tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56690271587539522024-03-15T18:10:30.850-07:00Susan M. Schultz's BlogDrafts of prose poems about memory and forgetting.susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.comBlogger1711125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-33332882239930717772024-03-09T12:46:00.000-08:002024-03-09T12:46:19.111-08:00Lilith talks death and shunning with Uncle John<br /><div class="xqcrz7y x78zum5 x1qx5ct2 x1y1aw1k x1sxyh0 xwib8y2 xurb0ha xw4jnvo"><div></div></div><div><div class="" dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r1l:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x41vudc x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Lilith and I walked to the entrance to the Temple this morning to see Uncle John. Uncle John is younger than I am, but after he started calling me aunty and then told me he's a grandfather, I called him Uncle and it stuck. He sat inside the booth on the other side of the bridge that leads to the temple. Tourists were to and fro'ing. Surprisingly, my neighbor and her daughter were leaving the grounds. I leaned in to Uncle John and said, "see that woman; she's my neighbor and <span><a tabindex="-1"></a></span>she hasn't talked to me for five years. I said something she didn't like and that was that." Uncle John commented on how much energy that must take. (It's taken some of mine over the years, too.) I said my son was of two minds about this: he hated that she shuns me, but couldn't help but admire her stick-to-ativeness.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">"I came to give you Les's address," I said (to send a condolence card). But I'd left it at home. Uncle John said he'd just run into Les. "He looks so sad." He hadn't said he heard that Les's wife died, but Les told him the story. How they'd gone to Japan and Vegas near the end because they loved to travel. How she'd gotten covid. How she died peacefully. How the grandchildren will provide some consolation. "But when they're gone, they're gone," he said.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Uncle John has a tender heart. I am very fond of Uncle John. Uncle John loves Trump and was an avid covid-denier. More equations that cannot be solved by me.</div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div><div><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic"><div><div><div><div class="xq8finb x16n37ib x1fqkajt x1aj7aux x1axty5n x1uuop16"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x1qjc9v5 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np x150jy0e x1e558r4 xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4 xwrv7xz x8182xy x4cne27 xifccgj"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x193iq5w xeuugli x1r8uery x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xg83lxy x1h0ha7o x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn"><br /></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-89177380871381646942024-03-04T13:57:00.000-08:002024-03-04T13:57:15.773-08:00Climate & Poetics Issue of Chant de la Sirene<div aria-haspopup="true" aria-label="Show details" class="ajy" data-tooltip="Show details" id=":tf" role="button" tabindex="0"><img alt="" class="ajz" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/images/cleardot.gif" /></div><div id=":om"><div class="qQVYZb"></div><div class="utdU2e"></div><div class="lQs8Hd"></div><div class="wl4W9b"></div></div><div class="aHl"></div><div id=":te" tabindex="-1"></div><div class="adM"><br /></div><div>Dear friends, colleagues, and country-people--</div><div><br /><div><div></div></div><div dir="auto"><div id="m_-6924684357433842316m_-4102682131033102622m_-6508490425366323850gmail-:r1b2:"><div><div><span dir="auto"><div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Laura
Hinton has curated a huge issue of her journal on Climate &
Poetics. I'm honored to have photographs and word work here, along with
so much more by other poets and artists. Plunge in! Kudos to Laura for
working so hard on this issue over so many months and for a wide-ranging
introduction and her poems.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.chantdelasirenejournal.com/introduction/laura-hinton-giacomo-cuttone?fbclid%3DIwAR2qSMlCQCewMDvsYsomGOyvdwhk6pVA4KYF5cfqjCSZxs-nrcCcf35MhyA__;!!PvDODwlR4mBZyAb0!WoyKq5FBG2rWwcowCOKZXb81ifByZAWp8zo0aQUpJuUgivb5DaMYYJUqy0GAauPx8tCG-5YgS3MUf8WsVKmniiqpAA$&source=gmail&ust=1709675358426000&usg=AOvVaw1BCOESzSKuRKqPcObEn5Jj" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.chantdelasirenejournal.com/introduction/laura-hinton-giacomo-cuttone?fbclid=IwAR2qSMlCQCewMDvsYsomGOyvdwhk6pVA4KYF5cfqjCSZxs-nrcCcf35MhyA__;!!PvDODwlR4mBZyAb0!WoyKq5FBG2rWwcowCOKZXb81ifByZAWp8zo0aQUpJuUgivb5DaMYYJUqy0GAauPx8tCG-5YgS3MUf8WsVKmniiqpAA$" target="_blank">https://www.<wbr></wbr>chantdelasirenejournal.com/<wbr></wbr>introduction/laura-hinton-<wbr></wbr>giacomo-cuttone?fbclid=<wbr></wbr>IwAR2qSMlCQCewMDvsYsomGOyvdwhk<wbr></wbr>6pVA4KYF5cfqjCSZxs-<wbr></wbr>nrcCcf35MhyA</a></div><div><br /></div><div>And I hope this missive finds you all well, or as well as can be in this day and age--</div><div><br /></div><div>aloha, Susan</div><div><br /><br /></div></span></div></div></div></div></div><p></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-937322111915849562024-03-03T11:59:00.000-08:002024-03-03T13:40:11.027-08:004 March 2024<p>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Not to try to
interpret . . . but to look . . . till the light suddenly dawns.</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
To take a photograph that can be guessed at, but not mean, as if
image were music, the shadow of a strip of paint on the parking
structure deck. Almost bird, but not. Almost slingshot. Almost moon
surface. Almost topo map. Stunned by its mis-fit, this queering of
decay (see Sara Ahmed). A sunset streams down the grid of parking
stalls, but that’s not the good photograph, even as orange sun points
toward us on our way to a baseball game. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">I
love pulling back from assigning a name to this shape and its
shadow, the way an image moves a viewer, but in what direction she
can’t describe. Rothko’s parking structure, sacred rot.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">White lines peel upward, the letter G hardly itself any more. There’s a
walkway from one to the other side of the structure; there are
benches, planters, a formerly green area (before they put in solar
paneled roofs). No one wanted to sit there on the concrete, in
the high sun, beside the dying grass, but as an architectural feature
it made some sense. That’s the problem with sense, isn’t it,
that it makes without meaning, and meaning so often makes so little
of sense. The ex-president talks about languages that no one speaks
crossing our borders. It’s hard to imagine such bodiless sounds
drifting over the southern border in the sun, craving water and a
blanket, spelling themselves out for audiences of one. Clearly, we’re
meant to see them as dangerous in a synesthesia of fear. The floating
wall in the Rio Grande can’t stop them, this viral sound that hints
at sense but refuses to signify.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
language flees its homeland, broken into noise; somewhere in the
caravan we might find its privileged ear, the conch that understands
its tones. A conch sounded before the game, though it was piped in.
