Nearest Nameless
–Charles Simic
So damn familiar
Most of the time,
I don’t even know you are here.
My life,
My portion of eternity,A little shiver,
As if the chill of the grave
Is already
Catching up with me —
No matter.Descartes smelled
Witches burning
While he sat thinking
Of a truth so obvious
We keep failing to see it.I never knew it either
Till today.
When I heard a bird shriek,
The cat is coming,
And I felt myself tremble.
CODICIL
–Ruth Stone
I am still bitter about the last place we stayed.
The bed was really too small for both of us.
In that same rooming house
Walls were lined with filing cases,
Drawers of bird’s eggs packed in cotton.
The landlady described them.
As widow of the ornithologist,
Actually he was a postal clerk,
She was proprietor of the remains.
Had accompanied him on his holidays
Collecting eggs. Yes,
He would send her up the tree
And when she faltered he would shout,
“Put it in your mouth. Put it in your mouth.”
It was nasty, she said,
Closing a drawer with her knee.
Faintly blue, freckled, mauve, taupe,
Chalk white eggs.
As we turned the second flight of stairs
Toward a mattress unfit for two,
Her voice would echo up the well,
Something about an electric kettle
At the foot of our bed.
Eggs, eggs, eggs in secret muted shapes in my head;
Hundreds of unborn wizened eggs.
I think about them when I think of you.
“It sucks to be reliable”: This is the dubious title of the 200+ page document where I make copious, obsessive notes about everything. It is here that I collect my thoughts, quotations from books I read and various other stuff. It’s odd to go back to things I collected but never used from the past, even from something as recently as a year ago. It never feels, as time creeps along, as though things are really changing. But in the drip-drip-drip of the slow-brewing days, change has happened silently in the background. But what never changes? That it often sucks to be reliable. To be the person who must always be stable, who is never allowed to fall apart or seek solace outside oneself. It may suck, but one can also not do otherwise because it is just the nature of who s/he is.
These thoughts have clearly stuck with me for a long time, but I never gave them much bulk or created cohesive resistance until recently – mostly because of a few conversations on the topic. Oddly because I told someone else that I felt relief with him because I didn’t feel like he was always going to crumble in my hands, before my eyes, that he was “emotionally stable”. Because he is so like me in so many ways, it should not have surprised me that he replied with something like, “I have not had any choice but to be stable.” I felt like I was paying him a compliment, and maybe at any other time or on another day, he would have taken it that way. But on the vulnerable edge we may slide along, it is sometimes irksome to hear such things, as though someone else is dumping their own emotional baggage on you, expecting you to carry it. I know this feeling because, well, I titled this document “It sucks to be reliable” a year ago – one of the many times I have superficially and informally given voice to this sad truth: being stable and secure can itself be a kind of baggage one cannot shed, even if s/he wanted to (and it tends to accumulate and get heavier as you go along).
Despite the resentment it might create, I mostly feel I would not want this to be otherwise (making the resentment little more than an immature tantrum). After all, when have I ever not wanted to be in control… and doesn’t that extend to being in control when other people’s stuff spirals out of control? This is not to say that it is always a burden to be reliable. Sometimes I am grateful for it – both that I myself am unsinkable and that I am strong enough to help keep others afloat. But there are those tired, empty moments when it would feel freeing to let go of that, even if, like a magnet, I would be drawn back in without necessarily realizing.
Night Flight
–Mary Oliver
Traveling at thirty thousand feet, we see
How much of earth still lies in wilderness
Till terminals occur like miracles
To civilize the paralyzing darkBuckled for landing to a tilting chair
I think: if miracle or accident
Should send us on across the upper air,
How many miles, or nights, or years to go
Before the mind, with its huge ego paling,
Before the heart, all expectation spent,
Should read the meaning of the scene below?But now already the loved ones gather
Under the dome of welcome, as we glide
Over the final jutting mountainside,
Across the suburbs tangled in their lights,And settled softly on the earth once more
Rise in the fierce assumption of our lives –
Discarding smoothly, as we disembark,
All thoughts that held us wiser for a moment
Up there alone, in the impartial dark.
