Glug Glug

Gunk from the Gulf

DRINKING OIL

Gushing with rage
Gaia screams out oily plumes
that bleed into life waters

Feed the car. It’s very important to
keep feeding the car.

When the fishes are gone,
the blackened waters coating all,
a well-fed car can take you away …

assuming you could leave,
which of course, you can’t.

Pray for Mother Earth
and don’t forget …
to feed the car.

I received word yesterday that this reactive poem I hastily wrote back in June re: the Gulf Oil "spill" is being published at Poets for Living Waters in their Open Mic section.  (PLW is a site for "poetry action in response to the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico." The Featured Poet section on the main page is currently full, but poems are apparently continuing to be published in the Open Mic section linked at the top of the page.)

This was, on my part, a reactive poem--that is, one written entirely in reaction to something that deeply affected me, though I don't live anywhere near the Gulf.   Poems written as a "response" to something ... "in the moment", so to speak, are not often one's best work, and its rapid dispersement doesn't excuse what may only be a clumsy attempt to express muted outrage. I was actually surprised anyone would want to publish it.

And then a friend saw it on-line and emailed me, saying it reminded him of something Ilya Ehrenburg said, in 1929, about cars, and how prophetic that seemed at the time. He urged me to go read Ehrenburg's book, The Life of the Automobile, which of course is not available in translation here. But I did find a sample excerpt:

The automobile works honestly. Long before its birth, when it is still just layers of metal and piles of drawings, it diligently murders Malayan coolies and Mexican laborers. It is born in agony! It shreds flesh, blinds eyes, eats lungs, destroys minds. At last, it rolls out of the gates into the world which, before its existence, was known as “bright.” Instantly, it deprives its supposed owner of his old-fashioned peace of mind. Lilac withers, chickens and dreamers dash away in terror. The automobile laconically runs down pedestrians. It gnaws into the side of a barn or else, grinning, it flies down a slope. It can’t be blamed for anything. Its conscience is as clear as Monsieur Citroen’s conscience. It only fulfills its destiny: It is destined to wipe out the world.

"... chickens and dreamers dash away in terror ...it is destined to wipe out the world."  

"Now, you have joined Ehrenburg in writing about the horrors of the automobile!" my friend added. [Neither my friend nor I own an automobile.] 

Stephen King's novel "Christine" came to mind.  I haven't read the book but my mate's seen the film of the same name, based on the novel.  It's a horror film about an cocky, arrogant, killer car with a deadly past that maliciously destroys  anyone daring to want to own it.  "But it's a classic", my mate laughed when I declined to watch it.  Monster killer cars aside, should we be blaming the automobile, that little box of metal, glass and rubber that we ride around inside of every day?  James Howard Kunstler, in his 1996 book Home from Nowhere says it's not the car's fault; it's ours: "The regime of mass car use is an offshoot of our historical aversion to civility itself."

My friend unknowingly echoed this sentiment.  He ended his email lamenting: "We no longer meditate in our journeys to our friends, our lovers--and even the ride to the morgue and the cemetery is one dismal ride in an automobile!"

The poem had two focuses: specifically: what's happening in the Gulf of Mexico; and more generally, our unbreakable addiction to oil.

In the rush to get at the oil to feed our cars, accidents happen.  While blame is being passed around, it is we who end up having to stomach the result and drink the oil--our wildlife and fishes first--and because we consume the fish in those oil-infested waters, we also get to ingest the chemical poisons that have been used to push it to the bottom, also known as dispersing.  THIS is what causes people to react.

They get angry, they cry out, they shake their fists, they hurl words.  They dress them as poems and send them off, to join hundreds of others, in an impassioned response full of anguish, satire, outrage, pulling out the words that first come tumbling out of the mental arsenal.    The feelings that engender the poem are heartfelt.  I'm not sure, though, despite the fact that it's been accepted for publication, that my hurried effort constitutes merit AS a good-enough poem.  I didn't take much time with it, and perhaps that shows. 

That said, I still wanted my voice added to the others, the community of writers responding, with their words, to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, to the continual raping of the earth, and to our insatiable greed for the very element that may in the end, as Ehrenburg cautioned,eventually "wipe us out."

This is not about what you think

Kudos to Scottish writer/poet Jim Murdoch for the most creative (and hilarious) example of how to tell readers about one's newly published book.

A dialogue that is not about what you think, to promote a book entitled This Is Not About What You Think, a collection spanning 31 years, of self-described "plain-speaker" Jim Murdoch's poetry.  (You can read samples of some of the poems here).

I especially liked this one:

Unbrokenness

There exists within physical things

the potential to be broken.

It is only a matter of time

and of unforeseen circumstances.

These things can be repaired, replaced

or buried and forgotten about.

Nothing can ever be unbroken.

His poem "Marks", hinges on the fact that the word "mark" has a double meaning: it is a synonym for 'scar', and it also indicates a grade.  The poem, Murdoch says, "leans heavily on the fact that meanings are not rigid.  There can be resonances."

For everything you ever wanted to know about the writing of this book, click here, where the poet interviews himself.  A poet with a sense of humor, writing about Life, in all its simplicity, complexity, and invitingly observable ... thereness.  [Ouch, what awkward wording. I only meant to say the invitation to observe may not be so subtle--like life itself, sometimes it confronts, and sometimes it obscures--or as one of Murdoch's poems cautions, sometimes it disappoints. Anyway ...]

The book seems definitely worth checking out, and I will. Am just passing the word along, for anyone interested.

The newest little grandbub

Introducing little Gabriel Calix, born a little after 1 A.M. yesterday, weighing 7 lbs. 9 oz. and 19 inches long, whom I will get to meet for the first time this autumn.

We have been celebrating ever since. A hearty welcome, little one. I can't wait to see you, hold you, learn absolutely everything about you. 

~ ~ Your grammy in Canada, counting the days!!!

Received in the mail

Cid Corman: Word for Word: Essays on the Arts of Language, Vol. 1. Printed January 1977 in Santa Barbara and Ann Arbor for the Black Sparrow Press by MacIntosh and Young & Edwards Brothers Inc. Design by Barbara Martin. This edition is published in paper wrappers; there are 500 hardcover trade copies; 200 hardcover copies are numbered & signed by the author; & 500 numbered copies have been handbound in boards by Earle Gray, each containing an original holograph poem by Cid Corman. Photo of Cid Corman at back, by John Levy. 169 pages.

My copy is paper bound with the pencilled notation: "LC -- 5/98 -- 14.00" on the page before the title, listing Cid's published works. I found the book on Ebay, for $3.00. It arrived shrink-wrapped, and in perfect condition.