Conches sounded before the movies, as hula dancers filled the
suburban screens. A sound of yearning, untuned from the sacred, cow
bell used to alert children to dinner. In this country, you can’t
have children (by IVF) and you can’t not have children to save your life (by
abortion). But we need more children! </span><span style="font-style: normal;">says
the senator to the press.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
forming and the deforming land mirror each other. Lava from a
helicopter, parking structure from my iPhone. The land is moving. The
image is moving. But to see it, we need to park ourselves. When the
fire station was damaged by a tornado, donors sent folding chairs for
the firefighters to sit in. It’s a waiting game. If you slow down
far enough, there’s nothing to see but what’s there in front of you.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Note:
Italicized phrase by Simone Weil.</span></p>
<p><style type="text/css">p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }</style> <br /></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-85073857467452038602024-03-01T12:46:00.000-08:002024-03-01T12:46:34.641-08:001 March 2024<p>
</p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">The young man stands
in front of us, dousing his head with fluid, clicking his lighter
once, twice, three times at the cuff of his pants. Flames lick, halo,
him--he’s not a body yet--one man points a gun, others bring fire
extinguishers. He’s replaced by a gray blob on our screens, a gray
blob that screams.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">It’s the worst,
most awful, photograph he’s ever seen, writes someone on X. He
posts it. An elliptical gray blob on the ground in Gaza. We still see
a left arm, plastic cable wrapped around its wrist.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">The question is no
longer how we write after Auschwitz, but how we write during
Auschwitz.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Or if writing is
what needs to be done.
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">I look for the
photograph of a Buddhist monk who set himself on fire in Vietnam.
That’s my google search, more or less. I can buy the photograph for
$32.83 from Walmart, already framed to give as a gift or to put on my
wall. The finest materials were used. A payment plan is available for
the more expensive (larger) version.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p><style type="text/css">p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }</style></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-39963047269658390462024-03-01T11:51:00.000-08:002024-03-01T11:51:49.614-08:00Life on an Island<p> </p><p>An SUV has stopped just where you first spot the Temple in Valley of the Temples. The driver points out a good photograph, but no one gets out to take it. "It's really beautiful," I say. "I know, I'm from here," the woman says. "I come to the cemetery to visit family members. But I've never come this far." You can go farther up, I suggest, almost to the mountains. "We have to drive around the island," she says, as they wheel off down the hill and out of the cemetery. <br /></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-35651490054566434352024-03-01T11:49:00.000-08:002024-03-01T11:49:03.015-08:00Lilith thinks about mortality<p><br /></p><div class="xqcrz7y x78zum5 x1qx5ct2 x1y1aw1k x1sxyh0 xwib8y2 xurb0ha xw4jnvo"><div></div></div><div><div class="" dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r1mh:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x41vudc x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">At the cemetery, S has his feelers out for news of Renn. He was the most consistent walker; his cancer was in remission, and then it wasn't. S hasn't seen him in a long time. I had just told him about Leona, of Leona and Les, who died three weeks ago of cancer. "My wife died at 45, of ovarian cancer," S said. His father died in his 50s, his sister . . . You get used to it, working here, he told me. There was a beautiful funeral the other day, he says, for a three year old <span><a tabindex="-1"></a></span>boy. Everyone wore t-shirts with his face on them. So cute. He gets in his hepped up golf cart and starts up the hill, stopping once to say something else to me; as Lilith and I leave 45 minutes later, he opines that Juan Soto is overrated and the Padres should do better this year without him. I'm fond of S, his consideration, his love of baseball.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">S. is a rabid Sandy Hook and covid denier. How does this equation even go?</div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div><div><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic"><div><div><div><div class="xq8finb x16n37ib x1fqkajt x1aj7aux x1axty5n x1uuop16"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x1qjc9v5 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np x150jy0e x1e558r4 xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4 xwrv7xz x8182xy x4cne27 xifccgj"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x193iq5w xeuugli x1r8uery x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xg83lxy x1h0ha7o x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn"><br /></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-47748674424896237402024-02-28T09:50:00.000-08:002024-02-28T10:39:54.118-08:00Lilith Looks for an Old Friend<p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x41vudc x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"> </span></p><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x41vudc x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto">It
took me a long time to remember their names, Les and Leona. For a while, I called them L&L, like the drive in. They walked
every day down some of the same paths that Lilith and I do. They walked
to the store, pushed grandchildren in a stroller, sauntered through the
cemetery. Always erect, always striding. One day (a year ago?) I ran
into Les, on his own, who said that Leona had cancer. Over time, she got
treatments; they started to travel again, to Japan, Vegas. I asked
Uncle John this past weekend if he'd seen them. (I <span><a tabindex="-1"></a></span>hadn't
been around for a long time, too.) He said he'd just seen Les leave the
cemetery. Yesterday, I saw a car backing into Les and Leona's garage.
The garage door shut, so I knocked on the side door. Les appeared, two
gorgeous grandsons squirming beside him. "It's Aunty Susan and Lilith,"
he said to the boys, who started playing with a hose in the front yard.
Leona died three weeks ago. He's still watching the grandchildren. There
will be a private funeral. "Her family is very big, so there might be
200 people there," Les said.</span></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-82012539164191738682024-02-26T12:12:00.000-08:002024-02-26T12:12:19.321-08:00My Photo Life<p>
</p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">[I applied for something.]<br /></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b>My Photo Life</b></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">I was born in 1958
in Belleville, Illinois and grew up on the east coast, while cheering
for the St. Louis Cardinals. I became serious about photography at
the time I retired from over 30 yeaers of teaching American poetry
and creative writing at the University of Hawai`i-Mānoa. I’ve
always been a writer. I work through through ear and printed word. My
vision began to develop when my mother’s dementia deepened in the
mid-2000s, I kept a blog that detailed the progression of her illness
(and its digressions). The blog was published as two books. The
discipline of keeping this blog over several years taught me to
attend to what was directly in front of me, whether it was my mother
or the love story between two Alzheimer’s patients in her “home.”
I used to wander the care home looking at the residents’ “memory
boxes,” framed spaces that held photographs of them when they had
been active, engaged. Many were World War II veterans or their
spouses, who had posed in their jaunty hats at a much younger age.
The boxes were intended, we were told, to remind the residents of
which room was theirs, but because they couldn’t remember
themselves, they served to memorialize them for family and friends.
(In Alzheimer’s, memorials come before, as well as after, death.)
My friend, the noted photographer Gaye Chan, was fascinated by the
idea of these boxes. She designed the covers to my books, both of
which have flat “boxes” of photographs on the back. The first
volume’s cover shows my parents in their Virginia living room, my
late father a shade, and my mother blurring. The second volume
features the page of an old photo album whose photographs are
missing. What’s left are yellow lines, intended to help the owner
set her photos straight on the gummy page.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Gaye and I also
worked, for a decade, on a small poetry press, Tinfish, which I
founded in 1995. I found the words and she assigned student and
professors as designers, or did the books and journal issues herself.
