Carrying Capacity (Song)

Other people can hold a two-ton truck full of the world, or at least fill the back of their pick-up full. Many could astound a waitress, balancing six plates full of the world. Even those who are not so graceful can manage a backpack full, a basket. Me, I hold out my cupped hands and already I am overwhelmed, must rush back to my silent room. How it is I can hold so little and love so much?

Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: Bruno Schulz

Bruno Schulz,
The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories,
Translated by Celina Wieniewska, Penguin reprint, 2008

If I could cancel one murder and save one life from history, I'd save Bruno Schulz, killed by the Nazis in 1942. If I could save one lost book, I'd save Schulz's Messiah. I can't. At least there is this book of treasures, Schulz's collected works. Actually, two books are included here: Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium Under the Sign of The Hourglass.


The first, Schulz's masterpiece, is only 100 pages long. I could never choose a favorite book, but this is the one I reread most often. Any attempt by me to descibe its contents is a mockery. Reading it is like peering into a strange, dark painting: a mad father, a bewitching sister, a dark corner where something never before seen grows (almost) to life. This book may only take you a day to read but I promise you it will be a illumined and unforgettable day.


Sanatorium, which I think was written earlier, seems in part a workshop for what Crocodiles would become, but this is appropriate for Schulz: he is the master of describing life half-created: the life of mannequins, mad relatives, stuffed birds.


My only practical advice is: allow yourself to skim the surreal novella "Spring" if you get bogged down in it the first time you try. Just make sure you don't miss the rest of the stories!


There is nothing else like this book--and this one book is all there is. I envy anyone reading it for the first time.

Annual Genitals

As per your request, the instructions:

On January 1st you arrive in a new world with new genitals and a year to figure out what to do with them. (And what not to do, though this is less crucial.) Sometimes just finding your genitals is a hassle. And there it was, on your head, all along. What you mistook for an ear!

Other genitals must be strapped down, especially when driving. Or pruned vigorously.
Then you must find your partner’s genitals, also orifices, which may or may not be like your own, and find artful and absurd ways to jam them together.

Be mindful--a year is all you have. Expect ridiculous contortions. And taboos. Like the time you shook hands at an interview and were immediately arrested. Like having to wear a hat down there.

You may find in yourself a new sympathy for the fumbling of adolescents, for the jealousy of elms. You may be frustrated for months until the day you turn on the vacuum cleaner and are catapulted at once into ecstasy.

Sudden growths, sudden shrinkages. Odd liquids. I’m afraid there will be no further instructions, no helpful charts of the slots, tabs and protuberances. Remember, this is supposed to be fun.

Meanwhile, also, you’ve arrived in an entirely new world. But never mind--you have genitals to discover!

Y2K

One of my good friends (he doesn’t exist) is an expert on Y2K. He knows everything about the disaster which did not happen. He worries about it all the time. It might still happen. Which reminds me of my friends (real this time) who worry they might still seroconvert because of sex they had years ago. This is true 21st century luxury living--to take refuge in the disasters which did not happen and ignore those umpteen and imminent.

History Can Happen To You

Monica says, “You think it’s easy to live with so much history? When they removed the cobblestones of Piazza Signoria they found an entirely new city. For three years they blocked it off while they decided what to do. Finally they covered it up again. Too much trouble.

“But history is something that can happen to a person. My house was being built and I got a call: there was a problem. What now? I said. They’d found an Etruscan kiln beneath my house. Enormous thing. For three months I had men digging in my backyard with tiny spoons. They want to cover my backyard in plexiglass, light it up from beneath and give tours. I’d make a lot of money. Of course the government will never get around to it.

“Still, when I park my bicycle I like to think of what is under there. I’d like to be able to see it. I would have the most wonderful parties, looking down at the ancient times in my backyard.

“On the last day two hundred people came and sat in my back yard. I sat in my upstairs window watching them. Very nice, I thought. But give me back my house.

“Of course they made a book about it, the history I’m living with. Then they came and covered it back up with dirt. Now I get special tax breaks and in return I must plant no trees. Small plants only, nothing with roots.”

Honors

When I struggle with the gorgeous and disgruntled citizens of Firenze, I remind myself: these people are descendants of the people who drove out Dante! It is an honor to be here. I stand absolutely no chance.

Or So We Are Hoping:

“God chooses what human nature discards and human prudence neglects, out of which he works his wonders and reveals himself to all souls who believe that is where they will find him.”

Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade
Abandonment to Divine Providence

Finally I Had It All Worked Out

On the first day at the monastery in Taize, Brother Pedro explained the book of Genesis. He told us all about the irony of creation, about God’s irony, about our participation in that irony. Wow, I thought, maybe I can relate to Christianity after all. I have often thought that God must have a wicked sense of irony. Brother Pedro explained that we just needed to find our place in God’s irony. Sitting there on my folding metal chair, I thought I had a whole worldview pretty well worked out.

Then I realized that Brother Pedro was from Madrid and what he was saying was harmony. He was talking all about God’s harmony, of which there are not so many examples, it seems to me, as of God’s irony.

