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more on mist

I have been reading Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse and yesterday evening I came across this passage:

It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrational tenderness thus (she looked at that long steady light) as for oneself. There rose, and she looked and looked with her needles suspended, there curled up off the floor of the mind, rose from the lake of one’s being, a mist, a bride to meet her lover.

Naturally I wondered if this was the same mist Kafka writes about not being able to expel from his head. He says that no one will want to lie there with him in those clouds of mist. Woolf’s speaker, Mrs. Ramsay, is troubled by this mist, by her inner life. She is at odds with it, and feels uncomfortable when her husband witnesses her in the throes of it:

Had she known that he was looking at her, she thought, she would not have let herself sit there, thinking. She disliked anything that reminded her that she had been seen sitting thinking.

And yet Mrs. Ramsay’s inner life seems extremely rich and rewarding. She maintains a special relationship with the third stroke of the Lighthouse beacon (the long steady light she refers to in the first quoted passage above):

Watching it with fascination, hypnotised, as if it were stroking with its silver fingers some sealed vessel in her brain whose bursting would flood her with delight, she had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!

Her husband sees a beauty emanating from her while she is in this ecstatic state and feels he cannot approach or interrupt her, and yet his interpretation of her state is flawed:

She was aloof from him now in her beauty, in her sadness. He would let her be, and he passed her without a word, though it hurt him that she should look so distant, and he could not reach her, he could do nothing to help her.

The novel clearly portrays Mrs. Ramsay and Mr. Ramsay as being at odds with both themselves and each other. She snatches moments to wade into the mist of her mind and yet feels guilty about her indulgence, not wanting her husband to see her in such a state. Mr. Ramsay, on the other hand, mistakenly interprets this state as distress or sadness. Perhaps he cannot conceive of his wife wanting time to think to herself? Either this underlines a fundamental misunderstanding between the two, bitterly lampooning a superficiality characteristic of many societal interactions (even among spouses), or it lays bare what Kafka concluded, that the mist itself prevents the necessary connection from being made between two people. This connection being one that would allow sharing of one’s most private inner ecstasies with another.

One theory I’ve considered is that the mist may not be translatable into language. Perhaps that is the problem. And yet, the mist may also be related to Jung’s collective unconscious; it may be the shared ecstasy we all feel from time to time, something primal that humans have always known but are unable to adequately express to each other. If that is the case, we may indeed share that connection, but only by sensing it in each other, not by communicating it with words.

7 Comments

by sean on December 18, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in amateur anthropologist flies into the sun, archetype flies into the sun, carl jung, collective unconscious, franz kafka, mist, philosophastering, senex, the antidote is inside all of us, theories, this is the explanation of a tuesday, tuesdays are generally neutral, virginia woolf

Posted by sean on December 18, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/12/18/more-on-mist/

digging in the shade of the vowel tree

Sylvia Plath wrote of
intolerable vowels
entering her heart
but what of ruthless
consonants headed
to our brains.

We all know about a-e-i-o-u and sometimes y. They may be intolerable but their numbers are small. And they are more easily made to do our bidding. The consonants, in contrast, are legion and their rigidity stifles. Perhaps the only way to harness their true power is to one-by-one start taking them away.

Anna Kavan wrote:

I had only learnt how to be friends with shadows; it might be too late to learn the way of friendship in the sun.

Friendship in the sun is a mirage. The way to it is false. The sun fades color and one day it will kill us all. Shadows make easy friends: we pass through them as they do through us. Few stay long. It is their nature. Sometimes it feels like it is in all our natures to expand and contract, pull away and grow close, like a squeezebox played by a jittery ghost.

Kafka wrote:

No one will want to lie in clouds of mist with me, and even if someone did, I couldn’t expel the mist from my head.

This gets at the heart of the problem, I think. One feels an isolation and maybe a desire to connect, sometimes even a desperate mania. But who can share a dreamy solitude? By definition, no one. And if it was at all even possible, the mist remains. How could we find each other. How could one’s dream self operate in reality? The pilot seat in your head is unlike the one outside of it. Out there, we cannot twist the knobs, adjust the instruments without consultation, without repercussions, without the sun blinding us. In the shadows, the mist, these difficulties melt away.

