Estranged

I haven’t really felt confined during the confinement. Maybe that’s because I’m used to a sense of confinement that has become so ingrained in American life that its newest incarnation hasn’t made a noticeable imprint on me yet. The biggest inconvenience has been dodging people in the streets – mostly residential streets – while out running. There are ten times more people out walking every day than anything I’ve seen in the 20 or so years I’ve been running these streets. About a quarter of the people display courtesies of moving out from the sidewalk; the other ¾ lope along as if they had exclusive property rights to Planet Earth. Everyone appears a little estranged, masked all the way to the eyes, which peer out like the eyes of an astronaut exploring an alien planet. Emphasis on the word alien. We’ve all become estranged. From communion, from planning, from stability, from agency, from government, from yesterday, from tomorrow. But the odd feature of this is how much more alive it makes you feel. Awakened. Attentive.

It takes an existential threat to make you feel more fully alive. Everything compartmentalized in my mind comes tumbling down. Classifications count for little. It comes down to energy. The energy of life, Bergson's élan vital. The energy of doing nothing. The energy of a gaze. The energy of a thought. The energy of a memory. The synergy of misery combined with liberty combined with reverie, wild celery & trajectory & a wild pink Tibetan dawn.

My father still exists because I have a memory of him. My mother still exists because I have a memory of her. Kevin Killian still exists because I have a memory of him. Spencer Selby still exists because I have a memory of him. Philip Lamantia still exists because I have a memory of him. Michael McClure still exists because I have a memory of him. I still exist because I have a feeling of existence. Jack Kerouac still exists because I read his books. Reading books graces existence. It’s natural to read books when you exist. It’s natural to write sentences when you exist. It’s fun to watch TV & drink wine & eat. It’s amusing to get in a car early in the morning & go somewhere where the weather is better & existence is effortless.

I see everything in scenes. In frames. Moments charged with the ineffable. The weirdness that comes over the world at twilight. The wonderful difficulty in defining anything. Define it according to what? What are the parameters? The perceptions? The nervous system & organs & tastes & smells & textures processed by what proteins? What waves of music slopping about in the brain defining the contour & quality of a moment? Give anything any image a little thought & focus & it comes washing ashore like an old glass bottle. A dumb metaphor held up to the sun.

Pablo led a nebula of horses out of the barn. Everything dilated & wagged in testimony to your touch. I backed away & wired Chicago for more money. Certain feelings emerged, coins & hedges & Spanish airports. Words slept on the page until they were awakened by your eyes. And then they became a new reality. The afternoon teemed with your signals. I prowled around you & waited for the cathedral to stop barking. And what was it, this large thing thrashing around at the end of the sentence? Paradigms, spurs & rubber. Everything we need to begin a new romance, a new form of energy. Can you hear it? None of these words belong to me. They belong to ghosts.