To Fast From Despair

(A brief self-reflection for the start of Lent, surrounding the question of modern compassion as discussed in this article.)

Is there a way to fast from despair? 

At the beginning of this season that Western Christianity calls Lent, it seems that our world is already fasting. Parts of it are abstaining from justice; others have given up basic human rights. And still other sectors have simply learned to say “no” to any language or space that leaves room for complexity. 

Unlike a more traditional abstinence, giving up these things has not caused any inconvenience to those fasting. Instead, each empty space seems to fuel the appetite for more such vacuums, echoing across the world. 

It is easy to feel caught between such knowledge and the work of compassion. 

Whatever one does for the least of these will inevitably not be enough. There is no place of safety, there is no haven of justice, there is no future of redress or sanctuary. Almost every boundaried place on earth is now leaning towards a period of exclusionary self-protection. The result of working for change will be, at best, a slowing of these gears. 

And yet. 

The clearest intellectual conclusion is despair. It is a sane assessment, and it does offer a sort of insulation from anger and helplessness. It is a palliative measure. And it is a certain sort of comfort. 

But beyond that, it is not helpful. It is certainly not helpful to anyone beyond myself. What was I saying about periods of exclusionary self-protection, again? They are not made with compassion in mind.

And if despair is the reflex, compassion is the nerve it protects. Compassion – as examined in this excellent article on “compassion fatigue” – has been mapped in various ways. I feel the cleanest-hitting definition is that offered by Nussbaum, who frames a key tenet of compassion as the quality of “similar possibilities.” Or, as the article restates, “the belief that it could be you.” 

In terms of self-protection: placing “it could be you” in conversation with most current civic and national issues reveals the flimsiness of the rights and reassurances with which we normally pad our days. 

To give up despair is to give up a hedge against compassion. That is, rather than understand pain through the (realistic) contingency that no alleviating effort will ever be enough, compassion’s call is simply to work with the urgency of protecting one’s self. 

It is, in its way, an inversion of the Golden Rule: forestall for others what you would not have done unto you. 

So having acknowledged that, I shall try to set despair on the deepest shelf in the pantry, alongside my shots and chocolate and blind spots. (Actually, never mind, the chocolate at least is staying.) 

It is a conscious process to retrain one’s protective reflex. It is a point of soreness, as a matter of course. Often it is much more, a source of outright grief and pain. It is uncomfortable, first, to engage with things I would rather avoid, and it is also painful to look at everything I hold dear and superimpose erasure, as surely experienced by others who might have been me. 

This season is well-known as a time of heading into deserts. But this year, it seems like the call is to head toward the jungle-like spaces, prepared to join the scrap over questions of what this world is willing to give up.

Love & Duct Tape

(Notoriously, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But what about its spine, and other essential parts?)

“They” say: you can’t judge a book by its cover. 

And that may be true, for at least some circumstances and reprints. But next time you want to accurately judge the contents of a book before, you know, reading it – I’ve got a cheat code for you: check the spine. 

You can definitely judge a book’s contents by its backbone.

To wit:  

My childhood understanding of the English language depended upon copious amounts of duct tape. Our household OED (196? edition) was…in a state that was an accurate visual metaphor for a lingua franca concocted as a confused love/hate-child of Old French and Older German. 

At some point post-Berlin Wall, the original binding gave up on its ability to contain multitudes. But the contents continued, by the grace of gray-sheened sticky sheets carefully layered on in parallel precision. To think: I might have never learned how to spell or use the word “syzygy” without this intervention. 

A second piece of evidence: another 196? household relic, The Lord of the Rings. 

The spines were already missing. However, book entropy doesn’t rely on spines alone. No, the covers and contents, I was to learn, are all fair game.

The first time I read that trilogy, I was able to literally read from “cover to cover”. Hopefully I savored the experience, because never again: maybe half of each cover made it through oh, half of each book? Not the most stable of materials, the mid-century paperback. 

By the second read-through, the last sections of Fellowship had also dropped off into the void, or rather, crumbled like Frodo’s will at Mt. Doom. 

Please consider that there was a lot of back matter to those editions: Mr. Tolkien’s linguistic commentary and references to the Silmarillion, as I recall. So effectively it was about a third of the printed matter of the book that just – disintegrated.

