adj. destructive to both sides in a conflict.
Hidden wrath in a place of power.
So quick no one sees him draw his sword.
Who will inhabit the castle of bone
With life ambition's price to enter?
Unrelenting foe, immovable, unseen.
For you this is not a home but a
Battleground.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Gifts found today
"Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up
Fostered alike by beauty and by fear"
"a Boy I loved the sun"
--William Wordsworth, Prelude Book 1
"While the child was dreaming in solitude, he experienced a limitless existence. His reverie was not merely an escape. It was a reverie of flight." Gaston Bachelard, The Alchemy of Imagination
The gallery of an inspired artist. Charismatic megafauna have their own dignity, and as he says, the inspiring romantic or mythic images resound deep in the emotional consciousness. This is not merely simpering wildlife presented for a WWF calendar, but a visionary on the boundary, at the crux of nature- culture interacting and speaking in our lives through his art.
Fostered alike by beauty and by fear"
"a Boy I loved the sun"
--William Wordsworth, Prelude Book 1
"While the child was dreaming in solitude, he experienced a limitless existence. His reverie was not merely an escape. It was a reverie of flight." Gaston Bachelard, The Alchemy of Imagination
The gallery of an inspired artist. Charismatic megafauna have their own dignity, and as he says, the inspiring romantic or mythic images resound deep in the emotional consciousness. This is not merely simpering wildlife presented for a WWF calendar, but a visionary on the boundary, at the crux of nature- culture interacting and speaking in our lives through his art.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
of things which are small and quiet
Another review, I haven't read anything since the last one, I must confess that I've been renewing the same volume since May, disgusting but true. I just received this in the mail,
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
and as the title promised, it speaks to childhood memories of confusion and wordless reverie, I've only read the first chapter but it's telling me about emptiness and silence and the reasons for them, darkest patches of a child's soul buried underneath years of reflective habit.
Other than that, the writing style is startling, flooded with imgaes of nature, bright, lurid memories. And it is set in India, country of my dreams, maybe all dreams. She sees the biggest thing in the small things. And she understands why I start all my stories with "There was never anything that could be said to describe..." or "No one could tell..." or "Nothing ever happened to change..."
here are excerpts. They are long because they were so full. THIS IS NOT MY WRITING. It is Arundhati Roy's. And if it makes you read her book, then that's good, but if it gives you just a taste of what touched me at the bottom of the well, then that's something too, and you are closer to thinking you understand me.
"Estha had always been a quiet child, so no one could pinpoint with any degree of accuracy exactly when (the year, if not the month or the day) he had stopped talking. Stopped talking altogether, that is. The fact is that there wasn't an "exactly when." It had been a gradual winding down and closing shop. A barely noticeable quietening. As though he had simply run out of conversation and had nothing left to say. Yet Estha's silence was never awkward. Never intrusive. Never noisy. It wasn't an accusing, protesting silence as much as a sort of estivation, a dormancy, the psychological equivalent of what lungfish do to get themselves through the dry season, except that in Estha's case the dry season looked as though it would last forever.
Over time he had acquired the ability to blend into the background of wherever he was--into bookshelves, gardens, curtains, doorways, streets--to appear inanimate, almost invisible to the untrained eye. It usually took strangers awhile to notice him even when they were in the same room with him. It took them even longer to notice that he never spoke. Some never noticed at all.
Estha occupied very little space in the world.
Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms. It rocked him to the rhythm of an ancient, fetal heartbeat. It sent its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skull, hoovering the knolls and dells of his memory, dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue. It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked. Unspeakable. Numb. And to an observer therefore, perhaps barely there. Slowly, over the years, Estha withdrew from the world. He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived inside him and squirted its inky tranquilizer on his past. Gradually the reason for his silence was hidden away, entombed somewhere deep in the soothing folds of the fact of it. ...
Rahel drifted into marriage like a passenger drifts towards an unoccupied chair in an airport lounge. ...
But when they made love [Larry] was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone else. Someone watching. Looking out of the window at the sea. At a boat in the river. Or a passerby in the mist in a hat.
He was exasperated because he didn't know what that look meant. He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didn't know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.
So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully....
What Larry McCaslin saw in Rachel's eyes was not despair at all, but a sort of enforced optimism. And a hollow where Estha's words had been. He couldn't be expected to understand that. That the emptiness in one twin was only a version of the quietness in the other. That the two things fitted together. Like stacked spoons. Like familiar lovers' bodies. ...
In a purely practical sense it would probably be correct to say that it all began when Sophie Mol came to Ayemenem. Perhaps it's true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes.... Equally, it could be argued that it actually began thousands of years ago... in the days when the Love Laws were made. The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how.
And how much."
