Open your mouth, says the nurse as she sticks the tip of the thermometer under your tongue. The cold resides in regions between the heart and the hand. Everything else burns like a cake of tallow into which a piece of twine has been stuck. Do your dreams ripple like a sheet before breaking into bubbles? You watch them roll across bathroom tile like a herd of silverfish. When you touch one, it divides over and over and over into smaller versions of itself.
In suspension
Up, and to Sir Ph. Warwicke’s and other places, about Tangier business, but to little purpose. Among others to my Lord Treasurer’s, there to speak with him, and waited in the lobby three long hours for to speake with him, to the trial of my utmost patience, but missed him at last, and forced to go home without it, which may teach me how I make others wait. Home to dinner and staid Mr. Hater with me, and after dinner drew up a petition for Mr. Hater to present to the Councill about his troublesome business of powder, desiring a trial that his absence may be vindicated, and so to White Hall, but it was not proper to present it to-day. Here I met with Mr. Cowling, who observed to me how he finds every body silent in the praise of my Lord Sandwich, to set up the Duke and the Prince; but that the Duke did both to the King and my Lord Chancellor write abundantly of my Lord’s courage and service. And I this day met with a letter of Captain Ferrers, wherein he tells my Lord was with his ship in all the heat of the day, and did most worthily. Met with Creed, and he and I to Westminster; and there saw my Lord Marlborough brought to be buried, several Lords of the Council carrying him, and with the herald in some state. Thence, vexed in my mind to think that I do so little in my Tangier business, and so home, and after supper to bed.
I am here to wait
which may teach me how
I make others wait
present in absence
as a body brought to be buried
several carrying it
in some little bed
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 14 June 1665.
Hill Station
“We look before and after,
and pine for what is not…”
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
Drawing maps for the hill
station, really they were modeling
the wilderness after their own cities
in the west: Burnham in his prairies,
his stockyards and early prototypes
of sky-scrapers. Aspiring to the colonies
birds build high in trees: their rookeries,
extravagance of space opening for light
over the middle court. On one side, plots
for residences. And on the other, buildings
of state. Lagoons, a greenway, promenades
for The White City— semi-utopia in which
visitors were meant to be shielded from poverty
and crime. In their records you won’t find
a list of indigenous names, families moved
along with livestock deeper into the nameless
periphery of rice terraces, lemon groves,
and more than a hundred species of fern.
Inside/outside
Up and to the office, where all the morning doing business. At noon with Sir G. Carteret to my Lord Mayor’s to dinner, where much company in a little room, and though a good, yet no extraordinary table. His name, Sir John Lawrence, whose father, a very ordinary old man, sat there at table, but it seems a very rich man. Here were at table three Sir Richard Brownes, viz.: he of the Councill, a clerk, and the Alderman, and his son; and there was a little grandson also Richard, who will hereafter be Sir Richard Browne. The Alderman did here openly tell in boasting how he had, only upon suspicion of disturbances, if there had been any bad newes from sea, clapped up several persons that he was afeard of; and that he had several times done the like and would do, and take no bail where he saw it unsafe for the King. But by and by he said that he was now sued in the Exchequer by a man for false imprisonment, that he had, upon the same score, imprisoned while he was Mayor four years ago, and asked advice upon it. I told him I believed there was none, and told my story of Field, at which he was troubled, and said that it was then unsafe for any man to serve the King, and, I believed, knows not what to do therein; but that Sir Richard Browne, of the Councill, advised him to speak with my Lord Chancellor about it.
My Lord Mayor very respectfull to me; and so I after dinner away and found Sir J. Minnes ready with his coach and four horses at our office gate, for him and me to go out of towne to meet the Duke of Yorke coming from Harwich to-night, and so as far as Ilford, and there ‘light. By and by comes to us Sir John Shaw and Mr. Neale, that married the rich widow Gold, upon the same errand. After eating a dish of creame, we took coach again, hearing nothing of the Duke, and away home, a most pleasant evening and road. And so to my office, where, after my letters wrote, to supper and to bed. All our discourse in our way was Sir J. Minnes’s telling me passages of the late King’s and his father’s, which I was mightily pleased to hear for information, though the pride of some persons and vice of most was but a sad story to tell how that brought the whole kingdom and King to ruine.
much company in a little room
an old man sat boasting
how he had been in prison
and there was a field
with four horses
and the light of evening
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 13 June 1665.
Miniatures
Skies the color of old aluminum
in the morning, when you can go
into the river and scoop shoals of tiny
fish in your hands— their ink dot
eyes and inch-long translucent bodies
weaving clouds under the rocks. Pale
drifts, smallest and ghostly, over-
lapping: so hard to tell one body apart
from another. And I don’t know anymore
sometimes if I am mother or daughter
or wife or teacher or friend; if I am scale
or chain or raw; if a thin line of smoke
coils me into submission before something
I cannot name scalds me and swallows me whole.
In response to Via Negativa: Sartoriology.
Sartoriology
Up, and in my yesterday’s new suit to the Duke of Albemarle, and after a turne in White Hall, and then in Westminster Hall, returned, and with my taylor bought some gold lace for my sleeve hands in Pater Noster Row. So home to dinner, and then to the office, and down the River to Deptford, and then back again and to my Lord Treasurer’s, and up and down to look after my Tangier business, and so home to my office, then to supper and to bed.
