Louisiana Heron
Women. The way they think inside of themselves. There was a line in a book about it. An author, Hilton Als who wrote The Women, said, “She had no idea what food might be pleasing to other people since she spent much of her time in her own head and body.” He was talking about his mother—Since she spent most of her time in her head and body. He then went on to say she was very clear about being her own person. She rarely changed her mind except to accommodate someone else’s change of mind. When she lied it was to spare someone else from the embarrassment of feeling too much. She didn’t know what others liked because she spent much of her time inside her own head and body. I wonder how often I would have to repeat that sentence over and over for it to loose meaning—would it ever?
A person like me would think that sentence was a given. But it really isn’t. Sometimes I miss what it is someone I love really wants because I’m inside myself imagining, thinking, feeling. My home in the world is what you can’t see, that place behind clothes, hair and pores. It’s not a secret but it can feel like one because no one else can wander in. There are no doors although sometimes people find those partial entry points and think they hear or see something with more clarity than they had before—even if just for a moment. Since she spent much of her time in her own head and body. Kind of like since he spent much of his time at work, teaching others. Why is one considered admirable, responsible even and the other selfish or regrettable. I think because many people have no idea what kind of depth, what kind of heavy lifting is involved when a persons time is spent in their own head or body? How would a person who doesn’t reside there know.
The inners is a religion. It’s a place to imagine and dream. A place of lost beauty and a place of natural disaster. There’s more to untangle there than anywhere else on earth. Or maybe it is earth, and everything on earth, and that’s what the people don’t see. Not only earth either. Maybe it is the place where all things begin. The big bang theory and the UFO’s, the gods and the goddesses, the rocks and the ruins, the rain and the gas. Maybe the skin is only a facade—a place where a being can hide for one hundred years to ruminate. Maybe we are the temples we keep building, the houses and the refuge are all replicas of what we already have. Copies of our own existence.
Maybe for one hundred years all we are trying to do is hide. You see this is what happens when you read— a being put his inners into the world, a theory they came up with in hiding, and I internalized that theory, expanding upon it until it became something else entirely and this is why I am here— spending much of my time inside myself. Watching the people build steeples and houses around me. A cupola with windows on all sides. I can see everything, so can you, but let’s never ever talk about it because if we do all the buildings might come tumbling down.
