I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up

Yosemite, 2009

I appreciate all your kind comments, your emails, your words of support and, yes, empathy. My light posts of late mask a sort of paralysis I'm feeling elsewhere, and I'm afraid that I have to take a break from the pretense. I'll be sitting here a while, just sitting here, on the dock of the bay.

Naked

The reason you so often in literature have a naked woman
walk out of her house that way, usually older, in her front garden
or on the sidewalk, oblivious, is because of exactly how I feel right
   now.

You tend to hear about how it felt to come upon such a mythical
   beast,
the naked woman on the street, the naked man in the tree, and that 
   makes
sense because it is wonderful to take the naked woman by the 
   hand

And know that you will remember that moment for the rest of
   your life
because of what it means, the desperation, the cataclysm of what
   it takes
to leave your house naked or to take off your clothes in the tree.

It feels good to get the naked man to come down from there by a 
   series
of gentle commands and take him by the elbow or her by the hand
   and
lead him to his home like you would care for a bird or a human
   heart.
Still if you want instead, for once, to hear about how the person
   came to be
standing there, naked, outside, you should talk to me right now,
   quickly,
before I forget the details of this way that I feel. I feel like walking
   out.

Jennifer Michael Hecht