Sad day of sorts. Ford is gone and there will not be snow to await his body's return to Michigan, probably. Perhaps we will see some kind of spontaneous majesty from the skies, but the middling weather feels like it's here for a while.
When the ground is frozen much more is required to inter a body in the earth. One must warm the ground before digging, or else use special equipment, or else blast its frozen heart away with explosive charges and then dig, the last of these being problematic in cemeteries for obvious possible zombie reasons, for all-too-clear indian burial ground reasons, and certainly that would not be acceptable in the quiet heart of the city in very early January, upon a solemn occasion such as this.
I will be there in attendance, at the public viewing for Ford. I hope for snow. I turn my eyes up to the clouds and think of the physical remains of the former president, the only president never elected to the post of either Vice President or the Presidency itself. I hope it snows for you, Ford. I hope it covers the world again in white.
12.22.2006
Well met, then, Willard
I am here, have been here in waiting. Waiting for weather—as you (probably) know, there is not a spot of it on the ground anymore. Has not been for weeks it seems. And close now to the holidays, just in sight of them, still the ground is bare, if wet and watched over by consistent wind. I wish for it, for winter, if this is what it is, what we can call it. We have passed the solstice just yesterday which means the days begin their game of lengthening again.
It is dark out in the world. There is no poetry in the darkness. There is no language in the heart of it, the occasional flick of light, the loneliness, the quietude. I could map your face onto it but where would that leave me—here, still, the sound of typewriter keys striking the faceplate as I write my way into it, whether the weather sees fit to grant legitimacy, a brief white blast, a taste of it at least, or if it does not.
It is dark out in the world. There is no poetry in the darkness. There is no language in the heart of it, the occasional flick of light, the loneliness, the quietude. I could map your face onto it but where would that leave me—here, still, the sound of typewriter keys striking the faceplate as I write my way into it, whether the weather sees fit to grant legitimacy, a brief white blast, a taste of it at least, or if it does not.
12.16.2006
Trapped under snow or rain or fog
Or wind: there goes a roof, a cow, any semblance of thought. My body landing miles no months away. But I'm back, Bentley, I'm back.
12.12.2006
What was underneath this space
a year ago—a hundred years ago—a thousand years ago—
and what does having a tomorrow mean? Does it mean that I will be returned to this, over and over, until I find another way out? Does it mean that there is such a thing as history? Have my actions, few though they may have been, had repercussions? Did they percuss down through action and equal and opposite reaction, slowly murmuring in the background behind my heart?
Air sound from below. Air sound from outside. Rain sound melting all the snow to ground.
There will be almost
nothing when I wake—
and what does having a tomorrow mean? Does it mean that I will be returned to this, over and over, until I find another way out? Does it mean that there is such a thing as history? Have my actions, few though they may have been, had repercussions? Did they percuss down through action and equal and opposite reaction, slowly murmuring in the background behind my heart?
Air sound from below. Air sound from outside. Rain sound melting all the snow to ground.
There will be almost
nothing when I wake—
12.09.2006
Wind is hard against the panes
and there is not much outside, friend, tonight. The gases of the atmosphere are lined up as if to buffet the glass and force a kind of entry. I know it's not personal (such solipsism here, the world aligned for you) but it's hard not to think of world in terms of self, how external and internal weathers relate. To what extent they correspond. Think Poe. Think whiteness, pallor of flesh, the slow creep of death, shadows spectral along the snowfield.
Weird day for weather: everything gusty, but nothing via precipitation. No prestidigitation from the up above. No trickeration via lightning and snowcloud oncoming, none of that illumination. The plus about words ending in -ation is that they rhyme inherently. That they imply a state of action, a snapshot of the act diminished in our naming and cordoning off of it. The body's movement, the magic of storm, becomes manageable through the mind's decision to just think about it. Which is something.
My whiteness. My whiteheads that dot my back like mushrooms awaiting rain. My wiving of the weather. My avatar of W, that wingspread and impression of sudden motion. Everything in winter is associated with the letter, the worst in some ways of the seasons. But the weather has its reasons. I love it—love to be underneath it, under its spell, its thumb, its cool control. I would be great as a kept man, a toy, cared for, collared, leashed, within.
Weird day for weather: everything gusty, but nothing via precipitation. No prestidigitation from the up above. No trickeration via lightning and snowcloud oncoming, none of that illumination. The plus about words ending in -ation is that they rhyme inherently. That they imply a state of action, a snapshot of the act diminished in our naming and cordoning off of it. The body's movement, the magic of storm, becomes manageable through the mind's decision to just think about it. Which is something.
My whiteness. My whiteheads that dot my back like mushrooms awaiting rain. My wiving of the weather. My avatar of W, that wingspread and impression of sudden motion. Everything in winter is associated with the letter, the worst in some ways of the seasons. But the weather has its reasons. I love it—love to be underneath it, under its spell, its thumb, its cool control. I would be great as a kept man, a toy, cared for, collared, leashed, within.
12.08.2006
Between falls
Cold world tonight outside the glass. As usual, nothing appears to be alive. No world transformed. Nothing trudging through it. Silence is one indication of my control over this world. This desire to be up after others have passed through into their slumber. No curse, this; no swear words necessary. Pleasing—though not without a dryness around the eyes, weary sensation one, and total darkness in the tower, weary sensation two, and a sense of slowly shuffling off towards sleep. If I had more to me I could stay up until three or four, or five, when the old begin to stir and fill their mugs with something dark and steaming. I admire them for this singular pleasure. My parents were this way, awake and away to their days for hours before I would stir. Now on occasion I am up before the light, before the night subsides and the factories along the water turn down their smokestack output to avoid being found out for what they in fact are. And if I am aware of anything at that hour, I am grateful for it, this glimpse of early motion that I do not normally get.
