“Swaying trees and power lines always hypnotize my mind. I fear it’s not enough this time to stop from wondering. If things will ever go our way when I can’t seem to stay in place. Could it be love that makes us change? It’s not for nothing.”—Mutual Benefit, “Not for Nothing.”
The heat makes me so tired. I could hardly keep my eyes open. Falling out in and out of sleep renders me trancelike. Sleep is like fading to black. When I am awake, I think too much.That Outback Steakhouse sign as a part of our landscape. A part of this big new desert world where the air that hits you when you’re driving along the highway with the windows down is thick and hot. Falling asleep is like wading through water but so, so, easy.
Today was an especially notable day because although we made no official reservations or did much planning at all, we were able to secure backcountry passes, meals, and a campsite.
“A moment I am above I look for you or someone who can remind me of the tight grip and the sun lick and the calm way of all things summer. When it’s all here. And it’s all new.”— Angel Olsen, “White Fire.”
All day I recite my mantras. They are meaningless and help me lose focus. One is from a poem I wrote several months ago.
“For when this idleness would drown us, driftwood passing our swollen limbs, I would look to you.”“I peeled off those two pieces of dried scotch tape like two corneas, opened the tiny shutters to a new world. The plastic coating was removed so I saw out of two twin coins gleaming thousands of miles into the future. Only two small pieces of scotch tape as the barrier of the girl and the world. And they leaked so.”— Grace Krilanovich, The Orange Eats Creeps
I read this book all over again when it was still light outside after the long days of hiking. I kept my feet in the creek forever and made light conversation with the people around me in between pages. I was thinking of this chapter the day that I crossed the bridge.A deer with a swollen belly (carrying child, presumably) eats of trees and grasses in front of me. Will she ever leave the canyon? Was she born to this thing, in this thing? Does she understand her confinement?
When I close my eyes, I’m standing nowhere, in the middle of nothing. Surrounded by nothing. Enveloped by nothing. When you wrap me like this I can’t breathe. You unfold my two halves and I am back in this place. There are pinprick holes in this sheet we call the sky.