If Only They Could Bottle This Feeling
–Nick Flynn
Pages torn from magazines,
taped to the walls – a sunset,a puppy, a tree in
a field — all of it more realthan these words. Our kiss
stretched a wire
from your hands to my skull, I fellinside, mouth first, head
first… if Iwas made of paper I’d have
burst into flame. If only they couldbottle this feeling, I thought
& then they did.
I woke up this morning feeling cold, cranky and unwell, thinking to myself, “I am so tired and so done.” I was overwhelmed by the exhaustion of extending myself too far, from bending in every possible direction to always show others I love and support them, in particular when it’s so thankless and often feels one-sided. It’s easy to get mired in feeling sorry for yourself.
And then I remembered: oh yes, Pamela Adlon‘s Better Things returns with a new season today, and despite the intentional decline in my television viewing, this is something I am genuinely excited about. Dealing with all manner of topics from being a single mom to three children to being the daughter of a challenging parent to menopause to dating and sex after 50, the thing I keep coming back to Better Things for is the deep wells of love and compassion that Adlon’s main character draws from and shows without reservation. Thinking of Adlon’s boundless love (and talent) kind of helped me get out of bed this morning.
For whatever reason, the picture Adlon has painted, and imprinted so that I continually return to it, reminds me vaguely of a Japanese poem, “What a Little Girl Had on Her Mind” by Ibaragi Noriko. It ends with (italics mine):
“The little girl grew up.
She became a wife and then a mother.
One day she suddenly realized;
the tenderness
that gathers over the shoulders of wives,
is only fatigue
from loving others day after day.“
I suspect, since she writes and directs the show, that its heroine isn’t too different from Adlon herself. I suspect that she, like the character, receives frantic calls for help from her kids, from her friends, at all hours, and despite the agony she feels (and she makes this look realistic, painful and heartfelt), no matter how busy or tired she is, no matter the annoyance and anger she may feel in equal measure, she is overwhelmed by the need to love and support and take care of. Sometimes it’s so palpable in watching her that I almost hope she won’t respond with love, care and understanding. (Take care of yourself, lady!) But she always does. The woman knows what’s important, and I can’t think of a better thing to spend my time watching…
Never mind that I love Adlon and have since she was very young in films like Grease 2, of all things. She was one of the most enduringly brilliant parts of Californication. Don’t get me started on the voiceover work. And even if all of this was lovely, she’s really come into her own and owns this quiet but revolutionary space that is Better Things. She is in control; she runs the show (figuratively and literally in this case); she (Adlon) and her character balance toughness with vulnerability and abundant love. It’s remarkable.
As a side note, I’ve written about my strange, down-the-rabbit-hole viewings of actors interviewing actors, and one of my all-time favorites, which I stumbled on two or so years ago is Sterling K. Brown in conversation with Adlon. I loved what a giddy, respectful fanboy he seemed to be. Imagine my utter delight when I saw that Adlon turned up in a recent episode of Brown’s This Is Us as his new therapist. It was perfect.
For J. in sleeplessness
Night Truths
–Stephen Dunn
I’ve known an edginess, come evening,
when I haven’t chosen to be alone, but am,
the necessity of music, the implacable silence
of the telephone, when my faith is faith
in the provisional, wild, no consolation
in it, and deeply, late at night, in the
peaty, musk-scented, moon-driven dark
I’ve felt so singular,
so importantly sorry for myself,
or so exquisitely stilled, attuned,
that I knew there were night truths
unavailable to lovers or the loved,
though I might be close to them,
and have put off sleep because sleep
is social, intrusive, all the uninvited
waiting to make their appearances, put it off
until it came for me, ignorantly, persuasive.
1.
into flight, the name as velocity,
a swift is one of two or three hundred
swirling over the post office smokestack.
First they rise come dusk to the high sky,flying from the ivy walls of the bank
a few at a time, up from graveyard oaks
and back yards, then more, tightening to orbit
in a block-wide whirl above the village.2.
Now they are a flock. Now we’re holding hands.
We’re talking in whispers to our kind, who
stroll in couples from the ice cream shop
or bike here in small groups to see the birds.A voice in awe turns inward; as looking
down into a canyon, the self grows small.
The smaller swifts are larger for their singing,
the spatter and high cheep, the shrill of it.3.
And their quick bat-like alternating wings.
And the soft pewter sky sets off the black
checkmark bodies of the birds as they skitter
like water toward a drain. Now one veers,dives, as if wing-shot or worse out of the sky
over the maw of the chimney. Flailing—
but then pulling out, as another dips
and the flock reverses its circling.4.
They seem like leaves spinning in a storm,
blown wild around us, and we are their witness.
Witness the way they finish. The first one
simply drops into the flue. Then four,five, in as many seconds, pulling out of
the swirl, sweep down. So swiftly, we’re alone.
The sky is clear of everything but night.
We are standing, at a loss, within it.
Blue at 4 p.m.
–August Kleinzahler
Flying Weather
–Dagmar NickThe heavens drone
their revenge
Swallows eddying
in the wake of danger
cry out Chaos.Day after day,
we rehearse our deaths
in the ejection seat.Two hundred meters
and one grave deeper:
How comforting it is,
the red cross on the roof.We know the sterile
scalpels, the new OR.
We know the rites
of Extreme Unction.
Sometimes we recognize both
too late.
Original
Flugwetter
Die Himmel dröhnen
Vergeltung.
Bin Schwalbenwirbel
im Sog der Gefahr
ruft das Chaos aus.Wir üben das Sterben ein
mit dem Schleudersitz
täglich und täglich.Zweihundert Meter und
ein Grab tiefer:
wie tröstlich
das rote Kreuz auf dem Dach.Wir kennen die keimfreien
Messer, den neuen OP
une die Riten
der letzen Ölung.
Manchmal erkennen wir beides
zu spät.
