I’m sitting in a creaky black office chair in the foyer of Tracy Jackson Smith’s office, finding myself in black clothes and unusually smooth hair, stretching the tape across the walls of my heart to see how much space this has brought.  I have not brought a hundred things here, I can only stilly sit, answer the phone when it rings, check my email.  This means I can think and I am, thinking about all the lines I’ve let cross and crisscross, trying to follow one through the knot to untangle.

1) I will leave the office in an hour and a half to buy
some floss and let Cooper out.
2) I will work today alone on my new journal and on
a grant proposal.
3) I will rediscover the prayers I wrote that I used
to say for matins, vespers, and compline.

The phone here in the office keeps track of all the calls received, even if they’re answered mid-ring, and I don’t know how to clear it.  It says “36 NEW CALLS.”  My hand says “COOPER” and “GET FLOSS.”  Can we all stop shouting for a minute, can I stop shouting and feeling so strongly about everything?  The answer is yes, and I can feel a strand pulling looser as I decide this, I decide to build structure into my days which includes:

4) When I get home I’m cleaning my room and
sweeping the house, taking the recycling.
5) When I get home I’m going to find somewhere to
sit still and think … I’m so behind on thinking.
6) When I get home I’m going to find myself and ask
myself where I’ve been and where I’m headed.

I developed two rolls of film, rolls that are months & months old and came out grainy and bad.  This is pretty disheartening, and makes me want to throw the other three rolls away.  There can’t be anything extremely worth saving, there.  I wish I had new shoes so I could throw away a couple of pairs that are becoming largely holes.  I have new pants, though, and I love them.  I have a new novel to read (new to me), a new title for myself (significant other), and new understanding of my limits and need for boundaries.

7) I have to be still every morning this week, every
night before sleep.
8 ) I have to start a new journal and tell it how I am,
on purpose, so I will know.
9) I have to take care of myself, rebuild fences where
the old fences have gotten lost, or where I unhinged
them myself.

Soon I will be leaving the 21st floor of the First Tennessee building and will be walking.  Standing up alone and being independent and deciding what to do next.  Something is extremely crazy about being too involved and I need a few moments to hear myself speak, some small voice that I’ve not been catching because there’s been a lot of wind and music.  I wish I was older and had more years of experience on me.  What is the point of being 23.  This is ridiculous and I’m tired of knowing nothing and being wrong.  Well, I needed to say that because when I re-read it I almost cried, but now I will say something else: The point of being 23 is that I have to be 23 before I can be 39.  I have to know nothing before I can know something, and none of this is ridiculous.

10) I should celebrate something…
11) I should find something beautiful and say it’s
beautiful.
12) I should find again how I’m searched & known,
find that beautiful, find myself beautiful.