My Listener

My Lord, my listener
You patiently wait
Through the long-drawn breath of my time.
What you gave to me
Will return to you
(Anyone’s guess where the borrowed ribs go) –
This breath that covers my eyes
And clears my sight;
Beating membrane’s spark;
These things alone
Will return, 
You to me to you
When you are finished speaking
Through my voice.

I Look for Gifts in Unusual Places

I look for gifts in unusual places
The quiet lonely spaces 
And the lots overgrown.

The tangle of words 
Where a thought shines free,
The memory that holds a life:
Who am I to refuse these things? 

The glimpse of a seed 
Or the leaves blowing restless – see,
My own words, my own worth, 
Is held in a thing just as small.

I speak only this, 
Words too important not to say:
The story of countless other
May otherwise sleep untold,

But they gift infinity within their glimpse of life.

Hummingbird Feeder: Full Time Job

Chirps and squeaks and red-yellow hum
The royalty draws down the red. 
Color of passion and UV vibration
Dripping, Kool-Aid, plastic temptation
Impossible feathers that take rich repose
Of a full three seconds, sparingly dosed –
Ah, wings at the window. I suppose
The hummingbird feeder is empty.

I tried to take a picture, but you can infer how that went. There are, in fact, two hummingbirds that have claimed the feeder, and the nectar disappears unnervingly fast. And in case you can’t tell – I love watching the tiny terrors. No matter how many times they show up it’s a major excitement every time.

Masks & Lilies

Masked like a bandit, my gaze undoes
The rules of yesterday’s child. 
Sweetness with bones and muscle unclenched –
Who knew Easter lilies’ mad scent
Was more than a match for precaution?

Two things occurred this week. First, my grocery store distributed face masks to all employees. Second, my grocery store received a huge shipment of Easter lilies. Now we all look like bandits, and the lilies are stacked in piles of jungle amid cases of water, pallets of dog food and essentials like ramen and toilet paper. 

The world feels a bit muted with a mask to filter out the store’s aromas. I usually navigate the place by my nose: cheese, coffee, bread, blood, cardboard, guavas, cleaning supplies. They all tell me something, new secrets each day. Now I keep my own secrets behind a couple layers of blue material. It turns out the lilies’ earthy musk is one of the few scents that can make it through – and it puts a secret grin on my face every time I catch it in passing.

Postcard from Solitude’s Beach

What do you hear in your silence?

I confess, the practice of solitude is not hard for me. By preference I am a creature of silences, long thoughts, and deep abstractions, always just out of step with time. 

Some of you are able to jump into life. You swim in it, splashing around. Some of you are able to experience things to the fullest, fully present in each moment. Some of you laugh in the surf and dive past the shallows into deep breakers. 

I stay on the shore. I watch many of you, seeing waves and ripples. It’s a constant mystery how you deal with the ocean, salt in your eyes and sea breeze tugging. It’s much calmer on the shore where it’s quiet. It’s much easier to think over here.

It’s easy to feel my shore is unchanged by the larger waves crashing along the beach right now. History indicates this will not be the case. 

At some point, the Jaws theme will play, even for me. Too dramatic? Very likely, and cliched too. How’s this – at some point, the Titanic soundtrack will echo, even on my beach. Solitude is comfortable for me; it may be hell for you. But the real struggle begins when solitude is no longer an option – of refuge or of last resort – for either of us. When everyone is out of the water, but the beach itself is also closed. 

A tsunami is a giant wave. As you may recall from highschool physics, a wave has two parts – a peak and the lowest part, a trough. If a tsunami’s trough hits a beach first, it appears as though all the water has receded into the horizon. 

It’s an inevitable calm, and it inevitably cannot last. When the trough hits, the peak will follow – and the peak’s strength corresponds to the depth of the trough, equal-opposite. 

We are in the trough right now. Not everyone, to be sure: some of you have already experienced a glimpse of the peak. But in general, if you live in the U.S., we are in the trough before the projected state-by-state peaks of covid-19 cases. The peaks will start to hit in mid-April. 

We’ll need each other from a distance. I’ll need the knowledge of how to stand in the midst of breakers, whether I want to be there or not. You may need to know where the shady beach-spots are, how to sit quietly and pay attention. Each of us will be simultaneously out of our element. None of us will have the luxury of that most ingrained of human responses, seeking strength in numbers during times of trouble. 

It will feel as though John Donne taunts us: everyone will feel as though they are, indeed, an island. 

Perhaps we’ll hear echoes of each other more clearly in our individual silences?

Wherever you are on your beach, waves or whirlpool or sand, listen for me. I echo through books and verse, scraps of paper you find in the tides. I’ll look for your mark in the traces of salt and tide, the distant laughter on the sea breeze.  

None of these things are what we’re used to. They place each of us out of our element, barred from human contact and banned from comfortable isolation.  They bring each of us closer to one of two places – insanity, or understanding. Solitude leaves you alone with yourself and forces you to examine whatever echoes of other people you find around you. Solitude may push each of us towards fostering our own version of that most essential of human experiences, empathy.

And in the meantime, at least John Donne isn’t contagious.

Suggested reading:

MEDITATION XVII, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

Apocalypse Is A Question

Contrary to common opinion, the world doesn’t end with a whimper. It doesn’t even end with a bang, despite the fondest fantasies of both the fireworks manufacturers and adult film industry (in a truly spectacular example of converging alternate realities). 

