Shift

It is always so surreal when—for just a second—I find myself seeing a person I am very close to, or have known all my life, as a complete stranger would see them.  One moment they are the person I know, they are what their name, their features, their traits have come to embody for me—and the next they are just some woman, just some man, just a random child sitting next to me or a boy smiling out from a picture. 

When this happens to me with a picture, I always try to recapture the fleeting feeling after it is gone.  It really does last only a second—maybe less—and then I am left staring, looking at the photograph this way and that, trying to refocus my eyes until they see something different again, that slight shift in perception that is so strange and so fascinating.  It’s like that picture of the duck and the rabbit.  Which is it?  A duck or a rabbit?  Which one do you see first?  Which image remains, making it harder to return to the other?

When I was little, riding the school bus, I sometimes sat in the back and stared out the small window at the bottom of the emergency exit door, where you could see the pavement on the street gliding smoothly by in a blur of grain and tiny stones.  I stared at it because, if I refocused my eyes just right, I could imagine that the road was much farther away than just under the bus—that it was miles and miles away, as if I were flying far above it—or that it was a huge, magnificent road for tiny people, or a small, insignificant track for giants.

“What is she doing?” kids around me whispered.

I can’t imagine how I looked to them.  Or maybe I can: a strange kid transfixed by the bottom of the bus, her eyes huge and unswerving, spellbound by—nothing.  I kind of grin when I think about it now.

What is she doing?  I never did let them know.  Just ignored them and went on refocusing my eyes.

Why is it so fascinating—this occasional quest to alter my vision, my perception of people and things?  Sometimes I think it is just the fun of playing with the brain.  Sometimes it is because I want to do the impossible and travel back in time, where I can unknow a person I’ve known for years.  Other times I’m sure that it is a desire to see outside myself, to find someone else’s eyes, shift the crystal ever so slightly in the light and see what colors flash forth.

I had a dream recently that I was a dying old man.  The hospital couldn’t do anything for me anymore, so they released me to my daughter’s care.  As I stepped shakily off the bus that brought me to her home, I saw the bright smile on her face, the same smile my teenage granddaughter was wearing next to her.  The smiles were genuine.  I knew that.  They were happy to see me, despite the circumstances.  But I felt my heart sink as I looked at them, felt the hollowness beginning to spread all through me as I longed for someone I could lean on, someone I could look to for support.  My mother was gone.  My wife was gone.  My daughter would take care of me, I knew, but she was not someone I could sink into, let go with.  I was her caretaker.  Or that was the way it was supposed to be.  That was the way it had been.

Everything was different.  Everyone was gone.

And as the dream flashed to the next day, with me as an old man sitting by myself in my daughter’s den, I felt myself slipping away.  I closed my eyes, letting the darkness cascade over me, deeper and deeper, in waves, and was only partially afraid.  The rest of me knew that this was as it was meant to be.  And then, suddenly, I was half old man and half the real me, and a soft voice in my head said, You’re going to wake up now, and then I really sank back into the darkness, waiting to wake up.

It was such a strange dream, and the feeling lingered for so long afterward.  I kept marveling at how real it had seemed—at how I had never really felt what it was to be like that old man before—could never have hoped to feel it, but for that dream.

Why? I kept asking myself. Why did I dream it?

“Caretaker?” my dad scoffed when I told him about it.  “You’ve never been a caretaker to anyone in your life.”

But that was the point.  I’d never been a father or grandfather.  I’d never been an old man, or a dying one.  But I was in that dream.  In that dream, my vision shifted, my emotions shifted.  I was someone else—or another me.

I don’t exactly know why.  But changes in perception are, I think, even in their smallest forms, gifts.  For a chance to see the world a little differently, just for a moment, I would stare and stare and stare.

Blessed Are

I like the show Once Upon a Time.  I've said quite a few times that I think the show is incredibly cheesy.  I mean, it has unabashedly embraced (and I mean embraced, like a frickin' boa constrictor) the themes of fate, love conquers all, love is the strongest magic, and good always wins.  So you can enjoy this show a lot only if you blithely shrug your shoulders and accept that it's a ridiculously feel-good, predictable trip.