And I finished the chapter, and then I cried, and then I slept. And I'm still working on how this is true, and why it's been hidden so beautifully.
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
and as the title promised, it speaks to childhood memories of confusion and wordless reverie, I've only read the first chapter but it's telling me about emptiness and silence and the reasons for them, darkest patches of a child's soul buried underneath years of reflective habit.
Other than that, the writing style is startling, flooded with imgaes of nature, bright, lurid memories. And it is set in India, country of my dreams, maybe all dreams. She sees the biggest thing in the small things. And she understands why I start all my stories with "There was never anything that could be said to describe..." or "No one could tell..." or "Nothing ever happened to change..."
here are excerpts. They are long because they were so full. THIS IS NOT MY WRITING. It is Arundhati Roy's. And if it makes you read her book, then that's good, but if it gives you just a taste of what touched me at the bottom of the well, then that's something too, and you are closer to thinking you understand me.
"Estha had always been a quiet child, so no one could pinpoint with any degree of accuracy exactly when (the year, if not the month or the day) he had stopped talking. Stopped talking altogether, that is. The fact is that there wasn't an "exactly when." It had been a gradual winding down and closing shop. A barely noticeable quietening. As though he had simply run out of conversation and had nothing left to say. Yet Estha's silence was never awkward. Never intrusive. Never noisy. It wasn't an accusing, protesting silence as much as a sort of estivation, a dormancy, the psychological equivalent of what lungfish do to get themselves through the dry season, except that in Estha's case the dry season looked as though it would last forever.
Over time he had acquired the ability to blend into the background of wherever he was--into bookshelves, gardens, curtains, doorways, streets--to appear inanimate, almost invisible to the untrained eye. It usually took strangers awhile to notice him even when they were in the same room with him. It took them even longer to notice that he never spoke. Some never noticed at all.
Estha occupied very little space in the world.
Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms. It rocked him to the rhythm of an ancient, fetal heartbeat. It sent its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skull, hoovering the knolls and dells of his memory, dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue. It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked. Unspeakable. Numb. And to an observer therefore, perhaps barely there. Slowly, over the years, Estha withdrew from the world. He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived inside him and squirted its inky tranquilizer on his past. Gradually the reason for his silence was hidden away, entombed somewhere deep in the soothing folds of the fact of it. ...
Rahel drifted into marriage like a passenger drifts towards an unoccupied chair in an airport lounge. ...
But when they made love [Larry] was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone else. Someone watching. Looking out of the window at the sea. At a boat in the river. Or a passerby in the mist in a hat.
He was exasperated because he didn't know what that look meant. He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didn't know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.
So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully....
What Larry McCaslin saw in Rachel's eyes was not despair at all, but a sort of enforced optimism. And a hollow where Estha's words had been. He couldn't be expected to understand that. That the emptiness in one twin was only a version of the quietness in the other. That the two things fitted together. Like stacked spoons. Like familiar lovers' bodies. ...
In a purely practical sense it would probably be correct to say that it all began when Sophie Mol came to Ayemenem. Perhaps it's true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes.... Equally, it could be argued that it actually began thousands of years ago... in the days when the Love Laws were made. The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how.
And how much."
And I finished the chapter, and then I cried, and then I slept. And I'm still working on how this is true, and why it's been hidden so beautifully.
more pop music that's embarrassingly true, embarrassing because lyricists hit us over the head with our own malaise, or celebrate the surrender to shallowness of feeling. They say the things that it's not acceptable to express, saying the most (not)serious things about emotion that are taken seriously(not). or maybe it's the other way around...
"i don't love him, winter just wasn't my season..."
"Cause you can't jump the track
We're like cars on the cable
And life's like an hourglass glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button now
So cradle your head in your hands"
...
2am and i'm still awake writing a song
if I get it all down on paper it's no longer inside of me
threatening the life it belongs to
And i feel like i'm naked in front of the crowd
cause these words are my diary screaming out loud
and I know that you'll use them however you want to"
"i don't love him, winter just wasn't my season..."
"Cause you can't jump the track
We're like cars on the cable
And life's like an hourglass glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button now
So cradle your head in your hands"
...
2am and i'm still awake writing a song
if I get it all down on paper it's no longer inside of me
threatening the life it belongs to
And i feel like i'm naked in front of the crowd
cause these words are my diary screaming out loud
and I know that you'll use them however you want to"
Monday, November 9, 2009
sesquicentennials and other squid
You will find meaning in things when I am gone
And so I'm not worried about leaving.
And because I'm not worried, I don't have to leave anymore.