I wish I could get by with three or four hours of sleep, that I could work late and awake with no effect on the body's defenses. Imagine what I could be privy to—the motions of the trash trucks on their circuits through the grid. Different sorts of snow. Traffic patterns that don't occur in daylight or late-night hours. They might look from above like halos, or precipitation (more than traffic does already, that steady or sometimes clotted stream), like the video game Frogger, or diamonds chugging through a tube. It could look like anything, and I would be there to witness it, somehow. This would be a kind of power, secret revelation. Vivisection, maybe. Pattern recognition. Precognition even.
This is desire for knowledge. Desire for bragging rights. Desire for the ability to shovel out the walk before anyone else in the time zone does. Desire—a cloud, an ampersand of thrills hovering closely together, on the edge of my mind, outside of reason. It's there and silent mostly in this life, punching chemical signals through pneumatic tubes to the brain. But it wants things. It is active often enough to pull me one way or another one, towards one body in rest or motion.
I wish I could get by with three or four hours of sleep, that I could work late and awake with no effect on the body's defenses. Imagine what I could be privy to—the motions of the trash trucks on their circuits through the grid. Different sorts of snow. Traffic patterns that don't occur in daylight or late-night hours. They might look from above like halos, or precipitation (more than traffic does already, that steady or sometimes clotted stream), like the video game Frogger, or diamonds chugging through a tube. It could look like anything, and I would be there to witness it, somehow. This would be a kind of power, secret revelation. Vivisection, maybe. Pattern recognition. Precognition even.
This is desire for knowledge. Desire for bragging rights. Desire for the ability to shovel out the walk before anyone else in the time zone does. Desire—a cloud, an ampersand of thrills hovering closely together, on the edge of my mind, outside of reason. It's there and silent mostly in this life, punching chemical signals through pneumatic tubes to the brain. But it wants things. It is active often enough to pull me one way or another one, towards one body in rest or motion.
12.05.2006
Beneath
When I was younger it would snow like this—layer on top of layer—and you could buoy yourself up on it with snowshoes, or cross-country skis (that wax, those boots, those locks). I am thrilled to be alive today in all of this (6 inches plus, everyone in the world complaining about it but me with four-wheel drive and sliding through the everything). Shoveling is even a recurrent pleasure: I was cold in the morning when I got up, every step a gasping against the hardwood floors, but when I went outside after coffee to huff it off of my driveway I came in flush and hot and ready for the day. It is my routine.
Others in the house make sport of watching cars try to make it up the hill (30 degree grade in my estimation), as they skid and their tires whine and all they can do is make it happen laterally, nothing in their dream of forward motion. The more interesting thing is when they don't give up: their minds are set, they have this goal of driving up this street. This is their world. Their wildly skidding, snowdrifted world. So we watch their taillights disappear back down the street, sliding into the banks or the cars parked at the bottom of the street in the danger zone, where descending cars cannot make the stop and turn and in turn hammer them, more often then not driving away without a note or admission of their guilt.
The engines rev all night. Some few do make it up when the road is plowed, or those that came in weighted four by fours. We see lights: plowlight, policelight usually without sirens, towtrucklight, brakelight, headlight, the light that descends on us from stars, from windows, from the few streetlights that illuminate the night. NintendoWiilight cascading from the top floor studio where the college kids clearly room together. You can see them manipulating the controller in front of their televisions. Ambulancelight when our neighbor has his weekly health scare and the authorities are called to try again to haul him off, even though they should know by now that he will not go with them.
I will not go with you. I will not go with anyone if lights come to vanish me back into darkness.
We even witness airlinelight blinking fast across the sky, far too close to qualify as actual astronomical occurrence. Rare thunderlight against the snow: you can't see it like you do in rainstorms, but it occurs. Lightninglight technically I suppose, not the result of thunder but concurrent with it.
Snow and light are everything in the world on nights like this, on days like this.
Others in the house make sport of watching cars try to make it up the hill (30 degree grade in my estimation), as they skid and their tires whine and all they can do is make it happen laterally, nothing in their dream of forward motion. The more interesting thing is when they don't give up: their minds are set, they have this goal of driving up this street. This is their world. Their wildly skidding, snowdrifted world. So we watch their taillights disappear back down the street, sliding into the banks or the cars parked at the bottom of the street in the danger zone, where descending cars cannot make the stop and turn and in turn hammer them, more often then not driving away without a note or admission of their guilt.
The engines rev all night. Some few do make it up when the road is plowed, or those that came in weighted four by fours. We see lights: plowlight, policelight usually without sirens, towtrucklight, brakelight, headlight, the light that descends on us from stars, from windows, from the few streetlights that illuminate the night. NintendoWiilight cascading from the top floor studio where the college kids clearly room together. You can see them manipulating the controller in front of their televisions. Ambulancelight when our neighbor has his weekly health scare and the authorities are called to try again to haul him off, even though they should know by now that he will not go with them.
I will not go with you. I will not go with anyone if lights come to vanish me back into darkness.
We even witness airlinelight blinking fast across the sky, far too close to qualify as actual astronomical occurrence. Rare thunderlight against the snow: you can't see it like you do in rainstorms, but it occurs. Lightninglight technically I suppose, not the result of thunder but concurrent with it.
