Levitating

Lately I can’t find the right place to sleep, and I end up circling the town a few times before I can make up my mind. I’m not sure if this means that I’ve been here too long or that I should stay, but the other day someone compared my midnight loops to the way Bro turns in circles and scratches the ground before laying down. I could always park in my sister’s driveway, but then I would wake up in her world instead of my own. I don’t like to over-use my regular spot, but it’s cold and I don’t feel like blending in in a parking lot either. I make two big circles all around town before I park in my regular place, not far from the road but hidden from it. I think there might be something wrong with my brain because I never do this, park in one place so much, and of all places this is a place where I should be extra stealthy.

The added bonus of all this driving around is heat. By the time I stop the driver’s seat is toasty warm and the rest of the van is a heck of a lot warmer than outside, which is five below or so. I climb into the back, pulling my boots after me, and undress quickly in the cool air. I left my night clothes in my sister’s washing machine.

I have to do this strange levitation/jamming trick to wedge myself between the bed and the down comfortors that are tight against the ceiling. The fabric is ice cold, but the down is soon holding my body heat and bathing me in it. It’s a special treat to sleep naked, to feel the smooth fabric and prickly feathers and whole warming process against my skin. I lay on my back and feel the feather bed under me warming slower than the feathers aboe me. The condensation of my breath tickles my face as it tries to find a place to settle between my mouth and the ceiling.

Under my shoulder the phone vibrates, then rings. I keep it there at night so the cold won’t sap all the life out of the battery. It’s Hat-Ma in the phone. We talk Montana, Florida, Wyoming, North Dakota, Georgia, Texas, and where the hell we’re going.

When we hang up the phone beeps again and it’s a text from Davka, who can’t call because her cell phone company thinks Alaska is a whole other country. I call her back. She’s staying up all night writing, and in my mind I can see her buried in journals and loose peices of paper in her apartment, probably smoking cloves. We talk about relationships and how it seems like so many people in this culture are just looking for someone who will give them a safe space to play out their childhood traumas and attatchments. It’s so hard in this world to know how to create a good relationship. We think that the answer is in a shared mythology of each other, but there are so many problems there, too.

I think it’s important not to let the wrong myths draw you outside of your core, and Davka says this is so important in stripping, too, in knowing your boundaries and doing what you love. Davka wants to create a myth, I want to find one, or maybe it’s the other way around.

This whole time I’ve been wanting to read her a poem I found, but I haven’t wanted to get out from under the blankets, where it’s now very toasty warm. Finally it’s unavoidable: I have to pee. I explain this to Davka and start telling her about this author as I wiggle and levitate out of my bed and van.

“Wait,” she says when I pause. “Are you naked in the snow peeing at five below right now?”

Yeah. I am.