2.26.22

The cold teaches us how a body in motion might stay in motion. Walking through the cold to ____'s house, I felt close to myself. I thought about everything I owned in that room I had been sitting in, of everything that I might call mine. Two blankets, mattress, notebooks, shoes, socks, clothes, a camera, pictures, heater, pillows, glasses, toothbrush, face wash, soap, laptop, advil, guitar, wok, seasonings, surfboard. I'm not sure I own these things as much as they have somehow found me when I had use for them. We lived together in peace for some time. How is a life made of so much but also so little? Once in a poem I wrote: "Collecting things/ Does it mean - I said yes and accepted a life somewhere?"

Yesterday night ____ and I spoke of music and how music cannot be held in our hands, yet we carry it with us. Where does the music go after it is played aloud? After thinking about it, we answered memory. Now looking at the all things that have found me, I wonder how I might turn the mundane evidence of my life here into music on its way to memory.   

Two springs ago, ______ and I sat in the living room and she drew my tarot cards. One card was two of pentacles; the guide book the deck came with said: The first things in life are gifts. Now that I am leaving this house, I can feel viscerally the deep love I have for it. Departure re-opens every closing door. I will miss the smell of wood in this house and the wisteria blooming around the back porch. Last night I came home and I had the sensation that all of life was a gift. If it was given freely, then I must also live as such. I don't think I am leaving this house or this city or this self as much as I am arriving, finally,  in this world.