Snow and light are everything in the world on nights like this, on days like this.
12.03.2006
I predict some photographic evidence tomorrow
—some video perhaps
—some beginnings of a story
—some more precipitation to cover us all in wreaths of it
—some beginnings of a story
—some more precipitation to cover us all in wreaths of it
There is light but not a lot of it
The sun has long set. The snow has set in around us. I expect this may be it for a while. I love the world when it is bright with snow like it was today. Everything ashine, reflective, beaming even. Good snow day with sun is good indeed. And now it's been dark—it's past midnight and as usual I am up in contrast to the sleeping thousands within (maybe) earshot. I have my tower. I have gotten used to it. When I ascend I gain perspective on the world. The weather quiets even against the windowpanes and I am ensconced here for a while to watch. I might be watching you if you are moving still.
A lot of light is still reflecting. The night comes packaged with its own unearthly glow. Is it moon or light trapped under clouds? Is it starlight from billions of miles away finally cascading all around us? Is it the front porch lights or back porch lights, motion detector lights, or Xmas lights just coming up all throughout the neighborhood? Tonight has far more definition, Willard. Most recent nights I could make out one, two houses perhaps. But this evening I am clearly in the world, surrounded by other bodies all in their own four-square shrouds. Dozens are visible. The light is kind of amber, kind of sepia, almost. Are you there this night, dear reader presupposed?
There is only so much to deduce from observation. The telephone cables, or electric cables, or cable cables, or whatever bisect the world as I see it into two parts, roughly of the same total area (thinking two dimensionally). With this little light peering out the world could in fact be simulation, simulacrum, total fake. It could be a well-rendered scene: all quiet, a canvas lit exactly right, placed outside the house by those who may control what we see and survey. It could easily be two dimensions masquerading as three. Without motion it's difficult to tell. There are trees, sure, and this is a street intersecting with the alley behind it. The alley has its own weird rough grade, the slope crosshatched with tiny pits, probably to allow for water to runoff in this cold climate to help with traction. Or something. It does not work to a very good effect. The streets are a grid, a kind of Midwestern map of the hearts that dot this city. We are on the northeast side of the plane, in positive relation to the X and Y axis. Lights strobe slowly off and on in the distance. Motion lights perhaps. A trick of the weather filtering out stimuli, perhaps.
Is it strange enough just to have this window to look out and porthole up the world? Or should I be glad of this, that these panes are something, a frame, boundaries to my sight. Should I be pleased with this chair and this tower and this view, these cables bisecting all that is in my sight, the blowing warmth from the duct below, the few lit windows I can just about see into. These two windows prove a kind of life. I could go all floating-eye like Emerson and hover just outside and watch their lives work. I could upload video of it to the network and trap it there, saved and safe and watchable. What would that be evidence of. Who would it draw to it? What worth is any individual life in aesthetic terms? I will leave it there for now.
A lot of light is still reflecting. The night comes packaged with its own unearthly glow. Is it moon or light trapped under clouds? Is it starlight from billions of miles away finally cascading all around us? Is it the front porch lights or back porch lights, motion detector lights, or Xmas lights just coming up all throughout the neighborhood? Tonight has far more definition, Willard. Most recent nights I could make out one, two houses perhaps. But this evening I am clearly in the world, surrounded by other bodies all in their own four-square shrouds. Dozens are visible. The light is kind of amber, kind of sepia, almost. Are you there this night, dear reader presupposed?
There is only so much to deduce from observation. The telephone cables, or electric cables, or cable cables, or whatever bisect the world as I see it into two parts, roughly of the same total area (thinking two dimensionally). With this little light peering out the world could in fact be simulation, simulacrum, total fake. It could be a well-rendered scene: all quiet, a canvas lit exactly right, placed outside the house by those who may control what we see and survey. It could easily be two dimensions masquerading as three. Without motion it's difficult to tell. There are trees, sure, and this is a street intersecting with the alley behind it. The alley has its own weird rough grade, the slope crosshatched with tiny pits, probably to allow for water to runoff in this cold climate to help with traction. Or something. It does not work to a very good effect. The streets are a grid, a kind of Midwestern map of the hearts that dot this city. We are on the northeast side of the plane, in positive relation to the X and Y axis. Lights strobe slowly off and on in the distance. Motion lights perhaps. A trick of the weather filtering out stimuli, perhaps.
Is it strange enough just to have this window to look out and porthole up the world? Or should I be glad of this, that these panes are something, a frame, boundaries to my sight. Should I be pleased with this chair and this tower and this view, these cables bisecting all that is in my sight, the blowing warmth from the duct below, the few lit windows I can just about see into. These two windows prove a kind of life. I could go all floating-eye like Emerson and hover just outside and watch their lives work. I could upload video of it to the network and trap it there, saved and safe and watchable. What would that be evidence of. Who would it draw to it? What worth is any individual life in aesthetic terms? I will leave it there for now.
12.01.2006
And it came, and it sounds quite crappy against the windowpanes
Seriously. A foot is on the forecast, which is good. An X arrived at last by mail, by a hundred thousand gusts of wind by night. It is white and granular and all over the place. But it is blustery and it has kept me up. It sounds like a sandstorm. Flecks, not flakes, sandblasting the house. Snowblasting the house. Does that count? Can it strip paint from wood? It sounds like it could. So it is cold and weather's here around us like a blanket. It is all along the ground like a rind, like a round sung by schoolchildren a hundred years ago that has finally settled down across our brows and hands.
