Write, Don't Think

Joy. Joy is lonely. I can watch others do it but when I run through others scatter, and the joy scatters with them. Like pigeons on a square in Italy. The ones my mom always told me about. She smiled. I saw her. So did her dad. Transatlantic lust. Hawaii. Greece. New Zealand. Poor ol’ Barbara at home with the kids and the marijuana in the fire place. That’s not funny. Drawers of beads. A chest freezer and a laundry shoot. Grandpa’s workshop in the corner of the basement. Half-finished sculptures of an artist going blind. Tin foil and pastels. Rice paper with ink. Indonesia. China. The Mediterranean.

Success is outside the window. Success is behind my fingers. Success comes out in surprised shouts but I’m not allowed to share it. It’s mine but I don’t want it to be. Success is lonely like joy. So is strength. So is failure. Failure is running in circles but never crossing the finish line. Failure is always running away. Success is always running away. I’m taking my joy hostage and stowing it in the overhead bin on a transatlantic flight.

My favorite is when I fly over England at night. Their cities are shaped like circles, did you know? Have you seen it? Or a herd of sheep gathered around a small oasis of water in the middle of a drought. Illuminated in the night. Fleece. Wool. English boulevards and wild roses. Rain. Then comes the English Channel. Wide. Gaping. But you can go under it. A million miles a minute and a gin and tonic and a dissatisfied family going to a wedding. (They didn’t like the bride.)

That place in London. That square. That man sleeping on his jacket. An open guitar case and the music agent who hated the Pixies. Fuck the Pixies he said. Fuck ‘em. I’d pay money to see you two any day, but the Pixies? Fuck ‘em. Fuck the Pixies.
The embassy. The phone call. Transatlantic is not so much fun the other way.

It’s coming back to sit in the center of a room and laugh at jokes that aren’t funny and try to hide disdain behind my skin that’s no longer my own. Molt. Like a snake. A wriggling snake with a heel to boot and the world’s vendetta against its squirmy skin. Shed. Everything. Nude. Naked. Hollow. Void. Vide. Chasm. Abyss. Abject. Object. Suspect. Subject. Sub. Dom. Dominate. Subjugate. Conjugate. Corrogate. Cardboard. Thin. Wrong. Fat. Folds. Flesh. On. Off. Run. It. Off. Onwards. Forwards. Out the window into the car down the street over the ocean back to earth.

(Written 28 February 2011 during F-Word rehearsal; a nonstop, seven-minute free-write based off of the personal experience of authentic movement . . . and other theater nonsense and whatnots.)