Sometimes just to see that light, that slow light of afternoon washing over sidewalks and the faces of buildings, sometimes just to see it is to betray myself, to go back to being a boy.
I will never be at the mercy of others again, I say fiercely, which is nonsense: we are at the mercy of others every day of our lives. But at huge cost we build up the illusion that we are not, that we are adults, and masters of our destinies. Across a wide array of cultures, those most committed to independence and individual freedom have been the most stubborn slaveholders. The Golden Polish aristocracy, who hired and fired their kings; the American Southerners, who were willing to fight to the death for the principle of radical independence, the free Athenians who acknowledged no lord -- the more famous they are for their unwillingness to be ruled, the more likely they are to have held others in subjection. Only the poverty of our education leads us to find this strange. It makes all the sense in the world. We fling the toga or the cape over our shoulders. I am free because I am a master, we say.
But it is a fantasy that sickens and turns, because we are never masters enough. The slave on his heap of rags, dreaming in his filthy corner: is he flinging a cape over his shoulder? Not wasting his glance on the canaille as he strides down the street? Likely enough, and kicking him awake won't change it.
But again. How I am to avoid that poisonous afternoon light? I am not a boy any more. I am as free as I am going to get, in the dappled interlude between the prison of boyhood and the prison of old age. The air is pure and cold. There is time yet, there is time: but that doesn't mean there's time to waste.
The high call of the osprey. I own no one, least of all myself. I pray that the poison of the afternoon light may pass and leave no stain. You do turn and look back, you must, as you reach the ridge: you turn and look back on the land of humiliation. But then you walk on over the ridge, and the stiff pine needles break and release their sweetness under your feet. Even if it's only a day, or an hour, you have been on the far side of the hill. No master and no slave.
Breathe again, that resinous air, so you will remember it the next time that memory rises to choke you. There is freedom: there is a far side of the hill.
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Sun as Orange
A sun as orange as an orange rose
behind the gray, staggered
limbs of the douglas firs:
fires, fires all the way
from Mt Adams to Lake Chelan.
The radio spoke of particulates
and of vulnerable alveoli in lungs
long used to the rain and the breath of the sea;
there is a smell of campfires
as it lingers in damp sleeping bags,
and thrusting gray fingers of
what would be fog
if this were October: there's a catch
too far back in the throat to unspring.
The world is a vacant church
lit by high stained glass. Tonight
a sun as orange as an orange will set
behind the crumpled hills,
and a gasping bloody moon
will waver in the wind.
behind the gray, staggered
limbs of the douglas firs:
fires, fires all the way
from Mt Adams to Lake Chelan.
The radio spoke of particulates
and of vulnerable alveoli in lungs
long used to the rain and the breath of the sea;
there is a smell of campfires
as it lingers in damp sleeping bags,
and thrusting gray fingers of
what would be fog
if this were October: there's a catch
too far back in the throat to unspring.
The world is a vacant church
lit by high stained glass. Tonight
a sun as orange as an orange will set
behind the crumpled hills,
and a gasping bloody moon
will waver in the wind.
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Long White Sand
Struggling to bring this ashore, to roll this corpse up over the tidemark. Not sure, not at all sure, that I shouldn't just let it wash out to sea. Still, some pieties are inescapable. (Not that I'd care to be brought in myself: let me go.)
The clink clank of hammers, far away, of work that I used to understand. A stiff wind bending the beach pines. I remember nothing of all those things I worked so hard to master. There was some Latin verse: passion and a raft figured in it. Virgil? Ovid? I don't remember now, though I remember copying it out.
It's still so hard. I have to be ruthless, though, about cutting things out and leaving them alone. My time is shockingly short. By some methods of reckoning I have a one in seven chance of having a heart attack, in the next ten years. I don't believe my chances are that poor, but still, I'm in those crosshairs. Sooner or later. And that, of course, is barring accident or misadventure.
Still there is no better way to proceed than to go methodically through the to-do lists that I have made. One thing, and then the next. I keep circling back. Roll the corpse over onto its stomach, then onto its back again. A yard further up the beach.
Oh for the long white dunes and the beach running off into a white haze of spray on either hand! I am doing something wrong. I am doing something wrong. I don't know what, but I know the signs of it.
The knees of my levis wet from the sand. Grit under my fingernails. Heave again. Come on, man, up we go. You weren't a picky eater, lad! Tucked in with gusto.
As I rock back on my heels, and try to wipe the sweat out of my face without wiping the sand into my eyes, it occurs to me to wonder: what if this corpse is mine? I mean, after all, whose else would it be?
Because in that case I would really be free. Really. To walk away on the long white sand.
The clink clank of hammers, far away, of work that I used to understand. A stiff wind bending the beach pines. I remember nothing of all those things I worked so hard to master. There was some Latin verse: passion and a raft figured in it. Virgil? Ovid? I don't remember now, though I remember copying it out.
It's still so hard. I have to be ruthless, though, about cutting things out and leaving them alone. My time is shockingly short. By some methods of reckoning I have a one in seven chance of having a heart attack, in the next ten years. I don't believe my chances are that poor, but still, I'm in those crosshairs. Sooner or later. And that, of course, is barring accident or misadventure.
Still there is no better way to proceed than to go methodically through the to-do lists that I have made. One thing, and then the next. I keep circling back. Roll the corpse over onto its stomach, then onto its back again. A yard further up the beach.
Oh for the long white dunes and the beach running off into a white haze of spray on either hand! I am doing something wrong. I am doing something wrong. I don't know what, but I know the signs of it.
The knees of my levis wet from the sand. Grit under my fingernails. Heave again. Come on, man, up we go. You weren't a picky eater, lad! Tucked in with gusto.
As I rock back on my heels, and try to wipe the sweat out of my face without wiping the sand into my eyes, it occurs to me to wonder: what if this corpse is mine? I mean, after all, whose else would it be?
Because in that case I would really be free. Really. To walk away on the long white sand.
Thursday, August 06, 2015
Pemberley
We will not be called upon to justify our lives. No ledger appears at the close, no recording angel holds an exit interview. What's forgotten remains forgotten, and the rest spins, as it must, in the slipstream of other people's stories. We are characters in their lives, mostly minor ones, and we play our parts in memory as the staging and the script requires. At the Foundation I see people setting up memorial funds, confident that scores or hundreds of people will donate to someone's memory, and go on donating for years. A few gifts come in. One or two people even give again a year later. But mostly -- your stock falls rapidly, when you're dead.
If you're deeply aware of this transience, you sometimes feel that your death has already sped past, and that your presence here is a haunting. Not so much alive as a living memory, walking carefully on imagined paths: so much of our existence was spent dreaming of things that would never happen. I imagine ghosts cluster most thickly in places they never arrived in life: they search for memories they never had a chance to make. It's Anne de Bourgh, not Elizabeth Bennet Darcy, who wanders the halls of Pemberley.
Still, a pale blue or a pale green fire follows my fingertips as I drag them along the gutters between your ribs, and my own breath is a efflorescence of crimson. The colors are almost intolerably vivid, between whiles. You could make a parlor game of it, if you liked. I prefer to let it be.
Instead, I hear the thud of my heart, like a distant pile-driver, and the tide-surge of my lungs in the stillness. There's a faint echo in the nerve cords, stretched from point to point, which hum under their breath. Listen and the sound will stop; look and the colors will fade. "Only things that can die are real," says someone -- the Unicorn? -- in a Peter Beagle novel. Sure, it's a point of view: To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
If you're deeply aware of this transience, you sometimes feel that your death has already sped past, and that your presence here is a haunting. Not so much alive as a living memory, walking carefully on imagined paths: so much of our existence was spent dreaming of things that would never happen. I imagine ghosts cluster most thickly in places they never arrived in life: they search for memories they never had a chance to make. It's Anne de Bourgh, not Elizabeth Bennet Darcy, who wanders the halls of Pemberley.
Still, a pale blue or a pale green fire follows my fingertips as I drag them along the gutters between your ribs, and my own breath is a efflorescence of crimson. The colors are almost intolerably vivid, between whiles. You could make a parlor game of it, if you liked. I prefer to let it be.
Instead, I hear the thud of my heart, like a distant pile-driver, and the tide-surge of my lungs in the stillness. There's a faint echo in the nerve cords, stretched from point to point, which hum under their breath. Listen and the sound will stop; look and the colors will fade. "Only things that can die are real," says someone -- the Unicorn? -- in a Peter Beagle novel. Sure, it's a point of view: To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Sunday, August 02, 2015
Fontanelle
Midsummer, leith an if you care;
the foreleith and the afterleith can fail
to knit. The intercalary comes there,
the fontanelle of the year, the fruiting swale
bandaged, but never healed, by a traitor moon:
we stumble on in haste for the hunter or the harvest,
but never quite escape our hearing of that croon,
that soft and pulsing place, when we are farthest
from the Yule. Suppose it blossomed then,
suppose the sutures opened, like all the doors
on a summer morning, and the cool air came in,
kissing knees and faces, pattering on all fours
over every linseed-polished floor,
suppose we gave a welcome to the third
glorious midsummer moon and called it lord,
suppose we all fell silent until his voice was heard.
the foreleith and the afterleith can fail
to knit. The intercalary comes there,
the fontanelle of the year, the fruiting swale
bandaged, but never healed, by a traitor moon:
we stumble on in haste for the hunter or the harvest,
but never quite escape our hearing of that croon,
that soft and pulsing place, when we are farthest
from the Yule. Suppose it blossomed then,
suppose the sutures opened, like all the doors
on a summer morning, and the cool air came in,
kissing knees and faces, pattering on all fours
over every linseed-polished floor,
suppose we gave a welcome to the third
glorious midsummer moon and called it lord,
suppose we all fell silent until his voice was heard.
