I Passed Through a Wall

I passed through a wall, my light eyes gave me that power. In the dark I was passed from one to another. When I could see again, my eyes were still light but my clothing was black. I remained shrouded even in spring, even under a bright sky. Over the years, my eyes darkened. I no longer have the power to pass.

Second Generation

What is the half-life of ecstasy? Of trauma? The second generation do not believe they are visible saints, because they cannot know for certain that they are saved by God. How could they? They weren’t present when every calculation, every accident, every success and every failure resulted in survival.

Yet survival, too, ends. That is also God’s will evidently.

And so the second generation, which did not witness God’s hand in survival, finally see God’s hand in death. And then cannot but see God everywhere.

In a City of Millions

Accustomed to the forest floor, I carry pine needles and sprinkle them in my path. I can walk through the city for hours. Trees in various states of decay tell me their troubles. They are grateful for the audience.

At the playground I walk in the sand.

With a bag of grain, I am a mill. The birds flock behind, marking my steps with wings.

A Bravura Performance (for Greg Kelley)

The trumpets faced me as in a firing squad.

At a signal, the fanfare began. I was dead.

In the second movement, there were whispers and whistles. I began to stir.

The third movement was the finale. Trumpets ran up and down my spine until they roused me. I joined in the applause, so loud I thought I might die again.

Busking

The dawn chorus is at a different time in each place. Only those who see dawn and then listen for the chorus think there is a causal connection. Listening – listening only – you might hear the dawn at any moment. In New York City, I heard it at 3am. I stared into the dark looking for natural light, any natural light, and there was none. But the song was unmistakable.

If you wander, as I do, there is no predictive way to hear the dawn chorus.

I open my instrument case to the sky.

I Heard a Voice Out of Reach

I heard a voice out of reach. Around the corner? In that clump of trees? Always the same voice, always out of reach. It couldn’t be a conversation, there was no second or third voice. It wasn’t a monologue either, there were no rising and falling cadences. Steady, like the patter of rain. Never close enough to distinguish words. Yet I knew it was a voice, because it sounded like my own.

Anatomy of

There is an organ that processes hate, like alcohol in the liver; yet it is vestigial and hence overlooked even by classical and Renaissance medical science. Burton writes extensively, like so many others before and since, about the generation of hate in the body. But where does it go, once received?

The conclusion is obvious but so counterintuitive we seem to have no way to accept it: there was a long evolutionary period when processing hate was not needed.

Is this our true prehistory?

Shelter

I turned a key in the elevator by the number I had been given, and the car moved horizontally like a tram. We traveled to another neighborhood along a narrow winding path. At the end – it wasn’t the end of the line, but we could progress no further – the way was blocked by a pushcart. The seller spoke a different dialect than where we had started. I could only understand scattered words in either one, and did not attempt conversation. I left the others bartering and walked along the tracks to find my place. There were many doors off a central courtyard, and behind each there were multiple rooms. My friend was holding an art performance in one, I was late but joined just as blackish distillation from a kinetic sculpture was being downed by an intrepid observer. Cats sniffed at the shot glass and rejected it. I followed one of these cats down a hall to what I thought must be my room at last. There was no luggage inside, I was fatigued, I leaned against a vertical cot. I heard muffled explosions through the mattress, they seemed at a distance now and I did not feel a desire to move any further.

Static

Each word we broadcast, we give to the air and cannot retrieve. The words we receive we keep. Sometimes we give back a word we had received, losing it again for ourselves. It is new if returned.

Inviting another to mix languages is an act of intimacy, yet our vocabularies remain entirely distinct.

Out of love, I move my antenna so close to yours I hear nothing but static.

Tarock

Others counted cards, worked systems, looked for tells around the table. I asked, what do the cards want? The Fool ranks highest in our game. And if you listen to the cards, they all have a fool in them.

Martha Bernays Lights the Sabbath Candles

Death is a diminution of power, not a disappearance. This is not a spiritualist belief. It is a realistic evaluation of the lingering role of the past in one’s daily life. The house, the table, the candles, the habits all remain in place regardless of loss. The Doctor is no longer in; but he is, all the same, is he not? He would be the first to acknowledge that truth, indeed he was among the first to assert it. Archeology leads in one direction only: down.

The work of unearthing the past continues, then, though newly unencumbered by another’s version of the present. We shared the past, and added to it. But all the digging now is mine.

Bandwidth

Warehousing context became unmanageable, the gods alone required so much space – entire temples, even. Modernism was a welcome, portable idea, like those tiny Byzantine icons that could keep God in a corner or a pocket if necessary. But this stripping away soon led to new contexts of its own, the scale of an icon swapped for grandiose gestures requiring nearly as much space as the temples had before. We were groaning under a fresh burden of abstraction made concrete, when context itself was jettisoned – it happened like a moonshot, countdown and blastoff with history trailing behind. Without ties to the past, meaning evaporated. And that solved our storage issue.

