Don't ask me. I just used to work here.
From here, behind the chained gate, I can see the locked doors. Management wants to make sure we can't get in there to produce something.
"Here's your two-weeks-notice," said the manager, "but it's retroactive, so goodbye." After he fired the last of us, he got a call from Corporate, and someone told him to turn the labeling-gun on himself, so he was priced to move, too, as they say.
Now Corporate's declared bankruptcy. Corporate is In The Red. Our pension-fund is nowhere. Where does all the money go? Nowhere. I mean, it stays right where it always was, like the pea in the shell-game, already pocketed before the game begins. There's nothing there for us to understand, my friend, my former co-worker. Somebody always wants it all or has it all and wants to keep it . The rest of us work for a living, until they take the job away, but sometimes we come to the work-site anyway, just to have a look.
I tell you, it's a mystery to me. I'm just another former employee, and I have to go find myself a job.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
52. Past Lives
According to Donnie Portobello, her past-life therapist, she had been one of Cleopatra's courtesans, a Medieval midwife, and the mistress of a captain who fought at Waterloo, for example.
She knew Donnie was just making up shit, but he was so bad at it, she felt sorry for him and continued taking the sessions until he quit the practice to find a job in retail.
She wasn't opposed to the concept of past lives. She just wished she'd learned something, anything, from each of those lives that might help her live this one, which seemed to be the only one she knew for sure she'd live, ever.
She wondered whether her life were going to be the past of life of someone in the future. If so, she reckoned she wouldn't mind writing out things she'd been learning about this life or leaving the person a keepsake, such as one of her grandmother's pieces of ornate jewelry--the garnet ring, for instance.
She knew Donnie was just making up shit, but he was so bad at it, she felt sorry for him and continued taking the sessions until he quit the practice to find a job in retail.
She wasn't opposed to the concept of past lives. She just wished she'd learned something, anything, from each of those lives that might help her live this one, which seemed to be the only one she knew for sure she'd live, ever.
She wondered whether her life were going to be the past of life of someone in the future. If so, she reckoned she wouldn't mind writing out things she'd been learning about this life or leaving the person a keepsake, such as one of her grandmother's pieces of ornate jewelry--the garnet ring, for instance.
Monday, December 15, 2008
51. Rowers in the Blood
Vagabonds, bound to a remorseless way, pull Will's vessel across gray oceanic fate.
The chieftain roars orders in fog, curses rowers, who are mapless, hopeless, ragged, stuporous, and rank. Absurdly, they are also certain. Pulling oars, they know they will hit land or death or both eventually. They are sure of their hatred for the one yelling. They know exactly how and why duty pulled them away from their village, their kin.
As tough as salt and oars make their hands, their hands will bleed red, darkening the oars.
Do you hear them? They row now in your blood when you are most coldly determined to go on, obstacles be damned, everything but the going, the way, be damned. Vagabonds. Bound to the way, bound to persist.
The chieftain roars orders in fog, curses rowers, who are mapless, hopeless, ragged, stuporous, and rank. Absurdly, they are also certain. Pulling oars, they know they will hit land or death or both eventually. They are sure of their hatred for the one yelling. They know exactly how and why duty pulled them away from their village, their kin.
As tough as salt and oars make their hands, their hands will bleed red, darkening the oars.
Do you hear them? They row now in your blood when you are most coldly determined to go on, obstacles be damned, everything but the going, the way, be damned. Vagabonds. Bound to the way, bound to persist.
Monday, December 8, 2008
50. Reporting the Rattlesnake
I'm thinking about a time when I was seven and walked over by a big blond boulder in full sun and looked down and saw a rattlesnake stretched out just in front of my canvas-shoed feet. I don't remember what made me stop before I stepped on the snake.
I went over to my father and brother, who were building something on sawhorses. I reported the sighting of the snake.
My brother scoffed. My father did not scoff, but he wanted proof. Later, I would realize that he brought the shovel with him; bringing the shovel suggests either that he did not want to have to go back for the shovel or he was leaning toward believing my story or both.
We three returned to the snake. I did not lead the way. The snake was still stretched out in late-Spring sun, simply getting warm. I wonder what it feels like to be cold-blooded and to have your body warmed by sun.
"I'll be a sonofabitch--it is a rattlesnake," my father said. He was wearing his carpenter's belt and white carpenter's overalls and a cap of some kind. My brother didn't say anything. I think he may have been disappointed by my accurate reporting.
My father stuck the blade of the shovel behind the snake's head and stepped on the shovel, sending it through the snake into soil. The rationale behind killing the snake was that a rattlesnake's bite can be lethal, that it at least can cause the loss of a limb by amputation (after flesh has decayed), and that therefore a rattlensnake near the house cannot be trusted to live.
I remember feeling good the snake hadn't left that spot and made a liar out of me.
I remember the crunch of the shovel and my father's calm approach. I remember we three, father and two sons, returned to our solitary lives with little or no transitional conversation. I associate the event with accurate reporting, immense boulders, a lethal snake in a relaxed pose, vindication, authority, unspoken reasons to kill animals, and fear. Let's be clear: I knew that snake symbolized death. I did not know that an anti-venom had not yet been invented, or at least not widely distributed, nor did I grasp that we were at least 60 miles from a hospital. Still, I knew rattlesnakes could kill.
My father would have carried a red handkerchief in is back pocket. Such handkerchiefs are also known as bandanas. He may have blown his nose using the handkerchief right after he killed the snake, a kind of punctuating gesture to a performance. I can't prove this. In fact, I can't prove anything about the incident as it belongs entirely to memory. One's memoirs would never stand up in court.
