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more from The Viaduct Notebook - and Meg - unedited (January, 19, '91):


I empathize too much with her (arrogant, my belief that this is what i'm doing). I relate, identify, project but can't fill in the difference. Hers is not mine,
but at work, we understand that on days Meg's not there, she was likely unable to get out of bed -
staked there by the weighted pierce of "it."

Her movement - she gracefully lumbers - head sways
with the fall of her feet, slow-like every step - every motion is an effort she has to deliberate over before taking. Walking itself, unnatural.

and I think it isn't good to get inside your head like this to get there and stuck there and never mind your head - how should I behave anyway
and it isn't good to drink alone and lately I've been making a lot of stupid mistakes. it's hard to believe a locked door, by itself, can change your
life but war - not desert storm but our war is nothing is different yours from mine but I worry - my ability to be in this 'normalworld' and function as a part of it and ... ... ...

when I asked meg why she came here (to her old apartment - now mine):
cheap rent - but really, there was a man - a disk jockey (who now lives across the hall from me).

Meg didn't listen to music for three years because of him,
and not just his station,
not any station,
not even a tape,
and if a car pulled up beside her with their radio on,
she would plug her ears.

3 years - she tells me while we are walking again after work under the viaduct; i'm trying to understand what he could have done to her and of course, she won't tell me - only what she did in response.

she has a picture of Jack Kerouac on her wall in her new place. i've seen it but didn't know that's who it was or that she took it down here - a mural off an abandoned building's wall - which is where we are now but we can't get close to it because they fenced it off - barbed wire. meg comes here to take pictures all the time - well. not as much as she used to. all this was beautiful when it was new to her but now it's industrial garbage - not the same. i think we're both attracted to it because it bespeaks abandonment. she tells me they are going to turn - all this - into an amusement park with stores and maybe even fake turf - i can't even imagine. we've turned and are heading home, side by side and quiet. I feel us - side by side and see us, for a moment,

from a bird's eye view -

Meg's slow, iambic gravity and me, (how do 'they' describe me -how has she) ethereal fragile insubstantial - whatever.

both of us balanced at the fulcrum of this place and 3 years without music and the singing voice I feel stuck in my throat and the barbed wire holding us out - or in. I feel a large sound build and send out from my throat - involuntary and NOT deliberate, not a moan, not a roar - to anyone but me, a scratchy half word/whisper. meg says, huh? I say, nothing - just clearing my throat. I still feel it there now , that sound - maybe it is always there.