Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Einstein for Dinner Parties: A Post-Pandemic Primer


Hey everybody! On this day in 1905, during what he later called his “Miracle Year,” Einstein submitted his paper, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,"for publication in Annals of Physics. If you were looking for a clever excuse for a get together (because "I haven't seen you guys in fifteen months!" is quickly becoming passé), look no further.


Emerging from cocoons of pandemic-induced isolation, we are all obviously wanting to put our best foot forward in every way. It goes without saying that, in certain circles, no dinner party or backyard barbecue is complete without someone referring to one or another theory of relativity. Depending on the number of credentialed or amateur scientists in the room, it may be of only passing importance whether the speaker appears to have any concrete understanding of various details, such as the difference between special and general theories, Cartesian or Euclidean geometry, or any scientific or mathematical principles in general. In fact, broad strokes are often preferable in these situations. 


With this in mind, I found an English translation of the paper and made some quick notes, which I am sharing here in the event that others with an eye towards personal growth might be as excited as this reader is with the possibility of making a grand splash on the social scene. Many of us have observed how, judging by the number of at-length discussions entertained, these past fifteen months, about the daily antics of various household pets, we may have unwittingly arrived at some unanticipated level of conversational stagnation. A little bit of relativity is bound to spice things up. 


Below, find a collection of found phrases which may be sampled and remixed individually, or (depending on the intoxication and patience level of assembled listeners) in entirety as a sort of pseudo-scientific monologue bound to return you to fond memories of late-night pontifications of stoned peers in college dorms, with the wild-eyed, wild-haired scientist on the wall, extending his tongue (in a move that would later be imitated by Steven Tyler to wide acclaim), right next to a poster of John Belushi in a toga. Cheers!



Take a magnet and a conductor, one in motion, another at rest

and currents of electric forces. Examples suggest phenomena,

suggest the same laws will be valid, though apparently irreconcilable.

Postulates will enter.


Light is always propagated in empty space. Recall the velocity of C,

independent of the state of motion of the emitting body. A luminiferous

ether is superfluous! At least, inasmuch as special properties are concerned,

with a velocity-vector of empty space.


Let us take certain difficulties of time.

Let us consider a train. And my watch.

And the times of events in places remote from any watch.


We might, of course, content ourselves with time values, 

as hands with light signals, but this coordination has a disadvantage,

as we know, from experience.


Assume a universal constant 

between A time and B time

and a principle of constancy, the velocity of light.

Define the length of a moving rod in space, an observer moving with it.


We imagine.

We imagine further.

We imagine further with each clock.

We imagine a moving observer.


We cannot attach any absolute signification to the concept of simultaneity.

Note well: x, y, k, z –– and a simple calculation we will now imagine,

compatible with principles.


We now inquire 

We give our attention

It follows

We envisage

It is at once apparent

If we assume

It is worthy of remark

We have now deduced

Evidently, as to the interpretation


––it is clear.



[Note: it is very important to leave the room at this point. Do not consider alternative views. Do not take questions. Especially do not give in to the temptation to further elaborate. Drop the mic. Exit. Refill!]



Image: "Housewarming" by Andy on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.


Tuesday, June 29, 2021

Remembering Forward and Back

There are moments when you are inside something, noticing what you will remember when it's done. Or there are exploding moments and you can't help but notice the blast of certain solid-seeming ideas. It's a protected site: caution tape, guards. You can't go around taking things from it, so you look, gathering images for later when you're no longer at the site, for when the site itself no longer exists except perhaps as a memorial, for when you are considering, in memorial, what remains.


A cannibal galaxy has such gravity that it may eat other galaxies. Some moments in time are like that, eating any memory of what happened before or after. You try to recover, but can do no better than metaphor.


It was like being inside a Dali painting, melted face propped on a stick. It was like being stuck on top of the monkey bars or like one of those dreams where you are trying to scream and the words won't come out. The problem with trying to tell some stories is that the origin point was consumed by other origin points, cannibal moments.


It was like another dream, also: driving a car up a ramp. The ramp is so steep that it's practically vertical. The road is narrow and it is over a bridge and the bridge is over sky and space  and water and whatever you might be about to fall into is on both sides, close, and there is no way to reverse, but you see that the road ahead of you will very soon drop off into sky. You head up anyway, accepting a certain lack of choice. Or choosing to accept that the original decision was already made when you got into the car and started driving. That moment never shows up in the dream, not once.


Or it was like being underwater, in the quiet susurration of it, trying to resist the temptation to surface for air. 


Or it was like flight/not flight, as in jumping up, bouncing off, or being thrown, that moment in midair when the breath catches.


And while you're catching your breath you know that it was indeed like all of these things, but none exactly, and for the time being you are all out of words. Sometimes all you want to do is hang on to some scrap of fallen silence at your feet and close your eyes, as if doing so could make it possible to return to some moment just before.



Image: "Silence" by Ale on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. 

Monday, June 28, 2021

The Large Bathers

A person much better schooled than I am in the subject of art history recently observed that Cezanne was obviously frightened of women. I thought of his large nudes and my first impulse was disbelief based on the forms he painted; based on The Large Bathers alone, but then I looked again and saw what might have been immediately apparent, had I been less than thoroughly schooled in the superiority of binary notions. As in, an idea that the beautiful and the terrifying live in opposite poles; an idea that an artist's preoccupation is the familiar and never the unknown; the idea that knowing well somehow cancels the haunting aspect of mystery. 



Schooling in the superiority of one thing over another is a very different thing from being schooled properly in the anatomy of a body of interconnected parts, in which even the poles of a supposed binary are reliant on one another for existence. For example, it is possible (and even likely) to be raised Catholic and read very little of the Bible beyond the red words. But then you look more closely, and you see how he was with the women and with the sick and the dead and you learn much later – by this time, you are actively looking, following a hunch and the wisdom of scholars who have managed not to sever their minds from their hearts–– that the most concise truth in Biblical letters is: Jesus wept. This at the death of Lazarus, when he knew he would raise him–– or perhaps he came to know this in weeping for his friend. You look at this liberator, his patience with the lepers and the new-dead sons, the accused whores left for dead and the tax collectors, and the Roman soldiers, and even Pilate himself who had little choice, and you think, here is a capital-M man, in an actual body, bound to be hunted for execution by the forces feeding on obedience of the same lowercase men holding a jagged rib like a shiv at Eve's naked throat, and the fact that this was obscured so thoroughly hits with all of the imagined weight and pressure of the first nail.



Then I look at the nudes again, and I see it, the way that naked truth becomes the terror in the night, how most of the time someone claiming to want it is just dropping coins by mouth into a coffer at an expected time, a fee more commonly known as lip service, which might be more aptly described as the words spoken in the name of an embodied mystery which has been bound and gagged prior to the press conference. I celebrate the way that this artist found the courage to keep looking when he could more easily have turned away.