“There are chapters in every life which are seldom read, and certainly not aloud.” The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
Each day I rise only to spend countless hours trying to reassure someone that there is a chapter in life waiting for him that is not all just monotony. He spills out his desperation at being bored, at having no life, at being “used up” and tired, and I try to ‘cheerlead’ him out of these doldrums. Trouble is, they are much more than doldrums, and he cannot see his life the way I see it. He cannot see life, as a concept, the way I see it. He and I both know the deception of this cheerleading: it is a lost cause to believe that life is anything more than monotony. I know and accept that this is mostly what life is – we wake, we eat, we go to work, we sleep, we pepper nice things in between. If we are lucky, we find a way of being that delivers contentment, and we can cultivate it. And amidst all of that, there may even be flashes of happiness.
But it’s mostly the monotonous grind, not the fun stuff, that makes up life. This man seems to believe that life should mostly be an endless carnival of the fun stuff (not to be confused with the funhouse, which is something quite different) and that he alone endures this life without constant stimulation and joy. There is no point telling him that this is how everyone’s life is; he viciously retorts, “I’m not fucking talking about anyone else. This is my life. And there’s nothing in it.” As though that nothingness is unique.
But no, in fact…
“Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that’s all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.” –Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre
“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.” –Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre
To feel alive in that interminable in-between space, so often devoid of any inspiration, people flail, and look for ways – without even knowing it – to drag others into their misery, demanding from them the swaddling of misplaced comfort.
“People are always looking for consolation and accepting it too readily. They find clever ways to invert their humiliations, little tricks of self-deception, a form of artistry.” –The Republic of Love, Carol Shields
This man will deceive himself and others for the purpose of gaining attention – even negative attention is not being alone, which for him is the worst possible outcome.
“Solitude is the playfield of Satan. I cannot describe the depths of my loneliness and distress.” –Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
(One wonders how it is that someone who is so needy and so craves social attention and affection has fixed himself like a barnacle to one of the most antisocial people alive.) He needs above all else to be seen and heard… but even this will never be enough.
“Life is an endless recruiting of witnesses. It seems we need to be observed in our postures of extravagance or shame, we need attention paid to us. Our own memory is altogether too cherishing, which is the kindest thing I can say for it. Other accounts are required, other perspectives, but even so our most important ceremonies—birth, love, and death—are secured by whomever and whatever is available. What chance, what caprice!” –The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
There are days, though, when he is perfectly fine. In fact, long stretches pass in which he conforms to something like a routine.
“And I’ve figured it out. Routine is liberating, It makes you feel in control. A paradox, isn’t it? You think your routines are controlling you, but in fact you’re using the routine to give you power.” –The Republic of Love, Carol Shields
Most people bristle at the idea of a routine but fail to realize that the routine and its structure is often all that keeps them in line, and in fact is one of the strictures that affords the occasional moments of happiness and staves off the occasional “emptiness creep” that sneaks in. When he starts to come undone, though, the first thing to go is the routine. And sometimes the universe seems to conspire against him, derailing him from his routine. Recently, he lost his mother, which is sad enough, but because she was at the center of many of his routines, he lost this anchor. Beyond that, the other parts of his routine, and indeed the foundation of his health and mental well-being, were interrupted by the recent winter blast. Every place he would normally go was closed due to weather, leaving him shut in his flat alone for too many days.
Sometimes maintaining a routine is all that will get you through. Yet, no one imagines that a collapsed routine will kill you.
Twilight Metaphysics
–Radmila Lazić
It’s too late to teach my heart anything.
The alphabet of suffering
I already know by heart. I test it live.
Life knows more than the Sybil.Time has stopped. What bliss is there in flowing?
Reality resembles a moth-eaten sweater —
This is poetry.
Life limps like a crippled girl
Who hopes to marry well
Even though her heart is scarred with memories.
Biography of fire and water.
These are the worthless and painful reserves
With which one starts on a long, uncertain journey
Over one’s own private homeland
On which every foot steps on in boots.Older than Cain is every suffering,
Even this one which like a cousin from far away
Has come for a three-day visit
And stayed, made herself comfortable,
Took up all the room —
And says nothing about leaving!The time of miracles is behind us.
Time of tower-building,
Heavenly and earthly gardens
From schoolbooks and poems.
The so-called Greek luck awaits us
Where we will never arrive.
Therefore, if you can,
Water the flowers and the heart
From the same pitcher.
Time doesn’t dry up,
Nor make steps quicker, as they say.
Time swallows its own images
As if they were its children.Get it through your head, throwing a blanket
Over your face won’t help you.
Even if underneath it a dear body waits for you.
No use stuffing wax in your ears either.
The siren’s song will be a part of your scream.Those born happy and less happy
Die before their own body dies.
