September 2021

House of Bones

Considering the first known examples of human architecture: dwellings made of mammoth bones.

They found them in the Ukraine in one of the Vietnam war years, in the year of Selma and the teenage sniper on the 101 and the launch of the world’s first in-space nuclear reactor. There were troops in the D.R. and the burning of draft cards and Muhammed Ali knocked out Sonny Liston in a rematch.

Phantom punch?

Right. It was Beatlemania and Watts and the Stones and Vatican II that year.

How did they find them?

It was just a jawbone at first. A farmer was expanding his cellar when he uncovered it. Then there were more bones.

How many?

Hundreds, then thousands. They thought at first it was the site of a mass slaughter.

All mammoth?

Yes. Then they noticed the patterns, the arrangement. Then they found more, and they figured that what they were looking at was one of the earliest known relics of human architecture.

People lived in the bones?

The tusks made an arched entryway. They created domes with the rest, covered them with skins. There were sometimes multiple domes in one area. Each could hold ten to one-hundred people. It is likely that there were ritual gatherings inside.

Day-to-day living, also?

Definitely. They would have to. Consider the cold.

So, they were sheltered in the bones of the mammoth they had eaten?

And the bones they would gather.

I am trying to imagine the quiet of that space, the uncompromised elegance.

Of living in the remains of the dead.

Of no one pretending otherwise.

Where everywhere you looked, there they were.

The remains, and you inside them.

Except it would be us, always us.

Always a group, breathing for a short time.

In the shelters assembled by living hands, from the remains.

As if to say, come in. Stay for a while.

As if to say, we are all going soon.

As if to remind, this is shelter. Foxes have holes, birds their nests.

But the sons and daughters of men?

Only this.

For more about the 1965 discovery of the oldest surviving architecture, Jeremy Norman’s History of Information provides more information and a short video.

Guide to Underwater Living

To survive in the deep with no hiding place, make yourself invisible. Where there is no refuge, develop a form that light will pass through.

Today, I am considering living underwater. Ninety percent of earth’s livable space is in the oceans. Recently, I read that many of the creatures living in it have survived by evolving talents for invisibility.

Consider this: land-dwelling creatures may camouflage themselves to blend in with surroundings. They may retreat to underground dens, high-altitude nests, or fly.

To illustrate, one doctor cites a familiar scenario: Say a gunman enters a room. What do you do? A kindergartener can tell you: take cover. Hide. Do not come out.

But what about the deep, where there is nowhere to hide?

To survive, you adapt by making yourself invisible. Where there is no refuge from what will eat you, develop a form that light will pass through.

The deep is full of transparent animals. You can read a book through some of them. Such forms are not without complications, of course. Risk of sunburning organs is among them. Stay low to avoid this.

If not see-through, you can make yourself a mirror, reflecting light back.

If not invisible, you can create your own light and shine it below you so that anyone looking up, sees nothing but light. If you do this, be careful not to let your light leak out or above you, so that you don’t become an easy target.

These transparent swimmers are everywhere, and now I can’t stop thinking about all of this invisible life, teeming beyond our ability to see what it is.

This post was inspired by this New York Times article, “A World of Creatures that Hide in the Open” from 2014.

Whale Songs

Some arctic baleens can live for over two-hundred years. What do they remember from their centuries of knowing?

My first memory of the largest creature known to ever exist on the planet, is of the ninety-four-foot blue whale model suspended from the ceiling in New York’s Museum of Natural history. It was amazing to me that something could grow so large from eating such tiny creatures. I was relieved to know that it wanted nothing larger.

Their songs are complex and can be heard for miles.

Some arctic baleens can live for over two-hundred years. And what do they remember, I wonder, from their centuries of knowing?

Killer whales, more porpoise than whale, live in family groups centered around the mother. The beluga earned the name canary of the sea, for its complex repertoire of chirps, whistles, and clicks.

The round trip of a grey whale is ten thousand miles.

Some beaked species have been known to dive nearly two miles beneath the surface, have been known not to surface for two hours.

The round trip of a grey whale is ten thousand miles. You can tell their age by the accumulation patterns of ear wax. Alternating rings of light and dark record the number of migrations. This because the color of the wax changes with water temperature.

The humpback may live off fat reserves for over half a year.

