(Tokyo, 2006)
It’s 0:11 at Shinjuku’s South Exit and the skinny lovers are climbing the stairs hand-in-hand toward the ticket gates.
From the bridge just above I can see the glowing screens of their cellular phones and for once they seem like fireflies: the boys and girls have captured a glowing piece of ecstatic neon Shinjuku and are carrying it home carefully, cupped in their hands.
Midnight is the time of taking down. A helmeted blue suited guide waves traffic through with his uplifted flashing orange wand. Lovers draw their hands across each other cheeks from brow to neck.
I thought this was the hour of hurry and regret. There’s none of that. On a steel fence that encircles a single tree a young man and woman still sit, dangling their legs.
One big hair boy with a silver duffel tugs at his crotch. The clock’s immense minute hand moves forward one.
It’s 0:12 and they had fun and still were good. They are in time, will make it home tonight.
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Friday, September 29, 2006
Family Travel / 9
No one refuses when I ask. “Of course. I’m happy to,” they say. “I’ll tell you all about your mother.”
Then they say, “Your mother was a wonderful cook.”
I get a menu. And that’s the end of it.
I was just about to meet my mother--she was in the next room--but she stepped out to the kitchen and left me staring at the food.
Then they say, “Your mother was a wonderful cook.”
I get a menu. And that’s the end of it.
I was just about to meet my mother--she was in the next room--but she stepped out to the kitchen and left me staring at the food.
Family Travel / 8
When I was a boy Aunt Gail wore her long salt and pepper hair up in an elegant bun. I remember I watched her combing it out one morning. Her hair reached nearly to her waist. I felt as though I’d had a revelation.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Family Travel / 7
Uncle Dan had been my father’s football coach and at eighty he still looked solid and vigorous. When he hugged me the tears in his eyes were magnified hugely by his coke-bottle glasses. My aunt, on the other hand, was very thin and looked so pale and dry that if you lifted her she'd weigh no more than hay. She’d had breast cancer, someone said. Maybe her mind was not what it once had been.
There wasn’t much to be said for me either. I’d been promising once and was no longer.
Here we were: trying to start again and so little left of us. Better not to try, I told myself. Still, I couldn’t help it: every time I looked at them the doors of my heart fell flying open.
There wasn’t much to be said for me either. I’d been promising once and was no longer.
Here we were: trying to start again and so little left of us. Better not to try, I told myself. Still, I couldn’t help it: every time I looked at them the doors of my heart fell flying open.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Nagusami / 35
Forgive me if you’ve heard this before. A few moments in any life are small durable flashlights to clutch against the pitch vast lurching dark.
In Banaras, around the time of the Sarasvati festival, I went walking alone on the ghats late at night. The steps of the ghats are steep and uneven and there are sudden drops. The riverfront, famed for its colors at dawn, is ghostly at night, lit only by an occasional cold floodlight from the old fort or ashram.
Walking down by the river, I saw someone standing wrapped in a blanket on the river’s edge. I couldn’t see much but I could hear him chant very slowly, in baritone, a name of God. At the end of each mantra he threw into the water what sounded like a tiny pebble.
I sat behind him on the stone steps, not too close, but near enough to be warmed by his voice chanting Sri Ram. . .Jai Ram. . .Jai Jai Ram. No other sounds but footsteps on stone faraway or, a few times, an oar in the water.
Finally, at the end of his devotions, the man turned around and saw the scrawny foreigner who’d huddled by his voice as by a fire. He smiled, showing his teeth in the dark and held his hand out to me. His cupped palm still held a few tiny pieces of sugar candy.
His voice was quiet and certain. He said, “It is important work－fish-feeding.”
In Banaras, around the time of the Sarasvati festival, I went walking alone on the ghats late at night. The steps of the ghats are steep and uneven and there are sudden drops. The riverfront, famed for its colors at dawn, is ghostly at night, lit only by an occasional cold floodlight from the old fort or ashram.
