Pressed Against the Pane, Part 3

Jack could not remember having ever felt so sad, ashamed and disappointed.

Mary gently caressed his arm, saying, “Not to worry, not to worry, I love you, I love you…”

Jack tried to smile strongly down at his beautiful, trusting wife, but his disappointment was hard to hide.

Jack’s performance that night was lifeless. His heart and mind were far away, and so when his knee twisted in the landing of a grand tour jete, he barely noticed the audience gasp or the pain shoot through his left leg.

Lying in the hospital for the following two weeks as the tendons in his knee attempted to mend, Jack kept imagining his father walking into the room, telling him he was sorry for leaving, that he was proud of him, and asking him to please come home. He stared at the door a lot.

But only Mary came to his room, and more truthfully, Mary rarely left the room in order to enter it.

The only other visitor was the director of the tour. After speaking with the doctor and hearing the negative prognosis concerning Jack’s ability to ever dance again, the director informed the couple that the tour would have to move on without them. They were devastated. Mary tried to hide her grief but her chest had sunk several inches. To have lost both biological family and adopted family in the span of a few short days was almost too much for Jack to bear. He fell into a deep depression and probably would have never walked again if not for the persistent presence of Mary at his side. As she silently moved his body to stand or to take one more step, her muscles spoke to his, infusing him with a hope that could not be contained by words. Their bodies kept them alive.

As he began to take longer and longer jaunts, the sight of Mary’s joy at his accomplishment almost erased the loss and disappointment clinging to his being. But not quite.

Leaving the hospital a few weeks later to begin their new life together, Jack made Mary promise never to mention his past in dancing again.

Mary began teaching in the small ballet school in Kansas City begun by Madame Najinska where she had been a student herself. Jack retreated to stocking shelves at a small, family-owned bookstore. The silence of printed words was a much needed respite from the limelight and applause of the dance world.

A few years later Mary had an opportunity to transfer to the Najinska School in Tulsa, and she convinced Jack that proximity to his family might one day lead to an actual reunion. Jack remained doubtful, but he wanted Mary to be happy.

Two borrowed sound-images

High heels on wet pavement
When you cover your ears, the low sound that's still there

Bare

People die of exposure. Nevertheless, we continue to speak.

3 childhood fears

1.
As a child, I had thorough fear of God. I feared him everywhere I went. I feared being seen by him, being heard by him. I feared he would notice my movements, chastise me for placing a foot out of step.
I feared him most the day a very sweaty pastor told me the Lord lived inside my heart. I grabbed my chest, petrified with fear. “My…heart?” I asked weakly. “How did he get in there?” The pastor would look at me impatiently from his pulpit and tell me not to blaspheme. I had never heard such an awful word. I knew then I was a sinner of exceptional note.
At church I would not dare take the Holy Communion. I refused to drink the blood of Christ, let alone eat his body. I thought, how much more divine sacrament can I take into myself? How much more will the Lord tolerate me?
My heart would race as my family approached the altar, preparing to partake in the bread and wine. I knew the pounding of my heart was Jesus warning me. I thought, Christ wouldn't want to dwell in a body as unclean as mine. I thought, one day he'll burst from my chest, breaking through my body leaving me bleeding to death on the ground. As I lay there dying, I would watch in complete awe the amazing spectacle of God shooting up to the sky, back into heaven like a rocket.
I cried when the pastor placed the wafer on the tip of my tongue; cried when I sipped from the chalice of grape juice--cried when later, I wet myself in front of the congregation.
Perhaps I was better off though, discharging the contents of my bladder rather than that of my heart.

