Rage simmered and eventually overflowed in the library when I found only two of eight books on the shelf (Endgame and 77 Dream Songs [depicted as that glowing white brick at the bottom of the pile]). There was one Virginia Woolf book on the fiction shelves. One! Do you know how many the library owns? 22!! When I harassed the librarian about the library’s practice of storing books out of public view without indicating their status in the public catalog she shrugged off my indignation with some syrupy party line about the many hundreds of thousands of books in their collection and the sheer lack of space. “The general rule is if a book is five or six years old, chances are it will be in storage.” Yes, I understand the need for storage when you have such a meager number of shelves devoted to fiction in a library serving a population of over 600,000 people! But please, for the love of everything that is decent in the world, the least you can do is flag the books in the catalog that are not on the shelf! I cannot assume a book is in storage and go directly to the desk because what if it is not…then I look like an ass. Besides, the librarian in the Humanities Department always checks the shelf anyway. Not to mention the tragic loss of browsing capability. I don’t always know what books I want. I want to handle them, to caress their covers, to whisper sweet nothings into their bindings. When I brought this up it was met with a vacant stare and an empty smile. So much for a user-centric attitude.
the bus to paradise passed me this morning
Some people never stop talking about their plans. They are dead serious. Just you wait, they say, as if they know you are already silently doubting them. Or perhaps it’s because they’ve been scoffed at so frequently before. Regardless, their plans are solid. However, according to my own sloppy research conducted using keen observation techniques backed with unscientific predictive modeling, these people never actually go through with their plans. But…there are questions. Is it the constant talking about the plans that keeps them from hurling themselves off a bridge? Does the mere daily mention of these grandiose plans sweep away the dark cloud of futility hovering nearby? Are they in denial? Does the bus to paradise ever stop to pick up these passengers?
Other people keep quiet about their plans. They may mention them in passing on occasion. But there is no big to-do about it. When you ask them about their plans they are sometimes evasive. Rarely do they go into details. It’s as if they don’t want to curse the plans by talking too much about them. In the meantime, we grow complacent about these people. We expect them to remain in stasis. Sure, in the back of our minds nests that tiny kernel of knowledge that these people do indeed have plans. But the infrequent or even non-mention of the plans lowers our guard. Therefore, when these people suddenly follow through on their plans everyone is flabbergasted. How did they do it. We didn’t even know. She seemed so quiet. He kept to himself. And no, I’m not talking about mass murderers, although it’s possible the same theory applies. When did these people get on the bus? Were we not looking when they slipped out the door, paid their fare and boarded?
Are you ever overcome by a feeling of being left behind? All my life I have plunged forward with only brief stays in the morass. But the longer one lingers in one place, the more departures one suffers. Now, I certainly understand the value of living in the present and how that factors into this discussion. I’m not interested in plumbing those depths for the eight thousandth time. I also recognize that I am a person to whom satisfaction does not come easily. I’ve made a lot of progress in coming to terms with this. As part of the process, I’ve developed my own specialized coping skills (note: available for hire). This is what we’re supposed to do as we get older. Learn how to live the day-to-day. If we don’t, there is trouble.
I fear this has now veered off-course. I did not intend to get confessional. Let’s blame it on the bus, broadcasting its glowing word of promise above the driver’s head, passing me by as I neared my destination, teetering on the edge of the always tenuous cliff of Monday morning, hastily rigging together the tatters of my ragged hang glider, preparing once again for a flawless take-off into the unknown.
Posted by sean on November 19, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/11/19/the-bus-to-paradise-passed-me-this-morning/
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.
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).
Posted by sean on November 13, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/11/13/possibility-of-foam/
wonderland
[click image to read]
Who will remember
life beyond old age
We saw darkly— being
opposite reflections of ourselves
We knew an unnatural world
negative – passive – useless
Yet consider the possibility
of unreal life
Let us happen
in our own isolated
captivity
Some of us passed
into this fantastic
wonderland
Posted by sean on November 8, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/11/08/wonderland/
william james on melancholy
In this letter to his 13-year-old daughter, who was struggling while away at school, psychologist William James (older brother of writer Henry James) offered his insight into what he calls melancholy, or what I would characterize as mild depression, the severity of which still allows for effective self-initiated non-clinical therapy. While I think his description of depression is somewhat dated in parts—or perhaps it’s just his wording (e.g. arising from an organism’s generation of poison in the blood?)—I also think there is some merit to his advice. Here is the excerpt that struck me the most:
Now, my dear little girl, you have come to an age when the inward life develops and when some people (and on the whole those who have most of a destiny) find that all is not a bed of roses. Among other things there will be waves of terrible sadness, which last sometimes for days; and dissatisfaction with one’s self, and irritation at others, and anger at circumstances and stony insensibility, etc., etc., which taken together form a melancholy. Now, painful as it is, this is sent to us for an enlightenment. It always passes off, and we learn about life from it, and we ought to learn a great many good things if we react on it right. (For instance, you learn how good a thing your home is, and your country, and your brothers, and you may learn to be more considerate of other people, who, you now learn, may have their inner weaknesses and sufferings, too.) Many persons take a kind of sickly delight in hugging it; and some sentimental ones may even be proud of it, as showing a fine sorrowful kind of sensibility. Such persons make a regular habit of the luxury of woe. That is the worst possible reaction on it. It is usually a sort of disease, when we get it strong, arising from the organism having generated some poison in the blood; and we mustn’t submit to it an hour longer than we can help, but jump at every chance to attend to anything cheerful or comic or take part in anything active that will divert us from our mean, pining inward state of feeling. When it passes off, as I said, we know more than we did before. And we must try to make it last as short as time as possible. The worst of it often is that, while we are in it, we don’t want to get out of it. We hate it, and yet we prefer staying in it—that is a part of the disease. If we find ourselves like that, we must make ourselves do something different, go with people, speak cheerfully, set ourselves to some hard work, make ourselves sweat, etc.; and that is the good way of reacting that makes of us a valuable character. The disease makes you think of yourself all the time; and the way out of it is to keep as busy as we can thinking of things and of other people—no matter what’s the matter with our self.
