Venustas Ergo Venustas

I find the world much more difficult and obscure than most people do. I have friends to whom it seems obvious that a person belongs to herself: a statement which I find fascinating, bizarre and indefensible. But to them it is self-evident. I have friends for whom it is self-evident that there is a God who created people, and who believe that they therefore belong to Her: again fascinating, again bizarre, again indefensible. 

It's not clear to me that we exist, in any way similar to the way we imagine we exist, anyway: so Descartes' clear starting principle is for me the iffy conclusion of a dubious chain of assumptions. What are my responsibilities, even if I was created, even if by some unknowable fiat I not only exist, but belong to myself, even if "I" and "myself" are meaningful categories that can be meaningfully linked by a property relationship? That's not clear to me either. To me these are speculations in the outermost spheres of wild hypothesis. To my friends, they're daily realities worth killing and dying for.

Really. I'm not making this up, I'm not trying to invent difficulties. I'm just saying it's dark, to me: I stumble through an obscure world of shifting shapes and dissolving outlines, punctuated by moments of brilliant, wounding, transcendent beauty. 

Which vanish almost at once, leaving behind longings, traces, puzzlements. Descartes, bless his heart, was sure that he existed. For my part, I'm sure that the experience of beauty can exist, momentarily at least, however we conceive of the experiencer. And that's about as far as I get with first principles. This is why I'm so fun at parties.

Afterwards

gently to the water
the hierarchs recede
and the old men of the forest lift their heads
gently to the water
rain and rain
forty-seven days
and the drift of abandoned boats
but all that behind us now
gently to the water

You spoke and the dazzle is around us still
you felt and our own bones ached
you saw and the darkness fell
gently to the water

Crusted with bits of colored glass and shell
criss-crossed with scars that are old and white
or young and angry red and damped with sand
bring these unsteady hands
gently to the water

they undo the webbing
and the cinch under your trembling arms
begins to ease the breath comes back to your chest
where some small white-furred creature lifts its head
and with infinite caution makes its way
gently to the water.

Just Beginning to Breathe

for Jarrett on his birthday

So I was thinking today

how much I admire your work:

the attention to what ordinary people

want and need, to making the conversation

general. I was thinking about

the love of cities, where strangers

bring what they have and find what they need:

the glory of civilization, and its shame,

which are the same thing (generally) and I was thinking

of how hard and necessary it is to help people

go where they need to go

when they need to go there

and how the City is the whole human problem

and solution

at the same time.

General. Trafficking has a bad name, 

but I remember your earnestness when I said

if those people in Vancouver didn't want to pay the cost

they shouldn't come to Portland: you said, 

"But we want them to come!"

You lit up. We want them to come.

I was thinking that today 

is your birthday and how much better the world is

how much better my world is

because you are in it: of the wild,

unreasonable generosity that opens 

the gates and makes the streets a necklace

threading the shops and the houses: the jewelry of 

a barely imagined giant

just beginning to breathe.