In An April So Cruel-

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I'm in this train car, and it's full of rock stars.

PJ Harvey is in the seat by the emergency exit to the next car, pleased to be left alone to recross her legs and read her book, while Chris Cornell is swinging on the vertical railing closest to the doors, observing the neighborhood.

Wesley Willis is walking thru, trying to sell everybody a fake flower or three, while Lenny Kravitz and Kim Gordon seem to be engaged in an intense discussion mid-car over what may or may not be the best length of guitar neck, or guitar body, or string gage for that matter.

Jon Spencer gets on, then gets right off at the next stop. And on and on it goes. A ride of legends for ages.

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The same punk rock girl I saw last week is riding the train. I am jealous of her look. Torn black tights and black low-top sneaks. Her hair is the color of day old dinosaur puke, and her ripped cutoff shorts are a grey-black that most fair-skinned and Scandinavian girls look great in.

I bet her name is Maura. Or Colleen. A feisty but feminine name that is like beauty. Staying nothing and everything at once. We are in the same car now. But I probably won't pay attention to where she gets off. I'll leave that to somebody else.

Did the hangover knock something loose? It usually does...

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Currently unmoored in the reeling, catastrophic zoetrope of the world of love. How massive and beautiful and so unreal in power, scope, potential. To heal, to redeem, to master. I hang in its warm spectrum like a captive on a ship seeing land for the first time in years.

That anyone dare to summon the dark finality of the fall of man in the presence of a glow so righteous and significant is a perversity nigh unforgivable.

And then, the delicate afternoon puts the hair of the dog into my palm, and I am grown up inside time's wild promise.

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I sat by and thought the thoughts while communing with today, which was tomorrow, which will soon be yesterday.

It's sounds and mid-day madness, not utterly steeped in frivolous actions, but mostly I sat and read and drank and thought. And the thinking was the act that brought me the greatest reward, even if it was just a loamy buzzing behind the eyes, or an unanswered meditation on a phrase surfacing again and leading me to a place of gratitude-laden reflection. No demand for a cross-examination or a too-industrious pass.

Questions form, then drop away in favor of memories. Memories are godsent, magnificent healers. I don't thank them enough.

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It's the idea of taking my first trip to the city of Paris making me nervous in that way that causes your stomach to flip. Like you're about to do drugs. A drug. One that will fuck you up for a little while. Probably a good long while in a good way, and you've saved the afternoon for it, but you're still nervous.

But it’s just a place. For existing. Like any other. And sure, for doing too, but not necessarily doing, and not doing the hardest thing in the world, certainly. Which is something I don't necessarily want to do.

In other words: is traveling to Europe one step closer to motherhood? Yes. No. Maybe.

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