Yesterday, we took Maria to the vet for her weekly Cerenia shot. As we talked with the vet, she sat in my lap, ears up like tents. Not a word could she know, yet alert she listened, calmly, taking in every wave of sound. When we left, I wondered who had heard more.
++++++
I listen to a lot of music. Same songs over and over again. Some with more than a hundred plays. But I couldn't tell you more than a phrase of a lyric, more than a few words here and there, and sometimes not even the title.
++++++
On those occasions where I felt compelled to look up lyrics, sometimes, but not always, something diminished, as if as the words moved forward, something other, something more beautiful perhaps more natural moved back silently
++++++
From an early age I developed a highly intuitive sense of tone and mood, the texture of a look, a cough, of foot on floor. I see in this way, not so much with eye but with the scent of movement, that truthful flow around boulders needed to navigate the stream, or as I mistakenly typed: the screams
++++++
We have four dogs but only Maria comes upstairs and lies next to my chair only occasionally moving from one spot to another.
As I rose to return my coffee I stepped upon a warm spot on the carpet, warm as fresh piss, which was my first thought. Instead, it was where she had just moved, her warmth still in the fibers and now upon my foot.
Reach any lesson you want. I just know it felt good, to feel that warmth, to think of how even the carpet knows our touch and I think of the room, and when I leave, what another steps into, in my absence. Do I leave a warmth?
They drank coffee in bed and read poems. Each line was held and weighed, each verb measured twice, each noun fitted for plate, poked for weakness, then set aside in a pile. He read then she read. Then they read again, standing, to see if in standing the poem became something different. And it did. So they took the words and threw them into the air, swirled them as water between fingers, drank of their sweet adjectives and those little cousin adverbs. And they did this all day long until candles took them to supper, to bed, to the readings of night, of poems that breathed as they breathed, wore mood as the sky did clouds, and what was form and what was function and what flew and what walked mattered not, as plot mattered not, as the bird cares not, knows not of flight but for the flying; and her head on his shoulder, and his lips upon the page and the rustle of clean sheets was all and none and yet more than all and less than none as the vessel before and after port. And with the last flickers, sleep came, ink and paper staining cloth and fingers, as dogs too in the bed and on the floor and in this way their days became their nights as warmth beget warmth under the roof, under the sky, to the sound of night and the stream and somewhere, never seen, an owl.
When I was a small boy, I had one recurrent dream, a vivid dream, almost a waking dream such embedded in my memory the cold sweat I experienced in remembrance, less then ten years of age, haunted as if I had transgressed in some past life. Each time the same. I was in an army. Sometimes a modern one, sometimes not. Always I was away from the battle, sometimes alone, sometimes with one or two others. I had, in every case, run away. I had, in the waking, a dread, from the dreaming, that the enemy was coming, marching, that they might or might not find me, the war ongoing, and that I could not face them, that I must run. And even to this day, I feel the shame I felt then, the roots of a coward within me as I did as a child, as I do today. So don't befriend me. I will only disappoint you and when you most need me, I won't be there. I'm telling you now. This is how it is. This is how it will be. And nothing you can say or do can change what is, what was, what is wired to be. To run away, to be alone, to know only of the trees and birds and blue sky, to be somewhere, some place untouchable, uncomplicated, unencumbered of the web of expectation, to float upon the imagination all things ethereal, ephemeral, to lie in pace, requiescat, only the song of the long blade dancing in my ear and the cold stone of heads come stop upon this ground, laden never more with should's baggage, that thin vizard of the ignorant, the bovine of life, feeding upon the living as they shat not flowers.
From the bed and sheets still warm, before arcadian song and flushed horizon, when he sits upright and breaths the waking kitchen a rectangle of silvered basin her silken curves rising in mauve morning pastels. Water falls from pewter faucet arching rain melodious sustained, kin to the purling stream outside the panes just beyond the trees. More than soothing susurrations, than the mimic of nature bought indoors; braided triceps catching light twined dunes of shadow drawn taut before release. Her hair hung with slight curl of waterfall fallen a splashing coda in wavering bars glinting at times shimmering. His breath came as waves serene insouciant, as from a distance, his heart's rhythmical syncopation, as other; as other than himself nuanced not a woman standing tending dishes washing glasses bringing order her seafaring signature upon the cottage the kitchen, her scent fragrant as apian meadows: in soul's accord not principle, of lyric not line, to hallowed eye beyond shoulder's graceful curve her diminutive tilt and moony roundness so recent of sheets still warmed. Finished and spigot closed quiet her feet bless the floor till whole she fills the rustic frame and smile perceives of dewy sunrise upon golden lips honeyed in suckle a flooding warmth of flesh eclipsed in pulse's coursing stream.
There is a gap between how I see myself and how I have been described or seen by others. I am as aware of this gap as one standing before an unbridged river. And what flows swiftly,
(scares the hell out of me and I wonder how long, if forever, I will remain on my side of the darkness, forever fearful to breach the gap, sew the wound, to wear my persona whole against the winds of winter.)
++++++
I am reading Donald Hall's Without, written to and for his wife, who died in 1995. At the end of each poem I am startled with a heavy sigh, as if each poem needs the breath of applause. These poems are simplistic masterpieces, drawn from the duration of her illness (leukemia) to death (aged 47) and the year beyond; one fills compelled to read and reread and read again, his thoughts so clear, so plaintive without being plaintive. And the question arises, Why? Why does death create this backdrop to living, to life, to feeling what needs to be felt? As if we need move closer and closer to the fire to feel its heat.
To quote:
Why were they not contented, four months ago, because Jane did not have leukemia? A year hence, would the question why he was not contented now? Therefore he was contented.
(Donald Hall was Poet Laureate of the United States in 2006; Jane Kenyon was a poet in her own right. They were married for twenty some-odd years)
++++++
I'm upstairs. It's raining again and I'm reading Without. Reading of death, which makes me think of my own to come, as it will, no matter what I eat, how I exercise, or where I live. And I'm thinking of the rain. Thinking of how it rained before there ever was a me; and how it will rain long after I am gone. And maybe, somewhere hence, some ratio of my blood will sit and wonder if what they hear is what I heard, of that melodious tapping. I find some peace in that.
