I have to go out and sit with Leo in our drive way when he insists. Today, it smelled like slightly roasted dust and cars drove faster. Then it rained. Not for water, but the effect of;  slapping sounds and the drive way being marbled, Chips ਵਾਲਾ ਫ਼ਰਸ਼, we used to call it. ਐਵੇਂ ਦੜ-ਦੜ ਨਹੀਂ, ਪਰਕ-ਪਰਕ। Some spots lit up, while others turned off. Next second; same people but different spots. "Now this happened. Then that happened". A film screen in my drive way.

I wrote a lullaby for him, yesterday. Might record it later.

ਚੂਹੀਆਂ ਖਾਣੀ ਲੀਓ ਬਿੱਲੀ
ਦਾਲ ਤੇ ਮਾਣੀ ਲੀਓ ਬਿੱਲੀ
ਕੌਲੀ ਚ ਭੁਜੀਆ ਲੀਓ ਬਿੱਲੀ
ਗਾਸੂ ਚ ਪਾਣੀ ਲੀਓ ਬਿੱਲੀ।

ਘੁੱਗੀਆਂ ਫੜਦੀ ਲੀਓ ਬਿੱਲੀ
ਡੋਗੀ ਤੋਂ ਡਰਦੀ ਲੀਓ ਬਿੱਲੀ
ਮੈਂਤੋਂ ਨੀ ਡਰਦੀ ਲਾਡੀਆਂ ਕਰਦੀ
ਮੇਰਾ ਕਰਦੀ ਲੀਓ ਬਿੱਲੀ।

ਗਾਜਰ ਮੂਲੀ ਲੀਓ ਬਿੱਲੀ
ਕੂਲ਼ੀ-ਕੂਲ਼ੀ ਲੀਓ ਬਿੱਲੀ
ਚੋਰੀ ਹੱਸਦੀ, ਢੁਈ ਵਿਖਾ ਕੇ
ਦੁੰਬਾ ਘਸਦੀ ਲੀਓ ਬਿੱਲੀ।

ਨਿੰਨੀਆਂ ਕਰਦੀ ਲੀਓ ਬਿੱਲੀ
ਸੁਪਨਾ ਧਰਦੀ ਲੀਓ ਬਿੱਲੀ
ਡੋਗੀ ਤੋਂ ਲੁਕਦੀ,  'ਲਾਂਘਾਂ ਭਰਦੀ
ਸੁਪਨੇ ਚ ਡਰਦੀ ਲੀਓ ਬਿੱਲੀ।

Limited Prints available on Amazon. ਪਰਸਲੰਨ Hand-bound edition in progress

ਪਾਪੀ ਤੇ ਪਾਦਰੀ

ਸਾਡੀ ਮਰਜ਼ੀ ਏ। ਮਰ ਜਾਵਣਾ
ਬੱਸ ਦੇ ਪਹੀਏ ਥੱਲੇ ਆਵਣਾ।
ਤੱਤੀ ਸ਼ੈਅ ਨੂੰ ਹੱਥ ਲਾਵਣਾ।
ਪੂੰਝੀ ਜਾਵਣਾ ਤੇ ਪਛਤਾਵਣਾ—

Passages in Weariness

(ਕੀ ਹੋਂਦਾ ਏ) ਸੋਚ ਨਾ ਸਕਣ ਤੋਂ ਬਾਅਦ? Evolution ਤੋਂ ਮੁਕਰ ਕੇ ਪੁੱਠੇ-ਪੈਰੀਂ ਤੁਰ ਪੈਣ ਤੋਂ ਬਾਅਦ? ਪਹਿਲੀ ਵਾਰ ਅੱਗ ਵੇਖਿਆਂ? ਮੁੜ੍ਹ ਬਾਂਦਰ ਨੇੜਿਓਂ ਲੰਘਦਿਆਂ— ਜਿਨ੍ਹੇਂ ਅੱਗ ਲਭ ਲਈ, ਲਾ ਲਈ ਏ? ਮੱਛੀ ਨੂੰ ਮਿੱਟੀ ‘ਤੇ ਘੜੀਸੀਆਂ ਲੈਵੰਦੇ ਵੇਖਦਿਆਂ? ਹਰ ਸ਼ੈਅ ਨੂੰ ਪਾਣੀ ਚੋਂ ਨਿਕਲਦਿਆਂ ਵੇਖਦਿਆਂ, ਹੱਦ ਕਰਦਿਆਂ ਵੇਖਦਿਆਂ?

ਮੁੜਨਾ ਵੀ ਇਕੋ ਪਾੱਸੇ ਤੁਰਨਾ ਹੀ ਹੋਂਦਾ ਏ। ਜੇ ਕੋਈ ਨਾ ਵੇਖਦਾ ਹੋੋਵੇ ਤਾਂ ਆਪਣੀ ਆਂਦਰ ਖਾ ਜਾਓ ਤੇ ਢੂਹੇ ਵਾਲ਼ੇ ਪਾਸਿਓਂ ਨੱਸ ਜਾਓ>>> A short burst, a range of n u m b e r s hurled in one’s own direction. A signal sent out>> and received<< “self validation”. A thought in grief. There’s nothing here but this. 

Stories from Estella

He is not really that long, but stretched by still happening. He takes two AA batteries to assure me;he’s here, I am here, though his both ends disagree. His body is caught up in happening, though his arse and his face have happened fully. If I follow his going end, I never reach anywhere, but if I meet him head on, he never walked. I see him going and coming. I press his left paw and he tells me: continue.

