swim

i've been living quite within myself.  wading in the pleasure centers in my brain, between fiction and non-fiction.  i see the waves coming towards me.  i'm in a low, squat beach chair, my rear end centimeters from the sand.  i'm watching whales and you.  both mysterious and guarded, beautiful and incomprehensible.  i catch a tail sinking back into the deep.  i make up what the body must look like.  make it up from images i've seen on tv and drawings in books.  it is, i proclaim, a whale.  and so it will be from now into the future as i have recorded it, as i have named it, as i have laid claim and tightened down on it.  forever, this story in my head. 

i've sent out a message on the rolling seas.  whales.  and so many things.  bigger than me. 

(it feels good to clack, clack on the keys again.  i warn myself to not make any grandiose statements such as, "i'm back, i'm writing again".  writing doesn't like being called.  writing is the most beautiful of dancers that really doesn't want the audience until it's performance is complete and the images and phrases are echoes left by feet already treading upon new landscapes.

it's tuesday morning.  my breakfast consists of peanut butter toast and coffee.)

the waves peak like so many hungry mouths, all sky bound, all reaching for a distant star with their wants and dreams.  i see reflected in these open chasms, the shouts of so many thoughts carried from distant shores, rolling along, one self affirming message after another, all proclaiming, "I am here!"  and so we are, remarkably here.  i walk to the water's edge and attempt to catch a falling wave, to cup the water softly to my ear, to hear it's cry, to know the news from some other time zone.  but water drains quickly from my eager palms.  i scoop and scoop like a child playing and each hand full falls away from me.  i am bid to immerse myself.  immerse myself in the hollering of the world.  i walk back to my beach chair and watch whales.  the water's too rough to swim.

i send out a message with the tide.  there are so many things i don't understand.  i look up at the clouds, mouth open and eyes closed: why.