Saturday, November 08, 2003
Memento Mori
It's a cold, bright, windy Saturday. All day, non-stop, the ugly drone of leaf-blowers wrecks the peace. Next door, at the home of the ill woman, a small crowd goes at the leaves with rakes. Members of her church. Our tall, grave neighbor had said that, if we see cars coming and going, it will be parishioners coming to help out. A row of leaf bags, like worshipers in a pew standing for the doxology, line the sidewalk now. I am moved by the care of her sangha.
Our own leaves still flood the yard. Irregular piles mount against the fence and garage, and strange bare patches appear at the corners of the house. The yard man will come with HIS leaf blowers soon. I will be complicit in the cacaphony. Two years ago I raked. Last year, after a minor fall downstairs, I couldn't. This year, serendipitously, lazily, I hired the yard man even before I broke my neck.
I remember the satisfaction of filling the leaf bags, and the sight of them at the curbside.
Recently, replacing the broken book-case in the living room, we unearthed a book -- "Wandering in Eden," by Michael Adam, that I cannot even remember buying. The sticker on the front says "Filene's Basement" and $.50. Maybe it was DK's. It's dated 1976, and it's subtitled "Three Ways to the East Within Us." It's got some lovely passages on the Tao and Zen -- on oneness, and the myriad things, and on the Zen of everydayness -- and even has the Simone Weil quote about imagination "filling up the spaces through which grace might pass." It's full of lovely black and white reproductions of Chinese paintings.
I decided to go for a walk, and decided to walk through the cemetary rather than brave the cold all the way to the river. (I like, as Glenn Gould calls it, the "Idea of North" more than the experience of North.) There are headstones from as long ago as the early 1700's, and many tell of early deaths. One, the stone announces, from "smallpox." Many stones from the 1700s depict blandly staring death-heads at the top, the later ones graceful willow sprays. The newest ones are solid and imposing , like 1950's automobiles. Two stones, side by side, simply said "husband" and "wife." No names. The cemetary's surrounded by little suburban back yards. In one some children were bouncing on a trampoline. Their dog, spotting me, barked and barked, running back and forth, hurling itself at the chainlink. It did not stop until I'd disappeared from its sight over the crest of a hill.
Then I came home. Nearly fell on my face again, tripping on a curb.
And now the sun's going down, it's still loud, and it's geting colder. I've been in the Albert DeSalvo strangulation apparatus six weeks today and I certainly hope he does not hold me to another full six weeks. It could, however, be worse.
(Apparantly, I am on the cutting edge of a genre of fetishism ! Who'd ever have imagined it. )
Our own leaves still flood the yard. Irregular piles mount against the fence and garage, and strange bare patches appear at the corners of the house. The yard man will come with HIS leaf blowers soon. I will be complicit in the cacaphony. Two years ago I raked. Last year, after a minor fall downstairs, I couldn't. This year, serendipitously, lazily, I hired the yard man even before I broke my neck.
I remember the satisfaction of filling the leaf bags, and the sight of them at the curbside.
Recently, replacing the broken book-case in the living room, we unearthed a book -- "Wandering in Eden," by Michael Adam, that I cannot even remember buying. The sticker on the front says "Filene's Basement" and $.50. Maybe it was DK's. It's dated 1976, and it's subtitled "Three Ways to the East Within Us." It's got some lovely passages on the Tao and Zen -- on oneness, and the myriad things, and on the Zen of everydayness -- and even has the Simone Weil quote about imagination "filling up the spaces through which grace might pass." It's full of lovely black and white reproductions of Chinese paintings.
I decided to go for a walk, and decided to walk through the cemetary rather than brave the cold all the way to the river. (I like, as Glenn Gould calls it, the "Idea of North" more than the experience of North.) There are headstones from as long ago as the early 1700's, and many tell of early deaths. One, the stone announces, from "smallpox." Many stones from the 1700s depict blandly staring death-heads at the top, the later ones graceful willow sprays. The newest ones are solid and imposing , like 1950's automobiles. Two stones, side by side, simply said "husband" and "wife." No names. The cemetary's surrounded by little suburban back yards. In one some children were bouncing on a trampoline. Their dog, spotting me, barked and barked, running back and forth, hurling itself at the chainlink. It did not stop until I'd disappeared from its sight over the crest of a hill.
Then I came home. Nearly fell on my face again, tripping on a curb.
And now the sun's going down, it's still loud, and it's geting colder. I've been in the Albert DeSalvo strangulation apparatus six weeks today and I certainly hope he does not hold me to another full six weeks. It could, however, be worse.
(Apparantly, I am on the cutting edge of a genre of fetishism ! Who'd ever have imagined it. )
Friday, November 07, 2003
Hesteronymous and Tadeusz
I've posted my Hester tale over in "Anita Rust." I'll post the rest of the Tadeusz essays later. Tadeusz deserves to take his place among the pantheon of fictitious poets.
Hester's Breadbox
Hester's Breadbox
Dwellings
It's high autumn on the river walk -- everything tangled, browning, falling, thinning. There are some brilliant red berries, still, and the milkweed's fuzz is a pure, impeccable white; some things are green still -- pines, bushes, an odd stand of grass near the bank. It's compost time, things going to seed, disseminating. More sexual than spring. Again, the ducks and geese, spotting me on the footbridge, swam upstream toward me. I had nothing for them. Looking at the denuded bushes, I thought "All wick, and no flame."
