Today marks exactly one year of The New Zero. (Here you can see where i was one year ago today.)It's been a year since I made the decision to leave my former job and strike out on my own. A year since I took down all of the old entries and filed them away. A year since that momentous spring when so many different things happened to me.
It seems like it's gone by in an eyeblink. We're almost back to spring, and it's almost time for my annual restocking of my life.
You guys, the people who read these words, thanks for doing what you do and for hanging around this long.
Here's to another year, eh?
from the mental notebook:Afternoon, about four, there are clouds north of Roanoke and the air is starting to take on that weird quality of being full-bellied with rain but not quite ready to give birth. Under the clouds, the air is glassy clear and stagnant. Though I'm not outside, I can tell. The trees don't move. I don't move. i'm sitting in a van with a friend, heading north, towards the darkening clouds. If this were iowa I'd expect the wind to come up and bring with it cold rain soon, if this were Iowa I'd expect it to be summer, 90 degrees and high humidity, with cicadas droning and he smell of manure drifting by me intermittently.If this were Iowa, I'd expect there to be green fields and high unemployment.
But this afternoon memories of Iowa are distant and flaking away from me as we get on the highway north. There is conversation to be had and food to eat, and there is, later, a house concert to go to.
Despite the clouds.
moon in my teethEverything informs the dreamer that she should awake;
alarm clocks, bells, black cats, a hand on the shoulder.
You wrap yourself in your doomsday blanket and walk out
into the dance that is this quotidian movement,
a second hand sweeping and you're thinking
that once you've seen the bones the flesh is nauseating.
It's an illusion, the lady wiggling in the sword-box
and sucking in her stomach to avoid the blades.Still. It must be done. You fantasize about
gritty warehouse lofts and mansions in the woods,
driving or walking or taking the bus to work, head heavy
with the burden of interrupted sleep. Wouldn't be my world
without hangovers or broken hearts.Here, all you consume is water. You long to see
your own bones, going at truth from the outside,
and that isn't catchpenny hunger but you persevere.
Giving up isn't a checkbox on the forms titled
'what I did today' or 'while you were out'.Keep on. Someday there will be a beautiful curve of white
ribs stark against the rich loam you're buried in; that is,
if you believe the advertisements. Not sure? There's insurance
against fire, flood, disease; there must be someone selling
disillusionment insurance. Perhaps it comes under the heading
'disaster'. "And at what point did you first realize you'd been lied to?
Describe how much your innocence was worth."The faceless around you sway as you sink into your daily communication
with a world that has no name through a screen that paints pretty pictures
with light on your retina, a distraction against that persistent second hand.
Working on a server you've never touched, you realize there's a woman
behind you. She's smiling. Between her teeth clenched a rocky glowing
ellipse. Her bones click as she gestures in sign the word for why.3/3/2000 (with gratitude to Christopher Bingham)