++++++
I don't believe in biography. I know the methods of history. Spent the better part of five years of my life apprenticed to the trade. And all the time, a rather singular question haunted me right out of the profession, namely, based on everything I leave behind and everyone who ever knew me, what would a biography of my own life look like? And this is when I start laughing, knowing the most important primary source material doesn't exist; knowing even those closest to me, know so little of me; knowing whatever could be written would only be a shadow of a shell; knowing even how little I know myself about what I did and to get into even murkier water, why I did any of the things I did. Over time even my own stories, the ones I tell myself, have changed.
About this time I developed an interest in fiction, which has only grown stronger. Fiction has a freedom that non-fiction does not. I like those wings.
++++++
The above notwithstanding, I love reading biographies.
Ariel gathered her toys. She did not talk; did not hum. In a line she placed them from smallest to largest, and where the skirt of a doll needed straightening, she straighten it. Nothing that was not a toy was present. When finished she stood before the line and with finger outstretched, counted left to right and then right to left, her eyes moving between objects deliberately. Then she took her hands and held them such to bookend the line, such that all was between them, such to hold the view in her hands. When this was done and only when done, done like the last word written, done like the turning of the back, she called for her father; not loudly, not with the comm but as if he were just a few feet away. Her face held no expression. She stood not unlike the dolls that sat; and when John arrived, this is what he saw and for the longest time, standing just inside the door, he watched.
It was always better in natural light. Nothing affected. No artifice to the day or the care given. Nor was anything added. No words. No makeup. Just the work. In full attention. And it was this, her eyes full on him and only him, her hands full of this moment and only this moment, where flesh met flesh and only the smell of cotton, the weave of other hands to witness her hands, caring, loving, in the light of the window, upon the bed and hair and thigh, upon the quilt and sheets and pillows.
Her movements he watched, movement unlike the start and stop of words, movement belying any concatenation, or structure or anything else performed or acted or built. She moved without beginning or end, without comma or period, continuous as wind, sometimes over the plain, sometimes through the narrow valley, every movement integral, a righteous integrity, the wholeness of unadulterated milk, of butter churned by hand, before wood, upon a three-legged stool.
With each touch of her tongue, he died to the glistening spear. With each inhale of breath she took him within and who was glass and who was wine ceased to hold meaning. Somewhere outside were birds; and a stream; and rocks covered in snow.
I hated my father from that moment forward. And I would guess he never knew. Not then, not ten years later, not even on his death bed. And as I stood watching him die, that unrepentant bastard, I thought of those black fields, of stubble burned to clear the land, to prepare winter soil for spring, of the stubborn pony and the saddle not secured, of the silly red cowboy hat my mother had smilingly placed on my head along with the black cowboy boots and pearly buttoned collared shirt one wouldn't wear outside of a rodeo. The images exist not as movie, but as photograph; and I can hear the click of the shutter as each moment was captured in that part of my brain quarantined for fear, where I was caught between the yell of father and the bray of horse, for in my mind, the pony was a horse. And there I was, unable to please man or beast, caught, as if the two were at war and I was between them, pulled in their struggle, torn, as I would come to see, on those ashen grounds, the taste in my mouth the way grass would be, in later years, on the gridiron.
++++++
I watch people living their lives and I know, like me, like everyone before them, they will die and all they have will be dispersed, all they've done forgotten, their memory as lost as a grain of sand tossed back onto the beach. And so I ask myself, what is this, what is this life?
++++++
There is not a day that goes by that I do not think the unthinkable. There is no effort to do so, the thought simply bubbles up, usually when in bed, both before sleep and before waking. It comes as a faceless voice and I simply have to say this: it is hard as hell to do anything with that voice.
++++++
I long for silence, which is really not accurate. I long for the absence of all things human. Not forever, but just long enough to heal. And I wonder at the very statement, at the view of life as campaign, as battle, as conflict, of myself as beaten and scarred, wounded and less of what I once was when sun was sun and rain was rain and I knew the difference between the two.
++++++
Along with that voice are ghosts. Events of more than thirty years ago, of moments not more than a sentence long, reemerging, roots long since forgotten having grown through the decades, stronger, I fear, than my ability to uproot them. These memories live as if a life of their own or perhaps as if held by another hand and played now, a flanking maneuver, attacking with strength, a quiet fury, as the boot kicked into the ribs or the fist punched into the gut under a scrum of helmeted young bodies.
++++++
I hear voices from afar. Not many. Not often. But I hear them in the way one drifting out to sea hears voices from the beach, in the way that one realizes, then, at that moment, the futility of words carried on the wind of breath not one's own.
++++++
I wake to coffee each day. And each day the same--I drink till my cup grows cold. That last sip, always cold.
++++++
Maria lies beside my desk, asleep in the light of the window. Her head is curled into her ribs, her neck stretched beyond what seems reasonable. I watch her whole body pull life from the air, expanding and contracting. I find her quiet rhythm hypnotizing. Like watching a baby sleep.
++++++
My father did the best he could. I really have no doubt. And this is where the sadness lives, in that thought, in the sodden reality of that idea, of how his blood courses within me and from some slicing of my own life, I walk down a path he must have known, only this time, I walk alone, to the back pasture, where once the two of us walked, mainly in silence. I never knew what he was thinking except for those times the barrel of my rifle pointed into the air rather than the ground. I was too young to know of accidents that could not be undone. I know them now. But he is gone and the conversations between equals exist only in my mind.
He took her to the mountains, in autumn, to a cave of a cottage amidst the ducats of fall. Where before was stone, now only wood, old timber, worn in time of hand and foot, warm in history, of stories before fire and food. Everywhere, quilts, stitched by hand, of natural fiber, soft as fledged feather or early untrod snow, falling, tip-toeing from quiet skies. She would wake to flue and fire and breakfast on a tray delivered in flannel with a smile. All before the mist was gone while still the chill of night kept toes under cover. Years later, she often said, those sounds, of his feet on the hardwood floor, the opening of the flue, the crackling of fire, of pans and pots in the kitchen, of the heavy door opening on iron hinges; these sounds she would say, were the verse before the verse. Each sound, as if alive, in tune, communicating an action, creating a space as if hands reaching forth and pulling back the curtains of time where even clocks seemed to tick slower, bowing to breath to mark the moments, to acknowledge and cede the stage to life, to love, to the wonder of two people revolving around the axis of mystery.