It sounds like it would sting. This wind. This combination of it over everything. The old house's windows are not completely snug. You can tell in these kinds of situations especially. Rattling. The thundering of gust against glass. Luckily we are on the inside half of that equation. Else we would be cold. We would be beautiful and silent, over and still.
Snow day is what the local news claims. I am a stickler for them, and this seems in no way like a day for snow and staying home to me. I am from another country, one that "very rarely" cancels classes. We consider our education, our work, our continued productivity important. We are stoic and we are cold and we are covered in this most of the year. We will snowshoe, snowblow, cross-country ski to work if necessary. Snowmobile, dogsled, trudge. We have methods of counteracting weather, or working within its bounds, against its tyranies. But here, in the South, it is a different story. The weather balls that glow against the night (they are setup by all the local weather stations, and they write songs to pair with the interactions of the weather balls with the world—they are warnings, blinking, colored, beacons in the cold) suggest the mood. How should we take this? As a slap? As a warning blast? As a punishment for the things we've done, come at last and long overdue?
It sounds like it would sting. This wind. This combination of it over everything. The old house's windows are not completely snug. You can tell in these kinds of situations especially. Rattling. The thundering of gust against glass. Luckily we are on the inside half of that equation. Else we would be cold. We would be beautiful and silent, over and still.
Snow day is what the local news claims. I am a stickler for them, and this seems in no way like a day for snow and staying home to me. I am from another country, one that "very rarely" cancels classes. We consider our education, our work, our continued productivity important. We are stoic and we are cold and we are covered in this most of the year. We will snowshoe, snowblow, cross-country ski to work if necessary. Snowmobile, dogsled, trudge. We have methods of counteracting weather, or working within its bounds, against its tyranies. But here, in the South, it is a different story. The weather balls that glow against the night (they are setup by all the local weather stations, and they write songs to pair with the interactions of the weather balls with the world—they are warnings, blinking, colored, beacons in the cold) suggest the mood. How should we take this? As a slap? As a warning blast? As a punishment for the things we've done, come at last and long overdue?
11.28.2006
Mounting pressure and atmospheric
Pressures: barometric, atmospheric, even geriatric, mount in the sky. There is something happening in the world above us tonight. Slight chance of snow, though it hovered closer to sixty most of the day and probably still is, even as bursts of rain illuminate the night and cover everything in running, everything in stickiness, in sickness/
I approach sickness: it's a fear brought on by fluctuation in the pressure (exterior, in the inner ear, especially the differential), that abstraction (untasteable, unshakable, complete in its physical absence). My body knows it though, bag of wind and water as it is, it reacts to the world's movements in kind. And so the ear reflects the bigger ear outside. Are we in something's mouth, something's innerness tonight? Or are we cradled here in space alone/
What comes next/
a dash/
an em/
a dot dot/
I approach sickness: it's a fear brought on by fluctuation in the pressure (exterior, in the inner ear, especially the differential), that abstraction (untasteable, unshakable, complete in its physical absence). My body knows it though, bag of wind and water as it is, it reacts to the world's movements in kind. And so the ear reflects the bigger ear outside. Are we in something's mouth, something's innerness tonight? Or are we cradled here in space alone/
What comes next/
a dash/
an em/
a dot dot/
11.17.2006
It is lonely here
All there is is tracks. Mine and Willard's. A pair. Forward and retreat. If we are buried here, would anyone ever, finally, know?
Does it matter if we are observed, or not—
Do we exist in the emptiness if we are alone—
Is there anything on the other side of the dash's bridge—
Or is there just field after field of whiteness—
As if that was not enough—
To what extent is it enough—
And does the use of extent disqualify this for poetry—
What is after the whiteness of the margin—
Is it like breathing; does it drop off—
And if I begin to drop little things off of it—
And listen for their echo on the slope below—
What will occur; or will they conglomerate
in stacks, band up, all of my possessions, and shout
out their echo and return to me?
Is anybody there?
Is anybody there is the echo in return.
The is of anybody there is like a broken tricycle—
an uncompleted sentence—
a slice of Morse—
a beat and what is less than a beat—
the what that comes after em—
maybe our collective mom—
the palindrome of mom and the light that spreads around it—
like a butter knife laid horizontal on a table,
perpendicular to all the frozen forks.
I always think of Antarctica.
Then I think of John Carpenter's remake of The Thing—
and then I dash it off—
(I have long been good at launch,
much worse at landing—my excellence at the trip out
but keeping nothing in reserve for the return.)
This is rerun. All is rerun and what comes on the other side of it.
Does it matter if we are observed, or not—
Do we exist in the emptiness if we are alone—
Is there anything on the other side of the dash's bridge—
Or is there just field after field of whiteness—
As if that was not enough—
To what extent is it enough—
And does the use of extent disqualify this for poetry—
What is after the whiteness of the margin—
Is it like breathing; does it drop off—
And if I begin to drop little things off of it—
And listen for their echo on the slope below—
What will occur; or will they conglomerate
in stacks, band up, all of my possessions, and shout
out their echo and return to me?
Is anybody there?
Is anybody there is the echo in return.
The is of anybody there is like a broken tricycle—
an uncompleted sentence—
a slice of Morse—
a beat and what is less than a beat—
the what that comes after em—
maybe our collective mom—
the palindrome of mom and the light that spreads around it—
like a butter knife laid horizontal on a table,
perpendicular to all the frozen forks.
I always think of Antarctica.