I saw the riverside hut again, a domed tent patched with plastic, surrounded by debris and a lawnchair. I did reread Bachelard on the hermit's hut, prompted by a post on the Hermitary. It was very satisfying to read. The idea of a hut -- primal shelter against encroaching cold and dark -- has been an image that resonates deeply with me. I was looking at Isay and Abramson's fine, sad collection of photographs and interviews, "Flophouse" yesterday. The flophouse being among the most elementary and marginal of shelters for deeply lost and alienated men. It sits on my shelf right next to Margaret Morton's "Fragile Dwelling," again a wonderful, heartbreaking collection of photographs of makeshift urban shelters, some oddly and wildly beautiful. Next to these two sits "Joseph Cornell: Master Of Dreams" and I can't help linking his oneiric and fabulous boxes with little dwellings, huts, rooms. And next to all of them is Luc Sante's collection of police photos from the early 1900's, "Evidence," murdered bodies sprawled in tenement rooms.
The odd spiky pods I'd been wondering about are burcucumber, but what I have been calling "wild buckwheat" probably isn't. I still haven't identified the beautiful, delicate grass.
Walking, I felt odd, not-myself, lonely, stranded, strange, temporary, doomed, yet somehow at home in all that. As if all those sensations were simply part of the inner landscape, as much as the weeds and vines were a part of the outer.
I have a poem about dwellings. The "plow this shantytowns under" line is from reading Morton's book.
ABODE
Who has no house now will never build one.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
The autumn’s past. This is the house I’ve built.
A roof, a floor, four walls, a door, that’s it,
sub code, badly measured, unvarnished, raw,
overly apophatic, you’ll complain,
but even a window would be luxury,
a campy tribute to an enthused age
when casements spilled their buttery, mullioned light
into the obscure forests of our selves,
or to last night, when fitful, needling rain
slashed accents graves upon the windowpane
where my face floated, backward, looking in.
Before you know it the bulldozers will come
to plough this shantytown under. Then you’ll see,
from freshly fertilized, newly enriched tracts,
glass spires beanstalking up toward eggy gold,
all window, panoptical, endlessly prospecting,
until the light off their façades at sunset blinds you
and you fall to your knees, afraid, misreading GOD.
And then I’ll shelter under the startling call
of geese who cross the night-time winter sky
in ragged Vs, dark-of-moon dull, no more
than air wrinkling between the naked trees,
and, at the eye’s cold corner, sybilline,
a sudden blinking of the pleiades.
3.2.02
I saw the riverside hut again, a domed tent patched with plastic, surrounded by debris and a lawnchair. I did reread Bachelard on the hermit's hut, prompted by a post on the Hermitary. It was very satisfying to read. The idea of a hut -- primal shelter against encroaching cold and dark -- has been an image that resonates deeply with me. I was looking at Isay and Abramson's fine, sad collection of photographs and interviews, "Flophouse" yesterday. The flophouse being among the most elementary and marginal of shelters for deeply lost and alienated men. It sits on my shelf right next to Margaret Morton's "Fragile Dwelling," again a wonderful, heartbreaking collection of photographs of makeshift urban shelters, some oddly and wildly beautiful. Next to these two sits "Joseph Cornell: Master Of Dreams" and I can't help linking his oneiric and fabulous boxes with little dwellings, huts, rooms. And next to all of them is Luc Sante's collection of police photos from the early 1900's, "Evidence," murdered bodies sprawled in tenement rooms.
The odd spiky pods I'd been wondering about are burcucumber, but what I have been calling "wild buckwheat" probably isn't. I still haven't identified the beautiful, delicate grass.
Walking, I felt odd, not-myself, lonely, stranded, strange, temporary, doomed, yet somehow at home in all that. As if all those sensations were simply part of the inner landscape, as much as the weeds and vines were a part of the outer.
I have a poem about dwellings. The "plow this shantytowns under" line is from reading Morton's book.
ABODE
Who has no house now will never build one.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
The autumn’s past. This is the house I’ve built.
A roof, a floor, four walls, a door, that’s it,
sub code, badly measured, unvarnished, raw,
overly apophatic, you’ll complain,
but even a window would be luxury,
a campy tribute to an enthused age
when casements spilled their buttery, mullioned light
into the obscure forests of our selves,
or to last night, when fitful, needling rain
slashed accents graves upon the windowpane
where my face floated, backward, looking in.
Before you know it the bulldozers will come
to plough this shantytown under. Then you’ll see,
from freshly fertilized, newly enriched tracts,
glass spires beanstalking up toward eggy gold,
all window, panoptical, endlessly prospecting,
until the light off their façades at sunset blinds you
and you fall to your knees, afraid, misreading GOD.
And then I’ll shelter under the startling call
of geese who cross the night-time winter sky
in ragged Vs, dark-of-moon dull, no more
than air wrinkling between the naked trees,
and, at the eye’s cold corner, sybilline,
a sudden blinking of the pleiades.
3.2.02
Post-Atkins Toasties
Frankly, Scarlett, I'm sick of all the ceaseless yammering about "carbs." They're shilling low carb BEER, for goodness sakes, on the TV. Carbs, buns, abs -- is there no end to this phonemic madness ?
Are Atkinsites allowed to take communion ? Are there low carb wafers, now, to accommodate them ? If so, are they equally transubstantial ?
I do hope, decades from now, this cultural obsession will find itself remanded to the slag heap of silly diets, viz. the grapefruit diet and metrecal fads of my parents' generation.
My own idea of a great meal is a toasted potato sandwich with a side of rice. No, who am I kidding. Laundry starch, spooned straight out of the box.