Image: Paul Cezanne's The Large Bathers,  Philadelphia Museum of Art. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, posted by jpellgen on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivs 2.0 Generic license. 

Sunday, June 27, 2021

Blessing the Torn Skies

A few hours ago, I learned it was Lucille Clifton’s birthday, and thought immediately of her beautiful “Blessing the Boats.” Then I knew what to do with what I was meaning to notice, from yesterday’s time at Balboa Park, which is right near San Diego’s airport, where the planes fly very low.  



May the sky

that tears above us

every ten minutes

with the next landing

hold you still

in its infinities, barely

contained. May you notice

the webs noiselessly repaired

in the shade-giving tree. 


May you hold the noise

and feel its impact, understand

what it means to live

in the time of tearing skies

and then turn your ears 

to the hush of leaves against

leavings, expanding in chorus

above you and to the hawks

overhead, and then to the drums

beneath the tree down the hill. Watch


––the dancers in unison and each 

their own, leaves singing the leaving 

of an ancient dance, remembered

in chorus in ways that it may never be, 

alone, in the place you go first to notice

the dead 

        before they are named. 


May you see 

        the bird on the low, long branch,

how violently its blood-red breast sways 

with each new tear in the still-aching

sky. May you study like these near the drums,

those songs that time and distance and generations

of death would have killed by now if they had not 

recognized, first alone and then in chorus, 

how the only way to mark the days of 

separation by sea and torn sky

is by gripping what moves beneath you


as you grip what moves through you, as

the same song, the same flight, holding

first until you can move into it, even as

you notice each fresh wound, tearing a 


body you once thought eternal, prone to 

capricious moods but never injury, and 

may you know how something new happens

now, even if: the wound is real and yes, it is


another man with a sword, eager to pierce

the next heaven, and you know what this

is because flesh won’t forget, insisting against

its own small space, on dancing eulogies in 

concert 


with the still uncounted souls waiting

here, beneath this torn heaven, for the next 

sign, and may you trace it, holding the line and

waiting to carry it, may you wait and hold, listen


and then cry out when the time is right, as the hawks

above have been doing ever since you arrived, finding

in the act of swaying with each pointed arrival, each

still-dripping wound, some way to recognize, 


even as you feel each cut from your crown 

to your feet, how none ever sever you from it. 

May you hold your hands up, open to 

these wounded forevers, 


and sway.



Image: "Tonight . . . Thunderstorms!" by Carol VanHook on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.0 Generic license.


Saturday, June 26, 2021

Considering the Liquidity of Solid-Seeming Cats

One learns early (children, cats) that there is a certain way to comport oneself in public, especially around men. Like most authentic educational experiences, transmission is done more through example than direct instruction. 


Reasons didn’t matter to me early on, only how to be. I wouldn’t consider questions of why until later. Men in public places might be easily confused, threatened, or alarmed, any of which might bring out the worst. A body adapts around certain givens in nature, or at least tries to. 


Early in adolescence, I just wanted to get the moves right and remember my lines, but I had no natural aptitude for the role. I watched other girls pull it off in a manner that seemed no different than their natural selves. They were graceful and coquettish; pliant and mysterious all at once. But I felt like a semi-sedated lion at a zoo exhibit, all my wild drugged out of me until all that there was left to do was look out through my wild eyes and hope they didn’t give me away. 


Those eyes. an old woman once said, like a cat!


“Shhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!” I wanted to whisper-shout back at her. This was early on in my experiment.  Over time, I learned, and decades later (which happened to be a few years before I could fully recognize certain problems manifest in this area of study and practice – I knew that I had emerged with top marks, as evidenced by regular complements as to my smile, “easygoing nature” which I read as familiarity with certain grooming practices and mannerisms aligned with the male gaze).


It's tempting to regret learning this, but probably futile. Knowing how to be invisible in public, how to wear veils, how and when to find the mute button on my unwieldy self, certainly afforded me certain measures of protection that I'd love to imagine myself innately resilient enough to go without, but which were probably needed. The cost of these preoccupies me lately, but it's not like I anyone can return old lessons for a refund. As a writer, I can only turn it around, look for other angles, find some useful rationale. 


In this vein, I’ve been observing how learning to be inconspicuous is a necessary part of any sort of undercover work. What else is a writer, but always moving in and out of places that are supposed to be off limits? I grew up in the age when to "be real" seemed to be linked with a no-holds-barred sort of no-filter mystique. I watched this lauded with a sense of dread and despair, recognizing that I was constitutionally incapable of this state. 


A body learns, over time, to let go of its binary notions: authentic/invented, delicate/fierce, domesticated/wild, tender/hard. If these binaries serve any purpose, it is in creating a tension that is interesting to work with. A dancer learns to compose, with the instrument of their body, a vivid display of movement that suggests that they have managed to remove the filter between emotional states and bodily expression. In fact, they have learned to explore, lean into, and play with the body's own limits and abilities, to achieve something that lets an audience imagine limitlessness. To achieve this, a dancer contorts into all manner of difficult and often painful postures.


In their excellent book, Humankind: Solidarity with Non-Human People, acclaimed object-oriented philosopher Timothy Morton makes an interesting observation about cats. Morton observes how cats occupy the liminal space "between" humankind and the so-called "Natural world." This is to highlight another false binary, namely human/nature. 


This week I have been watching my cat with heightened interest. My interest is selfish, another funny word, implying a binary between selfish/unselfish which is problematic and likely impossible for any being whose survival depends on connection with an intricate network of human and non-human beings. I am on the lookout for clues about walking in two worlds. Considering writing, loving, and any creative work, the idea of an extended retreat is infinitely appealing, and for most of us, just as unlikely, as far as life options go. In most cases, creating anything requires a fluidity of movement between worlds.


I notice that my cat may go from sleeping in my purse to leaping over the back gate in less than five seconds. Her shapeshifting powers are a wonder to behold, but perhaps she is not shapeshifting at all even though she appears at certain times to be in one state or another (resting/leaping, domestic/wild, waiting/hunting) ––only endlessly fluid. I'm fairly certain she'll return in the evening, contort herself into various impossible-looking nap positions, wander around, stare at me with that look that cats get, like the old sage waiting for the neophyte to move beyond lesson one.  


Friday, June 25, 2021

The In-Between

In any rite of passage, there is a state where the pilgrim leaves the known world and prepares to enter the place where she is transformed. This is called the threshold, or liminal state.


The first version of this word I ever heard was called limbo, and according to the nuns this was where you got stuck if you skipped confession. Apparently, doing this was about as damning as failing to wear clean underwear, because you could get in a terrible accident at any time.


What’s it like? We all wanted to know. They said it wasn’t exactly eternal fire but it wasn’t clouds and angels, either. It was just forever. And who wants that when you are so close to a final release? They were not forthcoming with other details, so the rest was left to the imagination.