What an education for me in image and text! More than once, we
gathered at large tables to put a publication together; the social
aspect of it was part of the larger process. The journal issues were
especially intriguing, as Gaye used recycled materials (print shop
proof sheets, old cereal box covers, x-rays, and so forth) as the
basis for her work, and as covers. Often, every cover would be
different from the others, so that opening up the boxes when the
finished work arrived was like being a kid again at Christmas-time.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">As a teacher of
creative writing, I increasingly let go of “knowledge”
transmission (how to write a poem, how to scan a poem, how to
construct a metaphor) and took up “attention” as my focus. My
students had become unfocused, what with smart phones and financial
crashes, sick relatives and two jobs, addiction and climate change
anxieties. So I wrote a list of 30 “attention exercises” for them
to do. <i>Stand at a bus stop and watch and listen to people; watch a
sporting event and pay attention to things that happen away from the
action of the game; meditate on a raisin; take a walk with someone
else, dog or person, and attend to what the other being notices.</i>
These exercises changed my own practice, and also led me into
photography.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">I have always
snapped photos, but until recently, they were photos of things,
snapshots, goads to memory. After getting a smartphone in 2019 (I’m
an adoptive mother, but a very late adopter of technical gizmos) I
began to change my way of looking at the world by getting my phone
lens close to what I saw. The “whole” fell away and the “part”
became my focus. Often, a very ordinary thing (the back of a tow
truck, for example) became wonderfully strange if I got close to the
back, where a metallic eye sat under a metallic brow. I take most of
my photos, even now, on walks with my dog Lilith (<i>Lilith Walks </i>is
another of my books, with photos, as writing and photography are
coming together for me). I take close-up photos of rusty dumpsters
(which remind me of modern art), pieces of trash with partially
erased words on them, my dog’s tail as she wanders out of the
frame. I’m especially fond of decay, of which there is so much in
the rain forest of the Big Island, where I take photos of abandoned
houses (eager to suss out family stories that were simply abandoned),
brown hapu`u ferns, abandoned cars and boats covered in the asemic
writing of mildew and mold. I’ve taken rust and lava walks with a
friend in Volcano Village, who also loves to see the world through
her camera’s lens.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">I’ve taken a
couple of photography classes since retiring from my professorial
gig. I use a camera for many photos now, though my technical skills
are still developing. For the final project of the first, course I
took photos of roadside memorials on O`ahu and the Big Island. These
are sites devoted to remembering someone—rather like outdoor memory
boxes—who died there. They’re often built in intricate detail,
then largely ignored by passing traffic. I wanted to see them close
up and to record what time had done to the memorials themselves
(following the advice of my friend, Gaye). For my second class, I
took photographs of a local Eucalyptus tree, one of those that
ribbons in reds and greens and drips sap and bark. It’s a messy
tree, but beautiful. Black and brown sap runs slowly down the dark
trunk, reflecting reds and greens; bark peels off in sheets. A
Facebook friend suggested that the Eucalyptus had invented Abstract
Expressionism. At around that time, an old poetry acquaintance gave
me a copy of Martin Buber’s<i> I and Thou, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">so
I wrote a sequence of meditations on </span><span style="font-style: normal;">the
tree, my photographs of it, and my relationship (I and Thou) with the
tree.</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> The manuscript, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">titled</span><i>
I and Eucalyptus,</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> is a fusion of
photograph and word—the links are not direct but in conversation
with each other.</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">I’m a practicing
Buddhist, so my attention to attention has taught me other lessons,
on equanimity, the power of ordinary objects and moments to make
meaning, on the meditative process of looking (as far as possible)
without a screen of thoughts and memories. The idea of sangha (or
community) strikes me as important in art, too. I am developing a
sangha of fellow photographers, many of them poets who, like me, are
late to the practice. But fervent.</p>
<p><style type="text/css">p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }</style></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-50585612415280844532024-02-26T09:40:00.000-08:002024-02-26T09:40:43.309-08:00Lilith and the Admirer of Rust<p><br /></p><div class="xqcrz7y x78zum5 x1qx5ct2 x1y1aw1k x1sxyh0 xwib8y2 xurb0ha xw4jnvo"><div></div></div><div><div class="" dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":R1al9aqqd9emhpapd5aqH2:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x41vudc x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The man with the open round face looked at me with suspicion--for just an instant--as he turned to look out of the cab of his pick-up truck. I had, after all, been seriously ogling the truck bed. "You've got great toolboxes," I said to him. He smiled; "yes, old school, from the 1950s." "Great rust," I said, I told him about my dumpster photos, how the rust makes artistic patterns. He lit up. "You must love the sugar mills! Kahuku, Waialua, Ewa." I don't know about the one in Ewa. He said, "you'll be in heaven there! I know how you think!" </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">At the lip of the truck bed were his keys and a pickle ball paddle. We could hear the happy yelps of pickle ballers from the nearby courts. Lilith and i headed off. The man and I agreed we'd enjoyed our conversation. The photos are still in my phone, and my husband just left on his bike with his pickle ball racquet . . .</div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-33635561445190436882024-02-21T12:11:00.000-08:002024-02-21T12:11:11.825-08:0021 February 2024<p>
</p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>This is because,
spiritually, they have only one nostril. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Oh
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">S</span><span style="font-style: normal;">mell
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">C</span><span style="font-style: normal;">yclops,
too literal to be ordinary, too metaphorical to be strange! The final
call will come with flowers in a plain vase at the window of his
room. </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">My
father had no window, but he could see things through. He didn’t
need memory; people were either present (a cousin’s young daughter
walked through his room, known only to him), or they were only absent.
Smell triggers memory in those who want it. I bought a jar of Vicks
because it brought my childhood back. Sick nostalgia.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Via a friend on email, Laura sends him all of our names. Please say
these names to him out loud, she asks. Name as visitation in plain language.</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> Name as our hope for this.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Another
poet wants no contact; she’s too busy dying. A name comes to mean
less and less, though it fills a</span><span style="font-style: normal;">t
least one</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> hole in a day.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
cyclops cannot smell; his one lane tunnel leads to hell fires, we’re
told. We smell his breath as a kind of warning.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">At
the elementary school, firemen line up beside their yellow truck.
It’s career day.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
dying poet wants to refuse closure. Our names demand it. We want to
have been there in the end. “You can say good-bye,” the nurse
said, even though he’s past breathing.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Brenda
buys teeshirts of rock stars so she can wear them when they die.
Let’s make teeshirts of ourselves and wear them when we go. </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">But
she’s so young, a student says. 82. The marker is in our brains,
not on our calendars. He’s 69. My father was 78. I’m 65. Numbers
don’t </span><span style="font-style: normal;">ad up</span><span style="font-style: normal;">.
My son, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">24,</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
tells friends that his cat’s ashes are kept more prominently, and
in a nicer box, than those of his grandmother. My mother’s grit
resides in a plastic bag in my closet. I should put them on the same
shelf as my father’s </span><span style="font-style: normal;">at
Arlington</span><span style="font-style: normal;">, but I put the act
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">off</span><span style="font-style: normal;">.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">It’s
been 337 words since I began writing this morning. I brought home a
bright button with photo of a woman, a man, and a boy on it. The man flashes a
shaka. After picking it up from the grass, I placed it on a ledge
yesterday, but no one </span><span style="font-style: normal;">took
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">it. The button offers no
names, no condolences, no hint as to its purpose divorced from
context. I could pin it on and wear it to go shopping, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">but
I think I know better.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">To
call them all back, the ghosts, is to create a flash mob of shadows.
A friend nearly fell back when Sean leaned forward on stage and
became his father, John. Family resemblance is spooky comfort. Family
non-resemblance lets us let go of our names.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">My
husband turns on the television this morning. Women pregnant in Gaza.
Women raped in Gaza. Women raped in Israel. Donald Trump. My husband
sounds angry. I go downstairs to write my sadness </span><span style="font-style: normal;">down</span><span style="font-style: normal;">.