Hearing I'm a vegan, most peer at me with deep concern and horror: where do you get your PROTEIN ? As if I were courting kwashiorkor by not gnawing on the bleeding shanks of beeves from dawn till dusk.
There's a wierd/weird (note to self: check the damned spelling already!) diner nearby with some vile name like the "lo-fat cafe" that we frequent from time to time for their tasty "air fries" and because they have several vegan selections. They do make it a point to cater to the anti-carb set, needless to say. Many of its patrons seem, well, buff. Musculissimo. It's a strange joint linked to a body building store where one can buy vast tubs of powdery protein supplements. It's scary in there. Feel the burn. Call the fire department, already. I think of generations of kidneys cowering under the onslaught of nitrogenous wastes.
Here, in the House of Toast, we offer asylum from the madness.
And we applaud the CDC's recent inclusion, in their list of salubrious exercise, "purposeless wandering."
Are Atkinsites allowed to take communion ? Are there low carb wafers, now, to accommodate them ? If so, are they equally transubstantial ?
I do hope, decades from now, this cultural obsession will find itself remanded to the slag heap of silly diets, viz. the grapefruit diet and metrecal fads of my parents' generation.
My own idea of a great meal is a toasted potato sandwich with a side of rice. No, who am I kidding. Laundry starch, spooned straight out of the box.
Hearing I'm a vegan, most peer at me with deep concern and horror: where do you get your PROTEIN ? As if I were courting kwashiorkor by not gnawing on the bleeding shanks of beeves from dawn till dusk.
There's a wierd/weird (note to self: check the damned spelling already!) diner nearby with some vile name like the "lo-fat cafe" that we frequent from time to time for their tasty "air fries" and because they have several vegan selections. They do make it a point to cater to the anti-carb set, needless to say. Many of its patrons seem, well, buff. Musculissimo. It's a strange joint linked to a body building store where one can buy vast tubs of powdery protein supplements. It's scary in there. Feel the burn. Call the fire department, already. I think of generations of kidneys cowering under the onslaught of nitrogenous wastes.
Here, in the House of Toast, we offer asylum from the madness.
And we applaud the CDC's recent inclusion, in their list of salubrious exercise, "purposeless wandering."
Thursday, November 06, 2003
Belated Introduction
A Link Letter
Being a Mac User, a point-and-click kinda guy, when I found that I had to mess with the Blogger "Template" code in order to have a link list, well, I was sure I'd immediately do something incredibly ham fisted and deep six the whole internet, if not the fabric of the space-time continuum itself. I took me days to figure out that, in the LoFi blogger interface, where I apparantly am by dint of my infra OSX infra IE6.0 system and browser, one has to insert a bit of code into one's text in order to link, my palms again sweat with a trespasser's trepidation. I nearly had V. tach when it came time to insert the "Bostonite's" web ringy thingy. But now I feel like a real hacker, and it's time to act like a real blogger (there are those who'll argue I am more a diarist that a cyber link-centered blogger, but I'm trying !) Anyway, I'd like to pay a bit of homage to the blogs on my link list. In order, then.
Buzzflash, of course, is an amazing collection of continuously updated news and progressive opinion, decidedly anti-Bush. Res ipse loquitur.
Trappists is the website of the Trappist monastery, Gethsemani, where Thomas Merton lived. My interest in Buddhism and Zen led me to Merton, and from him to the contemplative traditions in Christianity. Plus he's a marvelous writer. His journals are spectacular, and reading the prose in Seven Story Mountain is like swimming in a clear, cool stream.
I'm not sure how I found coffee sutras, probably through a google on some contemplative-related terms, but from my first encounter with this elegant blog I was hooked. He's a poet, and writes about east/west contemplative issues.
Veg is a vegan bulletin board, part of "vegsource," an excellent web resource for vegans, we quasi-anorexic aliens from the Lost planet, Vegas, the patron planet of hopeless causes (Go Kucinich !)
mahablog probably also goes without saying. Spiffy. professional, lefty and informative.
Duemer is a beautiful blog/site, resplendant with poetry links, by Joseph Duemer, a notable poet, teacher and critic. I feel an odd connection to Duemer because I once wrote a bitchy poem about him after I read one of his reviews a few years ago of a book of poems called "The Rooster Mask."
Hgpoetics is poet Henry Gould's site. He edits Nedge, and has printed some of my poems in the past. He's a lovely poet, and a very funny blogger. Years ago, I learned of Pessoa and heteronymy from an essay in "A Glass of Green tea -- With Honig," a collection of essays he's edited. I found his blog through a link on Duemer's site.
Hermitary is a nice site about hermits. See above Merton, Trappists.
Meetingbrook is a beautiful website about Meetingbrook, a contemplative community that combines Zen and contemplative Catholicism. It contains a webloglike section ("Today at Meetingbrook") with some exquisitely beautiful writing and thoughtful reflection.
Philocrites is a Unitarian blog. I approve of Unitarians.
I really don't know how I found jenblog, but I'm glad I did. It's a blog one can read for the charm of the writer's prose and for her lovely spirit and personality. She's a fellow Massachusettsian, too. I'm a sucker for local color.
Cut-to-cure is a surgeon's medblog. I'm an internist. There are contless variations of this duck joke that explains the difference.
This blog feetfirst is another medblog; she blogs on medicine, but also that part of life (yes there is such a thing) that is NOT medicine. I should thank her for linking to my Calcium Disaster entry, "Audite," and wish her luck on her upcoming boards. (I just re-certed a year ago. Mega angst !)
