The Snowmass Cycle

for Laure-Anne Bosselaar and Kurt Brown


1.   RETREAT

The sailor dreamt of loss,
but it was I who dreamt the sailor.
I was landlocked, sea-poor.
The sailor dreamt of a woman
who stared at the sea, then tired
of it, advertised her freedom.
She said to her friend: I want
all the fire one can have
without being consumed by it.
Clearly, I dreamt the woman too.
I was surrounded by mountains
suddenly green after a long winter,
a chosen uprootedness, soul shake-up,
every day a lesson about the vastness
between ecstasy and repose.
I drank coffee called Black Forest
at the local cafe. I took long walks
and tried to love the earth
and hate its desecrations.
All the Golden Retrievers wore red
bandannas on those muttless streets.
All the birches, I think, were aspens.
I do not often remember my dreams,
or dream of dreamers in them.
To be without some of the things
you want, a wise man said,
is an indispensable part of happiness.



2.   MOUNTAIN, SKY

I’ve been paying attention
to the sky again.
I’ve seen a ravine up there,
and a narrow, black gorge.
Not to worry, I tell myself,
about tricks the mind plays,
as long as you know they’re tricks.

If the rich are casually cruel
perhaps it’s because
they can stare at the sky
and never see an indictment
in the shape of clouds.

The frown, for example,
in a thunderhead. The fist.

That big mountain
I’ve been looking at—
I love how it borrows purple
from the filtered light,
sometimes red.

Like any of us
it’s all of its appearances.

It’s good that the rich
have to die,
a peasant saying goes,
otherwise they’d live forever.

Here in this rented house,
high up, I understand.
I’m one of the rich
for a while. The earth feels
mine and the air I breathe
is rarefied, if thin.

Dusk now is making its last claim.
I love the confluence
of dark mountain, dark sky.
Soon I won’t know the beginning
from the end.



3.   HIM

Those empty celebrations of the half-believer
along for the ride.
Those secret words repeated in mirrors—
someone’s personal fog.
A man’s heart ransomed for comfort
or a few extra bucks, his soul in rags.

I have been him and him and him.

Was it nobility or senility
when my old grandmother tried to drown
artificial flowers in the bathtub?

Can only saints carry the load
without talking about the burden?

I want to lean into life,
catch the faintest perfume.

In every boy child an old man is dying.
By middle age
he begins to stink, complain.

I want to have gifts for him
when we finally meet.
I want him to go out like an ancient
Egyptian, surrounded
by what is his, desiring nothing.



4.   DELINEATION AT DUSK

A lost hour, and that animal lassitude
after a vanished afternoon.
Outside: joggers, cyclists.
Motion, the great purifier, is theirs.
If this were Europe someone in a tower
might be ringing a bell.
People hearing it would know
similar truths, might even know
exactly who they are.
It’s getting near drinking time.
It’s getting near getting near;
a person alone conjures rules
or can liquefy, fall apart.
That woman with the bouffant—
chewing gum, waiting for the bus—
someone thinks she’s beautiful.
It’s beautiful someone does.
The sky’s murmuring, the storm
that calls you up,
makes promises, never comes.
Somewhere else, no doubt,
a happy man slicing a tomato,
a woman with a measuring cup.
Somewhere else: the foreclosure
of a feeling or a promise,
followed by silence or shouts.
Here, the slow dance of contingency,
an afternoon connected to an evening
by a slender wish. Sometimes absence
makes the heart grow sluggish
and desire only one person, or one thing.
I am closing the curtains.
I am helping the night.



5.   SOLITUDE

A few days ago I stopped looking
at the photographs
clustered on the wall, nudes,
which had become dull to me,
like a tourist’s collection of smooth rocks.

I turned away from the view
and conjured a plague of starlings.
Oh how they darkened the landscape.

Surely such beauty had been waiting for its elegy.
I felt like crushing a rhododendron.

Now and again I feel the astonishment
of being alive like this, in this body,
the ventricles and the small bones
in the hand, the intricacies of digestion ....

When the radio said parents in California
gave birth to another child
so that their older child might have
a bone-marrow transplant and live,

I found myself weeping
for such complicated beauty.
How wonderful the radio
and its distant, human voices.

The rain now is quite without consequence
coming down.

