one day, i will just live in Oakland and not need to be so far from my brown pink plaid bed on weekends to see friends. but, sat with baby osprey Lucille who was wearing a pink bear outfit and plays a deliberate delicate finger game, gave wild Nascha an early choco-bunny wrapped in gold leaf, tucked inside a green felt elephant purse Nascha barefoot on cold concrete in the Oakland dusk (i think for a five year old to actually say, as a calm side note, "my feet are cold" must mean they are beyond cold), shrieking about how she could have half after dinner. mismatched baby shoes sprout all over Mg's yard. heard about lesbian porno makers who successfully foster-adopted children with disabilities on fairly low incomes and i feel a crazy sense of definiteness, like yes! this, for me, please...gratitude to Mg for this.
other people i know moving in huge fast loops of narrative--this is called sadness. i do it too, i see it immediately. but when i am outside of it, i can't be in it. this is called flatness. am i going wrong with this tendency towards flatness lately? i think it is to give an open surface, as empathy, but maybe it is numbing..what to do with that? how much to help and how much to insist quietly, gently, that one takes steps forward, even if governmental forms are the most messy and deranged system of systems. she did systems analysis for the military in the 70s, a young mexican woman out of el paso. first engineer in her family. and now, "i bind my fingers so they don't curl, no matter how much it hurts. i don;t want to be deformed. i have a phobia of those Social Security forms."
i hang up the phone. stiffly, let my fingers curl a long time ago. leave work. go to the 2nd Words and Deeds class at Kunst-off. Hand placements on Harold's chest remind me how much I wan to be able to offer bodywork. Tracing the borders of Asia, the open-faced lovely singer from last week. The idea is to tuck one back into themselves and also, release out into other hands.
Neil says we must do a big score as a tiny dance. and Petra says we must make phrase. we lay on our blankets. i'd give anything to be able to sit comfortably indian style with the other movers on the floor. but no amount of binding...ok, i wouldn't;t, since i'd rather use what little currency in other ways.. i lean against petra's wheelchair instead. then glad for the flop time. mini-opera oyster, sipping air from a tube at the shoreline. rocking and scooching and sibilant in-breath which smells of hot chocolate. petra's cheeks are pink. neil and i are dressed in things of other roseate shades. it is freezing in the studio, there are glowing oscillating heater fan things and the red bricks. it is winter, it is estuary. never imagined how close everyone held to a river until it was told in the circle.