It is suspected that they grieve. This because mothers and related kin have been known to carry the body of a dead calf for some time after death, even when doing so threatens their safety.

The thing about whales is that no matter how hard you try to track them they tend to disappear for stretches of time only to reappear where the researchers don’t expect. The calves whisper to the mothers while migrating, and during these travels the mother will not eat. Instead, she will wait as her baby feeds, conserving her energy for the trip.

They don’t know why the calves whisper, but it must be learned.

Their ancestors had four legs, and whenever I learn this about a sea creature, I can’t help but wonder about what was happening on land, to drive whole species away from it. And I think about certain things, and wonder: at what point do you –––?

Notes:

Here’s a photo and information about the blue whale model in the American Museum of Natural History.

The last passage about migration is excerpted from my story “Twilight at Blue Plate” which appeared in Oyster River Pages in August 2019.

Daughters of the Sun

What is the sound of millions of Monarchs, moving? Like a waterfall.

The weather kills them, and the poisoning of milkweed, and the decimation of the forests they went home to. They keep looking: where are the flowers still wild, the trees still undisturbed? Sometimes, they find nothing.

But look what happens when they come. Here is a forest, even now. Have you ever seen a swarm of bees, gathered around the knob of a tree limb? Like that, the closed wings brown as bark, but wait. When they open, listen. What is that sound now, here at the edge of this expanding desert?

One makes no sound. But here are millions, and when they move, if your eyes were closed, you would think: waterfall.

The ancients, seeing them, recognized the spirits of fallen warriors, the souls of mothers lost in childbirth, the souls of children lost when the families had to flee the sites of massacre. The ancients, seeing them in the tree, saw the forests as waiting mothers and fathers, arms open to receive their lost children again.

Notes:

A recent article in My Modern Met features a recording by nature host Phil Torres, of the waterfall sound made when millions of Monarchs are moving.

There are numerous resources devoted to planting milkweed to mitigate the devastation of Monarch populations.

Pilgrims

Considering a voyage to cat island.

What are you doing?

Studying up. I’ll be traveling soon.

To?

Cat Island.

Bahamas?

They have one, I think. But this is Japan, which has a few.

How’d that happen? Have you been reading Murakami again?

Burroughs, actually. But the island, it used to be a hub for the sardine trade. There was a rodent problem on the boats, so the fishermen started taking in strays. The cats were treated well by the villagers. After all, they were essential workers.

Are they still?

Well-treated, yes. They outnumber villagers ten to one. But the sardine trade dried up. People left, except for the old timers. Cats stayed. Someone thought it would be a good idea to spay and neuter them awhile back, but a significant group escaped the knife. They’re somewhat of a sensation now.

Ever read Timothy Morton, the philosopher?

Oh, right. Who loves how cats blur the false boundary between Nature and Us.

Did you know that next to birds, cats have the widest range of vocalizations of any domestic pet?

The meowing would be just for kittens, but it persists into adulthood among domesticated species, as a cry for something from a caretaker.

Loneliness can do it, too. And hunger. By the longer, throatier Meeeoooooow can mean concern, or existential annoyance.

Oh, C’mon.

Yes, I think that’s actually what it means.

Well. Then, purring is contentment, obviously.

Sure, but it can mean worry, too. Like how humans will whistle when nervous, as distraction.

Chirping is my favorite.

Mothers will do that to tell the kittens to pay attention and follow along.

What about those little chirrups at the window?

Means they are excited, sometimes about a bird.

Yowling?

That’s for longing. It can be for a mate, or they could miss their old home.

They’re nostalgic, then?

We are the cats inside, Burroughs wrote. Talk about a man who loved cats.

Who cannot walk alone, and for us there is only one place.

Where?

Notes: For a beautiful photo essay of Japan’s largest cat island, Aoshima, you can click here.

An excellent article about philosopher Timothy Morton can be found here.

The Burroughs quote is from his novella, The Cat Inside.

Gutter Prayer

You held what was before you in your hands, giving of your heart until it was done.

Let’s touch them, you said. Of the disposable––the lonely, too.

Never eat a single mouthful, your mother told you, unless you share it.

When asked for beliefs, you disappointed. Only here, only this.

