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Listening to Deep Sleep Narcotics Co.’s new album after hanging out last night at the release show with a good friend. This is from earlier in the evening.
I spill out of my doorway to frost covered lawns and the city shrouded in fog. My breath billows in front of me and it is impossible to forget December has arrived. School buses trundle down the street and a young boys wait at the corner as I pass, stamping their feet and jostling their backpacks. My own bus stop is crowded with leaves but otherwise uninhabited. I lean against the pole and wait, staring down the street. As the bus pulls close I think for a moment it will continue past my body and vanish into the city without me, but the lights flash and it pulls to rest as it does each morning. I climb the steps and settle into a seat as we lurch into the day.
Fog makes light indeterminate. The ends of things disappear—I hold my coffee and watch the window as the suspended city slips past me, as the doors open and close with a rush of cold air. I am beginning to know people along this route. The man in beige overalls works at a produce factory south of Seattle, and we nod at each other each day without knowing names. I find myself watching for him as the bus pulls to his stop—his coat flares as he walks and he wears a hat that reminds me of a Humphrey Bogart movie. He seems out of place with this time; a man too large to fit into the modern narrative of web designers and Bluetooth headsets. I am on the bus when he gets on, I remain when his stop comes and goes. I must seem a constant fixture and I wonder what narrative he has constructed for my life or if I am simply the Girl on The Bus and exist only in this capacity.
The bus drivers, too, are familiar. We exchange pleasantries and sometimes continue conversations over a few days. A bit colder today. How were your holidays? Have a good night, thanks. I don’t know their names either, just their faces. The girl with dark hair and narrow features who drives on Sunday nights. The man with two kids and a knit hat from Saturday morning. The older man with glasses, often weekdays and Sunday morning. If we were to see each other in another place, our memories would tug but we would be past before realizing why. We exist together only here, between places. In transition.
This city is a place described best by circumnavigation. I take the long way to my destination without intention; I head north to go south, I circle back towards my home to leave it. This system doesn’t make sense. My map of the city is full of gaps and holes. I identify an entire neighborhood with one house and a stretch of beach. I fill others with backyards and porches, wine glasses and coffee cups. Seattle is strung together with where I have cooked dinners and where I have danced to music that rang in my ears for hours afterwards.
As the sun finally breaks through the massive glass windows at work, I realize I have been in Seattle long enough to accumulate memories of people who have merely paused here before continuing on. There is the poet who now lives in New York, the potter who moved somewhere near Virginia. The dear friend who drove his van to Portland and sold it instead of returning. This is no longer their place, but it remains mine. The sun lattices shadows on the carpet and I remember this kind of light last year, the kind that unfolds. How different everything felt then, but here it is once more—early winter.
Anne Carson, in The Glass Essay, writes “Perhaps the hardest thing about losing a lover is/to watch the year repeat its days….. I can feel that other day running underneath this one/like an old videotape.” I understand this concurrence, and I find myself wanting to quantify; to measure the blue shift of bodies as they move towards my own without accounting for the opposite movement, the way a body becomes redder until it has sped away entirely. I want to record the present and ignore the undercurrent of the past but that isn’t the sort of person I am. These days even California is tinged with the pleasant scent of orange groves and the soft blue night skies. It is easy to forget the desperation I felt there, how I longed to be somewhere cold could set in and burrow beneath doorways instead of a place coated by dust and wind.
It is dusk for only moments before evening steals in beneath the clouds. The overhead flood lights turn on and around me planes glint. The few families are buttoning up their coats and getting ready to head home. I would like to end this with a conclusive statement, but I have nothing conclusive to say. This is my home and it isn’t. The moon, just past full, will emerge like a coin made of bone. It will ride above me whether or not I point it to out anyone. This city will map and remap itself, transparencies made of faces and names and kitchens, until it becomes too large to describe in simple terms. Already I can feel the layers building, and that will have to be enough.
I am in love.