2.
I am terrified of my mother. When her quiet broke, when she screamed at my brother and me--when we would hide behind piles of clothes. She became huge standing over me, her hands moving wildly, like a storm, like veins of lighting, scolding me for eating too much or leaving the milk out or dragging mud into the house. Mostly I was amazed at how much more alive she seemed then, moments before she slapped my open palms with a dinner spoon. She would do it again, again, again till she was short of breath and red in the face.
I'd cry and scream, but she didn't hear me, because already, she was holding me, telling me she was sorry. As she kneeled to hold me, her white apron would fill with air and rise like a gigantic, glistening swell of water, enveloping me in the scent of linen and dried fruits. And then she would cry.
I would tell her to stop crying, that if she wanted she could send me to bed early, take away my dinner, give me more chores--punish me in some additional way. She would only shake her head and apologize over and over.
So I would stand there silently as she cried on the ground, both hands turned up towards the ceiling. Looking at her, I felt as though I was back in the womb, kicking her but having no memory of it.

3.
there is an urn in my parents house, an asian fantasy vase with blue chrysanthemums and white grasshoppers. it rests in a box under my mother's bed: she's hiding it from her mother, my grandmother. one day, that's where we will keep her ashes, and when she is dead and gone we will move the urn to a place of greater honor. the vase is a preparation, an example of patience.

Losing

The cicada killed trees line the highway,
their brown tips ready to fall to the earth
and plant the eggs of these ancient bugs,
where they wait out a generation
of sorrow, war, love, ambivalence
and then emerge in droves
madly mating and dying quickly.

I’m lost on the way to your house
and I should dig my phone
out of my purse, call you, and find out
where I went wrong. But I wait it out,
hope to find my way.

We build paths to one another, coat them with tar and rock
and follow them endlessly. I’m embarrassed
in front of the cicadas. They don’t even have mouths,
but every cycle of 17 years they know
to rise from the earth to seek and to find.

I pull into a gas station and browse the aisle
hoping that the route will appear somewhere
among the red and blue packages
of beef jerky and cheese puffs.

Without an answer I fill up the tank,
get back in the car, and drive.
My phone rings and its you. I let it ring.
The sun is going down, the stars start breaking through.
The bugs keep breathing, the hours move along,
and I keep searching the long stretches of pavement.
(ec)

Pressed Against the Pane

After Jack’s younger sisters began taking classes with the world-renowned ballerina Bronislava Najinska, Jack told his parents that he would meet his sisters after class to escort them home, for safety’s sake. He failed to mention that he arrived to meet them early enough to take class himself.

Madame Najinska perceived his potential as a dancer almost immediately. His lyricism came natuarally, and he was stronger than the other boys due to his father forcing him to labor on the oil rigs.

His secret life continued for several years until age seventeen when Madame Najinska recommended him for the touring company, Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe. Faced with the opportunity of dancing all over the world, Jack could not say no. Imagining his father’s reaction, he realized that he could not share his plans with his family. He merely told his mother that he would be leaving, not to worry, and that he would be in touch. Despite her begging him to stay, he packed his trunk and boarded the train to Kansas City.

As the tour began, he quickly scaled the hierarchy of the company. He smiled to see himself featured on playbills and his name printed in bold letters in the program notes. It was on this first tour that he changed his name from Jack Duffer to Jacques Dupre. Jacques Dupre seemed a worthy name for a world class danseur partnering the likes of Alexandra Danilova.

But it was also during this first tour that entertaining became his second love. Mary Drake entered the stage early in the tour. She had been a student of Madame Najinska’s satellite school in Kansas City, and having shared a dance mentor, they immediately felt a connection. To Jack, Mary sparkled on stage and her intellect and humor sparkled off stage.

When the company returned to Kansas City in 1955, Jack decided that it was time to wed Mary and to be honest with his family. Jack and Mary were headlining that night in Blue Danube. Jack called his family a week prior and invited them to come meet his new wife. His mother was delighted to hear from him but confused as to why they had to meet them at a theater. Jack insisted that they go there, though he lacked the courage to tell them why.

Jack wanted to believe that once his father saw what a smash hit he was, what a name he had made for himself, and that he was as hard-working and successful as his father, Harlon would be proud. Finally, he and Mary could be a part of the family.

