Photographers suffer from something I call febrile frustration. You’re passing by in a car and you see a perfect scene you frame and capture in your mind’s eye. You can’t stop to capture it–it was too fleeting anyway. A grouping of people with gestures and expressions that says something profound in that moment. Light striking just so in the wind. A man in a long coat passing by a building with such a wonderful play of lines and angles. Or perhaps you’re sitting on a wall of a fountain somewhere in a European town and the way people are leaning in together at the cafe across the way would make a shot that spoke volumes. But pointing a camera would be an unforgivable intrusion. Writing, on the other hand, requires only deep concentration on the memory of that moment, recapturing that which was embedded, at least temporarily, in that keen eye of the mind. You just have to look into the unbounded space within.
One
Walking down the sidewalk on a Sunday morning-three small children cavorting in a little group, waving new, brightly colored whirligigs, prancing a bit, laughing as they turn towards each other, faces bright, joyful, all in puffy coats and fuzzy, variously colored hats against the damp chill of the weather and the grey of the sky. And a woman, evidently the mother, bundled up, walking alongside them on the wide patches, eyes looking forward but inward, serious, a bit of a wrinkle forming at her temples and between her brows. She must have taken the kids along to the cheaper grocery store down the road before it closes at noon since she carries a heavy shopping bag in her right hand. She has, as mothers do, bought the children something to delight them and entice them to accompany her on an errand they would otherwise resist. She has, in doing this, protected them against the boredom and worries of the world she inhabits, not only in body, but constantly in mind. She can still divert them from what she clearly cannot avoid. It is as heavy as the package she must transfer from time to time to the other hand. The children, as close as they stay by her side, clearly still inhabit a different universe. She knows she must somehow will that to continue.
Filth and Darkness
We are floundering
on the shores of chaos.
All the normal pain of life
that we have arranged
and turned to
and away from
has lost its sense
in the face
of the stunning loss
of all
our compass points.
The north of cold and blue truth
is shifting so wildly
No explorer
can set off for its pole.
The south of warmth and compassion
is hiding deeply,
scared silly of its shadow,
the craven violence.
East and west
have traded places
with such alacrity
that the globe no longer knows
which way to turn.
We cry out into the darkness.
craving some way to know
if the birth of some child
Is coming,
With all this violence
this writhing, this dying.
And still
the pain drives home
Again and again.
To make our way through
we turn towards the sordid,
the darkness
The underbelly of it all
watching in fascination as it
Illuminates black screens
Runs in letters across headlines.
As if we cannot tear ourselves
away from the horror
of the mess we are making.
And must peer strait into
its most filthy depths
to become its familiar.
That perhaps by
smelling it, tasting it
Rubbing it in our eyes and ears
We may somehow
Incorporate it and
transform it with the very
Magic of our terror
Yet still, there’s another way
through the filth
The darkness and
the horror.
Like playing in the waves
of the ocean
We can dive under
The crest of that
Great undulation
that could otherwise
Smash this tender body
to a pulp
To find the stillness
below the noise breaking
above us
And get lost in the vastness
of that beautiful
Liquid universe,
That light.
As the mother,
birthing her child,
dives into the waves of pain
to meet the ocean
of all beings
that have ever
arrived.
The Lake at the Obsidian Fields
The surface of the lake before me
Is still and blue grey
a liquid reflection
of the infinite sky above
For the moment everything is at peace
Breathing calmly.
The depths the water
appear slowly
below the shimmering surface
as a fish glides along rounded rocks
lying at the bottom of the shallows.
And gradually, the light penetrates
here and there, traveling out
towards the craggy island
creating impressions now and then
of all that floats and swims
in the liquid layers.
the rocks in the clear depths
and the lake weed,
drifting.
There in the middle, it is very deep.
Down to the darkness
where carp lounge,
gills opening and closing
in the rhythm of the heart;
A white egret flies over, silently
and soon another follows
and a third.
The water spreads its depths
voluminous, uncharted
from forests on the right side
to rocky shores on the left
where oak trees, ancient and twisted
gracefully arch
feflecting themselves
In the luminous water.
All this now is inside
The outside is inside
And the inside outside.
The air has opened
The gateway
That allows dreams to pass.
Portrait of a Woman with Green Stripe: Matisse 1905
We are composed of color
Fundamental color
Made of light.
Such mystery in blocks of green
Of orange, violet and black
That, coming together
On this surface, flat yet
Never there,
of canvas cloth,
Create such life and spirit
that, waking every moment,
never dies.
