In Blood
Dear Plexiglassfruit,
Of all the letters I may have sent, I have never written to my mother-- my real mother. I suppose I never believed that she was there, waiting, as recipient, and I'm not sure what I would have said, in years past, on paper.
My mother-in-law says she cannot imagine, as a mom, not being proud of me. She is very kind. There is pride, and Pride; and I have understood that for my mother I am on the cold inverse of the sentiment. Mother puzzles over me and makes comparisons. I tacitly admit the rationale. I make odd choices; everyone voicing an opinion, has told me as much.
Mother has graciously let it go after all, as notable, but uninteresting. We both know that I don't have anything to offer her--- I am useless as a backscratcher. There is simply nothing I can do for her, pragmatically. She has lived life as a sort of barter, with the eye on always coming up ahead. Having expected a man to take care of her, she has learned that money takes care of her. She steels herself to this state of affairs.
She told me a few years ago that, for Enlightenment, I am not ready.
(*My sister, yes; She has paid her dues, I suppose.)
I can only marvel at the confidence of the proclamation. I lay no claims, and wouldn't dare cast judgement... I guess I hadn't much thought about reaching Enlightenment, sitting out here in the dark peripheries of our misunderstandings. My childish hope was that we take care of each other.
If I were to write to my Mom, in abstraction of all that binds us in our interpersonal experience, I would write something she would likely dismiss as "dispassionate essay:"
Dear Mother,
Motherhood is not at all what I expected.
You cryptically said to me, a couple years in, when my child was almost three that "Now" I understand, and know. Truly, I do not. I rather sense some discrepancies in our perceptions and acknowledge the inaccuracy of my own viewpoints. The insinuation I feel is that, now, presumably I understand what it is to be pegged. Saddled. Of course, with affection and responsibility. Because that is the sentiment that I associate with our family reflection of child rearing-- The burden wrought.
And I observe the key differences that may or may not have been fully voiced. That motherhood "happens" in different ways. It has been expressed as lament, in our family circle, as the limitation of self. The facts remain, Mother, that you yourself said you were "not ready," and my sister though eager, was "surprised" by pregnancy. You've each countered that I was so reluctant and calculated as to "sap the Romance out of it"... well, certainly everyone's notion of such fantasy is varied. I have never doubted anyone's Love, in the short- or long-term.
I understand that having a child, or children, is tiring. The state of being on alert, all the time, is not necessarily shared by all parents though. I have learned this in watching the families of my preschool students. I also know it, from being left, so often unattended as a child, without adult supervision; under the care of my sister, two years older, and sometimes not even that. I understand the impulse that sometimes overwhelms and makes a parent want to withdraw. I have felt it.
For whatever it was that made you want to pull away, Mom, I am sorry.
I hope I never hit you, pinched you, scratched you, spit at you, demeaned you or otherwise made you feel faced with contempt. I am wracking my memory for any such incident and cannot remember. And I cannot think of a thing more heartbreaking, abusive and demoralizing. A form of domestic violence that has no legal recourse, the abuser being a minor and outside of the law.
So, as you have doubtlessly wondered: what then do I think of Motherhood? I have not found that being a parent is aww and diapers, sleepless nights, and adventures. That was understood. To be sure, I expected it to be, for lack of a better word, "work." I hoped for Motherhood, as an ideal; an opportunity I suppose. I was looking to be fully present, and now, have these constant questions: ...Have I done the right things? Where have I gone wrong? ...What can I do to make a correction for my apparent, yet undeciphered, errors? ...for surely, the evidence shows, if only in my own sight, that I am doing something not right... to have fears about my child.
Of all of this, naturally, you are unaware. You are not here; pictures sent show only smiles, and I have said nothing, except the underlying truth that yes, I am happy to be a Mom.
Perhaps it is of these misgivings that you speak of... when you say, "Now...you know."
M.
Driving Home
the fast hiss
or slow sigh
from the map
or the tire,
on a whim,
is misnamed
.........Escape
.......................
grounding itself,
prostrate, clawed,
and towed against
the universal will...
leveled, when all that
can be placed, is,
atmospherical;
the w/hole
was there,
.........dually
....................
uninterpreted
The Rationality of Music
I grew up thinking music wasn't all that important in my family.
It wasn't pervasive like the argumentative silence-- the constant grudge that was held against communication and creativity in general. But I was wrong. Impressions leave a mark, and they are only half-truths, empty indentations, before the long paragraph that would follow as explanation.
