I do not know why I started writing. I am not entirely sure why I do it now. But I can tell you what the ritual is like, for it is a ritual. It is like splitting my head open and letting all the stars spill out. And in those stars are galaxies, planets, worlds. All through my lymph nodes, through my veins, through my senses are worlds. I tell their stories. Or they tell them through my fingertips, through my opening, panting mouth. Every story I tell is born in orgasm.
Okay, so I thought I was telling the story of the Midwest. That was my crazy desire. I thought—let me tell the story of this, my home. I did not know at the time that the land was alive, that Lady Indiana is Chaban, the Earth Mother, that her dirt is a living, sustaining thing, that she is the true Notre Dame, the real Our Lady, the encompassing mother under the earth. I did not know that she was the Woman of Dreams and Woman on the Wind and I did not know that somewhere in my flesh was her earth, in my desires her dream, in my breathing, her spirit. I did not know that we were one. At the time when I began to write I did not use the word storytelling. I did not know that these letters were magic letters, these words prophecies, that every story is a spell, a magic. I thought, “I am an eye. I am telling the stories of others.” I did not know that I was an I. That I was telling my story, that by telling it, I was becoming it. That by telling my story I was building me.
There is no me without the story.
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