Vulgata ab Aeterno

 

On the first part of the journey
I was looking at all the life
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
-America

‘I don’t have enough thoughts to fill five hundred years.’
-Katherine Rundell

"How cordial is the mystery!

The hospitable pall

A "this way" beckons spaciously –

A Miracle for all!"

- Emily Dickinson

It's been windy but here I am.  You catch me amidst my dissolution.  It's a process. Mind you, I still go bravely about my business, snatching at the familiar clutches of tedium. Traffic on the freeway, bills to pay, feeding the cat's leftovers to the birds. You know, finitude?  Tomorrow is Tuesday.  There's a mist susurranting all over the frosty ground and the dying earth seems so empty and still beneath the ringing stars as it spins lumbrously toward the dawn. One can feel a kind of rebirth on a global scale, signaled by the small voices of birds filling the silences with song.

I've been falling all apart lately and struggling to articulate the nuances as to why. Life, ever so-littered by obscure desires and ugly responsibilities has become frustratingly more jumbled, with all my elusive desires fraying. A knot of velvet, dragged behind a '99 Toyota Sienna.  An old football bobbing at low tide.  My therapist tells me that I'm so afraid of being wrong that I don't take enough leaps. She also says that I should take more naps. What to do with this dichotomy? 

While I finish the dishes my girlfriend wakes and bids me, not 'good morning' but to sweep the floor.  I can get so hung-up on this notion of myself as an elusive and gruesomely acidic sophisticate that it becomes an identity carved into stone and then she comes along and lifts that stone to the shelf, light as a paperweight. Everything in it's place.  Here I am. A rumple in her pillow to be fluffed and straightened.  One wonders what is her ultimate concern, what really drives her? What makes her think & act as she does? What's most deep and important to her?  She has coffee and all is put together again. Put to work. God bless her. She refuses to be deppressed.

She's not wrong.  It's work that's good for us, I've learned.  As the saying goes, "idle brain's a devil's playground."  And it is in the rote busy-ness of commonplace tasks that the stuff of life is fuelled to drive.  Embosom the familiar and find in it a source of inspiration and wonder.  Embrace the small, the concrete, and the quotidian and allow these to become vessels for the infinite.  You find out how deep the rabbit hole goes.  Pay attention to little habituations long enough and their invisible fissures begin to appear everywhere in the work as well as work's caesuras. Fractures and families of fractures going all the way down.

I remember an occassion in my quondam youth.  I was an introverted kid working the corners at my parent's party. The house full of manqué unremarkable people, (younger then than I am now) my parent's friends. Not good at much but good buddies for drinking and cavorting. Honkey Tonk Women may have been playing. How they treasured the sweep of those psalmic cadences.  I remember being bemused by their bird-lime pleasures while I stoop behind the vitrine or the swag curtains. Me in my vile yellow sweatpants and batman slippers, eavesdropping into all sorts of their fancy-schmancy-sounding disquisitions and letting my imagination bridge the gap between their increasingly drunken confidences and some mysterious Platonic ideal of worldly sophistication. "He told me his mom lived to be ninety-seven.  And she told him at the end 'I still have so many questions and no one to anwer them.'"
or 
"He's a pervert."
"Well, he's old an old pervert. At least he wasn't a pervert when he was younger."
"Some drugged by Coumadin, some drugged by lust."
"All old man are pedos, if you think about it... if they live long enough."

Anyway it was in this setting when I had my revelation.  Looking down on primordial earth and sun's refulgent rays of light and radiation cause random fluctuations that become chemical reaction: a blossoming cycle life emerges, rising in terraforming waves of ever-increasing complexity as older less efficient emergences submerge into decay. It is an arresting renewal that never rests, characters in continuous evolution. Voraciously, omnidirectionally, journeying like blind roots through the farctate fractures and folds of time, a living system of motion that culminates in the stratums of human culture in an ever-recycling process of transcending itself, the tidal flush of empires wash across the globe in retreats and mounting swells.

At work I was leading the class through their "Warren R." poetry workshops.  The wind was rattling the windowpanes.  'Warren R.' poems are anonymous eponymous topical poems. Everyone choses a broad controversy; (Environment, Gen Alpha, Relationship) and writes a poem about its undoing or destruction.  That's day one.  On day two small groups quickly pick apart the results in 10 minute speed-rounds. Poems are reassigned and re-written for day three.  What results are Warren R.: Environment, Warren R.: Relationship.  Say it out loud.  Anyway, we were talking about logical assuptions and the need for assertions that can't lose traction.   In response to the ideals of mathematics, one student said "think of the biggest number you can think of, and I can add one and make it bigger." 

