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.

Advent, Day 17: Other Clothes

(Day 17 of this year’s Advent series. Yesterday’s piece was about lightning rods; today we consider shoulder pads.)

Other Clothes

What other clothes
Could I wear?
What other cloth,
What other ties,
What other face to bind
Across my easy ways;
What other shape to cut,
Or tears to mend,
Or hemlines tread.
Whoever, however, I know not:
But by Your mercy
Show me how to wear
Such as You lay out
For me.

I have a thing for 1980s sweaters and jackets. House rules: the more garishly colored the better, and the cheaper off of eBay, the best. 

The only downside I have ever found to these pinnacles of creation is the matter of shoulder pads. 

A few snips are an easy fix. No problem, I thought. 

But the last few months I’ve had bad luck. I received one, and then another, masterpiece – in which the shoulder pads were treacherously sewn into the lining. 

In one case, a frenzy of seam-ripping and strategic re-sewing (after disposing of the shoulder pad remains) seemed to do the trick, at least enough to wear at Halloween.

In the second case, a friend with actual fashion curatorial chops convinced me to seek professional help…probably. I have yet to make the phone call, and I still eyeball from jacket to scissors thoughtfully whenever I look in the closet.

The point is, even after changes there’s no guarantee of perfection. One will either end up closer to or farther away from the vision one had to begin with. 

Given that gamble, I suppose it’s valid to ask: why even begin? I have yet to figure out a better reason than “it might be super cool.” Then again, I wasn’t really consulted about the beginning of all this. There wasn’t an opt-in or a bid, I didn’t get to choose shipping, and I certainly didn’t get to choose whether I wanted shoulder pads. Among other things. (Did any decade have the option of “shoulder pads, but slightly smaller”?) 

And at the end of the day – or beginning, rather – the options are: put it on, or pass. And if I pass, I still have to find something to wear.  

That is definitely some sort of model of – let’s call it, self-acceptance. Seam-eyeballing and all. 

And in the meantime, I’m watching Golden Girls reruns for style notes.

Advent, Day 16: Advent-Struck

(Day 16 of this year’s Advent series. Yesterday’s piece was about eye games; today we consider lighting rods.)

Advent-Struck

Star and flower, wood and wave
Smoke of peat or grassland
Cracked with flame –
Each of these, carbon rare, 
Fruit that bears your Tree
And bound by name –

By holy lightning framed,
Struck by an Advent:

If they know change, 
How much more transformed we?
Changes grave,
Towards and past,
Voices split by sky
Or sky-spilt harmony:
This world moved
Each second of
Eternity.

Five days a week, I walk to and from work. My jobs are on two different routes, but the distance to each is roughly the same. 

This gives me plenty of time to take in the world – sort of.  

You see, when I walk I’m constantly in motion. I have yet to find a time that is “too early” to leave, shall we say. 

And yet sometimes the glimpse of something – light or leaves, a dead frog, a playing card face up on the sidewalk – or a single oblong cloud hitting the moon; will bring a split-second of stillness so intense that it fractures the rest of my day. 

But I can never stay. The rules of my morning commute are that I have to keep walking. 

Have you ever tried to walk and pay attention… at the same time?

(It’s definitely cheating if you think you can just pay attention to walking. I’m sure people would already do that if it worked.) 

Some things are too important not to see. Especially when they’re the things that no one sees. 

Dead frogs and cats and torn-up book pages and perfect pieces of glass, for example. Cicada shells, bird wings, water gushing up from the road, a hole in the sidewalk.

(Alright: those last two I did in fact call about. Someone else did need to see them.) 

Over and through all of this, it seems the act of watching, of having been struck by those split seconds of weird or gorgeous or grotesque, is incredibly important. Not “an answer”, but a part of something: an act of witness. Or perhaps – a volunteer, temporary lightning rod: to ground a life or death or displacement. 

Advent crystallizes the act of paying attention, as question marks are wont to do.

And by paying attention, the one thing that becomes clear is that it is never enough. Never enough to ground the moment. And never enough attention for what that split-second is worth.

Advent, Day 15: See Through Branches

(Day 15 of this year’s Advent series. Yesterday’s piece was about negative space; today we consider eye games.)