PABLO NERUDA: Selected Poems. A Bilingual edition, in Spanish and English. Edited and with a foreword by Nathanial Tarn. Introduction by Alastair Reid. Translated by Anthony Kerrigan, W. S. Merwin, Alastair Reid and Nathanial Tarn. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, (1990), 508 pages. Bought on Ebay, for 99 cents.

Farm Visit by Bob Arnold. A poem in 28 pages, with illustrations. Guilford, Vermont: Longhouse Publishers, 2010. A gift from Bob and Susan Arnold, beautifully executed and artfully assembled, by hand. Merci une mille fois for this lovely little gift.

Although in the poem Bob's referring to cows taking a "skinny path to the pasture", the line following that one describes what I intend to do mentally, i.e., "Late in the day I will walk that path with them back home". Vermont is still home, though I only lived there briefly. The words of this poem bring that all back to me--"a place of coolness", an "aisle of light" (quoting the second and last lines in the poem).

A summer with poets, arriving to visit, one packaged group of words at a time; joining others on the shelves, to become permanent guests. How great is that!!!

In the early morning write

Gordon Lightfoot has a song that begins "In the early morning rain ..."    Was up by 6:00 A.M. as usual.  No rain this morning, only clouds, and a bit of sun pushing through.  I stopped by some fellow bloggers' blogs and saw that a few more "morning people" had already posted the day's words.

Check out this haunting Armenian melody played on the duduk by Djivan Gasparyan over at Bob Arnold's July 31st Longhouse Birdhouse  (posted at 6:22 A.M.).   (Mornin', Bob!   :)

and Tom (The Middlewesterner)  Montag's latest "Three from the Old Poet",  posted at 4:37 A.M.   (An excerpt:

As if I've
worked my whole life
becoming someone

I can admire.

Or poet/writer/blogger Linh Dinh, whose political essays, astute comments and ongoing State of the Union photo documentation of America in decline; the homeless, disenfranchised, tent cities, urban blight, etc. telling you far more than you'll ever get from CNN. (He posted today at 1:57 A.M.     I'm guessing that's not when he got up and that he's really more a "night" person.)

Another morning person, up by 5 A.M. with a new poem, is William Michaelian, reminding me that thought-out poems that don't get writ remain just that: words in transit, not yet extracted, much less parked.

Today we have the annual family picnic, again this year out in St. Louis-de-France.  Last year, about 40 people came, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, cousins, in-laws, significant others, and friends, and it lasted from early afternoon until nearly midnight, the evening spent on the patio to the sounds of guitar and keyboard, everyone singing along to old, familiar tunes.  It poured rain pretty much the entire day but nobody left, and when the downpour subsided, the mosquitoes came out. 

This year the weather promises to behave and allow a more pleasant time of it, the barbeque taking place outdoors (instead of in the garage) and dips in the pool.  Last time people brought about 8 different salads, and of course a big pot of Michel's famous baked beans and the usual grilled delights (even salmon burgers  for the semi-vegetarians).  (Our local supermarket last week carried imported frozen fish-kebobs from China--something I'd not seen there before.  Why this particular local market offers only imported Chinese garlic and not the fresher, more readily available and less-expensive-to-transport garlic from neighboring farms, is a mystery.)

Back to the writing thing again. This, of course, is no excuse--activities in general, social obligations, daily tasks, etc.--for not writing. It's perhaps cyclical, or so it seems at times--more time spent this summer on reading than writing, more hours internally absorbing, mentally archiving, "saving up", almost, for when the time is right, which for me is Fall and Winter. But this is absurd, the writer self argues. Sounds more like an excuse, chimes the neglected pen.

They may be right, and it's not a question of season, or intervening activities, or habitual proscrastinaton but something more baldly basic: simple discipline. I envy poets who can come up with a new poem every single day and offer it, in finished form. And then there're those naggy fictional characters nagging, nagging, nagging at you to finish their story, the one you've been working on for months--YEARS--and have put aside, like unfinished paintings waiting for the most conducive lighting, the right color mix, the optimal circumstance, the perfect conditions. This has got to change, scoldy self says to lazy self. I mean, really. Why are you blogging, instead of writing?!!!

My fingers have no answer. It's like being stuck in ... the Waiting Box--waiting. But for what?

Second Languages

A fellow immigrant here, unable to find employment in his field (engineering) locally, has asked me to teach him English so that he can expand his search elsewhere, in some of the English-speaking provinces. It has been some time since I've done language exchanges (English conversation for practice in French). Usually the respective level of competence in the "other" language was pretty much equal: somewhere in the middle-Intermediate range. This time, however, my student knows very little English and does what I do sometimes when I get stuck and can't find the appropriate word or remember the correct verb ending: i.e., revert to using the former known, familiar language.

This is detrimental to progress in the new language, and a very difficult habit to break. At the university here, when you take a French immersion course, you are not permitted to not-speak French. (I'm told for every non-French word you utter, you must fork over 25 cents. At least that is what a former student told me several years ago. Whether or not that's still true, I don't know, but it seems a compelling reason to try harder. (It could also be a good self-imposed incentive, not just for self control but to increase one's savings! Ten unguarded relapses could net you enough for a coffee and a croissant, au moins. :)

My student is a French-speaking Berber from Algeria. French is his second language and his French is vastly superior to mine. The accent and some words are different from the French spoken here (Quebeçois). (I find it easier, in general, to understand French speakers from Belgium, Paris, the Sudan or even Haiti than French-Canadians. Even after some years here, my own spoken French comes out sounding more "international" than local, with a slight accent not always immediately identifiable as Anglo-based. Strange.)

Accent acquisition is a curious phenomenon. For example, in Boston they swallow the "r" in some words and add an extra "r" on the end in others ("square" becomes "squay-uh", "yard becomes "yahd", "Barb" becomes "Bob" and "pizza" becomes "pizzer", etc.). Odd though that neither I, nor my children--who were born and raised there--ever acquired the accent.

Here's how native Bay-staters pronounce the names of certain of their towns and cities (in case you ever go there):

Peabody ("PEE-Bitty")
Medford ("MEHfid")
Gloucester ("GLOSS-tah")
Woburn ("WOO-bin")
Worcester ("WOOSE-tah")

Soft drinks are not called sodas in Boston; they're "tonics". What is a "hoagie" (submarine sandwich) in Pennsylvania is called a "grinder" in Boston. A "regular" coffee in one state might refer to plain black coffee; in another, it means with milk and sugar. Go figure. I add this last point because a former Pennsylvania colleague came back from a trip to Boston once complaining that "they don't know what a regular coffee means "out there"!! ("Out there", as in "Not-here" land, i.e.) Another friend's annoyingly repetitious but relevant saying immediately came to mind: "Never assume anything."

