a second appointment yesterday with a new woman whose initials are also SB. a new guardian on the door. once a month. she has strange wet eyes, like she regularly looks through a glass to another realm. and a nice smile.

afterwards I went into the shops again, and I bought checked pants, and silky tops in vivid green and soft pink and one in soft green with small purple birds tending its regency flowers. I bought sandals that divide my feet into six equal cubes and sandals with cushioned soles for long walks.

this morning i lay dozing and i became a young south asian man walking through a tunnel, agitated, banging the wall, wanting to get out. but the tunnel shifted in angle and the exit became visible. the tunnel opens out onto a green world, trees shifting calmly in the breeze.

I have changed the background at a bee curls and finally it feels open again. the dog, I realise, was the guardian. 

tupelo

I dreamed that my sister/friend and I decided we wanted a man to share our ship with. So with our staff we went looking for one and chose one of the popes that was on tv. We had only caught the end of his show but he seemed pretty good. It seemed like it would be good to have someone with that authority and presence, to guide us. Someone to follow.

We prepared the stateroom for him, making the bed beautifully. But when his staff brought him in we realised he was not what we'd expected. He could not speak or communicate at all, just rock and thrash and make a constant high-pitched whine. We took him into the stateroom and he dragged all the bedclothes onto the floor, to make a messy nest, which was the only place he would be able to sleep. And this was all he was capable of, so this is what we'd got for ourselves.

"A king and his slave

There was a monarch who once loved a slave.
 The youth's pale beauty haunted him; he gave
The favourite the rarest ornaments,
Watched over him with jealous reverence -
But when the king expressed a wish to shoot,
His loved one shook from head to foot.
An apple balanced on his head would be
The target for the royal archery,
And as the mark was split he blenched with fear.
One day a foolish courtier standing near
Asked why his lovely face was drained and wan,
For was he not the monarch's chosen one?
The slave replied: "If I were hit instead
Of that round apple balanced on my head,
I would be then quite worthless to the king -
Injured or dead, lower than anything
The court can show; but when the arrow hits
The trembling target and the apple splits,
That is his skill. The king is highly skilled
If he succeeds - if not the slave is killed.""

from Farid Attar, The Conference of the Birds, tr. Afkham Darbandi & Dick Davis.  London: Penguin Classics, 2011. 

I went to a 'mindfulness and writing' workshop today, hosted by someone else.

We sat, walked, lay, breathed, and then wrote. 

-

leaves no longer grow

but water still trickles through

branches, feeding moss

-

she could hear

the creature moving itself into place.

it had come to take walls from their homes. 

she could hear

its expectations in her mind, 

much louder than any thoughts she had

but she still had thoughts. 

she thought about where they would live

and whether the babies would sleep or cry

under the stars, amongst

the blue fields of concrete dust

falling like stars,

swirling like galaxies away  from 

soft warm mouths. 

she thought about water

and where they would find it.

she could hear the water in their sleep

much more than in their cries. 

later they would drink the sound of rubber melting

and grow that way. 

they would eat with each other

bitterly or sweetly. 

they would fold the shapes 

of houses with their hands, 

and passers-by throw money

thinking the shadows were birds

that carried the seed

of the native tree.


(I don't like this poem. It's just a series of gestures.)

I first met S when I was teaching a week-long community holiday workshop in poetry. She contacted me beforehand to see if it would be okay for her as someone who had written criticism but no poetry before. And there was another guy, a very accomplished and astute Japanese professor who wanted some time writing poetry in English.

So in the weeks leading up to the workshop I was terrified. It was going to be a small class but I felt so inadequate to teach them anything. Then a week or two beforehand my stepmum had a stroke-like episode and went into a kind of coma, we thought she would die, and not for the first time. I drove up north to help look after my dad. He was getting around in a daze. The dogs were not house-trained. My dad was opening bills for the business for the first time ever and finding that everything was on final notice. Nothing added up. At the hospital my sister sat by the bedside wondering what the fuck to do. To change my step-mum's catheter or sheets required multiple nursing staff, sometimes up to six at a time just to roll her onto her side. There was no way of scanning her or knowing what was going on or if she would ever recover. The nurses would argue with frustration over how to even move her.

I was so scared for my dad, and angry with him too. Why wasn't everything okay? How could I possibly begin to look after him? I bossed him around a bit, ineffectually, over the days of my stay, and then I had to go.