Let me clarify. Sir Oliver Lodge and John Tyndall are men I continue to return to, continue to be fascinated with. Thanks to a delay at work, I have had several hours to return to a book (haphazardly and luckily thrown in my bag this morning) about the life of Lodge.
Reading biographies always makes me re-evaluate my own life. I’d never heard of Lodge before I began this strange pursuit of ether science. Now I find myself reading about his life and feeling like I stumble into old friends.
Because I have the time, here is my history with Lodge:
I stumbled on Sir Walter Rayleigh’s scattering principle while looking for a way to structure my thesis. He charted observations of the blue sky, and the resulting image looked like the graceful arc of iris petals. I wanted to understand why, and so I began to look into refraction and reflection, which led me to John Tyndall. Within his transcriptions from his light lectures Tyndall talked about the humours of the eye (poem inspired is available upon request) and the ether of the sky. As anyone who has accidently asked me what I’ve been working on can attest, I haven’t been the same since. I know more about ether than anyone ought to–and I’m beginning to move into dark matter. But that’s another topic.
In reading (and reading and reading) about ether, I continue to run into the same names. This isn’t strange, but what does strike me is how often I run into the same names in different contexts. A few weeks ago my cousin gave us tickets to Bone Portraits, a play about Edison and X-Rays. Roentgen was one of the characters, and in reading about Lodge today, there was Roentgen. Lodge worked with telegraphy at the same time as Marconi, but I would hazard a guess that more people would recognize the Italian. He corresponded with J. J. Thompson (later Lord Kelvin) and had dinners with H. G. Wells. Men whose names I remember from science class years ago inhabit these pages, but I can’t remember hearing about Lodge before two years ago. He seems to be relegated to the “and others” part of most descriptions.
Who will be the names remembered from the communities (scientists, artists, musicians) now, and who will become “and others”? It is an exercise in futility to project into the future who will be remembered from the past. Creating is always an attempt at immortality, and some will succeed. I want to say that Lodge failed, but even that isn’t really true. I know about him now, and so do you. Ask me about his theories and his life, and I will tell you more. This is what I do for love.
Went to Open Books for Brenda Hillman’s reading this evening. It was packed, standing room only by the time she started, despite the blustery and rainy evening. A lot of UW students were there, including some of the friends I’ve made. It’s a strange place, to be friends with current MFA students in a program I didn’t attend. They have been nothing but kind, but I definitely feel like a bit of an outsider sometimes. I was talking to one of them about Forrest Gander (and his book Eye Against Eye, my pick for the poetry book club I’ve become part of) and Brenda overheard. She brought it up later in the night, both as an example of a poet that “Aunt Zelda” would like, and as a poet who continually evolves and is currently on top of his game. I instantly had to think back–had I said something contradictory to that and she was countering? I forget that conversations can be overheard sometimes. We all create our private bubble and it’s shocking when reminded- this isn’t a conversation that exists outside of earshot. I was so concerned about what I might have said about Forrest (which, when reflecting back calmly, was just that I have a bit of a crush and I love his work, Torn Awake a bit more than Eye Against Eye, but still, I love all of it) that I didn’t realize until later that Brenda said she overheard students talking. But I’m not a student anymore. And this, frankly, breaks my heart a little.
Brenda, before her reading, talked a lot about the importance of supporting local book stores. Open Books is one of the reasons I felt I had to come to Seattle, and I love that I can just walk down a few blocks and buy from them. I do try to get poetry from them rather than online, and for the most part, I can do it. It was crowded tonight, but I plan on going back to get the next book club book there. Rumor has it that Elliot Bay will be closing its doors in Pioneer Square, and I’ve heard that it’ll be moving to Capital Hill. Still, it’s such a landmark- that it has to move at all is shocking. And yet, not. So buy books from your local stores for your Aunt Zelda, as Brenda suggested. I might head down to Open Books and do my shopping there- include with each book a letter about why I’m in Seattle, what I’m trying to do here, and why I’ve chosen to send poetry rather than cooking utensils. Thanks for the suggestion Brenda.