Then I think of John Carpenter's remake of The Thing—
and then I dash it off—
(I have long been good at launch,
much worse at landing—my excellence at the trip out
but keeping nothing in reserve for the return.)
This is rerun. All is rerun and what comes on the other side of it.
What good is it if it is only expected, only coming, always coming?
Weather station does not predict snow for tomorrow. Nor today. Nor this week. We are still on the cusp of the winter, the windy edge of it, the lip of it, contemplating the drop and precipitation down from clouds. Weather station website does give 30% chance of it occurring tomorrow into Sunday. There is a 30% chance of the realistic onset of winter. But even then I don't believe it. I wore just a shirt today. I wore just a shirt the day before. When there is snow in air I will upgrade to coat, but until then it is not happening.
I refuse to believe in it. It resists my resistance to belief. It does not care. It is idle pattern in the atmosphere. I could worship any idol and it will not take note. It does not love you, nor me, and will not respond to charm, even prayers spoken under the lilt of a foreign accent. Sexiness does nothing to it. Gets nothing from it. We could be anywhere in its grasp, under its heart, beneath its slowly descending haze. But for now it's fantasy—distant like arithmetic, the cold clicking logic edge, the impersonality of numbers. This is an essay on its coming.
This is a lovesong to said winter, to said precipitation. I will burn for you. I will burn almost anything for you. I will set myself ablaze—be all fever forever—in your name, in your shadow's image on the doppler radar communicated to me through bitstream and TCP/IP, the complicated beauty of packet switching networks. You come to me in color, and then all suddenly in black and white, or white and white and white.
I refuse to believe in it. It resists my resistance to belief. It does not care. It is idle pattern in the atmosphere. I could worship any idol and it will not take note. It does not love you, nor me, and will not respond to charm, even prayers spoken under the lilt of a foreign accent. Sexiness does nothing to it. Gets nothing from it. We could be anywhere in its grasp, under its heart, beneath its slowly descending haze. But for now it's fantasy—distant like arithmetic, the cold clicking logic edge, the impersonality of numbers. This is an essay on its coming.
This is a lovesong to said winter, to said precipitation. I will burn for you. I will burn almost anything for you. I will set myself ablaze—be all fever forever—in your name, in your shadow's image on the doppler radar communicated to me through bitstream and TCP/IP, the complicated beauty of packet switching networks. You come to me in color, and then all suddenly in black and white, or white and white and white.
11.12.2006
Something like a phenomenon
The image at left is a scanning electron microscope shot of a snow crystal at a very high magnification. Think architecture. Think Escher. Think aqueducts or cupholders intersecting, layer upon layer. Think complication and the depth of structure that underlies sensation. Think clay or styrofoam—maybe it is styrofoam, torn to tiny shreds and disposed of in the clouds above. Would there be any way for most of us to tell?You can almost touch it—well, you can touch it, but the resolution of touch is far lower than this image; there would be no way for the human hand to do much with something like this except to make it melt. Even thinking about it might make it melt. Any power directed towards it could make it disappear. Even awareness, or a lingering uncertainty about its structure. So,
forget.
11.11.2006
Oh, Bentley, Is It Really Coming
I am awake and yet the floor is moving in ripples and outside I see nothing but the top of a carport, the standing water, the fallen. Leaves and such. The breath between waking moments is becoming shorter. Between snow, longer. That early arrival in October brought with it expectations: a winter of apartment as hermitage, isolation with loneliness following, instead of the familiar loneliness preceding. I do not want to be here by choice, by lack of options. It is depressing, Bentley, to be snowed in without the snow, to be awake all these hours. Tell me, Bentley, which director do I turn to for answers. Your Kubrick, perhaps. Tell me. There must be one, out there, who will help me back to sleep. Or there must be snow on the horizon. How much salvation can I hope for in the coming weather, should I. How much pressure can I place on the heavens. I am awake and yet my legs are not ready to carry me through the day and so I will be here, watching, waiting.
The Impossibility of the Dreamlife of Others
Not even to mention the dreamlives of objects, the atom hum within the spaces left amidst matter. But, as snow begins to thread and drape us this morning, I wonder about the spaces opened every night in the heads of others. How can we access dreams, and even if we can, will they be rendered flickering, like old Super 8 film? What are the dimensions of that action: how long a field does one play upon while asleep? How wide is it? Is it backlit snow against more snow against emptiness? Is it the spectral action of curry powder, baby oil, and sea monkeys whirring amidst gold? Is it an Aronofsky dreamlife? Is it the slow rotation of space itself, as seen via Kubrick?
The car parked below seems at first to be solid. Nothing moves from here except for the first stir of weather. From above, of course, the snow does not fall straight down, not like rain, which—seen from above—looks like straight converging lines. Snow begins to curl with the pattern of the air, and by the time it's twenty or thirty feet below, the combined effect is one of chaos. We are amidst the swirl, able to track it for perhaps half a minute, and then it devolves into lack of understanding. And that's okay: I am okay with trading off comprehension for a moment of determinism, something I can grasp, hold onto, at least until the solid gives itself a way and becomes more formless again in my new slick hand.
The car parked below seems at first to be solid. Nothing moves from here except for the first stir of weather. From above, of course, the snow does not fall straight down, not like rain, which—seen from above—looks like straight converging lines. Snow begins to curl with the pattern of the air, and by the time it's twenty or thirty feet below, the combined effect is one of chaos. We are amidst the swirl, able to track it for perhaps half a minute, and then it devolves into lack of understanding. And that's okay: I am okay with trading off comprehension for a moment of determinism, something I can grasp, hold onto, at least until the solid gives itself a way and becomes more formless again in my new slick hand.