And then there was the summer I had a pair of cargo shorts with button-flap pockets the perfect size for the average early-2000s YA paperback (thank you for ruining that for us, JKR). So for a while I was packing a Tamora Pierce per leg… because you know, decisions are hard when the reading’s that good. I believe both pants and paperbacks gave up about the same time. 

One of the most interesting things to me is going through the paperback section at secondhand book shops. You can tell what books people loved enough to reread. 

Pull out one of those illegible, vertical-white-line-spined books for a moment. Check the page edges for that other classic tell: page-turning. You know, the “I don’t have a bookmark so let me turn down the top corner of the page” move? 

Let’s just say you can pretty accurately clock the “good parts” (all contract-required three of them) of any romantasy/sci fi/thriller without having to read through the whole angsty/explainy/feelings/political intrigue/training montage of… the rest of the book. Oh, AND the spine might be particularly cracked to correspond with about that point. 

And yes, I know all this isn’t good for the book. Yes, it damages it. Yes, I’m probably a book-killer or at least a book-sadist. Nope, they have no resale value at all by the time I’m done. We commit for life in this library, baby. 

I think Anne Fadiman explores this best in Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader. She divides readers into two camps: those who treasure the book in its unmarked glory, and carefully try to maintain the illusion of untouched purity even while absorbing the text; and the second batch, the “carnal readers,” who…you know, make a mess of things and cheerfully go to hell entwined with their favorite passages. Little reverse Dantes, every single one of ‘em….us.  

And yes, Anne Fadiman also highlights the “turned down pages” phenomena: she came across her father’s copy of (I think) Fanny Hill. 

I will just conclude this cluster of observations by adding that the saddest thing to me is when a secondhand book isn’t marked at all. Because: it’s not actually about “judging” a book by its cover; it’s about giving it a chance, opening it, listening to it, even for a few pages. And that leaves marks, even careful ones. So it means no one has read them. 

Sometimes, cheat codes be damned, you just have to take a chance. And bring along duct tape – because it just might be a good one.

On Dust Work & Clean Versions

(An update: I talk “dust work” versus my new chapbook project Dust Work, and how to tidy up a trail.)

Since mid-December, I’ve been working on a hybrid-narrative writing project called Dust Work in the Valley of Dry Bones. 

The name, of course, is rather spooky. Just the way I like things – but really, I’ve used the term “dust work” for several years now, privately, to designate my writing practice without putting too much pressure on myself. 

And I’d be lying if I spun a clean origin for the term. The two main points I can remember are: first, Lent – which, notoriously, begins with Ash Wednesday: ashes to ashes, dust to dust – and, second, a book I read during high school called The Secret Life Of Dust (Hannah Holmes), which examines dust as a necessity for creating environments for life.

Now put the two together. 

The idea that emerges for me is that this untidy desert of a “right here, right now” in which I continually find myself is…actually a pretty good place to do whatever it is I’m doing. That is, the dust – the untidiness – is crucial to the business. 

So let me circle back to what that is:

In Dust Work in the Valley of Dry Bones, I examine “cleaning” as an answer to the question: “how to live?” 

From my project summary:

“Cleaning is often taken for granted. Yet precisely because cleaning is meant to disappear, it becomes a powerful force linking memory and erasure, care and control, kinship and identity. 

From a prophet who talks too much, to a trash can where waste is hand-placed for perfect tidiness, the chapbook asks what a life leaves in its wake – and what gets tidied to preserve the “clean version” of events.”

The clean version? How on earth do we get to that? 

There are already very useful books that address practical aspects of this question. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Marie Kondo), and The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning (Margareta Magnusson) (a surprisingly cheerful read) are two of my non-ironic favorites. 

And then there are the…less straightforward approaches. 

That is, there is already a rich body of artistic and intellectual work built around the idea of “maintenance work.” 

The arts and writing of Mierle Laderman Ukeles; Selma James; and Lenka Clayton; are particularly representative of work interrogating the who/what/why of domestic routines. 

And when I lift the dust cover off these pieces of intellectual framing, the real story: these ideas resonate because they are filtered through my own vivid experience of life with a…full-time, stay-at-home mother. 