That said, I think I need to take a break from my cynicism--just a little one, for just a short while. :)  People need these kinds of shows, books, songs, etc., sometimes.  Sometimes they're not just guilty pleasures.  Sometimes something else breaks through.  Tonight, when I was watching Once Upon a Time, I realized that a lot of my cynicism comes from people spouting these maxims about fate and love conquering all not because they believe them, but because they think it's what they're supposed to believe, or they're trying to trick themselves into strength, into making others believe they are strong.  So much lying to ourselves--so much lying to others to make us seem like the strong people the world expects us to be.  And I get fed up, and I just want to tell all these people--just admit that you are broken.  Just admit it and then shoot for reassembly--somehow.  Just admit you don't have it all together yet.

But the maxims--themselves--are essentially true.  Or I think I believe that again anyway.  At the heart of clichés, of course, is truth--we just have to ferret it out of the words and phrases that have become so commonplace and automatic as to seem absolutely meaningless.  Is there fate?  I don't know for sure.  But I think so.  There are some things in my life that have been so brilliant and so improbable and so right all at once that they make it hard for me to believe that they weren't simply meant to be from the beginning.  And love conquers all?  Good always wins?  Yes.  Yes, that is most certainly true.  Just not necessarily on this earth.  Probably not on this earth.  I've been forgetting that.  Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . . Blessed are those who mourn . . . .

There is such beauty here on earth.  Find it.  Feel it as much as you can.  Create it--if you can.  But know there is something more.

Poems ~ Bleh

I have poem phases and non-poem phases.  (That was a brilliant distinction, wasn't it?)  Right now--non-poem.  And I'm also in one of those all-too-frequent "my writing sucks" phases, but for some reason I felt like sending a couple poems into the world tonight.  These are three I don't hate too much.

Older ones:

The Remains (A Moment

In Italy)

I see them in your eyes,

those women’s words,
ash of the hourglass
sifting away the minutes
before you’ll leave again.
Who knew the obsidian
of your sharp gaze
had splintered so long ago
even your laugh cracked
beneath the shards?

I knew.

You didn’t have
to tell me.

The dark of your secrets
has always shimmered,
opaque at the heart
of your dormant throat.
And your chest houses
the scattered remains
of pottery, clay figures,
torn papyrus scrolls
of ancient story.

I have always known
your age.

You don’t have
to speak it.

I have seen the graves,
loved each hollowed shape.
I will lay my flowers,
sing my prayers,
if only to calm your
sleep tonight, ease
the burden of your
breathing.

 

Midnight in Berlin

There is snow on the street in Berlin

You have left me in the snow on the street
You are gazing up at windows
Let me in

It is cold in the street in Berlin

And you stand with no cloak in the street
Let me wrap my shawl about your shoulders
Turn—

It is raw in the street in Berlin

You could go numb in the white of the street
What ghosts have you seen sleeping here
Whose face

There is a child in the street in Berlin

There is a child where you stood in the street
Let me wrap my arms about his shoulders
Come—

There is snow on the street in Berlin

You have left me in the snow on the street
I am gazing up at windows
Let me in



Newer one:


Rome

Someday the fall of Rome will fill my soul

and with every crumble of the Colosseum I will feel you,
I’ll feel the stone
trembling
beneath your chest,
and I’ll try to rebuild, reroot each brick
until you convince me,
until I really believe,
that you like the crashing better
and the roaring
through your heaving body.

And we’ll be gods
in tattered remnants
watching the gladiators fight in jagged amphitheaters
collapsing all around us.
And we’ll laugh
because we aren’t fighting—
because we are ready to fall
soul in soul
within a nation—

We are empires

We are nothing
And I feel you here
with me
and I will fall
and fall
and fall
and fall—
with you—

When the stones of Rome are crashing down around me—
I want to be with you.