Ash fruits
An impressionistic review of the article “Night of the Growing Dead: A Cult of Virabhadra in Coastal Andhra,” by David M. Kline, in Criminal Gods and Demon Devotees: Essays on the Guardians of Popular Hinduism, edited by Alf Hiltebeitel and published by State University of New York Press in Albany, 1989.
A cobra moves into the termite mound, which has grown tall & full of turrets, like a Disneyland of dirt. The villagers build a shrine around it as a home for orphaned spirits, who inhabit large, gray, egg-shaped fruits that the potters fashion out of tree semen & the ash from burnt cow dung. Those who could not be burned are jealous of ashes.
And the ash fruits grow, year after year. They swell with offerings – the rounded towers of rice – having no way to take a shit. Every dead thing resembles a fruit, the sum of long-ripening actions. But these ones, with all chance of future action cut off, ripen only in their rage.
They are the pills too bitter to swallow, the gray implacable grief that drives every cycle of violence. The deaths of innocents violate the law of the universe, so the world must burn. The spine of Sati crumbles in the funeral pyre & God smears her ashes all over His skin, as sealed off now as a stone in these avatars of ash.
One night a year when they travel in procession to the river to be dipped & blessed, they can seize anyone by the throat – an onlooker, or their own former mother – & make him or her throw up the indigestible pits of their words. Which, however disjointed, always add up to a single, non-negotiable demand: more life.
Cover
Seven points in search of an argument
1.
Friday’s photo-essay about windows got me thinking about self-effacement, and how dangerous it can be. Think of guerrillas lying in ambush, or the CIA operative in deep cover. Then, too, privacy issues have been in the air lately with all the discussion about nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court. I don’t know whether the Constitution contains an implicit right to privacy or not, but I’m pretty sure than any government that denies the existence of such a right for its citizens, while multiplying arguments for higher and higher levels of government secrecy, is one badly in need of being overthrown.
2.
I’ve also been following an exchange about blog privacy on a listserve I belong to, and feeling more and more baffled as one blogger after another talks about his or her fear of being read by the wrong person. They talk longingly about anonymous blogs where they would have complete freedom to say what they want.
What’s wrong with me that I don’t feel thwarted by my inability to say what cannot be said? I’d always thought that near the core of every relationship there lay a little bundle of forbidden things – those terrible words that, once uttered, can never be retracted. One’s consciousness of this (or any) taboo creates a kind of tension that is ultimately creative. For me, the challenge is to find the words behind or beyond those terrible ones, which in a certain sense are only fuel for the spark that enlivens and illuminates every authentic, I-Thou encounter. But maybe for others this just sounds like an argument for self-censorship.
3.
I’m wondering whether poetry might not serve as an outlet without which I, too, would feel terribly constrained. Growing up, I had the benefit of a stable and supportive family, where every creative effort, no matter how minor, received praise from one or both parents. But at the same time, we were (and are), like many WASPs, not much given to talking about our feelings. That’s not to say I didn’t emote much; far from it – I was a rage and self-pity junkie. I threw tantrums almost constantly up until the age of twelve, when I began to get good enough at writing poems that I could start channeling my affective energy into that instead.
And what is a poem, after all, if not an attempt to say what is otherwise unsayable? To pick a well-known example: if you want to tell someone you like them, but are afraid of making yourself too vulnerable by baldly saying so, what do you do but write a poem in their praise? Poetry allows us to elevate ordinary discourse, to turn our words into a gift. Writing at that level leads one to focus on something outside oneself. For me, writing is not and has never been about self-expression; I’m not even sure I know what that would entail. Even when I write in prose, my main motivation is to try and share my insights with other people. I’m not interested in anonymous publishing because I don’t think that my words have any value beyond whatever connections they help me forge with a reader.
4.
I must admit, the idea of writing in different, assumed personas or “heteronyms,” Fernando Pessoa-style, has some real attraction, adding another dimension to the game-like back-and-forth between author and audience. But otherwise, apart from the need to elude criticism-intolerant employers or censorious family members, I don’t understand why one would ever need a disguise more impenetrable than one’s given name. I’ve always had this sense that “Dave Bonta” was a completely arbitrary place-marker, and I guess that’s the primary reason why I don’t mind the thought of anyone finding the stuff I put up on the web. I honestly don’t think of it as mine in any essential way; a good poem belongs to itself. If someone tries to assert their own authorship of it, of course I’ll object. But if they tease me about writing it, I’m happy to join in. And if they want to lob brickbats, so much the better: there’s no writing so flawless that it wouldn’t benefit from a strong critique.
5.