First sketches and a new dream: Notes on Crossing the River

Hard-skinned crawlers born of thirst. Slick with their own sickness, they carry the river inside, light blue water, trapped, moving. They slide over each other, trying to remember.

Do not enter the fish*. If you must touch them, cut. Split the skin. Let the water out. When enough is returned, anger breaks and everything collapses on itself. Even the fish and the river.

* Edit: I think I dreamt snakes, but they keep insisting that they are fishes who migrated to land. More information needed. New drawings have shifted towards फिशनेक .

I cut open my arm.
Who’s there?
Asks who?
Show yourself, Open up.

I roll-on like a mobius strip, and I roll on my stomach. Roll! I roll my Rs and say nothing other than rolled Rs. 

“Rrrrrr-Rrrrrr”.

“Writing is like that”, I was about to say, then writing is just another vulgar tongue.  I hate nothing more than those arrogant bitches who write and plead clemency. Why should a trickster be spared, when everyone rolls on their stomach without making a big deal out of it. One major difference between the two;  writers do not harm themselves only, like those who roll anyway. Writing harms both ways. Why suffer alone? Any contact is a good contact.

Then there are ways one can roll. Some observe their rolls quietly, some sing their Rs. Some sing their Rs so fine, they do not cut anymore. Yet many never miss a chance to misspeak with blunt Rs and bad tunes.

I do not know of many who died of a paper cut but everyone I know has suffered a few, and quietly so. Some contacts are quiet, some announce their Rs. What is done; is being done. Makes no difference.  There’s no getting around the spinning without fixing your gaze on something, anything. Nothing spins in the void.

Today was gentle.

Played ਚਿੜੀ ਉੱਡ-ਕਾਂ ਉੱਡ with Leo (He cheats). A flock of cranes flew over our house. Maude, homeless pothead who sings all day long (everybody loves her) has gained at least ten pounds this winter. She likes everything with everything on it

Got two onions and a bunch of cilantro from Lanzarotte. Saw two earthworms on sidewalk. Didn’t help them today, but it started to rain soon. I am sure they found their way home. Leo is happy.. He went out. Now sitting in the backyard porch, watching rain. Yesterday just was. This one is. Leo and I are one day old on a good day. Everything, and everything on top of it then.

Stories from Estella

I come from where things break, and I don’t know where I am headed. What came came. What’s to go is going. I came from For. I am glad wild things still fly in the sky bitterly in love, destroying each other. I am glad the myth is gone, what remains is what is. I am afraid myth is a witch flying through the cold universe passing through our hearts effortlessly, like it never mattered. I know I touched something even if a witch. ਜਨੌਰ ਹੋਣਾ ਕੋਈ ਖ਼ਾਲਾ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਬਾੜ੍ਹਾ ਨਹੀਂ। ਖੂਨ ਕੱਢ ਕੇ check ਕਰਨਾ ਪੈਂਦਾ ਏ। You come from what you came for. सदा रंगीले बालम आयो रे .

Passages in Weariness

I don’t know how it used to happen before but in my time, what arrives, arrives in the past. Time was here, long before me. This knowledge is a symptomatic revelation, a dried scab that tells me; I am/was here.

Meaning is always delayed, why delay it further? Why the Beckettian spirals, Gertrude’s sulking and Joyce's orchestrated collapse? I cannot drive, leave alone any desire to accelerate. I also don’t understand first the meaning, then the need to delay something that’s promised to arrive. I started with a point and I will end like one, a constant. Like a word with deferred meaning. It isn’t in the word, nor the syntax. It is offset. What happened, happened long ago.

Now it lies scattered between the words, pages, paper and the constant flights. The point has been postponed until the next point in the flow. Cogito is a differance machine. Time is always late, always delayed and untimely. Meaning is always delayed, but there's a narrow window to find the area under the curve in which the stillness of the point can be approximated. That’s as close one can go to death without dying. Language catches the death pants down when it delays the knowledge. Language/knowledge is that flash that gives a brief glimpse of the elephant in the room.

Such miserable business being a writer; to cut flesh with air between the the hand and the words. Such fraud to live for the love of it. Such a beautiful disposition.

Stories from Estella

Sometimes when I ought to speak, someone else's head pushes against my throat from inside. I gasp with my mouth open and my throat swells. After minutes of pushing in vain, the thought is aborted. What was I going to say? Perhaps this? That a baby’s head tried to get out from my mouth? And it is only after drinking a few glasses of water, it resigns, find a corner of his own inside me. What a dickhead.

- Jean

Passages in Weariness

It must be April. I slept in winter’s arms and woke up in hers. Cold air rushes in to fill the gap her dagger left. At least, there's air. I am waking up in a slush in the street.

Winter they say is defeated. She has retreated North and her foot soldiers melted, now flowing southwards. I am sitting by the bend in the street and talking to dirty water flowing down the drain. Go well, I will follow. Let me expose myself to the sun a little more. Perhaps until all that is water inside me is gone, and salt returned to the sea.

April is the month caught up between the gone and the unarrived. Poor thing. It’s hard to trust days and nights again. It takes time for the bud to arrive. Everything takes time. Everything takes exposure while waiting. Ready or not, everyone leaves.