"My mistress' eyes are nothing…"
It was as if Mozart could move his body through his notes, and you could walk out on the porch, look up, and see him in periwig and breeches, flying around in the sky. You could hear the music as he dove through it; it streamed after him like a contrail.
The components of being build essences of the all told, acted, sung and noted.
They shake out doings done and yet to come like San Andreas’ fault, not a fault.
Did we quake? My shoulders shuddered like a surge, a heart murmur or eruption.
No, the inner mechanics of rebellion taking a stand on all things ingest just arose.
When the ear throbbing starts, I know I’m lost to it, going into floated notice din.
My heartbeat declares so loudly inside my ears in its under water muffle-areum.
I doubt creation’s pen then, my mouth moving silently, my hands ripping at keys.
Keyboard fingers fly like the cocaine toad hopping brain’s clicking away at strings.
There’s this word association that bleeds writing, a lapse, slide gurgle into them:
Strung words, the meaning of which is not revealed until they mix and sit together.
They settle in a rhythm and slur, brushed water tinted smears blotting tilted space.
Poetry and being entwine thus: letter, scene, wish, guess all overlaid in blindness.
Squeezed juice, the nothing of matter becomes me-you, and we polish air’s shine.
I went looking for my calling
until my calling found me
but forgot my name.
Before I could hear,
I wanted to be a
journalist,
teacher,
biologist,
writer,
mommy,
dancer,
artist,
dragon,
nurse,
sociologist,
tightrope walker,
doctor
and boy.
A few wishes called to me
and a few I summoned once
on a boring Tuesday afternoon,
or was it Wednesday?
Days go nameless
when your suit does not fit (unfit),
your business is none of yours,
and your words remind you
of the unspecified advice
given by that unnamed source
on a forgotten date or
something someone once said or
letters you read in a book.
Endeavoring turned out a total bust,
all that flapping and folding
just to breathe the same air we all do
and always have since birth.
And after so much wind,
when good fortune dropped in my lap,
I turned to the skies looking for the bird.
Where does all the world’s blindness come from?
“Who created the creator?” my father asked,
surprising me with the quality of the question.
We all were.
But the truth is,
the laurel crowns all word-walkers emerging open-eyed
envisioning the final curtain call
–as if there were a stage.
I bow to mystery.
I don’t believe everything happens for a reason. I subscribe to chaos. I believe in the randomness of the universe as movement, collision, coincidence and correspondence. I believe in an ontology of chance. Cause-and-effect is real, but we humans are not always accurate tracers of chains. We are a lazy species, thus the teleology of throwing-up-our-arms-at-space with a surrendering shake of the head and declaring that the proof of the universe’s supporting life lies in our being here–the best science has to offer after unsuccessfully tracing the mathematical and natural laws to their inevitable ends in hopes of figuring out everything, just everything. We theorize origins and evolutions. We interpret from variables of experience, anatomy, observation and subjectivity. I do not trust absolutes. I believe in intention and will, though not necessarily in intended results. Thus speaks the rational mind of me.
The smoke and whispers, the mystery of which intuition is born, lean into those uninformed leaps of faith inside an unthinking gut and take me in another direction: a life unfolds according to its makeup, an already-has composition that merely needs room to spread out and manifest. Choices come from inherent brain patterns in conjunction with pathways generated in reaction to lived experience. This orchestrated tapestry of evolving human is the carpet unrolling from birth to death, a definitive starting and ending point that always ever was because of whom I was born, when and where. In that way, choices logical and whimsical alike, are prefigured, patterns predetermined even in their ensuing alterations and modifications. A determinism I am not comfortable with somehow associates the mystery of the inexplicable to me–my fuzzy teleology.
Joni Mitchell sings, ” I am a lonely painter. I live in a box of paints.” And when she does, I am stilled. But it is not the last sentence so much as the first, and not the last word so much as the word before–lonely–that moved me dozens of hearings. She moans the word, extended ‘O” evocative of Munch’s howl, though far more subtle, deeper and soulful. The anguish is not Munch’s, overlaid with fear, so much as the rooted, internal groan, petulant sugar, that she bemoans.
I sing that line out of nowhere driving in my car or listening to a conversation drifting in and out, particularly imbalanced ones where I witness more than counsel or contribute.
At first the metaphor of living in a box of paints brushed up against the literary lover in me. I imagined her a genie in a bottle, except a box of paints, transporting me back home–in my imagination–just visiting others’ worlds when I choose or must. But I know it’s the howl of the loooooooo that draws me to the line, to sing it. And not the lonely of loneliness. We are all lonely, though more like unsatisfied, unfocused and disassociated too often. A spiritual loneliness more than a lost or severed connection with others often characterized by missing someone or something. I do not consider that lack as lonely. It’s bigger yet smaller than one human or animal or other being, one activity.
No, the oooo in the looooo is both a ‘no’ and an ‘oh,’ like a sort of toggling between braking and accelerating a car or a dance, patterns of release and restraint.
Joni wants to paint but she sells songs instead. She is an artist, vast and particular. Many artists tear at the thrust of creation thwarted to pay the bills. We yearn to paint.
It is not so much a complaint–I can find a modicum of pleasure and certainly gratitude in anything I do, given that I allow myself to do so–as much as it is a longing, a desire ever felt, within centimeters of impossibly outstretched fingertips, a taste, a scent, a faint melody or flash of recognition come and gone. The hollow left behind–of not reaching–the come and gone, is the oooo. Both full and empty space, both present and absent. An ache. But one informed by the mind’s consent. I hurt because I worked out, something good for me. It will get better.
A promise. We live on promises. Some say that is wasting time, wasting away. Waiting is my least favorite thing to do. Impatience is my pratfall. But there is the impatience at not getting what I want–an open lane for some fucking space, room to race onward!–and there is impatience with something larger, more profound. Not attaining because…Perhaps that is the larger impatience. The because. What follows elicits the moan, sigh and gut grief.
Today “I am a lonely painter” with many mutterings to utter before the day is through, puppeteering a teacher, word-pump, and merchant. And as I dive into a replenishing yet jolting plunge into gratitude, I will channel Joni, fighting for all that is ordinary and plentiful right now–air, thought and motion.
If I could savor all the bits and pieces of love I have shared
In the gaze of the other 