Out of the fear and wrongness of it all I found myself determined to teach a beautiful class, to make something good, a place for poetry. I told myself I would not be afraid of their learning, I would not try to dominate by teaching, I would just facilitate, and learn. We began by reciting Drunken Boat together, listening to each other's voices. I tried to get them to think of creating and editing as separate, just for a time. I asked them to bring poems they loved each day and I did the same. Rilke's Eighth Duino Elego, Denise Levertov's Pleasures. The Japanese guy brought Robert Duncan. I'm not sure who S brought, I don't remember. Some Ted Hughes, I think. But I remember S's own poems, having a weird sense of resonance with them, because the aesthetic felt so close to somewhere I had been. She was writing about her oldest child and there was a profound sense of haunting. And a desolation that I recognised, a specifically maternal, ecological desolation. I never thought to ask her where that came from because it seemed SO familiar.

Afterwards we would meet up occasionally, every two or three months, to share poems. Warm as they were there was also something a little bit stiff about those meetings, even though we liked each other very much. I felt sure of my aesthetic opinions but never felt a justified authority for them, so I was a bit defensive. I think we were both guarding our aesthetics. And we didn't break through our mutual reserve to talk about things more personal than poetry, though that was personal enough.

It shifted when she got sick. Suddenly I could see what she was, the friendship that had been building, what I could lose. The trust, her grace and equanimity. I wanted to be there for her and I didn't want to lose her. I remember seeing her at the hospital for the first time after I got back from London, and she was so open. I remember her telling me stuff and then saying yes, I just had a feeling you'd understand that. And so we became confidantes. It turned out we were walking some quite similar, quite treacherous terrain on a couple of things. So we walked in parallel on those things for the next five years, sharing stuff that was unshareable most other places. Slowly both got to safer ground, calling once every few weeks to talk through pretty much everything.

But our journeys were at different orders of magnitude. I was a good friend to her and I am glad of that. Meanwhile she was incredible, making life itself out of sheer love and positive will.
I wonder now what I will be able to take of that, what I can take in and make my own.

I dreamed last night that I was at a beach with students. I was showing them how you could hold a length of kite paper or even a towel across your back, angle yourself and lift off the ground. Dip and weave like a kite. I was flying here and there around the beach and water, no great height, it was lovely. I was telling them not to dip down into the sea water, because it was so hard to get any lift once you were wet. At the same time I was doing this, getting wet, enjoying the feeling of the salt water and trying to fly at the same time. 

I went shopping all day, to try to do something necessary but not requiring any engaged thought. Drifting shop to shop, exercising 'choice'. It's like this gives a legitimacy to non-personage. You just choose pieces of identity to fit on, build a person out of clothes. I don't want to hate it any more. There are ways to make it work better: do it regularly, research, remember what you own, remember your sizes, look at pictures, look in the mirror, notice what others wear and decide what you like. Decide what you like. And then when you have enough of what you like from enough different sources that is what you are. People see this and they care. People can see you. They make evaluations about what you are like and under certain circumstances they discuss that. Usually to the effect that you are too this or a bit that. Quite this but very that. So you want to look a bit like what you think you'd like to be thought of.

So I went around all afternoon thinking 'I like that' 'I don't like that'. And I came home with an orange cardigan with pink trim. And a shirt with a large paisley flowers-and-birds print on it, and a t-shirt that N liked. When I got home again I guess I felt more personish, because I put them on and thought Yes I do like that! And I thought I should have a green top to go with the cardigan and maybe even some checked trousers.

I think when you have a long talk with a friend you become a person. When you have a series of long talks over a long time you are together persons made in that. When you lose someone who has one end of your conversations it's hard. Right now she's all around being newly dead and concretely so, and today he gave you a reprieve because of grief. But really you need more points of reference. Colours, objects, closeness.  

Last night I dreamed I came out of an elevator in an apartment building into someone else's house. I knew it was not the right floor, that I wasn't supposed to be there. But the apartment was huge and I was sort of curious to see inside it, and I sort of thought I would find a way through there to stairs or another lift to take me to where I was supposed to be. I wandered for quite a while, half hiding from the various people I saw at a distance in other rooms, or on loungers around the pool. I came to where I thought I could get out - a door to a lift well or stairwell - and I was face to face with the owner. I think it was Sarah, but we didn't know or recognise each other. I felt guilty but it wasn't awful, it seemed I could explain. 

I should maybe have called this blog notes from silence. I come back to this place where it seems impossible to say anything. standing looking at the world with mouth agape, hands dumb. one of my other notebooks, a bee curls, is mincemeat, I'm thinking of killing it because I can't the feeling of it. it flowered then the flower shrivelled and now it stinks.

ceaseblur is trickling over here, bits of reading, that's ok. the 'blank' diary has been quiet for most of two months.

