"...like sleaves of grease..."

He could be thought an ugly man. The right reach of his face between nostril and lip pull up in a jeer so constant that even his smiles take on the look of tongued battle between molar and seed. On this side, too, a bag of skin hangs below his eye, bloated with the insults and complaints his lips have held back for so much lost time.

He is a sailor who never learned that saying our goodbyes we are also always declaring certain hellos. He is a sailor who forgets just how much he remains with those he continually leaves behind. He is a sailor with back turned to the wonders of the open.

But one would be wrong to see this alone. For, despite his well-plaited and rough-burnished husk, his flesh remains as soft and unprotected as some sun-warmed peach. His hands are firm in purpose, securing the lines of cared-for lives without question, without invoice. His chin sometimes laughs with warm bellows that send children deeper into their frolicsome play. And, more than most, his saddened eyes open, like some unsought miracle, unto the tears of things.

He could be seen as an ugly man, but he is not. Like so many, he's simply a sail or two or three or ten away from learning how to sail home. And, when he does, he will at great long last greet those who remain with the living goodbye that is caught beneath his longing, still supple skin.

We, sailors of this earth...

I push my finger down here, gran-dada. My four fingers push down too, dada. Shoulder, chest, neck of the strongest tree. Hold me up, hold me tight. You are my gran-dada.

N’er will I let you go, my wee head of yarn. Your eyes are my eyes. We look across the sea like sailors of an ancient watch…quiet-like…while others chatter on. Little pluck of my heart, where do you find this reverence? Of all that is full force, unknown, and deserving of thanksgiving…

Gran-dada, carry me across the grass and set me within the waves. Hold tight to my coat tail.  Gran, gran, the breath of the wave pushes against me. My eyes squinch like yours. Where does the sea go when it swallows, dada? Where does it sleep? Can it feel my fingers touch it, splat, splat, splat? Da da, da da, stallion manes and crashing hooves chase me down the sand! Nothing can catch me except you, dada.  

Little fingers, will you become these worn, storied hands of mine? Will yours continue to touch the world like they do now? Is it merely a matter now of your being so close to its ground? Will they grow up and away, tracing the world in polished, kept and tidy ways? Do I yearn always to go to sea so that once again that which holds me up is a hand’s reach away? Wee head, come to me so that I may have something to hold against my hands again, to feel that some portion of the earth meets the resistance of my hands…hands sloughing off their callouses, losing their partnership with rope and wood and tar…now that I’m returned to land. 

Spin, spin, spin me, gran-dada, the silly gull screeching such and so above.  Taller…that I can see across the ocean’s edge. Where? How? Why does she breathe so loudly? What does she say? My finger pushes down on your shoulder here.  My four fingers over here. My head and your head, hard and warm and curly together. Salted breaths, we squint with sea eyes. We see the sea, don’t we, dada?

Yes, my yarn, we see the sea.   

To pause and look around...

Love looks here.

From deep within the kitchen, grandmother steps away from the hearthfire and looks out...at daughter-mother, at grandson-son, at doggie-friend, and son-husband-father.  Love tumbles along these connect-the-dot heart paths.  For the moment, the love is smooth and soft, bathed in summer sun, warming the floorboards that squeak with comforting familiarity.  The pie is baking, the meringue just catching its toasted caramel color.  Lilacs tumble in the breeze and diffuse the memories of childhoods 1, 30, and 50 years old, but no one notices that...except to find their smiles feeling just a bit deeper than they were a moment before.  

Doggie-friend barks once, head and eyes tilting back for a moment’s confirmation, then barks two more times quickly in succession.  Can we play now?  Stick, grass, around the maple one and a half times.  The field.  Yes.  We run like the wind, because storybooks and poems are very often true.  

Mother-daughter opens the screen door, and inhales.  She smiles at her mother’s back, arms moving forwards and returning, forwards and returning, as she kneads the white bread of her every day.  Eyes fill with tears, because these things are so often overlooked in favor of the loan, the sore hip, the clothes to be mended, the husband distant in some concern.  The tears bring rains of joy as she reaches her towel-draped hands into the oven to take out their most favored ritual of communion.

Come together.  “Don’t throw anyone out of your heart.”  For within that place, even the greatest trials can be held and cared for, even the greatest pains can be softened and heard.  Love lets grow here.