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Something New and Vigorous and Shameless
Toast with marmalade. Ancient sunlight resting lightly on the northwest surfaces of curtains, restaurant tables, hands. Feeling in full possession of myself at last. The dark rind of my heart settles deeper in its nest of ribs, and I scan the world with a hunter's eye, relaxed but deliberate: the sense of being master of my surroundings, once so common and recently so rare, has come back.
I slept, in two stages, until I was all slept out. It's been a couple weeks since that last happened. I feel like the grass that finally got its rain a couple days ago: a sudden unexpected strength is running through me.
Not that this sense of invulnerability is to be believed. It's one face that turns to me, out of many.
I'm tired of all the old stories, the laments for vanished makers, the regrets for fallen kingdoms. I want to make something new and vigorous and shameless, something that will gleam, something that will catch the setting sun and hold it in the sky. Something that will force other faces to turn to me. There are more, there are more who have business with me before the end. It's time to call them up.
I slept, in two stages, until I was all slept out. It's been a couple weeks since that last happened. I feel like the grass that finally got its rain a couple days ago: a sudden unexpected strength is running through me.
Not that this sense of invulnerability is to be believed. It's one face that turns to me, out of many.
I'm tired of all the old stories, the laments for vanished makers, the regrets for fallen kingdoms. I want to make something new and vigorous and shameless, something that will gleam, something that will catch the setting sun and hold it in the sky. Something that will force other faces to turn to me. There are more, there are more who have business with me before the end. It's time to call them up.
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Where The Target Is
Downtown, a woman fell into step with me on the sidewalk. She gave me an open, curious glance, and then asked, "Are you from here?"
"From Portland? I am," I said.
"Do you know where the Target is?"
I had to think about that: there is newish one downtown, I think. "I'm afraid not," I said. "I have a vague feeling it's over thataway," and I waved my hands towards the Southwest. "But I really don't know."
"OK," she said. "Thanks!" And we parted at the next corner.
People often approach me for directions downtown: I tend to meet people's eyes and smile, which makes me approachable, but I walk briskly, like someone has definite business somewhere, which makes me seem easy to get rid of. So that was unremarkable. What was remarkable was that this woman was black.
My first thought, upon meeting her eyes, was that she was African. There was an easy boldness about her, and a cheerful friendly confidence, that was not at all typical of the guarded, formal interactions I usually have with American blacks on the street, and especially not with Portland blacks. This is not a city with a happy history of race relations, nor a particularly happy present. But this woman's accent was pure Midwestern, probably Chicago, with no African trace that I could detect.
So the interaction was heartening. It was not a "here I am a black person approaching a white person" interaction, it was an "I wonder where the Target is?" interaction. Like almost all Americans, I have a desperate longing for the racial history of my country to disappear. This little interaction made me feel that it had. We could start over. The world was new.
There has been so much bad news coming over the wire that many people feel that things are getting worse, or at best, that they will always remain this way. But I don't actually think that's true. I think that comes of not ever having fully understood how bad things have been, not really having understood or digested the long white terror after the end of the hot phase of the Civil War. Things are bad now. But they are actually better. The fact that people can say how bad it is means that it's better.
A single interaction on the street is not evidence: it barely amounts even to a data point. But I'm old enough to feel it in my bones: this was not an interaction that was possible in my youth, and not one that was likely even twenty years ago, in this town. There is a cultural shift. The wind has changed.
There's everything yet to be done. But I'm filled today with an unreasoning joy, and a certainty that in the end—in the end long beyond my end, of course, but still, in the end—we are going to win this one.
"From Portland? I am," I said.
"Do you know where the Target is?"
I had to think about that: there is newish one downtown, I think. "I'm afraid not," I said. "I have a vague feeling it's over thataway," and I waved my hands towards the Southwest. "But I really don't know."
"OK," she said. "Thanks!" And we parted at the next corner.
People often approach me for directions downtown: I tend to meet people's eyes and smile, which makes me approachable, but I walk briskly, like someone has definite business somewhere, which makes me seem easy to get rid of. So that was unremarkable. What was remarkable was that this woman was black.
My first thought, upon meeting her eyes, was that she was African. There was an easy boldness about her, and a cheerful friendly confidence, that was not at all typical of the guarded, formal interactions I usually have with American blacks on the street, and especially not with Portland blacks. This is not a city with a happy history of race relations, nor a particularly happy present. But this woman's accent was pure Midwestern, probably Chicago, with no African trace that I could detect.
So the interaction was heartening. It was not a "here I am a black person approaching a white person" interaction, it was an "I wonder where the Target is?" interaction. Like almost all Americans, I have a desperate longing for the racial history of my country to disappear. This little interaction made me feel that it had. We could start over. The world was new.
There has been so much bad news coming over the wire that many people feel that things are getting worse, or at best, that they will always remain this way. But I don't actually think that's true. I think that comes of not ever having fully understood how bad things have been, not really having understood or digested the long white terror after the end of the hot phase of the Civil War. Things are bad now. But they are actually better. The fact that people can say how bad it is means that it's better.
A single interaction on the street is not evidence: it barely amounts even to a data point. But I'm old enough to feel it in my bones: this was not an interaction that was possible in my youth, and not one that was likely even twenty years ago, in this town. There is a cultural shift. The wind has changed.
There's everything yet to be done. But I'm filled today with an unreasoning joy, and a certainty that in the end—in the end long beyond my end, of course, but still, in the end—we are going to win this one.
Friday, July 24, 2015
Leaving The Water
I break the surface of the water, and wait
breathing the strange air, feeling my gills
heal over: my arms were so tired of being fins.
Of course, a man can drown
or be asked to pay back taxes,
which doesn't happen to fish.
But hands can grasp hands,
or the nobbles of a steering wheel, or
the handle of knife;
and fish, however calligraphic,
break down in the dotting of 'i's.
I will take this world of searing air
and the terror of sun,
the scrape of wind on the skin;
I will take the epithelium
of your lips pressed on mine,
I will leave the water
one time, one last time.
breathing the strange air, feeling my gills
heal over: my arms were so tired of being fins.
Of course, a man can drown
or be asked to pay back taxes,
which doesn't happen to fish.
But hands can grasp hands,
or the nobbles of a steering wheel, or
the handle of knife;
and fish, however calligraphic,
break down in the dotting of 'i's.
I will take this world of searing air
and the terror of sun,
the scrape of wind on the skin;
I will take the epithelium
of your lips pressed on mine,
I will leave the water
one time, one last time.
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Cascadia
I love a woman so black
the night overflows with her,
so big that there's no confining her.
There are the scars that feather backward;
there is the grace of flesh and the jet, ramen-
noodle kink of hair against my arm;
there is the curve of eyelid
that makes the heart stand still,
and listen for an answering beat.
No, not looking for absolution;
the long count of crimes can go
and sing for its supper. It's love,
the only love I know and the only one I've held
through a long strange bright and lingering summer
paused at the tremor's edge.
the night overflows with her,
so big that there's no confining her.
There are the scars that feather backward;
there is the grace of flesh and the jet, ramen-
noodle kink of hair against my arm;
there is the curve of eyelid
that makes the heart stand still,
and listen for an answering beat.
No, not looking for absolution;
the long count of crimes can go
and sing for its supper. It's love,
the only love I know and the only one I've held
through a long strange bright and lingering summer
paused at the tremor's edge.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Hatred of White
A spider, having learned
she is not going to take it at a run
takes a step and pauses
takes a step and pauses
on the vertical porcelain.
Can we call it patience?
Has her desire to escape the bathtub
decreased, or increased?
Is she aware of human eyes
watching her ascent
with oblique sympathy?
If she falls again
I'll drape a washcloth over the side
for easy access, but she can't know that.
She is betting her life on this climb;
and she knows well enough,
snowblind in this blaze of white,
she is a mark for every passing araneophage.
Or maybe she does not, maybe she knows only
unease, distress of spirit, hatred of white,
and the pause at each step
is helpless as a fall.
she is not going to take it at a run
takes a step and pauses
takes a step and pauses
on the vertical porcelain.
Can we call it patience?
Has her desire to escape the bathtub
decreased, or increased?
Is she aware of human eyes
watching her ascent
with oblique sympathy?
If she falls again
I'll drape a washcloth over the side
for easy access, but she can't know that.
She is betting her life on this climb;
and she knows well enough,
snowblind in this blaze of white,
she is a mark for every passing araneophage.
Or maybe she does not, maybe she knows only
unease, distress of spirit, hatred of white,
and the pause at each step
is helpless as a fall.
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Morning Light
Yesterday evening I walked west, toward the city, down from our little upland, across the 82nd Avenue gully, and up the slope of Mt Tabor, high enough to see the dark hills farther east. No mountain: a low cloud cover hid it. But I could see across to Mt Scott. I just wanted to walk, walk forever, hilltop to hilltop. But an hour was about what my knees would do. I turned back for home.
Always this ache, this longing to find some path out. I am so tired, and I can't keep up even with my daily tasks. I have tried to simplify, but the formula eludes me. Too many things too fast. I become duller-witted with each passing day: and even in my prime I was unable to untie these knots. What chance do I have now? Each mistake leads to the next, each waste entails more spending, every sleepless night leads to another. The taste of defeat is on my tongue. A deep breath makes me cough. I've played my bets and lost: why am I still at the table?
