We machine sadness; hone the lives of our knives and sharpen our dances to slice into the watery selves of these silks that we wave about. We choreograph the movements of alphabets, shading the letters with all the wet and hard and broken things that we find in our insides. And then? We cry out, spilling them onto the floor.
Do you know where your son is? Your daughter? Does worry for them pour from your mouth like a cataract into the pool of your chest, racked open to the sky, your heart torn from its home there, its old path worn by the flood—gone, it seems, for good? This is where I know they once stood. Here—in this spot—they blew candles. As we try to get a handle on our world without them in it, we pray and still we wait and sit with the empty notes of our song echoing…echoing, then gone.
(…an abecedarian…)
It was...
…about this time that I decided to
become the list, to see and feel what
came next, to know from within the
dead weight and heft of
every single
form that I could fathom, the
grand scheme (if you will) of this
healing human game that has played
into (and out of) our history in countless ways for countless days,
jogging our memory, not judging us exactly, but still
keeping an eye on us from—
lying just there—just inside the door,
measuring and metering and giving
nonce notices from the threshold,
once in a while letting us
pretend to be in control,
(queer as that may seem) while still and stilly and quietly
reassuring us about our lacks at the same time, and
stretching us ever-so-gently, nursing us at the beginning and at the end, taking its
time with us, not leading us directly to (never that!) but at least pointing us
ever more towards
understanding, placing things in our paths with the utmost
veneration, teaching us the value and deep, deep roots of our
wonder, opening and reopening us, encouraging us to not fixate on the
x-y axis of every single thing around us, while still reminding us of the value
of anchors,
yearning for us still and always to always and still reach somehow beyond our
zenith, and maybe—just maybe—helping us to get out there, somewhere just a
little bit closer to it.
“If you do something in the spirit of non-achievement, there is a good quality in it. So just to do something without any particular effort is enough.” Shunryu Suzuki To make something of these times I must make something so I will find a frame in which to nail my thoughts. I cannot beat this lone silence and I cannot take this seedless greening anymore, this yearning growth that knows only down and in, only dragging my thoughts into the night where I cannot find them though I remember having them, remember how they felt if not how they looked, remember them close and warm, and thought them somehow grand or at least telling at the time I barely had them, but now? Now I barely have them even less. Now I am not sure if I have them or if they have me. Now they are lost in their own depths, swimming silently in the rolling black medium of their making. Now they haunt me in their bare being and unmake me and swim through me and I will make nothing of them.
We both drum our fingers. He plays keys that aren’t there while I count imaginary feet and sole syllables.
I’m afraid I’ve fallen off the shadorma band wagon. I’ve been draggin’ my ass but enjoying the ride, enjoying it well enough to keep it up. I reckon I’ll write some more, if thoughts fit form and times permit. Shadorma November, Day...something or other.....hermits aren't good at keeping track of the days.
A Prayer Like Gravity 