I got the urge to make a videopoem today — perhaps because the videopoetry site I curate, Moving Poems, is on hiatus until Monday. The soundtrack here is from suonho and licensed under a Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 license. (If you’re into making video or audio, The Freesound Project is an invaluable resource, “a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds.” Check it out!)
“The sudden spasm of wings”
Here, too, the air fills more often now with the sudden
spasm of wings— pausing at the junction for the light
to change, you wonder about metaphors,
about how starlings wheel in unison: at first,
a ribbon wound round and round the milky
breasts of hills, and then no more
than a tiny constellation stippling the sky;
how everything’s feathered by the rhythm
of its own wind, rising and falling
even after the gears have turned.
—Luisa A. Igloria
12.23.2010
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
Military-Industrial Perplex
The Swiss Navy spoon was famous for its lack of options. It rested forlornly beside the rusted submarine in Alpine dry dock as the nation’s strategic stockpiles of soup and tea ran out. Alas for the shrimp, now without bisque or ocean! Alas for the singing tea kettles robbed of their song! But the Swiss Navy spoon was used to extreme conditions. Its handle sported nothing but a toothpick & a dispenser of salt — or as the Secretary of the Navy liked to call it, instant sea. They had an arrangement with Nestlé to manufacture seven million more.
Heart and Shadow
Each day’s a letter
from the unknown.
Yesterday’s missive
came on a plate
of beaten silver.
Today, the hollows
brimming with shadow
are legible. The only
comfort, a fox
squirrel crossing the yard,
its tail a mellow flame
floating in its wake.
—Luisa A. Igloria
12.22.2010
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
Solstice meditation
I’ve always felt a little sorry for the sun because it cannot cast a shadow.
What does it have to remind itself of its own eventual death?
What would the henge builders say about a god who never eats and a people who no longer believe in sacrifice?
What would the ancestors make of our craze for the living dead?
Solstice
How do we know the brown creeper fishing
in the dark valleys of the walnut tree’s bark
could not tell this landscape
from the moon’s? Past midnight, we craned
our necks toward the heavens’ gathered dark
and saw the shadow-play of bodies
entering each other’s path: the brief
interruption and embrace of light
by dark and dark by light, the face
of one passing over the other when
they’re perfectly aligned. Then
without rancor, without remorse
the plumb line lifts— and it seems
the world is as it was before, though all
that has transpired has changed
even the color of the morning sky.
—Luisa A. Igloria
12.21.2010
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
Medicine Show (5): Shackleton’s Banjo
for R.R., who forwarded the story
Shackleton’s ship trapped in pack ice
went down without its banjo,
that “vital mental medicine” as
he called it, fished out
at the last minute & hauled along
to Elephant Island with the raffish
rest of the crew. Who included
one Leonard Hussey, meteorologist
& cut-up, hired for his quick wit
& repertoire of banjo tunes.
Picture them singing Stephen Foster
over slabs of seal meat, 22 men
confined to a hut with the one
remaining boat for a roof,
the southern stars swimming
over its hull. Picture webbed feet
frying in a pan on New Year’s Day
as the men hopped & shuffled
their cornball best. And years later
when Shackleton returned
with Hussey to the South Atlantic,
on the night he died he asked
for one last tune. Imagine that banjo
pale as a bloodless cheek,
the explorer’s watery gaze.
And in the silence that followed,
shadows from the oil lamp
continuing to dance.
Scherenschnitte
On otherwise lifeless
tansy stalks, a green sprig
and a single yolk-
colored bloom. Snowflakes
drift past: far-flung voyagers,
their exile brief, their nostalgia
cut and crystalled with salt.
Harbor me in cold earth,
my winter lover. I long
for home most of all
when small birds come
to forage for seed
and light sieves
through cracks
in stones.
—Luisa A. Igloria
12.18.2010
Borrowing lines from the Morning Porch entry for December 4.
Aubade, with Feathers
Because we’ve loved,
the soft calls and dark
moving forms of sparrows
at dawn seem covert,
even illicit— Furtive
like some joys
tasted on the wing,
keen in their retreat
as any bladed thing.
—Luisa A. Igloria
12.17.2010
Borrowing lines from the Morning Porch entry for December 17.