I had a dream the other night that someone came to visit and i noticed we had dead rats behind our kitchen door. Two and a half dead rats. i was trying to clean them up, pick them up with plastic bags but one of them was so decayed it was the consistency of mousse.

"(ll. 452-461) `Strangers, who are you? Whence come you sailing
along the paths of the sea? Are you for traffic, or do you
wander at random over the sea as pirates do who put their own
lives to hazard and bring mischief to men of foreign parts as
they roam? Why rest you so and are afraid, and do not go ashore
nor stow the gear of your black ship? For that is the custom of
men who live by bread, whenever they come to land in their dark
ships from the main, spent with toil; at once desire for sweet
food catches them about the heart.'"
...

"(ll. 526-530) `Lord, since you have brought us here far from our
dear ones and our fatherland, -- for so it seemed good to your
heart, -- tell us now how we shall live. That we would know of
you. This land is not to be desired either for vineyards or for
pastures so that we can live well thereon and also minister to
men.'

(ll. 531-544) Then Apollo, the son of Zeus, smiled upon them and
said: `Foolish mortals and poor drudges are you, that you seek
cares and hard toils and straits! Easily will I tell you a word
and set it in your hearts. Though each one of you with knife in
hand should slaughter sheep continually, yet would you always
have abundant store, even all that the glorious tribes of men
bring here for me. But guard you my temple and receive the
tribes of men that gather to this place, and especially show
mortal men my will, and do you keep righteousness in your heart.
But if any shall be disobedient and pay no heed to my warning, of
if there shall be any idle word or deed and outrage as is common
among mortal men, then other men shall be your masters and with a
strong hand shall make you subject for ever. All has been told
you: do you keep it in your heart.'"

Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo tr Evelyn-White

I think of the days of our cat Bella's death as hot and fuzzy, black with her fur, prickly, salty. Can I write about this? When the nurses took her into the other room to put a catheter in her leg she was already very weak, but she turned to look right back over the vet nurse's arms and straight into my eyes. Why would I write about this? It was the middle of winter. N stood beside me. They returned her, still wrapped in the green crocheted blanket, to my arms. She relaxed into the cuddle as soon as she was back there, as though we were at home. She was so weak by then. The nurses had already told us what to expect, and gave us time like that until we were ready.

What I regret is that as they moved towards us with the injection they were making noises, as though to calm her down, but it was the noises that were disturbing. They were tense, tutting and cooing. They said 'talk to her, tell her you're there', so I did, but that was not what I wanted. I wanted to be silent with her. She knew I was there, we were together. She knew N was standing beside us and we were safe. But they made noises, and it was disturbing. She didn't wriggle or startle but she was aware, wary of the sounds. Those moments should have been peaceful, they could have come quietly and she would have felt more safe.

Once they put the injection in through the catheter it was instant, her heart just stopped and she was limp. Her bladder released through the blanket and I lifted her up to the vet's table so that we wouldn't be totally covered in wee.

Then my memory is a little bit fuzzy. I had another blanket with me, really a large piece of soft velveteen fabric, and I'm not sure if we wrapped her in it there or kept her in the crocheted blanket until we got to Mum's. I remember how her body kept its warmth as I held it against me, and how naturally it moved into the various positions of her life - snuggled against me as we drove, or curled in a circle, which is how we wrapped and buried her.

I unwrapped her so that Mum could kiss her goodbye.

That morning I had sat with her on the front steps and we watched the birds on the front lawn. It was drizzly and she was so happy to be out there, watching, alert, from the blanket in my arms. I let her stand for a little while on the footpath but she didn't move, just swayed, seemed unsure what to do, so I took her back in my arms and we watched. For those last couple of days all she really seemed to want was to be held. I sat for hours on end, just sat with her in the armchair, moving as little as possible, and then laid her between us in bed at bedtime. N brought whatever I needed. I tried a couple of times to take her to the toilet or to water or food when I thought she'd be ready, but actually she complained when I did this. She was, despite her great stillness, still capable of standing and taking steps when she wanted. I wasn't sure until she showed us, but she could still initiate movement, and so I learned to just wait for that and help her to her bowl or litter then. Otherwise we just sat together, sharing warmth through hours with no greater need. I felt I was storing something for the years ahead. The room grew dark, the room grew light. We were together.

things haven't been quite the same since my dream of being tortured. some time in the few days after that I meditated and it came back, the feeling of the forearm shoved up into my torso and squeezing. It was unbearable. In my head, as it began, panicked shouting - 'not again not again not again'. but it continued, and afterwards left me with the sensation of something being over. maybe of something having been killed. something specific, which used to reside on the left side of my face, below my eye, close to my nose.

