GASLIGHTING AND RECOVERY


He’s digging my grave
For the dragon he pays
With our nest, now shaved
Tumbling into the abyss
I visit the comfort robes of the past
Monogrammed in stone

The will to relive what’s past comes at night

And must be excluded by daylight.

Of HUMAN BONDAGE

The sky hasn’t decided if it will let clouds overturn the sun, and I haven’t decided if I will pack the stack of books on the floor. No, I don’t feel the drive to lift and organize, my bed is warm and the house is not as warm.

I brought my coffee and peanut butter and honey toast upstairs, on a tray, I happen to collect trays, reminiscent of times when women ate breakfast in bed. Propped upright, I explored a movie about uneven love, tragedy, and resurrection. Of Human Bondage lit my taste, featuring Bette Davis and Leslie Howard. —– FILM MADE IN 1930 IN GRISLY BLACK & WHITE. Uneven love.
Days now remind me of reading 1984 in high school, and Fahrenheit 451 on film. We did evolve from a simplistic, hand-carved culture, built on rebars of freedom to a house full of furniture, relics, gadgets, screens, gates, and beeps. The beeps for me, make me jumpy, not seductively strolling around my apartment lighting candles in peace. I really do shimmy every time I hear the beep.
I chose Sunday to shut down all communication with the mainland, take the longest bath I can stand, and write. I need a rest, like a chaise lounge on a spacious veranda with honeysuckle, wisteria, and lavender, and then a mile away is the ocean, let me swim again.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I feel artists, and their works are not featured in the media, or maybe it’s because my scrolling is stuck on the essentials of living. In times of war, people must have known, see it now or never. Over two million working artists in the country, so google says, and when was the last time you discussed it at dinner, with anyone. I haven’t, and I don’t know why? Pop-up thoughts on life.

 

MUST TO MOONLIGHT


 

MAXFIELD PARRISH

 

Now that you know I am leaving Santa Fe on an exploration of destination,  there you are again.  Igniting my flashbulbs for the seamless cinema-scope of Santa Fe, you are toggling behind me in the snow, as I plow, sweep and sprinkle salt, you are there when I am in the parade and choosing my characters to congregate, and make a party, and you are there when I wake up in the morning, to draw me out of the down comfort, sheets and pillows that bemoan me leaving, I want to get up and begin the day, because you are there, turning up the music, and opening the laptop to a new page, and the journal to a new entry, and my books that have punished me for not reading them. They are dusty and wrinkled from my sleepy attempts to find the water bottle and drink, and then the spills fall on them.  You are there when I am cleaning the stove and bathroom floors, a reminder to get on the floor and douse the tiles with love,  listen to music while I  vacuum, and end the day with my  shoes off and slouching in a comfy chair.   You are not dormant spirit, you are rising from the labyrinth of an imagined life and one that is moonlight.

MAXFIELD PARRISH