Life Is a Dream

We tried the doors, they were layered with steel so we climbed higher and went through a window which had been painted red to match the thick brick walls but proved nothing but plywood. Inside was a world of mechanical logic, gears and pulleys and electrical devices, now powerless. Chairs and glass partitions felt like magic to us – we made a circle and reanimated the space with our own spirits. The industrial gods smiled and lights turned on from a massive switch in the basement. We still couldn’t operate any of the machines they had once worked like toys, they weren’t built for humans like us. But the chairs were, and the glass partitions, and so were the scratched desks and rusty filing cabinets which we began to fill with figures drawn first in the dust and then with cans of marine blue paint we found stacked in a cupboard. Our faces and hands were streaked with excitement, the floor blue from dancing feet.

Four Helicopters

Wreathed in noise like incense curling around my body, I took the heavy air into my lungs and woke with ears gasping for space. Four helicopters hovered, hectic with sound. The dawn was a silkscreen. Vibration fell in sheets. I piled furniture, climbed toward the ceiling, leapt to the lamp and hung on, precarious, black as a fly or helicopter against the flat white expanse.

Mysterious Britain

We landed at night, the famous landscape largely hidden. However, the built environment was floodlit and its smallish scale was disorienting. We encountered no remarkable or confusing constructions, yet they all conformed to an unfamiliar metric. We ducked our heads instinctively at doorways, though they generously allowed our passage. Was this smallness an expression of our feelings at having entered a new place without knowing its limits in our lives?

The guide who met us carried no sign, an unlit cigarette laced with hashish in his mouth. He talked incessantly without imparting any information. When and where would he stop to eat, we wondered. He did not.

At the dank place he took us, we tried to settle in a corner while he finally smoked that cigarette, staring at the unseen view out a blackened window. There were so many smells crowded together in this place they cancelled one another out. The tea we were finally offered was acrid, in cups ringed with stains. More talk, slower but again without information, as the cigarette burned down.

In the middle of that long night, I had a vision of darkness, that is, I felt I could see dark itself. It was a dark built to the same oddly small scale of the floodlit spaces we had passed through to reach it.

Rhizome

The fence around the text collapsed. It was a residential setting, so the implications did not seem extensive. Nonetheless, complications began to undermine other fences. Verbiage, uncontained, spreads noisily on the surface like a weed, but more powerfully and silently underground, like bamboo. Arguments in one household sprang up in others. There was no history or familiarity with their terms, but their strength was undiminished by distance. Politics seemed to be the subject for many of these disputes but that was a red herring, because what passed for politics in one home hid the fervor of emotional grudges from another. Violent arguments ensued, yelling could be heard from house to house in the evenings. In apartment buildings, stomping and even smashing of objects became a regular part of the interior soundscape. It wasn’t long before disputes began to break up longstanding domestic arrangements; couples separated, children left home, some people simply disappeared. It must be assumed that wherever those from this neighborhood move its arguments will follow, without hope for constructive resolution.

Panic Attack

In case I needed to travel by train, I dressed, packed a light bag, and placed my keys and wallet in my pocket. Polishing my glasses, I chose a book for the journey: Rimbaud.

I always choose Rimbaud for these journeys.

Waiting in the street for a taxi to the station, I checked my pulse. It was steady, but elevated. Knowing this might be a panic attack, I continued to the station.

Presenting myself at the gate, I was told by the conductor that I did not have a reservation. I opened my wallet. There was no ID inside.

Breathing out fully, a rush of blood tingling my skin, I felt relief. One cannot travel without ID even if one buys a ticket at the last minute or, on those lines where it is permitted, en route. It was not a real panic attack.

I read a poem by Rimbaud in the taxi home, moving the bookmark one page further. When I reach the end of the volume, I will die.

Messenger of Misfortune

Underground I found others of no interest. We were not literally under the ground, that would have made us locatable. But we had each employed a similar strategy for disrecognition: erratic habits, unpredictable income. Perhaps we stood out at sparsely attended performances and exhibitions as especially unconcerned with “potential.” This was the kind of sign only others like us picked up, however.

Amongst ourselves, we ask few questions and answer even less - although I have encountered some who ask nothing but questions, which is effective if exhausting. Silence is the standard, and its awkwardness must be cultivated, continually refreshed.

Life is not comfortable underground. Breakfast is never at the same hour, or accompanied by the same beverage. Public transportation nearly always leads to an unfamiliar station, or at least to an unfamiliar exit. Sleep comes when it does and where it does.

A conviction that life itself is uncomfortable is likely the first step we each took. Underground is just a path, but the only one I know that leads to personal space.

A Bintel Brief

I came to this place, like so many, fleeing persecution. Yet I find persecution here as well. Does a person have more than two chances? Many do not have any. I look at others in this place who are worse off than I. But how could I urge them to flee, if they will only find persecution where they go, as I have? I do not know our persecutors since they do not wish to mix. And so I have no better understanding today, in this second life, than I did in my first about what causes persecution and how if ever it may stop. I am a freethinker, I have not lost a faith I never had, yet fear I am beginning to become one who does not think freely. Because freedom is not a part of my experience in this place and not in the place I was born. Did I see freedom en route, as I passed through so many places between? If I did, I must have been too busy fleeing to notice. Or perhaps it was itself so fleeting, that any momentary lack of concentration on freedom is enough to miss its only appearance. I am writing you this letter, worthy editor, to ask advice. Should I believe in freedom from persecution? And if not, why did I leave my miserable home? In my misery there, I had an idea that there was less misery elsewhere. It was this idea that made me a freethinker. Tell me, worthy editor, how I might continue to be one.

