To say the word.
And you said to me, go back
and I returned where you told me
to myself, the soul’s eye looking.
The awe of it, and all of it unknown.
But I wanted solid things in space,
a place to own. I looked long and
it was true, then. There was no place
to rest this head.
You said the word and it left me
and I am locked away now, far
from that mother, that tongue.
Take me back.
***
Inspired by Augustine’s Confessions.
Surviving loss.
Shoveling silence over buried forms, brush the night with dark lashes. Wait. The memory of suffering suffers the memory of love. And yet, it will make you drunk on the idea of losing what was never yours.
Make yourself a deer. Run a bright flash of sinew over wet grass, until you get to the shore of the day where you witness a rising wave and the sound of a whispered I am. Find that you still hold a glowing flame, tiny and quivering, at the back of a breath.
Even now.
***
Notes while reading an excerpt from “Deluge” as it appears in The Hélène Cixous Reader.
Of intentions and nourishment.
Born carried away, of a desire that will neither die nor introduce itself by name to a stranger, it becomes obvious that I am that, too. So taken––from every place and the self, too––I cannot arrive.
At the end of everything, when the flow continues, so does this singular insistence. Bleed.
Hand opens soil to hide these delicate hopes, even at the end and especially then. Flower? Maybe. Of course, they will be trampled, as lives are. And yet. They will live, too. There is no certainty in this, but there it goes, happening.
Light in broken glass.
During the crisis, we rehearsed everything we knew, sending ambiguous signs and vague symbols––an ongoing SOS maybe, to some beyond––and watched the play of light, how it obscured the boundaries between surface and space. Which were we, anyway?
It rained and the bombing continued and so did the ads for flawless skin in seconds and the promise of a good night’s sleep, an end to mildew, air fryers. The campaigns were one-note, not unlike the bombs; some spoke of distraction, but who had the time? The babies were needing. The list was endless. It was never done. There were only so many of us, to hold them.
Horizons blurred, then sharpened. We looked and gave up looking. The crisis would splash across our faces. We stopped sometimes to wash them, turning away from it, sometimes into each another, and everyone had a story of a sighting, the something they would never forget. Bodies looked for somewhere to rest. Where? we asked each other. When?
Which is to say, I cannot remember where the bits went in the last blast, or what they were. I don’t remember what or if I was holding at the time, only that I felt it fly from me, scattering in every direction.
It wasn’t a sign or a symbol. I retrace my steps, rehearse everything. But it won’t take. Someone calls, help me. I almost recognize the voice.
The rewilding of language and hearing.
After the long racket, there was a time when the words loosed their ties and harnesses, freed their necks from collars, and jumped the fences one by one in an unrelenting tide, away from us.
Once freed, they made their own music and removed the delicate garments we had been dressing them in. Once feral, they refused our concerted efforts at domestication. They would think and move for themselves and no longer in our tight throats. They were done with our agendas, our probing scrutiny, the various tinctures we administered at prescribed times, and especially the bells.
We spent our frustrations banging against the broken fences and ringing the redundant bells, and then grew silent with a sense of everything to say and no way to do it. In this time, we became aware that the next occasion for speech would announce itself only by the rising hairs at the backs of our necks, and this was the beginning of our listening.
Questions of memory.
Now, where is the little dream we had before the fire? Thoughts like this always precede those of flight. There was a little bird among us before the fire, jumping from shoulders to heads and one arm to the next, like we were branches. Which of course we were, although we never noticed the tree. Do branches, usually? There are none to ask.
Anyway, you would think the tiny bird would have been the first to vanish, but it wasn’t. I can see it now as it was near the end, bright body against the dark. As if waiting, with a question. We left and the bird did not follow and then came a long road. It is the same as this one. I think I hear it, sometimes.
With Hélène Cixous.
The ladder, she tells us, is neither immobile nor empty. Its climbers are secret; they have different voices. A common thread is this mysterious affinity. It has to do with their music and to find it they had to ascend downward, into the earth or the sea. Neither is easy. What matters is to learn from the dead.
Writing, she explains, is learning to die. If you listen, the dead man will give you the end of the world, and you can’t write anything until you start with losing a world.
***
The above are notes while re-reading the opening section of Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing (“The School of the Dead”), a beloved classic by Hélène Cixous.
A dying art.
To whom it may concern.
A cover letter.
I know you haven’t listed this skill under “mandatory,” but I want you to know that I am excellent at dying.
