In the Womb

what things have felt like lately with a dash of anthropomorphism

My candle is lit. The sky is deep blue like the first time you wash a baby’s head and their veins zigzag across their forehead. The color of early morning birth.

Yesterday, on the phone, Mikey asked if I’ve been writing. I said Yes and he said What stuff? And I said, I’m not sure.

The truth is, Michael, that I’ve been drawing sketches of ugly little characters with ugly trees and ugly houses and I write some prose over the skyline, instead of shading it in with blue, and that has been fun lately.

Fun. I’ve almost succeeded in letting myself go.

I recently read a lot of books about Galápagos birds and Galápagos history and even some Galápagos fiction (Kurt Vonnegut) and each time I read those books there was always a sentence along the lines of: If you have the extreme fortune of visiting the Galápagos islands…

Well, I did have the extreme fortune of visiting the Galápagos islands last week, and on top of that I had the extreme fortune of snorkeling—first off of the south end of Santa Cruz and then up near the equator in Genovesa and then most magically off of Santiago.

I liked it under there. Nobody could talk to me. It was like being back in my mother’s womb. I was floating and staring at everything that once terrified me and still does. There was nothing I could do about anything, floating there. I just had to look. Look at the mangy mussels clinging onto open pored legs of the sea, crabs hobbling down from their version of everything, stingrays with the face of any man I’ve seen on the street. You were in your mother’s womb! My roommate, Thomas, said when I got back and told him about my mother.

…

What now? The candle is still burning. The sky is not as dark.

Last spring I shaved my head and got a tattoo and then a job as a bartender and then decided that I was sober and stopped being a bartender. This all happened within a few days. What now? It’s been a year. I have bangs. I drank whiskey last night. Four sips. I felt sick, I hated it, I wanted it out of my body.

Last night I dreamt that the foundation of a house I was living in was collapsing and nobody around me listened. It was right there, crashing and colliding and every time I said anything, even things that weren’t related to the floor of our house, I was ignored. And then finally it all fell down and I dashed around death, like I always do, and the rocks of our house sat on the ground all wobbled in the wrong direction.

A lot of things are crashing. I’m in the womb, in the womb. And everything is changing again. What is the right direction? What do you do when your body gets sick? I feel like I get sick of every compounding action that the world has. Sometimes I get sick staring at something sad. Sometimes I get sick staring at the internet. Sometimes the internet is sad. How do you let go of who you think you are? How do you let go of who you want to be?

Okay, back to the womb. It’s safe in there. No more drinking!

Jo