1-31-2013

One aught not despair. One aught to regard all inconveniences as adventures. One aught be merry and confident and ecstatically grateful for what was and what is and what has yet to be. I know life is a grand and gratuitous blessing. I know it. And yet, forgive me world, today I despair of you. Today I break and beg things to be all other than they are. Too much pain.

The car radiator has gone into hibernation and looks to require $700 to be coaxed back into life. If I pay the price of warmth, I lose the Santiago. If I pay the price of the Santiago, I lose my fingers to frostbite. Twice daily. The pain of cold in the fingers is almost beyond bearing. It is the pain of cells turning to scimitars, cutting nerves open from the inside. My face suffuses with involuntary salt-waters and I cry out imprecations at the winter and the tortures of the cold. The pain prevents me from properly gripping the wheel. It prevents me, likewise, from properly concentrating on the road. I risk so many mishaps on its account, and yet I am so reluctant to surrender the Santiago. The Santiago has been my North Star for almost a year now; it has been the lone fixed point by which I have navigated my ramshackle raft over circumstance's rollicking waters.

Flying the North Star

Oh life! Where is port? Where is a safe place to anchor? Where is a home? Where is anything other than the hingeless oscillations of the tide and eternally landless horizons? I know I am in a thankless frame of mind right now; I know that to be given experience of any sort is worthy of praise unending; I know that even torment is a marvel. Yet it is hard to confront, at last, one's homelessness, one's solitariness, one's directionlessness. One can be homeless, and alone, and without direction for a lifetime without ever confronting these maladies, and one can get along pretty decently in one's oblivion. I was oblivious, after a fashion, for oh so lamentably many seasons. Yet the pasteboard mask has ruptured, the white whale has been punctured and I am forced to face truths once hid. It is for the best, ultimately, I know it is. I shall learn to captain the waters that presently leave me seasick, and, as I learn, the ship shall become my home, and the sea my companion, and the trajectory of billowing Fate my direction. Only until such a time I grasp the gunnel in fits of self-pity and shake bitter fists at the winter.

1-30-2013

Rain. A winter tonic, a respite from the ice. I sit in the coffee shop and watch the glossed black night beyond the window. It's pleasant. Exceedingly. Swingy jazz issues from overhead speakers; a lady with horse-wild hair and debonair knits sits with her beau in the corner; everything emanates easy-come ambiance. At any moment I half expect a P.I.--sandstone trench; East Coast accent--to idle in and start interrogating the barristas. I want to protract this fiction longer than the open-hours will allow. I want to stop the clock and rummage around in make-believe corners. Slow down, glassed sands, slow down! Pause long enough for a lass to build some castles on you!

The rain grants refuge from the winter, but has rendered me an exile from my four walls. It has seeped in under the door and soddened the carpet, which the in-laws have since wrested from the floorboards and wontoned over upon itself, an obstreperous watchguard of fans stationed all about lest the fibers think about returning to their supine state. The place smells of damp and has no seating provisions, the chairs all being displaced to accommodate the newly yogic floor-mattings. I wish I didn't have to leave this table, this trumpet drawling, this cup of tartly steaming tea. I wish gadfly time was not so persistently biting at my ankles. Where's the veil as would protect from that gnat? Where's the break in the glass? 

1-29-2013

Swiftly now! Write like the arboreal bellows on a wild Northern sea! Write like the gallop of blood through lovers' veins! Write like the feet of Gene Kelly! Fly fingers! Fly! Outpace the night!

There is no time! The clock has got me shackled to a deadline, manacled to a midnight minute from which I cannot be unloosed. Life is so diffuse and the days so compressed. How may a mere time-dweller reconcile the two? I know not. I know not! I rack my brain, the seat of man's moments, but the seconds remain unstretched. 12.29. Tick tock. Tick tock. The sandman's hand infiltrates the hourglass and collects the last grain. I must pay the debt of that handful of dust and turn myself over to sleep. 

1-28-2013

The Clote (Water-Lily)

"O zummer clote! when the brook's a-gliden

So slow an' smooth down his zedgy bed,

Upon they broad leaves so seafe a-riden

The water's top wi' thy yollow head,

By alder sheades, O, 

An' bulrush beds, O,

Thou then dost float, goolden zummer clote!

The grey-bough'd withy's a leanen lowly

Above the water thy leaves to hide;

The benden bulrush, a-swayen slowly,

Do skirt in zummer thy river's zide;

An' perch in shoals, O,

Do vill the holes, O,

Where thou dost float, goolden zummer clote!

