Oct 17, 2009 0
Damn it.
So in the spirit of trying to reckon with “myself as another,” I’ve decided to try to do some things that scare me. Some of those things are things I generally don’t want to share because they don’t frame me within the persona I’m comfortable offering the world. So this is some sort of disclaimer. This is most likely TMI. Or too-public navel gazing. Call it what you will. And if you’re generally (or vehemently) opposed to that sort of thing, just stop reading right now. Because I’m not gonna apologize for this. It’s a warning, not an apology.
Okay, that said, I’m trying to follow up with some of gestures from my last couple of posts. Risks, for me. In front of you. Sigh. So I’ve been dealing with depression about some things lately, and I’m still not ready to get into much detail about that stuff (since mostly I don’t think it’s really the result of anything but my own perception, failings, etc.).
Instead, I thought I’d offer a bit of a message I wrote to a friend of mine. In it, I’m trying to make sense out of a book of poems that I’ve been working on for several years. The book revolves around three characters: Jacob, a retired carnival barker; Emma, a midnight gravedigger; and Roscoe, a white clown. Mostly likely there’s going to be a fourth character, too: Eliot, a shape-shifting, semi-autonomous marionette. The piece is evolving. I’ve got about 35 poems in the series so far. So what follows, is a quote from a message I sent to my friend, trying to figure out (for both of us) the nature of Jacob’s undertaking. So here it is. I will respond to any feedback you’re compelled to offer. Questions, too.
I can’t get comfortable. Sometimes, lately, I’ve been thinking about Jacob and how he’s trying to deliver those broken prayers. For some reason, all about him, these prayers are being whisked around on the ground. They are beautiful. Each one makes a beautiful, resonant sound when he picks it up. Each its own sound. And he stands there in the tall grass of a long-fallowed field. The sunlight’s lost. He can still see, but there’s really no way of knowing when twilight fully fades. He knows this, but he knows that he can still see without the moonlight. It’s a light that seems to have no origin. And he stands there as this light dims. And these prayers are blustering about. Some snag in the grass, but not long. Some fall on standing water, almost melting like snow, but not melting. He waits. Tries to watch a single prayer. But he can’t really get a look at it. It never stops moving. Every once in a while, he’ll think it’s paused. A rest. But it hasn’t. What’s paused is his own eye. It can’t fathom the restlessness of that prayer. The constant shift. Bouncing from one blade of grass to another. Catching on mounds of dirt. The wings of a dragonfly sleeping. A sparrow’s skull. The prayer keeps moving, but Jacob’s eye fall’s behind, focused for a minute on that wing, that skull. But he’s lost that prayer. That particular prayer. But there’s another. And so he follows it. And he realizes what he already knows. That each prayer moves. And moves. And moves.
And high over his head, where there is always sunlight and always moonlight, the sky is a fabric of moving threads. Innumerable. An infinitely dense field. Each a prayer. Exactly one location. Exactly one direction. He picks up a handful of the prayers at his feet and tosses them into the sky, smiling. Ecstatic. … They rise above his head and then descend again as a stiff wind blows them off to his left. He gathers another handful. Tosses again, but this time, no smile. Curiosity maybe, or he’s testing something about aerodynamics and grace. This time they disappear into ditch grass a hundred feet away. And finally, he hurls two clenched handfuls right into the face of the wind. A few of them catch in a tear as they blow back over his face.
So he empties his knapsack of everything but a jack knife and a lock of her hair. And gathers what he can of prayers, and sets off toward the horizon. What little he knows of prayers is this: each is headed for the edge of the world, the horizon, where rails bend to touch each other.
And for the longest time, I thought I might learn something about myself by learning something about Jacob. Maybe some day. And I’ve also wondered if he’s a hero capable of delivering my prayers. But lately, I’m coming to realize that Jacob is not a version of me. And that it’s not my prayers I’m hoping he might be able to deliver. No. Now I realize that I am one of those prayers listing about at his feet. And he doesn’t know how to deliver me. No matter how much he wants to, he has no idea how it works. So he carries me. And can’t know me from any of the other prayers he’s carrying. And I still can’t sit still. Even on my way. Even being carried. Even by someone who loves me.
And I don’t know what to do. And I’m starting to lose my sense of direction. My momentum. My gumption.
I tell myself that I’ll start to listen to what the world has in mind for me. To ride the wind instead of fighting it. To say yes to attraction. To say yes to drinks at the Barrett Bar. To say yes to dancing at Zanzibar. To say yes to movies with friends. But each time I find myself falling down again through that wind, knocking about uneasily around my house.
I don’t think the drugs (SRIs) are helping. “Yes” isn’t helping. Investing in a world that isn’t invested back isn’t helping. Patience isn’t helping.
Really, I’m at a loss.