I suddenly felt a stinging longing for the quiescent scent of rubiaceae.  "If Infinity is a number then perhaps Eternity is a condition." I posited aloud. They debated this for a bit.  If every thing is transient is anything? "Zeno’s paradoxes show that space can be divided up into infinitesimally smaller and smaller segments, so motion is, in a sense, impossible."
"That's why Aristotle banned infinity from Greek thought."

I let them go and move on to the next group.  They were googling the difference between zaftig and saftig.  One means plump and the other means juicy. I'm glad I got up today. Glad I didn't miss the bus.  You learn something new every day.

Mad Walls We'd So Carefully Mapped Precisely as if Asking for Change

 

Some cold night! Wow! 

and us, first on the watery realm—

rich ashwood 'gainst a current as

we battle on boards shaved from 

mad walls we'd so carefully mapped

precisely, as if asking for change. Listen

to the rush of the coming scenery

mist, instantly a mysterious atmosphere —

I told him so, but mister

the ruckus was his vintage ride— we rise

"from here on up the skies taste just like hope"

most strictly just ether of course but copious

the flow, blasting, man

life —what reckless throttling isthmus or else what holy 

bounce our role-models flushed down to the feels

— blows from a horn

standing next to the amp of pure darkness deafening

the test of the affected knick-knack inaction.

Like light-headed ghosts, career-sitting as we say, 

weighted by a meteoric scale —

sightless— imagine maneuvering woe with caution 

like anchorites in a pool of mornings

what they'd give to know courage fused to completion.

Don't rush pal the deal is ready. Bright hope is astringent

You caught me perusing clothes to vacation 

to a landscape's shaved neck —where breathes the young child

cobwebbed by dawn, "but it's desire" she said.

—the vast chasm a gate exemplifying tensions 

mere steps from the limits of space

a scene, terrifying— it isn't exactly across we go

but to the present— mouths repaired full up with ephemeral 

old truth, my daughter, touching my hand

with all the right words, on all-fours 

come on with

she says 

not 

done 

not 

yet.

contumacious

Uneasily eloquent, it's also

all so forgettable

like a forty-eighth climax, who's counting?

Let's drop a penny in the fountain, watch the bright

staid face wetten and diminish

as an old party photo might, night image

from this distance

our skin, tanned from such surfeits of summer sun,

still smells young, tones

brought out by some nicely whipped aerobic nothings

I remember,

while we hula through these ringlets

of time, I ran after

her and woke up alone beside

an unread (by me) dog-eared library discard of Exile's Return by Cowley.

Man, why can't I just let it go?

Here we are back in the light of a late winter afternoon.

We use lots of words to describe light but do we

ever consider light's feelings?

If the light in this room had a skin

it would need a strong creamy moisturizer.

If the light outside had a fear

it would be a specific twenties flavor of shame and embarrassment

Justice is the obsolescence of smug, w/

school officials on the nightly news who

offer their thoughts on what absences mean, or dareIsay, give face to

the 'voice of absence.'

Be careful, coach said, of drinking more than 12 oz. of coffee,

it will parch you, and alcohol

will warm your blood making it easier to freeze

to death, they managed to chide me about good posture

irreticent administrators, coming home to dirty

dishes in the busted rusted Buick while blasting classic

rock, swells of courage never coming

back, who was it who said

a group of millennials is called a Debt?

Fat plaid wounds plunging into financial thistles.

Austin was never going to work out

for us, luxury rent doesn't grow on

trees chopped and pulped into modern dance and creative writing degrees

I had a photo of her pirouettes in the snow

I wrote a story about the backward guy who remembered his memories of the future

like when you signed up for that student loan

coming down the brick stairs a guy waved me over welcomingly

because he recognized me as my father's son

so back in my car I thought to text Dad and later still

had an interrupted dream

of those untroubled years before I was around

how my father's mustache persisted throughout the late seventies and

all of the eighties.

So far what have we?

The shaggy carpet lining of the universe, rust-red-stained

limestone towers beneath which we smoked cigarettes

and glistening existence a miasma of chaos,

velvet cupcakes, round, friendly fractals

candles burnt at both their ends.

Here we are at the part with the questions

What is a curse? A curse is only an idea.

"Like a vow?" she asked, before she had to leave

a painting on the wall that seems to suggest ownership by a cat lover

I'm here alone, with your stuff

Yours, yours, yours, not ours, I address my letters

inappropriately so it would feel weird to use your name in its entirety.

another unsettled desire, it's true

lately everything is worse, you weren't wrong, or aren't

making it up, it's been a hard winter, exacerbated by the collusion with

your inability to receive love /

my ability to offer

here, I hear you, through radio silence though still going

whole months strong like this in which I used to get wasted,

now wasting time 

on President's Day rebates coming in crimson colored boxes.

Where we will keep the relics of our paradise years?

