March 7th, 2014

I fall asleep. At some point Genna screams because the fish has died. At some point Joe sits on my bed and asks where he can buy flowers for the fish. At some point I am aware of how cold I am toward animals. This stems from the time my grandmother was dying and all David could offer was a story about a dead Guinea pig. I wake finally to another David coming through the front door. I run to meet him, in stockings, half asleep, slipping down the stairs, and I am so happy to see his beautiful eyes shining with the great distances he has traveled. Joe comes back and places the flower where the fish tank had been, and we go to the once-a-month gay happy hour at the local art gallery. Michael, whom I've just met, makes a joke about math and says, just remember, there are no x's. He repeats this, and all other words fade, I turn to David who knows all about the other David, and we smile, and I know there are prophets everywhere. Dr. Zack, with whom I have never seen eye to eye, looks me in the eye and says if there is any reason I am here tonight it is to tell you to let go the weight of the past. Zack won't remember this in the morning, but I will never forget it. Every tongue is touched with truth tonight, and there are no ex's, there are no ex's. What remains when we solve for x is an unarticulated newness we feel to our bones. We are brothers in this, these men and I, and this is a feeling like home.




March 6th, 2014

After a performance, the actors emerge as normal people in the world when minutes ago they were symbols of our hopes and hurts. How can we survive this unbearable unmasking? My grandmother has this thing she says says Karizma. Sing when there are no words, dance when there are no songs. This is why she chose to represent the storm and the rabid dog in her stage adaptation of Their Eyes Were Watching God as a violent percussive dance performed by boys in street clothes. She is remarkable. She is the kind of student you dream of being able to teach, and I hope daily I have not failed her with my insufficiencies. I am so glad the wolf attacked me and not mom, I keep saying to my father in the dream. He is stirring eggs and he smiles but he can barely hear me over the din of the afterlife. Mom is resting in the other room and they are together again. I describe in detail how I gripped with both hands the bony leg, how I shook the body that would have torn mine apart until I felt the bone break beneath my hand, how I threw it over a cliff and didn't wait to watch the body fall, but ran with my mother out of the woods and into safety. Everything is a symbol. Dad rushes around, finishing all the things he died too early to do, but he is proud. I can feel this in the air that moves between us. His eyes are soft and full of water.