The snake might have bitten me, and I might have died. My body was small, so the venom would have been proportionately more powerful. But the snake didn't bite me, and I didn't die, and these words possess a reality the incident lost almost immediately. I rely on my memory, a thin reed. I don't have much choice, at least when it comes to the past. There was a rattlesnake stretched out in the sun. Believe me.
I went over to my father and brother, who were building something on sawhorses. I reported the sighting of the snake.
My brother scoffed. My father did not scoff, but he wanted proof. Later, I would realize that he brought the shovel with him; bringing the shovel suggests either that he did not want to have to go back for the shovel or he was leaning toward believing my story or both.
We three returned to the snake. I did not lead the way. The snake was still stretched out in late-Spring sun, simply getting warm. I wonder what it feels like to be cold-blooded and to have your body warmed by sun.
"I'll be a sonofabitch--it is a rattlesnake," my father said. He was wearing his carpenter's belt and white carpenter's overalls and a cap of some kind. My brother didn't say anything. I think he may have been disappointed by my accurate reporting.
My father stuck the blade of the shovel behind the snake's head and stepped on the shovel, sending it through the snake into soil. The rationale behind killing the snake was that a rattlesnake's bite can be lethal, that it at least can cause the loss of a limb by amputation (after flesh has decayed), and that therefore a rattlensnake near the house cannot be trusted to live.
I remember feeling good the snake hadn't left that spot and made a liar out of me.
I remember the crunch of the shovel and my father's calm approach. I remember we three, father and two sons, returned to our solitary lives with little or no transitional conversation. I associate the event with accurate reporting, immense boulders, a lethal snake in a relaxed pose, vindication, authority, unspoken reasons to kill animals, and fear. Let's be clear: I knew that snake symbolized death. I did not know that an anti-venom had not yet been invented, or at least not widely distributed, nor did I grasp that we were at least 60 miles from a hospital. Still, I knew rattlesnakes could kill.
My father would have carried a red handkerchief in is back pocket. Such handkerchiefs are also known as bandanas. He may have blown his nose using the handkerchief right after he killed the snake, a kind of punctuating gesture to a performance. I can't prove this. In fact, I can't prove anything about the incident as it belongs entirely to memory. One's memoirs would never stand up in court.
The snake might have bitten me, and I might have died. My body was small, so the venom would have been proportionately more powerful. But the snake didn't bite me, and I didn't die, and these words possess a reality the incident lost almost immediately. I rely on my memory, a thin reed. I don't have much choice, at least when it comes to the past. There was a rattlesnake stretched out in the sun. Believe me.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
49. Maggie
The father kept hounds, so the son recalls a childhood with hounds. It's pretty much that simple.
There was the rust-colored hound--breed-name Redbone--who tried to fornicate the legs of humans. There was the black hound who feared lightning and thunder. A brown hound--breed-name Black-and-Tan--would follow a bear's trail for days. The father attached a brass plate to the dogs' collars. The plate recorded the father's address and phone number in case a hound were discovered in a far county, still tracking what it was tracking. Sometimes the son thought about the relentlessness of hounds.
Once the son watched the father remove porcupine quills from a dog's mouth, which bled red. The end of each quill was shaped like a fish-hook. Evolution had designed the quills not to be removable.
The son noted a look of grim, dutiful resignation on the father's face as the father snipped off the end of each quill and pulled each quill out of the dog's bleeding mouth. The son also noted the patient but perplexed look on the dog's face, as if the dog were asking itself for the first time, "Why is there pain?"
A trite story-line erupted. The son had a favorite dog--breed-name Plot Hound. It was his own pet. He named it Willie, after his favorite baseball player, Willie Mays. Everything was fine with Willie except that he foamed at the mouth after running around with the boy. The father took Willie away. The son waited--a day, two days, before asking, "What happened to Willie?"
The father replied, "We had to have the vet put Willie down because he had a hole in his lung." The son remembers saying, "Oh." He recalls not crying, not being enraged, not being comforted or counseled, not getting another dog. He remembers pondering the question of Willie's absence as if it were a math problem in the fourth grade.
The gray strange grief associated with the dog stays lodged in the son like one shotgun pellet. It doesn't hurt. In a way, it's more grotesque because it doesn't hurt.
There was a female dog, Maggie. She was black, sleek, and lean--breed-name: Plot Hound, like Willie. How calm she was intrigued the son. She never strained stupidly against leash or chain. She never over-reacted to the prospect of food or affection. She stood primly and accepted petting as a comfortable fact of life. She responded to good things as if they were, apparently, the good things that might possibly happen in a dog's life. Maggie.
There was the rust-colored hound--breed-name Redbone--who tried to fornicate the legs of humans. There was the black hound who feared lightning and thunder. A brown hound--breed-name Black-and-Tan--would follow a bear's trail for days. The father attached a brass plate to the dogs' collars. The plate recorded the father's address and phone number in case a hound were discovered in a far county, still tracking what it was tracking. Sometimes the son thought about the relentlessness of hounds.
Once the son watched the father remove porcupine quills from a dog's mouth, which bled red. The end of each quill was shaped like a fish-hook. Evolution had designed the quills not to be removable.
The son noted a look of grim, dutiful resignation on the father's face as the father snipped off the end of each quill and pulled each quill out of the dog's bleeding mouth. The son also noted the patient but perplexed look on the dog's face, as if the dog were asking itself for the first time, "Why is there pain?"
A trite story-line erupted. The son had a favorite dog--breed-name Plot Hound. It was his own pet. He named it Willie, after his favorite baseball player, Willie Mays. Everything was fine with Willie except that he foamed at the mouth after running around with the boy. The father took Willie away. The son waited--a day, two days, before asking, "What happened to Willie?"