And when breakfast was taken and trays set aside, when sunlight shown through laden firs, through windows pane-ing crosses upon their bed, when bejeweled snow sparkled of day waking, then, knees bent to table, he would take pen to parchment, her head on his shoulder, eyes closed, listening to the ink, the nib, that warmness of creation and she would begin to breathe as she did at night when her hands hung his arms like vines round boughs and his eyes were as moons on fire and his hair askance in homage to desire. The sound of his pen, of paper absorbing the essence of his mind, of loops and dashes and periods and of spaces too, as if inhaling before again plunging into verb and standing upon nouns; and in this way he made love to her before he made love to her and by Janus she struggled to explain how one was different from the other.
After some time, as billowed sail she heard paper snap, vellum taut in hand, and the familiar clack of pen put to rest on the night table. As if to brace for the breath to come, of the reading, his soul breathing, her arms tighten around his torso, hair flowing over his shoulder, down his back and over his cold erect nipple. Then words came, slowly at first. Keeping her ear to his chest, she listened to verse and to heart, to the expanding of his lungs, to the rise and fall of each line, each rhyme, to the melody that surpassed language, in the way of food, of water, of the touch of a hand on fevered head or lips on love long lost returned, recovered, embraced and multiplied. Words became something other, perhaps a pulse, a sigh, some hidden communication from some hidden place beautiful, some oasis within his cartography undiscovered. Taking his left hand, she laced her fingers into his and squeezed warmth between them as the gentle humid waves of her breath rolled across his chest, as the dancing of the day to come, in her mind.
Some days every breath is gray nothing holds color everything cold and I think of my grandfather of stone and the big oaks of south Louisiana an anger rising vague desultory burning sunspots everywhere all at once whole as hunger consuming and I think of heaven a place I don't believe in not at all and I wish I did wish I could wish I had my ticket punched full paid ready to go now because I do believe in hell absolutely I do why? because I live it every fucking day
++++++
Maria is skin and bones with a water bottle belly. She, like her father a few years before, comes upstairs and lies all day next to my desk. Mainly, in the sunlight of my window, looking more like beached whale than dog. And I'll be damn if in her stiff tail that still wags and her glassy eyes that still long and that weak voice that still barks that I wonder who is keeping whom alive
++++++
Going rake leaves. What was golden and red and orange is now brown. Gnarled, decrepit oaken fingers supine and they appear to be reaching toward sky or bough I can't tell but I sense not peace not rest as if they know there is still work to be done that they are still a burden still to be disposed
++++++
There was talk words escaping as wind swings an iron gate, lots of noise not much else.
++++++
It comes like waves how else to explain it not like gentle shores lapped not with the warmth of southern waters but like the North Sea in winter against the bow relentless
this place is no place yet every place all at once
it sucks mercy from the air bloats the belly with dread grows like roots between the ribs
a pregnant stress alive kicking expanding
in me but not of me something other feeding
you don't want this this demon child this waif that comes not on the heels of a gray day
it prefers the clear sky and temperate clime as if to slap the hope from one's furrowed brow
this is when it comes on a nice day a good day as if to say Look not even the gifts of heaven of God himself can save you
and as the breeze plays havoc with the leaves (one might be trying to rake) there is the sound not unlike laughter or little feet scurrying across the lawn
++++++
Some days (most days) every breath is gray (viscid cobweb breath) nothing holds color (blanched and bled) everything cold (of life) and I think (of forest darkling) of my grandfather (neuronic fires extinguished) of stone (plumes of withered wicks) and the big oaks (casting eidolons) of south Louisiana (consumed in night) an anger rising (graveyard cold) vague (and casket black)
What she was in my hands, and what she is now, two different things.
But--
No buts. We could take her apart. Deconstruct her. Lay out all the pieces and examine them in the closest detail. Then lovingly put her back together. And still, Goldie is something other.
I don't understand.
Then work harder.
But--
No more questions!
"You know Von, I don't know to this day if he was teaching or just angry. And I'm not sure why it bothers me, all these years later that I don't know."
"Why do you suppose?"
"I don't know. Perhaps because I think he was angry. With me. At me. And, on certain days, I can't carry the thought."
I keep asking myself one question. Over and over. What is a poem? To what purpose? You see, since I've been unemployed for close to eight months now, my view of all things has changed. I no longer have the luxury of thinking about luxuries and even the smallest purchase is weighed against its equivalent victual. To the life I knew, the feeling is akin to standing on a dock and watching a great ocean liner leave on holiday, the band is playing, streamers in the air, the languid push signaled by horn, and there you are, feet planted, waving goodbye to a life you used to have, a life your friends still have. And so, the poem? I can't eat it. I can't turn my lamp on with it. It won't protect me from the rain or put a book in my son's backpack. So why do I care to read and write? What is this need that sits alongside hunger and thirst, and, if I am honest, pride and embarrassment, depression and humiliation. I don't know the answer, which makes me smile because it fits the rest of my wardrobe--the longing and need of things not needed that tease me as the whore who dances before my eye but beyond my reach.
++++++
There are days I want to rake leaves as if there were treasure and I were digging; and somehow the self that walked back into the house would be different than the self that walked out, with amatory need, to lade refuse, the hair of a tree into the product of a tree, to put on the curb with no sense of irony, dumb as {censored} stone.
++++++
I see people smiling and I wonder what language they speak; I wonder why we never spoke that language while growing up; I wonder why I struggle so to learn it now. I swear it looks like a foreign language to me; and I don't know how people do it, so many, so naturally. I really do find smiles wonderful, in the way of a fan watching an athlete do things he can't do. And for the life of me, and I've thought on this often, I cannot comprehend or understand why smiling seems so hard, for me, why, when I do smile, the thought is never far from my mind, that somewhere, somehow, someone is about to slap that silly grin from my face.
