Under the Knife

I went to do laundry. It has been piling up. It is raining and it is cold. I pedaled my bike to the laundromat. A big, black plastic bag tied to the back; inside, my clothes ajumble. I couldn't find the laundry detergent. I couldn't see. My eyes open, awake and I couldn't see. I've been crying. Today is a day for crying and losing. I lost the detergent.
Finally, I had to ask for help. I asked God to help me find the soap. I stood there, lost and confused. I knew where it should be, it's not there. I looked and looked. I had to ask for help. I almost gave up. With my belly I tried to sense where it would be hiding. That led me back to where it should have been. Is this just my imagination? It isn't there, I know that. I sensed again, paying attention. No, it isn't working. I am fooling myself with the belly sensing. I am playing at magic. I know what I know and I know it must be somewhere else. The sense was insistent. Pointing, pointing. I gave up and looked again. I found it, there, where I hadn't seen it before.
Doing laundry is like doing dishes. It is comforting. It is doing something to give me the feeling of order and progress. I was crying while loading the machines. Machines. I am a machine. I must come to life. Nobody was there, I was alone. I am alone. Nobody is in there, inside. The rain is not rain anymore. It is tears. The cold is not cold, it is loneliness. Everything is magical and points to my illness. The world is dead and somehow, somehow I must bring it to life.
While waiting for the washers, I read in the little book, the book of Not-Doing. It told me to use the empty, the nothing in things. The book is hard to understand, it makes no sense. Yet it has been around for thousands of years and something about it, about the crazy wisdom of it, I recognize. So subtle, so faint, so fleeting.
It is a day for crying. My tears mix with the rain. I am trying to understand what I feel. I think it is sadness, yet I don't know. Maybe it is happiness. How is it that after fifty years in my body, that I cannot tell sadness from happiness. This is absurd. At the bad coffee place I see a dime on the ground. I do not pick it up. I leave it. With my coffee I sit at a table, away from everyone. I look at the sad world. The rain and the cold. I am reading a book someone gave me. It was written by a poet. It is about a little donkey. I am overcome by the beauty of this man's writing. I am crying. My body is heaving from the repressed sobbing. I can't cry. What will they think. They will think I am sick and call the police. They will not understand that these words are cutting into me, that I am doing laundry and lost the soap.
It is a day for crying. For losing. For cold and rain. I cleaned my bedroom, washed the walls and dusted. The bed has new sheets, with lace borders. My bed is white. It is as white as a frigid arctic plain. Even the electric blanket turned to high won't warm my bed. At night I slide into the new sheets and wrap my arms around my loneliness. I might as well sleep with the rocks and wet leaves. My bed is empty. I am empty.
It is a day for crying. Here He comes, with the sure knowledge of a surgeon. I see the knife. I am begging Him not to do this. Can't I have a little fat, a little flesh? Oh God, please. Just a little to remind me of my self. He tells me: No. You asked to be alive. We cut away all that you use to hide, to distance yourself from life. Your skin is too rough, it keeps you from feeling. Your flesh hides your heart. You need to be painfully open, cut open, raw and defenseless.
It is a day for crying.