Rearranging Things and Invisible Things
I don’t want to write this, but I’m doing it anyway. Writing for structure, a container. To prove to myself that what’s wanted isn’t all of what’s needed. I’ll find a way to want it because I want the structure, the container, the invisible vessel—without it, I could drift forever, disappear into my curiosity, fall in love with nothing, and maybe that’s what I’ve already done. Maybe. I love the process—the sifting, sorting, finding and rearranging.
I’m talking about the creative process. I think that’s what I’m talking about. Or maybe it’s just what I’m saying—just commenting on something vague, the mountain behind the fog as if I hadn’t already seen it. I know where I’m going and finding out how to get there. I can qualify anything as something when I’m just finding out what it is, and this is probably some hypnosis, a lullaby to my windy subconscious. If I’m lucky or wise enough, all this will swirl into a dream.
Like last night, I’ll dream of swimming pools and the return of a man. It was so long ago. It upsets me to remember it. But he’s tinier than ever, and when I dip my foot in the first pool, I take it right out. Not my pool. I know it’s not my pool before even putting a toe in it. I put my toe in because I’m polite enough to remember I used to be polite. Not anymore.
He shows me his smallness. Again and again, I see how tiny he is—he’s as small as he always was. But in this dream, I can see how I made him larger. I blew him up with breath and helium, stretched him to seconds before the breaking point, and kept him like that. Somehow, that balloon stayed blown up for decades, stuck in the backroads of my mind. Untouched and unbothered.
But he shrinks without any problems, except wheezes, when introducing me to his children: two daughters and a boy. The daughters run away. We watch them go into the fog and up the mountain. He wants to run in the other direction, to the lake. He fixes his car, puts on his shoes, and asks me to care for the boy. I say no.
What a dream.
Did I do it? Did I find a way to want this?
Well, yes. But it wasn’t what I thought it would be. I thought I’d write more about the space, sticks, and shelves in the workroom. I set up a new studio space in the workroom two days ago. I moved the rocking chair—it was getting in the way of my yoga—an enormous thing made of rough branches and lacquered to last forever. It’s still here. Everything is still here. Just rearranged.