I suppose I’ve come to the limits
of my paltry resources, this hankering
for people and for massive disturbance,
then high pressure,
the sequence that’s been promised for days.

I will long to be alone
when my friends arrive.



6.   THE BODY WIDENS

The body widens, and people are welcomed
into it, many at a time. This must be
what happens when we learn to be generous
when we’re not in love, or otherwise charmed.
I’ve been examining yesterday’s ashes. I’ve visited
my own candleless altar. Little by little,
the old selfish parts of me are loosening.
I have a plan for becoming lean: to use
all my fat in service of expansion. Have women
always known this? Loveliness and fear
when they open and let in and give away?
The mountains here pierce the sky,
and the sky, bountiful, closes in around them.



7.   A NEW MOUTH

Give me a new mouth; I want to talk.
I’ve been watching the spider mend its web.
I think I’ve learned something
about architecture from a swallow.
Excuse me while I separate the nettles
from the flowers, while I put my nose
to the black moist smell of earth
and come up smiling. Somewhere in the world
is the secret name
for God, many-lettered, unpronounceable.
             There’s a speakable grace
in the fields and even in the cities.
The grapes ripen, someone refuses to become
a machine. And yet I want to talk
about the worn-out husks of men and women
returning from the factories,
the venereal streets, the bruise history
passes down to its forlorn children.
    I need a new mouth to acknowledge
that piety will keep us small, imprisoned,
that it’s all right to be ridiculous
and sway first to the left, then to the right,
in order to find our balance.
                                  I’ve been watching
an evening star quiver. I’ve been trying
to identify the word before its utterance.
Give me a new mouth and I’ll be
a guardian against forgetfulness.
I’ve noticed the wind doesn’t discriminate
between sycamore and cypress.
I want to find the cool, precise language
for how passion gives rise to passion.



8.   STRANGER

The wind gone. I can hear my breathing.
I can hear the lateness of the hour
by what isn’t moving.

Woodrun Slope. Snowmass Village.
These are winter names, and it’s summer.
The water from the mountains
rushes down man-made gullies.

Serious phantoms with their black tears
are out tonight.
I’m close—my other delusion goes—
to the heart of things.

A young man with a young man’s itch
would rise and go out prowling.

Tomorrow I’ll choose a mountain
that’s a hill, take the slowest horse
at the Lazy-7, slow and old,
sure to know its trail.

I knew a man who said he could dominate
solitude. In other ways, too,
he was a fool.

Once I wanted to be
one of those fabulous strangers
who appear and disappear.
Now I arrive only by invitation,
stay long enough to earn my fare.

Outside my window, clouds from the west
erasing the stars.
A coyote howling its singular news.

At whatever pace,
isn’t there an imperative to live?

Before a person dies he should experience
the double fire,
of what he wants and shouldn’t have.


-- Stephen Dunn

The Bank Heist Theme

Feel Good. Always.

Against Drowning

2013

*Quoted lyrics from Lykke Li, “Love out of Lust” 
2011 album "Wounded Rhymes" Atlantic Records

I can take bullets to the heart

Tove Lo on loop. My friend says she's that wasted girlfriend you can always count on. You can tell her everything and she will never judge you. 

I'm not a fan of Hunger Games (I haven't even watched the films to be honest), this video just happens to play the best version of this song online.


   

Love it when I'm play-pretending 
When I can take bullets to the heart 
Fucking up my happy ending 
But I can take bullets to the heart..

Burning Books

This is not about Bradbury’s novel, but it does have a great deal to do with governing institutions and how their powers dictate whose books are read by the world or left to rot in drawers. 

If he were to will it, A. would rather have books by brilliant writers—who perished before they were widely appreciated—burned to never be read by the public again. He believes publishers and everyone today do not deserve to read such great works of literature. The way he sees it, our society continues to propagate the same system that rejects poets and novelists that create important and revolutionary books. 

Think about it, every century has a roster of maligned geniuses way ahead of their time. A. finds it hypocritical and pretentious that the "same" institutions, critics, writers, academics, publishers (publishers most especially) even have the gall to laud these dead writers today. Not everyone forgets how all they ever did was reject and throw scathing remarks at these writers when they were alive.