I know the kinds of uncharitable things people say about each other behind their backs, and I assume that I must come in for a certain amount of that. On the other hand, I also assume that people have better things to do than to think or talk about me – and 98 percent of the time, I’m sure I’m right. Then I remember that, from 7th through 12th grade, I was more or less the class pariah, and it occurs to me that my outlook on being self-conscious may not be very helpful to anyone else. Basically, I just don’t give a shit whether anyone likes me or not. As long as I can keep churning out poems that please me, as long as I can keep finding excuses to immerse myself almost daily in the bliss of creation, I’m happier than I feel I have any legitimate right to be.
6.
I guess I’ve been influenced enough by my Christian heritage to believe that self-disclosure, confession, and vulnerability are valid, perhaps essential routes to spiritual understanding. To put it another way, it seems to me that whenever we buy into the modern materialist notion of the self as unique, independent, ideally impenetrable interior space, we are much more likely to forget the fragility of the rest of Creation and thereby participate in its abuse. In Christian terms, we go from the imitation of Christ to the imitation of Pilate. In Jewish terms, we resemble the smooth talker Aaron, ready to build a golden calf if our friends want us to, rather than the hesitant, tongue-tied Moses or the inspired Miriam. I very much fear that my shamelessness, thick skin and too-fluid words condemn me to ignorance of something I have little business even speculating about. My friends who, at first blush, strike me as being excessively wary of self-exposure, may in reality be close to some implausible quarry, some unicorn or behemoth, which I, through my heedless whistling and stomping about, have inadvertently frightened deep into cover.
7.
But poetry has taught me that disclosing one thing always entails concealing something else. To find is to lose, and vice versa; the eye remains invisible to itself. No single identity can encompass the mystery of who we are, whether as individuals or as nodes in social, political and ecological webs. Protecting privacy means, above all, preserving the freedom to become whoever we want. And a government that tries to assert the power to know every aspect of its citizens’ lives is one that, as we’ve seen, will stop at nothing to extract ultimately worthless confessions.
Restoring the words
I’m reading Paul Zweig. This is the twelfth poem in the third (“Eternity’s Woods”) section of his Selected and Last Poems, followed by my response. See here for details on this experiment in responsive reading.
One Summer Before Man
by Paul Zweig
Listen! The undergarments of the women
Are rustling OM. It is the Sanskrit
Of skin, the Hebrew of hair. . . .
[Remainder of poem removed 11-18-05]
* * * *
One Autumn Before Computers
A giant puffball bulges among
the dried stalks of goldenrod
like a misplaced hope.
I stuff it in my coat pocket & look
around for others, without success.
That evening, I chop its spongy cloud-flesh
into a sauce with clams.
Then, too, there was the spruce tree
a porcupine had recently girdled.
It stood in the dense center of a galaxy
of needles, some fallen pale side up,
some dark green – a pleasing blend.
Out at the feathery edge, a scattered pile
of hickory shells. I crouched there
tracing words with my finger
over & over in the soft dirt,
as if into the uncomprehending palm
of a young Helen Keller.
I try to imagine what it would be like
to write for such an audience:
one autumn before home computers,
on a Xerox machine at the university,
my father making a copy
of a copy
of a copy
until my poem rose from the page like mist.
I forget the point of the exercise, now –
something about the need to keep
the originals, maybe, or to write
as firmly as we could.
Or years before, at another college,
going with him into the library
after hours, to run off copies on
what must’ve been one of the very
first Xerox machines, enormous,
full of lights & noises –
the only thing stirring
among all those wordless books.
“Will it make a copy of me?”
I was five years old.
“Sure. Close your eyes.”
I remember the heat as its beam raked my face,
my mounting excitement
& the letdown that followed,
squinting at a piece of paper heavy
with drying ink. What would I have done
if, as I’d expected, the machine had given
birth to my identical twin?
Imagine someone with whom
deceit is impossible.
Thirty-five years later, I still recall
how the sky looked when we went
back out: fast-moving clouds
back-lit by an almost-full moon.
It was a revelation.
“Clouds at night!” I whispered,
taking one last glance behind me
into the shadows.
Window pictures
I want to say that the invention of window glass has led to the domestication of vision. This may seem like so much hyperbole, but in fact, windows have proven just as lethal as most other efforts to make the great outdoors less threatening or more easily accessible. It’s estimated that at least 100 million wild birds are killed by collisions with windows and other human structures in North America every year. According to the Bird Conservation Network,
During daytime, birds often fly head-on into windows, confused by the reflection of trees or sky. This is a common occurrence even in suburbia at homes and glassy office campuses. All of these birds suffer head trauma and over half die.
There are various ways to try and combat this effect.
Recent research by ornithologists at the Field Museum of Natural History confirmed that simply turning off bright lights, closing blinds or pulling the drapes reduces bird deaths by 83%. Even not washing the windows during the migration months helps keep the reflective qualities low and, thus, can help reduce bird injury and death.