Sweet steam from the pie trails about in the kitchen and weaves its way through warp and woof of its screens.  Porch reveling in the flowers of all its perfumes.  A momentary silence for us to pause and look around.

Doggie-friend bounds back upon the porch, little two feet follow, father smiles and opens the door, letting in these boundless-for-now energies, flowered memories, and the wafts of warmed lemon that had drifted outward, but decided they’d like to rejoin the family inside.  

Around the hearthfire.

Lovingkindness.

May it also be with you.

Clear the heavens and give our eyes again to see...

I purposefully deny the more likely explanation.  Imagining instead that these animals have come to town with a traveling road show, temporarily housed in a most practical setting--the centrally located, always meant to be used, municipal tennis courts. 

Surely, whether a permanent home or a night's stay, this is not friendly to giraffes, and I don't pretend otherwise.  For whimsy's sake, however, let's overlook this feature of the story...or, even worse, take advantage of the bewitching juxtaposition made possible by this form of containment.

Forget the context, and bend in closer.

The photograph is taken through two sets of chain link fencing; crucial parts of the animals are hidden by the wire's crossbars.  One can see a crowd of onlookers across the court, faces framed by layers of countless patchwork boxes.  Faces looking.  Faces looking at giraffes, faces looking at children, faces looking somewhat dull.  Then, there's the picture taker, all alone on this side of a fence reaching even above the very tippy-top of the camera's view, looking intently upward at those giraffes. 

And, they look beautiful.  Seemingly made more elegant by the reaching metal structures hemming them in on every side and doing so in the dullest of angular ways.

The giraffes' necks parade upward; the swell of their posture can convincingly be described as proud.  Their patterned skin and directed ears look tight with the spring of internal life force.  I can almost see and hear the giraffes’ feet making strange clicking noises on the crusty court surface as they shift aimlessly in place.  I picture them moving across the court slowly, undulating about the boxed space as if nearly imperceptible tides had been left behind by the volley of balls from the morning’s match and could be transmitted through the giraffes' endlessly long legs--legs like antennae (or landslides) vulnerable to any terrestrial disturbance.  Why else would they move in this barren landscape?  Why else?

The curtain descends, everything ends, too soon, too soon...

This is a story of nothing nice. A story of human racing. 

The story,
Of the human,
Race.

(A to the the, to the unh, unh, unh.)

It’s a story of take you below.  Put you below.  Leave you below.

(Darling, speak low.)

Of ears that never stop ringing.

Of things you shouldn’t forget, but inevitably do.

(Of do diddie do dah, dang diddie doh.

Oh,

oh,

a 1, 2, 3, ohhhh…)

               (…sweet chariot. Bother me to carry me home.)

But this is someone else’s story, so you needn’t listen to it.

I’ll play the next song loud enough,
And, we'll swing, swing, swing it away.

Again, Sam.

Again!

"The city dweller rushes, the farmer moves steadily, the monk is solemn in the way he moves. Their objects are different." --J.H. van den Berg

There is a return that cannot seem to rest.   

Push, push on.   

Feet and hands treading, body surging, and the water moves with us.  Closing my eyes to each particular, smelling to find my way around.  Return now, my familiar unfamiliar.  It is new, and yet what I meant to say to you that night was: “This is what home feels like.”  The provisions are stored, and the screen door lets in enough wind, enough light, enough life.  You might have agreed with that.

Can we stop talking about this now?  

Perhaps.  

          But. 

   Then.  

Can you count the ways things are said aloud?  It's all in the listening.

And, breathing takes the form of in and out, 

a return that cannot rest.  

And we'll all fall down...

                                                Rickity splicket splat,

                              The moon spit out a bat.

                              Over the hill,

                              Under the mill,

                              Rickity splicket splat.

                                          

                                          Betimes we may,

                                          Betimes we might, 

                                          The bottle’s bold,

                                          And the nursemaid’s right.

                                              

                                                Fetter you once,

                                                Fetter you twice,

                                                Never let go,

                                                Or the boxbender’s price.

             Me daddy dug a three foot pit,

             Put in a spade and took out a fit.

             Round in the morn,

             Down in the horn,

             Me daddy dang a skim skam skit.

