IF YEARNING ENCIRCLES US

Apropos of nothing.

The undertoad continues to be strong. Is it the undertoad who (that?) is making me so sleepy, so nearly unconscious? I woke up this morning, or kind of, only to drink a cup of coffee and then to fall back asleep. The undertow emanates from bathysphere depths and I am currently camped down in that area. Apropos of nothing.

Getting exercise this week is going to be a challenge. Both pools are closed tomorrow. That strikes me as inappropriate given that it is a city, civic resource. Summertime and the swimming should be easy on the 4th of July. But no. 

This is today's soundtrack: Like A Rolling Stone.

Now it is Sunday. And still it is hot, although not as hot as Friday. It's almost time to go to yoga. I was going to get Janet to go as there is a substitute teacher I think she would like, but I realized how hot it gets in the studio. That's probably not a good place for her in this weather.

Meanwhile, I've been in a bit more of a reading mood. I have about five things I am rotating through: Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion, West, Mrs. Osmond, Fox, and I am still snorkeling through the last few pages of The Portrait of A Lady. All of them are yummy and excellent. I must be in a reading mood as great sentences appear: These are now happily frozen for future use.

He began to feel that he might have broken his life on this journey, that he should have stayed at home with the small and the familiar instead of being out here with the large and the unknown.
— Carys Davies, West

He felt the old bitterness, which he had tried so hard to swallow, rise again in his throat, and he knew there are disappointments that last as long as life.
— Henry James. The Portrait of A Lady

You could say that he is angry about the past, but ambitious for the future. Impossible to say which will turn out to be the stronger, or if the two things are simply bound together in him and inseparable; the essence of who he is.

Perhaps the truest thing  you can say is that everything he does, he hopes it will be for the best.

— Carys Davies, West

You had so many ways of deciding which way to live your life. It made his head spin to think of them. It hurt his heart to think that he decided on the wrong way.

A thing seemed important until there was something more important.

— Carys Davies, West

Another day and a train of thought lost. I will begin anew.

These are now happily frozen for future use.

Tablets IV

1

I wanted to write an epic about suffering,

but when I found a tendril

of her hair among the ruins

of her mud house,

I found my epic there.

2

I didn’t sleep last night.

As if the night

were hiding in the morning coffee.

3

Her life is a game of snakes and ladders

sent relentlessly back to square one,

but whose life isn’t? She takes a breath

and throws the dice again.

4

The city glitters below

the airplane window, not because

of the bones and skulls scattered

under the sun, but the view

through the frosted breather hole.

5

She died, and time changed

for those she loved most,

but her watch kept ticking.

6

A god carried the burdens

until the weight persuaded him

to transfer them to man — 

the new suffering god.

7

The map of Iraq looks like a mitten,

and so does the map of Michigan — 

a match I made by chance.

8

If you can’t save people,

at least don’t hate them.

9

Her bubbling annoys me — 

can’t understand a word she says.

So what if I toss her from the aquarium?

So what if I spill her new world

with this nasty immigrant fish!

10

The city’s innumerable lights

turning on and off remind us

we are born to arrive,

as we are born to leave.

11

The handkerchiefs are theirs,

but the tears are ours.

12

Women running barefoot.

Behind them, stars falling from the sky.

13

So strange,

in my dream of us,

you were also a dream.

14

He said to me: You are in my eyes.

Now when he sleeps,

his eyelids cover me.

15

Gilgamesh stopped wishing

for immortality,

for only in death could he be certain

of seeing his friend Enkidu again.

16

Some say love means

putting all your eggs

in one basket.

If they all break,

can the basket remain intact?

17

The homeless are not afraid

to miss something.

What passes through their eyes

is how the clouds pass over the rushing cars,

the way pigeons miss some of the seeds

on the road and move away.

Yet only they know

what it means to have a home

and to return to it.

18

The wind and rain

don’t discriminate

in buffeting us.

We are equal

in the eyes of the storm.

19

When I was broken into fragments,

you puzzled me

back together

piece by piece.

I no longer fear

being broken

in any moment.

20

Freezing in the mountains

without blankets or food,

and all they heard was

no news is good news.

21

Their stories didn’t kill me

but I would die if I didn’t

tell them to you.

22

Before killing them

they collected their personal effects.

Their cell phones are all ringing

in the box.

23

We are not upset when

the grass dies. We know

it will come back

in a season or two.

The dead don’t come back

but they appear every time

in the greenness of the grass.

24

If yearning encircles us,

what does it portend?

That a circle has no beginning

and no end?

— Dunya Mikhail, Poetry Magazine, July/August 2018