I'm walking. Walking so fast the machine beneath me shudders from the pounding of each footstep. I just keep pounding. In this gym on this holiday there are groups of super-fit people working out together. They are the kind who seek wholeness through exercise and do not perform the ritual for merely aesthetic purposes. They are large, and not skinny; their muscles add more contrast between light and shadow on their bodies. In groups they stand and chat with old friends, telling stories and catching up on news. Again and again and again one leg passes the other in the reflection in the window. I like watching the muscles bounce upon impact, like seeing that there is muscle there taking shape, changing. I'm walking, faster and faster, raising the incline.

I see the water out there. It's still there and I know later in the day I will be over it again. I think about my mother. The cradle of the soft cool water and me in it. I visited her yesterday, painted water over the top of her. I brushed swirls and swirls in varying shades of blue all over the concrete surrounding her name. I worried a bit at first. I worried that it wasn't looking like the masterpiece I had already completed in my mind. I never paint. I have never painted. I am unaccustomed to the way a brush holds paint; I do not know how the pressure of bristles against a surface then releases all that color. I thought, "What if I screw this up?" Then I told her, "It's OK if this isn't perfect because I can be 10 when I'm with you mom."

Ohh, the music is divine in my ears as I stomp on this moving surface. It is so clear a conduit and the energy flowing into me is more than my body can contain. I am a mouse on a wheel. There is so much and I feel like screaming. That's what I want. But I'm in this place and those happy healthy people crowding the workout room are back there lifting and chatting. I'm walking, just walking trying to get this all out of me. I see lightning shooting from my fingers and toes. I see myself touching you and you would feel my love and maybe, maybe you wouldn't want to live a life without me in it because my energy is so strong and it is unique enough that you think it special and you know - you know - that there are few others in this world who can promise such enduring connection. And the water is where I belong. It is my mother, it is my lover, and I wonder about the relationship between the two. The answer I reach is that both are nurturing, lifegiving. All good things come from water. Haran. Waterlily. I am from the water. I move like it. I ebb and flow like it. Please come inside of me. I want to feel the warmth spreading out in all directions in my belly instead of the pain of that muscle wringing itself dry. Don't play with fire she said. OK.

I'm driving now. This car, its vibration is unrelenting. I think my arms tire from clinging to that constant shaking. But I'm here and I'm going fast. Fifty miles an hour down Wallingford Ave this morning. Fifty miles an hour. I know it. I liked it. The streets were empty, there were no cops. People were still sleeping. And, best of all, I was on time. But now, it's the freeway and I know this holiday day there will be cops out there drooling for those last summer violations. They are predictible though; they are not at all creative and their presence is added merely as a challenge rather than a threat. They are just one more thing dividing my attention.

I have the urge to buy a dress and go dancing. I've wanted to buy one for a long time, but I never see one that looks original enough and is also of good quality. I want red. No, I already have too many red dresses. A black skirt then, that one I tried on at Betsy Johnson earlier this summer, only not that one because I can't afford it. One just like it, one that pats the middles of my kneecaps when I walk. But I wouldn't wear it dancing, even though I do want to go and do that. I would wear it in a bar, leaning over a table and sipping the one and only drink I'd order. Well then, I guess I'd have to buy shoes too. And I'd want those ones I saw in Japan but didn't buy, the ones I think I'll ask Catherine to buy for me even though I know it would be an impossible task for her.

The speakers crackle too. Bass is too high and the system cannot tolerate anything but the radio, which fades in and out depending upon my distance from Seattle. All that water. I'm circumnavigating it. Driving. I plunge my hand into the cool blue. There is a grotesque splash initially, water repelling ununiformly in all directions. It was neither ready for nor expecting me to enter it that way. Soon though, it calms and there is coolness all around. It feels like a mouth closing softly.

