snapdragon

the snap dragon was a very simple thing. we came back from a walk and were passing thru the back gate into the garden behind the pool. there was a beautiful red flower in the midst of all the sprays of green and breathless purple. oh, isn't that beautiful, look at that.

do you know why they are called snapdragons?

the demonstration of what they can do made me laugh. you put your fingers to either side of it and press gently, and it looks like a dragon's mouth opening and closing.

i laughed with delight and, i think, squealed. did you know that? i giggled at C. NO! and we were both like, ooooh...!

C. said something a minute later when we explained to S. after she asked what we were yelping about like, it doesn't take much to make us happy.

i was really happy. increased sensitivity to the mug in my hand, my skin and the sheen of sweat drying in the breeze on the small of my back the music starting in my head, the red of the flower, the quality of the air, the way the sun was on the deck, malcolm winding his way thru our legs. flexibility and constitution. a will. the saving grace of an unenviable position, that we move forward and backwards in time. the last time i'd seen a snapdragon was in san francisco, about to go into a diner for breakfast. i noticed them in such a way that it's a defining moment in my life, they covered the street and a mythical, paradigmatic history (of place, and who i was there) ended. so in a sense, something that had sort of a psychopompic function, between the bright, foggy western morning and a early june day in the east, i kind of learned the techniques of living. of noticing. my artistic and poetic capacities. but this had a heart. eschatological time. this ended time—into presence.

do you see how this relates to what we've been going back and forth about? if you do that's great because it alludes me. like, my mother sent me a picture of a butterfly, and i thought of you. you were watching a butterfly one day in Paris.

The last night S. was here, before she left for Beirut (and omg i was seriously considering just telling Dad that she was going to ireland. tsuris! also, i might be a bad jew and using that incorrectly.) I've kind of been a very technical, fascinating, marvelous and weird person since that night. She leaned her body into me and brought her mouth to my ear. all the fantasies and hard play and she just said i was in you. i was fucking you.

hours later we curled up on the couch, it was a hot night and the windows were open. we sat in the dark. the humidity made me calm and it felt like you were breathing water. our voices were quiet and rusty. heat like that, you feel sedated and predatory. you've hunted. and prayed.

I found everything inside the room soaked, as if were, in Bliss - the Bliss of Satchidananda. I saw a wicked man in front of the Kali temple, but in him also I saw the Power of the Divine Mother vibrating.

That was why I fed a cat with the food that was to be offered to the Divine Mother. I clearly perceived that the Divine Mother Herself had become everything - even the cat. The manager of the temple garden wrote to Mathur Babu saying that I was feeding the cat with the offering intended for the Divine Mother. But Mathur Babu had insight into the state of my mind. He wrote back to the manager: "Let him do whatever he likes. You must not say anything to him. (p. 345)

To my Divine Mother I prayed only for pure love. I offered flowers at Her Lotus Feet and prayed to Her: "Mother, here is Thy virtue, here it Thy vice. Take them both and grant me only pure love for Thee. Here is Thy knowledge, here is Thy ignorance, take them both and grant me only pure love for Thee. Here is Thy purity, here is Thy impurity. Take them both, Mother, and grant me only pure love for Thee. Here is Thy dharma, here is Thy adharma. Take them both, Mother, and grant me only pure love for Thee." (pp.138-139) Sri Ramakrishna


the re-reading of genet right now is hilarious. you can imagine. ;)