++++++
The head of a horse is bigger than it looks. As too the eye (look for yourself if you don't believe me). And I wonder if the larger eye is like a larger lens, if it sees more, sees with greater detail and clarity and in the seeing, imagines a different world where a warm day and a field of grass is all that is needed, and even, perhaps, all that is wanted.
++++++
I look upon my kitchen counter and wonder at the fruit--a couple apples, a handful of oranges and one ripening avocado sitting off to itself--I wonder of their fate, sitting as if on death's row, having been plucked from life, but now waiting, not for firing squad or even burial, but to be eaten, devoured, consumed with the most horrible suckling sounds of teeth and lips and tongue upon their ripe, plump flesh. So don't ever ask me why I don't smile in the kitchen. Life has been given so that we might live. I don't see anything funny about it, my skin sunburned from the day's harvest, about as red as the apple in my hand.
We have again entered that time of no mosquitoes among a bounty of leaves yet harvested. The sky, and I don't know the science of it, but the sky is more blue, a robust blue, especially today without clouds, especially today against the golden trees of October. There is nothing pale about the sky, or in my mind, the day, a day warming with the hour, of sun in low arc across the southern heavens and all the neighbors busy at work, leaving me alone, in that wonderful stillness of wind carrying only the sound of itself. I'm eating home cooked, steel cut, Irish oatmeal. It feels of Fall on the tongue, and as I chew, I imagine cows and their pace and the peace I layer upon them in my imagination. The God's honest truth is, I don't want to trade this for work. I want to breathe poesy as I breath this day and wonder on what it all means and then I begin to think it means nothing of what is written, for what is written by critics, well, I can't imagine was meant in the act of creation. I'm speaking mainly of Keats's To Autumn. Perhaps he was conscious of each nut and bolt, of every turn of the wrist. But something I can't explain or define, something just over the edge of my ability to articulate, tells me otherwise, tells me that what he wrote to Reynolds,* of the sight of autumn upon the stubble, was simply the unlocking of a flow that did what flow does, which is to engage something beyond conscious thought, to travel some unexplored path, jotting sights and sounds in the natural progression as quickly as the hand could move. And I think, if we take him at his word, we don't try to work it out, for it was never worked in. So I'm going back outside to breathe and watch the leaves fall in ones and twos, just watch them twirl to join the others in the cool silence of a weekday morning. And if I am able, to enjoy the experience without any ideas about it.
*Keats described the feeling behind its composition in a letter to his friend Reynolds, 'Somehow a stubble plain looks warm - in the same way that some pictures look warm - this struck me so much in my sunday's[sic] walk that I composed upon it.'
Maria was ill, belly swollen to make her gait more turtle than canine. The dis-ease was hard to watch, her hairless undercarriage pregnant with some vague pathology, not life; her legs but sticks of sinew and from time to time they would wobble and she would fall the way a horse falls on its hind quarter, head held high, unbelieving, defiant, terrified in the course, the coursing, of life flowing still; and then that disconnect between the course of body and the machinations of mind as if the spirit itself could be wrought and rendered, sundered before tears old as these many days, cold as the fading of light into autumn night.
What do we do she said. We watch, he replied. We watch with all our attention. This is what he said. So they sat, just the two of them as their little dog waggled into the yard, taking a few steps, turning to look back, then taking a few more steps. From time to time she would lift her nose to the wind and her ears would rise. The night was still, cloudless, and from a distance her tawny coat looked silver, almost a mist among the grasses, and with each wobble forth, she grew more ghostlike, a fading waif in the soft dying light, just a smudge; or was it the tears; when she came running back, not ready yet, not knowing she wasn't suppose to still be, as if within her some great battle waged between the heart and the disease, as if within her eyes, if one looked close enough, if one tilled ear toward, all that had ever been fought, was engaged now, under the balding straggle of four point one pounds.
When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charact’ry, Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour! That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
________
Bright Star: Official Trailer: Written and directed by Academy Award winner Jane Campion, Bright Star is a riveting drama based on the three-year romance between 19th century poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, which was cut short by Keats untimely death at age 25. Ben Whishaw (The International, Im Not There) and Abbie Cornish (Stop-Loss, Elizabeth: The Golden Age) star as Keats and Brawne, respectively. The film is co-produced by Campion, Jan Chapman, and Caroline Hewitt.
________
My observations as posted a few days ago, reposted here for housekeeping:
10.10.09
When I walked out of the theatre, I felt other than before. Autumn cool, ground wet but not raining, and overcast, there was a certain lightness of mind, of decluttering, a scrubbing. Each step seemed a thing in and of itself, like the riding of a horse, a palpable sense of separation between the walking and the walker. Also the looking, as if through different eyes; occasioned of an equanimity tinged in fear, of something good, right, justified yet fleeting. Breath, too, the breath of morning in midday, a gentle rising and falling to match the gait.
How does one describe the indescribable. To be changed and to know of the changing, a realignment, a tectonic shifting of soul and mind and even body--a lightness such as the unshouldering of a heavy coat, where everything, every step, lifts again in peaceful joy, neither frown nor smile burdened. And above all, a calm, the kind after a long, hard cry, when resistance gives way, is released into the wind, carried somewhere, away.
I could write of the movie, the score, the acting, the cinematography. But everything I would say would pale the art as words always dilute their object. But I will say this, there are moments, devastating moments, when what is real and what is affected become confused, where one loses the sense of stage and in its place, a witnessing. Of what, I'm not sure. Yet, one knows upon the moment, of something other.
This movie is not like other movies. I can think of no higher praise.
______
Update: 10.14.09
Watched Bright Star again. On the first view, there were two facets flawed I thought: a bit slow at times and a bit blocky. As I sat before the second viewing, I anticipated an exaggeration such that the movie would seem interminably long and blocky and that I risked everything I had experienced on the first view, including the tears still not unfelt.
Two hours later, walking again into a gray afternoon, the feelings of before were as they were, only deeper. Where before there was the slowness, on second viewing, a sense that everything was moving too fast; and where before there was the gap between scenes, on second viewing I discovered a fading, a melting, an emotional thread weaved such to make one flower within a field blend to color the entire landscape whole. And the tears I feared would fall not upon the artifice of actor viewed not quite thrice, I found instead the well contained more water than the eye could bear.
