you can’t go home again, but it’s nice to visit from time to time. of course, as you do it, home will probably do plenty of things to embarrass and repulse you. like electing a republican senator on the basis of his pick-up truck.
the longer you stay, too, the more you will start to breath these failing and inadequacies and shamefulness into yourself, forgetting – or at least abstracting – whatever you’ve done and wherever you’ve gone that could serve as a counterpoint. but that’s not what this poem/epistle/blogpost is about.
what it’s about is actually just the opposite. it’s about how home can build you up if you visit it the right way or follow it with the right headspace. not just by fattening you up with doritos, donuts, designer ice creams, chinese soup, indian buffets, nostalgic candy bars and high-fructose everything. though, of course, it will do that. and not just by attending to and/or provoking material whims and longings you didn’t even kneow you had somewhere in the depths of your brand-new iBoxer fiber-optic underwear (by calvin klein), or else inside the textures you remember but assumed you’d done away with or forgotten or dismissed. turns out these urges miss you just enough to make you miss them, to vie for your attention and for the resources and suitcase space that sounded infinite (from where you live now) but that seems more and more limited the longer you stay “home.”
but that’s not what this poem/epistle/word missile/reflection (like narcissus)/brand new set of sheets or dishes/way to fill a notebook/blogpost is about.
what i’m actually trying to say is how ready i feel, for the first time in a long time. how i see that what i’ve set out for myself is daunting and impossible by fits and starts, and maybe a little bit dangerous.
over the course of the past two months, i’ve gotten to re-connect with pretty much everybody i wanted to, in north america. in most cases, i got to see them. and i feel so filled up, in a powerful way. like after a good lunch of solid hippy stew. i feel so stretched out in a limber way, so ready to go out. this is the beautiful part, the not-sure-why-i-get-to-be-so-lucky part. i get to go out and do exactly what i want to do.
here’s the plan:
the plan is to keep this energy going, the energy that i’ve been absorbing and pushing against and into in parks in brooklyn, concerts in new haven, rehearsal spaces in toronto, kitchen tables in san francisco, couches and futons and borrowed beds from manhattan to somerville to honolulu and over phone lines and internets from all sorts of points in between.
the plan is to get to rio and hit the streets and make things, whether dressed as a parrot or carrying a guitar or maybe not wearing too much of anything at all (TBI).
the plan is to get back into the jails asafp, and try to prod and tease and ease and fight the stories out, no matter what form they take. the plan is to spend a whole lot less time on facebook and a whole lot more time recording songs and coercing poems out of or into thin air, or talking to puppets, or out on the street, discovering for the thousandth time why i’m so madly in love with rio de janeiro, and with brasil.
people ask me why brasil, and i don’t have an answer beyond the isadora duncan line: if i could say it, i wouldn’t have to dance it. but there’s always a moment in rio – usually on my 6th or 7th night in town, almost always in someone’s backyard, or else somewhere in santa teresa – when i start to feel the tropics, when i start to feel brasil.
it’s something about the way the air is thick, the way i can sense the bright greens and pinks and yellows and reds of flowers and trees, even if i can’t see them. something about how the night feels more penetrating, more total, how the streets feel cracked and danced on and haunted and alive.
(if i come up with a better answer, i’ll let you know).
i’m feeling very ready to go back to those streets. i’m feeling very charged. what i’ve actually been trying to say in this blogpost/poem/epistle/discussion/dissection/digression is:
thank you.
(and stay tuned).
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