Jung wrote:

A man can hope for satisfaction and fulfillment only in what he does not yet possess; he cannot find pleasure in something of which he already had too much.

Yikes, Carl, that’s bleak, even by my admittedly generous standards. In fairness, on the next page of Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Jung also states: “The needs and necessities of individuals vary. What sets one free is for another a prison.” So I guess one could argue that for some people overindulgence sets them free, although I don’t think that’s his point with the former quote. I think it is about anticipation. Jung is talking about this concept in the context of the development of analytical psychology, and yet it stands out in the text as such a sweeping statement. But I don’t think this aphorism or whatever you want to call it can be universally applied. Certainly competitive eaters don’t find pleasure in the 18th hot dog in a row that they’ve shoved down their throats. But can Jung honestly think that attaining the love of another person does not lead to satisfaction and fulfillment? I mean, I will grant him that unrequited love is an exquisite thing, and possibly more intense on the whole than many long-term relationships. But no satisfaction and fulfillment for those in love? I don’t know, maybe he is not including love or other emotions here. Maybe he is referring strictly to material things, in which case I willingly concede his point.

Édouard Levé wrote:

The full weight of depression comes on between 1-5 PM, particularly when I am home by myself. Mornings and night are more filled with promise.

Filled with promise. Is that what we are after? Moments filled with promise? Is it merely the anticipation we crave, what Jung says we can find satisfaction and fulfillment in? Anticipation can be tantalizing, I’ll admit. But how. How can we be satisfied with mere promise. Inherent in promise is a pledge to fulfill at some point in the future, not at the moment of the promise. Like an IOU. Is it the step we take to accept the promise that is meant to satisfy? Is it the mental and/or emotional trust fall we allow ourselves to take? If so, what of broken promises. Do those negate the previous gain in fulfillment? Well, do they, Jung? If he were here, I’d have more than a few questions for him.

Levé also wrote: “Above a certain height I like what I see. Below it I don’t.” I suppose we can read this on a literal or a metaphorical level. What is the certain height. And is it a chronological point, a philosophical one, a spiritual one. Who knows. I think we can safely say, though, that whatever the certain height represents, it changes between individuals. Remember how Jung said what sets one person free is another person’s prison. Some people don’t like what they see above a certain height, while others crane their necks for a peek. Some spend their lives craning for that view, but some are content to not look. They don’t want to know…they look away in fear, shame, embarrassment, whatever.

So what is the conclusion. Is Kafka’s mist the same as Carson’s foam? Sometimes it’s a strain to make all the connections. Certainly reading and writing are key decoder rings. Endless battles, ceasefires, sneak attacks, and truces with the vowel and consonant armies. And maybe the ladder stretches high enough to see above the mist. I think others have ladders high enough, too. If we squint hard enough we can probably see each other, mouths flecked with foam, across the scorched battlefield strewn with bloody words and mangled sentences. Hello there! I do not have rabies. I am merely seeking the sublime. Perhaps you’d care to meet in the mist and discuss for a few moments. I’ll be waiting.

5 Comments

by sean on December 17, 2012 • Permalink

Posted by sean on December 17, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/12/17/digging-in-the-shade-of-the-vowel-tree/

news from dream life

Last night I had a dream where, in answering someone’s question, I referred to a place that to my knowledge only exists in my own dream life. The place is a park with a campground that was the setting for an epic dream of many months before. This is the first time I can recall this happening and I woke up feeling exhilarated over this advancement in my dream explorations. I think it represents real progress. I have been reading Anna Kavan’s book Sleep Has His House at night before I go to sleep and I now wonder if it is influencing my night-time life.

mystery of the annes

Question. Do all the Annes mean something? For many years now, I’ve been adding Annes to my favored author list. It all started with Annie Proulx (AP) and her novel The Shipping News. I moved on from that novel to reading most of her other fiction, both short and long. AP is primarily a Western writer, and her characters are often fringe types, loners, roamers, outsiders. I read her novel That Old Ace in the Hole when I lived only a few hours from the Texas Panhandle region where it was set. I read a lot of her fiction when I lived out there in North Texas and it helped me a little bit to understand my own place as a loner in what I saw at the time as an unforgiving open land.

