Mechanic

(Lord’s day). Up, and after entering my journal for 2 or 3 days, I to church, where Mr. Mills, a dull sermon: and in our pew there sat a great lady, which I afterwards understood to be my Lady Carlisle, that made her husband a cuckold in Scotland, a very fine woman indeed in person. After sermon home, where W. Hewer dined with us, and after dinner he and I all the afternoon to read over our office letters to see what matters can be got for our advantage or disadvantage therein. In the evening comes Mr. Pelling and the two men that were with him formerly, the little man that sings so good a base (Wallington) and another that understands well, one Pigott, and Betty Turner come and sat and supped with us, and we spent the evening mighty well in good musique, to my great content to see myself in condition to have these and entertain them for my own pleasure only. So they gone, we to bed.

under my car
all afternoon to see
what sings

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 1 December 1667.

Sala

(SE Asian - noun: living room)

One gray marbled coffeetable, two
end tables on which lamps stood, 
flanking a sofa at least twice 
reupholstered. A poor reproduction 

of Amorsolo's Rice Planting on the wall: 
broody volcano shrouded by distant clouds, 
a line of golden-skinned farmers bending 
to push seedlings into the loam. The floor,

buffed and waxed to a hard shine. On every 
other surface, fretwork of crocheted runners
on which my mother laid a lifetime of tokens
of our various accomplishments, next to

her collection of plaster saints: 
as if diplomas, pictures, certificates 
were themselves the patrons of a future
we would never stop trying to supplicate.
 

The ghost of Christmas present

Up, and to the office, where all the morning, and then by coach to Arundel House, to the election of Officers for the next year; where I was near being chosen of the Council, but am glad I was not, for I could not have attended, though, above all things, I could wish it; and do take it as a mighty respect to have been named there. The company great, and the elections long, and then to Cary House, a house now of entertainment, next my Lord Ashly’s; and there, where I have heretofore heard Common Prayer in the time of Dr. Mossum, we after two hours’ stay, sitting at the table with our napkins open, had our dinners brought, but badly done. But here was good company. I choosing to sit next Dr. Wilkins, Sir George Ent, and others whom I value, there talked of several things. Among others Dr. Wilkins, talking of the universal speech, of which he hath a book coming out, did first inform me how man was certainly made for society, he being of all creatures the least armed for defence, and of all creatures in the world the young ones are not able to do anything to help themselves, nor can find the dug without being put to it, but would die if the mother did not help it; and, he says, were it not for speech man would be a very mean creature. Much of this good discourse we had. But here, above all, I was pleased to see the person who had his blood taken out. He speaks well, and did this day give the Society a relation thereof in Latin, saying that he finds himself much better since, and as a new man, but he is cracked a little in his head, though he speaks very reasonably, and very well. He had but 20s. for his suffering it, and is to have the same again tried upon him: the first sound man that ever had it tried on him in England, and but one that we hear of in France, which was a porter hired by the virtuosos. Here all the afternoon till within night. Then I took coach and to the Exchange, where I was to meet my wife, but she was gone home, and so I to Westminster Hall, and there took a turn or two, but meeting with nobody to discourse with, returned to Cary House, and there stayed and saw a pretty deception of the sight by a glass with water poured into it, with a stick standing up with three balls of wax upon it, one distant from the other. How these balls did seem double and disappear one after another, mighty pretty! Here Mr. Carcasse did come to me, and brought first Mr. Colwall, our Treasurer, and then Dr. Wilkins to engage me to be his friend, and himself asking forgiveness and desiring my friendship, saying that the Council have now ordered him to be free to return to the Office to be employed. I promised him my friendship, and am glad of this occasion, having desired it; for there is nobody’s ill tongue that I fear like his, being a malicious and cunning bold fellow. Thence, paying our shot, 6s. apiece, I home, and there to the office and wrote my letters, and then home, my eyes very sore with yesterday’s work, and so home and tried to make a piece by my eare and viall to “I wonder what the grave,” &c., and so to supper and to bed, where frighted a good while and my wife again with noises, and my wife did rise twice, but I think it was Sir John Minnes’s people again late cleaning their house, for it was past 1 o’clock in the morning before we could fall to sleep, and so slept. But I perceive well what the care of money and treasure in a man’s house is to a man that fears to lose it.
My Lord Anglesey told me this day that he did believe the House of Commons would, the next week, yield to the Lords; but, speaking with others this day, they conclude they will not, but that rather the King will accommodate it by committing my Lord Clarendon himself. I remember what Mr. Evelyn said, that he did believe we should soon see ourselves fall into a Commonwealth again. Joseph Williamson I find mighty kind still, but close, not daring to say anything almost that touches upon news or state of affairs.

above all things I wish
to sit at the table with napkins open
talking in the mother tongue of wonder

and so be righted again
with my wife leaning into sleep
and the treasure of touch

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 30 November 1667.

