reverence

current preoccupations:

humanitas, by which is meant the stakes of things. of us. of the moment, of vanishing points and gestures of all kinds.

here and now, these are the sacred objects at hand:
an apple. two water bottles. a brown matte mug of instant coffee, a spoon’s end angling from the cup’s rim. stains on the desk. post-it notes. a paper clip. the scars of stress on the backs of my hand – raw and never-quite-healing-places beneath the knuckles that I worry over in the stillness between paragraphs.

coming closer:

the two bottles are not the same. one is plastic and heavy. with markings of quantities I would never use to measure water. blue-gray, with a black plastic screw-top the texture of which shows it to be of a different type of plastic, light and less scratch resistent – I have a feeling that the flavor of the water from this bottle owes entirely to its moments of contact with the lid, and not to the rest of the interior. the other bottle is smaller – a tiny glass bottle of deeside scottish spring water I bought once and have carried about since. it fits in a rear pocket. I carry water more than I drink it. In the fine print I can see from here, ‘best before end – see bottle neck – bottled at source from the lower spring at pannanitch wells, ballater, royal deeside, scotland AB35 5SL, by the deeside water company, ltd. 250lm e.

this much.

yesterday on a walk
in victoria, we talked
about digital space
and poetry.
how impoverished
the space of the virtual
is, at present. How little
it would take
to use it better, with more
reverence
for what is there
without our adding
anything?
When we write,
we look first to the page.
when we paint,
we look first to the canvas.
Scupting, Michelangelo
came at the buried shape
from the edges, from all sides,
cutting away
what was not a part of the body
inside the rock.
this space we have created
is alive with directions
and open spaces – almost
as large as the air we breathe
but not quite.
what would it take
to look at it for what it is,
seeing the light of the screen,
the infinite interiors of hypertext and
layered windows, doors opening on doors.
this is the way I would write
if I were to write
in virtual space.

evening

I have dreams of Edgewood now – that stretch of grass from the back door
to the dock, and the deep shaded corner of the herb garden. I swear
I know that piece of property by heart. Sometimes when I’m falling
asleep I go over it – a long sentinel’s walk – all around
the land’s line – past the shed, down the road, hopping a swampy bit
at the base of the lower ring, then up and across that field beyond
the pasture, and back down along the stream. Or the different way,
down through the dim trees that ring the pond – stopping at the gate
beside mosquito bay to look into the bees’ door. then round the pond.
There’s a patch of jewel weed there just where you enter
the woods. Not now, of course, but in summer. I like the way the ground
feels underfoot, in the pine needles up by the house, beneath the
bird feeders. There’s some nice quartz there, too.

I think I could travel this whole world – and wouldn’t mind the try -
never to find a place I like so well. I’m glad you found it. So
glad so glad so glad. I remember the lump I got in my throat coming
around the drive that first time – before even glimpsing the house.

So see? Even when I don’t come home, it’s here too. I’ve got it
learned. And I’ll be back soon – to play that aching piano – or is it
me that’s aching for it – and wander up and down the upstairs hallway
in the night, and sit at the upstairs desk in the evening and early
morning, and squat on those front porch steps in the late afternoon,
or prop back in a porch chair in a night blow, and hunch over that
corner stool by the coffee maker and watch you go about the kitchen.
There I’ll be. I can’t wait.

I do love you. I love that place you’ve made. I love its stories,
accumulated in so few years, really. I’d never think a place could
become a home so soon, so solidly, and with such grace.

Write when you can, and send me two years.

make where you want to go where you are going.

These days have been so awake. not always happy, not always good, but, as f. and I once discussed in a long storm-session down the beach, happiness is not always the point. In fact, it rarely is.

long postgraduate committee meeting, discussing the State of Things, conference presentations, skills, phd topics, research interests, book lists, wiki, public knowledge, access, visibility, refworks, citation methods.

(Nikolaj’s home has an unattainable quality – round, smooth, simple, solid bowls, dishes of fruit simply presented, off-white walls, sparing but smart placement of strong images. simple, simple, simple. Also, tiny, beautifully crafted coffee cups in informal piles alongside the pitcher of just-warm milk, the tall cafetiere.)

Then a meeting with Bob Plant, which began with a string of woes and developed into a fairly articulate expression of the problems with the current structure of my thesis. The auspices of the meeting: Bob, would you help me? I’d love to sit down and talk about the best and most sensitive way to approach Levinas – I’m having some difficulties making a few transitions in my work.

Bob’s advice: stop trying to do what you’re trying to do. Stop listening to your supervisor so much – he wants you to and thinks you are writing a paper on heidegger. You do not have to write a paper on Heidegger, and do not want to. Moreover, the foudnaation that you have so far does not lend itself to the string of proper names you’ve laid out before you as a structure. you do not need these. you need to use them only insofar as they support and enrich your own writing, your own thematic developments.

To continue: move from where you are now straight into where you want to go. Do not give entire sections to single writers or philosophers. Go to attention, go to recognition, go to care, to proximity, to letting be, to sacredness and cherishing. this is how you can maekee the path into thee poetry, and how you have move forward without neglecting the work you begin with, in human rights.

Clarity, forgiveness, affirmation.