I know what's wrong: it's all these days without rain. Feeling sad and wan. Our neighbors aren't watering the tree they planted last year, and it's dying.
In the morning, the young crows wake first: those strange, bleating caws of the very young corvids, demanding to be fed. They pursue their parents, begging, begging even as they forage. They forage quite competently, but they're still driven by the habit of need, even now when the need is gone.
Morning light filters into the house. I could try to sleep again, or I could wander out into the day. Sleep, I think. Or at least lie down on the couch, and imagine the paths out, and the cold rain. It will rain again, someday.
Thursday, July 09, 2015
In a Time of Drought
Already, September hints, the curtains will fall
and the bare limbs of the trees
will tell their secrets again in an urgent whisper,
while the rain
runs down the hidden paisley gutters of the glass
back and forth, tracing the unseen curves like a finger
tracing the features of a dreaming friend.
And you listen, you listen hard, but
it's too fast, and there are names you do not know,
names such as "Alteridae" or "Windfool,"
so the syllables keep running, faster than you can hear,
and the secrets keep themselves.
Still, the trees stand, older than us and prouder,
and the leaves are thick now, from the valley to the hill;
sap spills over, leaf by leaf,
and the city brick is sticky underfoot.
There is no God but God and God
is a voiced velar stop, follow by a back vowel, culminating
in a voiced apico-alveolar stop.
In the beginning, we are told, was the word,
not the speaker. In which case also
the beginning was the leaf, and the tree perhaps
an afterthought, slowly bringing a sky in its wake,
and drawing a new sun up over the horizon
filling the world with the light of its desire;
and last of all—
Have you ever thought of how in English,
the beginning of God is a sort of strangling,
a drowning and a death? And once started,
you must go on, delivering what breath remains to you?
Only then do you tap the aveolar ridge
with your tongue, one last expense of breath,
and after that act of faith, only after,
do you get to breathe again.
Other languages, other stories, no doubt;
and the rain will rain harder this Fall
than it has ever rained before:
this summer longs for the falling rain
as the word longs for a voice.
Wednesday, July 01, 2015
Bracket
Proleptic grief: I suppose
I had better get used to it.
So often death
comes heralded now,
bracketed like
a First World War
artillery barrage:
one specialist says a year
(too long) and another
a couple months
(too short) and the death
moves slowly into focus,
churning up the soil
before and after.
You may invite
your trenchmates
to observe the remaining beauties of nature
how the blasted tree spines stand
like black runes
in the white morning;
how the rich regal purple,
blue, and green of the fly's body,
that magnificent iridescence,
is the next glory we will have:
but don't expect
enthusiastic reply.
Better the long slow scrimshaw
better the memorized letter from home
better
a snatch of sleep in the rocking earth.
I had better get used to it.
So often death
comes heralded now,
bracketed like
a First World War
artillery barrage:
one specialist says a year
(too long) and another
a couple months
(too short) and the death
moves slowly into focus,
churning up the soil
before and after.
You may invite
your trenchmates
to observe the remaining beauties of nature
how the blasted tree spines stand
like black runes
in the white morning;
how the rich regal purple,
blue, and green of the fly's body,
that magnificent iridescence,
is the next glory we will have:
but don't expect
enthusiastic reply.
Better the long slow scrimshaw
better the memorized letter from home
better
a snatch of sleep in the rocking earth.
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Cornrows
Cornrows, braids,
close-written texts rising from the scalp;
cuneiform hair gleaming on the wet clay
of a Sumerian morning:
weeping, weeping, long ago.
Did you ask, were you told,
why your fathers took spear and shield
and walked away with the dust between their toes,
and their soles already cracking?
It was the long tallies in clay,
bushels of grain owed and not delivered,
and now woven into your hair as the debt
of your skin and your people:
justice must be served, they say.
The counting of coup will never end,
and the doves are shot with the olive in their mouths.
close-written texts rising from the scalp;
cuneiform hair gleaming on the wet clay
of a Sumerian morning:
weeping, weeping, long ago.
Did you ask, were you told,
why your fathers took spear and shield
and walked away with the dust between their toes,
and their soles already cracking?
It was the long tallies in clay,
bushels of grain owed and not delivered,
and now woven into your hair as the debt
of your skin and your people:
justice must be served, they say.
The counting of coup will never end,
and the doves are shot with the olive in their mouths.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Quilt
Spin backwards till the whine of the centrifuge
rises to a shriek, then cut the fuel line. Down
fly the red and white streamers: down
fly the tinged drops. Above
you see what you want to see.
Down here, it's all the glass and the quick poison.
Look, just because it's one thing doesn't mean it's not another.
The day sank in smoke and a sweet sour smell
like a wound gone bad. The stars missed their footing:
Someone cranked the wheel
and shook them down the shabby front of heaven.
Look, even now some one is lying
as they lay out the big squares: orange,
the night-dark of eggplant or avocado,
a deep-stirred red to call for justice.
In the end
a quilt lasts because the woman who sewed the backing
knew or didn't know what she was doing: some quiet lady
in a small Midwestern town,
willing to meet any power of the Kingdom of Hell
armed only with her sewing machine and the right color of thread.
You laugh, but the devil doesn't. He has not
had a good night's sleep since the last time
she threaded in the bobbin. Who'd be the Lord of Darkness?
All work and no play. With the rise of Arcturus, and a hint
of the Borealis, the ground will shake,
and every bridge will fall into its river.
rises to a shriek, then cut the fuel line. Down
fly the red and white streamers: down
fly the tinged drops. Above
you see what you want to see.
Down here, it's all the glass and the quick poison.
Look, just because it's one thing doesn't mean it's not another.
The day sank in smoke and a sweet sour smell
like a wound gone bad. The stars missed their footing:
Someone cranked the wheel
and shook them down the shabby front of heaven.
Look, even now some one is lying
as they lay out the big squares: orange,
the night-dark of eggplant or avocado,
a deep-stirred red to call for justice.
In the end
a quilt lasts because the woman who sewed the backing
knew or didn't know what she was doing: some quiet lady
in a small Midwestern town,
willing to meet any power of the Kingdom of Hell
armed only with her sewing machine and the right color of thread.
You laugh, but the devil doesn't. He has not
had a good night's sleep since the last time
she threaded in the bobbin. Who'd be the Lord of Darkness?
All work and no play. With the rise of Arcturus, and a hint
of the Borealis, the ground will shake,
and every bridge will fall into its river.
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Tidal Flats
I'm dimly aware of not being my own master, that the words I'm saying are funneled through me. Echolalia. Not just the words; the thoughts as well. The longing for freedom as well as the longing for self: it's so deceptive. Neither is what I want: what I want is other people in subjection. Which would be all very well, were it not that holding people in subjection was my final answer, in the game of "let's define evil!" Which might still be very well, if a feeble and scatterbrained old man had any chance of subjecting anyone. As it is, I get to watch everything I've built and heaved up out of the wrack sliding down into the sand again. Wrong again.
And so I try to put the pieces together another way. Suppose I had been building out of love, rather than out of the desire for domination? Well, one is surely a distorted image of the other -- but which of which? And how would I know? And who has time to find out? Because we're far out on the flats, and the tide is coming in.
This absolute conviction that I am wrong is one of the few constants of my life. It is a psychological phenomenon, not a philosophical one. Of course I am convinced of my wrongness: I always have been, and presumably I always will be. Gnawing on that is not going to yield any marrow.
No, I have to turn, and breathe deep, and open my hands. This is the shadow of a day of idleness, that's all. It means nothing. It is sending me no message.
Turn seawards. Let the tide come. Since when have I been afraid of the sea? Not my worst enemy could accuse me of that.
And so I try to put the pieces together another way. Suppose I had been building out of love, rather than out of the desire for domination? Well, one is surely a distorted image of the other -- but which of which? And how would I know? And who has time to find out? Because we're far out on the flats, and the tide is coming in.
This absolute conviction that I am wrong is one of the few constants of my life. It is a psychological phenomenon, not a philosophical one. Of course I am convinced of my wrongness: I always have been, and presumably I always will be. Gnawing on that is not going to yield any marrow.
No, I have to turn, and breathe deep, and open my hands. This is the shadow of a day of idleness, that's all. It means nothing. It is sending me no message.
Turn seawards. Let the tide come. Since when have I been afraid of the sea? Not my worst enemy could accuse me of that.
Friday, June 19, 2015
Milk Witch
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| "TaraxacumOfficinaleSeed" by Greg Hume - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TaraxacumOfficinaleSeed.JPG#/media/File:TaraxacumOfficinaleSeed.JPG |
Blowball, cankerwort, doon-head-clock;
I always took dandelions the wrong way.
They were beautiful, I thought. Fierce.
Tougher than the tame grass;
more extravagant. Splinter-headed suns
drooping one day, and the next
(witch's gowan, milk witch)
lifting perfect spheres of white aeronauts,
ready to take to the reckless breeze.
Weeds: they grow where they're not wanted.
Yellow-gowan, Irish daisy, monks-head, puff-ball.
Well, so did I, and I plan to go on
wrecking the lawns of my betters, scattering my seed
wide as the wind will take it.
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Five Tips: What To Do If You're A Person Who Can't Save Money
Well, you're not a person who can't save money. But leave that aside for now. For the moment let's think about the problem this way: there are two people wearing your body and living your life and making your decisions. One of them wants to save money and one of them doesn't.
