Category: faith

Perception Problems

And the chase.

With everyone going around asking what is going on here, I decided to take the question to the oracle, who was just starting to move out of her third or fourth morning nap. She was nonchalant, grooming her back fur while keeping an eye on the birds outside. Call it a crisis of perception, she said. As an advanced being, she is tolerant––but only barely––of some of my neophyte questions. I suppose the point is humility, so have learned to persist.

Look, she says. You all talk about signs of the times, but you have a momentum problem when it comes to reading them. Some of your so-called ancient minds (here she laughed) may be useful to your kind now. Take that guy Euripides, for example. In one of my earlier lives, I would visit him in his cave. It was home to a sizable rodent population, so it was a win-win. Plus, he had a terrific beard. 

Then she went back to grooming, assuming the point to be made. As always, I must implore her to elaborate. A magnanimous oracle, she usually does. She is referring to his idea that the movements of a moment can be traced to the ebb and flow of two essential forces, love and hate. Plus, the fact of what chases both. Love in its infancy is easy prey for fear, and this feeds its primary opposite. Which is never sated.

Anything else? She asked, looking bored. Let me know when you get around to something interesting. 

I couldn’t resist. I had to ask her how she knew. The look that followed seemed especially calculated to remind me of my stunning ignorance.  

You are asking me how I know about chasing? 

At this point, she returned her gaze to the birds. Mine followed. 

Constants

And figuring.

The work involved an intellect of spirit, but our teacher called it only love. Or nothing, as it mattered little what you called it, our teacher reminded, repeating: show your work. It was endless iterations of complex proofs, each for a simple truth. Only love. The thing about it was that its coordinates kept shifting in infinite directions, so as soon as you finished one proof, you could be sure that it no longer held because the prior constant was now something else. Go figure, the teacher told us, and meant it. Feel into weeping, carry the mess, survive the noise until arrival at some inner music. Same with smells and what is unbearable to look at. You couldn’t tell anyone what you were up to because as soon as you said the name, the meaning would vanish. It was no good explaining ourselves, so we learned not to. They called us idiots. But you can learn to nod at this kind of thing, laughing as you get back to work. No, it wasn’t satisfying, we might have corrected, if we had any inclination to answer certain questions. It was something else, that work. Always.

Breaks

And the long look.

Discarded things were her materials and she gathered them to herself over years.  She spent time looking before she began anything that looked like art, but looking was her primary work. Whatever art she made, and she made a lot, came from this devotion. She wondered over these broken-down objects, the ways they had served, the hands that had handled them across time. It takes a special kind of eye to see their beauty. Hers came from the choice she made, to love them. Because of this, she never thought of fixing or repair. She only wanted to handle them endlessly, to celebrate what they had become, to carry them into their next becoming.

Husks

Acts of care and grieving.

I have no time to wonder about the purpose of anything, all of which seems beside the point where doing is demanded and I have working hands. No, I never have writer’s block. I love too hard. No time for questions about the rank of the thing, any more than I would ask, are these clean dishes good? This laundry? The fact of dinner or driving to and from? What is necessary for living must happen or else there is death. And when the little deaths of a day accumulate, I carry the husks in a little pouch. If I ever do start asking why, I can take them out, study the way the little exoskeletons catch the light. If I lean back long enough to notice, I will fall asleep within minutes, until the next alarm. Siri, does this count, this constant caretaking? Siri, is this poetry? Siri, I am so tired. I wish something would stick in the gears again and make it stop. But no, that would mean some calamity. Siri, why is it only calamity that can do this and what are we becoming?  Where is that pouch, those tiny husks of living forms? I need to see them now, to notice how they still catch the light. These will be dust soon, but there will be more.

Language of Inquiry

With Lynn Hejinian.

You disbelieved both borders and endings, knew a word to be something bottomless that drew you in. In one dream, you would write a single long sentence in a day, uninterrupted on a thread of rolled paper, chasing thought down the pier with your thinking hand, its bride. By your constant attention on the grace of shadows, you kept your world lit. Those who knew your light were restored by its nourishment. They found something in its playful dance that made it possible to return, even in the days of death, to the living.

***

Inspired and with collected lines from Remembering Lyn Hejinian (1941–2024) in The Paris Review, which came out in the wake of the poet’s death in late February.

The Mountain and the Door

With Jean Valentine.

No, I don’t want to do it this week, any of it. So this morning I linger here, taking in the well-kept secret of you, hiding in plain sight. You worked with what you could not understand. Your work was translation. You threw most of it away, keeping only what continued to kick after the scratching out. You moved a lot. Said later, it was probably preparation. For what others called your tough strangeness. Of Dickinson, you remarked: Happy are those who can choose their refusals and survive. Considering Plath, you wondered over the thin line between the subversively unconventional and despairing state. How close you were to the edge. You feared its pull, that you might leap, but your friend, a nun, understood what you were, reminding you back. Write every day, she told you. That is your prayer, your health, your everything. 

***

I have been spending time with Jean Valentine’s Door in the Mountain (New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003), and this morning I read Amy Newman’s 2008 profile of the poet in Ploughshares. Today’s post is assembled with phrases from Newman’s article, which includes quotes by Valentine.

Between Stations

Call and response.

Editing a manuscript but the voice will not hold until I see it. Who must be the unborn who decided to save a life by delaying the opening. In the meantime, the weight of eyelids shutters the shores of lost continents and the priest repeats: You must. Be ground like wheat until. And I cannot leave this body even as its pilgrimage in other lights seems just beginning, and there is a voice caught in the throat and she is in a running dance after the sauntering river until she stops. Again, that sense of waiting for the lens to adjust. But into what? Then the thick sound of hawk lifting behind my head––off now, that circling cry.

Exit mobile version
%%footer%%