Walking down by the river, I saw someone standing wrapped in a blanket on the river’s edge. I couldn’t see much but I could hear him chant very slowly, in baritone, a name of God. At the end of each mantra he threw into the water what sounded like a tiny pebble.
I sat behind him on the stone steps, not too close, but near enough to be warmed by his voice chanting Sri Ram. . .Jai Ram. . .Jai Jai Ram. No other sounds but footsteps on stone faraway or, a few times, an oar in the water.
Finally, at the end of his devotions, the man turned around and saw the scrawny foreigner who’d huddled by his voice as by a fire. He smiled, showing his teeth in the dark and held his hand out to me. His cupped palm still held a few tiny pieces of sugar candy.
His voice was quiet and certain. He said, “It is important work－fish-feeding.”
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Nagusami / 34
Mary, of course, was not her real name. She told her real name once, to a visiting missionary, and Ebenezer beat her for it and the missionary forgot the name.
Mary shouldn’t be talking. Mary ought to be scrubbing the floor, sorting the rice, cooking chapatti over the kerosene fire.
At night Mary coughed, an awful cough that shook the house. She’d been dying in her village when Ebenezer came huffing and puffing down the bicycle path because his old Ambassador car couldn’t squeeze through.
Mary, the village tomato lady, was taken to Hyderabad and in return it was only fair that she should serve Ebenezer in his kitchen and in his bed.
Mary did talk however and even learned a little English from the visiting missionaries and hearing Ebenezer talk to the charity money men.
Of course she made some mistakes. For example, she never learned that hungry and angry were two separate words. If you were ‘hangry’ she immediately brought dhal and chapattis.
This particular mistake proved never to be an obstacle.
She said, “You like me. I like you. You no like me. I no like you.”
She even taught a little of her language to the visiting missionary who couldn’t be expected to remember. One night on the roof of the house in Hyderabad where she was prisoner she lifted her hands to the full moon and instructed,
Chan-dha Ma-ma Ra-vay!
Moon Mother, Come!
Mary shouldn’t be talking. Mary ought to be scrubbing the floor, sorting the rice, cooking chapatti over the kerosene fire.
At night Mary coughed, an awful cough that shook the house. She’d been dying in her village when Ebenezer came huffing and puffing down the bicycle path because his old Ambassador car couldn’t squeeze through.
Mary, the village tomato lady, was taken to Hyderabad and in return it was only fair that she should serve Ebenezer in his kitchen and in his bed.
Mary did talk however and even learned a little English from the visiting missionaries and hearing Ebenezer talk to the charity money men.
Of course she made some mistakes. For example, she never learned that hungry and angry were two separate words. If you were ‘hangry’ she immediately brought dhal and chapattis.
This particular mistake proved never to be an obstacle.
She said, “You like me. I like you. You no like me. I no like you.”
She even taught a little of her language to the visiting missionary who couldn’t be expected to remember. One night on the roof of the house in Hyderabad where she was prisoner she lifted her hands to the full moon and instructed,
Chan-dha Ma-ma Ra-vay!
Moon Mother, Come!
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Nagusami / 33
Those who went into these “bad places” entered an intoxicating, out-of-the-ordinary, festival-like world where the line between reality and dream was blurred.
--Haruo Shirane
(Phuket, 2005)
So cautiously, so gingerly, he pushed open the gray anonymous door -
Hey sexy!
Two dozen big boys under black lights in white spandex laughing waving to him from the stage.
Well. There wasn’t really any choice, was there now, but to go in?
--Haruo Shirane
(Phuket, 2005)
So cautiously, so gingerly, he pushed open the gray anonymous door -
Hey sexy!
Two dozen big boys under black lights in white spandex laughing waving to him from the stage.
Well. There wasn’t really any choice, was there now, but to go in?
