Entry 75

Mosquito-bitten ankles, green eyes, karma, butterflies

I dreamt of the perfect headline. When I closed my eyes, I saw a stage. In the cooling grass I sat reading lines, collecting mosquito bites on my ankles, drinking wine that tasted like tropical fruit, watching the sun fall so fast that when I looked up from my script I realized I could no longer see in front of me. After dark, I walked for hours, searching for inspiration I found only scraps of, but the scraps still gave me a sense of hope.

Everything, I’m certain, is going to change, quite soon. But it hasn’t yet, and the heat has slowed all of it down to the kind of lull that usually lets you catch your breath, but then goes on so long you wonder what you’re doing out at sea. Someone told me recently that, karmically speaking, if you judge someone, you’ll be put through the same trial for which you judged them. I feel I should let the distributor of karma know that my former judgement of the situation I now find myself in was neither unkind nor undue. Anyway, I remain in good spirits, I maintain my sunny disposition, and I am not lacking passion, I checked. I swept all my floors, gave new water to the roses and shrank my to-do list all the way down into nothing.

Why the fuck aren’t you wearing green,” I hear behind me, walking a busy stretch home last night. “My fucking eyes are green,” the bouncer at the door to the bar replies. “Don’t get lost in them.” As I make a mental note to use this line later, I watch two butterflies wind their way, together, above my head. Last summer, in a cycle of emotional death, butterflies followed me everywhere. I told this to a friend last month who was crying. She stopped when I said it. “I’ve been seeing butterflies every day,” she replied.