Elegant and Palpable Variations

Just some notes.

In the second act [Cat on a Hot Tin Roof], the family members who have crowded into Brick's room disperse, and he and Gig Daddy are left alone together. During their fraught conversation, Big Daddy suggest, tentatively and with some trepidation, that his son's relationship with his best friends Skipper might not have been entirely normal. Brick responds with a swift disavowal but his detachment has been broken for the first time in the play. At this moment, the playwright himself bursts on the to the page with longest of the many italicized stage directions that exist between the lines of dialogue. 

The thing they're discussing, timidly and painfully on the side of Big Daddy, fiercely, violently on Brick's side, is the inadmissible thing that Skipper died to disavow between them. The fact that if it existed it had to be disavowed to 'keep face' in the world they lived in, may be at the heart of the 'mendacity' that Brick drinks to kill his disgust with. It may be the root of his collapse. Or maybe it is only a single manifestations of it, not even the most important. I'm trying to catch the true quality of experience in a group of people, that cloudy, flickering--fiercely charged!--interplay of live human beings in a thundercloud of common crisis. Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character, just as a great deal of mystery is left in the revelation of character in life, even one's own character to himself.

1.do you & me know each other, will we ever know each other, and ourselves
2. how social everything is, me in poetry land, how solitary, need to see the experience in a group of people.
3. big deal about Brick, the things that define me, no it might not be the thing that defines him ... is my ex-wife smothering my son Jack with a pillow after she's drugged him with sleeping pills at 12 years old because shes afraid that somewhere in the future he will suffer, she will suffer, and she wants to avoid that. `1 event maybe not even most the important.

Hunger, liquor, need, pieces, wrote. A sense was building in me that there was a hidden relationship between the two strategies of writing and drinking and that both had to do with a feeling that something precious had gone to pieces, a desire at once to mend it--to give it fitness and shape, in Cheever's phrase--and to deny that it was so.

Writing about Marguerite Duras, another alcoholic writer what liked to rake over the live coals of her own experience, Edmund White once observed:

"Perhaps most novels are an adjudication between the rival claims of daydreaming and memory, of wish-fulfillment and the repetition compulsion, Freud's term for the seemingly inexplicable reenactment of painful real-life experiences (he argued that we repeat them in order to gain mastery over them). And as with music, the more familiar the melody, the more elegant and palpably ingenious can be the variations." pg 171

imagination alcohol
fantasy alcohol
rewriting tragedy
preserving memory
gaining control over it

As to the role of alcohol in all this: imagine the mixed relief and terror of getting that sequence down. Imagine pressing the words, letter by letter, into the page. And imagine getting up, closing the door to your study and walking downstairs. What do you do, with that sudden space in your chest? You go to the liquor cabinet and you pour yourself a shot of the one thing no one can take from you: the nice good lovely gin, the nice good lovely rum. Click in a cube of ice. Lift the glass to your mouth. Tilt your head. Swallow it.

Hardly any wonder Recovery was unfinished. What a title. What an insane risk.

Excerpts from The Trip to Echo Spring, by Olivia Laing.

pg 173.

The Black Sun

The Black Sun

1.
I sit far back from the center where people walk
their strollers and throw frisbees. Depending on what
the wind is saying I sit in or out of the late afternoon sun.
A small pool beside me collects coins. My focal point
is a big round polished piece of black granite,
an obelisk rolled upon itself glazed and lumpy
like a chocolate donut. It must have arranged my chair.
I survey the orange and red flowers in rows,
the reservoir, the redwoods, and after each in turn
I’m returned to Noguchi's Black Sun.

2.
Back a second hotter day I take the same chair.
The fountain is raucous. I smell chlorine in cool
mist when the breeze shifts. A woman spreads
a towel on the green lawn. She rolls up her shorts
and kicks off her sandals. I guess she's near Jack’s
age if he were here. Broader views contain more
bare shoulders and frisbees and trees, but the black
stone fills the same still space within me. You ask
me to say goodbye to Jack--an act of kindness--
a happiness project. I know your request is rhetorical.
Shadows track the listing earth day by day around
the sun. Jack is far away and moves as the sun
moves. If he could hear me would I say goodbye?