I haven’t washed my windows in years, and I feel damn good about that. I can look up from my computer in the late afternoon and enjoy the play of sun and shadows through the spicebush in my garden: shadows of clustered berries, shadows of wings.
The lone window on the northwest side of the barn is missing half its panes. I remember as a kid taking advantage of that fact more than once in my never-ending war against the woodchucks, resting the barrel of the .22 on the empty frame.
Here’s a view into the ground floor of the old chicken coop, where our chickens spent much of their time when the weather wasn’t conducive to foraging outside. The mixture of hay and chicken manure that remains can make a rich mulch, but I always have to sift it to remove the numerous shards of glass, all, I presume, the remains of previous windows.
I’m wondering whether the ability of windows to keep things in might confer certain environmental benefits to offset their hazards – for example, by making confinement more tolerable to otherwise rapacious domestic cats, not to mention by retaining heat. Maybe the shadow within the shadow knows. Or maybe I should just Ask Umbra.
One of the largest employers in the Tyrone area is a PPG (formerly known as Pittsburgh Plate Glass) factory specializing in the manufacture of the large back windows of automobiles. It’s amazing to me that engineers have figured out how to make curved glass that doesn’t distort one’s view out; a little over a hundred years ago, even flat window glass came out full of flaws and waviness. The glass castle that houses the PPG corporate headquarters – the most distinctive feature of the Pittsburgh skyline – symbolizes the dominance of glass in the Era of the Automobile. I look at the way the car window warps the house, the trees, the sky, and I think: this is what the angels must see of us – cocooned in our glass bubbles – if they exist.
The car is gone, the garage is empty. On days like this, one can envision what the end of cheap oil might mean: great societal upheavals and the loss of a dream of freedom based on personal mobility, yes, but also cleaner lungs and much clearer views. Forced to go about on foot, we might once again come to believe in the soul as the infinity that remains outside,* instead of some house-bound, transparent ghost.
All around me, as I snap this shot, white-throated sparrows are foraging and singing: Poor Sam Peabody, such a sweet and mournful tune. Play it again, Sam, I want to say. All those weeks of rain were easier than this painful blue.
__________
*From a translation of a poem by the great Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez entitled “Yes, If I Could Only Smash.”
Singing science
I’m excited by the theme for qarrtsiluni this month, “science as poetry.” This was the choice of the brand-new editors, Alison Kent and Maria Benet; I was pleased to be able to step aside and leave the blog in such capable hands. (Though I couldn’t resist a final, spur-of-the-moment post for the October theme on the death of Rosa Parks.)
Potential contributors having a hard time thinking of a topic need look no farther than the recent news that laboratory mice can sing (click on the link to hear recordings of the songs).
Scientists have known for decades that female lab mice or their pheromones cause male lab mice to make ultrasonic vocalizations. But a new paper from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis establishes for the first time that the utterances of the male mice are songs.
This finding, to be published Nov. 1 online by the journal Public Library of Science Biology, adds mice to the roster of creatures that croon in the presence of the opposite sex, including songbirds, whales and some insects.
“In the literature, there’s a hierarchy of different definitions for what qualifies as a song, but there are usually two main properties,” says lead author Timothy E. Holy, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy. “One is that there should be some syllabic diversity–recognizably distinct categories of sound, instead of just one sound repeated over and over. And there should be some temporal regularity–motifs and themes that recur from time to time, like the melodic hook in a catchy tune.”
The new study shows that mouse song has both qualities, although Holy notes that the ability of lab mice to craft motifs and themes isn’t quite on a par with that of master songsmiths like birds.
“Perhaps the best analogy for mouse song would be the song of juvenile birds, who put forth what you might call proto-motifs and themes,” he explains. “It’s not yet clear whether singing conveys an advantage to male mice during courtship, as it appears to do in birds.” …
“Studying this kind of response in mice lets us model higher-level tasks such as pattern recognition and learning in a brain where the neuroanatomy is much simpler than it is in humans,” he explains. “The idea is to help us lay a foundation on which we can eventually construct a very concrete understanding of how these tasks are accomplished in the human brain.”
Will science someday be able to explain what poets and musicians cannot: the source of inspiration? I’m not holding my breath.
At any rate, I already have a different idea in mind for this theme, so I offer the above story al que quiere. See the qarrtsiluni sidebar for the slightly expanded submission guidelines.
Sacrifice
I’m reading Paul Zweig. This is the eleventh poem in the third (“Eternity’s Woods”) section of his Selected and Last Poems, followed by my response. See here for details on this experiment in responsive reading.
The Art of Sacrifice
by Paul Zweig
Our breath on the altar is offered in love.
