this happened to me

I was reading an old email from a couple of years ago.
Sometimes when you're going through the thing you don't realize how remarkable it is.

Reading this entry, I realized that sometimes I live at quite an epic level.
And it all seems quite normal. Exhausting, but normal.

from 2004...
"What a trip I’ve been on.
The circus was incredible
we worked so hard. We had one weekend with 6 shows in 3 days. All I did was eat, warm up, have epsom salt baths perform and sleep for days on end.
We sold out most shows, with standing ovations after every performance. It was like being rock stars. Sometimes people even applauded on my entrance, which was pretty spectacular in a low rent kind of way; I was pushed on on a 10ft staircase, keening at the top of my lungs with our 7 piece band pounding away! Glorious!

So I went on a motorbike holiday.
I was up around where you were and I didn't even think to write you to let you know. I went to Armstrong to see the Caravan show and then on to Winlaw about an hour from Nelson and then I rescued a friend in Princeton and we hung out in a little town called Cawston.

Lot's of swimming in rivers, eating, drinking and sleeping out under the stars with NO TENT! my first time doing that ever I think. It was fabulous.

So now I'm enjoying time with a bit of money, a bit of work and a lot of free time. Glorious. I'm even still relaxed from my holiday. Something I want to try to maintain for, well, the rest of my life really. It just feels so good to slow down. The city is just way to urgent."

death on my shoulder

on the summer solstice I stayed up til 3:30 swimming with friends
lying on the beach naked
looking at the city through the flames of an illegal fire

at that moment on another facet of the earth people were dying
how many died that night i don't know
but only one mattered to me

in my dreams i heard him leave
a short, sharp grunt as he parted ways with his body in the deep velvet silence that's death's bosom.
"that's gotta hurt" I thought to myself

2 days later the anonymous grunt was interpreted for me
again in the middle of the night
after living as far into the evening as felt good and satisfying

email can be so brutal
when it's there, fluttering, 0's and 1's to tell of such a passing, of such and event
it took a week for me to really understand one sentance
the one that said he "didn't survive the collision"

I wandered in the wilderness of my apartment for days
asking
"WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!"
"WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!"

didn't
survive
the
collision

What is a collision?
How can he not survive it?

No.
I revisit that moment, over and over
maybe I shouldn't
but it's a key into my broken heart
not just lovers break your heart
sometimes the world does a bang up job

the day he died a thought came to me
Look into your heart and find all the fear there
and empty it out so you can really Love

Which I did
Which felt really really good
and with that email, slam, shut

and now it hurts
and the only way to feel peace is to soften it
but then I cry, sob, weep, helpless to do anything else
where every I am
beyond polite
beyond composure
beyond caring

And the depth of this weeping
this body shakeing wailing
makes me understand so much about poetry
about love
about definite ends of things
of people
that I love