Sometimes how a person pronounces a single word can tell you where they're from. (For Boston, the word "third" usually nails it for me, ha ha; for Pittsburgh, it's the words "no" and "down". For Philly and Central Pennsylvania, a nasal tone; for Vermont, indescribable but immediately recognizable. I used to be able to differentiate between a Ukrainian speaking English from a Moscow native speaking English though I cannot myself speak either Russian or Ukrainian.

Sound threads weaving past that grab the attention, unconsciously, to later surface as recognition... or something like that. One could do that with observations of physical gestures as well, how one expresses (or doesn't express) a thing ... fascinating. What we absorb and unconsciously imitate in our respective cultures, what we alter or suppress or enhance to become what we already are, but more (or less) so. How we are all different, and yet the same...

Suppose you want to learn another language and don't have access to or cannot afford language classes or a private tutor. This is a good little starting point, for an interactive, sound-integrated introduction to English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hebrew, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, Hindi or Vienamese, with titles in Polish, Greek, Turkish and Indonesian, etc. It might be interesting to at least learn numbers and colors and salutations in these respective tongues. You never know, it might come in handy some day. This is the easy part, it seems to me. It's the darn grammar that takes working on. And the idioms! And of course, practice.

I have a book somewhere in my library upstairs (in need of reorganization after some shuffling and switching of bookcases) that gives words in 26 languages. It's fascinating to see the similarities and differences among linguistic families. I sometimes read the dictionary as one might begin to read a novel. The words have stories, the descriptions conjure up imaginary others. One doesn't normally admit to this because, well, you get that Look. I once saw a video of the actor Richard Burton reading a telephone book; he made it "sound like Shakespeare."

Anyway, my student has invited me to learn how to make Algerian cuisine (his wife will show me) and in the meantime has sent me some recipes, in Arabic. Which I can't read, of course, but can follow the pictures.

Ah, language. Visual, spoken, unuttered. You would need two lifetimes to explore even the surface of them! Dabblers and masters, and how to graduate from the former to the latter: the apprentice's dream.

Different Journeys, Same Quest

                                                       hurrying along the road

                                                       I can't look back

 

~ ~  Taneda Santōka (1882-1940)

~ ~

 For all his walking

 no green mountains await -

 only fate

Three Downtowns

A side street down near the port.

Centre ville, Trois-Rivières.

Outside metro Atwater, Montréal.

Boston Financial District

Am back from a 10-day trip to the States. 

The top photo was taken one evening before my departure; the middle one, while waiting to connect with the rideshare to Boston; the bottom one, on the way to South Station for the bus back to Canada.

Three different cities, all close to my heart. From the familiar old wooden three-deckers in Massachusetts to the equally familiar brick facades with the winding metal staircases of T-R and Montréal, memories and nowness collide.

My daughter's computer crashed and died mid-week so the blog took a little hiatus. We did get to Mystic Lake one hot and humid afternoon (along with about 200 other people on the little sandy beach and surrounding woods). The water was brown, the bottom muddy and an occasional weed would wrap around your leg if you swam into certain areas. I remember it being cleaner, clearer and far more swimmable in the past. This, and other local beaches there are sometimes closed during especially hot days now because of a too-high bacteria count.  We lucked out, though, that this particular day was not one of them.

The highlight of the trip was, of course, being with the l'il bubs again--and, a stop at Trader Joe's. This is a discount grocery store where you can find the most amazing food products at extremely low prices. (I noted that the maple syrup imported from Quebec was half the price we pay for it here where it's actually produced.)   I came back with blue agave, Mesquite honey, Mexican vanilla, ghee and Dr. Bronner's Hemp Tea-Tree Pure Castile soap; and from the little Tibetan shop: prayer flags for outside the house and meditation incense. Oh and three books, the perfect traveling companions, reading 210 pages of one of them en route through Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont.

One afternoon we went, all six of us, to see the animated "Despicable Me" in 3D.  There's a scene in the movie where the characters ride down a roller coaster.  It was so realistic I had to put my head down, because I suddenly got dizzy. The kids loved the film. Worth seeing, with or without the 3D.

Anyway, it's good to be back. The compelling pull of one's accustomed routine ... or something like that.  The cherry tomatoes and chard have tripled in my absence, bugs have attacked and eaten into the kale, the basil thinks it's a tree, the lettuce are screaming to be picked and the raspberries have finally arrived. Several items in the fridge have escaped my mate's notice and quietly expired or turned moldy, and Lida the window plant was gasping for water.  But all's well. When I left, we were in the throes of a heat wave. Now the mornings and evenings are chilly, almost like Fall.  Refreshing ...

Heat Wave Relief

Some favorite music plus some appropriate images for cooling off.

Am off to the States again tomorrow in the Philippemobile out of Montreal. I am told there will be six of us and we're requested not to bring too much luggage. Five and a half hours with two stops at a third of the cost of going by bus--can't beat that. So looking forward to plunging into Mystic Lake again and seeing the l'il bubs, who are probably an inch taller, at least. V. just turned 3, and the newest one, Calix, will arrive "any day now", or so my son tells me, though I won't get to meet him probably until the Fall, that trip being a tad farther and a whole lot longer.

I don't like traveling in summer but the Philippemobile is air conditioned, fully stocked with music of all kinds, with large, comfortable (heated in winter) seats, and always engaging conversations with interesting people from all over the world. Thank goodness I made reservations last week--there's already a waiting list.

I hope they don't make us open our suitcases at the border. There is no way I will be able to close mine again! And still haven't found a place to put the chocolate egg/toys so they won't melt en route.

Adieu T-R, salut Boston!

Another mission

As of the first of July,  46 U.S. warships capable of carrying 200 helicopters and warplanes, plus 7,000 U.S. Marines ("who may circulate the country in uniform without any restrictions"), as well as submarines, are heading to the Costa Rican coast for "anti-narcotics operations and humanitarian missions'  until 31st December 2010.

They are going there to fight the "war on drugs." 

read more ...

Some Costa Ricans question the official reason given for the sudden encampment of troops and warships, feeling there is something more to it than that.  (A glance at a map might offer a clue to what they feel is a much more likely motive.)

There are other rumbles on the Internet suggesting that this has to do with something big about to go down in the Gulf of Mexico connected with the BP oil catastrophe, necessitating the possible massive evacuation of ships and people.  (BP drilled down miles into a geologically unstable region and may have set the stage for the eventual premature release of a methane mega-bubble.  According to some environmentalist experts, what's pouring into the land, sea and air from the seabed breach,  is "a chemical cocktail of poisons," threatening to make the Gulf a complete dead zone with chemically polluted air and poisonous rainfalls. This oil "spill" has everyone spooked.

