But we should do something about this woman standing in the doorway with a snake on her head. We can't just leave her there; it would be rude. She's getting tired, I think, and perhaps a little exasperated. She wants to get on with this novel.
I can never write the word novel without thinking of the word navel, and then in turn of my grandmother's story about the retired military commander from the Royal Navy who was recognized from his lapel pin by another commander who said, "I see you're Naval, sir," and the first guy replies, "Oh, Thank you," and tucks in the front of his shirt.
I suppose what makes the story funny to me is not the humor so much as what humor was for my grandmother; she really thought it was funny.
Therefore there are two levels to the humor, as well as two levels to the word naval.
For me, anyway: for you maybe not; maybe the word naval leaves you cold and flat as a dead flounder, whereas the word iniquity, let us say, reverberates for you like hot pancakes falling from the sky.
Which makes me wonder how we ever actually succeed in communicating with one another, what with all these denotations and connotations and whiz-bang association airplanes caromming out of each syllable.
Quite a business.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
.
rippled so did I -
past these moments,
past the times that used to be:
the times of you and me.
Now rippling,
we come together again:
familiar.
Time warps out beyond the memory of us.
Ripples remain.
The ripples were always so.
The ripples were always.
The ripples were.
The ripples.
The.
.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
CODFISH AT THE MARKET
Miraculoulsy, little Billy was unscathed by his encounter with the nomads.
But the image of the ant-hill stayed with him: just there, beside the trail, looking like its own little wasteland, and one step closer and you realize the whole area is alive with intentional activity, astonishing purpose and precision, construction of Mayan labyrinths, with secret Queens and passwords.
The password in this case had been interred with their bones. Ants have bones, you know, but they are very tiny and are instantly transmuted upon death, and are therefore very difficult to study: nobody has fixed an ant's broken leg, yet.
Ah, but then: nobody knew that business about the butterflies, either, did they, until just very recently; when was it: 1956?
The Aztecs knew it, of course: they released butterflies from their temples on the tops of pyramids, but then they forgot how to do it about 700 A.D., and nobody remembered again until just the other day, only now of course the butterflies are all gone, or just about, compared with how it was then, and anyway such knowledge doesn't really have much practical value these days.
The same is apparently true of jellyfish: they share a kind of
membrane through the pulse of ocean that moans a mucous memory of music.
All of us seem to have many membranes. Getting to know someone is watching the layers of intricate membranes shift and slide and re-arrange.
Of course we cannot see our own membranes: we feel bare-skinned and naked before the fiery eyes.
Poke a finger at a fish at the market: CODFISH.
But the image of the ant-hill stayed with him: just there, beside the trail, looking like its own little wasteland, and one step closer and you realize the whole area is alive with intentional activity, astonishing purpose and precision, construction of Mayan labyrinths, with secret Queens and passwords.
The password in this case had been interred with their bones. Ants have bones, you know, but they are very tiny and are instantly transmuted upon death, and are therefore very difficult to study: nobody has fixed an ant's broken leg, yet.
Ah, but then: nobody knew that business about the butterflies, either, did they, until just very recently; when was it: 1956?
The Aztecs knew it, of course: they released butterflies from their temples on the tops of pyramids, but then they forgot how to do it about 700 A.D., and nobody remembered again until just the other day, only now of course the butterflies are all gone, or just about, compared with how it was then, and anyway such knowledge doesn't really have much practical value these days.
The same is apparently true of jellyfish: they share a kind of
membrane through the pulse of ocean that moans a mucous memory of music.
All of us seem to have many membranes. Getting to know someone is watching the layers of intricate membranes shift and slide and re-arrange.
Of course we cannot see our own membranes: we feel bare-skinned and naked before the fiery eyes.
Poke a finger at a fish at the market: CODFISH.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
On Opening Doors
Before I opened the door, the action seemed insignificant, inconsequential, almost irrelevant. It was just another door in a world of doors: let’s have a peek behind this one.
HURRAY!!! there are hundreds of people all smiling at you and raising their cocktail glasses and cheering your name, wanting to put you up on their shoulders.
Maybe it's not that dramatic: maybe you open the door quietly, and enter the calm place, and go in and sit down and wonder at things, or get up and walk around, for two or three hours, or days or weeks or months or years.
Every and each period of time passes calmly, with nothing much to do, except maybe pausing to eat, now and again, and go to the bathroom, and sleep.
But then you come back, and Holy Cow: everything is different.
You long for wood-smoke in the airport; you remember huge butterflies.
It was all because of that door: I opened that door, and I didn't think anything of it: I was just going to have a look.
I was going to come right back.
Some doors don’t close.
HURRAY!!! there are hundreds of people all smiling at you and raising their cocktail glasses and cheering your name, wanting to put you up on their shoulders.
Maybe it's not that dramatic: maybe you open the door quietly, and enter the calm place, and go in and sit down and wonder at things, or get up and walk around, for two or three hours, or days or weeks or months or years.
Every and each period of time passes calmly, with nothing much to do, except maybe pausing to eat, now and again, and go to the bathroom, and sleep.
But then you come back, and Holy Cow: everything is different.
You long for wood-smoke in the airport; you remember huge butterflies.