I turned the word over. Limbo. It called to mind the image of a doll version of a person floating in a watercolor atmosphere with limbs outstretched.


I thought about people running and then swimming toward higher ground when the floods came. And about the dream monsters chasing, the jolt in the stomach, shouting So close! I thought about my grandparents, how they would stand behind me in church before I was even old enough for Communion, the pillars of their bodies like trees, and me in the shade. I wanted to stay in that place forever, but I felt it coming, the shadowy force coming closer with every passing year -- so close! –– and I dreaded arriving in the space of being severed from their shade and the quiet of being nowhere and no one, with no one asking, What now? 


Then, years passed, and I felt far removed from this moment, but close enough that when I thought of it again, something flickered at the corners of my lips, in recognition of how there had been a time when it was possible to think of such an endless in-between as a threat for something that might happen, and not as what already was.


Image: "Kelp" by montereydiver on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.


Thursday, June 24, 2021

Tell Me Something, Good.

One day it occurred to me that I could not remember the last time I had wanted to talk to anyone.


I had been talking plenty, whenever the situation called for it. I had mostly enjoyed these exchanges, even when I dreaded them in advance. My pause came from realizing that I could not remember ever once being in a silent state of restful solitude and thinking that it would be better if I were talking. Sure, I wondered how various people were doing; I wanted them to know that I thought of them, but these feelings have to do with love and connection and not the desire to utter any actual words. I had to really ransack my mind looking for an example of a time when talk was the thing I desired. Still, I couldn't find any. I am an introvert who fears being something else, namely an alien ill-suited for life here. This seemed like an ominous sign.


Never? I wondered. What an inauspicious thing to observe in oneself. I immediately red-flagged this newfound awareness as the sort of thing I should probably never say out loud to another human being (The irony!). To be introverted is one thing, but surely this new awareness indicated some sort of solitary leanings in the extreme, possibly pathological. Perhaps some dark secret had been hidden and missed all along.


But then I realized something else. It was also true that I could not think of a single time when I was in a resting solitary state and I suddenly thought that I would like to write. (Not once? I wondered, checked. Nope, not once––not since childhood, anyway).  


I love writing like the desperate love anything––as in, it feels like misery but I would not want to live without it. I could think of plenty of times where I had to write, or decided to do so in order to fulfill some obligation, and other times when an impulse came knocking and I answered the door. I had often looked forward to long periods of imaginary uninterrupted interludes during which I would be writing, even though I had never actually thought, while resting, anything like: This moment would be greatly enhanced if I were moving a pen along a page. 


And yet, I could think of no examples where I had ever regretted writing (but a few where I regretted hitting "send"). Considering conversation, similar themes emerged. It was never the talking I regretted (except when it took me from writing for too long), only what I did and did not manage to say.


Sometimes the world shifts and lets you notice a thing that you've been technically seeing all along, plain as the air you've been breathing and equally invisible. I did not dislike any available forms of communication: not speech, not writing, not dance, and not song. All were needs, and I had been prone to dreading each of them in particular ways. 


Words are so hard to deal with, and the dealing is always such a burden. Like hearts, like loves, like babies and bodies, and water; and bodies of water; and loving hearts; and the burden of carrying each one around, holding its beating insistence, its incessant demands; its relentless flooding of life into limbs and everywhere else it goes, in all the ways that are always so impossible to explain. 


Words are such a chore. I might put them off forever. All I ever want are those quiet, fluid, indefinable spaces housing the soft rise and fall of one beloved's breath beside me; the weight of an open palm on my knee, and possibilities only tasted and never adequately described, by lips pressing into a sleeping head under my arm. All I ever miss is never words, but the sound of quiet breathing in the same room, its implied command a simple one, and as easy to follow as my own next breath. Like, Shhhhh. Like, Wait. Hold. Don't Move. Here.


These words, these words, give me some. Let me give them back to you. Even though we both, by now, should recognize them for what they are: crude and heavy, the burdensome hot-mess cousins to the queens and kings and holy babies we are trying to sing about. Still, you work with what you have, and sometimes these are the only available tools after the quiet-by-your-side-breaths stop, and the weight of a hand has vanished, and a body fails to contain the parts that are relentlessly flying away.



Image: "Wolf Concert" by Tambako The Jaguar on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

Card Tricks and Other Joys of Research

Sometimes, when I’m all out of sparks, I open one of my magic books. I have about five of these, acquired a few years back when I had a magician character in mind. 


That was my stated reason, anyway, but I confess that it is also true that I just think magic books are cool, and writing gives me all sorts of excuses to go looking into cool things like a little kid on an extended break. To the dismissive voice that might be lurking in the shadows waiting to shout, “Dilettante!” –I can call these pursuits Research (note capital 'R'). This because I call myself Writer (see capital 'W').  It’s a title ripe for claiming, apparently, somewhat like Napoleon's crown, but with much less bloodshed.  All you have to do is keep showing up with a pen in hand and move it along. 


One of my favorite writers of all time is Percival Everett, and I was delighted to learn, in an interview I listened to last year, that while he found the process of writing books generally difficult, angst-ridden, and unpleasurable (while also unavoidable), he found research to be a lot of fun. I was grateful that he dispelled the myth of writing as a grand old time. I have heard that it is for some, and I don’t think they are lying, but I’ve only rarely found it to be anywhere close to unpainful, much like necessary exercise.  That’s probably because my idea of fun is getting a bunch of margaritas and waxing loopy while making up song lyrics with friends, speaking in tongues and accents if with small children, or, if alone, laughing at cat memes. 


Point being, research has benefits. Among these is that when one of the horsemen of distraction come in (Thank you, Sarah, for sharing this "Four Horsemen of Procrastination" meme with me after I wrote about the challenges that come when the muse gets replaced by "That Guy"), to  ask, while I am trying to work out some interpretation of a proverb or philosophical paradox, something like, “Do you know any card tricks?” –– I can open an as-yet-unopened resource and compose an answer primarily of found passages and annotations. Such as this one, culled from the introduction to The Royal Road to Card Magic, by Jean Hugard and Frederick Braue.:


Modern magic is a vocation, a national convention

conjuring an art. In return for time and effort,

reap friends and spectators.


There are many  

whenever a pack is uninitiated, 

dumbfounding with impressions

of skill. 


There is always something 

in the effective sleight, 

unless striking feats from

wonder to wonder.


I wait for some response. The dark horseman of distraction slinks off. He was apparently hoping I would join him in some sort of illicit internet foray into all manner of card tricks.


Here the internal voice gets a moment of jubilation. "Hah!" she erupts,  "Another point for research!" Gentle reader, forgive her this cocky jubilation, as she is an endangered creature riddled with doubt.  And to the retreating back of this hooded gangster, she now shouts: “I told you I was trying to get to these proverbs! Now what?!” 


And now I may get back to writing this thing I am meaning to write.