But forty-six warships for a place the size of Rhode Island or Vermont ...? They haven't succeeded in stopping the drug flow coming into the US across the border from Mexico; maybe they can do something from the Costa Rica coastal side. Costa Rica is a small, neutral country with no army, no match for the sophisticated, well-funded and well-armed drug cartels. It's apparently been unable to secure its own coasts or stop the violence and flow of drugs, hence their calling in the U.S. Marines. 

The warships have been invited to stay in Costa Rica untill December. Guess we'll just have to wait and see what transpires in the next several months, how many drug lords they actually manage to put out of business. Let's hope another war or horrendous catastrophe doesn't erupt somewhere else in the meantime.  The US military is already stretched way thin, what with two other wars currently going on, in Iraq (7 years) and Afghanistan  (nearly 9 years). Weapons of mass destruction? (They didn't find any.)  Bin Laden? (Couldn't find him.  No one mentions him anymore.  He probably died years ago.  Hard to get dialysis treatment hiding out in a cave in the mountains.)  The enemy now:  Terrorism, and the drug cartels. 

As for the Gulf--there just are no words anymore, and fear seems to be replacing hope.   Meanwhile the anchortainment industry rumbles on:  "Which team do YOU think LeBron James will decide to sign up with?", CNN breathlessly asked of its viewers; Mel Gibson had another violent emotional meltdown;  the Clintons are buying an $11 million house in Westchester;  and, according to a chuckling newscaster, Americans spend $57 billion dollars a year on lottery tickets.   

Meanwhile;  they're planning to stone to death a 43-year old woman in Iran (99 lashes and imprisonment weren't enough) for alleged moral misconduct; an old friend has stopped talking and eating and won't come out of his bedroom, steeped in depression; another, whose insurance runs out in a few weeks, is battling her second cancer (different type this time), and yesterday,  while returning from grocery shopping, we passed members and friends of a local family standing out on the highway in the hot sun holding out tin cans soliciting donations for their child, whose treatment injections will cost over $40,000 a year.  The world turning, burning, churning, in a not-so-merry-go-round of dizzying disrupt, enough to suck the air out of you, if you let it.

On a lighter note:  they're auctioning off Roy Rogers's horse "Trigger"'s "remains" this week. Trigger died of old age and Roy had him taxidermied decades ago-- for posterity.[2]. Am trying to imagine why anyone would fork over up to $200,000, for a ... dead horse. "I thought his name was Silver," my mate said, when I told him about the horse. "Hi ho Silver a-WAYYYYYYYYYYYY" we both said at once, then cracked up laughing. Silver was the Lone Ranger's horse.   I forget Tonto's horse's name.

Gorgeous blue-sky day the other day. The heat wave passed, a cool breeze in the morning. Priceless.

Then it all came back. Leguminitis sets in again. Bring out the fan.

patterns

here we go
again

it's getting old.

really.

Journeys of the Mind

"Why is there something rather than nothing?"

Ives's trumpet hauntingly echoes such cosmic query, only to be answered by ... silence.


Knowing as the endpoint.

Not all profound inquiries lead to understanding. Few actually get there, the seeker becoming mired down in the process--enamored of it, even--succumbing to distraction, settling for peace of mind instead.  It never occurs to some to consider setting out at all, on what might be a most perilous undertaking, the already-known being entirely sufficient.

Maybe the journey is the purpose; whether you eventually understand or not not the point.

Maybe there is no plan, no "end".  Just constant change ‘mid patterned sameness. And circular trails that take you right back to where you started.

Live and love ... if you can.
To that journey, stay or go, it's all the same, no one's judging.
Doing, having, trumped by being

Always the same yearning ... to Know.
What if at the end of life, you'd not yet figured it out?
And suddenly realized it no longer
mattered?


(There’s more to this that you’re not telling me

isn’t
there.)


__________________________________

*Painting given to me by a friend for helping her move on the 1st of July.  It was painted some 30 years ago on a village farm by a then neighbor, "Claire", a self-taught artist. A man pausing in the act of chopping wood, to look out at the sun, the land, the horizon of familiarity, and untapped possibility.

Visitors

_____________________________
*Photo by awyn, taken out back near the tool shed.

Light, going

or is it

coming

and when it does,

will it

consume

everywhere, books

a friend's little library

in the tiny watercloset in the basement

six shelves in all

plus posters and framed prints,

mini-sculptures ... and masks

and of course,

the toilet and sink,

almost as an

afterthought

It's not that one spends all that much time reading there.  It's that every other possible space in the house is already filled, from floor to ceiling--basement included--with books.  So shelves were added here.  One of my most favorite houses in all the universe, hundreds of miles away, its kitchen high up with the trees, huge windows looking out on squirrels and birds and leafy branches.  The sun squinting through, and the quiet that only such hidden-away cul-de-sacs can provide.  I'm to have breakfast there again in the coming weeks.  Yay!

Apparition

From misty heights, the air gone thin, with
frozen hands
     climb higher still
enveloped in white
fog.

I thought I was alone.

They come from nowhere, pass in silence,
holding hands, then disappear, the only sound
a sweep of wind,
     their footsteps fade
below.

You don't belong here,
better "There" where when
they sing you know the words.
     And yet ...

I can't not go, they beckon, see.
Too long away, they find you, call.
They hold your silence, live inside you
like the snow--as anchors when
the reaching
     reaching,
     reaching causes you to
leave behind the circle known,
to wander in the wonder of
the fog of

else.



________________________
* in the mountains, outside Oslo, another lifetime

And Then There Were Two

Three old men, walking together, hands clasped behind their back, European style. Every evening, during the summer, they'd pass by the house; then, ten minutes later, they'd pass by again, on their way back. As they walked, they'd be conversing, in a language I recognized but did not understand. No one I knew walked in that particular way, holding their hands behind their back. Nor did women, unless it was with your mother or an elderly aunt, walk arm in arm together down a sidewalk--except the Europeans. That may have changed now but it was an anomaly back then in that particular time and place.

Sitting on the front porch steps, ruminating on how people walk. Andor Czompo, a dance instructor, once told us that Hungarians walk differently from everyone else in the world, which he then proceeded to demonstrate. The difference had to do with the position and coordination of the feet and simultaneous swinging of the arms as one strode forward. That little example, one of those peculiar things you hear or see and always remember. Like the elderly Greek gentlemen who passed by on their evening stroll all those years ago when we lived there on Elm Street.

They were always impeccably dressed, as if going to an event. One of them wore a hat. Their talk would be punctuated with lively gestures; one would be speaking and the other two would nod in agreement or interrupt with a counterthought. Sometimes we heard them before they arrived, the sound carrying down to precede them.