Music was part of our myth, after all; the Polyphemus, kneeling, before sound.
I grew up believing I wasn't musical, and competitive as is my nature, I was determined to make up for that deficit. I asked Mother for a flute one year. The year before they would have selected openings for Band. I was eight.
Flute, sax, clarinet, trumpet, or drums. Those were the options for tutoring.
"Ask your grandfather," was the monotone answer behind the magazine, after a long sip of homemade latte. Mother liked a little coffee with her heavy cream, between the lazy trailings of her red tipped dragon companion. Newports.
Her father, Bruno, with deference, was one step from church and God Almighty--
he was Bank.
Promptly, my grandparents returned from a trip to Europe with a lovely hand carved wooden recorder. (Flute, sax, clarinet, trumpet or drums, remember? unless trying out for string orchestra.) Sigh. I was disappointed. I had no natural ear; otherwise maybe I'd be already mimicking bits of Mozart... with all humility, I knew I needed lessons.
Mother played the piano; and refused to teach us. The basics, to me and my sister. Finger positions, chords...
"I'm not good enough," she sighed pushing some junk mail from side to side.
I persisted.
I wanted a flute. For a very specific pragmatic reason.
It's odd the way things metaphorically distort mentally, in the eye. Stress. They say children lose their distance-vision as a defensive response--to things they fear to see or wish to shut out of their lives.
Listening intently to the inside.
I don't condemn them for it, philosophically. Our parents refused to get us glasses, though both my sister and I "clearly needed" them by mid-elementary years. The admonishment was that the crutch of lenses would make the myopic condition irreversible.
As might be imagined, it made school difficult-- not seeing the board, or math problems, or oncoming persons, or gym balls, etc., etcetera.
I strategized that a flute would secure the comfortable "convincing" distance I'd need to actually see the music sheets, and discretely learn the notes, in sound and name, and the corresponding finger positionings... Music is dynamic like that...
The Bank, reconsidered.
And gave me a beautiful, old, imported Stradivarius.
It was gorgeous. Red carved and lacquered wood with requisite horsehair bow and an amber block of intoxicating pine-scented rosin. They immediately encouraged me to take it out of its ornate case and hold it, under the chin proper, with arms extended... my nine-year-old heart breaking at every silent punctuation of the natural dimensions required.
No, I could not see the music sheet to save my life.
Not only did I have no natural talent to "play by ear," but now with musical notation in front of my face, I was a certified idiot.
I was just awful. Mrs. Bobiak all but said so.
I practiced of course, at home, at odd angles, to memorize the songs so as not to mortify myself, in front of peers, but time and time again, if asked to start at some arbitrary point (on paper) I was at a loss... f*k if I knew what note was what where, and somehow Mrs. Bobiak never grasped that I could not see the sheet...
My sister, on our Father's insistence for fairness, was also given a Stradivarius, the subsequent year; to her bewilderment; and she took the thing with emotional distance. She never saw the issue. She was musical, and voice was her preferred instrument.
As for the violin, she seldom practiced.
To wrap this part of the torturous history, a brief stint in foster care, as well as court appointed healthcare, landed us both in unfashionable, but functional eyeglasses. My sister made rapid progress. Mrs. Bobiak said so and smiled politely at my continued ineptitude.
I continued to grow up believing my family really didn't care for music...
All the perquisites were there, but surrealistically misplaced.
Father, on his part, had recorded with a band of his own devising (...Ciche Mnichi, meaning The Silent Monks) in which he played Banjo. Our family house had a modest collection of unplayed vinyl with the standby labels and titles, Elvis, Roy, Aretha, Beatles, etc... here respectability shattered... the expensive stereo was as if permanently transfixed to a leaky corner of the living room, where water seeped from the cathedral ceiling and made it semi-operable... and upstairs in the library closet, audio cassettes number in the 100's including four sometimes five copies of identical albums... maniacally... still sealed in cellophane, and those hard plastic wrap around handles designed to prevent theft....
And the greatest treasures, of lyric and instrumentals, were bootleg. Wojtek Mlynarski. Maciej Zembaty, Edith Piaf, Leonard Cohen, among others. And some that got transferred over, and over to fresh blanks... Like ABBA and 100 of the World's Most Beautiful Melodies...
As it turned out, Father cared so much for music that he would rather play it in his memory, than suffer a washed-out reality over poor equipment or disintegrated copy. He told me, when he could not suffer another note by Aula Babdul (*on poor mix tape containing the otherwise esteemed Paula Abdul).