Now, as we wrestle our grim disease...

Look what I hold, behold, in my hands!  Wonderous.  Joy.  We’ve travelled up moist and darkened autoroads for this, this wonder that is man. 

It is slowly forming the coolest, sweetest drips.  Rivuleting down the creeks between my fingers.  A coolness I have never quite known.  When first I held her, my mouth rushed to taste and crunch and reel back from her.  My face turned quickly to my left to smile and beam in the direction of my laughing, buffling friends.  We are overwrought; we are joy. 

What is this that I hold here?  Summer’s never spoken like this.  Her cooling streams were threats, not treats.  She sheds a tear, losing her last bit of power.  

But, this, this power of ours.  Oh, what a wonder.  Let me never forget this.  Let me never become used to this.  Let me always throw my head around in simple glee at this.  Let me always ask, What, what is this?

But, already, all ready, I notice my smile’s faint smugness.  I look back at our automobile, and I know I will forget this too.  

Perhaps more than anything, Summer cries for this.  Cries for us.

In her tears, I hear faint askings:  When is the last time you stopped short?  Fallen on your face at the turn between your breaths?  For that too is a wonder.  I beseech you:  remember this.  Each step is a laying down of meaning.  How will you shape it?  Or, be you a pile of mere flesh? 

But, I make retort:  Perhaps this, this possibility, marks the greatest wonder of all:  We, the creatures who make routine out of everything once wonderful. 

Yes or no.  Water or tears.  Wonder wears wearied paths between your fingers and mine.

Don't leave you be...

 

 

Your chair next to mine next to hers next to his 

next to yours next to mine.   

We go round.  We stay still. 

There you be.  You look by and past. 

  

I see it in your back though.  Taught, well-hemmed, fair secure against this storm of our old age.  Can see it still when you turn, revolving armor, armadillo, armada.   

Your arms fly about and bother with me now.

I will hear what I want to hear, so please leave me be.  
I'm worrying myself with the nothingness before I was.  I've had it turned the other way for so long.  Friendly with my past, missing it, jelly-teared about it, shrine making.  And, this holy disregard for the every next year...months, weeks, soon be.

   

This cannot be the place for my dignified years. 

I cannot have planted for this. 

We have wronged me, myself, mine chair.  Next to yours next to hers next to his.  Wrong ways around.  This whole time.  

My lips dry and caked.  

It’s no matter.  Your arms bring me cloths to wet and quiet them. 

Armature of my old age. Mater Matuta Maturus.

I must worry about my beginnings now.  So, let me be.

But, you.  Burn out the stays that keep you always forward turned.  Shed jellied tears for the nothing from which you came. 

 

There were two halves of nothing.  This whole time.

Salty comfort for your breaths.
 

Time waits for he who listens...

Having flopped away from his family in bits and bops, our hero, at age five, wandered alone on the beach.

He found a half living fish and its punctured eyeball.

He poured sand on top of it to calm it down.  It worked.

He rushed to the sea's edge and felt a good long moment of accomplishment as it ran away.

He was spared a dashed ego when he turned around to follow a rotten wind's trail and the calls of a pile of men.

Yes, he saw a pile of men.

This was something.

He walked in weaving loops toward them...quickly, but also hesitantly...as a child can do without looking anything other than appropriately composed.

These men did indeed invite fear and interest.

So, he went near.  And, stopped.

What are they about?, he wondered in one form of thought or another.

They play with me.  They tell me something.

It seems nice to be large like that.  But, that one looks dead.  This one like the eye popped fish.  Two pretend.  Adults pretend too.  I know that. 

What do they tell me?

They ask after me.  They tell me one thing and another.  They are nice and they are not nice.  I know that too.  I would like to cover them in sand.  Like the fish.  Because they don't know what to do with themselves either, and they look cold and in need of a blanket.  Half dead.

He, our hero, decides he doesn't want to be a man.  Not an eye punctured, cold pretending, blanket-or-dead man at least.  So he turns around, and begins to work out how he can become three again.  It's not his time.

The only way to make sense of it...

This is the way to change the shape of one's face.  To let oneself grow old.  Finally.  To calm the self, become something wiser...or perhaps simply something else. 