The father replied, "We had to have the vet put Willie down because he had a hole in his lung." The son remembers saying, "Oh." He recalls not crying, not being enraged, not being comforted or counseled, not getting another dog. He remembers pondering the question of Willie's absence as if it were a math problem in the fourth grade.
The gray strange grief associated with the dog stays lodged in the son like one shotgun pellet. It doesn't hurt. In a way, it's more grotesque because it doesn't hurt.
There was a female dog, Maggie. She was black, sleek, and lean--breed-name: Plot Hound, like Willie. How calm she was intrigued the son. She never strained stupidly against leash or chain. She never over-reacted to the prospect of food or affection. She stood primly and accepted petting as a comfortable fact of life. She responded to good things as if they were, apparently, the good things that might possibly happen in a dog's life. Maggie.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
48. Red Polka-Dot Dress
There is a photograph of his mother wearing a dress with red polka-dots on a white background. The photograph is a color print from the negative film of a snapshot taken after the mid-point of the 20th century.
This is the most famous dress his mother owned, as things turned out. He thinks about her putting it on that day to get ready for the party, a summer-party in the High Sierra. He thinks of her thinking that the party will be a good time, an open field of behavior, an earned respite from the work of raising three children and tending one husband in rugged country 4,500 feet above sea level.
The son knows she doesn't, on that day, see the dress as a symbol in so many words or thoughts. But he imagines she looks at herself in the circular mirror of the "waterfall" bureau, imagines she sees the dress contrasting with her deep summer tan and blue eyes just so. The image she sees is attractive, and it satisfies her. The party is going to happen. She and her husband are hosting the party. The husband is not an easy husband to have. His personality is as hard and well defined as a sheer stone bluff in the Sierra. He is a rugged, overwhelming man, with a grudge against life that's masked by a child's sense of mirth, a prophet's sense of will, a peasant's capacity to toil, and a glad smile as broad as a highway-billboard. Luckily, liquor makes him gladder still. The son knows the mother knew of other women's husbands whom liquor made mean, made violent.
At the party, there will be work but also other women to do the work, so the work will seem like part of the party. There will be laughter, liquor, and food--and several compliments about the dress, which seems that day to be the perfect summer-dress, sleeveless, cotton, red polka-dots on a white background. Everyone at the party will know a great deal about World War II, hard work, the Great Depression, and the English language as spoken colloquially in the United States of America.
None of it will escape the avalanche of time, although snapshots, saving the dress, and nonfiction writing are amusing tactics of delay, the poignant motions of an amateur magician's hands, with Death sitting in the audience like the bald figure in Bergman's The Seventh Seal.
Thank God, he thinks, his mother didn't come close to thinking thoughts as melodramatic as "none of it will escape the avalanche of time," etc., that day. Thank God his mother never saw The Seventh Seal and asked him questions about the film. He would have tried to answer the questions, and his mother would have remained unconvinced by the answers. She would have disliked the film as much as she disliked puppets of any kind.
The white dress with red polka-dots fit, the alpine sun shone, friends and acquaintances arrived, and everyone acted as if they weren't about to die, and when people act that way, and they should, they seem untroubled and, indeed, immortal.
By his accounting, all the adults who attended that party are dead. The polka-dotted dress hangs in the closet of a daughter-in-law, and one of the cousins, the many cousins, painted a watercolor featuring the dress hanging on a clothesline. The dress is a cut and stitched quaint decorated piece of cloth. The snapshot lies between pages on a shelf somewhere.
Everything is taking place and changing at a speed humans cannot, do not, and best not comprehend fully. In a way, the party was over before his mother ever put on the dress, but she didn't see it that way, and that day, that's part of what mattered, he thinks.
The scandal of time is that it allows humans just enough time to arrange their thoughts and manage their habits so as to avoid confronting the scandal of time every moment. Scandalously, time makes routine seem reasonable and a bright dress permanent, and it makes summer-parties seem like a fair exchange.
This is the most famous dress his mother owned, as things turned out. He thinks about her putting it on that day to get ready for the party, a summer-party in the High Sierra. He thinks of her thinking that the party will be a good time, an open field of behavior, an earned respite from the work of raising three children and tending one husband in rugged country 4,500 feet above sea level.
The son knows she doesn't, on that day, see the dress as a symbol in so many words or thoughts. But he imagines she looks at herself in the circular mirror of the "waterfall" bureau, imagines she sees the dress contrasting with her deep summer tan and blue eyes just so. The image she sees is attractive, and it satisfies her. The party is going to happen. She and her husband are hosting the party. The husband is not an easy husband to have. His personality is as hard and well defined as a sheer stone bluff in the Sierra. He is a rugged, overwhelming man, with a grudge against life that's masked by a child's sense of mirth, a prophet's sense of will, a peasant's capacity to toil, and a glad smile as broad as a highway-billboard. Luckily, liquor makes him gladder still. The son knows the mother knew of other women's husbands whom liquor made mean, made violent.
At the party, there will be work but also other women to do the work, so the work will seem like part of the party. There will be laughter, liquor, and food--and several compliments about the dress, which seems that day to be the perfect summer-dress, sleeveless, cotton, red polka-dots on a white background. Everyone at the party will know a great deal about World War II, hard work, the Great Depression, and the English language as spoken colloquially in the United States of America.
None of it will escape the avalanche of time, although snapshots, saving the dress, and nonfiction writing are amusing tactics of delay, the poignant motions of an amateur magician's hands, with Death sitting in the audience like the bald figure in Bergman's The Seventh Seal.
