treading on the sacred

How ironic to long for what is directly beneath your nose. I used to think richness was dictated by the object. Now I’m not so sure. I think maybe that poems and films that arouse a sense of sacredness are just pointing at that which is always there. I’ve been nostalgic for this world I’m standing in for years.

At a gas station in Fort Collins once, at dusk, looking at the mountains, I told my friend I was nostalgic for that exact moment. It was like I was experiencing it the way I remember things fondly. The scent is what always gets me, and there was a humidity that night which is unusual for the Front Range.

On a sidewalk patio, I had a drink with my friend who is a dancer in the Naropa BFA. The program is influenced by a Tibetan Buddhist lineage holder, who brought my lineage to the west. We were sitting and having our drinks, when a group flooded out the door of the bar.

I saw a girl who looked drunk, and stumbled as a guy stabilized her. I thought it was silly, and dropped it, but my friend looked surprised and excited, and looked at me beaming. What she had seen was different: a momentary dance performed by the group of college students, twirling out the door, looking in all directions as if trying to decide where to go next. I then realized I had seen this all happening, but my story about the drunk girl distracted me from its beauty.

Another time, on a beach in the Baja of Mexico, I lit a cigarette and drank a Coca Cola. The smoke caught the light in a grossly intimate way, and my sunglasses had a crack in one lens. I was too busy for that moment, and now it’s lost and perverted by my fiction.

I’m writing a poem.
There is a line, stolen from myself long ago:

…and I remember a night in Chicago,
where from my fire escape I could see only one star.
Since I didn’t have many to choose from,
I wished upon it to
“STRIP ME! STRIP ME, STAR,
STRIP ME!
‘Cause my clothes are growing holes,
and anyway
I’m sick of singin’ fiction to strangers.”

I think, though, that I’m actually sick of singing fiction to myself. The romance that lures me to my scripts is exactly what I’m missing by writing them, treading on the sacred in search of sacredness.