one door closes, another one something-something

--This is the end, my friend.

--That's The Doors, right?

--Right.

--Beautiful friend.

--Right again.

--The end? Fuck, I thought it was the beginning.

--Me, too.

--End, beginning, what's the difference?

--Now you sound like T.S. Eliot.

--What did she sing?

--He. He's a he. A love song.

--Is that what this is?

--A he or a she?

--No, a love song, or something else.

--You're something else.

--You, too.

--Hello, goodbye.

--You say yes.

--No, I say no.

--Sometimes.

--Drive.

--Where?

--Drive, they said.

 

 

social distancing vs. social proximating

I have been known to have social distanced. It is not the same as socially distanced. I have known social distancing. I have known social distancing, in its comings and its goings. Have you? Haven't you? The social distancing of snubs and snafus and near-misses. Or near Missus. The social distancing of forays and fumbles, dalliances and disasters. I have known them all. As T.S. Eliot penned it:

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

               So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase

I have known social distancing by any other name. Filed under the names of loneliness, alienation, indifference, rebuff, and buffering. Under the banners of taboo, time, and space. The labels of contagion or conjugation. Felt as intimacy or aridity.

I have socially distanced by one word, one sentence, a single faux pas. 

Haven't you? Have you?

Social distancing.

How about you?

How about us?

I have sung hymns to social distancing.

No one heard them.

Or no one replied.

Social distancing in the key of me, the key of you, the chords of coldness.

We sought the bridge.

They paid the toll.

They crossed the border.

I bridged the gap.

You narrowed the way . . . of distancing's definition, its social cues, its molecular matrix.

And while we're at it, at this safe distance, socially speaking, tell me, what is its opposite?

Social proximating?

As in: "I want to hold your hand . . . if you wash it." Or: "I want to touch your elbow (with my elbow) ..."

Social proximating, as in "Baby, socially proximate with me, babe."

It's a new brave new landscape, a brand-new vernacular.

Hold on.

But keep your distance.

For your good and mine.

For our good. And for the good of others.

... and speaking of arrivals ...

... not meaning the Arrivals terminal at the airport, or alternately the Departures edifice at the same locus or terminus ...

But something else.

("That is not I meant at all.")

Hold on a second. Try on for size, color, and style these oft-quoted lines, by T.S. Eliot, in "Little Gidding":

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree

human touch

Not just any touch. Human. After today's healing service, at St. Paul's Cathedral, downtown Syracuse, I wondered, "Why does this move me so?" When the priest puts the oil of chrism on my forehead, and even more when her hands press upon the top of my head, I am moved. I am touched, literally and figuratively. Why is that? Is it out of a deep hunger? A longing for human warmth and connection? To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, in "Prufrock," it is that and so much more. But if I am honest, it is not touch alone. It is smell as well, though I can't seem to name any. (There was no incense, yet in some deep recess the burning wax of candles resonates, I'm sure. And bread, morsels of sacred bread. Isn't all bread sacred? In our family, as kids, back in Stamford, Connecticut, if we dropped bread from the kitchen table, where we dined, our custom was to pick the bread up and kiss it. Was the practice imported from Poland or Slovakia? I should ask my mom, 98.) So today, snowflakes touched my skin, or could have, this late in cruellest April, but they ain't human. My head will touch my pillow and find comfort there, but it ain't human. Which begs the rank and obvious question, "Am I human?" That is not as morose or as depressing as you might first think. Back in high school, Father Giuliani often said we had to be human before anything else, certainly before we could claim to be Christian (or atheist, for that matter). What is it to be human? You could make an argument, couldn't you, that the absence of touch, inhabiting the arid, monastic cells of the Desert Fathers, vacant of human touch beyond my own skin, my own fragrance, would pin me with the solipsistic label inhuman.

autodidact

Sometimes, in this white space (though what color, really, exists in the digitalsphere?) I wonder if I am merely speaking to one person who is listening, i.e., myself. And yet if that is so, that is okay too. T.S. Eliot wrote somewhere that a poem is not completed until it is heard or read by someone, even if that "someone" is the poet.

endings

We know they come, endings. We know the end is coded in the DNA of any beginning. We know our endings are preordained, happy or not. What? Why say "happy or not"? I say that because I want to believe -- and practice -- that we have that under our control, whether we want to be happy or not, deep down, despite pain or loss or expectation. I don't mean that flippantly or breezily. I'm referring to an inner disposition. Or is it a predisposition? That's key. Maybe not. What do I do with what I have, whether a beginning, a middle, or an ending? What do I do with this ending? How tender am I toward myself and toward the other person (or persons), and toward the ending itself? How do I even end this tiny creek of crooked words? With some T.S. Eliot:  

"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from." 

