July 2021

The Freedom of Self-Imposed Constraints

If it is true that nothing is more terrifying for an artist/creative than the blank canvas or blank page, then it may also be true that the faster we get something on there, the more quickly we can free ourselves from such terror.

Before I learned to write every day, I spent about a decade either trying to write for too long (as if I could finish my opus in a month or something) or putting it off and feeling sick ––and who wouldn’t, with stakes and expectations so unrelentingly high? I started and stopped what I was trying to make a practice, more times than I can count. Needless to say, I rarely finished anything.

Write to save your life, is one prompt that I would never give to a student. But that’s exactly what I did to myself when I was trying to “be a writer” then. I was full of a destructive sort of “no pain, no gain” mentality, which I thought meant you were “serious.” If the point is to talk about the dramatic moment staying up all night, I suppose it could be effective. But if the point is to develop something lasting and long term, such as a body of work over a lifetime, it’s disastrous. In high school and college, I tended to apply the same model to my athletic training, and as a result, I was chronically injured and unable to compete for numerous seasons.

I suspect that I was at least partially influenced by the incredible expectations I was feeling, from many areas of dominant culture, about the supremacy of youth. A writer I admired once said to a class, “If you haven’t made it happen by twenty-six, forget it,” and while there must have been some context for this, it was lost on me, and all I could feel after graduation was the pressure of “It,” and I think Stephen King made a brilliant choice for a title of one of his most well-known horror novels. Turning a creative impulse into an “It” is a great way to create a lot of drama, but it’s a horror and a disaster to live through. I had no practice to sustain any creative “vision” I could dream, and I had yet to learn that the daily practice of growing the work over time was what I really wanted. It’s much less glamorous, much more accessible, and much more sustaining.

Then I stumbled on the idea of 15 minutes a day. Then 3 pages. Then I tried adding one hour in the evenings. Now there’s no drama about whether or not writing is going to happen. It’s no longer a big deal. It just does. To learn this, I needed to limit my expectations. This meant being humble, honest, and patient. I had to drop the unreasonable vague product-oriented timeline, and just grow. Not so I could be some superstar, but so I could live.

“Waiting for Summer” by Nicholas Erwin on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license

I keep having to adjust the parameters and re-teach myself this lesson. When I started this daily blog project, it was a big step for me. I noticed that while the posts were generally short (the sort of thing that could be drafted in 15-20 minutes or less) I could easily not get them done until late in the day because I would decide I wasn’t “ready” or “didn’t have an idea.” In summer and in-between writing projects this might work, but in a few weeks, I am going to revert to my “normal” schedule with all of its typical demands and then some, plus I’ve added this. Plus I want to begin work on a new manuscript soon. I realized I had a choice: either plan on being unable to sustain it at some point or make a strict limit. So now I am limited to 15 minutes to think, 15 to write, and the rest of an hour to type, find (most) typos, add links and an image, and post. That’s it. Some are better than others, but all are the best I can do in a given time frame. No time for grand ideas or clever concepts. Just a daily offering, and no longer a big deal. I’ve scaled down my expectations some to make it so, and now I do not have a doubt that I can do it for a year (then two, three, and so on . . .), even during very hectic days. If all I have to work with is an hour, and it gets sidelined in the morning, I’ll find it later. But usually, I can control the early morning, so most days this is doable.

Since trying this, I’ve noticed that I’m already able to dream other projects more fully, because my mental space is freed up after my morning post. I’ve been more relaxed, and I am learning to trust that something can always be made “from scratch” the next day. This post is written on a day that I admittedly have “no new ideas,” just this thing I was noticing all last week, after implementing a new constraint, which now limits my ability to plan on finding a “better idea.”

If it is true that nothing is more terrifying for an artist/creative than the blank canvas or blank page, then it may also be true that the faster we get something on there, the more quickly we can free ourselves from such terror. What comes after that is so much more interesting, anyway.

Here are some constraints I like to use:
•   Set a timer for 15 minutes. Pick up pen. Write. Stop at timer (unless you really can’t). Notice how fast the time went.
•   Limit a daily exercise to something relevant to the history of a given day.
•   Prompts like this: In today’s short piece, include a childhood object, a famous dead person, and a favorite activity.
•   Start writing. Don’t stop till you fill 3 pages. No lifting pen off page.
•   Write one page in the voice of _______________.
•   Open the dictionary at random. Choose the first word you see. Write it down (if you don’t know what it means, include the definition). Repeat five times. Now write a short exercise using all 5 words.
•   [for late afternoon sessions] Take a snack with you to the writing table. Don’t make dinner until you do this (short) thing.

