04.14.05 - 5:30 p.m.

I don't have time to write about Red's trip to London. He leaves tomorrow, or so the story goes, and I wish him luck and I hope he doesn't get killed, although if he does, I probably won't remember him. I've considered a short story centered around the whole absurd enterprise, but I can't wrap my mind around the Red character. I
really don't pay that much attention to him. I remember that the Polans had to change his schedule years ago because he... what? I can't even remember that much. It was something weird and absurd and, really, just a bit sad, but I don't think that people like that ever see how other people see them. And, what does it matter? Other people see you in passing: their lives impact your own only tangentially. How much time should you really spend worrying about what other people think?

Absurd.

Spring, fucking spring, is driving me crazy. It's cool, even cold outside, but the sun is out and I just want to move. I want to throw my fist into the wall or jump out the window, anything to expend energy. I feel bright and shocking and wild, and it's great, but really distracting, because there's not much in the world that stands up to this sort of feeling. What do you do with it? You can't actually jump up into the sky and scatter yourself among the stars, no matter how capable you feel.

I suppose that, tonight, I'll settle for cleaning the deck and, hmmm. Well, something slightly more scandalous than that.

Since I don't have time to write about Red, I wrote about him:

Skinned
by me

Red is going to London with sex on his
mind. It's not the prettiest picture textually
speaking. Think of the airplane, suspended
in the sky, heavier than the thin air around
it, speeding through the atmosphere, perfect,
perfectly fluid, and the wind 5 million knots
faster than anything you or I could stand,
scouring its silver skin clean. He will
have half a day of double-paned windows and the
horizon sketched neatly beyond them, the line
between heaven and earth. That's the border
he's treading: blind, panicked hope and
some sort of leaden misery: small town
poor man, clay feet, and a mind as simple
as a child's first sentence. Me Tarzan.
You that other girl, the one I can't
quite remember, the one I'll never
forget to recall.

                          I would like to be scoured
clean. I prefer to think of the wind, and
not London. London is too far away, and
meeting that will happen in two or three
days too quotidian to justify such distance,
and such need and such strife. We're all
a-twitter here. The details fly from our
mouths like luna moths, spastic with joy
around the porch light. Here is a woman he knows
only by her words. Here is a man she knows
only by his own. Here is the hotel, its
anonymity such a dubious paradise. This
is all we want. This is all we have ever
wanted, except water, and the light above
our heads. Red wants more, of course. Love,
or sex. To be the absolute center of an
entirely other human being's attention. To
fill someone's senses, and be filled
in turn.

Rereading, I like the first bit, but not so much the latter bit. Of course - to keep me writing - it goes in the vault for a year. And next week, when I finally get it together and replace the long defunct printer, I'll really be able to start printing them and start the 1 year write-edit rotation.