moth's powder (11.lastmonday.04)

11.lastmonday.04

dear moth's powder,

i realize, now and of course too late, that by my showing up in your neighborhood and announcing to all our friends mutual that i'd be there for a few days - with no doubt that they'd tell you - that i placed you in the most precarious of situations that forced your hand to make a gesture and decision that you had rather not made. of course, you chose to forego seeing me at all, foreclosing the possibility itself, not naming but certainly implicating that my behavior was indeed rushed and injurious, that it was ill-thought and seemingly callous. so much so that you took the occasion of my arrival to be the occasion of your flight, your pain so brutally true and honest that even Randy - whom we both know loathes me and always deemed me too passionate or, too excessive to be veritable - even Randy told me that you'd taken an impromptu trip. of course, his telling me was the rub, announcing that i, indeed, was the reason for your quick, emotional adventure away some somewhere for the weekend.

so while our friends mutual would converge and while you would be invited - because of my arrival and their desire to be around me and me with them; we do still love these people that we found while together accidentally on our journeys and peregrinations through life's steep and deep recesses and mountains - but since you'd be invited, well, you'd have to make a decision to not see me and what better way to avoid this than by visiting, where was it, San Francisco? i wonder who you saw while you were away. but, of couse, though i took this as the strongest offense, i had not stopped to consider - until very, quite recently actually - why your going away was the only recourse you had for avoidance. was it that our being in the same town at the same time cause for too much emotional ebbs and flows of which you could not resist? i'm sure that shit sounds hella...egotistical.

don't get me wrong. i get it now. that i could not give you the space you so required and requested of me by my showing up was nothing other than me desiring to fulfill some such narcissistic thrust, some egoist sentiment. of course, i cared (and still do, i suppose) for you. i did not want to offend you. i did, indeed, want to see you. but then, curiously, a friend asked me recently: why would you want to see him under such conditions and that was meant as a critique of the actions i took. why, indeed, was i not willing to wait? and if waiting meant forever and that i'd have to move on and release my grasp and let go of the "that" which we had? then so be it. i hate adages unless they are true and aphorisms unless they emerge out of my experience. but i suppose when they (and who is this they that is constantly referred to when we say they say? well.), but they do say (or, am i making this up?) that when you want to demonstrate love to someone or something, you've gotta let it go. of course, my showing up and calling Randy - Randy, of all people; i was desperate, you must know this - these actions were last resort and last ditch effort for you to give me some attention. and of course, i tried to enact a certain sort of nonchalance about the whole deal and this by way of never - not once while i was there - mentioning your name to anyone and trying as hard as possible to go to take someone home with me when we all went out to the club so that all our friends mutual would have some such tale to tattle about my exploits with a guy who he met at the club who was hella cute and sexy and is a med student at the local college or university and is really smart and progressive and out and everyone loves him and we were all trying to holla at him but he only paid attention to ... well, you get the picture.

i had the entire dialogue and how things would and should play out planned and choreographed and sounded out in my head and imagined the vein (i typed vain, at first, which, i suppose, i wanted to also affect; get on the underside of your vanity, hurt it, bruise it a bit; make you know that you should want me. anyway), i imagined the vein in your head and neck popping out, your breathing with difficulty and deeply because you were some kinda hurt by the fact that i could come to the same town and have fun and not mention you to any of our friends mutual and they'd have a story to tell about me to you and i'd be so aloof as to not even care if there was a story that they'd want to share about you to me. well. egotistical, i suppose, doesn't begin to describe it. but, and i know it is quite unbelievable at this point, but i really only wanted to carry you. like in the dream i had a few weeks back that i recounted to you.

funny thing was, quite literally, the day after i'd had my dream about black and white supermans, about our children and about carrying you over thresholds, i went to a friend's house and he wanted me to watch this foreign film titled La Petite Vendeuse De Soleil - which means, The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun. the film is about a little girl - named Sili - living in Dakar, Senegal with her grandmother and because of class, she decided to sell newspapers - Le Soleil. her grandmother was blind and, let's say, a highway beggar, one who needed the support of others (and no, this is not a moral judgment against needing others; of course, i think needing others is the condition that makes us human). of course, this created tension in the film because Sili was twelve years old and became competition to a group of young boys around her age who also sold the same (and other) periodicals. well. it wouldn't be that interesting except folded into the story is the notion of carrying as well as giving, which of course reminded me of you (i'd almost say that seeing the film the day after writing to you about carrying carried some mystical, spiritual quality, content or substance and maybe i should just wait...for you...for me to carry you).

in the film, Sili is paraplegic and uses crutches to get around, which would - to normative eyes - make the selling of Le Soleil most difficult. of course, she does not allow what is deemed a disability by others to hinder her desire to assist her grandmother. of course, the boys who resisted her selling the paper used her abilities against her (i mean, they'd knock her down and steal things from her). intriguingly, her first day on the job, a businessman purchased all thirteen newspapers from her and gave her more to compensate for her industry, thrift and hard work. with the profit she made from the sales, she took the money and purchased an umbrella that would cover her grandmother from the sun, giving the shade necessary for her to sit throughout the day and beg, talk, socialize. her fortune was immediately shared with others not just in the way of giving money (which was cool, of course) but also by her giving shade, giving protection to the one who would so protect her. but the final scene is most powerful to me: the rival boys knock Sili on the ground (it would be crass, i know, to say "knocked her silly" but i do want you to laugh - or at least smile - even when i'm serious) and they stole her crutches and newspapers. her friend (who sold newspapers as well but who helped her and did not consider himself a rival) questioned: what's next? her reply? we continue.

he extended his hand to Sili, lifted her off the ground, placed her on his back and carried her so they could proceed along the journey. this was, of course, better than the dream i had because it showed me that ones who do so much work to cover others also, at various times and places, need to be carried. the film was a constant display of ensemble, of musicians who play together, who fill in spaces through improv and creativity, who use skill, care, thoughtfulness and rigor to create new out of seeming necessity.

my dream, as i'd told you, ended rather abruptly with me carrying you and things going fuzzy thereafter. but this film gave me the two words we continue with the gesture of carrying. well. my trip to your neighborhood? it was more like the opposite of carrying, really like throwing to you to the ground. in my insistence to carry, i did not realize that carrying may well be letting go, or, to sound hella cheesy, holding you in my heart or some shit.

we continue (even if by way of withdrawing; by letting go),

a.-