THE RITES OF SPRING (extract from an ancient journal)

Having promised myself never to be ashamed of anything again, still I feel bad I wasn’t able to enact the rites of Spring on the New haven Green. I was invited into the circle and declined. Maybe I wasn’t offered a juicy enough role to impress my credentials in the seasoned shifting, too broad a characterization for my reality to get to grips with itself. Not that I think I made the wrong decision as it turned out I didn’t belong in that particular circle, only as a peripheral presence, as I did dance around a bit held some hands and shook a paper-rattle in the generalized melee phase of it, which was OK. I was present, and I brought my son to be present, roused him from a daycare drowsing for the occasion, presented my “free time” to its’ happening, so I suppose I enacted the rites of Spring more than I ever have before, which is nothing to be ashamed of or even just feel bad about. I actually balanced a raw egg on the perfectly poised earth at 10:29 that morning to prove to myself how much I would like to appreciate nature’s wholesome proportions….

….Took some deep breaths later that night before a smoked a misplaced miniature cigar and ate some ice-cream so I could squeeze these words out of me, the urge to make my presence felt this day not yet abandoned to somebody else’s media. I know I am tired and I know I am not sure where I am meant to go or be, my spirit is fretting in some gray area, my body tense and tight-lipped unable to let go and simply “be”, in which case I may never really know how alive I was, or am, am I but crabby and impatient and sugar-blue-glued-up inside and would rather smash the door down than look for a key, my fist being ready at hand and I can believe a crash when I hear one? I can believe some state has been altered, but I don’t have the time or the energy to do yoga or meditate, still hooked into the rattling race to have the most tin-cans tied to your backside when you cross the finishing-line, I needs to produce I, this is an un-bloody production not even that clever, I mean I could be a lot cleverer, I could have turned that un-bloody ritual on the new Haven Green into “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” or “Death of a Salesman” or “Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti” at the Met…. But where were the crowds for good-god-great-spirit’s sake, where were the Stars, the chiffon and the razzmatazz??? I suppose they were all busy behaving un-naturally, which ought to be something to feel bad about or even ashamed of, if you don’t you may spend the rest of your life believing babies are born in the Hall of Records and Spring is a time to plan your summer vacation, you could watch it all blossom on TV, Channel 8 was there : a pastel-preened dolly with a microphone in high-heels looking like she was already on television which she was / is, her transmitting presence dogged by a cigarette-sucking linear-minded back-room-be-jeaned camera-person as unexcited by the event as I was by his haircut, which is fair enough, we all have our jobs to do and we can’t all rise above it no more than I can whoop with joy or hug my neighbor without a driving script to take me there or an inspiration that appears out of thin-air or a London Blitz… You cannot make love because love cannot be made, but can it be bombed into existence? It is present, let’s face it, but most of us keep it locked up at home for safe-keeping, bring it out only on special occasions. but can’t let it go or let it be in the urban wild, for fear it might get lost forever and then we would have nothing to go home to….???

I am not ashamed I am simply not always lovely, in fact sometimes I feel so ugly and un-appetizing I decide I’ll be a television critic and spend the rest of my life safely and cozily recognizing shit when I see it and wallowing in it, coming up for air only when Channel 8 tells me it’s perfectly natural to take a walk in the woods so long as I’m back in time for the six’ o ’clock news… Meanwhile the sun is coming out and it is Spring and life is present whether I love it or not, making an urban mess all around me, I choose to live in the city, what can I say, stop it??? We don’t need another highly-raised profit-making venture, no more concrete, lay off it go-getters, go get a mask and a paper rattle and some homespun, dirt-mark a circle chant and sing and speak the apostrophes of Spring the birdies and buddies are on the vine the vine is on the March but April is the cruelest month so long as the land is wasted and busy busy busy people block the earth up so slab-like….????

Maybe I just needs to feel at home in the gloriously lowly dirt, so my grave won’t be a forbidding place, in fact it will really allow me to rest in peace, which the older I get the more certain becomes my goal to set a spirited example to my after-bearers that this is possible and I don’t need to write a book to prove it only air it out on the Universal Green….. But am I getting high on “I” again? “We” implies a presumption “I” speaks for everybody, which of course “I” does if “I” speaks the Truth. If “I” doesn’t and doesn’t even try to, it means “I” is speaking for somebody else who isn’t even real, if reality is the womanifestation of the Truth… But still “we” sounds pretentious, so I’ll stick to “I” which sounds egotistical…So maybe I’ll pretend to be a little “i” which implies humility, but now I feel little “i” is double-bluffing big “I” into preciosity…So maybe Ii’ll remain dumb and commit “Ii” to being “nobody special”, so nobody else can call little “i” affected or call big “I” at all, which must be everybody else’s fear or “we” would simply shut up and the world would be dumbfounded and blinded by multiply irrelevant Ii’s…… ?????

So who’s going to stop shouting first? Peace isn’t just something you give up on, unless you give up on everything and leave nothing to chance or bribery like Christ-like manwoman eternity is the shortest distance between two possibilities… And what’s “your” excuse? Little “i” am the victim big “I” is the master of facts, the breakdown of reality the truth that I needs to come clean one way or another…This morning he didn’t want to get out of bed. This afternoon he felt he had to hurt to get attention. Tonight he wants an angel to come share his silence, tuck him up in clean sheets and massage his neck muscle till his brain breaks free…He is at home feeling shipwrecked with his sleeping kid believing it will pass…Settling now for a cup of green tea and a cookie and maybe check out Channel 8…That’s how low he is sinking this evening good-god-great-spirit help him in his lonely impoverished urban Spring…….

PAUSE FOR QUIETUS. (and to contemplate the partially-seeing “Ii”)