as thin as thread

"you hold the needle between your thumb and forefinger, not too tight, or you'll get tired, not too loose, or your stich'll be bad."

as frail as she was, my grandmother had trouble sleeping during the twilight of her life. it's a strange switch, or contrast, when i'd come home at 4AM a little drunk and she'd be sitting on the floor beside her bed sewing the lord's prayer, the last supper, other bible verses onto tan fabric.

and i can't explain my interest in the things she can't do, shouldn't do, is too weak to do. she can barely smile these days, and her sewing coat hangs from her thin shoulders in a way that hugs her like a dense cloud. but she sews and sews, follows patterns, rips stitches. she never complains about the her sore knuckles, the deep bone-pain that gives her chills and moves up straining her tendons.

"i did these things years ago, before i was married... what was it... 1920? it's something i don't even have to think about doing, i just sew, like it's built in my hands"

built in the hands. rooted in the bones.

she sits at the dining room table as a pot of water boils, smells like lemon grass and pepper, rose, milk and chicken fat. she waits with her hands crossed, waits for us to join her.

Secret Space

I hid under the dining room table long before the dinner party started.

I counted the legs, both wooden and human. The worn shoes, scuff marks, panty house, hems.

What if the table collapsed and I was crushed.

Wait, have to adjust to avoid getting kicked.

I hear the muffled sound of voices, laughter, munching.

My heart beats in my ears and somehow I am surrounded by life and yet utterly alone.

From a star distance we see how life goes on and the little girl breathes from her own secret space. Waiting for God to pass by--a whirwind? a fire? an earthquake? a hurricane? a chicken leg? a deviled egg?

A whisper.

Bone growth

Breathing deeply into myself
(it is time),
I draw in the slack.

I close my eyes, and I return
to the cool, still space
inside
that is mine.
And I listen for the slow formation
of dense matter.

as you go, as i go.

"...but how much does it matter to you? the things you lost, the art, the clothes and all that? has it been a zen/cleansing experience? what do you miss the most?"

"there are various parts of me that are battling over what i, as a whole, will miss most above all that was lost. there is my head, which says i must yearn for the costly things, my heart, which tends to remember many things that were only important, only remembered in passing: the meals cooling in the freezer, the old socks and the first quilt i made. There are things my eyes miss, patches on walls, things my ears strain to hear again. my hands and my feet-- my back even, misses the carpet i laid on as i called you on the phone that morning. the truth is, i miss all of it, a little bit, and that is where the whole emotion comes from, the entire experience that, even as i write to you, sulks back to the black and abandoned house, away from me and back to where it wants to be. i try to hold on to it, but i feel a vacuum left wide and precarious in front of me when it goes at last, as things do. as you do. as i do."

The candles burn, our ages change, and the shadows shrink and expand.

Sometimes, I don’t say what I mean. My brain gets muddled, my words obscure. When I spoke to you of birthdays and change, I was trying to speak of becoming, not aging per se…to give language to an observation that we seem, somehow, to become more fully ourselves, that (to use some of the language floating in the space between us) our resonant frequencies continue to grow clearer, stronger. A strange and absurd thing for me to say…because, of course, we are always fully ourselves, at every moment along the way. But still, one that strikes me as true.

You say you’re in a better place, and maybe that’s what I mean I see.
We don’t, after all, live inside Plato’s cave.

I am dazzled by the hazy brilliance of the flames.

Animals don’t speak.

Laughing together, we cast shadows in the lamplight. Our arms and legs, our hands and feet, I wonder what happens to the animals we make on my bedroom wall...the animals whose forms we imagine, the animals whose forms we become?

Tongue-tied, searching for language, my mouth doesn't say what my heart knows, and my words continue to miss the mark. Still, I speak. I am learning to trust my foolishness.

I want to learn not to speak, like the animals do.

In the lamplight, in the starlight, in the light of our flickering desire, we laugh and see the animals still, and I am not afraid.

Long ago, he wrote to me, “Everything became absurd and luminous in that laughter. The world was turned inside out...."

how hard is it to see fire, anyway.

we joke, "wouldn't it be funny if one day you reached an age when you couldn't see animals anymore!"

and we laughed at that idea, the blatant obsurdity.

it's not so funny though.

and i cringe at the thought that it's happened, but we haven't noticed.

