The Writer's Life: Film & Book Reviews, Observations, and Stories

Snow blowing through pines
Ashes sparking in sunlight
Are all that remain.

Now that he has died
His lover’s deranged spirit
Seeks rest. Pass me by!

Because everything I know about women
I learned from you
Who treated me as a lover
You spurned
Because you had none
A scapegoat for your husband, my father, whom you despised
Who abused you
And made you his slave
Who ranted and raged like a wounded beast
A petulant prince who had lost his mind.
How did I survive this?
Why was this my destiny?
And why am I now the one person
Who protects you and keeps you safe
Even though you cannot stop hurting me?

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

–Walt Whitman

This is one of Sarah Jane’s favorite Whitman quotes. I think she read it at the end of yoga class for me. But who knows? Who knows a goddamned thing? Beautiful, isn’t it? Something to strive for. What is strength? I’m not sure any longer beyond holding an asana and breathing through it with calm steadiness. Is there really anything more to life than this?

From unlearning everything we thought we knew
was coalesced a wondrous rectitude with all things
and all beings, and in this space from each of us
we put a plait of tattered strings as a reminder
that our pasts had no futures until we gave them hope,
and though we measure everything by our own standards
and are as different as right from left, we stand together
bound by love which knows no end and has no purpose,
and in deference to our resolve the willer of the world
has lent us time to play our parts, and so
with grace and natural dignity, we cherish
our few moments and are gone.

The heart’s simple truth
Is a stone gray and smooth
Hidden from sight.

It will end
As a sacriledge
With no one having a clue
What I’m doing or why
Me staring at blue blinds
Shaking uncontrollably
Repairing the breach in my ground of being
That death created
An actor reinventing himself
For the very last time.

There are many over-the-top Baroque churches in Europe, each more gilded and cherubic than the next. None worse than those in Vienna my wife told me when she refused to enter yet another in Prague—though before this impasse, we did find an example of one that was perfect, she said. It was the Church of St. Nicholas in the Little Quarter with its statues of church fathers, ornate pulpit, Baroque organ, high altar, and dome fresco. It was church not as some far off, mysterious place, but church as heaven, as a rich, gleaming place one could imagine going to after death. Because the exhibition of paintings by K. Škréta were in upper gallery, we were able to scan the church from above, though what we noticed was not the ornate sculptures and gilded figures, but the balustrade that had been carved and scratched by thousands of visitors, and then burnished with human oils and sweat until it became a perfect record of something that was the opposite of Baroque.

He dragged one leg,
Our piano tuner,
Because he’d had several strokes
After contacting a disease from a bite
That consumed his heart,
Or so he said,
But he could still tune pianos.
Hearing him work
I found myself in a Zen garden
Listening to syncopated chimes
And the soft cries of insects
Burrowing into hard wood,
And I thought
How absurdly strong
The human spirit.