last night, the morning after

from my journal, 4 May 2010

i drop off the recycling and realize i can leave the bed sheets with M_____. as i park, i'm nearly certain that i see N_____. she sees me see her and i park - the instant panic of apparitions and i feel Jache somewhere over the Atlantic, traveling to A_____ to escape her scars.

she does not follow me and i call Jache, leave a message. i walk to the building and see my old neighbor, who tells me M_____ no longer lives there. we talk some, but under the growing cloud of revelation as i begin to understand this is one of those moments whose transition and impermanence is undeniable.

i can feel it on my skin - birth, deaath, sacrifice and mourning - i can taste it. stronger than the cadence on the beach in September, more forceful than a kick to the gut. i sense

G____ and K______
Jache and N_____
M_____ and me.

i see all the living and dying present in every moment, and i feel a tremendous reassuring peace in all this spinning dizziness, the confluence of passing and emergence.

it was M_____'s leaving that triggered it, and in that instance i realized that this place, this concrete structure, this edifice of memory had finally been untethered from the portico of my mind. i watched it float away on a Monday night, trapped inside a balloon, engulfed by the deceitful aura of re/membering. i drove home eyes open, blindfolded in the dark.

i got home and talked with my yin, shared these things with less eloquence, and wrote a poem before the thoughts grew too hazy or still. i went to bed before midnight and dreamed of a revolution in the streets of Miami. i'm there with my yin-in-law and we roam the streets safely, knowing we are among our own.

Liberty City, 1980