Tip #1: Treat both of these people as fully rational and intelligent. Because they are. There are lots of excellent reasons for spending money. There are good reasons (though fewer) for spending money you don't have. Your spendy self is not a willful unteachable brat. She's a human being with deep and important reasons for doing everything she does. Find out what they are. Find out why she thinks these things are more important than saving money. Honor her intentions. She's not going anywhere. Your solution is going to involve either enlisting her, or tricking her. Enlist her if you possibly can, because it's not as easy to trick her as you might think.
Tip #2: Trick your spendy self if you can. If you have an employer with a savings plan, which lets you save your money before you ever see it, and makes it hard to take the money back out once it's in, then do that.
Tip #3: If you're self-employed, or in debt, that won't work. You're going to have to enlist your spendy self. Get her on your side. Find the moments when she spends too much, and interrogate her about them. Why does this expenditure seem so imperative? What's at stake? Don't treat her like a naughty child. Treat her like an adult. She might be right, after all. But it's likely that you can persuade her that whatever end she's trying to achieve by spending this money -- generally, making somebody happy -- can actually be better served by NOT spending it. Saving that money rather than buying a treat -- that is the treat. You're buying them, and not just yourself, financial room to maneuver. You're buying freedom. You're buying treats to enjoy later.
Tip #4: Realize that they're out to get you. I don't ordinarily encourage this frame of mind, but in this case it's totally appropriate. They are out to get you. The marketers and credit card companies and banks, the media, often even your friends, are all trying to manipulate you into spending money. If you feel like the target of a plot, its because you are. Cultivate paranoia and even a little hatred. This economy is, by design and with full intent, a machine to manipulate you into spending so hard that you have to work ever harder just to keep up, so that you never have time to pause, never have time to think it over, never have room in your life for art or God or love or contemplation. Push back. They'll nickle-and-dime you into submission, if they possibly can. Screw them. That's not what life is for.
Tip #5: Remember, when you're scrimping: you are already this poor. You are not pretending to be poor in order to be rich later. You really are this poor, and by saving twenty percent of what you make -- the bare minimum, for most people, to set up a comfortable retirement -- you are simply facing the facts of your poverty. Face them boldly and fiercely. Be proud of being a person who understands reality and is willing to be real. Do it for yourself, and do it for the people you love. They need your example.
Tip #1: Treat both of these people as fully rational and intelligent. Because they are. There are lots of excellent reasons for spending money. There are good reasons (though fewer) for spending money you don't have. Your spendy self is not a willful unteachable brat. She's a human being with deep and important reasons for doing everything she does. Find out what they are. Find out why she thinks these things are more important than saving money. Honor her intentions. She's not going anywhere. Your solution is going to involve either enlisting her, or tricking her. Enlist her if you possibly can, because it's not as easy to trick her as you might think.
Tip #2: Trick your spendy self if you can. If you have an employer with a savings plan, which lets you save your money before you ever see it, and makes it hard to take the money back out once it's in, then do that.
Tip #3: If you're self-employed, or in debt, that won't work. You're going to have to enlist your spendy self. Get her on your side. Find the moments when she spends too much, and interrogate her about them. Why does this expenditure seem so imperative? What's at stake? Don't treat her like a naughty child. Treat her like an adult. She might be right, after all. But it's likely that you can persuade her that whatever end she's trying to achieve by spending this money -- generally, making somebody happy -- can actually be better served by NOT spending it. Saving that money rather than buying a treat -- that is the treat. You're buying them, and not just yourself, financial room to maneuver. You're buying freedom. You're buying treats to enjoy later.
Tip #4: Realize that they're out to get you. I don't ordinarily encourage this frame of mind, but in this case it's totally appropriate. They are out to get you. The marketers and credit card companies and banks, the media, often even your friends, are all trying to manipulate you into spending money. If you feel like the target of a plot, its because you are. Cultivate paranoia and even a little hatred. This economy is, by design and with full intent, a machine to manipulate you into spending so hard that you have to work ever harder just to keep up, so that you never have time to pause, never have time to think it over, never have room in your life for art or God or love or contemplation. Push back. They'll nickle-and-dime you into submission, if they possibly can. Screw them. That's not what life is for.
Tip #5: Remember, when you're scrimping: you are already this poor. You are not pretending to be poor in order to be rich later. You really are this poor, and by saving twenty percent of what you make -- the bare minimum, for most people, to set up a comfortable retirement -- you are simply facing the facts of your poverty. Face them boldly and fiercely. Be proud of being a person who understands reality and is willing to be real. Do it for yourself, and do it for the people you love. They need your example.
Tuesday, June 09, 2015
A Facebook Translation
Enorme tronco que arrastró la ola,
yace el caimán varado en la ribera;
espinazo de abrupta cordillera,
fauces de abismo y formidable cola.
El sol lo envuelve en fúlgida aureola;
y parece lucir cota y cimera,
cual monstruo de metal que reverbera
y que al reverberar se tornasola.
Inmóvil como un ídolo sagrado,
ceñido en mallas de compacto acero,
está ante el agua estático y sombrío,
a manera de un príncipe encantado
que vive eternamente prisionero
en el palacio de cristal de un río.
------Jose Santos Chocano, EL SUEÑO DEL CAIMÁN
Dream of the Caiman
Enormous log dragged by the wave—
caiman beached on the river shore:
backbone a broken cordillera,
formidable tail, jaws an abyss.
The sun wraps him in a dazzling aureole—
a seeming mail-coat and heraldry,
a metal monster who shimmers
and whose shimmering lays a sheen.
Unmoving as a sacred idol
girt in a mesh of compact steel,
he lies against the still, dark water
like an enchanted prince
who lives an eternal prisoner
of the river’s palace of glass.
See four other translations, with a wonderful introduction, at Via Negativa.
yace el caimán varado en la ribera;
espinazo de abrupta cordillera,
fauces de abismo y formidable cola.
El sol lo envuelve en fúlgida aureola;
y parece lucir cota y cimera,
cual monstruo de metal que reverbera
y que al reverberar se tornasola.
Inmóvil como un ídolo sagrado,
ceñido en mallas de compacto acero,
está ante el agua estático y sombrío,
a manera de un príncipe encantado
que vive eternamente prisionero
en el palacio de cristal de un río.
------Jose Santos Chocano, EL SUEÑO DEL CAIMÁN
Dream of the Caiman
Enormous log dragged by the wave—
caiman beached on the river shore:
backbone a broken cordillera,
formidable tail, jaws an abyss.
The sun wraps him in a dazzling aureole—
a seeming mail-coat and heraldry,
a metal monster who shimmers
and whose shimmering lays a sheen.
Unmoving as a sacred idol
girt in a mesh of compact steel,
he lies against the still, dark water
like an enchanted prince
who lives an eternal prisoner
of the river’s palace of glass.
See four other translations, with a wonderful introduction, at Via Negativa.
Friday, June 05, 2015
Asking To Be Born
I did not ask to be born, she said.
But then I thought, that might be expecting too much
even of God. How can He know? Maybe more like
a confirmation when you reach the age of reason.
What age is that?
Well, I guess that's the trouble, she said.
As far as God's concerned, I'm not sure
we ever reach it.
She kissed my arm: her wrist so thin
my thumb met my fingers
at the radial pulse.
Man is born to trouble, she said,
as the sparks fly upward.
But then I thought, that might be expecting too much
even of God. How can He know? Maybe more like
a confirmation when you reach the age of reason.
What age is that?
Well, I guess that's the trouble, she said.
As far as God's concerned, I'm not sure
we ever reach it.
She kissed my arm: her wrist so thin
my thumb met my fingers
at the radial pulse.
Man is born to trouble, she said,
as the sparks fly upward.
Saturday, May 30, 2015
On Meeting A Lady
The old courtesy rises like a ghost,
and—though nobility comes first
from the swagger of slaveholders,
and so, by easy stages, to the cast
of landed votes—
yet a lady evokes a gentleman,
and the glamour of the lake;
my hand looks for the pommel of a sword.
The light spills,
unruly, from your eyes; the world leans.
Peasants born of peasants, no share really
in gallantry; our part was the harvest and the whip.
Still, I take your hand, square my shoulders,
long for ancestry and colonnaded walks.
Oh, I would take slaves for this!
That's the sad truth, I think:
history writ small.
and—though nobility comes first
from the swagger of slaveholders,
and so, by easy stages, to the cast
of landed votes—
yet a lady evokes a gentleman,
and the glamour of the lake;
my hand looks for the pommel of a sword.
The light spills,
unruly, from your eyes; the world leans.
Peasants born of peasants, no share really
in gallantry; our part was the harvest and the whip.
Still, I take your hand, square my shoulders,
long for ancestry and colonnaded walks.
Oh, I would take slaves for this!
That's the sad truth, I think:
history writ small.
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Soon Now
I have not wanted to walk in the way of accumulation. But it is the way I fall into, being by nature wary and deliberate. I begin most days conscientiously studying whatever language I have in hand, reviewing flashcards -- thousands of flashcards, now -- and doggedly reading my twenty pages. And I set thresholds for buying and selling stocks, and watch the rise and fall of prices. I track my exercise and my domestic tasks. I am like those ants you see, carrying grains of sand to excavate tunnels and build hills. Any casual passer-by might demolish a life's work.
Venus and Jupiter hang a while in the west, these evenings, while the moon falls behind them. They shine over the garage roof. When we're all asleep, the raccoons step cautiously there, and pause a while to consider. They are as convinced as we are that the place belongs to them: the fact that the ground-apes nest in their basement doesn't trouble them. It's a good place to watch the stars, and a staging area for raiding nests or collecting the neighbor's chickenfeed. They gaze a while at Venus, through the tall bamboo, while raccoon-ambitions run through their minds. Soon they will achieve their hearts' desire. Soon life will be right. Soon they will be content.
