Shaking the Tree

How We Speak to Each Other in Winter

“Isn’t that pathos, the ache we hear in certain music, a longing for kin? Isn’t that what Braxton means by ‘vibrational affinities,’ that no sound exists of itself but as a leaning toward others?” – Nathaniel Mackey

This is the sound of his voice strung across space

Like a telephone wire, sometimes too industrial

But beloved by birds, even in cold weather, twanging like a flat note

He plucks to make me laugh

This is the sensation of falling face-forward into a poem

That devours the mind and spits out the core of an apricot

Rolling into the deep spine between pages

While it rains on a Wednesday, room empty enough

To hum, the soundtrack of my dissipation into

A love song for music

This is the pressed silence of a frost-bitten hand against

A window in January, waiting for the glass to disappear

Or the momentum that put it there to push it

Through—

And an ode to the sanctity

Of sound in times like this when

Winter makes speaking so hard, speaking with our eyes

Imperative—Listen:

There are so many songs

In the landscapes of silence between us

Just beneath the snow

Remember Me in a Rose Garden

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Itching to write, fingers fumbling, the crumbling remains of something lost still curved beneath the nails, her face too full for memory—how softly we dissipate, first people then steam, rising from the grate—last night I dreamt that I was driving, one back window open, and a bird sailed through, all wings and talons and loud, anxious flaps. It wouldn’t settle. It wouldn’t leave. My mother, sitting next to me, didn’t seem alarmed, and if I was I can’t remember now. We drove for some time, myself, my mother and the bird, coasting down the canyon in that car full of cobwebs, until finally the bird flapped its way into my lap. It hopped there for a moment, clumsy on my uneven legs, then sank into stillness. It was soft and warm, its small eyes closed, a little heart beating beneath its breast, and I cupped it with one hand, steering with the other. I was touched that it trusted me. It seems less likely that an animal trusts out of pity or social obligation, and perhaps for that more likely that it trusts completely.  I was nervous, too—we needed to get that bird somewhere—but life was suddenly a tangible thing in me, a radiator generating heat, fueling us forward, moving us on… and I awoke with that life in my thumbs, the occupation smoothed into a gesture.  I have spent today forming  the curved fingers of someone who believes she know what it is to be needed, and is waiting for a flighty bird to sleep between her hands.

Everything they needed came to them

In pieces, pulled apart like gauze from

 Softer memories, pulled together like

A handful of shoelaces, hanging

(From the rafters of epiphany,

That broken barn shaken

By too many earthquakes)

Every raindrop, in fact, a tiny piece

Of everything, sometimes,

Falling slowly, or nearly all at once

On hail days, when the realizations hit

Like dislodged beads of ice

(He realizes he has gone deaf

Asking her to listen; she realizes

She has fought too long for love

To do anything but fight)

To exist at the fingertips—that too, was a

Gesture of everything, as feeling

Returned to what was numb,

Identity reborn like

Shy, pink roses blooming

Under the skin, and in

The heartbeat

(There where they found each other,

And there where they uncovered

What it meant to find themselves.) 

Only a hush here orchestrates

The refracted light in doorways

Touches the still, still morning

Far away from passengers and

Pink leather, from aggressive days

That lag into the night.

The peace here is not a bed sheet pattern

Or a protest

But a natural emptiness—

A foggy window

Interrupted beautifully, without doubt

By the clear streaks of fingers

Return to me, for loneliness is never lonely here

And no one disrespects the moon.

(The Gateway by Georges Seurat)

Note to self:

Remember a night drawn by Seurat, illuminated by disembodied globes and headlights like stars, the trees great shadows, black, ensconced by fog. I think my heart accepted Santa Cruz for the first time tonight as something more than a temporary place; perhaps because I faltered and it caught me, held me, then released me softly from its charcoal fingers into awe. 

If you chose to see it, love is always there— and, if you look hard enough, love is all there is.

The guitar, Mr. Potter, chooses the guitarist

I swear J.K. Rowling must have purchased a guitar at some point during her life, because shopping for one is exactly like shopping for a wand.

