[Equanimity found on the wall of a parking lot: ready for anything. Mural (in Downtown Durham, North Carolina): words by Kate Bowler, design by Gwen Heginbotham, art by Loren Pease; photo by John E. Simpson. I liked the sentiment very much, as well as the mural itself; on the other hand, the mural’s look seems to illustrate only the “beautiful” part. So I duplicated the photo in black-and-white (slide right) to try to mute or balance out the overall message a little.]
This week, from whiskey river:
The canoe is incredibly wobbly, even when you sit on your heels. A balancing act. If you have the heart on the left side you have to lean a bit to the right, nothing in the pockets, no big arm movements, please, all rhetoric has to be left behind. Precisely: rhetoric is impossible here. The canoe glides out over the water.
(Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robert Bly [source])
…and:
Curriculum Vitae
1) I was born in a Free City, near the North Sea.
2) In the year of my birth, money was shredded into
confetti. A loaf of bread cost a million marks. Of
course I do not remember this.3) Parents and grandparents hovered around me. The
world I lived in had a soft voice and no claws.4) A cornucopia filled with treats took me into a building
with bells. A wide-bosomed teacher took me in.5) At home the bookshelves connected heaven and earth.
6) On Sundays the city child waded through pinecones
and primrose marshes, a short train ride away.7) My country was struck by history more deadly than
earthquakes or hurricanes.8) My father was busy eluding the monsters. My mother
told me the walls had ears. I learned the burden of secrets.9) I moved into the too bright days, the too dark nights
of adolescence.10) Two parents, two daughters, we followed the sun
and the moon across the ocean. My grandparents stayed
behind in darkness.11) In the new language everyone spoke too fast. Eventually
I caught up with them.12) When I met you, the new language became the language
of love.13) The death of the mother hurt the daughter into poetry.
The daughter became a mother of daughters.14) Ordinary life: the plenty and thick of it. Knots tying
threads to everywhere. The past pushed away, the future left
unimagined for the sake of the glorious, difficult, passionate
present.15) Years and years of this.
16) The children no longer children. An old man’s pain, an
old man’s loneliness.17) And then my father too disappeared.
18) I tried to go home again. I stood at the door to my
childhood, but it was closed to the public.19) One day, on a crowded elevator, everyone’s face was younger
than mine.20) So far, so good. The brilliant days and nights are
breathless in their hurry. We follow, you and I.
(Lisel Mueller [source])
Not from whiskey river — indeed, from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota — an object lesson in not wanting what you can’t have:
J.P. was a deer hunter. He did it out of ignorance, because his dad had done it, and like his dad, he wrapped a deer hide around himself and wore a pair of antlers and sat in a blind with his back to a tree and watched the stump where he had set a bowl of raspberry Jell-O covered with Miracle Whip for bait. Deer love Miracle Whip especially with chopped walnuts and raisins. He attached a brown string to the bowl and tied the other end around his ankle, in case he fell asleep. Which he did.
He slept peacefully until he felt a slight tug on his ankle and jumped up, gun cocked, and saw a skunk with its nose in the Miracle Whip crunching on walnuts. For this skunk, the sight of a man with antlers was too much excitement for one day. The skunk raised his tail and cut loose. He was a teenage skunk full of hormones, and the aroma almost knocked J.P. off his feet. He dropped his gun and staggered out of the clearing, tearing clothing off him as he stumbled blindly ahead through the underbrush, and that was what the family in the Winnebago saw as they drove up the highway, a naked man with a shotgun who smelled bad, towing a bowl of Jell-O.
They didn’t stop to help him. They couldn’t imagine what help would be helpful. They called the sheriff and a couple of deputies responded and found him in the ditch. They tossed him a blanket to wrap himself in and they sprayed him with Hi-lex, which they keep in the squad car for just this sort of thing, and he recovered to where he could point in the direction of his car. They drove across the field, J.P. walking fifty feet ahead, and they saw his pants, which had his car keys in them, and they got a quart of sparkling water and threw it in his face to wash out his eyes, and asked him if he was okay. In Lake Wobegon, we are brought up to say yes to this question.
So the deputies were glad to leave him there and eventually he found the car and made his way home. He soaked himself for a couple days and then resumed his life, but you never completely recover after an experience like that. He went to Bill the barber who shaved his head but his hair grew back smelling skunky so he had it done again. When his friends ran into him in town, they didn’t ask, “How’s it going?” because they could see for themselves. The people in the Winnebago posted a picture of him on Instagram, naked, armed, somewhat crazed, with the caption, “Somewhere someone is having a worse day than you,” which someone saw in a book of trending memes and showed to J.P.—he’d become a joke to media managers and content specialists—and it broke his heart and he took up residence in the Upper Peninsula. It happened three years ago but, standing near me in the Sidetrack, he still smelled faintly acrid and looked unwell.
[J.P.] told me the whole story, except for the Instagram part, and said, “One good thing about getting skunked is that deerflies never bother you again. Up on the U.P. they got deerflies the size of hummingbirds. Bug repellent only irritates them. But they smell skunk and they leave you alone.”
(Garrison Keillor [source])
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