When I moved here to Baltimore, I started reading Anne Tyler (AT) novels on a sporadic basis. I’ve probably read about 10 of them by now. I wanted to read AT because her books are usually set in Baltimore. I’d never lived anywhere before that also happened to be the specific setting for a writer’s books. It added a special extra thrill to the reading. AT’s characters, much like AP’s, are often loners and oddballs. Often in her books these loner oddballs find other loner oddballs to be with, although not without encountering much difficulty along the way. Reading her books always puts me in a strange headspace, yet one that also seems familiar because of all the Baltimore references. I enjoy this.

The third literary Anne to enter my life was Annie Dillard (AD). I fell in love with her writing immediately. I began a mass consumption project. I’ve read most of her books by now, although I’m saving a few for the future, mostly because AD has alluded to the probability that she won’t write another book (too much reading to do, says she). The ones I’m saving are her memoir and her two books of poetry. I started the memoir once but it didn’t click. The same thing happened with her first novel, The Living. I tried hard to get through it but eventually realized I was bored and didn’t care what happened to the characters. That’s always a sign for me that the book isn’t working and it’s time to put it down. I thought maybe AD’s fiction just wasn’t for me, but then The Maytrees came out and proved me wrong. Still, it is her nonfiction that captivates me most. I know I will be rereading much of it, despite my general tendency not to reread books.

Now along comes Anne Sexton (AS) and Anne Carson (AC). I’ve read more of AC than AS at this point, and I can say that I’m already enthralled with the former while still plumbing the depths of the latter. What I like most about AC is her mixing of genres. A book of hers can contain poems, essays, opera librettos, screenplays, and various bits of unclassified text. I get the sense that she does not force herself into formats that her thoughts don’t want to go. As the writing flows, it begins to take form. None of this, I’m going to sit down and write a poem now. Despite the intimidation I feel at her stunning intellectual prowess, her writing still feels liberating and accessible to me. It feels like reading an academic treatise but without the formal constraints that usually come with such writing. She pulls from so many disparate sources and ties it all together so it makes perfect sense, although often only if I read it closely.

So what is it about the Annes?

Other inputs: My sister was born an Anne and now goes by Annie. She reads a lot. When I first moved to this city my best friend was dating an Anne. I had never seen him so happy. I thought they might make it. But sadly they did not.

Anne is the French form of Anna, which is a form of Channah (or Hannah), a name used in the Latin and Greek Old Testament. In Hebrew the name Channah means ‘favor’ or ‘grace,’ or more specifically, ‘He (God) favors me’. The Book of Luke, in the New Testament, mentions a prophetess Hannah who recognized the child Jesus as the Messiah. Anna became a popular Western Christian name during the Middle Ages because of Saint Anna, the mother of the Virgin Mary. Anne is still a popular name in France. In England it is also commonly spelled Ann. Various forms of the name appear in most Western and Eastern European nations, as well as Russia.

My aunt’s name is spelled Ann, and she is the daughter of Irish immigrants.

I’m sure we all recognize patterns in our lives. I try not to ignore them. Sometimes they are ones yawning behind me I want to avoid in the future so I try to learn from them. Sometimes they are merely part of life’s effluence. And sometimes they appear to be mystical messages encrypted and in need of decoding. I feel like I am in constant search of a decoder ring.