Imagine a wooden room, crowded from top to bottom with rows and rows of acoustic guitars suspended by pegs. They’re so closely packed, that it’s nearly impossible to take one down without knocking it into another. The guitars come in all shapes, colors, and sizes. There are are top heavy guitars, bottom heavy guitars, thin necked guitars, thick necked guitars, guitars honed from dark wood, guitars honed from light wood, red guitars, blue guitars, pointy guitars, curvy guitars, even guitars embellished with biblical icons. 

This is one room. Branching off from this room are several smaller rooms, like walk in closets, where the incredibly expensive guitars are kept— the ones you feel breathless just to look at, because not only are they gorgeous, you know they must sound like slices of heaven. Some of these guitars are brand new, just shipped from Canada, Hawaii, Brazil. Some of them have long, mysterious histories, maybe multiple owners, and you know which ones they are. Something about them is smiling, battle scarred and wise.

You are standing in the main room, so quiet and yet so full of sound, and every guitar is the face of a person who might become your friend. Will it be that one? you wonder, looking at a pale guitar with a black pick guard and a half moon hole. How about that one? That one? This one, here, displayed on a stand on the ground? There’s no way of telling until you play it, and even then, there are choices. All you can be sure of is that there has to be a spiritual connection. It has to understand you, and you have to understand it back. 

The guitar, Mr. Potter, chooses the guitarist.

One of the first guitars you play is a pretty Canadian redwood that your dad likes. It sounds like a laughing girl. The next is a boxy maplewood that sounds like sunlight glittering over an ocean. Neither seems quite right— tempting, but unsatisfying.

You return to the wall, and after a hazy stretch of overwhelmed indecision, hunger, and disappointment, a face in the crowd stands out to you. It’s black— glossy and reflective— with a sunburst of brilliant, fire colored wood fading into the edges of the bottom bulb. You ask the man working the register to help you take it down. You sit on your crate. You play it. It’s neck is thinner than you’re used to, but there’s something nice about this. It’s guarded, this guitar. It doesn’t want to let you in too soon, because it wants someone patient enough to want to understand it. You can relate to this. It’s almost like a past self. You’re holding yourself as a teenager, and you’re telling that self that no matter what you’re going through, it’s going to be ok. Your heart is a light emanating out of darkness, and listen, you sound so pretty, so bright.

I wish I could say I bought this guitar immediately. The truth is, my dad sat with me on his own crate swapping it back and forth for almost an hour with a second contender— a light spruce that was easy to play, sounded great, was on sale, and sold more frequently than any other guitar in the store. I almost bought it. It was plain, but hey, that didn’t matter, did it? It seemed friendly. Then I held the black guitar again, and the arms of my soul (assuming, for this moment, that souls have arms) reached out immediately to cradle it. I knew I wouldn’t be able to let it go, but it took me a stupidly long amount of time to realize that this meant there could only be one option.

I also wish I could say that once I bought it, I didn’t consider returning it. I thought maybe my reaction had been overly emotional, inspired by an empty stomach and an irrational impulse. It took two days, and an hour with the house to myself, to realize I had made the right choice. Even once it belonged to me financially, that guitar evaded my attempts to talk to it, like someone shy who has possibly been through some abuse (it is used, and there are scratches when you tilt the black wood in the upper left hand curve to the light) but I can’t tell you how perfectly it fits beneath my fingers now, how beautiful it sounds, and how easily it plays. I took it as it was, and I like to think it takes me as I am, too.

On Happiness

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Why are some days so clearly and unconditionally Damien Rice days? I like a lot of other musicians, but none of them necessarily enter my mind as the right thing to listen to ALL DAY LONG first thing in the morning, and refuse to leave until the next. I was driving to the Doctor’s office on a highway through mid morning fog, ipodless, suddenly craving “Older Chests” like a pregnant woman craves pickles, then “I Remember,” then “Cold Water,” and with repressed agitation made it home just in time to find the right CD, press play, and spill my relief into that air all softened and sweetened by his voice. This can only mean two things: the winter seasons are coming, and it’s that time of month again. (Also, I am silly.)