I wash an apple, my thumbs skidding over the smooth skin. I think a lot about food, these days. The Fat Nutritionist put me on to Ellyn Satter. She has a little set-piece about normal eating, and it actually made me tear up, the other day. It sounded so lovely, so impossible. To feed oneself faithfully. It sounded like a fairy tale to me.
I will find out where she has gone
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
Such things, of course, are not for you and me. We were born for irritation and discontent; for fiddling with latches and broken zippers; for hearing dance music in the distance; for waking up to find ourselves old.
I lift the apple and breathe the faint scent of its skin. Soon. Soon now.
Soon, but what? That, they don't tell me.
Venus and Jupiter hang a while in the west, these evenings, while the moon falls behind them. They shine over the garage roof. When we're all asleep, the raccoons step cautiously there, and pause a while to consider. They are as convinced as we are that the place belongs to them: the fact that the ground-apes nest in their basement doesn't trouble them. It's a good place to watch the stars, and a staging area for raiding nests or collecting the neighbor's chickenfeed. They gaze a while at Venus, through the tall bamboo, while raccoon-ambitions run through their minds. Soon they will achieve their hearts' desire. Soon life will be right. Soon they will be content.
I wash an apple, my thumbs skidding over the smooth skin. I think a lot about food, these days. The Fat Nutritionist put me on to Ellyn Satter. She has a little set-piece about normal eating, and it actually made me tear up, the other day. It sounded so lovely, so impossible. To feed oneself faithfully. It sounded like a fairy tale to me.
I will find out where she has gone
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
Such things, of course, are not for you and me. We were born for irritation and discontent; for fiddling with latches and broken zippers; for hearing dance music in the distance; for waking up to find ourselves old.
I lift the apple and breathe the faint scent of its skin. Soon. Soon now.
Soon, but what? That, they don't tell me.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Interlude: The Moon And Venus
How fast it can all crumble! And I realize there was never much there, after all. But I'm lost on a bare plateau, in the gray wind, trying to assemble myself and failing. But I can't go on putting off the reckoning. This is silly: it's always been silly. I have the advantage now, anyway, of being able to put aside the pretense that I'm in control or know what I'm doing. That, at least, is one hag that's no longer riding.
First of all I'm going to need to get some sleep, some real sleep. For weeks now I've been waking after four or five hours, and walking my mind in circles about whatever most frets me at the moment. I need to stop that somehow. Everything collapses, without sleep: ordinary intelligence and prudence disappear, and what remains is a paper thing, like a huge wasp's nest, dropping shreds of itself as it stumbles from wanting to fearing and back again. I shamble on, against the gray wind or with it, but I might as well be still. There is no chance, none whatever, of arriving anywhere I want to be, by this means.
Eight fingers and two thumbs: adding carefully, I come up with ten. That still seems to work. And the person I was before has left inscriptions. Not all of them legible, but I do have some guidance. At this point one is supposed to call upon gods or friends for help, I suppose: but I've had enough of the agendas of others. I'll work this out for myself. So a nice deep breath, here. Not too much longer, now. This is an inherently unstable state: it won't last.
And last night the slender Moon and Venus were a blessed relief: still there, still beautiful, lingering after sunset in the West. I had almost thought the sky would be blank, a vapid darkening screen. But it wasn't. It never is. We will do fine.
First of all I'm going to need to get some sleep, some real sleep. For weeks now I've been waking after four or five hours, and walking my mind in circles about whatever most frets me at the moment. I need to stop that somehow. Everything collapses, without sleep: ordinary intelligence and prudence disappear, and what remains is a paper thing, like a huge wasp's nest, dropping shreds of itself as it stumbles from wanting to fearing and back again. I shamble on, against the gray wind or with it, but I might as well be still. There is no chance, none whatever, of arriving anywhere I want to be, by this means.
Eight fingers and two thumbs: adding carefully, I come up with ten. That still seems to work. And the person I was before has left inscriptions. Not all of them legible, but I do have some guidance. At this point one is supposed to call upon gods or friends for help, I suppose: but I've had enough of the agendas of others. I'll work this out for myself. So a nice deep breath, here. Not too much longer, now. This is an inherently unstable state: it won't last.
And last night the slender Moon and Venus were a blessed relief: still there, still beautiful, lingering after sunset in the West. I had almost thought the sky would be blank, a vapid darkening screen. But it wasn't. It never is. We will do fine.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Day Unwrapped
If the whole day
lay unwrapped
unpromised
trifled by the breeze
and free to kiss
if one deep breath
found ribs
at ease to fan themselves
like brand new playing cards
and flowered from the spine
then my hands
would settle to your hips
like curious birds
my lips would find
three places
where your throat demands
three murmured passwords.
They would unlock
a box of iron, one of silver,
and then a box of red shot-laced with gold.
lay unwrapped
unpromised
trifled by the breeze
and free to kiss
if one deep breath
found ribs
at ease to fan themselves
like brand new playing cards
and flowered from the spine
then my hands
would settle to your hips
like curious birds
my lips would find
three places
where your throat demands
three murmured passwords.
They would unlock
a box of iron, one of silver,
and then a box of red shot-laced with gold.
Friday, May 15, 2015
The Man with the Lantern
Lori Witzel linked to this fabulous series of accounts of the Man in the Moon, which I knew little of. My Man with the Lantern is a recurrent image I have upon falling asleep: not quite a dream, I think, though it might have come from a dream originally. I am far underground in a system of branching tunnels, and ahead of me is a man carrying a lantern. He appears and disappears, as he goes around corners, but I'm always able to follow the lantern-light on the walls, whether I can see him or not. He half turned once and he was Dave Bonta, but I think that was a nonce avatar: he can probably take whatever form is handy. I imagine he's been Diogenes as well. He's not usually very distinct.
He is patiently searching: stopping sometimes and scrutinizing the walls or the ceiling. I am not. I am not looking for anything in particular, and certainly not for a way out. I am just following him into the dream world.
A dark May morning, heavily overcast and thinking of rain. I am slow: I slept too long this morning, after a night of wandering from bed to couch, in various stages of half-sleep. Duermevela, you say in Spanish, sleepwake, but we seem to have no word for it in English.
Shaking off intimations of defeat and disaster, the fret of little-mind about its own precious continuity — as if it could care about, or understand, continuities larger than itself! — and finding, at times, a rightness underneath. I have taken to worrying, lately, in an uncharacteristic, unattractive, and mostly unfruitful way. Not a habit to encourage. No. Return to the sky: bright or gloomy, dry or wet. If I spend too much time indoors I start to believe in a world little enough to understand, a world of sense, a world that can be accounted for and rendered into credits and debits. That won't do.
He is patiently searching: stopping sometimes and scrutinizing the walls or the ceiling. I am not. I am not looking for anything in particular, and certainly not for a way out. I am just following him into the dream world.
A dark May morning, heavily overcast and thinking of rain. I am slow: I slept too long this morning, after a night of wandering from bed to couch, in various stages of half-sleep. Duermevela, you say in Spanish, sleepwake, but we seem to have no word for it in English.
Shaking off intimations of defeat and disaster, the fret of little-mind about its own precious continuity — as if it could care about, or understand, continuities larger than itself! — and finding, at times, a rightness underneath. I have taken to worrying, lately, in an uncharacteristic, unattractive, and mostly unfruitful way. Not a habit to encourage. No. Return to the sky: bright or gloomy, dry or wet. If I spend too much time indoors I start to believe in a world little enough to understand, a world of sense, a world that can be accounted for and rendered into credits and debits. That won't do.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Hedge Duff
These wood shavings I've accumulated so carefully over a lifetime: a handful of curls, blackened with age. I used to offer them as unimaginable treasure: and I never understood why so few people were anxious to receive them.
But now I understand, vividly and completely, that I have nothing, nothing whatever to give. My poverty goes far beyond what I imagined. I've run up debts it would take lifetimes to pay.
So stop, step back a little, consider. The soap in my palms, and the warm water. The click of a dog's nails on a wooden floor, and the piping of birds in the thicket. The shadows of tree leaves falling on the leaves of the hedge; the shadows of both on the ground; and in their weaving, the small creatures escaping, or not escaping, the chickens.
And these shavings I've gathered? Well, they might serve to start a cook-fire, or they might add a little bedding for the chickens. Oh, Dale, you've listened to the voices in your head for way too long, poor soul.
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon.
So. Give up what you have gathered. Shave and wash your face. Or better yet, go back to bed and finish the sleep you've held at arm's length for decades. There are dreams there, waiting to show you things you've been unable, or unwilling, to see. Staying awake doesn't give you a magic ability to choose which dreams will come.
All this time, and all this debt you've acquired, and you still want credit for something? No. Go to sleep, dear, and meet the man with the lantern. Wander under the world's roof for a while. Listen to whatever music they have there, in the light that comes through net after net of leaves, the light that falls from lip to lip all the way down to the criss-cross tunnels. You have nothing to give. But they weren't going to receive you because of your gifts anyway. They're going to receive you because that's the way they are.
But now I understand, vividly and completely, that I have nothing, nothing whatever to give. My poverty goes far beyond what I imagined. I've run up debts it would take lifetimes to pay.
So stop, step back a little, consider. The soap in my palms, and the warm water. The click of a dog's nails on a wooden floor, and the piping of birds in the thicket. The shadows of tree leaves falling on the leaves of the hedge; the shadows of both on the ground; and in their weaving, the small creatures escaping, or not escaping, the chickens.