Thank God, he thinks, his mother didn't come close to thinking thoughts as melodramatic as "none of it will escape the avalanche of time," etc., that day. Thank God his mother never saw The Seventh Seal and asked him questions about the film. He would have tried to answer the questions, and his mother would have remained unconvinced by the answers. She would have disliked the film as much as she disliked puppets of any kind.
The white dress with red polka-dots fit, the alpine sun shone, friends and acquaintances arrived, and everyone acted as if they weren't about to die, and when people act that way, and they should, they seem untroubled and, indeed, immortal.
By his accounting, all the adults who attended that party are dead. The polka-dotted dress hangs in the closet of a daughter-in-law, and one of the cousins, the many cousins, painted a watercolor featuring the dress hanging on a clothesline. The dress is a cut and stitched quaint decorated piece of cloth. The snapshot lies between pages on a shelf somewhere.
Everything is taking place and changing at a speed humans cannot, do not, and best not comprehend fully. In a way, the party was over before his mother ever put on the dress, but she didn't see it that way, and that day, that's part of what mattered, he thinks.
The scandal of time is that it allows humans just enough time to arrange their thoughts and manage their habits so as to avoid confronting the scandal of time every moment. Scandalously, time makes routine seem reasonable and a bright dress permanent, and it makes summer-parties seem like a fair exchange.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
47. Gallery Fatigue
Is this blue, then, sky once more represented? Is this foregrounded purple scratching a bramble imagined? What is the black-and-white at the bottom of the work, near the gallery's floor?
You will say it is black-and-white. You make. We view and interpret. It's an old folk-dance practiced in a gallery. Artist, you're somewhere sleeping.
Me, I'm almost sleeping in the gallery, sedated by your art, weighed down by yet another round of made images. I name this exhibition "Fatigue." I flee the gallery.
Outside I see a woman wearing a red dress. The art of this image refreshes me. Artist, I wish you well. Today I wasn't the audience you sought. That's not your fault.
You will say it is black-and-white. You make. We view and interpret. It's an old folk-dance practiced in a gallery. Artist, you're somewhere sleeping.
Me, I'm almost sleeping in the gallery, sedated by your art, weighed down by yet another round of made images. I name this exhibition "Fatigue." I flee the gallery.
Outside I see a woman wearing a red dress. The art of this image refreshes me. Artist, I wish you well. Today I wasn't the audience you sought. That's not your fault.
Monday, November 17, 2008
46. Red Balloon
Red Balloon
The soul enters
a public realm,
so soon becomes
the fool
by feeling it must
say or do
too much, dance
with rule,
court expectation.
Pride-inflation
balloons the soul
into bright red
foolishness. The
soul abhores
but can't control
the Puffery Patrol,
relentless baiters
of the soul,
ubiquitous louts:
shame on them.
Godspeed to those
souls who can remain
intact, uninflated,
contained, looking
out of the mind's eyes,
sensing what is wise.
--Wary souls. Have
you seen them?
I have. They wait and
watch. I watch and wait
for them to illuminate
the better path.
The soul enters
a public realm,
so soon becomes
the fool
by feeling it must
say or do
too much, dance
with rule,
court expectation.
Pride-inflation
balloons the soul
into bright red
foolishness. The
soul abhores
but can't control
the Puffery Patrol,
relentless baiters
of the soul,
ubiquitous louts:
shame on them.
Godspeed to those
souls who can remain
intact, uninflated,
contained, looking
out of the mind's eyes,
sensing what is wise.
--Wary souls. Have
you seen them?
I have. They wait and
watch. I watch and wait
for them to illuminate
the better path.
Monday, November 10, 2008
45. Salamander
I saw another miracle today.
During a rainstorm, a salamander adhered itself to the outside of a basement-pane.
Its orange underside was almost red. Its throat pulsed against a flattened water-droplet caught between throat and glass. Its shiny small black eyes blinked. Once.
Its four-digit hands and/or feet were perfectly original, delicate, serviceable, and real.
The texture of its wet black back, on the spectrum of roughness, lay between that of lizard and cat's tongue.
The salamander chose not to speak. It interrupted my life, having launched a surprise-attack. The salamander, except for the pulsing and blinking, remained immobile, calm; it was non-violent and awfully actual, demonstrating once and for all that words can refer to things. The salamander had defeated Jacques Derrida without even trying. Indeed, the salamander existed, and Derrida did not.
Sight of the salamander made me by turns giddy, astonished, reverent, calm, curious, wistful, covetous, and sad.
A salamander stuck itself to a window where I live. Its underside was almost red, its digits delicate. What a day. What a very good day indeed.
Friday, October 31, 2008
44. Mouth
If you say something with your mouth, I will stare discreetly. The fascination of a woman's mouth is more wondrous than art, more interesting than science.
The mouth speaks beautifully. It is beautiful and speaks. It is. Oh, it is.
It doesn't stop being a mouth when it speaks.
Its tongue is a pale shade of red, shapes words and contacts lips and teeth. And you are saying something, and I am staring in naive fascination.
At this moment, your mouth is all I want to study and to know. All else has become less important than it was.
My eyes listen intently. My ears stare at your words.
Your mouth is a small magnificence, a magnificent particularity. Your tongue's an impartial shaper of words. Your lips are something the Lord made.
The mouth speaks beautifully. It is beautiful and speaks. It is. Oh, it is.
It doesn't stop being a mouth when it speaks.
Its tongue is a pale shade of red, shapes words and contacts lips and teeth. And you are saying something, and I am staring in naive fascination.
At this moment, your mouth is all I want to study and to know. All else has become less important than it was.
My eyes listen intently. My ears stare at your words.