One such extreme case is that of novelist John Kennedy Toole, the author of “A Confederacy of Dunces” (which I've yet to read). Toole approached many publishers to accept his manuscript yet none of them could understand his brand of tragicomedy. As history had it, presses didn’t bother to give him a chance. When frustration and depression finally took its toll on the young writer, Toole committed suicide in 1969 (he was 32). Upon learning this, A.’s exact words were “How could the world do that?—He died thinking he was a horrible writer.”

Struck by grief, Toole’s mother continued to submit his manuscript to various publishers. With the help of his friend writer Walker Percy, “A Confederacy of Dunces” was finally published in 1980, almost twenty years after Toole’s death. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 and is now revered as one of the most a canonical works of modern literature about the Southern United States.

http://www.jktoole.com

http://thebooklion.files.wordpress.com

Another case: Herman Melville's popular classic “Moby-Dick” (also another book I’ve yet to enjoy) was not well-received when it was first published in 1851. It gone out of print by the time Melville passed away in 1891. Nevertheless, today it is considered a brilliant classic and one of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century.

--

Yes, it’s possible to be a writer and not be read in your lifetime. I can go on and on about writers who didn’t enjoy much recognition for their masterpieces. Try to find “The Monk” by British novelist and dramatist Matthew Gregory Lewis and you’ll marvel at one of the finest gothic novels written in the English language. If you’ve ever come across works by Chinese poet Li-Po (also known as Li  Bai, some say he’s arguably more brilliant than Tu Fu, but unlike Tu Fu, he wasn’t popular when he was alive), French poet Charles Baudelaire, and American poet Emily Dickenson (who probably just published 3 poems in her life), then you stumbled upon treasures that humanity almost shunned and never found. 

We devour one book after another and yet we don’t know how much suffering some of these writers had to endure while they were alive. 

A. maintains that none of us deserve to know of such beauty; if the world truly wanted to help its writers, it should reward them while they are living. In an ideal world, institutions should help keep artists from going poor and hungry. Perhaps in another universe there must be a Xanadu where artists can stay true to their craft without being neglected and shunned by society. But at the same time, somewhere in my heart I know one cannot produce great art by staying in a “place of comfort." It is the fate of artists and writers to understand human suffering well enough to create art.

Drinking Alone by Moonlight by Li Bai

A. said to me, “Do you agree? If I were to have it, society should burn these books! We don’t deserve them.”

He, WE, feel strongly about this issue, though I took the opposite position: I said no.

I understood how A. felt. As writers, we scoff at the idea of powerful institutions that publish minor works over books that have the potential to stand the test of time. If it were to happen to him, A. would choose to keep his book to himself—this is how he shows defiance, this is his way of rejecting the world that continues to drive true writers and artists mad.

“But that wouldn’t be right,” I said to him. “I would however keep them away from the publishers who rejected them. It's wrong how they continue to earn more just by reprinting their works.”

--

It’s not this generation’s fault many authors were not read when they were alive. The existence of beautiful books by neglected writers are a testament to the injustice that pervades the publishing and writing enterprise (I say this exactly because I believe it mustn’t be driven exclusively by capitalism).

If more people read these books, whether they write masterpieces or not, their lives will be richer for it. It is also my hope that a good reader may be inspired to continue writing important literary work. Who knows, perhaps some of them can even change the goddamn system. It’s a long shot, but it has to start somewhere.

Mindfulness

Tonight's reminder 💌🙏 Very timely words of wisdom, indeed. #chinesefortunecards thanks, Arnie!

To the Dead

What I hope (when I hope) is that we'll

see each other again,--

. . . and again reach the VEIN

in which we loved each other . .
It existed. It existed.

There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--

. . . for, like the detectives (the Ritz Brothers)
in The Gorilla,

once we'd been battered by the gorilla

we searched the walls, the intricately carved
impenetrable paneling

for a button, lever, latch

that unlocks a secret door that
reveals at last the secret chambers,

CORRIDORS within WALLS,

(the disenthralling, necessary, dreamed structure
beneath the structure we see,)

that is the HOUSE within the HOUSE . . .

There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--

. . . there were (for example) months when I seemed only
to displease, frustrate,

disappoint you--; then, something triggered

a drunk lasting for days, and as you
slowly and shakily sobered up,

sick, throbbing with remorse and self-loathing,

insight like ashes: clung
to; useless; hated . . .