Jack never knew if they stayed for the show to see him or not. His mother came around to the stage door during intermission to hug him, meet Mary and apologize. “You know he can’t handle this, Jackie.” She said.

“No I didn’t,” he thought.

She fussed with the sequins on his bodice and tried to smile at him, but she couldn’t look him in the face. “Be in touch, dear,” she said as she turned to go.

“Aren’t you going to stay to see our big number? We’re starring together!” Jack asked in disbelief.

“I’m sorry Jackie, it’s just too much…it’s just too much…” her voiced trailed off as she quickly walked away.

situation with one and many values

a is greater than b

b is greater than c

c is greater than d

d is greater than a

(gt)

Fire and respect, ch. 1

...words, which are made for singing and enchanting, rarely make contact with thought.
(gb)

Sherpas unite!

I am a Sherpa. I walk the line between carrying and hauling. I am a human masquerading as donkey via Sherpa. I make my way along the city streets of my neighborhood. I carry boxes, bags, odd shaped items along the paths of concrete en masse to my abode. My seasonal trek depends on need, location and connection to the places I navigate.

Sometimes I see other Sherpas making their way through the canyons of my city. I see them in the distance, colorful silhouettes, schlepping backpacks, odd shaped cases, packages and bags. Most often, I see them with odd black bags on small wheels that they pull along, walking fast, eyes darting about. Typically, taxi cabs as yellow ego mobiles honk at us as we parade along our daily routes, their honks portraying their lack of understanding of the Sherpas' urban pedestrian ways.

Most Sherpas have tugged cardboard boxes, two or more suitcases, large packs of toilet paper shrink-wrapped and white bags with groceries weighing us down. An experienced Sherpa will know that it is best to carry the carton of milk with double plastic bags. Periodically, I will see a Sherpa wrestling with a chair, or large bags of what appears to be laundry. Most Sherpas are polite to others along the high-streets, we know how to carry the items without bumping others, we know that we are practicing an inner code of silence when sharing the city streets.

As a good Sherpa I travel to and fro along the train lines that connect my urban village to others. A good Sherpa knows his or her way around and understands the intrinsic value of the map. As visitor to other villages within the confines of my city, I am identified as "other." I carry items with me that denote I am from another place. The local is "other" confined within the locale.

In my treks outside of the transit free-zones, I realize that the way of the Sherpa is that which is a shared experience. I see a Sherpa approaching with a perambulator with a baby tucked inside, the Sherpa is carrying items in brown bags, as well as the four-wheeled device which is loaded down with items. I try to catch her eye, as if—"We are the same, I too merge my life as a Sherpa"—she glances away and pushes off into the distance behind me. I make the humble realization that our group has not unified as of yet, as there are too many of us navigating the city at any given time.
(sk)

Question

How honest do we allow ourselves to become?

Memory, Mercy, and The All-Seeing Sun

A friend told me she believed that a memory was an agreement between two people and the space in which the event occurred. I told her though I’d never thought of it that way, I agreed completely. She used a word other than ‘agreement’, maybe it was a ‘contract’… should I just stop writing here?

The things we see are of course not the things we see but light reflected off of them, perceived by our eyes and put together by our brains and then associated with some language we have stored away up there. Two people can see the same object or event, but the light waves that mediate this event are different, coming from different angles, and, according to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, even at different times to the observer. So we find the same rock sending each observer similar, but unique observations. Here I would like to cite Mr. John Cage saying, “Everyone has the best seat in the house.”

To speak of the same event then, even if perfectly recorded in our memories – every detail crisp, every book in order, every shade perfection; and this for both parties – is impossible as there is a fundamental discrepancy in our recording of the event. Perhaps the word ‘compromise’ would serve us better than ‘contract’. Or maybe not. Enter mercy.

