Starburst Artifact

metal corrupts the image

better handwriting. same hands.

When I moved to Maine I shipped six small boxes of books ahead of me.  Two contained all my journals.  Slid amid mine: my mom’s, 1976-1979.

Every time I move, I take it down from the altar shelf and reread it.  I try to read it once a year regardless.

Psychological cartography.

“What are my resources for living in this world?  I told Steve last night I’m a person who sings one song well and gets paid for it.  The rest of my life has always been a mess.  He agreed.” 

“To take on more is to put myself on a faster treadmill.  Don’t think I could tolerate that very well.  Not wise for me.  I can and will take on more responsibility for the house and pets.” 

She bought the house in question.  She paid for the pets.  She paid for Steve’s expenses.  She paid for Steve.

After a fight with him: “Right now I miss him.  I’ve lost my best friend because he found me out and hates me.

Shit, I really believe that.”

“Poor Steve.  He must be hurting really badly.”

Sparingly accurate depictions of Steve’s rage.  How it fed on itself.  How expressing his anger never brought relief or respite, but merely fueled conflagration.  She perfectly diagrams his savagery.  She perfectly diagrams the postmortem.  “The Case Against Welles/The Case Against Gibbs.”  Item by item minutes on a three day fight. 

Vivisection, really.  All the ways she retreats into analytic technique and venerates stoicism and tries tries tries to take an active role, mindful responsibility, for his damage and his damaging.

Quoth my father: “Are you really so horny?  You’re hungry and desperate.  You’ve been pursuing me relentlessly all day.”

Her sexual response inspires his need to withhold.

Her success inspires his “outsider number.”

Every time I reread these pages I hate the man like new.

Constant struggle in her beautiful writing for dignity and aplomb.

I want to dive backwards in time and be born again.  I want my every kick and revolution to draw her irretrievably away from this terra firma she depicts.  I want my embryonic centrifuge hurricane strong.  Wind her away from the maw of the forest. 

There is no cure for cancer.