Late Night Tea

Screen Shot 2016-05-31 at 6.00.32 PM“There inside the Forest of Clocks

The more she worried, the darker it got

One step, two step, black sang a riddle

Thinking led to nowhere — found herself in the middle

Curiosity lures the soul with the voice of a child’s mind

And now she finds herself Here

She’s out — just in time.”

–Inspired by a dream, a week before moving from SF to NYC, 1987

Wind chirps and twigs snap, imagination runs wild as her body sits still — the stiller she gets, the more she feels like she’s going crazy — movement keeps her sane, a life force in her that cannot, will not, be contained. Seems they dealt her a dose too big when it came to divvying out life spirit. Hers comes on so strong sometimes she feels like she’s going to explode, she can’t keep up with the pace of her deepest desires, always jumping on the urges, and running with the craziest whims.

She was the kind of girl who’d flash her tits and then wonder why she did it. But she was also the kind of girl who would talk herself into the idea that it as totally okay. “Fuck ’em all if they can’t take a joke — why is the world so uptight? Jesus, get a life, people.” But then she’d flop, wondering, somewhat timidly, “Why do I feel compelled to push the energy? What’s up with that?”

It’s not the attention she wanted, it was the effect she’d have on the people who were living with their goddamned eyes closed. If tits were a prompt in a writing class, people would probably be inspired to write something — inspired either by the absolute anger and being utterly offended, or aroused or sad or confused — but at least something. They’d be beckoned to come suckle at the tit of creative inspiration or outrage, come hither and speak your mind, unleash thoughts you’re supposed to keep tethered. It’s in those ideas that words sing and magic bursts through the bullshit boring thought processes of regular life, safe shit, men with their pants zipped and women’s breasts hidden away to keep the peace and maintain the status quo, keep the natives from getting restless. Well, fuck that. The world would be a better place if we let the natives get restless and go wild, uncaged and unglued, uninhibited and unafraid — anything that starts with “un” — that’s what the world needs: more undoing. Let the cats out of the bags, wear more hearts on the sleeves, let it all hang out, release the prisoners and free your tits, free your mind, free hand, free bird, free lemonade, free thought — amazing how freedom can inspire such fear in people. That loss of control freaks folks the fuck out.

Maybe that’s why she second-guessed her tit flashing. It simply took too much energy to think about the chaos she’d provoked — that ultimately the freeing of her tits would lead to an even tighter regime, restriction, repression in people than had she left her boobs in her bra in the first place.

She always thought that life would be so much better if everyone was required to have sex a minimum of once a week — required as in you must, you will, you shall be blessed and given the opportunities to fuck every day, and you are required to partake at least once a week. The rules are simple: always great sex, always kind and sweet and satisfying and freeing — no emotional messes, just good old natural sex, oh — and you can order up your preference in advance — rough and naughty, sweet and gentle, quick and funny, and so on. The only rule is that you have to imbibe in sex at least once a week. Life would be so much better.

Life. Sometimes her life sent her down a path of bliss and learning; other times into a trainwreck of pain and fury — of not having the reins to pull back and around the wreckage, but then again she’s endured many emotional catastrophes in her inability to slow down, a learning so deep it couldn’t be absorbed any other way except in darkness, in that black place of not knowing — sometimes that where you know the most. She’s sat in the living room with Death sitting on the sofa next to her. Spent many a night shooting the shit with Death, kind of felt like a friend at some point in that she’d rather hang with him and hear his stories than sit alone in the dark with no one. Death is a presence, lurking always, why not invite him in for tea, make him feel at home — door’s always open — that way he doesn’t have to force his way in. No knocking at the door if it ain’t locked.

 

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