Sourdough golden

oldie Gods, those low

vibrations in your bones, that is your self. The band

wailed long enough that time, depression, stopped, a truly mythic set

and Aphrodite's green-eyes and powder-blue t-shirt,

standing next to you in the supermarket searching

for Shamrock brand Half & Half and new experiences

before freedom ends,

it's ironic that the Greek idea of Sisyphus' divine punishment 

describes the typical American's 9-5.

She dreams of a vacuum cleaner that's not broken

Is that or love too much to ask? 

What even is love, anyway? Because,

we've been together for a while now and mostly want to be

alone. Don't like listening to talk. I like being asleep 

beside you in bed, can we do better or

Is that it? I suppose life sucks

less when showing love

especially when compared to my crunching away at this

solipsistic tirade, the fake contumacious cadence I'd once perfected

like walking in an antiques shop

boil away our hectic lamentations in sweat

and here are are at the part with no safeguards,

most nights I end up down

near the river, something so satisfying in being held

by the water. In many small inconsequential ways

I have fallen into choices that resonate,

a very pleasant low rise life, it turns out that this is true

of most people floating with-

out assurances. How deep

(is the water)? We have no idea.

river rudders and the solid shivering boatlaunch banks of concrete

Hedge your bets, pull your punches, risk little, nothing

wrong with that, in fact there's a lot right in

choosing to follow a life along the well-worn path

family, school, career, why take responsibility for

the madness that is

 freedom? It is, as I have pointed out, uneasy

and also forgettable

like all of these things, where'd you get all these things

clothes, books, lamps, picture of the 

guy we called brick, what was his real name?

it would feel weird to know or use, now

that here we are, alone,

with your stuff

I never called you but I could.

A Tangible Weltering of Intangible Clouds

My first summer here involved going swimming in a city pool.  Took my nephew, not my phone.  Extremely late August, the scalding blue sky frosted by frenetic clouds and surfacing my ears at each tap of the wall at the end of a lap the cottonwood trees down the seep outside the fence loudly whispered asemic secrets.  “7 – 8 – 9”

My nephew brought his gaming tablet.  He sits upside down over three chairs, for all I know having beaten thirteen levels in the past half hour.  I asked him how he sat like that.
    "My body ain't your body old man."

    Two video game levels in a long term relationship are considering becoming homeowners together and are therefore window shopping for houses online.

This blog is about the elements of the city as it lives in your memory.  The heightened awareness of nights spent in new surroundings.  The slow dissolution of constituent elements into new compounds, the chemistry of age, the burning flames of passion, how else can things as yet unimagined arrive?

The first spring here involved a climb in the mountains east of town.  Forgot my phone and had to go back for it, the petaled clouds like one of those robust and compensatory floral arrangements that your grandmother kept on her table after Grampa died.
"18– 19 – 20"

I hang onto the cliffface by my eyelids and hope to God my life grip isn't done-in by all this sweat just as a cool wind from the south rushes in.  Makes you wonder.

This blog is about the time the hungry sun went out to eat.  He wore his sharp creased crayon yellow radials and announced to the people that he would eat them.  “I will roast you into morsels, bake you into cookies and eat you” the sun said.  The sun was an egg.  The earth was flour and the cities were like raisins.

A warm morning in June.  Two initiates to the ancient secret rites of adolescent rebellion.  After a hot climax the girl asks if that was what he thought it would be like.  The boy's mind is beyond borders, a long way off language.  His heart beats like gunfire, settling into a warrior’s rhythm and each lilting salvo fights off the old anxiety holding his chest hostage.  The unnervering unsteadiness, like seeing yourself in strangers Tinder photos, like watching the Dodgers hit a double while not spilling any relish on your new blue shirt, the rustling traffic of sunlight through leaves.

This blog is a how-to manual about the destruction of love.  As it was or love as we thought it would be.  How we bake our loves up into cookies, take two ideas of love, add flour and sugar and wait 25 minutes at 350 degrees then line them up on the counter and serve them on a platter to your au courant guests.

Train 1: What are you writing Ray?
Train 2: Words.
Train 1: What kinda words Ray?
Train 2 (Ray, apparently): It’s a series of stories I’ve been working on actually, about Arizona.
Train 1: Really?  I have not ever been to Arizona
Ray: I’ll obviate that for you. This story’s about about a rodeo guy, and the cowgirl who loves him, and a dust storm.  It’s about losing someone and wanting to get them back.
Train 1: I didn’t know you knew anything about rodeos
Ray: I went to a rodeo once and it was very chaotic.  I am trying to thrust the chaos of that experience into the structure of this story.
Train 1: Do stories work that way?
Ray: I don’t know yet.  But I think relationships do.
Train 1: Is it a happy ending?
Ray, [reading]:  ‘I don't want love if it means I can't go home,’ she said.
At a certain number of laps it’s my preference to count backward, say 25 again, then go back down through "24– 23 – 22..." It’s a nice natural way to unwind without building to a climactic peak, and, bonus!, if I absentmindedly forget where I am on the second pass through the numbers I can start going forward again, unless by some logic more exercise could hurt me.