Friday, September 22, 2006
Family Travel / 6
Aunt Gail and Uncle Dan were both eighty but they said, “No, we’ll come to you” and drove all the way down from Maine. We arranged folding chairs in the backyard of the farmhouse and my sister-in-law made a big breakfast. My uncle and aunt brought a huge tray of scones and fancy pastries from a bakery in Portland. It was downright strange, the amount of food we had. We all thanked each other warmly for the very generous pastries, the thoughtful eggs and fried potatoes.
We arranged our plates and laid our forks by them. Nobody ate anything.
We arranged our plates and laid our forks by them. Nobody ate anything.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Family Travel / 5
I asked my father once if Mom ever talked about dying.
“Your mother didn’t think like that,” he said. “She hoped for the best.”
About this, it turns out, my father was wrong.
“Your mother didn’t think like that,” he said. “She hoped for the best.”
About this, it turns out, my father was wrong.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Family Travel / 4
The last Mother’s Day my mother was alive my father planted a blue spruce in the backyard as my mother watched from the laundry room window. Twenty five years later, that fragrant tree, taller than the house, towers over the yard.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Family Travel / 3
It’s the same story my father always tells, of Grandma Grace’s trip around the world, except this time it starts “After your great-grandmother drowned herself in the pond out back. . .” And my brothers and I have to flag Dad down, as he sits by the fireplace in the kitchen. “You never told us that!” “Didn’t I?” Dad says. ”Breast cancer, I think. She didn’t want to go through with it.”
This is a matter of pride in my family. We never kill ourselves without a real good reason. How many times have I heard the story of my grandmother going round the world at age 17? I never knew that drowning was the starting point--that grief filled the sails.
Grandma Grace went round the world in 1926. And she came home to the farm and the farm and the farm.
“She was like living with a movie star,” my father says. “Glamorous, and not exactly there.” Swears he seldom saw her drink.
My great-grandmother chose drowning. My grandmother chose a gun. Forty years later, my father sat in the kitchen, opened his hands and said, “My poor Mother. We should have just let her go.”
This is a matter of pride in my family. We never kill ourselves without a real good reason. How many times have I heard the story of my grandmother going round the world at age 17? I never knew that drowning was the starting point--that grief filled the sails.
Grandma Grace went round the world in 1926. And she came home to the farm and the farm and the farm.
“She was like living with a movie star,” my father says. “Glamorous, and not exactly there.” Swears he seldom saw her drink.
My great-grandmother chose drowning. My grandmother chose a gun. Forty years later, my father sat in the kitchen, opened his hands and said, “My poor Mother. We should have just let her go.”
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Family Travel / 2
Don’t you love family reunions? Everyone gets to meet everyone.
For example, I get to introduce my mother’s sister, vanished 25 years, to my mother’s namesake, my niece, who is 20 years old, seven months pregnant, due to be shipped to Iraq 45 days after the birth, and looking plenty shell-shocked already.
Does this sound like fun?
Right at the start I’d like to sit the family down, hand out stubby yellow pencils, and make the following announcement. “You may NOT talk. The following is a list of explanations and guidelines. You may take notes. You may not interrupt. There will be time for questions at the end.”
This is impossible, of course, because no one could agree on an official version—or the official version would have nothing to do with the truth.
All I said was, “Joan is Ned’s second wife” and immediately Ned is fidgeting. Evidently Joan is actually the third. There was another mystery wife sandwiched briefly in the middle. We don’t talk about her.
Finally nothing can be said but, “Everyone does just love Uncle Ned!”
For example, I get to introduce my mother’s sister, vanished 25 years, to my mother’s namesake, my niece, who is 20 years old, seven months pregnant, due to be shipped to Iraq 45 days after the birth, and looking plenty shell-shocked already.
Does this sound like fun?
Right at the start I’d like to sit the family down, hand out stubby yellow pencils, and make the following announcement. “You may NOT talk. The following is a list of explanations and guidelines. You may take notes. You may not interrupt. There will be time for questions at the end.”