The author of </span><i>The Cloud of Unknowing</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
cautions me not to confuse metaphor with truth, and for once, I
can’t.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Note: quotations from and influence of <i>The Cloud of Unknowing,</i> A.C. Spearing, translator.<br />
</p>
<p><style type="text/css">p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }</style> <br /></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-68243494430163986322024-02-20T17:00:00.000-08:002024-02-20T17:00:27.115-08:00I and Eucalyptus in Cordite (Australia)<p> From my obsessive project on a local Eucalyptus tree, by way of Martin Buber's<i> I and Thou.</i> There's a photograph for the piece, but it wasn't included here.</p><p><a href="http://cordite.org.au/poetry/baby/i-and-eucalyptus-13/">http://cordite.org.au/poetry/baby/i-and-eucalyptus-13/</a><br /></p><p><br /></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-82939218484443121742024-02-19T09:40:00.000-08:002024-02-19T12:19:00.005-08:00Lilith Walks Down Memory Basepaths<p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x1tu3fi x3x7a5m x1nxh6w3 x1sibtaa xo1l8bm xi81zsa x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span id=":r17:"></span></span></p><div class="x6s0dn4 x3nfvp2 xl56j7k"><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j"><span class="x1n2onr6"><span class="xzpqnlu x179tack x10l6tqk"></span></span></span></div><p></p><div class="xqcrz7y x78zum5 x1qx5ct2 x1y1aw1k x1sxyh0 xwib8y2 xurb0ha xw4jnvo"><div></div></div><div><div dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r18:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x41vudc x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The man was wearing a Kamehameha Baseball teeshirt. "It's almost baseball season!" I chirped. "I'm a Cards fan." "I know," he said. "You coached my sons." That would have been teeball, some 20 years ago. <span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x41vudc x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto">The team was the Kahalu`u Cardinals; they wore Cards caps and bright red uniforms. (I'd always wanted to manage the Cards.)</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">"Were they the twins?" I asked. Yes. I remember the twins; once I suggested that they could get outs without throwing the ball to someone else (a real problem in teeball), they ran all over the field tagging other players. It became a rout of outs. At that age, most kids are most fascinated by the dirt around their bases.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The twins played baseball at Kamehameha, and one was first team in the state. One works at Kualoa Ranch in marketing, the other for the Bishop estate. As the man started to walk away, dachsund on his leash, I said, "Oh, and they loved NASCAR!" "Booga booga and all that!" said the man in closing. (Likely misheard.)</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">******</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x1tu3fi x3x7a5m x1nxh6w3 x1sibtaa xo1l8bm xi81zsa x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span id=":r11o:"><span><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j"><a class="x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x1ejq31n xd10rxx x1sy0etr x17r0tee x972fbf xcfux6l x1qhh985 xm0m39n x9f619 x1ypdohk xt0psk2 xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1a2a7pz x1heor9g xt0b8zv xo1l8bm" href="https://www.facebook.com/#" role="link" tabindex="0"><span><span aria-labelledby=":r11v:" class="x1rg5ohu x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x16dsc37 xt0b8zv"><span class="xmper1u xt0psk2 xjb2p0i x1qlqyl8 x15bjb6t x1n2onr6 x17ihmo5 x1g77sc7" style="display: flex;"><span class="xt0psk2 x1qlqyl8 x1n2onr6 x17ihmo5 x1meexak jrhKlDOp vdth" style="position: absolute; top: 3em;">c</span><span class="x1r8a4m5 x1n2onr6 x17ihmo5 xnt8be4 jrhKlDOp vdth" style="position: absolute; top: 3em;">7</span><span class="x1qlqyl8 x15bjb6t x1r8a4m5 xi7du73 x1n2onr6 x17ihmo5 x9ek82g jrhKlDOp vdth" style="position: absolute; top: 3em;">u</span><span class="xjb2p0i x1r8a4m5 x1n2onr6 x17ihmo5 x1sjo555 jrhKlDOp vdth" style="position: absolute; top: 3em;">t</span><span class="xmper1u x15bjb6t xi7du73 x1n2onr6 x17ihmo5 x1g88jzi jrhKlDOp vdth" style="position: absolute; top: 3em;">1</span><span class="xjb2p0i x1r8a4m5 x1n2onr6 x17ihmo5 xd1zjae jrhKlDOp vdth" style="position: absolute; top: 3em;">4</span></span></span></span></a></span></span><span class="xh99ass"><span><span class="xzpqnlu xjm9jq1 x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x10l6tqk x1i1rx1s"> </span><span aria-hidden="true"> · </span></span></span><div class="x6s0dn4 x3nfvp2 xl56j7k"><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j"><span class="x1n2onr6"><span class="xzpqnlu x179tack x10l6tqk"></span></span></span></div></span></span><div class="xqcrz7y x78zum5 x1qx5ct2 x1y1aw1k x1sxyh0 xwib8y2 xurb0ha xw4jnvo"><div></div></div><div><div class="" dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r11p:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x41vudc x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Postscript. Back when I coached 5 year olds in teeball, I found some stuff out. One dad leaned over to tell me to "tell my son not to act like a girl." A few years later, when I coached a pony league team, again the Cardinals, it was because none of the dads wanted to go to meetings or do the paperwork. It turned out that no one would let me coach, either. At the final potluck, a mother thanked the dads for doing the coaching, and me <span></span>for standing in. Needless to say, I was furious. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">When I saw the man's son years later, he was a lovely young gay man who'd been assigned to a Navy ship in the Mediterranean.</div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div> </div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div><div><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic"><div><div><div><div class="x1n2onr6"><div class="x6s0dn4 xi81zsa x78zum5 x6prxxf x13a6bvl xvq8zen xdj266r xktsk01 xat24cr x1d52u69 x889kno x4uap5 x1a8lsjc xkhd6sd xdppsyt"><div class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1iyjqo2 x6ikm8r x10wlt62"><span aria-label="See who reacted to this" class="x1ja2u2z" role="toolbar"><span class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1e558r4" id=":r1b:"><span class="x6zyg47 x1xm1mqw xpn8fn3 xtct9fg x13zp6kq x1mcfq15 xrosliz x1wb7cse x13fuv20 xu3j5b3 x1q0q8m5 x26u7qi xamhcws xol2nv xlxy82 x19p7ews xmix8c7 x139jcc6 x1n2onr6 x1xp8n7a xhtitgo"><span class="x12myldv x1udsgas xrc8dwe xxxhv2y x1rg5ohu xmix8c7 x1xp8n7a"><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j"></span></span></span></span></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><span aria-label="See who reacted to this" class="x1ja2u2z" role="toolbar"><span class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1e558r4" id=":r1b:"><span class="x6zyg47 x1xm1mqw xpn8fn3 xtct9fg x13zp6kq x1mcfq15 xrosliz x1wb7cse x13fuv20 xu3j5b3 x1q0q8m5 x26u7qi xamhcws xol2nv xlxy82 x19p7ews xmix8c7 x139jcc6 x1n2onr6 x1xp8n7a x1vjfegm"><span class="x12myldv x1udsgas xrc8dwe xxxhv2y x1rg5ohu xmix8c7 x1xp8n7a"><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j"></span></span></span></span></span><div><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j"><br /></span></div><p> </p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-27075548965771770962024-02-17T12:05:00.000-08:002024-02-17T12:05:02.644-08:00Lilith, Eucalyptus, Hounds<p></p><div class="xqcrz7y x78zum5 x1qx5ct2 x1y1aw1k x1sxyh0 xwib8y2 xurb0ha xw4jnvo"><div></div></div><div><div class="" dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":rut:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x41vudc x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The smell of brownies and puakenikeni attacked our senses this morning as we left the house (to mangle a favorite Ashbery line). At the cemetery, Uncle J and I tangled half-heartedly over current politics; it proved a poor re-mix of _Lilith Walks_. He said he didn't want to talk about it; he wanted to talk about Lilith. After Lilith lunged to get at some orange and brown cat kibble--earlier, there had been beef stew brought by the Cat Lady--we headed back. As we walked toward <span><a tabindex="-1"></a></span>Eucalyptus, I saw a man, a woman, a boy, and two large brown-eyed dogs, nearly primate in their expressiveness. The man, in straw hat, kept them at a distance from Lilith. I recognized him as the former cop I'd been told had been shot in Hau`ula; he used to walk with difficulty and his dogs. Now he walked easier with them. The woman was showing their grandson the tree. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">I've never seen anyone else examine the tree from close-up, poking at it with a twig, finding it intriguing enough to show a small boy, who quickly started petting Lilith. The deep-eyed hounds looked on; one seemed to wear a fur doily at its neck. I showed the woman some of my Eucalyptus photographs, the way the photos bring out reflected reds and greens. As we left the area, I saw the little boy "sledding" down a grassy hill on a blue and white saucer, his grandparents and their dogs waiting patiently at the top.</div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-9125072008195062482024-02-14T15:14:00.000-08:002024-02-14T15:25:30.643-08:0014 February 2024<p>
</p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">We watched as she
drowned, but at least we watched.
