tightly closed

Ultimately a photograph looks like anyone except the person it represents.

           

Every photograph is a certificate of presence.

           

—Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida

I want to photograph my grandfather—he carried shadows with him:  afternoon shadows of war and intense energy finally woven like a hundred strings into empty stares and forgetfulness.  I remember sweltering summers spent at the lake with him and my grandmother.  The Oklahoma days were punctuated by catfish catching, toad hunting and shockingly cold swims.  Numerous photographs of those summers survive, but without opening an album I can recall many of the images:  they are my memories.  There are also—albiet fewer—images of my grandfather when Alzheimer’s caught him.  His empty look tells me he is not there—he is his own index, his own wet breath on a mirror.  Despite his absence, the photograph and his body become "a certificate of presence"—a legal document verifying his ability to reflect light.  He would often leave my grandmother notes on the kitchen counter telling her where he’d gone—"Gone to the Boat Dock.  Me."  They were images of his "that-has-been."  Now he has-been and is-no-more, but his fragile index remains.  Like Barthes' Winter Garden photograph, I do not need to show a photograph of my grandfather to report who he was (closing my eyes is enough), nor do I need to photograph him to remember who he was.  For me, this index becomes the "air (the expression, the look)" of his face apart from his body, but inexplicably more important. 

crochet communion and other words written in stitches

i never understood my grandmother.  she lived with us off and on (while i lived at home off and on) for a few years.  often she was in the way, apologizing for not being in the way, or looking on in such a way to make us all think she was going to get in the way very soon.  there are many things about my gran that i never tried to get my mind around, and many things i simply couldn't.  i came from her, but i never connected to that part of my past.  when i tried to chat with her i couldn't  get past the tired stories and complaints.  she loved to read, and so i'd buy the thickest history tomes i could find.  she devoured them.  i wanted to talk about what she'd read, but her tired stories were the only ones that surfaced.  even after a library's worth of books, she couldn't stop talking about the slights.

when i was quite young in an effort to connect with me she tried to teach me how to crochet.  we began with a tiny little needle and some floss-like yarn.  doilies were on the menu.  but doilies were not my thing, and my hands weren't deft enough for the tiny needle and thread.  i gave up quickly.  it seemed like an antiquated craft of a bygone era--i had stuff to do, and blankets could be bought in stores.  what did i need hand-work for?

several years ago my gran died.  i loved her--she was my grandmother.  but i wanted to like her.  i wanted easy laughter, bits of unsolicited advice, and moments of matriarchal compassion.  right before she died she sent me an apology for the time we'd just spent together--it had been unpleasant and she knew the inevitable was upon her.  her words were rough and kind--she was a washer-woman and the words of a washer-woman were all that would do.  she died a few days later.

i never had a chance to reply to her letter--my response was written, but never posted.

a few years later i came across pictures of some beautiful crochet work--brightly colored swirly hexagons in mustard and green and turquoise.  i was enamored by the even stitches and rich colors.  i wanted to learn.  as i looped the yarn around the needle and the hexagons began to take shape i thought of my grandmother.  she wanted me to do this--to pass on the language of evenly tied knots that talk about family and home and loss and relationships.  as the blanket took shape i began having a conversation with my gran for the first time in my life.  no words were spoken.  no words were needed.  

as i work with her needles and fresh yarn, every stitch i make is a moment with her.  i accept her apology.  she forgives me.  she tells me about her childhood in west texas.  i tell her of my adulthood in north texas.  she admits her fears.  i admit mine.  i come to terms with my grandmother's inability to communicate with me because i have found a way to remember her--not for what i wanted her to be, but for what she was:  a woman whose washer-woman hands knotted a language of beauty her mouth never could.

i think i like my gran.  we are more alike than i knew.

for those who are UnKnown--after beckett

"you weep, and weep, for nothing, so as not to laugh, and little by little . . . you begin to grieve."

endgame, beckett


sometimes you cry because you're supposed to.  at funerals.  at sentimental love scenes in movies.  when you fall on your bike and scratch your face.  when your heart is broken.  when you're three and you can't find your mother at the market.  you cry.  you may even weep.  you may burst into bawling because it's what you do.  you get that tightening in the back of your throat.  the tingling in your nose.  the welling of tears that threaten rain.  and the tears teeter on the edge of your lower lid.  and you resist--which only makes it worse.

and you hope someone will make you laugh.  you hope there will be a witty joke or a happy remembrance or an arriving mother or just a distraction to stop the ensuing weeks of rain--the tingling in the nose.  you want something to divert the tears.

and then you laugh.  you laugh well.  and you think that will stop the tears.  it does.  for a moment.  but the laugh has made the tears fall.  and somehow the combination of tight throat and laughter that rises from your middle has caused you to cry.  and the dam breaks.  and you find your nose running and tears running and you're chuckling--or smiling or guffawing.

and then you are silent.

pause

and if you give the silence time, you wonder.  you wonder at what you are.  at why you are crying or laughing.  or both.  and if you give it long enough, the silence lets you ask questions.

