Once I got used to the idea I would never be Gertrude Stein and like her wished I had died when I was a little baby so as not to feel anything I changed my mind. Every person has inside of them a person, the very person they know or wish or want or dream they are (could be/should be). Why so many of us keep this “other” person hidden is beyond me. Such beautiful powers of apprehension we have.
So now is the time to question my own apprehension, my many fixed habits with less than little comprehension. It’s like I’ve been worn and rubbed down by life, the city I live in, its insecurities and alienation, nature mixed with pavement, soccer moms in their suv’s repeating and replicating, ornaments on the freeway. The pace and stride of my mind is so unlike the people I’m surrounded by. One too many common sentences by one too many disconnected women and before you know it, I’ve said it too. I say inwardly, “Don’t worry about it. Sometimes words slip out and meanings don’t have any meaning and on behalf of another person sometimes you’re just trying to be nice.” But I hate it.
I made a promise to myself once. I made a determination to always be myself. To love what I love, to do what I love, to live eat speak breathe dream know what I love as if the love of it itself was who I am, as though my spirit were hazed with a light of gold. To not care who I impressed or who was listening, to avoid the drama and be my most logical self.
You know what I love about you? I mean besides your comfortable voice and your attractive face and your awfully unblocked and unburdened way of living, I love your fractured-ness. I love how you’ve made friends with both life and death. I think the name Bob Dylan translates into treasure. It doesn’t matter what language is used.
If all of us could live our life even a smidgen of one degree to how you live your life, the world would be a bigger and better place.
I hear you, I listen to your music, I read your poetry and articles and books and interviews, I watch the videos. I thank you for your trouble, for your roof and outlined life, for the swing of your song, for the ups and downs of your performances. I’m like a beetle waiting to be turned over with each new announcement of news.
When you sing I walk out of myself. The person inside of me comes around. Smiling and springy, less talkative, more attentive.
I believe there must be something wrong with me. I’m like a bicycle without a chain, an engine without any oil, a hairpin turn with both headlights gone. Without you I’m very shy and old fashioned, a mute, a barely noted observation, an inaudible voice. Books piled around me, poets I read just out of curiosity, sentences that say so little to me as if they were visitors, cousins on vacation, and I still have to go to work.
You are like the mouth of a room, an entire creation beyond each wall and fence and borderline. I walk in freely, anticipating every single thing like a frightened bird. I walk out crying. Ashamed by my own lack of intelligence.
To which all things return. Such beautiful powers of apprehension I have. In my worry and doubt I turn to them. For life I hide in the shade frowning. For you I smile easily. For life I hide in the shade frowning. For you I release my bewilderment and flower with affection.