This was the viewing of the power of the waters

while the waters were asleep:--
secrets, histories of loves, betrayals, double-binds

not fit (you thought) for the light of day . . .

There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--

. . . for, there at times at night, still we
inhabit the secret place together . . .

Is this wisdom, or self-pity?--

The love I've known is the love of
two people staring

not at each other, but in the same direction.

-- Frank Bidart

Sing 'cause you don't know how to say it

There's been a lot of talk of love
But that don't amount to nothing
You can evoke the stars above
But that doesn't make it something

And the only way to last
And the only way to live it
Is to hold on when you get love,
And let go when you give it, give it.

If I'm frightened, if I'm high
It's my weakness please forgive it
At least I hold on when I get love,
And I let go when I give it.

At the World's End

Tonight I laid my head on his chest listening to his constant heart. He strokes my hair to sleep yet I remain wakeful. I hold him as he holds me in his dreams.

In a few hours the sun, glinting windows, heat--on a new day I will be the first person in his life.

If the world had ended, we were exactly where we needed to be.

Exposures

I came across an article on Time Magazine about photographer Melissa Spitz. Her work involved making her mother the main subject of her photographs. I’m sure photographing parents or family members and elevating their portraits into art isn’t unheard of, but what makes Spitz’s work a bit different has drawn mixed opinions and reactions from people who have learned about her objective.

According to Time, Spitz has spent the last six years documenting her mentally ill mother through photography. She explains in the interview: “There are people who think I exploited my mom, and think that I’m doing something wrong, and then there’re people who think I’m doing something very important.”

Now, I think some people don’t really mind becoming public subjects as long as they agree with the kind of representation artists render. In Spitz case, her mother asked to be photographed until she told her to go all out with her life. She even admitted to feeling bad about it at first, but it eventually helped them bond again even with her mother's condition.

Those who think Spitz is taking advantage of her mother to “put up another art show” may be too quick to judge. I believe much of art’s content is greatly affected by what concerns the artist. The work can later on possess transformative powers for the audience as well as the artist who created it. Spitz states in the same interview: “[T]he work was a conversation that was not only me watching her but also an echo of how I feel about living and dealing with her.” Spitz isn’t just putting up strange photographs in the guise of raising awareness for mental patients. What’s it like, really? By doing this, she attempts to demonstrate how it is to be patient and strong for a family member struck with mental illness.

I think what society criticizes is the unapologetic exhibition of the private life, more so when a person is ill or disadvantaged because it is largely seen as a helpless person who did not have a say in the matter, who’s just another subject for media consumption until the next interesting and unusual thing comes along. A person may be offended when they’re photographed or captured in a video because 1) they don’t have control over how they are represented 2) because someone has invaded their privacy 3) along with a number of other privacy and public space issues (because of the arbitrary some-things-are-just-inappropriate-for-the-viewing public).

People sympathize with the notion that someone might be stealing moments from a person’s most vulnerable disposition to be later looked at closely by the public. Those who "exploit" do this to grab people’s attentions, and perhaps to even make some money (though I doubt Spitz is making any real money out of this project). While I understand this point, I would like to maintain my openness to art and whatever form it might take. I also believe a closer look is exactly what it demands.

--

I’m quite a reserved individual myself. For someone attempting to write and publish, I have almost zero exposure. I understand the need for privacy and value my personal space. For a while I even thought this fear of exposing myself has kept me from writing about subjects that mattered to me. Because in the age of Facebook, Instagram, Viber, not to mention annoying aunts, uncles, and acquaintances that always manage to tell me what I should and should not believe, sometimes I just don’t want to have an opinion anymore (such is the adult experience, you realize some of the people you’ve known can be quite imposing). To add to that, I admit I’m almost always afraid of being wrong 90% of the time. It can really kill critical thinking and sound thinking in general.

The air of indifference surrounding these social (media) interactions just drove me further into silence. They have a tendency to seem like announcements; nobody listens really, many of them don't feel like real conversations. As a result, I made my online accounts private, used pseudonyms, logged in less, and only added friends I felt safe to interact with.