See Through Branches

See through branches, or the pounding rain;
See through a dragonfly’s wings.
See through silence, 
See through pain,
Or walk
By way of night:
One long path of
Things revealed
To those who 
Give up sight.

Have you ever played the child’s game of sitting in a moving car on a sunny day, eyes closed – and turning your face towards the sun? 

The passing trees splash cool against your skin, and their shade smacks your closed eyelids –

But the return to light is swift. It brings warmth and an unreal color: Orangeblackred – said fast and all together now – mysterious in its illogic.

That is: by this age, you have likely already learned the folly of mixing in black. 

You know yellow and red make orange, and orange to red makes…redder orange? And you have also likely found that there are many (many) ways of stumbling into “inadvertent brown”.

But – the matter of black. It’s the surest lesson any paintbox or marker set ever taught. (Don’t talk to me about crayons.) 

Black is always the last color made. When black is added to anything, there is then nothing left to add. 

The fact that one can use the words “orange” and “red” to talk about this particular color indicates that it must be not-black, because otherwise how would those words occur as a necessary part of the description? 

And yet the “orange-ness” and “red-ness” of this color disappear the more one focuses on them. 

So in the end, one says “Orangeblackred,” and by then the car ride is over and it’s time to come to grips with the fact that eyes really aren’t meant to be strained while closed…

Of course, now I know a better term for that color was “my eyelids’ blood vessels.” Which is probably also the next Pantone color of the year. 

But it was an early intro into the way both language and sight reach their limits; and the joy – as in a game – of trying to find words for all one isn’t seeing, even after the point where words aren’t enough. 

Advent, Day 14: Empty Things

(Day 14 of this year’s Advent series. Yesterday’s piece was about the M.C. Escher structure of the second; today we consider negative space.) 

Empty Things

Blessed are those
Who fill their time with deserts – 

With empty things, stables and tombs
A mountain with crowds moved on – 

The leftovers
After fishes and bread
Are gathered in. 

“Negative space” is defined as “the empty space around and between the subject(s) of an image.” Its perception is the result of an eyes-plus-brain quirk that can result in optical illusions such as our previously-discussed bistable image, Rubin’s Vase.

Now: if we’re speaking philosophically here – which of course we are – there are two additional little quirky tendencies that negative space tends to bring out in humans. 

Exhibit A is the tendency to focus on the subject and not see the surrounding space at all. This is the “stick a star on it” tendency of holiday preparations. 

And then there’s Exhibit B. Exhibit B is…rough. For me, personally. 

It’s the tendency to yes, see the negative space – and then – to make it something.

You know. Like a face, or a vase. Or two vases. Or maybe, I don’t know, a pelican. You never know where the average graphic designer is going to secretly stick a pelican into a visual? 

Ok, so maybe that’s the “stick a pelican in it” tendency of looking at things. Negative space is supposed to be *checks Wikipedia again* “the empty space around and between the subject(s) of an image.” 

So: the space is the space is the space. 

Ok, Wikipedia. Ok. I’ll stop trying to stick a freakin’ pelican in every blessed, empty thing. 

Now please tell me there are some leftovers in this empty space other than fish and bread.

Advent, Day 13: Each Second A Temple

(Day 13 of this year’s Advent series. Yesterday’s piece was about transmutation; today we consider the M.C. Escher structure of the second.) 

Each Second A Temple 

(I)
Dearly beloved,
If ever you wonder
At our Lord’s ways, 
Remember you this:
Each second
Is a temple – big enough
To hold all Creation.

 (II)
Each second a temple – 
No walls, windows, or doors – 
Yet the only space I have
In which to meet my Lord. 

My friends – in the spirit of these pieces, let me set aside words today. If you have come to this table, be welcome – let’s just sit together and enjoy all, all that these seconds hold. 

Advent, Day 12: Strange Transmutation

(Day 12 of this year’s Advent series. Yesterday’s piece was about bodies; today we consider transmutation.) 

Strange Transmutation

Liquid, silver, salt: strange
Transmutation,
Yet no stranger than
Bread into body,
Wine into blood
Or water
Into earth.

Bless thou this earthly wine
Back into water –

That I may flow
Over stone
And under soil –
Following your call. 

I lead what you might call a “sardine-rich lifestyle.” With precisely 0.00% intent to stock up on mercury, deplete the oceans, or recycle enough cans to form a fleet of Ferraris (“yeah, metallurgy…never knew the name”) – I nonetheless eat sardines for 7 out of 21 meals a week. That’s – hmm, that’s ⅓ of my meals. Huh. 

