Visitation in Carnac
The Observer
The wet stones sit in their circle
communing with the cat--
she’s at home with their familiar hum,
but tilts her head to triangulate
through the Breton fog as
a sudden melody streams out of
this intruder, who sings without words
of dances in the round, and blessings
brought by a more ancient apparition,
even here in Carnac, where
we treat the prehistoric as routine,
a home for lichens and light rain.
Conversation between Elizabeth Buchman and Hector Graceman
Gracia
Eighty two: ideas are few,
Mere remnants of that long to-do
Of thought and yearning, trial and learning
That, at my age, need no review.
I know enough; I’m almost through.
Thank God, I still have time with you,
And, letting go the to and fro,
From the present tick I’ll take my cue.
Here are pleasures ever new,
These graceful measures of our interview.
Reading, sitting while you’re knitting,
I know the solace of what is true.
EB: Why you spry man, I didn’t know you were 82.click
HG:83 in July. I won’t ask your age.
EB:Well, let’s just say I’m not far behind you.
It’s a sweet poem, Hector. I like the word “gracefuI”. I may be an old Jewish lefty, but I think there is something like grace that has operated in my life. Not beshert, more like an unmerited blessing. Like you. Like the Visitors.
HG:I want to say something about your latest art piece. I get some kind of playful echo to the “Visitations,” which I notice that our anonymous commentator is now calling an “intruder”. We haven’t really spoken about the message from the Visitor. What did you make of it?
EB: Honestly, I think they’re saying goodbye. This appearance at this Carnac seems like a kind of farewell.
HG:Do you know anything about Carnac?
EB: Well, I guess it’s in Breton, in France.
HG:Yes. These ancient stone sites---like Stonehenge--- are thought to have had astrological significance. They may date back as long ago as a million years, and just as the Visitations are the latest sign of some heavenly connection, these megaliths may be the first. Which makes sense of your sense of an ending. Bookends.
EB:In some strange way, I’ve lost track of time. I mean, Hector, it’s been months since they were first sighted, and it seems to me that the world has gone from furor to indifference. Amazing really, the way the human animal can normalize what once seemed astonishing.
HG: Yes, all the wonder gone. (sigh) Even, I confess, for me. I don’t think I need them any longer.
EB:O, I’ll miss them, but they have changed my life. And I will never be the same.
HG:Say more.
EB:Well, of course there’s you. But, in some basic way I feel affirmed. No, that’s not quite right. All my life I’ve felt like “Crazy Jane,” the different one. It’s like my fate, a burden I’ve gotten so used to that I almost stopped wishing I wasn’t different. But still, some part of me always wondered what was the matter with me. But since the arrival of the visitors...well, I feel I’m part of a different universe, one in which eccentricity is a norm. What’s odd here is the warp of culture.
HG:I think I I feel the same way, EB. Perhaps everyone secretly feels their differentness. I don‘t know. But then I guess that this medium in which we see the photos and where we have found ne another will become, as Shakespeare wrote, “this insubstantial pageant faded, leaves not a wrack behind.” EB:“We are such stuff as dreams are made on…”
HG-EB (together)“And our little life is rounded with a sleep.” (laughter)
HG: “Rounded” what a wonderful word. Comforting.
EB:Round like the visitors. (pause). Last words, Hector?
HG: If last words these are... Well, gratitude, for you, of course, but just that, but to the universe. Unfathomably strange. And you?
EB:So weird, this holding fast and letting go at the same time. Keep writing poems, Hector, and I will keep making pictures.
click
--Jonathan Reeve Price and Peter Asher Pitzele
To explore the sequence of Visitations:
Visitation on a Clear Day
Visitation in the Smoke
Visitation in the Haze
Visitation Arriving at Dawn
Visitation on the Rio Grande
Visitation on a Maine Summer Day
Visitation in Brooklyn
Visitation in Midtown
Visitation at Night
Visitation--Skyscraper with Pigeon
Visitation--Blocking Traffic
Visitation at Hudson Yards
Visitation on the High Line
Visitation Under Brooklyn Bridge
Visitation Across the Hudson
Visitation in Central Park
Visitation at Rush Hour
About Jonathan
LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/jonathanreeveprice
MuseumZero site: www.museumzero.art
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JonathanRPrice
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https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/41600924.Jonathan_Price
About Peter
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peter.pitzele/
Scripture Windows: Toward a Practice of Bibliodrama, with Susan Pitzele
Our Fathers' Wells: A Personal Encounter With the Myths of Genesis
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