Hermes is a PGY-2 IM resident, a top-notch writer, who blogs about the crazy and painful life of training.
Docenoch does urgent care. That's sort of what I do.
Pharmawatch is an exceedingly well documented blog about the evil tricks of Big Pharma. It's a by an Australian doc, and I recommend it highly.
I found frumpyprof on the blogger home page "recently updated" scroll. Randomly. It's a new blog; the writer's got an interestingly dysphoric voice.
I found Mittfraud via a Boston Phoenix article about our Ken-Doll, Church of the Sub-Genius, pierce-Brosnan wannabe Venture Capitalist governor, Mitt Romney. He is wealthy, vapid, loathsome; a feed-the-rich, no-new-taxes, let's bring back the Death Penalty bobblehead. The site presents well researched documentation of the mitty-gritty of the Mitthead's not-so-amusing vicissitudes.
That site is linked to chimesatmidnight, more good stuff on the Mitthead and folks of his ilk.
Lileks is a famous dude, kinda righty, but his stuff makes me laugh.
Anitarust oh how onanistic, but that's me. Go there. I am so cute. K-U-T-E.
Breakfast deconstructs the "Hungry Man Breakfast." I hearly compounded my neck fracture laughing when I read it. Yes, I can be juvenile.
Finally, blaugustine is an example of a gorgeous, artful blog by an artist. Go there and admire her artist's books. She is amazing.
Buzzflash, of course, is an amazing collection of continuously updated news and progressive opinion, decidedly anti-Bush. Res ipse loquitur.
Trappists is the website of the Trappist monastery, Gethsemani, where Thomas Merton lived. My interest in Buddhism and Zen led me to Merton, and from him to the contemplative traditions in Christianity. Plus he's a marvelous writer. His journals are spectacular, and reading the prose in Seven Story Mountain is like swimming in a clear, cool stream.
I'm not sure how I found coffee sutras, probably through a google on some contemplative-related terms, but from my first encounter with this elegant blog I was hooked. He's a poet, and writes about east/west contemplative issues.
Veg is a vegan bulletin board, part of "vegsource," an excellent web resource for vegans, we quasi-anorexic aliens from the Lost planet, Vegas, the patron planet of hopeless causes (Go Kucinich !)
mahablog probably also goes without saying. Spiffy. professional, lefty and informative.
Duemer is a beautiful blog/site, resplendant with poetry links, by Joseph Duemer, a notable poet, teacher and critic. I feel an odd connection to Duemer because I once wrote a bitchy poem about him after I read one of his reviews a few years ago of a book of poems called "The Rooster Mask."
Hgpoetics is poet Henry Gould's site. He edits Nedge, and has printed some of my poems in the past. He's a lovely poet, and a very funny blogger. Years ago, I learned of Pessoa and heteronymy from an essay in "A Glass of Green tea -- With Honig," a collection of essays he's edited. I found his blog through a link on Duemer's site.
Hermitary is a nice site about hermits. See above Merton, Trappists.
Meetingbrook is a beautiful website about Meetingbrook, a contemplative community that combines Zen and contemplative Catholicism. It contains a webloglike section ("Today at Meetingbrook") with some exquisitely beautiful writing and thoughtful reflection.
Philocrites is a Unitarian blog. I approve of Unitarians.
I really don't know how I found jenblog, but I'm glad I did. It's a blog one can read for the charm of the writer's prose and for her lovely spirit and personality. She's a fellow Massachusettsian, too. I'm a sucker for local color.
Cut-to-cure is a surgeon's medblog. I'm an internist. There are contless variations of this duck joke that explains the difference.
This blog feetfirst is another medblog; she blogs on medicine, but also that part of life (yes there is such a thing) that is NOT medicine. I should thank her for linking to my Calcium Disaster entry, "Audite," and wish her luck on her upcoming boards. (I just re-certed a year ago. Mega angst !)
Hermes is a PGY-2 IM resident, a top-notch writer, who blogs about the crazy and painful life of training.
Docenoch does urgent care. That's sort of what I do.
Pharmawatch is an exceedingly well documented blog about the evil tricks of Big Pharma. It's a by an Australian doc, and I recommend it highly.
I found frumpyprof on the blogger home page "recently updated" scroll. Randomly. It's a new blog; the writer's got an interestingly dysphoric voice.
I found Mittfraud via a Boston Phoenix article about our Ken-Doll, Church of the Sub-Genius, pierce-Brosnan wannabe Venture Capitalist governor, Mitt Romney. He is wealthy, vapid, loathsome; a feed-the-rich, no-new-taxes, let's bring back the Death Penalty bobblehead. The site presents well researched documentation of the mitty-gritty of the Mitthead's not-so-amusing vicissitudes.
That site is linked to chimesatmidnight, more good stuff on the Mitthead and folks of his ilk.
Lileks is a famous dude, kinda righty, but his stuff makes me laugh.
Anitarust oh how onanistic, but that's me. Go there. I am so cute. K-U-T-E.
Breakfast deconstructs the "Hungry Man Breakfast." I hearly compounded my neck fracture laughing when I read it. Yes, I can be juvenile.
Finally, blaugustine is an example of a gorgeous, artful blog by an artist. Go there and admire her artist's books. She is amazing.
Garlic and Sapphires in the Mud
AXIS
There’s slim hope for the small --
a ring of bone, its peg.
We name the part and its breach:
Axis and Hangman’s,
C2 and traumatic spondylo-
listhesis.