Lesson learned––again. Constraints are freeing and they allow me to focus. They teach and re-teach me to overcome paralysis of thinking. And they are a lot more fun than wondering what to do and listening to that nagging voice insisting that it isn’t good enough.

Oy! Metaphor in the Wild

I’ll be the tree; you be the bird.

I keep metaphors on hand like tools for getting me out of tight psychic spaces. Many are regularly useful, like the tiny Philips screwdriver in the catchall drawer, even after they’ve become so clichéd that they would sound generic if I used them in writing. You know the ones, hope as the thing with feathers, and the bright light in the dark room. The beloved as a summer’s day, or the sun. The heart as the always-breaking part, its cracks the places through which some inner light shines. Snow like a bedcover, a partner as one’s other half, emotions like an amusement park ride, the premise of which is to simmer delight with suspense until they boil over into terrified laughter. The dead horse, still beaten; the late-coming blooms, time as a thief, running off with the riches still unspent. Years like a river upon which a body may be carried, against which the salmon might swim. Time at the bedside in the white costume of a nurse of the first great war, coming to heal.

These familiar metaphors can be called up as needed, summoned for the occasion. There’s comfort and security in returning to them. I’ll be the tree; you be the bird. I’ll be the nest; you be the egg. I’ll be the frightened, you be the sheltering wing, here is the basket, now take the eggs. Long road, steep hill, one foot at a time, there are always the bushes to shake.

“Friday Funny Animals 21” by John C Bullas BSc MSc PhD MCIHT MIAT on flickr under an Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivs 2.0 Generic license.

Until they shake you such that your vision lands on one you’ve never seen before, and it’s like finding a new room in the house you’ve been living in for years. This happened the other day, as I was walking by an elementary school, and I looked through the fence, into the garden, to read the words painted in a child’s hand, in large letters, on plywood propped behind the raised beds, against the opposite fence.

“THE WORLD IS YOUR OY,” it proudly proclaimed, and I almost missed it, filling in the space with the missing letters I expected to see––as I do often, mainly with my own typos. Ah yes, I thought, the mollusk ready to eat, which is a delicacy when fresh and poison when left to sit too long. The thing to be shucked and opened, quivering briny flesh on the tongue, swallowed whole.

But then I stopped. No, it was not an oyster, as this young person had written it. Perhaps they were going that way, and then they got tagged it or something more interesting happened in the adjacent field–– a kickball game or an unexpected kite. Maybe the fire bell rang. Whatever the interruption, the result is clear, and what it leaves me with is a metaphor that’s just right at specific moments when other ones will not do. Yes, I think, wisdom from the letters of babes. The world is indeed, sometimes, just this: My Oy! Some tools are too wonderful to keep to oneself, so I have to write it here again. I’ll leave it to you to decide on the appropriate use.

After all, the world is your oy.

Earthling vs. Surrender

Earthling may not know why she is waiting. But sometimes it’s like this when the only thing to do is sit and be.

In this scene, earthling doesn’t look so hot. It appears that earthling is just very tired. Always seeking, always questioning. Always trying to figure things out. Earthling gets like this from time to time. They are good at getting things done, but sometimes the thing to do is something else. Earthling is stubborn and sometimes gets tunnel vision. On such occasions, wise woman may visit.

[Enter wise woman. She finds a bedraggled-looking earthling, walking in a dazed manner like they have forgotten what it was that they meant to do. She approaches gently, waits for earthling to notice. Earthling is preoccupied, so wise woman speaks first, placing a gentle hand on earthling’s back.]

What do you do when the walls are breached, defenses crumbled, when strategy is suddenly a moot point?
I shall defend!

No, listen. I just told you that your lines of defense are gone.
Oh. Then I shall get away! There are lots of alternatives. Just look at this list!

It’s silly to run at this point. Where would you hide, you and your long list?
Well, then. I shall rebuild!

Sure. Maybe, but you’re still without walls for the time being, aren’t you?
Sigh. Damn, you’re right. Well now what?

