jon and i talk about compulsive behaviors: it is frank and concise and for some reason i feel able to talk about things i have long been ashamed of and long supressed. we drink a lot of tea. conversation shift to gender, to cities. kasia and james come over, matt makes an appearance for the sake of poetry. i am comfortable here with the role i play in the living room, with the pace of my life now. shapeless thing, operating on a clock that has no restrictions. life plan through april– to sea! then, anchors down in the port city in may.

rather than spend $188.00 on rx, ive taken up yoga. everything hurts in a way that makes me aware of my body without being uncomfortable. spent a lot of time thinking about how to make changes. rudely, by saturday i have to be at peace with myself. what a ridiculous sentence. any wordplay unintentional. somehow i have to be positive and forward thinking and i have to believe in it enough that i don't have to say it, mercifully, not for my own sake or any other reason i'd have to choke on. i have to reek of it. i'm convinced that if i'm good enough, i can kill cancer. conversely, i'm convinced that if i'm not good enough, i won't kill cancer. starting from zero, today. clearly. how counterintuitive, but completely necessary. the surprising ansewer to the unasked question: the only possible answer.

last night, on the phone, nana talks about chemotherapy. she approaches it head on at first, maybe to test me out, to see how we handle it when we give a name to the thing we fear. the rest of the conversation it is implied, the spoken gesture is graceful only if conscious of the risk. our roles in regards to each other and ourselves are flexing like windows in an earthquake. they'd never break if it weren't for the window frames. but without a window frame, a window doesn't mean anything. we are as much as we live up to our expectations? we are as much as we live up to when our expectations break down? fitting theme: girl in a corridor, running, grenade in hands. desperately flings it into one of many similar rooms. the window is flung into the street in 100,000 pieces. where did she get this firearm? why did she let it go where she did? was it inevitable? was there even a grenade? did she invent it? the weapon? the room? the corridor? it is a room you should never enter again, maybe, so you don't have to remember what was inside, and how different it all was before.

train trip tomorrow. then buses. then cars. then planes.