Imagined, Undying Flower

As easily given, 
as easily taken away: 
but why could it not 
also be painted 
a different way?
 
Did it not help you?
Did it change something?
Did it really return to just
the same as it was before?

Unexpected abundance, even 
if not a windfall. A torrent 
at midnight, or a heavy snowfall.

The world looks pristine
before we start again

to make tracks in it.

Heard on High

still from Heard on high
This entry is part 30 of 40 in the series Pandemic Year

 

Watch on Vimeo.

In the news: a last-minute Brexit deal, a Covid stimulus bill passing through Congress, and possible signs of intelligent life from Proxima Centauri. Sitting outside around midnight, I watch a deer silhouetted against the snow pick her way to the stream, hooves crunching through the icy snowpack. And the lacework of tree branches: a threadbare garment. It’s one thing to feel as if we’re all connected in some cosmic web, but it’s another matter entirely to share the bleak familiarity of our solitude with strangers, I mutter to myself. Her head goes up, ears pivoting like radio telescopes in my direction.

power outage
all the glowing lights
in the sky

***

Process notes

This all came together rather quickly. There’s nothing like a power outage to remind one of just how dependent we are on the increasingly decrepit and unsustainable infrastructure of a fossil fuel-based civilization. And also how dark and quiet the nights can be. Fortunately, last night’s outage only lasted half an hour. (One year, the power went out for much of Christmas day! That’s life in the country for you.)

I’d been playing around with haiku on the theme of animals walking in human footprints, but for this video just a shot of deer hoofprints in my snowshoe tracks seemed sufficient. I found the music on ccMixter.

Widow

Waked about seven o’clock this morning with a noise I supposed I heard, near our chamber, of knocking, which, by and by, increased: and I, more awake, could, distinguish it better. I then waked my wife, and both of us wondered at it, and lay so a great while, while that increased, and at last heard it plainer, knocking, as if it were breaking down a window for people to get out; and then removing of stools and chairs; and plainly, by and by, going up and down our stairs. We lay, both of us, afeard; yet I would have rose, but my wife would not let me. Besides, I could not do it without making noise; and we did both conclude that thieves were in the house, but wondered what our people did, whom we thought either killed, or afeard, as we were. Thus we lay till the clock struck eight, and high day. At last, I removed my gown and slippers safely to the other side of the bed over my wife: and there safely rose, and put on my gown and breeches, and then, with a firebrand in my hand, safely opened the door, and saw nor heard any thing. Then (with fear, I confess) went to the maid’s chamber-door, and all quiet and safe. Called Jane up, and went down safely, and opened my chamber door, where all well. Then more freely about, and to the kitchen, where the cook-maid up, and all safe. So up again, and when Jane come, and we demanded whether she heard no noise, she said, “yes, and was afeard,” but rose with the other maid, and found nothing; but heard a noise in the great stack of chimnies that goes from Sir J. Minnes through our house; and so we sent, and their chimnies have been swept this morning, and the noise was that, and nothing else. It is one of the most extraordinary accidents in my life, and gives ground to think of Don Quixote’s adventures how people may be surprised, and the more from an accident last night, that our young gibb-cat did leap down our stairs from top to bottom, at two leaps, and frighted us, that we could not tell well whether it was the cat or a spirit, and do sometimes think this morning that the house might be haunted. Glad to have this so well over, and indeed really glad in my mind, for I was much afeard, I dressed myself and to the office both forenoon and afternoon, mighty hard putting papers and things in order to my extraordinary satisfaction, and consulting my clerks in many things, who are infinite helps to my memory and reasons of things, and so being weary, and my eyes akeing, having overwrought them to-day reading so much shorthand, I home and there to supper, it being late, and to bed. This morning Sir W. Pen and I did walk together a good while, and he tells me that the Houses are not likely to agree after their free conference yesterday, and he fears what may follow.

I wake to the noise
of no noise
whether the cat or a spirit

haunted
I dress myself
in paper-thin things

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 29 November 1667.