It’s not that you hadn’t sought more. It’s not that you hadn’t gazed into the heavens with an aching heart, waiting for some response. Finding nothing only made the ache worse, so you turned what you had of longing to those who mirrored it, to offer the comfort you would seek.

I remember the time. It was a year of massacre, mass suicide, mass extinction. The machine won the chess game. I was finding Joan Didion, the epigraph from Yeats framing her chronicle of the end of an era of wild hope. For? The promise of a new age, Turning and turning, some human achievement promised, but the falcon cannot hear the falconer.

It wasn’t going to work, was it? Meaning, any of the ideas.

You were done with ideas, too. Only love, you offered. Only this.

Unbreak my heart, we sang, our fragile candles in the wind. We were building a mystery, but it seemed to be swallowing us whole, like Jonah’s whale, the secret gardens of our imagined inheritance forever a million miles away.

No, you insisted. Only here. You held what was before you in your hands, giving of your heart until it was done.

And wasn’t this the ultimate hope, some finite relief to our dreams of immortality? That there was something we could do, really do––not dream, not imagine, not vision our way into or out of–– with all its messy, mundane details, its fluid and its stink, its inevitable decay, and the inevitable rejuvenation of this endless, wanting need? We could meet it just as endlessly until we couldn’t anymore, until we could be relieved of the pressure of our promise, swallowed back into the great void you saw everywhere, especially when you sought an answer or a cosmic face toward which to offer your prayers. Only here, you said. Only these outstretched hands.

We could meet them, again and again. This you can do, you showed us. This you can do until you are done.

This morning, I am reminded that on this day, in 1997, Mother Teresa died, so I am considering the legacy of her life.

Mirror, mirror

Imagining thirteen ways of being looked at by a blackbird.

They’re back.

What?

These blackbirds, see? They are looking at me. I just wanted to see these mountains. Out in the––

Snow?

Right. I’ve been––

Wallace Stevens again?

Well, sure. There were only three at first.

And where did you think you were going to find snow? Have you seen the––

Now this one. Listen. There is some innuendo in his tone.

His?

C’mon, you can tell. Now they’re at my feet.

Now they’re flying out of sight.

They’ll be back. All afternoon, it’s been night coming, and you can feel weather brewing, too.

Not snow, though. Fire, maybe. Or rain.

It’s a murder, right, when they come in a group like that?

No, that’s crows. Blackbirds are a choir. Except, I hate to tell you this.

What?

Look when they come back. Those are crows. You can tell by the beaks. Tails, too. Besides, have you been listening?

Caw, caw!

Exactly. Did you know that they hold funerals, crows do?

What?

One dies, they all come silent and look. They stand around. Then fly away again, quiet as they came.

Huh. I thought they were mostly mischief.

It’s the blackbirds that go from nest to nest. Crows mate for life. They don’t even kick the young out. They can stay in the nest ‘til they’re mating age, and even then, they’ll keep coming back.

The river’s moving again.

There they go.

Tell me you didn’t feel it, though.

Feel what?

They were looking at us.

That’s why they have a reputation.

For mischief?

For being messengers.

What’s this message, then?

How should I know? I don’t speak crow. Maybe they just wanted to mess with you.

For?

Getting enamored with that voice.

What voice?

That human one you love so much. Like from the Stevens poem. Where it’s always you––

Looking?

Right.

*This morning, I woke up with Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” in my mind, alongside a sense of mischief. I couldn’t help imagining the birds flipping the script.

One Hundred Days

Celebrating the mystery of daily practice.

Today marks one hundred days of these posts, which started as “this thing I am trying” and evolved into Breadcrumbs, and which are now evolving me.

The project began from an impulse of love and a wish to connect. Someone asked: Why, where do you see yourself? I thought, Dead, eventually. Hopefully not soon, but a person never knows. It mattered not to do so while waiting for someone’s invitation to the table.

I was working on manuscripts, which is long and lonely work. I am still working on manuscripts, some of which are new since beginning this project. I publish here and there in journals, and this is also slow-going. That’s how these things are. And meanwhile, every morning since I started this experiment, I also publish here. The idea was simple: try this thing and don’t stop. I could evaluate after a hundred days.

