I can’t NOT take the bait on that one. I have my philosophical front to uphold, and such a large investment in identity dilemmas that I will, of course, circle back to it, but imagine, if you will, just for a moment, a whole city of Johnsons. Would we dare go there alone, or would we walk down the sidewalk clutching one another’s elbows and giggling? (Now I do venture off into the Vagina Mono-blogs…)
A verse from one of my favorite poems:
You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile of
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely
I have that fantasy, too. I think this is partially a true story I have crafted into my own fantasy: a woman lives in a trailer on the edge of an abandoned landing strip in the middle of the Texas Panhandle. Her passion is photographing lightning. She has no friends, occasionally sleeps with cute cowboys she meets in bars, but never takes them home for fear that she might become attached to something other than the intense smell of ozone after a thunderstorm.
“If I'm lonely
it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it's neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning “
-Adrienne Rich