There is a little light, Willard
and in it—and I confess that this a state I do not usually witness in the world, the hypnapompic edge of consciousness:
awaking early, a surprise
before the morning light has become full
and fully come to us, the body's beginnings
of an ache, the creek running underneath
the house, the bottom of the pumpkins
on the porch rotting out from underneath them:
soon they will be goo, humus, compost
with the rest of us, slurry, but backlit
by the waterlight just visible through occasional
sheets of rain. Oo and ew. And desire
staccato against the silence and the air
brushing up from the heating vent, from
somewhere else, away from here
—so this is unusual, Willard. If my tower were any higher, I would feel in a spire, and even now it feels like it is a thousand feet below to the world. I am equivalent to cloud, or haze, or stones thrown by the strongest man and caught by birds who circle and dip amid the cumulus.
With my lens I can see the everyness starting to transpire below, but it's hard to feel committed to it. Perhaps I should get to work on weather, start generating terminology like just discovered scars.
awaking early, a surprise
before the morning light has become full
and fully come to us, the body's beginnings
of an ache, the creek running underneath
the house, the bottom of the pumpkins
on the porch rotting out from underneath them:
soon they will be goo, humus, compost
with the rest of us, slurry, but backlit
by the waterlight just visible through occasional
sheets of rain. Oo and ew. And desire
staccato against the silence and the air
brushing up from the heating vent, from
somewhere else, away from here
—so this is unusual, Willard. If my tower were any higher, I would feel in a spire, and even now it feels like it is a thousand feet below to the world. I am equivalent to cloud, or haze, or stones thrown by the strongest man and caught by birds who circle and dip amid the cumulus.
With my lens I can see the everyness starting to transpire below, but it's hard to feel committed to it. Perhaps I should get to work on weather, start generating terminology like just discovered scars.
11.10.2006
From sleep, Bentley, an answer
- I have risen and my head says otherwise, that leftover refusal to wake.
- A sensitivity to light.
- One eye open, the other closed.
- A longing.
- A hand to head.
- Winter blood.
11.09.2006
I wonder if winter is a still life, Willard.
If temperature means lack of energy, means slowing motion, and everything caught and crystallized, gone solid. If we looked at it through a slowly opening aperture, if the world would stay the way it is even after the image washed out in dreams of whiteness.
Again, up against the dark
It goes away at 5 or so, and you can feel the light beginning to slant and seep away to that other portion of the world that deserves it at about 4. Even by 3, which should be afternoon, the sun is there but you can only feel it weakly, that is if it comes out at all, visible behind the architecture of the clouds. Probably morning is when it is best in the world when it all turns to winter. Certainly the chair I am sitting in is best from nine to noon, where it receives the sun. Unfortunately I am not made for morning, not mostly, my motor skills will not kick in until the caffeine kick and bell-toll meaning about ten. Nine if I am lucky and there is nothing in the world that requires me.
So the sun is gone completely, and has been gone by now for hours. What did humans do before we could control the light sources in our homes? How old are candles? We have had flame, I suppose, since the dawn of civilization. But now everything is lights and electricity, energy and fossil fuels condensed through millenia of stasis and pressure. This city is lit, I know, especially when I see it from the air, or through the fog of car glass under moisture. It sparkles and is something to behold. I can hold it in my hands, in my heart. It is like a ham. Fit for cats and consumption. When we can see it, we can eat it, and it is beautiful, and it is more than this, a daily miracle, all of these things combined—when taken in the aggregate, there is a lot to be said for all of this. Even when it's gone and the lights are gone and we are left with television memories of summer.
So the sun is gone completely, and has been gone by now for hours. What did humans do before we could control the light sources in our homes? How old are candles? We have had flame, I suppose, since the dawn of civilization. But now everything is lights and electricity, energy and fossil fuels condensed through millenia of stasis and pressure. This city is lit, I know, especially when I see it from the air, or through the fog of car glass under moisture. It sparkles and is something to behold. I can hold it in my hands, in my heart. It is like a ham. Fit for cats and consumption. When we can see it, we can eat it, and it is beautiful, and it is more than this, a daily miracle, all of these things combined—when taken in the aggregate, there is a lot to be said for all of this. Even when it's gone and the lights are gone and we are left with television memories of summer.
A quick sweep before rest
Snow is related to sleep. Both come in sheets, sleeting down from somewhere outside of us. Both are hush and pins and nothingness for hours. You get the hazy feeling just before them both: is it the body's expectation or desire? Willard, which of these do you desire more? Is it the reduction of the senses? Putting them on hold? Could we be so bold so thus. Is it a taste of death—I am speaking of the two of them, held together and just above my chest, this storm, this coming slumber. I am on the edge of it tonight. That light that peers through the yellow world outside of this one: it is a streetlight, maybe, from a half-mile from here. It peers through the desiccated trees. You couldn't see it only weeks before, but after the clearing out of Fall and foliage it is apparent. It is a beacon. It beckons to me, finger crooked, will-o-wisp clearing something in my way. Maybe it is the light from Paulding, Michigan, transposed and brought down here, or visible via supernatural force, some atmospheric thing that I can't pretend to understand.
But I am here. And motion detector lights are here. And in the sky above stars exist. And in a film on the exterior of the storm window blots of dust exist, and paint. And the increasingly apparent shapes of trees.
The world is limbic, luminescent. I can barely limn it. I am on the edge of it, finger tracing the glass's edge as if it was made of salt and I was hard up and in some need of mineral.
