April 4
The heavy pallor of early morning seemed to hover long through the window, gungrey-light, muted. & come to find everything covered in a fine film of ash, Redoubt blowing at 6:00 for a solid half hour, pluming 50,000 feet in the air, a southeasterly current ushering ashfall along the Kenai & depositing it in a thick shroud here & in Seldovia. We are under an ash advisory. Stepping from the door was a strange shock, akin to wondering into some post-apocalyptic landscape. I half expect a father & a boy wielding a fire-stick & a shopping cart to come trundling past on the Seward Highway. & so today unfolds under a tight constraint. Manacled to waiting, the air unsafe to breathe, an anxious & cabin-fevered dog restless on the bed, I can only shrug, only resign, let a day quietly stream past. In a way, it will be a relief to extricate myself if only momentarily from that storm & stress of finding anchor & settling place. That unclear panic, that galaxy of obscure stars spinning around the head. Much easier, in the end, to release the vague pressures that vice the present, to air it out, let fly the chaff. Too easy to feel tunneled in by unnecessary haste, forgetting the kernel unforged in flame, locus of the possible, the still moment in the turning world.
Later, the sun gauzed & obscured, 30 knot gusts swirling ash into eddies & wind-devils. Went to the bakery for a loaf of bread, my mask on, & came back with ash welled up in my ears, my eyes burning from its fine silica powder. Had to brush the thick build-up from the windshield. & stuck inside, beginning now to feel a breed of confinement, a kind of defense building up in me against the day’s enforced hermitage. Most places in town are closed. Being outside for longer than a minute or two is ill-advised, if not plain idiotic. & so to myself I turn, finally, unable to offer up distraction. Here, here, here. A print in the ash. Evidence of life in the blown ember of having-been.
& with myself as sole witness, the tales I tell turn suddenly from their urgencies. Look yourself in the mirror like Leaud & repeat your name over & over until it dissolves into babble, & a line is ruptured, a floe issued solitary from the break. Past falls into neat mythologies, amorphous, there for the plucking when my courage would swell, my sadness would have company, my exultation a partner. A kind of chorus to embolden the present, a choir of ghosts gathered round, transparent, wearing the feeble rags of revision. & the notion of the foreseeable the strangest breed of faith. Hoping that chimeras cross the windowpane come morning. Hoping that windmills protrude from the sloping hills. Dulcinea, Beatrice. No name here to follow. I think I stand upon the roiling shore, the violent waves in their crashing upheavals, torrents of massive sound, & the wind a lashing whip, the ash & sand ripping across the night sky, the dull stars swallowing whole their sickly pale lights in retreat, clipped moon in silvered cutting arc, & me there, black form, whispering prayers & hoping them heard. Such precious susurration. Gentle call-note. Doting thing. A leaf dropped in an ocean hoping for some distant shore. What we traverse to delineate the eye of the storm, its fine contours, its changing borders. Where that calm resides, that promised exhale ferrying us hushed unto ourselves. That a tempest should rage around a stillness, a circumference warring against its center, the most illuminating of natural sympathies, maybe. That there is respite in release. What can I tell myself but unembellished anecdotes tired from over-rehearsal? There is a starkness, a poignant, honest, bare skeleton in this kind of foraging alone. I cannot lie to myself & make myself believe. There is no passing glance, no pertinent design. I am I. A wave. The prayer’s transit. The light itself.
Later, the sun gauzed & obscured, 30 knot gusts swirling ash into eddies & wind-devils. Went to the bakery for a loaf of bread, my mask on, & came back with ash welled up in my ears, my eyes burning from its fine silica powder. Had to brush the thick build-up from the windshield. & stuck inside, beginning now to feel a breed of confinement, a kind of defense building up in me against the day’s enforced hermitage. Most places in town are closed. Being outside for longer than a minute or two is ill-advised, if not plain idiotic. & so to myself I turn, finally, unable to offer up distraction. Here, here, here. A print in the ash. Evidence of life in the blown ember of having-been.
& with myself as sole witness, the tales I tell turn suddenly from their urgencies. Look yourself in the mirror like Leaud & repeat your name over & over until it dissolves into babble, & a line is ruptured, a floe issued solitary from the break. Past falls into neat mythologies, amorphous, there for the plucking when my courage would swell, my sadness would have company, my exultation a partner. A kind of chorus to embolden the present, a choir of ghosts gathered round, transparent, wearing the feeble rags of revision. & the notion of the foreseeable the strangest breed of faith. Hoping that chimeras cross the windowpane come morning. Hoping that windmills protrude from the sloping hills. Dulcinea, Beatrice. No name here to follow. I think I stand upon the roiling shore, the violent waves in their crashing upheavals, torrents of massive sound, & the wind a lashing whip, the ash & sand ripping across the night sky, the dull stars swallowing whole their sickly pale lights in retreat, clipped moon in silvered cutting arc, & me there, black form, whispering prayers & hoping them heard. Such precious susurration. Gentle call-note. Doting thing. A leaf dropped in an ocean hoping for some distant shore. What we traverse to delineate the eye of the storm, its fine contours, its changing borders. Where that calm resides, that promised exhale ferrying us hushed unto ourselves. That a tempest should rage around a stillness, a circumference warring against its center, the most illuminating of natural sympathies, maybe. That there is respite in release. What can I tell myself but unembellished anecdotes tired from over-rehearsal? There is a starkness, a poignant, honest, bare skeleton in this kind of foraging alone. I cannot lie to myself & make myself believe. There is no passing glance, no pertinent design. I am I. A wave. The prayer’s transit. The light itself.
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