Admit One
constellated in the vein of sheila heti's alphabetical diaries
A crowd gathered, just there, on the edge of the woods—but for what? All day my heart was shipwrecked at the bottom of the sea thinking about that awful kiss. And by the time I had woken up the feeling had shriveled in me, receding into a small yellowish light, barely discernible given the arrival of new hungers and another day on earth. And there I was, a tiny clown looking up at it all with my little black eyes set like gems inside my little round skull. Anna says that if love is going to make you feel small you should feel small like you’re in a church.
Betsy and I have been wondering whether to tell anyone our real names. But I am up on a cliff and it would take a while to reach me, here in the attic of the world. But then a rhyme began in my head—“mine is the country of dirty lace, silver tongue and painted face”—and I knew my business in the city was still unfinished.
Dead or dormant or simply thirsty? Dreamt I started a fire in my childhood bedroom. Dreamt it was raining on a planet with no name.
Eating ripe fruits and trying not to stare at her. Even from below the yellow water, I could hear the music.
God, like everything else, is a type of specific arrangement.
How badly I want his hand pressed over my mouth. How dare the heavens be so fair, etc. How the songs about trains and ships and lemon trees put me back on earth.
I am a professional wanter, lifelong yearning olympics, etc. I am amazed by lemons. I am dreaming at sea level, sea level which is the x variable of safety here, so I am dreaming along the x variable and not at all safe. I am greedy for rain, for the storms that ruin my plans and for the books splayed upside-down around the house that I don’t bother closing. I am out of all my human things: shampoo, conditioner, detergent, salt. I am the kind of dogged creature who believes in nearly any prediction I offhandedly hear—about the weather, the climate, the election, the fickle tectonics of stars.
I am trying to listen to the old woman from my dream.
I am weak and everything is an omen in a sea of omens. I fling open the curtains and draw them back again. I glue the little glass mime back together. I have as of late been wearing a sterling bell in my ear at all times. I have the distant sense that I should be preparing for something, like I am already behind. I keep trying to do nice things for myself but they always turn into chores. I miss redacted so much.
(I realize I have to write because writing is a form of arranging, arranging the debris that tumbles from heaven according to mortal schematics and principles, like how if humans ever saw angels their first instinct would be to alphabetize them.)
I shall need a weathervane above my bed. I shall need to finally “assume the position.” I shall need to learn a sailor’s knot. I should have never left the pond. I should like to learn how to speak one day. I should stop bringing home small objects. I should stop eating this late. I text M a picture of a raw steak in a black pan with the caption “Doesn’t it remind you of my heart?” I want to be buried in lemons. I want to do that trick before a crowd. I want to fall in love just so I can leave the city, because love is a good and true enough reason to leave the city. I was a fool then—I am a fool now. I was not in control. If you unzipped me right now, all you would find is more aching inside, spilling out of me like multicolored ribbons.
In my dream we were becoming betrayals to ourselves. In the bathroom at work, my tears are endless like a clown scarf pulled from a clown mouth. In the water I was mystified. In the water I was so tired of being charming and I was at last released from the task. It began to storm and the little dog shook. It was that the wounds were pink instead of red, she said.
Language, he argued, is a deterministic organizing principle & that human impulse & behavior is fundamentally shaped by malefic stories. Last night I got too drunk on a first date. Last night the moon set like a ruby fang over the ridge, one venomous tooth over the black mandible of the hills & I nearly called out in fright and ruined everyone’s fun. Like my doorbell would even ring in the middle of the night. Like the universe keeps depositing lucky pennies into my chest, more and more pennies every day, and I am full of a heavy gleaming. Lunched on hamburger meat and whiskey.
Maybe I should stop asking my Hinge dates about their recurring nightmares. Maybe one day I’ll know what that means. Maybe the emptiness inside the locket is what I’m in love with. Mike says love is when two people know a secret about the world that nobody else does. My mother is picking those wildflowers out in the rain, stealing them right out from under god’s chin and inexplicably I worry for her. My suitcase half unpacked.