This is impossible, of course, because no one could agree on an official version—or the official version would have nothing to do with the truth.
All I said was, “Joan is Ned’s second wife” and immediately Ned is fidgeting. Evidently Joan is actually the third. There was another mystery wife sandwiched briefly in the middle. We don’t talk about her.
Finally nothing can be said but, “Everyone does just love Uncle Ned!”
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Family Travel / 1
When my aunt came back after twenty five years she gave me a plastic rock. The kind people hide keys in, except there wasn’t a key. Gale, the aunt I was sure I’d never see again: here she was. She was fragile and pale; she’d grown old. She kept forgetting which one was my husband and which one was my brother. Still, when everyone else had been led away and it was just the two of us she grew determined. “I have something to tell you,” she said. “You can throw the rock any time you want to.”
Family Travel, disclaimer
Although many parallels exist between the following text and the life of its writer, the following should be seen as a fiction. No family's history can fairly be told from a single vantage point. Others would no doubt tell a radically different story.
I write the following goaded by the the Gospel of Thomas: "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
I write the following goaded by the the Gospel of Thomas: "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Dream: Merry-Go Yamanote
I dreamt I rode a wooden horse, as from an old-fashioned merry-go-round, colorful and smooth from a century's worth of shellac.
I rode that horse and the horse was hooked to the back of the Yamanote Line train.
"Well, this is new!" I thought when I saw that horse and I climbed right on.
The Yamanote line train circles central Tokyo at high speed, speeds especially fast if you're flying through windy tunnels trying to keep a grip on a wooden horse. There was nothing to hold onto; the horse was so smooth I was sure I'd slide right off onto the tracks.
Finally, the train stopped at Ebisu. "This is appallingly dangerous," I thought. "I should get off here." But I hated back-tracking and, anyway, I was already late.
Two old obasan hurried up to me then. "You've got to put your feet in the stirrups!" They didn't wait for me, but each grabbed a foot and stuck it into a stirrup.
In another second I was off again, my bright horse chasing the Yamanote Line train.
I rode that horse and the horse was hooked to the back of the Yamanote Line train.
"Well, this is new!" I thought when I saw that horse and I climbed right on.
The Yamanote line train circles central Tokyo at high speed, speeds especially fast if you're flying through windy tunnels trying to keep a grip on a wooden horse. There was nothing to hold onto; the horse was so smooth I was sure I'd slide right off onto the tracks.
Finally, the train stopped at Ebisu. "This is appallingly dangerous," I thought. "I should get off here." But I hated back-tracking and, anyway, I was already late.
Two old obasan hurried up to me then. "You've got to put your feet in the stirrups!" They didn't wait for me, but each grabbed a foot and stuck it into a stirrup.
In another second I was off again, my bright horse chasing the Yamanote Line train.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Sermon for September 8th
The good news is: your thoughts are not plutonium. Only shit.
Remember this when asked to call to mind the essential purity of mind, which remains untouched by all contaminants, like the earth, the ocean or the wind—
No, wait. All those things are thoroughly sullied. The poisons sunk deep even into the metaphors.
Imagine then, something beyond the bright, beyond secret prisons and ozone, beyond presidential decree, something so vast hidden in the breath, including even the nebulae, the neutrons, ions and Republicans, embracing even ever-radiant you, and your shitty little thoughts.
Remember this when asked to call to mind the essential purity of mind, which remains untouched by all contaminants, like the earth, the ocean or the wind—
No, wait. All those things are thoroughly sullied. The poisons sunk deep even into the metaphors.
Imagine then, something beyond the bright, beyond secret prisons and ozone, beyond presidential decree, something so vast hidden in the breath, including even the nebulae, the neutrons, ions and Republicans, embracing even ever-radiant you, and your shitty little thoughts.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Nagusami / 32
(Tokyo, 2006)
I’d like a street-smart master, rather than the pious rural model—the sort of guru who might accost one at a late-night coin laundromat. I’d bring that guru beer instead of marigolds, food stamps instead of the pious envelope of cash.
