Ren Powell's Blog, page 17

To Potter About

I can’t think of a way to describe the last lost ten days that isn’t a cliché. Suffice it to say (see?) that I am trying to figure out how to squeeze the plans for ten days into a few hours. And taking comfort in the fact that clichés are – if anything – proof of a normal experience. Common even.

I learned this morning that in the UK the infinitive form related to the verb puttering is to potter. I have no idea why I find that interesting. Instructive almost. I mean, if I am going to amble and mosey about, there is hope that it will result in something useful, if not aesthetic*. A pot of some sort.

(Isn’t “aesthetically pleasing” redundant?)

I love the word pot. A soft plosive, an open vowel, and another plosive that is simultaneously more and less forthright. Teh. It’s a round and hollow thing. Pronouncing the word conjures physical sense memories – of both the object and of its making. The clay.

I have no idea why I didn’t become either a linguist or a potter. When I was in between being a child and a woman I spent my lunch breaks throwing pots on a kick wheel. There was something intensely comforting in the physical experience.

I haven’t seen a kick wheel since, and I have no interest in using an electric one.

Tomorrow the shops open again after the Easter break. Shop is a cozier word than store. The small business situated on the old main street in Sandnes and sells pottery and clay is not a store. It’s a shop. Sh: a voiceless postalveolar fricative. An “ah”. And a gentle plosive. You slide in – are swept into – an open space and the door closes softly behind you. Ideally, the next word should begin with a soft K sound like the resonance of a tiny bell.

Sometimes I wonder if my understanding of language is a kind of synesthesia; a spacial perspective on onomatopoeia. Or perhaps it’s just my pataphysical praxis?

Tomorrow I’ll walk to the shop on the main street in Sandnes and buy a bag of clay. Just to potter around a bit.

Right now, I need to get to work.

Weekends are for sextains?

Or formal verse, at any rate. Button up to see what needs to break out.

I have no idea where the phrase “at any rate” comes from, but it is one of the musical aspects of language that annoys the pedants: a phrase unnecessary if one “writes well”.

But the music matters. I was listening to a Penteract podcast episode with Ian McMillan (of The Verb). They were discussing the beauty of dialects. The perception of what is appropriate to discuss in a dialect, and what is not. That same classist rot is in the Norwegian language, too, I think. And here extends so far as to embrace English as a kind of dialect for the elite. The academics.

Literary writing isn’t part of the academic system here. But it still seems ironic that I can’t apply for most government grants because I write in English rather than Norwegian, while the majority of the visual art projects that are awarded grants have English titles.

The government wants to protect the status of a national “culture” by prescribing a standard language. For literature (and for stage). But not for use in the overall arts community. It is interesting. I keep thinking if that means that they see literature and drama as elements of the culture rather than a commentary or response to the culture?

Or I may be overthinking this. Restrictions on languages aren’t remotely new. But neither is it remotely appropriate in terms of “art”. Part of me thinks it turns all literature into nationalist propaganda. And another part of me thinks I am sucking on sour grapes.

At any rate, my dwelling on it is entirely unproductive. I get wound up.

A man I admire wrote yesterday that Good Friday was actually the best day to begin new resolutions, to make fresh starts.

I am lifting my bicycle pedal up with the top of my foot, to the apex of the arc. And I move my foot around, up and over, and I step down on the pedal. I stand up to push with the whole weight of my body, hoping to get enough momentum to make the forward movement easy.

I could make a poetry video. And not give a damn who “gets it”. Who pays for it. But I can’t seem to find the path from the idea of the metaphor to the actual, physical implementation of real-world objects. I can’t translate the poeticized, empirical knowledge back into the real world.

I am wound up. But bound.

I think this inertia is one reason I am drawn toward formal verse when I feel hopeless. Formal verse is somewhat effortless. The poeticized knowledge is guaranteed to translate into something acceptable on some level. There is a sense of sureness in a slavish execution.

I had a graduate student years ago who turned in a draft all too light on research, in which she postulated that a particularly adventurous painter would have (not) accomplished his modernist work had his teachers been prescriptive in terms of his art training. Ah, but the truth is: they were. They were naturalists. His training had been as rigid as a tongue with no familiarity with curse words.

I figure part of the draw of the rigid framework is to discover what really needs to escape from it. Otherwise, we are simply working within the contemporary frameworks we think of as “new”, but are actually familiar enough to give us that sureness of execution. We want the pedigree. It has a purpose, too, beyond the name-dropping.

But maybe the tighter the restrictions, the more meaning can be brought into view? In this same podcast this morning, Anthony Etherin talked about only having written sestinas that were also anagrams, explaining that he didn’t think he would write a good sestina without even more demanding constraints.