Burning Bush

Moses worked everyday. Hard work. Hiking through the hot desert, herding obstinate sheep from one place of famine to the next. His mind running form the past to the present, from the past to present. No future, not yet.

How many times did he pass that bush that burned but was not consumed? God did NOT speak until Moses turned aside and took notice.

What a jerk, that God. Doesn't God know how busy I am? I don't have time to be looking for burning bushes.

Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Burn, baby, burn.

Northbound, december

Theresienstadt

And now I wonder, where did all the ashes go? How did they keep singing before they burned? And what were the words they sang?

Burning bones

I was covered in your ashes, and beautiful. The sky was wide open with your sun shining down upon me.

Cranes fly overhead. It is a calm, cool day, with autumn in the air. A fire burns, and we are safe.

I’ve been rowing every day we’ve been here, except for Monday. I go out alone. On Sunday, our first day here, how I enjoyed looking back towards the water’s edge and seeing your form lit by the sun along the sandy banks. Later, returning to the shoreline, I brushed your hair.

I stayed until both switches were turned. I watched your smoke rise into the sky, moving swiftly with the clouds above, on your way. I smelled your smoke. At the end of the day, I returned and saw your bones, so strong and white. It was hard to see your bones, and I cried at the thought before I did. I howled at the thought, driving along the quiet highway. I howled and keened for your dry, quiet bones waiting for me.

The cool cloudy sky opened up, and the golden evening sun poured itself down over me.

drawing room etude 2

"...happy only in moments of pure idleness when I was comfortable.

how purely material was everything that I desired in life, and how easily I could dispense with the intellect."

in the drawing room we had sherry with silver spoons. drew the curtains, up to sea, down for a cool dampness, oh what a mistake, it is we that should see the waves and yello sky. it's quite charming, Soon Liszt will play, you know him-? very topps. a mesh of dresses and teas and invitations, and oh look here a delivery of orchids from meseur (he payed for them with Aunt Leoni'es silvers. t'adores that Mme. O so so much that he'll barely have any renumerations about it later. he'll have scant dreams. any case, all are wellcomed and sitting pretty and gussying and gusshing. Here, its plodding and prissing onward when that Liszt stops for a sec of a second and i'm all in arms, that's the finish?!? just the next movement honey, dont get so troubled. Liszt begins again and bliss restored for the chitter of gulag gossip (all dusted in scents and shmmying pearls).... no no no that is all behind this couch i suppose a secret written on male's lapels that woman must be taken to dinner this night

˙˜˚leisure time†††:.


At Dinner: ladies collected, senses getting propt. eyes aface.. food fawns in on butterfly wings, alightng pm everything anything. first positions open and marked. wallpaper, a decoaretd thing, clings. first course lands as a loaf bear, on his back, legsup. viviseced and laid bare the mushy insides of his sugar wheat flour insides. Nice with jam or butter. They are tthe latest these days. Magir speaks: TO CHEEZ BUttONS for her gracious hostesness please thank you. open now, theDuke du sluffs off the niceties and huffs Is It About God? A roomfull of em they prick up! no doubt an easy opportunity for scandal, the good questions thus remians. such would never be a problem if arrtists dined alone or with thier kynd; or if nobility maintained its own bylaw. {and oh so rare that noble artist. still, always pleasure from idleness}

lunch party

there's much ticking in my ear i have to wonder if it's safe to go about finding ticking's end. an itching to move or a licking to get out. cat's always licking and caught the lines, the ways out. bless him for it. he runs. so we'll see(maybe disagree). bet it would have been a party. i find myself saying that so often now;

i'm slow, the exits are many, i'm slow to say this or that and follow, or else it's the cave, the leaves, which we wanted anyway but which must be innacessible. out of here! thats what they say. in other words, i like it, but hey it's an escape like any other, so can we live in it? what are the options? bring me options, that's what i repeat to my sef all through my laze. yeah bring it to me .

i'm the one wanting openness, branches to walk on, white clothing, you get the idea, and then it's just bad lighting (which they say helps for the hallucinations and that's quite alright) although..dirt..big leaves. that would be luff

more ashes: the vase is a preparation, an example of patience.