Snow could bring it, trace of mineral and dust, transmitted via flake to outstretched tongue, to outstretched anything exposed in cold for this purpose, and for only this. I will be all receptor to the night, to nice things that descend in it. I will not bind myself to metal poles like on the television. I will work beyond myself this year, just past the usual edge of consciousness. Think this a pledge. A ledge I am willing to go out on. I will extend. Two feet past the end of the diving board, in suspense, wigged out on sodium pentathol and wrapped up in that cushion. On the way to animation and the inevitable drop back to the world that has been going on beneath us every day, all of the every every too far below time.
But I am here. And motion detector lights are here. And in the sky above stars exist. And in a film on the exterior of the storm window blots of dust exist, and paint. And the increasingly apparent shapes of trees.
The world is limbic, luminescent. I can barely limn it. I am on the edge of it, finger tracing the glass's edge as if it was made of salt and I was hard up and in some need of mineral.
Snow could bring it, trace of mineral and dust, transmitted via flake to outstretched tongue, to outstretched anything exposed in cold for this purpose, and for only this. I will be all receptor to the night, to nice things that descend in it. I will not bind myself to metal poles like on the television. I will work beyond myself this year, just past the usual edge of consciousness. Think this a pledge. A ledge I am willing to go out on. I will extend. Two feet past the end of the diving board, in suspense, wigged out on sodium pentathol and wrapped up in that cushion. On the way to animation and the inevitable drop back to the world that has been going on beneath us every day, all of the every every too far below time.
11.08.2006
Snow, now, no.
Bentley: I can't sleep, post election. There isn't even a chill outside. Just the garbage, ready for pickup. Should I be hopeful? Should I close my eyes? Keep them closed?
11.06.2006
Deciduousness
They were here and they they were gone. I don't know what to say about it except for that. You get to love the bright busts of color wrapping the forest that is visible outside through the windowframe before the darkness comes. The wind comes. And the color comes—itself a stand-in for the trees cutting bait, discarding that which brought them here. A couple bright windstorms and it's all on the ground being raked by mostly men into wet, rumped heaps. Trees lose it all: the booster stages gone, released back into the atmosphere where they will catch fire and evaporate in heat.
It happens in the summer, too, in warmer climates. When trees drop leaves in summer months it's called drought deciduousness, the opposite of the winter method in the parts of the country that freeze. It slows their growth—like everything slows in winter: fluid dynamics in water, oil, windshield washer fluid, tar. Animals slow down and curl, conserve what's theirs, coil in crowds to save energy. Their lope is slower, I know, or maybe I imagine, when I see them moving across the snow if I am lucky enough to witness this trek at all.
My hats are out, that which controls the hair and the scalp's exposure to the weather forming, thinking about descending, in the sky.
It happens in the summer, too, in warmer climates. When trees drop leaves in summer months it's called drought deciduousness, the opposite of the winter method in the parts of the country that freeze. It slows their growth—like everything slows in winter: fluid dynamics in water, oil, windshield washer fluid, tar. Animals slow down and curl, conserve what's theirs, coil in crowds to save energy. Their lope is slower, I know, or maybe I imagine, when I see them moving across the snow if I am lucky enough to witness this trek at all.
My hats are out, that which controls the hair and the scalp's exposure to the weather forming, thinking about descending, in the sky.
11.04.2006
Paradoxical undressing
Quite often, the scene findings in cases of fatal hypothermia show evidence suggesting a struggle. The premises may be in disarray, and affected individuals may be found under newspapers or furniture. Presumably, once hypothermia has set in, they become confused and disoriented, and attempt to seek warmth in unusual places. They also suffer from "paradoxical undressing", or "hide-and-die" behaviour, thought to be due to a disturbance of the temperature-regulating function of the hypothalamus that causes a feeling of overheating (and resultant attempts to cool down such as undressing) as the body's core temperature drops.
from:
http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/175_12_171201/cala/cala.html
from:
http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/175_12_171201/cala/cala.html
So there is an absence of it tonight
The air therefore is still and clear. No precipitate in the solution. Nothing swirling down: no flakes of gold or white or dust. Not even the ghoulish pollen dusting through the air. There is wind so you know there is still air and the world on the other side of it that could be seen through it if there was light enough, if the light cast by the few electric lights visible from my tower window was big enough to see by. If I was out in it, away from light and the flat slats of light that mean windows with something going on behind them—maybe something sexual or prurient or televisionistic, or maybe just a light left on when the room was vacated, and maybe even the house is vacant, had been shown today but the realtor forgot to terminate the show so it still shows at night, this night, to me and to anyone else who could come by—if I was out in this simulacrum of nothingness, my eyes would adjust and my skin would be cold and possibly chapped and beautiful, worn away like slickness, like sickness, like the music of coughing and the plumb bop of phlegm.
I shouldn't talk about it, shouldn't write about or conceive of it, that virus, that bacterial creep inside the body's cave system, so I don't bring it on myself. It's true that I am good for weeks of it. When it comes inside me it sets up to stay like winter. It won't go away without medicinal intervention. And cold is that to me, both cold and a cold, the slick of ice and the menthol haze of Halls or something stronger. There is always something stronger, but it can wear you away. It wears away your coats like the cats that tear the lining up. It wears away your heart and hardiness and hats. Wisp of thread by wisp of thread the cold and the wind will erode your clothes, your heart, your heat away and leave you bare.