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">We attended to our
need to see her drown, but at least we attended.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">No clarity but in
the sentence, edited.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Clarity is not
relief, though it may be sculptural.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">She disappears into
her socks, the ones they gave her to wear on wood floors.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">The television
spouts football history. She has forgotten mine, hers, ours.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Depressed people
can’t remember their feelings, an article tells me.
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">My depressions
were punctuated by floods of memories.
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">When her friend reminded her of the beauty of the church where they'd attended a concert--the vaulted ceiling!--she shrugged. <br /></p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">This morning
emerges, lacking detail, as if the present also can be forgotten.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">We don’t talk
about the benefits of amnesia, only the way it strips us of our
stories.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">She in her socks sits in a gray plastic chair too heavy to throw.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">She in her pinkish glasses looks at us. She seems too sane to be here, a doctor said.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">A woman carrying her own big belly
wanders through the common area, talking.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">A black man in
cornrows watches Earl Campbell on TV.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">A white man in
scrubs wanders by in socks, pulls a phone off the wall, whispers in
it.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">I’m surrounded by
the rhetoric of need. Can I turn the
mirror back?</p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">I remember
sentences, how comforting they were.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Those most unable to
communicate shall have no devices with which to communicate.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">I will buzz you in,
says the young woman with repaired clefts, a lisp.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">I will walk you out,
says another woman, who thanks us for visiting.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Someone needs to
take care of me</i>.</p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">This place is “more genteel than the other one.”</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p><style type="text/css">p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }</style></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-87682896699581748852024-02-13T10:47:00.000-08:002024-02-13T10:54:23.536-08:0013 February 2024<p> </p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Vulnerability as a
layered thing; it is closer or farther away, which is not to say it’s
not a constant. Constancy seduces us into an image of stability, cat
on his usual maroon pillow, dog’s nose poking out through her blue
blanket. But not the mountain, looking on like a watchman behind
trees and townhouses. There’s a strange stability in cast-offs, a
potato chip container pushed into a chain link fence, an old
McDonald’s wrapper resembling an orange leaf, inside of which a
real one. Trash is both vulnerable and eternal, in neither sense
admirable. It promises decay, even as it refuses the kind offer,
perpetual in its plasticity. The mind’s plasticity steers it around
the obstacle of forgetting, or hearing loss (more common in
Republicans, I read). Piles of twigs on a beach are either washed up
from the ocean or placed there by a sculptor selecting time as his
co-artist. I appreciate how the photographer left a blur in his shot,
introducing impermanence on the right side of an otherwise stuck
image. No rhyme or reason to what stays, and what seems to leave the
scene sketched there. </p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">That there is only
one subject now (war, massacre) doesn’t mean we write only about
it. A Buddhist abhors distraction, but the ordinaries among us need
its flags. A desperate contrast between game and horror marks them
both as troubled. Worse yet, there’s no calm between them, only a
crazy wobbling. The game brings us despair and the war, oddly, hope. Or does it? We’re so trained to hope that affect
precedes experience, warping it into a cast-off narrative of love and
escape. The pretend battle offers love; the real one a series of
hatreds so deep we can’t measure them. The test tube of our
vulnerability has no hash mark for hate. </p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Forgetting hardly
matters, except as a sign. Remember what is socially demanded (your
anniversary, birth date) and neglect the rest (human history). If
forgiveness is desirable, isn’t it a function of forgetting? I remember the feeling I had while I read his novel, but I don’t
recall the plot. What I remember is my body, the angle at which it
hurt.
</p>
<p><style type="text/css">p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }</style></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-3327395058849469372024-02-12T11:45:00.000-08:002024-02-12T11:59:58.510-08:0012 February 2024<p> <br /></p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">“<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>As
soon as any category of humans is placed outside the pale of those
whose life has value, nothing is more natural than to kill them.”
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">Horrors of analogy: Gaza is
shaped like a football field, long and narrow. There are bombs on
each, holes in the line, drones to catch the view from </span><span style="font-style: normal;">a</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
stadium’s heaven. Pan away toward Paris and New York; it’s Vegas,
after all. Meditation is double chance: I caught sight </span><span style="font-style: normal;">on
my screen </span><span style="font-style: normal;">of a veiled woman
holding the swaddled corpse of her child, a young girl beside her, eyes
too big to see through. Video shook, as if the machine that
reproduced the scene was itself in shock. The planners live out of
bounds, boundaries breached only by tantrums and tackles. In bounds,
a kindergarten as killing field. The crime, they say, is to cross the
border. They're invading our safe zone, when we gathered to watch
them kettled between end zones. End zone is end
time. We want to imagine there’s a clock, but it doesn’t
stop. </span></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
new queen of affect jumps up and down in her box, as her common law
king bullies his coach on the field. If he were black, he’d have
been kicked out. If she were a man, they wouldn’t call her a
cheerleader. We care so much about her that we avert our glance
from the mother outside a hospital in Gaza. If she were a man, she’d
likely be dead, but it’s her child, trapped in a destroyed car,
whose voice slowly diminished until only she was quiet. Once they've been harvested, the silences
of a war zone denote killing fields. A
man who killed for the Khmer Rouge wears eyes the size of the young
girl’s. To see so much is to see nothing. What can I hope to see in their eyes, except anesthesia? The social worker was appalled that anyone
would say that disassociation in a child is good. <br /></span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Soldiers
loot the shops for goods, destroy registers for fun. If you haven’t broken enough with your tanks, use your crow bars. Not tragic but sick joy. Take that, Yeats. Joy that hates itself afterwards. His wife
asked him to bring her a souvenir from Gaza; he will bring himself
back, objectified. Feel sickness wash up from the feet like a
rogue tide, like flooded tunnels, like water sources unfit to drink.