They always walked three in a line close beside one another, neither slightly ahead nor behind each other, so that when traffic came towards them on the sidewalk, the little column of three suddenly had to de-link, separate, and move aside to let someone pass.

All four seasons, there they were, walking their walk, like clockwork. In the winter, they'd be dressed in heavy coats, bundled up in scarves, with boots and gloves. When they talked, you could see the frozen air coming out of their mouths as their feet crunched along the snow-packed sidewalk. If one slipped, the other two were there to help him get back up again.

Came Spring one year ... and there were only two. "Look, Mom," my daughter said, looking out the window of our second-floor apartment one evening as they passed, "One of them is missing." Something else was different, too. They weren't talking. The two remaining walkers walked as usual, hands clasped behind the back, but at a slower pace than I'd remembered. Still side by side, the little column, now shortened, continued the evening tradition. They looked straight ahead, or down, and walked in complete silence. It was that thundering silence that told me the third one's absence had taken place fairly recently. I had no idea who they were or what part of the neighborhood they came from, but it was like a large cloud had drifted by and emptied out a deep and sudden sadness.

This was years ago, and the other two have probably, by now, joined their old companion in that realm wherever it is that people go to when they die, but I like to think they live on somehow. They do, at least, in my and my children's memories, those "three old Greek guys" back on Elm Street, whose friendship with one another was as solid as a rock. They didn't just simply walk together. They were, it seemed, glued together, and totally in sync.

Whoever you were, guys, thanks for the memory. It is one I replay often and with pleasure, like a well-loved film, the three of you passing by, season after season, talking and laughing. Sto kalo, gentlemen.

Happy Belated Birthday, Aung San Suu Kyi

In 1990, in Burma (now called Mynmar), Aung San Suu Kyi overwhelmingly won the election to be president. Burma's ruling junta, however, would not allow her to take office. Instead, they imprisoned her. She has been in confinement, mostly under house arrest now, for 14 of the last 20 years, forbidden visitors or contact with anyone outside her living quarters.

A recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, she is the world's only peace recipient to be imprisoned. Yesterday, she turned 65.

Suu Kyi, for me, is a giant. Her personal sacrifices, to stand up for what she believes, to fight for the rights of her people, were and are enormous. The cowardly generals of Mynmar are terrified of the influence of this small, thin, soft-spoken woman. They think by locking her up and depriving her of liberty that she will be marginalized, ignored, forgotten.

Think again, generals.

Happy Belated Birthday Daw Suu Kyi!!

We have not forgotten you.


_________________________

*photo from Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's pages.

Kitchen Art Gallery

A few weekends ago we happened to be downtown and stopped by a small Asian grocery shop, looking for gram flour.   This is the special flour, made from a certain kind of chickpeas, that you use to make pakoras. The store did not have any and we ended up having to go all the way down to Montreal to get some--but what a delightful surprise in discovering this marvelous little épicerie.

This is Hermencita, its owner:

She sells jasmin tea in bulk, ghee, garam masala, and any number of other foods and spices difficult to find in general supermarkets or local health food stores.  She also gives cooking classes in the kitchen at the back of the shop. 

She invited us to look--and that's where I discovered these marvelous murals, painted the entire length of the wall opposite the sink and oven.  Her brother, Herman Unso,  painted them a few years ago during a visit from the Phillipines, their native country.

This is Hermencita's grandmother.

 What better scenes for a kitchen mural
than highlighting where the food comes from?  

Carrot, anyone?

 Joy, in the everyday work of life

Riding in the rice fields

What a pleasant surprise that hot, busy afternoon -- to have stumbled onto and been invited into a private, hidden art gallery in someone's downtown kitchen. 

Hermencita has kindly given me permission to show these paintings here on my Jottings blog.  If you are ever in Trois-Rivières, the name of her épicerie d'Asiatique is "Feng Shui".

Pain Basket

pain, in French, means "bread"

My bread basket here is bi-lingual --

the other side says BREAD

So ... this is not a basket to collect your pain

but why not have a basket to collect one's pain?

You empty a bread basket by eating the bread.

Can you be emptied of pain, though

merely by learning how to
swallow it?

Fun with Harmony #1

Thanks to William over at Recently Banned Literature for the reference to this great little drawing program called Harmony. I've been having fun playing around with the various sketch modes.  These are my first attempts at, er, making art.  I didn't pick the subjects; they kind of just ... happened. I start out with one thing in mind but a mistake here, a misplaced line there, and all of a sudden it becomes something entirely else.

The creature at the top, for example. That started out to be a face looking into the distance. Something went screwy when I tried to draw his hair. It became horn-like. As there is no erase mechanism coded into this drawing program, I was forced to leave the "horns".  Then the nose wouldn't cooperate--the one I started to draw decided to switch species, to match the horns. Now it looks more like a deer--kind of. My "Man Looking into the Distance" suddenly became a shy creature unsure yet of its bearings. "Please don't delete me," it pleaded. That it's not identifiable as any known animal doesn't mean it can't be kept. All things are possible in art. At least that is my rationale du jour.

Drawing with a cursor is difficult, especially in the simple sketch mode. The slightest wiggle of the line and your drawing's ruined. You can't go back and correct it. Am still working at getting the hang of it. 

All these faces and the creature seem to have wanted to arrive through the lines and squiggles--so I let them.  I made a weird-shaped nose, for example, in Drawing #3 and the character that was emerging complained: "Where'd you ever learn to draw noses? I hate the hairdo you gave me. At least compensate by making me more elegant elsewise!" (So I added a pipe, ha ha.)

Or, I create a face with no ears [Drawing #5] and when I begin to add them, the face whispers: "Leave it. Ears are not necessary. I can hear without them." And while I'm pondering how that can be, they all now begin bugging me to tell their story.  WHAT story? I ask.  There are FIVE of you!! 

It is so strange, though.  When I look at their faces, stories start coming...

The Place Who We Are

Is home a place?  Places change.  We change.  What is it about particular places, though, that inhabit us (not, as is usually the case, we them)?  Last autumn I revisited a town in which I'd lived for 13 years and barely recognized it.  The memory of it, over the years, was far stronger, and much more real.  I no longer feel "at home" there, though in some sense I never left. 

Ruminating this morning on the idea of satisfaction with the whatness of now, of acceptance, of the embracing of where you are and what your life has become (in light of a friend's complaint that five-plus years and still stuck in the "same 'ol, same 'ol").  And then I came across this little poem:

New day. Same sun.
What you get is

what you've got, and
it is enough.

[Posted three days ago, at 4:37 A.M., by Tom Montag over at The Middlewesterner]

For those readers not familiar with poet Tom Montag, he's from the midwest and a number of years ago he became an intentional vagabond, driving from town to town, trying to grasp what exactly makes people "middle western".  But this poet's attempt to understand "who we are and of what are we made", I think,  transcends geographical boundaries:

~ ~ I saw the shadow of crow fly into me.

