Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

That encounter--that very embarrassing encounter--well, it made me realize something. It was the first time I wasn't in . . . I was just someone. It was the first time I was a one, and not the One. I guess that may not be strictly true. I guess that had probably happened before--I am sure there had been rejections and semi-rejections and what not. I don't know. But for some reason, that encounter stuck out.

It stuck to me--or maybe pierced me--like a stake. Yes, amidst all of the investing and divesting of stakes that were happening at that point--this was one was definitive somehow. Somehow it lit up a bubble in my brain. Somehow, it made sense of some of the stakes.

Life is about stakes. It is about piercing things--places--souls--in order to erect something--make something. God pierced the Bride in the Song of Songs thousands of years ago--God--the Bridegroom in this story--pierced her with his wounding, seducing arrow. God, the Divine Seducer, drew her into a movement--a dance of presence and absence--that included separate and simultaneous instances of anguish and ecstasy. God held that soul captive with the promise of fulfillment--of a penetration--that would fill so deeply, so unnervingly, so interior within her--that she herself would dissolve in a moment of ecstatic disappearance.

Life is about stakes. About digging under layers in order to make a home out of wounds--welcome wounds--risky wounds--desirable wounds.

Yes, we make tents all day everyday--professionally, politically, religiously, and erotically. In love, in living, we erect places to make temporary spaces in order to clear a temporary tent in the forest--the dark, but beautiful forest of breathing--of smoke--of tears--of hunger--mortality--and desire.

That event was a shattering stake--an illuminating stake.

That event showed me that my tent was based on stakes--a perpetually moving, shifting, contingent set of stakes. That event showed me that my tent was always moving in different directions and different ways in order to make space for everyone. I wanted to be able to pierce and be pierced--to be God and the Bride--the object and subject--the Seducer and the wounded, captive Lover--all at once. I wanted to convince that I could erect spaces.

But, it meant my stakes--my personal stakes--my attempt at congealing the chaos of my little world--of forming a coherent mass in my little psyche--the day by day, moment by moment job of running a motor rather than a firework in my head; of running good set of irrigation pipes throughout the flowing circuits in my pink, cephallic center--of letting the water of desire and voices keep within the banks of the canals I had dug--were heavily dependent upon the refracted pieces that were returned to me in the desire--the compliments--the appreciation of those--the others--the ones.

I realized the tents I was making were based on an empty center. I realized that I had been running on the basis of an absence--one that I would fill at a moment's notic in order to receive and dispense with piercing, convincing stakes--ones that would result in melting and liquified insides.

My center--the empty, absent center--the space that was only a space because nothing was there--was not only the site where those stakes were dispensed from, but also the place wherein a new tent could be erected in a matter of moments, days, encounters.

I could construct an open space out of the returned, refracted fragements returned to me from the other.

My tent was nothing. My tent was contingent.

My tent was dependent upon me knowing that I had pierced--that I had crossed--in ways that are and were liquifying.

Without the liquid, I would spill no liquid. Without the crossing, I wouldn't and couldn't be crossed.

I miss that Old Man. I miss his grumpiness. I miss his moods. I miss the questions he would ask me about his crossword puzzles and how he never thought I was right. I miss how he would try to flirt with Sage and the other semi-hippy women at the shop; how his swagger carried him through even the most awkward moments. But, mostly I missed his otherness. I missed him sitting across from me--outside of me--without a care in the world as to my stakes and what I was trying to accomplish. He didn't care about being pierced. He didn't care about melting. He just sat there--and let the tent build itself. He just sat there and let the tent between us--between he and whomever he encountered--built itself each time they met. He was always happy to see you--any you--and you always knew it. How did he do that?

I still talk to him most days. I still talk to him when I walk in the Shop, or go for a walk on the boardwalk. I tell him about my day, or the girl I am seeing, or what I am reading about. I don't know where he is--I don't know how he exists in my psyche still--within the circuits that are always threatening to become jumbled and the overflowing canals--but he is. He is there. And he is still other--still foreign. It somehow reminds me--or gives me hope at least--that someday I will figure out how to not let my tent be so contingent; so wrapped up in other peoples returns.

The Best Book Ever Written in the English Language

So, Louise (mainly), Kevin, and Brad wrote this book. You can order it on Amazon and wait until they get it in stock, or get it here http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=1589797488&searchurl=an%3Dlouise%2Bnelstrop%26sts%3Dt%26x%3D0%26y%3D0
.

If you buy a copy, I will wash your car. If you buy two, I will wash your car with my shirt off.

A Song for You

So today I wrote a song for you
Cause a day can get so long
And I know its hard to make it through
When you say there's something wrong

So, today I wrote down some words for you. I wrote them in my brain. I wrote some of them on a page, too (but not all of them). I wrote because a day can get very long--you can forget who you are, what you are, and what you are doing, all in a day. Yes, a day can get long and life can too. Life treads on--always in the interim--in the in-between--but the poles on one side get longer and longer, and the inexpressible one on the other remains there--measureless. You would think this squishing of life between these two would make it short--at least one day. But, for whatever reason, it does not.

So Im trying to put it right
Cause I want to love you with my heart
All this trying has made me tight
And I dont know even where to start

Maybe thats a start

The words that I wrote--that I am constantly writing--I want them to be right. How do you make write right? How do you press words into disciplined, rigorous service? It does make me tight. I don't even know where to start with you--really. I guess you could say that, in that way, you make me speechless? I don't know. But, yes, I don't know where to start. Is that a start? I don't know. I have started before and ended too. I have begun and not finished. I want to finish this song--this poem--this story--this narrative. I want to insert the definitive plot line that will lead to the climax and the finish. You know? But, I'm tight. I'm tight trying to get the write right.

Cause you know its a simple game
That you play filling up your head with rain
And you know you are hiding from your pain
In the way, in the way you say your name

It is a simple game. We have played alot of games, you and I. They have not all had simple rules--but they all have had a simple purpose. Why do they end with rain--with heads full of rain precipitating coiled up words? Rain isn't bad. I like the rain. But, rain isn't good if it means denial or running.

And you're so tired you don't sleep at night
As your heart is trying to mend
You keep it quiet but you think you might
Disappear before the end

I know you sleep. I know you mend. I know you sleep in different places for different reasons. I know you sometimes keep it incredibly quiet--but not always. I know you won't disappear before the end--not you. But, I don't know how to mend the two ends. I don't know how to mend your end with mine. Oh well. In the interim, int the perpetual in-between, I'll keep writing songs for you. People like that, don't they?

I talked to an old, ex-friend today. She said, "Thanks for writing about me, I am flattered."

"What?"

"You know, your story and your electronic diary. You wrote about me. I am the character in your little story. I means some of it is confusing, but I am flattered to be written about."

I was dumbfounded.

"I think you missed the point of the story and stories in general. I also think you missed the point of the flickering ones and zeroes. Neither of them, the story or the numbers, were ever about identification. If you look for you in them--look to identify fully and wholeheartedly--well, you missed the point of fiction. Yes, fiction. Yes, stories--with narrators--are fiction. If you want to be--be--a character in a story, you will only be frustrated. Stories are not about being something. Stories about pieces and fragments and thoughts and events that happen in and through us. Some of them in the far past; some of them in the near past--but all of them portray an amalgamation that can never be explained through identification. You are not here. I am not here. Do you understand?"

By the time my rant was over, she had turned her attention to another friend. Oh well.