3.
My chair is occupied when I finally get here.
A neighborly lecture on street side parking
soured my sour mood. The lawn has browned.
The sun not the sculpture selects my new chair.
I seek relief in shadows from other people.
Blocked by a tree what does the Black Sun say
now? Last night I had two dreams. Jack is young.
We are on an ocean liner. Jack falls over the side;
I jump in after. In the other he wants to explore
dark and narrow steps leading underground. I fear
the dank cramped space--no room to turn and find
the sky. Don't go far, I say. I fear I won’t follow
when his fears awaken and I hear Papa? And towels!
To keep him clean! He wants five—I let him take three.
In my goddamn dream! The Black Sun is a ridiculous
metaphor for what it is like for years to lose your son.
It is cold and dead. Through its aperture, I can’t see
Jack's ashes on Hurricane Ridge. There is a reason
why mountains appear blue and blur in the distance.
Color disperses, contrast softens, background bleeds
through, and blue, blue light comes faster.

Reality calls for a name, for words, but it is unbearable, and if it is touched, if it draws very close, the poet’s mouth cannot even utter a complaint of Job: all art proves to be nothing compared with action. Yet to embrace reality in such a manner that it is preserved in all its old tangle of good and evil, of despair and hope, is possible only thanks to distance, only by soaring above it--but this in turn seems then a moral treason. - Czeslaw Milosz's Nobel Lecture

For the User Experience

For the User Experience

The UX artist chose us

because we’re ripe and isolated.

(Or did she step our siblings flat

then shoot from below

to obscure the act?)

Our stems are green and pliable.

She posed us so we touch

as if to say when I am with you

there is nothing else.

Our petals are office orange

under windows blue.

I’m happy. If the wind rose

we'd lean apart. If our stamen

stirred, we’d pollinate.

We'd follow the sun.

Like wallpaper on desktops

our life in waiting still

does not exist. I can see

why you feel we need some

real time--where we would display

our affections privately.

You ask me about the weather.

It is all spring--sunny and warm.

Please don’t ask me to marry you,

or why our sepals, like mini-skirts,

hold the bloom in the best light.

The Sense of Grief

The Sense of Grief

                “The countless that love caused to lose their lives” – Dante Inferno, Canto V

Cinderella and other countless tales

that end happily thereafter

are forgivable lies I told my son

until through living he grew less naive.

When a playground bully first dimmed his light

or when he heard me call from the sidelines

Who wants the ball more!

he listened but refused the lesson.

A mother killed the son she loved

not in any abstract or metaphorical way.

I so share the sense of grief

I cling like a last winter’s leaf

twisting crazily this way and that

The first to die, losing, still believes.

Shipwrecked

Shipwrecked

Bone-tired, salt-sprayed for years

exhaustion washed longing from my body.

I listen for a siren

and welcome rocks.

I take the broken mast and scattered timber

and build a bridal suite

where some day a tree,

resilient of her marriage bed,

would growing, start to die.

This is a time, though stubborn,

when my spirit could be won over

and yet I drown again

at home where the ships all burn.

Short sermon on the mount

"God came; she saw; she conquered,” said Jesus. When asked about the meek and all the other blessed people, his mom wouldn't elaborate.

(Thanks to Anne Carson & Sierra Nelson & Colm Toibin.)

Assignation

John and I used this poem, among other props, to discuss my guilt. He says I am constantly surveying the landscape, the walls around me, the trees for mistakes I can make.

I say I'm looking for opportunities for guilt.

He says that sounds like something the old Woody Allen would say. John says stuff like that.

We are in the middle of a long debate about me the poet (the writer) and me. Why & when & what happens when I put on the writer's hat. "Assignation" is a good poem, he says, but it is clearly illustrates, too, that the problem isn't "love," or "poem," it is my focus on the word problem.

Assignation

The assignment this week
was to write a love poem.
     “I want to undress you with my words.”
I struggled, you see.
Maybe the word “poem” was the problem.

I want to meet your lips at my door.
I want to lead you inside
and leave us open to birds and the sun.
I want to pull you close
feel your hips against mine.
I want to slip my hand under your top
trace your shoulder blade with my thumb.
Maybe I’d pause, then, if I could,
and lift my face from our kiss.
But still I would stay close,
breathe your breath,
rest my forehead on yours and ask
     if you’d like a glass of wine
     if you’d like me read you from Howe, Gilbert, from Bishop
     if you’d like to lay down on the rug and let me undress you.
I watch your eyes watch mine asking me
     who is this guy?
     what does he want?
     why is he so quiet when we talk,
     when we make love?
I unclasp your bra and slip your shirt over your head.
I kiss your neck, kiss the strap off your shoulder.
You let your bra fall.
Maybe the word “love” is the problem.
I drop to my knees.
Maybe the problem is me.