Instead, it’s the letdown without the cliffhanger, the punchline before the joke that never comes. The world ends with a question. 

The jury is still out on what the question may be. The fact that this is a continuing debate is proof that we haven’t yet found the winner. But we have seen some strong emerging contenders. Each year I believe it more likely we may identify a winner within (or rather, concluding) my lifetime1. 

The ever-popular: “What does this button do?” is a bit of a Cold War-era cliche. Its grown-up counterparts: “How can we disrupt the market?” and “Is there an app for that?” 

“What the Hell?” is always a popular contender, with the advantage of being both concise and not specific to any particular era or socioeconomic bracket. 

Other classics2 include:

When will we return to normal?
Why didn’t you say something? 
Why didn’t we know? 
Why didn’t we listen?
Did it have to be this way?
What have we done?

I’ve been told these are too many questions, and readers want a Call to Action. Rather than question such advice, I humbly deliver the following.

Today, ask yourself: Can it end differently? What can I do to make sure it does?

1 You think I’m kidding? Believe me, I don’t want it to be this way. It’s no fun to talk about. Writers need dramatic conclusions in order to thrive. Barring those, we at least need a (read: any) conclusion. A question isn’t a conclusion. A question is frequently viewed as a sign you haven’t researched enough. Every piece of writing advice on this planet exhorts writers to end with a “Call to Action,” whatever that is, whatever the action may be, responsibility be damned. 

2 Other classics, not included, include: “You wanna play a game?” and “Why so serious?”

Don’t Break The Spell

Don’t break the glamour, don’t break the spell
Who cares if they think you write so well?
You know, that’s all; a universe of one
And when all is said (on paper) and done
Words shape minds; your own most of all
So write the human you can’t quite recall.
The one who hides behind desk job and chores
And grocery trip runs and tasks you abhor
But the glamoury works on you as well
So whatever you do – don’t break the spell. 

A Heartfelt Verse

I am deeply grateful for this cup of tea
Without it I’d be asleep, you see
Within its steaming Lemon Lift depths
Lurk blog posts, theses, a codex
Of all the words I have yet to say
Before my readers run away.  

When I Talk About Wonder

Did you ever read David Foster Wallace’s 2004 Gourmet magazine article, “Consider The Lobster”?

It’s about lobster (as you would expect), but really about consumption, alienation, and pain. It’s a Hell of a read. 

I would also say it’s written with wonder. Please don’t choke on your tea. 

I realize I’ve thrown the word “wonder” around in a few posts now, and I’d like to clarify what I mean by it. This does not mean I seek to clarify how you experience wonder. It means I would like to lay out the assumptions I make when I use it as a verbal shortcut. 

In short, when that five-letter word shows up, I’m not thinking about unicorns and sparkles1. 

Wonder: the capacity to be surprised, to acknowledge the world is not as you thought. The compulsive desire to push beyond the easy answers.  

It requires you to a) pay attention and b) be prepared to work on a moment’s notice. 

When the world is not as you thought, when your mind betrays you, when you’re angry and you don’t know why – those are all experiences of wonder.

Those are all times when, if you’re paying attention, you say: something surprising is going on. Something is different. The world (this world, your world, any scale of world you choose) is changing, and the capacity to throw yourself at that change and seek its currents is the core of the experience of wonder. 

If you’re willing to work with wonder, you won’t lack for things to talk about. The world is full of easy answers to be pushed beyond. 

Now with that small matter out of the way, let’s get down to the real business: do you have an emergency plan for when the unicorns and sparkles show up? 

For another, different perspective on wonder, head over to Syd Weedon’s post on A Small Blue Marble: A Lady Who Means Well and Gives Free Advice on the Internet. 

1 In fact, I REFUSE to talk about them. At least since the Unicorns & Sparkles Incident was successfully hushed up. You didn’t hear about it here.

You Don’t Find Fossils in Granite

You don’t find fossils in granite1, 
So why do I find them all around?

Sedimentary, my dear Watson2 –
We are formed not by fire
But only time’s slow drift.

Inertia forms its own mass
Of things drifting down:
Trickle down, 
Things settling, 
Price of settling, 
Price of gravity –

The price of what? 

A great geological cover up.

Don’t blame those who excavate
What once was alive. Those fossils
Are decently dead and done. 

I speak of our economies, policies, 
Philosophies, rivalries:
The bones of an ancient,
Covered by convenience and things let slide,
Until it appears a mountain 
That, they say, is immovable.

1 It’s true, and I never thought about it until coming across this information in David B. Williams’ Stories In Stone: Travels Through Urban Geology (an interesting read for anyone with interests in any combination of architecture, history, urban planning, geology, and offbeat coverage of natural science topics). As you may recall from grade school, the three types of rock are sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic. Granite is a metamorphic rock, formed by fire and time; the fire does for any organic remains what a flamethrower does for a paper crane. Therefore, you will find no fossils in granite – or any metamorphic rock – or igneous rock (hardened lava) for that matter. Only sedimentary rocks hold fossils.

2 Often imitated, never initiated – according to Quote Investigator (a truly entertaining website), Conan Doyle’s Holmes never used this precise line in any of the books or stories.