One whose frustrations with housework were rooted in knowledge of the same feminist movement that bolstered the above-mentioned artists and activists; and whose own artistic mindset and vision of her space engendered what can best be described as a particularly rigorous methodology of cleaning-as-continual-practice. 

Of course, regarding my own “maintenance work:” I’ve spent years living as an adult and trying/failing/trying to tidy my life into order. I’ve cleaned up after myself and after roommates; I’ve also tried methods ranging from “ignore it” to “put it in a box.” I’m currently trying a hybrid approach called “ignore it but do just enough laundry/dishes to sort of count.” 

And yet – this process of writing about cleaning has been very important to me: not as a penance or manifesto or “how-to,” but as a way to finally, realistically acknowledge to myself that – there isn’t really a way to live and be clean at the same time. 

It isn’t a moral judgement. That is: as long as I am part of a system, I’ll leave a trail. I’ll leave carbon dioxide and skin cells and hair. I’ll shake lint off my clothes and pick up cat hair when I sit down. I’ll drop tissues, scuff walls and doors, lose my favorite hoodie somewhere in Texas – learn all the stains on the walls at both my places of work; put a piece of tape on the lifting desk laminate at one of them. And throw away empty sardine tins at the other, regularly and surreptitiously. All of these things will leave trails.

No amount of maintenance work will completely erase them. No amount of talking about maintenance work will, either. 

But if “cleaning” is one answer to the question of “how to live,” it is important to acknowledge a property of cleaning that is immediately obvious to anyone who’s done a lot of it. That is: it’s cyclical. Recursive. Things are clean, and then the dust settles. And then – you clean. Sometimes you clean for yourself, sometimes you clean for others and hope someone likewise picks up the slack for you (or at least has poor eyesight for dust) – but the process itself will never cease. As long as you’re in relation with life, you’re in some sort of relation with the business of picking/not picking up after yourself. 

So: dust work. The business of dust settling, new dust rising: the space for life to emerge. 

You see what a difference a clean version can make?

Advent, Day 24: Single Leaf

(Day 24 of this year’s Advent series. Yesterday’s piece was about vigils; today we consider arrival.)

Single Leaf

I really love the sound –
A single leaf against the ground.
It means I’m finally
Listening.

My friends –

Here we are. 

If you have never heard the sound made by a solitary leaf, then I hope your day will hold that. 

As I hope your day will hold countless seconds of awe and uncertainty and clarity, side-by-side, each to their moments of attention, each enriched by and enriching all the rest. 

May you step out in peace.

Advent, Day 23: You Who Hold Vigil

(Day 23 of this year’s Advent series. Yesterday’s piece was about beasts; today we consider vigils.)

You Who Hold Vigil

Do not close too soon
This time between, 
You who hold vigil;
You who hold
This night in your lap,
Who rock with the muscles
Of movement and memory, 
Sing with the voice of no words,
Bear what was inside, out;
Bear the form
Of the night who bore you
Long ago.

Well, my friends. 

It turns out I really didn’t know what I was wandering towards this Advent. The question marks have flown by at breakneck speed, life pouring in through their contrails. 

Vigils that last for any period of time are never an act of single attention. 

In my case, seconds of reflection and awe have occurred within – everything else. There’s been work and not-work and cleaning, a birthday and a birthday party; I remembered my mother, and tried to remember the living. I definitely forgot some things, like going to the gym; worked on putting together chapbook collections; continued reading the same books I’ve been working on since August; started a poetry manuscript on cleaning; and signed myself up to make turkey, black beans, and roasted squash to share with others. 

The housework definitely slid. I did clean out the fridge. To make room for the turkey.

One of the more vigil-like aspects was glimpsing the person I was three years ago, when I wrote this collection of Advent poems to send off to my parents. I was able to edit a few of these poems to reflect what I felt was most honest, now – but was unable to share then. The main things have stayed remarkably consistent, however. Themes of uncertainty, honesty, silence, beasts, and miracles – and the many ways of paying attention to and through these. 

All of these themes are still question marks for me. They mark spots where my brain keeps catching on the world, and refusing to accept a single tidy insight.

And my scattered attention stays scattered. Fragmentation is a motif because I have a hard time focusing on – seeing things – in any other way. 

Today I’m sitting down to write most of my Christmas cards. Which have apparently just become New Year’s cards. At this rate a few of them might go out in time for Lent too. (You would not be wrong in suspecting there’s more than one reason why I like to link the two seasons.) The year moves forward. 