I worry the first thing that guru'd do, if my master ever deigned to appear in Tokyo, is make me give up my special space on the train, the standing space in the nook just beside the door. On the train with the rush hour crowd, ass against the wall, that space makes it all much easier to bear.
I’ve become expert at darting to that space, un-tempted by the slim chance of a seat, expert at beating out any short woman or elderly person who might also covet that slightly protected space beside the door. In the middle of the train you’re jostled by people getting in or out; in the corner you can turn to stone. In my safe corner I hunker down and just endure--keep an eye out for unsettling city masters, the troublemakers who say there’s more to it than just keeping yourself protected and near the exit.
I’d like a street-smart master, rather than the pious rural model—the sort of guru who might accost one at a late-night coin laundromat. I’d bring that guru beer instead of marigolds, food stamps instead of the pious envelope of cash.
I worry the first thing that guru'd do, if my master ever deigned to appear in Tokyo, is make me give up my special space on the train, the standing space in the nook just beside the door. On the train with the rush hour crowd, ass against the wall, that space makes it all much easier to bear.
I’ve become expert at darting to that space, un-tempted by the slim chance of a seat, expert at beating out any short woman or elderly person who might also covet that slightly protected space beside the door. In the middle of the train you’re jostled by people getting in or out; in the corner you can turn to stone. In my safe corner I hunker down and just endure--keep an eye out for unsettling city masters, the troublemakers who say there’s more to it than just keeping yourself protected and near the exit.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Nagusami / 31
The bakufu, whose first priority was to uphold the social order and public security, designated the “bad places” as spaces of controlled release (nagusami), where citizens’ excess energy could be channeled and where it was understood that there would be no criticism of the existing order. -- Haruo Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature 1600 – 1900
The trouble, of course, is in the phrase “no criticism of the existing order.” As if we might wile away our time in nagusami while the president completes the destruction of the globe.
Instead what we aim for is sustenance in small packages. To sustain life with tiny barely noticeable gestures.
Turn the page with your one beautiful leisurely hand, while the other is handcuffed to the gate of the weapons manufacturer. Here’s a little something to read--while you wait for your case to come to trial.
Continue the heroics. We are pleased to serve sandwiches.
The trouble, of course, is in the phrase “no criticism of the existing order.” As if we might wile away our time in nagusami while the president completes the destruction of the globe.
Instead what we aim for is sustenance in small packages. To sustain life with tiny barely noticeable gestures.
Turn the page with your one beautiful leisurely hand, while the other is handcuffed to the gate of the weapons manufacturer. Here’s a little something to read--while you wait for your case to come to trial.
Continue the heroics. We are pleased to serve sandwiches.
Monday, September 04, 2006
A safe place.
Then there’s the very particular hell of losing something. For example, a very important piece of paper, which you can neither find nor stop looking for. Immediately one’s apartment, which seemed such a modest space, is revealed to be a vast and craggy wilderness, an Afghanistan, with countless hiding places. Where could it be? In this file, on this shelf, in this drawer—or behind it, or under it, or near. It can’t be nowhere, dammit. Things don’t just disappear.
Funny, how you never realized your life was completely out of control until now.
Consider the time you are wasting. This was your special hour to be creative. This was your own special time, which gets you through the day and its hassles. You were almost out the door and right on schedule. Ready to reconnect with the children.
The children. Whatever happened to them?
Anyway, the chance is lost because you won’t rest until you find that very important (and unfortunately, quite small) thing which you have lost. Inside you a thin insistent voice is needling, “It can’t be lost. I’m sure it’s right here. Somewhere. I put it in a safe place.” That voice is inside you. Therefore, it is impossible to murder it without wide-ranging consequences. Still, you will try. But first—you must find what you are looking for.
