Atmospheric River

There’s an atmospheric river moving in. I can feel it already: a mood of indigo with a dash of witchcraft. We were playing hopscotch on our mosaic rails when the sky broke in half and tons of water fell on our heads, thus anointing us to the cataclysms of our time. Why is water always so cadenced? Its flows are rhythmic, yet its splashes are tumultuous. Butterflies fill the space we punch and heave. I’ve never before written a sentence like this. So imploring, so helical. Where did it come from? I’m guessing Sri Lanka. The embassy from Mars. It’s raining. Our grammar crackles, and our hooks and talons are sculpted in silver and 18ct gold vermeil, each curve and point perfected by the maker's hand. I’m also really into boots and I can give you a description of my hat by giving it to you drop by drop. It will help explain things. Why languages always leave such a mess behind, and emails prowl the cupcake. The day Old English turned rags into pounds, and injury assumed new meaning, as did blubber and enthusiasm, a new perception was born, and we called it fog, until we knew better, and gave it a different fable. Awed intentions extrude my copperplate. I told you from the beginning. God was a tortoise. And parabolas consumed the study. Every poem needs an ingredient. And grumbles with footnotes in pools of light.

My feelings about grease have always been pleasantly neutral. It’s something I rarely think about. I know it’s important. Vital as a haircut. I like the way it sizzles on a grill. So juicy. So hot. The scorch of art on a canvas. Which is a grill. The mouth waters. I’ve never seen Grease. Capital G Grease. Danny Zuko, Sandy Dumbrowski, Betty Rizzo, Kenickie, and Frenchy. Bacon grease, I’ve been told, is a good way to season cast iron cookware. And can also be used as a base for popcorn. If not an entire empire. An empire of popcorn. And jealousies and appellate courts. Here comes the night. On iron axles. It’s a time for speculation. A time for parades and celebrations. All of them silly provocations. All of them written with howitzers. And explosions of box office gold. As the lyric crashes, the enrichment is in your quiver. Take aim. Do it slowly. Take your time. When the time is right, and your mind is focused, let it go. Let it all go.

I remember looking at the traffic on I-90 west from the vantage of the rest stop in Cle Elum and thinking holy shit these fuckers are going fast. This is not a normal world. Not at all. It’s an abnormal world. A subnormal world. A paranormal world. Everyone in a panic. Everyone tortured with insecurity. Let’s rock! Edgar Allan Poe oozes out of the air and hands me a grimoire containing all the recipes for acceleration into the vast wilderness of space and time. It calls for Chile peppers, cayenne and horseradish. Nausea, delirium, and wang dang doodle. A truck goes by at 90 miles an hour. Driven by a demon. Silver wings and a Stetson. Long white beard braided with the skulls of a thousand megabats. Tats everywhere. Instinct is never demure. Instinct is instinctual. As a herd of stampeding bison. As an old man on a country road in an exhilarating demonstration of free will. Will is never free. It comes from a well. And has international scope. Guns and pumpernickel. Instinct with tango. La Cumparsita. And Dulce de leche. I’ve never been to Argentina. But it’s locked into my imagination as firmly as Tierra del Fuego. Fronds of Chilean firetree. Or the woman barreling down I-90 in a Tesla. Knitting.

Whenever people ask me what do I write about, I never know what to say. I write about everything. Everything that has a word to describe, illustrate, substantiate, encompass or embody it. Even if it takes a jar of synonyms. Eventually the right word will present itself. But not always. If there’s no word to describe, depict, explain, epitomize, or denote whatever it is that I’ve felt, touched, undressed, seduced, waltzed, or crinkled, it doesn’t get written. The thing I experienced. The thing that made me itchy. The thing that made me sad and cryptic and sacerdotal. That caused me to walk the streets with impossible frustrations. And seek shelter among the taciturn and withdrawn. I would describe it as vague. Elusive. Enigmatic as Iowa. Extravagantly ineffable. Like a philology caught in a hurricane. Phenomena blowing everywhere, circulating in the bloodstream, creating huge and remarkable sensations which nobody can describe, or cage in a zoo of gilded nouns and garbled intonations. Something like an atmospheric river. A long, narrow body of roiling mists hundreds of miles wide and thousands of miles long. Ominous and dark and vaporous and silk. It knows everything, and throws piles of dictionaries at our heads during dinner. No one saw it come in the room. This husky pastiche, this fabulous mélange. This search, this blue confusion. This box of mingled correspondence that defies the logic of cork, that crawls on its punctuation until it achieves maximal simultaneity, boils, bubbles, burbles, gurgles, blusters and flirts with a paperweight I echo in asterisks.