There is something fascinating about this idea. I can’t help but think that the attention to conscious constraints is what allows us to bypass our linguistic and cultural, unconscious constraints.

Right now, I am going to pour another cup of tea and write a sestina.

Bulldozing a Significant Life

Halfway through April. But this isn’t the present tense I expected.

I don’t believe it was not without intention that Shakespeare wrote “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow […], rather than today, and today, and today. In the same short speech he writes of yesterday – but never of today. Never the present. And wasn’t that MacBeth’s problem? He desired a future, he feared a future, and he never settled into the moment. It was for him – is for me – always about tomorrow. Where “what-is” is defined: as concise as a definition, as solid an object. There is no bleeding at the edges, no messy liminality. And unlike the past, there are no unintended repercussions.

The future is a clean concept.

MacBeth’s reign as king signifies/will signify nothing because he never actually inhabits the real world. The wicked sisters lead him away from it. His thoughts are on tomorrow, which will then slip from his sight as he focuses on the next tomorrow. At a petty pace.

Until it is suddenly mid-April. And there is still no present significance. Everything is still in the to-do column of the list.

The garden is still untended. The books, not yet written. The past is an emotional soundscape. And we know – from history – that it will always be interpreted by fluid, random signifiers.

Maybe the real mistake is just craving significance.

Knowing that tomorrow will be the past is probably part of the reason I struggle with procrastination. It’s not my future present that I am pushing ahead of me with every breath, it is the weight of the future past.

So much unnecessary effort. So much sound and fury.

No – I don’t really think Shakespeare (or Fletcher) intended all that can be extrapolated in a close reading of any of the plays.

All poetry is part Rorschach, part prophecy, isn’t it?

Pheonix

Halfway through the ten-day vacation. Still waiting for some kind of joy to take hold. Just at the edge of the day. Just a small tug.

There are 4 y’s in that paragraph. Like utterances of frustration.
Three j’s. Like little fishhooks.
Two g’s with their round descenders. Heavy. Resigned.
Where it ends.

Depression is a sneaky creature. Like one of those cats who hang out in your driveway, in your yard, until you find yourself living with a cat full time. Feeding it. Making concessions for it, as though you’re obligated to tend to it.

I keep using external excuses: I need to get away – to the desert’s heat and the intense sunshine that condenses everything vital into granular truths. Uncomfortable, but discernable. Not that I want to stay in the desert. Just learn from it. Take some things home with me.

A friend once visited the Saraha on her vacation, and for Christmas that year, she sent us all tiny packets with a few grains of sand. There’s a beautiful innocence in that little crime. An optimism. A desire for magic.

I think of the word charming, the history of the word, and figure before I go down the rabbit hole, it is bound to turn up darkness.

Charming. Charming. Every spell comes at a price. Handwritten letters. Deliberate fonts. It’s all in the details.

So just let it be? J. Like a fishhook.

A second definition for vacation is the action of leaving something one previously occupied. The example given in the dictionary is that of a priest and the “vacation of his fellowship” for marriage. I suppose then, one can have a vacation from a state of mind. And it need not be temporary.

Today I will listen to Edith Piaf and think of Coach, who died this week. I will be grateful for his compassion and generosity. He put a roof over my head. He parented me when I should have already grown up. “Stand up straight.” Seems like a metaphor now.

He gently questioned all the clichè melodrama I dragged into his house, “Do you think you two are good for each other?”

When I moved in, his kitchen was covered with dust. I learned that his bills went straight to the bank, and the paper copies piled high, unopened on the counter. He lived each day as it came. For the easy small talk at the cafè. For the deliberate ease and the joy of theater rehearsals. I swear he was the weirdest bodhisattva that ever lived.

I will remember him sitting in his den: smoking, and listening to Piaf.

I will be grateful for my healthy lungs.

“Avec mes souvenirs/J’ai allumé le feu”.

We go on vacation, we go through the desert, we take our chances fishing, and we burn our pasts to learn how to begin again.

While we can. Rest in peace, Coach.

Seen But Not Yet Heard

Last week the lapwings returned. Though I have yet to hear one. When we driving to work, E. pointed out one in the field where the geese edge the horses from the good spots. Geese can do that. They are mean.

There are birds that overwinter here. Ducks, and sparrows mostly. And some blackbirds. But now all the blackbirds have returned. And they sing loudly all night. It is really wonderful. I even turned off the Dalai Lama’s favorite prayers this morning during yoga to listen to the blackbirds.