And these shavings I've gathered? Well, they might serve to start a cook-fire, or they might add a little bedding for the chickens. Oh, Dale, you've listened to the voices in your head for way too long, poor soul.
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon.
So. Give up what you have gathered. Shave and wash your face. Or better yet, go back to bed and finish the sleep you've held at arm's length for decades. There are dreams there, waiting to show you things you've been unable, or unwilling, to see. Staying awake doesn't give you a magic ability to choose which dreams will come.
All this time, and all this debt you've acquired, and you still want credit for something? No. Go to sleep, dear, and meet the man with the lantern. Wander under the world's roof for a while. Listen to whatever music they have there, in the light that comes through net after net of leaves, the light that falls from lip to lip all the way down to the criss-cross tunnels. You have nothing to give. But they weren't going to receive you because of your gifts anyway. They're going to receive you because that's the way they are.
Friday, May 08, 2015
Eld Inlet
Belly of canvas over the lurching gunwale
and black sweatshirt curved round breast and head:
you sucked like a hero, three months old,
determined to thrive. The Wolf caught the wind
in its teeth and shook it. Spray rose slow
and suddenly slapped us in the face, but you
were not about to unlatch. You scowled at the weather,
red-browed, and nosed in deeper. The air scoured
us, cloud-white above and foam-white below,
ragged water in greens and grays. No memory
further than this, no landfall or departure:
only your indomitable rooting and the hammer of the waves.
and black sweatshirt curved round breast and head:
you sucked like a hero, three months old,
determined to thrive. The Wolf caught the wind
in its teeth and shook it. Spray rose slow
and suddenly slapped us in the face, but you
were not about to unlatch. You scowled at the weather,
red-browed, and nosed in deeper. The air scoured
us, cloud-white above and foam-white below,
ragged water in greens and grays. No memory
further than this, no landfall or departure:
only your indomitable rooting and the hammer of the waves.
Saturday, May 02, 2015
Dispensations
Over on Facebook, in response to a post of Marly Youmans re a Washington Post article re the extinction of poetry citing the census bureau's Survey of Public Participation in the Arts:
Holy cow! We're almost as popular as jazz? That's exciting.... Interesting to read the survey: the only reliable evidence for poetry's ballyhooed death that I've seen. Still, as with all surveys, it's important to see exactly what they're measuring. What's declining in a straight line is the number of people who answer "yes" to the question, "did you read any poetry last year?" What it suggests to me is that the number of people who read poetry *as a duty* is dropping. That is, there's a dwindling number of Americans who feel that they can't count themselves as educated unless they read a bit of poetry. It is an indicator of what's happening to poetry-reading generally, but only a vague one. I suspect that if you were measuring the number of people who would answer "yes" to "do you ordinarily read poetry in the course of week"? you'd see a quite different graph.In the meantime, my carapace hardens, and my back curves: my delicate feelers grow ever longer and more gracefully from their pediments. As my powers of hearing and sight dwindle, my other senses become more acute: I have never been better at telling which ants are from friendly hills, and which from hostile ones. And I seem to be ramifying: as I listen to music, in the evenings, I can feel my spirit branching and dividing, opening new channels, budding into new leaf. I am subsiding, apparently, backwards, into the kingdoms from which we came. I'm content, and more than content. The moon rises enormous, fifty minutes later every night, and I can hear its breathing, which is something that ordinarily only mosses and lichens can do. These dispensations are not, of course, for my benefit. I'll be called for something.
What I really like about the poetry-reading world, as I know it, is that there is almost no one in it for the wrong reasons. People read poetry nowadays, not because there's any cachet to it, but simply because they like it. And that is probably very good for poetry, however bad it may be for poetry sales.
Friday, May 01, 2015
Not Silly Enough
So I tried to read Fifty Shades of Grey, but I got bored after a dozen pages, and then the library wanted it back, because there were a zillion more holds on it. I returned it without regret. It was not so poorly written as some people said. It was just a romance, written in the predictable prose typical of the genre; what I read was unremarkable.
It was silly, of course. Most books are. Most people are. We want silly things. We want the world to be other than it is. We want there to be someone young and gorgeous, who at age twenty nine has a hundred thousand employees -- I may be getting my numbers wrong here, but you get the picture -- and who sees us, not as commonplace, but as extraordinarily attractive. We want our attraction in return to be unambiguous and uncontrollable, something that sweeps us (and our scruples) away in a grand flood. That would be marvelous.
It's the basic plot of the romance novel, from Jane Eyre on: someone from a higher, more authentic, more intense, higher-class world (however we conceive of that; the variations are endless, depending on one's taste and training) will notice that we are special, pluck us out of a tedious low-class world that is blind to our wonderfulness, and bring us into theirs. Where we will shine with the brightness that was always there, but never properly seen.
It's a good plot. It has deep roots, and it's based on a truth that we really don't want to lose hold of. We are, in fact, special and precious, we are radically undervalued, and a world that would appreciate us is possible. These things are all true, and keeping them central is worth a little silliness.
So the silliness is not the problem. The problem, really, is that it's not silly enough. It doesn't say, "what would the world that valued me really look like? What would I really have to do, so that someone -- anyone, master of empires or no -- could see what is extraordinary in me? What perception would I have to cultivate, in order to be overwhelmed by my desire for somebody -- anybody -- outside the covers of a book or the frame of an LCD screen? We need to build that world, to expose that extraordinary interior, and to cultivate that perception.
I don't know where Fifty Shades was going to go: I didn't really think it was going to go anywhere that would help me with any of those three tasks. If I were to propose an objection to it, it would only be that it wasn't silly enough to be really helpful. It proposes a world that's just a little different from ours, an exposure just a little more extensive, a perception just slightly shifted. That is not going to do it.
Now contrast my friend Larissa Brown's Beautiful Wreck: a book that understands how different the world would need to be, how sharpened and cleared one's senses would have to be, how hard one would have to work, before such a narrative could really make sense. Now there is a romance novel worth reading.
It was silly, of course. Most books are. Most people are. We want silly things. We want the world to be other than it is. We want there to be someone young and gorgeous, who at age twenty nine has a hundred thousand employees -- I may be getting my numbers wrong here, but you get the picture -- and who sees us, not as commonplace, but as extraordinarily attractive. We want our attraction in return to be unambiguous and uncontrollable, something that sweeps us (and our scruples) away in a grand flood. That would be marvelous.
It's the basic plot of the romance novel, from Jane Eyre on: someone from a higher, more authentic, more intense, higher-class world (however we conceive of that; the variations are endless, depending on one's taste and training) will notice that we are special, pluck us out of a tedious low-class world that is blind to our wonderfulness, and bring us into theirs. Where we will shine with the brightness that was always there, but never properly seen.
It's a good plot. It has deep roots, and it's based on a truth that we really don't want to lose hold of. We are, in fact, special and precious, we are radically undervalued, and a world that would appreciate us is possible. These things are all true, and keeping them central is worth a little silliness.
So the silliness is not the problem. The problem, really, is that it's not silly enough. It doesn't say, "what would the world that valued me really look like? What would I really have to do, so that someone -- anyone, master of empires or no -- could see what is extraordinary in me? What perception would I have to cultivate, in order to be overwhelmed by my desire for somebody -- anybody -- outside the covers of a book or the frame of an LCD screen? We need to build that world, to expose that extraordinary interior, and to cultivate that perception.
I don't know where Fifty Shades was going to go: I didn't really think it was going to go anywhere that would help me with any of those three tasks. If I were to propose an objection to it, it would only be that it wasn't silly enough to be really helpful. It proposes a world that's just a little different from ours, an exposure just a little more extensive, a perception just slightly shifted. That is not going to do it.
Now contrast my friend Larissa Brown's Beautiful Wreck: a book that understands how different the world would need to be, how sharpened and cleared one's senses would have to be, how hard one would have to work, before such a narrative could really make sense. Now there is a romance novel worth reading.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Happily Ever After
A new morning, after a good night's sleep: a strong sense of convalescence. (A word I've never really thought about: I guess it parses to "a coming together of strength"?) Anyway, after many days of short or broken sleep, it is a blessing I know how to value. To close my eyes with no burning, and no sense of uneven relief!
Hammering away at the forge. "It flows from the shoulder; there's a sort of music to it, when you do it right," says Coll. I've always wondered where Lloyd Alexander got that from; if he'd ever actually held a blacksmith's hammer. Anyway. Feeling strong and well. It's possible to feel strong and well. One forgets.
We drove yesterday on old ragged highways in the hills beyond Corbett and Troutdale, some of it raw with logging, some of it industrial farmland, some of it pretty enough second-growth and pasture. We came across a number of old rusted out trailers and cars, VW buses rusted to earth color and covered with moss. Also church camp after church camp. It's a country suited to the ill-considered, semi-spiritual impulse to bolt and hide.
I start to mull over retirement, in all its senses. Another ten or fifteen years, and I might be ready to live by some mossy rock, someplace where I could walk in the woods every day. Martha and I -- in what we now recognize as, if not depressive thinking, at least depression-related thinking -- had decided to live in town, rather than out in the country: because we knew we couldn't stand to love a place and then see it overrun with tree-cutters and 7-11 builders, paving everything in sight and stringing wires all over the sky. But the longer you live, the less you need to worry about what twenty years will bring. Even odds that we'll get so far, even now, and decreasing as we go. We might find a quiet corner yet, in view of a river or a mountain or two, and live happily ever after. We might.
