of sleep corridors and whisperings.
—Jack Spicer
I’m not feeling so tawdry
tonight but I would love a date
with the Pacific. A date with an
ocean seems suddenly and
terribly desperate, but I suppose
it could fairly easily be surmised
that I am. Desperate. But yet
I don’t think I am. Usually
anyway. I really would love to
date. Am ready to. Maybe I even
have something in the works. But
reading a blurb that pops up in my
phone just now, “Just when you
think Trump can’t sink any lower,”, says
the phone, so to speak, “he does.” And of
course he does. So I begin to wonder why even
to bother with this love thing. “It’s aready
a recipe for disaster,” I say to my phone? To
myself? In the end it’s all just a
realy dumb conundrum, anyway. Right?
But...but...if there ever was a time when one (I)
needed someone to grab by both hands, pull
him toward me, look directly into his eyes and
scream “THIS. CANNOT. BE. HAPPENING!!??”
...well, that time would surely be now. What a
time to remain in what has surely become,
by now, mostly just a self-imposed bubble,
my box, my little room in the city. Isn’t that
what love is, after all? Of course it is. Per-
haps among a multitude of other things. And
now these mullings have me missing it. The
comfort. The comfort a cat cannot give, for
example, or just to discern. I mean, you can
yell at an animal for days until it gets all silly
cross-eyed at you, but still who does it come
to for food. Nevertheless, this would have
to be torture for a cat. What would she care
what my phone is telling me about this guy,
this president, and this unbelievably lower
he can go. But to another human, with the
electricity moving between the palms of
each of your hands into the palms of each
of the others’ and vice versa, as that rare
and seemingly inappropriate scream gets
shouted directly into the other’s face.
Until. The relief. That someone understands.
And can let it go in that fundamental, if not
primal, way. Sure, the face being screamed
at flinches at first, afraid that maybe you are
angry at something he or she has done.
But how short a time must it take to feel
his or her own burden lifted; a load that
makes one feel free again, perhaps as
momentarily free as the screamer feels?
This, after such a jolt to the system. To
the systems of each of us, which now
get to feel momentarily repaired, as if
we have each experienced a catharsis.
In the Greek sense. A purge. A spew.
A vomit. And all better now, we can go
on and live another day with our mod-
icum of happiness. That empathy.
That connection. That intimacy.
That comfortability. That relief.
The laughter. The cursing. The
absolute understanding between
two human beings. That “I totally
get you.” Now that’s love.
I think that the wishy-washy feeling that
I have had about whether I want it, know-
ing full well that I do, is no longer the
least bit wishy-washy. I truly want it.
