fertile place the reindeer sprang from (swampy? tundral?) offered up another image: a cleanly flensed frog. Now the two images were overlapping: the frog’s icy-blue, skinned legs and the whole and intact tiny reindeer.
Then came the smell of gingerbread, though likely I’m misidentifying some flower’s perfume, and while this whole sensation took place in summer, many wintry things kept adding up.
To what, though? To what?
I am of two minds about knowing.
What if I thought about the images this way: simply, that they exist out there, and embedded in shifting forms, the tender and violent enter me, the moment’s site for such happenings. No irritable reaching after fact and reason, as Keats would say, just Hello Reindeer. Hello Frog. Your absolute smallness. Your unexplained end.
These images are meaningful /I have no idea what these images mean. And what do I get if I push the real-but-odd pictures up against the nothing-in-hand?
Maybe a glimpse of the blue flame of an egg.
That old man kneeling in the woods, come upon as I was walking, crouched low at a fallen tree, hands pressed together—was he okay, resting like any pilgrim might, his scant belongings bundled, eyes closed and face tilted up? I looked to be sure he was praying and hadn’t just fallen, and to see if I should help. It seemed like a loss he was addressing, for he picked the right props—downed tree, rough cane, small parcel—and added to them only himself, a beseeching presence.
But maybe he had fallen. As in “from grace.”
Sometimes, against one’s will, a oneness of meaning creeps in.
Given the choice between, say, a dozen okay chocolates and one small piece of pure Belgian dark, I’ll take the smaller, perfect thing. The brief one-time delicacy. It’s always been this way with me. I’ll eat it at once, no slow rationing-out, and then I’ll live with the fleet abundance and the longing.
But, too, I have these perfect T-shirts, so well fitting, falling just-so—a whole drawerful I took such care in collecting—that I resist wearing them for fear of using them up and then not-having.
I’m drawn to the way rust bleeds out around a razor in the rain.
And I want to pick the razor up so no kid will get hurt.
I want the stain to spread.
And I want no one to run in a mess to the doctor (for I, myself, surprise nail-in-the-foot, once had the awful tetanus shots.)
I want this perfect lost-barn tint contained in the blade’s corona every time I cross the street to stay right here . (And just for fun?—one of the T-shirts I love and keep safe is the color of that rust, precisely.)
Recently, while on a walk, I found a letter in the street, handwritten, to a Mrs. G. from Mary D., a Jehovah’s Witness, suggesting another visit and scripture reading (quick, only fifteen minutes, she assures) to ease Mrs. G.’s hurt over the loss of her brother. The letter was beautiful, and ended, “I just wanted you to know that I am still out and will be happy to see you whenever you can make the time—and that’s usually what we have to do—make time because it seem time just don’t allow. Most Sincerely.” I am drawn to the handwriting, a combination of script and print, carefully laid down across plain unlined paper and comfortably sloping, the ease of language, the unselfconscious voice set so directly down on the page, an unmediated mind-to-paper move certain of its task. I wish the letter would go on; I want to hear more of this comforting voice.
But at home, I hide when the Witnesses come. I want to be left alone in my godless world. I want not to be exhorted or cajoled or handed one thing more for my own good. I am fed best by what is left behind. Detritus, loved and held, picked through. (No pure dark Belgian here.) I’d do well as a crow or a vulture, cleaning, paring, finding succulent what has been overlooked and is moldering.
The “good word,” okay.
But not to have to receive it fresh and from on high.
Today it
Then came the smell of gingerbread, though likely I’m misidentifying some flower’s perfume, and while this whole sensation took place in summer, many wintry things kept adding up.
To what, though? To what?
I am of two minds about knowing.
What if I thought about the images this way: simply, that they exist out there, and embedded in shifting forms, the tender and violent enter me, the moment’s site for such happenings. No irritable reaching after fact and reason, as Keats would say, just Hello Reindeer. Hello Frog. Your absolute smallness. Your unexplained end.
These images are meaningful /I have no idea what these images mean. And what do I get if I push the real-but-odd pictures up against the nothing-in-hand?
Maybe a glimpse of the blue flame of an egg.
That old man kneeling in the woods, come upon as I was walking, crouched low at a fallen tree, hands pressed together—was he okay, resting like any pilgrim might, his scant belongings bundled, eyes closed and face tilted up? I looked to be sure he was praying and hadn’t just fallen, and to see if I should help. It seemed like a loss he was addressing, for he picked the right props—downed tree, rough cane, small parcel—and added to them only himself, a beseeching presence.
But maybe he had fallen. As in “from grace.”
Sometimes, against one’s will, a oneness of meaning creeps in.
Given the choice between, say, a dozen okay chocolates and one small piece of pure Belgian dark, I’ll take the smaller, perfect thing. The brief one-time delicacy. It’s always been this way with me. I’ll eat it at once, no slow rationing-out, and then I’ll live with the fleet abundance and the longing.
But, too, I have these perfect T-shirts, so well fitting, falling just-so—a whole drawerful I took such care in collecting—that I resist wearing them for fear of using them up and then not-having.
I’m drawn to the way rust bleeds out around a razor in the rain.
And I want to pick the razor up so no kid will get hurt.
I want the stain to spread.
And I want no one to run in a mess to the doctor (for I, myself, surprise nail-in-the-foot, once had the awful tetanus shots.)
I want this perfect lost-barn tint contained in the blade’s corona every time I cross the street to stay right here . (And just for fun?—one of the T-shirts I love and keep safe is the color of that rust, precisely.)
Recently, while on a walk, I found a letter in the street, handwritten, to a Mrs. G. from Mary D., a Jehovah’s Witness, suggesting another visit and scripture reading (quick, only fifteen minutes, she assures) to ease Mrs. G.’s hurt over the loss of her brother. The letter was beautiful, and ended, “I just wanted you to know that I am still out and will be happy to see you whenever you can make the time—and that’s usually what we have to do—make time because it seem time just don’t allow. Most Sincerely.” I am drawn to the handwriting, a combination of script and print, carefully laid down across plain unlined paper and comfortably sloping, the ease of language, the unselfconscious voice set so directly down on the page, an unmediated mind-to-paper move certain of its task. I wish the letter would go on; I want to hear more of this comforting voice.
But at home, I hide when the Witnesses come. I want to be left alone in my godless world. I want not to be exhorted or cajoled or handed one thing more for my own good. I am fed best by what is left behind. Detritus, loved and held, picked through. (No pure dark Belgian here.) I’d do well as a crow or a vulture, cleaning, paring, finding succulent what has been overlooked and is moldering.
The “good word,” okay.
But not to have to receive it fresh and from on high.
Today it
Similar Books