7 Comments

by sean on November 16, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in anne carson, anne sexton, anne tyler, annes, annie dillard, annie proulx, names, place, reading, repetition, swirly patterns, where are all the decoder rings, writers

Posted by sean on November 16, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/11/16/mystery-of-the-annes/

possibility of foam

If buried all but traceless in the dark in its energy sitting, drifting within your own is another body—Anne Carson, “Seated Figure With Red Angle (1988) by Betty Goodwin”

There is something about living in a city, and it has to do with the surroundings being artificial, constructed by humans. Here we sever ourselves from real nature. Here what nature there is persists under duress—it may even seem to be a thriving minority, but it will always be the minority. The muted signs of seasonal change vagulate. The constant reminders of the hubris of so-called civilized people swarm in smothering tones. Callousness blankets us. The automobile serves as master and slave. I am concerned.

There is another body inside of my body.¹ And it is drifting. And it is all but traceless in the dark. Whose body is it. Is it mine. Or does it belong to someone quite different.

It is an unfortunate thing to recognize that you are not one who is meant to live in such close proximity to other humans. And yet here you are, aren’t you.

John Stabb from Government Issue sang:

In that comfortable rut again
Goals for the talking man
Outside lies a presence
But a lonely spirit’s walking rut

And he can’t get out
Man in a trap

Deeper things getting direct
Empty social life’s a wreck
Weather and insects tonight
Happiness in black and white

And he can’t get out

Sometimes we come to embody the lyrics we listen to in our youth. This is neither here nor there. It is life. I think we’re all a little bit surprised when we get there. Or here.

Let’s find more creative ways to fail. And write about those ways in more creative ways.

Anne Sexton wrote:

The silence is death.
It comes each day with its shock
to sit on my shoulder, a white bird,
and peck at the black eyes
and the vibrating red muscle
of my mouth.

Anne reminds us that silence can be as menacing and intrusive as noise. A reminder that we are all out here flailing about. And some of us don’t make it. Like Anne herself. Some of us sink beneath the surface, our lungs filled with shards of the little brittle things in life. The ones that drifted beyond our reach, slow or quick, only to be breathed back in with fatal heaving breaths.

Recently I spent a fair amount of time writing up a review of a show I went to the other night but I lost interest. It suddenly seemed unimportant. Literally as I was writing it, I felt the words spelling out into nothingness. The only point of interest remaining when I finished was a question: What do we want from our rock stars? And do we even want them to be stars? I don’t go to see live music much anymore and rock music even less so. But this question startled itself into my mind and would not leave. Music once loved can be tainted. And how a band presents itself to its audience can either win me over or leave me cold. These are the lessons I learned. Outside the womb can be harsh.

There is foam² spilling out here. As winter prepares to wrap us in its icy sharp arms, I am awash with foam. And it may never dry.

___________________________________________________

1. See also: this post

2. For more on foam, see Anne Carson’s essay “FOAM (Essay with Rhapsody): On the Sublime in Longinus and Antonioni,” originally published in Conjunctions 37 and reprinted in the book Decreation (2006).

4 Comments

by sean on November 13, 2012 • Permalink

Posted by sean on November 13, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/11/13/possibility-of-foam/

tuesdayish

On Walking Backwards

My mother forbad us to walk backwards. That is how the dead walk, she would say. Where did she get this idea? Perhaps from a bad translation. The dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us. They have no lungs and cannot call out but would love for us to turn around. They are victims of love, many of them.

–Anne Carson, Plainwater

Couples who walk around with their hands in each others’ back pockets proclaim a clear statement, I think. And that statement is, we don’t mind you watching us grab each others’ butts.

There are ghosts. And they haunt us. This can happen in nontraditional ways.

People work harder to make their lives easier.

At work we now have the same meeting every week, but every other week it is called something different. This, I believe, is some kind of trick.

I am waffling over something, and this makes me hungry for waffles.

Sometimes a piece of mail can frighten you. Imagine the worst, then wait awhile to open it. I don’t advise this.

Plans make me nervous. Once I’ve made a plan or been made aware of a plan that involves me, I often secretly wish for it to unravel. I’m not sure why.

