When Staying Put Just Won’t Do

[Photo above, “Standing Still,” is by Beth Dickman. Click to see the larger original.]

From whiskey river (italicized portion):

Moment

In the Romanesque church round stones
that ground down so many prayers and generations
kept humble silence and shadows slept in the apse
like bats in winter furs.

We went out. The pale sun shone,
tinny music tinkled softly
from a car, two jays
studied us, humans,
threads of longing dangled in the air.

The present moment is shameless,
taking its foolish liberties
beside the wall of this tired old shrine,

awaiting the millions of years to come,
future wars, geologic eras,
cease-fires, treaties, changes in climate —
this moment — what is it — just

a mosquito, a fly, a speck, a scrap of breath,
and yet it’s taken over everywhere,
entering the timid grass,
inhabiting stems and genes,
the pupils of our eyes.

This moment, mortal as you or I,
was full of boundless, senseless,
silly joy, as if it knew
something we didn’t.

(Adam Zagajewski, from Mysticism for Beginners [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Moving Forward

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
that I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can’t reach.
With my senses, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
and in the ponds broken off from the sky
my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

(Rainer Marie Rilke; translation by Robert Bly [source])

Switching gears a bit, there’s this gave-me-the-willies excerpt, from a 2008 novel. The narrator is a young mother and journalist who has been kidnapped, after offering herself to the kidnappers in place of her daughter:

After two nights together, we have rituals now. The lights left on, the chaining and unchaining of wrists to headboard. The turns taken in the bathroom. We could continue on this way, in a rhythm, no surprises. Two people, I know, can go on like this indefinitely.

When I wake up Tuesday morning, it’s already light, and He’s outside on the phone…

He comes in with something wrapped in tissue under His arm. He starts to hand it to me, then remembers the limitations of my hands, and puts it on my lap.

His eyes smile as I unroll it.

My white T-shirt, my gray knit capris.

The blond hairs on my arms stand upright. When did He take my clothes? Before? After? He has been in my house twice?

My lower lip quivers. I think of the nights just before the storm, before He came. The nightmares, pounding heart, twisted sheets. The sounds I thought I heard, talked myself out of. It’s more than I can bear, believing I was right.

His brow is knitted. He says a half sentence: “I thought you would…” Trails off.

“These are mine?”

“Yes.”

“You went through my closet? You say this isn’t about me, yet you go through my closet, my things?”

He blinks, shakes His head. “I went to the Gap.”

He reaches in His right cargo pocket and pulls out the price tags. The plastic tabs still dangling like fish on a line.

“They looked like what you wear,” He says quietly.

(Kelly Simmons, from Standing Still)

One last link in this chain of free associations…

When you look at Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, on a plain old road map — and especially if you’re doing so from Deep South, USA — it looks like it must be cold as bejabbers, and probably year-round. You might conjure up images of a rocky, windblasted coast — a thumb of land sticking out into the North Atlantic, not as far as Newfoundland but plenty far enough thank you.

But then you look at it on a satellite map instead, and zoom in. Damn, you think: that place is green.

And as with New Orleans, say, if you were looking at it strictly from a geographic perspective, you might be surprised to learn that not only do people live there, they love living there, and its cultural history is deep and music-soaked.

Here’s an excerpt from this page:

If you made your way along Route 19 on Cape Breton Island, you would reach the small village of Mabou located in Inverness County. Had you veered just slightly off the main highway, you would have found a small street that was once home to a number of large families. One home in particular, bordered on the Community Hall, the local gathering place for weddings, dances and anniversaries. Live music would regularly fill the air. It was in this close-knit community that Kathleen (Kaye) and Alexander (Buddy) would raise their 12 children — five of whom would eventually become known to the world as The Rankin Family.

The Rankins have never attained the popularity in the USA that they have in Canada. How to classify them, for one question. Wikipedia punts and calls them “country, folk” — in the sidebard, not even the main article — and maybe that second one puts people off. (That’s just for hippies and old-timers and musical sociologists, right?) I’ve also seen them dubbed a roots-music, an alt-country, and a Celtic group. However you want to label them, over the course of more than thirty years they’ve consistently grown and remade themselves (but not too much), surviving the deaths of family members, far-flung solo careers, and (like all of us) the other distractions of life… surviving, and movin’ on.

The get-up-and-dance song below (lyrics follow, as always) comes from their 1998 album, Uprooted (note: if video seems silent at first, be patient):

(And yes, I’m not by any means the first to point out the resemblance, but, uh,
Jimmy Rankin and John Cusack, anybody???)

Lyrics:

Movin’ On
(by Jimmy Rankin; performance by The Rankins)

Oh, I’ve been ramblin’ ’round
For such a long, long time
Somewhere in between
I kinda lost my mind
Now I’m movin’ on
I’m goin’, goin’, gone
Movin’ on, like the man said in the song
I’m a rolling stone… I’m movin’ on

Wake up all alone
Deep in a hotel night
While away the hours
‘Til you finally see the light
Then I’m movin’ on
I’m goin’, goin’, gone
Movin’ on, like the man said in the song
I’m a rolling stone… I’m movin’ on

Ah, cigarettes and coffee
Won’t keep a man alive
I’m thinking of my true love
In some smoky dive
I’m movin’ on
Goin’, goin’, gone
Movin’, like the man said in the song
I’m a rolling stone… I’m movin’ on

Oh, don’t look over your shoulder
The sun sets at your back
By this time tomorrow
We’ll be smokin’ on down the track
Now I’m movin’ on
Goin’, goin’, gone
Movin’ on, like the man said in the song
I’m a rolling stone… I’m movin’ on

I’ve been ramblin’ ’round
For such a long, long time
Somewhere in between
I kinda lost my mind
Now I’m movin’ on
I’m goin’, goin’, gone
Like the man said in the song
I’m a rolling stone… I’m movin’ on…
Movin’…