The Pond

It has rained all day today. Feeling nolstagic, I donned my coat and grabbed my camera and went for a walk, half-heartedly wishing that my walk was taking place in another continent, in another place. The sky reminded me of winter days in La Tour-de-Peilz or Dundee. When I think of these places and all the moments of laughter I had there I find a bittersweet flavor in the core of my heart. Constantly we compare the moment of now in some sort of dissonance and look back to other times when we laugh as a matter of natural response, not a practiced effort. Still, I did find some kind of little joy in my steps today, listening to the rain drops pelting my hood even with earbuds in and listening to the moment's soundtrack from my iPod nano and feeling the swing and thump of my camera hanging around my neck and tucked in under my coat.

I managed to get a couple of photos without destroying my camera in the downpour...then when I came home, I found the poem.



The Pond

Night covers the pond with its wing.
Under the ringed moon I can make out
your face swimming among minnows and the small
echoing stars. In the night air
the surface of the pond is metal.

Within, your eyes are open. They contain
a memory I recognize, as though
we had been children together. Our ponies
grazed on the hill, they were gray
with white markings. Now they graze
with the dead who wait
like children under their granite breastplates,
lucid and helpless:

The hills are far away. They rise up
blacker than childhood.
What do you think of, lying so quietly
by the water? When you look that way I want
to touch you, but do not, seeing
as in another life we were of the same blood.

Lousie Glück

downtown

today's acquisition.

over the years, i've had the opportunity to work in manhattan, staying there just long enough each time to enjoy all the good and great things a huge metropolis has to offer but never staying long enough for the city to get under my skin and leave its bitterness. i remember coming across a review of this book a while ago and when i saw it on the shelf of a dollar store today, there was no question.

halves

they were like two halves of a missing sculpture like two halves of a perfect pear cloven and that was their story before they even knew it beyond distance they could trade words their thoughts meshed like the sea met the sky on a misty day as time passed they didn't know where one ended and the other started and they had this crazy idea that that was how their lives were going to unfold, like a piece of endless, elegant origami unfolding and with each leaf and crease undone there were to be art and love escaping from the thin recesses of their mingled lives and then the burr came it was not new it had been displayed or mentioned or talked about but it was not full so when it came it killed all they had together like a plague like a black death as if they were a continent of humans they all died he lied or he didn't lie he lived his own lie in his life so it was the truth so it came out as a lie even if he didn't want to lie there was the terrible fright there was the terrible fright of losing the only one he had met after all the years who was an equal there was the terrible feeling of wanting to tell yet it receded into the empty part of his soul where he thought it would not come out but it did and it did and it was horrible it was the crystal castle coming down, weighed with such darkness, it was like all the feathers of a thousand doves turning to lead and falling on the earth, falling on the earth when the earth is made of glass and everything broke apart and violently flew in all directions and it was the beginning of the end and it was the beginning of a new beginning and so he patiently, now, watches the sun and lets it set beyond the horizon and in the darkness he sees things and thoughts and emotions and realities that were too subtle for the bright light of day and his heart begins to calm knowing that it did not matter what he knew but it was about what he might see

i could not sleep in these hours before dawn

so i wandered and found this...

Demian

Some years ago, an old friend sent me a letter and she said I was her Demian. I had no idea what she was talking about. Recently, someone told me that was a very high compliment. So today, I went out and bought a copy. It's been some 16 years since that letter so it is high time I figure out what she was trying to tell me...

Happy Birthday Papa

For a moment this morning when I drifted from sleep to wakefulness, I thought what it might have been if you were still here on this earth. I thought how it would feel as an adult to have a close connection with my father. Thoughts as these give rise to ideas that make me feel that I should be a writer full time. That may happen yet...

Meanwhile, happy birthday papa.