The snowflakes that wait by the road

Dear Friend,

Are the leaves falling where you are? The view of the mountains where I am are beautiful in a quiet and almost sad way whenever it is autumn. Mountains in autumn remind me of both hope and bruise, and that space in between them without a name. Also of Native Americans and the colored people, black, brown, yellow. The weight of history is heavy and long, and though we may want to refuse it, the times remember for us. The length of its memory, the memory of an elephant. Have you ever placed your open palm on a grown elephant? Gentler than the dog's, the dog who loves you and sleeps by your side as though there is nothing else in the world to ask for.

The tree right across my window is black and bare. It is sleeping now that winter has begun. Since my arrival, I have noticed two stray cats called by their names at night by a woman's voice. The cats are not hers. I have seen her on an occasion feeding them in a corner. Sometimes the cats are by porch steps when I arrive; they look at me and I try to put a name to what I feel. I am wary. Though I can count by years the length of stay, moving is always inevitable and necessary. Someone, many years ago, engaged against it: she said there are things that cannot be changed. I let her have her way, though I did not agree and still don't; although admitting, I must say a part of me wants to believe it.

I think about the birds, and the squirrels, and the stray animals at times these days, their lives no more lesser or greater than the lives of those in the Third and war-torn worlds, in conditions where gentleness remains to exist.

On the last days of this semester, students tell of long and heavy histories of themselves; art, again, as always, a catharsis, although...you must have sensed by now I remain grappling: to old to believe and un-believe. Hope. Is Always An Expensive Thing. We buy in exchange of spirit.

There is plenty of sadness and pessimism to share. And yet there remains joy in things so little, like the snowflakes who lives ever so momentarily only to fall and wait by the wayside, to lose itself and rise again.


Signed, P

gentle non-fiction

One type of genre I step back from is the personal essay. In spite of ideas such as fossilised written selves vis-à-vis transitory selves, the certainty and nuance of an elusive self migrating in space and time, the lies of protracted drama in the name of art, the unreliable "I", other beautiful and convincing arguments the many number of friends writing in the genre say, I remain a step away.

Non-fiction, no matter how gentle, how sincere, tells too much. A freshman's first draft of narrative essay tells how she was physically abused by a father, how she cried in the middle of a cornfield, thought of running away from home, decided to stay. Another draft of a Haiyan survivor's account.

Sometimes I pretend not to wrestle with the question why. 

No matter sometimes I feel something surfacing from the well of quiet to be written this way, in this genre of gentle sincerity. There, a lump in the throat. A remembering of something that is, perhaps, being slowly forgiven by the self within the self, in spite of the self.

And yet, I step away. Less courageous than a nine-year-old battered by her father at the cornfield.

no words

I hear no words recently, between my ears the room
all open windows no sunlight no moonlight stay
they come leaving as they please

In their steads, I play music slow with steps
the kind that sways the shoulders in hazy waves

Miracle Fair

Commonplace miracle:
that so many commonplace miracles happen.

An ordinary miracle:
in the dead of night
the barking of invisible dogs.

One miracle out of many:
a small, airy cloud
yet it can block a large and heavy moon.

Several miracles in one:
an alder tree reflected in the water,
and that it’s backwards left to right
and that it grows there, crown down
and never reaches the bottom,
even though the water is shallow.

An everyday miracle:
winds weak to moderate
turning gusty in storms.

First among equal miracles:
cows are cows.

Second to none:
just this orchard
from just that seed.

A miracle without a cape and top hat:
scattering white doves.

A miracle, for what else could you call it:
today the sun rose at three-fourteen
and will set at eight-o-one.

A miracle, less surprising than it should be:
even though the hand has fewer than six fingers,
it still has more than four.

A miracle, just take a look around:
the world is everywhere.

An additional miracle, as everything is additional:
the unthinkable
is thinkable.