Your mouth is a small magnificence, a magnificent particularity. Your tongue's an impartial shaper of words. Your lips are something the Lord made.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
43. Parish
After he receives communion--pale bread, deep ruby wine--he returns to his place and stands.
Parishioners file past him after they accept the eucharist, too. This procession seems to him to register every human face, and on each face is written love and doom, concern and grace.
Each face is carried by its person, transitory, passing through the space and light inside this place, the parish, passing through this mystery we label, out of custom, life.
Each face helps an identity cohere in the body, in the brain, as parishioners all sit down again.
Parishioners file past him after they accept the eucharist, too. This procession seems to him to register every human face, and on each face is written love and doom, concern and grace.
Each face is carried by its person, transitory, passing through the space and light inside this place, the parish, passing through this mystery we label, out of custom, life.
Each face helps an identity cohere in the body, in the brain, as parishioners all sit down again.
Friday, October 24, 2008
42. Grief #2
After she died, she laundered all his clothes once more, folded clean worn work-shirts, bluejeans with snuff-can circles imprinted on back pockets, and red handkerchiefs.
Waiting for the pain to leave was like wanting snow from the longest winter--let's say the one in 1952--to go away so ground might breathe again.
After she died, her daughter finally gave the father's clothes away, but she laundered them once more, for they'd grown musty in the boxes. Inheriting the house was like being shut in all day with the flu and hearing other children play in the snow.
She sold the house within a year but had it painted first, inside and out.
For herself, she saved two of the laundered, ironed, folded red handkerchiefs.
Waiting for the pain to leave was like wanting snow from the longest winter--let's say the one in 1952--to go away so ground might breathe again.
After she died, her daughter finally gave the father's clothes away, but she laundered them once more, for they'd grown musty in the boxes. Inheriting the house was like being shut in all day with the flu and hearing other children play in the snow.
She sold the house within a year but had it painted first, inside and out.
For herself, she saved two of the laundered, ironed, folded red handkerchiefs.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
41. Red-Ant Nest
A swarm of circumstances caused red-ant nests to be part of my ken.
As a boy and when a boy, I stirred the nests with sticks. The nests stank grandly.
I watched the ants--two parts cinnamon, one part pepper--travel and work, hauling stupendous loads. A blue-winged butterfly shipped back to the nest looked like a sea-tossed yacht.
Concentration of so many ants is hypnotic, their subterranean culture and above-ground urbanity seem astute, perfected, and chaotic.
The last bits of creatures end up in red-ant nests. Thereby cities of ants are fueled. Red-ant nests constitute simmering mounds of ant-flesh. Lore told me that tunnels, shafts, corridors, and rooms lie under nests. Also a queen was supposed to live down there, in supreme charge, a deified center of the chaos.
I thought of my face, human, peeking out of its ken, leaning over it all, taking note, breathing, seeing, smelling, and hearing--and being viewed, in some sense, by the nest and its individual members, so many, so teeming. The nest whispered and whirred.
The red-ant nest as I recall it was a kind of machine, a collective speaking with perpetuation's voice. Why was the nest so close to our house? Why was I so glad it was so close to our house? Why was I surprised when an ant crawled up my shoe, up my sock, and onto my bare leg--and bit?
The astonishing, stirring buzz and hum of a red-ant nest is the music of a niche.
Am I grateful I saw, stirred, smelled, and heard red-ant nests? Yes, I am. I am grateful.
As a boy and when a boy, I stirred the nests with sticks. The nests stank grandly.
I watched the ants--two parts cinnamon, one part pepper--travel and work, hauling stupendous loads. A blue-winged butterfly shipped back to the nest looked like a sea-tossed yacht.
Concentration of so many ants is hypnotic, their subterranean culture and above-ground urbanity seem astute, perfected, and chaotic.
The last bits of creatures end up in red-ant nests. Thereby cities of ants are fueled. Red-ant nests constitute simmering mounds of ant-flesh. Lore told me that tunnels, shafts, corridors, and rooms lie under nests. Also a queen was supposed to live down there, in supreme charge, a deified center of the chaos.
I thought of my face, human, peeking out of its ken, leaning over it all, taking note, breathing, seeing, smelling, and hearing--and being viewed, in some sense, by the nest and its individual members, so many, so teeming. The nest whispered and whirred.
The red-ant nest as I recall it was a kind of machine, a collective speaking with perpetuation's voice. Why was the nest so close to our house? Why was I so glad it was so close to our house? Why was I surprised when an ant crawled up my shoe, up my sock, and onto my bare leg--and bit?
The astonishing, stirring buzz and hum of a red-ant nest is the music of a niche.
Am I grateful I saw, stirred, smelled, and heard red-ant nests? Yes, I am. I am grateful.
Monday, October 20, 2008
40. Rhetoric #2
Poetry met rhetoric at a cafe and, after they had secured beverages and found a table, said, "A rhetorician should be neither rude nor a quince." Rhetoric said, "I beg your pardon?"
Particularity, an insufficiently specific concept, will never smell like hay. Hey, sing to me of necessary differences as squabbles soil the davenport of consciousness.
Valiant fronds attempt to build consensus. Intelligence and generosity waltz across an alluvial plain, dancing away from parched, immobile debates. The old colonel's red, rusted saw-blades reminisce in the sawmill of the past.
Back at the cafe, rhetoric had identified its audience, poetry, so it said, "A syllogism is neither a hatchet nor a pinwheel." Poetry laughed gladly. Rhetoric continued to entertain if not instruct. "That is to say, surrealism is crucial to maintaining the health of a rational asylum. Therefore, my dear poetry, let us secure a warrant to search our premises for doubt."