Religious but not spiritual
Listening to Poulenc’s Stabat Mater as I knead bread, I feel a sudden strong surge of affection for Christianity, which ordinarily I am neutral to or even vaguely repulsed by, depending on my mood. Poulenc makes me almost wish I were Christian, in the same way that the poems of Rumi, Hafez and Khayyam make me wish I were Muslim and the temples of Kyoto and Nara once made me wish I were Buddhist.
Perhaps it sounds shallow to admit that the purely aesthetic or sensory expressions of a religion make its traditions come alive for me, but I think the kind of gestalt such expressions can produce is central to the religious experience, at least as I understand it. Philosophically, I am a materialist and a naturalist: there is no room in my worldview for the supernatural. Something either exists, and is therefore part of nature, or it doesn’t. But although I’m unashamed of my agnosticism in regards to the specific truth-claims of any given religion, I still think of myself as religious, inasmuch as I share a basic set of intuitions and practices that I think can only be described as religious. “Spiritual,” with its overtones of woo, doesn’t do as good a job of characterizing such habits as:
- Relating to each entity and event as if it were unique and unrepeatable. Whereas in mathematics we are taught to treat sparrows (say) as interchangeable, so that they may be assigned some arbitrary value, from a religious standpoint, each sparrow is ultimately irreducible to any abstraction. Our generalizations fail to capture what is truest and most precious in the world.
- Cultivating wonder and awe, even at the patterns unveiled by the aforementioned generalizations (which are essential to scientific understanding). Instead of taking a dismissive attitude about reality — x is no more than y — a properly religious person marvels that x is no less than y.
- Remaining humble in the face of all we cannot know. To pick one example, I sometimes find myself echoing the Muslims and saying insh’allah (“God willing”) about any planned-for future event, because it just strikes me as unpardonably arrogant to state definitively that such-and-such will happen on such-and-such a date and time. There’s a presumptuousness about the way we post-modern consumer types relate to time and place that I find really disturbing.
- Gratitude for our own existence, a feeling of having been blessed no matter how dire the circumstances. Deists may have a hard time accepting that it’s possible to feel a generalized gratitude to whoever or whatever unknown forces may have brought us into the here and now, but trust me: it’s not only possible, but really quite easy!
- A kind of double vision that on the one hand sees the world as irredeemably broken or sinful or full of dukkha, but on the other hand sees it as already perfected, even paradisiacal — and tends to feel this latter vision is truer, if much more difficult to sustain. (In some religions, of course, this insight is reserved for those with more advanced training, or is restricted to mystical sects.) Thus though I believe strongly in evolution by natural selection, I feel no contradiction in also seeing the world as Creation, by which I mean: wondrous, unpredictable, and capable of exceeding itself at every turn.
- A willingness to suspend disbelief without necessarily submitting to the tyranny of creeds. I think it was Sam Johnson who memorably characterized the necessary precondition for appreciating secular works of fiction as the suspension of disbelief. In many indigenous belief systems, conscious clowning and make-believe are vital ways to keep the imagination from calcifying and preserve that sense of awe and wonder mentioned above (see “Laughing in Church“). “Holy fools” are honored in most traditions; some Sufis maintain that Nasreddin was the subtlest and wisest teacher who ever lived. There is a playfulness to the best theology.
- Feeling and showing deep respect toward other beings, to the point of seeing ourselves in them and placing their needs before our own. Empathy and compassion are at the root of ethical behavior. They’d be impossible without the humility and imagination already mentioned, but I don’t think they are simple corollaries, either. As social beings, I think we’ve evolved to respond in specific ways to the faces of others, as Levinas has argued.
- Cultivating a healthy skepticism about one’s own wants and needs.
People hostile to religion often seem to feel that if they can simply demolish the arguments for supernatural realities, that religious people will see the error of their ways. Their belief in the persuasive power of reason is touching, and smacks a little of superstition itself. I gather that modern psychology has found little evidence to suggest that people are ever persuaded by facts in this manner, unless they are already looking for things to justify abandoning beliefs that have become uncomfortable for other reasons. But be that as it may, I think critics sometimes fail to understand the appeal of religion in the first place — and fail to recognize the extent to which science does not and can never explain away the wonder and mystery at the core of existence. Whether organized religion is the best way to preserve this intuition is of course a completely different question.