As I mentioned above, this advice could be helpful even today for those who are suffering from mild depression. For the clinically depressed, of course, this advice is not sufficient. I’m also not sure how I feel about the way James lightly disparages those who embrace melancholy. On one hand, I can see his point, in that this outlook does direct inward and tends to stay there, where it can fester and corrode our “character” as he puts it. However, I also believe much can be learned from intense self-examination, and if our first instinct when feeling ourselves slip inward is to deny this and instead seek out others to “speak cheerfully” with, then I think we lose out on a possible learning experience. There is also the vast canon of visual art, music, and writing generated by so many melancholic individuals to consider. Were these people to put down their pens, brushes, and instruments whenever they started feeling blue so they could instead go chop some wood or chat with their neighbors, think of what a loss to the world that would be.
Maybe I am taking James out of context, or over-analyzing his advice; after all, he was trying to cheer up his daughter, not writing a treatise on depression. Unfortunately, he’s not here to clarify his thoughts. Interestingly, James himself suffered from chronic depression, and was at times suicidal. I wonder if he ever tried taking his own advice, or if his depression was too crippling to be helped by it.
Posted by sean on November 6, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/11/06/william-james-on-melancholy/
human dust
[click image to enlarge]
Erased from Ch. XXVIII of Nerves and Common Sense (1925) by Annie Payson Call
Audio of reading:
Posted by sean on November 5, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/11/05/human-dust/
the quiet, the quiet
Erased from Ch. VII of Nerves and Common Sense (1925) by Annie Payson Call
Some live in chronic time.
They do not find it,
they do not find it and they get ill.
It is really much the same,
keep a little stimulant
keep a bad habit.
We feel unnatural if we feel natural.
We are in it—but it is poison.
If a habit of
rocking or chattering
may feel unnatural and weird,
we wrench out these things
and yet the poisoning goes on.
When we are in a pretty bad way,
the worst know it.
I once lived in excitement,
dressed in excitement,
went to breakfast in excitement,
went about everyday excited.
Every event—little or big—was excitement.
Excitement over nothing.
We went deep in the woods and the mountains,
full of great powerful quiet.
When first there, excited about arrival,
excited about it,
but the night jumped in with torture.
I suddenly started up the trouble.
‘Oh, oh, the quiet! It is so quiet!’
Brain in whirl of excitement
felt pain when excitement touched it.
Posted by sean on October 30, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/10/30/the-quiet-the-quiet/
r___ed f__ling
Erased from Ch. III of Nerves and Common Sense (1925) by Annie Payson Call
Posted by sean on October 30, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/10/30/r___ed-f__ling/
sorry but this person is dead and could not answer*
In the calm before this storm Foxtrot yet wanders the sky, shining its central eye into my hidey-hole. State of emergency in a place riddled with emergencies, a place where every day is an emergency and we pack our kits in our minds just to make it to day’s end. Listening to songs about erasing it all and hearing the calm outside. And we wait for wind. And we wait for rain. But right now all I hear is you breathing, on the floor, in black-and-white pose.
What will come in another day. Another two. I don’t know. It’s a time of year I do know. It’s the beginning of another end. I used to not even think about it. There have been so many other moments. But can you name just one. I see so many in my mind but I doubt I even lived them. Spectators spectating, dissolving from others’ memories before they are even written across the cerebellum. And the brainstem builds our dreams. And it also tells us we are hungry. But can it know when we are hungry for our dreams?
A long time ago there was a band we went to see in the bottom of a funeral home or maybe just a church. This band’s name was Sarabellum. We huddled on the green carpet and watched and learned. This memory of Sarabellum remains imprinted, though not on my cerebellum, more like my cerebral cortex, likely the prefrontal. So many lobes, so little time.
Where is that liferaft of hair I built. I will need it when my basement floods. I will need it when we are gone and all that is left are the strands of your hair I find everywhere. I will need it to ride out the crescendoes of noise trying to drown out all other sounds. I will float on sound, on my raft, like Huck Finn, down the Mississippi metaphor. And maybe someone will sing this song for us when we are gone. Maybe when this song erases everything else, it will keep on playing and never stop. And it will be us and we will be it and that is all.
*Google Image Search leading here, where this image does not exist
Posted by sean on October 28, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/10/28/sorry-but-this-person-is-dead-and-could-not-answer/
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