When Atlas shoulders the world
he feints left, and right,
on a pivot that’s thin as a tooth,
baby’s first.
Sometimes axle tree means the sun.
I prefer the gallows
where Odin hung for nine days once, ashen,
but kept his head.
My axis met its Ragnarok head-on,
cracked, and held.
11.6.03
There’s slim hope for the small --
a ring of bone, its peg.
We name the part and its breach:
Axis and Hangman’s,
C2 and traumatic spondylo-
listhesis.
When Atlas shoulders the world
he feints left, and right,
on a pivot that’s thin as a tooth,
baby’s first.
Sometimes axle tree means the sun.
I prefer the gallows
where Odin hung for nine days once, ashen,
but kept his head.
My axis met its Ragnarok head-on,
cracked, and held.
11.6.03
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
Axis
Time enters the body, said Simone Weil.
Trussed up in the DeSalvo-Gregor Samsa collar, and relatively housebound, I am in a new relationship with both time and body.
The work clock has stopped. No more ten to six, no more Monday through Friday. I have a vague sense of DKs teaching schedule, a sort of work-clock-by-proxy, a dim ticking through the walls, barely applicable to me.
This little cracked circle high in my neck is making its own sweet time. C2. See, too. Sea two. I suppose it deserves a poem. The Axis. I have written poems about the other named spinal bones, the Atlas and the Coccyx. It's the least I can do, eh, for my li'l buddy C2 ?
Night Time is different, too. I've been waking after every REM cycle, so regularly I can predict the time: ninety minutes later than when last I looked. If I'm lucky, 3 hours.
I don't wear a watch anymore. I'm not bored. Time does not weigh or drag. But I feel ever so slightly restless, untethered, anxious. Like a shaking hourglass.
10:30 AM is the "dishonorably-late-to-be-in-a-bathrobe" hour.
"Lunchtime" happens later; during worktime I'd wolf the jelly-sandwich-and-apple down long before high noon. Now I'm nuking oatmeal and raisins at 1:30. I could not be more sedentary lately, with this injury and the rainy weather. Metabolism gutters to a slow, slow burn.
Other timestones ? Recertify in Internal Medicine again in 2014. Pay mortgage off in 2018. I don't like to think of those things.
The floor is farther away now. I have to turn en bloc to see around. I haven't seen my bellybutton for six weeks, other than in the most metaphorical navel-gazing sense, which I suppose I'm doing lots of. Viz, this.
But yes, I must do an axis poem. There will be a hangman in it. I'll work in "clot the bedded axle-tree" and yggdrasil, the poles, the axis mundi.
Trussed up in the DeSalvo-Gregor Samsa collar, and relatively housebound, I am in a new relationship with both time and body.
The work clock has stopped. No more ten to six, no more Monday through Friday. I have a vague sense of DKs teaching schedule, a sort of work-clock-by-proxy, a dim ticking through the walls, barely applicable to me.
This little cracked circle high in my neck is making its own sweet time. C2. See, too. Sea two. I suppose it deserves a poem. The Axis. I have written poems about the other named spinal bones, the Atlas and the Coccyx. It's the least I can do, eh, for my li'l buddy C2 ?
Night Time is different, too. I've been waking after every REM cycle, so regularly I can predict the time: ninety minutes later than when last I looked. If I'm lucky, 3 hours.
I don't wear a watch anymore. I'm not bored. Time does not weigh or drag. But I feel ever so slightly restless, untethered, anxious. Like a shaking hourglass.
10:30 AM is the "dishonorably-late-to-be-in-a-bathrobe" hour.
"Lunchtime" happens later; during worktime I'd wolf the jelly-sandwich-and-apple down long before high noon. Now I'm nuking oatmeal and raisins at 1:30. I could not be more sedentary lately, with this injury and the rainy weather. Metabolism gutters to a slow, slow burn.
Other timestones ? Recertify in Internal Medicine again in 2014. Pay mortgage off in 2018. I don't like to think of those things.
The floor is farther away now. I have to turn en bloc to see around. I haven't seen my bellybutton for six weeks, other than in the most metaphorical navel-gazing sense, which I suppose I'm doing lots of. Viz, this.
But yes, I must do an axis poem. There will be a hangman in it. I'll work in "clot the bedded axle-tree" and yggdrasil, the poles, the axis mundi.
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
TERCE
Oh, dear. What have I wrought ?
TERCE: THE HOUR OF WORK
...love and work... S. Freud
...ora et labora... St Benedict
The Trappists want to feed us. Cheese wheels, jam,
fruitcakes infused with bourbon, bourbon fudge,
and even beer. “Eat, drink !” their brochures bid.
We see ourselves reflected in their eyes,
cartoons of appetite. They want to lead
us to temptation, certain that we’ll find
our way there anyway: why not cash in ?
But when the Trappists eat it’s by the Rule
of frugal Benedictine rations -- two
cooked dishes at the sixth and ninth hour, one
scant pound of bread per monk per day, no flesh
of quadrupeds except in illness, wine,
a half glass tops, it raises HDL
and abstinence, though noble -- well, you know.
They live for decades. Then, eternally,
impeccable from years of work and prayer.
We love and work our way to early graves,
while hoping for forgiveness, unction, grace,
or, if not those, at least a premium
black walnut deep-lid casket, Trappist-made,
ordered pre-need. The cross is optional.
TERCE: THE HOUR OF WORK
...love and work... S. Freud
...ora et labora... St Benedict
The Trappists want to feed us. Cheese wheels, jam,
fruitcakes infused with bourbon, bourbon fudge,
and even beer. “Eat, drink !” their brochures bid.