Equivalence

You used to hate 
the extra name in front
of your birth name 
and when

anyone but your father
called you by your 
pet name
 
You used to hate 
yourself for letting
your bladder run 
under cover of rain

packed into a jeep 
with other school
children  

You used to hate 
garlic Now you love 
garlic

You heard a poet say 
what does it even mean
to ask for one clove  
and not a whole head
in a recipe

Don't they really mean
that can't be enough

You used to spit
the bitter back
into the spoon
but mix salt
with sugar

You used to love 
the resinous green 
smell of pine

Whatever you lost 
you both loved 
and hated
the hardest


Incommensurable

Up, and at the office all this morning, and then home to dinner, and then by coach sent my wife to the King’s playhouse, and I to White Hall, there intending, with Lord Bruncker, Sir J. Minnes, and Sir T. Harvy to have seen the Duke of York, whom it seems the King and Queen have visited, and so we may now well go to see him. But there was nobody could speak with him, and so we parted, leaving a note in Mr. Wren’s chamber that we had been there, he being at the free conference of the two Houses about this great business of my Lord Chancellor’s, at which they were at this hour, three in the afternoon, and there they say my Lord Anglesey do his part admirably ably, and each of us taking a copy of the Guinny Company’s defence to a petition against them to the Parliament the other day. So I away to the King’s playhouse, and there sat by my wife, and saw “The Mistaken Beauty,” which I never, I think, saw before, though an old play; and there is much in it that I like, though the name is but improper to it — at least, that name, it being also called “The Lyer,” which is proper enough. Here I met with Sir. Richard Browne, who wondered to find me there, telling me that I am a man of so much business, which character, I thank God, I have ever got, and have for a long time had and deserved, and yet am now come to be censured in common with the office for a man of negligence.
Thence home and to the office to my letters, and then home to supper and to bed.

who but the body
could speak about sin

each of us taking on
a mistaken beauty

like the name of a god
in common letters

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 28 November 1667.

Snowfall

Along the coast, more whales 
have been reported coming ashore
this year than in others. Bats 

swoop through humid skies above
the swamp. Couldn't mistake this place
for anything but south. Dismal fringe

of dying vegetation— and yet. 
Every now and then you want to drop 
the necklaces you wear, or at least 

their pendulous weights... Fold 
and fold, so a square morphs into 
a triangle. Grids are not what you're
 
after. Have you felt the satisfaction 
of cutting away, then being rewarded? 
In the center of each star, a node 

for branching. Just when you think 
paper could take no more, it yields 
feather and web, the shape of what 

could fall through the sky to catch
on your sleeve. Keep one if it should
land on your tongue, and close 

your eyes. Loneliness is just one 
letter from loveliness. Open your eyes 
before steam blurs the clear, sharp edges. 

Pretend you remember what it's like to be 
the first to score a field of white 
with your steps, how your weight 

presses softly into powdery snow. Quiet 
wind smooths your tracks afterward; no one 
would know you were even there. Reversals 

are difficult to engineer, so when they happen, 
they feel like otherworldly intervention. Sometimes 
that's the way the dead send letters from wherever 

they've gone. Tell yourself they only want 
to feel something of them survives. Under 
a canopy, a coppice, a cross-hatched thicket— 

Vague sense of being adrift in a time without 
time. White on white on white until the world
can silver. Xysts become the quietest

promenades. You don't have to be happy or un-
happy; don't have to be whole to be here. Zygotes 
birth such fragile stars, bonding water and air.


 
   

Dotted line

Up, and all the morning at my Lord Bruncker’s lodgings with Sir J. Minnes and W. Pen about Sir W. Warren’s accounts, wherein I do not see that they are ever very likely to come to an understanding of them, as Sir J. Minnes hath not yet handled them. Here till noon, and then home to dinner, where Mr. Pierce comes to me, and there, in general, tells me how the King is now fallen in and become a slave to the Duke of Buckingham, led by none but him, whom he, Mr. Pierce, swears he knows do hate the very person of the King, and would, as well as will, certainly ruin him. He do say, and I think with right, that the King do in this do the most ungrateful part of a master to a servant that ever was done, in this carriage of his to my Lord Chancellor: that, it may be, the Chancellor may have faults, but none such as these they speak of; that he do now really fear that all is going to ruin, for he says he hears that Sir W. Coventry hath been, just before his sickness, with the Duke of York, to ask his forgiveness and peace for what he had done; for that he never could foresee that what he meant so well, in the councilling to lay by the Chancellor, should come to this. As soon as dined, I with my boy Tom to my bookbinder’s, where all the afternoon long till 8 or 9 at night seeing him binding up two or three collections of letters and papers that I had of him, but above all things my little abstract pocket book of contracts, which he will do very neatly. Then home to read, sup, and to bed.

o pen like a handle
how we ruin a ruin
ask for one night above all
in little abstract contracts

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 27 November 1667.