Go Right Ahead

[Image: note dropped by South Vietnamese Air Force Major Buang-Ly onto the deck of the USS Midway on April 30, 1975. It says, “Can you move the Helicopter to the other side, I can land on your runway, I can fly 1 hour more, we have enough time to mouve. Please rescue me. Major Buang, wife and 5 child.” See the marvelous Letters of Note site for the complete story.]

From whiskey river (italicized portion):

Our Valley

We don’t see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.

You probably think I’m nuts saying the mountains
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you’re thrilled and terrified.

You have to remember this isn’t your land.
It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours. Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men
who carved a living from it only to find themselves
carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

(Philip Levine [source])

…and:

The truth is you already know what it’s like. You already know the difference between the size and speed of everything that flashes through you and the tiny inadequate bit of it all you can ever let anyone know. As though inside you is this enormous room full of what seems like everything in the whole universe at one time or another and yet the only parts that get out have to somehow squeeze out through one of those tiny keyholes you see under the knob in older doors. As if we are all trying to see each other through these tiny keyholes.

But it does have a knob, the door can open. But not in the way you think… The truth is you’ve already heard this. That this is what it’s like. That it’s what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you can never show another soul. And you think it makes you a fraud, the tiny fraction anyone else ever sees? Of course you’re a fraud, of course what people see is never you. And of course you know this, and of course you try to manage what part they see if you know it’s only a part. Who wouldn’t? It’s called free will, Sherlock. But at the same time it’s why it feels so good to break down and cry in front of others, or to laugh, or speak in tongues, or chant in Bengali — it’s not English anymore, it’s not getting squeezed through any hole.

So cry all you want, I won’t tell anybody.

(David Foster Wallace, from Oblivion: Stories [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Let Nothing Lie Dormant

At the farmer’s market in Rosarito, Mexico,
a man touched my arm.
He sat on a stool at a wooden table,
and in the center,
a blue pitcher of water beaded under the sun.
Hunkered over his lap,
he worked with a gouge on a block of walnut,
and he blew at the dust,
and the dust swirled in the breeze.

Done stripping the sapwood vulnerable to rot,
the man held the heart of the wood,
a purple wood hard against
the chisel’s cutting edge.
He looked up from his work,
and his gray eyes told me I must listen.
“This wood must be strong
or the heart cracks before the real work is done.
See this?” he asked softly,
and he lifted a mallet carved
from a branch of apple, “Strong wood,” he said.
“It wanted to be more than a tree.”

He rubbed fresh walnut dust between his palms.
We drank glasses of ice water,
talked about life in general,
and he used the pitcher,
billowed and wet like the sail of a boat,
to cool his neck.

Later, through the soft meat of an avocado,
I felt the pit longing to be free.

(David Dominguez [source])

…and:

My mother went over to my aunt’s house to stay for a while. Late in the night she found my aunt standing in front of the mirror in the back bedroom.She was shaking all over and frothing at the mouth. “You ugly old woman,” she growled hoarsely. “You bad, mean old woman. Get out. Get out of my house.”

…We had to put [my aunt] in a nursing home. Then a nurse called Mama. My aunt had been wandering around in the night until she found a mirror in the entrance hall. She would stand in front of it and talk.

“We don’t know who she’s talking to,” the nurse said. She tried to remember what my aunt had said. “She said, ‘You’re no better than you ought to be, you young hussy.’ Then she said, ‘I saw you going out in the bushes with that black-headed Root McCall down at Lake Sinclair. And you wearing that little shimmy-tail dress. You had your chance to do right, but you sure went wrong with your bad ways. You sure did go wrong.'”

The nurse asked our permission to lock my aunt into her room at night so she wouldn’t wander around and find the mirror, and we said that would be fine.

[Some time later, in a hotel room with my aunt:] Early in the morning when it was just beginning to be day, I woke up. My aunt was standing in front of the dresser. I had forgotten to cover up the mirror, and she was gazing into it. She had a look on her face I had never seen before. She leaned toward the mirror. She held one frail, trembling hand out to her reflection. And in the sweetest, quietest voice she said, “My name is Miss Mathews. And who are you, little girl?”

(Bailey White, from Mama Makes Up Her Mind [source])

…and:

Tomorrow, Today, and Yesterday

the 3-year-old, wanting to know what day
it is asks everyday what day it is
we tell her Tuesday or Saturday etcetera
then she asks what day it will be
tomorrow and we go through the naming
of tomorrows in order
chanting the future like a litany

tomorrow is when she wakes up
in the morning and when we tell her
we’ll go shopping tomorrow she
remembers yesterday and informs us
that it is tomorrow that today is
yesterday that therefore the time is
always now to do what we plan to do
tomorrow

(Jane Piirto [source])

Bob Dylan’s written enough powerful, big-themed songs that it’s easy to forget he can write on a small and personal scale, too. One of my favorite examples: “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” from 1967’s John Wesley Harding album. It’s a favorite of other artists, too; one of the best covers, I think, is Norah Jones’s sweet jazzy riff:

[Below, click Play button to begin I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:20 long.]

Lyrics:

I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
(music and lyrics by Bob Dylan; slightly altered 
lyrics and performance by Norah Jones)

Close your eyes, close the door
You don’t have to worry any more
Cause I’ll be your baby tonight

Shut the light, shut the shade
You don’t have to be afraid
‘Cause I’ll be your baby tonight

Well, that mockingbird’s gonna sail away
We’re gonna forget it
That big fat moon
Is gonna shine like a spoon
But we’re gonna let it
You won’t regret it

Kick your shoes off
And don’t you fear
Bring that bottle over here
Cause I’ll be your baby tonight

Well, that mockingbird’s gonna sail away
We’re gonna forget it
That big fat moon
Is gonna shine like a spoon
But we’re gonna let it
You won’t regret it

Kick your shoes off
And don’t you fear
Bring that bottle over here
Cause I’ll be your baby tonight
Cause I’ll be your baby tonight
Cause I’ll be your baby tonight, tonight