Just wait.
And?

Sit.
And?

Listen.
That’s not very much. I prefer lists. I like to cross things out, one by one. See? Post blog, get groceries, send that email you don’t want to send, check that email you don’t want to read, remember to run, walk, or swim in body; remember to call, remember to read for restoring of soul, remember to sit so as not to forget point of connection between body and soul, mind and everything else; remember to remember, remember to forget.

Dear, just stop.
Stop what?

Doing.
Doing what?

No, just stop doing.
And?

I already told you. Just wait.

[Earthling may not know why she is waiting. But sometimes it’s like this when the only thing to do is sit and be. She’s practicing.]

Phobias

Any object can become a fear object:
a needle, a flower, the dark.

One of the books I keep on my nightstand, within easy reach of my morning-coffee perch, is The Daily Poet by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano. There’s a prompt for every day of the year. Four out of five times I may read the prompt and go, “Huh. That’s cool,” and move on, and I keep checking. While not all prompts will resonate at a given time, all are technically doable, and there’s a wonderful variety. It is from this book that I developed the habit of checking to see what happened on this day in history when I’m looking for a practice exercise, and also of checking Craigslist for ideas. It’s a gem with a beautifully simple format. Today’s prompt is to consider the theme “phobias,” which is something Aimee Nezhukumatathil does so interestingly in her poem, “Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.” That sounded like something I could do today, so here it is.

Any object can become a fear object:
a needle, a flower, the dark.
Not the car exactly but riding in one.
Those figures that look human, but
aren’t. Thunder, of course, and lightning.
My grandfather, anticipating this fear, would
announce, when a storm came, Angels! They
were bowling, he told us.

Some fear books; others, amphibians.
I sometimes have nightmares about steep
slopes. Time itself, the mirror, ridicule. I
can’t help but think these go together. The
confined space. Knees, even. Whole groups
of others: men, women, beautiful women,
teenagers, children, clowns. The ill, and
doctors. Touch itself, the color white, the
color black; small and large things. Death
and dead things; the figure 8. Weight gain,
paper. School seems like an obvious choice;
I hadn’t considered the color purple. Sleep,
holes, speed.

I read the list, impressed with the specificity
of options. Admiring, even, but I wonder,
what is the word for this ever-present knot,
this constant quaking from the inside out,
easier to hide than to still? When small, I
was not afraid of most grownups, only of
having to become one, because while it
was clear that there would be expectations,
it was not so clear what they were. A common
concern was driving, how it was that my mother
could remember every turn, mostly, to all the
endless places we went, and still get back home.
It saddened me to know that when my turn came
behind the wheel, I would probably disappear.

Unless! I brought breadcrumbs to leave a trail,
but consider Hansel and Gretel. They were careful,
but the birds ate their intentions home. The fire
of the oven, waiting in the dark woods, this is
what kept me in knots, the way I could stumble
and be cooked alive. But it wasn’t on the list,
so maybe I dreamed it, as with other things,
Just butterflies, the growns would say, as though what
was happening was the flutter of iridescent wings
of a colony of new-transformed lives, ready to
fly from this body’s own dark.

Learning by Imitation

Imitation is a wonderful teacher. One learns this especially by failing at it.

Today’s post arises in part, from a quick-write exercise I did with students some time ago, about how we learn by imitation, inspired by a TED talk by the artist Hetain Patel, “Who Are You? Think Again.” When possible, I do these free writing exercises with them, and whenever I do, I vow to do it more. Invariably, some interruption will void this intention. Still, it’s always worth repeating. I am thinking about the subject of learning by imitation today. The other part is that I needed to find this post for my offering today, because of time constraints.

I drafted this one awhile back, but never posted it. I wasn’t blogging daily then. More like 3-15 times per year. Now it’s daily and after forty days, I added a time constraint. Doing this takes away the luxury of being too choosy. I can’t hem and haw over what goes up; all I can do is offer the best I have within a given hour. Today, as I was preparing to enter the 15-minute “think of an idea” phase, I got distracted by another question: What other poets/literary writers are keeping blogs and what can I learn from them? There went my hour. The good news is, I can learn a lot. I’ve already learned that I am going to have to migrate to WordPress in order to be able to have some of the functions and features I will want long-term, so now I am adding “learn how to migrate website to WordPress” to my to-do list. It may take a little while, but I can learn.