Image by Robert Bjorken on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivs 2.0 Generic license.


Tuesday, June 22, 2021

But why bother? In defense of nobody's heroes.

There is a lot to value about artistic recognition, but this is a cheer for the value of being solidly nobody. Considering the Zen idea of “beginner’s mind, best mind” helps to highlight how the point is to keep beginning. The people I find most interesting (both well-recognized and completely unknown) are those who are more interested in what is confusing or new to them than anything they have already done. Life rarely fits any limited ideas of what it should look like, and this is the deep appeal of the misfit creative beings who go on doing their thing, pursuing deep interests and questions: not because anyone is asking, but because there is some life there, and sometimes because no one else is looking for or after it. 


To share from the point of strangeness and isolation, a person may create openings in the walls of strangeness and isolation that prevent us from knowing each other. It is interesting and deeply human, and a deeply loving act of service: the project of creating homes and supportive ecosystems that work with and for ourselves and the lives around us, regardless of who is or isn’t asking, noticing, picking up, or recognizing. 


Frank McCourt was sixty-six when he published Angela’s Ashes. He had spent a career as a teacher. Alma Woodsey Thomas had her first show at the age of seventy-five, after a thirty-five-year career teaching art in DC public schools. Mary Delany was seventy-two when she invented her own art form, mixed media collage. 


I am currently reading Helen DeWitt’s brilliant novel, The Last Samurai, which she published at the age of forty-three. This may seem relatively young, until you realize how early and earnestly she began. We live in a culture that loves to celebrate the young phenom, the wild breakout success, but I take heart in knowing that DeWitt’s brilliant “debut” was her 50th manuscript.  In each of the preceding forty-nine, she had labored diligently and faithfully toward her art, in hopes that it would be read and recognized––all while working alternately for a laundry service, as a copyeditor, for Dunkin' Donuts, and at various other roles of official employment. She was right to hope for eventual recognition, but she may have been “proven wrong” if she stopped after the first forty-nine “failures.” I doubt these were artistic failures, now that I have read DeWitt’s work, but her singular brilliance and truly groundbreaking aesthetic no doubt made unfamiliar demands on her readers, so it was likely passed over, in favor of more easily accessible and familiar styles.


These heroes are the passionate, sensitive artists who managed to maintain artistic vision and practice while working in other roles. Recognizing and celebrating the life-giving courage of their radical acts can be a healthy antidote to the common tendency to see perceived limitations as impediments to artistic development. I could do my work if only –– fill in the blanks, depending on the mood and obstacles of the moment. But if the goal is protection and preservation of life, then obstacles and moods, while deeply relevant to our being in the world, have no relevance (generally, in professional life) on whether the work gets done or not.


I am consistently honored, thrilled, and humbled by the power of artists who demonstrate this level of artistic professionalism even as they play working roles as plumbers and dishwashers, house cleaners and repair people; chefs and diaper changers and all-around creative inspirations for managing the way the flow of the substance of any given day can feel like trying to take a sip through a fire hose while trying not to perish from drowning or thirst. 


It’s like that. Not sometimes, not exceptionally; but most of the time, and consistently. I’d rather learn to work with these conditions than cross my fingers and hope for better ones someday. 




Image: "Pygmy Tarsiers" by Rodney Campbell on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivs 2.0 Generic License.

The pygmy tarsier, a nocturnal primate native to Indonesia, was widely believed to have gone extinct in the early 20th century, but then it was accidentally captured (and sadly killed) in a rat trap in the year 2000. Fortunately, since then, several other members of the species have made appearances, and their movements are now being tracked and monitored with great hope, interest, and appreciation for their fragility. One of my favorite species of internet research is searching up newly discovered and rediscovered species. 



Monday, June 21, 2021

Some Night At a Window

Naked feet on bare floors, elbows on the sill,

hands cup the lines of a jaw,  mirror


connecting the stars above the babbling towers 

whose shadows cloaked our daylight,

beyond the reach of 


hands cupping the lines of missing faces. Eyes 

reach anyway, holy useless as first songs

and the first games in the garden, 

out and out with the tops of our artifices

but not always the endless lines

of bodies in skies 

where the children of gardens 

still hide in the dark folds where invisible stars become


— and a new one, here 

— in the quiet depths behind these sigh songs,


the lines of ourselves slipping,

and no names yet for the unborn

when we never named the dead


— in the depths behind these breaths, 

reaching lines toward letters, 

ever into some beginning,

say the word.



Image: "Window at Night" by Victor Reynolds on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivs 2.0 License.


Sunday, June 20, 2021

When the Muse is on Vacation and They Send in This Guy.

So I am now getting down to it. Ready. Here I go. Wait –– okay, now.

What are you doing?


Writing. 

Why?


Well, that’s how you do it. 

What are you writing?


I don’t know yet.

So why are you opening a notebook?


It’s called showing up.

For what?


I’ll know when it happens.

What’s happening now?


We’ll see.

It doesn’t look like much. Is that a grocery list?


That’s for later. This is for now.

That also looks like a grocery list.


I make lists. 

Of?


Ideas. Verbs. Names of plants. Names of mythological figures. 

For?


For when it happens.

Oh, aren’t we grand? The happening: Live, ladies and gentlemen, right here! 


Look, I’m trying to do a thing here. Can you. . . go somewhere else?

You put in the order. Now I’m here.


Not for you, though. I can’t think.

What are you thinking?


I don’t know yet.

Hey did you see those images by that guy in the UK who does all the hilarious taxidermy memes? Look, look! You should check this out.


I really––– Oh, that is funny. 

Told you.


Okay, now back to work.

KK, let’s go. What are we doing? Wait, is THAT what you’re doing?


It’s not done yet. It’s just a list.

That looks pretty lame; are you sure you wanna go with that? How long have you been doing this?


Listen, can you just––

Do we have any snacks?










Saturday, June 19, 2021

Action/ Reaction

If a scream erupts in a forest, and no one hears it

—or if none of the hearers can connect 

the substance of the scream to the face 

of the wounded, whether because 

these hearers are out of sight or otherwise unable 

to perceive how a body nearby could be capable 

of keening like that, or because the hearers are not 

in the habit of connecting the nuanced arrangement 

of particular human features to the nuanced arrangement 

of particular human sounds, when considering a  

particular cry of distress after shutting eyes tight

against any witness— did it happen? 


Same question may be posed 

with other variants. If the cry was piercing 

and potentially recognizable but muffled 

by the presence of a sudden hand 

against an open mouth, does it count?  

If the moment of the cry coincides 

with the collapse of the known world 

and the known world in question 

was once synonymous with the depths 

of the forest, did a cry even happen, 

if the place that it would have 

poured into was suddenly gone? 


Now consider other variables. 