Corona

Corona

Tambora erupts and smears chrome yellow all over.
The sun blurs behind storm clouds.
Yellow wind froths waves, and foam
tumbles across the expansive canvas.
Rocks are yellow. Cottage windows are yellow.
Palm trees are yellow because green costs too much.
Still beneath the horizon the moon is round
and palpable like pain. I lick its often shadowed face
which turns through every phase to me.
Near enough to block the sun, the moon
casts the jetting corona in yellow light.
I can’t disobey its blunt insistence over every thought.
Look! The sun hasn't abandoned you.



Thanks to E. Bishop's "Write it!" demand from One Art. And Sierra Nelson.

The Tree

The Tree

Open the door
and inside, the bible and prayer.
I hear all the words and sprout leaves.
I don’t want to bear more fruit
but I’m torn. Knowledge
of good is a good thing.
Outside the stained glass a bird flies
abandoning me
to join with others freed
east above the rolling hills of man.


My friend said Blakean: A Poison Tree. I'm happy Blake wrote that one.

To gather Paradise

I dwell in Possibility—
A fairer House than Prose—
More numerous of Windows—
Superior—for Doors—

Of Chambers as the Cedars—
Impregnable of Eye—
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky—

Of Visitors—the fairest—
For Occupation—This—
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise—

Emily Dickinson

On Friday night when I was wrapping up a draft of my sledgehammer poem, I told myself, "dammit I get it. I don’t need a metric like money to measure my worth--this poem, this feeling right now, is enough. I've already paid my dues. My only job is recovery and poetry. Showing up every day is the only thing I have to do."

But then on Saturday I wrote my therapist a note, but I didn't hit send; it was too pathetic. On Sunday I could have written it as well. On Friday afternoon I could have written it.

John every day I have these hours of real pain. Today it was after my poetry workshop. I know I'm going to a movie with a friend this afternoon. So Saturday is filled with positive activity. I should be resilient but I hurt so much.

On Sunday a different friend asked if I'd considered medication. (I have friends!)

This idea that I've already paid my dues, and showing up is enough, is abstract. I haven’t found a way to have it hold me, calm me, quiet my demons(?) (I’m afraid of that "demons" word because many psychiatrists/psychologists used it when describing Denise going crazy--her demons let loose like the dogs of war.)

In Dickinson's poem, I interpret her dwelling to be the land of poetry and her task to spread wide her narrow hands and gather paradise. When I read the poem, I have no idea if she is like me, knowing this only in an abstract way, or if she really feels it and her occupation provides her solace. In paradise, surely we feel no pain.

Sledgehammer

Sledgehammer

I confided to my friend another okcupid faux pas.
Still about Jack--
Still disclosing the crime that killed him.
She said it was manipulative.
That I had to stop it.
That I was selfish.
That I wanted to recruit new mourners to my side.
It prevented the woman, ever, from revealing herself.
I had to get past this she said.
So,
I’m walking down the street completely self-absorbed,
looking for a new spot to get my haircut.
Her lecture finds an appreciative audience
who sits for hours in coffee shops replaying her withering lines.
I'm barely aware I am not performing my daily observations
of Rome and her cats,
of a bruised banana peel
on a pedestal
supporting a massive granite column, and bam!
sledge hammer!
bam!
breaking through from the out there,
bam!
throwing me up against the squad car,
bam!
kicking my legs apart.
cuffing my dithering thoughts behind my back.
See the stop sign, bam!
See the white enameled crosswalk, bam!
See silhouetted branches
like a nest of snakes
against the mottled woolen sky!
See the web of hemorrhaged capillaries
blossom on her face our first mother's day.

Stop and smell the roses.

as if they were carved in latin

Dammit Stop and Smell the Roses!

I'd been hearing this advice from various quarters (The Joy of Living, John, my Saturday poetry workshop even gave us homework to observe daily the world around us) yet yesterday I could still be walking downtown completely self-absorbed. Until this.

the noisy set ... the martyrs call the world

Towards the end of our session, John miraculously pulled these lines out of his mind, recalled from his college days, about the labor of poetry:

Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’

We were talking about how writing poetry makes me happy. When I'm making a poem, I allow myself to be free of judgment, of yardsticks, of rules of right and wrong.

