Monday, February 28, 2022

28

The way things open, click, come back into place. How to stay open to that? To keep the space of waiting open—what Clarice Lispector teaches, according to Hélène Cixous. Waiting calls itself and calls on us to follow. The choice is not to do nothing, but rather to attend to the sun, a passing breeze, the way a gesture can move through a hundred bodies, take on so many names. Waiting names itself in what is otherwise unnamable. In the silence, I was told, think about the sounds of birds which have gone extinct, and notice where they may have been. Imagine another listening. I want to remain open to being moved, to not imagine a future too distant, too much of a projection onto frayed tarp or a wall that fits only half of the image. The project, then, might be to devote what is available to fostering the conditions of attending. A bird sitting atop a telephone pole each day, then one day two, then for weeks nothing. A walk at the river in which it was decided that geese have a similar energy to hippos, not that there was a chance to encounter any hippos, but rather, that both should be avoided. Look: See how far your eyes can go without you. “I want to be with you, rigorously,” says Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Writing is one way of doing that—being with or noticing the fullness of you—a walk around a reservoir, speaking in and out of sleep, asking what’s held out of each, blue water and green muck beyond a rusted fence. Take me / take me, too.

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73

Look, this made me think of you. Beneath a few oak trees, N and I watched a whole lifecycle, worms crawling along bark, moths midair, empty ...