Sunday, September 13, 2015
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Monday, September 7, 2015
Letter of Complaint
It has become a grave concern of mine: How to stop time.
I imagine lassoing it and dragging it to the ground- it's too heavy, and I know it, and you know it, but I can't resist the snag of the image. Also I imagine throwing myself in front of it, as if it's a train, but we all know how that ends. I imagine myself prostrate clutching its feet as it walks away. It's a deaf mute, time, or a robot- or simply hard-hearted.
But my project: Make it stop. There's drink, which works sometimes, but only in shot-glass-worths, intermittent hiccups. There are photographs, which are nothing but tattoos of regret, and videos, which are snuff films. Gritting your teeth does not work, nor does a habit of sustained, maniacal attention to the moment -it passes and passes and passes, indifferent to your efforts. Meditate and you're nothing but a Greek chorus, a bedside witness, late to the reception with your hands full of funeral casserole.
Writing is your best bet. You knew that. But it's a fools errand. You twist things, by writing them. You wring their necks.
I strangle anyway. Damp heat. Small hands scrabbling at model trains. The hush, thick and awful and exquisite, after a toddler has passed. We wake early, drink too much coffee, try to scare up joy where we can - a train's passage and the whine of its brakes, a plan for dinner and tickle chase, again.
It's a no-joke enterprise, the permanent retarding of today: failing and failing and shouting the whole damn time.
I imagine lassoing it and dragging it to the ground- it's too heavy, and I know it, and you know it, but I can't resist the snag of the image. Also I imagine throwing myself in front of it, as if it's a train, but we all know how that ends. I imagine myself prostrate clutching its feet as it walks away. It's a deaf mute, time, or a robot- or simply hard-hearted.
But my project: Make it stop. There's drink, which works sometimes, but only in shot-glass-worths, intermittent hiccups. There are photographs, which are nothing but tattoos of regret, and videos, which are snuff films. Gritting your teeth does not work, nor does a habit of sustained, maniacal attention to the moment -it passes and passes and passes, indifferent to your efforts. Meditate and you're nothing but a Greek chorus, a bedside witness, late to the reception with your hands full of funeral casserole.
Writing is your best bet. You knew that. But it's a fools errand. You twist things, by writing them. You wring their necks.
I strangle anyway. Damp heat. Small hands scrabbling at model trains. The hush, thick and awful and exquisite, after a toddler has passed. We wake early, drink too much coffee, try to scare up joy where we can - a train's passage and the whine of its brakes, a plan for dinner and tickle chase, again.
It's a no-joke enterprise, the permanent retarding of today: failing and failing and shouting the whole damn time.
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