[by Wislawa Szymborska; translated by Joanna Trzeciak]

exes and whys

The programmer I am working with now
knows the landscape and language
I only have the vaguest idea about.
Her algorithmic words she translates
meeting on a plane with my verse 
in an art collaboration we call mad.
On her 13-inch MacAir, 
black on violet Queer. I wonder about
the prompt for such declaration or
the necessity for staking such name.
Or any name for that matter, names
being able and unable to define
at the same time. I understand and not
many familiar names people call
themselves to make more human.
An agender, for instance, refuses any
line, that mark, which maps shapes,
forms, volume, movement, spaces.
The project we are working on
brings abstract spaces into a real.
Something one can hold onto,
participate in. How so many things
I do not fully understand, except,
as the collaboration's theme goes,
we are all children of Eve.

what comes next

What comes next is not unknown. It is 
as clear as a clear sky day, sky like glass
blue like you can see through it and what lies
beyond, those blue green fields of cornflowers
a tree, a rainbow, an eternal outdoor
picnic like we dreamed to do on Sundays.
What Sunday-school picture books all say.

What comes next is not unknown. All told
from the pulpit, how the world will become
dust, like flesh into ash, the questions.
Only the living left bereft.

My papers are sent. The board to convene.
Meanwhile. 
I pretend not to pay attention 
to the arthritic bloom in my finger joints.

When I was younger and younger, 
palm to palm my fingers could mimic
the grace of a swimming fish's tail.
I could move one or both ears...

Such feat for a twelve year old!

What comes next is not unknown. 
I tell my dog we will see the vet on Sunday.
Meanwhile I recover from my own bout
with flu. The days are numbered.
What comes next is not unknown.

Only the heart is scared. Brave only by
closing its eyes. To leap into the known.

If You Hire a Poet to Draw a Map

He will take liberties with the land. He’ll unwind rivers that
offend him. He’ll move mountain ranges that get in his way. He’ll
expand the coastline to make room for more otters and seals. He’ll
slide the equator a dozen degrees north so the winters won’t be
quite so harsh. He’ll rename major cities after the lovers of his
past. On the east coast there’s Penelope, so plump and polluted.
And Melinda in the west, awash in fragrant flowers. He’s likely to
add a few states. Some as small as a cafe. Others span great swaths
of the open sea. He’ll sketch in highways where it pleases him. The
black ones are designed for families and grandmothers traveling
alone. The green and orange roads are not for novices. They twist
and turn. Go underground for miles. Pass right over lakes. Then
the asphalt ends. You get out of your car. A farmer greets you by a
fence. He hands you a carrot. You ask the obvious question. And
he replies, Yes. This is the end of the orange road.

—David Shumate

origins

In discourse analysis, some things understood are no longer gestured at aloud.

This morning I talked about patterns.  Residing in the conscious, subconscious, unconscious.  The cosmos itself, a pattern.  Little wonder there in the world of ideas.

When, at today's end of day, l lost my temper over crew inefficiency, there must have been a pattern.  What did I say?  That age did not matter.

I come home and one of the dogs let out before closing the day, I hit.  Where did it come from?  This ugly hand, this very ugly head when I become taut as guitar string.  

I know:  in hiding is a very angry young man.  Where did he come from?  Why?
Tonight in bed, she heard my thoughts, as I walked around them, echo on the walls.  

Was I not harsh enough?  Some colleagues remarked, too considerate.  Lash someone if need to. What do I know, what do I know?  When the waters are calm and the guitar strings 

are loose are beautiful, I close my eyes.  The end of day.

the short history of tractors

a funny book.  this book
of humour and history.
also secret-keeping
and family.
how the humble agricultural 
tractor meant to feed thousands

became prototype of a tank
meant to kill countless
in a world war.
and the child who 
wanted to know the family

secret, found what needs to be kept.
and the funny father at last freed
of the burden of memory
raised both hands to heaven,

freed of gripping sanity.

obligation

the obligation is always compassion.
years and many things else have taught
scales and angles change
relative to the perceiving eye.
what matters little to one, matters
a world to another.  who is really to know

the lesser or more than of things:
we need to believe someone must
if only to keep the collective world
aright.  or is it
only our too often unarticulated need 
for the sense of anchoring ground?

a dinner

He says their language had a name for the storm surge
what has been forgotten by the language's own people

the name was kept in a vault that was kept in the marrows
between tongue and memory.