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

lobster? or crab?

"I should been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas." -- T.S. Eliot in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

And would such scuttling claws pinch their pincers to pick up any scurrying underwater ants?

(Just aiming for the high-brow, even if it's a stretch scientifically.)

April

What was that that T.S. Eliot said about April?

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering	5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

That's how he began "The Waste Land," published in 1922. It's a difficult poem, for sure, what with his and Ezra Pound's emendations.

Am I reading it wrong to say he is saying that April is cruel because it gives us life (as in "lilacs"), which will only fail us or leave us in the end?

He takes more comfort in snow and winter.

And he didn't even live in Syracuse!

Maybe he needed to watch some baseball, such as a 20-inning marathon yesterday, of nearly seven hours, the Mets somehow stumbling to victory over the better Cardinals.

Cardinals.

You hear them more in April.

I love them, their clarion chirp, sonorous bell of insouciance, reminding me of my late brother, who also loved them.

December

T.S. Eliot called April the cruelest month in his poem "The Wasteland."

Do you think December was a cruel-month candidate in any of the earlier drafts, the ones subjected to scratchings and emendations and scribblings and redactions courtesy of Ezra Pound?

In the northern climes, December is dark and has the shortest hours of daylight.

Plus, all that pressure of the holidays.

Laugh.or.else.

The Unbearable Darkness of Being

Started in the dark this morning.

On my knees in the dark.

I am in the dark.

A little light, please.

Not just for me. Hardly. What about young Fiona, from Australia, mother of little Laura, husband of David, sight lost in one eye and losing it in the other fast? What about her? What about them?

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

The charred smudge on the forehead in the shape of a cross.

The mortal stain.



Of now done darkness . . . (Gerard Manley Hopkins)



Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

(Thomas Stearns Eliot)



Out of the ashes
Lots of green shoots today
Lots of green shoots
Watered

(PK)

Chasing Climaxes

From the narrow vantage point of one solipsist (i.e., The Laughorist), the closing scene of "The Sopranos" final episode demonstrated both brilliance and courage on the part of David Chase. The scene takes place at a New Jersey diner called Holsten's (having lived in Jersey for 10 years, with two children born in the Garden State, I must confess to harboring very fond memories of those joints). The hypertense tableau is set, with all of the Soprano family poised to sit down and eat, all in one place and at the same time. This is itself a rare event for any family (nuclear or otherwise) in America, as ably demonstrated by Steven Spielberg in the opening scene of "E.T." You might say, the Sopranos are in a Tension Envelope (as I have blogged several times before). In the words of the summary provided by HBO:

Tony is the first to arrive at Holsten's for a family dinner. He sits in a booth and plays a song on the jukebox, watching the door. Carmela enters and joins him, asking about his meeting with Mink. He tells her Carlo's gonna testify and she takes the news with a sigh. AJ arrives next, complaining about the more mundane tasks of his job but quotes old advice from his father: "Try to remember the times that were good." Meanwhile, Meadow struggles to parallel park outside. Customers come and go - a shady looking guy who's been sitting at the counter enters the restroom. Finally parking the car, Meadow runs inside to join her family, just in time for dinner.

But of course the summary cannot convey the electric fear pulsing through this ordinary moment. As viewers, we expect the whole family to be sprayed with bullets, or at least Tony, or for him to be arrested. Something. We crave some spectacular climax. The bell at the door rings; SCREEN GOES TO BLACK. (The bell at the door, reminiscent of Thomas DeQuincey's essay on the knocking at the gate in Macbeth.)

Many, if not most, fans and ordinary viewers feel cheated by this anti-climax, this impotent lack of climax, this "nothing" nonending. But this David-Chased climax of the quotidian, this climax of the ordinary, is perfect because it's like a Chekhov slice of life. This is it. That's it. Just see it, folks, with all its laden possibilities.

Did I lust for and expect the Big Bang Bada Bing Climax? Sure. But here's why I like what Chase did:

1. The cut to BLACK was so abrupt it was like experiencing the shock of a hit (if indeed they were assassinated; maybe they weren't).

2. It was like death itself (I know; I can only surmise) in that it was the rudest of interruptions. You want to say, "Hey! Wait! I'm not finished here. Something's wrong with my freakin' TV. Hold it. something's wrong. I'm not ready for this." Which is more or less what we want to yell at Death anyway, eh?

3. I'm not likely the first to observe this, but wasn't David Chase obviously echoing T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men (1925) with:

"This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper."