Open statement to any UK policy-makers landing here as a result of a Google search:

Please don’t cull the badgers.

lunchtime trip to the ♥library♥

My weekend looms…

4 Comments

by sean on October 18, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in anne carson, anne sexton, books, fiction, libraries, lydia davis, mary ruefle, poetry, preparations for the cold months ahead begin with the laying in of books, reading, when i couldn't find one of these books on the shelf the person at the humanities desk asked me if i knew how to find books using call numbers, why are books held in storage when there is ample shelf space, and why is the catalog inaccurate - i am so glad i turned down a job there

Posted by sean on October 18, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/10/18/lunchtime-trip-to-the-%e2%99%a5library%e2%99%a5/

enter title here

As a child, Ravel’s Bolero touched me deep. Something about the repetitive melody building as it does to a climax. The drumming particularly struck me, so primal, stripped-down, staccato. And isn’t life so like this for a bit, at least. A crescendo to a climax, but then…a plateau. And what then, what then. The topography of the flat plain bewilders. The plain en plein air. The air all comes at you at once, with no rises to slow it, or alter its trajectory. This tundra is of our own making, sculpted and smoothed over time. Or is it. Maybe it is a figment of a voracious imagination, one that eats a life up one slavering daydream at a time. Perhaps this merits further examination. Or not. This isn’t some academic treatise. No one peer-reviews this blog, that I know of.

I drove past the flea market today and they had a new professional sign installed atop their sign pole. It read: Internet Sweepsteaks. I remembered a couple miles down the road that I had my camera but I did not turn around. Hence I can offer no proof of this gaffe.

I have a memory of lying on my bed as a child, listening to Bolero come through the wall from the hi-fi in the living room. But let’s not get all Proustian here.

I chased a bird today. I said I would not do that but I did. So I didn’t find it. I did find model airplanes. And in one of my phagocytic daydreams I shot them down with my model machine gun. A kingfisher objected to the model airplane. Well, of course. It flew overhead, calling in fussy agitation. In my head I am flying a model fighter jet from the cover of a waterbush. My jet is fitted with tiny model machine guns operated by tiny model soldiers. My tiny model army shoots down all the other model planes and I continue birding in peace.

Someone is singing fake opera down the block. This is unfortunate. I am listening to Nine Inch Nails for some unknown reason. Ah, I remember now. I came upon a NIN album in the car’s CD player. I turned it up loud as I drove slowly down The Avenue with the windows lowered, like I was 17 again. So I’m listening to that first NIN album now, because that was a big one back in the day, I won’t say which day because we’ve got to keep our occasional secrets haven’t we. And I’m trying to drown out the fake opera, but it is persistent fake opera and it refuses to be put down. Also, I’m finding that I’m not really into this album now, especially when he kind of fake-raps. In fact, I would postulate that this was a grave stylistic error on his part. But we all do things in our youth that we later come to regret. And so, perhaps this fake opera singer is also young and will undoubtedly come to regret the torture she put us all through one late September day.

And to paraphrase a sample from a Man or Astroman? song, “well, that’s all over now.” I took a break, between last paragraph and this, during which various events occurred. For example, I watched an episode of the new BBC Sherlock Holmes series. Oh, and I went to the arboretum with Farley. Now it’s just crickets, I’m afraid. Crickets and slugs, as per usual. Plinking out some tunes on my alphabet piano.

I enjoy aggressive music as much as I enjoy quiet melancholic music. It’s essential, you see, to achieve a balance. To be stale, it’s the yin and the yang. But really, each person has its halves. Call it what you will. Semantics notwithstanding, let us not deny our dark sides, or for that matter, our light ones. I embrace both, though it may not be obvious to the general populace. But I am not concerned with them. I am concerned with touching the thing inside. It requires a delicate touch. And it is finicky in what type of delicate touch is required.

I used to go to parties. In my experience that was a mistake. End of story.

I am now listening to Teeth Mountain, a defunct local band whose tribal drumming and frenetic guitars I enjoy. Again with the drumming. One or two classically trained musicians were involved, I believe. Now said musicians play in another band, Horse Lords. I am interested in musical noise that transports one’s headspace into alternate galaxies. I support purveyors of such racket. I support many things, quietly and unobtrusively.