Rope up all your problems under an awning of institutional darkness.  Destroy the logic of progress
Destroy the merchandise.
My urge for destruction has been stolen and replaced with an exact replica, yours now for three easy payments of $19.95.

This blog is about two ducks giving themselves over entirely to instinct.  Many people don’t know this but ducks live very ordered, rational lives.  The first duck was named Ted.  Once, at the end of a long breathless flight, when they were circling a lake up in the north country, Ted dared the second duck, named Chris, to divebomb it.  “Descend more rapidly than you ever have before mi amigo” Said Ted.
Chris didn’t need to be asked twice.  Though the wind rushed robustly against his beak he tucked in his wings and careened down, a feathered meteor.  Upon hitting the surface of the water he exploded into a cacophony of quacks and down.  Ted took his time to descend and saw that there was absolutely nothing left of his friend.  This is a blog about destruction in the name of progress.
But what progress is there?

The first winter here involved sneezing nonstop for about five weeks, the absence of clouds making the hoary hours shuffle past, here is a sick poet repulsed by the constitutional laziness of natural phenomenon, kind of, as if all the earth is quietly gasping for breath, choking on a  chicken bone, no one can hear a sound.

The girl kisses the boy on the mouth and asks if the boy thinks she is pretty.
An hour later he scratches his dog behind its ears. Weeks later he is at the clinic down by the cultural center.  "Is it curable, doc?"

A city that lives in your memory goes out jogging with the childhood home that you barely remember.  The remembrance of your college dorm DM’s you, soliciting your recollections of summer camp "U up?  Wanna get a drink or something?"
"17– 17 – uh, – 17?"

Two cargo ships in the harbor discuss their respective pasts and preferences.  It’s a blind date and they are trying to determine if they have any long term compatibility.

Ship 1: What’s your favorite Denzel movie?
Ship 2: How long have you owned what you are wearing?
Ship 1: Is it pronounced Caribbean or Caribbean?

Mid-way up the western slope there is an umber forest encased in mists, spring flowers highlight the beauty of fucking up and seeking forgiveness.  A wrinkled woman wakes early to find fresh flowers on her doorstep, he must have plucked them from the garden. She puts them gingerly, carefully, in a garbage bag.  Time to start again.  Dark coffee and humor
"Mince words?  No. I mince garlic."

The rodeo cowboy in the story  fights back twigs and blackbirds, snow and ghost horses, his greying beard seems to be a lovelorn calculation but it is accidental, incidental to the story writ large.  He enters the town and walks right in to the sheriff's office where the sherrif sits behind a black desk, his black boots as dark as extinguished lanterns, his deputy nodding by rote behind him.  "I figure someone's gunna hafta leave this town." The deputy plays with a silver coin, looking at the cowboy as if he knew how this would end. 

This blog is about decisions and calculations made through weeping.  It's about going to new places, the foreign land of the future, the raucous birdsong of the past outside the window, such terrifying cries.  "I'm too scared to go back to sleep" she says, going back to sleep.
"12– 11 – 10"

The second autumn here involved an involuntary trip to Mazatlan.  The sense of leaving home was strange, unexpected, and mostly mitigated by the smaller of the two suitcases, both phones, business and personal tucked into my breast pocket.  It was late-term August, one could feel the cramped birthing pains of September, a deep ache, the steep descent from the jungle of clouds to the jungles of Sinaloa.

The satiated sun fills the earth with his passions and then empties the sky of its stars and starlings, cooing doves and bundtcake clouds. The sun writes a blog entitled Destroy Cosmology and then cracks a beer and allows dusk to delve down and extend his dark grace across the faint milky night before the lights come on.  A dream then, a whisper to women:  half the month will be inky the other conjectural facets of faith.
"5– 4 – 4 – 3"

I wander the town without a goal, noting historical points of interest.  Who decided that 1619 should bear any echoing resemblance to 1719, or 2019?  The centuries are arbitrary. Nothing is funny."The enemy is with us," says a native man in a foreign tongue.  Yes.  This is something we can laugh about, a cobwebbed generation or so from now.

One wonders what stories rivers tell each other.  A river longs to be with the ones who know what it's like at the shining edge of life, and to hang out with them for a little while.  This river was the color of roses.  I follow for a while, ask probing questions, go further, keep my ears open. 

Two rivers, after flirting and flattering for years, have decided to give it a go and get together.  "No strings attached," says the first river.  "Where I come from I am a queen," says the second river, "no strings attached never means no strings attached."  The first river's throat clogs with silt and he remembers the kings he has seen as he washed away at their graves.  This could work, he thinks mindlessly, gushing, yes, his waters violenting crushing hers, conjuring together a new way.