una poca de gracia

your bibliomancy forecast for the week of january 27

LIFE RX 27 JAN 25

death, and a sentence from Mary Robison’s Oh!:

“Virginia waved good-bye, swinging her whole arm in a wide arc. It was the good-bye wave she used on her television show.”

the aleatory

I used to have a hard time with the song “La Bamba.” I had a hard time with it because it was so beautiful and full of love, and still Ritchie Valens ended up in the dark water of Clear Lake, Iowa, in bleakest midwinter, and he was only 17.

And when I would listen to “La Bamba,” I would think, for some reason about my heart beating—how it had, up to now (now now now), a perfect record. Never missed. Not once, or not for long enough to count.

And then I would think about the inevitable clockwork of a pattern like that. How hard it must be, to be a heart. How faithfully this part of me has been, working away in the dark, loving me by never giving up. Things that never miss do, eventually, miss. This is what all stories are: The day the wrong thing happened, the watch stopped, the plane crashed in the lake. A heart that beats is a heart that stops beating.

Given the basic irony of storytelling, a heart that contemplates this for too long will stop beating, too.

I used to have a hard time with the song “La Bamba” because I couldn’t accept this, and I couldn’t accept my refusal of it, either. I would say to myself: Oh my GOD sarah are you really crying about Ritchie Valens again????!? Can you please be normal, can you PLEASE stop crying.

But I don’t ask myself that question anymore. It’s so obvious to me that I can’t be normal, I can’t not think about the darkness at the bottom of Clear Lake, or how cold it would have been on February 3rd. And that’s why I’m okay with “La Bamba” now. I accept the broken heart. Isn’t that the whole point?

(I’m not a sailor. Soy capitán, soy capitán.)

the forecast

Let die, let loose, let fall. Shovel the snow every few hours so it isn’t impossible to deal with later. Ride into town on a horse of bone. Enter any door that will admit you, and break hearts.

writing prompt

Write a poem from the point of view of an eternal flame.

a chune

“La Bamba,” Richie Valens

Well, obviously.

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credits: small spells tarot deck by Rachel Howe
Oh! by Mary Robison
"La Bamba” by Ritchie Valens

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dear diary, we got about eight inches of snow in the mountains. For the first time since we evacuated, I feel like we’re actually safe. Most of Southern California was still under a red flag warning for two more weeks after we lost our house, and on Thursday, there were even two small fires close to the place in the mountains where we’re staying now. Just like then, the power was cut as a safety measure, and I was sitting in the dark, trying to ration my phone battery and wondering about when I should start worrying. But snow! snow is perfect. It melts slowly into the ground instead of washing out to sea. In California, it’s hard to take the snow too seriously. Within a few days the sun is out, and it’s already melting. It slides off the roof of the A-frame in a huge cartoon galumph. It doesn’t threaten to stick around forever, which makes it much more endearing. X S