Vague shades of Autumn are beginning to creep into the Summer now. I feel like the coming of autumn is the eeriest, the softest, the most delicately dramatic of all our seasons’ changes. We feel it before we see it, forget it until it greats us as a familiar stranger at the end of that long, dark street in our minds. The gears of the train begin to turn, shadows begin to shrink, and the hot buzzing of humidity goes silent, as though a needle has been lifted from a record. We sit up. We feel the emptiness collecting inside us, making room for whatever is coming, for those crisp dark days fogged and cleaned by rain. The ideas of changes are shaped and sent flying. We watch them go, and we wonder who sent them, and we wonder why we failed to realize they would go until they were already gone. What waits beyond the milk spilled over the horizon, and how will we know when we’ve arrived?

∞

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Oslo, Art, and Peace

Beginning at its very origin, when the month of Caesar’s assassination became known as “Julius,” July has ignited some of history’s most memorable revolutions.  A chain reaction of fireworks in red, white and blue ignite the sky in Canada, then the United States, then France—the sun bursts free from June Gloom’s wet embrace—and fans across the world remember the birthday of the boy who lived (yes, I am serious) to lead the fight against Lord Voldemort’s regime.

Festooned  by causes for freedom, pride, and celebration, July may signify to some that there is power in violence, and a promise of happiness at its end. Those wiser urge us to understand that the most vital ingredient for positive change is unity—that the success of a rebellion is not measured by how potently we hate, but by how courageously we love. In a brighter future, wars will be fought against hate, not people— and if we want to get there, we have to do it together.

So, creators, my challenge for you is this: channel your angst into something that will help other people release their angst. Channel your happiness into something that will help other people find happiness. Use your words, your scribbles, your drawings, your paintings, your icons, your song, your dance, your blog, to express something that you think is beautiful, and remember that in doing so, no matter how long it takes you to be satisfied, you are making a glorious effort to add empathy and compassion to a world in constant need of both.

—-

A snipet (minus and plus a few words) of the letter I wrote for Scribbler’s Abode’s July Newsletter. My heart is with Oslo, and this seemed more relevant than anything else I could think of to say. 

Accepting yourself (whoever that is) on the internet and off

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On Writing as Subjective

I’ve been thinking, lately, that there really is no such thing as BAD writing. There is writing that knows what it is and is comfortably itself, and there is writing that either tries in vain to be something it’s not, or is simply unaware of itself. Either way, developing style is a process, and in my opinion, has very little, if anything at all, to do with talent. Becoming a “good” writer is simply a matter of understanding where your writing is meant to go. This notion that we should learn the rules before we break them is confusing: writing that follows the rules and writing that breaks them coexist in our contemporary bookshelf. As you read more and more you realize that authors are always “breaking the rules,” and hopefully at this point, you realize that “rule” is a silly word to describe the first step in developing stylized writing. Sandra Cisnero’s House on Mango Street is just as incredible as JD Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye, though these texts are entirely different. Maybe it’s time we stopped thinking about writing as a competition or a game with multiple levels, and starting thinking about it as an investigation of self. Teachers should (perhaps) focus less on teaching their students how to write and focus more on identifying where a student’s writing style wants to go. No matter what, we will always express ourselves in different ways and form different aesthetic opinions. A “good” writer simply appeals to a large number of aesthetic opinions, and the wonderful thing about writing is that it can, if it is confidant in itself and a genuine expression of its writer, change or broaden a reader’s aesthetic opinion all by its glorious self.

The Music Box

Old rhythms, like dead moths caked in dust, like grandmothers nodding as their rocking chairs dip them into dreams, are smoothed into the soft brown corners of my father’s music box. I can hear the steel strings jangling, see the imaginary road stretching out, far across the ridge of my spine, which flattens beneath his touch and winds into a hazy horizon of mountain tops and faces muted by the mist of coming rain. They were ensconced in fog, those days we took the back road to school and listened without speaking to the guitar making rain inside the stereo. They were pale like film grain photos, but they weren’t like photos at all. They were the flesh and blood of moments.

I wonder why the box is empty. I wonder how I know, other than the label, too frayed and yellow to read, why it is a music box, but feelings are my only language, memories, now delusions, my only confirmation. A world of songs once lived here, now evicted by time, now all washed down like a water color canvas, left only with the ghosts of callused fingers.

March 13, 2011