Occupying no time and
Evidently no place
A being whose penetrating gaze
Dark eyes, dark brows
Divided by that perfect streak
of green of sea,
Comes to look within us.
Everyone who sees
Absorbs the knowledge
She transmits,
With steadfast view
And silent lips;
Of self
from which nothing
Whatever in the world
Can hide.
Back to it
The rain has come with its beautiful fragrance of oceans and air, everywhere present wiith the first big drops that fall on my summer shirt as I pick raspberries. It makes me feel the writing in me, pushing, stirring. Where will it come out? Through an ear? Through an eye? Yes. The eye that caught a glimpse of a particular shade of deep blue of a car just passing. Much better really to use the word apercevoir, which has the sense of perceiving something quickly, something suddenly touching your consciousness through some impression on your senses, something so fleeting that you nearly don’t perceive it. J’ai aperçu le couleur bleu foncé and now it has left an impression like a taste I can see and recall as if it exists somewhere inside the space of my chest. I can breathe it in and then send it out through my throat and my nostrils into the atmosphere of the air of the village now glittering with rain.
I play with the color for awhile, sending it through the space left under my neighbor’s electric shutters across the road, in through the chimney of the man with the big Doberman dogs that bark, sending it like a trailing cloud behind an anonymous car passing by, making that light squelching sound through the puddles. Then I pull it back inside to feel its texture inside my throat and then let it dissolve into its essence and become part of my blood and marrow.
I think about the English-speaking women I spoke with there at the café under the platane trees near the river. I taste the flavor of them, the spice of one enough to wake me, the other flavors, delicate, herbal, wafting off to be dissolved by the wet drops and wash eventually into the river. The one with a bit of spice tastes slightly of sorrow and fatigue, with a lingring pungent undercurrent of a clear, sharp look at the life in which she swims.
And the rain keeps coming. Who would have believed it, even as late as lunchtime that the clouds (that have cheated us all so often of late) would actually let down persistent wetness for an hour or more on end. The gaping cracks in the dry earth must feel the drops beginning to round their edges, loosening the particles of dirt that will now begin their slide downwards into the gaps, pulled by the gravity that made the wetness fall from up above to down below.
All this is happening while the wiry, robust young man who drove his other-kind-of blue car madly into the parking area across from the café around noon, slammed on his brakes, burst open his door and walked with long, strong strides across the road to the terrace of the café, is probably sleeping off the alcohol that had pumped up the blood in his head enough to come storming after a woman who he probably had thought betrayed him, ready to put his strong hands around her throat. And the older man, perhaps his father, who had flung open the passenger door when they stopped, striding behind the younger man to back him up, is probably at the Saturday local afternoon pétanque match , sitting on the sidelines, steaming to the other old men on the bench, telling them the story of how he and his son gave that woman what was coming to her, glossing over the humiliation of being moved on by the equally robust Spanish café owner.
And I imagine that the rain, gently wetting their t-shirts and gradually diluting their “pressions”, eventually brings the old man to silence as the sound of the pétanque balls, clicking against each other, becomes the background to his thoughts of supper and an evening spent in front of the glowing tele.
Earth Waits
Earth is waiting patiently
To take back
All the minerals
all the fibres
of this body
That were borrowed
On a contract
limited in time.
An arrangement
with the force of gravity
To yield up just enough
to let it rhyme
And move about
within its mighty field
leaving little trace
While earth continues
quietly to rest
Within its calm
embrace.
And meanwhile, air
has silently agreed
To pass through
this funny thing,
the nose
and be drawn
into these stretching lungs
Which then pass on
that precious gas
To mingle once again
with earth
and thus allow
The magic dance of life
to continue
for a space.
And water runs
as is its will
With grace
where it’s allowed.
And fire fuels the dance
to keep the whole dang thing
in spinning motion
While what I may call I
continues in its race
To understand its place
Before earth and water
Air and fire
Let go
of such a notion.
A Sip of Wine
Damn! What about
those birds that fly
through the tops of the palm tree
there in front
of the neighbor’s house
just at that moment when
the descending afternoon sun
shines for a moment through
the layer of grey louds
over the mountains.
How can they glint so golden
flashing here and there
through the dark pointed fronds?
It shouldn’t be possible
in this ordinary world
But there it is.
I saw it.
