There are none, honestly.

Simply, we have become what we've always wanted.

Today.  It started off as any day off.  No class and bumming around town with Shelly.  Restlessness subsided into boredom and we shopped aimlessly without heart.

Then the brilliant idea came.

We went shopping for food and left for the mountain. 

Good Lord, what a marvelous day.

We went to the Big Meadows Lodge to stand on the balcony and watch the mountains.  We walked in looking like hobos in our means of warmth.  (And you already know what the middle aged women thought of us.)  So we meandered around until we were finished and stopped at every pull off down the mountain.

And now:

I've never been happier to be home.  Dad and I played pinball for a good while tonight.  He told me when he lived in Kalamazoo, he would go to the laundro-mat every day and play pin ball and eat Taco Bell. 

As it turned out, he was very proud when I scored over one million points on the first ball.

It was really fun.

I'm so glad to be home.

Divinely yours,
BETH

...on receiving the news that I will be walking my manager's dog tonight.

I am holding the broken fragments of reality in my hands but I am not weeping.  So far, to have a crystalline reality shatter in front of my own eyes seems far too reasonable.  In fact, I expected it to happen. 

What have I done now?  I'm chewing on glass to punish my tongue that moves.  I am my own problem, yet I am also the potential solution.  What have I done now?  It's indescribable.  Simply, I've made a mistake.

The first day of autumn: the dark, marble skies rolling like a herd of black demons, the wind gnawing the skin of cheeks and knuckles, the trees falling dead one by one.  Yes, I have seen war. 

But I smiled as I thought, "I can screw up and still be okay."  Later I found myself in a turquoise chair, beaten down in the seat from violent butts, my legs shuffling, drinking coffee to ease a pain that settles on the bones.  After the story was told, the sin acknowledged, the inflamed throat gasping for salvation, we began to formulate our amateur plan.

My leg can't stop shaking.  The ache, the sickening ache...

Our plan is shaky with sad outcomes of lonely failure and empty bank accounts resulting in robbery of innocent men.

But there's something itching, brewing thicker than my potions on Thursday night... the moon is turning blue and I hear the mountains singing a sad song.

What have I done? 

Divinely yours,

BETH

He won't even know this is written for him but this is the secret beneath the surface of our casual conversation:

I asked him in a sleepy delirium with lowered inhibitions, "Do you exist like the sky?"

But he is the sky. 

With the black air around me, I laid within a circle of trees, a fire burning at my feet.  When I laid with my eyes closed tight, the night was so empty like a dark room--I could feel the cold, stark parameters.  Then I opened my eyes and saw the infinite sky littered with golded specks that I felt his presence.  I did not realize it was him up there. 

What a strange revelation.  Suddenly the fire blazed and the smoke blew horizontally over my body. 

I giggled lightly, I choked on the laughter I tried to conceal, I erupted and after the longest period of joy, I calmed down only to continue smiling at the sky.

For the first time since the beginning of August, I was not lonely.  And he... he was there to witness my healing.

---------------

I drove into town today and bought an $8.50 copy of Kerouac's On The Road.  Also, I happened upon a pottery studio and talked to a man who received his master's in some obscure form of pottery in '71.  I sprang for a really expensive cup... but it feels right to drink coffee from a mug made by the hands of a man who loves his craft.   

Today a woman asked me how I was going to get the sap out of my hair.  "I don't know.  I'll leave that up to my hair.  She runs the show."  The woman was genuinely stumped which in turn confused me and I stood there laughing.  What?  Was I supposed to say, "I'll go to a spa and let the professionals handle it?"  (Thinking about it, I can't remember the last time I've uttered that phrase.)

And what a strange thing to think about.  Are there really professionals?  So there are people who "know" what they're doing... but do they really?  Or do they follow an instruction manual, memorized it the first week they worked at the Pentagon. 

I don't trust a professional.  What do they know?

--------------

Divinely yours,

BETH

He won't even know this is written for him but this is the secret beneath the surface of our casual conversation:

I asked him so long ago, in a sleepy delerium with lowered inhibitions, "Do you exist like the sky?"

But he is the sky. 

With the black air around me, I laid within a circle of trees, a fire burning at my feet.  With my eyes closed, the darkness felt so lonely; only when I opened them did I feel his presence.  I did not realize it was him up there. 

What a strange revelation and suddenly the fire blazed and the smoke blew horizontally over my body. 

I giggled lightly, I choked on the laughter I tried to conceal, I erupted and after the longest period of joy, I calmed down only to continue smiling at the sky.

For the first time since the beginning of August, I was not lonely.  And he... he was there to witness my healing.