Between two observers, a memory has to be a compromise. We are separate beings with separate experiences. The following diagram is one my roommate showed me. He is much smarter than I and I think it had something to do with a man whose name sounds as though it would be spelled “Flousser” but that looks French and I believe the ‘er’ is pronounced as in ‘her’, but it deals with phenomena and projects and I don’t want to say, “The way I understood it is…” but rather I’d just like to take the symbol and use it as it crystallized something in my own thinking. Besides, I don’t think my interpretation is too off…

___|___|___|___|___|___
___|___|___|___|___|___
___|___|___|___|___|___
___|___|___|___|___|___
___|___|___|___|___|___

The horizontal lines are experiences, events, or projects, the vertical lines are individuals, observers, phenomena. That may be completely wrong, but the idea is clear either way. Where an event and an individual cross, there is an experience, and even if two individuals cross the same event, the experiences are located in different places and thus not the same experience.

Without common experience, perfect communication is lost because sometimes I mean this and say that and you hear what and you think who. This is why we need compromise. Even more, this is why we need mercy. To know that we’re always speaking in approximations, we’re never getting it right, we’re never fully understanding one another can make interacting fairly discouraging. We are often misquoted, mistaken, downright wrong, and with this fact in place, we are in need of grace for those unfortunate individuals on the receiving end of our blunderous attempts at social interaction.

But the space knows. The sun, the source of all light knows. Something happened in this room, and though there is no possible way to record this happening, the past is past and any record is a mere representation, a biased angle of specific and unique information, not the totality of the event, but the fact is that it happened. A short story for the end:

I close my eyes and see a flock of birds. The vision lasts a second or perhaps less; I am not sure how many birds I saw. Was the number of birds definite or indefinite? The problem involves the existence of God. If God exists, the number is definite, because God knows how many birds I saw. If God does not exist, the number is indefinite, because no one can have counted. In this case I saw fewer than ten birds (let us say) and more than one, but did not see nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three or two birds. I saw a number between ten and one, which was not nine , eight, seven, six, five, etc. That integer - not-nine, not-eight, not-seven, not-six, not-five, etc. - is inconceivable. Ergo, God exists.
-“Argumentum Ornithologicum” by Jorge Luis Borges
(ar)

Milwaukee Ave.

Shortly after B and I met each other, moved to Connecticut, and decided to become cleansed brothers, we made a trip to the great windy city. Our trip lasted for a strange two years. These were a strange two years that we did not count on. Our stay became one of miracles.

The first thing we encountered was a large white man. His skin was blue and had a big fluffy white hat. His skin was made of small balls of a hard something that I could not put my finger on. He was homeless.

I said, “Hey, man, how goes it?” and handed him a quarter.
“Fixin’ to git me a bottle of wighn…”
“Right on man,” we concluded.

Shortly after, walking down the same street, we ran into a band consisting of 3 organists, a trumpeter, two drummers, a beat machine, a screaming transvestite, and another homeless man. They were right outside of a bright, small grocery advertising healthy cigarettes.

We jumped in with the band instantly becoming expert clappers as if some great reggae spirit of love gave it to us. The man running the show and playing the bottom and loudest organ clapped and yelled with his pants pulled up on his waist way too high. He said, “lets do that dub song, now.” and they did. We walked away and stepped over a sleeping student.
(jc)

Pressed Against the Pane, Part 1

She smiled as she approached Jack and Mary, sitting regally at table 9. She always admired how gentile they were; Jack holding open doors, his hand protectively at the small of Mary’s back. Although he always respectively deferred to her opinion or plan, Jack always seemed to be a few steps ahead of her. Preparing for the unforeseen setback or opportunity before they even glimmered the horizon. Mary’s bravado hid her deep dependence on Jack’s loyalty and stability. Part of his charm was that he didn’t need her to care for him but he let her care for him anyway.

It was Jack who had fallen in love with Gold Coast first. He bought all of his wardrobe at the men’s boutique, Hannigan’s, housed across the courtyard. Jack detested wasting time in stores, and once he had found a suitable tweed blazer, year-round wool slacks, and a tailor he liked, he was set. Hannigan’s loved his loyalty and stablility almost as much as his wife did.