With poetry, I am completely happy if in one day I only improve a poem by 1 word. Or, quoting Oscar Wilde, "I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."

With poetry, I don’t have expectations or place demands on myself for success. I know there is no money. I’m not looking for acclaim. Yes, I’m happy to workshop a poem ... happy to hear what readers think … but that criticism doesn't feel like I’m being scolded by the “noisy set of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen, the martyrs call the world.”  Or like feeling scolded by my parents if I get something wrong.

With poetry, autobiography and fiction become irrelevant. Truth doesn't fit neatly between the gold-leafed pages of a bible.

With poetry, life is slow, no clock is ticking. With poetry, I can spend time watching leaves move branches around.

There is something about writing a poem that is the same as being around children. It is, in part, that when doing both I don't feel judged.

So I had a good cry. It was about Jack and Libby of course, And how I feel like a good daddy when I pick up my four year old friend. He asked if I could not find a way to make a relationship with someone, the way I would make a poem.

I have to get over feeling judged by the world, feeling guilty for letting people, friends, lovers … down … for not living up to the task of life.

John started our session by quoting a friend. The friend's last words were that he’d been listening to people all his life. John interpreted that to mean, listening to the friend's very demanding mother. My mother was demanding. And as I type this I realize she wasn’t just demanding of me, I watched her, all the time, be demanding of her husband … defining in part the father and soulmate I should become. I could not live up to her measure of being a good man. I tried. I tried so hard. Came so close. Denied so much in reaching for that. (My mother would disagree. She would say I had. I was a good man. She would console me, and I wouldn't hear her.)

So here’s Yeats poem on poetry, and the fall of man that seems to get in the way (makes hard work of) love.

Adam's Curse
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’
                                          And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There’s many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know—
Although they do not talk of it at school—
That we must labour to be beautiful.’
I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’
We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

memorize a poem homework

I committed to Stephen Mitchell's translation of Rilke's:

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: from here there is no place
that does not see you. You much change your life.

Short talk on happiness

According to Yongey Mingyur, who quotes other Rinpoches authoritatively, emptiness is absolute and pregnant with infinite possibilities. He writes that happiness is possibility. That achieving nothing, ever, even a single line of poetry, makes you happy.

(Thanks to Anne Carson & Sierra Nelson & Candy Shue.)

A first draft

the happiness project

my tears run all over the linoleum floor

they spill over thresholds and window sills

and seep through cracks to the basement below

all griefs boiling

dissolving one into another

fire burn cauldron bubble

over heat stainless steel

unbonds

a bicycle bell,
chrome grill and trim find a sky blue cutlass to accessorize.

iron? thumping the line flat with sweet smelling starch.

and carbon, graphite--this poem.

a break-up done well, does that.

stainless steel doesn’t crack, cannot grow.

so how?

is it time passing?

is it a project? filling your life with friends and hiking and sailing lessons?

is it exercise and a rose garden?

daily meditation? a season of therapy?

is it joining okcupid

answering questions

messaging strangers

then coffee chemistry and falling in love

again?

tasting her breath? wine on her lips? the salt inside her thigh?

i think it is space

only

the possibility

between diffused atoms

a stance of mere willingness

(Prompted by the rune Inguz and Richard Ford's alloyed with loss.)

CBT

I had a good session with John on Tuesday. 2 good cries about Jack. "You were happy when you were with Jack. You loved Jack."

I am the main character in the Depression or Grief movie playing inside my head. When the main character is outside me, my child or my date, or an object like a soccer ball which I can step up and intercept, those movies are happy (or more likely to be happy I assume).

When I'm the main character, the movie is narcissistic, overflowing with self-consciousness.

John doesn't have a problem with my writing, per se, if I'm describing something outside me. But he is concerned when I write about myself. (Which is pretty damning since I write poetry and memoir. And these blog posts.)

I'm feeling enough, John said, I need to think my way out of the feelings--hence Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. By examining my thoughts, stop the movie (the feelings) before it starts.

This is where John's advice touches something new. I always thought my problem was I wasn't emotional enough. Whether I suppressing emotions, absorbing emotions, not expressing my emotions ... for the last few years I thought my work was emotional. I'm not sure John is contradicting this, but he says start with my thoughts. Notice my depressive pattern. When I start beating myself up, second guessing all the decisions I made with L, or start directing some anger at L, I should look at my thought and question it. What data do I have to support the thought? John used the word "data."