~ ~ Why am I so moved by this landscape, these scenes, that old farmhouse with windows boarded up? What previous life did I live that I have this intense connection? All the old cottonwoods talked to me like friends. Was I a cottonwood once?

~ ~ Why have I had to come so far to be home? All day the land spoke to me as I drove, this land of which I'd write. Every grove of trees wanted to whisper its story, every old house invited me inside to meet its ghosts.

~ ~  The symbols of ourselves rise above the line of earth - the windbreak, the water tower, the elevator, the church steeple. We are mere mortals yet we would be little gods of the earth, each with his own habitation, his own local place. We set our markers on the earth as if they would be shrines, places to pray for rain, to give thanks for good harvest. Places of refuge. Markers that say: "Mine." Yet as earth-bound as these symbols are, how they reach for the sky! How they fashion the light that swaddles them.

[From Vagabond in the Middle", #5 and #6]

 Long after the original journey has ended, Tom Montag continues to look, to listen, and to wait with patience, reporting, on his blog, on what he finds as true.

I want to share his poem with my friend:  "New day/same sun"  (in reverse:  same 'ol, same 'ol, but it's a new day!), and "what you get/is what you've got."  It is "enough."

And if it's not--then a different journey must begin.  Within or without, we all arrive there eventually--though, absurdly, may not yet realize we're already there.

Thanks for the insightful little poem, Tom.

______________________
*photo by awyn, "on the road" last weekend.

Little wolf song

Montian Gilruth of FunkyFreddy Republic, performing at the Montreal Musicians Meetup in July, 2009. The name of the song is 'Ti-Loup, by Ian Gray.

There's a place where you can go
and your dreams will live and flow.
In my arms I'll rock you, slow.
Close your eyes, 'ti loup.

'Ti-loup is a common French nickname for Petit Loup (Little Wolf), pronounced "Tee-LOO".

A lullaby to save to sing to little Calix when  he arrives in August.

Used Poems for Sale

__________________________

YARD SALE

USED POEMS

Saturday, June 5, 2010

10 AM to 4 PM

Corner of Lafayette & Grisham

NO EARLY BIRDS!!

___________________________

I had gone out for a newspaper and was driving home when I saw it.  The sign intrigued me.  It didn't say "Used Poetry Books" -- it said "Used Poems."  What's a used poem?  Used how?  Hmmm.  Perhaps it is the seller's own private collection.  He's used up the words and now wants to get rid of them.  There's a poet who lives in my neighborhood?  At any rate, it piqued my curiosity enough to make me veer off and follow the sign pointing the way to Lafayette and Grisham.

A small brown cottage with a mossy green lawn badly in need of a trim.  A row of identical cardboard boxes set up alongside the driveway.  A man in an emerald green shirt rearranging the contents of one of the boxes.  He must be the seller.  I pull to a stop and park in front of the house.  The man in the green shirt frowns and meets my gaze.  "The sign said no early birds," he shouts from the driveway.  I glance at my watch.  It's only twenty minutes past nine.

I was just curious as to your--er--books," I say.  "What kind of poetry ..."  but before I have a chance to finish, he comes over to the car window, puts his hands on the roof, and leans in to address me.  "They're not books," he says.  "They're manuscripts."  And indeed, on closer look, I can see no books in any of the ten or so boxes--only what looks like piles and piles of sheets of paper.

"Whose are they?" I ask.  "Who wrote them?"

"You can't look at them now," Green Shirt replies.  You're too early.  You have to come back at ten, like the sign says."   He turns around and goes back to arranging the boxes.

Not much arouses my curiosity these days.  Truth be told, I've been in a rut, but this man and his boxes of "used poems" got me wondering.  I used to write poetry, way back "when".  Nowadays I barely have time to read the newspaper, and the only writing I do is work-related.  The curse of middle age:  you start reflecting on resuscitating the best part of yourself while observing the rest of you start declining, one year at a time.  For some reason, I'm wanting to read poetry today.  Maybe try writing some again. It was that sign that did it.

And so after lunch I head over again to Lafayette and Grisham to check out this most mysterious yard sale.  A woman with a child in a stroller is bending over examining a manuscript in one of the boxes.  She flips a few pages, laughs, then tosses it back into the box.  "You got any toys for sale?" she asks the man in the green shirt.

"Nope.  Just poems."

The woman shrugs and walks away.  A few cars slow down in front of the house but no one stops.

"Hi again," I say to Green Shirt, as I turn off the ignition and get out of my car.  He's sitting on the porch steps smoking a cigarette.   He stares straight back at me, doesn't respond. 

I stoop to look inside the first box and pick up the manuscript the woman had been thumbing through.  At first glance it appears to be a group of untitled poems having to do with nature.  Strings of words such as "black trees in mist", "shadowy midnight moon" and "undulating waves that grab at hollow shores", etc. sail off the page in neatly typed lines seemingly unconnected to one another.  Although formatted as poems they are not poems at all, just line after line of random phrases, puzzling metaphors and ...  rambling nonsense.  This particular manuscript has 37 pages.

I put it down and pick up the paper directly underneath it.  This one is short--only four pages, neatly stapled in the upper left-hand corner.  As with its predecessor, it is undated, untitled, and the author's name is nowhere to be found.  The first poem begins:

Ephemerality transgressed

each crack in the stark formican table remembered

the distant bloat of wasted tears

cat food, toil paper he at the turn
turn off the light

"Turn off the light?"  I must have raised an eyebrow.  The man in the green shirt is watching me.

"Whose, uh, poems are these?" I ask.   "Did you write them?" 

He makes a grimace, the kind that announces you are sick to your stomach, and turns to look at a passing car.  I take that as a No.

"Let me take a wild guess," I smile.  "You're the former editor of a now defunct literary journal and these are rejected submissions that ..."

Green Shirt abruptly cuts me off.  "Nope."   He strikes me as someone who doesn't suffer fools gladly, or pompous pretenders either, and for some reason I'm suddenly embarrassed.  His demeanor quickly changes, as if he can read my thoughts.  "They're actually my brother's stuff," he says, stubbing out his cigarette on the concrete step.  He gets up from the stoop and walks over toward me.

"Your brother's a ... poet?" I ask, not quite daring to ask what has happened to him and why are you selling his papers?

Green Shirt the mind reader slowly explains:  "My brother's ill, you see.  It became necessary to ..."  He does not finish his sentence.

"I'm sorry," I say.

