stanzas for an imaginary garden

by octavio paz (from itinerary)

the first eight lines describe a somewhat rural, provincial garden. a small enclosure with two entrances. apart from the palm tree already there, you should plant bougainvillaeas, heliotrope, an ash and a pine. you should also install a well. this first text could be placed on one of the entrances to the little garden, either as one stanza on the lintel or on the pediment, or divided into two quartets, one on each of the doorposts:

four adobe walls. bougainvillaeas.

in its quiet flames, eyes

can bathe themselves. the wind passes through leaves

singing praises and herbs on their knees.

the heliotrope crosses over with purple steps,

wrapped in its own aroma. there is a prophet:

the ash tree -- and a meditative: the pine.

the garden is small, the sky infinite.

these four lines could be placed on the other entrance, on the lintel or pediment:

happy rectangle: some palm trees,

jade fountains; time glows,

water sings, the stone is silent, the soul,

suspended in a moment of time, is a fountain.

this text could be placed in the inside of the garden. for example, on the fountain. i imagine a wall over which a curtain of transparent water falls as you read the four lines:

rain, dancing feet and loosened hair,

ankle bitten by lightning,

falls down accompanied by drums:

the tree opens its eyes, revives.

COLOPHON

written after visiting the place:

populous wasteland, a few palms,

plucked feather dusters, hammering

of motors, a prison wall,

dust and rubbish, nobody’s home.

written remembering the imaginary garden:

green survives in my ruins:

in my eyes you look and touch yourself,

you know yourself in me and in me think yourself,

in me you survive, in me you vanish.

cruel optimism

"at the same time, it matters who speaks in this poem: a confident person.  he finds possibility in a moment of suspension and requires neither the logic of the market to secure his value nor the intimate recognition of anything municipally normal or domestic to assure that he has boundaries.  he can hold a nonspace without being meaningful.  this does not seem to threaten him.  thus the instance of optimism might or might not be a part of cruel optimism: we don't know.  the promise is everywhere, and the dissolution of the form of being that existed before the event is not cause for mourning or rejoicing: it is just a fact.  does the episodic nature of the interruption enable him, after the moment, to return to the suburbs refreshed? will they go to a high-end cafe and buy some intensified coffee supercharged by sugar and milk?  will they go get otherwise stimulated?  will they become different in a way on which they can build a world?  is the couple a stand-in for the collective that can now be awake for peace rather than somnambulant?  does the aesthetic moment of the different autonomy they get when they exist together in reverie become not a condition for detaching from the market but the condition of living in it, so that they can think that who they really are are people who can be lost in a moment?  habermas would perhaps note that the fantasy of the lovers' worlding power enables the speaker to disavow how otherwise he is constituted as a man of property and the market.  john ricco might argue that the men's outsideness and outsiderness demonstrates the potential resource of gayness to make a queer antinormativity that does not look back to domesticity wishfully.  it is impossible to say how deep the break is.  by the end, the speaker thinks he really lives now, in a moment of suspension.  he really is a lover, an intimate, no longer the user of gas and fertilizer and the delegator of labor to others.  that was in another life, or so it seems." -lauren berlant, cruel optimism

balance & vulnerability

"when we think of balance, we think everything has to be equal. we don't even think everything has to be equal; we really say everything has to be identical to the standard of measurement we are applying, in this case, ten pounds of lead weights, and nothing must ever move. if nothing ever moves, everything dies. and that is the interesting thing about extreme orderliness in the law and order sense of the word. what happens in fact in a system that demands absolute order is that you get an enormous amount of unnecessary death, a tremendous amount."

"and what is vulnerability? just this: the ability to be wrong, to be foolish, to be weak and silly, to be an idiot. it is the ability to accept one's unworthiness, to accept one's vanity for what it is. it's the ability to be whatever and whoever you are - recognizing that you, like the world, like the earth, are fragile, and that in your fragility lies all the possibility of growth and of death, and that the two are one in the same."

-paula gunn allen, off the reservation

a question of turning

from queer phenomenology by sara ahmed

"my writing moves between conceptual analysis and personal digression.  but why call the personal a digression?  why is it that the personal so often enters writing as if we are being led astray from a proper course?"

"it is not just that bodies are moved by the orientations they have; rather, the orientations we have toward others shape the contours of space by affecting relations of proximity and distance between bodies.  importantly, even what is kept at a distance must still be proximate enough if it is to make or leave an impression."

"phenomenology is full of queer moments; as moments of disorientation that maurice merleau-ponty suggests involve not only 'the intellectual experience of disorder, but the vital experience of giddiness and nausea, which is the awareness of our contingency, and the horror with which it fills us.'"

"space then becomes a question of 'turning', of directions taken, which not only allow things to appear, but also enable us to find our way through the world by situating ourselves in relation to such things."

"the question of orientation becomes, then, a question not only about how we 'find our way' but how we come to 'feel at home'."

