Between Two Whiles

I am still settling into my new job, hence, a little wiggin’ out.  A few hand-me-downs from my boss…

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Refuge in the Season of Deluge

Of the Surface of Things

I
In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four
Hills and a cloud.

II
From my balcony, I survey the yellow air,
Reading where I have written,
‘The spring is like a belle undressing.’

III
The gold tree is blue,
The singer has pulled his cloak over his head.
The moon is in the folds of the cloak.

                                           -Wallace Stevens

Walking I have been doing much of lately, Sir Stevens.  And, as you attest, in so doing, the impossible landscape has made itself plainer. 

I apologize for my unforeseen absence and lack of updates.  Despite what this record shows, I have not been without the beween-whiles, but instead, actually absorbed in very real sorts of liminal life spaces.  I am returning to BetweenTwoWhiles one year older, one degree more official, and one job more secure.  I realize I am still quite a few posts short of being “caught-up” but, in keeping with the spirit of this blog, I must remember that such a perspective of Time is only illusion. 

The Wind Shifts

This is how the wind shifts:
Like the thoughts of an old human,
Who still thinks eagerly
And despairingly.
The wind shifts like this:
Like a human without illusions,
Who still feels irrational things within her.
The wind shifts like this:
Like humans approaching proudly,
Like humans approaching angrily.
This is how the wind shifts:
Like a human, heavy and heavy,
Who does not care.

-Wallace Stevens, Harmonium

Posted Poetry

• Walking Thee, I Land

Other Poetry

For Josh

I ate a miniature package of SweeTarts today.
Contained were three purples,
And thoughts of you.
How much you would have hated
Each, just alike, equally disappointing

I realized how I love,
Have always loved being the one
To eat them for you.
A chosen’s privilege
Fleeced as small sacrifice.

I miss you brother.
Who made me stronger
Letting me right the plum wrongness
Of minutiae.
Sacred saccharide.

I wish I had again a handful of oranges and pinks and blues
to flout in cheery recompense
the wine dark threat of being.
I’d offer them to you
in artlessness, with all
the sanctity of little sweaty palms.

Though it is against my better judgement to place my own attempt at poetry in the vicinity of Rilke’s, well, sometimes other-than-better judgement gets the better of me.  So, I am starting off the occasional original poetry post with a revival from the year I spent in Greece, on the island of Paros…A land of much inspiration to be sure. 

Walking Thee, I Land

The fall of my feet is regular, in long, memorized strides,
Arrival only distinguished from next departure by a
Vertical moment of stance.
A metronome, regulating breath in three-step
Pace–one-measure-in, one-measure-out—
At home, this aspirated waltz is all score, for
Important though the percussion may be, the flat drone,
Of rubber against asphalt only recalls the
Manufactured hell I run to escape.

But here, I am keenly aware of the beats
Themselves, as earth, real earth, responds
Beneath me. The cool hush of sand falls in
with each trebly, nasal inhale; I quicken
Pace, as if to claim my lung’s capacity of unburdened air,
Twice as often. Trading bread for toast,
Beach meets warm crunch of gravel underfoot,
Accentuates the basal in each exhale, and
With conscious spell I force the last stale, city
Air out through pursed lips.
Bounding.
Breathing.
Percussion and winds,
We revel in our refrain, the earth and I.

Rounding the bay, maintaining watery left,
A now-straight-stretch narrows before me into coastal
Mountain, jouncing in my horizon
As if conducting this somatic symphony. Again,
My pace quickens, yielded to an accelerando.
The wind has the grass atop mound flying
Ecstatically like dramatized hair of the impassioned maestro. Trying
To exact such details, squinting into the distance, I pass
Into shade, underfoot, overlooked.
Shaken by a chill that forces
my eyes wide again. So wide
In fact, that I see
Only shapes.
Only peak, large and looming.

Now barely moving, staccato bouncing sobers
Into deep, sweeping gestures as mountain grows, fills my
Sight, and I wonder that
I am powerless against the dictated rhythm. I can
Scarcely connect my bounding from left foot
To right to the mainspring of the world’s
Pulsing so. But, 
Thinking my causation reaffirmed, the bounding
And the pulsing stop, concomitant.
I cannot be sure whether I
Have sustained the last note
Through the final gesture, or if gesturing
Has stopped with my note’s expiration.
All has stopped. Beneath
Rimy shell, a pulling apart from
Myself, repelled and drawn forward, new chorus.
Tremens et fascinans.
Transfixion.
Active immobility.