This may be over?

5 Comments

by sean on September 22, 2012 • Permalink

Posted by sean on September 22, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/09/22/enter-title-here/

la palabra o la muerte

Cigar-smoking guy smoked a cigar yesterday and today, not that I’m counting. He was with his lady friend. They own that patch of grass between the black locusts. Someone had taken their other seat yesterday. Too sunny for that spot, anyway. My black socks heated up in the sun, creating hot bands around my ankles. It wasn’t pleasant. Yesterday cigar-smoking guy smoked his cigar while his lady friend was present. Today he waited for her to leave. Yesterday I was behind them as they walked to the grassy patch. Or rather he rode his bike extremely slowly next to her as she walked. From experience I know this is annoying, on both sides. I almost intervened because clearly I know best.

In his essay in the Spring issue of Zone 3, Don Lago relates a story about Aldo Leopold that I already knew. It’s about how as an eager young man Leopold partook in a hunting party that came upon a female wolf swimming across a stream to her overjoyed pups. The men in the hunting party, including Leopold, joyously opened fire on this happy reunion scene. When they approached the dying wolves, Leopold poked with his gun at the she-wolf, who snarled back, not surprisingly. Leopold related seeing a “fierce green fire” fading from her eyes. It was at this moment that Leopold began to understand the tenets of what would become known as ecology. See, when you kill all the natural predators in an ecosystem, you’ve got two problems: overpopulation of prey animals and the resulting carnage on the ecosystem. Hunters are only so eager to step in and blast away at the defenseless woodland creatures, but it’s too big a vacuum for them to fill. Besides, one could argue that there are also too many humans today, and so where are our predators. Perhaps they are still yet to come. The hunters become the hunted. Oh yes, one day…

So the gulls cried and the orbs ate their raucous lunches on the deck at McCormick & Schmick’s™. Many bees pollinated a flowering bush. They briefly paused over me but found I had no pollen to offer. The water taxi ferried three people somewhere. Someone nearby smoked a cigarette and disparaged someone else over the phone. He had big hair and used nasty words. I was happy for the protection of my bee-laden bush.

Director man’s leaving. Oh well. No shock to this crusty cynic. No one bought his crying act at the meeting. What is there to cry over when you found your dream job in the south of France? No one is buying what you’re selling, buddy. No one. So take your act elsewhere. That’s right. Take it. And now the feeding frenzy begins. Fight to the top. Power and money. The nonprofit world is no different. There are humans here, of course. And where there are humans there is corruption, lies, ruthlessness, greed, manipulation, spitefulness, exploitation for personal gain, false faces. Savor the flavor…of hufu.

Meanwhile, the first cases of Coca-Cola in over 60 years will soon be arriving in Myanmar. Thank goodness the madness has ended. Soothe those parched, ragged throats with America’s sweet nectar, high fructose corn syrup, the great symbol of liberty and freedom. Drink it down, Burma, and maybe one day you’ll be as fat as us. Coke executives everywhere should be proud. Now if they could just crack that North Korean market (not much hope for Cuba, as long as the Castros are around). I’m sure they’re salivating at the thought. Can you imagine the bonuses? The high-fives? The unabashed corporate nudity?

All axehandle hounds aside, though, I’m chopping down a tree. I’m a cat in a paper bag. I’m fighting nothing and nothing is fighting back. No one wants to be a cart on the track of an amusement park ride. The tunnel of love. The tunnel of death. The tunnel of life. Is it shrinking up ahead or widening. I can’t tell. Turning and turning in the widening gyre is what Yeats said. A waste of desert sand, he said, a shape moving its slow thighs, in the shadows of the indignant desert birds. What rough beast, indeed.

