Before the aftermath
Yes, some added. We should have listened longer, mourned sooner, welcomed other eyes; been less afraid and more willing to approach the borders of our terrors, to see if any existed; to extend a bodily willingness to allow the next breath to sting with its magnitude, to know this something not our own, which we may yet learn to hold before the break.
Between worlds.
To move between the domestic and the otherworldly need not be some hero’s leap across some chasm, triumphant. We drifted back and forth, more gaze than choice. In this way, our tears translated to the pools of mermaid songs at bath time. Come, littles. Now the scalp, now the towels at our tails. Daylight done, lights out, out! The mystery had to do with its return in the morning, and we whispered, Tomorrow. Of the light and the pinecones, rabbits, and blue jays. They would. We would be there. We hoped tomorrow to put acorns in a pile, that the squirrels would see them and approve. That they would see us and know. We called our good nights to the moon. It was changing and we meant to see how. It pulled our gaze like tides, and we were out again.
An opening behind closed doors.
Some of the patients were irritated. Some were tired of being told––what was a mind problem, a body problem––when experience suggested nothing less than a revolution of mindbodyflesh. Some began to reject various boundaries, and when invited in, walked out; when expelled, remained.
And what is the subject here? one asked.
Obviously, the object, said another.
A third objected.
It is somewhat of an exercise, one of these continued, this habit of trying to observe myself with my own eyes while my own eyes are unwell, and yet. If disease is a theory to explain illness, and illness is unchecked growth, the attempt certainly raised interesting questions, didn’t it? About the assumed hierarchy of growth over––say, loss.
Of course it did! Many agreed, and it was confirmed by official decree that the bulk of the assembled were unwell. This was old news. The patients gave a collective shrug.
Looking out the window one night, one had some additional questions. To no one in particular, they inquired: Can you read this hand? How about those skies, or that owl over there, for anything but weather? Without making any one of us a specimen?
It was not immediately clear if anyone heard. The night continued. Later, the owl made a sound. It was like cooing and not unlike song.
Experiments in style.
Reconstruct. The world is shaped by art. Also, by protest. Challenge the world, the art, the protest. One artist, revealing her best kept secret, confessed I have none. When it comes to the crisis of creating anything, style attempts to negotiate some resolution. Even so, the thing is perpetually unsolved. One devises systems based in numbers, another according to stars, another traces bodily systems, weather patterns. Others make their own instruments, new forms; move the frame, alter the angle, change the lens. Apply the medium upside-down. Apply the medium while suspended from the ceiling. Apply the feet to handheld instruments, lend the ear to color, taste the next note.
Yes, but to what end?
To not ending.
What holds, what resists.
Anyone can be an expert, when keeping is the point. All it takes is rejection of a sense of the disaster of being full up, and a guiding hand to fear how the space of its reach might indicate some lack––of anything but the capacity to Figure it Out.
By the science of keeping, one can make lists and keep intentions. Retention’s methods always have some Master eager to Proclaim the next Solution to loss. To capture a place, there are itineraries, photos, souvenirs, but none so lasting as a scar.
The body, in the end, can only hold a record of its wounds. It returns the bones and teeth to the earth or the next collector. In the end, it can only offer what flies from it, which is a concept the experts have yet to explain.
***
Inspired by Elizabeth Bishop’s One Art. Playing with the negative image.
Instruments for fluid forms.
When the source of the moment is the vessel and not the stream, and the tool at hand is a knife and not a cup, it’s so difficult to harvest anything. All I wanted was a coherent paragraph, some excerpt to offer a guest. But I’m all vessel today, and have perhaps absorbed too much, and attempts to slice water are studies in futility.
I will say this, though. It is frustrating insofar as I continue trying to cut anything. Abandoning this, the continued movement of the knife becomes a way to trace the resistance of fluid. My cutting impulse begins to still, and what replaces it is something else. Whatever it is, it won’t be named.
I think of the wonder on an infant’s face when she first discovers the resistance of the surface of water. The slapping and splashing that follows, cooing between laughs. Over and again, she brings it down to feel what pushes back, as the echo of her laugh reverberates into any nearby vessel, shaking all that is barely held, now spilling again.
Sea and seeing.
It was the black boxes that haunted you at first. Now you tell stories with mirrors, some of which transform into windows. It’s never clear which is which. What pulled you was the possibilities for world building, the hypnotic vastness. Your mind was drawn to portals, the potential thresholds lurking at the edges of the ordinary. You wonder what happens when sight turns into a nightmare, and no one notices. As an antidote, you watch the sea. It reminds you of an invitation to return somewhere. You hope it is. You hope it may return you to seeing.
***
Inspired by, and with borrowed phrases from Krish Raghav’s interview with Josh Riedel (BOMB magazine), on Riedel’s novel, Please Report Your Bug Here.
From a wall in a room with cosmologists.
It was an enviable position, according to some. To be what I was, a fly on the walls in which they met. I was hoping to get out, but made the best of my lot, listening. If I did escape, I was hoping to at least be able to share an uncommon view of the cosmos, but my findings were inconclusive.
Surely you must have heard something.
Well. They know it’s big.
There’s a start.
When it comes to origins, they can speculate as to when, but have no idea what, except hot. In recent decades, they have at least become aware that they are only seeing what’s observable to them. One thing that’s really got some of them worked up is about how the further away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving. Away. From what they can see.
Hmm, and they don’t find this discouraging?
Nope. They are very persistent. It’s adorable, really. And they have all these little naming games and such and can’t help characterizing all the forces with various personalities. Like, they have this one saying they love to repeat. Let me see if I can get it. It goes: Space meeting Matter says, “Move like this!” and Matter, meeting Space, says, “No, curve!”
So now what are they onto?
Mostly a sense that they are missing something. That it’s right there, on the horizon.
In the part that’s moving away fast, or the slower part?
I don’t know. That’s when they finally opened a window.
***
Inspired by this article. And by the work of Georgi Gospodinov, which often features sentient flies.
With Jorie Graham.
Recognize this astonishment, this awe, this resistance to the hurry of speech. Its pressure signals the weight of what language battles. Here is the rupture, the interrupter; partner; opponent; interrogator; monument. Watch it.
To meet it on its own terms is to welcome some erosion. Each confrontation will put an end to the original witness, the one who meant to do the looking, and wrest from her womb a new creature, sharply aware of being watched.
When the word fists stop swinging, held behind the back, and the shouting mouth surrenders to its hold, what emerges? Here are the boundaries between flesh and time, sealed and open, the words we speak and those unspeaking us.
***
The above are notes while reading Jorie Graham’s essay “Some Notes on Silence” in By Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry (2000), edited by Molly McQuade. The italicized phrases are Graham’s.
How not to lose the life of life.
It is autumn, she said. And we are going to die. And we have all this choosing to do, with great stakes. And yet, simultaneously: this beloved, ill; this new child, this sudden bird, this love. How often we keep our thinking separate from what we know. For a simple reason: simultaneous submersion within all sensibilities is unbearable.
So, how to know anything? How to keep the life of life in life? Try not knowing. Try reading below the threshold of interpretation. Try burying the head, leaving only the ear. It is possible to transcend personality and arrive. At a shared physical understanding. These songs were always here to pull us into them and we.
***
The italicized phrase comes from Jorie Graham, whose work inspires this piece.
