Double Bottom [by Lera Auerbach]

Ink on Paper by Lera Auerbach

 

When I was twelve, my parents took me camping near Lake Inyshko.

Supposedly, in this lake, Yemelyan Pugachev buried his stolen treasure. The treasure was never found because Lake Inyshko has two bottoms. The first bottom appears solid, just like the floor of a lake, but it’s not – there is a deeper depth beneath it with more water. The treasure sunk under the first level into the depth of the unseen.

My life seems to be like that – it appears solid, but beneath the first bottom, there is water again or different skies that conceal my labyrinth. When I misstep, I sink and find myself in the labyrinthine second layer of Lake Inyshko. I become lost like Pugachev’s treasure. I forget there is a world outside. I hold on to the thread of words and sounds, but I don’t know for certain if I can fully trust this thread.

Is the thread protecting its weaver or does it simply using the weaver’s abilities to manifest its own existence? Am I the weaver of the thread I’m weaving?

I like the notion of letting things go. Letting go makes me giddy; letting go turns me into a disobedient child. But every mischief is followed by a punishment.

Whom am I punishing?

Comments

[Emily Fragos]

I cannot hear the words "letting go" without thinking of Emily Dickinson:
First--Chill--then Stupor--then the letting go--
Is "After great pain a formal feeling comes" one of the greatest poems ever written. I think so.

Thank you, Lera. Your work is always provocative, revelatory, and brilliant.

[David Lehman]

Thank you, Lera - and thanks to you, Emily Fragos, for your attentiveness to and enthusiastic support of Lera's work.