Even if my attention wants to linger in the vigil-state of Advent, that’s not possible. Maybe I’ll be back next year. In the meantime, the night of December 24th marks the moment when we are through this bi-stable door, stepping out of Rubin’s vase into the church season of Christmas and Epiphany. Things become a bit more scripted again, and I tend to wander off to look at squirrels and other unknown beasts. 

But I try to bring a few things along. Even though that’s not really possible. I try to remember a few bars of song, the lullabies of this time, the gentle rocking of a cradle – vexing (thank you, Yeats) or otherwise. 

I try to remember the night that bore me long ago. One half of a question mark. One half of an answer. One half of a map between these wandering lines of black and white on either side.

Remembering and looking forward at the same time – through all the fragmentation – that’s a pretty good definition of vigil, and a pretty good path beyond this question mark’s rocking curve.

Advent, Day 22: You May Slouch

(Day 22 of this year’s Advent series. Yesterday’s piece was about honesty; today we consider crossroads.)

You May Slouch

You may slouch
Towards Bethlehem –
Or take up your mat and walk;
Run, praising, or run
The other way
Following Jonah. 

Whichever, however way –
You will arrive:
It is a small town,
But a crossroads
No path is spared.

– With special appreciation of 
William Butler Yeats’s The Second Coming –

Crossroads are (notoriously) places where something happens: something is offered, something is received, something or someone is refused or gained. They are sites of interchange, in both the literal and metaphorical sense. 

Yeats wrote “The Second Coming” in 1919, as a reflection of the dawning post-WWI era. The images it portrays are generally understood to be terrifying, although this has never stopped me from loving the poem to pieces and sneaking quotes into cards for every possible occasion (graduation to Christmas to “get well”). It’s motivational. Or “awe-inspiring.” Something like that, anyway. My point is – Yeats was writing after World War I, he knew damn well what kind of rough beast might be on Europe’s horizon. And he still framed it as a question: “…what rough beast…” – ?

Which means it could be something amazing. Unlikely, yes. But it could be. And a sizable portion of hope is looking towards that unknown rough beast – 

And holding out a dog treat. Just in case. 

Advent, Day 21: I’ll Wrestle Your Stranger

(Day 21 of this year’s Advent series. Yesterday’s piece was about tranquility; today we consider honesty.)

I’ll Wrestle Your Stranger

I.

I’ll wrestle Your Stranger,
If that is my part.

Yet I would rather talk
Heart-to-heart,
Or as with silence
Give up all defense –

II.

Did Jacob learn 
A better way to fight, 
That night?
Lacking words
He used so well in greed –

All tongues, asleep
He left under a stone;

Now, alone,
Stripped from self and home,
He learned the love of
Honesty –
By Your rough embrace.

So, about honesty: 

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

I think of honesty not as a value but as a practice. It is a quality I am most aware of when writing; the sense that some part of a sentence or story has taken the easy way out. That’s my sign to think again. 

It is fine if something is told “slant,” in Dickinson’s inimitable phrase. It is not fine if it is told lazily. 

And to be clear: laziness, in the sense of apathy, can be a virtue (I promise you my argument on that one of these days). But laziness in the sense of triteness ranks high up on my personal list of moral failings to guard against. It is a flaw that trips twice: first, by dulling one’s own sense of persistence and care, and second, by dulling others’ sense of urgency toward existence.

…“Urgency toward existence”? Apparently so. 

Let’s be precise. The body is the primary tool with which to experience the world. And only one person will ever experience the world from within your body. 

Only one person can map your uncertainty from the inside. 

Only one person knows the shape of your pain well enough to translate it into empathy.

So: the practice of honesty is one way to pay attention to…all of that.

And honestly – 

Figuring out how to tell truth so it sounds more fun than the proverbial one that got away: it’s not a bad way to spend an evening, stone pillow and all.

Advent, Day 20: When Sinks The Silence

(Day 20 of this year’s Advent series. Yesterday’s piece was about side quests; today we consider tranquility.)

When Sinks the Silence

When sinks the silence
Into my soul –
So much is lost:
The words submerged
That stone-like build
A weeping well,
Where yesterdays swim
And feed on crumbs’
Retelling.

