A Letter from Somerville to Manhattan. 9.2.2005

I've been fading in and out of faint, desirous, restive sleep all morning.

Walking around--running around festers into meditative trance. It's always a few days before running somewhere evokes the sensation of the place instead of the memories associated with the action. I was inundated with relics of motion in other states, other States, other phases of my shaking, shaded face above pavement.

Like a cabal, fears collide to plot and trip me. Colorado: once, in the seventh grade, a boy in science class tied my shoelaces to the desk legs during an educational film. I hit my forehead on the desk and turned plum from scalp to hem when I tried to stand up and all because that boy had had a crush. I never had a crush on him, but thought I did for a few minutes because of my ecstasy at the attention from the other girls whenever I mentioned his name. I had had a crush on a wispy viola player I had known since the second grade. I didn't recognize that as
a crush either, just a rush to the chest whenever the violist's high voice broke into laughter and a chasing image which popped into my head uncontrollably when I masturbated in the loft of my childhood home. Fears work it the same way, giggling, covert, destructive, a camarilla of unswank whispering flickers.

In somerville: for a minute I emerged and ambulated in the evening
air. Midnight. Quite right night. Nice night for a colder stroll away
from home. The sky as pink as it ever got and a bowl moon caving
orange and painted above rows of tipping duplexes and razor-wired
fences.

Then Lousiana: one day, a year ago- maybe more, I had gone walking
outside along the swamp in the early morning. Nevermind the bugs, we won't
talk about them here. I was well on my way. The same dilapidation as
Massachusetts later erected and crumbled into. Regional differences: nominal noisy
things, no duplexes. There they called 'em shot-gun homes ona count a the fact that the hallways are straight enough to fire a gun down and all the rooms branch off a common stem.

The same linguistic entanglements, the same clashing cultural perils,
the same hunger and music. Or the same exponential diversity.
Different wrought iron, same wrought. Same rot, different smell. I had
passed a church recently stripped of strategic letters to say "Aint
Anthony's Church" and then below it read "school," as if to announce
to the entire area that whoever had done this wanted y'all to know
that this aint anthony's church and it aint his school, neither. I was
walking down that street- no another street, next to a swamp- at seven
in the morning. I ran into a house exactly like the others besides the swarm of large black birds which had settled on top. Three feet tall and threatening a wingspan at least as large as a caped shepherd, they opened their wings periodically, in hesitant, conversational, flourish. In memory the birds brood temptingly, indefinitely, until I rush them out or shut my eyes or finish the
story. In actuality the time I stood, as limp as a marionette, in
front of the house, was less than a minute. I turned, and ran away.

Lousiana again, by way of massachusetts, by way of 23rd street: no one
believed the story when it happened. Everyone swore there were no
vultures in that area. But my memory of them didn't fade. They
hovered, large, with shrunken heads and slumped shoulders, black and
foreboding. I wondered what was in the house. who was dead and rotting
inside, except that they were only perching, and once- only in memory
and not in historical reality- a new bird circled and landed shoulder
to shoulder to the others. The only one who ever validated my story
was a demented old woman and her son, who may have agreed to pacify
his mother instead of to appease my waveringly decreasing confidence
in sanity.

Somerville: but that night, I passed a black church fronted by a soft
blank space and a community of dark St. Francis and his many tiny
white Mary's. I always forgot to cross before I passed the church, and
a black winged flutter of fear colluded my right mind. In front of a
red door, a leg-dragging man apparition materialized for a few limping
steps. In my fantastic projections, he could overcome me by foot.

And now, here I am. Nearly motionless and haunted. Temporarily
temporally misaligned. Missing you and your arms. Missing old me and
modes and memories of harm. Not because they were pleasant, but
because they are inaccessible.

Yours,

RN

Word Splurge

Tmesis


tme·sis : Pronunciation Key (tmss, m-)
n. pl. tme·ses (-sz)

Separation of the parts of a compound word by one or more intervening words; for example, where I go ever instead of wherever I go.


[Late Latin tmsis, from Greek, a cutting, from temnein, to cut. See tem- in Indo-European Roots.]

Thank you to http://www.dictionary.com.

Letter From Harlem to Cambridge 8.18.05

Harlem. Certainly this (NY) is a relentless city. There is nowhere I have been less comfortable indoors. Even in my childood (a few miles up Boulder Canyon on Sugarloaf Mountain) I liked the indoors. When one is so obviously submerged in scenic purple folds and seemingly interminable fields, the white walls of a windowless room, are less constrictive/restrictive/suffocating than they are necessary. A breath. Something soft and bland, cold, to clear the sinuses. Even now, when I go back, I find myself at a loss for words. I've heard that upon return it takes many natives a few days to adjust to something as spectacular as a crest of the Rocky Mountains. It takes a few days of waking up there to accept it, although I never fall totally out of a Herr-esque mixture of sheer emotional entropy and disbelief. Gap. Stop. Gap. Thought. Gap.

But here- separates and peels apart from that past reality into a different world landscape altogether. And regardless of the decor, regardless of what is outide, I rarely want to stay inside.

It is easier to lose one's breath here.

The outdoors is only more frustrating.

I'm leaving though. I'm moving here, to New York. And on our small Slumberville, I'm also addicted to a morose and porous blue available only in Suburban Night. Maybe it's a sediment or toxin I should wean off of. New York feels like
it's impersonating night. In the dark, I trust my old home, Boston's an unreconciled insomniac: sick and wavering in the dark, eyes closed, lights off, awake nonetheless.


Here, would I be barraged senseless, headachey, nauseated, and a whole
host of other things which non-aspirin can only mitigate.


my most sincere regards,

RN



please elaborate.