I review Jeff Encke’s (book) and write about David Hinton’s (book) for Web Del Sol Review of Books.
(It’s pouring in Seattle. There are meteors showering tonight. Book club was at my house this evening, the wind is battering at my window. I love concurrencies.)
What bees and babes is this place luring?
(from Gretel and the Witch)
I have my very ow
n copy of The Ravenous Audience now, and I’m so glad to hold it in my hands. I had the great fortune to see this book along its way to book-ness. This is not a shy book, and it is not for the timid reader. Kate tackles a lot, and she is unafraid in her words. There are delicate moments, but there are raw moments too. It’s a great collection, and I just wish that I was in Southern California to hear her read from its pages. I guess I’ll just have to try to tempt Kate back to Seattle for a visit and a reading…
Seattle is a place of transplants. The Heroes show, last night and tonight at the Jewel Box Theater in Belltown (inside Rendezvous… but that’s another story) explores the idea of Not From Around Here in six personal essays where writers and artists and musicians collaborate to map out their own experiences within this city and others.
Maybe I’m partial, but Carrie Purcell’s segment was my favorite. Her piece interwove third person personal essay and the history of the King Cello with cello music by Hana Mareckova, It was beautiful, and I’m very glad I stuck around Belltown to attend. The place was packed into the aisles and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.
It’s refreshing to be reminded that other people aren’t from around here either. That they have the same difficulties that I do, that they have the same worries. Why did I come out here, is this really what I thought my life would be, how did I end up doing this thing? Seattle is starting to be my home, not just a place I am staying, and I like that. My housemate this morning mentioned something to the same affect- that I am taking ownership of certain things in the house were before, I was tentative. I think I have little patience for tentative action now. I want grand gestures, I want exclamations and affirmations. I want things put in containers and not just open glasses placed on a shelf in the fridge.
I also continually want to share this place. I am not from around here, but I claim this as my own. I want to show you the rain slicked streets, the light refracting off of the ground. I want to show you the crack along the horizon as the sun sets and the rain clears for just a moment. I want you to smell the perfume and sweat on the bus, to see the leaf as it blows twelve stories above the ground past the office window. I want you to hear the rain dripping through the ceiling and pinging off of the displays in the Great Gallery. I want you to leap over dips in the sidewalk with me, I want you to dance in the kitchen with me, to laugh with me as I tumble down the stairs.
The house, too, was like this,
over painted, over lovely–
the world is like this.
- H. D. The Gift
It was a perfect autumn evening when I walked home from A’s house on Halloween. Near full moon, deep blue sky, orange street lights pouring over the leaf covered sidewalk. My shoes barely made a sound, my skirt puffed out beneath my coat. On almost every corner laughter spilled out of windows, glasses clinked and plates clattered.
It’s a few days later now, and the walk is still inside me somewhere. Caught in my ribcage maybe, or tucked beneath my shin bone.
C picked an H. D. book for book club, and her simple lines have me excavating text again. There is something satisfying about digging deeper and deeper. About unearthing.
Apparently, in April of 2008, my work was the Web Monthly Feature at Verse Daily.
Newer news:
Current work appears in the November issue of elimae.
I agree with my sister, this dress makes me happy. It’s not only springtime wonderful, but seeing her site reminds me again that I want to be more of a crafter. Coming across her current contest coincides with listening to a podcast about crafts from To The Best of Our Knowledge. It made sense to hear that crafting can actually help depression. I was always sort of flippant about my crocheted afghan and the summer I spent working on it, but I guess I was tuning into something that was actually helping.
In the spirit of all this, I brought out the scarf I began last year while keeping my housemate company in the kitchen last night. I got a few rows done, but it still needs work. I’m having trouble justifying working on it while I still don’t have a job I’m happy in though. Something is always in the way. And then there are books to read and poems to work on and fellowships to apply for….
So I admire crafters. And one day, I will join your ranks. Until then, visit my sister’s blog for her amazing projects, and stay tuned for the eventual-scarf.