The fuck-you we smile is offered in love.
[Remainder of poem removed 11-18-05]
* * * *
Sacrifice
The yogi who fears the little death of ejaculation
treats every release of his semen as a sacrifice.
Beyond the bliss of union, he seeks power:
flight; perfect foresight; invisibility;
the ability to possess a body
as the gods do, lording it over the tongue.
He chants religious verses as he comes,
oh light, oh ether.
There are no magic powers, there is no little death,
there is only a letting-go – however fleeting –
of that death-grip in which we hold
our precious ones & zeros,
Shiva, Gauri.
In the half-light, half-dark of dawn,
headlights on the new highway
outshine the moon that hangs full in the cleft
they used to call Skytop,
oh father-face offered into the mother-face.
Beyond building highways, the engineer seeks
a world that yields and merges
with the flawless model.
But moving the mountain laid open
countless veins of pyrite.
That rent web of fool’s gold
now bleeds acid into two trout streams,
svaha.
In color
Is it possible to take an uncliched photo of autumn color? Probably not, but I thought it might be fun to try. I found this rosette of red oak leaves on a foot-high tree, an example of deer bonsai. If its leading buds are destroyed too many years in a row, a seedling can forget how to grow straight and divert all its energies to crawling and twisting, the same as if it were growing near the tree line. At least it doesn’t make a virtue of its extremity and call it civilization.
In a year of otherwise drab and extremely late color, when the blueberry and huckleberry bushes turn, the powerline right-of-way becomes the best destination for fall foliage on the mountain. The same species grow abundantly in the woods, but their foliage is sparser there, and far less likely to catch low-angled sunlight.
After the recent rains, a couple of small, woodland pools reappeared for the first time since early June. I remember the clumps of wood frog eggs I found there in early April, and how after weeks without a drop of rain, the last, saucer-sized puddles seethed with tadpoles, like alphabet soup reduced to nothing but the Qs.
Views and pictures of views are the stuff of real boredom for me. But I liked how, with a rockslide in the foreground and the wooded Allegheny Front behind, the late afternoon sunlight lent a certain charm to the cemetery-like arrangement of mobile homes in the middle distance. For the first time, I was able to look at these houses without immediately thinking of the burning cross incident that occurred there a few years back, someone’s idea of a practical joke on his new, African-American neighbors.
I guess last Tuesday’s surprise snow shower gave me my best shot at an uncliched take on autumn. For some reason it almost killed the camera, though. Perhaps, despite my protective umbrella, a flake or two landed on a sensitive spot. Right in the middle of a busy morning, with everything still fully attired in summer and fall fashions, here comes winter, boldly exposing herself to my poor little one-megapixel camera. It stopped working for four days after that, heedless of my frustration at my inability to get a picture up.
In slough time
I’m reading Paul Zweig. This is the tenth poem in the third (“Eternity’s Woods”) section of his Selected and Last Poems, followed by my response. See here for details on this experiment in responsive reading. I’ll remove Zweig’s poems after a week or so to prevent egregious copyright infringement.
Hope
A stalk of yellow weed isolated in sunlight;
The tinge eastward toward Queens over tarred rooftops.
A wake furls slantwise across the empty river . . .
[Remainder of poem removed 11-06-05]
* * * *
The Catch
We were playing hide-&-seek. At the last moment,
I dove under a black rubberized tarp
that had been lying out back for several months.
I heard her finish the count & come looking,
rounding the corner of the house on rapid feet.
The tarp rustled from my heavy breathing.
A beetle made a racket
burrowing out from under from my right ear,
which was pressed against the ground.
She ran past, the beetle wiggled free
& everything grew still.
After a while, I heard the approach of slow footfalls.
This time, I held my breath as if
my life depended on it. The steps came up
to the edge of the tarp & stopped.
“Nobody under there,” I heard her say.
Is it better to fish without luck,
or to stretch a net & accept the inevitable by-catch?
The silence after that second attempt
has yet to end. From time to time,
a harvestman runs over my carcass on seeing-eye legs.
What mountain is this, I start to wonder,
keeping the smooth sky from a tangled earth?
__________
For bycatch, see here. For an excellent, brief essay on harvestmen, see here.
Poetry kicks philosophy’s ass
“Hence, at the basis of the concept of self-understanding lies the fact that all dogmatic assumptions are dissolved by the inner self-production of reason, so that at the end of this self-construction of the transcendental subject it is totally transparent to itself.”
HANS-GEORG GADAMER (discussing Fichte, Hegel and Husserl in an essay called “Heidegger and Marburg theology”)
” . . . the glass house
of wit . . . ”
JOHN HAINES (“Meditations on a Skull Carved in Crystal”)