Pop songs being true:
Black and Gold "Cause if you're not really there, then the stars don't even matter, and I'm filled to the brim with fear, that it's all just a bunch of matter... If you're not really there, then I don't want to be either, I want to be next to you"
Love song "I'm not gonna write you a love song, because you asked for one, because you need one... I'm gonna need a better reason to write you a love song"
I'm actually so impressed with Sara Bareilles, here is another one:
Fairytale "I'm not waiting for the next best thing"
"Who says I can't be free, from all of the things that I used to be, rewrite my history, who says I can't be free?"
And so I'm not worried about leaving.
And because I'm not worried, I don't have to leave anymore.
Pop songs being true:
Black and Gold "Cause if you're not really there, then the stars don't even matter, and I'm filled to the brim with fear, that it's all just a bunch of matter... If you're not really there, then I don't want to be either, I want to be next to you"
Love song "I'm not gonna write you a love song, because you asked for one, because you need one... I'm gonna need a better reason to write you a love song"
I'm actually so impressed with Sara Bareilles, here is another one:
Fairytale "I'm not waiting for the next best thing"
"Who says I can't be free, from all of the things that I used to be, rewrite my history, who says I can't be free?"
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Disappearing is how you can tell you were there
Disappearing is how I can tell I was there
Fading out, I feel a sudden elation
I existed! I was material, factual,
solid matter! I will go tell all my invisible friends
and they will be jealous.
Fading out, I feel a sudden elation
I existed! I was material, factual,
solid matter! I will go tell all my invisible friends
and they will be jealous.
Monday, November 2, 2009
goodbyes
I understand why a heron flees at my arrival.
Crashing through the underbrush, I have broken the spell, and things which were silent and unacknowledged must flap away impressively deeper into the growth as the light dies in the autumn sky.
Yet still every time I am saddened. The heartbreak is always fresh as for a moment, the heron and I stare, stark recognition and the tremendous quivering fear that I have transgressed some boundary of his domain. Do I hold my breath? Do I take one cautious step, shift my weight, try to hold every ounce of muscle still to my will? Is that wrong, as caught in his gaze I try to be closer to touch the stabbing wildness even as it touches my memory, that image, the subtle discovery of other resounding deep and far down inside my mind? Do I glance down for a second breaking eye contact, and what has made me uneasy in the face of this unwavering stranger? Does the heron's gaze weigh more than his sudden flight, winging above the riverbed and beyond the treelined banks, yellowing for a moment with late afternoon sun? The rare gold of this memory is measured in sadness.
It is very precious to me.
I will keep enacting this scene, I will crash and flail in the underbrush on autumn walks, always at sunset, and when some minute change, a stillness invoked from the air makes me aware of the heron's gaze, I will be still, I will be sad, I will be perfect, and he will leave. The tragedy thus continues, how could I wish it otherwise, I for my glimpse of eternity, followed by the reminder of his power to withdraw. I am myself, always arriving just in time to see him leave-- which is too late-- always the outsider, always too loud. There is something the heron wants, and to my dismay it cannot be me. But if I am myself, I am part of this scene too, I do what is in my nature, so my presence is no more unsettling than the heron's. What do I tell him that he cannot bear, from which he must turn away and fly? What do I say in my unwitting pursuit about the wildness of the soul?
Crashing through the underbrush, I have broken the spell, and things which were silent and unacknowledged must flap away impressively deeper into the growth as the light dies in the autumn sky.
Yet still every time I am saddened. The heartbreak is always fresh as for a moment, the heron and I stare, stark recognition and the tremendous quivering fear that I have transgressed some boundary of his domain. Do I hold my breath? Do I take one cautious step, shift my weight, try to hold every ounce of muscle still to my will? Is that wrong, as caught in his gaze I try to be closer to touch the stabbing wildness even as it touches my memory, that image, the subtle discovery of other resounding deep and far down inside my mind? Do I glance down for a second breaking eye contact, and what has made me uneasy in the face of this unwavering stranger? Does the heron's gaze weigh more than his sudden flight, winging above the riverbed and beyond the treelined banks, yellowing for a moment with late afternoon sun? The rare gold of this memory is measured in sadness.
It is very precious to me.
I will keep enacting this scene, I will crash and flail in the underbrush on autumn walks, always at sunset, and when some minute change, a stillness invoked from the air makes me aware of the heron's gaze, I will be still, I will be sad, I will be perfect, and he will leave. The tragedy thus continues, how could I wish it otherwise, I for my glimpse of eternity, followed by the reminder of his power to withdraw. I am myself, always arriving just in time to see him leave-- which is too late-- always the outsider, always too loud. There is something the heron wants, and to my dismay it cannot be me. But if I am myself, I am part of this scene too, I do what is in my nature, so my presence is no more unsettling than the heron's. What do I tell him that he cannot bear, from which he must turn away and fly? What do I say in my unwitting pursuit about the wildness of the soul?
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