Amelia & I

The other one, the one called Amelia, is full of life and passion.  She’s always going on fun adventures and meeting new people.  Unfortunately for her there is me.  I get into her head and rattle around like a ping pong ball driving her mad.  I am the dark cloud in the distance that people see and fear.  Why is that?  I wasn’t always this way.  I used to be fun and support Amelia’s creativity.  We used to be a team, and now we’re opposing rivals. 

See, I’m doing it to her now .... she’s stuck, with nothing to write because I am there questioning her every move, making her anxious and giving her writers block.  She looks like a vegetable, sitting there, staring at the blank page, with nothing to write.  It’s not like I want to be the burden Amelia bares.  She carries me around like a ball and chain, struggling to be free, yet knowing there is no way out of this relationship.  I fear I may stop her from doing great things.  

When both Amelia and I are not at work thinking and taking action, we are sleeping.  Why can’t we always let go of things as when we do when fast asleep?  I have known Amelia to conceive some pretty wild dreams ... it must be frustrating that I take that away from her during the day.  As Walter Benjamin put it, I am like the dream that has grown grey.  Amelia will soon put a note on her door which reads: “poet at work” so that she can be free from me, letting her imagination run wild.  Amelia is the dream, and I am the banal.  I am not sure which of our faults this is.  Should Amelia try to let go of me?  Or should I stop crowding her mind, and let go of her?  Or maybe Amelia should not let me crowd her mind so that we can let go of each other, or at least learn to co-exist.

We are stuck in a game called the tug-of-war and it has gone on too long.  We must find peace.

Gertrude Stein & "Exercises in Style" REMIX

In the outside there is awakening, in the inside there is breathing, in the evening there is feeling, because throughout the day there is meaning.  Because throughout the day there is meaning.  In meaning everything is living, in meaning everything is expanding, in meaning there is surrendering, in meaning there is acknowledging, in meaning there is frequency and entirely understood there is adoration.  All the ticking makes time and all the energy makes light and all the wheels made spinning and all the crazy made wilding.  This makes beauty.  

Paranoid

In the S bus, (what could S stand for?) in the rush hour where all the people around watch and stare and judge and know.  A spy perhaps of about 26, squinting, heavy, watching eyes, white knuckles, as if he’s looking for me.  People getting off, spy getting closer.  The spy grows annoyed with one of the men standing next to him.  He accuses him of jostling him every time anyone goes past.  An alibi for moving so close to me.  When he sees a vacant seat he throws himself on to it.

Two hours, 21 minutes and 39 seconds later, I meet him in the Cour de Rome, in front of the gare Saint-Lazare, a sketchy place if you ask me.  He’s with a friend who must be speaking of me: “You ought to loosen your grip.”  He shows him where (at his knuckles) and why (shooting a look at me).