Hiccup

It is such a big thing to live.

I spent a long time this morning sludging through the time suck that is Wikipedia. How can we be on the brink of productivity and all of the sudden think about some random thing like the man who hiccupped for 68 years and and then you are drooling and have been taken places.

Wiki takes you places. I ended up on a stranger’s Instagram page and then I was in the sad finger drive of looking up the obituaries of contemporary poets. I wanted to see what they did and what they were loved for, and I feel odd now, kind of washed away. Sleater-Kinney plays in the other room. I have been wearing the same t-shirt for two days. Maybe three.

All the poets are precious. I think that when they die, all of their unborn poems are just hanging in the New England fog or out in the hot sands of Nevada or in the West Village floating right above the bodega that sells fresh fruit beside of fly swatters or maybe they are also in West Virginia in the throat of a 14-year-old who doesn’t know a goddamn thing about the human heart. Yet.

Is it possible that poets never die? I don’t want to die. Or is it possible that the people the poets love and write about never die? I am very much the VP of the Let’s Never Die Club, I used to be president, but I got so busy. Some of the poets killed themselves. There is actually a ranker.com list of the ones who committed suicide. Some of them got sick. Frank O’hara was hit by a fucking jeep. All of them were here for a small time. We all are. What the hell are we doing with ourselves? I am watching my son begin his life as an 18-year-old. I am at the same time intrigued, jealous, and terrified. It is such a big thing to live. How are you living? Are you really doing your best? I mean, I think we always are. Sometimes. Maybe.

Also, everything goes so fast. I was just a whole other person with a whole different life. How does that happen? What do you think about when you wake up in the morning? Can you start right now, immediately and live so that you are able to whisper to your younger than now self:
I loved every part of that WILD thing called life.

Let’s try. I am currently taking an online course called, Let’s EAT Shame. I lie.
I am writing that course. With the twenty-seven-dollar black eyeliner I bought when I was drunk.

I want my son to read Sylvia Plath. But not too much. I want him to be soft and worldly and know what love is. Like the Foreigner song. Most of the best bands are British, I think. Such a small island makes so much noise. I want him to have that exquisite ache of love. But also, to laugh and laugh. My god, I just want him to be happy and alive. Can we agree that everything will happen to all the people?

What do you most want in the whole world?

I would like to understand how we are so powerful and so fragile at the same time.

ILYSM.

xo

amy