jeandonnelly:The older I get the more relatives I see looking...

jeandonnelly:

The older I get the more relatives I see looking back at me in my selfies. Perhaps living into the dark mysteries of the dissolution of my parents marriage - the cycles of spectacular betrayals and guilt-induced abuse in my own - while parenting boundlessly hopeful, myopic, tender, and resilient adolescents for whom everything will be new or be made to seem new by them - for them in a world they believe can and will change - I can’t help but see all of my grandparents - living and long passed - their individual features I see reminding me of - what Fanny Howe calls - their “radical love” - flawed, omitted, distorted, coveted, flung out under rages or exquisitely shared, rejected or returned.

Giorgio Agamben writes, “the only possible city is a face.” The one the I asks to touch and does so with no apparent or residual struggle. Then the you will be a city delivering a letter on how to care for one another.

In his collection “Our Face” - or perhaps it translates “Whole Face” - Henri Meschonnic wrote - and this is my feeble translation -

my wonder now is
now

the future is so much

in us in

speech

it might resemble
us or I

find everyone
each is

us this
discovery in

a face

cradling silence
that says more than

formed

words
to hear I

continue
and hear

its speech
inaudible force

and endless