Oh! when they brook-drinken flow'r's a-blowen,

The burnen zummer's a-zetten in;

The time o' greenness, the time o' mowen,

When in the hay-vield, wi' zunburnt skin,

The vo'k do drink, O,

Upon the brink, O,

Where thou dost float, goolden zummer clote!

Wi' earms a-spreaden, an cheaks a-blowen,

How proud wer I when I vu'st could swim

Athirt the deep pleace where thou bist growen,

Wi thy long more vrom the bottom dim;

While cows, knee-high, O,

In brook, wer nigh, O, 

Where thou dost float, goolden zummer clote!

Ov all the brooks drough the meads a-winden,

Ov all the meads by a river's brim,

There's nwone fo feair o' my own heart's vinden 

As where the maidens do zee thee zwim,

An' stan to teake, O,

Wi' long-stemm'd reake, O,

Thy flow'r afloat, goolden zummer clote!"

-William Barnes--

Do not seek me in the arm-chair, with the keys upon my lap, and the Dandelion tea untasted on the table. I am not here. Oh no, I am not here. I am on the other side of sleep, tumbling in the warm undertow, gone, gone, gone, going, gone. I am amidst the clover, and the scent of hyacinths, and the drowsy emeralds of midsummer in the meadow, of midsummer in the glade. If you wish to find me, to meet me, to join me--oh how I hope you will join me!--you must come to the place where the June birds sing; you must settle yourself down in the dappled dusklight and presss your belly to the blades on the bank, and skim your fingers just-so through the clover. Turn you face this way, my friend, for I am right by your side. You have found me! Ah, I am so glad you have found me! Let us watch the clotes till our lids slide shut, and sleep, and rise elsewhere tomorrow. 

1-27-2013

The reconnaissance hours. Sunday at the coffee shop; sun-sloshed, my shadow alternating between blur and pitch against an opposing wall; peduluming seed bag at the window, junco excavating breakfast; flickersome freckles on crystalline snow. I consider the tree dead ahead and its legion of shadows. In the initial estimate I write off the optics as inscrutably complex; I think of landscape artists and suppose their chiaroscuro to be a guessing game. Yet the mind craves exactitude, it craves a cause to every effect, an action for every reaction, and so I focus, and concentrate, and try to read the light like one reads a pool table, graphing angles, calculating geometry. And just like that, the shadows unravel, simplify; the black and the gold partner up as waltzers, each color holding the hand of its contrary; poles of shade and light hinge at definite, discernible points, and all is rendered orderly. Methodical thought tidies the mess of sensation. It feels good.

I do not debut the jumper, the Salvation Army foolery with Christmas pom poms caught in the straggled green collar and tartan present toppers stapled down the front. Everyone else is wearing perfectly inoffensive woolen numbers, albeit erratically patterned, and my desire is to blend into the spirit of things, not to stand on sartorial ceremony. I hide the indiscreet glue-gun work beneath the sheath of tailored wool, coat belt cinched to squash the highland bows, and consider the eminent good sense of making a first birthday party an "ugly sweater" one. Baby Ruby samples the cake frosting with her feet and knees and fingers before reapportioning the ecru paste to all and sundry, sugared war paint banded thickly on her cheeks. I crouch in a corner, admiring the child at a distance. She's beautiful: face that pulses with expression, eyes of layered blue, every feature denoting both sweetness and curiosity and utter unconcern for her doting onlookers. The frosting finds her iris, stinging the lovely orb, and she is taken to a corner to be cleaned and to cry. The crowd fluxes and unfurls, its centralizing agent gone, and I find myself on the sofa talking to a chap with a ten-month old. The first-time father is working towards his PHD in cellular genetics, or something of that nature, experimenting with cyclins in fruit flies, trying to determine if a new-found member of these proteins, one that apparently has all of the looks but none of the personality of the others, does indeed belong to the family it mimics. I am enchanted by his enthusiasm. He requests I hold his son, Gabriel, for a moment while he collects his things as his wife has suggested they should be heading home soon. I have no instinct for babies and sink into cold sweats at the prospect of handling them, but I am caught fast by social graces; I have no time to object, and Gabriel is delivered into my arms. I feel his weight; I scan his swollen cheeks; I cock my head to better hear his sleepy clucking. It does not feel half so wrong as I feared, this ball of being, breathing, breathing, breathing, ribs to my ribs, feet at my elbow, head in the crook of my arm. It feels humbling, sacred even; it anchors me in the moment and the moment tastes of eternity. 

