part 1 - suspended letter

here's one story: i've known you, for a long time - most (all?) of this life - beyond. you chose me and your father. you chose us when we were small, like you were small and watched us - and bided your time. i felt you - i've felt you and sensed what you were like - palpably - since I was in my early twenties. i felt you walking beside me, a little boy, and i reached in a gesture strangers wouldn't notice, to take your hand; our laced fingers swung between us down dark city blocks and shadows while i walked - displaced in time. i was a little drunk, i think, and if i might have felt a bit silly, this was overridden by how right it felt.

i never thought much about wanting children but there you were. this did occur. and when you were inside me - when i was pregnant - then too - i sensed you - your humor and imagination and light - i felt your wings and energies and thoughtfulness - i recognized your face in the crowd of unknowing and through your infancy when you cried and yowled - so much - i knew - i knew you behind and above and through the petty details. i was still scared though - i doubted myself - especially when i was pregnant. during my first trimester, standing in my little apartment, i told your dad that i was so much a kite without a string and he said he thought that was ok - you would be my tail. i've remembered this - often - prophetic and such a valuable thing he said to me, though in no way does it suggest that i am your kite. of course.

my first blog posts - i tried to clarify reasons for having a blog. but 'reasons' skim a surface i don't want much time on. we look for sense, reason, when in fear of the unknown or uncertainty, and do find what will comfort us - the human mind wants to explain and is good at it - the human heart, to wonder and experience awe. but - if I put into words for myself, as I sometimes do, a reason to continue - to not scrap this sporadic blog effort entirely, you are there at the thick of it. there are other pieces to my calling too - but - it has become a place that i am building for you to visit me when i am no longer here - after i die. euphamisms are easier but also so awkward. i don't know how to say it.

my posts are not nearly as consistent as i'd thought they'd be - wish that weren't so, but it's difficult. sometimes i tell myself, "just pick a notebook, open it, and transcribe." sometimes this works. other times, it is not so easy. i get lost in language that flowed through me and seems not even to be mine. it's all one verse begun decades ago - my uni verse - my part of it will be done when i am. so, breaking it into pieces that stand of themselves, can be daunting. sometimes, it ... evokes ... too much emotion. for the same reason, i don't listen to music that i love more often. i get overwhelmed - if i'm trying to listen while doing other things, i end up dancing instead or writing (even more into notebooks i'll not likely get around to posting) - or otherwise immobilized and 'unproductive' towards the chosen (multi) task.

when i write, usually it is not with forethought or a subject in mind - through retrospect, i can infer a meaning but that meaning shifts with where i happen to be planted at the time. the last piece i posted, it is a new piece and i felt the energy of you in it from the beginning - that is unusual. it made me extra thoughtful and is what compelled me to do this - this post here. it is a letter, something like that, i think. i won't give it to you properly; it's written - here - because i need to - for me. and here, it will wait beyond time's convention, broken off moment, suspended and unstuck to history.

time, to me, is ... not what we say it is. we are silly in our clocks and calendars, i can 'feel' they are not 'right.' i understand they serve a purpose but question even that - it might have been otherwise. it often is for me and so, find myself subtley resistent to this convention (and quite a number of others). humans can be so arrogant - ahh - but that comment could turn into a rant - arrogant in its own right - and you know already my feelings about this subject. it's a grace to have that - that you know - already and that we finish each other's sentences - or could - but don't so often, as we still want to hear - as if it is all always new - and it is.

i say all this for myself. you have it already, in one way or another it has been expressed and grasped. i say it here - now - for me - whether or not your read it - or anything here, is not in my hands. it is just here - suspended and free from time's convention - a moment unstuck to history, just as you have been for me and now, are - for yourself. on some level, i imagine you feel it here - all of it - these words waiting - and that is enough.