R.L. Swihart's Blog, page 74

Rereading Coetzee: Youth

 ‘Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion,’ says Eliot in words he has copied into his diary. ‘Poetry is not an expression of personality but an escape from personality.’ Then as a bitter afterthought Eliot adds: ‘But only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.’

Michigan: Muskrats

 Michigan. Muskrats down the road from Mom. Very industrious little guys.

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Michigan: Mute Swans

 Michigan. Mute swans (yellow/orange bills compared to the trumpeter's black) are considered "invasive" compared to the indigenous trumpeter. Still beautiful and I guess they stay the winter. Saw these two close to Grand Rapids.

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Rereading Coetzee's Trilogy

From Youth:

She has issued no reproofs, made no demands; she has even paid the abortionist herself. In fact, she has taught him a lesson in how to behave. As for him, he has emerged ignominiously, he cannot deny it. What help he has given her has been fainthearted and, worse, incompetent. He prays she will never tell the story to anyone. 

His thoughts keep going to what was destroyed inside her – that pod of flesh, that rubbery manikin. He sees the little creature flushed down the toilet at the Woodstock house, tumbled through the maze of sewers, tossed out at last into the shallows, blinking in the sudden sun, struggling against the waves that will carry it out into the bay. He did not want it to live and now he does not want it to die. Yet even if he were to run down to the beach, find it, save it from the sea, what would he do with it? Bring it home, keep it warm in cotton wool, try to get it to grow? How can he who is still a child bring up a child? 

He is out of his depth. He has barely emerged into the world himself and already he has a death chalked up against him. How many of the other men he sees in the streets carry dead children with them like baby shoes slung around their necks? 

He would rather not see Sarah again. If he could be by himself he might be able to recover, return to being as he used to be. But to desert her now would be too shameful. So each day he drops by at her room and sits holding her hand for a decent period. If he has nothing to say, it is because he has not the courage to ask what is happening to her, in her. Is it like a sickness, he wonders to himself, from which she is now in the process of recuperating, or is it like an amputation, from which one never recovers? What is the difference between an abortion and a miscarriage and what in books is called losing a child? In books a woman who loses a child shuts herself off from the world and goes into mourning. Is Sarah still due to enter a time of mourning? And what of him? Is he too going to mourn? How long does one mourn, if one mourns? Does the mourning come to an end, and is one the same after the mourning as before; or does one mourn forever for the little thing that bobs in the waves off Woodstock, like the little cabin boy who fell overboard and was not missed? Weep, weep! cries the cabin boy, who will not sink and will not be stilled.

Michigan: Winter Birds

 Michigan. A regular snowglobe. Around Mom's feeder. The red-bellied woodpecker.

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Herbert's Cogito: Sounding a bit of Optimism

BEDLAM 

Before departure it’s a madhouse 

papers objects flying around 

as if they feel they will lose a right to gravity when Mr Cogito flies off 

unpaid bills 

unsettled debts incurred on a word of honor 

unwritten poems 

futureless contracts 

colorless flirtations 

beer left unopened 

all of it flies around in Mr Cogito’s head the mess is growing 

what will happen if he doesn’t manage to tame the elements after all you can’t put off going away on holiday forever 

so one day or night when it’s all ending Mr Cogito will prop himself up on the pillows of an express train covering his chilly knees with a blanket and conclude it will all go on as before the holidays 

surely it will be worse than in Mr Cogito’s time but it will always go on

Leaving Michigan (1/20/21)

 

Borrego Springs: Galleta Meadows

Borrego Springs. Sculptures in Galleta Meadows. Dark sky community. Cool traffic circle with a cool name: Christmas Circle. After I hit Borrego Springs (on the way back from my second trip to Salton Sea) and went through Julian to get an apple pie: I chose Mom's. Yummmm.

#rlswihart13 #rl_swihart #saltonsea #borregosprings #galletameadows #sculpture #desertart #christmascircle #travel #stayclose #poetry #readmorepoetry

Bombay Estates

 Last Post on Bombay Beach. Bombay Estates. Grab a spray can.

#rlswihart13 #rl_swihart #bombaybeach #bombayestates #grabaspraycan #art #abandonedbuildings #travel #stayclose #poetry #readmorepoetry

Bombay Beach: Nothing

 Bombay Beach. Last Resort. We parked in a empty lot next to the house with an old hearse and clam shell. We followed "everyone else."

#rlswihart13 #rl_swihart #saltonsea #bombaybeach #nothing #hearseandclam #emptylots #desert #travel #stayclose #california #winter #howlowcanyougo #poetry #readmorepoetry #offcourse #piffmagazine #quadrant