Just like that moment
when my mother,
the teetotaler descended
from the Jewish shtels,
then having come to the great age
Of ninety six,
Sat before me in the restaurant
By the salt water
of the Pacific
on the opposite side
of the huge country
from all that she had known
for that entire lifetime
On the far side of everything.
The boats of the marina,
bobbing in the pink water,
And my mother’s cheek
bathed in the warm orange light
Of the setting sun.
She had just asked,
“Can I have a sip
of that lovely white wine
you’re drinking?
It’s glowing with the light.”
And of course I said yes
and she took the glass
offered across the table
And sipped, savoring fully
a moment,
her focus turned within,
her head tipped slightly back
And her dark, crinkled eyes
then suddenly
bright with joy.
Subsiding back into her chair,
with a smile
that transformed the world
her hand still balancing the glass
that had turned into a goblet of
the most exquisite
chartreuse glow
Saying,
“Ah!
What an incredible
burst of flavor
Just there in the cupping
of my tongue!
Like the scent of lemon blossoms
and the taste of warm sun!
I never knew wine could be like that.
I will savor it forever”
Then taking in
a long breath of joy
She looked at me with
The love beyond even
that of a mother for her child
and said,
“There are still wonders
To discover every day,
something new
and extraordinary,
unexpected
Even after all these years
of living on this earth
there are things
I’ve never seen!
There’s reason to live
still another moment
to taste it here together.”
And perhaps
we will continue
for one more breath
or two
Just to see
another.
The River Walk
I walk along the muddy path
by the sparkling,
flowing river
Boots squelch down
in puddles
that lie in wait for me
like small and
hungry swamps.
Water mixed with earth
and brown swirls
left by cows
Trampled by the heavy feet
of hunters after wild pigs,
and men and women–
skidding now and then
on patches
of that treacherous clay–
after the bright reflections
of their own
inner peace.
The river so high in winter
with sun that shows itself
just here and there
in vast surpassing blue
Gleaming through
the darkening clouds
Shining far into
that deep green
massive water
lined with reaching trees.
Through all the canals
And waterways,
Weirs and water gates
That still direct its flow
Even since abandoned
after those that built
and tended them
Over many hundred years
have wandered off
and left them
to live some other kinds
of lives,
More and more complex.
The ingenuity of mills and
The wonders of knowing
how to use the force
of all that flow.
Creating and maintaining;
Streaming human wealth
from that ever-changing river
forging down those mountains.
Lives had been given to the grinding of grain,
The sawing of logs
And finally
the weaving of cloth.
And I am here
seeking forgiveness
From the trees
And finally finding
That it is there
Flowing fast and strong
Through us all
As those humans
who fashioned all this artifice
must have known
In the quiet of their souls,
pretending with their faith
their will would reign supreme
to direct what cannot
ever be turned back,
And will never be denied.
And I turn my face
To the force of
All that water
As it batters
Through my walls.
The Changing Weather
Part One
There is a rain
that falls through air
and lights it
with the glow of water.
It comes everywhere
at some time,
Even in the deserts
Where once
there were oceans
And in the oceans
where once
were green forests.
There is no time.
We know this now.
There is no separation of
molecules one
from another.
There is only some chance
that one of the smallest particles
is present now
In any given notch
in the myriad
of universes.
We know that when we look out
From a window
That it is not a window
outside us
Nor is the outside
not the inside.
We know this.
Feel it!
Practice the feel of it
With every breath you remember
Until the music of it
Vibrates everywhere
All at once.
Part Two
The eggman in the market
who observes his hens
Says they’re now running inside
And outside of their chicken house
With all the changing weather,
With the warm, then the cold
Then the wind, then the rain.
They do not like the rain
On their feathers.
The governments of the world,
he says, are changing
Like the chickens running
in and out
With all this variation
In the weather.
“Governments are driven by the weather
Like the hens”
he says,
In his accented French
of the Occitane.
Pearl at Butchart Gardens
At the age of ninety-three, her now sparse hair had been dyed metallic-red by accident. Pearl was bent but not broken. Her memory was true only for the years of her childhood and youth in Brooklyn. Everything else came and went like fireflies floating through her mind. But my mother was happy.
She was teaching French to one of the nursing assistants at the Residence. She had the Ph.D. she had never completed and became part of her identity when introduced. “I’m Pearl. I have a PhD. Where did you study? ” The other residents were old, not like here, and had no real intellectual interests. But the staff loved her.