He first saw what would become Gold Coast in the Spring of 1985. Jack had received an unexpected windfall of cash as an inheritance from his long estranged father. He hadn’t spoken to him for over thirty years, even though they both lived in Tulsa. That they never crossed paths in all that time was both a testament to his father’s good planning and stubbornness as to Jack’s.

Although a realist in many ways, Jack’s romantic sensibilities always won out concerning his father. He had been convinced that one day he would come to his senses and reconcile with him. Jack felt too much shame and disappointment to make the first step in forgiveness himself. He’s the father, Jack thought, he should be the grown-up.

The last time he’d seen his father was also the final night of his dancing career. Ironic that his father would cut off communication the very night he ceased doing the very activity that spurred the disownment.

Jack had been keeping his career a secret from his father for years. Male dancers in America, and especially in Oklahoma, were a rare and ostracized breed. Jack knew that the last thing his father, the oil prospector, wanted was a dancing son.

Jack’s father, Harlon, had started with nothing, moving from the plains of Kansas to the plains of Oklahoma in the late 30’s. He came to try his luck in the oil business, and he drug with him Jack’s mother, who in blind love followed him to the desolate former Indian Territory. She couldn’t have imagined how different life would be from Kansas. Flat is flat, she thought. But the red clay soil ate up produce instead of producing it as expected, which quickly left her, Harlon, and their newborn son, Jack, in dire straights.

Harlon though remained optimistic that their future lay not above the ground but underneath it. His brother soon moved down, and they partnered up to drill for oil. Their first big vein hit set the family smiling for nearly a decade. Despite a short setback when Harlon and his brother were sent overseas to serve in the army during the 40’s, with only Harlon returning alive, the oil business continued to pump along quite well.

Harlon fancied himself an “every man.” He was courageous, risky, hard-working and successful, and his oldest son was supposed to follow in his footsteps. But Jack was never awed by or even interested in oil and the tough Oklahoma terrain that was home to it as Harlon was. Jack was a mystery to his father, and instead of getting to know him for who he was, Harlon assumed that Jack was merely rebelling against him and his unspoken expectations. How does a son not know what’s expected of him? he wondered.

Space vs place

Before birth and after death, we’re in space.
After birth and before death, we occupy place.

I read these words, and I wondered what you meant.
No, more than that, I wondered how you felt about what you meant.

regressing through meta-analyzing

say it dirty but put it in the third person, he said, and it's poetry.
say it dirty but blame the second party and you're just transferring blame.
say it dirty with authority and get it right.
not saying anything dirty but only talking about dirt and you're a scholar of poetry.

advanced lesson in French

je mange et jeu au soleil le jour brillant
vous piaulez et dites, "obtenez-de ma manière"
il viande et touche mon oracle
elle coupe et donne un coup de poing mon strudle
nous écrou et pompenons leurs caresses
elles complètent et basetent nos nouilles

trans:
i eat and play in the sun shiny day
you peep and say, "get in my way"
he meat and touch my oracle
she cut and punch my strudle
we nut and pump their cuddles
they top and bottom our noodles

for dearest sara (on the occasion of her death)

The women are alone again tonight. I wonder where their husbands are off to. She lights a cigarette, someone complains. I sit in front of his door, and she looks at me, you had better stay out of trouble, she says. Yes I agree. Yes, I know. But I know nothing, I admit to her. She laughs, Why not find yourself a nice girl and settle down? Yes, but I don’t know. She smiles and asks the girls where their husbands are off to. They don’t know if they’re coming or going! But whatever it is, they’re gone, I say. We don’t talk like that, they say and they fold their hands on the table. She feels the pattern of the lace, the low relief, the familiar lines.

In prayer I hear her digging up the sand on the beach, in front of her house, in front of her view. Of the few things she owns, there is this view—soon to be in limbo and orphaned. This is the first time I've watched the sunrise in maybe 60 years, you know. I didn’t know that, and I’m interested in why. But there is no answer, of course—she’s looking away.