Evaluating now, I feel mostly gratitude. It never got easier, but it did become more automatic, the practice of––this thing. I don’t have to name it to learn from it. Daily practice teaches what I could not think to learn, including invitations to new questions. Friend, thank you for joining me here.

The mind offers many reasons to stop and change course. This is what minds do, offer reasons for things. They can be acrobats of distraction. But the still part, the listening part, knows. This is the part I show up here to visit. This is where we meet, at the edge of the deep, still lake we share. Most of what is happening in it, I will never explain. This is the kind of presence I trust. The mystery is always more compelling than any of my own ideas.

Looking back at selections from the archives, I see something moving that is vastly more intelligent than I am, the logic of which I could never have planned. One hundred is a special number, and in this case, only a beginning. I mark this day with this prayer of gratitude. Friend, thank you so much for being here with me. I bow to you with a heart full of wonder.

Holding Here

Remember the living.

There are plenty of good ways to lose yourself, many of which are to be welcomed as venerable guests. But not this. Don’t let me be dulled by the endless impact of the gears, the noise, the flood of what passes for knowing.

Remember sleep. Remember a meal.

Remember waiting, and to listen–– and look! What is that? Stay in the question.

There is sky. Here is earth. Remember water, and all that is invisible and necessary in the air.

Then, remember breathing.

These are basic things. You knew them as a child, even if you resisted: bedtime, mealtime, any unwelcome pause in your momentum.

But the world will pull you from it all, and away from matters of your substance.

Not the world, exactly––but the machine colonizing it: including our breath, our dreams, the simple act of looking.

Remember what you are. Remember touch. Remember, body.

Here is the place where you are. Remember, it is a powerful stranger.

After David Wagoner:

“Wherever you are is called Here,/ And you must treat it as a powerful stranger” (“Lost”).

Skywatching

We looked and looked––so as not to miss it, so as not to be missed.

Squinting, we studied the faces. It’s all Greek, you said, of the letters. We looked back and forth: the sky, the charts, the corresponding manual. We couldn’t help ourselves; we kept returning, flashlights wrapped in red cellophane. What are we doing? You asked, as if to acknowledge the elephant.

They circled us. Or, they held in place as we spun. Or, it was all spinning, all of it pulling apart. The lines, at least, indicated order. The wandering stars came and went. Those are planets, you said. We nodded, wearing grave expressions to indicate our intended recognition of the obvious.

You continued. See the hunter’s belt, his right knee, the blade of his sword. Notice the white spot at his crown, how he gazes toward the head of the bull. We followed the book, looked up. Back to the book.

Daughters of Atlas, braiding bright––and across the way, the dog star. Now the she-goat and her kids; now the charioteer. We pretended, at first, to see them. We didn’t want the story to vanish. The Big Dipper was offered: Take this cup, and our mouths fell open, heads back.

Our own galaxy is ragged, irregular, its dark nebulae like curtains hiding the light. In the spring came Ariadne, and then Theseus after the Minotaur. Surrounded by the walls of the labyrinth he built, the craftsman must have plead his case to the same sky, dreaming Icarus’s wings.

Now the head of the hydra, now the snake and the eagle behind it. Now the scorpion, and here’s the instrument of song with Vega its center. He played for love, Orpheus, until he lost it, looking back.

Now comes the winged horse. We looked and looked––so as not to miss it, so as not to be missed. No, I think that’s it! That must have been it! Unless it was the southern fish, unless it was the dolphin, coming to save the poet and his songs.

Turning and turning, Andromeda’s spiral, and the ram bled before it––until the dragon was installed at the gates, to guard the fleece. The royal family stood beyond them. At last, another hero with a sword, looking for something to slay. He asks the three sisters, finds the gorgon sleeping, takes the head.

There were other monsters to fight, other maidens to scatter, and Look! Do you see them there? Strewn from the east to the west?

I am telling you, we tried. So great was our wish to understand something; so great was our need to be tied to something that the ancients also knew, to run our hands across some venerable form that had managed to keep living, even after the bombs and the weather, even now––that we believed ourselves when we said Yes, and Yes!

Yes, we see! There––and there! Seeming with our raised arms to behold what held us, but what was it? We didn’t care, not really. Its substance was beside the point. In that moment what we wanted was the relief of our surrender. To say Show us, and wait, deciding in the silence: We believe.