I don't believe in magic

Mostly, I don’t believe in magicians. A comedian is an entertainer. But a comedian loves you. Wants you to laugh and makes jokes, awkwardly, when no one is looking. I think a magician must hate you.

Comedians love. That is why they joke. They want to laugh. Want to examine the world in you. They murmur, look at this problem. Let’s examine it. Let’s try it out. Test it in the world and find the humour. Find ways to understand why they love you. Why a ham sandwich is funny. Comedians love ham sandwiches.

A magician will look you in the eye and lie to you.

Magicians don’t love you. That is why they smoke. They want you to gasp for air. Want to create the world in you. They murmur, collude and scheme with their confederates. Let’s imagine a world not as it is. Let’s create it after our image. They want you to forget the real magic they cannot create and take their illusions as true. They want you to want deceptions.

I want magic like laughter. Magic like flowers and seeds in the winter. I want whispers of magic murmuring I’m about to giggle magic. Giggles don’t lie. I want a magician who loves me.

But they don’t, they wouldn’t lie if they did.

I want comedy not magic. I want a ham sandwich.

Pre medical

and sometimes you realize you don’t remember activities you know you must have done (did I roll through a red light without noticing or was the light green and so I didn’t notice it?)
and so try to remember
is this just absent-mindedness

Then you get a quiet headache, like rain when you need milk
and let it go. I don’t need milk and I just do not remember.
and breathe
and sometimes breath makes the rain in your head melt
and roll down the back of your throat into your chest
to be swallowed by your stomach

and you realize that you have arrived already and think of the dreaded the getting there you do not even remember and you continue you continue about what you were intending to do and think about the absence in your memory, a green light you never saw and forget quickly the quiet headache, the breath and melting and keep only the strange taste in your throat and a vague sense that it feels about 9 o’clock

Before you knocked

Before you knocked on my door
before we talked, before we laughed and knew
each other to be human
in the moment before our intersection
there was only me: a piece of crumpled paper.

I was filled with the crumpling of paper
incomplete and hopeless ideas aborted and abandoned
I was, everyday, choosing to abort myself

in the moments before that knock I was ready to quit.
I was ready to give up on my adventurous song
and fly to the security of people who know me, or knew me once.

After that knock.
After EG's tears. And the shaking of hands (not fists)
I went to sleep. I was sick and that knock was heavy
and tiring

And this is something that I know:
When I awoke I wasn't sick anymore. I breathed easily and had no soreness in my throat or chest. But that which is more there was no crumpling of bed sheets, there was no hopelessness in me.

I sat and ate dinner and said out loud to my home, "what now?" And I was still uncertain so I said, "forget it. Go back to sleep. You might still be convalescent and need more rest." But my heart felt round and said "if you do that then you have to quit your job on Monday and prepare to leave Japan" and I said, "I can't succeed in Japan. All there is for me here is loneliness, a friendless isolation. I have been here all this time and I still have nothing." And then my voice came loudly "You haven't tried." And then silently because I didn't dare think it, it embarrassed me so, if you do not try you are just a coward and these years of adventure were nothing but running for the fear that others might discover that cowardice.

What else choice was there but abortion I couldn't face...

and so I tried.

and then I saw Jupiter.

and then I met a man who could make a saxophone taste like honey.

And then I wrote. I wrote words and circles and lines. I wrote nothing about me I had so many things to write I couldn't rest my pen the floods of ink and paper filled me. And when I couldn't write I drew and when I couldn't draw I sang and when I couldn't sing I danced.

And then I danced and didn't look for mirrors.

and then I made two friends. two strangers.

And then, and it was so strange to hear and feel, I lay in bed and laughed out loud about something I couldn't remember. And then I dreamed in gold and purple. And in the colours I heard my brother laugh.

Before you knocked I had hopelessness.
now I have desire.
Before you knocked I had fear.
now I have dance.
Before you knocked I had excuses, explanations, justifications
and plans. Sorry I’m busy.
Now I have only life.

Before you knocked I thought I had nothing
but now I see I have the crumpled piece of paper

it may not be perfect or beautiful
it may not change lives or save lives or end lives or begin lives
it may not even be more than a crumpled piece of paper with a drawing on it of a ham sandwich
but it is something, and I have it.

Yes, the point i was making

The point was about drinking. That it is an activity deeply loved by humans. We love to drink things almost as much as I love to read things. It is compulsive. I see a word or a shape and I just I have to know what it says. I can't leave it alone without reading it. Even here where all the word shapes are の　と　と　ろ金じゃ　or something like that...I just, I see them and I have to read. Lines like | and 二　and curves like めのね　lovely I think and ponder what they might mean...ham sandwiches over here maybe...and I try to log it away because maybe one day I will learn its true meaning and find the ham sandwiches...