“Sample Book” by scrappy annie on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 2.0 Generic license.

So now, it makes sense to share this other thing. One, because it’s what I have right now. Two, because it just happens to be precisely relevant to today’s thoughts. It’s funny how unexpected diversions and interruptions can lead to new discoveries. Come to think of it, that’s exactly what I mean to be showing and doing here. It was fun to find this one again. It was about a ten-minute exercise, I think. I was most likely interrupted by a hall pass after about five. But I had forgotten these things, and finding them today made me chuckle:

I used to covet the friendship bracelets of my older cousin, Kelly. Even at thirteen, I knew that what separated me from Kelly was more than the two years she had ahead of me, and more than her fashion sense. We were different types. I felt this with a sort of ominous dread. Kelly always had a boyfriend, and it was hard to imagine her ever suffering through the malaise of generalized heartbreak that was my consistent companion.

I remember wanting to have some sort of word that I said differently than everyone else, that could be “my word.” My first friend, Tara, had “beltseat” and “brefkast”, my grandmother stacked my grandfather’s t-shirts in the “armoire,” my dad could say “fuggettabbouttit” believably and my mom said “draw” instead of “drawer.” My third grade teacher, Mrs. Reynolds said “idear” and “umbreller.” I tried out different ways of saying orange — or ah-range, and I could never decide which fit best. Eventually, I forgot the whole endeavor.

Then, one day when I was fourteen or so — maybe younger, there was this girl. I can’t remember her name anymore. She was a varsity swimmer — confident, self-assured, and never without something to say that people seemed inclined to listen to. She was the sort of girl who seemed to operate on an ingrained assumption that the things that went through her head would naturally be of interest to others. In short, she had certain qualities I sorely lacked, and I watched her with some puzzlement, wondering how one would go about attaining them.

There was one thing tangible I could discern. Whenever the subject of bagels came up, she said “bahgel” and she never hesitated to get extra cream cheese on hers. It was a horrifying amount of cream cheese, a giant slab that appeared about as thick as one of the bagel halves it came between, an amount I could never imagine consuming with any degree of ease, especially not in public. She could, though, and did, and as I watched her eat with relish in the team van, without any sense of shame, I understood that there was something greater than age or pronunciation quirks separating us. I gave up trying to say the word as she did, because it felt like a great pretension. I didn’t mind a pretension; in fact it felt like I really could use one or two, but “bahgel” felt obnoxiously contrived and false. So I went back to saying it the regular way, “Just plain, thank you,” no butter and no cream cheese, and peeled mine slowly from the outside in, trying to make it last, fighting against the urge to tear it in half with my teeth like a crazed wolf.

Imitation is a wonderful teacher. One learns this especially by failing at it. As Patel observes in his talk, “. . . contrary to what we might usually assume, imitating somebody can reveal something unique. So every time I fail to become more like my father, I become more like myself. Every time I fail to become Bruce Lee, I become more authentically me.”

I’ve been looking at poet/writer blogs all morning, and I don’t see a single one I can imitate seamlessly. I see many I can learn from. I take a lot of hope in this: the idea that imitating means I don’t have to start from scratch, and failing at it means I am being real about who I am, what I do, and how I see. In a world that often praises an empty and misunderstood “authenticity” I want something lasting, something that is honest, and something that surprises and renews my perspective by never being exactly what I planned. So here’s to learning by imitation.

I’ll Meet You at the Lost and Found

I’m seeing these lost parts everywhere. In the mirror and on everyone I pass.

*I’m working with new constraints this week, aiming to limit these posts to being conceived and done in an hour or less, with means writing no more than 15-30 minutes, to allow time for finding ideas, posting, images, etc. One of my go-to places to look for ideas is the lost and found section on Craigslist. I’ve done this before in an earlier post. Today’s exercise was infused with some thoughts I’ve been having lately, about what happens to unshed grief.

I have forgotten the names of the titles to these books I once read, and do you know this feeling? In one, a botanist befriends a chosen savior, rides a horse out of town, and finds a special door, which makes a sound like a gong. In the other, there’s a woman in a hospital bed who suddenly develops special powers.