"More grateful 'tis at times (for Nature craves
No artifice nor luxury), if forsooth
There be no golden images of boys
Along the halls, with right hands holding out
The laps ablaze, the lights for evening feasts,
And if the house doth glitter not with gold
Nor gleam with silver, and to the lyre resound
No fretted and gilded ceilings overhead,
Yet still to lounge with friends in the soft grass
Beside a river of water, underneath
A big tree's boughs, and merrily to refresh
Our frames, with no vast outlay- most of all
If the weather is laughing and the times of the year
Besprinkle the green of the grass around with flowers."

Lucretius, from On the Nature of Things, tr William Ellery Leonard

classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.2.ii.html

"Mild is the slow necessity of death:
The tranquil spirit fails beneath its grasp,
Without a groan, almost without a fear,
Resigned in peace to the necessity,
Calm as a voyager to some distant land,
And full of wonder, full of hope as he.
The deadly germs of languor and disease
Waste in the human frame, and Nature gifts
With choicest boons her human worshippers.
How vigorous now the athletic form of age!
How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!
Where neither avarice, cunning, pride or care,
Had stamped the seal of grey deformity
On all the mingling lineaments of time.
How lovely the intrepid front of youth!
How sweet the smiles of taintless infancy.

Within the massy prison's mouldering courts,
Fearless and free the ruddy children play,
Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows
With the green ivy and the red wall-flower,
That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom;
The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron,
There rust amid the accumulated ruins
Now mingling slowly with their native earth:
There the broad beam of day, which feebly once
Lighted the cheek of lean captivity
With a pale and sickly glare, now freely shines
On the pure smiles of infant playfulness:
No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair
Peals through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes
Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds
And merriment are resonant around.

The fanes of Fear and Falsehood hear no more
The voice that once waked multitudes to war
Thundering thro' all their aisles: but now respond
To the death dirge of the melancholy wind:
It were a sight of awfulness to see
The works of faith and slavery, so vast,
So sumptuous, yet withal so perishing!
Even as a corpse that rests beneath their wall.
A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death
To-day, the breathing marble glows above
To decorate its memory, and tongues
Are busy of its life: to-morrow, worms
In silence and in darkness seize their prey.
These ruins soon leave not a wreck behind:
Their elements, wide-scattered o'er the globe,
To happier shapes are moulded, and become
Ministrant to all blissful impulses:
Thus human things are perfected, and earth,
Even as a child beneath its mother's love,
Is strengthened in all excellence, and grows
Fairer and nobler with each passing year."

Percy Bysshe Shelley, from The Daemon of the World: A Fragment 

an "iBook" edition - no details. 

What is the authority of a draft?

It has been suggested to me that I am too attached to my "compositional experience", and as I work (so very very slowly) on revising "Soft Shroud" (working title, working body...) I have that thought in mind. Not as something I accept, but as a kind of irritant. Sand for the oyster, or maybe just sand for the sandwich. I am asking myself - what is the authority of the draft?

And of this draft, which I dug out of sustained physical attention to felt sense within particular musical environments (especially the Animal Collective's Spirit They're Gone Spirit They've Vanished (also Fall Be Kind)) that I chose to hold particular emotion & event environments (Charlie's death, bankruptcy, Grafton) that were for me totally experientially bound together.

None of that is nothing to me. It took me quite a long time to see how much was NOT carried in what I had written - I had to wait until my immersion fell away again, but still the territory and its signs are so personally infused that it is hard for me to step outside it.

When I think that I am too attached to my "compositional experience", I think the alternative is to be present (outside of myself) to what the words are on the page now, to let go of their personal histories and be fully conscious of them, independent but intact. But I can't. I can't be somewhere other than my body and its memories, which have emptied into words. And I can't eradicate my own purpose without losing too much. The purpose is not to convey experience as it happened. The purpose is to make an immersion (not just be in an immersion) that vibrates at the same frequency as the frequency I was in (physically, compositionally) in relation to those experiences.

It sounds easy to come to this but it has not been obvious to me at all.

What if the draft knows more than me now, rather than less than me now? And what if my role is not to cut it away from its moorings,  but to move into those, to know that I don't understand them but they are 'mine', as in, the experience's? This would not be 'the mooring of starting out', but of a kind of backwards-forwards, which is very much the direction of the poem. A ship moving backwards, prow pointing back, into a night that's just like water.