These numbers are not being idly dropped for bragging rights, you understand. My goal here is to convince you that when I say I know how much energy a tin of sardines holds, I know exactly how much energy that tin of sardines holds. 

Specifically, 4.5 hours worth. If we’re going to talk about transmutations, that’s a pretty decent conversion: 1 tin of sardines for 4.5 hours of anything I want to do. There are very few other simple trades, I feel, that would give me such a happy exchange of the hyper-specific for the utility of the extremely general, while also being fishily delicious. 

Of course, there are probably some…downstream consequences. The great fine-print issue of food chains is that one participates by participating. So eventually I’ll have to make good on all those sardines I borrowed (7 tins a week * 52.14 weeks/year * average life span of oh, 120 years). Still a better deal than most banks offer, but I definitely think about it every time I open another tin and see the little silvery bodies inside. They’re pretty much perfect, except for no heads. 

Now, in terms of systems of consumption, David Foster Wallace wrote a piece called “Consider The Lobster.” I’m not going to quote it here, but I will recommend it heartily as a piece of food writing that is deeply concerned with the problem of exchange and costs, and a far better examination than I can offer.

What I am going to quote is Sir Terry Pratchett, in the Discworld novel Small Gods. The book is, you know, about gods. And belief. And sort of, also, about consumption, as in the actual costs of existing, which from a certain view point – that’s what everything is about. Oh, also miracles. 

“….And wine made of water! A mere quantum mechanistic tunnel effect, that’d happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn’t a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time…”

 From the viewpoint of zillions of years, everything turns into everything else. 

From the viewpoint of today, one tin of sardines has turned into 4.5 hours of my lifetime, filled with work, writing, planning a birthday party, and a truly magnificent walk that included a December-blooming rosebush scented like pink lemons. 

From the viewpoint of something-less-than-a-zillion-years, the differences between me, my sardines, and water – or even wine or bread – are very small indeed. All are tiny, temporary bundles in a system of raucous interchange. Don’t poke their edges; atomically speaking, they mostly don’t exist. 

Also, don’t poke my sardines. I need 4.5 more hours out of them.

Citations

Pratchett, Terry. Small Gods. London: Victor Gollancz, 1992.

Wallace, David Foster. “Consider the Lobster.” In Consider the Lobster and Other Essays, 235-282. New York: Little, Brown, 2005.

Advent, Day 11: Let Me See You In Darkness (II)

(Day 11 of this year’s Advent series. Yesterday’s piece was about “life events”; today we consider bodies.)

Let Me See You In Darkness (II)

Let me see you in darkness,
As by no other light. 

With immensity
Or the point-contained hum
Of smallest wonder – 

With direction
Not betrayed by any map
Or star;

In stillness, roaring,
Wave, hum, muteness,
Shush, and susurration –

As if by teeth, or by root
Of wood or stone, 
Hollow bone, 
Xylem, phloem,
Fin or fruiting body.

What, when suntime things are gone?

What purpose free
Of need or use
Except to be –

No need to answer,
That which 
I could not contain;
Except that,
When seen by darkness,
We may be 
Of nature Same.

Have you ever seen a cow scratch its ear? 

I am, naturally, asking with a purpose; the first time I saw this take place, I was utterly shocked. Awe-struck. The fact that a cow (technically a heifer, in this case) could have itchy ears, and also do something about it beyond rubbing against a fence post (my prior understanding of large quadrupeds was that they solved most things by rubbing against fence posts) – the establishment of this fact, via it happening right in front of me, reworked my brain regarding bodies.

This particular cow chose to scratch its ear using its back hoof, just like a dog would. The motion took place with nonchalance, even a kind of competent grace; this cow had definitely scratched its ear with its hoof before, and would do so again. 

It was a gesture that I had never conceived a cow body could perform. My impression of cows was always very…refrigerator-like: rectangular, heavy, don’t swing on them, milk inside. The word “non-flexible” didn’t describe them, because the word “flexible” wasn’t on the list of cow qualities to deny. 