When soothed all sound,
Made to lie down
In pastures:
Passed beyond,
Or peace be upon
The cowbell clink,
Trampled rush
Towards greener seed – 

Where angels tread
By muffled way,
No harm to say
Nor see –

Then what is lost, 
Let lost remain
Lest gaining back
My heart betrays
This soft tranquility.   

Tranquility is a deeply impermanent state. I would be a fool to talk over a poem built on setting aside the need to explain or expand. May you, likewise, see what you can set aside today – even for a moment.  

Advent, Day 19: A Million Mornings Long

(Day 19 of this year’s Advent series. Yesterday’s piece was about note taking; today we consider side quests.)

A Million Mornings Long

A million mornings long,
By way of night – 
A million sunsets, then
Some balance bright
And rich in time.

A million waits the journey,
A million steps –
On ways not circled round
By maplines kept.
Still, on – 

Though moving not.
Only sun or star,
Face of moon or face
Of stranger; these ones are

The migrant ones

Who gift our timewards press
With side paths rich.

There’s a picture online of a cat sitting upright on the sidewalk. The cat is illuminated by a perfectly golden shaft of sunlight. 

The caption: “If gaming has taught me anything, I know a side quest when I see one.” 

Of course, side quests usually aren’t lit up like a burning bush. And the notorious trade-off of the side quest is time and attention from one’s main goal. But sometimes the benefits are worth it. 

Sometimes, just knowing there are other routes enriches the main route.

Advent, Day 18: The Miracle Collector

(Day 18 of this year’s Advent series. Yesterday’s piece was about shoulder pads; today we consider note-taking.)

The Miracle Collector

The miracle collector
Comes around –
Most every morning,
For what others haven’t found
In busy streets.

Leave out the miracles
You passed by
And on your doorstep
You may find
A chance: tomorrow’s eye
To fill your time with byways,
If you try. 

I spend a portion of each day walking. 

And I don’t just walk; I take notes. 

Every once in a while, I even look at these notes after the fact. 

Here is a brief sample of things that were found “noteworthy,” covering a span of about 12 months, and with only light editing for clarity and spelling. You may draw your own conclusions. 

(Pleasant Valley Road)

Huge old white/cream rose bush now in bloom, overflowing the yard
Of the house that was in flames not three weeks back.

Gold leaves and scattered clothes and at least three different types of smoke

Silver sky through I-beam bones

Bloodlust, in block letter red
Paint, on sheetrock
Written

(Oltorf Street)

Section 8 apartments on one of the hills that shapes water towards the Colorado River, the lot used to be a mesquite wood. From its steps I still see:
Sunrise flung wide, or the high gold silence of early morning.

Incense down the hill, and the smell of Jasmine rice cooking

Ant mounds of hot red grit amid yellow soil

Clear flowing water down a concrete hill

Bullet casings and needles half-covered in mud, fallen gold leaves and children playing 

Mad koolaid scent of mountain laurel

Green and pink scarves to meet the children’s bus

(Riverside Drive)

A prayer strung on a misplaced knife,
Keychain-like

By the time the sunflowers came round the buildings were all gone

A bike in urban waters –
Did they think 
The turtles 
Needed Transit?

Rose-covered sheet and sharps, looking down over the bridge into a cart

A pair of children’s shoes on a bridge ledge 

Old water, rusted murky twang of steeping metal

Surprise fish in floodwaters, look down through air to see the stir

Desire paths to smooth the surveyed corners

Dragonfly crash-landing in sudden rains, clinging to the shirt under my umbrella (heavy)

(Govalle Avenue)

Smell of vanilla pipe, strong and broad, at the street crossing – no one in sight

Rubbered scent of lilies

Lizard chasing a cockroach across limestone at the bus stop, who catches who

White rose bush, early morning, hidden under dead branches

While spring pours around

Wardrobe (mirrored doors) reflecting morning

A lady who sweeps dust in front of her house every morning
What does she do when it rains

Pecan and snail shells, wild grape vines, terrible crunch of which?

Empty lot framed in grape arbors

Twisted grape arbors holding up an empty-windowed house

I can’t exactly call myself a “miracle collector,” since I pass many more things by without noticing. But I can leave these things out on the doorstep, as an offering to tomorrow’s eyes.