(also, i walk by this window display in the morning on my way to work. there is a giant quartz. a red dress. a fur coat. the store never appears to be open. i also walk by a swing someone has strung from a tree branch over the sidewalk. and road construction. and a confusing art gallery. and where the men play dice. and where the cook was shot on his cigarette break. i think about him a lot.)
2-the cab driver sang me a song. he didn't know my name and he sang, "Laura..." he said, 'i hope it isn't serious.' he said, 'how is your love life?' i wish there was a way to track why i remember certain things later. why i remember them crossing fillmore in a part of town i'm only ever in when i go to the doctor. i go inside the store with its white floorboards and i pick up tiny shoes the size of my palm and the woman eyes me and i want to tell her, 'you have no idea. and neither do i.' later when i tell the story, i tell it like he was psychic, and another man i barely know sings my name and laughs, and the sound of it...i don't know. the sound of my name inside these unknown voices, in song. and i hope it isn't anything serious. serious serious serious.
3-'well, you're so young,' she says. and here i thought i was full of dust.
4-even paul newman had an affair somewhere inside that happy 50 year marriage. butch cassidy and the sundance kid is a really good movie. we all do a lot of different things over the course of our years.
5-what a dumb word it is, sadness. what a thing to not foresee. being a widow. or what treachery it will be. the mistake, of course, will be your own.
6-here is the thing about rain. you can be outside in it. you can be inside. 'take those off,' he says. always, i want to feel closer. i wake up inside a video. inside a letter. i thought so hard about writing letters last night that i thought he would have written me one while i slept and it would be waiting. but what i'm forgetting is autonomy. bad-ass-ness. how it feels to dance.
8-these lyrics: and this i remain.
9-i don't know where i am (san francisco. or: at work. walking home, in the movie theatre). what day it is (tuesday). how old i am (33). i feel like i am floating. like i am wearing second hand cashmere. like i am a silly girl. like i am psychic too. trivial. a hermit. an ant. depends when you ask me. one day i am scoffing at gifts, the next i'm admitting what no one else can. what wisdom. 'you can't be serious,' he writes in the margin.
10-'are you psychic?' i ask the cab driver. 'yes,' he says. 'is this the future?' i ask the man who checks me in. 'yes,' he says. i meant to tell him i was kidding. how for five whole fucking minutes i cared so deeply about that video game. the magazine for overweight women. the women around me, far sicker. far more experienced in these things. actually growing life. actually closer to the end, but only technically.
11-an example of my lack of professionalism. 'i appreciate the messages of the universe,' i say. these messages pop up and i respond furiously. these conversations seem vital.
12-what i look up on the internet. 'only work related things,' i say. advice and love notes and witty banter. maybe he's doing it for me. my equilibrium. to remind me that, either way, i am skin and cells and cycles and wholeness. to remind me that, either way, it isn't about us. not mostly. the kind of patience he means is patience so profound and enduring, it's not even close to the kind of patience i have. maybe he means to tell me that what matters has already been said, and that what happened still exists, cannot be taken back, ghosts of a sort. to want anything else is to miss the point, to be seeking punishment. i guess many (most) things are for their own sake entirely. what is it that we really build or wait for? it is the joy, now, of typing these words. it is the walk, this morning, trying to angle my knee over my wobbly ankle, looking at it all again. it is not what will happen or did.
13-my position on pornography.
14-what i borrow and lend.
15-he knows the tone he is setting. he knows the opportunity.
16-i have this czech necklace. i rarely sleep in jewelry, but sometimes i do. i went to see this assassin movie alone, and it had certain interesting qualities. i think i probably won't ever watch another horror movie. i bought junior mints. i don't usually buy junior mints. i rode the bus. i forgot i hate the bus. i often remember the moment we were robbed. someone might just yank something from your hands. it happens all the time. not just near seas and volcanoes, though that has long since stopped being a memory. i've sort of been paying attention to the primaries. i have this tiny planner that barely anything can fit inside. the impracticality of it seems very important to me and i carry it everywhere, to meetings, where i mark down things that i would remember anyway and write numbers into the blank months and feel good that things are happening.
17-'beautiful ass,' he tells me.
'the cervix appears unremarkable,' the report says.
18-being in love is scary. it depends what kind of in love, but most of them are pretty scary. we talk till the candles burn down about our lives, and our husbands, and our writing, and children, and being creative. i say certain things out loud for the first time. though the saying can't alter actual objects or travel through time, it does i think slough off some unnecessary skin.
19-daydream is the wrong word for this morbid shit.
21-and this is what i mean tonight. i hesitate more these days because i feel what i mean changing and fluctuating so much. it depends on my surroundings, on what music i'm listening to, what i'm wearing, what else has happened. it feels like such a wild impermanence of thought. one day convinced, and the night an anxious rush of, no, not that, and sleeping, and then the morning. it's not unpleasant, just unmoored, directionless, air, softness, a rush, a turned around, like i've been spun, like i have powers or timelessness. like i'm the girl in his song, or the title of the noir movie after the football game. a name that was chosen those years ago. not inside most of the time of this world, and now, such fuss, such talk, such muddle, such wonder.
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