Dear Paul, there are still many things I want to tell you. But at this moment, I see all of it in this blade of grass. Spring—or as you describe it, May—arrives in a single blade of bright green grass. Leaves of grass as Walt Whitman named them. This blade of grass also grows between our bodies. Our bodies are not the general bodies of people as in we humans, but just Cecile and Paul. A blade of green grass grows between our standing bodies. It grows because earth collects in cracks in the sidewalk, and you and I pay attention to all sorts of seedlings and all sorts of cracks. It grows because we have been seeding all the black holes we encounter with curiosity. I’m not tired of exploring black holes, and I am amazed that a blade of grass—a single blade of grass and then another—can find fertile ground in black holes. But it happens again and again.

My uncertainty can cause a blade of grass to be uprooted too quickly: as quickly and easily as, say, the action of squeezing the life out of an ant that simply followed (according to its nature) a pheromone trail into my room, up the table leg to my tabletop. I look at the ants’ seemingly random wandering and say, What are you doing here? Why are you ants crawling on my writing desk? But isn’t it better to sweep their little bodies into my palm and then shake them out onto the planter on my balcony? And the blade of grass? May; Mai; Mayo; Maya. Let it live as long as possible: through the summer, autumn, even through the winter.

It is windy this morning; the wind is energetic enough to shake the tree that grows in the planter that borders the width of my balcony. How many years has this tree been there? It, too, simply arrived and started growing. But the particular blade of grass that grew between us joined us to its own alignment to Spring. I don’t know why I ended up examining it so closely, magnifying it until it appeared to have the same height as your and my body.

I began exploring how I could draw this blade of grass. I started from its tip; I drew from top to bottom but quickly realized how false it was. I would never be able, in that way, to draw what I was after. Then I drew from bottom to top. I was drawing the blade’s emergence from the earth and its upwards rise. As it rose it curved. I started to see everyone as blades of grass: walking, running, bending blades of grass; blades of grass reclining on lawn chairs, their arms flung over their eyes to shield them from the sun. In the earth, their roots are elongating.

Last night I awoke with urgency; it was the blade, demanding that I draw it as it had appeared: with an amazing static moment and barely any thickness at all. I also understood where and how the image of the blade of grass had emerged. If the skin with all its contours is the earth’s surface; your touch elicits the blade of grass to grow from my skin; you trigger it to grow.

An uprooted, fleshy blade of grass lies on the bed, right down the midline between us. It’s as long as we are tall; its burst of blanched roots project beyond the edge of the bed; its sharp tip lies flat at the pillows. There are no traces of earth. You and I are lying on either side. We don’t cross over the blade, which is soft and slightly puckered as if slowly letting out the held breath of effort it had used to grow upwards, vertically, arched, bright and green. Now it is uprooted and lies flat in bed between us. Air seeps out. It would need to take the moisture and breath from both you and me to reanimate itself. Not only has it been uprooted, it has also become bloated and exaggerated in scale. (It’s been flung, tossed carelessly, whimsically, operatically, left gloating, dropped into alcoholic drinks, but it hasn’t been crumpled, swallowed, chewed or digested. It is still green.)

When I look back at all of this, this strange image of the blade of grass that I cling to, I wonder, why am I like this? I begin to imagine not a still-life, but an animated version in which the elements of the image—das Bild—begin to reveal further aspects of themselves. I also realize, simultaneously, that I may be the only person that values and devotes herself to the elaborated existence of this image, this extenuated mystery, up to and including the point when the image exerts its power over me.
I could see all of this as being a slave to an image, but I would prefer to be driven by the image, because, after all, it is an apparition which appears unbidden; the image, if I care for it, devote time to it, reveals aspects of itself, even more so when figures, elements, or entities are yanked out of their usual context—in this case a single blade of grass. (I love you because our artistic visions overlap not specifically in letters, words or Buchstaben, as you would describe them, but in how we approach the flotsam which flows passed us. This has almost nothing

When I look back at all of this, this strange image of the blade of grass that I cling to, I wonder, why am I like this? I begin to imagine not a still-life, but an animated version in which the elements of the image—das Bild—begin to reveal further aspects of themselves. I also realize, simultaneously, that I may be the only person that values and devotes herself to the elaborated existence of this image, this extenuated mystery, up to and including the point when the image exerts its power over me.
I could see all of this as being a slave to an image, but I would prefer to be driven by the image, because, after all, it is an apparition which appears unbidden; the image, if I care for it, devote time to it, reveals aspects of itself, even more so when figures, elements, or entities are yanked out of their usual context—in this case a single blade of grass. (I love you because our artistic visions overlap not specifically in letters, words or Buchstaben, as you would describe them, but in how we approach the flotsam which flows passed us. This has almost nothing to do with our material bodies, our gender, our sexualities, nor with other relationships, but rather with a part of ourselves which almost does not exist, yet it does exist, insistently, and it is our particular madness that this bare existence is what we sporadically in extensio devote ourselves to.)

A new day. Here is the third part of the story of the blade of grass. Before I begin, it must be said that in the second part, a glass jar filled with oil suddenly fell off the rim of the bathtub. It was a simple accident. There weren’t any negative consequences. Nothing broke. It simply happened, and when it happened, it produced a loud noise. That this happened is not the focus of the story, nor is the focus the father or mother. What should stay in focus is the fresh, new, green blade of grass. A single blade of grass that has a fresh smell.

This blade of grass was carried by two figures from upstairs to downstairs; from the kitchen to a room in the basement with a bed. And the two figures lay down in the bed with the fresh blade of grass laid between their bodies. They had laid the blade of grass in the bed with the utmost care, but it was a blade of grass, one which normally grows along a vertical axis. Suddenly, the blade found itself horizontal. I don’t think it was pulled up from the ground. Nevertheless, its root hairs extended themselves in this new orientation. Its sharp tip lay by the pillows between the beautiful heads of the two figures. Human—grass—human;three lines: human—grass—human.

Early evening, I bike down the road to a paved clearing and practice many things, the most important of which is being alone. With close-cropped hair, I look like a boy. And as a boy, I feel athletic and bold. I run my bike into the grass, pick up a stick and explore the surrounding foliage. Back on the pavement, I ride in ever tighter circles, practicing the smooth turn. I lean forward, spread my elbows, narrow my eyes and revv like a motor.

Mother wears wooden clogs inside the house; you can always hear her approach.
I listen for squeals at the foot of the stairs.
Mother is scrubbing one of the upper, carpeted steps near the second floor landing. She tells me she’s stepped on one of my rodents. Nothing remains – only the stain and her story.