Need more salt (for protection).
One day I’ll knit all those old hells into a spectacular frock & parade around roaring before hanging my capelet of old hells by the door where it would drip with midday rain above my muddied rambling boots, whose soles are caked with the petals of downed lupine pressed up into the rich dark soil that I track all through the house with the little white dog wheezing at my heels. Out here waiting for the silence to speak my name, my name which is an organizing principle, my name which is like a loose thread and not very important. Out of order as in flawed chronological assemblage or as in broken—not working? Over the bridge strewn with dead seabirds.
Pity, pity. Poisoned by that stupid kiss.
Que triste, the saints exclaim, que triste.
Silence is the solid green jewel at the center. Something in me says that tonight is the right time for a prayer but I can’t find the words. Sometimes, at parties, there is the feeling of my cover being blown. Sudden plunging, sudden descent. Sweat like chandelier jewels hanging between my breasts, I thought as I looked in the mirror.
That little dog could have dragged me straight into another realm. The clouds had capillaries of raw light blasting through them, the sudden jewelry of the universe hanging there against the wild tilt of God’s collar. The clouds rolled in and the thunder rolled in and my heart began to ache and ache and ache. The dirty water on the overpass reflects a spare acre of moon. The human spirit that burns as easily as marsh grass. The seawater was a cold fire around my ankles & my lantern was weak. The sky forming and reforming itself like it’s not so sure what God’s image is after all. The sky shining like the dull bottom of a once precious spoon. These are just the things I saw and how I saw them.
This is how a life passes. This was, of course, during the dark purple months of self-annihilating anguish when I was careening from flame to flame like a stray beast who hadn’t received all of its proper shots. Today the little white dog led us through passages of arrowleaf balsamroot, wild geranium, indian paintbrush, purple lupine, arnica and harebell. Trav prays like this every day—I’m sorry, Thank you, Amen.
Tried explaining my “salamander” theory & used a flower as an example in which on one level the flower represents a self-contained entity comprised of pistol, stamen, petal, stem, roots, pollen etc., wherein its material characteristics (color, smell, texture) suggest a unified whole, while on a secondary plane the flower exists only as a partial expression of everything else and can be felt instead of merely sensed, i.e. as an expression of coincidence, or metaphor, or miracle, myth or symbol, a being that speaks through trance or dream or tradition, where if you were to pluck this flower from the earth you’d find the entire universe would be pulled up with it—and that “salamander” episodes bring you into accidental contact with this second layer, this patina of the divine that encloses all reality like a warm, calloused hand.
Truth is I don’t need a summer romance; what I need more of actually is the woman who came over to us at the hotel pool that we had snuck into, who said we should YouTube the swim bladders of whales because “the birds will just peck and peck at the flesh.”
Undo me, undo me, carve me into the shape of a new name.
Walking through the cemetery we found an ancient thorny plant and we all wanted to prick our fingers on it but collectively agreed it was not a good idea. Watch me beg again for the breaking. What choice do I have? When I fold my pants to put them away, a single orange “ADMIT ONE” ticket flutters to the ground. When something is out of order perhaps it’s just scrambled itself in time. Woke up with my knees feeling like I had been kneeling on rocky soil all night, like I had been praying in the yard in my sleep? Would that pity could be made into bread, transforming this staleness of the “I” and its persistent, anemic flavor.
(Writing in a diary—hm—it’s the process of becoming one’s own archaeologist & digging with the randomized equipment of consciousness, whatever’s there, whatever’s in the fridge, the ergonomic wielding of daily self knowledge even if it’s not true or right or lasting.)
Your coffee going cold as you watch me disappear into the emerald vault of the lake.
Your feelings are not your life, says the old woman inside my dream.
If you enjoyed this hot and heavy peek-a-boo with my brain, definitely order Sheila Heti’s BRILLIANT book Alphabetical Diaries from your local independent book store. So much frothy gratitude to that masterpiece for teaching me and allowing me to write about myself for what feels like the very first time.