The Duke of Yorke is sent for last night and expected to be here to-morrow.
in my new suit
turn and return
with my old lace hands
to the river sure as night
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 12 June 1665.
Down and out
(Lord’s day). Up, and expected long a new suit; but, coming not, dressed myself in my late new black silke camelott suit; and, when fully ready, comes my new one of coloured ferrandin, which my wife puts me out of love with, which vexes me, but I think it is only my not being used to wear colours which makes it look a little unusual upon me. To my chamber and there spent the morning reading. At noon, by invitation, comes my two cozen Joyces and their wives, my aunt James and he-cozen Harman, his wife being ill. I had a good dinner for them, and as merry as I could be in such company. They being gone, I out of doors a little, to shew, forsooth, my new suit, and back again, and in going I saw poor Dr. Burnett’s door shut; but he hath, I hear, gained great goodwill among his neighbours; for he discovered it himself first, and caused himself to be shut up of his own accord: which was very handsome.
In the evening comes Mr. Andrews and his wife and Mr. Hill, and staid and played, and sung and supped, most excellent pretty company, so pleasant, ingenious, and harmless, I cannot desire better. They gone we to bed, my mind in great present ease.
I am out of love
but only ours
which makes the morning a noon
and I am out of doors
and poor
but will shut my mind
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 11 June 1665.
Exit
~ after Remedios Varo, “Icono,” 1945; óleo y nácar incrustado/madera (Oil and inlaid mother of pearl/wood).
I want to believe that beneath the plumbing
and gears exist possibilities of escape;
or flight, even. This isn’t just the result
of having been given books to read in childhood
with towns named Lakeport or Riverdale; or where
merry was a word that conveyed characters
from one episode to another, much like a red
convertible. I’m not surprised when I read
that before 1917, such stories were constructed
from whole cloth, with little or no connection
to the real world. But when I say
the herbalist placed both her hands
on the part of the skull that was most tender
and transparent just after birth, there is
a general air of skepticism. And yet I felt
an immediate pulse— it coursed through
the length of me and did not stop at the soles
of my feet. What about the mirror? Is it not true
either? Whose face looked out as I raised a guttering
candle to its surface? You can know upon entering
a building that the shape of a man at the end
of a hallway will correspond to the shape he leaves
in a bed. So many stairs. So many planets and stars
reeling in their own inscrutable dance. But our
mathematics is more simple: something passed
here at one time believing it could last
longer than the birds that fell mute or turned
to stone. A house is an architecture of open
mouths and eyes. And trust me, you don’t
really want to spend eternity in a tower, lost
in pearled conjugations of ropes and hair.
Observer
Lay long in bed, and then up and at the office all the morning. At noon dined at home, and then to the office busy all the afternoon. In the evening home to supper; and there, to my great trouble, hear that the plague is come into the City (though it hath these three or four weeks since its beginning been wholly out of the City); but where should it begin but in my good friend and neighbour’s, Dr. Burnett, in Fanchurch Street: which in both points troubles me mightily. To the office to finish my letters and then home to bed, being troubled at the sicknesse, and my head filled also with other business enough, and particularly how to put my things and estate in order, in case it should please God to call me away, which God dispose of to his glory!
come into the city
or out of the city
where should I begin
in both points
with the particular
in case it should call me to glory
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 10 June 1665.
Night out
Lay long in bed, my head akeing with too much thoughts I think last night. Up and to White Hall, and my Lord Treasurer’s to Sir Ph. Warwicke, about Tangier business, and in my way met with Mr. Moore, who eases me in one point wherein I was troubled; which was, that I heard of nothing said or done by my Lord Sandwich: but he tells me that Mr. Cowling, my Lord Chamberlain’s secretary, did hear the King say that my Lord Sandwich had done nobly and worthily.
The King, it seems, is much troubled at the fall of my Lord of Falmouth; but I do not meet with any man else that so much as wishes him alive again, the world conceiving him a man of too much pleasure to do the King any good, or offer any good office to him. But I hear of all hands he is confessed to have been a man of great honour, that did show it in this his going with the Duke, the most that ever any man did.
Home, where my people busy to make ready a supper against night for some guests, in lieu of my stonefeast.
At noon eat a small dinner at home, and so abroad to buy several things, and among others with my taylor to buy a silke suit, which though I had one lately, yet I do, for joy of the good newes we have lately had of our victory over the Dutch, which makes me willing to spare myself something extraordinary in clothes; and after long resolution of having nothing but black, I did buy a coloured silk ferrandin. So to the Old Exchange, and there at my pretty seamstresses bought a pair of stockings of her husband, and so home, where by and by comes Mr. Honiwood and Mrs. Wilde, and Roger Pepys and, after long time spent, Mrs. Turner, The. and Joyce. We had a very good venison pasty, this being instead of my stone-feast the last March, and very merry we were, and the more I know the more I like Mr. Honiwood’s conversation. So after a good supper they parted, walking to the ‘Change for a coach, and I with them to see them there. So home and to bed, glad it was over.
my head aching with too much night
I hear nothing but owl
meet with nothing but wild stone and woods
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 9 June 1665.