April 9, 10
“I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason—Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.”
Writing again, finally, in my chapter on Keats. A few weeks ago, half-asleep & irritable in the barn on Orcas, I came of a sudden to an understanding in regards to his poems & poetics, & though I’ll usher it along elsewhere & appropriately, here it’s worth mentioning in a different framework. In the early odes he always opened a trap-door, pulled a velvet curtain, snapped the integrity of the poems’ pursuits in order to extrapolate some conceptual daemon. The Grecian urn devastates the work of art beyond repair, & its feeble recompense is to pull back a step & cryptically remark on beauty & truth. The nightingale thieves the poet of his numbered, tubercular, fugitive hours, & in the end, the poet merely asks if he was awake or asleep. They are weak gestures, rhetorically empty of breath, tableaus of poorly acted liminality. & then a remarkable thing happens in the final ode on autumn—he disappears. The stubble-field lays bare & cold, windblown, ravaged. The air grays, clouds quietly obscure horizons. & that’s all.
What strikes me again, nagging thing, is my tendency to umbrella concepts over particulars. That I am not this gun-grey day in a cabin of yellow walls looking over the snow blanketing the bay, but that I am rather doing some work on myself, prospecting truth, prodding at theoreticals, taking time to merely feel. Our faith in concepts absolute. Our fear of plain detail a quiet thundering in us, murmuring heart. I tremble to let it be, to let pass the day unannounced. This daily missive here, my application for meaning beyond what has already passed. Evidence to myself that I have participated, processed, found in the pile of splintered alder beside my window a fitting metaphor, seen inscaped in the thawing wheat some richer profundity that I cannot, need not name. An uncertainty that I yet frame, make object of, teach to dance before me, threadlined marionette. The wilderness in every instant tamed & tempered just so, even unwittingly. & so Keats descries the necessity of the uncertain, & just as certainly installs as its protector a sense of Beauty. & so I let the stark alder bough speak for me of some time-weathered desolation. I let the leaf scrape the empty drive & gust into the culvert to freeze overnight, I let the gaping silence between rifle reports below the bluff ring the clearer in hushed anticipation of coming sounding. & though I am not in control of these things, a ghost in the mineral world, a wisp, a waif, still I put my fingers forth & still I bid them dance, still I bid them sing. & how I love the natural world. How I love it for its ability to ignore me completely.
***
The last day of my twenty-ninth year, the tug & pull of a personal history, the bottomlessness of sprung introspection. Caverns, craters, scars, lines drawn & maps rendered—a shook foil. How to gauge the days, take their measure. I think of my twentieth birthday, that child, that cocksure hollow eye on the horizon. The spring in Iowa, its heavy odors & soil-rich air, its levity. To look into my eyes then, I wonder, & again today. Always this remove. My twenties a roaring cannonball shot through & landing here, another bit of detritus for the yard, tucked between scrapped lumber & clotted surplus concrete thrown aside & forgotten under layers of steady snowfall. That quick fire. Was I supposed to be something else? Somewhere else? Had I a dream that died? Or is this its manifestation? I don’t know what thrived in me then, what youthful energy, what latent hope, anxious compulsions. Twenty, you believe your own myths, & when faith is fine, the feeling is close to grace. When it falters, it falters over a looming abyss. & then twenty-one I extricated myself, reft & cleaved from what I knew, alone in Providence. Here it was pride, & arrogance, & utter, unspeakable fear.
& so began this lasting courtship with groundlessness, or my own version of it. A root some unthinkable thing. & falling in love, that tectonic shift, world-change, coming to fulgence. A partner to sing the same song. A pup that abided it, abides it still. Colorado. New Mexico. Colorado again. & then Orcas, that isle that undid me. & Alaska, now, here. How I arrive slowly at my slip, the berth of an old dream. Too much to fathom in between.
Today, last night’s snow already melting from the stand of spruce outside the window. The sound of water rushing, gutter-run, rivulet & culvert, ditch & drive, everywhere a tendril of the same gushed melt-off. The flatulent call of pheasants in the tall grass. Inside, write a spell, read a spell, pace in front of the window, look out over the glaciers. Days I simply cannot grasp what to do with myself, & sink into without struggle. No distraction alluring enough to totter the epicenter of slow change. Nothing to shake from me the ash. Where I tindered kindling. How difficult to remain still, & how impossible to conceive of motion. The stillness, I suppose, the point. This is where I’ve come to jury over my ghosts, put my selves to trial. & it is a trying, a taut, a sluggish deliberation—but it is a progress. Just look, how I’ve shed my twenties already, molted skein in wake.
