I just wanted to start by saying that I love this blog. It has been a treat every day. Yesterday, I listened to the song from Nomi's post about 500 times. If you haven't listened, I recommend skipping my whole entry for Nomi's, immediately. Sometimes, friends just so come through.
How is it possible that a year has gone by already since
the last February project? This has been the fastest year of my life— and the
year when the most has happened. Since last year, nothing is the same: I’m back
in school, in a new city, and without the relationship that focused my life for
the past six years. Last year, I found it fitting to post about Beyonce on this
blog; this year, I turn to this blog for comfort and reassurance and support.
Which I guess is what February is for, now. Its always
been the worst month, and now its character feels appropriate for all that has
happened to us. And since you all feel it too, it can’t just be me. You have
all allowed me to focus the blame off myself and on to the month, for its
loneliness and its tragedy and its despair and its endless endless chill. So
for that, I am grateful. It’s not me—its February.
And its going to get easier, too. This year isn’t every
year. This February isn’t every February. And I try to remind myself, amid the
confusion of each morning that seems to place me in a life so different than
what I imagined, that every day could be the start of something new.
“Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds
forth in time. I worship each god, I praise each day splintered down,
splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors
spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split. I wake in a god. I wake in
arms holding my quilt, holding me as best they can inside my quilt. Someone is
kissing me – already. I wake, I cry “Oh,” I rise from the pillow. Why should I
open my eyes? I open my eyes. The god lifts from the water. His head fills the
bay. He is Puget Sound, the Pacific; his breast rises from pastures, his
fingers are firs; islands slide wet down his shoulders. Islands slip blue from
his shoulders and glide over the water, the empty, lighted water like a stage. Today’s
god rises, his long eyes flecked in clouds. He flings his arms, spreading
colors; he arches, cupping sky in his belly. He vaults, vaulting and spread,
holding all and spreading on me like skin.”
And February ends: making way for spring. This is the best to remember. So, enjoy revisiting this poem:
February
Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the
cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and
tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I
am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front
door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and
territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around
here
should snip a few testicles. If we
wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that
too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and
over
again, He
shoots, he scores! and
famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the
pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor
hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French
fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it
be spring.
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