"but 'getting lost' still takes us somewhere; and being lost is a way of inhabiting space by registering what is not familiar: being lost can in its turn become a familiar feeling.  familiarity is shaped by the 'feel' of space or by how spaces 'impress' upon bodies."

untitled by john ashbery

we were warned about spiders, and the
   occasional famine.
we drove downtown to see our
   neighbors.  none of them were home.
we nestled in yards the municipality had
   created,
reminisced about other, different places -
but were they?  hadn't we known it all
       before?

in vineyards where the bee's hymn
   drowns the monotony,
we slept for peace, joining in the great
   run.
he came up to me.
it was all as it had been,
except for the weight of the present,
that scuttled the pact we made with
       heaven.
in truth there was no cause for rejoicing,
nor need to turn around, either.
we were lost just by standing,
listening to the hum of the wires overhead.

bjork & her tv

THE SERMON OF THE TWELVE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

by anne sexton

January?
The month is dumb.
It is fraudulent.
It does not cleanse itself.
The hens lay blood-stained eggs.
Do not lend your bread to anyone
lest it nevermore rise.
Do not eat lentils or your hair will fall out.

Do not rely on February
except when your cat has kittens,
throbbing into the snow.
Do not use knives and forks
unless there is a thaw,
like the yawn of a baby.
The sun in this month
begets a headache
like an angel slapping you in the face.

Earthquakes mean March.
The dragon will move,
and the earth will open like a wound.
There will be great rain or snow
so have some coal for your uncle.
The sun of this month cures all.
Therefore, old women say:
Let the sun of March shine on my daughter,
but let the sun of February shine on my daughter-in-law.
However, if you go to a party
dressed as the anti-Christ
you will be frozen to death by morning.

During the rainstorms of April
the oyster rises from the sea
and opens its shell —
rain enters it —
when it sinks the raindrops
become the pearl.
So take a picnic,
open your body,
and give birth to pearls.

June and July?
These are the months
we call Boiling Water.
There is sweat on the cat but the grape
marries herself to the sun.

Hesitate in August.
Be shy.
Let your toes tremble in their sandals.
However, pick the grape
and eat with confidence.
The grape is the blood of God.
Watch out when holding a knife
or you will behead St. John the Baptist.

Touch the Cross in September,
knock on it three times
and say aloud the name of the Lord.
Put seven bowls of salt on the roof overnight
and the next morning the damp one
will foretell the month of rain.
Do not faint in September
or you will wake up in a dead city.

If someone dies in October
do not sweep the house for three days
or the rest of you will go.
Also do not step on a boy's head
for the devil will enter your ears
like music.

November?
Shave,
whether you have hair or not.
Hair is not good,
nothing is allowed to grow,
all is allowed to die.
Because nothing grows
you may be tempted to count the stars
but beware,
in November counting the stars
gives you boils.
Beware the tall people,
they will go mad.
Don't harm the turtle dove
because he is a great shoe
that has swallowed Christ's blood.

December?
On December fourth
water spurts out of the mouse.
Put herbs in its eyes and boil corn
and put the corn away for the night
so that the Lord may trample on it
and bring you luck.
For many days the Lord has been
shut up in the oven.
After that He is boiled,
but He never dies, never dies.

~ from The Awful Rowing Toward God, 1975

because / music

silver soul

stealing beauty

migration

surrender

and ever and

north? these restful blinds slip
smoothly here.  winter's scratch
                    over which year runs
bitter, they are all full of low time

     how authentic!  it's the hurried
watch bending out to dark, the earth, the
river.  aged autumn, why see the house,
last year's car, the farms?  ah,
this long april note down the rows -
celery, and beet.  one might think
without foretaste, how far north,
how quickly the end.
                    these leaves, leaves

no other.  some other.
air turning and yet i stretch the year
among the caress, its last rest
                is at it here
and the year
has his summer so high it
all clouds out winter.  here's to spring?
now here's rows of earth and these
reeds way before here was a how.
we've come this way into time
into lapping how at the sill
and now and there's and that

7.30.13

death,

soon enough

unorthodox percussion

imagine what my body would sound like

the hook upon which everyone hangs

two from adrienne rich

living in the cave

reading the parable of the cave
while living in the cave,
                     
                                   black moss

deadening my footsteps
candles stuck on rock-ledges
weakening my eyes

these things around me, with their
daily requirements:

                                 fill me, empty me
talk to me, warm me, let me
suck on you

every one of them has a plan that depends on me

stalactites want to become
stalagmites
veins of ore
imagine their preciousness

candles see themselves disembodied
into gas
and taking flight

the bat hangs dreaming
of an airy world

none of them, not one
sees me
as i see them

********************************************************************************
for the dead

i dreamed i called you on the telephone
to say: be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer

the waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself

i have always wondered about the leftover
energy, water rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stopped

or the fire you want to go to bed from
but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down
the red coals more extreme, more curious
in their flashing and dying
than you wish they were
sitting there long after midnight

time probably always swings