In the meantime, you find all the unpaid bills, the unread books and unanswered letters. All your abandoned projects and pictures of all the people you promised, tearfully, to write, call, visit and find time for.
Hey, you aren’t using your life well, are you? Life is passing you by. All your time is wasted with pointless tasks. Like now.
And you can just see it. You can see it—that’s how perfectly you can picture it in your mind. You ought to be able to draw it right out of the air, you can see it so well. It ought to be right—here.
You look in the same place for the fifth time. Because it’s got to be here. But it’s not. And the blaze of relief—and the vicious stabbing pike of --no, this isn’t it. This only looks like it. The world is full of these near-miss doppelgangers, sent by God to punish you for your misspent life.
What a wreck you’ve made of it, considering all the wonderful chances you were given. People had such hopes for you. You were promising, once.
Now you only waste your time in countless bad habits and looking for this small, terribly important, thing which you have lost.
Except it isn’t lost. It can’t be. Things don’t just disappear.
It’s here. It’s got to be. You put it someplace safe.
Funny, how you never realized your life was completely out of control until now.
Consider the time you are wasting. This was your special hour to be creative. This was your own special time, which gets you through the day and its hassles. You were almost out the door and right on schedule. Ready to reconnect with the children.
The children. Whatever happened to them?
Anyway, the chance is lost because you won’t rest until you find that very important (and unfortunately, quite small) thing which you have lost. Inside you a thin insistent voice is needling, “It can’t be lost. I’m sure it’s right here. Somewhere. I put it in a safe place.” That voice is inside you. Therefore, it is impossible to murder it without wide-ranging consequences. Still, you will try. But first—you must find what you are looking for.
In the meantime, you find all the unpaid bills, the unread books and unanswered letters. All your abandoned projects and pictures of all the people you promised, tearfully, to write, call, visit and find time for.
Hey, you aren’t using your life well, are you? Life is passing you by. All your time is wasted with pointless tasks. Like now.
And you can just see it. You can see it—that’s how perfectly you can picture it in your mind. You ought to be able to draw it right out of the air, you can see it so well. It ought to be right—here.
You look in the same place for the fifth time. Because it’s got to be here. But it’s not. And the blaze of relief—and the vicious stabbing pike of --no, this isn’t it. This only looks like it. The world is full of these near-miss doppelgangers, sent by God to punish you for your misspent life.
What a wreck you’ve made of it, considering all the wonderful chances you were given. People had such hopes for you. You were promising, once.
Now you only waste your time in countless bad habits and looking for this small, terribly important, thing which you have lost.
Except it isn’t lost. It can’t be. Things don’t just disappear.
It’s here. It’s got to be. You put it someplace safe.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
A glass wall.
My brother took me to airport. We hadn’t had a chance to talk. We didn’t talk in the car either. Not really. We said goodbye at the check-in counter but he didn’t leave right away, he waited, and I turned and waved to him from the other side of security.
He waved back. I missed him already.
I turned and walked down the corridor toward the gate, already thinking, what’s next, when I glanced to the side and saw him right beside me, silenced by a wall of glass. Surprise! He was waving, clowning from the other side of the wall. He was saying something; I couldn’t tell what it was. How sweet of him, my brother whom everyone loves, the drunk.
I hardly got to see him anymore. Not like this. The whole visit he’d been hunched over the table, sarcastic, waiting for whatever it was to be over.
My brother, the same one who taught me to love the forest.
Now he believed, or said he believed, every word the president said. The attacks didn’t make him like this. He’d been becoming this all along. September 11th just made it official, official justification to be afraid and angry.
My brother used to rescue birds. He even kissed me once, right on the top of my head.
My brother has always been taller than me, and better looking.
My big brother on the other side of the glass. His face open and warm like I’d remembered. How sweet of him to do this. How like him.
I should have said goodbye at the curb, I thought. This is going to kill me.