Circuit

To say that nothing has changed is wrong, or at least, it misses the mark.

Shell-shocked and trembling, I lose my bearings, and this is what I want.
True north remains, but I don't know what this place is, this place where I find myself alone with you.
I am patient.

We’re in an abandoned skyscraper in Kuala Lumpur.
130 floors up, we can see a garden below, from this space that is ours but not ours.
Kuala Lumpur is the only city in the world to have a million-year-old primary forest within the heart of the city.

And you're right, I'm not leading a caravan through the desert, where ashes hide among the grains of sand and water flows beneath.

Receiving and transmitting, I am following the current that flows between us, traveling along its coil, electrically charged, invisible.

indefinite maps; a burning bush.

and further more, there's the house on 181st street, the one willfully burnt down. the one abandoned at first, only later to be demolished by its owners with fire. why they did this i don't know, but there they were, standing in front of the smoldering cinders with a cardboard sign that read, "please help--god bless." we could smell the stale pepper scent of the burnt wood down the block. then later, the ash stirred up by gusts of wind. aren't those clouds of ash still the house, the same one as before, now transformed, its material diffused into the air? the house opened, its walls loosened, spread out by the wind, as ash. where are the maps for these places, these homes blurred and cloudy. and god sees, i suppose, blesses through such flames. if we are ash, as you say, then god burns the bush, is behind it at the beginning, sees to it that there is light in the end.

Ash Wednesday

A smudge of ash across my forehead, crumbling down onto the bridge of my nose: "May God have mercy on you and guide you on your way." My son cried, terrified, his head buried against me, "But I don't want ashes, Mama, I don't want ashes, don't make me get ashes!" And of course, I didn't and never would. His seemed a strangely prescient objection, a poignant and wordless fear of death, his own demise when he will become ashes again. We are all but ashes, even our children, even our mothers; that is what we are reminded of now. Not of the abundant gift of grace, but of our own finiteness, our end. And we wear and bear this sign as we leave from this dark place, just as our knees bear the weight of our bodies as we bow low on the altar: "I come, I come."

A Curious Smudge

There lay a curious smudge on the atlas right on the point of my destination. Days earlier I had marked the spot precisely with my pen, and now, as I am looking back on the spot and wondering the logistics of getting there, the exact point has indeed vanished and, instead, a watery blur of inks lays stained.

In order to get there I wonder if I could locate the exact perimeter, encircle the area, and lasso it in. It is in there, I know, somewhere within that watery smudge, and perhaps I can still find it.

An enduring languagelessness and the sound of water

After the dream of the tidal pools:

In the water, with you, what I whispered was, "This is almost unbearably beautiful...in contrast to so much else." And I’m thinking now of your skin on mine, underwater, so warm, where there are no words.

speaking to the deaf

my deaf uncle though, he speaks in tangles of flesh: kind of. hands that are naked and used for the purpose of speaking-- this just complicates things though. he had my aunt try and translate literally from the american sign language into english and twisted from her tongue came this and that, confounded strings of sentences: inelegant. he laughed at me, because he could see in my eyes a confusion that only his hands could unknot. once, while he was fixing a butane barbecue grill, his right arm caught fire in a freak accident and he had to be rushed to the hospital. his arms and shoulders were covered in second and third degree burns, and he was red with both arms elevated, like in the first moves of the YMCA dance.

and when i looked at him, into his eyes, i felt him say to me, "to know true silence, to live wordlessly we must endure pain not unlike this."

and his arms remind me of my baptism. if the water rises up, if the banks of the river recede, my uncle will notice. he squats beside the river, spits into the sand, and we both remember the day i came to know christ.

carried on the shoudlers of church men, their strange hands against my elbows and the back of my neck, the women clapping their hands, my brother, my friend in the white linen suit. there is the frail, breaking light, the blank undersides of leaves, the river rushing ahead, babbling. and there is the song, the singing voices loud under me, to the side, leading the way.

and my uncle in silence, a deep kind of languagelessness that years later, now even, i wish to endure with him.