I used to have some of these, too, where I could will a thing to happen with my mind. I’d think, ice cream, ice cream, ice cream––all day, sometimes two, three, four days in a row––and then, out of nowhere, I’d hear it, the sound of the Good Humor truck! It was magic. I coveted the Chipwich, but the firecracker popsicle would do.

The dog is gone again, also the cat. But now I have this chameleon. I hope someone will claim it, as it will not eat standard pet food. I am tired of buying crickets, but I am not sure if it is any good at hunting and don’t want it starving on my watch. I don’t know where it is now, BTW.

I found a wedding ring, a kayak paddle, a Dora the Explorer backpack full of syringes, and a small sandal, sized for a toddler’s foot––all on the bike path near the railroad tracks. There was an open suitcase near the offramp by Broadway and Main, clothes scattered everywhere, my eye was drawn to the colors: blouses in fuchsia, teal, pomegranate, and the display of women’s underthings.

I lost the number I meant to call. Remember we met on the beach? And the name of that movie I told you about? It was my favorite that year, but after I returned it, I never saw it anywhere else.

I’m seeing these lost parts everywhere. In the mirror and on everyone I pass. They’re hanging off of us all the time. Sometimes we look like ragged snakes, trying to shed old skins, other times like ragged soldiers in torn battledress, other times just like children who have just left their favorite toys in the park. You can tell, sometimes, when someone’s about to drop their courage. The sight of joi de vivre melting off a face is so particular. When someone stumbles upon their lost sense of humor, it’s infectious, leaking out of their pores.

Then there’s all those things you don’t keep and you don’t hold, that pile of griefs accumulated somehow, stuffed or tossed one by one, in the backs of closets, under the bed, dropped into the abyss of an oversized purse, in the catchall drawer with all the takeout menus and spare hardware––but eventually, you’re not losing and you’re not finding, exactly; they’re just there. And then there are these moments in the produce aisle of the grocery store where you’re suddenly floating over the citrus display, then landing near the parsley and cilantro, eyes suddenly wet, because it was only a moment, but you saw it, how people clutched their carts and baskets to themselves, or out in front, like shields, filling and emptying, an endless stream, searching eyes glazed under fluorescent lights.

“Osprey” by Laura Pontiggia on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

I meant to list some more things I was finding, but my hands are tired, knuckles white.

Funny how you can lose the will to hold a thing, even when you thought you could––if you saved up, if you built muscles strong enough, if you never looked down. I’ll come back tomorrow, I’ll open this catchall drawer, I’ll look. While I’m at it, I’ll check these ads again, see if anyone’s missing a chameleon. Then I’ll see about finding the chameleon. But now, I need to find some silence, and a pillow.

Before I do, do you know that the osprey have built a nest in those lights across the field? Do you remember? That song we used to sing back and forth when life was the thing we would keep, between us, if only we held tight enough. I can’t remember the words now. Can you help?

Circus Flames

It was a Friday afternoon, mostly women and children. It started right after the lions, during the Flying Wallendas.

On this day in 1944, the Hartford Circus fire broke out in a Ringling Brothers tent, during an afternoon show attended by thousands in Hartford, Connecticut. One-hundred sixty-seven people were killed. It was common practice at the time to waterproof the tents by coating them in a solution of paraffin wax dissolved in gasoline. The event is depicted by Stuart O’Nan in his 2001 book The Circus Fire: The True Story of An American Tragedy. The following is an imagined account from the perspective of a surviving member of the staff.

“Circus” by Joshua Zader on flickr under a Creative Commons attribution 2.0 Generic license.

We’d been short-staffed since the war started, always running behind.
A few years before, a fire in the menagerie had killed our lion. No one
could forget the elephant’s screams. You could call that an omen, or you
could wait until the trains ran late and our first commandment was broken
and the show did not go on. The land got a taint before we started, leaked
from the first audience, the one that never saw the show. You could feel
it, like the first notes in a film where the mummy wakes up, before it moves.

It was a Friday afternoon, mostly women and children. It started right after
the lions, during the Flying Wallendas. The bandleader
played Stars and Stripes Forever, our smoke signal for danger. Don’t panic
folks, but you know how that goes. The big cats got out okay, but their chutes
blocked the exits. Some just ran in circles, calling the names of the ones they
could not leave.

As the flames consumed the tent, wax dripped from the roof, burning tiny
faces, flailing arms in summer shirtsleeves. The papers
called it the day the clowns cried.

