Jonathan Carroll's Blog, page 35

CarrollBlog 5.12

Leave the dishes.

Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator

and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.

Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.

Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.

Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.

Don't even sew on a button.

Let the wind have its way, then the earth

that invades as dust and then the dead

foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.

Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.

Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles

or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry

who uses whose toothbrush or if anything

matches, at all.

Except one word to another. Or a thought.

Pursue the authentic—decide first

what is authentic,

then go after it with all your heart.

Your heart, that place

you don't even think of cleaning out.

That closet stuffed with savage mementos.

Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth

or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner

again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,

or weep over anything at all that breaks.

Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons

in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life

and talk to the dead

who drift in though the screened windows, who collect

patiently on the tops of food jars and books.

Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything

except what destroys

the insulation between yourself and your experience

or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters

this ruse you call necessity.

Louise Erdrich

CarrollBlog 5.11

There are people who will tell you

that using the word fuck in a poem

indicates a serious lapse

of taste, or imagination,

or both. It's vulgar,

indecorous, an obscenity

that crashes down like an anvil

falling through a skylight

to land on a restaurant table,

on th white linen, the cut-glass vase of lilacs.

But if you were sitting

over coffee when the metal

hit your saucer like a missile,

wouldn't that be the first thing

you'd say? Wouldn't you leap back

shouting, or at least thinking it,

over and over, bell-note riotously clanging

in the church of your brain

while the solicitous waiter

led you away, wouldn't you prop

your shaking elbows on the bar

and order your first drink in months,

telling yourself you were lucky

to be alive? And if you wouldn't

say anything but Mercy or Oh my

or Land sakes, well then

I don't want to know you anyway

and I don't give a fuck what you think

of my poem. The world is divided

into those whose opinions matter

and those who will never have

a clue, and if you knew

which one you were I could talk

to you, and tell you that sometimes

there's only one word that means

what you need it to mean, the way

there's only one person

when you first fall in love,

or one infant's cry that calls forth

the burning milk, one name

that you pray to when prayer

is what's left to you. I'm saying

in the beginning was the word

and it was good, it meant one human

entering another and it's still

what I love, the word made

flesh. Fuck me, I say to the one

whose lovely body I want close,

and as we fuck I know it's holy,

a psalm, a hymn, a hammer

ringing down on an anvil,

forging a whole new world.

Kim Addonizio

CarrollBlog 5.10

"The greatest courage in life is to lose yourself — and that's the primary requirement of love. Unless you lose yourself you cannot be in love. You can play the game called love, but you will never know the reality of love. You will be doing something else in the name of love. Deep down it will only be an ego trip — and love can never be an ego trip. Ego has to be dissolved, only then does love flow in you. And that is real courage. In a deep sense it is committing suicide — not of the body but of the mind. It is becoming mindless. Hence love looks to people like something mad, insane. In a way it is true, it is mad. Going beyond the mind is a certain kind of madness. Of course it is divine madness and it brings a sanity of its own kind. It beings an insight, an understanding, but is is totally different from intellectual understanding. It is not of the mind, it is of the beyond."

—Osho

CarrollBlog 5.7

"I have this one wish. Take whatever time you need, and if it takes you years that doesn't matter. Here it is: Write me a letter with your own hand, in your beautiful handwriting, telling me all you want to tell me, all I am for you, all I am, all you are for me, all we are, so that if one day I will not be able to take baths anymore, I can read that letter and it will be beloved water"

from WHITE APPLES.

CarrollBlog 5.6

from The Midlife Manual by John O'Connell and Jessica Cargill Thompson.

"Chutney fantasy" is a generic term for escape-route dreams, many of which genuinely involve the dramatic quitting of a job in order to forge a new career making artisanal chutney over open fires in copper pans reclaimed from National Trust properties.

Typically, it takes root shortly after the onset of midlife, growing and growing until suddenly you're phoning up banks to ask about business development loans. "It will be really special chutney," you say. "Pear and ginger, but with prunes, too. We've got this idea for specially shaped jars, a bit like that St Peter's Ale which comes in replica 18th-century beer bottles."

You explain that it will be a premium product, designed to be sold in the sort of delis where people won't mind paying £6.95 a jar. Yes, it is a lot, but start-up costs will be high. And obviously you'll be paying yourself the salary you were on when you were doing crisis PR for Tesco.

Other popular chutney fantasies include:

Opening a B&B, but a really good one. "People get it wrong. The trick is making sure the sausages you serve at breakfast have a high pork content – nothing less than 75 per cent will do."

Landscape gardening. "I read this great biography of Capability Brown. He was amazing, the way he tamed unruly nature, moving trees around and stuff. I could do that. And I've found these great 'gardening' trousers on the Jigsaw website."

Teaching. "I know people say teaching's hard, but it can't be harder than managing the supply chain at a small Leeds-based manufacturer of burglar alarm components – and I've done that for 15 years! It's time to put something back... Kids just need to be inspired and reassured that they can really do something with their lives."

Setting up a market stall... The other day I saw this really cool retro Citroën van for sale. We could convert it and take it round festivals selling proper coffee! And gourmet pies! And that artisanal chutney my mate makes!"

CarrollBlog 5.4

To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell."

Gabriel García Márquez

CarrollBlog 4.30

from "THE MOTHER'S PRAYER FOR ITS DAUGHTER"

. . . May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it's the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach's eye, not the Beauty.

When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half and stick with Beer. Guide her, protect her. When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called "Hell Drop," "Tower of Torture," or "The Death Spiral Rock 'N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith," and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age.

Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels.

What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I'm asking You, because if I knew, I'd be doing it, Youdammit.

May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers. O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed.

And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it.

And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with this little creature whose poop is leaking up its back. "My mother did this for me once," she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby's neck. "My mother did this for me." And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I'll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.

Amen.

Tina Fey

CarrollBlog 4.29

"I Imagine the Gods"

by Jack Gilbert

I imagine the gods saying, We will

make it up to you. We will give you

three wishes, they say. Let me see

the squirrels again, I tell them.

Let me eat some of the great hog

stuffed and roasted on its giant spit

and put out, steaming, into the winter

of my neighborhood when I was usually

too broke to afford even the hundred grams

I ate so happily walking up the cobbles,

past the Street of the Moon

and the Street of the Birdcage-Makers,

the Street of Silence and the Street

of the Little Pissing. We can give you

wisdom, they say in their rich voices.

Let me go at last to Hugette, I say,

the Algerian student with her huge eyes

who timidly invited me to her room

when I was too young and bewildered

that first year in Paris.

Let me at least fail at my life.

Think, they say patiently, we could

make you famous again. Let me fall

in love one last time, I beg them.

Teach me mortality, frighten me

into the present. Help me to find

the heft of these days. That the nights

will be full enough and my heart feral.

CarrollBlog 4.28

There is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of these lovable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else; they're often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really, really want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.

Chuck Klosterman

CarrollBlog 4.26

"What is life? we ask, knowing that the answer will come not as a headline but as an aggregate. Life is dewclaws and corsages and dust mites and alligator skin and feathers and whale's whiskers (as mammals, whales do have hair) and tree-frog serenades and foreskins and blue hydrangeas and banana slugs and war dances and cedar chips and bombardier beetles. Whenever we encounter something that is rare, we mentally add it to the seemingly endless list of forms that life can take. We smile in amazement as we discover yet another variation on an ancient theme. To hear the melody, we must hear all the notes."

Diane Ackerman, The Rarest of the Rare