notes nearing an edge
the pressure to bear the witness asleep
at the wheel all of us far
from the valley
who becomes the river
start somewhere I meant to
listen I meant to
hear you as you left
the land I meant to record
at least your sands running out
take this—we say of the body—
the opening notes of each of us in turn
going fast act fast you have to give it
all away
Appealing to vertigo
Begin again–– before the fall. Turning and returning––the mind spins like a child to feel the euphoria of dizziness. Too close to the edge, I try to warn, back away from there! But vertigo is its own draw. The weight of seeming sanity is enough to inspire a preference for the vantage afforded by dizziness. There is sight beyond seeing, but no words for what it is.
After space
First was displacement across a hollowing, echoing earth. Then came the longing of the rest of us, still here. The ache to know a place. Meanwhile, we remain tethered to one or another edge but mostly floating, trying to listen to the remaining birds. Who seem sometimes to suggest a song to somewhere.
A sky-watcher listens.
In the year of quiet, you noticed what got louder. Listening, you transcribed a diary of what was happening just beyond the nearest clouds. It was not a new invasion, only the old one you had long been living with, adjusting to, learning to accommodate––until you noticed, or almost did not notice, how well you had learned not to look at the edge where you lived. One day, you decided to look.
Why? Some asked you, and you explained that you took it personally.
What, exactly? The skies, and what happened in them, for one. But also, this other thing, more diffuse and insidious, precisely because it is lethally easy to ignore.
***
Inspired by Finn Blythe’s BOMB interview with Lawrence Abu Hamadan, on his work Air Pressure: A Diary of the Sky, on view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Italy, until February 26.
