Signs of Weakness

Million Dollar Baby beautifully illustrated how close triumph lives beside tragedy, beauty beside cruelty, power in the place of frailty.

The Ironman, and all the courage and will that was involved there, is contrasted here by a sick and weakened corpse, confused, delirious, unresolved. McCandless' story echoes this...the 112 days of survival in the wild, undone by some seeds that upset his stomach. This is reality though, this is actuality, this is where the certainty we have comes against the rock hard reality of the world, and its certainty for us, its truth for us.

I am tired of endlessly writing. It's a distraction from these feelings of malaise. Does it do any good to write triumphantly when you're feeling weak and defeated? Does it make sense to write when you're triumphant and happy? Should one not absorb the joy, spend it all outdoors?

I have spent most of the last 3 days indoors. Outside is more of that poisonous yellow dust. There are invitations, job offers, weekend plans, new movies. Still my body reacts to these climes by producing gray slime, reducing me to slumber, a piece of felled tree trunk, lying on a bed, or a sofa. I am tired even of the sound, the jabber, of the TV.

Clear Water

To swim in the cool breeze of an empty pool
To walk alone with mountains
To laugh with beer and friends
To come unstuck
and be sent fast over highways
by iron muscles
my own steel gaze
I yearn for a return to full power
the life of my own limbs
the phosphorescent flare of clear, sharp thoughts
I need the pestilince, the plague, the poison to leave my body
take any toxic thoughts with
and undone deadly deeds
The Foul flow
hubris, sweat, blood, draining my tissues
phlegm, ink
vomit, spit it all out!
let it leak
spurt from the armpits of an octopus
or a white cell
engulf, engorge, swallow it up
or sweat it out
into the wild wild sea
with all its salt
PURGE
thaw, rust, ruin - leave!
ejaculate
burst the blister
so that I may have clear water
for all my arms
and all that lies within