reclaiming the notion of the simulcast, or the dangers of doing this

i just realized that i could never do any sort of real-time video correspondence because i am too haunted by the last time i ever did something like that, which was in october of 2007--where if you look at the screen you see the other person but the other person sees your eyes lowered and not looking at them; and if you look into the camera, the other person distinctly feels as though you are looking into their eyes, but you cannot see the other person at all, and though it feels like the more intimate choice because of the simulated eye contact you are connecting even less; and since each person can look either of these two ways and it is changing all the time (for emphasis), it's unpredictably harrowing/you are trying to reach someone who isn't there/i don't think i could ever reclaim the notion of the simulcast for myself because when i last did something like this was when i video-visited my dad at the marion county jail in florida; thirty minutes of each day for five consecutive days in a portable building, off a ways from the actual jail; he was wearing a pink-and-white striped suit because he was in the jail's infirmary; i saw other men pass by in classic cartoon black-and-white striped suits; also red-and-whites which meant convicted; orange-and-white for those awaiting trial; green-and-white for the well-behaved to mind the hedge rows and wander about the grounds "freely".

i still have "jail" dialed into my cell phone, after "jacob myles" and before "jan ross". in case you need the number, it's (352) 438-5961. the way it works is that you need to call to make your telephone visitation appointment the day before. i found you can get around this on your first day, if you have flown a great distance at the last minute and you want to visit with your jailed person right away. i got to know the voice on the other end of that reservation line pretty well that week. at first, he doubted the validity of my age based on the timbre of my voice and, maybe, its buoyancy. at the time i was 25. he said i sounded fifteen.

there was a landscape to each of the days' visits. the first one was a gulping. i swept in emergently, presenting myself to the camera as a force of sympathy and comforting, as evidence of beauty and thus hope. countering the contrary: yes, you are in jail and everything is fucked, but your daughter is strong and healthy as a green shoot. see, look how long my hair has grown, look at my muscles now that i've been dancing and doing pilates in new york. i showed him the fresh tattoo on my inner upper arm, scrawled in french in outward homage to my parents--pour ma mere et mon pere pour la vie avec amour--what was to me an inner missive of emancipation--i boundary my love upon my arm to keep my hands free.
i watched him curl over and sob and break apart like wet bread; dutifully looked into the camera so he would feel less alone; smiled so he would be warm; i was like one of those mothers who lifts cars off of their babies.
i put myself in the road.

the next day, the second day, was reddened by the dangers of doing this. my dad was still crazy at this point, and was asking me to go a "club" in daytona beach to find Mr. Florida (as in muscle-contest-winner) and a brazilian bouncer named Choo Choo; who could pull strings politically, and who owed him a favor, respectively. i refused. he spat venom, that i wouldn't help him in that way, and i nearly vomited in the parking lot after the half-hour was up, my tears were so violent.

i scrawled notes in my journal during every half-hour increment. i drank a large coke in a red plastic cup in a diner, and stayed on the phone with my mom for the whole meal. i went to K-Mart. i put cash in an envelope.

down with submission

i don't know, i want to look into this more, but i'm incredulous at where we've landed. part of me does want to buy a gossip rag when i am standing in line at the drug store, but i cannot justify the $3.95. it's not that i haven't enjoyed an in touch OK! people life&style in my time; certainly i have, on airplanes or toilets, but it's as if my sense of decency/self worth/morality has taken over, and there is an elephant blocking the hallway. i do believe there is some human element of craving for drama/heresay/living vicariously that gets satiated by this stuff; and there is an element of celebrity that i interpret as somewhat mythological, but really, i can't get down with a subscription. i do graze the covers, though, waiting to pay. i half-follow what's up.

