In Drought, Psalms

Aurelia, Leonor Fini

After a captivating, stormy dream:

i crave the touch of the desert. i crave its harshness, its roughness, rubbing against my body. i crave it burning my lips, my eyes. i crave it while i sleep, while i wake. why can’t i have it? you say it will hurt me, hurt you. but… how? 

i have disturbing dreams. i dream my hair is falling off of my head. i cover my scalp with my hands. my hair falls in unraveling tassels. my hands trace my bare head in horror. 

you once told me that nightmares are signs of a healthy mind. should i believe you? i didn’t believe you then. i won’t believe you now. 

your voice moans in my ears like the cold tongue of wind over shifting dunes. i don’t recognize it. i don’t want to recognize it. i defend my right not to recognize. 

i am beginning to suspect the concept of you. i am beginning to divide it. to fission it into unfissionable parts. nothing can undo that. remember. nothing. 

and nothing can undo the cruelty of memory. its mass inside the silence of my head. its indiscriminate firing, like a driven confession falling on slanted ears. remember? your white shirt was splattered with mud from our play in the grass. your linen pants were torn at the crotch from my tugging too hard. your cock was petrified driftwood between my hands. my legs, sex-soaked and love-bruised, were tangled in yours. my lips, lust-wet and purple-hot, were pressed to yours. my breasts were parched hills, waiting for rain. but when you sealed your lips, the clouds collapsed. 

your absence, like the silent closing of a door. my longing, like the gentle shimmer of a mirage. pools of water flowing over rippling desert sands. but the closer i come, the further they move away. 

how can you be made to understand the blindness? the absence of water? the numbness of ice? the touch of misguided fingers to elusive eyelids? how can you be made to understand the missing geometry of you? all of this, once certainty, once fact, once answer, is now question all over again. 

the sand is cold around my ankles. i extract my feet from this intimate sediment. the dunes moan my absence. the cacti offer me sustenance. i whisper your name. the sand stutters over every syllable. my eyes are dry. i could curse the day. the hour. the moment. i could curse the truth, and what i intended for it to be. 

instead. 

i sing psalms of transmutation: sand to gold. earth to water. wound to blossom. cave to air. 

cotton. to raiment. to skin. 

i am alone. naked. my fingers thrust inside fugitive clouds. my breasts raw with abrasions. won’t you clothe me? 

i am not illusion, nor mirage. i am reality. can any voice but mine make this proclamation?

can any body… but yours… be mine? 

in your absence, i have only the sky to keep me grounded.

Oxygen

Detail from Venus with a Mirror, Titian

You gather your thoughts like

one gathers so many vagabond grains of sand,

And this I recognize ever so patiently—

as our ‘growing into’ one another sparks,

our furtively flickering synthesis

day after day

year after year

this measured merging of one with one

And flares—sudden, speechless—

like my recognition of my need for breath,

Only

when I am gasping on its absence.

On Writing . . . and the Gift of Silence

Detail from Woman Reading, Augustin Bernard d'Agesci

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink, and clamoring to become visible. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

* * * * * * * * *

I love to write. No big surprise, right? I have a writing blog (actually, two), and though I am not a frequent blogger, I am very much a frequent writer. I write daily. My existence depends on it. My sanity depends on it, to be sure.

I’m a “processing” person. I like to analyze and think things through, and I write so I can find new ways of looking at the world. The human mind can only process so much in the split seconds it takes us to internalize a certain situation. Before we’ve had a chance to mull it over, it has already been filed away as “Event 99,” along with all the associations that go with it. So, what about Processing, and Understanding, and Insight?

There is something extremely satisfying and fulfilling in the act of writing, though I don’t think it’s the act of writing itself that satisfies. Rather, it’s the act of creating... recreating... from a unique perspective, having broken things down to their small parts. Hence: Processing. Understanding. Insight. When we create art, we give birth to fragments of ourselves. And, more often than not, if we have truly put ourselves into our artful self-expression, we don’t even have to claim it as ours. It will have “Nevine” or “Carl” or “Perpetua” written all over it, because it is bursting with the spirit of who we are.

We write. We paint. Fragments. We express. We create. Fragments. And as those fragments of ourselves are released, they make their way through the ether, seeking new resting, nesting places. Many times, they don’t find what they’re looking for. But sometimes, they do. This is when magic happens for the receiver. Magic is what makes something inside us, as appreciators of creative expression, smile and think, “Yes!” while reading a poem by, say, T. S. Eliot. Yes, he is my favorite poet. He always has been. He always will be. I read his words and they touch a part of me I sometimes wonder if even I have ever touched so intimately. 

I have similar experiences with my own work, especially when it comes to the creating part. Sometimes, my writing leaves me shimmering with its ease and beauty. Other times, I am up all night, with not a flicker of emotion or inspiration with which to put words to paper. And, to be sure, my reader will always experience my free or stunted flow, on one level or the other.

And just what is the point of this whole dissertation? The point is... four days ago I made a decision to take a writing fast. I told myself I would abstain, for a few days, from creative writing of any sort... just so I could see what it feels like. When my fingers itched for my favorite writing pen, I wrung them like they were saturated with water. When my head ached from an overflow of unexpressed thought, I told it, Silence, my head. When my muse came by for tea, I politely took a rain check.

I confess: This was an act of extreme masochism. It was almost physically painful, especially because I knew I had the choice to reverse my decision. But the truth is I felt that staying away from writing for a short while would be a good thing... because... when I am not birthing my own words, I indulge sensually in the words of others.

So I have been reading... and listening to music... and reading... and celebrating the beauty of others’ words... and worlds. But then, today... I needed my own words. I needed them more intensely than I have over the past four days. I needed the cleansing and cathartic power of their presence, and I decided to break my fast. But, oh muse! Oh, fickle one! She shunned me, just as I had shunned her. And words were not to be found! I asked her over for tea and crumpets, but she gave me her left shoulder.

I decided not to attend to her vengeful play, and instead, to read some more... just as I have been doing these past few days. As Joyce Carol Oates once wrote, “If writing is not available, reading is.” Indeed! I chose a collection of poems by Franz Wright. He’s quite the poet, truly. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize and all! Yet amazingly, because he is a poet, most people have never heard of him. Sad, eh? I picked up a copy of his God’s Silence at a used bookstore a couple of weeks ago, and I spent my morning in the company of his ethereal words:

The long silences need to be loved, perhaps

more than the words

which arrive

to describe them

in time.

Brilliant, yeah? And, can I just say? All the comfort... and confirmation... I was seeking.

As for me, as I await the arrival of words with which to describe my silence, and as I listen to the magnificence of Beethoven’s easy flow of creativity, here is my humble, muse-free contribution for today:

when my words

my voice

my spirit

are resting

their eyes

let the words

the voices

the spirits

of others

rise

In every limitless void, there is limitless bounty!

Gestalt: Intimations of Self-Integration

Young Woman, Pablo Picasso

i.

at first

there is silence

and how it creeps in

and settles into the corners even

most neglected, most marginalized

ii.

and also

there is solitude

and how it lingers

on windowpanes by day

on shadowed walls by dark

iii.

and too

there is awakening

and how it scintillates

in the intense midnight sky

serenading the tangoing stars

iv.

and then

there is wholeness

and how it manifests

in a quiet elaboration like

a shore that becomes the sea