I walk into a spiderweb and instantly get a charley horse in my right thigh. As my old friend Crazy Dave used to say, it’s all in your head, but that’s where it counts.
Yesterday I made a new stone seat and this evening I go sit in it, a mile from the house. I pull out the book I’m reading, Melissa Studdard’s Dear Selection Committee, and read five more poems. Her poetry is rich, often wild, and reads like a cross between Rumi, Mirabai and Neruda, so is perhaps best consumed in morsels rather than all at once.
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Tonight my tiredness is loosely woven from bits of spiderweb and lichen and the sound of diesel locomotives pulling a hundred cars of coal. My tiredness weighs almost nothing and is the color of cold porridge. Why can’t I lay it down by lying down? My tiredness trickles from joint to joint like the opposite of an electric current.
Sucede que me canso de ser hombre… such a magnificent poem. (I really must re-read Residence on Earth. I lost my copy years ago.)
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As the sun goes down, daytime mosquitoes begin landing on the phone’s bright screen. I’d better stop typing. I don’t want to keep them up past their bedtimes.