"Cool," said poetry, "shall I leave the tip?"
"How kind of you to offer," said rhetoric.
Particularity, an insufficiently specific concept, will never smell like hay. Hey, sing to me of necessary differences as squabbles soil the davenport of consciousness.
Valiant fronds attempt to build consensus. Intelligence and generosity waltz across an alluvial plain, dancing away from parched, immobile debates. The old colonel's red, rusted saw-blades reminisce in the sawmill of the past.
Back at the cafe, rhetoric had identified its audience, poetry, so it said, "A syllogism is neither a hatchet nor a pinwheel." Poetry laughed gladly. Rhetoric continued to entertain if not instruct. "That is to say, surrealism is crucial to maintaining the health of a rational asylum. Therefore, my dear poetry, let us secure a warrant to search our premises for doubt."
"Cool," said poetry, "shall I leave the tip?"
"How kind of you to offer," said rhetoric.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
39. Two Short Improvs
1. "That better be butter in the red tub, Ned. Otherwise, these guys are going to gouge out our eyes."
2. She saw a red fox, bush-tailed, walking out of brush. She watched the fox as it crossed the dusk-dimmed grass and passed into the meadow of her memory.
2. She saw a red fox, bush-tailed, walking out of brush. She watched the fox as it crossed the dusk-dimmed grass and passed into the meadow of her memory.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
38. Edgar Allan Audobon
Sometimes I wish a Baltimore oriole had visited Edgar Allan Poe--an oriole instead of or least in addition to a raven.
Encountering the oriole might have influenced Poe to take a break from the relentless blacksmithing, the grim hammering out, of stories and poems.
All theoe tombs, mansions, cellars, casks, ill-fated crushes on cousins, demonic practical-jokers--all of it burying whimsy alive behind bricks of and mortar of gothic obsession.
Or better yet--a red-winged blackbird. Just that dash of scarlet--there, as the blackbird glides over a marsh, alights on top of a tall reed, retracts its wings, sings.
--A line of red on a black wing, red that does not signify blood. Death missing its train, unable to attend the masque, RSVP, regrets. A bolt falling out of the pendulum: and the adolescent fixation on garish imaginary torture grinds to a halt.
--A garrulous cop, whistling and talking as he helps the drunk, chilled, disoriented musty-coated writer home to a warm bed, a stove, a week's worth of rest and hearty breakfasts.
I imagine Edgar, still alive at sixty-five, lifting binoculars, finding the bird in magnified view, evermore. Dupin! Voila!
Encountering the oriole might have influenced Poe to take a break from the relentless blacksmithing, the grim hammering out, of stories and poems.
All theoe tombs, mansions, cellars, casks, ill-fated crushes on cousins, demonic practical-jokers--all of it burying whimsy alive behind bricks of and mortar of gothic obsession.
Or better yet--a red-winged blackbird. Just that dash of scarlet--there, as the blackbird glides over a marsh, alights on top of a tall reed, retracts its wings, sings.
--A line of red on a black wing, red that does not signify blood. Death missing its train, unable to attend the masque, RSVP, regrets. A bolt falling out of the pendulum: and the adolescent fixation on garish imaginary torture grinds to a halt.
--A garrulous cop, whistling and talking as he helps the drunk, chilled, disoriented musty-coated writer home to a warm bed, a stove, a week's worth of rest and hearty breakfasts.
I imagine Edgar, still alive at sixty-five, lifting binoculars, finding the bird in magnified view, evermore. Dupin! Voila!
Sunday, October 12, 2008
37. Perfect Attendance
One year he didn't miss a single day of school. He thereby achieved something called "perfect attendance."
In fact, he hadn't attended perfectly. He often failed to pay attention to matters at hand. Sometimes when the teacher was working hard to teach a lesson, he daydreamed. Sometimes he became transfixed by what he perceived to be the beauty of girls his age. Undoubtedly, his visage sometimes appeared zombie-like at times.
He'd gotten his body there, though, five days week, four weeks a month, nine months in all.
Born of that time-period was a certificate of perfect attendance--stamped with a red seal. The certificate is lost. It no longer attends the school of here and now. It's attending a college of redistributed molecules, probably in one of the landfills in the United States of America. The certificate is working on its Ph.D. in Disintegration.
What does he recall from that perfectly attended year of school? How the girls smelled--perfume and soap, and sweet sweat, too. He turned 15 in the middle of that academic year. He was a sophomore in high school. The girls were between the ages of 14 and 18. So were the boys. He remembers the smell of grass on the football field, grass mixed with mud, sweat and blood mixed in there, too.
He believes he remembers some features of geometry--for example, one-third of the base times the height will get you the volume of a cone. One summer he applied this formula to a conical pile of gravel at a rock-crushing plant where he worked. In his mind, he also has an image of a geometry quiz, corrected by the teacher in red ink. He read some literature that year, including some composed by William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, and Robert Frost.
In his mind, he detects faint but palpable evidence of satisfaction connected to having achieved perfect attendance.
In fact, he hadn't attended perfectly. He often failed to pay attention to matters at hand. Sometimes when the teacher was working hard to teach a lesson, he daydreamed. Sometimes he became transfixed by what he perceived to be the beauty of girls his age. Undoubtedly, his visage sometimes appeared zombie-like at times.
He'd gotten his body there, though, five days week, four weeks a month, nine months in all.
Born of that time-period was a certificate of perfect attendance--stamped with a red seal. The certificate is lost. It no longer attends the school of here and now. It's attending a college of redistributed molecules, probably in one of the landfills in the United States of America. The certificate is working on its Ph.D. in Disintegration.