Which explains, in part, why music was listened to primarily in the car...
It was Mother who surprised me most, years later... when she met my husband, music fanatic Bunny Villaire, and it turned out they spoke as if the same language, like veritable encyclopedias, referencing fairly obscure gems of music recording...
Mother even voiced the title on his mind an hour before our wedding as he searched his files for just tune as I descended the stairs...
"...play the Power of Love," she suggest. "Perfect," he answered, setting the needle.
I understand now that love of music is kept locked, close to the heart, and emerges at times, spiritually like Gospel or Jazz, improv.
And it is beautiful to take part in Song, whatever the genre; and its counterpart.
The track that comes to mind, as haunting my music experience:
https://youtu.be/qYS0EeaAUMw?si=Yn0rNy6gHhh_JQHR
To Hold a Candle
Can I begin to convey adequately the significance of the lit candle in the dimensions of imagination if you cannot already relate, in some way, to what it means to take heart from a struck match...?
I'll sit us there, if you're willing, for a moment.
It's a bright incandescent rhombus, a square turned-- perfect. A diamond. That is the surface of the lighted table. It floats in an otherwise seemingly borderless space. It might be said to be literature unmade, a meandering mess, reaching for oxygen. The way a book is closed, and the cover glares.
A darkness on so many levels. Lit.
We seldom eat here, though there is a freezer-fridge. It functions entirely as a closet, unplugged. We keep our cash in a pickle jar on the center wire rack. It is the kitchen in name still, and the wood table itself is like a plain slice of bread. Lightly warm toast. It's spread with books, and papers, and dotted with the Holy Bible in the center, and anchored by a pair of brass candlesticks.
We're dressed like we're going out.
I mean in padded pants and jackets. Hood, hats, layers on layers, and the kind of gloves "real artists" wear-- with no fingers. We cut them off ourselves in frustration, then splurged, and bought a couple of $4 pairs pre-made. Whether we're slowly sipping the second pressing of a shared teabag, or reading aloud in a near whisper, or silently writing and sketching some quixotic idea, the thing that keeps us glued and heartened, is the tiny glow of the eyes of two candles.
The poverty of less would demoralize.
Of course we can share, one. But two represents us better, each burning at the wick, at astonishingly even tempo. It is a kind of understated miracle the way household emergency grade wax melts at a fairly predictable rate. We know we have about two hours. I speculate that it's the extra chill of our surroundings that keeps these candles hardened.
Each should only last an hour-- according to the package.
मलम्
The World as Word.
I look at the word.
Stoicism.
Stoa, the Greek root. It reminds me of extensions, in various languages, even code, where the stoi makes hidden figures...
I understand the etymology stems from the "hall" where orators stood or sat, and contemplated aloud after sitting long; in silence, looking in.
Stoic reminds me of stołek [St'Oh'EK] and stoł [St'ew] meaning footstool, and table, respectively, as translated in Polish and in other slight variants of Slovik languages.
That seat, and table, kitchen and workbench like, remind me of Sanskrit texts, heavy with the notion of action in inaction. It has in my interpretation much to do with living through consequences, without actually enacting them. Painting a moving picture with the most dynamic, sophisticated, and time sensitive media, of the mind: while sitting, and doing nothing.
https://youtu.be/FDmPcSWE0WU?si=FRLhlzqyVV9hg8Vw
It reminds, how we carry so much more, inside, than our hands ever will and that through mental exercise muscles in our arms and legs are somehow fortified to endure what, little, by comparison, is allotted... knowing it could be so much heavier, for us, and, or, for others.
Stoicism is perhaps the natural disposition of thinking man. It is why it is felt as tao, a way of life much like Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism are neither philosophy, nor religion, yet nevertheless there is the element of Faith.
I can't help but wonder whether those who succumb to "art" of any sort, are in a way rent stoics, having been unable to hold their internal load, pouring it out instead, in visual, auditory or kinesthetic form. I can't write failed, though that is the term that comes to mind. I write rend, in past tense, as a borrowing of life from Life.
Seeing how the World is ever in that precarious balance of making and unmaking.
The hallmark of the Stoic is to seldom talk, and when silence is broken, the thoughts are drawn from a reservoir of contemplation, a wealth of deep passion and internal suffering. The holy indifference, that whatever is, is as if one step removed from us. The little that is said, emerges like a boa, from the knot in the tree, internally... Slides around the shoulders like a warm muffler, curling about the throat, with tacit acknowledgement that any false movement may result in fatal constriction....