Writing provides me with a space for myself. It’s tough to keep that space from being infected by the world outside (distractions are everywhere). I try to write because it keeps me focused enough to think for myself. If it’s one thing I’ve been struggling with, it has always been balancing how much of myself I can expose and retain from my work. I’ve been told to disclose more, that I’ve too much restraint. I still keep asking: up to what point should I reveal of myself?

When I write, it’s strangely with the thought that I wish to somehow disappear in my work. I guess what I’ve been looking for isn’t myself but something beyond myself. All this time all I might be hoping for is to see through the world beyond mine and what I already know.

--

I worked for a television show when I was a young graduate a few years ago. In one of my assignments, I booked an interview with a female fashion photographer named Sarah Black. I recall it was for an episode which featured various Filipino women in the art, fashion, business and entertainment industry. My producer couldn’t make it for some reason so I ended up conducting the interview myself.

I was with our cameraman kuya Randy, who apparently won an award for shooting a documentary that I did not know of at the time. I was the production newbie, and in those days, co-workers hardly told me anything about the job. I had to know things for myself.

When it came to shoot stand-ups, which are basically action shots of the subject, kuya Randy wanted to take as much footage as possible. He probably takes over three hours of footage for each segment with only ten to thirteen minutes edited into the show. Anyway, that’s how shooting usually works (at least from my brief stint in local TV). The truth is people behind the camera never have enough beautiful subjects and satisfying angles, shots, lighting, and time. They breathe all these elements. Taking a shot is like a reflex action to them. They can’t miss that moment.

When kuya Randy motioned to shoot more stand-ups, Sarah Black began feeling uncomfortable. She asked if it was necessary for him to take so many shots at various angles doing different things at certain positions. I found this to be quite odd knowing she was a photographer. But I quickly sensed she was too familiar with this routine, that when the lenses were turned on her, she felt the urge to hide. That was the thing, she agreed to be interviewed, but suddenly felt self-conscious when the camera pried on her. We moved from shooting a professional interview to suddenly taking parts of her that she didn’t consent to.

I could empathize with Miss Black’s unease, I actually even felt embarrassed because it was as if we betrayed her trust. It didn’t take long before I told kuya Randy to stop filming. I would have allowed the shoot to continue if Miss Sarah showed signs of openness, but she kept her cover. I reasoned we had interviewed Miss Black before so we could just use the old footage in the archives. I let the reticent photographer fly out but not without double takes of her hazel-gray eyes and long raven hair.

On the way back to our office, kuya Randy schooled me on how to never stop a shoot even if the subject was starting to feel uneasy. After x number of years in the field, he said that looking closer and longer is one way to show how beautiful something is. He explained that their vulnerability made them more real. He then talked about how he shot a documentary about a disabled child. I won't go into further detail, but he believed the documentary won an award because people were moved by the child's loathsome condition. Kuya Randy's exact words were naaawa sila sa bata. 

I personally sneer at the business of poorly manipulating people's emotions. At the same time, I learned that invasion of privacy constitutes the quest for truth. I'm sure the said documentary raised awareness. I just really hope more people and institutions helped the child after the story was aired. Was it a form of exploitation by the media? Were they merely being a good journalistic team? I have mixed feelings about this, it obviously isn't my cup of tea.

Being disrespectfully invasive wasn't the way I wanted to do my job. I still didn’t agree with kuya Randy, I maintained my position even when the producer gave me hell for it in the next couple of days. 

I value my personal space just as much as I respect another's. I thought there was no way I could uphold this while working with local media (I don't know how other journalists do it, but it requires careful handling). Right then, I knew I’d pack up in search for a new job a few months later. I wasn't cut out to have a career in Philippine Media. And I don't believe it's necessary to reveal more, especially under tawdry lights you couldn’t control. 

Against Certainty

There is something out in the dark that wants to correct us.
Each time I think "this," it answers "that."
Answers hard, in heart-grammar's strictness.

If I then say "that," it too is taken away.

Between certainty and the real, an ancient enmity.
When the cat waits in the path-hedge,
no cell of her body is not waiting.
This is how she is able so completely to disappear.

I would like to enter the silence portion as she does.

To live amid the great vanishing as a cat must live,
one shadow fully at ease inside another.

-- Jane Hirshfield