01 June 2004

Six miles. Twenty-one pages. Three emails. Two hitched rides. Two phone calls. A partridge in a pear tree.

I felt more alive than I've felt in years.

Twenty-one pages... And every page has a voice, and every voice sounds a little bit like me, but, I think, only because they've passed through me. I wasn't the author, really, nor the story, but just somebody who can type fifty-something words a minute, and can hear the voices of the pages. A transcriptionist.

The sun set last night just like it used to do in Ithaca -- when there was any sunlight at all in Ithaca. I remember once, I was about fourteen, and this pretty song was on the radio, and I was struggling through some Shakespeare sonnets in the backseat of my dad's car. And the sun set in Ithaca, this glowing orangish blue, and I could have sworn everything in the world was perfect.

I was late meeting a friend of mine last night because it took me awhile to hitch a ride. But I didn't hurry. I stopped to smell some flowers. They were Russian Olives. I didn't recognize them by their appearance, only their scent. My mom loves Russian Olives. She calls them "bee trees." We had three of them in our yard when I was a really little kid. I used to hide underneath them, and my whole body, my hair and my whole existence, smelled like Russian Olives. I smelled them everywhere I went. Last night, I felt like a child again.

I said: "Never forget that there's magic in the world." It probably looked likeI was talking to myself, but I wasn't.

Sometimes I have forgotten.

Last night, I was so alive, I reached up and touched the moon, and I could feel the minute fissures in its surface.

Six miles. Twenty-one pages. Three emails. Two hitched rides. Two phone calls. A partridge in a pear tree. I thought: this is the rhythm of the universe.

Then I -- homeless, pregnant, impoverished ME -- calmed a hysterical friend who'd had a bad day, and slept for three hours with my twenty-one pages covering my eyes...

~Helena*