In Search of Lightness                                                                                                                                                                                     Jan  28/Jan  29



I don’t think I have ever put as much stake in anything as I have in the year of the horse. “Year of the horse,” I have said that so many times. So, so many times. Year of the horse. Year of the snake. Breathe in, breathe out.



Horses Outtakes, shot at Sam Wagstaff’s white apartment




           All throughout this week, tears have existed at the edge of my eyes, and days carry forward with great heaviness.

In the thread of reading Yeats, I read this poem that came recommended by Patti in Bread of Angels, as early poetry she read before even reaching grade school.

   

To listen to while readingOn heavy nights, I
go to Alice Coltrane.
 Patti came to me some months ago, and can be found everywhere in my life. 


To know something about yourself, for most of my friends are born as water horses It wasn’t her who spoke first of the year of the horse, but when she did, it became all-important to me. I have never felt an affinity to astrology (except for times of crisis, when, for ten whole minutes, it is all-powerful). Yet, in looking for hope, I know now that the Chinese lunar year begins on the 17th of February— a date which I now await.
Within a few days of my adopting this belief, Patti spoke of it on Substack; which I, of course, took to be providence, and soon I believed in a divine power of the year of the horse. Even more so, I began to believe in the poetic symbolism of the year of the snake preceding the year of the horse: all that must be shed sheds itself before you can weightlessly  run.

     https://pattismith.substack.com/measuring-up
                                                             
          https://pattismith.substack.com/measuring-up                                                                           gembermuntthee  inspired by  Patti
  

Each time I hear her speak—  worse yet, when I read her words— I am brought to tears, not owing to some great sorrow carried in her life or work, but an inexplicable something that magnetizes her to me. When I revisited this video to hear her mention the year of the horse, her reading of an excerpt about walking in Chinatown left me crying. By the end, all I could do was listen to Horses. And, as “Gloria” played, all I could do was write a poem for her.

It was really as if by divination how I found her, a path paved by providence. In a long many months (which measured upwards of a year) of wanting to read Just Kids, the book only made its way to me two months ago, after much yearning and more than a few trips to the bookstore where it was pledged to me. Finally, the copy made it to me on the penultimate day of my French class, under treeshade, accompanied still by the promised 20% discount— a tale I have retold as if some great family story, over and over.  In many cities and with great diligence,  I was drawn closer and closer to her as she was to Rimbaud at my age. Her words became my gospel and her life a map. Her image exists wherever it can, and, most of all,  always in my mind. In these short few months of our literary dalliance, she became my blue star.  




an ingenuine tattoo as I painted les yeux
Having just read “Art Rats in New York City”, it was Bread of Angels that I was looking for, but as global circulation goes, it was still unavailable in the country. My glimpses of it were limited to photos online and Patti’s readings. 
In sharing my disappointment with N. (and her returning disappointment as she had wished to buy Just Kids for me), we made a promise that she would buy me Bread of Angels, and I accepted that with patience, the book will come. Unexpectedly, last week, I heard from my bookseller, unprompted, that it finally was here and, no longer able to excercise patience, I immediately asked him if I could come buy it from him the next day. N. and I took an afternoon expedition, and she bought two copies, signing mine as a birthday present. We speculated we were the first to buy the book as we saw the fresh stack being undone of its cellophane cover only at our purchase. 

I was happy. 



Never particularly a fan of her music, I sat down tonight to listen to Horses in the dark of my room. Maybe it is my saying all this now, or having just listened to her speak, or, the sincere review of the album an intern wrote for NPR in 2011, but I finally was moved.

I asked Z.,  seeking her infinite wisdom received either through a astrologer or AI, what the significance of the year of the horse was, to expand my own knowledge on this minor obsession of mine. To this, what she had to tell me was of the luck found in wearing red underwear, as the year of the horse was the year we were born in, meaning prophetically we were due for bad fortune. Though I took it as a joke at first, one Google search confirmed it to be true. In everything I knew of my minor obsession, this was completely novel information to me, seemingly almost never explored in self-protection. It was as I read more about this that my obsession fell, drooping down as the symbolism I had projected onto this was incongruent with its reality. 

In N.’s room, as I looked through her bookcase in the morning, with all this on my mind, I saw in her collection, a CD of Horses. In the many months of her owning this CD and certainly also my seeing her collection, I never had noticed Horses. For this was the first time I had seen it, I took it as a sign of divination. And, for foolishly I believe Patti finds her way to me when necessary, I decided to believe in what the year of the horse would bring. 

This year I will run. 

  “Kickapoo's Desert Dream.”

more lightness in form of music:  
         cleaned out my shelf
once home: hoofdweg
On the weekend, I spoke to D. (my good friend, Dave) for the first time in a while: the arrow at the bottom of this page is all thanks to her teaching.