If you haven’t taken the Amtrak in Florida, you haven’t lived. At 2:00 AM,
seven months into the pandemic, I’m looking up where Seamus Heaney
died. It was Blackrock Clinic overlooking the sea and I wonder,
sometimes, what is my thing with the Irish, but if the white kids can go
to India for an epiphany, maybe it’s fine that I go to Ireland. Don’t read
Melanie Klein in a crisis. She’s depressing and there are alternatives. Like
Winnicott or a lobotomy. Flow is best understood through Islamic
mysticism or Lil Wayne spitting without a rhyme book, post-2003. To
want the same things as you age is not always a failure of growth. A good
city will not parent you. Every poet has a love affair with a bridge. Mine
is the Manhattan and she’s a middle child. Or the Sea Link in Mumbai,
her galactic tentacles whipping the starless sky. When I say bridge, what I
mean is goddess. People need your ideas more than your showmanship.
LA is ruining some of you. All analysis is revisionist. Yellow wildflowers
are it. It’s better to be illegible, sometimes. Then they can’t govern you. It
takes time to build an ethics. Go slow. Wellness is a myth and shame
transforms no one. You can walk off most anything. Everyone should
watch anime after a heartbreak. Sleep upwards in a forest so the animal
sees your gaze. I think about that missing plane sometimes and what it
means to go unrecovered. Pay attention to what disgusts you. Some of
the most interesting people have no legacy. Remember that green is your
color and in doubt, read Brooks. In the end, your role is to attend to the
things you like and ask for more of it: Bridges. Ideas. Destabilization.
Yellow tansy. Cities. The wild sea. And in the absence of recovery, some
ritual. In the absence of love? Ritual. Understand that ritual is a kind of
patience, an awaiting and waiting. Keep waiting, kitten. You will be
surprised what you can come back from.