We see ourselves reflected in their eyes,
cartoons of appetite. They want to lead
us to temptation, certain that we’ll find
our way there anyway: why not cash in ?
But when the Trappists eat it’s by the Rule
of frugal Benedictine rations -- two
cooked dishes at the sixth and ninth hour, one
scant pound of bread per monk per day, no flesh
of quadrupeds except in illness, wine,
a half glass tops, it raises HDL
and abstinence, though noble -- well, you know.
They live for decades. Then, eternally,
impeccable from years of work and prayer.
We love and work our way to early graves,
while hoping for forgiveness, unction, grace,
or, if not those, at least a premium
black walnut deep-lid casket, Trappist-made,
ordered pre-need. The cross is optional.
Transparency
The maples have dumped their leaves this week; the brown crabgrass of the backyard's hidden under a layer of yellow leaves and the kitchen window, without the partial screen of leaves, looks directly at the back porch and into the kitchen of the neighbor's house.
C's wood sculpture hangs from the top of their porch: a spiral sunburst on the left, rays spreading right, in an oblong frame, all in oddly dark red green and blue. The neighbor is a tall, pleasant man, with whom I've had two substantive conversations in our whole six years here. He initiated them both.
In the first, he asked whether we'd been satisfied with the yard work done by someone we'd hired after seeing them work on his yard. In the second he asked permission to trim some of the branches of our unruly Norway spruce that overhung his driveway, and said that his wife was quite ill.
I gaze out through C's dark sun and feel a heavy sadness.
Last July I heard singing from his house, hymns; I couldn't make out all the words, but was sure I heard "fire fall," obviously a pentecostal image. I was in the midst of writing a poem based on a snippet of conversation I'd overheard at the Fourth of July fireworks. The poem became a pentecostal poem.
JULY 4th PENTECOST
“Where’s the finale, Daddy ?” lisps the child.
“Finale means the end,” the man replies,
didactic, fatherly, “but there’s lots more
to come yet, son. Don’t worry. Lots, lots more.
Of course you’re right -- the grand finale’s grand,
grand lights, grand sound, but, still, a long way off.
Don’t worry, boy. There’s plenty left (a loud
report drowns out the shaky voice) I’d say,
at least fifteen or twenty minutes -- look !”
He points to something whistling through the dark,
and braces for the flash and blast. The sky
blooms with red flame round as a giant moon.
The fire fall whets his tongue. Half-drunk, he cries,
“Wasn’t that splendid, love ?” The wind rises.
Smoke billows overhead. “Thus we transit
the glorious mundane to the last days,
the grand finale and what lies beyond !”
The child covers his ears, presses his face
into his father’s thigh. Muscle and hair
repel the little cheek. “And so much more
has yet to come !” exults the father.
“I want go home see Mommy,” sobs the child.
C's wood sculpture hangs from the top of their porch: a spiral sunburst on the left, rays spreading right, in an oblong frame, all in oddly dark red green and blue. The neighbor is a tall, pleasant man, with whom I've had two substantive conversations in our whole six years here. He initiated them both.
In the first, he asked whether we'd been satisfied with the yard work done by someone we'd hired after seeing them work on his yard. In the second he asked permission to trim some of the branches of our unruly Norway spruce that overhung his driveway, and said that his wife was quite ill.
I gaze out through C's dark sun and feel a heavy sadness.
Last July I heard singing from his house, hymns; I couldn't make out all the words, but was sure I heard "fire fall," obviously a pentecostal image. I was in the midst of writing a poem based on a snippet of conversation I'd overheard at the Fourth of July fireworks. The poem became a pentecostal poem.
JULY 4th PENTECOST
“Where’s the finale, Daddy ?” lisps the child.
“Finale means the end,” the man replies,
didactic, fatherly, “but there’s lots more
to come yet, son. Don’t worry. Lots, lots more.
Of course you’re right -- the grand finale’s grand,
grand lights, grand sound, but, still, a long way off.
Don’t worry, boy. There’s plenty left (a loud
report drowns out the shaky voice) I’d say,
at least fifteen or twenty minutes -- look !”
He points to something whistling through the dark,
and braces for the flash and blast. The sky
blooms with red flame round as a giant moon.
The fire fall whets his tongue. Half-drunk, he cries,
“Wasn’t that splendid, love ?” The wind rises.
Smoke billows overhead. “Thus we transit
the glorious mundane to the last days,
the grand finale and what lies beyond !”
The child covers his ears, presses his face
into his father’s thigh. Muscle and hair
repel the little cheek. “And so much more
has yet to come !” exults the father.
“I want go home see Mommy,” sobs the child.
Monday, November 03, 2003
Hermit (11.99)
ORATIO
... a thousand twangling instruments
I like to imagine an eremite
alone in his cell
wordless listening
supremely irrelevant
a crystal of the purest patience
while all night my radio
To lie down
To lie with
To lie
pits white noise against nuit blanc.
On clear nights we could pull Canada
straight down from the aurora
a map mostly white
dark green for taiga
pale gray for tundra
Cap-chat, Chibougamau
mysterious names and distances
a Frenchman in a dark room
Gone are the days of imperfect reception
Gone are the screens of hissing snow
Gone is the bull’s-eye socket
that opened on unspangled darkness
Gone is the pure tone of void and emergency
One ancient trope, anaphora,
has survived rhyme and reason.
