(1)
I learned that a friend of mine was going through a tough time. His mother died, and he had debilitating neck pain. He needed to write the obituary and arrange for the funeral. His mother had dementia. Was he able to say goodbye? I did not ask.
I don't know which scale would measure grief. Such a scale doesn't exist.
Physical pain is easier to manage. If it is yours. Because at some point, the pain stops defining you.
Grief buried deeper, so deep it can't be torn away, it becomes you.
In the Arctic, old babushkas, when they become unable to take care of themselves, hope to be killed by a polar bear. When they become too ill and weak, they look for the bear to eat them. I asked why. Being devoured by a wild animal didn't seem to me like an attractive way to finish life.
"The bear will be nourished by eating me," explained an old Inuit woman. "The bear will become strong and fat. Then one day, my son will kill that bear. My son and his family will eat the bear's meat, make healing mixes from its fat, and make trousers from its fur. Thus, through the polar bear, I will nourish my son and keep him warm, even past my life, even past my death."
Post mortem motherly care.
(2)
A few years ago, I travelled to Greenland and stayed in Nuuk in the apartment of a polar bear hunter. A polar bear hunter's home looked like an IKEA house made by children constructors of adult sizing. Everything was modern, functional and perfectly unremarkable.
A photograph on the wall showed a polar bear (or rather its fur) covered in blood, soaking in a bathtub. I realized it was the same bathtub in which I had showered that morning. It had rubber ducklings as lucky ornaments. Perfectly, chillingly, unremarkable bathtub.
(3)
"I wish I could make a blanket of protective words to shield you," I wrote to my friend, whose mother died after suffering dementia for several years.
“A protective blanket of words” could be a definition of poetry.
“Could be” because, like everything else, it rejects any definitions.
Poetry is no different than spell-making or alchemy.
As if words could make a difference.
As if anything could still make any difference.
In the world gone mad with apocalyptic craziness and fear, can words remain protective talismans?
(4)
Bears in the Arctic are suffering from global warming. They're skinny and weak; they couldn't kill even old babushkas on their suicide mission.
If I could stitch a protective blanket of words, I would make one for the polar bears, another one for the suicidal babushkas on their mission to feed the polar bears, and the third one for the polar bear hunters. I would then make a gigantic frozen quilt for the Arctic to protect it from climate change and even a bigger blanket for the entire world to save it from madness.
Every stitch would be a word of love, a talisman against impending disaster.
But I never learned how to make blankets or quilts. I can mend sounds and strings but not threads. The thoughts made of words are unravelling, and I can't weave them together.
The photo of the weak polar bears taken by Lera Auerbach, even before we get to her moving, grief-stricken prose poem, is almost more than I can bear.
Auden wrote that "poetry makes nothing happen," but he also wrote that it is "a way of happening, a mouth." It seems to me that both statements are true.
I don't know what else to say. I just wish to experience Lera Auerbach's heart-words.
Posted by: Emily Fragos | January 14, 2021 at 05:42 PM