What does he recall from that perfectly attended year of school? How the girls smelled--perfume and soap, and sweet sweat, too. He turned 15 in the middle of that academic year. He was a sophomore in high school. The girls were between the ages of 14 and 18. So were the boys. He remembers the smell of grass on the football field, grass mixed with mud, sweat and blood mixed in there, too.
He believes he remembers some features of geometry--for example, one-third of the base times the height will get you the volume of a cone. One summer he applied this formula to a conical pile of gravel at a rock-crushing plant where he worked. In his mind, he also has an image of a geometry quiz, corrected by the teacher in red ink. He read some literature that year, including some composed by William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, and Robert Frost.
In his mind, he detects faint but palpable evidence of satisfaction connected to having achieved perfect attendance.
Friday, October 10, 2008
36. Terracotta, Peppers, Tomatoes
There is a world where I do not have to reach for anything. There is the sea, a mountain spring, enough work for me to sustain those who sustain me.
There is soil amenable to peppers and tomatoes, also. A roof of terracotta tiles. Between the sun and the house lies a corridor of red light on the sea.
I do not live there, probably never shall. Probability is God's business. Math is merely another story we tell ourselves.
There is a world, a place, a setting, a scene, a stage. I not liver there, terracotta. If I lived there, I would not have to reach. Reaching, each day, I exhaust my supply of composure. Peppers. I do not live there. Tomatoes, peppers, terracotta. Never shall? It is good to know, though there is a place, such a place, no need to reach. Good to know, terracotta, peppers, tomatoes, a red corridor of light on the sea.
There is soil amenable to peppers and tomatoes, also. A roof of terracotta tiles. Between the sun and the house lies a corridor of red light on the sea.
I do not live there, probably never shall. Probability is God's business. Math is merely another story we tell ourselves.
There is a world, a place, a setting, a scene, a stage. I not liver there, terracotta. If I lived there, I would not have to reach. Reaching, each day, I exhaust my supply of composure. Peppers. I do not live there. Tomatoes, peppers, terracotta. Never shall? It is good to know, though there is a place, such a place, no need to reach. Good to know, terracotta, peppers, tomatoes, a red corridor of light on the sea.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
35. Flashlight Annie
So there was this old woman, almost a recluse, who lived in a shack with her son, who was in his 40s, unemployable, and alcoholic. So far, so good.
However, he'd walk up from the Flat into town around dusk, to the bar, where they let him run a tab, and he'd get drunk, usually on whiskey; he'd head home late at night, and often he fell into a large blackberry patch by the side of the road. We must remember that wild blackberry patches get monstrously large. They are entities unto themelves.
Imagine all the bad choices that lead a drunk to fall into a blackberry patch, the same blackberry patch beside a road the drunk knows well, and to fall in there more than once. I've imagined those choices. I've thought hard about lying drunk among those thorns, cut up, unable to move without making things worse, looking up at pine boughs or stars or, worst of all, the goddamned beautiful moon. Even as I look back to this local lore, I sympathize. Even if I laugh, I don't gloat. There but for the grace of God . . ., and I'm not kidding.
The old woman--her first name was Annie--always went looking for her son. She went out on the road carrying a flashlight, which cast a big yellow beam but which also had a red illuminated butt, which glowed like the tip of a lit cigar.
The town's big contribution to this complicated situation was to nickname her Flashlight Annie. No one ever walked the son home, steering him clear of the blackberry patch. No one tried to sober him up. No one tried to help Annie look for him. Now, if he had really gone missing and were not simply lying in the blackberry patch, someone would have called the sheriff, and a group of men would have gone looking for him. They might have even borrowed my uncle's bloodhound, and my father and uncle would have been among the men to join the search-party.
I don't want to give the impression that the town was cruel. It just had funny ideas about what was the town's business and what was private business. The plight of Annie and her son, the Sisyphus-like repetition of his journies home and her seeking him in darkness: the town regarded these as the business of only Annie, her flashlight, the blackberry patch, and her son.
I do not know how she was able to extract him from the patch each time. I wish I were in possession of this fact.
I picture her putting a plate of scrambled eggs in front of him the next morning, some catsup on the side of the plate, maybe a cup of coffee nearby, poured from a tin percolator. I imagine his face cut up "all to hell," as my father might say. I picture the flashlight back in its place in the shack, a place for everything, and everything in its place.
The red scabs of thorn-slashes belonged to the son's face. I imagine his hands shaking, as a drunk's hands will shake in the morning. I imagine the remorseful silence.
He is my son, and this is my life, and after he finishes his breakfast, I will wash the dishes: I imagine her thinking this, Flashlight Annie.
However, he'd walk up from the Flat into town around dusk, to the bar, where they let him run a tab, and he'd get drunk, usually on whiskey; he'd head home late at night, and often he fell into a large blackberry patch by the side of the road. We must remember that wild blackberry patches get monstrously large. They are entities unto themelves.
Imagine all the bad choices that lead a drunk to fall into a blackberry patch, the same blackberry patch beside a road the drunk knows well, and to fall in there more than once. I've imagined those choices. I've thought hard about lying drunk among those thorns, cut up, unable to move without making things worse, looking up at pine boughs or stars or, worst of all, the goddamned beautiful moon. Even as I look back to this local lore, I sympathize. Even if I laugh, I don't gloat. There but for the grace of God . . ., and I'm not kidding.
The old woman--her first name was Annie--always went looking for her son. She went out on the road carrying a flashlight, which cast a big yellow beam but which also had a red illuminated butt, which glowed like the tip of a lit cigar.