If access is granted, but no one is told, 

does the person at the gates no one was trying 

to approach after years of denial get to shrug, 

raised eyebrows, and claim innocence––based 

on, well, I didn’t say they couldn’t. . . 


Get to: what does this even mean? A body gets 

to do what it will do until acted upon by an opposing 

force. Except in the case of survival. Except in the case 

of protection of children. A body will persist until 

it can’t, and in persisting, adapt to certain givens 

for the sake of survival. As in, this door is locked, 

this knob will burn your hand, this exit will get you 

shot. If someone on the other side unlocks the door 

quietly in the middle of the night, hides the key 

and leaves it closed, is it to be considered open?


Define: cry. Which sounds are included?

Define: pains. Which count?

Define: life. Which forms are we talking about here, 

who is screaming––and who has stopped?


Where do these faces go when they leave us?

Here’s a better question: why do we keep 

insisting that they are ours?


If someone shuts their eyes against some 

never-ending light, can they be considered 

a witness? If someone builds a dam across a river 

of time, can it be stopped, and what is the name 

for the resulting body? And if someone removes 

a dam and the river moves again, now altered 

in shape, is the dam still real, or has it been erased?


If eyes trained on sky notice wild promises in stars, 

do these vows have any bearing once obscured 

by the light pollution of the empire’s cities?


If breath denied failed to void the depth 

of inhalation, what do you call the sound that follows?

The rising, leaning, lilting unsparing hallelujahs of 

nobody knows, the forever-present notes that no hand 

grants and no thief can steal, reaching back to some original 

promise, in the first splitting of atoms, when it was 

discovered that the matter they contained was mostly 

open spaces for the vibration of shimmering notes, 

haunting the seeming solids behind the spectral gates; what is this?


Consider moving. Listen. Consider this breath, the sound 

behind it; consider the open mouth, the next note. 

Sing.




Image: Alma Thomas, Grassy Melodic Chant, 1976, acrylic on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum.

About the artistAlma Woodsey Thomas, now a renowned figure of African-American art history, had her debut showing at the age of seventy-five, after a thirty-five year career of teaching art to D.C. junior high school students. 


Friday, June 18, 2021

Curious Sends Memo to Dead Artist of Living Work

TO:         Hieronymous Bosch

FROM:         Curious 

CC:         Anyone else who might be wondering

DATE:         Now


SUBJECT:         That Garden You Painted

        also: The way your work is frequently invoked 

                        as an experiential reference point. 

                        As in, This year is feeling very Hieronymous Bosch.  

                        Your name as an adjective–– as with Kafka, or Dali.

                  How one might want to inquire as to your thoughts.


You: pessimistic-fantastical visionary of hopes and fears,

Jerome of the forest, you left no letters or diaries: what now?


We look on, knowing nothing, about what you "probably meant." And yet:

You likely lived six decades or more in the house your grandfather built.


You watched, at thirteen, the burning fire of four-thousand homes in your town.

You didn't always favor Flemish style; the transparent glaze concealed.


You wanted revelation, went impasto; rough, to point to your hand.

As if to reject the presumption that it was God painting the forms.


You even signed some; most were lost. The God of your garden was youthful.

How big the fruit! What a menagerie, waiting to explode back home.


It welcomes a memory, of taking great care with a painting of marker on white.

I filled the page with detail; this was first grade, we were asked to draw the garden

I could not wait to be seen, for what I could see! What a marvel. I could not wait,

  to share this delight!

Butterflies cocooned in this center of knowing; I would explode out soon.


I filled the page with detail in first grade; we drew the garden.

Nobody asked me for a unicorn; I knew it was perfect like I knew drawing breath

Butterflies cocooned in the center, like promises, I would reveal myself soon. 

Teacher made the rounds and paused at my desk; I drew in breath, feeling her moved.


Nobody asked me for a unicorn. There were none in the garden, she told me.

Those are pagan, she said. This was confusion. I thought garden was everything good, and 

unicorns the best of all time.

She was moved to remind me that everything I ever wanted was exactly the reason for the fall. 

I was a mute, infant Eve, holding my half-eaten fruit. It soured quickly. I did not draw for her 

again.


Dear Jerome, your work here raises questions about ambiguity.

Others see total alignment with orthodoxies of your time. Still,

isn't it ironic, at least somewhat, how much heaven in your hell?


Heavens from earth, the third day, enter this paradise lost. Come in, now!

Rabbits dance behind Eve, suggestive of mating; cautionary tale?

Or just good loving? And what about the dragon tree: eternal life?


Here giraffe, here elephant, here a lion eating prey. Pray, what's that?!

The cat has the lizard! And who is that cloaked figure reading, right there?

Is that a duck, behind a fish? Without shame? Only curious now.


Hey teens, don't eat cherries with great lords; they'll throw the pits in your face. Truth!

Women carry fruit on heads; acrobats ride camels and unicorns.

Ladies strut with peacock pluck. Dance, dance, dance! Who waits for their entrance, here?


See winged fish, strawberry! Come inside this shell, land on constant youth!

No child or aged person in sight; they fly in tandem on eagle lions. 


They fly trees of life. See bird of death perched on branches. The gallant knight

wears a dolphin tail, scratching the back of his head; as above, so below.


Then comes damnation, or does it? The dark and cold are over the top, 

Waters frozen, fire waits: a bestiary for feasting on bodies.


City's burning, river's blood; crucified on instruments, the choir sings. 

Rotting trunks for tree-man's arms, his body a broken shell; his gut pierced.


Beasts have at it; wolves eat the last knight; the dragon has run out again.

But Jerome, does it get annoying; everyone speculating about what you


meant; does it get old, everyone asking about the rules of the game,

and all the fine print, forgetting that the point was to play?



Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, oil on oak panels, 205.5 cm × 384.9 cm (81 in × 152 in), Museo del Prado, Madrid






Thursday, June 17, 2021

Simultaneous Open Windows

Open fist against graffitied bricks, he watches crows, remembers death.

Painted peacock lady smiles over traffic lights; checks the mirror, pouts.


Back-to-back on the park bench, a pair wonders if they are dating yet.

Babies bearing swords beat against trees and stones while sandboxes still wait.


Queens rock hi-tops, heads leaning toward hips, and braided babes run.

Mob men in trench coats talk business and horses while sirens wail upstairs.


Holiday blue notes shine cool on midnight sidewalks; her walking pace slows.

By park fountains he reminded her, What’s the point? ––Meaning, of her rage.


Baby boy finds mama’s stash. She won’t know what he eats, until later.

He fell in love: first God, then the ancients, then woman; then he was done.


Don’t tell me what to do,  she says, leg crossed over knee. He listens, nods.

Bullet clears rib cage to stop against spine; now there is no need for shoes.


If you sit beneath trees long enough with snacks out, squirrels come to eat.

Makers cross the street. Meeting halfway, they embrace. Cars honk and they laugh.


Joining foreheads, seated lovers bow, form a heart by the fountain mist.