last week jessica simpson was all over everything with the words SHE'S FAT JESSICA SAYS I'M NOT FAT JESSICA'S BOYFRIEND SAYS HE LOVES HER JUST THE WAY SHE IS FAT JESSICA DUMPED and it was quite alien to see her fanned out and venutian as she was--not actually grotesque, not unhealthy-looking at all, just a pair of eyes and a smile evened out by the presence of some flesh--because she has spent so many recent years bony and thus "successful", slipping willie nelson the tongue in a music video; soaping up a car in cowboy boots, ruining nancy sinatra.
reading quotes like i was so unhappy when i was skinny now i feel so much better that i can eat is really stunning
why this perverse body worship
but today, i was so sad to see the headline JESSICA IS SORRY WANTS HER BIKINI BODY BACK VOWS TO LOSE 30 POUNDS IN 8 WEEKS

her capitulation

it feels like it is somehow mine too

like how did we get here, where celebrity children make headlines, and their fashion can be followed: WE CARE THAT A BABY SISTER FOR SURI IS ON THE WAY

do we

these are all hothouse flowers, anyway

my miracle of the day today, she was a honey

buying apples from me at the civic center farmer's market, a latina girl of about seventeen or eighteen in a black & white plaid flannel (the kind which are coming back) wore eye shadow which she had carefully matched and graduated to the grayscale of her shirt, and which looked about as smooth and masterful as if da vinci in a bathrobe and curlers had himself applied the pigment to her bare face that morning before school.

be moved

i have wanted words about that friday P.M.
i have, in fact, written sentences about that friday P.M. in my head as i've been crossing the street, in rainboots as if there were puddles, when in truth the rain has only now just come, just after a sweetest friend has left for a while, and at the totality of that day, i fell asleep before eight o'clock, just fell white-flag asleep. tiffany said it was the first rain, that it makes everyone narcoleptic.
i wrote most easily about that friday A.M., because it could be clearly delivered: two strangers share a table and the reason for the convergence becomes evident when each produces italo calvino's new novel from her pocket. damn, universe.
but what came later that day is not just damn, universe.
but oh-sweet-goddamn-universe-you-left-your-Jell-O-in-the-basement.

culling
winnowing
stirring
noising

as i set this table, there is the cake fork, the grapefruit spoon, the butter knife, the napkin shaped into a paper crane (1,000 of which grant any wish for healing), and these words, bare.

i swear that i cannot make this make sense, so please just go with it. so far it's been another friday. i played a show tonight. my experiences have compounded; i can't not. i'll start with two that came tonight, and then dig in to last week's epiphany.

first,
What To Do If Your Girlfriend Is Exquisitely Beautiful
- again invoke the rules of improvisation, encountering boundlessness, possibility without rule; truth with no axiom; say yes, because yes is water, and a person blooms with love, as does pigment in water, so does a person with plenty of water: filled-out under-eye, not not-hunger, which is thirst, obviously.
- accept valentine from G-d.
- Most Importantly, Sing With Her.

second,
petal-blue, television blue, periwinkle-but-electric blue, computer blue, yves klein blue, blue hour blue.
i saw a blue tonight in the blurry scrap shadow of a flower in a video, that spoke: be moved.

now,
the friday before last. i'll just name it. mi ami / bottom of the hill.
i stood up close, and i meant to move. because these three really know how to bring the glorious noise, it seems to me, full-bodied, whole-souled: each player governed by his own mechanism/temperate zone/mythology. by example on stage is it clear to the breathing audience that as you are there you shall move, or move aside. you gotta show up. it ain't no picture show; they hold space for US ALL to take it/for real/bring it/BE IN.

one of the last songs rang all crazy in these tree-tall tones, up high where bells hang, and violins wake the devoted at their doors to pray before four--sacred frequencies--but with the insistence of fire alarms. grit-richness, melting into the bottom end, sturdy upon which to stand, and so to dance--
and dancing i became a horizon personified to myself, earth busted open at the seams, spilling sun yolk. moving into new places in my body, body moving newly in place. all of a sudden i had a stunning thought.

i have never/but how insane would it be to let go ON PURPOSE (vehemently, deliberately) out of such love as to abandon completely all (pre)tensions of holding on?

the bones of each finger of each hand

bird-in-hand

oh, how i've been brittle in the past, when parting.
oh, how this counterintuition alighted me. so intensely freeing, and scary.

so i do. it is my skeleton now.

then there were those timbres. the clanging and the ritualistic clamor.
the purity and the brashness
the blood on the keys

OMFG

just to move