Dreams in books

From the Polish Rider by Ben Lerner, out of the new Yorker that my mother sent me

I'd always been jealous of painters and sculptors and other visual artists, basically jealous of any artist who worked with something other than words. . . jealous because of my unsophisticated but unshakable sense that a work of visual art is more real, more actual than writing.  But maybe the comparative unreality of writing is precisely its advantage... powerful in part because they are so easy to reproduce, transmit. 

From the Tiger's Wife by Tea Obrecht

The forty days of the soul begin on the morning after death.  That first night before its forty days begin, the soul lies still against sweated on pillows and watches the living fold the hands and close the eyes, choke the room with smoke and silence to keep the new soul from the doors and windows and the cracks in the floor so it does not run out of the house like a river.  The living know that at daybreak the soul will leave them and make its way to the places of the past... and sometimes this journey will carry it so far so long that it will forget to come back.  For this reason the living bring their own rituals to a standstill... hoping that sentiment and longing will bring it home again, encourage it to return with a message, with a sign, or with forgiveness. 

You must understand this is one of those moments
What moments?
One of those moments you keep to yourself
...You have to think closely about where you tell it and to whom. Who deserves to hear it?

It does not take me three whole days to fall in love with her.  Only one.

Zora had been wearing a new perfume for two months now and I hadn't been able to get used to the smell of it yet-- but sitting there with the smoke in her hair and the day coming out of her skin... she came back to me completely.  Everything I had expected her to say she let fall between us, and I couldn't remember the answers I had been preparing. 

He was nine but he had known since the encounter in the smokehouse that he and the tiger and the tiger's wife were caught on one side of a failing fight.  He did not understand the opponents; he did not want to.

I live here

So jes and I have this whole bit where we live here.  And it's good for 101 purposes, mostly when we want to get pizza hut or whatever.  The point basically being that we are on the road for so long we can't use vacation thinking anymore, you know make every minute count explore the local culture etc because we would like die.  Like we need a different rhythm to last a year with it. 

So I had a great I live here moment this morning.  I was supposed to catch the light rail into Walthamston station, and I was walking there when passing the bus station I saw the 275 bus approaching, that goes to Walthamston.  Which I also know, with my mind. So I hail it and hop it.  You know, like someone who lives here.

We're hitting Hampton Court manor today - Henry 8 house.  Yesterday I spent like literally 6 hours in the British museum.  So you know I've done like almost half of one floor.  Sigh.  I don't even read the plaques it's endless. 

But I did hold another half a million year old hand axe.  The guy said it was older than homo sapiens, he thought homo habilis. 

And you know I went through the famous Egyptian wing and some of the Greek and all the Mexican stuff and it's nice they give a sort of shout out to the amateur collector intellectuals who started the whole concept of museuming with private collections. 

And then I went to the cirque de Elois.  This whole day on my own and the night as well.  I saw years ago cirque de Elois show Rain, which was themed on the mythology of water and so powerful, still my favorite cirque ever.  This one was like urban hip hop themed with a bit of a west side story, construction and building landscape themed.  This is less jacked into my personal passions but still the almost plot having choreography makes the cirque performance just that much more powerful.  And they resist the tropes of strong man act etc in favor of a whole show with a whole cast.  Loved it. 

Oh and did I say we scored Margaret Atwood tickets and that I went to a book store and found that David Mitchell has a new joint out? Life is good.

Poem- The source

So those of you who have known me for 20 years may remember that I've done like four versions of this poem with different content but the same structure.   This latest one was semi inspired by the Egyptian exhibition at the British museum.  It's probably the version I'm happiest with so far

The Source

...Of the Nile
Between you and your God, a font of marble
A coffin of soil,
In jars, rounded as the body
They keep the sacred waters, secret as secretions
The body germinates in its sepulchre
All fourteen lost pieces
Reunited through devotion.
Who would sieve the whole of Egypt for you?
Who would know what to do?
Who would water you each day for a year?
And light an oil lamp for each night?
365 nights
14 pieces molded together
Til sweet grain breaks into the sweet light,
Uncountable.
The fruit of your labors
Is rebirth on the waters
They fill your body
To soaking.

...Of all my troubles
It's one or the other
Electric or mire
Spontaneous generation or a quicksand sunk with smothering fears
Worse than tears
Certainty murky and unmoored
Sinking in the silt of emptiness
If no one sieves the burning sand
My fourteen bodies remain
Dessicating disparate for all time

...Code
So as we live the layers of sand cover the graves of our parts
Beyond recognition
Layers of silt fall on the riverbank
Like broken reeds
The land builds up, layer by colored layer
It leaves its mark, readable to educated eyes
A wordless rainbow to the rest of us.
Am I one thing or many?
Is this soil a fistful of sand
Or each year's weather
What do we mean when we say - the land?

La boheme

We went to the Tate Britain and there was a room with all the people from the lives of the Bohemians, that book where I learned Arthur Ransome was one of them.  Gwen John paints her friend doralia, and herself.  Augustus John paints Gwen John.  One of their friends paints Augustus John with another girl, maybe a lover.  And that's what's so exciting about them I think, how they were all friends and lovers and cross pollinating each other's art and lives. 

This was the same room with heaps of Sergeant's too, so good. 

Then tonight I went to see the last performance of the threepenny opera.  It was so vital, the people weren't even miked, just pure showmanship and that Weimar style.  Real standouts were the owner of the hotel, and Polly his daughter.  He had a hilarious simultaneously understated and campy over the top performance.  And her voice got this perfect sweet tone at all the right place in his gritty atonal songs. 

And at the end, after all the applause and they had left the stage, the people in the left wings suddenly gave this uproarious cheer and we all joined in and they came out again.  The raucousness of arts here.  It's so real and alive.  Like living in a place where history is happening.  Like art is your real life.  I can't describe how good it is to watch people organically react like this to art.  It's like the poetry reading.  It is so good.