the soil the urn is in
There is a Kristin Hersh song in which she sings, This is beautiful. Hold my hand. I thought of this song when I walked outside earlier. The day is fearfully beautiful.
Fearfully so because something this beautiful fills me—in a flash—with sublime joy and then sadness. Something this beautiful simultaneously implies its opposite. The falling feeling, the fast crash, the pit. In the big picture I don’t fear the pit. I enjoy it like I enjoy menstrual cramps because the pain is groundingly real. Nevertheless, a fall is a fall. The sun is out and hot on my face, but not oppressively hot, and there is a cool wind fairytaling the air alive. Beauty manifest.
* * *
One day, during a particularly manic period of my life, I stepped out into a day like today. The sky was blue manifest, the trees green manifest. My whole body felt the color pure at its roots. I was in it. And then a cardinal—the brightest reddest cardinal I’d ever seen—swam past me and lit on the greenest tree backed by the bluest sky. Tears came into my eyes, and I felt fortunate allowed to be caught in that moment.
It went. A breath in, a breath out, gone. I went inside.
Back to the urn, again and again. Hold my hand. Sometimes hands are soil-heavy and sometimes that’s ok.
* * *
What brought me outside earlier today was the mailbox. Car payment, car insurance. Out of generosity, I also sent money to the New York City Department of Finance. Or: sometimes I like to park my car where I’m not supposed to past the time when I’m supposed to be there so that I have a clear excuse to contribute financially to a city I don't live in. Sometimes I like to go bowling on a sheet of ice so that I crash and shatter.
I was short one stamp, so I went to the gift shop. The cashier says do you want to stick the stamp directly on your envelope instead of trying to pull the one stamp off the paper because sometimes that’s difficult you know (she’s pulling the stamp off for me) Sure, I say (she continues pulling the stamp off) because I do that sometimes once when I was home I did that and (hands me the stamp)
She stops speaking.
I wait for her to finish her story about the one stamp.
She looks at me, not speaking.
Not even the subtle sound of sage rolls. Still-life: Loud, sad silence overlays knowingly vacuous chatter.
* * *
Let us telepathy rather than nothing at all. The one-stamp story the cashier used as a tool to get us through the act of exchanging money for stamp, and once I had the stamp, to her, the exchange in all respects was complete. To me, there was no hand, no cardinal, no blue or green, no eye or sun even in it. No completion, no meaning. Not even the formality of stand-in conversation was achieved. Just fossil, tool and air. Door-step microcosm.
Outside I tossed my three envelopes in the mailbox and contemplated not going back in. Why in life should a day this beautiful outside be passed in an office without windows?
The lovers on the urn turned to look at me. And laughed.
Fearfully so because something this beautiful fills me—in a flash—with sublime joy and then sadness. Something this beautiful simultaneously implies its opposite. The falling feeling, the fast crash, the pit. In the big picture I don’t fear the pit. I enjoy it like I enjoy menstrual cramps because the pain is groundingly real. Nevertheless, a fall is a fall. The sun is out and hot on my face, but not oppressively hot, and there is a cool wind fairytaling the air alive. Beauty manifest.
* * *
One day, during a particularly manic period of my life, I stepped out into a day like today. The sky was blue manifest, the trees green manifest. My whole body felt the color pure at its roots. I was in it. And then a cardinal—the brightest reddest cardinal I’d ever seen—swam past me and lit on the greenest tree backed by the bluest sky. Tears came into my eyes, and I felt fortunate allowed to be caught in that moment.
It went. A breath in, a breath out, gone. I went inside.
Back to the urn, again and again. Hold my hand. Sometimes hands are soil-heavy and sometimes that’s ok.
* * *
What brought me outside earlier today was the mailbox. Car payment, car insurance. Out of generosity, I also sent money to the New York City Department of Finance. Or: sometimes I like to park my car where I’m not supposed to past the time when I’m supposed to be there so that I have a clear excuse to contribute financially to a city I don't live in. Sometimes I like to go bowling on a sheet of ice so that I crash and shatter.
I was short one stamp, so I went to the gift shop. The cashier says do you want to stick the stamp directly on your envelope instead of trying to pull the one stamp off the paper because sometimes that’s difficult you know (she’s pulling the stamp off for me) Sure, I say (she continues pulling the stamp off) because I do that sometimes once when I was home I did that and (hands me the stamp)
She stops speaking.
I wait for her to finish her story about the one stamp.
She looks at me, not speaking.
Not even the subtle sound of sage rolls. Still-life: Loud, sad silence overlays knowingly vacuous chatter.
* * *
Let us telepathy rather than nothing at all. The one-stamp story the cashier used as a tool to get us through the act of exchanging money for stamp, and once I had the stamp, to her, the exchange in all respects was complete. To me, there was no hand, no cardinal, no blue or green, no eye or sun even in it. No completion, no meaning. Not even the formality of stand-in conversation was achieved. Just fossil, tool and air. Door-step microcosm.
Outside I tossed my three envelopes in the mailbox and contemplated not going back in. Why in life should a day this beautiful outside be passed in an office without windows?
The lovers on the urn turned to look at me. And laughed.
4 Comments:
little snippets of life that make beautiful sense together. i adored reading this. and the fact that it ends with laughter is just precious.
thanks. i think there should be more laughter, particularly in the face of what might not at first seem to induce it. yes, laughter.
I enjoyed this post. I'm squirreling some of it away for the next time my mind wanders while I'm performing mundane tasks (that might be any minute now).
thanks to you glomgold. hm. i was doing mundane tasks, which was why i checked my e-mail and blog. what now?
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