accept death as an orifice. I don’t have time to look up the
descriptions of each fossil. But plainspeak is best, right?
Until one finds meaning in speaking writerly (rather, um,
onanstic if you ask me; but also POETIC. Right?).....
I go to witness the blessing of a baby. My partner’s
godchild. In a spectacle of a Greek Orthodox...
cathedral? I parted ways with organized religion
years ago and am surprised to be so calmed by,
and so in awe of, this ritual, mostly just prayers. I’m proud
of the circumstances that bring me to attend. And touched
by how it reinforces the severity, the joy, the poignance,
the responsibility, the amazement, the ever-conflicting
importance of the power with which we’re (with which
I’m) drawn to suspicious rituals (I love to use the phrase
‘ludicrious construct’). It calms me. And centers me.
I am surely more than a marionette, yanked around
by opposing forces? I’m a piece of ice used as a
lesson in memory and metaphor. I lost my home
in the north due to overly warm seasons (it is
the future); a fisherman whose family is swept
into an expanding sea. I’m a refugee fisherman
from a larger ocean. Now, the fish rule.....
But I’m a liar. I am poison. I’m a sexless blue
whale with my nose deliberately stuck into the mud of a
deep cavern—unspoiled even by the likes of you.
The water is unbearably cold. The mud I’m
stuck in is somehow warmth. The tears I am
surely and constantly weeping—right?—are like ice.