It seems consistent with mindfulness meditation. Stepping back from my thoughts and seeing where they come from.

Another tangent to our conversation was ... if something goes wrong, I fall back on my "good guy defense." I am a good person because I'm a gentleman, a boy scout. I follow the rules. I take out the trash. I pay my debts. I give up my seat on the bus. Believing I'm good, I battle the depression, the bad thoughts & feelings. I can hide there, safe, within the rules.

The Writing Part

Part of this Happiness Project is writing. I started that this morning. I have a Prologue and a Chapter 1 completely in mind--they could almost write themselves.

Prologue -- How did I get here? I've had agency. I've made the decisions.

I left my friends, my tennis and soccer buddies in New Jersey and moved to Seattle. I left a vibrant poetry scene in New York (and New Jersey--Princeton, Drew, Patterson). I chose a writer's life of solitude. I don't have a job--so I miss that social outlet and income. I live on the portion of my pension that survived the divorce. I moved 3000 miles away from my daughter. I recently broke off a relationship with a wonderful woman and am still deeply grieving Jack. Sackcloth and ashes. A life of denial.

Chapter 1 -- Denouement. I finally understand what "falling action" means. If the climax was the break-up, the denouement was the swarm of emotions engulfing me as I began to realize what I had done, what I had lost. I'd been merely surviving. I wasn't trying to make a life together with L. What doesn't grow, dies. I arrogantly perform euthanasia.

But I'm stuck. I'm full of doubts--with not a a single original one among them.

• In writing about myself, I write about others. I don't want to. I don't want to create caricatures. I don't want to "use" my friends.
• I doubt my skill. Can I write a description? Could I describe L to you?
• Is it fair to anyone new I meet, that they might provide content for this story?
• Is it fair to me? Can I have any hope of success in my project, if I'm keeping my writerly remove from the action?
• Is my recovery story of  any interest to anyone?

Moving forward is the thing. I have to just write. The goal here is to be happy--not to produce a book. I need a project. To be happy, I have to be working towards something. Happiness comes from pleasure but also from meaning and accomplishment. If at the end, the project doesn't work as a book. Fine. Maybe even a relief.

Chapter 1 is too fresh and painful. When I was writing Dear Denise, I constantly heard the advice that I was too close to the subject. "Maybe it would be better, Bill, if you let time pass and gain perspective." So I could choose to be kind to myself, and put this chapter aside. Some would argue it would make for a better book. But what if Chapter 1 part of the work I need to do? What if I can't get to happy unless I finish Chapter 1? I can rewrite later with perspective.

PS. I reviewed this post with my therapist John. I wanted to make sure I was respectful. His reaction was that the post was fine though he didn't understand this world of social media and blogging ... in fact it repelled him. He had concerns, though, about my abstracted, writerly self. That perhaps adopting a writer's personae got in the way of truly meeting people--being in the moment with them. Maybe it was the same thing Grace was saying in Dear Denise, when she said that my letters to Denise were a shield.

This is an old familiar concern of mine. I told John that he was finally getting me.

Our relationship is strong and I trust him. Maybe he is able, now, to help.

Matt Killingsworth on Mind Wandering

Be Here Now!

Live in the Moment!

Killingsworth has some data to back that up. From moment to moment experiences in real lives.

At minute 6 of this 10 minute 2012 TED talk, he starts presenting results. When our minds wander, when my mind wanders, it does often find my worries, anxieties and regrets. On average our minds wander 47% of the time, and even during sex, our minds wander 10% of the time.

The good news for me is that for reading and writing, my mind is with the words on the page. Yes I can drift when I read, but for the most part reading reins me back to the moment. Last night I woke almost every hour--I have my anxieties right now--but to calm myself, and to get myself back ready for sleep--I picked up David Shafer's Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

Similarly I love my Sunday morning pick-up soccer with the guys. Yes, I can start wandering--beating myself up for a stupid pass or wondering what am I going to do at the Seahawks party at my ex-girl friend's ex's house. But a forward runs at me and the thrill of the game takes back over.

And now Ray LaMontagne, and "Be Here Now."

My friend sent me this clip early in our relationship. She was right. She was always trying to get me there until we stopped.

Footnote: Garner is right, WTF is a "paranoid, sarcastic, and clattering pop-thriller."