Nina MacLaughlin's Blog, page 2

Quality in craftwork depends on three...

Quality in craftwork depends on three things,according to furniture designer David Pye. Care, judgement, and dexterity. Herepeats the words over and over in The Nature and Art of Workmanship. Withcare, I take it to mean attention, a focused tuning in, the ultimate form ofcare. With judgement, I take it to mean honest discernment, an ability to look,openly, and assess, to see not what you want to see but to see what is, and indoing so, thereby see the possible routes to what you want. And with dexterity,I take it to mean, be it in carving a spoon, or in love, how intention istranslated to touch.

November holds the in-between. Between warmth and cold, between...

November holds the in-between. Between warmth and cold, between light and dark, between living and dying. The eleventh month, getting darker, getting colder, echoes our own eventual winding down and gives chance to live in the richest, deepest way. “The space of nothingness is where one struggles to reach a deeper layer of self,” writes Tadao Ando. November opens a path to those deeper layers unavailable to us during the rest of the year. It’s an approximation of the expiration date stamped on our foreheads.

It’s the last day of November, and in honor of the month, an essay I wrote for the Paris Review, “The Dark Looks Different in November.”

Today the persimmons were ripe. Fingertips,...

Today the persimmons were ripe. Fingertips, asqueeze, and the flesh below the skin allowed. I sliced one into eighths andate the slices slowly. Inside, the sunset honeyed fruit, its subtle sweetness, thetongue-smooth flesh, and cupping it all round the waxy resistance of the skin.I was deep into adulthood before I had one and felt lucky for the introduction,and feel lucky when I walk into the kitchen and see them on the counter in abowl. They arrive in November with the pomegranates. One fruit has the suninside it, the other, shadow rubies from the underworld. I eat them while Ican.

Rainin the morning. Drear all day and colder...

Rainin the morning. Drear all day and colder than it’s been. At the end of theafternoon, I walked west along the river and at the bottom of the pale low sky,a blaze of fucshia burned, and then, for seven minutes, maybe less, the lowfast clouds moved with pink fire over the river. The cloudswent grey again, from fire back to smoke, and the dark came quick. The dark comesquick these days, quicker than you think.

Theblues are getting deeper and the oranges on...

Theblues are getting deeper and the oranges on the either side of day. A child onthe street is counting down from ten. I can hear him because the windows areopen because it’s already almost seventy degrees, here on a Sunday morning inNovember. I walked outside after I woke up and the air was soft and balmy, butit did not feel like spring. The quality and slant of light, the sycamore leavesrattling against the curbs, the ghosts around. Earlier dusks, starting today. Six, five, four, this charged atmosphere of countdown.

[Photograph: Trustee Room with Fireplace by Shellburne Thurber, 2002.]

What is the moon?The moon is the lantern in the abdomen of an...

What is the moon?

The moon is the lantern in the abdomen of an insect who wants to fuck. The moon is a hill of sheep. The moon is a rock roughed by a surface of barnacles. The moon is the filed tusk of a night mastodon. The moon is a furred spider-egg sac spilling spider stars. The moon is the haunch of a white cow, the haunch of a kneeling horse. The moon is the pouch of a pelican beak flashing full of silver fish. The moon is a crumb of pollen carried on the back leg of a bee. The moon is hydrangean. The moon is aware of the original chaos and the subsequent chaos. The moon is honey, is lemon, is marmalade, is lavender. The moon is garnet, dried blood, stained in the crotch of your underwear. The moon is a tooth whose roots tangle through the great jaw of space. The moon is camouflaging behind the clouds. The moon is never trespassing.

Tonight’s Full Worm Moon brings the finale of my moon series for The Paris Review.

I imagined the men, hungry, gaunt, shadows deepening in the...

I imagined the men, hungry, gaunt, shadows deepening in the craters of their eyes, getting thinner, getting weaker, and one night lying down together, maybe holding hands in their big moon suit gloves, their lives leaving them. And I imagined the abrasive moondust chewing through their big moon suits, then the flesh of them, so they were bones on the surface of the moon, and I imagined the moon swallowing the bones into itself, as the desert sand absorbs a snakeskin. Their helmets left as headstones. Their bones absorbed into the bone of the moon, until they were made moon themselves.

The Hunger Moon has come and gone, but “The Moon in Full” series continues at the Paris Review.

A QUESTIONNAIRE FOR THE MOONIn general, are you glad to be...

A QUESTIONNAIRE FOR THE MOON

In general, are you glad to be tethered by gravity to planet Earth?
Please circle one:   Yes   No

Is the light you appear to shed made of ghosts?
Please circle one:   Yes   No

If you were to describe the smell on your surface, you would use the word(s) (please circle all that apply):

  -Snow  
 -Black tea  
 -Dust char on heater when heat is first turned on  
 -Marshmallow  
 -Wet nickel  
 -Lily of the valley  
 -Basement (damp)  
 -Bone marrow  
 -Normal rock  
 -None of the above

Do you dream?
Please circle one:   Yes   No
(If yes, please fill out the following)

Do you dream about:
  -Contours?  
 -Falling?  
 -The horror of arrival?  
 -Attraction and its many forms?  
 -Swimming in the laval fields before they were solidified?  
 -Stairways, elevators, ladders, other means of ascent/descent?  
 -Icarus, his feathers, his avoidable death, an alternative night flight in which you would’ve seen him soar, would’ve seen him safely to new land?  
 -Tidal waves, rogue waves, walls of water, flood, rhythm, swell, retreat?  
 -Mirrors?  
 -Shoes?  
 -Blood? 

The Wolf Moon is bright and high, and “The Moon in Full” series continues at the Paris Review.

What does the heart of night have to say? I used to fear that...

What does the heart of night have to say? I used to fear that below the shadows were more shadows, a dark so dense its gravity, at some point, would grow inescapable. But the moon opens the night jar of the heart and inside, beneath the layers of fear and shame, lives another form of light. It does not glow like moonlight and it does not shine like sunlight. It is like no light any of us have seen with our eyes, a light like bells. When the moon draws out the shadows it can guide us to this light in the darkest center, in every heart pulse and in every pause that breaks the eternity of a sleepless night. There it is, this light, and it is—can I say it? Why this shame? This light, brave animal, can I say it? It’s love.

The Long Night Moon is rising, and “The Moon in Full” series continues at the Paris Review.

Here on earth it is November. It gets late earlier now. Day...

Here on earth it is November. It gets late earlier now. Day routs the shadows and night gathers them back in with broad black-feathered wings. The Beaver Moon glows, reminding us that its longevity is not ours to know. But in secret heated moments we can feel the throb of our aliveness, sensing the aliveness that came before and will come after, the hushed mingling of souls, marking the heart that tries and tries to speak our ageless and ongoing bewilderment.

The Beaver Moon is beaming, and “The Moon in Full” series continues at the Paris Review.