Now she is quiet and I strain myself to hear her. I turn on the bench, look through the floral print wallpaper and see her, leaning beside a window, open five or so inches, legs crossed, looking outside, over the seagulls. What is so interesting about those birds? Whatever answer they can give, whatever mystical advice will always be opaque. That’s right darling, she’ll say to me.

Yes, I answer. I do not knock on the door. I will not see her or hear her again. Outside, it is beautiful winter on the Oregon Coast. I hear a car passing, I hear Yiddish—nothing particular, nothing to speak of.

She has no idea what she means

My brother was the beast.
My brother is a mystic.
My brother is Hildegard.

A pastor preaching on power
cited a theologian who wrote,
True power is when something holds us, and we don't even know we're being held.

Ours is a city yet to be, she said, ours is a city already present.



I entered your history.
(Authoritative witness is most clearly revealed when all forms of authority are lost.)

And we swim underwater with our eyes open.

water-sky

The sky is dark for five o’clock. Heavy. We walk slowly, deliberately, savoring each step in each other’s company. On one flank little city lights peep out from behind thick clouds holding what will be what holds us back and what will keep us there. Our other flank is endless with sky, water, and a healthy greenness. We are walking towards the water.

The coolness pricks our skin and the breeze forecasts the wetness that is to come. It is just beyond comfortable but we ignore any sense we have: to turn back. We move forward.

We arrive and sit, our backs against the concrete wall that shields us from the stares of the city lights. We look forward into the water and wordlessly our gazes fade into the distant water-sky.

A drop falls. A second. The clouds relieve themselves. The wetness is cooler than the air and the hairs on our forearms and shoulders start to raise, the backs of our necks alert to the imposing weather. Now that we are there, that we’ve arrived, we can’t turn back. We’ve waited for this for too long. Wordlessly we endure the increased stress on our bodies to stay warm, we shiver and wrap our arms around ourselves, hugging our knees and struggling to keep our bodies from shaking. I look at you and see the rain running in-between your eyelashes, around your eyes and down the crease of your nose onto your lips. Suddenly we are completely waterlogged. Your face has now turned into a landscape of water currents, your hair matted snuggly to your head.

We get up and slosh away. I’m following you, you choose a railing up along the concrete armature of a building. You navigate to a sheltered cavity beneath the windows. We sit upon the rocks/ drainage system. Centipedes slither in and out of our refuge among us. We lean back against the concrete wall. We stare out into the downpour. It is arresting. You look at me squarely and say with weighty eyes, “I have to go,” but neither of us can move. You turn your back to me and slide your wet shirt off to put on a dry sweatshirt from your pack. I see your back muscles and look away, into the distance.

We try to wait it out but it just keeps coming. Drop upon drop, thick as static on the TV. We sit and stare out of our newly nested burrow, family of bugs and rocks and chill, and stare through the downpour to the water-sky. Above us the rain pellets drum off the glass, then glide down the panes in long sweeping channels. Water likes to stick together.

You say you have to go again and although I don’t believe you, you pull yourself up and grab your things. I follow you out from our shelter, unready for the next shockwaves of shivers and chattering.
We slosh back, picking up our heavy legs with our heavy pants, and this time our silence is also much heavier. Cold and wet, neither of want to leave, but you feel you must. The irresolution remains unspoken.

Camping - day 3

The water in the lake does not move much. When it does, I am surprised, anxious, irritable. Why have I come here? I ask myself, again and again. Is it so bad in the city? Is it so easy for us to access this nature, this landscape that is neither ours or its own, on its own? Things are complicated, I hear the voice say. Things do not make sense because they make sense. I can see the Chicago apartment, the stack of bills unpaid, debt.
We drink some whisky and swim just after noon. I feel less frustrated, and on my back in the water I think I could be like a sea mammal, a blue whale leaning on its side to expose one big eye to the sun. The voice goes away at some point, and I am left alone, only buoyant--just floating.