I Plunged into Solitude. I Dwelt in the Tree behind Me by Odilon Redon
I look towards the door. I think of her.
I think back to the drawer, that little piece of paper.
Something like reality. Grainy and full of pulsating life –
buzzing flies, little black and white stars; nestled among the curling papers.
Then he closes the drawer, before I can make out the full word.
And about those words. euryewreyrsjdhg. Wait, what again?
iuweyrweyrufegfdxfkrogrggrtjjtgtkghjgthrgregre.
I don’t get it. I open my mouth. Her face turns stormy.
Then she turns back towards the windows.
I wish he would tell me. I can’t read what’s between those eyes.
Blessings
encapsulated into being:
an A, an E, maybe a D
or, perhaps, two Ts:
You grow into your name,
or maybe you don’t know
what it means. Google tells you
that you’re a “child of God”,
or “the Messenger of Angels”.
But I don’t want empty titles, or
non-definitive purposes. Neither am I
a word lost in the passages
of light, or meaningless verses.
The story spills, rolling about
from the dregs: pale pastures of bitter coffee.
Of two really bad wines –
a glass flute lies casually on its thinly, curved side.
A discarded button lies on the floor,
reflecting a pale bluish Singer hue.
Ethereal grandmother eyes, sandwiched
between ancient, jovial mischief
now sparkle as she takes to the tale:
“80 years of strife,
and of withered family life –
of the seas and of many lovers,
drowned in the jungles of Malaya.
A man that disappeared off the coast,
taken by two khaki-clad men:
who is to say, or say afoul
of these dangerous mice
that masquerade as men?”
Somewhere in between
the halogen lights
rests the slight pause
of her dexturous fingers,
the shadow looming
in the form of benign presence,
all in all, right in front of me –
she who wears them all,
clandestine threads
inpalpably woven in her blood:
she, half-hidden by the light
of the lamp, who gently
pokes the needle through the cloth,
humming the medley under her breath.
“I took you to the fortune teller
and he took a look at you –
and he named you right there, and then.”
But what does it mean, Mum?
She continues to sew,
the silence punctuated
by the scrape of the key.
The door creaks open
and a stilted gasp of light peers in.
It dances on her face,
illuminating buttonhole dimples,
tracing soft-worn wrinkles
and lifting her face
from somnabulant monsters.
“I don’t know, honey –
count it as a blessing from the gods?
But what you make of it:
that, I can say, such will be.”
The silent embroiderer continues to weave. The rain tinkles, their spherical bodies dashing themselves against the window panes.
Her needle; quick – sharp – is the sniper resting on the water’s edge. Then it dives in, that little pinprick of red, and a flame slowly flickers on the surface of cobalt silk. That sudden flare, the inevitable anger! She stops her work, startled.
Then it quivers; dilating in a spectrum of orange, and the sudden memory of a held-back slap inches its way to the surface. A tear-streaked face, painted in hazy shades of white and grey, keeps repeating: “No, mamma.”
She tilts her head, grappling with the memory, her eyes narrowing involuntarily. The hazy film continues, unaided. But the persistence of her laconic reply rapidly gives way to the explosion. The hand moves suddenly, from out of the corner of her eye, and a tingling sting radiates across her fleshy cheeks, stippling its anger across naive flesh. “But why, mamma?” And another slap. “But why?” Slap.
Then it dims to night, as if someone had turned the light down a notch, and a blanket swims into view. Its hunched folds, pregnant with a slowly ebbing warmth and some strange, pernicious yearning now seems to her like that distant glimmer of stars, brushing against cold, stiffened feet, offering some unfulfilled premise of yet another forgotten story:
But what? And why?
She touches the cool metal, that sits neatly in the clasp of her throat, that silent observer, yielding no truth to her curious fingers, but pressing down on that hollow at the base of her throat.
Her chair creaks. The damp air clings to her. She stops her embroidery, and looks out through the dirty windows.
The cuckoo, doomed forever as that instigator of abandonment, starts crying out its wretched call in the fading daylight.
This poem is written with relation to these quotes by Osho. Or maybe not. 🤣
“So I say to you, even to a well frog it is possible to communicate something about the sea. And if the messenger is really inventive, he can create devices to communicate. That is what a Buddha is doing, a Jesus is doing – creating devices to communicate something of the sea to well frogs. Because there is one thing in common – the water. If there is one thing in common, then connection is possible, a bridge exists.”
And this quote here could describe both the ecstacy and frustration that occur when we communicate with someone else.
“There are three hundred languages in the world and three hundred languages for rose; there is no relationship, all relationship is arbitrary. Cold is related to hot, well is related to the ocean. Their relationship, however indistinct, is there – real, not arbitrary. But between a word and reality there is no relationship, they are not related at all. So you can have your own words, a private language, you can call anything by any name.If you like to call it something else, the rose will not fight in a court. And nobody can prove that their word is more correct than yours, nobody can prove it because no word is more correct or less correct. Words are irrelevant, they are not related.
And this snow –
born in the cold:
the shade of an old man’s beard,
marking transitions –
the pearl, glistening,
spread open, all opportune
nestled between hinges.
The untouched language
of Indian textiles; before
purple and gold existed –
the bare glint of a pebble,
all lonely on the sand.
How could I even try
my hand at comprehending?
There’s 50 words for snow,
but no single word
to cut to the absolute bone.
Ruminate all you want,
come up with dialectics
till you go blue in the face –
but still,
“All this snow –
always born in the cold…”
I’m really, really enjoying this book…and really, really enjoying this rain….