It seems the crows are more conspicuous these days, too. Carrion crows. Or they might be rooks. The sun should be up when I walk Leonard this morning, and I am armed now with the little checklist to see if I can spot the differences. Rooks, for example, have “feathered trousers”. I am going to keep an eye out for those.

Rook, Raven, Crow, or Jackdaw? It’s like a song stuck in my head.

But there is something special about the return of the lapwings. That they dare. They are on the “red list” and categorized as near-threatened. Tractors can crush and threshers shred their nests. But they keep returning, quietly blending into the landscape. Choosing this danger over that one.

Or maybe they’re just not able to see what’s coming. How many generations does it take to etch the new, inorganic world into a bird’s DNA?

At any rate, I will be listening for them this morning.

What Will People Say?

Slept a bit late this morning. Trying to “catch-up” on sleep, although I know that is not supposed to be a real thing. But it helped. I was dreaming when the alarm went off. And the morning kicked in. I’m trying to return to routines. A glass of water followed by a full yoga flow.

It felt good.

Maybe that is a good sign.

There is snow on the ground again, but I feel the weight of winter lifting. Something is lifting. I am afraid to look it square in the eye and question it.

It helps that I am excited about the wasp project. Feeling like it is alright for me to throw myself blindly into something that doesn’t quite fit a mold. I’m not sure that I have ever done that before. I have clung to molds as assurances. Who was it who said that there is no such thing as a failed sestina? There is a measure of safety in coloring within the lines. You can be sure that you do one thing right.

I suppose there is an irony in that I am playing with constrained poems while claiming to be coloring outside the lines. But I am designing my own constraints. Conceptually relevant. I don’t think that experimentation has to be arbitrary.

I am doing a lot of reading – online, and ordering what I can afford. Exciting publishers, that are new to me. Exciting – very niche – poets who are inspiring in so many ways.

I know I am late to the party. By that I mean, not only am I aware that I haven’t stumbled on anything “new”, but that I really thought that I had found my voice as a writer some years ago. But now it is like I’ve discovered I have a whole new octave to move around in.

I’m not saying the work will necessarily be good. And with no clear framework that defines what is at least technically “good enough”, I feel brave moving in this direction.

Well. I feel ambivalent at least. Because I have been here before. In the previous century, I was excited about the idea of hyperlink poems. While I’m sure I am not the only person who thought of it, I might be one of the few of those who did, who didn’t follow through. I played with video poetry for what felt like 10 minutes.

Fear of failure is a big deal. Fear of doing okay is a big deal. Fear of people saying, “Yeah, so? I have had that backbone-energy-confidence all along, so what took you so long?” is real: “Why do you care what people think?”

Well-adjusted, self-confident people are judgy as f-.

I think I have been cursing for two years as a way of learning not to care. Like a B-movie prisoner banging a metal cup over the bars of his cell. Like a Be-movie actor banging a metal cup over the bars of a piece of scenography. In character: totally method and “living in the role”.

It’s not a healthy approach to acting: it’s not a healthy approach to life.

This is my mid-life rebellion.

Taking up Space

Yesterday on the train home from work, I sat in the center of the carriage as I usually do – where on each side of the aisle four seats face one another. I prefer the awkwardness of avoiding other people’s eyes over the claustrophobic press of industrial material in front of my face – that’s like having my nose pressed against a stranger’s back, like queuing for something necessary but shameful.

But yesterday I was alone in the little conversation pit. My knees angeled into the center of the space, one arm draped across the turned-up seat next to me, the other lying along the bottom of the window. Three teenage boys started walking toward me. I didn’t move, and they walked past without eye contact, though they scanned the pit. Another young man headed toward me, averted his eyes, and kept walking. Honestly, I was just too tired to make the proper adjustments to my body to wordlessly invite, or make room: to offer or to defer. I was too tired to even consider it as something expected or normal. The thought didn’t occur to me. But when it did, I wasn’t ashamed of myself. I was curious. My first thought was to observe my own body (still too tired to make an unneeded adjustment). It was unapologetically taking up a lot of space. I was being territorial, I was simply taking up the space I was in at the moment. I wasn’t making myself as small as possible. I wasn’t anticipating another person’s desires. I didn’t feel obligated to.

Not that I would have objected had they been expressed! I wasn’t feeling inconsiderate – just more responsive than predictive.

It wasn’t until that moment that I was conscious of my public habits. That, even on a train with plenty of available seats, I habitually, unconsciously, perform physical cues of submission.

And at 55, not doing so is an entirely new experience. A new behavior. Part of me wondered, is this what it is like to reach “a certain age” and let go of some very specific fears? To stop moving through the world continually trying to please? Is this what it feels like to acknowledge one’s own right to take up space in a public setting? To not apologize for one’s own physical presence.

