No it was not wrong to go for a walk without a cellphone with a storm coming, and no trail map in the mosquito-woods of Memphis, Tennessee, or to live lonely for year 2017 in Minnesota. There is nothing inherently wrong with getting lost, wet, or nervous sweating. At least something else to answer besides “you’re asking all the right questions” when my friend asks “what is the point of this trip?”
Dive into the sweat right before a necessary dip, emphasis on the acute meaning of necessary. The kind of dip that quenches an intense blood boil in your body not caused by the sun or humidity. When the heat is symptomatic of longing through long stretches of space and time and trying to fill that place with spirit; it hard work, every daydream that I know, puts the oven in me and makes me sweat. The Hiawassee lake in Western North Carolina is the only thing at that exact right time that will ever calm me down. Like if we had not left Duluth, Minnesota or Ithaca, New York exactly when we did I cannot even begin to imagine the lack of motion, and the range of costs. The magic surprise of Hiawassee’s appearance on the left hand side of the road is different than the Ausable River, Adirondack Park, because I know I am getting in the car to go there. But similar to you showing up at eleven at night never knowing when anyone will if ever come to my crevice. My Hurricane or Big Crow. The surprise sweat, smells oscillating, flowers changing every day. The chickens and the tarot cards calling my bluffs.
Was I nervous or excited sweating it’s hard to tell it’s hard to tell when you’re getting wet on a log in the woods or standing just feet wet in the creek or eating cucumbers and hard-boiled eggs: Dart Brook.
On the mountain splitting wood till Monday, firing other people’s pottery like I made it because the kiln oven is more than what is inside. Stoke slow in the beginning, mostly chopping, beads building on the inside sun rising. Knowing it will be the longest hardest day of the year and wishing there were more days like this as my younger sister guides the fires ways and woes. Wanting a tempered and steady increase, as in not pushing because there is an impulse to push, and don’t pull the peeps out too often- like don’t open the oven every two minutes while I am roasting squash when what I am really hungry for is skin and that car ride if you know what I mean. Temperance is challenging Eden said at ten-mile creek, especially when bathed in consistent swell of soggy wood. Tenderness caused by an open wound like my vagina’s mind that bleed for all of 2017 after having not bleed for three years. Tenderness: the feeling present in both pain and pleasure. It’s still swollen. Fire is hot and hot wants hot. Now I’m sweating, still chopping wood- bending at the hips and not the knees while letting the top hand fall from the blade to the other hand. The sweat wicks off myself when I am close to the firebox, but that doesn’t mean it is not a clear as day is light is dark is night sweat. The confirmation is in the feelings of progress and my organs dancing rather than liquid proof- which isn’t to say that I don’t smell as ripe as the musty excretion that rings true over this entire year. We only started smelling something like this in 2017, and now wow how mature I smell.
And what of not sweating. What of riding easily, no tension, attention or suspension. Just fine. Full of nothing but volume and seemingly simple curves like the little brown jug.
Check out Lily’s band The Glue, she’s also DJing @ JESUS DRINKS FREE soon. Hree’s live vid of The Glue, cuz that’s all the internet has to offer up to this point! – DS