4. C'mon! Aren't most climaxes more ordinary than extraordinary if you're really honest? (I freely expect a veritable chorus of satiated and panting readers to shout: "Speak for yourself, buddy!")

5. Isn't life really not as tidily wrapped and explicitly resolved as we have come to expect through supermarket novels and conventional (American) dramas, at least as depicted in television series and movies?

Plus, isn't life

The Calls of the Wild

Haruki Murakami has his Wind-up Bird; I've got my Unwind Bird. I've even got my Unravel Bird, my Unwindable Bird, and my Long and Winding Road Bird.

I once spent the better part of a year writing haiku, as directed by a spiritual mentor. It was a good suggestion. It forced me to observe the world before me more acutely. And awareness is what It's all about, in't? (Years later, I found the little red notebook I carried around with me while commuting daily from Jersey to Random House in Manhattan. It was pretty cool. In the same book is an autograph of the author James Baldwin, spotted at a Hyatt Hotel lobby in Chicago. But I mentioned this in some previous blog. Oh. That's right. Doesn't matter. Blogging is all about The Eternal Now, baby. Incidentally, in case you missed it at the beginning of this paragraph of digression, the haiku link is perfectly splendid. Really.)

Well, blogging sometimes provides me with the same observational motivation.

I walk out at lunchtime.

I hear the purple finch. I know its lighthearted corkscrew of frivolous song.

In the evening, or sometimes the early morn, I discern the lyrical, slow repetitive lament of the robin, or a mourning dove.

Or the grackle's onomatopoeia.

These are sounds that give me pause. Why does most writing (including blogging) focus on the visual, rather than the olfactory or the aural? (Of course, exceptions abound, such as Marcel Proust, or Patrick Suskind [can you tell me how to add the umlaut over the u?], author of Perfume, which was made into a movie.)

I know perfume can get my tail wagging.

Sometimes flashing neon lights in Naughtyville get me all flustered.

But sounds?

The unmistakable crisp click of heels on a hardwood floor.

The languid reverie of a cardinal.

The "mermaids singing, each to each."

The crack of the bat.

An endless trickle from the aquarium's filter.

The closing of the elevator doors.

The mating-call whisper of the unhooked bra.

The cry of the titmouse (how could I resist?)

An unfettered laugh.

The tap on the keyboard.

The I/O switch.

(A tip of The Laughorist's beak to Naturesongs.com. I've taken poetic liberties in my descriptions, for fun. But this is a seriously great site.)

Sounds used are copyrighted to Naturesongs.com, 1999-2007.

Between Silence and Scream

So, he was an English major, the mass murderer and suicide, and words were not enough to exorcise his demons. Words failed him. He failed in finding power enough in his violent and obscene words. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, he found the "time to murder and uncreate."

Last week, the topic in the U.S. was words and race and pain (or so I hear). I was in Berlin and saw in the courtyard at Humboldt University a plaque in the ground, amidst the cobbles, commemorating sadly the burning of books. Again, are words talismanic and dangerous? Or utterly futile? (Incidentally, do you recall what the tabloid topic was just before 9/11? Shark attacks. You can look it up.)

"Then how should I begin /To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?" (again Eliot).

This guy did so with bullets, finding words impotent to shape or hold or issue his rage.

"Unkennelled" shows up in Shakespeare's "Hamlet." What tragic dogs were unkennelled, unloosed, from this guy's tormented lair?

To my tiny mind, I see comparisons and similarities linking the Unabomber, Henry David Thoreau, and this guy. The rants against society, the unsparing "morality," the utter disappointment in human imperfection and injustice and moral decay. Of course, such a link is a stretch, a leap. The Unabomber was an anarchic, shadowy killer; this guy a long-simmering cauldron. And Thoreau had no bombs or guns.

I was struck by a passage in today's NY Times, quoting Lucinda Roy, a professor who taught Mr. Cho. She said he'd show up with a baseball cap pulled low, wearing sunglasses.

"He seemed to be crying behind his sunglasses,"

she said.

Now many more people are crying behind sunglasses, or in the open air. Alone and always and forever.

Miserere Nobis

Yesterday evening, I walked in Burnet Park, the dog and I.

The day after the last day.

The first day after the last.

The robin's insistent trill, a solitary vespers.

The jet engine's ascending roar in the distance, like that cobalt-blue Tuesday morning.

The light settling like a warm blanket.

The robin's chant.

The dog's piss stain on a patch of snow.

My human odor.

A ghost of a freight train rumbling.

The presence of absence.

The forsythia's whisper of yellow.

The stubborn verdancy of grass.

A broken branch under foot.

A lone robin, a sentinel and mourner,

Near the top bony branch,

Singing arias for the misbegotten

And lost.