Vapor trailing off a simulated cherry, taking in the air of a cold, hard, muddy, Eraserhead-type October night. Throwing tiny acorns against a wooden fence, little tree seeds with so much potential yet facing such great adversity. Listening to songs that sound like they’re coming out of underwater speakers, tearing holes in sweater sleeves, sitting here and living in a lofi world.
I don’t know where I am anymore. A sequential thought is a miracle, tossing through scenarios both experienced and imagined, seeing the sights that made me who I am, flooded streets in summer storms and generators running at full volume at night, sneaking honey buns out of convenience stores to keep my belly full (you’d call them corner stores), not knowing how to sit or stand or move or act till I got out of that place, like a curse, sensory pleasures the ambrosia of the broken-down town.
My whole life felt like a chord progression you couldn’t place, resolution out of sight, almost grating, until this moment, this turn of events, this change of the hand and tune of the strings that brought the entire piece into order, that made the whole song make sense. You helped me with that.
So I put myself into things that can erase myself, that can create something new, something whole that will fly far from that place where I used to be, that cursed home, still home, always home, no matter how far I fly, erase the times and the places and the people, erase my past self until I’m nothing but a palimpsest, a scraped and scarred blank thing, standing under harsh light but with no discernible features to be seen. I am feeling all of these things.
I feel I’m flying through clouds most days. Sometimes with hair standing on end from static shock, sometimes soaked freezing from the rain, but flying, floating, above it all. And there is no way to erase those things, to erase my selves, the Things I’ve Seen. No need to, either. And out in this night, if I can’t be in the clouds, I’ll just have to make my own.
Liza Olson 