Only eyes dare move in such presence,
O Fixture. And, slowly. Or,
As what hints at slowness to one sifted between
The grip of time. Surely still for the first time,
I realize how life has taught me to walk
Posthaste.
Envious shadow bears down with the weight of all
Former glories, passed in haste, burying
All but the hatchet.

This awning cannot be born by
The learned posture of one forever taking leave.
Pin-footed, former logic flies
Off. Mirroring the profile of your skyward marge,
This keen non-understanding rises
Within me. You,
With a hundred sprawling, gnarly feet, move not.
Though endless waves at ankles break, you reach
Out with four-bearing toes submerged,
A striking pose of balance.
Upward.
Outward.
How is there remain without stagnate? Just above
The cobalt lick of sea, dainty yellow buds beam. Golden
Blankets fleece fear and draw me
Up.
Out,
of my counterpoise.

Scaling, what wells up within
You, bearing each rock further
From the fulcrum core. My own
Surface expanding, skin, in hair-stands, lifts off
Muscle, off bone. All lift, no push or pull. Crescendo
Bringing whispers to ear, where I stand upon god’s acre. Light
Now with pardon.

Still once more.
Poised upon pinnacle with lightness of the so thoroughly unburdened self.
Birds hang below in air, thickened with so much of me. Over
The edge, lithic features punctuate the space-falling onto water.
Where, beyond, inverted mass is swallowed. Features far
Reaching enough to keep me from my sending back.

Now, to remain, and begin to be grafted here.
Looking down to secure final footing, feet
I cannot see. But middle, bulging, rounding so
It seems I am once again below, looking up. Terra summa,
Can birds’ breath rise from beneath, at sea?
No, the once vacant,
mounts up
within,
expectant.

bench-sit

I have always enjoyed a good sit on a bench…Taking in the world from a station somewhat universally accepted as neutral.  One can simply sit on a bench, and in sitting, fulfill all that is expected of them for that span.  An onlooker’s amnesty.  

Yesterday I found myself sitting on a stony bench in a small New Jersey town, nestled behind a rather dense cluster of trees and shrubs, as I rested my sore feet before starting the return-leg of my walk. (Even a compulsive wanderer like myself can be foiled by the mysterious sudden smallness of shoes and the throbbing of smushed toes.)  As there were precious few NJ personalities to be seen, on account of the thicket and the weekday morning hour, my attention fell upon my less animate surroundings.  With the help of the refuse from the trees overhead, my solitary morning was filled with characters.  

I know what the images conjure for me, in the way of character types, but I am curious as to how this reads to anyone else.  For instance, what names or informal titles would you give to the six characters in the collage above, based upon the minimal representational information?  I’ll give you an example from my own cast…Bottom left, meet “Comb-over Kirk.”    Swell guy.  He’s not really even wanting for hair.  He just likes to counter the symmetry of his mustache with some exaggerated coiffing.

Click on the green title for this post, ‘A bench-sit in New Jersey,’ to

go to the post page, where you can leave your comments!  

Residuum

…Remembering them will not suffice: there must,

from all those moments, still remain a pure

existence in my depths, the sediment

from a measurelessly overfilled solution.

For I am not recalling: what I am

moves me because of you.  It’s not that I

discover you at the sad, cooled-off places

you left; the very fact that you’re not there

is warm with you and realer and is more

than a privation.  Yearning ends so often

in vagueness.  Why should I be desperate while

your presence still can fall upon me, gently

as moonlight on a seat beside the window. 

-Rainer Maria Rilke (To Lou Andreas-Salome, III)

Piled up breath

…As one would hold a handkerchief in front of

one’s piled up breath…no: as one would press it

against a wound from which life, all in one spurt,

is trying to escape—I held you close

till you were red with me.  Who can describe

what happened to us?  We made up for all

that there had been no time for.  I ripened strangely

in every impulse of my unlived youth,

and you, Beloved, found yourself beginning

a kind of savage childhood in my heart…

-Rainer Maria Rilke (To Lou Andreas-Salome, II) 

We all know that oil and water do not mix (i.e. They do not react chemically to form one new substance, or alter the molecular composition of either constituent).  However, add a third component, light, and this stalemate pair appears to undergo a transformation of sorts!   To my rusty AP-Chemistry/Physics recollection, the magic is explained away by the variant lightwave lengths being reflected by layered oil and water, separately, and simultaneously. (*Note: This is not a science blog!)