and so the match begins.  and in only a moment you have asked enough questions to fill a thousand-thousand books.  and sometimes you have the courage to wait for answers.  sometimes you're not afraid of the silence into which the emotions have hurled you consentless (or senseless or spent).

and you wait.

pause

and there is time.  there is all the time you have to wait.  to go about your business while you wait.  to live in a state of waiting silence.  to listen.  to not be afraid that the players have forgotten their lines or forgotten to show up or forgotten.

and in the silence you remember grief.  grief that smells like wet and shoes and salt and cotton candy.  and because of the silence you give in (or you resist).  and you grieve because the volley of questions is unending or the volley of answers are unsatisfactory or the volley of silence is unalleviated.

silence.  silence.  silence.  silence.

take off your shoes.  your hat.  look around you.  measure the space.  find its edge.  sit or stand or walk or dance.  listen to the sounds--sometimes it sounds like words.  sometimes it sounds like babble.  sometimes it sounds like weeping.

but wait.

"do not climb on toads"

evidently, someone of great import is being quoted on this sign.  and because of the profundity, these things should be posted somewhere other than this sign which stood so near said toads.

and please, if you're having bowel trouble.  well, you know. . . don't use the water feature.  however, if you're not--go right ahead and use that water feature.

the toads won't mind.  really.

. . . or what I will call a reflection on dismemberment

I am more than nominally intrigued by the dismemberment motifs in the Bakkhai and Oedipus the King.  People lose arms, legs, hands and (most notably) eyes.  What is it about the loss of such integral appeditures that Euripides and Sophocles were so fixated on?  In both plays the apex of tragedy begins its sweep upward at the announcement of Penthus's limbs being torn off and Oedipus's eyes being gouged out.  We respond (how could we otherwise?) with disgust and untenable curiosity when the horrific events are announced.  We are at once revolted by the conjured images of our imaginations--How could a mother do that (rip and tear and shred bare-handed) to her son?  And how could a son do that (Oedipus-like) to his mother.  And then gouge out his eyes?  And at the same instant our curiosity is unconstrained--How much blood did Penthus have in him?  What did Aguae look like when trance-like she began the frenzied dismemberment of her beloved son?  At the moment of action, what was the "look" in Oedipus's eyes?  What did he see?  And what is the wrenching sound of dismemberment?

As the true tragedy of the plays is revealed--a stew of hubris, god-ignoring, and fate--the disgust and curiosity is in some small way satisfied.  The lament of Agaue and Kadmos is more wrenching than the imagined sounds of the dismemberment--they too are being dismembered while their own disembodied limbs lie strewn across the stage.  The cure for the curiosity is more potent than the curiosity itself.  No need to see Oedipus in the self-mutilating act--his tearless cries at the sound of his daughter's sobbing is enough to satiate our want of eyes.  

We have seen enough.

And maybe, if we were watching, something in us has lost a limb too.

o the sparrows (with apologies to fortinbras).

maybe it was the sparrows.

maybe it was the ecphonetic O.

or maybe it was fortinbras' fault (when you can't blame bill gates, blame fortinbras).

last week after class i did not take the interstate home.  i intentionally avoided the most efficient route.  my car turned left (sans premeditation, predetermination, preordination, or election) when i wanted it to turn right.  as my car habitually neared the familiar route, i decided to listen to my right-turn-self in a moment of action and eschew the interstate.

i defy augury.

i also defy the interstate.

in the moment of decision, i wondered if this habit-defying action would really change anything.  would i get in a wreck not intended for me?  would i pass something or someone that would alter my perception of the world so much that i'd never be the same?  would i run over a wooly worm that would have otherwise survived if i had run over a beetle on the interstate, and this said beetle's great-great-grand beetle would eventually (butterfly effect-like) cause the destruction of mankind?  have i seen too many movies?  the extrapolations are endless.

what if (dangerous isn't it?) claudius had allowed hamlet to go to wittenberg?  would it have been action enough to get him out of denmark and distract him from revenge?  would he have been off packing his bags trying to decide which vintage t-shirts to take, and which ones to leave behind when ghost-dad made his appearance? would rosencrantz and guildenstern (or was it guildenstern and rosencrantz?) have stayed home because hamlet wasn't there to behave erratically and force their invitation?  would polonius have continued blathering empty axioms until ophelia ran off to become a carny (tragedy indeed)?

and then there's fortinbras.  lest we forget the formidable viking lord of revenge, he's always doing something:  marching, defending honor, sending captains off to chat with kings, revenging, this and that. if hamlet had gone off to wittenberg as planned, fortinbras would still have arrived to revenge his father's honor.  ergo, claudius dead.  ergo, a bigger stack of bodies.

so what?  moody hamlet turns right towards wittenberg--avoiding the proverbial butterfly.  there's always fortinbras waiting in the wings to do the deed.  claudius gets revenged.

i went interstate-less.  i missed the crucial beetle of world destruction.  no worries, fortinbras was in the car behind me--i saw his norwegian complexion in my rear view.  i got a new view, however.  i looked at the city in a new way.  i saw the surface streets.  i saw people i'd never seen before at a stop and go 45 rather than 70.  and now rather than non-active habitualness, maybe the habit-breaking act makes the next one easier.