2 Comments

by sean on September 11, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in aldo leopold, big hair, cigars in the city, coca-cola, corporate nudity, ecology, high fructose corn syrup is the answer not 42, horror of humanity, hufu, human behavior, human nature, i feel vagulous don't you, it's the end of the song play it again, one hundred beers of solitude, orbs en plein air, poetry, predators, william butler yeats

Posted by sean on September 11, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/09/11/la-palabra-o-la-muerte/

the vagulator’s map

I want to be somewhere unfamiliar and yet I know it is merely a swirly chipped vision I see in my head. Outside a stone house at dusk, looking down the hillside at a copse of trees, wood smoke trailing from the chimney to the violet sky above, a pungent scent to breathe in, to savor. Gravel crunches underfoot, a lantern swinging from a hand slants yellow light across the path, scrape of the gate latch, a figure strides into darkness, never to return.

Canadian art house films don’t help, the lush scenery a starring role in itself, stealing the limelight, all humans fade to flat. I care less about what they are doing to each other, probing each other with words and organs, wrecking lives, all-too-familiar narrative arcs, but what about the waves forming across the lake, lapping onto the stony shore, the way that mountain looms like a haunted face over us all. These things matter. They outlast flesh.

I like words that start with ‘wood’. A woodnote is a song or call of a woodland bird. A wood nymph is a nymph of the forest. I would imagine a wood troll is a troll of the forest, or perhaps an orchard. A wood pussy is informal for a skunk. Wood sugar is xylose.

There is a bird (actually two of them) called a wryneck. These Old World species can twist their necks into unusual contortions. Perhaps they also demonstrate a dry sense of humor when relaxing amongst their bird friends and colleagues. I’d like to fancy myself a wryneck, but an old cycling accident prevents it.

In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf uses the phrase ‘vagulous phosphorescence’ to describe an old lady. Vagulous is a word that Woolf apparently made up (see p. 7 of this article), meaning ‘fanciful formation’. There is also a verb form, vagulate, meaning ‘to wander in a vague manner; to waver’.

In the woods today there were more birders than birds. The bird to birder ratio was not in my favor (and yet as I now review other reports online from that location today I see that two rarities were found, both of which would have been life birds for me…sigh). Even the typically less-traveled trails held women with feeder blobs secured to their midsections, guffawing young ones with canine friends, a full orchestra of humanity tuning up for the day’s symphony. And why not. The humidity broken, temperatures dipping to livable levels, cotton puffball clouds clotted a blue painted sky. Why not all converge in one spot.

I rose above it, literally, and found a Brown Thrasher. And an American Redstart. I need less input, more output. Rather, more filtered, structured input. Less information to influence, to make one waver. The vagaries of the vagulator, vacillating with vociferous vim and vigor.

In the port-a-john there was a violent-looking spider. It was perched calmly in the corner at seat level. This raises questions in my mind. Are spiders vindictive? Was that spider thinking I know you all hate me and think I’m horrifying so I will lurk here in this portable toilet until you sit down and then I will jump into your naked lap, possibly onto your private bits, scaring the living shit out of you and causing you to never use a portable toilet again? Was it thinking that? Or was it just thinking, damn, this sucks. I am stuck in this portable toilet. How am I gonna get out. Or was it thinking, I’m a spider, I’m a spider, I’m a spider. Or the abbreviated: spider, spider, spider. Or not thinking, just being its spider self, in the portable toilet, unaware of any special significance attached to its location or even its existence.

When you start researching things on the Internet you tend to see the exact phrasing used in Wikipedia articles repeated over and over, in blog posts, news articles, and ‘answer’ sites (which presumably exist for people who know how to get online and ask questions but don’t understand how to use a search engine). Take for example, the vapors (or vapours, if your people prefer the ‘u’), which is described in these exact terms in Wikipedia, as well as a million other places: “Vapors were considered to be the female equivalent to melancholy found in men.” So, really the movie I watched last night should have been called Vapours, not Melancholia. And who assigns gender to a planet, anyway. Of course the Earth is a she isn’t she and we have been legitimately raping her for years haven’t we. Maybe she will magically expel us all soon. Better get in your magic tepee, teepee, or tipi.

These are the days, the days we are living.

2 Comments

by sean on September 9, 2012 • Permalink