in seattle, six o'clock and already black and dark. the new year peers. my best friend sits across the table with headphones plugged in and silver hoops swinging. break has been very good indeed and i feel a necessary grounding, a landscaped slide, the sound of moss hitting pavement and running to cover. i missed this place and i'm also looking forward to going back to chicago and developing a sense of home in a new place.

i feel a little less foolish and a little less agitated... this whole semester i've been battling a sense of the Jackass, i.e. the Jackass within, and i've tried being patient with that braying horse because nearly everything vibrant comes kicking with as little style as possible, or at least that's how it's gone for me. but i've decided to name that healing donkey open ground. my totems both drag and look at me askew every time, but i'm just a tad more wise today. only a bit though.

yeah. i guess chicago wound me up tight and nervous and made me wonder if i would find something outside of the Jackass. i no longer want to write myself into existence and so who will i write? agitation, perpetration, and the question of what my Plan is? is it possible to have a Plan when all of my plans have cliffallen and the only stable ground has been instability itself?

i am amazed at how many typos i make on a daily basis.

a little piece I am starting slowly like dripping wax:

Strobe

1.

She thinks in stone, thoughts simple rearrangements of solid. Gaseous pockets bubble contained, their motion defined, the limited entropy of motion no more than a caged monkey picking the lock. Plates move. She likes putting her feet on the handlebars. She settles, thoughts settle on her, they settle in her. She functions in time-lapse, depending on the outside view. Oceans understand her, but hook-beaked predators fly wide, their claws scraping her surface to drag away squealing vermin. And dangling them for her consideration. A ponderous contemplation, we all want her lazy gaze. In the country, she rides her bicycle while chewing rose hips. I gather along the telephone wires hopping three steps after her, but refusing any further. The trees passing her are wary. Decisions lock down, choices two clamps pressing pieces of burgeoning structure. Heads hoping never to be caught, but it happens: sometimes she enfolds and crushes down, her hard minerals, her feldspar, her quartz, her mica, her obsidian, her limestone too. Fossil remnants testify to the truth of her language. We remember the impervious spaces, the unquenchable moltens, lodes no pickaxe can land. Later, she spits the rosehip seeds up over her head; some bounce off her back tire and I pick them up in my beak. My tongue snakes their surface, everything in the distance is green. Desire is a funny creature. Rattling the chains, she puts her bicycle away carefully and remembers to lock the door snug. Her eyes prefer to say no. After a few lifetimes, we realize stones glisten best on the beaches they find themselves.