There is too much for this title, I understand. It presumes giving, having been given, and the nerve to identify the extent & result of that reception. This is folly; this is precisely the false humility I spoke of earlier in the blogging week. There you are, Tim, caught in your own abstract web. Ha, ha. Carry on as you would, having said nothing at all. Or next to nothing, since you cannot not carry on.
Sometimes, it is this simple: "And we didn't die in childhood!"
When I was young, I was a pitcher. The last game I ever pitched, I threw a one-hitter and we lost: 3-2, state semi-finals. The one hit was a home run to a player who would go on to division one ball. It was a full-count fastball, just off the outside corner. It was an exquisite pitch. He saw it perfectly, swung—hands out in front of the barrel—and drove it opposite field, over the left field wall. How to describe the grace of that moment—my action and his response. A perfected dialogue—purity that transcends its consequence.
Which city holds your ghosts, your non-mentionables? I have walked there without you. I have felt the warmth of that sidewalk, the distant chattering that someone calls home.
The mirror contains its ocean.
Jorie Graham:
"The way things work
is that we finally believe
they are there,
common and able
to illustrate themselves."
One cannot pretend to keep accounts on the world. It goes, we take, it goes. How else? Not as indifferent or callous, but a view on what is and will be without our looking. Look on—feeling takes the view.
Charles Olson:
"these things
which don’t carry their end any further than
their reality in
themselves"
Carry me there, this exquisite.
See what you believe before you believe what you see.
Then, tell me about it.