This, of course, was no surprise to every one 
seated around the table, the man to his right

had spoken on ethno-epic only an hour ago.
Every one agrees 

on memory keeping and cultural work and sense 
of identity;  the woman among them says "yam"

the night's metaphor on roots 
of self, bearing from the underground.

Of the five, two are most uncompromising; 
two, being won over

one sits noncommittal in the background.

about the why we live

in another time, the technique was all that mattered:  how to construct the lines, how to cut them, how to end; also, what medium to use: wax or wood or metal; what frames, what movements of light or line; or how big the canvas; is it better in graphite, in oil, or latex; what mixed media to use; what texture the background, the color, the chiaroscuro; should it be two or three dimensional, or should it be in relief or in double images; should it also include an installation, a center piece, a performance?  where will the exhibit be held?

in that another time what was often not thought was the why.

why do you ____?
what do you ____ about?
why do you ____  the way you do?

no certain answers to these of course.  only the hows are measurable.  the birth of concepts, of be-ing, no real origins as there are no real arrivals yet.  every thing in transit.  what we can only recall:  terminals where we think we came from: one point to another.  

but the nuances.  
 

half a morning

away from the calendar, it is easier to pretend an endlessness.  an easy-ness of being.  this morning, i cut the flowers growing from the basil.  the flowers were beautiful, but the basil will die if they are let be.  i talk to the dogs who have the gift of contentment.  they are lucky.  yesterday, there were strays at the streets and i thought, someday i shall be a fosterer.  not now, not yet, when still preoccupied with the many things that speed time.  who ever said life is a race, and we are all racehorses?

at the conference, someone cried semi-feudalism and nearly raised a fist.  it started with the talk of horse-rig system.  an old way that lingered, half-dead, into the present.  and the word she cried so confrontational.  the large room was quiet.  no one said a word.  not everybody agreed.  i thought, why worry about men?  worry about the horse.  who cannot say a word.  who cannot have a god.

this country has a history of gods.  It is standing on a huge island of a God.  everyone prays.  too many claims.

Jayvee asked me to write something to close his exhibit on transcendence.  a one-man show of 3x4 paintings of acrylic and mixed media.  layerings of washes and drips, transparency in monochromatic whites, blues, grays.  non-figurative sense of the form.  i finished this morning, while the sky is in September downcast.  the news earlier was urgent about war and a mass burial.  i also wrote Jayvee a poem.  not one of us mentioned a god.













  

design

"Art as life is design," I recall saying, "an appearance
of random.  Even though it is not."  
What would I have thought if I were across the room,
thinking of the pieces of today:
a conversation on diplomacy, a paper stack,
a calendar with running days, an unanswered letter.

























  

on relative "reality"

if one holds a cup here, now, long enough, one sees how the cup dissolves into something else, how the here, the now, turns into a something a somewhere else between spaces and places and things.  a kind of non sequitur.  how do we resolve the fluid contradition that is also known as real?  perhaps the surrealists have it right:  how we live separately and simultaneously in liquid dreams and reals; two or more mirrors facing each other creating more worlds; the strangeness of being one same person and different to different persons.  

such nuances; such fine, fine thread; such attempt--no matter how inevitably futile-- to climb the height of the ladder in attempt to see the worlds.
























    

the roles we play

Linda, who said she can't leave New York there's just so much theater there, said I see her when I could, when she's back, there, or here, or wherever it is she is referring to, as home.  