Sure, we all will be one day, say the jaded. Agreed, but not everyone practices.
It’s much more in vogue to practice the opposite–– building, amassing: wealth, armor, safety nets. You get the sense, looking at some photo collections––or rather, at how intricately they are framed––that life is a sort of museum you build against death. I get the museum idea, but I prefer a collaborative approach, where Death and I are partners.
Okay, not exactly partners. Death is the director, curator, and chair of all departments. I make copies. Still, in my last formal review, Death applauded my knack for being “pretty good” and “sometimes accurate” as well as having “a clever knack for misinterpretation.”
Beaming, I say, “I’ve been practicing!” At the sight of my lips moving, Death promptly exits the room, leaving me to my own devices again––which, as I’ve said, involve practicing.
You read stories? Once upon a time, as the saying goes, I picked up a pen. “Mightier than the sword!” I announced, imagining myself the noble knight. The costume was terrific. Then I read the job description.
“Dragon slayer?!” Oh, no.
This was one of my first misinterpretations. Sure, I found the dragon, but then I took him home with me, foul breath and all. I understand the logic of basements now––or, as the armory-builders love to call them, “wine cellars”–– but, as you might imagine, I don’t have one. When I started this quest, I didn’t even have a home. Still don’t, but I did what I could with these stones.
At first there was only a tarp above us to keep out the rain, but gradually we made an A-shaped roof. I meant to find branches, but these were scarce, so I had to use PVC pipe and old tent poles, and let me tell you, I do not relish any journey to the hardware store. My main issue with these places is the abundance of people who seem to know precisely what they are doing. Even with my guard up to a level of maximum defense, I must be giving off a look to invite one after another liege to ask me what I am looking for. When I manage some answer, they will invariably tell me what I really need.
Of course, I don’t mention the dragon. I just say something like “shed” or “addition” so as not to alarm anybody. I have pretty much accepted that I won’t be getting the security deposit back after this project is done. Point being, every time someone explains to me what I really ought to be doing, I die a little.
But here’s where the practice comes in! I’m right back to business, back to the dragon lair, where I die a little more every time he breathes, because I have no idea what sort of oral hygiene protocol goes with the proper care and feeding of dragons. The cat, who has made off no shortage of lizard tails, doesn’t know what to make of him, and the feeling seems mutual. They keep what distance can be kept in our small space. It isn’t much.
The cat comes and goes whenever she feels like it, so here I am with this fabled beast, and he’s eaten all my pens. I am writing this in invisible ink. The only thing to do when I get to the end of one of these pages is––what do you think?
Turn, turn, turn. And each time I do, it’s blank. Tell me: how is a knight to meet this challenge except by dying again? Then when I finish the back of the page, it’s rip and toss, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the feeding of dragons is that they are very picky and won’t settle for anything but your last accomplishment, however meager it may seem. He lifts his head, gobbles it up, and goes back to sleep, for a little while.
I’d love to give you references but given the dragon’s flair for consuming whatever I amass, these may be better procured on a word-of-mouth basis.
In the event that an interview is forthcoming, please disclose your policy regarding emotional support animals. Any limitations when it comes to size? You don’t get this good at dying without a lot of support.
Dreamscape in a fog.
Women in sweaters and long skirts walk through an uncultivated pasture in the fog, above a lake. They retreat from the lens, toward something else. No one speaks.
Now comes a car on a nearby road. It takes a moment to stop. A woman gets out. The light reminds her of autumn. The man from the driver’s seat corrects her speech. I cried the first time I saw it, she says. He will not come.
I will wait for you, she says. She roams away like this often, in stubborn wonder. He follows, eventually. By the time he catches up, she will no longer be the woman from the car. By the time he catches her, she will be a woman who has been walking alone on a dirt path for some time.
***
Inspired by the work of Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky, and specifically his film, Nostalgia.
In the aftermath of fracture.
When the stone sky locks the angels out, who watches for the saints beneath a daily march, crunching underfoot? Grains of sand, listen: which of your every has ears? Without compass or clock, I can answer only, no, I do not know the way or have the time; please resist the impulse to make me a metaphor. Put down your pen and help me look. It was all in a pocket under this wing, along with a spare key to the late morning blue. We were supposed to practice today, scales of light and choreography of chroma, and I had soft branches to buttress the round of the new nest. The babies–– It’s cold enough to see it in the air when I call and here it is again, this cry, I am.
