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July 26, 2008

Flowerbox

Eye to eye with cornflowers, marigolds, a floral
galaxy of calyxes, flox, constellations of Queen
Anne’s lace, in a flowerbox roped to a rusted rail,
on an old-brick warehouse braced by ancient iron stars.
Far below, an abandoned worksite, narrow grotto of I-
beams, bricks, cinderblocks, sand piles, piles of nails,
of rubble, metal ducts, blue tarps. A yellow scaffold,
Giacometti-like, shifts its composition when I move.
Above: silver minarets, wrapped-wire pendants, beacons
flashing in roiling skies wild as seas, cloud-shrouded
as the grizzled hair of Fates. Skies like an atlas open
to double-spread fractal-frilled coasts, the continents.
Comes the secretive scuttle of rain: hermit-crab patter
on hard coral, the scurry in borrowed shells; plick-plick
tap the crabs fleeing wavelets they call breakers, as
the pocked sand hides tectonic plates ineluctably shifting.
On this railed ledge, on this early dark Sunday, Earth
whirls with stars and meteors, all lost to me watching
water plick-plick on the yarrow, on the globemallow,
on pink blooms of the pollen-studded cosmos.

Posted by Jane on 2:49 PM | Comments (1)

July 19, 2008

A Pasture For Gazelles

"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. " --Kafka

"...I would fall in love with a monkey made of rags. With a plywood squirrel. With a botanical atlas. With an oriole..." -- Czeslaw Milosz

“Do not become bewildered by the surfaces; in the depths, all becomes law.” - Rilke

To be alone
It is a color that
Cannot be named:
This mountain where cedars rise
Into the autumn dusk -- Jakuren, 12th century

"… do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." - Romans 12:2

My heart has become able
To take on all forms.
It is a pasture for gazelles,
For monks, an abbey. -- Ibn ‘Arabi (1165-1240)

"What we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of the minutest event - the falling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper scratched over with a few small characters by a sharpened feather." -- Melville, Pierre

Posted by Jane on 12:23 PM | Comments (2)

July 10, 2008

Vin-Yet

A sudden storm. I duck into an old tavern, with walls of ancient bead-board and yellowed pressed tin. The plank ceiling looks like the deck of a ship. Disoriented by looking up, I’m briefly hanging by my feet from a spar.
.
This dreary Sunday afternoon (my favorite kind), the narrow dining room is empty but for two girls getting tipsy by the window. The silver arc of a car parked out the window unites them in dialogue. The brunette says: “It was raw on the outside and black inside. I mean, raw inside and black outside.” Giddy confusion and gales of laughter. The blonde, though, does most of the talking, twisting up her hair when the check comes. Apparently they’ve complimented the waiter’s flamingo-pink tee shirt, for I overhear him call over his shoulder, as he glides by with their money: “I bought it in 1993, and wear it only one day a year. That would be today. Girls, I’ve gotten so fat, I'm like Elizabeth Taylor squeezed into a dress.”

Posted by Jane on 8:29 PM | Comments (1)

July 4, 2008

Freedom to Fear, or Not

“Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.” -- Montaigne
~
Sitting on a bench at the marina was a very old lady I’ve been seeing on morning walks. In her compact solitude she seemed like a Zen monk. She held out her arms, when I paused to say hi, and asked me to keep the dogs back. She explained: A dog bit her on a finger in childhood, and her fear of canines is “deep-rooted and innate.” Something in her plight stopped me, and I sat the dogs a little distance away. She went on, “No one understands that I do realize it’s not their dogs, that it’s entirely me. Since that bite, before my teens”--she held up the ancient scar—“I never had a pet, never cared for animals. My fear of them is entrenched and I can do nothing about it.”
~
Sarah is 91. She’s unafraid of death, traveling by herself, or being alone. Her husband died years ago. She has no children. She cultivates no friendships, does not take meals with the other seniors in her elegant “independent and assisted-living” apartment house. I asked how she spent her time. “I get up at 6, go for a long walk, and let the day unfold as it will.” To which I said, “It sounds like a nice, free life.”
~
She’d lived a full life, of work and travel all over the world. But not to Australia, she amended, which, being a “new country,” never appealed to her. She preferred old countries like Greece. Was there any place she regretted not getting to? “Africa,” she said, surprisingly, “because of the animals.” I teased: “You’re not afraid of lions and elephants, but you’re afraid of dogs?” She smiled: “I wanted to see the animals. Just see them.”
~
Meanwhile, Caleb and Tracy were sitting very still, watching the old lady gently. “They seem docile enough,” she said, and apologized again for her aversion. She thanked me for not cajoling her to pet them, as well-meaning people always did, to help her overcome her dread through their harmless pets. I said, “You’re free, aren’t you, to stay afraid. We all protect our phobias. One of my biggest is driving. At 15, I chose never to drive. But there’s another Freedom--larger and deeper, which is freedom from fear itself, which overrides our peculiar little tendencies and preferences. I intuit that inner Freedom, but I’m not ready either to give up my fears for it. Not yet.”
~
Sarah looked at the waiting dogs. “Thank you,” she finally said, understanding. “Maybe, if I see you again sometime, I’ll let your dogs come closer. But it might take me the rest of my life to touch them.”

~

Posted by Jane on 9:00 AM | Comments (0)