She said why do I not leave this place.  I said why do you return.  I did not ask do you feel like a stranger here?  I do.  Every time I return, the place has something new.  And I get lost:  the streets

have a habit of changing names.  The landmarks have the habit of changing faces.  Old places disappear, always something new.  When I first saw Linda, she was not 

the picture of the name in mind.  She was otherwise; and warm and bubbly; meticulous about each step of the process.  I was not surprised.  Long years in the theater have a way of creeping

itself into the skin.  In a workshop she tells the participants the cliche among us they may not yet know:  we're all actors playing our lives in roles.  Linda says we are friends, we are lovers, we are

wives, we are children, we are mothers.  One time she whispered I am feeling cold: I think I might be sick.  She asked for a pill and I gave her a glass of lukewarm water with it.  She curled herself 

on the couch, like a fetus.  I turned off the lights and closed the door.
What are we when we are alone?  What role do we play in front of the wall?

on questions with no answers

1.

this business with poetry.  almost no wonder why 
poets were sent away from the republic.
all questioning that could, on any day, be meant
to mean subverting  what has been 
a long held belief.  e.g. the world is flat. 


2.

this city is connected to the others by two steel bridges.
mornings and evenings, people fall into long, long, long lines:
all in a hurry to leave at first light
all in a hurry to return by dusk fall.
they all curse under their breaths in between.


3.

in poetry reading class, the students' thoughts
are thick like fabric.  the professor has opened
a window, has let something in: 
postmodernism:  a poem in footnote form;
gender theory:  a poem on the satire of normative roles;
philosophy:  a poem on memory's palimpsestic quality.

the students' thoughts
clutch their bibles, reciting verses.

not one of them has ever seen a firefly.




 

two parcels

the first parcel had been, supposedly, received 11 months ago.  documents processed for at least two days, an airplane ride away.  i was promised delivery by courier, and waited, patiently, through 11 months.  no reply.  called long distance etc.  meanwhile, the office went ahead with things and so it appeared the parcel had been received.  until i personally checked to make sure.  there was nothing.  retraced steps personally:  airplane, inquiries.  yes, the parcel was sent.  the young lady searched the files:  in a packed drawer in a steel cabinet, in a pile of brown folders on a table, etc.  she produced a trace in a card:  yes, it was sent months ago.  she typed the code and printed electronic proof:  yes, the computer does not lie.  the parcel had been sent, and received (supposedly) 11 months ago.  the electronic trace gave a name.  i called the name.  hi, do you remember receiving the parcel on this date?  the name denied.  no, i did not receive anything.  less than an inch away from literally saying are you accusing me?  i ran my fingers through my hair.  there was no use arguing or pushing when the next words wouldn't be good at all.  okay, i tell myself, what would be the point of arguing and the prize of winning it?  the documents are still lost.  lost in the jungle of the name's working place.  sigh: to retrace the steps, to book another flight, to process the documents again.

the second parcel was received yesterday.  Gloria, who must be feeling partly responsible for the lost documents, was excited: she sent me sms and walked with me the moment i arrived at the office.  your documents have arrived! she said.  the odds are.  one look at the sender and.
the second parcel was expected: i was informed i was to receive it within the week.  still, it is a happy thing.  the second parcel of papers.  with all the copyediting marks of the hardworking copyeditor who must've wondered why there were too many absent punctuations.  why subheadings and titles are in small letters.  i will have to begin writing stet after stet after stet.  the note enclosed in the parcel said a cover artist has been assigned and i sent email that i've asked someone to do it.  that she is in muscat/masqat, oman may need to be discussed.  in the meantime, let's see what can be done.




















 

on staying under the sun

roger has written and published another non-fiction piece.  a memoir.  and it is beautiful and tender, the kind that makes you be on a boat watching the glowing dusk and white waves.  he mentions reading as a child The Little Prince, the "old" grownups always needing explanations; and how now he himself is on his way to needing those.  i sent roger a post telling how beautiful his new published work and how i wish i have his bravery to step into the light, under the sun, for the world to see.

roger says he walks around naked.  sunburnt.  
i say that is why i write poetry.

dear love

dear love,  these two days i find myself in the mountains in this city of strawberries and pine.  i remember you when i take a walk in the cool mornings, how a day stretches and folds itself not unlike the mountainsides.  this city eight hours away from the rain trees and cottonwoods, the city familiar to me.  the circle of writers i sit with, playwrights, screenwriters, poets, fictionists, we all agree:  how silences and restraint account for half the world.  this art of hiding.