Falling

last night I finished reading Patti Smith’s Year of the Monkey it will surely be the last book I finish this year I was in my bathtub filled with with too much very hot water in order to ease my knees which have taken many blows over the years my knees which are so scarred from falling off bicycles and horses and swings as a girl that when I had the shredded meniscus vacuumed out in my right knee the surgeon told me I had already had surgery there no I said I certainly would remember and he said they’re full of scars well there you go I have also fallen so many times and I was going to catalog the times I remember here this morning but I feel too quiet inside to do it now but I seem to always have been falling crashing down pitching my body off the earth’s uncertain skin which is perhaps why bodies of water even the motion of my bath always feels more steady than terra I also feel my age in my knees more than any other place especially in winter in Patti’s book she is hitching rides from strangers down Pacific Coast Highway I used to hitchhike there but I was very young and homeless not a famous elder woman with plenty of money this question skewed the book for me but only for a moment once I figured out how dreamy the book was how memory filled and aching it was a remembrance of the deaths of her lifelong friends Sam Shepard and Sandy Pearlman the first time I started reading it in my very hot tub I fell into a waking dream state and when I picked up the book later to read again I fell into that same dream state where my words along with Patti Smith’s were tumbling through my brain in a gorgeous music

I inhabit that delicious space between a book just finished and choosing a new book with plenty of time and comfort and all the words in the whole wide world right there within reach

I am going to be as small as possible today I’ll go to the beach soon as I do every morning then at 1:00 pm I’m going to make some hot chocolate turn on the little fire finish decorating the tree and binge watch HBO’s Watchmen because the finale is tonight and I don’t want it to end

tomorrow is Beethoven’s birthday