--Please, please, don't break up. It won't, don't worry. It's just the wheels: they're out of balance see. And you have the phone. You have the phone so nothing bad will happen. Still, it won't stop shaking and the speed is so fast and the power steering feels so… so out of control. I'm driving this car like a man drives a woman. Crazy.--

And I wonder about all things. Faces appear from my past like reflections in the grimy windshield. I'm passing cars with strangers in them. All are beautiful and I'm struck by how each and every person can be so attractive. There Lee is, that little smile he had on that one day, and only that day when his picture was taken. He gave it to me and I still have it but have not looked at it in years. I only pulled it out recently and then did I remember what he looked like. What if I saw him again? I imagine he would approach me, speaking in short sentences. Maybe he would insult me. I would have to keep up my guard. I'm always guarded but I would have to protect the part you can't see, the part that hurts even though his insults are always so infantile. I see a group of high school girls on the bus. They're taking up too much space and I have to sit in some strange row of chairs facing sideways so that if I want to look toward the direction we're moving I have to turn my body. All of them are gorgeous, their skin so smooth, eyes wide. I see already the difference 10 years makes. My skin will never be like that again. I wonder, what do men see when they see these girls? Do they want to taste them? Violate them? Do they hope that one of them would be willing to go out with a sick old man? One of the girls says, "Nothing happened, we just talked." Nothing happened. Parties and boys. They were so young: "Just wave, don't say anything to him. Just wave." (Oh, maybe that's the voice in my head.)

I think I don't fear the shaking anymore. Driving, driving, driving. It's sunny warm, I'm so lucky to be cruising like this at all. I'm comfortable. You like the way I drive? I like to watch people drive. I like the way certain men drive. I remember the first time Dave drove my car. It was a gesture of mine, an opening of myself. You know, I love the way a person's visage is illuminated by the dim bulbs on the dash. In the night, I can see out the window up to the stars or at lighted signs passing by; and I can also see only the softly lit form of the driver, inanimate against the outside movement. I just want to be in a moving car with someone alone in the darkness, safe inside the thin glass. I liked the way he sat confidently behind the wheel, but not at all conceited. Not at all. His legs were not spread wide, partly because the clutch and gas are so close to each other, but also because he is not that way. I see his reader's fingers close around the wheel comfortably; his right extends out to the shift. He grasps it over top, his fingers curling down the side. He does it differently than I do. The green light emanating from the Alpine deck casts a small shadow in that indent just between his thumb and wrist. When he allows his hand to rest on top of the stick, I think how close he is to touching me. I could. I could just reach out and run my index finger along the smooth veins winding up his arm. He is driving this car. Driving it as an extension of himself and in complete control. I have never met any woman who shares that kind of symbiosis with a car. Why is that? Why is it that women look awkward behind the wheel? It seems that women are always just precariously in control of a vehicle that is all too eager to break free from a tenously held rein. Cars must be built for men, for large people. Maybe men are just taught how better to dominate a thing than women are. It's just me driving, and I am an exception to my own observation.

I have a fantasy of escaping this place. Have I written it before? I've dreamt of it so much that I think I have. I think I might have written it somewhere or to someone. The dream is to have the red shiny sports car, my computer in the back, my bike on top. I could leave all obligation for a long while. All I need: Car, bike, computer. Car. Bike. Computer. (Of course I would ride my bike. What do you think?) I would drive to Montana. To Wyoming. The Great Plains. I have not been there since I was three.

All these people I'm passing in this epileptic vehicle. I love it when I take a look around and all I see is beauty and for a time I think that humans are wonderful.

I've been thinking a lot of Kristin lately. I miss her. Wondering if she's still living on Capitol Hill, if she's still living with that guy. She is so beautiful. She is one of the most beautiful people I have ever seen. I've been thinking of her because when I knew her she was unaware of her beauty and was most honest and genuine in all of her intentions. She was unaware of men staring at her as we walked down the street. (How could she not see?) She did not know. And when her lover told her the truth about his past and she felt betrayed and she felt she didn't know him anymore, didn't know him ever, she traveled out one night alone to a bar where immediately a wealthy man from somewhere else fell in love with her and asked her to come stay with him. (It is the most beautiful and the most bright woman who learns never to trust. Men always lie to her, always always because they know she would never give herself over to them if she knew the sickness of which they are really capable, the vile things they have already done.) She told me later it was surprising to her that she was someone men found attractive. She never thought of herself that way and added, "I'm a good girl. I don't do things other people do." She was good. She was fucking perfect. I am looking for her. I juggle in my mind three squares of white paper. Words for me. I'm not her, but like her I was unaware. You don't play with fire. (But it is already burning.) I'm pedaling now. Walking was too much and apparently, the drive was not fast enough. Now I'm pedaling hard. Racing, in fact. Already I'm thinking I don't want to climb that hill on the other side of the water. Already, it's boring for me. What if I really lived there? And I'm thinking, I really just need to pedal faster. And then: I could just not peddle up the hill. I could turn right instead of left. No. Don't do that. Don't play with fire. (I like the way it warms me. I like my glowing face.)