Weighing in.
One option, when it comes to dealing with confusion is: promise, announce, proclaim, blame. Another, offering less up front, commands infinitely more. Observing a full spectrum of unknowns, this one points silently with the gaze, to offer no defense. Defenseless, the humble observer can only sway, moving steadily into an unnamed dance. No one teaches its choreography because there is nothing to teach, and no one ever comes running to learn how to wait.
In awe of an asymmetrical ascent.
Lovebird, what made you decide that it wasn’t enough to walk on two feet, and how did it occur to you to surmise that your face, repurposed, might become a third limb?
Lovebird, they say that you have a sense of humor, calling into question such a basic assumption of movement in a body. Where others saw only two sides, you found a third way. Where others settled for the old coin metaphor, the mirror, the simple reflection, you said, regarding dimensions, there are more,
and went on your way––up, up, evolving.
***
Inspired by an article I saw in this morning’s New York Times, about a groundbreaking discovery in lovebird locomotion, overcoming (with other parrots) “a forbidden phenotype.” And by my Grandma, who used to call us “lovebird” and “loverbird,” among other pet names.
I don’t know if the African Grey parrot in the photo does any beak walking, but I love her expression, so am imagining her as the speaker.
For the never forgetting.
At the baths, questions. The woman walks ahead. A man stops her to ask for a cigarette. I don’t smoke, he tells her. Okay, she agrees, and hands one over. Never forget, he says, regarding God’s words to St. Catherine. She wonders what. Only: you are who is not, and I am what is.
The bathers look on. One claps, considering the speaker must have heard it from the source. But what is faith if you can earn a degree in it? Its most common translation: madness. And who are the faithful, seeming so alone? Is this what it looks like, the communion of saints?
Why would anybody swim with a lighted candle? Whatever it is, he wants to know, so he stops her to remark upon the color of her hair in the light. What else is lost in translation? Only the translator as she leaves him.
There’s a landslide in the living room, the entrance a sacrament. By his side, a clock, a gourd, an empty bottle. Now comes the good oil, anointing by proxy. Now a confession from the madman: he never learned to smoke. It’s too hard, he says. Better to learn not to do things.
Now the rain again. Now the bread and wine. A furtive look in the mirror. Who is this man? At communion, heads bow, I am not worthy. But say the word. The bottles fill with rain.
***
This is the second of two posts inspired by Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia. The first was over a week ago. The reason for the gap is that it tends to take me a long time to watch a film, life being what it is and only so many hours in a day. Since I really love this one, it took less than two weeks. Now I would like to see every film this director ever made.
For Käthe Kollwitz.
She knew that for the grieving, someone willing to stop and wait, absorbing speechless calamity, is always worth more than platitudes of comfort lobbed in passing. In the age of abstraction, her naturalist style might have been called out of step, but a mother who loses as son to war is not an army. To see her women was to feel their weight. I have no right, she said, to withdraw from this. As she saw it, her duty was her steadfast gaze, maintaining focus where others would turn away. See, for example, her mountain of mothers. Their large working hands, the bodies thrown over small children, the way they hold one another in an unbroken circle while keeping watch for what may come next.
***
Inspired by the work of Käthe Kollwitz.
Opening notes.
After any weekend, Monday’s alarm tends to come with no small amount of reluctance. When it sounds, my first thought is about finding a corner to hide in with my blanket and pillow. My second is more sleep, with vague calculations in the fuzzy background about how long I can get away with this before the snoozed alarm sounds again.
For this reason, this day tends to demand a lot of coaching on my part. I have asked Buzz (cat) for a little help, but she’s in the opposite corner now, facing the wall and likely engaged in astral projection. I’m not on her level yet, so the best I can do for now is make coffee, then a list.
I hope to create something with this day, and to let what may be created live in me. Also, to redeem some of my bad habits, such as wanting to hide under a blanket indefinitely. I hope to keep my eyes open well enough to find moments of joy and share it. I mean to help where I can, and I am going to need some help doing this. To comfort and be comforted. To listen and hear. Not for answers, but music. I don’t know how any of this is supposed to work. May I find music spacious enough to fold me into its rhythm.
A time to grieve.
Bodies again, but no words.
The point was our speechlessness.
Terror: when the body flees to survive.
Horror: parted lips, frozen and immobile, a spectacle of power. It almost always goes by another name, or none.
State: a verb for the creation of complicity.
The method: consistent spectacle.
What heals, then?
The opposite of spectacle is suffering. To suffer is to return from horror with a voice.
Blessed are they who––
Cry against the silence, throw shattered voices into it.
The opposite of order, this is language like broken windows.
