To Be A New.

How to write at all?—I’m curious, concerned. (I hear this voiced within, ask aloud on the patio, by the pool, speak on skin, through sheet: How will I write in this happiness, when?, if I am living, spending time doing that). Fulfillment is a block. But I’m willing to allow it, to let this, for the first time to let it go, go on. (And I think, not at all, and I relate—rarely—to the absence, which was “I”). Back in the yard, I walk after the rain. At first thought I think this will be more difficult to explain. Then, no. No, this—these last(ing) days—are less challenging to explain, while description I bet may barely brush the surface, so to speak. In other words—what? I can explain why I’ve come, how I’ve resisted. And I will hear—as I have been—“but you are young with such an old soul.” But I can’t conjure the words to describe my difference, our engagement—how engaged I am, truly; on a private level, so many touch me. Language is my intimacy: I live for this, because of this. My dream—my hope—is to be better at how I live for others, to discover the particular words as to make us stand out. By “stand out” I mean, if paper were shuffled together, I want to be able to blindly grab, and hear a passage that marks a change in time, situation, that I can remember specifically (who, where) that is not because my character but a result of the other. I want what I write to reveal the remarkable traits of someone else. I can achieve this by practicing, beginning to write the everyday (the aftereffects, the [common?] surprise, the sentimental, the seen, the revered) and acknowledging I will make mistakes. Life only expands with a voice in mind. I want to listen to others, to voices; I want us to relate. Maybe because somewhere I hope this is how we fall in love. And how we grow up without forgetting.

I’m late and have to cut this short. At the doctor yesterday, I asked the woman leading me to the room, how she is. “Tired, Chelsea, I am just real tired.” Today? Or often? “Today.” I was agitated in my sleep last night. Was that what happened? “No.” Just not enough? Are you someone that needs a certain amount of hours? “That’s not me at all. I had my dream and all day I’ll be depressed because I had to leave it for work.” She then told me about the man she has been dreaming of every month for the last 18 years. It began on July 15 1990 when she came to Miami from New Jersey. Do you feel depressed because you wake from this next to your husband? I asked. Does he know about him? “He never wanted to know anything.” She told me multiple versions of dreams. She told me of the paycheck, the plane, the ticket back. Another doctor called her out, urgently she said she’d be right back, but she never came. I waited, and wrote out a poem by Robert Creeley for her and included a note:

Echoes

Eight panes
in this window
for God’s light,
for the outside,

comes through door
this morning.
Sun makes laced
shadows on wall

through imperfect glass.
Mind follows,
finds the lines,
the wavering places.

Rest wants
to lie down
in the sun,
make resolution.

Body sits single,
waiting—
but for what
it knows not.

Old words
echoing what
the physical
can’t—

“Leave love,
leave day,
come
with me.”

- Robert Creeley.

* What is the use of poetry if it can’t be shared; what good is a dream if the body never lets it actually act out?

An old soul has perspective. She has insight. She has a sense for reason. I feel she can become new by risking soul, by caring for the outside, by encouraging those to retain a youthful heart. The only way one can risk himself for the other is by intuition. This takes a certain confidence; a communication where one believes his feeling, and trusts the other can—and wants to—believe too. If I die aware of my development, I will have lived. I know.