[Image: “East Side Railroad Tunnel East Portal,” by Erik Gould. (Spotted on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license: thank you!) If you’ve got a nice wide monitor, be sure to click the image for the whole panorama.The photographer’s lengthy description of the subject includes this anecdote: “On May 1st. 1993, a group of students gathered at the western portal below Benefit St. for a May Day party. They lit fires, put on animal masks, pounded on drums until early the next morning, when police arrived. Fearing the activities in the tunnel were unsafe, they attempted to get the students to leave. The situation escalated quickly as some students refused to go, the police responded with pepper spray and the students answered with rocks and bricks. The ensuing melee ended with many injuries and a badly damaged police car, and the police charge in the next day’s paper that they had encountered ‘satanic rituals’. As a result the portals on both ends were sealed up with steel doors, which soon were forced open.”]
From whiskey river (italicized lines):
Little Things
After she’s gone to camp, in the early
evening I clear our girl’s breakfast dishes
from the rosewood table, and find a dinky
crystallized pool of maple syrup, the
grains standing there, round, in the night, I
rub it with my fingertip
as if I could read it, this raised dot of
amber sugar, and this time,
when I think of my father, I wonder why
I think of my father, of the Vulcan blood-red
glass in his hand, or his black hair gleaming like a
broken-open coal. I think I learned to
love the little things about him
because of all the big things
I could not love, no one could, it would be wrong to.
So when I fix on this image of resin
or sweep together with the heel of my hand a
pile of my son’s sunburn peels like
insect wings, where I peeled his back the night before camp,
I am doing something I learned early to do, I am
paying attention to small beauties,
whatever I have—as if it were our duty to
find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.
(Sharon Olds [source])
…and:
Am I free? There’s something that still restrains me. Or am I fastening myself to it? Either way, it’s like this: I’m not completely free because I’m tied to everything. In fact, a person is everything. It’s not a heavy burden to carry by yourself because it isn’t simply carried: one is everything.
It seems to me that for the first time I’m gaining in understanding about things. The impression is that I don’t try anymore to come closer to things so I won’t go beyond myself. I have a certain fear of myself, I’m not to be trusted and I distrust my false power.
This is the word of someone who cannot.
I don’t control anything. Not even my own words. But it isn’t sad: it’s humble happiness. I, who live to the side, I’m to the left of whoever comes in. And within me trembles the world.
(Clarice Lispector [source])
…and:
Suddenly
Suddenly—the word most used by Dostoevsky. Somebody told me that. Some Dostoyevsky expert. Suddenly. As though any kind of action could be drawn into words: Suddenly music. Suddenly turning. Suddenly silent. Suddenly. As though I never saw the process.
Everyone in the old house is sick but me. Silence, except for the snoring, coughing, and occasional trips to the bathroom. Snow everywhere through the windows. You can’t look out without seeing it. Suddenly winter. Frozen rivers. Bitter cold. Barren trees. Small silver plane etched out against a chalk, still sky. Suddenly, completely alone.
(Sam Shepard [source])
