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.
4 comments:
Hi, Trée - your words so wonderful, conversational, essential, deadly serious yet pouring with sunlife. I can't say why. Maybe your introducing us to Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon -- it feels like an opening into now-world. Deep-self shared is golden treacle, "even those closest knowing so little of" you notwithstanding. I used to believe no one knew me, because I wanted to. So much pain & so little understanding in early life, a need to protect.
"Why was I not content when ___?" The reed of self so very narrow, with just a few small holes for life-music to dance through. And when one catches sight of the miracle, wanting to open wide to eat and sing the love-life, so many apertures plugged up. Death of a beloved can free up the relationship. No such problem with beloved animals.
"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".
As if, as so: to feel.
Ironically, the death (2007)of my dog Shadow, (deep ache, still)brought an intense period of musings on dying and death to an end.
Two more losses followed. My ego still believed I could control this
unfortunate condition of death, the illusion itself creating fears & nameless dread. Until his last breath my father refused his own mortality. Controled willfulness has been my paternal inheritance (and maybe his old purple Buick), tool for living and wound to heal.
I love your musings on the rain.
It seems you are so young for them, but you are the poet. I try to touch them with my mind, and awe keeps interrupting, and disbelief.
What would a biography of you look like? The auto-biography is being written daily, regardless of names, planets, time zones, stories -- it's all you, amazing kind original sentient never-to-be-repeated you. I'm glad you didn't wait till you died. ;=)
Constance, your words are as a warm blanket on a harsh starred night. Most welcome.
I finished Without last night and started on his memoir of their life together. I'll say this for Without, if you can read it without a sigh or the misting of eye, then we have nothing in common and nothing to talk about. I mean 'you' in the royal sense, not you as in you. ;-)
I wish I could write as clearly as he does. Then again, perhaps that's why he was US poet laureate and I wasn't. :-D
And so, my dear Tree, you've done it again. You drew me in with words that quickly pulled me into "me". I can't do much with poems as I will read them and then pick them apart and i want to, need to know, why the poem came about and in what kind of mood was the author. I feel, this is the only way for me to correctly understand what they wanted to say instead of imagining what it is they wanted to say. It is funny how you brought up Biographies.. I feel, actually, i know the same. So many people know me, but nobody really knows me and a biography might present them with quite the surprises. To be honest though, i don't like to read biographies, 'cause who's to say that the author didn't lie or make things a little better or a little worse or whatever else could be altered. Not to say that people that write biographies are liars ;-) The rain makes me sit by the window a lot and with that, makes me walk through the halls of my brain. Sometimes it's good that nobody sees my thought process ;-) I have often thought about how this world will go on without me. How the people that will survive me will go on with their lives. I think of my grandma who died and i think about if she had the same thoughts. With me coming from Germany (Berlin, to be exact), i often wondered how her thoughts were during the war (or even after when she was one of those infamous women who cleaned up afterward). I walked roads that are hundreds of years old and i imagine the people that must have had their feet on the same spot of the asphalt as me at that moment... oh gosh.. i am rambling.. I shall leave your comment section before I totally lose myself in here ;-)
Liane, I know the feeling. When I walk the ground (Battle of Franklin-Civil War) and stand where I know blood was shed, and not just some blood, but more than I have the imagination to comprehend, and I wonder of the cries and screams, the fear, of men going out of their minds, of courage and shame and perhaps both within even the second, well, I find I do the same with all the historical sites I visit and I feel things that most others who travel with me, seem not to feel. Sometimes you just have to drop to your knees and dig your nails into the soil, bring it to your lips, to your nose, muddy the humus with your saliva and spread the earth upon your cheeks, to feel that very soil upon your flesh, to feel it burn with the anguish of nightmare and anger and hatred--and for a moment, just breathe it, breathe the history of war, which is the history of death premature, of fear clawed and torn from stout breast, of testicles tight and in retreat, of lips burned and blistered in the heat of cannon, of legs marching of fodder, of shouts confused, and voices gone quiet beyond the eardrum burst. The experience is pornographic, as sordid as bloodlust, as the plunge of cock into the bowels of Lamia, of the searing rush of semen, breeding more and more death and destruction, of a hunger never sated. Walk these grounds with me and more than your eyes will be wet and sticky.
Post a Comment