Saturday, April 21, 2012

And Then Suddenly . . .

Look, we can just start over. I did. I've done it, several times at least. These things we think define us, they are so trivial to replace, one paycheck from losing them anyhow. Always. There are garage sales and in almost every case they won't get their price since the world is so stuck on new. Give them what you want and you'll both be grateful.

What would you say defines you that you must hold onto it so tightly? That boat which was my carapace, and I shed it. Like clipping toenails down to the quick, maybe, but it wasn't really that hard. Sure I'd invested myself, my blood even and near death more times than I can say, into every cranny, with whatever intelligence I had to hold out sea and rain and take the wind and go with it.

These structures have their beauty, no? Lines bespeaking something eternal seeming, gathering lust or what is it that compels so much energy. But for an instant why would we gather in so many things and build a legacy of stuff which will  be just that annoying for our children to dispose of?

I say start over every single day, why not? If you can do it. Not one of us really knows the Way of time. I knew, you know, that those lakes on which I grew had been carved by glaciers, and that these had come at some time of prehistory, which even now I think must be at the time of dinosaurs.

But it's not. There wasn't even time for any evolution except for the sudden kind. The killing kind, the culling kind, since we were left with furry creatures - those are the only ones which matter to us - which had to have been there in substantially the same form beforehand. There wasn't nearly enough time, and so I've been swindled. In my mind, at least, which is a theoretical construct at best.

So those lakes which seemed so ancient, and down through which I dove on wrecked boats, tit for tat exchanges, were only puddles after the rain, scraped and filled and overgrown the way that tadpoles come from the sky. I would inhabit.

It's almost Biblical, if you want to think of it that way, how these repositories of melted polar ice remain for us to suck on. How much really could it possibly matter that we piss in them and they grow fetid since it's only been a day or so. It took so much longer for the oil and gas to form on dinosaur remains. Or so they say, and why should I believe it? Why not?

What I mean is that it hasn't really been that long since humans with consciousness or of consciousness or by consciousness or however that grammar can be worked out have peopled the earth. Written history, you know, almost jumps out at you from the ice-age, incubated in darkest heart, but proved against the cold. Or was it?

It couldn't possibly matter, but we know that the written record on top of which consciousness floats, your boat and mine, goes back maybe a few thousand years at most. I don't want to be precise, since I'm not much on history and I've been hoodwinked before. About the glaciers. But I think it's approximately Biblical time and then suddenly.

What, a quickening don't they call it? And now these words they float all over in the ether, but still as always they do try to make some sense, some narrative which would be my story and not yours although we share so many genes. As for Noah, it's hard not to get drunk and slur the words, but still they strive for narrative sense even without our participation sometimes. Stuff happens.

These words so full mostly of lust and true detective facts which make your blood curdle pleasantly so long as you are not out-of-doors or alone. But you and I have only each other, so why not start over? I am as is my home, as was my carapace when I needed it, but a substrate on which my narrative floats. In which I reside. Capsized.

There are but two of us, really, these narrative lines, and I can feel no stirrings for the Chinese kind. No matter how hard I will try and have tried or even might try, I cannot go native inside that narrative tradition. It is, you know, without a God, as I remain, having talked myself right out of it since as I was saying, why not start over? But it is not any narrative at all, as confounding as a female, really, recumbent and seemingly without creative urge at all. Relentless and enduring like the good earth. Is all.

Poetics, confound it! The stuff of which stuff is made, which is what it means in the first place. It wasn't ever a narrative urge, certainly not toward conclusion, but it was a shape and it had rhythm and rhyme and meaning which seemed to happen by itself. There was no-one at its tiller, scraping long lines in the earth, for us to sow and blow away its chaff. Stirring, floating, idly by. Merrily.

Were we ever in that much control? Really? Yes we can cultivate our minds as well as the earth but toward what end? Just to grow and overgrow and finally to run out of tillage or over earth's edge and on . . . . ? And on? It can be sometimes hard to cleave unto practical matters. I like that word. It's very precise here.

Pounding then through our ways and into recumbent receptivity for it, what are we about if not destruction? Creatively, we are but a glaciated mass of liquid language held but for a moment in crystalline shapes upon some page, but that it evaporates into some ether. But not before the gouging has been completed. Without copyright at all, it would descend down through what ages are left us. There is no pencil with which to plow, nor prow, nor bowsprit anymore though I long I do long for it.

As once I did for swimming as far as I would through cool waters and sunning bottoms up grinding into warm sand. That is no more, and no regrets. I still remember.

Land ho! Ahoy! I see you there. And so why not, really why not just forget about all that stuff I left behind and gather new stuff in a new world and cultivate the wildness of it. Their terrible need to be rid of it will match my desire to have it as if it were new. I understand they really were pre-literate Chinese across the frozen straights. How could it possibly matter, since the words in either case have still come down to us, whoever it was discovered it first, which is just a pissing match into a puddle now, though we would Dam it all to hell and over.

I am but substrate not for my own story, but for the one imposed on me by my station. On the crossroads, or at them or of them or even sometimes through them. That substrate will be shed and I am I. The story only. And if that is the case, and ever will be, then these words might as well endure for longer than the I that wrote them can or even might, since endurance of that nature is just a pain. In the end. I'd rather thrust. I had rather.

It's just that I don't really care anymore. There might be a castle on a hill, or a beacon, but it's just simply too expensive and not worth its upkeep unless it be turned to the public trust for gawkers to imagine. There are these remains now everywhere and most of them more recent than you think. Than you would think, not germanic sounding schlossen so much as temples to the sacred Mary in one form or another of her. Underneath they're all the same to us.

Why would anyone do it? But if, you know, I do remain conscious and interesting and whatever words I started with have been educated out of me, or do I mean educted? Drawn from memory, and they have some energy of their own for sure. Some semblance. But if there is a me there at their center, then why not God? Actually, suddenly.

I would ask His Holiness since he's in town about now, but he's deep down just a chump like me, though in a different place at a different crossroads just by happenstance which shouldn't be so voided of sense if we were able to help it. But we aren't. I know a man who knows him. And a woman. Several, actually, on a first-name basis, or so it seems to me. Or so they almost say, though  they hang back and simply mouth it. His Holiness.

Ah but he came and went I see and I was strapped to the plow. To save enough for furnishings. I didn't even notice or pay attention. We only are negotiating price, right? He was just a man, and there are more than enough who take him seriously which after a while is just provocative. I am afraid of large forces. San Onofre set afire, but it was an outbuilding only and nothing nuclear. I spirited past in the night, last night, having lain aside my plow while others labored still to till 'til after-hours. On a Friday! Of all things.

Drink up please, it's time. I come by those words honestly, I really do, for I called them out in my youth, tending bar down under in Victoria Station, the Whistle Stop, and that should be a lesson to you. These were once the crossroads of the globe. Then  it was Freddy Laker and now it's likely some student service or maybe just a convenience store. I owe you nothing.

But if I this bag of blood and bones can still support a narrative, then why not God for earth? The quickening is that sudden. It rises like a Mayfly, and into the sand again to be washed away by unsalted tears. If we would only shut up and listen. It is not nice to shout Him down or call His name so chantlike. It makes us less than human. As we were and ever shall be.

Fanaticos at some arena, lusting for blood if we were to admit it. 'sblood. Machine-like staccato, methinks and it's time for silence. Really, would you ever with someone you don't even know on a first-name basis? I didn't think so. Those are but loose words, worth but the penny that they sell for. Mardi-gras beads to excite something which at its basis really isn't very nice. Who owns you anyhow?

Anon