Lessons of the Avant-Garde (for Alison Knowles)

It’s not the oldest tree in the garden, but one that bears the marks of time most clearly. Pliability - bending easily in the wind or under snow - combines with a stubborn return not to original form but to a form, we might say, that only this tree achieves. Under greenhouse conditions, the tree proves to have surprisingly regular growth throughout its lifespan, and with restraint may form straight and even symmetrical patterns. This is never seen in the field, however; there the tree, in part because of its relentless growth under any and all conditions, reaches shapes not only rarely seen but, as far as observations allow, never repeated.

Conservation

If gloom begins to descend on a room with a fireplace, no fire in it, and a view of blank sky fading on a day that never had any sun, with a stillness broken only by the occasional shadow moving slowly across a wall, whether from someone or something passing by on the street or through the air, or simply from one’s shifting attention to the deepening shadows, and if there is quiet in that manner which never comes without precisely this kind of gloom, then do not by any means switch on a light.

Surgery

It wasn’t the parts they removed – people have always adapted, and at first they only took one from each – but the way they decided which part from whom went unexplained. Groups formed naturally among those who shared a new situation, but when they looked at one another they could find no other common thread. Workers on the same assembly line had different parts removed that necessarily altered the patterns of their work, yet the demands of the job remained. It was those factory workers who began swapping tasks to accommodate the changes – which in turn led to the first self-management organizations. The revolution that followed was so efficient, hardly anyone realized it had taken place until the parts stopped being removed. Which is why now we refer to our society as a body, a whole body.

Mai 68

I was riding my bike through a half-abandoned mall. I knew I shouldn’t, and one of four boys following a monk reprimanded me. Just then an lighting fixture fell near the boy. I laughed triumphantly. But the boy looked scolded by God, so I dismounted as he had wished. I fell in behind the monk and four boys, single file. We arrived at one of the remaining open food stalls, where they were expected. A young woman prepared small cups of elaborately different food for each of the boys, and they and the monk relished everything on their trays. I ordered noodles and sat down. Two young men emerged from the stairs leading down to a kitchen and explained they were in a band. Her name was Mai, they were Mai 68. The noodles were excellent. We don’t make them to eat with a spoon, they said proudly. I asked to hear their music. We can’t play our tape at school because families disapprove, they explained, we only play it when we’re working at night. The rhythms were ordinary but the melodies odd. I suggested we make a recording there in the restaurant. The space was cramped. I was struggling to arrange enough stands and cables. They waited outside in the night air playing pétanque. I heard the sound of boules clacking and went to record it, but when I arrived with a microphone they looked abashed and started to hurry back in. I want to record the pétanque, I said, so they continued to play but now it was self-conscious and not worth recording. They enjoyed the novelty of the idea so I held up the mic regardless. Soon they became boisterous as if drunk. Mai brought out a platter of foods at once sweet and savory, strange as the melodies. Everyone reached in to share, the sounds became unselfconscious again and joyous. It grew loud. I slipped back inside to finish preparations for the recording.

Pizarnik

The cat is comfortable with the night. He goes here, he goes there. He sleeps, or he doesn’t. He turns on the light and reads Pizarnik and is not disturbed. He takes no notes. He writes nothing down because he is comfortable with the night.

Consultation

A face is not symmetrical so for identification we focus on the center line. That center line is the edge of a plane so fine that it disappears from view. This moves the perception of identity to outlying asymmetrical features, giving us the shifty, distrustful look we see in the mirror, or reflected by poems.

Etiology

The summer was so fecund that even the ice in the freezer was rank with herbs. We watched them melt and sprout. Soon we had grown winter.

The Criminal Mind

You learn working with criminals that prior acts are not predictive of future ones. For example if they write a poem this is no assurance that they will write again. The poem, about the night, is a singular act and should they write another poem it too will be a singular act. In this manner they may construct a career of writing poetry. That is the behavior of criminals.

Infrathin

The borders became indefensible once we realized how thin they were. No one remembers who started simply to stand at the line, rather than requesting entry. But soon there were many. And it was impossible to say, the guards quickly learned, which side of the line those standing were truly on; the border proved to be so thin it could be crossed by osmosis. Now we know there are no lines on the earth, at least none we can perceive with our limited locational abilities.

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

The first virtual government provoked a virtual civil war, as predicted by many; what no one foresaw was that its successful opposition came not from those committed to remaining in real space and time, but from those craving an individual virtuality. This virtual underground – refusing control of their imagined world – was both impossible to organize and, for the same reason, impossible to defeat. Indeed, they were victorious instantaneously for those who joined. The virtual government, stymied in its effort to convince the underground that it had been defeated, grew ever more real with its frustrations, resorting at last to the ancient physical tool of violence. At which point, it too dissolved.