Juno to Jupiter

I am flying over you now. They warned me of your belts, threatening radiation, how you will blind me with them if I stay

On this day in 2016, NASA launched the Juno space probe, a twenty-month survey of the mysterious fifth planet in our solar system. The name was appropriately chosen in honor of the Roman goddess, Juno, wife of Jupiter and mother of Mars, the god of war. She is associated with may roles, including protection, pulling back the veil, and childbirth.

To mark this day, an imagined conversation.

JUNO to JUPITER
What formed you, anyway? All these years, you’ve never mentioned it. Do you even have a solid center, or are you all atmosphere and wind, gravity and radiation? You’ve drawn these clouds around you, hiding, but I see you, Jove.

They know you for your sky, your thunder, your place on the throne, but I’m not here for any of that. I want to know what you’ve got hiding under those blankets of clouds, and about your waters. Can they be breathed, and what moves you?

It’s taken me years to reach you. Eons before I left, I would wonder, watching, hearing tales of your thundering greatness. But I have to say, from a distance, you looked so small.

I am flying over you now. They warned me of your belts, threatening radiation, how you will blind me with them if I stay. That great red spot of yours, now like an eye, then a mouth. How easy to mistake that for a center, when it’s just your most dramatic atmospheric spectacle, nothing but a war of opposing winds,

a stage play for the battles that so impressed our son. I have to tell you, he has really gotten carried away. It’s all he can do, even when he calls it by another name––peace, containment, deterrence. Can you do something? Show him, it’s only a distraction, a relatively recent storm, a blemish on your surface and not the polestar of your magnitude.

Again with the thunder? Well, don’t say I didn’t tell you. Besides, they say it’s shrinking.

I’ve got to go soon. Before I do, I will take in your atmosphere, your magnetic field. You will cover me in dust again, answering as you always do, with nothing but weather and wind.

Writing in the Dark, and What it’s Like to Be a Bat

One of the best things about being a writer is getting to hang out in a space of researching these questions.

One of the interesting challenges of keeping this daily practice of posting here, is noticing how often I face a sense of having nothing to share. Earlier this week, I began some early notes for what I think are two distinct coming long-term projects, and I also revised a poetry manuscript. Those are unwieldy and not appropriate for publication here. I thought of sharing something I found this morning, but I had written it years ago and part of my intention in showing up here is with new pieces, ready or not. I want to practice what I am trying to teach myself, which is, among other things: that even when you feel like you don’t have enough, or feel unworthy, there is always something new to share. Just because. It’s hard to learn this because the world is so much. Mostly, I want to avoid walking out there, especially with some creative infant child in my arms.

So, baby steps. I am coming up on forty days into this practice (Hah! I think as I write this, The length of a Biblical desert fast! What’s next, visions?! Hang on!) and after an enthusiastic day one, I have been having plenty of good practice in noticing that every day there’s a block, and every day, something new. By this point, I have learned to expect that the next time I get writer’s block (either in five minutes, one hour or tomorrow morning), I’ll just keep writing through it. Sort of like breathing through the thing that starts to feel like despair or laughing while crying.

I feel mostly as though I never have anything to say (if saying means, “All must hear this!”), but I can’t know what I think (and sometimes feel) without writing. As a result, I have lots of backup techniques with which to treat such paralysis. My writing self, I have learned, must be treated like a terrified, sickly child in need of a lot of extra support. I keep books of prompts handy, and bookmark weird news sites and craigslist ads, also photography sites and art books. Many days, I look up “This Day in History” to see if anything kindles there. If I still come up short, it can be fruitful to try an erasure or a found poem of another text. The worst that can happen from that is that I will spend some time reading a text I might otherwise not read. It can teach me something new.

Juvenile Mariana Fruit Bat by USFWS-Pacific Region on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 2.0 Generic license

Thinking about what to post here today, I checked my usual places and seemed to be coming up with nothing. But then I learned that it was on this day in 1937 that American philosopher Thomas Nagel was born. I’ve been obsessed about questions of understanding and what can’t be understood, thinking and what can’t be thought through, and (always) with the question of how to be––here, in this impossible world. I jumped at the chance to return to his “What it’s Like to Be a Bat.” The only problem with using this text for found poetry is that I loved so many whole phrases and complete sentences, that I had to leave them intact. I thought about italicizing these sections, as though to give credit to the author, who might very well be appalled at the gross modifications and reductions of this excellent text, the focus of which is largely a question of certain inherent problems in reductionist tendencies. But then, I just italicized the whole thing. It’s an exercise. Consider the words stolen, the arrangement sometimes mine.

