Diary 40

02.06.24

PATCHWORK

The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our
grasp on the world and our sketch of our project.
Simone de Beauvoir

Nothing is sacred
marauder, look.

I pillage naked
in a gauzy dress

burn fields of iris
to reach heaven.

Mama always said
bare skin was made for

Patchwork. Wanting
to confess is a symptom.

Wait until dusk
when the sun casts

ravines of shadow
across the canyon.

There will be no saints
or saviors, something

supple waiting
in the doorway.

Men will crawl
out of their caves

just to glimpse
something holy

and god,
stitch by stitch

I will darn my
gaping body

into something so
delicate, it trembles.



02.05.24

I realized I’ve consistently been writing out playlists on here for the last few months, so I found a platform that allows me to link songs together and play them back to back, like a radio show. Below, two playlists, and some commentary in-between.

Wherever the wind blows, Ep. 1
The sound of dust becoming visible, Ep. 2



02.04.24

Drove out east this last week and explored the ghost towns around the Salton Sea. Sorted through the rubble of all the bandos: shattered glass, old mattresses, bed springs, beer cans, scraps of metal, slashed couches, cars that’d been lit on fire and left behind. Felt real apocalyptic. But we did see a few homes that were still inhabited, too. Here and there we passed someone bent under the hood of their truck or working in their yard and though we were the only car on the street, these people never looked up to scope us out, didn’t flinch or move a muscle, just minded their own business. I liked that about them.



01.17.24

Recently invested in Kai Carlson-Wee’s poetry collection, Rail. Below, a poem that’s buried itself beneath my skin. I’m copying it here because it’s well worth remembering.

HOLES IN THE MOUNTAIN

Even the dead rats in the alleys of Oxford,
heads crushed and tossed in a trash bag,
left to fester behind the fence, are waiting
for crows to divide them, to carry their bodies
away. And if not crows, or the street pigeons
picking a leg bone, then the broom
of a street sweeper keeping a rhythm
to one of the tunes in his head. Or the wind
as it funnels the dust in a mini-tornado
above him. Because it isn’t enough
to say God is the speed of the wheel
that turns the sky, or that God is the distance
between two trains, hurtling at the same speed
toward you. It doesn’t matter what stories we use
to explain these impossible themes—
they will always turn fake or explode
in our faces. On Mount St. Helens
the fires went into the roots of the oldest pines,
smoldered and stayed in the coals for a month
before burning the farms on the opposite side
of the mountain. They found this out later,
tracking a mouse through a network
of intricate caves. We used to have ways
of explaining our failures. Now all we do
is erase them by spreading the veils of blame
so thin. The scars on our hands are only around
to remind us: don’t grow old in yourself,
don’t get lost in this scrimmage. Because even
death, in its marble skies and free-wheeling borders,
is an art of remembering everything over.
And although the soul is a joke we tell
to the part of ourselves we can touch,
it’s only because the soul is a fire, and laughs
at our sorrow, and has already survived us.