Interstices

[Image: “Interstices 2” (one of several sharing the same title), by user ‘runlevel0’ (Enric Martinez) on Flickr.]

From whiskey river:

But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And it’s only in that time that we can see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.

(John Green [source])

…and:

The Almanac of Last Things

From the almanac of last things
I choose the spider lily
for the grace of its brief
blossom, though I myself
fear brevity,

but I choose The Song of Songs
because the flesh
of those pomegranates
has survived
all the frost of dogma.

I choose January with its chill
lessons of patience and despair – and
August, too sun-struck for lessons.
I choose a thimbleful of red wine
to make my heart race,

then another to help me
sleep. From the almanac
of last things I choose you,
as I have done before.
And I choose evening

because the light clinging
to the window
is at its most reflective
just as it is ready
to go out.

(Linda Pastan [source])

…and:

The division of one day from the next must be one of the most profound peculiarities of life on this planet. We are not condemned to sustained flights of being, but are constantly refreshed by little holidays from ourselves. We are intermittent creatures, always falling to little ends and rising to new beginnings. Our soon-tired consciousness is meted out in chapters, and that the world will look quite different tomorrow is, both for our comfort and our discomfort, usually true. How marvelously too night matches sleep, sweet image of it, so nearly apportioned to our need. Angels must wonder at these beings who fall so regularly out of awareness into a fantasm-infested dark. How our frail identities survive these chasms no philosopher has ever been able to explain.

(Iris Murdoch [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Lacemakers

Santa Maria Assunta, Torcello

Mater dolorosa, here I am hungry
And ill-disposed on worn flags at your feet.
Through high windows wintry sun seeps in
And floods the six-tiered polychrome Apocalypse,
This Sunday’s text in comic strip.

That’s my son over by the door, impatient
To be off somewhere. Other boys pose
On attila’s Throne while their fathers snap pictures
And mothers price lace — clotheslines of lace
Strung from trucks selling pizzas.

Around the lagoon, your fields have grown wild;
Vines redden on half-fallen fences
That no longer keep the allotments apart.
On some islands the women make lace, punti in aria — stitches in air —
Materializing the spaces between things.

(Beverley Bie Brahic [source])

…and:

City Elegies

(excerpt)

I. The Day Dreamers

All day all over the city every person
Wanders a different city, sealed intact
And haunted as the abandoned subway stations
Under the city. Where is my alley doorway?

Stone gable, brick escarpment, cliffs of crystal.
Where is my terraced street above the harbor,
Café and hidden workshop, house of love?
Webbed vault, tiled blackness. Where is my park, the path

Through conifers, my iron bench, a shiver
Of ivy and margin birch above the traffic?
A voice. There is a mountain and a wood
Between us—one wrote, lovesick—Where the late

Hunter and the bird have seen us. Aimless at dusk,
Heart muttering like any derelict,
Or working all morning, violent with will,
Where is my garland of lights? My silver rail?

(Robert Pinsky [source])

…and:

Thomas Merton wrote, “there is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.” There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage.

I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.

Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock—more than a maple—a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.

(Annie Dillard [source])

…and:

from Auguries of Innocence:
60.

To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour….

The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won’t believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever’s fright….

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine;
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine….

Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in Eternity….

The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar
Are waves that beat on Heaven’s shore….

He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne’er believe, do what you please.
If the Sun and Moon should doubt,
They’d immediately go out….

God appears, and God is Light,
To those poor souls who dwell in Night;
But does a Human Form display
To those who dwell in realms of Day.

(William Blake [source])

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Editor’s Note: Yes, yes — I’m shocked, too… a whiskey river Fridays post actually published the next day (fake publication date be damned). It signals how busy (and/or distracting) the last few days have been for me.