Subject: ramblings on 'days of open hand' | Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2001 20:58:42 EST | From: paula | To: undertow@vega.org || 'days of open hand' affected me the way few other records ever have. things come and go but they always return. connections are made and changed. 10 years ago i felt beaten down; 10 days ago i felt beaten down. | this is the word of mouth on my body of work. | time was, i knew where the damage came from. now i just feel it being inflicted in my body. how can you figure out why things happen if you only believe in an arbitrary world? | the wind is coming, and as it hits the trees, they shudder and then dissolve. i'm on an eastbound train bound for mercy, trying to write something so beautiful it will make you ache from longing. | perfection and derangement are the watchwords of my life. i aim for one but keep hitting the other. blindsided by the god of sadness who touches me with his gentle, paper-like fingers. these writings are the result and they're found in a book that doesn't exist. | for me, suzanne vega's songs walk with the god of sadness and are bound in that vanishing book. pages made of days of open hand. i want my spine to be tough enough. i want dark and beautiful lines of writing on my body. i want my body to be a page. write on me. | i was lost ten years ago and i still am. maybe some things are never meant to be found. but oh make a mark on these miles of fields so i know where to begin. i wander with this mute mouth and all i can do is write. these words, this body. i want to join the two until i'm made of words, built from the ground up by letters and typefaces and ink. | suzanne, i need the words you write just as surely as i need my own. these words must keep me sane. | there's violence in my mind and something's gone. someone else i know says she's been kept on the stretch her whole life. we breathe thin air. the book is disappearing. i thought i had it, gripped tightly in my hands. i'm bound to it and in it. | i'm rushing and choking. the sun comes up and goes back down. i crack up every so often. hear the creak. and this past august i found myself on the seventh floor of mercy hospital. take what's needed. | i hungered for a pair of eyes and found someone. but the god of longing ripped the page of our togetherness from the book and said | "yes and nothing else | no and nothing more" | faith. hope. forgiveness. and yes, sadness - say it's a part of living and write it in the book. say that sadness is a human feeling and i'm human, not a thing on a string. say that the god of sadness is not a god over me. | no, i don't believe it yet. let me cut myself out of the book. my heart ticks inside me like rain. i don't know how to move in light. | oh, feel the passion in my language. i'm not the poem. i'm not what i write. that line is the horizon and the train pulls even with it. boxcars settle into a rhythm of clackclackclackclackclack. pull me even with the lines of your body. fasten me to you, find me. find me on that train going east, clutching a book and i'm made of its words. find me in these tombs of brown fields. find me please oh find me.