I am reading Spaulding Gray's journals and while they are beautiful as he was beautiful they are difficult because his trajectory was so clear even as a young man when his mother had a "nervous breakdown" and killed herself I read a line this morning that he wrote when he was in San Francisco
I want to live out the rest of my years as this, wander, wander, wander but afraid to be alone
I am grateful that I have never been afraid to be alone that I can manage that part of life and have done so forever yesterday I was telling my son about my very first grown up apartment near the airport how much I loved living there walking to the nursing home to work getting a ride from Ted Bundy swimming in the aqua pool at night trying to enter the wrong apartment while drunk and now I am stuck in my own timeline
is anyone really clear on their timelines? The Johnny Cash Psychiatrist used to really push me on this but some things the bad things the bad years are hopelessly muddled in my brain as though my timelines are jellyfish tentacles that wave here then there pushed by the tide in one timeline I am in my own apartment and I have decorated it just so and I burn coconut incense in there and the apartment is full of plants that I tend and I want a cat but know I can't yet care for one and the people who live upstairs have become my friends and we visit all the time we play GO and take LSD and I fall in love with their huge dog and they have just given me a 1946 Buick Special my first car and I drive down First Avenue to downtown Seattle and get a tattoo way before girls I know before anyone I know except sailors are getting tattoos and in another timeline very close to the apartment timeline I live in a house near my apartment with the bad man and there are airplanes constantly overhead we are under the flight path of the airport and he finds out I fucked his brother and I have a miscarriage and the 12 year old boy in the house next door comes home from school one day knocks on my door asks to use my bathroom then goes home and blows his brains out with a rifle and I don't know how I get out of that timeline either except I end up in Coeur d'Alene with my brother and his friends and his friend's sister whose brother becomes my husband
then the jellyfish scoots off after that things are pretty clear
maybe
I want to live out the rest of my years as this, wander, wander, wander but afraid to be alone
I am grateful that I have never been afraid to be alone that I can manage that part of life and have done so forever yesterday I was telling my son about my very first grown up apartment near the airport how much I loved living there walking to the nursing home to work getting a ride from Ted Bundy swimming in the aqua pool at night trying to enter the wrong apartment while drunk and now I am stuck in my own timeline
is anyone really clear on their timelines? The Johnny Cash Psychiatrist used to really push me on this but some things the bad things the bad years are hopelessly muddled in my brain as though my timelines are jellyfish tentacles that wave here then there pushed by the tide in one timeline I am in my own apartment and I have decorated it just so and I burn coconut incense in there and the apartment is full of plants that I tend and I want a cat but know I can't yet care for one and the people who live upstairs have become my friends and we visit all the time we play GO and take LSD and I fall in love with their huge dog and they have just given me a 1946 Buick Special my first car and I drive down First Avenue to downtown Seattle and get a tattoo way before girls I know before anyone I know except sailors are getting tattoos and in another timeline very close to the apartment timeline I live in a house near my apartment with the bad man and there are airplanes constantly overhead we are under the flight path of the airport and he finds out I fucked his brother and I have a miscarriage and the 12 year old boy in the house next door comes home from school one day knocks on my door asks to use my bathroom then goes home and blows his brains out with a rifle and I don't know how I get out of that timeline either except I end up in Coeur d'Alene with my brother and his friends and his friend's sister whose brother becomes my husband
then the jellyfish scoots off after that things are pretty clear
maybe
posted by Radish King at 2:45 PM
4 Comments:
I think because I had so many children starting to young it is easier for me to keep the timeline straight. I just remember which child was doing what but still sometimes things get muddled. Which child WAS that? There are entire pieces of years that are gone and probably good riddance.
I went to see May's new apartment today. You would love it so much, Rebecca.
P.S. I love Spaulding Gray and I hope with all of my heart that he is at peace.
I was lucky enough to attend one of Spalding's events--I have no other word for it--in Pittsburgh when I lived there years ago while attending then dropping out of art school. I captivated the crowd with stories of folks he called up from the crowd. He coaxed their stories eloquently out of them. I'll never forget sitting in the middle of a crowd of people rapt by this man and his ability to tell stories and convince everyone around him that their stories were worth telling, too.
Mz Dodge that is amazing damn girl xo
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