Leavings

[Image: one of the photos in photographer Amy Regalia’s 2007 exhibit, Leavings.
For more information, see the note at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river:

Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable and finally has come to look and not to buy. So shoes are worn and hassocks are sat upon and finally everything is left where it was and the spirit passes on, just as the wind in the orchard picks up the leaves from the ground as if there were no other pleasure in the world but brown leaves, as if it would deck, clothe, flesh itself in flourishes of dusty brown apple leaves and then drops them all in a heap at the side of the house and goes on.

(Marilynne Robinson [source])

…and:

Early Morning in Your Room

It’s morning. The brown scoops of coffee, the wasp-like
Coffee grinder, the neighbors still asleep.
The gray light as you pour gleaming water —
It seems you’ve traveled years to get here.

Finally you deserve a house. If not deserve
It, have it; no one can get you out. Misery
Had its way, poverty, no money at least.
Or maybe it was confusion. But that’s over.

Now you have a room. Those lighthearted books:
The Anatomy of Melancholy, Kafka’s Letter
to His Father, are all here. You can dance
With only one leg, and see the snowflake falling

With only one eye. Even the blind man
Can see. That’s what they say. If you had
A sad childhood, so what? When Robert Burton
Said he was melancholy, he meant he was home.

(Robert Bly [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Peace*

What to do
when the days’ heavy heart
having risen, late
in the already darkening East
& prepared at any moment, to sink
into the West
surprises suddenly,
& settles, for a time,
at a lovely place
where mellow light spreads
evenly
from face to face?
The days’ usual aggressive
contrary beat
now softly dropped
into a regular pace
the head riding gently its personal place
where pistons feel like legs
on feelings met like lace.
Why,
take a walk, then,
across this town. It’s a pleasure
to meet one certain person you’ve been counting on
to take your measure
who will smile, & love you, sweetly, at your leisure.
And if
she turns your head around
like any other man,
go home
and make yourself a sandwich
of toasted bread, & ham
with butter
lots of it
& have a diet cola,
& sit down
& write this,
because you can.

(Ted Berrigan [source])

…and:

Louis [the black Labrador retriever] broke into a lope and then a run, bursting into and through one open area [in the park] and then a moment later into a second — no, this one not open but a single big tree… Louis followed The Man’s scent to the far side. He found the briefcase, The Man’s clothing. But then, what was this?, The Man had turned around and gone back to the clearing and then… disappeared?

Louis looked about. He put his nose to the ground, traced circles around the large tree in the middle. Puzzled, he sat for a moment. The Man was definitely gone, taking all the right and the little not-right with him. Hmm. Louis did the thing which all dogs can do but domesticated ones eventually stop needing, let alone relying on: he opened his mind and let the tides of dog history rush in. No, they told him. He was correct. This had never happened to a dog before. He got up, walked slowly to the tree, raised a back leg and bookmarked it for future reference by himself, if need be, and by others:

A human, my Male, disappeared here.
Signed, Louis the black Labrador.

…[After The Man returned,] in some way, He was not the same Man as when He’d awoken this morning. Correction: still not that Man, and also (Louis felt certain) never again quite that Man.

As for the not-right thing, The Man was suffused with it when They first arrived. It was everywhere on Him — He must have been swimming in it, whatever it was: He was practically dripping it all over the floor. The Woman — The Man himself, for that matter — didn’t seem to notice. But Louis noticed it, and it disturbed him greatly until he realized that it was evaporating. Wearing off. By the time Louis clambered up onto the big chair-bed next to Him and put his forelegs across The Man’s thighs, nearly all not-right traces had gone. What remained, Louis was pretty sure, would remain for good. Like the big tree in the clearing in the woods, The Man had been permanently bookmarked by the experience.

(JES)

_______________________________

* Note: Ted Berrigan’s poem “Peace” should be formatted rather more elaborately than as shown above: each indented line should begin at the point where the preceding line ends. It was taking me waaaay to much time to get this exactly right, though. If you’d like to see the poem as it was meant to be typeset, please refer to the source: The Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan. I apologize to the poet.

About the image: Regarding photographer Amy Regalia I haven’t found much online. (I think, but am not sure, that this is her apparently inactive Tumblr site.) I did find a handful of references, though, to a show of her work in 2007-08, at one or two galleries in San Francisco. One of their sites says:

Amy Regalia stumbled upon the subject of her series, Leavings, while on a separate assignment in San Jose. The attention to craft employed by the creators of these piles of yard waste, pre-mulch, attracted Regalia’s eye. In the spirit of Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose work classifies buildings of the same function, Regalia set out to make portraits of these organic refuse piles paying careful attention to the sidewalk horizon line. Seemingly simple streetside scenery opens up to a complex layering of information about the lives of the residents, their gardening practices, and what lies hidden behind the fence.

([source])

I found the image used at the top of this post at the blog for the above gallery; it adds one more detail: “Regalia paid careful attention to keeping certain factors consistent throughout the series, such as her distance from the sidewalk.”

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