Her mind had slowed and took no more of the flights that had occupied it for so many years. She came to live in the present, without that constant worry of what might come to pass at any moment with the people in her circle of love. She laughed often, a heart-felt gusty laugh that sometimes brought tears to her eyes (and mine). We laughed together like high school friends.
She’d flown three thousand miles across the country with me three years before so I could have her near me. After it had become clear she could no longer live alone in her big house, it was sold and I moved her into the Assisted Living in her town, the place where she had planned to go to be with the people she’d know for over fifty years. But she was no longer capable of living as independently as her younger friends and quickly became isolated and depressed. There were emergency calls to me on the other coast when she became stranded in the Emergency Room or when she wouldn’t believe that she had already been given her medications. I felt powerless to help her.
So I found a place near me where professors and their spouses went when they became too old to manage. They were from another culture than Pearl’s, more nordic than ashkenazic, but I thought she might find like-minded intellectuals. When we walked in the front door of the residence after she’d stayed at our house for the night, she grabbed my arm and tried to forcibly turn me back, whispering loudly, “I can’t stay here! These people are all so old!”
But, they were nice to her there and I could go and visit her often since she was near the office where I went every weekday. I could go catch her when she left the residence on one of her walks “Across town to 42nd Street”. She’d forgotten entirely the middle sixty years of her life and oriented solely to Brooklyn and “The City” where she’d lived for the first thirty odd years of her long life.
Saturdays became “Pearl Day”. In the summer, when we had a market stall selling our vegetables, I’d help my partner set up and start the day. Then I’d hop in my car and drive over to the next town where she lived and we’d spend a few hours together. I took her on little excursions to see the mountains or walk by Puget Sound. She loved the novelty of the Pacific Northwest. “The water! The mountains! We don’t have mountains in Brooklyn!” We’d have a nice lunch in a restaurant or a picnic in good weather.
But it wasn’t enough for her. She needed more real company, more stimulation. I talked to her about hiring someone to take her on outings. She wouldn’t have it. It was too artificial and too expensive.
Then I had a brain storm. I found a lovely woman who had a business providing services to the elderly. She was charming and smart and funny. I told her about my mother and she was game to work it out. I told her about my little subterfuge.
The next day, I called my mother and told her that I’d found a lovely, recently retired woman who was a bit lonely and wanted to have someone to do things with. It even so happened that she wanted to learn French and was excited when she heard my mother was a former French teacher. My mother consented to meet with her and see if they got along.
They got along famously. Her name was Lyle. Even though I continued to pay her for her time as agreed, they became fast friends. They went to the local museums and events. They could be seen walking arm in arm repeating French phrases together, chatting up museum docents and random people they came across on their slow walks and giggling over the antics of children on the boardwalk by the water,
Her memory was increasingly misty. Much of the time, she thought I was her sister. It became more and more difficult for the staff to manage her medication since she couldn’t remember having been given it just a few minutes before. She insisted she had never traveled and became obsessed by making her first trip to Paris (where she had been two or three times before). She began calling travel agents in town, trying to book tickets. We talked about the difficulties of a long, long plane trip at her age. “But my mind is clear! I feel good. I feel young!” “Yes,” was my response, “but your body is ninety-three years old. It’s a bit fragile.” I had to go to all the travel agents and ask them, please, not to sell tickets to Pearl. They laughed and agreed. She continued to try.
To assuage her, I told her it might be possible for us to go together if she consented to hire a wheelchair once we were there. She categorically refused on grounds of humiliation. I insisted. She insisted.”Okay, I said. Let’s take a trial trip. We’ll go visit Victoria in British Columbia because I know it well. We’ll stay at a B&B I know and we’ll go to Butchart Gardens”. She consented. LIttle did I know what was in store.
I booked the ground floor room at the B&B where I’d stayed several times with my partner. It was in a lovely old house in a quiet part of town. The hostess had become a friend.
We drove up to Tsawwassen Ferry Landing in British Columbia and had a wonderful ferry trip to Victoria. She was entranced by the beauty of the islands we passed and by being on a ship on the water.
Once we arrived in Victoria, we had a half hour car trip to the B&B. She was tired and chafed at the seat belt, practically crying like a small child. When we arrived, she was charmed by the owner and we settled into the room. We went out to a nice restaurant and returned for an early bedtime. I was exhausted and after I’d gotten her settled for the night I lay down in my own bed and fell asleep immediately.
I was awoken soon after by the noise of my mother getting out of bed, thinking it was morning. I tucked her back in and told her she needed to sleep. A half an hour later, she was up again. Once again, back to bed.
