At the workshop the day after Losing It, they read a paragraph about their first trip to the grocery store in Hyde Park. A woman squatted, shitting in a parking stall. Hard to theorize, easier to describe. They asked if I was angry at them, after they interrupted my talk to object to it. Four years later, we talked about Obama and grace at an outdoor table, fenced in. At the coffee shop nearby, there was a memorial to a man who died by the gun; a church memorialized others. The first visit was winter, the second a cold summer day. They stood in front of the L, where a round pillar zig zagged black and yellow beside a vertical steel support; they were dressed in black shoes, black stockings, a black dress and jacket, their hair still peppery. How to theorize the immediate, the instant of recognizing that photo as mine, of them, amid an awkward geometry of concrete pillars near a lake. Something of the hot and cold, cold pillar warmed by sunlight, abstraction reflected back on concrete. But it wasn’t thought that seemed forced; it was world, so difficult, a puzzle to be completed, then mapped. A den, piled with books and papers, by the kitchen. A white cat, a conversation about older male professors. The food they could not eat, the way they talked about it. Confusion’s necessary, they said, not seeing that meditation’s a further confusion, or a confusion set in molasses. Molasses spilled in the harbor. The sweetness of a mind moving, and of its end. RIP Lauren
2015
Her obituary refers to Lauren as "they." I'll need to change the pronouns.
No comments:
Post a Comment