It was all because of that door: I opened that door, and I didn't think anything of it: I was just going to have a look.
I was going to come right back.
Some doors don’t close.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Chapter 88
The sun was roaring through the trees, blinding and hurtling me back through time, towards Attila, and Genghis Khan: such a sun once signaled surge of harness, the huge hot rise of charging horses, with flashing eyes of men and metal.
Meadows, especially, were good grounds for killing.
I took a sword in the mouth.
How the horses suffered.
Keep swinging back: pre-born Africa,
where mud-baked pygmies birth the sun
anew each year, so you and I
their children have the light.
Today the sun is never quite as bright as that,
and there are very few pygmies left who remember.
Reaching even further back
we cruise the plain of flame,
burning world of rude red rock
and incandescent sky which
only dinosaurs remember.
In such a time was fire in the sky,
and gods in the dancing blackness.
Now towards the end of time
the sun is thin.
Little we see in Nature that is ours.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Meditation on Standing Still
Before we go any further, let us agree on some background: there are three images to keep in mind.
First is the image of rain upon water: it is raining, water falling upon water, and the individual raindrops pock the candle-wick wet fat drops plop.
And so begins the spreading out of circles.
We are standing on a float, a dock, by the edge of the sea, with hugely firs and trusting cedars leaning dark-dream evenings one side, and only ocean on the other, and the rain charging down, yahooing onto tin roofs and 45-gallon drums and onto you, onto you especially, ecstatic gum-boot face thrust trust-up, charging flowers, rushing urgent vocabularies from sea to living liquid air.
Second we have the sound of Raven's wing: you can always tell Raven from Crow by the deep-set WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH of its wings; the crow rides more on top of the air with rapid cocky strokes, while the raven ploughs through the ocean of air and you can hear the waves crash.
When you are making the sound of a crow in your throat you think more up, kind of natural gargling, in the throat, resonating up the nasal passages: a harsh wind. Raven is found more in the back in the throat, more deeply seated, like someone who has been thinking about something for a long time, and then begins to speak.
And for number three, what 'Here' have we?
Naturally this moment,
only this one,
where you and I are now.
Complete.
First is the image of rain upon water: it is raining, water falling upon water, and the individual raindrops pock the candle-wick wet fat drops plop.
And so begins the spreading out of circles.
We are standing on a float, a dock, by the edge of the sea, with hugely firs and trusting cedars leaning dark-dream evenings one side, and only ocean on the other, and the rain charging down, yahooing onto tin roofs and 45-gallon drums and onto you, onto you especially, ecstatic gum-boot face thrust trust-up, charging flowers, rushing urgent vocabularies from sea to living liquid air.
Second we have the sound of Raven's wing: you can always tell Raven from Crow by the deep-set WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH of its wings; the crow rides more on top of the air with rapid cocky strokes, while the raven ploughs through the ocean of air and you can hear the waves crash.
When you are making the sound of a crow in your throat you think more up, kind of natural gargling, in the throat, resonating up the nasal passages: a harsh wind. Raven is found more in the back in the throat, more deeply seated, like someone who has been thinking about something for a long time, and then begins to speak.
And for number three, what 'Here' have we?
Naturally this moment,
only this one,
where you and I are now.
Complete.
How to Teach A River to Write
Suddenly the door opened:
in walked a statue-perfect woman
with a large snake on her head.
No, too abrupt; make it more gradual.
One day, the river swelled up and overflowed its banks,
and flooded the whole area
where the tree shrews were constructing their labyrinths..,
damn: I forgot to mention the labyrinths.
'Suddenly the door opened;'
I liked that part;
the story was doing fine, up to there.
Suddenly the door opened, and in marched
The River, vocabularies astrew and niceties asunder,
demanding to know The Time.
When a river asks you The Time, as some of you
(the weathered ones) will know,
it is no frivolous matter,
and of course there is only one appropriate answer,
to be uttered immediately;
which is to say, in fact to shout,
no, to holler,
to practically bellow,
(while gesticulating with huge gestures and wild hair,)
NOW!
'When?' murmurs the river,
coy now,
languid.
Now, you reply: Now so Now,
and Now and Now, and especially ...Now!
Oh God, murmurs the river;
I just love it.
(NOW is the one word rivers love to hear.)
in walked a statue-perfect woman
with a large snake on her head.
No, too abrupt; make it more gradual.
One day, the river swelled up and overflowed its banks,
and flooded the whole area
where the tree shrews were constructing their labyrinths..,
damn: I forgot to mention the labyrinths.
'Suddenly the door opened;'
I liked that part;
the story was doing fine, up to there.
Suddenly the door opened, and in marched
The River, vocabularies astrew and niceties asunder,
demanding to know The Time.
When a river asks you The Time, as some of you
(the weathered ones) will know,
it is no frivolous matter,
and of course there is only one appropriate answer,
to be uttered immediately;
which is to say, in fact to shout,
no, to holler,
to practically bellow,
(while gesticulating with huge gestures and wild hair,)
NOW!
'When?' murmurs the river,
coy now,
languid.
Now, you reply: Now so Now,
and Now and Now, and especially ...Now!
Oh God, murmurs the river;
I just love it.
(NOW is the one word rivers love to hear.)
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