The opposite of calm, this is babbling, wild-haired, full-bodied.
The opposite of isolation, grief demands recognition of our common breaks. Its substance is our connective tissue. It flows with the blood of a common wound.
Grief is a voice, and it sounds like the inverse of okay,
which sounds like the reverse of an answer.
Consider this moment. Against the hum of this machine, let us launch
a shattering cry. Now is the time.
Break.
***
Inspired by Christina Rivera Garza’s Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country and by Adriana Cavarero’s Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence, translated by William McCuaig.
Studies in meticulous meditation.
So much depends on the scent in the air, the texture of ions, the nuance of birdsong. Add to this detailed considerations of ambient temperature, the auditory interference of nearby machines, and the possibility of mice. A lizard will do, perhaps. But perhaps not.
Where the dog will bound headfirst with nothing but blind enthusiasm for all that may be moving, anywhere and at any time, and the resident human might emerge easily, absent of mind before recalling some vague purpose, this one waits, a portrait of pure intention, poised.
The perennial questions of her forbears course through her consciousness, distilled in this moment, to a single one. In, or out?
She waits, leaning. Everything hangs in the balance. Suddenly, some inscrutable truth revealed, she pulls away. No, she decides. It is not time. Not yet.
Much remains to be seen. We wait here together.
***
Inspired by Buzz, the resident cat of many moods, who is begrudgingly teaching me the ancient ways––as long as I concede to a daily tithe of salmon feast for gravy lovers.
Against the machine.
When the horror of a moment renders a body speechless, the acts of pen to page, brush to canvas, fingers to keys––become negotiations with death. Yours, mine: what are they and how do they relate? To account for whole cities of dead, a vast underground rendered invisible through banality. What is it to write a voice, paint a vision––while standing on ground in full recognition of the brothers beneath it, and the invisible sisters with their children and parents in mass graves? Welcome to the necropolis, says one, where screens herald the battalion.
What are the stakes at this scale? Life. Lives. Forget numbers, abstractions. Try instead: One.
One.
One.
One.
Each a brother, sister, mother, daughter, each with a scent of their own, a particular laugh and secret hopes––erased.
What is at stake? The human condition in the age of the war machine.
How to resist? The first act is naming.
***
Inspired by the work of Juan Ruflo, Christina Rivera Garza, and Achille Mbembe.
The poet remembers.
Only symbols. When I saw that the architecture was burnt out in me, I became a poet. Now I am grief, hunger, the embers of cities. But making is older than killing, and what is this man to make of this life but a brief flight in darkness, now and then on a rainbow?
***
This morning I learned that it was the birthday of poet Andrei Andreyevich Voznesensky, who Robert Lowell once distinguished as the greatest living poet in any language. He came to fame during the Khrushchev thaw and was known as an outspoken critic of artistic censorship of any kind. I don’t have a complete translation of Voznesensky’s work, but I was able to find some selections online. The above is assembled from my a small sample of these findings, adapted.
Urgently seeking answers.
Are you there? I need to know what happened.
Sure. It started with a long walk and a begging bowl. Then it was time to sit.
I have some questions.
Who doesn’t? For answers, consider impermanence, inevitable extinction.
Yes, got it! To everything there is a season. A time to––
But don’t hold onto the idea, or any other. No more T-shirts or bumper stickers, okay?
Right. I’ll try to focus on action. How do I give?
Without counting.
What about appearances?
What about them?
Never mind. Let’s get to the real teaching. I’m ready.
What you learn isn’t supposed to be a trophy, but a raft.
Okay. Let’s talk fortune.
Give it away. What did I just tell you?
Right, right. Okay, what about this stream? How do I enter?
What stream?
Um, like the path––you know, the levels?
Forget about those.
You say that a lot. What should I remember?
Only teach.
But I don’t know anything!
There you go.
But seriously. I can’t even control my mind yet.
Hah! Which one? The past, the present, or the future? None of them are made for holding.
[sigh]
Can you just give me some answer?
Fine. But I’m about to lose service here. The reception in these mountains is terrible. Ready?
Yes!
It’s–––
Hello? Hello?
***
This morning, I learned that on this day in the year 868, a copy of the Diamond Sutra was printed in China, making it the oldest known printed book. Prior to this, the teachings had long been conveyed orally. Naturally, I got to imagining an attempt to convey urgent teachings orally via cellphone. I have spotty service at home and pretty good service in most other places, so many of my conversations have at least a few moments where one or the other party is saying, “Are you there?” or “Wait a minute, I’m walking outside. I might lose you.” I consulted Burton Watson’s translation here.
