ON KEEPING EVERYTHING IN STAR-ORDER

So I think the only thing left to do is to follow Tom Waits' cue and move according to the stars. It would be misguided at best, but at least it wouldn't be arbitrary. For one year I saw maps in everything. I traced the veins up and down the forearms of my friends. Treasure maps, I told them. I dreamt of benevolent globes that children could hide in.

Now I'm in the doldrums of formless-college-insubstantia. Unmappable regions. Terra incognita. Hic sunt dracones, I would've said in my previous incarnation.

So with my maps all withered, the legend all askew, I guess I'll just trust in the stars. It puts me in mythic company: First-World explorers, Underground Railroad, Tom motherfucking Waits. The stars are not man-made. So there can be no deceit in them. Right? Right.

I made a constellation projector out of paper and a touch-light. Stars as simple as pinpricks.

retrieved notes from 1 August 2008:

"Thou shalt not disregard the Irrational."

What do I mean by 'Poetry is the most important thing in the world' ? How presumptuous of me, how naive, how self-aggrandizing. But it is just this: stargazing on an empty night; a stranger called Father; cats watching; a broken typewriter; a man who lived biblically; Cepheus is the husband of Cassiopeia. There is order in that. There is light and water and poetry, the three essentials. I don't know the names of the constellations. Cait does, she took an astronomy class at a community college. I don't know their names. There, there, there are things there are no names for. Cait & I run as if there were still urgency in the deadened world of sleep, as if the sky might leave us. These short, staggered breaths, my ribs aching in time-- it's not epiphanic but it's the closest thing I've got. I lay on my back on the pavement. There's that same old dream of leaving. How far can I walk? As far as I am lonely.

Upon reentering Cait's bedroom, I go to each of the four walls. She confirms with compass in hand. I put the edges back, I give the corners back to the room of my mind. I take a black marker and write on each wall: BOREAS, NOTUS, ZEPHYRUS, EURUS.

There is order in that.

Last night, I stood with familiar-strangers/strange-familiars at a bonfire in an empty field. My ex-best friend was drunk and sullen because I'd snapped at her about something. She started apologizing, crying, wouldn't let go of me and kissed me several times on the mouth. It's the kind of scene where everyone looks hard into the fire, pretending not to see. And I couldn't think of anything to say to her. Not one thing. I just rolled my eyes up to the big grayness of something-and-nothing. I looked at her face, knew there was no chance of grace or placation. She told me she loved me, which was embarrassing. I just looked up and said: I wish the stars were visible.

Then there's the other lost friend. Sometimes I fear that Hanan will never get out of Saudi Arabia, despite our elaborate escape plans. I asked her how she felt about the stars. She said that they were beautiful, but that she still loved the moon. She told me about the last lunar eclipse that happened during Ramadan. She said: In Islam, they say it's a sign of God's wrath. But I'm not sure I believe that.

What I don't tell her is this: the Man in the Moon is not wrathful. He has absolutely no anger in him. Just whitewashed, bleached-bone sadness. He longs after something, we can't know what. Maybe it's a girl or something more celestial. But he's loathe to let go. The Man Who Navigates the Moon moves in (n)ever-increasing circles, kids himself that he's leaving, only deviates a hair's width. Still lingering despite the show of going. They say the moon's moving further and further away but everyone knows he won't go through with it. You see the sad display all the time. I've read about it in books and ex-husbands.

The Moon, I don't tell her, is no one to follow. The stars, though---maybe. Maybe.