Infinitely antiphonal, it says
Give us this day and
Eat, drink
image and metaphor, its goons,
the self, its god,
goods, its gross grace.
Now the air twangles with testimonials
ravishing ! wondrous ! splendid ! --
until you’d think the tongue had been
clear-cut and strip-mined of superlatives
shucked to its dumb root
but still it screams down sheer ironsides
on the latest machine
spitting in today’s most phosphorescent chic !
From deep inside the basement’s
freshly poured neiges d’antan concrete
Fido’s bow-wow bow-wow bow-wow bow-wow
joins the cricket behind the boiler,
and the fizzling smoke-detector
in an new arrangement of
O iambic tabernacle O pentacle
while upstairs Old Uncle Gulliver
squirms in his AM FM truss.
Oh, how he likes it.
What burns on the MC’s index card,
fruit or beast ?
Which of a thousand thousand savors will suffice ?
What’s the consolation prize ?
What info-perdition lies
between words between stations ?
And when will the smoke clear
so that I might rescan
the spectrum of the terrible
for the vanishing slit between BC and AD ?
In the desert parabolas reread
the zodiac sign by sign by sign.
What strange music, half faith half math,
will loom our new ear ?
... a thousand twangling instruments
I like to imagine an eremite
alone in his cell
wordless listening
supremely irrelevant
a crystal of the purest patience
while all night my radio
To lie down
To lie with
To lie
pits white noise against nuit blanc.
On clear nights we could pull Canada
straight down from the aurora
a map mostly white
dark green for taiga
pale gray for tundra
Cap-chat, Chibougamau
mysterious names and distances
a Frenchman in a dark room
Gone are the days of imperfect reception
Gone are the screens of hissing snow
Gone is the bull’s-eye socket
that opened on unspangled darkness
Gone is the pure tone of void and emergency
One ancient trope, anaphora,
has survived rhyme and reason.
Infinitely antiphonal, it says
Give us this day and
Eat, drink
image and metaphor, its goons,
the self, its god,
goods, its gross grace.
Now the air twangles with testimonials
ravishing ! wondrous ! splendid ! --
until you’d think the tongue had been
clear-cut and strip-mined of superlatives
shucked to its dumb root
but still it screams down sheer ironsides
on the latest machine
spitting in today’s most phosphorescent chic !
From deep inside the basement’s
freshly poured neiges d’antan concrete
Fido’s bow-wow bow-wow bow-wow bow-wow
joins the cricket behind the boiler,
and the fizzling smoke-detector
in an new arrangement of
O iambic tabernacle O pentacle
while upstairs Old Uncle Gulliver
squirms in his AM FM truss.
Oh, how he likes it.
What burns on the MC’s index card,
fruit or beast ?
Which of a thousand thousand savors will suffice ?
What’s the consolation prize ?
What info-perdition lies
between words between stations ?
And when will the smoke clear
so that I might rescan
the spectrum of the terrible
for the vanishing slit between BC and AD ?
In the desert parabolas reread
the zodiac sign by sign by sign.
What strange music, half faith half math,
will loom our new ear ?
Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa
I walked down Main St just after dark tonight to pick up some prescriptions at the pharmacy. The evening traffic seemed overly fast, dense and menacing, an impersonal collective phenomenon horridly devoid of care. A big encroaching mismanaged machine.
Oddly, among the wet, fallen leaves of the sidewalk, there was a decidual trail of family photographs and cards, leading to a broken-backed photo album splayed in the gutter. I was tempted to collect them, peruse them, interrogate them: how often does one find such treasure ? But my neck brace -- and I'll need three full months of it I learned today -- makes the ground a relatively inaccessible part of my world, so I let it all be.
DK dreamed our Cat Billy was telepathically reading him a book about dogs. What a fabulous dream. He said it was unpleasant, though. Not a nightmare, but one of those going-nowhere, annoyingly obscure dreams.
My father once dreamed of a row of boy scouts playing flutes.
(Alienist ! Where are you when I need you ?)
So I walked to the pharmacy, past that silly, pseudo-colonial hamburger restaurant whose name always escapes me -- Captain Something's Tavern -- and saw that their sign, with its series of red neon messages, was boasting of "thireteen televisions" and "nine satellites" and "trivia night" and "karaoke." In the parking lot of the pharmacy I watched a young woman get into her car, light up a cigarette, and turn her stereo up to window shattering level. The pharmacy was overbright with fluorescents. The first thing I saw was a display of at least three shelves worth of pink, shiny, grinning ceramic piggy banks.
Then I think I blacked out.
Just kidding.
How do people stand this life, I wondered on the way home, passing St Jude's weirdly protestant appearing white clapboard colonial church, gazing at the pretty statue on its lawn. I counterpoised the idea of a saint to the whizzing, loudmouthed, pig-pink, multi-channelled, meat eating world I was passing through. And, the idea of hermitage.
Then I thought of "Christianity" and it seemed as remote and unhelpful as the ranks of porcelain piggies in Walgreen's, except at its outermost limits of darkness, silence and unknowingness, where even Christ doesn't matter, doesn't figure. Transchristian realms. Christ is like the Zen trope of the finger pointing at the moon. He's the finger. He's what comes into speech, the Logos, a way of talking about the Unspeakable.
But as remote as it seemed, part of me wanted to go into the church, for the silence and simple acknowledgment-of-mystery that it represents.
Our new orange kitty might have another name. Gertrude has seemed just so ponderous. The kitty is cross eyed. I thought: rosicrucian, then I thought of Henry Miller's "The Rosy Crucifix" -- so maybe Rosy, or even Rosa after Andriessen's opera.