Thank You

For about an hour after talking to you, I am suspended in a very unusual cloud: a cumulonimbus of good choices. In that hour, I run around and try to make as many good choices as I can, tie things down, tape the windows, before the thunderheads move in, before the crazy people come back.

“As for Dante, there is not a single fact of human experience, from the lowly to the sublime, that cannot find a place in his Comedy.” (xxvi, Esolen, Inferno)

Forest Ranger

A man in Cairo calls Tokyo for phone sex.

“Hey, is this Ben? We’re out deep in the forest, Ben.”

Way out in the woods. Miles from anyone.”

“Heavy underbrush, briars, just a narrow path tickling its way through.”

“There’s a stream we hear. And birds.”

“A little breeze but still too hot to wear a shirt.”

And so on from these civilized and stranded boys, who, before even imaginary fucks, must first resume the world, return the green, a stream where they can tug off their pants and swim. A whole forest, restored, before one can snarl,

“I’m the forest ranger and you, mister, have pitched a tent with no permit.”

T-Shirt

Some days I am supposed to be sturdy I find that there is almost nothing to me. Recognizably male but inexcusably flimsy, like the cheap undershirts my father used to wear until they were translucent, which one day tore like an omelet.

Other people, meanwhile, are so much there.

Owls

Have I mentioned someone is here with me? My husband.

Anyone who reads those words must necessarily feel a pang of sympathy for him. Poverino!

Certainly he is first-rate, has chosen me the way my brother used to rescue baby owls and attempt to nurse them back to health in a cardboard box.

A hopeless endeavor, but still admirable, don’t you think?

Loons

It is suspicious, I admit, the pleasure I felt when I broke the news to him that loons do not in fact mate for life. It’s true that the two same loons are often seen together but--DNA testing proves--that loyal bird is not the father. The loons have been sleeping around.

“Don’t think that proves anything,” he says. And so I sit loyally at home tonight, adopting the faithful guise of loons.

Comedy, Translated and Defined

On page 167 of his translation of Inferno, Anthony Esolen gives the following definition: “A comedy is a song written in the humble style wherein the main character begins in grief and trouble and ends in happiness.”

Wonderful, isn’t it? Who wouldn’t wish to be scooped up in such a Commedia?

But this Esolen, though he aims to be helpful, can be both pushy and pious. I had a boyfriend once just like him. This boyfriend used to get me in the car and start playing cassettes of motivational speakers. At certain points, he’d pause the tape and say, “See? See? That’s what you’re doing wrong.”

This is exactly how Esolen uses his commentaries on Dante. Everything Dante says he uses for some heavy-handed moral point he wants to make.

On the other hand, it seems very appropriate to argue over Dante, who was, after all, the world’s most artful picker of fights. Not once in the one hundred cantos of his Commedia does he say “Why can’t we just get along?”

There’s something to be said for an argumentative version. So I read Mandelbaum for beauty, Hollander for the notes, and Esolen for arguments.

Brain Surgery

Last night a man questioned me about the odd bald patches on back of my head. Very gently he asked, “Did you have some sort of operation?”

I told him the truth--what a missed opportunity! Henceforth, I will lie. I will quietly and matter-of-factly admit that I have had Major Invasive Brain Surgery. (How large should I say the tumor was? Enormous, undoubtedly. Biggest they ever saw!)

And, when I have stepped from the room, one person will say to another, “Now I understand completely.” “Me, too,” says the other. “Sure he’s odd, but give him a break. He’s had Major Invasive Brain Surgery!"

Everyone will be relieved. Especially me. At last I make total sense.

Beginning (Standard)

I wanted to write an advice column. But then I thought: there is nothing I do well.

I do dumb things. At dumb things I am quite good. You could even say I am a master. As far as foolishness goes.

And, as perhaps you have already discovered, sometimes foolishness can go very far indeed.

Beginning (Devotional)

Oh Bhagavan, oh beginning-less and endless Paramapujimapa. Many respectful pranams, candles, clouds of smoke, cookies in crinkly packages, piles of oranges, et cetera.

Gentle reader: on this path there is no error into which this devotee dog has not fallen, no ditch of iniquity unvisited, no spot of shine untarnished.

Nevertheless this worthless das, this miserable slave, has, by the abiding grace of the Mother In Charge of the Universe, been suffered to persist!

Therefore, oh earnest seeker, oh venerable sister, oh brother, I will speak as I can of the tangles and the briars on this path, that there might be fewer thorns to pierce your beautiful feet.

Welcome to Firenze

From the outside it looks small, one room, postcards and olive oil, but from the back another room extends, canned goods mostly, frozen fish. From there a corridor, portraits showing hairstyles which may be available and then more rooms: party supplies, keys and shoe repair, erotic novelties, live fish.

What sort of shop is this anyway? What did the sign say? A little courtyard with overgrown roses leads to a very narrow corridor. A man coming the other way mutters, shoves past scowling. Maybe you shouldn’t be here at all.

When the next man comes you make yourself as small as you can. He winks and grins so gorgeously, so lasciviously, you just about lose consciousness.

What kind of place is this anyway? Do you need a ticket, a hard hat, a condom? One room leads inexorably, improbably, to the next. What was it you were looking for? Meanwhile, here is another room --