---------------

I drove into town today and bought an $8.50 copy of Kerouac's On The Road.  Also, I happened upon a pottery studio and talked to a man who received his master's in some obscure form of pottery in '71.  I sprang for a really expensive cup... but it feels right to drink coffee from a mug made by the hands of a man who loves his craft.   

Today a woman asked me how I was going to get the sap out of my hair.  "I don't know.  I'll leave that up to my hair.  She runs the show."  The woman was genuinely stumped which in turn confused me and I stood there laughing.  What?  Was I supposed to say, "I'll go to a spa and let the professionals handle it?"  (Thinking about it, I can't remember the last time I've uttered that phrase.)

And what a strange thing to think about.  Are there really professionals?  So there are people who "know" what they're doing... but do they really?  Or do they follow an instruction manual, memorized it the first week they worked at the Pentagon. 

I don't trust a professional.  What do they know?

--------------

Divinely yours,

BETH

It's everything I desire from my existence, the very sweet juices wrung from my pores: the earth.

And if you saw me, you'd think I was out of my mind.  But really?  I've found my mind.  It was hidden underneath the roots of an old spruce on the edge of a forest.

I wanted to pick I toadstool and was climbing beneath the bottom layer of a tall pine when I realized that my hair was tangled in the needles.  Needless to say that was disappointing.  Rather than taking the time to untangle my hair, I just snapped the small branch off.

My collection of leaves is growing.  There are many and in their simple colors remind me of portraits and landscapes I have seen before.

Here I feel like I have lived many lives. 

Here, I know myself as the tiny human I am on the gigantic surface of this mother.

My pup and I went walking and found a nice place up the mountain to take a nap.  I saw a leaf fall from the very top of a tree.  Fluttering, fluttering until it finally landed easily beside my right knee.

There are so many truths in nature.  All of them simple. 

And yes, I have neglected everything decent. My hair is a massive knot with broken curls falling from everywhere.  I have one outfit: black sweat pants and a tank top.  A constant scent of woodsmoke lingers around me and I have soot and ash everywhere.  The skin on my fingers and toes are dusty; somehow I got a gigantic sliver in my hip; the tip of my pinky was ripped open on a fence; I bashed my head on a rock.

 I can't sleep.  Have you seen the sky?  I mean, really seen the sky?  If you could see this you wouldn't sleep either.  It's as clear as a new coin.

It feels alright.

DIVINELY YOURS,
BETH

PS This is was erratic, discontected, the such--I finished reading Cities of the Red Night by William S. Burroughs.  Can you blame me?

  Waiting at a red light, I look over and Shelly spontaneously impersonates Bob Dylan.  I can't remember exactly what she said, only the look of sheer pleasure resting on on her face, golden and warm like sunlight.  And I thought, "This is how we form life."  Then we laughed about how accurate her imitation was.

  My mind is bursting!  How fondly I remember the days it was the size of a peanut.  But now it has eaten thanksgiving dinner of information and it wants to sleep, wants to roll around wallowing in pain from unanticipated growth.

 And one more question:

 In my constant dreams, he is standing here with me, and I feel satisfied seeing his blue eyes.  He was a strange apparition.  And I know that he existed but before my very eyes I saw him fall to dust and was sucked into the earth. 

My breath is in him, does that mean a bit of my life resides within him?

Divinely yours,

BETH

 My dearest friend, partner in crime, so far away, you belong here tonight.  And I can barely hold my eyes open but we would sleep.  There's nothing more pure than the sleep shared between friends, hanging like a sweet filmy haze above our heads.

  In this moment I realize how much time I do not spend honestly mourning our distance.  What a travesty that I have forgotten our illness, our disease, our blight.  How are we separated? 

  Where are you if you are not sitting across from me at my kitchen table where we have vomited so many scandalous confessions, switched identities and grew in the shade of each other's tree. 

  Somewhere, there is a road connecting us: it will be paved with our famous epiphanies, our fantastic existence. 

Divinely yours,

BETH

 My dearest friend, partner in crime, so far away, you belong here tonight.  And I can barely hold my eyes open but we would sleep.  There's nothing more pure than the sleep shared between friends, hanging like a sweet filmy haze above our heads.

  In this moment I realize how much time I do not spend honestly mourning our distance.  What a travesty that I have forgotten our illness, our disease, our blight.  How are we separated? 

  Where are you if you are not sitting across from me at my kitchen table where we have vomited so many scandalous confessions, switched identities and grew in the shade of each other's tree. 

  Somewhere, there is a road connecting us: it will be paved with our famous epiphanies, our fantastic existence. 

Divinely yours,

BETH