I'm Risking It Always

I started a new job, likely the cause of my most recent and critical terror. It's an endeavor to support homeless queer and trans young folks who haven't been presented with the most welcoming environments in their limited experiences. My colleagues at the new joint are all the worst hope junkies, furiously railing against systems and bureaucracies and the general funk of the world and the furtive realization that nothing matters except this singular instance of passing, tick, tick, tick, of the neverending present. Who knows what I'm talking about? I sure don't, but better yet, who knows what lies I will profess next?

I've been doing a multi-dimensional comparative reading of various texts - tomes on magic, religion, and the various and nigh identical communal fantasies that arise whenever more than two or three are presently gathered together, naturalistic poems concerning the majesty of the insect world, the capitalist necessity of the witch hunt and the vast legislation against the common individual, essays on poetry and translation, short stories, and a thoroughly racist account of the Killbucks' missionary vision among the Yup'ik peoples in the late 19th century, among other things. Just now, I had the thought that I felt very much like the ewer from Aesop, the one in which the raven drops stones to raise the water level so that it might drink from the vessel. I don't know what I'm talking about.

Throughout my adult life I've been stricken with nightmares, needing to be shaken awake from a moaning keen by my bedmates, whoever they might be, to stop the reel playing in my brain. The other night I had a dream of the agglomeration of the most beautiful and innocent and wonderful young girl with whom I'd had a conversation. The talk was light, airy, full of magic. We sat on a bunk bed and talked, she in a nice blue dress with crisp linen mille feuille. In the dream's logic, I had to recurrently leave the little girl in the bedroom where we were speaking, and was forced to pass by the child's corpse being stuck to a wooden peg, like a coat, on a closet door that stood outside the room. I screamed and cried, looking at her little shoes. Dangling on the peg. Her living face so resplendent in memory and not reality. I don't know what that says.

The solsticetide festival season is upon us and the cafe throngs with holiday liveried folk and well wishing and parades. Dax Riggs mellowly croons "I'll see you all in Hell or New Orleans" of that titular track from his eponymous record and I get the feel that he'd definitely vibe with that notion here in Palmer as folk shepherd reindeer through the town commons and a cobalt blue tractor hayrides bundled children along the town's streets as the tatted barista dressed as a lithe Ms. Claus delivers trays of steaming sandwiches to tables brimming with old women and their grandchildren. Does that follow? (It does not.) I sometimes wonder what it is I'm trying to say.

I can go with the flow.