This is the way to break the iron force of habit:  A pain that won't leave you.  Like a tide that has forgotten to go out. 

Bo, Bob's boy.  This is Bob's boy, Bo.  Bob's Bo.  Bob's Dot and Bo.  Dot and Bo.  Bo and Dot.

Just think of the grasses, the shells, the once two-world creatures, the rock face that was an edge.  Soaked now to another consistency.  Left with new marks bored into their topical maps that will never go away.  New old marks.  It took a measure of extremes.

Some things happen so they never happen again.  

Urged towards a speaking he cannot produce...

Our hero is wrongly sized.  Small and wet in the mouth.  And, a she.

No, that's too much.

[Taking my legs out from beneath me.]

A small he, and wet with things he shouldn't have said.  His name changes, but for now it is "he." 

Our hero, he, managed to skip the stage of infancy...but, in doing so, he found himself living from ages 3 to 6 three times over.  The first time was eye opening; the second dull; and, during the third was when he became wet limbed.  At 15, this spread to his mouth. 

And, now, we meet him at the still relatively ripe age of 19.  He is understandably, but somehow still inexcusably, horny.  And, yes, he does have a way with girls and especially women.  What you dislike and worry over, he licks up and cannot finish with.  You should be thankful.  He is, we shall say, appreciative.  Sublimely appreciative.  In his own words, which he stole from Marguerite Duras (and, to complicate the issue, from her translator):  "I prefer your face as it is now.  Ravaged."  [Yes, be scared.  It will leave more for the rest of us.]

Anyway. 

At this point, his name conveniently changed to

The problem is that it's not very clear what exactly he did to become a/our hero.  Perhaps we can dig into his history a bit and see what we can find.

Here's something.  At the second time around of being five, the following sequence occurred:

[To be continued, let's assume.]

Things you find in the skin of another's neck, or else in the grass...

I'm fairly certain that the light of the setting sun on late summer's grass tells a story older and thicker than many told tragedies.  It's something like this: 

His face gives up its look.  Likely in the matter of a moment, it stepped down from the train of expectations, let go of their shared momentum, and abandoned itself to the present.  His face, he, softened.  And, he drank in the sadness of the day's almost end.  Completely.  For, this is the time of day when one typically pitches a tent against the coming darkness, pours out a drink or pulls on a sweater, conspires to laugh with friends, share a meal, or at least takes up an already begun book from the side table.  Not tonight.  His face became a defenseless landscape.  And, sorrow is there told...and held open.  It, he, is beautiful.  For the moment.  Tomorrow, the sun will be clear, and the call will come and he will in all likelihood accept.  

That is the second-hand tragedy, the sound and the fury, and the color of the leaves of grass at dusk.  I'm fairly certain of this.  

Memories to come...

I bought my first four "stolen moments" or "borrowed memories" for 10 cents a piece.  I found them tucked away in a forgotten drawer at a used bookstore in Toronto.  They were the smallest photographs I had ever seen; the colors were reminiscent of my childhood LiteBrite; and, they were taken before I was even born.  These photographs derailed my day--a short break from writing my dissertation turned into an afternoon of giddy fascination.  I wanted to know who took these photos.  Why had they straightened the room just so?  Was the person proud, miserable, excited, waiting for company, worried that the roast was taking too long?  How long had that shot taken to compose?  Had they washed down the patio just for the photo?  And, why did these photos end up for sale?  In my hands?  The next day, I found I needed more.  And, I now have more, many more.  Pictures of families cooking, sitting dogs, playing dogs, dogs in a bathtub, men in work clothes, men clinking glasses, houses in profile, cars in profile, stiff subjects, bored subjects, caught off guard and nervous subjects, subjects acting oddly with respect to other subjects, brides and old women and bullies and cads, national monuments, ceilings taken by mistake, unexplainable stories of giraffes in a tennis court, a man posed behind a pole, a woman holding an effigy of a dead child.  Why have these shots been taken?

I continue to collect other people's photographs, because the stories invite me to ask after them.  They are not quite as fixed in place as the photographs in my family album.  They breathe and sing, falter and warble.  I find these stories, these borrowed memories, in places where stories have been cast off--places for the used and no longer cared for--and I pick them up where they have left off.  Let's see what happens here...