They wear their faces like other people’s clothes
As in paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.The one who wrote the sky, the earth and the sea,
And above all, snow and dreams,
The phases of the moon, the color of leaves, our faces,
Seems distant and cold like the North Pole.Don’t call that nihilism or blasphemy.
With wrong syntax and bad diction
Was how the world was created —
So many apples of divisiveness
Have been tossed between us,
One of them will roll even at your feet,
Perhaps, just as you’ve brought in the harvest,
Added up the accounts,
Thrown your hands over your head
Chasing rings of smoke and reveries.Dead-born will be your wishes.
Your every hope will be a widow.
And as for love, not enough
To spread on a slice of bread.
The late poet Derek Walcott wrote: “To change your language you must change your life”. I’ve thought about this statement many times over the years, and usually find that the inverse is also true – truer even: “To change your life you must change your language”. And we speak many different languages, literal and figurative, to fit our lives.
There are the obvious ways in which this is true. For example, in the life of a migrant, you only become integrated to a limited extent without changing your language, but you can make inroads with the literal changing and adopting of another language. The more immersive it is, the more it shapes your life (so these statements work in conjunction with each other: language changes life, life changes language).
I spoke at some length with a friend about whether a language inherently contains a power structure. We were discussing that the US and UK have buckled under the weight of crumbling infrastructure and insufficient provision for managing natural disasters/bad weather. He shared that a friend in Massachusetts boasted about how her new generator switched on automatically five times that winter, leading him to ask (once again), “What is it about Americans that makes them twist the shortcomings of the place they live into things to brag about?” I always go back to the same answer: they don’t know any better. Many everyday things (for me or for him) sound futuristic to people in America (and to some extent, the UK). “Empires”, if we could call America one, crack and crumble from within. My friend wondered if the English language contains a built-in predilection for “shitty societies”. I did not agree with this statement but thought a bit about the built-in attitude of English. He posited that something in the language creates fear and anger in its speakers that is masked by arrogance.
I admit that although I have analyzed the language – and language in general – from many points of view, I had never taken it on from this angle. I have, though, thought about the imperialism and spread of language, which then gives native speakers a sense of entitlement. He posed the question: “How else to explain why both London and NYC are crappy in similar ways?” I figured it is not so much something within the language itself so much as in its ubiquity and power. (Both places driven and developed by the original British imperialist way of thinking, the dominance of English, even among large populations of immigrants who end up united by this one powerful lingua franca, contributes.) Within the language itself, though, is it a magnet for the best or most useful elements of other languages? Has it not only overtaken other languages but plundered them for its own needs? Does the dominance of English come from how and where its imperialism ended up (North America, India, other parts of Asia, Australia), in places where dominance also meant colonization and the “conquering” people staying put and taking power – as opposed to “resource grabs” like those in Africa, where French colonialism was alive and well? Could it be the result of English having such a vast and even superfluous vocabulary.. another way of dominating just by sheer volume of words? (And we can’t even say there is one “English” – its spread and ubiquity have created all kinds of variations.)
I don’t know the answers to these questions, but the questions are fascinating.
Then there are increasingly less obvious languages. For example, the language of self-help: you are told to frame yourself and your issues in a new way. The frame changes perception and eventually the language used to describe that perception. That is, you are what you think. You are the language you use. This came to mind most recently when I was listening to a young colleague who is often cuttingly direct in the language she uses, and I wonder how she would respond to softer, more diplomatic language. I also note that she notices keenly when others are as direct as she is. Would she be as effective in her role if she were softer? No. But if I were as direct and abrupt as she is, it would not suit me or work for me. Each of us, thus, forms our own (kind of) language – by which we are identified and through which we craft our own identities.
Similarly, in pop-self-help and some broader psychological discussion, “failure” isn’t used when something might just be a setback. Here I think of alcoholics… do we really want to say that because someone had 90 days of sobriety and then fell off the wagon that those 90 days are a loss, a waste or a step back to square one – and their attempts a “failure”? Does the language we apply imply judgment and set the groundwork or pace for the next “slip”? That is, for an alcoholic each day sober is a success, and even if they build toward longer periods of sobriety, is their success (or failure) measured cumulatively? Maybe AA or other people measure this way. But for the person dealing with it, the language needs to be more forgiving or less judgmental.