The town's big contribution to this complicated situation was to nickname her Flashlight Annie. No one ever walked the son home, steering him clear of the blackberry patch. No one tried to sober him up. No one tried to help Annie look for him. Now, if he had really gone missing and were not simply lying in the blackberry patch, someone would have called the sheriff, and a group of men would have gone looking for him. They might have even borrowed my uncle's bloodhound, and my father and uncle would have been among the men to join the search-party.
I don't want to give the impression that the town was cruel. It just had funny ideas about what was the town's business and what was private business. The plight of Annie and her son, the Sisyphus-like repetition of his journies home and her seeking him in darkness: the town regarded these as the business of only Annie, her flashlight, the blackberry patch, and her son.
I do not know how she was able to extract him from the patch each time. I wish I were in possession of this fact.
I picture her putting a plate of scrambled eggs in front of him the next morning, some catsup on the side of the plate, maybe a cup of coffee nearby, poured from a tin percolator. I imagine his face cut up "all to hell," as my father might say. I picture the flashlight back in its place in the shack, a place for everything, and everything in its place.
The red scabs of thorn-slashes belonged to the son's face. I imagine his hands shaking, as a drunk's hands will shake in the morning. I imagine the remorseful silence.
He is my son, and this is my life, and after he finishes his breakfast, I will wash the dishes: I imagine her thinking this, Flashlight Annie.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
34. Hunting
His father, his uncle, and their friends used to get up very early on Fall days and go hunting for deer.
The men wore bright red shirts because they did not want to be mistaken for deer and shot with rifles, or shot, period.
He understood that the difference in appearance between men and deer was more complex than the presence of a red shirt.
He also understood that men with rifles are likely to shoot the rifles at anything that moves as well as many stationary targets.
He grasped intuitively that wearing a red shirt had something to do with safety and improving one's odds of surviving a hunting expedition.
He did wonder, however, what the deer thought of the red shirts, whether the deer became more than a little depressed at the sight of the two-legged ones wearing red shirts in the colder season.
He liked sitting at the breakfast table while night still existed and listening to the red-shirted men munch bacon, slurp coffee, and discuss a variety of topics related to hunting. The men seemed ready for anything and in command of their lives. Some of these men had served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II. He hoped one day to be ready for something and in command of his life.
He liked going back to bed after the men had departed, the sounds of dogs and pickup trucks and voices disappearing, leaving the sounds of wind in pines and the muttering wood-burning stove. Sometimes he read a pulpy novel. Usually he just went back to sleep.
He did not like the idea of being a deer and getting shot or watching one of the herd-members bleeding to death in manzanita brush.
He liked the taste of fried fresh deer liver and deer heart, however, and he ate them without remorse.
He did not like the idea of killing deer. Leaving the deer alone seemed altogether more fair and less trouble than searching for them, shooting them, packing them, skinning and gutting them, and so on.
He liked the smell of a freshly skinned deer. The smell was rich and slightly salty.
He assumed one day deer-hunting would die out and the deer would not miss it.
He very much liked the idea of wearing a read chamois shirt--so soft and so bold the shirt was, so very ready for anything that might happen in the garment world, so very much in control of its dyed-fabric life.
As things turned out, he never killed a deer; in fact, he never tried to shoot one. A couple of times, while he was driving a car at night on swooping, curving, diving Sierra Nevada highways, the headlights of the auto he was driving seized the image of a deer running across the asphalt. He had always been able to stop in time, however, so he had never killed a deer by accident, even if he happened to be wearing a red shirt. He remembers eating the heart and liver of deer, even as this had occurred so long ago. He is not nostalgic for such fare. He remembers. That is all.
The men wore bright red shirts because they did not want to be mistaken for deer and shot with rifles, or shot, period.
He understood that the difference in appearance between men and deer was more complex than the presence of a red shirt.
He also understood that men with rifles are likely to shoot the rifles at anything that moves as well as many stationary targets.
He grasped intuitively that wearing a red shirt had something to do with safety and improving one's odds of surviving a hunting expedition.
He did wonder, however, what the deer thought of the red shirts, whether the deer became more than a little depressed at the sight of the two-legged ones wearing red shirts in the colder season.
He liked sitting at the breakfast table while night still existed and listening to the red-shirted men munch bacon, slurp coffee, and discuss a variety of topics related to hunting. The men seemed ready for anything and in command of their lives. Some of these men had served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II. He hoped one day to be ready for something and in command of his life.
He liked going back to bed after the men had departed, the sounds of dogs and pickup trucks and voices disappearing, leaving the sounds of wind in pines and the muttering wood-burning stove. Sometimes he read a pulpy novel. Usually he just went back to sleep.
He did not like the idea of being a deer and getting shot or watching one of the herd-members bleeding to death in manzanita brush.
He liked the taste of fried fresh deer liver and deer heart, however, and he ate them without remorse.
He did not like the idea of killing deer. Leaving the deer alone seemed altogether more fair and less trouble than searching for them, shooting them, packing them, skinning and gutting them, and so on.
He liked the smell of a freshly skinned deer. The smell was rich and slightly salty.
He assumed one day deer-hunting would die out and the deer would not miss it.
He very much liked the idea of wearing a read chamois shirt--so soft and so bold the shirt was, so very ready for anything that might happen in the garment world, so very much in control of its dyed-fabric life.
As things turned out, he never killed a deer; in fact, he never tried to shoot one. A couple of times, while he was driving a car at night on swooping, curving, diving Sierra Nevada highways, the headlights of the auto he was driving seized the image of a deer running across the asphalt. He had always been able to stop in time, however, so he had never killed a deer by accident, even if he happened to be wearing a red shirt. He remembers eating the heart and liver of deer, even as this had occurred so long ago. He is not nostalgic for such fare. He remembers. That is all.
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