What washes up on us is chance, but what began it was fully intended. Three hostages were freed.</span> <br /></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Note: First sentence by Simone Weil, quoted by Jacqueline Rose in <i>The Plague</i>.<br />
</p>
<p><style type="text/css">p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }</style></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-50602579405231084662024-02-11T11:18:00.000-08:002024-02-11T11:18:58.030-08:0011 February 2024<p> <br /></p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Love is not
consolation; it is light. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Morning
orange through tight and looser screens, blotch of shadow on the blue
chair, dark puddle on tile beside one cat. Catalyst, my software
suggests, the analogist that resides inside my laptop, spitting apt
alternatives out of letter patterns. Another cat lists to hunt on the
lanai, which might be typed as “language,” the machine’s
longing for replacement. If love is part revulsion, then revolution
is but a circle. The cats make triangles, lines, any
shape that obstructs the others. It’s the design of their politics,
like a flat slalom or Raelian garden, replete with concrete statues.
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">We could offer repetition
with that order, but to clone a mother to make a daughter is to split
history in two, as if on tracks that promise parallels, but don’t
deliver. A baby was cloned in Israel, far enough from Miami that no
one could see or touch her. She’s older now, but lines of
communication grow less precise. Is teenage Eve aware of her
provenance in a lab? Is clone a peculiar incest, made again of
itself? </span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Above the meters in a dingy garage, I spotted a pigeon on a bed of sticks, tucked beneath the ceiling. I couldn’t tell
if it was alive, until I saw its eye flicker. Pigeon was making itself,
again, patient on its perch. Nearby, an open door
revealed a large room of lazy-boy rocking chairs, meditating on their emptiness. A
cat cafe had chairs, but also movement; a woman smiled at me, two
kittens on her lap. $15 for 50 minutes of love in the light of an
Aiea strip mall. I’ve conflated Kaimuki and
Aiea, as if one were the other’s clone. The mall is future rubble,
when it will all appear the same. Death no longer levels us, but concrete might.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">W</span><span style="font-style: normal;">e
hear the screams of a Palestinian teenager seated in a car beside an
Israeli tank. We hear shots. Later, the frail voice of a five
year old girl traces her final days inside the car, alone with her
dead family. Eleven days. Her mother still stands outside the hospital. My word
processor offers me “motherfucker,” but that’s the other guys. Not an
alternate spelling, but an alternative affect, the mother’s tears,
our passive rage behind our screens. The light through those screens
puddles like blood.</span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Note: first sentence by Simone Weil. <br /></span></p>
<p><style type="text/css">p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }</style></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-40365377368541724722024-02-08T12:31:00.000-08:002024-02-08T12:31:43.874-08:008 February 2024<p>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>May I be alive
when I die.</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> After taking
photographs of discarded things, a friend thought I was doing a
sequence on death. T</span><span style="font-style: normal;">o do
that would be </span><span style="font-style: normal;">to be alive
when I’m alive, perceiving death as ground work: receipts for poke
in the grass; cigarette tucked into a tree crevic</span><span style="font-style: normal;">e;</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
chip bag crumpled in chain link. It’s witness that brings death to
life, or abstraction to the Eucalyptus. But that’s only half the
equation. Who was the author of the bag, smoker of the butt, eater of
the fish? They’ve signed their disappearances as </span><span style="font-style: normal;">material</span><span style="font-style: normal;">. Consumption
invisible, the product </span><span style="font-style: normal;">is </span><span style="font-style: normal;">now
worthless except to my eye. Eye and Eucalyptus would be another
title, as E and Y rhyme inside the short and longer syllables. A
dull photograph is perhaps more real </span><span style="font-style: normal;">than
the saturated one. The word “putts” pops up as alternative to
another in that sentence. Mechanical word play; now it reads
“word-word,” as if word said twice meant something other than
word said once. Who’s the maker there?</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">To
be aware of death as one is dying is no different than an awareness
of ordinary objects. It’s death that turns us from subject to
object in a sentence. But you can’t get there without active verbs.
My work as a teacher of writing should help me learn the grammar of
life’s sequences. "From here on out" is a cliché that escapes the
fate of other cliches; not dead but odd. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Because</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
she stayed up to watch the Grammy’s when her house started to b</span><span style="font-style: normal;">urn,
she thinks Taylor Swift saved her life. Miracles do ha</span><span style="font-style: normal;">ppen
between advertisements. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Or,
there’s a</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> “barren terrain
of feeling,” a parched surface on which we laugh and weep, unaware
there’s a deep discount on affect. The affectation of old men
erasing teenage girls. Their tears don’t change the world. “</span><span style="font-style: normal;">Their”
is ambiguity, according to the Court.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">******<br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">There’s
modern art in your nature photographs, a friend tells me. Kinda calls
into question the difference between realism and abstraction, doesn’t
it? If a tree makes abstract art, is it a painter? Or is a painter a tree when she does same? The photographer comes along at one
remove, takes the photograph and is comfortable to be seer and maker
both. Is there a place for volition where image meets thing, at
whatever remove?</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> The ascemic text of a burned out
city confronts us with our inability to read it. </span>
</p><br /><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Note: the first phrase is by DW Winnicott, quoted by Jacqueline Rose.<br />
</p>
<p><style type="text/css">p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }</style> <br /></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-40324099884081535532024-02-04T11:20:00.000-08:002024-02-06T11:22:35.940-08:004 February 2024<p>
</p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">If unknowing lives on
top of you, and forgetting below, then to forget is to fall into
knowing, or what once was known. A Swedish artist makes miniature
replicas of old Tokyo, adding on air-conditioning units and pipes,
“weathering” them with paint, making the old old again from
scratch. An old woman on a plane told me she survived the fire
bombing of Tokyo; she remembered holding to her mother’s back as she
ran. Labor not as productivity but as its antithesis, until the atom
bomb dome gets lovingly refurbished to remain destroyed. The production
of destruction boosts the economy, while a homeless man lays tape
between his two shopping carts, “private property” scrawled across
it. Behind the sling of tape, an odd tarp barely holds
itself up over discarded cans and papers. He (if it is he) is nowhere to be
seen; hence the tape. Nearby, a bearded man with a large growth on his
left cheek reads an old paperback. Says it’s difficult. I
recognize it only as a thriller. Goodreads installed on the sidewalk outside of
Walgreen’s. He turns down a bag of toiletries. The woman at the
acupuncturist's front desk had told me not to be afraid of them.<br /></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Gaza flattened is a
miniature, constructed of the labor of bomb and airplane builders,
the skill of pilots, the brilliance of computers. Perhaps our Swede
can remake Gaza as it is now, concrete slabs broken on other concrete
slabs, a boy crushed beneath the ruin. He added urinal and toilet paper to
his Tokyo; those have been excised from Gaza, along with hospitals and
schools. One is undertone of the other, the cloud of forgetting not
yet vaporized, still knowing itself as suffering. The gardens outside
Auschwitz are in the movies, if not the news. A film most effective
for its sound, marking what cannot be seen (except ash). Artificial
volcano, fueled not by earth but by bodies. I remember my horror when
my mother, whose found Nazi spoon stayed in our cutlery drawer, explained
to me that lampshades were made of human flesh. She described the