I am here. Deal with it. YOU smile.

I will always smile back.

Once I got home I sat on the cushion and did a metta meditation. Just to make sure it all doesn’t go to my head.

Waiting for a Compassionate Moon

I had something to say last night. Slept poorly and woke to the blackbirds singing about the fresh snow (I assume that was the topic of conversation).

Now, what do I say in the face of that? Another day slipped by. Along with all the thoughts I didn’t take note of. The hours that I could have filled with – what? – I don’t know: evidence of my being/having been.

At the turn of the year, I counted the full moons in a lifetime, and despite the panic that came with realizing that – even under the most fortunate of circumstances – more moons have passed through my life than will come in the remainder of my time. And still, I have managed not to pay attention.

B. can likely count moons on her fingers and toes. We haven’t discussed it. The word “terminal” comes up as a descriptor, the phrase “I would have been dead by now”. I nearly wrote “I’m dying here”, which is not my usual phrase for being frustrated. The subconscious can reassemble bits of literal and figurative language lying around the neural network in the most awkward and unfortunate ways. There is more than one reason to slow down.

This morning there is a waxing crescent moon over the snow. Filling slowly for April’s pink moon, peony moon. I keep waiting for symbolism. For a meaningful connection between the universe and the tiny phenomenon of my life.

I think I have a title for the wasp project. And am still amazed how the facts and the memories link in unexpected ways. How a constrained poem kicks up the word vortex, which relates directly to the wasp’s ability to fly. And I thrill at the order of it all. As though I’ve uncovered hidden connections. Meaning.

Last week we went for drinks with friends for the first time since the shutdown of two years ago. Catching up, and discussing lottery dreams, and inheritance dreams. I mentioned my dead mother’s estate, and how I am pulping printouts of her hand-written will to make wasps’ nests. J. asked me if I thought it would bring me closure. “You’ve talked about her a lot”. I felt a wave of shame. I had no idea that I have “talked about her a lot”. All these internal hidden connections. I am beginning to think that if I don’t make the connections, it all leaks out in meaningless chatter. There is nothing beautiful about that.

I am wondering when a steady drip of sadness becomes depression. Is there a mathematical formula dependent on how many missed showers? How many empty hours? How many appeals to magic?

“In one myth, Paeon, a student of the god of medicine, used a peony root to heal Pluto. The god of medicine became jealous and tried to kill him. To save Paeon, Pluto transformed him into a peony because he knew it was a flower that people would admire and praise. Therefore the peony began to signify compassion.“

Pluto was the god of the underworld. The god of the afterlife. But now all I can think of is that Pluto, declared a planet in 1930, is no longer a planet.

A Quick Field Note

The British National History Museum’s image database is online. I’m researching Ichneumonoidea. And telling myself to keep looking, to become so familiar, so intimate with them that they become beautiful in my eyes.

There are close-up photos of veined wasp wings, and of wasp eyes that look like woven mats. The antennae curl like ribbons shaved with the edge of a knife. Deep black thoraxes.

Or thoraxes as pale as a waxy layer of old Nordic flesh – mimicking the semi-permeable barrier between life and death. Almost translucent, almost obscene.

Maybe there is a kindness in some deceptions. Death comes over the flesh – dappled first, then like a curtain of darkness with the elegance of opera gloves: somehow stuerent (socially acceptable).

The tarantula hawk has a body as black as ink. And wings as bright as persimmons.

Make sense of that emotionally.

Beautiful.

In America, it is National Poetry Month. I am not good with everyday constraints, so it is just as well that I am not an American. But I am working every day on this project. Posting or not.

Happy writing if you are writing. Happy reading, regardless!

The British National History Museum’s image database is o...

The British National History Museum’s image database is online. I’m researching Ichneumonoidea. And telling myself to keep looking, to become so familiar, so intimate with them that they become beautiful in my eyes.

There are close-up photos of veined wasp wings, and of wasp eyes that look like woven mats. The antennae curl like ribbons shaved with the edge of a knife. Deep black thoraxes.

Or thoraxes as pale as a waxy layer of old Nordic flesh – mimicking the semi-permeable barrier between life and death. Almost translucent, almost obscene.

Maybe there is a kindness in some deceptions. Death comes over the flesh – dappled first, then like a curtain of darkness with the elegance of opera gloves: somehow stuerent (socially acceptable).

The tarantula hawk has a body as black as ink. And wings as bright as persimmons.

Make sense of that emotionally.

Beautiful.

In America, it is National Poetry Month. I am not good with everyday constraints, so it is just as well that I am not an American. But I am working every day on this project. Posting or not.

Happy writing if you are writing. Happy reading, regardless!