January 24

I took my car in to be looked at. I walked home, feet squidging in the mud.

Raining, a misting rain. My dad offered to pick me up so I didn’t have to walk through the rain,

but I wanted to walk through the rain, had planned it and planned on it, and now here I was just as I had planned.

I cut through a park which was a muddy patch in between 2 houses with a bench painted green and a barrel for trash.

There was a split rail fence surrounding the park and I leaned my back into the fence post. Tilting my pelvis.

There’s a guy on the internet who will diagnose your body pain and tell you what’s wrong, for free. My problem was — is

Anterior pelvic tilt. And I hold my back like Donald Duck. Sway back I guess you call it. And then I stand like that, sometimes for long periods of time.

Sometimes I strap a guitar on and sing songs and tell stories in between, all swayback.

Anyway the guy on the internet told me the antidote, which is to tilt your pelvis the other day while tightening your abs, and I was doing it in the rain.

Then I walked home and came to sit at my table/desk.

Really All I am about today is catching fire and catching spirit and not letting the pilot light of my creativity go out.

There’s a little lie I’ve been telling myself lately which is that I don’t want to write, and can’t write and can’t create, and that there is no sheen or shine to anything,

no sharp edge to my being.

And I start to believe in the dull edge — he dull patina. I start to believe that I don’t want to write but then I realize that is the lie.

The truth is, I have an edge, a fire, a shine, and that I do want to write.

I mean I don’t, but I can get myself to a place where I do. It’s kind of like tilting your pelvis the other way. Something that you might not think of or know how to do on your own.

I’m trying to give the bones of my creativity the right twist and tilt so that the flesh of my creativity comes to life and stops hurting… or something.

It’ll come.

Playing gigs helps. I played a gig last week and, besides my back hurting the next day, was completely energized the next day.

I love singing, I love playing.

I have my french press all cleaned out. The stove top is clean.

I have coffee ready to go for the morning.

Tomorrow will be a day full of possibility, ripe with prospect, chance, hope.

Oh yeah the stars are always out here. The moon. the railroad. Different than the subway. The subway in Brooklyn came with a slight rumble and rush.

This train comes with a muffled harmonica glissando. It’s too far away for me to hear the rush or rumble. It’s a distant keen. It’s more romantic in some ways.

In a “It takes a lot to laugh it takes a train to cry” kind of way. But the train sound is less romantic in other ways, because, well, it’s not the subway.

I still have to sort out the ways I love and miss New York, and the ways that I won’t miss it, and also the ways I knew — know — it was time to leave. I couldn’t stay.

And so my challenge now is to stay alert, poised, ready, listening, burning, or at least

ready to catch fire.

2 thoughts on “January 24

  1. When I first read this, it caught in the branches of my brain, a kite of words labeling itself as one of my favorite ever of your blog posts.

    Rereading it, I’m not quite as entangled in the rush of emotion it gave me at first, but I think it retains its place as favorite. Maybe it’s the opening of rain-embrace or the closing of that longing so deeply embodied by train sounds or the thread of creativity woven throughout–maybe it’s the stew of all the things, and I’m just enjoying the feast.

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