Sunday, September 13, 2015

Six Words

Won't you be quiet, Krista Tippett?

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Six Words

I don't know.  I don't know.

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.