And here is what is insane. I would gladly go again, tonight, to pay and to watch, again.
________
Update: 10.17.09
Viewed the movie a third time. Here are a few observations:
-Paul Schneider is simply superb -Ben Whishaw's performance must be seen more than once to be appreciated. He does more with less than any actor in recent memory -with sound and a sparse soundtrack, the movie has a texture, as if of time past and there is with this texture the sense of a different pace, movement, of the different time it was. The movie, as such, will frustrate many modern viewers -the more you know of the history, and the poetry/letters, the more depth in the viewing; and admiration for Jane's script--this is fine historical filmmaking -even with a third viewing, there were still tears -even in the third viewing, the two hours slipped by too quickly -even still, on pain of divorce, I'd pay to see the movie a fourth time
Em placed the note down and quietly tip-toed to her side of the bed. Pulling back the covers, she discovered, neatly tucked partly under her pillow, an envelope. Quickly she opened it:
You once asked, How shall I read? I've never known how to answer until this night and fearing not how to say what I know to be said, I have retreated to this note.
Watch the movement of nib on parchment. Listen to it as if vellum were flesh and each stroke a whip upon word. But watch loop and line, each syllable coming of life as the ticking clock ticks our hearts into breath. Watch the flicker of candle casting warm glow and the dipping of gold into the well, drinking the pool from nothingness into something. And here, upon this scene, this mystery of creation, of empyreal quill giving life beyond once it had and the mind turning, as the ticking, as if a great relief were excised, as if the spilling of ink were a letting of blood and upon the lamb were scored the very words divine. Then take this turning and hold forth thy diction to the window, to the pace of twilight before the consumption of wood and the first shivering draught of night.
Love,
Trev
Em sighed, placing the note back into the envelope, closing it with a kiss. As the note, her legs slipped into the opening of the sheets and found their place in the bent of his knee, her arm riding the slow rising of his sleeping torso and there, upon the nape she did breathe the two of them into, as he said, the draught of the night.
To talk of it is to be beside it, to speak of the ocean rather than swim the water. And those that speak of these things, speak from the shore, they speak from the mind, from the distance of this and that, here and there, of the apple held, not eaten. This is what Papa said.
But--
Shhhhhh. No talking.
So we sat. And I imagine how a strange sight it must have been to Grand, to look upon the beach and to see the two of us sitting, rounded backs and elbows perched on bent knees. I remember the wind in my hair and the sand between my toes, the glittering ocean and the warm lapping water tickling my feet as if a game of touch. The longer we sat, and he must have known this, but the longer we sat without speaking, as sun accumulated upon our faces, as birds came and went of wing and foot, as the waters opened and dolphins leaped before healing back into memory, even as the sun's arc ticked passed noon, he must have known I would settle as sediment in a jar, that my waters would clear, that I would see as if I were the ocean and that then I would know, the experience broken on the waves of Grand's voice, the experience beyond, as he had said, words, that I would know as we walked up the path, back to the Villa, to lunch prepared. I think it was his smile and the way he held his hands behind his back and walked with his head down, just smiling; and I felt a warmth as if that smile were the sun and I thought, perhaps it was.
Trev had fallen asleep, sheets stained of pen, parchment held loosely in hand. Em carefully tucked his pillow under his head, pulled the sheets upon his shoulder and with his note in her hand, began to read:
I was to gather upon cobbles, my feet; and old brick, my shoulders. Where leaves, burnt of life golden and orange and withered brown, spun from trees as letters scorned. Where the days flow by with the bus-i-ness of nothing, of faces blank and buses red. Where the sounds that matter lie within and my eyes see a land that was once, of hills and stone, where the sun clocked the day and the moon occasioned stolen kisses in the trellised cold. Where, if I close my eyes as children do, she is there, flowing, a river unto herself of bends and twists. And it is here, upon this vista, this woman, as wave to breaker, I find myself flung. Again, and again the slap of wet stone, heaving, exhaling. What is left of me, but to come again, to throw myself, to leap with all the force of moon and gravity, to abandon convention and trope and become as the mist, sparkling but a moment before the sun reclaims me and I die in the warmness of fingers felt but not seen.
ed note: Kyra's notes on the day of departure. Believed to have been written within the first days on Bravo.
I looked upon his eyes and they looked larger, bluer, still as a morning lake.
Pale grey eyes to match the rain, the sky, the withering of my heart.
His hands, too, felt larger as he held my shoulders, taking measure as if a clothier, a tailor who sees as a painter sees.
The day was cold, a steel rain and my feet became wet, numb, planted on the deck of the dock, wanting to root to this place where before my eyes was all I knew of love, of all that had breathed life into me.
He seemed, eye and skin, as some patriarchal elephant, majestic folds of skin, of eyes that held me fixed, of movement deliberate, tracing my features as I did his, as two taking the mask of memory.
All round were others, each lost in their own partings, tears in concert with the rain, arms reaching forth as sun to the branch as branch to sun as the ripe fruit mature for that moment known, forever known to come, to fall, this silent hammer, to fall beyond the ear, even beyond the eye.
His lips came to my cheek and I thought of Grand, of the times they must have embraced, of the love they shared for so many years and the love, perhaps, soon, they would share again; and in this moment, less than but a second it seems now, I felt a sinking, a molting, of what, I could not say other than if, if with a wave of hand, the vessel upon my back could depart to my eye upon it, wave my hand would wave and drive we would the path we drove, this wretched day, this horrid occasion, the sunder of the unseen.
We stood, our breath rolling forth, his, then mine, one, then, the other and I felt a spinning, is if on a merry-go-round, rising and falling, spinning round to the love in a smile, of a grandfather's joy, to the postcard of memory no time could touch.
As his thumbs wiped the tears, there again, as before the fireflies, as on those summer beaches, that warmth, again and as if to do only what I could my eyes released what my tongue could not and he, standing as he always stood, standing as the mountain in winter, absorbed my pouring forth, took as vase to flower, of cup to tea, of me, as before, as now, as I would always remember.
He pulled me as one pulls breath, within, dissolving my resistance into him and chest to chest we were as the ocean, as before Valla, the gentle rising, the warmth of sun, upon cheek, of waters alive in the palette of blue and silver, of laughter and giggles, of being held in his hands, his love; as if he knew, this day, today, would come.
