our boat may be leaking

but at least it's the right boat.

"over the rhine may never sell as many records as other bands, but everyone who has ever bought one has become an artist."

Suppression

does the trick.


A few days of no writing and I am feeling damn prolific. And after a day in the city, bursting. The two-minute-shower that kept me from my notebook was too long. I think I lost about twenty dozen thoughts to the steam and green walls.

I am coming home without conclusions but with hundreds of questions and quotations. But today is Lydia's brithday party--yes two months late. She was waiting for one of her friends to get goats, but by the time they got the goats she decided she wanted to have a western party instead of a farm party. So now the western party is two months late. So the whole house smells like chocolate cake and there are helium ballooms and plastic spoons and soda (which we never buy) in the fridge and someone is mixing frosting and the boys are vaccuming and pushing back the couches.

We're always pushing back the couches. Sarah told me a few days ago that she always wonders what our living room will look like the next time she comes over. It changes daily, according to our needs.

So I think I am going to go out into the woods with my notebook, like I used to when I was little, when I read a lot of L. M. Montgomery and probabally bordered on pantheism and spent as much time as I could by the river singing under bridges or climbing trees or engaging in monologes and writing stories about girls named Adele and their secret hideaways and tame beasts.

Oh and there was the hemlock grove.

The Railway Station

My nonarrival in the city of N.
took place on the dot.

You'd been alerted
in my unmailed letter.

You were able not to be there
at the agreed-upon time.

The train pulled up at Platform 3.
A lot of people got out.

My absence joined the throng
as it made its way toward the exit.

Several women rushed
to take my place in all that rush.

Somebody ran up to one of them.
I didn't know him,
but she recognized him immediately.

While they kissed
with not our lips,
a suitcase disappeared,
not mine.

The railroad station in the city of N.
passed its exam
in objective existence
with flying colors.

The whole remained in place.
Particulars scurried
along the designated tracks.

Even a rendezvous
took place as planned.

Beyond the reach of
our presence.

In the paradise lost
of probability.

Somewhere else.
Somewhere else.
How these little words ring.

- Wisława Szymborska