Giannina Braschi - Yo-Yo Boing!

Iam walking in my boots, plodding and trodding along, and the faster I go the more perspective I lose because I never look back to see what I have left behind. I say I am southbound — and that is where I am bound to find my destiny — southbound. But a sudden impulse drives me back around the apple of the north, westbound where I am bound to be spellbound — gazing at the infinite point of the water’s horizon — entranced by a mannequin and the shoes it is wearing — wishing I were that mannequin — watching the wind blow the newspapers away — watching a mouse run into a sewer. And passing by a rat and watching a thief pass me even faster, cursing at a madman, but everybody passes on their way to no return — or knows that even when crossing the same river twice, the waters will be different each time — but water will be water no matter what it wants to be — or how it wants to go with the flow, swim, dive, die — cease to be what it was yesterday — cease to feel yesterday sailing across its back, sticking a knife in today’s back, yesterday’s beings asked us: why? As if why would tell us why we are not what we were yesterday. I have circled this apple plenty of times — and still nobody knows who I am. Going in circles around the same apple sometimes makes me yawn because I’ve discovered

nothing new, nothi g that makes me think. But I can’t blame Adam’s apple, which always makes me think — I blame myself — it’s my own fault — for not renewing in my heart of hearts the winding ways where the waters of my youth flowed away. Lazy, fickle, and rash — eager, tired, and brash — spiteful, truthful, and resentful — or thoughtful like an autumn tree that turns green in the middle of spring — sprouting clichés that sound like words I’ve mixed with red wine where the vines of my desires grow thick — and the grapes inspire me to think again, and I look in one of the mirrors and see someone else looking back at me. But who am I if I don’t recognize myself in either face — maybe they’ll recognize me after I’m gone because I can’t stand standing still for a single moment that dares to try to hang me on a wall like a self-portrait — I can’t bear being myself, the person I just was, the one I no longer am, the one who left with the moment that no longer is, and I ran and ran because I didn’t want to be trapped inside myself because I didn’t feel right running inside a body that wasn’t my body, what body, maybe I’ll start a fire and burn all my things and memories that have trapped me inside a body that isn’t me anymore — because I was never really inside it when I was running away from myself not to find myself again — not because I hated myself, but who am I to love myself so much that I would want to stay inside myself for so long — why wouldn’t I want to blast past the earth’s orbit like an astronaut — or the dead — who leave us behind and never come to visit because they want to leave the earth, like you, like me, like all immortals who thirst and hunger for such sudden death that never ceases to burn or fly or soar — I can keep talking because the water keeps flowing and I keep walking and if I don’t stop talking I’ll keep talking like I’m walking and blaming myself: why me — why now — and why not yesterday. Why me, why now — and why not when I wanted to be me — and didn’t find myself wanting to be me — and for not finding me inside myself I blamed myself and wondered: why me? And why now — and not before — it is me — and it is only now that I can blame and beat myself up for the crime of a missing identity that I never committed — and now that it’s beating in my chest with its own sense of guilt, blaming me and forgiving me for never feeling guilty about anything except the oppression that oppresses me, and it’s not my fault for being oppressed by my own guilt that forces me into a corner, with my back against the wall, against the masses, pointing at me with furrowed brows, calling me the oddball, the exception to the rule of blaming blame — for not having done what I was supposed to do when I was supposed to do it — for having done it after time ran out of time — and time passed by. I passed by — I come and go the way I went — the same way as before and after — where I will never find myself behind bars — looking out — what a nice feeling to be outside passing this same place twice, but now that I see it again, I can’t tell whether I’ve been here before or whether I’m dreaming again — I don’t remember being here, and that is why I came back, to see if I would recognize it, memorize it, or forget it, dreaming of the memories of being there or simply being, forgetting what I was passing I was less and now I am what I was and that is enough — I already forgot who I am and become the forgetfulness that forgets that it already forgot who I was. I am what I am without being who I was without being sincerely sincere — I heal my thoughts — kiss the wound and make it feel better — and you have to get up in the morning before you can go back to bed again. No matter how

late I come home and go to bed the thoughts keep me up at night, swarming and buzzing around my head, even when I count to a hundred thousand and shut my eyes as tight as I can, I still hear them thinking — rise ’n shine, sleepy head, it’s time to get out of bed — and as long as they’re still thinking, I’m still breathing but nothing in life or death is worse than being tormented by your own thoughts day and night, nonstop, around-the-clock — I tell some of them — can’t you wait until morning? Now’s not a good time. An idea sticks in my mind, but I can’t think it through right now — so it hangs there, thinking, suspended in midair while others try to push and shove it out of the way, it hangs there livid — timid, it’s the best one so far — my first choice — even though it’s hanging over my dreams, keeping me awake and disturbing all the other ideas that won’t let me sleep either — first thing in the morning I’ll have to write them down. As if thoughts were as self-absorbed as assumptions or presumptions, presuming categorically false and phallic assumptions and supposing or presupposing supposed suppositions assuming nothing about anything and presupposing preposterous presumptions, forcing themselves on valid ones that bow to the boss obediently — because he is the boss — that’s why — because he bosses them around mindlessly because if he stopped to think he would shrink from the sheer force of his impotence — the boss of force, not the whim, ah, if only the whim were more forceful when it comes spiraling down on top of them so precipitately, oh good Lord, you sound like Neruda with so many categorically presumptive adverbs that leave the mind on a precipice precipitating precipitately, you don’t need so many ly’s to precipitate if you go straight to the point without beating around the bush and spread your wings and fly, you fly like a straight arrow and hit the thought, bull’s-eye, and you’re brilliant, sparkling like a flawless diamond (sorry, but I love little flaws), you don’t know what I’m talking about, but that doesn’t stop you from contradicting me, to make me lose my train of thought, if I’m not as hardy as a party that parties hardy until the bad mood fades because it runs out of breath and withdraws its claws, the claws of its paws, the bedrock of its foundation, there, between a rock and a hard place, it catches a catnap but it’s not a cat napping, it’s a dog panting and it steps into the cat-trap with all four paws. The truth has no sub-clauses or subterfuge, crutches or canes — it’s not arthritic or grouchy — it howls at the infinite like a dog and expects miracles to rain from the sky — it won’t drown in a glass of water, fall for sugar pills, or hobble around on a cast and crutches. I’ve often preached in my sermons (not to sing my own praises or eat pistachios like a caged canary swinging on a perch) — I’m already gone, but I keep going — away from all sorts of cages — I seized the chance to walk out that door as if it were my own house and never look back. No, I won’t say no to subjunctive clauses or to double brackets that close when they’re supposed to, or to single brackets that stay open, searching in vain for the cat’s four paws of the subjunctive clause in the wolf’s jaws where they’ll never see the light of day, and I won’t say no to the heart of darkness or to the dark of day, and I won’t say no to either side that thinks it speaks the infinite truth because neither one crosses the dividing line or because two parallel lines never meet their grief. I have to retrace my steps — here and there — to find something I lost — places I feel good — because I can’t feel myself anywhere — only in brief stages where nothing feels good — and it’s not that I feel bad — it’s that the wanderer