Round my hooded head, as so many times before, his elbow held me as the trees of Valla did so many years before, as I watched him upon the deck, painting, arms wide, of Grand sitting, watching, just watching him, the two of them, some dance in the painting, the sitting, together. I could not then, as now I cannot explain it. How they did it. How even in just this scene, this moment, how the two of them danced in the tilt of a head, the lilt of a voice, the angle of an arm raised, of the quiet watching, as if together they breathed.
ed note: if the Story of Kyra were to have a beginning, it might look something like this:
I was leaving. He was not.
He, my grandfather, in white tunic and silver hair, produced an envelope. A single ticket. He stood on one side of the table, myself, on the other. The distance could have been a continent in what was not said, what no words would, could address before our silent eyes, of all that his upheld arm meant. The air itself seemed to thicken and our humid eyes held more than the sight before us, of the distance that was to come between us. When was all I could manage. Tomorrow he said.
We drove to the dock in the silence that precedes a parting, of a leaving, of a decision made not to be unmade. I was leaving. He was not. So we sat, each in our own world, the slate rain blurring the day as events had muddied our paths. He would stay behind. I would go. There was no other way. I always thought I would speak upon his day and lay him in the ground, the floor mine to say my peace, to send him beyond with the mind and heart he had so carefully cultivated. But this was not that. We would part with eyes open and arms that could still grasp and hearts that would know the eternal release of a warm embrace. And of minds that would forever not know the last nor comfort with word and hand those final days. We would say goodbye, standing toe to toe, eyes wide open, wet as rain.
Our planet, Hyneria, was dying, crying storm upon storm, wailing leaf from limb, rending trunk from root and, in this case, separating a granddaughter from her grandfather. He was old he said. Had lived his life. So he would give me the only thing he could now--a chance, to have what he had, a chance to live beyond the rising waters of this world. A chance he said, to begin without burden, to fulfill the promise of my gifts, to seed the generations to come. I cared not a wit for this future. The price too high. The uncertainty too great. My self-doubt, perhaps, too overwhelming.
This is how we drove to the dock. Papa and I in the front seat, Goldie and Blu, our mechanicals, in the rear. My own parents were somewhere, somewhere not here. They had married the climate, their research, stood, I imagined, proudly upon their labors, their proposals, fighting, probably, some lost battle even upon this day. But they were not here, as they had not been, here, for quite some time. And what they looked like were more photographic than memory, more imagination and campfire story than hug and kiss and eyes of witnessed joy and celebration. After my sister died, and their research started receiving attention, I rarely saw them.
We arrived, the scene as some horrid carnival. Everywhere were others. And vessels neighing at moor of all shapes and hues, sizes and makes. A great exodus. At least for some. Like an ocean liner with too few lifeboats, Hyneria did not have enough vessels to evacuate everyone and those that were fortunate enough to be leaving were leaving with no plan, no destination, and perhaps no hope of doing anything but changing time and place, of dying elsewhere. I did not want to go. If I were to die, I wanted to die at home, with my grandfather, at Valla. But this was not his wish. He had given me everything. I could think of no way to deny him; and, I suppose, in hindsight, I knew I couldn't.
My name is Kyra and what follows is a retelling of events before and after that day at the dock when I said goodbye to Papa and to everything I ever knew.
When I walked out of the theatre, I felt other than before. Autumn cool, ground wet but not raining, and overcast, there was a certain lightness of mind, of decluttering, a scrubbing. Each step seemed a thing in and of itself, like the riding of a horse, a palpable sense of separation between the walking and the walker. Also the looking, as if through different eyes; occasioned of an equanimity tinged in fear, of something good, right, justified yet fleeting. Breath, too, the breath of morning in midday, a gentle rising and falling to match the gait.
How does one describe the indescribable. To be changed and to know of the changing, a realignment, a tectonic shifting of soul and mind and even body--a lightness such as the unshouldering of a heavy coat, where everything, every step, lifts again in peaceful joy, neither frown nor smile burdened. And above all, a calm, the kind after a long, hard cry, when resistance gives way, is released into the wind, carried somewhere, away.
I could write of the movie, the score, the acting, the cinematography. But everything I would say would pale the art as words always dilute their object. But I will say this, there are moments, devastating moments, when what is real and what is affected become confused, where one loses the sense of stage and in its place, a witnessing. Of what, I'm not sure. Yet, one knows upon the moment, of something other.
This movie is not like other movies. I can think of no higher praise.
______
Update: 10.14.09
Watched Bright Star again. On the first view, there were two facets flawed I thought: a bit slow at times and a bit blocky. As I sat before the second viewing, I anticipated an exaggeration such that the movie would seem interminably long and blocky and that I risked everything I had experienced on the first view, including the tears still not unfelt.
Two hours later, walking again into a gray afternoon, the feelings of before were as they were, only deeper. Where before there was the slowness, on second viewing, a sense that everything was moving too fast; and where before there was the gap between scenes, on second viewing I discovered a fading, a melting, an emotional thread weaved such to make one flower within a field blend to color the entire landscape whole. And the tears I feared would fall not upon the artifice of actor viewed not quite thrice, I found instead the well contained more water than the eye could bear.
And here is what is insane. I would gladly go again, tonight, to pay and to watch, again.
Sit he said. I did as I was told. My father was a man of few words and believe me, you wanted it that way. Eat. You and I. This is what we are going to do. I started to speak, which he stopped with a look. Then, just the sound of our knifes and forks sounding much louder than I knew they were. He ate slowly. Hot sauce on everything. A lifetime of smoking had destroyed his taste-buds. No expression on his face one way or the other. When we finished, he wiped his mouth. ______
Get a book he said. I did. Turn to any page. Read. As I did his eyes looked up. From time to time he would stop me. What does that mean he would say. Why that word. Why there. And I wondered if the author put as much thought into the text as my father's exegesis rung from it. ______
Every morning was the same. I never chose the food. He never the book. And in this way we navigated our days. ______
He is gone now. The chair opposite me is empty. I read all the same. The questions still as clear in my ear as once they were, as once the knife and fork. And I make my own breakfast; with a dog lying on the floor watching every move I make. ______
I can't prove it, but I don't think she is the only one watching.