So, it is best perhaps, to sit, still, remembering we will slip from the manacle, soon enough, from one unknown, to another.
We don’t Know.
That is the most honest thing to say.
I made a pact with someone passed, that whichever of us should go first, we would show a sign, if there were some means of communicating from the other side. When the fatal moment arrived, I thought surely, I would be haunted to the end of my life.
Contrawise. Though, I had this strange sensation of absorbing the passing spirit that night--waking in a baptismal kind of sweat through every pore of my body.
The cut, since then, has been as if final. God knows I am all too adept at making shit up. What do we call it? --"self-gaslighting"---?!
No such thing. Perhaps I have failed to see. Maybe the timing is not right, for a sign. Maybe that Individual consciousness is still alive and knows that it would harm more than comfort, if sighted.
Or maybe, the door is barred. Or there really is, Nothing at all...
We just don't know.
The Death of a Content Creator
We met in 2019, a summer excursion.
I admit I was on the outset reluctant to go. Though, interested and supportive, on subcutaneous, surfacing, level I sensed instinctively that it would be hard. Emotional.
(Ericc Tascott, April 20, 1952 - March 13, 2024)
My husband had told me about him, with great fervor and esteem; how much he had learned from the man, and how he valued living and apprenticing together, creating and selling painted sculptures. Tasting the bohemian artist life, as it were, feeling Ericc had opened a door to a possible life he didn't believe could be made real-- to live solely off of one's artwork.
It's difficult, near impossible, to write on, without giving the impression of arrogance, presumption. To know. And yet...
The foundation, cracking, the traces of art before the stoop, the circle of familiar cats, the apologetic disarray on entry--- The scent of death is not new.
It's in the smell of glue, and paint, and varnish; in the finished and unfinished wood and clay; in the very pulp of paper, once dampened and now dried. It's not a sometimes thing; occasional; or project based. I'd been to other studios. I've lived one. It's a very visceral thing, sensitive, beyond object curiosity. It permeates everything. And I maintain that the working artist knows the lingering smell of Death.
To the art appreciator, those paintings, photos, sculptures, and other tangibles, take on a Life on closure. To the maker, it is as if one more nail in the coffin, one more boulder to the tomb, set loose. The things we make that bury us, in the byproducts of creative thinking-- it's the knowledge that death can creep in at any moment for the Content Creator, the instant he or she losses that momentum of expulsion. Loses out to depression or physical ailment, because in a twist of logic, that unburdening of "dead weight" is a Life affirming process, and when no longer making that "refuse," the Artist is already dying inside.
Going in, I knew he was no longer creating. Parkinson's, my husband told me. I understood the particulars of what that illness entailed, the debilitating involuntary tremors. My grandmother had suffered it. Her handwritten letters to her elder son almost illegible in final years, yet still she wrote, by necessity, unfailingly remarking on her scrawl (przypraszam za bazgroly) until she absolutely could not intelligibly hold thought nor pencil.
...the Dualling of life and death, is ever present, as a question unspoken: How are you ... Doing? I shook his hand. Not an ordinary shake, firm. Held. Our eyes locked, depth, and a cemented understanding: One of us.
Maybe numbers people (accountants, lawyers, bankers, etcetera) have the same sensation of Recognition. I'm sure poets and musicians do. The connection was strong. Painter to painter. He couldn't know, but it's as if we did. Whatever was wired in that handshake went through a lifeline, telepathically. Deuce the details.
I turned aside and fought tears and pride.
He reminded me of my father. He was a father figure to my husband. He hadn't compromised-- in a life full of compromises. He had insisted on Living. The biology of the Artist being to Create content. And when he stopped creating, back in 2019 or prior, he was already dying. I had the foolish notion of understanding something of the phantom pain he was feeling, as the amputation of the archaic vestigial organ of creativity, while he showed us around; where he used to work; what he used to do...
The understanding being that the Death of a Content Creator can come at any moment. The content, meaning, what resides inside the person: the Next.
with or without receipt
when the Universe
declines
in kid gloves
stretching the skin
sacrificial
I think of Dana
and losing touch
the herd
thinned
the babies
dispersed
the land
so close
to being sold
a dance beat
Native
in space
else
where
it could be
man or woman
...who will judge
the stepping out
of Time
beside
a small town
ShopRite
jaws of register
a spoke poet
sound
hands molding
clay like candy
wordlessly
handling
the Flood