"These are his writings," he explains.  "They're all drafts, works in progress.  He's never finished them.  Just sits in front of his typewriter and whatever comes into his mind, he types it out, puts it in a drawer and never looks at it again.  It just got to be too much, is all."

I nod, as if that makes perfect sense, though it doesn't.  Shouldn't the disposal of one's entire life's work be up to the person who owns it?  Perhaps the brother's too far gone, as they say.  I wonder if he knows—that all his stuff is sitting out here in the driveway, up for sale.

I pick up another manuscript, a hefty tome of over a hundred pages.  Green Shirt recognizes it immediately and says, "That's his poem about the garden."  Poem, singular.  The whole hundred-plus pages are a single poem.  Green Shirt points to a small patch of dessicated flowers in a bed of weeds at a corner of the house, hardly what one would call a "garden"--certainly not enough to warrant writing a hundred-sheet declaration in verse about.  I open the manuscript at a random page:

vestiges of flotsam unrealized

shaded by benign neglect the roses

bloom crowding out the

don't forget to turn off the

light mud-clogged bird rot

everywhere

"Turn off the light" again?  This makes absolutely no sense to me.  I begin to suspect this brother of Green Shirt suffers from some mental disease.  "But why are you selling them?" I ask, thinking if you wanted to get rid of so much paper, why not just drop it in the recycle bin?  I can't imagine voluminous drafts of non-poems from an anonymous writer would generate much interest at a yard sale--in this neighborhood, anyhow--and I say so (more kindly stated and in less detail, of course) to Green Shirt.

"Because I'm tired of keeping them,” he says.  "He keeps writing and writing and writing and there's nowhere to put them anymore.  The basement is full.  The attic is full.  There are boxes and boxes of them in the garage.  He won't let me destroy them."

"Your brother is certainly prolific," I say, envious, trying to remember the last time the poetic muse deigned to visit me.  "Does he know you're, uh, selling them?"

"It was his idea,"says Green Shirt.  "It's the only way he'd let me move them out of the house.  He seems to think no one will realize their true value and at the end of the day they'll remain unsold.  Then he can bring them all back in.  I'm afraid it's starting to look like he's right.  You're the only one to show even the remotest interest."

Green Shirt suddenly blurts out:  "Look, I'll sell the lot of them to you for $15.00."

I am stunned.  What would I possibly do with a dozen boxes of someone's old personal draft manuscripts?

On second thought, there might be interesting material to be found in this collosal collection of poetic gibberish.  I begin recalling my increasing stuckness, hours facing a blank sheet of paper trying to write even the most mundane thing.  I can't even find words for habitual business reports.  And this fellow's brother simply explodes with words.   Where has all my creativity gone?  I stare at the reams of paper overflowing from the boxes.  I'm thinking I might borrow a metaphor here and there, re-use some of the words maybe, to inject into my own now-stalled writing.  But no sooner has the thought arrived than it is summarily dismissed.  What was I thinking?  Have I become so desperate for inspiration as to stoop to using someone else's words?

And yet ...  the prospect of acquiring this avalanche of newfound creativity no longer seems so preposterous.  Not at all.  It's all in how you look at a thing. 

"Okay," I say, surveying the line of boxes again, mentally calculating the space it would require to transport and relocate them.  I wonder what my wife would say.

"There's only one conditon," says Green Shirt.  Oh oh.  Here it comes.  There's always a catch.

"Once these boxes have been removed, I don't ever want to see them again.  Do you understand?" he says.  "Under no circumstances can they be returned here."  Which seems fine with me.  I mean, if this crazy project turns out to be a waste of time, I can just recycle them, right?.   I begin thinking about the process of going through each and every manuscript, one by one by one.  Maybe it's the look on my face that hints to Green Shirt that perhaps I may be reconsidering my impulsive decision because he suddenly becomes more friendly.

"Look. If you agree to take all of them, I won't charge you a dime,"  he says.  "In fact, I'll even PAY you to take them ALL."

"All?" I say, confused.  "You mean ...."

"Yes," he says.  "All.  These twelve, and all the boxes in the attic, in the basement and in the garage.  The complete collection.  I’ll give you $200 to remove them."

Whoa, wait a minute, that's a whole different ballpark, mister.  Not that I can't use a couple hundred bucks.  I'm already spending  the money in my mind. But wait.  "Er ... how many boxes are we talking about here?" I say, reluctantly coming to my senses.  By his count, 12 in the driveway, 17 in the attic, 26 in the basement and 14 in the garage--69 boxes in total.  Think about it.  That's thousands and thousands of pages, billions of words.  My head reels.

Now, there is no way I can bring 69 boxes of anything onto our premises without my wife's knowledge or approval.  Green Shirt stands, his arms folded, an expectant, hopeful look on his face.  I imagine poring over the manuscripts page by page by page, looking for extractable items to fuel my dried up poetic wasteland. Be realistic, I tell myself. You can never hope to read them all. This will clearly take decades.  I would be dead before I got to even the fifth box.  Nevertheless ...

"Agreed," I find myself saying to Green Shirt, somewhat appalled at this newest bout of recklessness on my part.  And yet I haven't stopped myself.   He isn't smiling though.  Maybe he already knows it wouldn't work, that I'll suddenly realize what I'm getting myself into and change my mind, and he'll have to lug all dozen boxes back inside at the end of the afternoon, that the growing mountain of manuscripts will never end. But as it turns out, that doesn’t happen.  I may be compulsive but I've never renegged on a verbal agreement.

The rest of the day is somewhat of a blur.  I ask our next-door neighbor's son Chad to borrow his pick-up truck and help with the loading and unloading of the boxes.  It takes us, in all, three hours.  My wife is furious, isn’t speaking to me.  I don't know why she's so upset, we haven’t brought them here, to the house.  I’ve taken Green Shirt's suggestion and rented a storage bin at the edge of town--a whole large room actually--and put all the boxes there.

Well, as these things go, one does things on a whim and then regrets it.  A month has passed--my God, has it been that long?--and I've only gone through half of one box.  It is taking far longer than I'd anticipated.  There's so much there.   Some manuscripts are more incoherent than others.  Overall, I would say it's doing more harm than good, though, because now everytime I attempt to write anything, only his words come to mind.  Green Shirt's brother's words.   That was the whole point, though, wasn't it?  To find inspiration? But it's backfired, it's like catching a virus, now I can't rid myself of them, they crop up everywhere.

For example, last week at the supermarket when I consulted my grocery list I found some of Green Shirt's brother's words had infiltrated my pencilled notes:  "Bread, milk, bananas, urgency of malfaction, celery, neglect, coffeebeans, incommunicable with respite ...."    My wife has forbidden me to visit the storage bin but the words, alas, have taken root.

