January 28 again
Started a short story a bit ago in which letters from a battlefield are warp to a family history's weft. Also, drank some gin since my employers are again in Seattle & I am again at liberty to do so. The latter leads to posting the former in order to get at a simple question right when I wonder it most-- should it continue? The first part, a letter, would be italicized I think. The second part is where I got up to get a gin & tonic, & it is quite short as a result. So.
Don’t have much time to write, so please forgive in advance any omissions obvious to you. Besides which, to shift my focus & thinking from this place to that is an endeavor I’m never likely to master. I close my eyes, though, to sleep at night, & in that swelling darkness I am flooded with the old ghosts, with that life I left behind me, all of its currents, all of its loose ends buzzing like a dying filament inside my heart. Or I’ll be kicking a shovel into the dirt & suddenly remember the smell of grandma’s blackberry cobbler. Or the mud room, earthy, thick, all those mason jars blanketed in dust, the soft light of the sun filtered through the film on the windowpane, through the cobwebs that gather in its corners. Or the way her hand wasn’t cold at all, or warm, or anything, like it was disposed of body, a thing separate entire. The finish on her casket. But mostly I feel any wind here & I imagine it the tired remnant of some gale thrashing the oaks & maples along the drive, the bitter-cold winter, the sky the kind of blue that says yes the world is frozen & yes I would be too if I were able. The wheat fields in their roiling. My fingers over their tops, & the finches bobbing along the furrows. God, no simple wonder.
But here it’s detachment that teaches me my lessons. The click of the magazine & the endless stuttering of the report of gun-fire. How can I live among these things? This rifle in my hand? How can I shoot from my darkness into theirs, let fly this bullet from my hand & hope to lay it there in his heart? I shudder at it. But I am here, & there is no other recourse but to stand & let pierce some missive aimed elsewhere & let expire my own good breath. Kill or be killed. I cannot fake the trigger-pull. & besides, once the cacophony of battle is begun, once my nausea turns, I am taken by it, hostage of its simple violence. Every time my bullet lands in some man’s chest it kills another part of me. But yet I walk, & endure, & bid good morrow come.
I think of you all often. All the time. If I think on the here & now of it too long I’d likely lose all control of myself. They are latter days. But they will pass, & will bring me home to you. Until then, my love goes with you. Wishing you all best—
ap
When he was a child, he imagined all things living. The stars in their nightly shining, the severed bough of madrona upon the walkway, the stones stretching endless along the shoreline. He felt a part of an ongoing communion. speaking frequently into the air, assured that the wind would carry his words where they were intended. Or that the light in casting across his visage would take up a sentence like a conveyer belt & bear it aloft unto its rightful hearer. “A frog,” he would say, & would expect to hear his brother’s footsteps nearing, the shift of pebble underfoot. Too, he thought the world inhabited by invisible souls that could act as messenger & courier alike. If he found a particularly desirable bit of granite, or an insinuation of orthopod embedded in a halved soapstone, he would leave them in obvious places, tell the spirits where they ought to take such precious carriage, & walk away. His life began in early disappointment.
So it's a beginning. Coming up against violence again, which seems natural enough, an inherent wound in every utterance. But a landscape peopled sparsely, stretched acorss the yawning canvas of many years. How time is subsumed. How we fight against our fugitive hours, wrestling after meaning. Well. Best to leave it at that I suppose.
Don’t have much time to write, so please forgive in advance any omissions obvious to you. Besides which, to shift my focus & thinking from this place to that is an endeavor I’m never likely to master. I close my eyes, though, to sleep at night, & in that swelling darkness I am flooded with the old ghosts, with that life I left behind me, all of its currents, all of its loose ends buzzing like a dying filament inside my heart. Or I’ll be kicking a shovel into the dirt & suddenly remember the smell of grandma’s blackberry cobbler. Or the mud room, earthy, thick, all those mason jars blanketed in dust, the soft light of the sun filtered through the film on the windowpane, through the cobwebs that gather in its corners. Or the way her hand wasn’t cold at all, or warm, or anything, like it was disposed of body, a thing separate entire. The finish on her casket. But mostly I feel any wind here & I imagine it the tired remnant of some gale thrashing the oaks & maples along the drive, the bitter-cold winter, the sky the kind of blue that says yes the world is frozen & yes I would be too if I were able. The wheat fields in their roiling. My fingers over their tops, & the finches bobbing along the furrows. God, no simple wonder.
But here it’s detachment that teaches me my lessons. The click of the magazine & the endless stuttering of the report of gun-fire. How can I live among these things? This rifle in my hand? How can I shoot from my darkness into theirs, let fly this bullet from my hand & hope to lay it there in his heart? I shudder at it. But I am here, & there is no other recourse but to stand & let pierce some missive aimed elsewhere & let expire my own good breath. Kill or be killed. I cannot fake the trigger-pull. & besides, once the cacophony of battle is begun, once my nausea turns, I am taken by it, hostage of its simple violence. Every time my bullet lands in some man’s chest it kills another part of me. But yet I walk, & endure, & bid good morrow come.
I think of you all often. All the time. If I think on the here & now of it too long I’d likely lose all control of myself. They are latter days. But they will pass, & will bring me home to you. Until then, my love goes with you. Wishing you all best—
ap
When he was a child, he imagined all things living. The stars in their nightly shining, the severed bough of madrona upon the walkway, the stones stretching endless along the shoreline. He felt a part of an ongoing communion. speaking frequently into the air, assured that the wind would carry his words where they were intended. Or that the light in casting across his visage would take up a sentence like a conveyer belt & bear it aloft unto its rightful hearer. “A frog,” he would say, & would expect to hear his brother’s footsteps nearing, the shift of pebble underfoot. Too, he thought the world inhabited by invisible souls that could act as messenger & courier alike. If he found a particularly desirable bit of granite, or an insinuation of orthopod embedded in a halved soapstone, he would leave them in obvious places, tell the spirits where they ought to take such precious carriage, & walk away. His life began in early disappointment.
So it's a beginning. Coming up against violence again, which seems natural enough, an inherent wound in every utterance. But a landscape peopled sparsely, stretched acorss the yawning canvas of many years. How time is subsumed. How we fight against our fugitive hours, wrestling after meaning. Well. Best to leave it at that I suppose.
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