Meditation 22

2/11/2020

The question of surfaces came up. We can call content a surface, if it carries a mirror on the other side. We can call the mirror depth, so long as we stack it on others. Ron calls it torque, what happens between sentences, but I’m more inclined to to call it cliff, or canyon. Mules no longer traverse Molokai's cliffs, so our friend walked up to buy supplies, then 3600 feet back down. It took a day to go shopping, and detergent was heavy. My student calls it “abyss,” but he’s young yet. After we read Sonnet 73 and I play the role of the older poet to the younger man, another student asks if I’m dying. To grow older is not to read but re-read, which is to look for something other than content (note the pun). Tell me why the sentence is beautiful, and assign it a role in its paragraph. Does it serve as function or as mini-poem? If you open the mini-poem, are you charged $12 to buy a guaranteed A paper, or do you get to drink from it for inherent value? If we call each other service workers, clients, and consumers, what is left for the rootless, the suffering, the unattached? She turned the noun “snake” into verb, transformed the garden hose into a sentient being. You can make the sentence dull by ejecting metaphors, so we do. There’s a hose on the sidewalk. I remember seeing a snake in the grass in Kingston, New York, thinking at first it was a hose, then noting its thickness, the way it moved away from us kids through something that appeared to be volition. We only read character through action, unless we read the sonnets well. The metaphor serves a function, but falls off meaning’s cliff-edge. A tiny parachute appears, negotiating the walls between sentences, and you brace yourself against the canyon floor. When you listen to a woman walking down the stairs (she carries a trash bag over one shoulder), what do her steps sound like? Which are louder, which softer? What does that tell us about the space? My percussionist sits at the table counting out the poem’s beats. There’s meaning there, but it’s parasite to the words. Her dog jumped toward the leaves in their descent. Fill in the second half of that analogy, making a sentence of it. We do have limits, but they’re stories that spool out. Rain doesn’t fragment the earth; it fills it in. And then a thrush’s song leans against the gutter’s drips. A rooster stands in the field, for once quiet. Someone’s alarm bleats a greeting. Let’s try this all again.