He was right there, walking right beside me as I walked down the hall. I didn’t know what he was saying. He was laughing.
I walked as fast as I could and tried to seem reluctant.
The glass was ending ahead. I waved with both hands. So did he. My brother, who is taller than me and better looking and always will be.
How horrible these glass walls are. To be so close and not able to be heard or to touch. I can’t imagine I’ll be able to look at one now, whether arriving or departing, without wanting to scream.
How childish. To be as old as I am now--and still sprouting new fears.
He waved back. I missed him already.
I turned and walked down the corridor toward the gate, already thinking, what’s next, when I glanced to the side and saw him right beside me, silenced by a wall of glass. Surprise! He was waving, clowning from the other side of the wall. He was saying something; I couldn’t tell what it was. How sweet of him, my brother whom everyone loves, the drunk.
I hardly got to see him anymore. Not like this. The whole visit he’d been hunched over the table, sarcastic, waiting for whatever it was to be over.
My brother, the same one who taught me to love the forest.
Now he believed, or said he believed, every word the president said. The attacks didn’t make him like this. He’d been becoming this all along. September 11th just made it official, official justification to be afraid and angry.
My brother used to rescue birds. He even kissed me once, right on the top of my head.
My brother has always been taller than me, and better looking.
My big brother on the other side of the glass. His face open and warm like I’d remembered. How sweet of him to do this. How like him.
I should have said goodbye at the curb, I thought. This is going to kill me.
He was right there, walking right beside me as I walked down the hall. I didn’t know what he was saying. He was laughing.
I walked as fast as I could and tried to seem reluctant.
The glass was ending ahead. I waved with both hands. So did he. My brother, who is taller than me and better looking and always will be.
How horrible these glass walls are. To be so close and not able to be heard or to touch. I can’t imagine I’ll be able to look at one now, whether arriving or departing, without wanting to scream.
How childish. To be as old as I am now--and still sprouting new fears.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Nagusami / 30
The trick of freedom, when at last you get a little, is not to go completely fucking nuts and singlemindedly obliterate yourself. Like the coal miners who work twelve hours a day, six days a week. Who can blame them if, on the seventh day, they start getting drunk at dawn? Still, one must avoid this if one can. We are unaccustomed to freedom, as ascetics are unaccustomed to eating, and must break our fast carefully, starting with clear broth.
Friday, September 01, 2006
The chairs.
First-time visitors to the attic are amazed but let me tell you it’s nothing like it was. The pockets and pickup trucks of a century’s lovers and brothers and well-wishers have taken almost everything away. I’m guilty too. From the attic I once took an old letter in blue ink that told of a great-grandfather’s journey around Cape Horn. I lost it before I’d even read it to the end.
Even when I was a boy there was still a stuffed alligator and Civil War uniforms with locks of hair in their pockets. Most of what’s in the attic now is junk, and not so old at that.
For example, there is a collection of chairs that fills an entire room, chairs in dilapidated rows, piled on top of each other, with a few even dangling from the rafters. The chairs that wait all day to receive the sun that filters through the ancient curtains in the late afternoon. Why do we have all these chairs?
The motive cannot be thrift or preparedness. No matter how outrageous the party, no one is ever going to say, “Honey, could you run up to the attic and get another hundred chairs?”
My family has lost everything, as every family does—it just appears that we have never lost a chair.
And it’s the usual trouble: the chairs were granted immortality but not youth. Most withdrew to the attic in sad disrepair and there is hardly any place you’d dare sit, even tentatively. Even the ghosts (honestly, who else could all these chairs be for?) must go crashing to the floor during particularly raucous committee meetings.
The chairs are just intact enough for memory, but most of the memories have long since been dismantled.
The chairs I know are toward the front. The heavy rounded chairs of when my brother’s children still lived at home. Chairs that only did their job and didn’t care for fashion.