liberation of Dachau, but in plain language. Plain language is to
pray by; she needed a fugue more baroque and discordant. I still
parse her words for the horror she felt (and she did) failing to feel
their pulse.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">What is your local
anesthesia? One friend reads Jewish theology, another goes to the
ocean. To see them is not to imagine their sound tracks, their sense
of another’s suffering in the sound of machines. We’re told the
bombing is a form of restraint. The explosions look good on television in the night.<br /></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p><style type="text/css">p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }</style> Note: the opening is based on <i>The Cloud of Unknowing</i>. The movie is <i>The Zone of </i></p><p><i>Interest.</i><br /></p><p><br /></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-62197574688294649152024-01-30T11:27:00.000-08:002024-01-30T11:31:52.429-08:0030 January 2024<p>
</p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Winter is likewise
context; yesterday, I could hardly see to drive home in the downpour,
the mountains so whited out. As if snow were its only marker. Hold a
droplet to the light; it’s as translucent and still as ice. Winter acts like winter, except when it doesn’t. To define
is to act, holding a word up in light and dark to see what it becomes. Mountains are
still there; they have to be.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">In England,
townspeople mourn the death of a 700 year old tree. That day's weather was good,
the sun was out, but the oak fell anyway. They had a meeting to ask
what to do with the tree’s corpse; some suggested pieces of it
be placed around town for children to climb on. A child might
remember her scuffed knee in the way a historian touching a
pedestal at a slave market remembers the 1820s. Time is tactile. No
more growth, no more dying--presence in a dead form resurrected by a child’s knee.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">From above, the tree
is less a body than a circuitry of branches, arteries and capillaries
laid across the Green. I can see mountains through trees, but
after trees fall, I better see the ground. The question of
post-meditative action is one that bothers me. If mind spreads out
cleanly, without a map, where is the ghost of a tree to mark my entry
back to the world? A man and a woman now sleep beside the Walgreen’s
across from my dentist’s office in Kailua. Tents like mushrooms
testify to rottenness. A broken log becomes nursery to ferns. Ferns
hold hands up like Ringo his cymbals after a death threat. Another
person claims to protect us, but he can only sit beside.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">If Jesus had an
AK-47, what might he do? Clear out the money-lenders, but leave a
carpet of blood and intestines? Answer back to God’s order that he
be crucified? The white man’s teeshirt can’t solve this word
problem, though he holds these two concepts together as if they
rhymed. “Yes, we need a dictator, and he needs to be Trump,” they
say, beaming beneath their red caps. Agent of order disguised as
chaos. He must be acting so that we can be real. </p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>
<p><style type="text/css">p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }</style> <br /></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-30885640691487625482024-01-29T11:01:00.000-08:002024-01-29T11:07:45.453-08:0028 January 2024<p> <br /></p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">The Palestinian
writer is suspicious of “witness,” which he sees as an outgrowth
of craft, meaning poetic and legal form. I write about the
helplessness of witness, if it’s imagined as watching atrocities on
a screen; in what form do I inscribe such an inability to act? If I
keep writing and writing without finding an exit, have I “published
too much,” or tested the theory that repetition gets the words into
my reader’s bones? The writer’s argument turns toward violence,
mandating an explosion of old forms in favor of the “rubble couple”
of re-origination. But the explosion of my paragraphs yields me
little, if anything; my legal brief, set on fire, still offers
nothing more than ash. My seeing, like my reading of his argument as
flawed, simply doesn’t matter. Norman ended his dharma talk with an
optimism that resembled duct tape stuck over a broken engine. Even a
Bodhisattva can’t take in the dusty kids of Gaza, the city tombs of
Ukraine. Let us parcel out our spots of time to usher us into a room
where the shape of the table is not in question.
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">The poetry of
witness is learned helplessness, no matter the form we inscribe it
in. The arc a baby makes in air before it’s shot follows a
beautiful geometry that hollows us out. Even a rainbow is ugly in
war-time.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Just as Lennon put
his A string against an amp to create feedback, so should we lean the
instruments of our art against the nearest power source. But making a
racket hardly suffices when Israeli citizens place their chairs neatly at a
high point to watch the bombing of Gaza. No amount of “fascia
flossing” will soften the muscles of that hatred. If I could shoot
them, would I? But I can't, so all I do is talk into this
screen’s void or voice, assuming it to have the depth a reader can
lend to it. Don’t take an Uber to the court’s transcript; ride
your bike into its turbulence. The transcriber shakes like a frond in
a Kona storm, or a “frawn,” as the sign at Punalu`u read.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Kindness doesn’t
do the work of justice, though there must be a map here somewhere to
show me how one can lead to the next. We learned the triviality of
kindness as children; it’s nearly too late to start again. My
daughter’s boyfriend puts out his hand to support her knee as she
naps. The arc of that reach appears perfect. My mother’s pilot
friend saw a girl fleeing a bombing run and said he’d never drop
his bombs again without seeing her face with his eyes.</p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Note: references to "Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide," by Fargo Nissim Thakhi in <i>Protean Magazine </i>and to Susan Howe's "rubble couple." The shape of the table was at issue in the Vietnam peace talks.<br /></p>
<p><style type="text/css">p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }</style></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-60927091807267083132024-01-27T11:57:00.000-08:002024-01-27T12:00:32.444-08:0027 January 2024<p>
</p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Nothing comes
more naturally to men than murder. </i>A Palestinian woman approaches
the camera, clutching her grandson’s hand and a white flag; she is
shot dead. A man collapses on a street beside his son’s dying body.
He crouches, screams. The passive voice is no help; it confers
anonymity of name only. It’s the rhetorical strategy of steam,
wreathing incident with mist. We gaze into a well at the Holocaust
Museum to see video not permitted to children. We look into the well of a steam vent,
our faces warming to the task. “A well of living
waters” can’t be ruined with your coins; they glint upward like
my daughter’s eyes, markers not of material but of illumination. My
writing becomes more spiritual as the world becomes less so. Look
between the sidewalk seams for what’s green; if it’s a weed, eat
it.
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Their guide started
throwing lava rocks away from small piles, resembling altars.
Tourists regard evidence of belief as a license to imitate; perhaps
they recognize what’s holy in the lava fields where an
eruption created a sculpture garden of buried trees. Abandonment is
creation, Weil writes; here we note that what we can’t see (the
tree) is beautiful (in its lava cloak). I felt something pass between
my eyes and hers on the airplane before I left her and her friend at the E gates for
her flight back. Glint of coin, otherwise hidden.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">To reach the end of
words goes beyond reaching the end of sentence or phrase. It
suggests the impossibility of sentences, composed of words. There
might be an essay in that group of photographs: tarp to cover a
motorcycle, shadow resembling a gargoyle, black leaves on a fence in
the sun. But the essay lacks opening or end, is only stream.
Something about the way the literal becomes metaphorical, or how a
name (Tortilla) becomes an object to be eaten (tortilla). So much in
that capital letter.
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">My parents’
letters to me, found in a rusty file cabinet, moved me not
for what they said, but for the shapes of their letters. Random
sections of my mother’s neat cursive became photographs; they made
no sense that wasn’t asemic. More of her in the imprint of blue
ballpoint pen, less of her in complete words. Or: for her to
have written sheer wisdom in the midst of anxiety seems to me ironic.