Then I'm out mowing the lawn today and all of a sudden who shows up, out of the blue, but Green Shirt.  Except now he has on a beige shirt with a soccer team emblem on the pocket.  He looks tired.  The man must have a difficult time of it, looking after his sick brother and all. I wonder if the brother ever noticed that all his drafted poems went missing and that they now belong to me.  I do not dare to ask.

"Hi Raymond," Beige Shirt says. Wow, he remembered my name.  And where I live. For the life of me I can't remember his name, though.  What's he doing here?

"You broke our agreement," he says.

"What agreement?" I ask, trying to remember what that might be.

"You left a box of manuscripts on the kitchen table yesterday," he says.

But that's impossible.  Why would I have done that?  I don't even go to the storage bin anymore.  Wife's orders.    How would I even have gotten a key to this guy's house?  This doesn't make any sense.  Beige Shirt looks at me, waiting for a reply.

"Perhaps it was my wife," I say, not sure why I've just implicated my wife as breaking into someone's house.

"Your wife is dead, remember?  Come on, we had a DEAL, Raymond."  Beige Shirt sounds miffed.

My wife is dead?!!  What is he talking about? I just talked to her.  And why is he calling me Raymond?  Who's Raymond?  Beige Shirt is clearly delusional.  I start to go inside the house, to get away from this man.  He's beginning to frighten me.  But he follows me!  I try to close the door so he can't get in but he's too quick and strong and pushes right in.  Then he gently closes the door.

"Go back to your room, Raymond," Beige Shirt says, turning and going into the kitchen.  MY kitchen.  The gall of the man, who does he think he is?!  Now he's lifting a cardboard box full of loose papers from the table, places it on the floor near the back door, muttering under his breath.

"Please.  You're not going to throw them OUT!!" I find myself begging.  "They're not ... finished."

A small panic overtakes me as I suddenly remember something.  I race upstairs, two steps at a time, to the attic.  Gone.  They're all gone!  I turn around and run down to the basement, sweating and out of breath.  They're all gone there as well.  "They're not in the garage, either," says Beige Shirt, waiting for me in the kitchen when I return.  "Don't you remember?  We put them all in storage."

"We?!!!??" I stammer, becoming wobbly in the knees.

"You and I, Raymond, don't you remember?  We drove them to the storage together."

"I can't drive!" I shout back, agitated that I remember no such thing.  "You know I can't drive.  And there is no way I would have removed my poems from this house.  No WAY!"  Beige Shirt ignores me.  "Who put you up to this?"  I demand.

I stagger back and lean against the refrigerator, trying to make sense of it all.  A face comes to mind.  It was that guy--the one who claimed he saw a sign for a yard sale and came looking to buy my used poems--he was the one who took them!  There was no yard sale.  Why would I SELL my poems?  We must go and find him. 

Beige Shirt sighs.  He's never understood poetry, he admits it, what people see in it, only that they go on and on about it, like Raymond does.   He's read Raymond's poems and finds them unintelligible, words without meaning.  He's shown Raymond's poems to other poets at the local Arts Center who tell him don't destroy them, you have no right.  But Raymond, he just keeps writing and writing and writing, vomiting words out of his brain into his fingers and tap tap tapping away all hours of the day and night on his keyboard and he never even looks at them again, like once they're out of his head, they're on their own.  Won't let anyone look at them either. He won't even show them to ME.  

I have to warn Raymond that Beige Shirt may not have his best interests at heart.  What kind of a person would sell his own brother's life's work?!!

  ~ ~ ~

It was the space, you see.  Beige Shirt looks out the window at the little non-garden.  It used to be a real garden but that was when he had time for such things.  Caretakers don't get a lot of time to themselves and anyway, Raymond would simply mow right over it, no flower was safe; it is only the imaginary ones, in his manuscripts, that get to live.

One more box, and so it starts again.  But he would deal with it. Hadn't he always?

Beige Shirt makes a mental note to take the box near the door off to the garage in the morning, before Raymond's awake.  

They just take up so much space, he says, to no one in particular.

 
-- Draft of a short story by Annie Wyndham

____________________________________________________

The inspiration for this strange little tale came from the words of a blogger friend, written in an entirely different context, namely:  "The already-used is exemplary” and “Poets take note."   I don't know why but it began writing itself immediately after my seeing those words.  That, and all the vente de garage signs I've been seeing in the neighborhood recently, and a film I watched last week called "Shutter's Island" combined to weave the tale, urging my fingers to Write it down, Hurry up and write it down Write it down Write it down, ha ha. 

And so I did.

No words

Birds, mired in oil on the beach at East Grand Terre Island

along the Louisiana coast yesterday, Thursday, June 3, 2010.

AP Photographer Charlie Riedel has filed the above images of seabirds caught in the oil slick on a beach on Louisiana's East Grand Terre Island.  To see all 8 photographs, click here.

Over 1,300 comments follow, expressing shock and sadness and outrage.

I can't find words today.  Only a kind of stunned, and horrifying ... numbness.  From looking at only two photographs.

It's been 46 days ... and the oil's still gushing.

Remembering D.

Then and now. Where'd all his hair go? Is he wearing .... hearing aids?! There's a knowing in his eyes that wasn't there in that first, earlier session all those years ago, where he had his head down, his long hair falling over his youthful face as he sang fire and rain into his guitar. That voice--it hasn't changed.

There was someone I always thought I'd see one day again too--like in the song--but never did.   And everytime I hear this song, I remember ... that some things remain unfinished, like our ongoing conversations with the dead. It's been five years, two months and three weeks already. I always thought I'd see you, somehow, somewhere, someday ... just one more time.

We never did actually get to say it, dancing around the fact in a feeble attempt to stop time.  We talked about other things: a film you had watched, the book you were reading: Brian Moore's A Burnt Out Case.  What kind of book is that to be reading on your deathbed?  We both laughed.  Stage IV got you before you had a chance to call back.

Fire and rain ... and eyes that smile.    You again.  Still  ... there.

feu de forêt

Forest fires all over the region:  85 over in Ontario province, 52 here in Quebec,  2,500 people evacuated, including three aboriginal reserves.  The hot spot in the province has been the Haute-Mauricie region, just north of Trois-Rivieres.  There are nearly 1,000 firefighters battling the blaze; New Hampshire and Maine have sent up firecrews and equipment.[1]

The Montreal sky was thick with its fumes last night, continuing today.  Last night, even with the windows closed, the strong smell of something burning in the back yard, except it wasn't in the back yard, it was miles away.  We've had a water ban all week and probably extended now; no rain in sight, and if you get caught watering your flowers or lawn you must pay a $200 fine.


___________________
 *Photo by Linda Lemire, taken 2 days ago north of La Tuque.