WHO IS SHE? Wouldn’t you like to know. Sometimes you only catch a glimpse of her, out of the corners of your eyes. You think you see her coming your way down the street, or that you see her from behind at the shop, examining some bananas, but then she turns around and you realize that it isn’t her and you are disappointed. Sometimes the girl has the same scarf, same build, same boots, same way of walking, but it’s not her. Another good question might be, what is it that makes her who she is? That one is also difficult to answer. You just don’t know. Idiot poets struggle and wrestle and hassle themselves with such questions. Idiot painters too. They keep painting, and the songsmiths keep writing, just trying to get it all down on record or on paper. Is it in the curves of her eyes, the way that she walks, the sound of her voice? God no. There is some kind of radio signal broadcasting from the bosoms of people and hers is the one that is hitting you the strongest, starting to reverberate in your core. The sound continues to fill you. Sound is one word. It’s also like seawater. Remember, how you used to go and swim at the seaside as a child, and you could feel its waves pulsing through you hours later when you were all sandy and sleeping in the back seat on the long car ride home? That’s what it’s like. It fills you from end to end, rolling like the waves, from the hairs on the crest of your head to the final peninsulas of your toes and back again. Naturally, I tried to get away to preserve my autonomy. I told myself all kinds of pleasant lies to distract myself from the truth. She was too young or too old. Too fat or too thin. Her voice was too high or too low. Whatever I was, it was too much or too little. I was overly abundant and inadequate. However the math squared, it would never work out. But math is wicked and deceptive. Thoughts are self-sabotaging. And sometimes there really is no way out. The only way to go is in. I don’t see her always, but she is always there, just beyond sight, a blurred figure at the end of a misty street. The last time I saw her in real life at a birthday party, she was stunning. It was as if someone had cut a piece of the night-time sky away with a pair of scissors and made a woman from this celestial fabric. All of the little lies I had told myself were washed away. I thought everything was normal and tried to convince myself such, but about half an hour later, I started to feel that pull again. The mighty ocean had picked me up and was tossing me about with its heavy waves. I was being sucked out into water. I confided in my friend about what was going on, and she said that it all sounded beautiful. “Go with those waves,” she told me. “Ride them.”
north! 