Now, there is of course a reason for this…rabbit hole. (For all I know, some rabbit holes are actually dug by cows at this point. But “cow hole” really doesn’t sound right, so let’s just agree to treat that question with the ignorance it deserves.) It has to do with the question of bodies, embodiment: probably the one and only thing I am prepared to consider miraculous in this world, insofar as anything else you might name is just icing on a thousand-layer (genome-flavored) cake. 

That is to say: it is a true statement that I am attached to my body. It’s definitely odd, mysterious; I’m pretty sure I accidentally ate the operating manual while still in utero.

But I’ve gotten used to doing things a certain way while inside of it. I don’t give much thought to, say, scratching my ears. The fact that I typically use my hands for this is the reason I was astonished to witness a cow treating the matter of ear-scritches with precisely the same level of non-attention while going about it in a way so alien to my own approach that it…that it was really alien to my own approach! Thank goodness it wasn’t an octopus, you know? 

Do you know, though? Do I? About bodies beyond this one? 

Do I know if – for example – octopuses even have ears? (Nope! They have statocysts!) Do I know what it is actually like for a fly to taste with the chemoreceptors on its tarsi; do I know what walls feel like to geckos; do I know what the ground looks like to a squirrel in a pecan tree?

Do I know how the tree senses sunlight? 

Do I know the ways of Behemoth, or Leviathan?

No, no, no, no, no. 

I like to try, though. Since seeing that cow, and a few other instances in my life, I’ve found it a good little mental practice to occasionally sit down in whatever posture least tangles my attention, and imagine eight arms, u-shaped pupils, everted retina, and the ability to squeeze through tiny gaps. 

It’s never going to make it as a “mindfulness” practice. I have to keep a phone handy; few things highlight my lack of comparative anatomical knowledge like the sudden need for, say, a spleen equivalency. (At this point, I’m pretty sure the spleen is just a joke played on humans by literally all other life on Earth, who are still wondering when we’ll work out that we don’t need one.) 

But as a “care-giving” practice – as in, learning how to give care to the beings and spaces and systems all around me that I can’t understand – it’s top-notch. Most empathy and morality comes down to whether or not you can imagine something happening to you: imagine unto yourself, that you do not unto others. 

And if that doesn’t completely re-shape your headspace – 

There’s the ever-present question of how to address an itchy statocyst when all you have are muscular hydrostats to scratch with. 

Advent, Day 10: This, Too, An Advent

Day 10 of this year’s Advent series. Yesterday’s piece was about seeing; today we consider “life events.” 

This, Too, An Advent

This, too, an Advent:
The clotted blood, tired heart or
Time-turned soul.

Light this candle: change to bear,
As change comes yet again and –
Again: it is a steady flame.

This, too, your Advent:
Where hearts break toward a different song

Or sing again – but

Not yet.

Both quick and dead,
Light this flame.

It burns true, both sides the door that love cuts

Through the world. 

The remarkable thing about “question mark spaces” in the year is that they will arrive, whether or not you are ready for them. All you are required to do is remain breathing. 

And of course, this is also true for… life events. 

I say “life events” (that pseudo-euphemistic Millennial-coded marketing term) but what I really mean is…you know, the sort of thing that could actually, also be called: life-but-we-really-hope-not-ours events. 

Those little sections of awareness that both rivet and fractalize your attentions into:

The sensation of living chunks of several divergent lives at the same time or 
The sensation of living chunks of someone else’s life at a very specific narrowing time or
The sensation of please-don’t-let-this-be-my-life or
Please don’t let this be someone’s life any more – or 

Really, just “please.” 

Sometimes there’s nothing to even ask for, at least as far as “use your words” is concerned. 

In the interest of not using my words, then, allow me the cover of a quote, from Barbara Brown Taylor’s An Altar in the World: 

“I have to be careful here, or I will sound like one of Job’s pious friends. No one who is not in pain is allowed to give advice to someone who is. The only reliable wisdom about pain comes from the mouths of those who suffer it, which is why it is so important to listen to them. That way, when our turn comes, the rest of us will not be clueless. We will recognize at least some of the territory and remember what those who went before us told us about what comes next.” 

I try very hard to remember these words whenever I can. There is only one thing I quietly add to them, within my own head: although “what comes next” is certainly a great part of all this, it’s the “what comes now” that really can’t be skipped.

Citations

Taylor, Barbara Brown. An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. HarperOne, 2009.