++++++
My father had one thing I've never had--a wallet. It was black leather, worn smooth and thick as a hamburger. No credit cards in those days. A wallet had cash and a driver's license. And for whatever reason, my father always carried a lot of cash, mostly twenties, which I always found just a little strange because my father never spent any money. Never really went anywhere either. ______
When you wanted something, he would say Go get my wallet. You were never allowed to open it. Instead, you carried it to him and he would open it, his thumb on the bills as if counting them again, making sure they were all there. Then he would pull out what you needed, give you back the wallet and tell you to return it to the same place. An emphasis in his gravelly voice. This was no idle command. ______
Even today I can't explain it. But that ritual meant something to him. He didn't go to church or believe in God, but he believed in the wallet. I used to watch him come home from work. He would always pull out his bulging wallet and lay it on the nightstand. He would do it like a firearm. I know this because we used to hunt. And he always carried a pistol on his hip--leather holster cocked like he knew how to wear it. When we got back to the truck, he would unbuckle the holster and lay the pistol on the dash, so that it would be in sight. And we would drive home this way. ______
The way he placed that holster, that pistol on the dash was the exact same way he placed his wallet on the nightstand.
some writing on the first read blows me away and on the second read is still damn good but by the third starts to fall apart ______
by the time I read my own writing all I see are thirds _______
I think back on so much of my life so many places I travelled where the memories are golden yet, never, it seems are they golden twice never in the same way _______
I wonder if kisses are this way
so I wrote:
I want to kiss you just once and I want it known between you and I before; there will be no other this is it this one kiss ______
now imagine that ______
imagine living this way to love something so fully so complete we can let it go ______
imagine each day this way each hug each look each touch where fingers are galvanic and shoulders soft and breath warm of wintergreen ______
and to love something so purely there is no longing or wanting or wishing or regret ______
and there is no desire to go back to look back upon what is no longer there ______
nor to look forward ______
imagine that kiss that eternal melting of flesh of breath given and taken of arms as vines and eyes with nowhere else to be
I remember the moment. He was playing Mario Cart on the TV. I was a few feet away, on the computer. Dad, you want to play, he asked, only the sound of the game in the air between us. There was life in the request. A child's energy, optimism.
Without taking my eyes from the computer I said: Maybe later.
Maybe later. This is what I said. Without much thought. Engrossed in my own interest. Content to have the TV babysit. So I could do my thing. On his time, his weekend. Between weeks.
With those words I drew a line. After has never since been as before. I have a propensity for the dramatic in the telling. This is not one of those times.
Maybe means no. That's what he said, still playing his game, racing against the computer, wanting something more, reaching out to me. There was a tone in his voice I had not heard before, a pain, however subtle. My God it was there. And I was an idiot. He was five, maybe six years old. And I did this to him, to me, to us. My words were as an arrow, once released, and I knew as the quiver of my voice made its way, I knew the damage it would do. As it did.
I have regrets. I do. A lot of them. But none greater than this, when the asking was alive and fresh and hopeful and a father was still a son's best friend.
Von stood before the port window as a mountain in the last days of winter, his balding head buzzard unkept. His eyes held the years like pristine lakes, full of fish grown, of moss covered banks, and trees of fir, heavy of rain, of thickening sap, of a drooping sadness. Kyra watched him scratch his head, those galvanic fingers, watched him lost in thought in the way of a father wondering where he went wrong, alone in a solitude beyond the travelled path. He wore his whey robes as he did on most days, the folds from a distance looking still as marble, museum quiet, where whispers were ecclesiastical and feet walked as if the ground itself were alive. She had thought Trev would have taken the leaving of Mairi the hardest or perhaps Em in the knowing look of Trev's eye; but it was Von, now, who stood as one forlorn, as a shepherd without a herd, abandoned even of dog.
Four weeks it had been and not a word. The restlessness of orbit thickening the air; pettiness became as bubbles, as froth, drivel and dross and dreck. Still, he stood, seeming to fly above the squabbles, holding his comm in his palm, rubbing it like a rock.
"Von?"
"Yes."
"Talk to me."
"I hear talk of leaving."
"Idle chatter."
"Show me a tree and I'll show you a root."
"We're not going anywhere."
He shook his head. We never made eye contact. There was no need.
++++++
Rog rolled over, his teeth gently raking Yul's lobe. "Want to go on-world?"
Yul arched her back, her shoulders fitting the groove of his collarbone. "Sure. But first, tell me about the dock."
"I've told you everything."
"No, I don't think so."
"Yep."
"Nope."
"I'm gonna spank you."
"Is that what she said?"
"Who?"
"Susan."
"What are you talking about?"
"So you were her little whore. And then somehow, a lowly ranch boy, your brother too, got a ticket off-world. Just like that."
"Yeah."
"Bullshiott."
"You don't believe me?"
"How did you get your paper?"
"None of your business."
"You frailed her for it."
"You're crazy."
"You frailed her day and night, like a young plow in old soil."
Rog shakes his head.
"And she got you a ticket."
"Maybe."
I knew it! You whore."
"You complaining?"
"Show me."
"Show you what?"
"How you did it. How you frailed your way off-planet. I can't imagine it was just any kind of frailing."
"Well, maybe it wasn't."
"You liked it didn't you?"
"Liked what?"
"Being good enough to earn your keep."
Rog began to answer. Yul put a finger to his lips. "No more words. Close your eyes. Earn your keep."
++++++
"I need the cottage," said Em.
"Kyra says no one is allowed on-world," said Trev.
"I'm not asking."
"Oh."
"Do what you have to do."
"Really?"
"I need stone, under foot. Tall lazy grass, the sun on my face. An old roof, one bedroom and a bed to wake the birds when you ply my waters like a man needing a son."
Kyra sat on the bridge, alone, the flow of the universe washing over her. As if waves on the beaches of Valla. As if she were canvas and Papa's brush the nebula. She listened the way one listens to wheat in the field, or crickets at night, or even to the ticking of a clock in a still house.
"What are we looking for Papa?" asked Kyra.