But, as I say to the child writer whom I’m trying to coax into writing today’s piece, “Oh, well! It was a good time, wasn’t it?! And no one got hurt!” I highly recommend the process, which if you cut out the time hemming and hawing over what to do, is entirely intuitive and basically involves trying not to think while you pluck out words and phrases of interest. Generally, something like this may be done in 1-15 minutes, which makes it great for a practice exercise. In this case, I made some attempt to honor the spirit of the work, but I took liberties with delivery and nuance.

Caveat: I still don’t know what it’s like to be a bat. But at least I got to hang out in a space of researching the question, which is one of the best things about being a writer.

Consciousness, the mind body problem, is intractable.
Current discussions get it obviously wrong.

Reductionist euphoria is designed to explain, but
problems are ignored. Philosophers share a human
weakness for what is familiar, hence familiar reductions.

Without consciousness, it seems hopeless.
Perhaps a new form can be, in the distant future.

Extremists deny this. It is impossible to exclude experience.
Ever spent time in an enclosed space, with an excited bat?

Now there is an alien form of life! Consider echolocation,
how they whisper with their shrieks, how different from
any sense we possess. What is it like to be a bat?

We cannot form more than a schematic conception.
If there is conscious life elsewhere in the universe,
it is likely that some of it will not be describable.
It would be foolish to doubt that there are facts

which humans will never possess, just as it would to be convinced that the bats’ experience, once thoroughly observed, may be known.

What would be left if you removed the viewpoint of the bat? Here is a general difficulty.There is an effort to substitute the concept of mind for the real thing, to have nothing left over which cannot be reduced. What next? What it is, remains a mystery.

The apparent clarity of the word “is,” is deceptive.
Suppose a caterpillar, locked in a safe, by someone unfamiliar with metamorphosis. Weeks later, a butterfly! One might think a tiny, winged parasite devoured the original, and grew.

Does it make sense to ask what my experiences are really like, beyond how they appear?
Proposal: it may be possible to approach from another direction, separate from empathy or imagination. It would not capture; it’s goal would be to describe.

One might try to develop concepts that could be used to explain to a person blind from birth what it was like to see, and vice versa. One would reach a blank wall, eventually, but still. Possible.
Red is not quite the sound of a trumpet. I am indebted to many people for their comments.

If one understood how subjective experience could have an objective nature, one would understand the existence of subjects other than oneself.

Note to artist-child-self: now go look at bats. If none are available, because daytime, birds will do. Watch. Then later, remember to write again. Do this impossible, necessary exercise of making something even if it isn’t sense, of what you may not know.

How We Celebrated Tiny Flames

We didn’t think about squandering, then,
and it never once occurred to us to save.

Remember when we shot our breaths
out of ourselves, laughing
at the last loud fart? We couldn’t stop

And we sprayed gasping iridescent drops
into the air like water from the spray
nozzle of a garden hose, just for dancing.

We played chase like being hunted was a game,
like capture was a cartoon scene, we fell down
laughing. Wait, we said, I need to catch ––
like it was slow feathers falling from the sky
to be cupped in our open hands

––And remember, how we painted with it, too?
We blew our canvasses across car windows,
fingertips tracing: here a smile, now a cat,
heart.

And sometimes it was smacked from us, as when we
fell back off a ladder or a swing, but the trick
to waiting was knowing the metaphor and trusting
that if the next breath could be knocked out

like a ball from a basket, it could also come
swishing back at the next run up the court,
catching nothing but the nets of our wide-stretched
throats.

We didn’t think about squandering, then,
and it never once occurred to us to save
any of what we spent so freely, those fortunes
that we took for our inheritance. We had no way

of knowing, then, how easily they could go. Really,
it takes only a certain amount of pressure,
applied across a certain length of time,
but how could we have begun to measure

what we had yet to grow the strength
to apply?

We couldn’t, not when
time was what we flew threw,
roaring our laughs
like lions
until they ran out.