I shouldn't talk about it, shouldn't write about or conceive of it, that virus, that bacterial creep inside the body's cave system, so I don't bring it on myself. It's true that I am good for weeks of it. When it comes inside me it sets up to stay like winter. It won't go away without medicinal intervention. And cold is that to me, both cold and a cold, the slick of ice and the menthol haze of Halls or something stronger. There is always something stronger, but it can wear you away. It wears away your coats like the cats that tear the lining up. It wears away your heart and hardiness and hats. Wisp of thread by wisp of thread the cold and the wind will erode your clothes, your heart, your heat away and leave you bare.
11.02.2006
It has stopped and there is nothing underneath it
or at least that is my fear, that it has coated everything and erased, replaced it. All that is left of the world is relief of what was there before. The echo of a form. The mold for it. So we can replace it, remake it. Make it new. Make it nothing like we've seen before. Make it in the old and odd world's image.
I think of murder, a little. Of bodies felled and left in the hundreds of thousands of square miles of woods, of those who waited just a little while too long or found themselves too many footsteps away from home, or with no sense of where North is in the middle of it, and no GPS or GRE or orienteering maps for reference. Those who lay down there, hoping for something more to come and save them. Hoping for the light to penetrate the gusting haze. Hoping for the dog with rum to come and lap their faces back to life. Maybe that's not murder but something else. The slow moan of suicide. Or accident. Or dumbassitude. Transfixed by beauty, a kind of transfiguration, effortless, a butterfly fixed by a pin to brooding cork.
Or when the trees creak with their sheaths of ice in the wind, and you can hear drunks returning home from the bars a half a mile away, rowdy and bleeding from the fall they won't remember until they get home and smear their sheets and wake up the next morning refreshed and surprised.
I think of murder, a little. Of bodies felled and left in the hundreds of thousands of square miles of woods, of those who waited just a little while too long or found themselves too many footsteps away from home, or with no sense of where North is in the middle of it, and no GPS or GRE or orienteering maps for reference. Those who lay down there, hoping for something more to come and save them. Hoping for the light to penetrate the gusting haze. Hoping for the dog with rum to come and lap their faces back to life. Maybe that's not murder but something else. The slow moan of suicide. Or accident. Or dumbassitude. Transfixed by beauty, a kind of transfiguration, effortless, a butterfly fixed by a pin to brooding cork.
Or when the trees creak with their sheaths of ice in the wind, and you can hear drunks returning home from the bars a half a mile away, rowdy and bleeding from the fall they won't remember until they get home and smear their sheets and wake up the next morning refreshed and surprised.
I was wrong, Willard
Snow is a story about you always being wrong, whoever and wherever you are. It is in the air this morning like a haze. Like a hundred thousand tiny gods descending lazily to the earth. It is something born of atmosphere and delivered to the world by the world.
Snow is a fuck yeah, decimated by atmospheric pressure, and distributed to the earth, a leaflet shredded many many times.
It is coming down this morning. It is likely to cover us. Or maybe it is waning even as I have come across it. Willard, will it accumulate. Willard, will it cover the abandoned couches left on the curb by college neighbors? Already their striped form has grown a glaze of it.
Grass blades have accepted dust, hairspray, and are spiking up and frosted. I saw this effect this week at the store where a hundred brands compete for my affection. I fear that my hair is going, and I fear that I need product to stock up against it, a charm against secession.
If I could be covered in it this year almost all the time I might be happy then.
Snow is a fuck yeah, decimated by atmospheric pressure, and distributed to the earth, a leaflet shredded many many times.
It is coming down this morning. It is likely to cover us. Or maybe it is waning even as I have come across it. Willard, will it accumulate. Willard, will it cover the abandoned couches left on the curb by college neighbors? Already their striped form has grown a glaze of it.
Grass blades have accepted dust, hairspray, and are spiking up and frosted. I saw this effect this week at the store where a hundred brands compete for my affection. I fear that my hair is going, and I fear that I need product to stock up against it, a charm against secession.
If I could be covered in it this year almost all the time I might be happy then.
Snow, in the morning
I have been awake for half an hour and the light is now slipping through the drawn curtains. It says snow on the forecast, is snowing, light snow. It took me thirty minutes to to open a curtain, look out. They weren't lying: snow. This isn't what I'm used to: snow before December. I have been coughing for four days now. A throat, off and on, in pain. I thought I had escaped it until, inexplicably, a day of proper fall sneaked in to the early winter. Seventy degrees. Warm. And then waking up the next morning to the familiar chill, the threat of snow. My body couldn't take the disappointment: it settled in my throat, my sinuses, my joints. This rapid change of seasons.
Post-snow blog
I have already missed the first two days of snow, and I don’t regret it, at least not very much. We had an inch, perhaps two, well before Halloween. Mid-October, really. The Upper Peninsula got buried pretty well. And famously Buffalo, NY too. They got hosed, though they get enough that I don't see why everyone cares. I think we have a week or two before anything will start, seriously, this year. Last December we got unexpectedly buried and it lasted for the month. I got back from the MLA convention in DC to the end of the winter, at least for a while, and the snow had receded. The weather was balmy, almost. 50s and 60s. A respite. It lasted for quite a while, and after that the winter had seemed to have blown itself out or up.
There is nothing in the air at all except for leaves and occasional light. It's late and I am seeing a reflection through the reflection of the inside of this room—there is someone out there, walking.
There is nothing in the air at all except for leaves and occasional light. It's late and I am seeing a reflection through the reflection of the inside of this room—there is someone out there, walking.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)