I walk on infirm firmament, my garden grows from chaos, entropy, fission, disorder. It is disorienting to till such soil, but I am not discouraged, for I have seen the flowers that bloom in such landscapes: harmony, uniformity, fusion, order. Life is neither all Reason nor all Madness. It is both, each consistently creating and destroying the other. 

The sun and the coffee-shop are fled; the Juncos shiver and slumber; I sit with night and fresh, thick snow at my shoulder, and the music of Satie, and the peace of the evening. And it feels good.

1-26-2013

Three cheers for the simple joys of domesticity! Radio 4 plays a panel documentary about Romulus and Remus, the tea kettle gurgles to a boil, I fold my various jumpers and arrange my new-bought groceries in a pretty array over the chest and microwave. The dairy items I have had to put in the fridge, understandably, and the strawberries, but as for the rest, I think I shall leave it where it lies, a pleasing produce patchwork, a testament to ethical consumerism and a hint at yesterday's lesson learned. Everything we do is significant; everything matters to the severest degree. The tidy bags of seed and grain are organic, as are the biscuits and soups; the strawberries are American grown, as are the rolled oats; the honey is raw and fair-trade; every item, save the one concession of mandarin oranges, is carefully chosen to cause the least harm as best I can foresee it.

"Do I dare disturb the universe?" Oh, Eliot, we do not have any choice. In a minute there is not "time for decisions and revisions that a minute will reverse." Everything matters. You shall disturb the universe with every mouthful of peach. Pray, then, make the mouthful count. Sit in the aisle of the grocery store, on the tiles, crouched by buckwheat and hazelnut flours, sit and unfurl the story of the honey in both directions, both its history and its future. Ask yourself: what were the bees that made this comb? What were their dances? What their flowers? What was the ancestor that came before them? What was the need that gave them wings? What was the predator that couple-colored their backs? What were the blooms? What painted these blooms and numbered their petals? What was the soil from which the blooms grew? What were the micro-organisms that unapplauded nourished that soil? What was the sun that gave of itself to the leaves? What were the atoms that fused and fled and fed the chloroplasts on those filigreed flagstaffs? What hands dove for the honeycomb? What history had she who wore the netted mask? What parents and what progeny? What battles did her great-uncles fight? What poetry did her foremothers know? And ask yourself: what shall become of this honey, once the jar is in my basket? What shall the taste of it, dripped thick on coconut butter and rice cakes, do to me? What peace and comfort shall it foster? What satiation? What cells shall it vitalize? What energy produce? What shall be accomplished with that energy? What strength? What sorrow? What love? What shall become of my body with the honey in it? What shall become of the million dominoes the honey-eating sends toppling? What shall become of the honey-eaten world, and the universe, and of the future itself? How much depends upon a jaw of raw honey? So much. So much. Everything matters so very much.

1-25-2013

7-1-11

"...This afternoon M___, a gentleman in his early fifties, came in to buy his weekly yogurt. We have talked on many occasions before and I like him because he is passionate about the importance of good boots and gave up fishing because it upset his conscience. He loves walking and the solitariness of Bald Mountain. He told me he was sad I was leaving. I replied that there would always be wonderful people behind the counter at L____, but he shook his head saying I was the best there'd been. I was flattered. Then he told me that if he were younger and I were single he'd have "been all over me," but unfortunately that was "not how the world had turned out." Again I was flattered, and not knowing what else to say, said as much. I wanted to leave the store and spend the afternoon tramping with him, learning about his history, what brought him joy about nature, what his philosophies about life were."

Today I learned that M___ had passed away. His final minutes were spent on Bald Mountain. I should have taken the initiative. I should have suggested we hike there together. I should have replied to his last email. I try and comfort myself with the fact that it was summer, and I was working 77 hour weeks, but damn it! I didn't reply. "Dear Sarah, I desperately wanted to come up and see you this weekend, but fate had other plans for me." I didn't reply. "Please take good care of yourself until I can come up and see you again. M___." I didn't reply. I never did see him again and I ache with wishing things were otherwise. For they could have been otherwise; I know they could; I could have made them otherwise.

Everywhere we tread we leave a trace, nor can we breathe without disturbing the universe. To exist is to bear a responsibility beyond reckoning. How have I treated life so blithely? How have I failed to see the gravity of my most trivial actions? How have I misunderstood the importance of every "hello" I've ever uttered, every footfall I've ever in snow imprinted, every word, every gesture, every move? Listen! We are alive and everything we do is of uttermost importance in the grand scheme of things; every action has not just an equal and opposite reaction, but chains of actions and reactions stemming out into the horizon of the future until, at some point, the entire universe is altered by the way we put on our socks. Everything matters; everything matters to the severest degree. Everything!