"We're not," said Papa, his canvas blank, brush in hand. "Life is not about looking. If I could I would pluck the vile jelly, such deceit does it weave."
"What are we doing then?"
Papa drew breath and stood a little straighter. His white tunic, pristine among the brandonian oils, white as his canvas against the blue ocean beyond. "To look is to deny our reality, to step from the flow that we are part and parcel, to facade, pretend and traffic in stories. We don't want that do we?"
Kyra turned her nose up. "Sounds to me like you are talking too much. And showing too little." She crossed her arms, mimicking his stance.
"Is that so?"
"I think it is."
"What pray shall you have me do?"
"Paint."
"But my canvas is blank and I don't know what to do."
"Put paint on the brush silly. And put the brush on the canvas."
"But what shall I paint?"
Kyra smiled, took the brush from his hand and began to stroke blues and reds and yellows across the canvas. When she finished, she stepped back, hands on her hips. "There. That is how you do it."
"Yes. I think it is," said Papa. "Do you know what you have done?"
"Knowing is overrated."
Papa laughed.
"As you always told me, any fool can hold a thought."
"True."
"But what you see here, my dear Papa, no pun intended, is . . .
"Kyra? Kyra? Can I have a word with you?" asked Von.
"Certainly. What's up?"
"Tracking device is in place and working."
"Good. Keep me updated. I want to know the moment anything goes other than it should."
They sat and ate, only the sound of knife and fork. Mary stared into her plate, movements slow, measured, without expression. Kathrin silently watched the clocklike motion.
If you want to talk--
Thanks.
Kathrin lifted kettle.
No.
Mary--
I said no. (Mary pushes her chair back and stands)
I'm not your enemy.
And your son? Would he have put a bullet in me, in Virgil?
That's not fair and you know it.
I don't know it.
What does that mean?
Nathan is dead.
Mein Gott, Mädchen. (Kathrin takes Mary into hug. Mary's arms remain limp)
Let me go.
Let it out.
I can't do this.
I got you. Let it out.
They stand like this, Mary tucked into Kathrin's wet shoulder, a wet trembling.
++++++
What did he say? asked Kathrin.
You're just a nobody girl.
He was on morphine.
I raised my hand. And he laughed.
(Kathrin pulls her tight. They sit before the crackling fireplace)
He said go ahead. Won't bring Virgil back. That's when I reached in my pocket and gave him what he wanted. When I returned, he was dead.
(Kathrin says nothing. Just the sound of the fire is heard.)
His eyes were still open. The syrettes unopened.
++++++
It's okay.
No. It's not.
Okay.
Kathrin, it's not the result. Never the result.
(Kathrin just stares at her.)
Don't you see. With everything, intent. Intent.
(Both sit for awhile in silence.)
I'm turning in my resignation.
Can you do that?
No. Not really.
I don't understand.
How can I go back?
Because you have a duty.
Duty?
Yes, duty.
What did duty get Walter? Erich? But you are right. I do have a duty. A duty to know when I'm done. Done with this war, done with this place.
Mary--
I've leaving in the morning.
Where? You have no place to go.
Don't care. Don't matter.
++++++
Mary is walking on the side of the road when a jeep pulls up. She continues walking, the jeep rolling along:
Lieutenant Browning?
Yes.
Mary Browning?
Yeah.
Get in the jeep please.
No.
Damn it.
Don't cuss.
Where do you think you're going?
Don't know.
You don't have to go back.
Then why are you here?
We know you're pregnant.
How?
Don't matter. You got a ticket home.
(Mary laughs) What makes you think I want to go home?
From time to time we are asked to "special" a boy, which is to say, sit with him round the clock, such the condition; such was Nathan. He knew Virgil. Said things that hurt. Said he wanted to die. Asked my help. Can't stop thinking about it.
++++++
What do you think?
I think we do our duty.
How?
We follow orders.
But this is bullshit.
Yeah.
++++++
My shift. He was half-sleeping, a discarded puppet of a boy. Stagnant pools for eyes, brimming sadness, regret, anger, confusion. Arms tied down. Tubes everywhere. And beside his bed, I sat, trying to feel something.
++++++
You, you and you. Now.
It was night. The kind of dark you can't see nothing, but you can hear everything. And they wanted a prisoner. Needed information.
++++++
He said I didn't know what it was like. Said some things could never not be, once done, forever they mark a man. He had done some things. When I said no, he begged. Pleaded. Told me just to leave him for a moment.
++++++
Nathan, how we gonna do this?
I don't know. I don't know.
What are we gonna do?
Shut up. Just shut the fuck up.
++++++
I reached in my pocket. Laid them on the table. All he needed. Neither of us saying anything. I laid them one by one as one might lay cards. Then I leaned over and whispered: If you want to fuck yourself, go ahead. I'll let Virgil know you're coming.
I have collected acorns 
Von stood before the port window as a mountain in the last days of winter, his balding head buzzard unkept. His eyes held the years like pristine lakes, full of fish grown, of moss covered banks, and trees of fir, heavy of rain, of thickening sap, of a drooping sadness. Kyra watched him scratch his head, those galvanic fingers, watched him lost in thought in the way of a father wondering where he went wrong, alone in a solitude beyond the travelled path. He wore his whey robes as he did on most days, the folds from a distance looking still as marble, museum quiet, where whispers were ecclesiastical and feet walked as if the ground itself were alive. She had thought Trev would have taken the leaving of Mairi the hardest or perhaps Em in the knowing look of Trev's eye; but it was Von, now, who stood as one forlorn, as a shepherd without a herd, abandoned even of dog.
Kyra sat on the bridge, alone, the flow of the universe washing over her. As if waves on the beaches of Valla. As if she were canvas and Papa's brush the nebula. She listened the way one listens to wheat in the field, or crickets at night, or even to the ticking of a clock in a still house.
there is
there is one absent
They sat and ate, only the sound of knife and fork. Mary stared into her plate, movements slow, measured, without expression. Kathrin silently watched the clocklike motion.
From time to time we are asked to "special" a boy, which is to say, sit with him round the clock, such the condition; such was Nathan. He knew Virgil. Said things that hurt. Said he wanted to die. Asked my help. Can't stop thinking about it.