Hammering away at the forge. "It flows from the shoulder; there's a sort of music to it, when you do it right," says Coll. I've always wondered where Lloyd Alexander got that from; if he'd ever actually held a blacksmith's hammer. Anyway. Feeling strong and well. It's possible to feel strong and well. One forgets.
We drove yesterday on old ragged highways in the hills beyond Corbett and Troutdale, some of it raw with logging, some of it industrial farmland, some of it pretty enough second-growth and pasture. We came across a number of old rusted out trailers and cars, VW buses rusted to earth color and covered with moss. Also church camp after church camp. It's a country suited to the ill-considered, semi-spiritual impulse to bolt and hide.
I start to mull over retirement, in all its senses. Another ten or fifteen years, and I might be ready to live by some mossy rock, someplace where I could walk in the woods every day. Martha and I -- in what we now recognize as, if not depressive thinking, at least depression-related thinking -- had decided to live in town, rather than out in the country: because we knew we couldn't stand to love a place and then see it overrun with tree-cutters and 7-11 builders, paving everything in sight and stringing wires all over the sky. But the longer you live, the less you need to worry about what twenty years will bring. Even odds that we'll get so far, even now, and decreasing as we go. We might find a quiet corner yet, in view of a river or a mountain or two, and live happily ever after. We might.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Sclerosis
The answer came to me at about three, this morning:
nothing. There is nothing to be done. My work
lies within these bounds: it is to be as kind
as sense and time allow; to think as hard
and as generously as I know how;
to meet each person's eyes
with an honest gaze. Such commitments as I've made
to the grand world, honor them; but make no more.
It is one of the corners of middle age (a land
full of corners): the world is no longer mine to fix.
I am drifting out of it. I belong more and more
to the forgotten times, times that no longer bend
when I push them: they and I are setting, hardening.
We become the past: the play of light is history
caressing our long stone faces: the patina
already gathering, the features
already blurring.
nothing. There is nothing to be done. My work
lies within these bounds: it is to be as kind
as sense and time allow; to think as hard
and as generously as I know how;
to meet each person's eyes
with an honest gaze. Such commitments as I've made
to the grand world, honor them; but make no more.
It is one of the corners of middle age (a land
full of corners): the world is no longer mine to fix.
I am drifting out of it. I belong more and more
to the forgotten times, times that no longer bend
when I push them: they and I are setting, hardening.
We become the past: the play of light is history
caressing our long stone faces: the patina
already gathering, the features
already blurring.
Friday, April 24, 2015
Flaw
Sometimes, returning to a zipper, I find
I have forced its teeth to mesh above a fault
and what looks like a life is a long improvisation,
ready to split and open at a sideways thrust.
Even unzipping to the fault is a risk:
there's no way to know how bad the wound --
teeth irreparably bent, twisted, even broken? --
and how to get the runner past at all?
Still, I advertise myself as clever with my fingers,
strong when called for and deft, quick or slow
depending on the tempo of the need:
if not me, then who? So I set to work,
working the little interlocking teeth,
peering, kneading, forcing when I must,
fitting bones to sockets (that I can't really see),
guessing my way, against a rise of panic
that everything is broken, nothing fits again,
that zippers all are false, and nothing holds its form.
Then there is a shift, a smoothening, an ease, and suddenly
the runner slides, like a fish into lake.
The flaw vanishes, leaving behind
a faint kink, a hint of weakness
easily ignored; forgotten, maybe,
until the next strong, unconsidered pull.
I have forced its teeth to mesh above a fault
and what looks like a life is a long improvisation,
ready to split and open at a sideways thrust.
Even unzipping to the fault is a risk:
there's no way to know how bad the wound --
teeth irreparably bent, twisted, even broken? --
and how to get the runner past at all?
Still, I advertise myself as clever with my fingers,
strong when called for and deft, quick or slow
depending on the tempo of the need:
if not me, then who? So I set to work,
working the little interlocking teeth,
peering, kneading, forcing when I must,
fitting bones to sockets (that I can't really see),
guessing my way, against a rise of panic
that everything is broken, nothing fits again,
that zippers all are false, and nothing holds its form.
Then there is a shift, a smoothening, an ease, and suddenly
the runner slides, like a fish into lake.
The flaw vanishes, leaving behind
a faint kink, a hint of weakness
easily ignored; forgotten, maybe,
until the next strong, unconsidered pull.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Desmoronadizo
Morning: I left you sleeping with the daylight on your face. In the window, not-quite blue contends with not-quite white for a mastery neither seems to care much about: the day feels flaccid, unstrung. We are tired of trying, I think. We need to get out into the hills and the free air.
It is the sort of day that makes you question every decision you ever made: when the fact that you have attained the age of fifty seven without having learned to play the castanets or read Arabic is clear evidence of a wasted life. When the sun does push through the clouds, it arrives with a metallic, ominous glare that's more like summer than spring. My uneasiness increases.
My life is crumbling underneath. It was never built on stable ground -- not something to blame myself for: we all of us start building where we find ourselves -- but I do wonder what happens when it gives way entirely. Not necessarily anything bad. Something new, perhaps. I'm ready for something new.
In the meantime, the dogwood flowers magnificently, and the Spanish bluebells continue their reconquista of the lawn. The solitary crow that visits us now sits in the maple and practices her new call: a clear, ringing "tok!" like a percussionist's wood blocks. Maybe she's been listening to the flickers.
My hands are stronger than ever. I am full of love and tenderness for my clients, my friends, my family. I am deeply ignorant and impossibly young, and it's April.
It is the sort of day that makes you question every decision you ever made: when the fact that you have attained the age of fifty seven without having learned to play the castanets or read Arabic is clear evidence of a wasted life. When the sun does push through the clouds, it arrives with a metallic, ominous glare that's more like summer than spring. My uneasiness increases.
My life is crumbling underneath. It was never built on stable ground -- not something to blame myself for: we all of us start building where we find ourselves -- but I do wonder what happens when it gives way entirely. Not necessarily anything bad. Something new, perhaps. I'm ready for something new.
In the meantime, the dogwood flowers magnificently, and the Spanish bluebells continue their reconquista of the lawn. The solitary crow that visits us now sits in the maple and practices her new call: a clear, ringing "tok!" like a percussionist's wood blocks. Maybe she's been listening to the flickers.
My hands are stronger than ever. I am full of love and tenderness for my clients, my friends, my family. I am deeply ignorant and impossibly young, and it's April.
Monday, April 20, 2015
Blackthorn
Schlehdorn say the Germans (the Schleh being sloe),
meaning, to the Proto-Indoeuropean,
bluish, blue-black; skin-colored
for some Africans. Sloe gin being actually,
if you care about such things, a liqueur;
add enough sugar and anything is sweet.
And never mind whether black means
the mat black of the bark --
for canes of authority and beating boys
into whipmasters on their own account --
or the dark, bloom-whispered midnight
of secret fruit among a brawl of thorn, blossom,
sucker and snow. Who can choose or know?
We must go further back, falling backward,
jolted by the concrete stair of time,
to the first slender wand, the first white star,
whiskered as a kitten and dotted as the script
of Arabian princes, in the first spring,
before any fruit
had stained the yard.
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Shawl
Your shawl hangs blue and gold
and green in the rising sun,
so still that the world
rocks around it,
and the light seems more
of evening, and the end of time
than of any morning
we will know again.
There are these times
when the light comes level,
through an overmounted press
of time and distance,
but locked—and still—
when I am afraid to look up,
afraid to see what the sky may be doing:
it is too far, too high, too cold.
Muted teal, the gold
of pollen scattered on wet sidewalks,
the green of ancient copper fittings:
to hang so still now
as if your shoulders
had never shrugged against its weave.
and green in the rising sun,
so still that the world
rocks around it,
and the light seems more
of evening, and the end of time
than of any morning
we will know again.
There are these times
when the light comes level,
through an overmounted press
of time and distance,
but locked—and still—
when I am afraid to look up,
afraid to see what the sky may be doing:
it is too far, too high, too cold.
Muted teal, the gold
of pollen scattered on wet sidewalks,
the green of ancient copper fittings:
to hang so still now
as if your shoulders
had never shrugged against its weave.
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Canyon Road
 |
| https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/65584 |
Time was you had to follow the Tualatin River to the Willamette, round about Oregon City, and then head north, past the Falls. It was a long trip, and Oregon City was in the pricey hands of the Hudson Bay Company. So in the 1850s the territorial government, with private backing by Portland powers-that-be, built a plank road, where the Sunset Highway is now. Then you could go straight from the Tualatin farmlands to the Portland docks. One in the eye for Oregon City and Hudson Bay. And probably the reason why I (and most of the rest of us) live here, rather than ten miles upriver at the geographically more sensible Oregon City. Meanwhile, Hudson Bay is quaint history, and Oregon City drifts into the past, a vision of Old Oregon, with a strange sunset patina to it: a vision of the pleasant small-town Oregon I knew as a boy.
Sunday, April 12, 2015
Quixote at Sunrise
But I chose this. I chose to be undermined: why?
Because I too was afraid. Because secretly I too
thought the stories were too good to be true,
that there was a dark vein running through the marble.
I wanted a scoffer at my side, someone to explode
my extravagance of cheer, Panza to my Quixote.
And so we have traveled, decades in company:
I supply the hope, he the despair. It works
in its fashion. But there are times,
on the windswept crest of the hill, overlooking
the camp of our enemies, when I wonder,
have I chosen wisely? Would it have been better
to have a squire who believed my foolishness,
and handed me my lance with shining eyes?