Writing again, finally, in my chapter on Keats. A few weeks ago, half-asleep & irritable in the barn on Orcas, I came of a sudden to an understanding in regards to his poems & poetics, & though I’ll usher it along elsewhere & appropriately, here it’s worth mentioning in a different framework. In the early odes he always opened a trap-door, pulled a velvet curtain, snapped the integrity of the poems’ pursuits in order to extrapolate some conceptual daemon. The Grecian urn devastates the work of art beyond repair, & its feeble recompense is to pull back a step & cryptically remark on beauty & truth. The nightingale thieves the poet of his numbered, tubercular, fugitive hours, & in the end, the poet merely asks if he was awake or asleep. They are weak gestures, rhetorically empty of breath, tableaus of poorly acted liminality. & then a remarkable thing happens in the final ode on autumn—he disappears. The stubble-field lays bare & cold, windblown, ravaged. The air grays, clouds quietly obscure horizons. & that’s all.
What strikes me again, nagging thing, is my tendency to umbrella concepts over particulars. That I am not this gun-grey day in a cabin of yellow walls looking over the snow blanketing the bay, but that I am rather doing some work on myself, prospecting truth, prodding at theoreticals, taking time to merely feel. Our faith in concepts absolute. Our fear of plain detail a quiet thundering in us, murmuring heart. I tremble to let it be, to let pass the day unannounced. This daily missive here, my application for meaning beyond what has already passed. Evidence to myself that I have participated, processed, found in the pile of splintered alder beside my window a fitting metaphor, seen inscaped in the thawing wheat some richer profundity that I cannot, need not name. An uncertainty that I yet frame, make object of, teach to dance before me, threadlined marionette. The wilderness in every instant tamed & tempered just so, even unwittingly. & so Keats descries the necessity of the uncertain, & just as certainly installs as its protector a sense of Beauty. & so I let the stark alder bough speak for me of some time-weathered desolation. I let the leaf scrape the empty drive & gust into the culvert to freeze overnight, I let the gaping silence between rifle reports below the bluff ring the clearer in hushed anticipation of coming sounding. & though I am not in control of these things, a ghost in the mineral world, a wisp, a waif, still I put my fingers forth & still I bid them dance, still I bid them sing. & how I love the natural world. How I love it for its ability to ignore me completely.
***
The last day of my twenty-ninth year, the tug & pull of a personal history, the bottomlessness of sprung introspection. Caverns, craters, scars, lines drawn & maps rendered—a shook foil. How to gauge the days, take their measure. I think of my twentieth birthday, that child, that cocksure hollow eye on the horizon. The spring in Iowa, its heavy odors & soil-rich air, its levity. To look into my eyes then, I wonder, & again today. Always this remove. My twenties a roaring cannonball shot through & landing here, another bit of detritus for the yard, tucked between scrapped lumber & clotted surplus concrete thrown aside & forgotten under layers of steady snowfall. That quick fire. Was I supposed to be something else? Somewhere else? Had I a dream that died? Or is this its manifestation? I don’t know what thrived in me then, what youthful energy, what latent hope, anxious compulsions. Twenty, you believe your own myths, & when faith is fine, the feeling is close to grace. When it falters, it falters over a looming abyss. & then twenty-one I extricated myself, reft & cleaved from what I knew, alone in Providence. Here it was pride, & arrogance, & utter, unspeakable fear.
& so began this lasting courtship with groundlessness, or my own version of it. A root some unthinkable thing. & falling in love, that tectonic shift, world-change, coming to fulgence. A partner to sing the same song. A pup that abided it, abides it still. Colorado. New Mexico. Colorado again. & then Orcas, that isle that undid me. & Alaska, now, here. How I arrive slowly at my slip, the berth of an old dream. Too much to fathom in between.
Today, last night’s snow already melting from the stand of spruce outside the window. The sound of water rushing, gutter-run, rivulet & culvert, ditch & drive, everywhere a tendril of the same gushed melt-off. The flatulent call of pheasants in the tall grass. Inside, write a spell, read a spell, pace in front of the window, look out over the glaciers. Days I simply cannot grasp what to do with myself, & sink into without struggle. No distraction alluring enough to totter the epicenter of slow change. Nothing to shake from me the ash. Where I tindered kindling. How difficult to remain still, & how impossible to conceive of motion. The stillness, I suppose, the point. This is where I’ve come to jury over my ghosts, put my selves to trial. & it is a trying, a taut, a sluggish deliberation—but it is a progress. Just look, how I’ve shed my twenties already, molted skein in wake.
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