Yesterday and this morning the air was heavy, poisonous with smog fumes from two major fires. Now, a great wind is thrashing the trees, opening and slamming doors in the house, raging through the world.

I've got a bad headache and feel bloated, spacey and tired. Spent all day yesterday waiting for FedEx so I could get Masankho's luggage to him on Hawaii. He has lousy cell phone reception there so we had a number of frustrating phone calls that were basically a bunch of static, and "I can't hear you, your phone is cutting out!" shouted desperately into the void.

I still feel numb and cut off from my feelings about Jasch, (and Scott, and Michael.) It may be because of the medication I've been taking ever since Alan's death when I slipped into a major depression. Or maybe I'm just overwhelmed and scared to feel. At any rate, I can't feel right now--I want to, but it's not coming.

I confessed all this last night at an exformation (playing around) group with a couple of Interplay friends and it felt good to at least name what was going on. Just to say it. It's not just the deaths, its all the other big--and good--changes that have happened/are happening this year. Even moving from a single person to being a couple--and I have felt C and I move more and more into that shared mind-space over the last few weeks, that space where we are each thinking about the same things together--Alan and I had that, and it's wonderful, and scary.

After the little group, I went to the car and called C and confessed all to him, and he was empathic and said all the right things. And it was still a hazy hot evening and I'm still in a numb, overwhelmed moment, but I can also be loved and okay. I know I've been eating too much sugar and playing too much online Sudoku and I want to stop doing that...it's just more ways to not feel, and it ends up making me sick.

I did find this poem this morning on Poetry Almanac, which made me think of Jasch's relationship with his daughter, Hana. I hope someone shows it to her:

For My Daughter

When I die choose a star
and name it after me
that you may know
I have not abandoned
or forgotten you.
You were such a star to me,
following you through birth
and childhood, my hand
in your hand.

When I die
choose a star and name it
after me so that I may shine
down on you, until you join
me in darkness and silence
together.

--David Ignatow

I also found a great poem by Kevin Young yesterday when I was cruising around on Poetry web sites. I love Kevin Young's work for its economy, music, and humor.

Ode to the Midwest
by Kevin Young

The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
—Bob Dylan
I want to be doused
in cheese

& fried. I want
to wander

the aisles, my heart's
supermarket stocked high

as cholesterol. I want to die
wearing a sweatsuit—

I want to live
forever in a Christmas sweater,

a teddy bear nursing
off the front. I want to write

a check in the express lane.
I want to scrape

my driveway clean

myself, early, before
anyone's awake—

that'll put em to shame—
I want to see what the sun

sees before it tells
the snow to go. I want to be

the only black person I know.

I want to throw
out my back & not

complain about it.
I wanta drive

two blocks. Why walk—

I want love, n stuff—

I want to cut
my sutures myself.

I want to jog
down to the river

& make it my bed—

I want to walk
its muddy banks

& make me a withdrawal.

I tried jumping in,
found it frozen—

I'll go home, I guess,
to my rooms where the moon

changes & shines
like television.