Maybe certain experiences we live through do not change the literal language – the words you use – but change the whole approach, so your set of sociolinguistic approaches and cues becomes different. Maybe experiences forge within you a different person, with different eyes, who can no longer speak the same language, with the same tone you once used before the experience. This is applicable in many cases, but I think in particular about consolation, grief and the expectation of it.
How little I understood when I recently read Eduardo Sacheri’s The Secret in their Eyes how prescient two takeaway quotes would be:
“…perhaps the man’s fate, a life destroyed by tragedy and grief, provided me with a chance to reflect on my own worst fears. I’ve often caught myself feeling a certain guilty joy at the disasters of others, as if the fact that horrible things happened to other people meant that my own life would be exempt from such tragedies, as if I’d get a kind of safe-conduct based on some obtuse law of probability…” – The Secret in their Eyes, Eduardo Sacheri
“I believed I understood that the reason we’re sometimes moved by another’s grief has to do with our atavistic fear that this grief may get transferred to us, too.” – The Secret in their Eyes, Eduardo Sacheri
These thoughts stuck with me after reading the book, which I was reading as I consoled someone through and after the death of his mother. While being supportive and compassionate to him, I turned to someone else for my own kind of consolation, and discussed at length the particular kind of grief that punctuates the loss of one’s mother. He only realized then, as if becoming prepared for grief, how very devastating his own loss would eventually be when his mother passes away. It seems especially cruel and unusual that he didn’t have to wait long to be confronted by the potential for this grief: his mother suffered a fairly catastrophic setback only a couple of weeks later, which has not resulted in her death – but has opened the floodgates and made him see that his entire approach, logically, was flawed, that he could not control or know what the loss would mean or do to him. Sacheri’s points on how we are moved by another’s grief – because it is so close to what we ourselves may soon experience – was applicable.
And yet, language cannot contain this kind of grief, the fear (or confusion) it creates and the mirror it holds up to us and how we live and feel.
Language is equally inadequate for consolation. But in such cases, it’s less a spoken language and more a listening language: giving the time, patience and love to listen.
He “…went on to assure us there’s no Devil, no Satan, no Hell. There is—(maybe)—Heaven but it isn’t anywhere far away or anything special. And we demanded to know, why isn’t Heaven anything special? (You always hear of Heaven being so special.) And Daddy said, because Heaven is just two things: human love, and human patience. And all love is, is patience. Taking time. Focusing, and taking time. That’s love. This was disappointing to us! This was not anything we wanted to hear. We were too young to have a clue how special human love and human patience were, how rare and fleeting…” –A Book of American Martyrs, Joyce Carol Oates
WHAT IS POSSIBLE
–Adrienne Rich
A clear night if the mind were clearIf the mind were simple, if the mind were bare
of all but the most classic necessities:
wooden spoon knife mirror
cup lamp chisel
a comb passing through hair beside a window
a sheet
thrown back by the sleeperA clear night in which two planets
seem to clasp each other in which the earthly grasses
shift like silk in starlight
If the mind were clear
and if the mind were simple you could take this mind
this particular state and say
This is how I would live if I could choose:
that is what is possibleA clear night. But the mind
of the woman imagining all this the mind
that allows all this to be possible
is not clear as the night
is never simple cannot clasp
its truths as the transiting planets clasp each other
does not so easily
work free from remorse
does not so easily
manage the miracle
for which mind is famous
or used to be famous
does not at will become abstract and purethis woman’s mind
does not even will that miracle
having a different mission
in the universeIf the mind were simple if the mind were bare
it might resemble a room a swept interior
but how could this now be possible
given the voices of the ghost-towns
their tiny and vast configurations
needing to be deciphered
the oracular night
with its densely working soundsIf it could ever come down to anything like
a comb passing through hair beside a windowno more than that
a sheet
thrown back by the sleeperbut the mind of the woman thinking this is wrapped in battle
is on another mission
a stalk of grass dried feathery weed rooted in snow
in frozen air stirring a fierce wand graphingHer finger also tracing
pages of a book
knowing better than the poem she reads
knowing through the poem
through ice-feathered panes
the winter
flexing its talons
the hawk-wind
poised to kill
untitled
-rupi kaur
i didn’t leave you because
i stopped loving you
i left because the longer
i stayed the less
i loved myself
BLIZZARD
–Adam ZagajewskiWe were listening to music —
a little Bach, a little mournful Schubert.
For a moment we listened to the silence.
A blizzard roared outside,
the wind pressed its blue face
to the wall.
The dead raced past on sleds,
tossing snowballs
at our windows.