Billy's dream dog book was probably a god book, or a bible: that's why DK found the dream so annoying. Of course, free associating to someone else's dream is not exactly kosher, Sigmund.
Rosa rosa rosa rosa rosa !
Oddly, among the wet, fallen leaves of the sidewalk, there was a decidual trail of family photographs and cards, leading to a broken-backed photo album splayed in the gutter. I was tempted to collect them, peruse them, interrogate them: how often does one find such treasure ? But my neck brace -- and I'll need three full months of it I learned today -- makes the ground a relatively inaccessible part of my world, so I let it all be.
DK dreamed our Cat Billy was telepathically reading him a book about dogs. What a fabulous dream. He said it was unpleasant, though. Not a nightmare, but one of those going-nowhere, annoyingly obscure dreams.
My father once dreamed of a row of boy scouts playing flutes.
(Alienist ! Where are you when I need you ?)
So I walked to the pharmacy, past that silly, pseudo-colonial hamburger restaurant whose name always escapes me -- Captain Something's Tavern -- and saw that their sign, with its series of red neon messages, was boasting of "thireteen televisions" and "nine satellites" and "trivia night" and "karaoke." In the parking lot of the pharmacy I watched a young woman get into her car, light up a cigarette, and turn her stereo up to window shattering level. The pharmacy was overbright with fluorescents. The first thing I saw was a display of at least three shelves worth of pink, shiny, grinning ceramic piggy banks.
Then I think I blacked out.
Just kidding.
How do people stand this life, I wondered on the way home, passing St Jude's weirdly protestant appearing white clapboard colonial church, gazing at the pretty statue on its lawn. I counterpoised the idea of a saint to the whizzing, loudmouthed, pig-pink, multi-channelled, meat eating world I was passing through. And, the idea of hermitage.
Then I thought of "Christianity" and it seemed as remote and unhelpful as the ranks of porcelain piggies in Walgreen's, except at its outermost limits of darkness, silence and unknowingness, where even Christ doesn't matter, doesn't figure. Transchristian realms. Christ is like the Zen trope of the finger pointing at the moon. He's the finger. He's what comes into speech, the Logos, a way of talking about the Unspeakable.
But as remote as it seemed, part of me wanted to go into the church, for the silence and simple acknowledgment-of-mystery that it represents.
Our new orange kitty might have another name. Gertrude has seemed just so ponderous. The kitty is cross eyed. I thought: rosicrucian, then I thought of Henry Miller's "The Rosy Crucifix" -- so maybe Rosy, or even Rosa after Andriessen's opera.
Billy's dream dog book was probably a god book, or a bible: that's why DK found the dream so annoying. Of course, free associating to someone else's dream is not exactly kosher, Sigmund.
Rosa rosa rosa rosa rosa !
Sunday, November 02, 2003
Nones: Outpatient
Only two of the divine hours remain unwritten in my series -- terce, nine AM, the start of the workday, and nones, midafternoon, the slump, the cluttered worldly dregs of time. I think an old poem, circa 2001, fits the 3 PM slot perfectly -- a poem I wrote after I saw a group of young men wearing work clothes hugging each other and wailing in the parking lot outside my window at the hospital. I later learned that a fellow worker had died on the job of some awful injury.
I've been too distracted of late to write. Maybe this fits.
NONES: OUTPATIENT
The sound, convulsive, musicless, disturbed
the clinic’s drone of paperwork and care,
and, summoned, we attended. It was woe
that froze our pens and stethoscopes midflight,
a woe so whorled and intimate it seemed
our ears were die-cast complements. And then
it stopped. We knew it would, of course. We knew
the chaplain would sweep down ex machinae ,
ex beeper, cell phone, elevator, stat,
and do whatever thing it is he does,
while we got back to doing all we could,
which isn’t much. And, all that afternoon,
amidst a crowded service of dull noise --
heat’s shuffle through coiled corridors, the cough
and spit of sleet and wind on the gray pane,
the hiss of the flickering overheads, the grave,
determined data rattling into banks --
my ears kept picking up that note of woe,
as perfectly attuned to its long wave
as a maternal ear to one child’s cry.
But then a keener sound crescendoed near,
two sirens bawling in and out of phase,
a lullaby, a ululation, then,
outside Emergency’s tokenless gate,
an ear-from-cosmos splitting unison.
I've been too distracted of late to write. Maybe this fits.
NONES: OUTPATIENT
The sound, convulsive, musicless, disturbed
the clinic’s drone of paperwork and care,
and, summoned, we attended. It was woe
that froze our pens and stethoscopes midflight,
a woe so whorled and intimate it seemed
our ears were die-cast complements. And then
it stopped. We knew it would, of course. We knew
the chaplain would sweep down ex machinae ,
ex beeper, cell phone, elevator, stat,
and do whatever thing it is he does,
while we got back to doing all we could,
which isn’t much. And, all that afternoon,
amidst a crowded service of dull noise --
heat’s shuffle through coiled corridors, the cough
and spit of sleet and wind on the gray pane,
the hiss of the flickering overheads, the grave,
determined data rattling into banks --
my ears kept picking up that note of woe,
as perfectly attuned to its long wave
as a maternal ear to one child’s cry.
But then a keener sound crescendoed near,
two sirens bawling in and out of phase,
a lullaby, a ululation, then,
outside Emergency’s tokenless gate,
an ear-from-cosmos splitting unison.