I fell into a deep sleep only to be woken again by some strange sense and a silence from her bed. I called her name. No response. I checked the toilet. No. I went out into the hall. No. But then I saw a light from under the kitchen door and a sound of a dish being put down on the table. Since it was only two thirty in the morning, I knew it wasn’t Lorraine starting to prepare breakfast.
I ran to open the door and there was my mother, raiding the refrigerator. The kitchen was off limits to guests, the private kitchen of the household. Horrified, I told my mother, “I’m sorry. You can’t be here. This isn’t our kitchen. Lorraine would be very upset.” I put the things away carefully, making sure to wipe up any evidence and lead my mother back to bed.
Now, truly exhausted, I put her back to bed and told her sternly to stay there until I told her it was time to wake up. I didn’t dare to sleep soundly, so I heard her get up again twenty minutes later and, drowsy, by the time I’d gotten myself out of bed, she was already headed for the kitchen.
I caught up with her and guided her back to bed. “But I’m hungry,” she said. “It’s time to get up.” “No. it’s three thirty in the morning. We’ll wake the whole household. You have to stay in your bed.”
I tucked her back in and gave her one of the cookies I’d brought. FIve minutes later she was pulling back the covers to get up. Oh God, I thought, No! Like the desperate mother of a naughty three year old, I said,
“If you get up again, I’ll have to spank you.” “You won’t!”, she said. “Oh yes!” I said. “I will!”
Three minutes later, she was up. I pulled back the covers, strode across the room andI smacked her on the bottom.
“No! Stay in bed!” A bit tearful, she got back under the covers.
Shaken by my audacity, I went back to bed and slept fitfully, attentive to any sound. She rolled over and over, but didn’t get up again till 6:30. I helped her dress and took her to the front room to watch the news on the tv while I snoozed on the sofa.
We had a lovely breakfast when Lorraine got up. The other guests at the table were charmed by this woman past ninety who was knew how to engage them in conversation. It was a lovely fall day. Time for our excursion to Butchart Gardens.
I had been there twice before and knew the layout. It would be much too far for her to walk but they had handy wheelchairs. When we arrived at the parking lot I said “Wait here while I go get a wheelchair for you. It will be a lovely ride through the gardens but too far to walk.” “No wheelchair”, she said. “Okay. We’ll do something else today then”, I replied.
She finally consented. Under duress. We started out on our journey around the gardens where the constant explosions of color and pattern leave you in a state of all-consuming awe. We got to a part of the garden that was quieter and more subdued, a park with a path through. She suddenly said, “You shouldn’t be the one pushing me around. I should be pushing you. “ I laughed and said “Thank you. But I’m fine.” She insisted. She got out of the wheelchair, all fragile ninety pounds, five foot six of her compared to my five foot eleven. I got her to sit again for a few feet, but she started to drag her feet so I couldn’t push. “See. It’s too hard “ she said.
“Okay.” I said. “You can push me.” We changed places on the momentarily deserted path. She tried to push. “You’re dragging your feet!” she said. I lifted my feet so she could see. “Nope.” She tried again and it wouldn’t budge. Just as a father and his little girl came up the path, she started to cry. Oh no! I thought. That father must be thinking, “Right! Elder abuse!” like a good Canadian.
I leaped out of the chair, grabbing the handles so she wouldn’t fall over. I put my other arm around her and said “It’s okay. I understand.’
“I feel so guilty” she said, “that you have to push me. I should take care of you.” I reassured her that this was the way of nature, that the younger eventually have to take care of the older. “But you’re the younger one!” she said. She was still crying softly as I got her back in the chair.
We went to sit on a nearby bench in front of a fountain. I needed to do something to redeem the moment. Her head was hanging in shame.
I said, “You know, I think we can do something together. You feel guilty a lot. More and more. Let’s embrace the guilt! Let’s hug it! Let’s tell it it’s loved. Let’s practice Jewish Buddhism. We replace love with guilt! We’ll start a new religion together! “
I hugged myself. “Oh guilt! I love you! Be big for me! Grow strong!” She looked at me and started to laugh.
“Do it!” I said. And she did.
We both hugged ourselves, kissing the air. “ Oh beautiful guilt! We love you” we chanted. We were both laughing. “More!” I said. We did, more and more, laughing harder and harder until we both had tears streaming down our faces.
We hugged. She got back into the wheelchair. “Where next?” she said, wiping her tears with the back of her hand.