The spindly chairs of my father’s aristocratic revivals are next. They didn’t last long. And then there are my mother’s chairs, the chairs I sat in as a boy. Mismatched chairs made from good wood, a little soft, that I dug my nails in.
Chairs, thank God, aren’t much good for moral admonitions, can’t manage more than a doleful: he leaned back!
Even the highchair my father made is here. A highchair with gothic arches and a letter in the seat. A very pompous high chair, really. Like a throne. No wonder we put on such airs.
How little I know of the chairs. Most of them I don’t recognize. The chairs further back are curious and dour. They seem to possess some occult geometric power, so that it seems they might, if returned to their past configuration, call back the people who once sat downstairs around the table. Perhaps, if I crawled back and sat, I might see my great-grandmother leaning toward me with a ladle full of soup. Or my mother--.
The chairs are here for us. We do not dare.
We ought to call up Mr. Conrad, the appraiser. These old chairs might be worth something.
Isn’t it a relief to know that even in this world there are a few things are guaranteed not to happen? For example, no one between the end of time will ever mend these chairs. Even if one is a pre-Victorian cherry deluxe et cetera, no one will make a dime off these chairs.
They will remain, keeping time in rows, and not forever. Only until the fire.
Even when I was a boy there was still a stuffed alligator and Civil War uniforms with locks of hair in their pockets. Most of what’s in the attic now is junk, and not so old at that.
For example, there is a collection of chairs that fills an entire room, chairs in dilapidated rows, piled on top of each other, with a few even dangling from the rafters. The chairs that wait all day to receive the sun that filters through the ancient curtains in the late afternoon. Why do we have all these chairs?
The motive cannot be thrift or preparedness. No matter how outrageous the party, no one is ever going to say, “Honey, could you run up to the attic and get another hundred chairs?”
My family has lost everything, as every family does—it just appears that we have never lost a chair.
And it’s the usual trouble: the chairs were granted immortality but not youth. Most withdrew to the attic in sad disrepair and there is hardly any place you’d dare sit, even tentatively. Even the ghosts (honestly, who else could all these chairs be for?) must go crashing to the floor during particularly raucous committee meetings.
The chairs are just intact enough for memory, but most of the memories have long since been dismantled.
The chairs I know are toward the front. The heavy rounded chairs of when my brother’s children still lived at home. Chairs that only did their job and didn’t care for fashion.
The spindly chairs of my father’s aristocratic revivals are next. They didn’t last long. And then there are my mother’s chairs, the chairs I sat in as a boy. Mismatched chairs made from good wood, a little soft, that I dug my nails in.
Chairs, thank God, aren’t much good for moral admonitions, can’t manage more than a doleful: he leaned back!
Even the highchair my father made is here. A highchair with gothic arches and a letter in the seat. A very pompous high chair, really. Like a throne. No wonder we put on such airs.
How little I know of the chairs. Most of them I don’t recognize. The chairs further back are curious and dour. They seem to possess some occult geometric power, so that it seems they might, if returned to their past configuration, call back the people who once sat downstairs around the table. Perhaps, if I crawled back and sat, I might see my great-grandmother leaning toward me with a ladle full of soup. Or my mother--.
The chairs are here for us. We do not dare.
We ought to call up Mr. Conrad, the appraiser. These old chairs might be worth something.
Isn’t it a relief to know that even in this world there are a few things are guaranteed not to happen? For example, no one between the end of time will ever mend these chairs. Even if one is a pre-Victorian cherry deluxe et cetera, no one will make a dime off these chairs.
They will remain, keeping time in rows, and not forever. Only until the fire.
Nagusami / 29
Sometimes when I spend time with the muscled-up, well-moisturized, well-to-do white men who constitute what is known as ‘gay’ I consider renouncing the phenomenon known as ‘gay’ and embracing a lifestyle not so fixed and set in its rules and prohibitions, something more relaxed. For example, fundamentalist Islam.
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