Magdalena O!

i am all wet. my shorts stained with the grit of the street. i am soaked all on my backside. my legs freckled with black dirt. fallen tree buds. my hair frizzy. my eyeliner moved from the top to bottom eyelid. yet, my skin so soft. the water loosening it. the water opening me up.

humidity is so teenage.

what is the moat around my house protecting me from? why are there barricades protecting me from the moat?

I pass the other side of the page – Pablo Neruda

(video stills)

I regret now that my preoccupations with always thinking i’m too old have cost me years of experience, and now when I am much older I think I am ok but behind it all. I musn’t think that. I am here, I am able.

My preoccupations always cost me observations. I fell asleep shortly after getting home from work. I stayed up until 2am the night before baking banana bread, of which I’ve had almost the whole thing by now. I gave myself to work today, it was so strange to put effort into my job because I am so good at totally dissasociating myself from any task. I decided today would be different, I thought it would help me feel connected. I’d tell my boss how excited I am about the new menu project or the staff exhibition, but I am just lying. I am trying to convince myself to feel something but I feel nothing at all. If I’m going to stay with something, then I should give myself to it, but it’s so trying to do so. I don’t want it to be difficult, I want to be sincere. The disconnection drains me. I always imagined it helping me, making sure that I was still ‘me’, I wasn’t in any way my job, but instead my lack towards it stops all creativity.

How do you reach out? Is the sincerest reaching out only fulfilled when you let go of worrying about vulnerability? Why do some people put you at ease, while others you want to so badly to reach out to, make you clam up? Can I ever let go completely with everyone I want to? I want to listen to Tipper and be in a country I’ve never been to before and just lay on the grass, a thick bed of grass like in Egmont Park, Brussels, without my cell phone, my lap top, without anyone but have the music permeate me. Did my grandfather reach out? Is he dead because he didn’t want to reach out? Did we just not hear him? Why did he die five days before I was supposed to go see him? I’m on the phone with him, he seems well. He is faking it. I don’t want to believe it. I am too busy making websites, I am too busy living to admit, to observe someone I love dying in front of me. I use my work as an excuse only in part, because I don’t want the responsibility, I don’t want to give into knowing he needs me so much, he is depending on me. I want those close to me to know they can depend on me, I want to feel needed, I want to give myself to help. My eyelids are heavy with dread.

Everyone is picking up their loved one and mine is dead.
Mine isn’t coming out.
Mine poisoned his blood through self-medication
three days before I got there to take care of him.
This is so unfair.
So here I am crying,
crying because he’s not here.
He could still be here.

I COULD OF CAME EARLIER.
I COULD OF STOPPED BEING SO SELFISH.
S
E
L
F
I
S
H

So I’ll never see him walk through those doors like I was used to all my life.
I only get to watch other people’s embraces.
I don’t get to participate.
I don’t get the privileged to help him
with his things while he insists that he can
carry it
himself.

Where are the hurricanes? Take me. Take me.

I want to see those gates to belong to us again.
I want your eyes wide open with excitement
not shut with shellac, while I hold you
crying tears all over your body, while
the heat is making the gel in your hair
melt.

Why?
You never did anything to your hair.
It was always cut perfect, all in your style
of the
do-it-yourself
hairstyle.
(dec 06)