Anxiety the scrambler; wisdom the thresher. I only described places,
she said to me, not my feelings. Mutual anxieties built a wall
that travels the country on a large truck to honor the dead. Moving
Vietnam Memorial looking ominously like a Trump convoy, flags and
motorcycles going by. Same signs, what context. </p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Note, first sentence by Simone Weil. <br /></p>
<p><style type="text/css">p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }</style></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-27004466106687516232024-01-23T12:01:00.000-08:002024-01-23T12:03:54.038-08:0023 January 2024<p>
</p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Whenever someone tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny.</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
Tell me not what you believe, but what you doubt. A white man in
dreads stood in line at the Hilo KTA, wearing a shirt with an AR-15 on it and
the word Jesus. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Townspeople
gathered </span><span style="font-style: normal;">to tell Jesus to leave. They
were afraid of 1) his ability to rid a man of his demons, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">and</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
2) the effect on their economy of the loss of pigs to </span><span style="font-style: normal;">the
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">demons. A homeless man in
black tatter</span><span style="font-style: normal;">ed clothes
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">wanders onto the highway near
the airport. Are we afraid </span><span style="font-style: normal;">we
might run him over</span><span style="font-style: normal;">, or see
him as he might be, looking us in the eye? Perhaps it’s not illness
that frightens us, but the </span><span style="font-style: normal;">chance
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">that</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">it might be taken away. </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">F</span><span style="font-style: normal;">ear
the cure, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">for</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
it’s a change of state. Fear the state, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">for</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
it will enforce the cure. Jesus sent the man back to his townspeople
to tell the truth. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">No</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
guarantee they’d listen to </span><span style="font-style: normal;">him
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">who lived so long in the
tombs. Death </span><span style="font-style: normal;">and madness are
comforts because they last.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">So
is the wind, though it moves, casting doubt </span><span style="font-style: normal;">like</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
the sun writ</span><span style="font-style: normal;">ing</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
on a brown fence in front of me. Fern hands, a patch of illegible
writing, it all </span><span style="font-style: normal;">dances</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
with the air. “Have you written your daily affirmation?” my
daughter asks. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">I doubt it.</span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Note: the opening quotation is from Simone Weil. The Biblical passage is Mark 1-20.<br /></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p><style type="text/css">p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }a:link { color: #000080; text-decoration: underline }</style></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-27607924733123363432024-01-17T11:38:00.000-08:002024-01-17T11:43:28.330-08:0017 January 2024<p>
</p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">It’s not the image
I want, but the foreplay to image: “Awakened Mind is like.” The
mind is like the sky, but is not the sky. To be like something is
never to get there. That’s the entire openness of it.
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">“Awakened-Mind-is-like”
is like an engine revving in the cold, waiting for the catch, the
clutch, the act of pushing stick into reverse. (Some of us still drive
stick.)
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">“Awakened-Mind-is-like”
is like a compound German word, two objects
transformed to a single idea. Shaft of knowing, Put the hand
shoe in the cool cupboard before a day thief crosses the donkey
bridge.
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">It’s like nothing
else, like the smear of sunset on ocean at closing time, or like the
freight train that rumbles before a gust of wind. It’s like the like
of a like. We’re not even on social media, but I’m still liking
things.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Like nothing else is
not nothing, or is it? Like a phrase that leads to another phrase but
never comes to a full stop. It’s the ground you stand on that
shakes.</p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Awakened-Mind is like a parent looking to connect. Like a URL that promises connection, but takes you somewhere else like a shoe store. That links to soccer, hence Accidentally Awakened Mind. <br /></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">AwakenedMindIsLike
is like a musical, set in Waikiki; buskers with their small speakers,
a man holding a hand-scrawled sign that reads “I need a wife.” <br /></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Awakened Mind
refuses metaphor entrance. Metaphor's a big bully who waits at the
door and scampers in during a moment of inattention. Metaphor demands
that it is what it is, except that it’s not. One cannot say that
Awakened Mind is Metaphor.
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Simile comes along,
wearing a cloak. That would be a real cloak, would it not? Between
the cloak and its body is a layer of warmth; outside the cloak is
another story. The wet suit of metaphor squeezes all the oxygen out.</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Is simile like
Awakened Mind, or does the equation work only one way? Simile’s
more versatile than that! It can also be Sleepy Head, for instance,
or a Single Issue Voter. It’s all in the
(mis)translation: Awakened Mind is like Insomniac Brain, like
Sleepless Skull. How do you sleep? Like a log.<br /></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Awakened Mind is
like a runway plagued by potholes. Shut it down for a night and in
the morning land your plane. It's not the sky, nor is it like.</p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Note: inspired by the Awakened Mind is Like sutta. Thank you to Mary Grace Orr. <br /></p>
<p><style type="text/css">p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }</style> A google search yielded some good German words.<br /></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5669027158753952.post-47306386555112780322024-01-16T12:18:00.000-08:002024-01-16T12:18:59.563-08:0016 January 2024<p>
</p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>To perceive is to
be both objective and subjective. It is to be in the process of
becoming one with whatever it is, while also becoming separate from
it. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">We witness the death of
migrants in the river only in words, but words also drown. My friend
tells me care for the homeless was his day job; the park was not
his home. His mentor took sex workers into her apartment, fed and
counseled them. I take in images on my television; people suffer in my
living room. But I can turn them off (again). You could put up cubicles to push back the light. A shoji screen testifies to what is
shadowed, not what is most bright. I have a free app that alters
photos to draw out shadow and contrast. “Application” covers
a lot of bases: we apply ourselves to a task; we write applications
for school and jobs; we apply a coat of paint. All of these mark changes by which our lives are improvised. But the app revises
directly, only appears spontaneous. Another app announces my “new” memories to me, as if it
were my subconscious. Proust in a </span><span style="font-style: normal;">phone</span><span style="font-style: normal;">.
Who needs accident, when you have algorithm</span><span style="font-style: normal;">s</span><span style="font-style: normal;">?</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">If
witness were an app, we’d need to spend less time on our phones. At
random moments in the day, they’d flash atrocities at us (you have
a “new atrocity!” it would announce), or just the smaller traumas
of private life. Despite his privilege, my friend understands that he’s
been traumatized. The trick is to translate that back into daily
practice. Trauma as hat trick; stick it up your sleeve and it comes
out a rabbit. The dead is as soft as the live, and that’s a hint as
to the afterlife. It’s not our afterlife we look for, it’s
another’s. To touch the dead rabbit is to participate in its life
beyond its breathing. We wish that for ourselves. Paul wished he
could hold John for a day, but he was decades too late. Regret witnesses love. Write a song to bring the afterlife to silence.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
psalm is a koan. We knead it like dough, rolling and teasing it into
the shape of a loaf. </span><i>They have no speech, they use no
words; no sound is heard from them. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">The
mystery is not silence, but speech. Screech goes the bird outside my
sliding door. Wind shifts like a curtain. I can know these things by
listening to them. A word’s only true if your embouchure’s right. </span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Note: quotation by Etel Adnan of Anne O'Hanlon; line from Psalm 19. </span>
</p>
<p><style type="text/css">p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }</style></p>susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934944559857117395noreply@blogger.com0