I Can See You From Here

I have needed my second cataract surgery since before the pandemonium

So I needed it pretty badly without knowing it got worse in the same way you gain weight foggy layer by foggy layer and I don’t know if you can appreciate how detailed everything is now especially today because it snowed overnight and in the forest there’s a stripe of white on every single thing and I can see every single stripe individually, intimately, almost carnally, I mean this is fucking unnecessary.

Also it doesn’t look like everyone I see is piggybacking their ghostly twin which was entertaining

Things are still not healed there’s a bit of a – well – just think if you expect your egg to be overeasy and it comes to you sunny side up you’ll get the idea.

It’s like the white of my eye isn’t quite done yet

So with this new clarity of vision I decided I needed a haircut. Well. Actually I decided I needed ALL of them cut and made the appointment and like how people who win Oscars get to the stage in a near unconscious state that’s kind of how I got to the hair joint you know I was suddenly sitting in the chair one eye closed terrified of getting a hair in it because it would feel like a rope so I had to keep telling myself it was not a lopsided haircut which it is not but it doesn’t have much else going for it so I can’t go to work until it grows in a little and I think it’s going opposite because today I woke up and it felt shorter which was quickly verified in the liquidy morning mirror.

Also, and I don’t know if this will pass, but I like the silver hairs which I can see each one like the snow on branches just now and also the wrinkles are of interest although likely temporary not the wrinkles but the interest

Otherwise, friends, things remain the same although acutely.

On the walk me and Daisy just took which was like a high contrast photograph I thought I might try to divide this blog so you can choose story-of-the-day – I will come up with a better title – because I write one every day and why not and I won’t send out notifications because they’re daily and that’s just fucking redundant, you’ll know like you know about Wordle, maybe I’ll call it Wordles, lol, which spellcheck wants to change to Wordless the idiot.

I will let you know when I figure out how to do this or more accurately when David does

Anyway here’s what would be today’s Wordless if you want to read it and if you don’t here it isn’t.

This I Know By Heart

Yesterday I didn't write a story because somebody from an existing one waved me down, said look! so back I went reading what was already written, a story in which lots happened but also nothing was accomplished, which is a pretty accurate description of yesterday, I mean if ever there was a day in which to lose an hour that was it.

I get tangled up in unfinished stories and it’s treacherous like getting caught in the weeds you have to know how to swim out, it’s okay if a few wiggle against you but motion is necessary, velocity is critical, and then you find yourself in a place where there’s maybe a new story, somebody on shore worth going in for.

I didn’t know why this person was waving me down I mean I’m not the sort of girl anyone waves down but I was completely alone out there so I knew it was directed at me and although distance made him vague I could tell his eyes were acute just like the character yesterday who said look! so I did what he asked, I gathered myself from the water those waves didn’t want to let me go but I did it.

He was around my age maybe 16.

What I said.

The tide is so dangerous he said you new here?

Just got here before lunch and as if to verify my mother’s body popped up over the careful floral hedge and she gave a wave as earnest and meaningful as his had been your lunch is here Stella!

Jesus we did that play he said and he looked at me, through me, whisper-yelled my name which was exactly what the waves were saying.

stella stella stella stella

I read Streetcar so many times, I plucked Marlon Brando from the 50s movie and Jessica Lange from the other one and gave them the roles. I am a repeat reader. I am into the hundreds on To Kill a Mockingbird, Gatsby, The Razor’s Edge, Solitude and Cholera my dad used to say by the time I got to be his age I’d have them all memorized and that I’d be heaven’s greatest storyteller but you see I write all the time so much it’s like I can’t stop I am always stealing back that lost hour so I can tell my own stories between the memorized ones.

I’ve always believed my audience is in heaven.

But back to earth.

We both said I love that play at the same time and I will insist upon the existence of love at first sight forever, I will place it like electricity in stories, because there was a moment there, a gap in our lives, a stagger, our own private eclipse while I was Jessica Lange he was Marlon Brando and isn’t that what youth is for.

We met that night, he threw sand against my window like a whisper and mouthed my name as I came down the outside stairs.

I am now the age my father was on that holiday and indeed I have many passages from the books I mentioned memorized, but none like Streetcar, I can see the pages before they turn.