I know the oil and water are separate substances, and that the liquid rainbow is not actually a third substance I can distill from the mix, bottle up, carry around in my pocket–and dispense as hope to those in need– but I also know that in that oil slick along the curb I see a lot more than oil and water.  It is in my seeing, in my eye as a mechanism  to perceive the interference of lightwaves, that something else is made.  In a way,  I am the third component of this work.  (And by extension, sight, a kind of currency of hope…Thus, a little insight into the impetus for this blog!)

As is the case with most situations in my life,– insert lovingly annoyed testament of friends, family, and more than a few strangers– a metaphor inheres!  In the curbside masterpiece, composed from “natural” materials by “natural” processes, the potential of interrelated media is exhibited.  The spectral illusion of the light upon the oil and water is the amorphous experience of the viewer of a work that defies the nomenclature of the traditional arts.  Dance, music, painting, theatre, video projection, object, etc. may all be identified as elements of a work, but the experience of the work as a whole is not described by any of these terms.  Familiar species of art, layered, result in ever-changing displays, colored as much by the vantage point of the viewer as by any other element of the work…The slick is more than oil glazed water, a work is more than dance in front of video projection.  One is left wanting of more than categorical descriptions in trying to express an experience of a work of art–the oil and water may be identified and defined, but a process must be explored in order to understand the rainbow.  

The rain dances down upon the oil stained street, painting the asphalt stage where a series of scenes occur between people who live in the building along that curb, and the people who visit those people, and the cars that wait patiently in the wings as the focus follows the actors indoors.  The sun’s rays reach the live-action painting, continuously projecting the teeming atmosphere that fills the space between the slick puddle and it’s own smoldering surface.  I happen to walk by, entering the scene as audience, or perhaps as player.  I have no relation to the people, or cars, except my own dependence upon rain, and sun.  I did not contribute to the making of this particular oil slick painting but  I stop and gaze into it’s iridescence, dancing around the circumference to take in the dynamic composition from every angle.  In bringing my senses to the scene/work/event as viewer, perhaps I become part of the work to another passerby…Perhaps even to the owner of the leaky car, who played a role in the making of the piece and may never notice the rainbow puddle as he looks down from a window upstairs.  And who’s to say what’s the art, and whom the artist?

The Sun of our little Universe

Buddha in Glory

Center of all centers, core of cores,

almond self-enclosed and growing sweet—

all this universe, to the furthest stars

and beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;

your vast shell reaches into endless space,

and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.

Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,

blazing high above your head.

But in you is the presence that

will be, when all the stars are dead. 

-Rainer Maria Rilke

I had the pleasure of spending last summer living, working, and playing in Upstate New York with the dear people of Mettawee River Theatre Company.  Throughout the development and touring phases of the show, Nanabozho–a Winnebago Creation Myth–cast and director doubled as crew, so that rehearsal seamlessly faded into foraging the woods for raw materials, assisting “Puppet-Master” Ralph Lee in fashioning said raw material into puppets and set pieces, taking turns grocery shopping, cooking, or cleaning for ten, and drinking beers on the porch in the evenings.  Needless to say, the farmhouse was aswirl with the spirit of community and creativity that has been brewing in this commingling of living/working since 1975.  

For me, Mettawee-Time was ideal; each minute breathed in expanse, fully inhabiting its transient claim to existence. Though we were busy, the place cultivated a sense of awareness and intent.  Fully engaged in my actions, from small to large, I acted consciously.  The days did not pass without my knowing, as they so often do elsewhere.  Mettawee became a world unto it self, lending clear purpose to each task, without self-enclosing irrelevance.  I often reflect on this precious experience, thinking if I could only identify the distinguishing characteristic, I could bring it to my daily life in New York City.  

While I am one for nuances, I’m going to go with the obvious here…The city lacks nature, which the farmhouse was immersed in, nearly hidden by.  We rehearsed on a green lawn outdoors, built the world of Nanabozho out of the surrounding land, cooked with locally grown vegetables–the compost of which was eventually returned to the same land it sprouted from–hiked to the nearby lake and swam in the water that on more than one occasion caught up with us on its return to the land from a gaseous state, raining out our performances.  We were connected to our surroundings, part of the ecology.  Days passed differently because they belonged to Time and not the clock.  Thrice-daily meals around a communal table kept time for our daily routine.  The fresh-become-withering wildflower centerpieces subtly informed my weekly calendar.  We truly lived Heliocentrically!  My Copernican revelation…Do we really still insist upon our own centrality?