The bracelet was there to remind him to count each memory, but her.


Sketching rocks bathed in light since the sun rose, try to remember dawn.



Notes:

The title comes from the painting by Robert Delaunay (1912, oil on canvas; Tate London). The poem came from an exercise done on the seventeenth of the month. In honor of Alan Ginsberg’s American Sentences (A haiku without line breaks, seventeen syllables), I aimed to write seventeen of them. Then I took some liberties with arrangement and punctuation. Sometimes breaking from the sentence (into two or three), I kept lines of seventeen syllables, each aimed toward a particular scene, during a particular twenty-four-hour period, on a particular street, in an imagined city, present day.


Image: "Central Park Sailboat Pond" by Regan Vercruysse on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivs 2.0 Generic license. 




Wednesday, June 16, 2021

Deep Sky Observing


So you own a star chart. 

There is much more.


What’s wrong?

Not seeing anything.

Try averted vision.


What books? What size? 

How far? How much? 

When? 

How far?

Are we there?


How many inches?

Just wait. I have rid myself 

of rarely used accessories 

in my garage.


For example?

I found out 

that I did not want 

to be a mathematician.


What is the best way?

Look at your maps. Find 

a dark country road. In

hunting season, be careful!


Traveling alone?

You may have to walk. 

Worth the effort, 

for dark skies.


Cloud cover?

Pay attention. 

Conditions repeat 

over time.


How do I––?

Look. Use eyes and 

mind: a technique 

for seeing. Take a break. 

Nap. Wash the mirror 

until the solution 

drains away.


How about something 

–for general purposes?

No.


Why not?

We don’t live 

in a general-purpose universe.


Brand new equipment!

Try it out.


Going all the way!

The new bracket does not fit.

The drive gear needs more lubricant.


Wasting precious dark sky time?

Patience. Try out that new mount 

before you leave. 

Be prepared.





Inspiration (and found words/ phrases) from the opening three chapters of:

Coe, Steven R. Deep Sky Observing: The Astronomical Tourist. Springer, 2000.


Image: "Night Sky" by Steve Lyon on flickr under an Attribution Share-Alike 2.0 Generic license.



Tuesday, June 15, 2021

Big and Little: A Reunion

BIG

I held you in my arms and breathed against the silence. Then, when you were speaking, you announced, Play a game, and you returned me––back to what I’d learned how to renounce. 


When you were speaking you announced, Tell me a riddle! and I held you high above me toward the stars. Here is how to croon what I am learning to announce, of wonder: here is Venus, now Orion; there a satellite, now Mars.


And everything we shared came out in singsong, and every note within it came out true. Teach me spaghetti by the moonlight, drink a spring song. Everything contained a season; it was you, in this loving cup, now brimming, lands the chorus of a soul; long bent on new receiving, long past dying in its hole. Would you wait and listen for the riddle I would tell, beyond the point of speaking past this silence of this well?


Where I have fallen will you find me, if I give you certain clues; will you listen if I play now, every verse of these late blues?


I’m finding now a riddle, and I’d sing it if I could; but I’m out of rhymes, so share here: once, man living, cut for wood.


What’s tall when young, short when old, and can die in a single breath?


This is the end of the time when we rhyme.  But wait!  Consider these words. Another puzzle goes like this. I kept it for you: Consider a fork in the road. 


A stranger in a strange land arrives at an intersection: East or West? One will take you to your destination, the other to hopeless despair. At the fork, two men. Each knows the way, but one always lies. What to do?



LITTLE

Remember how we used to play the guessing game?


Animal, vegetable, mineral: over time, like this: whenever the seahorse, during the age of the narwhal, from time to time, the tortoise––sooner or later, a ferret.


From time to time, a gem squash as long as an English cucumber. In the meantime, this heirloom tomato, and all of a sudden- Rutabaga!


At this instant, taste the snap-peas, until zucchini, okra, chives, until adamantine and agate, since granite, garnet, jacobsite.


Before, until now. Ever after, return. Again!



BIG

Back to the crossroads question, and the two men. Remember this: ask either, “What direction would the other say?”  Whatever you hear, do the opposite, and you will be on the right path.


Whatever you hear, take my hand, in this silence, where I’ve fallen, show me:  Laugh!



LITTLE

[laughing]


Again!






Monday, June 14, 2021

Remembering, Borges, Flights

Morning.
Morning!
 
The dreams are gone again. Memory is full of holes.
Mind the gap!
 
Do you know whose memory is the least contaminated?
A baby’s?
 
Maybe, but not what I was thinking. 
?
 
A patient with amnesia.
?
 
They can't contaminate by remembering. It just comes.
And goes.
 
Right, a free flow. 
Did you hear about the artist with face blindness?
 
To lose one face is enough. Imagine losing them all.
She made interesting self-portraits. She did them in the dark, feeling her face, adding paint to canvas; feeling again. Art as an act of looking, free of the presumption of sight.
 
Do goldfish really have only eight seconds of it?
Memory?
 
Yes, or is this just a myth told to children who would otherwise be very sad about the creature in the bowl, in the plastic bag from the fair, doomed to this constant back and forth?
Borges called it a pile of broken mirrors. 
 
The fishbowl?
Memory.
 
He died on this day, in 1986.
That was the year I forgot how to fly in my dreams.
 
How?
The trick was to remember the state of dreaming. Then I had to flap really hard. My arms, because that's all I had, no wings or feathers.
 
Yeah, but how did you forget?
Whoever knows, but that year my dreams or something started taking me too hard and fast, I could not remember until it was too late. 
 
Borges said there are no images at the end, only words.
Remember 1986?
 
There were bombs everywhere in the news. I didn't see them up close, but I worried. 
They were waiting under parked cars, in office buildings, churches, synagogues, planes.
 
It was my first Communion year. I remember waiting to be suffused in light. 
The Challenger exploded. I remember the plumes of flame and smoke on the screen. My second-grade teacher had wheeled the television into the classroom so we could see it live, the techno-miracle of space travel.
 
Chernobyl, too.
After that, radioactive deposits were found in every country in the northern hemisphere.
 
There was a human chain that year, five million links long from New York to Long Beach. 
As a reminder, right?
 
Yes, of hunger. Homelessness. Easily forgotten by the housed and fed.
They were flooding the streets.
 
This was Reagan's America. It was popular to cite an epidemic of laziness, compounded by drugs, as the reason. 
Just say No, but the hands did something else.
 
Said yes?
No, they answered another question. A better one. The question of the body before you. 
 
Answer like an open hand.
Right. Like, "Here."
 
Do you remember Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings?
He observed that there are dragons in every part of the world.
 
Yeah, he said we don't know what they mean, only that they are always there.
What memories do they hold; what future projections? 
 
I love his face, Borges. How it would light up when he smiled.
He must have been something in person.
 
