July 4th, some sky, some religion, much writing exercise

The clouds cleared for a minute, and to my West there are greyish, pale Angel's Slides coming down out of the sky. "When I was young we were told to be extra good when we saw those, because angels come down 'em from heaven."

Well, I'm extra Me -- whether that's good or not I'll leave to a higher count.

****

I can't seem to shake my Judeo-Christian - Protestant & mostly Catholic foundations. When I reach down there to pull them out, it'd be like cutting off my feet, or pulling the bottom grapefruit out of a pile. They'd all fall. I'd fall. I might have to start at the top & skim & remove & edit and release until I am there, and nothing that I am is resting on those Roman Catholic bricks -- and then throw them out into the river.

****

I feel like sitting here writing about how much I wanna write. It's none of the main things I think about anyway. It's not really an altruistic purpose, either. It's pretty narcissistic & self-centered. I want to see someone read something I wrote, see their faces soften or harden, and maybe a glint of recognition or humor as they catch some subtle cosmic joke in it all, and had it back to me saying "that's really good -- I really enjoyed it" with a boyish and youthful naive charm. I want to be the one who "knows." I want to be the teacher, the knower, the kind-of outsider who has relevant observations. I am embarrassed of this fact, and it stifles my writing.

It's good to read people who are full of themselves, like Bukowski or Miller. There's good stuff in there, and they know it. it might not be prophetic, or universal, or even literature -- but there's some good stuff in there. I want to participate. I want to be a writer -- one who'se read. One who people enjoy. I hypothetically know that can't be my motivation -- and it might not be -- its just a wish.

Maybe I need to be struck down; lightning, plague killing off my whole family, interned in a concentration camp, lose my legs; before I can understand. Maybe I need to be a latin-american mother of 6 who has had a succession of alcoholic boyfriends who beat her & her children and who is now living in a hovel outside town and working in a rich person's house as a maid, and pretends to be stupid so they aren't threatened, whose children are going toward gangs before her very eyes -- off looking for fathers amongst their peers -- and who knows they could be wiped out any day, if not by another kid their own age, then by a cop, or a store owner who won't spend the night in jail, much less years. Maybe then I'd understand what it is to be human.

Maybe this driving force that haunts me always, whispering "faker," "charlatan," "impotent half-assed little white kid" into my ear would stand at attention and take my orders -- go to bed. Shut up. Sit down. You are nothing now.

Images of me pulling & tearing and birthing out of a reptilian chrysalis of complacency & politeness reign over the mountain landscape about; superimpose it and pull me back to the page -- pen dancing.

Normally, I would stop there but I won't today.

[to be continued]