Because I too was afraid. Because secretly I too
thought the stories were too good to be true,
that there was a dark vein running through the marble.
I wanted a scoffer at my side, someone to explode
my extravagance of cheer, Panza to my Quixote.
And so we have traveled, decades in company:
I supply the hope, he the despair. It works
in its fashion. But there are times,
on the windswept crest of the hill, overlooking
the camp of our enemies, when I wonder,
have I chosen wisely? Would it have been better
to have a squire who believed my foolishness,
and handed me my lance with shining eyes?
Thursday, April 09, 2015
The Palaces of our Ancestors
A pale morning: white sky, slightly triste; the firs so still that a crow launching itself makes a startling sway in the branches. An equal and opposite reaction, just so, but you don't often see it so clear.
Last night I cradled your head in my elbow and worked your neck with my other hand, and suddenly I longed to be done with service. Always the tenderness: but as time goes I understand better and better how little I can do, and how quickly it fades; or worse, sometimes, how it turns on itself and runs backward. We are strange creatures, with our little monkey desires and our fits of orgulous grandeur, our loneliness and our long parchment checklists for determining under what exact conditions we will accept comfort: checklists so long they get underfoot and trip us, as we peer at their fine print. We go stumbling along the halls of the palaces built by our ancestors, hankering and dreading; terrified of cockroaches but comforted by loaded machine pistols, seduced by glimmers of anything like admiration in a new eye, and indifferent to years of loyalty.
I am tired of playing the fool, but it's the only role I know. And everyone agrees I'm perfect for the part. (And that's true too, nuncle!)
Last night I cradled your head in my elbow and worked your neck with my other hand, and suddenly I longed to be done with service. Always the tenderness: but as time goes I understand better and better how little I can do, and how quickly it fades; or worse, sometimes, how it turns on itself and runs backward. We are strange creatures, with our little monkey desires and our fits of orgulous grandeur, our loneliness and our long parchment checklists for determining under what exact conditions we will accept comfort: checklists so long they get underfoot and trip us, as we peer at their fine print. We go stumbling along the halls of the palaces built by our ancestors, hankering and dreading; terrified of cockroaches but comforted by loaded machine pistols, seduced by glimmers of anything like admiration in a new eye, and indifferent to years of loyalty.
I am tired of playing the fool, but it's the only role I know. And everyone agrees I'm perfect for the part. (And that's true too, nuncle!)
Monday, April 06, 2015
A Poem For One Who Decided To Hate Everybody
A sudden check, a falter, almost a stumble,
oh my dear, for the loveliest eyes, and
I reach for my purse to scatter -- what currency?
Nothing avails both here and there.
If I flung this gold over the river,
dead leaves would fall on the further bank.
The bridge can be neither yours nor mine.
Forget the silly arguments from design,
Plato's maunderings laundered by Aquinas;
there is an argument deeper than those.
Someone is building these bridges, or
hints of a crossing. I know it is neither of us:
who has that kind of strength?
You asked how I could believe:
I could only answer, how could I not?
It is the impossibilities, the echoes
of that beloved voice, the lives that have crossed
from here, to there, and back. You hear of them
in the beetle-backed gossip of old poems,
and you know it's true:
There is not braggart or bluster
in all the world, with heart to make that boast.
Still. We began, and we end, in the sadness
of a stranded shore, and useless coin.
Sleep, then. You see him more clearly in dreams:
walking carefully underground, holding his little lamp.
Don't try to keep up: you can't. It is not for this life
to catch the one who wanders in the earth,
or even to find the bridge traced in the air,
the lines glinting where the sun catches them,
invisible else; you can look through a long lifetime
and still fail. But long after, the footfalls
echo in some other dream, and make a music
in the mind of another someone
maybe not wise, nor good
except at listening. But start there, and catch
a leaf that rustles from the canopy.
You cannot spend it on that side,
but you can know it came from this.
oh my dear, for the loveliest eyes, and
I reach for my purse to scatter -- what currency?
Nothing avails both here and there.
If I flung this gold over the river,
dead leaves would fall on the further bank.
The bridge can be neither yours nor mine.
Forget the silly arguments from design,
Plato's maunderings laundered by Aquinas;
there is an argument deeper than those.
Someone is building these bridges, or
hints of a crossing. I know it is neither of us:
who has that kind of strength?
You asked how I could believe:
I could only answer, how could I not?
It is the impossibilities, the echoes
of that beloved voice, the lives that have crossed
from here, to there, and back. You hear of them
in the beetle-backed gossip of old poems,
and you know it's true:
There is not braggart or bluster
in all the world, with heart to make that boast.
Still. We began, and we end, in the sadness
of a stranded shore, and useless coin.
Sleep, then. You see him more clearly in dreams:
walking carefully underground, holding his little lamp.
Don't try to keep up: you can't. It is not for this life
to catch the one who wanders in the earth,
or even to find the bridge traced in the air,
the lines glinting where the sun catches them,
invisible else; you can look through a long lifetime
and still fail. But long after, the footfalls
echo in some other dream, and make a music
in the mind of another someone
maybe not wise, nor good
except at listening. But start there, and catch
a leaf that rustles from the canopy.
You cannot spend it on that side,
but you can know it came from this.
Friday, April 03, 2015
Her First Dread, The Sun
Consider cydia deshaisiana,
how her first task, on birth, is to gnaw her way
into a womb. The womb closes:
the cool darkness is grateful.
There she begins to weave,
using hooks on her anal
and four hind abdominal prolegs,
binding herself within.
Only a sudden warmth
will make her spasm, blindly,
seeking a change, a coolness,
a shadow she can only imagine as the inverse
of her first dread, the sun. And
with luck, say, her shudders, kicking at the walls
at whatever cost, may roll her
to a damp and cool place.
What makes her begin to wonder,
to dream about the outside? What
revolution, what reversal of polarity,
takes possession of her mind?
Carefully, she chews a hole
plugging it at once with silk.
She is not ready to leave, but
she knows that when grown to a moth
she will have no jaws.
The day comes
when she craves the light
and she pushes through the silken door.
She will live only a few days, outside:
silver gray, pattern-winged,
fragile and confused.
She has just one more yearning:
to find a place like home,
to pump her swollen belly free,
and to lay her wondering, jawless chin
on a sweetly-scented rind.
how her first task, on birth, is to gnaw her way
into a womb. The womb closes:
the cool darkness is grateful.
There she begins to weave,
using hooks on her anal
and four hind abdominal prolegs,
binding herself within.
Only a sudden warmth
will make her spasm, blindly,
seeking a change, a coolness,
a shadow she can only imagine as the inverse
of her first dread, the sun. And
with luck, say, her shudders, kicking at the walls
at whatever cost, may roll her
to a damp and cool place.
What makes her begin to wonder,
to dream about the outside? What
revolution, what reversal of polarity,
takes possession of her mind?
Carefully, she chews a hole
plugging it at once with silk.
She is not ready to leave, but
she knows that when grown to a moth
she will have no jaws.
The day comes
when she craves the light
and she pushes through the silken door.
She will live only a few days, outside:
silver gray, pattern-winged,
fragile and confused.
She has just one more yearning:
to find a place like home,
to pump her swollen belly free,
and to lay her wondering, jawless chin
on a sweetly-scented rind.
Wednesday, April 01, 2015
Captain's Log: Fool's Day
I have seen it before, surely I've described it before, the nearly lost ship rounding the headland and gliding into a sheltered bay, with water pouring from the scuppers: the sudden quiet, the gentle rocking, the empty shore: backing the sails and dropping anchor. Clouds racing overhead and tangling with the trees on the cliff tops. There, branches still whip back and forth with the wind, but here there is only the occasional gust.
Much to do, everything to do, but the immediate danger past. Send a party to scout the shore, post a watchman or two, and send every man else to his exhausted hammock.
Where are we? I hardly know, and hardly care.
Oh, my dears, I have wrestled so long with shadows. I've worn myself out against phantoms and tricks of the light. I'm tired of fighting long wars on borders that no one else can see, defending countries that no one believes in. It seems to me that I have done my best to keep faith, but the conviction of failure, of dereliction, grows on me. I have understood everything wrong. Or I would not be here, stranded on an unknown coast. This loneliness speaks for itself.
Well. I tire of myself, and shrug all this ship-captain grandiosity aside. I command nothing but this unwieldy tub of muscle and fat: a temporary and unenviable command. When called upon I'll gladly resign this commission, but till then, I must order things as best I can, and even do some good, should the opportunity arise. Back to work, and the pitter patter of the day, the little clawed feet trotting over the deck, the ordering of small things for small results! On the bald street breaks the blank day.
Much to do, everything to do, but the immediate danger past. Send a party to scout the shore, post a watchman or two, and send every man else to his exhausted hammock.
Where are we? I hardly know, and hardly care.
Oh, my dears, I have wrestled so long with shadows. I've worn myself out against phantoms and tricks of the light. I'm tired of fighting long wars on borders that no one else can see, defending countries that no one believes in. It seems to me that I have done my best to keep faith, but the conviction of failure, of dereliction, grows on me. I have understood everything wrong. Or I would not be here, stranded on an unknown coast. This loneliness speaks for itself.
Well. I tire of myself, and shrug all this ship-captain grandiosity aside. I command nothing but this unwieldy tub of muscle and fat: a temporary and unenviable command. When called upon I'll gladly resign this commission, but till then, I must order things as best I can, and even do some good, should the opportunity arise. Back to work, and the pitter patter of the day, the little clawed feet trotting over the deck, the ordering of small things for small results! On the bald street breaks the blank day.
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