Like a baby. Or a person who has forgotten everything and sees only––
Light?
 
The play of light and shadow.
An uninterrupted flow.
 
I love watching babies before their vision develops.
Their faces, do you mean?
 
Yeah, how they light up and start laughing at something in the ceiling.
And you watch them, and you wonder what are they seeing?
 
And why can't I?
We probably used to.
 
But I can't remember.









 
 
 


*The idea of a patient with amnesia as having the least contaminated memory comes from Sarah Manguso’s Ongoingness: The End of a Diary, as described beautifully in Maria Popova’s Brainpickings article: "Ongoingness: Sarah Manguso on Time, Memory, Beginnings and Endings, and the True Measure of Aliveness." 

* A story about artist known as Carlotta appears in the BBC News, and the documentary about her journey, “Lost in Face” appeared in a BBC News article by Vibeke Venema, “Prosopagnosia: The Artist in Search of Her Face,” published August 16, 2020. BBC World Service.

* "As the end approaches, there are no longer any images from memory––there are only words." Source: Jorge Luis Borges, Andrew Hurley (2004). “Aleph and other stories”, Penguin Classics

Sunday, June 13, 2021

Forms

Every medium has its own personality. Paper is delicate so everything gets a dreamy fluid quality, light dissolving over the landscape. On paper you can see the smudge of erasure, the changes, the trial and error. Consider the difference between this and something like film, or film-less photos, those bodies of pixellated light in captivity.


With photographs everything looks like something that a crazed nostalgic is trying to freeze outside of time. Oil on canvas: longings laid bare, to hold what will not be held. The time spent anyway, squinting. 


A bedside book in childhood: Lives of the Saints, dog-eared at Joan of Arc, because of the way she didn’t flinch, that insistently cross-dressing soul. I think her gift was less that she heard a voice all day long telling her what to do, but that she listened.


Now it’s art books, too heavy to lift with one hand, propped open across a chest and half-waking dreams of Blake’s Jacob’s Ladder, all the near-transparent souls climbing doggedly into blinding light, none looking as though they have any idea what it may be, but there it is waiting, anyway, pouring over and through their bodies and their steps in a luminous column and you get the sense that they’re climbing forever like a white-knuckled novena, World Without End.


Joan was burned at the stake for three reasons: one, she wore pants; two, she wore them into battle; three, what she said about the voice she heard, even after it was clear what would happen if she didn’t retract. There was a line between what you could see and may not see. She crossed.


Before he painted Jacob’s Ladder, William Blake was getting regularly arrested for bar fights, and after he painted his opus, he died, as the legend goes, amid visions of angels. What did he see in them, I wonder, and how was it different from the eternities he saw in hours, the heavens in his wildflowers, or the worlds he found in grains of sand?


A want to hold it all in an instant, the forever dream against countless suggestions that seeing something is almost always very different than seeing everything, and the end of the world something different than the end of every known part. 




Image: "Jacob's Ladder" by José María Pérez Nuñez on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 2.0 Generic License.


Saturday, June 12, 2021

Before the Storm

Consider one beginning, how above the blue carpet of a grandmother’s living room, there had been a painting of a small boat in a storm, against a dark sky. 


Below this, on a stand, an oversized bible, the pages slightly gilded at the edges; what it meant to wonder, in this place, on a summer afternoon, back against the blue carpet, how it was that anything at all had started, how from this wonder a body might get up and walk to the book on display, turning to the beginning, and puzzling over the words, in awe of the poet’s certainty.


Only words and nothing else until a command came, and then it was Light,  and after that, the seas and the forests and the beasts and a man and after him, it is said, from a bone taken from the center of his breathing, a woman; consider learning, how she met him in the garden; consider wondering how they knew how to play, and imagining the horror of living ever after, dying to know it again, after they beheld in the center of the garden, the tree of the knowledge the limits of what they could know. Drunk on abundance, they weren’t ready to accept any limits. They had no practice. It was not as though there was a choice to be made, though later it would be framed as though there had been. In the beginning, knowing nothing but abundance, how can anyone look away when the very source is given, to taste? 


They say she bit first. Of course, she would have been the one among the branches, gathering fruit. Later she would be painted as a sinner, but how could she be anything but a child in these original days? Here, someone whispers: serpent, man, or God––in the beginning, does it matter, or is this a moment when it is possible to imagine a single hope, constant as a pulse? How it whispers, like the rustle of leaves at the edge of a branch at late afternoon, “Stay.”


Image: "Eclairs lointains" by jmbaud74 on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivs 2.0 Generic License


Friday, June 11, 2021

Epiphany: Live in Concert

There is a night, long after my bedtime in 1983, when the three kings take the stage. Soul is leading. For a moment, he is front and center, green jumpsuit and perfect hair, wanting company. The numbers dead from the Ethiopian drought have reached four million, and protestors are gathering at Greenham Common Air Force Base as Reagan’s army deploys missiles. It’s almost time to invade Grenada. It’s civil war in Zimbabwe, earthquake in New York, the birth of Mario Bros and Microsoft Word, some say the birth of the internet, and a new land speed record in the Black Rock Desert. I don’t understand what is happening.


The King of Soul calls on the rising King of Pop, younger and still darker than we knew him later, who leans in to be embraced by Mr. Dynamite, kissing his ear, his first words into the mic, I love you; I love you, then spin, shimmy, what is this? A Moonwalk revelation, ending in an embrace, the wide white smile of The Godfather of Soul shining back. It’s the Embassy Bombing in Beirut, the highest U.S. unemployment rate since 1941, the assassination of Aquino in the Philippines. Here comes Run DMC, Depeche Mode, Iron Maiden; the age of the international superstar.  Let’s dance, karma chameleon, I want to party like it’s 1999. It’s time to fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen; buckle up, it’s the law. 


Next comes the King of Funk; Prince, where are you? Pointer finger extends a royal summons to the back of the room, stage left. The Artist arrives straddling the waist of the white-bearded muscle man who bears him on his back, whose image calls to mind Hell's Angels; up goes His Royal Badness in a futuristic jumpsuit, gold lame details, heels. This king on the guitar, a prolonged erotic moment. Oh no, it's not a jumpsuit, now the top half is coming off, now it's the shirtless High Priest of Pop making love to the Mic stand, to the audience, thrusting himself into the space between the music and their rising cheers, then falling like a spent lover into the crowd. They are filling the prisons, building new warehouses for storage of the fathers and brothers and sons. There are bullet holes in the ceilings. The new warehouses are stacked five stories high; they can’t build them fast enough. The vans arrive in a constant stream; the machine needs bodies. The bodies are the fathers and the brothers, the uncles and the sons. Where are they now? They are Away.