But maybe you aren't quite compulsed to read things like this, but you do love to drink things. You see something, something that looks drinkable and you go and you drink it. You have to. You would feel funny leaving it. And we are all so terribly thirsty. This is why there are so many different things to drink: goat's milk; guava juice; Ovaltine; water; creme du menthe; nudies if you are in Australia; Moosehead if you are in Canada (or South Korea and looking for a Canadian beer); 600 different kinds of rices tea if you are in Japan; 6 million other kinds of tea from morning glory dew tea to baby knuckle juice tea if you are in China and coke in many flavours if you are in Texas...

It is shocking all the different things we drink, and the lengths we go to to drink them. and that is the point I was trying to make. I don't even notice that I am reading a word and already I have finished, and that is just how it is.

And I was thinking this and drinking cartons of milk and feeling a bit funny about it. I was drinking milk like wine from the carton thinking I would feel a bit funny drinking cartons of wine from a carton. Wine just feels more justified from a glass bottle. Maybe everything feels more justified from a glass bottle. I wonder if anyone here makes milk in glass bottles. They do in England.

I was drinking cartons of milk thinking who drinks cartons of milk. Usually if you drink cartons of milk then you buy milk by the jug and you are a whole family with 4 hockey playing sons. Or that engineer from Electal Hall who used to buy two jugs of milk at a time.

But I used to be lucky to drink one cup of milk over the course of two weeks. And there I was empty cartons piling up in the kitchen. The staff beginning to worry if i was ever going to order a drink.

When I ordered another cocoa. I told the woman I was talking with in another language (or two) that my tea bags have words on them, and so I had to read them. and they say: write us if you have any questions or concerns or if you are just lonely and crave some human contact. And I asked her: how do my tea bags know me so well? And she said she didn't know, maybe I should write and ask.

and that is the point i was making.

i like calendars opened to April, an essay on cliteracy

This room has a great wealth of walls. And the reason for this is: In Japan there is a great wealth of calendars.

The clock on the shelf on the other side of the door is analogue. It has bendy arms that are hard to read and a floral pattern that doesn't help you tell the time. I have to choose to read it. And even when I read it I can't really know just what time it is, I only set it approximately. At that time I thought it was about 9...

I like the first of the month because sometimes the calendar hasn't caught up yet and for a brief moment I can approximate my recovery. I can think, is it really?

I like calendars in April. I like calendars turned to April. It's a good month. Month of promises. Month of poetry. An awkward month. The first round month of the year. The month of 30 days when we can sort of come in out of the cold. When we dress too warmly and have to tie bulky sweaters around our hips. As we walk. Or when we go to restaurants with gloves and toques and the waiter wants us to take the menu but our hands are full with clothes we don't want to wear but brought because it might be cold. because it is April. There are 30 days of this.

April is a month that invites you to picnics, but the weather is terrible. April is a month that takes you to a cafe for cocoa, but there is no whipped cream. it's a month where movies always have Leonardo Dicaprio. A month when the strawberries are expensive, and smell nice but taste sour. It's a month of taxes and funerals and if you aren't going to make it, April is the month that will break you. It is a month of fire in flowers and muddy clothes and romping and dry skin. It's a month awkwardly off, you can only laugh in April. And laugh again. It's April. Proportioned like a trombone player.

And better yet is when the calendar says April. Because you can catch it in your eye and think, "oh god, not again...not April. It's so, I can't..." and then you realize, no, it's May. I haven't changed the calendar. And laugh. With relief. And make plans to go to the park with a friend.

I am a recovering woman. As you can see. No clocks. No watches. There is something about seeing numbers. Even the clock on my computer screen wisely hides itself when I am not looking for the time, and even then it tells me the wrong time. Because there is something about numbers.　Something about recovering as a woman and seeing numbers that...just... I don't like calendars. I don't need to know exactly when it is. It is now. Isn't is? You know. I don't need to know exactly.

But in Japan, the calendars never say April. Except in April.

I love you

because you joined facebook. we all did this, didn't we. We all joined facebook. and hated it. or hated that we silently enjoyed it.
because you send emails, everyday, sometimes twice. and still have nothing to say.
because you say, "punch yourself in the chest", and "come on!" and i do it. and feel better for it
because you never invite me anywhere.
because you never tell me to do anything.
because you never suggest that maybe i should think about it differently.
and yet i go out, play cards and invite Mormons into my home.
because you can't make coffee. and don't like it anyway.
because you can't play cribbage. and still join in.
because you make music, or poetry, or movies, or children. and they all make me cry.
because you can drive a car. and hang a teddy bear from the ceiling. and make wine from water and other ingredients. because you laugh when I am uncomfortable.
because you cry when the little boy with the sippy cup figures out how to dip his oreo in the milk.
because you know how before i say how i feel.
because you sit on the kitchen floor.
because you write and read and think about so many different things; medicines, tv listings, the changing colour of the silence.
because you appear in a dream on an anniversary.
because my fingers can make it so. I love you.