For the third year, albeit not in a row (does last year… the barely walking hours… count? Except for the pool with A and brolaw, the meeting of S, and the few years spent shuttling around in circles while the snow silted through the cold cold cold of my head – it hardly seems waking. It hardly seems there… And now I am in a year that is going to strike my life like the energy that has been pooling for far too long), I slept outside again, curled under the low sky in my Ecuador hammock and curled and curled. Everything so soft inside me, and the Midwest greeting my birth with lightening and dark heldback laughter. All night, the brief outbursts of passion… greeting me, greeting the dreams slumbering inside me. The rain just hit the outside rim of my rolling bed, not enough to deter or to get me wet, but enough to remind me where I was, and how my life was turning around. How this Me is glorious… the rubbing together of my layers generating this moment, the moment of unfurling. And all night, I woke and spoke softly to it. Hello streaks, hello photons, hello movement generated in the lapses between snapshot and snapshot.

And so, I awoke in the morning just a little stiff, but rolling with… rolling with. And the day, so mellow and just what I needed. I will never get over how many people wrote me, sent me cards, Created for me (lolly lolly), called me, made a point of telling me they loved me. They Love Me! And so, I spent most of the morning editing co-student papers from workshop and loving the privilege of understanding another person’s mind-on-page.

And then I went shopping for me and for my turtles. I bought myself presents: three tetras for my little turtles, plants for them, light, catnip for Fuji, cat-toy for Fuji, all the objects I’d place around myself were I living in a terrarium of my own design. I spent over an hour in the Pet Store, listening to animals. (Does it matter that my hatchlings, my babies, the ones who I bought three fish for in order to keep them company in the small little worlds they live in… snapped the head off one of the tetras in order to welcome her home?)

And then, I went to a party…

And got smashingly drunk. Way way way far too drunk.

And the girl that looks like N: I wanted to be her friend. I wanted to know who she is past the person who reminds me of N. I wanted to learn the difference between (to make friends and feel their insides over. to understand another soul). So, I got far far too drunk and was too familiar and afterwards we went for this long walk, and with all those Wonders who’ve been in my life – I’ve been thinking about them, missing the ones I no longer know, missing D, missing S, missing Rosario…

(I called Rosario and she is still dating Rosario. Rosario hugs Rosario, loves Rosario, is making it work with Rosario. The masturbatory incest of those who leave me… the irony of their loves, of who their Chosens reveal them to be… the revelation. And the way their Chosens call me puta barata and they claim I’m a conquistadora or worse yet. Worse yet. Worse yet. So many betrayals of my language… I will look carefully to the places I strike, the energy I expend and the words I speak. Rosario told me off again when I talked to her, and I told her that I couldn’t keep in contact with her if she was going to keep running me down with old lies… and she said okay, not to call again. And I’m so tired. So tired. And there aren’t even words to describe the other. Rosario deserves Rosario. They are a match. Heaven will reveal itself in the white space between their names.)

Anyhow... just thinking of them and, in a sense, carrying them around in this new moment. A warning, maybe? But obviously not enough of one:

I walked with the girl who reminds me of N, and reveled in the being with a being. But with N, I'd know that a long walk is a long walk and it is about feeling the night, looking at the bridge lights as they reflect the city back to me. It is about hearing words, and looking at the church she pointed out and told me was Greek, but really was Catholic. (I wanted to climb inside another person and laugh with them). And so, I babbled late into the night and she said, "Um, where are you going?"

And I said, "I'm walking. I'm walking with you. This is not the direction home, but I'm dedicated to the cause of walking."

And she said, "Oh, I was just walking you to the subway."

How many miles past subway had we rambled, how many light years past hello and goodbye? Probably never as far as I need. Finally she got tired, ran out into the street and caught a cab and left, and I realized just how very very pukingly drunk I was. That I overstayed my moment. That I talked too much for one walking.

And so, I tried to catch the subway home, and instead I found that the night had shut down around me while I was walking with this girl who reminded me of N, but was coming out differently. Differently in a way that was good. I liked her. The story she told me of was of finding shells on the beach as a child, coming home and looking for them as an adult. Then having it revealed that her parents put the shells on the beach for her to find. And realizing that the shells were never what she thought... Ah, I wanted to say, ah…. I like this girl, yes. But I wanted a friend so badly I think, I wanted to talk and talk and talk, that I ended up lasting out the night as it shut down around me.

And so, I caught a cab home with Falil-the-cabbie, who tossed his hand over the partition between the front and the back, told me he liked me, and then asked if I "wanted to get fun with him." And when he overshot my home, and I said, "turn right turn right," he stopped and asked me if I wanted to get fun with him. I said, um no, I have to go. And then he asked if he could hug me goodnight, got out of the cab when I did and tried to kiss me. And I just turned my head and felt a little lost and drunk for a minute. And yet I knew exactly where I was: back in familiar territory. And so, I walked home...

Now, I have sworn off alcohol for a month, at least a month, and I've sworn off letting too much of myself out there in this world. Sworn off wanting instant friendship and connection, wanting people to meet me in the river Right Now just because I've been swimming out there for a long time.

This world is too beautiful for me. This world... I am too beautiful for it too, sometimes.

But here I am, twenty-nine and a thousand lives old. Waking up, finding things around me to be grateful for. Feeling the gratitude, feeling it well up through the violences. I’ve found a good head space, and I’m going to stick to it… a prime number, a movement, a Real not Drama, and the intensity that burns, burns inside, and will jut out and strike where it may, a white streak to follow with good deep-belly laughter.