This is the year I enter school - line up! Bells, the bells, the stone buildings, the weight of this ominous word, terrorist, its point to point to some being not quite human, grounds for extermination, but now, we were told was the age when the wars were done; now, the adults said, was a time of hard-earned peace. Of progress, the dawn of a new age! News of another car bomb punctuated news of mass extinctions, and even with the bombs erupting everywhere, even with the mass extinctions, and the adults looked ill with symptoms of battle fatigue that no one was allowed to discuss. 


It is the year of the West Bank fainting epidemic, and epidemics of fainting elsewhere, especially at concerts; it was the heyday of new religion, and our stadiums became our new meccas; and Sally Ride is the first woman in Space, Ride, Sally, Ride! and Guion Bluford is the first black man in space, Say it Loud! Vanessa Williams the first black Miss America, and the King holiday is signed into law. The Zapatistas are rising; Thriller is released. 


I am too young to be at the concert; too young to even know the names of the kings who take the stage. I find the footage later, among the artifacts of the hyperspace that was being assembled around us. I pour through the artifacts, looking for clues in the aftermath; it’s the same question in any aftermath, isn’t it? What happened? And what was there before? And, was there any sign, before it hit, what was happening?


I can’t help it, the way I keep returning to the moment when the second of the kings takes the stage, the way he says I love you like he’s someone just arriving, and I love you like he’s someone already getting ready to leave. I can’t help but think that if I had seen him then, I would have been moved with recognition. Even then, before I knew anything about anything except the speed of the way it feels to spin with your arms out wild, knowing you’re about to fall flat when the spinning gets too much; that’s what we did then, holding hands until we released them, falling flat and breathless on our backs, laughing in terror at the still-spinning sky.



Image: "epiphany" by spinster cardigan on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.


Thursday, June 10, 2021

Lost and Found

Once I lost my iPhone my wallet, my keys. This on multiple occasions, several each.

Once I found a box turtle! It was in the middle of the street, by the water tower.


Then I lost my wedding ring, my bike, my surfboard.

But listen! Hear this: single mom needs help, getting a car for cheap. Nothing fancy! Please let me know! Thank you.


Missing animal pet? Lost cats, Siamese and tabby, both fixed, please return, no questions asked, I beg you.

I'd lost you anyway, listening to vintage sad songs, seventy to be exact.


Lost parakeet near Sea World, but he could be anywhere. He is friendly, but shy. Lost briefcase, too.

What if we walked around like we do in these ads, wearing our missing on our chests, like billboards for our losses?


Lost childhood friends. I disappeared for a decade, lost all contacts. Do you remember the playground on Euclid with the green monkey bars, near the school? 

I kept your scent on me as long as I could make it last.


You would know when you met me, that I am also missing childhood friends and lost cats, at at least a dozen sets of keys, not to mention those years when who knows what we were thinking, live and learn, not to mention that season when someone left the cage door open overnight and self-respect got out, and I can't remember why; not to mention, have you seen these memories? Not to mention, have you ever wondered if they really happened? 


Not to mention the way that–––

–––that thing that

–––I meant to tell you

–––was more real than anything I have ever witnessed

–––and there I go, losing the words again.


I lost that one paper I was supposed to deal with. I thought I put it in the special pile with the other Very Important Documents, but it's not there, and all that is in the pile are a bunch of receipts for things I don't even own anymore.

And where did the time go? 


Don't even start.

Have you seen my mojo?


Girl, it's right there, check it out. Now turn!

[Turn, turn, sashay, turn]


I see you! That’s it, right there. There you are!



Image: Eastern box turtle in Prince George's County, Md. by Chesapeake Bay Program on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Generic License


* This is why I love Craigslist, for the poetry of "Lost and Found" and "Missed Connections"


Wednesday, June 9, 2021

Calypso's Lament

Let it be a song, then, and us inside its shattering wings — and you, when did I first know by your hand the letting of the blood of ancient wounds, unscheduled tears? If it began in this moment, where would you find me, if at all? In the space where we last slept, dream me dreaming you.


My arms, so long beseeching some anchor, now find you, and the smooth plateau of your hungering back erupts in tremors above me; the aftershock a head before this altar, a whispered Amen. It is easy to learn new aches. New peace is something else, when the night undoes the day.


Let me be the simple task that is the most difficult to do; sketch filigreed complications on the stretched skin between these ribs, only bless and be blessed. “Shh,” someone says, don’t hurry, but I am faithful as the dog that holds on, because the desire to pray is a prayer.


If you will not heal my doubt, let me bear the unbelieving, about face, face this enemy facing consequence your face in my hands, I heard you calling, let me see.


In the beginning, the word; it was a god of open mouths, all breath and a promise. Take it, I say, here. I had only this imitation to give, and immortality. Blessed be this sin, teach me your new shame; to die is only difficult for the proud. If this kingdom we are holding is the only one, leave mine pillaged and let me know its glory only by what remains.


Let me give what I may not hold, dream an answer to the question I dare not speak aloud and pass it back, folded, in your hands. Do you fear the dead? I want to meet them in the olive grove before we find opposite sides of an invisible highway from which to sing our goodbyes. Let me know a patience to cook blood, freeze the earth against my cheek. 


Give us this day, taste. 


What is this mortal body? I want to study how it shudders around a heart. From this quiver pull a single arrow. Aim another card close to my chest; teach me new deliverance, then give me rest.


You had a secret and lost it. It was the expanse of your life. Look, I will open another to you. Call it forever. Come here. Let us be suddenly young and always, our monuments etched in Crayola hues, each touch conferring the ancient blessings of the rainbow that followed the flood.


What else did we ever do with our bodies, but offer them on altars, before the sun and the moon against drought and flood, against all the ways there were to die slowly we found new ways to sing, take me now and make it swift, so many candle flames roaring against the darkened hills?


Give me a sermon and I’ll sing you a psalm. Raise a hand, raise a glass, raise the dead. Take this body from this tomb where they left me in rags after the last breath I took alone. Brother, take my hand and do not move for it may pass. Hurry, it may get away. Are you tired? I am tired too, of waiting on this island, but how else do you take the measure of a beating heart?


*In Homer’s Odyssey, the goddess Calypso is a nymph on the island of Ogygia, where she detained the hero Odysseus for seven years, as he tried to get home. By the time he washed up on her shores, he had lost all his men and most of his hope. He found comfort and pleasure on the island, and was well cared for by the goddess, who was a match for his wit and a lover of music. His departure was an essential moment in his journey home, when she freed him reluctantly after receiving an order from Zeus, via Hermes, the messenger. She had offered the hero immortality if he stayed; he refused. She generally gets painted as the jilted, short-sighted lover, but I could never read her without thinking that she must have genuinely loved him to make such an offer, and it must have truly broken her heart when he left. As the story goes, there was no one like him. As I do with women of antiquity (including goddesses, nymphs, and gorgons), I sometimes wonder about what parts of her have been erased in order to fit the perspectives of the men who wrote her history for her. 



Image: "Calypso" by Pinc Floit on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license