so last september or so when i felt as if a thirty-eight to the brain would, if not a rational or desirable solution, at least be a feeling of relief, and was glad for a daughter to provide responsibility like a boat crossing a salty sea, i asked some one what i should do to get through and she said read rumi and i did. and it didn't help in the way i hoped it would. but i was in a mood... i looked at a coffee mug i have with van gogh's bandaged ear self portrait on it and across the hundred years i felt like i understood. it made perfect sense. cut off an ear and send it to her. if he'd been my friend and he'd done that i would have said damn, you really love her don't you, and made him a cup of coffee and wouldn't have mentioned it again. monet invited me to see amy goodman speak, the voice that broadcast live from east timor as the crowd around her was shredded with american bullets, and she was a small person, and she didn't speak of that day, and then later we went and danced for a wild night under the influence. and later monet said that i didn't really know her, and in tears i wrote a list of everything she likes, it was a long list, and i wonder if that proves i know her at all. and yesterday it was a hundred and six degrees out and i went to the local natural history museum and there was an exhibit of native american baby carriers. a lot of them, and each one had a history and stories of the woman who made them and when i looked really closely at this hallucinogenically fine beadwork and the picture of its maker a hundred years ago, a comanche, young, and proudly showing her baby in the same carrier three inches from my nose... what struck me was the perfection of the stitches.