Resemblance

This poem was featured in the New Yorker a while back. I've been flirting with its truth(s) all month long. I miss my dad, everyday.

ResemblanceBy David Ferry

It was my father in that restaurant
On Central Avenue in Orange, New Jersey,
Where I stopped for lunch and a drink, after coming away
From visiting, after many years had passed,
The places to which I’d brought my father’s ashes
And the ashes of my mother, and where my father’s
Grandparents, parents, brothers had been buried,
And others of the family, all together.

The atmosphere was smoky, and there was a vague
Struggling transaction going on between
The bright day light of the busy street outside
And the somewhat dirty light of the unwashed
Ceiling globes of the restaurant I was in.
He was having lunch. I couldn’t see what he was having
But he seemed to be eating, maybe without
Noticing whatever it was he may have been eating;
He seemed to be listening to a conversation
With two or three others—Shades of the Dead come back
From where they went to when they went away?
Or maybe those others weren’t speaking at all? Maybe
It was a dumbshow? Put on for my benefit?

It was the eerie persistence of his not
Seeming to recognize that I was there,
Watching him from my table across the room;
It was also the sense of his being included
In the conversation around him, and yet not,
Though this in life had been familiar to me,
No great change from what had been before,
Even in my sense that I, across the room,
Was excluded, which went along with my sense of him
When he was alive, that often he didn’t feel
Included in the scenes and talk around him,
And his isolation itself excluded others.

Where were we, in the restaurant that day?
Had I gone down into the world of the dead?
Were those other people really Shades of the Dead?
We expect that, if they came back, they would come back
To impart some knowledge of what it was they had learned.
Or if this was indeed Down There, they they,
Down there, would reveal, to us who visit them,
In a purified language some truth that in our condition
Of being alive we are unable to know.

Their tongues are ashes when they’d speak to us.

Unable to know is a condition I’ve lived in
All my life; it is a poverty
Of imagination about the life of another.
This is, I think, the case with everyone.
Is it because there is a silence that we
Are all of us forbidden to cross, not only
The silence that divides the dead from the living
But, antecedent to that, is it the silence
There is between the living and the living,
Unable to reach across that silence through
The baffling light there always is between us?
Among the living the body can do so sometimes,
But the mind, constricted, inhibited by its ancestral
Knowledge of final separation, holds back,
Unable to complete what it wanted to say.

What is your name that I can call you by?

Virgil said, when Eurydice died again,
“There was still so much to say” that had not been said
Even before her first death, from which he had vainly
Attempted, with his singing, to rescue her.

Doug Adams

A legacy in our community.
May you rest in peace, Professor Adams.

Music & Memory

Popped in the disc you made me last fall,
to hear that new Dylan song with the Om-ish beat, you know the CD
with Dylan, Parson, and Young written on the top, the one we listened to
over and over before blazing trails, in the mist turned rain on
the cliffs where redwood trees shot up and away like rooted rockets--
yeah that one.
I call to tell you I'm listening over and over to the chorus: "old man take a look at my life"
and you respond by saying "I need to make you a new CD; that one is old."
I don't want a newly burned, present moment compilation
because the past-time favorites usher in connections to the times when
you were here, and the new stuff--well, no matter how good it is--will be
played in a climate of absence, and who wants to reminisce on lonliness?
All I can do these days is write poetry about what was
and what appears, even if it just appears in memory,
because hanging on is a full time job,
and music is a hallway bridging the gaps between
present need and future fulfillment.
So let me hear Neil Young whail about becoming exactly like his dad,
because I love the part of you that picked such a song
and identifies with its content now and forever more.
Or perhaps its not about you at all,
but about my own desire to be seen and reflected on by my father.
You would never conversate with me about it either way;
just don't make me a new CD.

Birthday Presence

It was my birthday yesterday.

I turned 26 with flowers, hiking in Muir Woods, a cookbook and anthology of quasi-erotica, tapas

and chocolate mousse to inaugurate my continued becoming.

Few friends called. Grief.

My mom made a trip up to celebrate with me and

I leaned close to her skin every chance I got—closer than before.

By pushing away the inches between our faces I became a warrior

on the battlefield of things- slipping -away:

my leaning –

a shield

mother daughter breaths waltzing in midair –

knives cutting through the enemy of distance.

Her Friday night theology put Amos, Ike and Zeek to shame. Grace.

She drove away, after kissing my cheek with force this morning.

I watched the white SUV—that I’d deplore anyone else for driving—cruise down

Le Conte slowly and fingered eye sockets for fear of control loss.

Ten minutes later I found a project to do

in this empty apartment and poems snowflaked from on high

while Sade’s King of Sorrow cooed my silly little sadnesses

back to their sleepy places.

The Morning Desert

the morning mouth smacks
--the ones you made on the verge of waking up--
filled the air as I waited
and waited
for eyes to open, thoughts to return, and limbs to shift in-between sheets that
smelled of our cigarette conversations the night before

sometimes I would wait
and wait
down the street on the couches where I would bury myself
in theory and fill my tummy with yogurt, granola, fruit
and coffee until you phoned to say “come home”

other days I would enter the circle
and melt into your family’s gift to me
while I waited
and waited
for your dreams, or residue high/hangover to subside
so I could crawl in and claw (lightly)
the places on your back that only a mother
or lover are allowed to touch

now,
a cat's collar bell rings outside my window
to announce a new day but I wait
and wait
for the moment you decide to re-member me, though
the first voice over obscured lines
compares little to the ocean of absorption I swam in,
thanks to our circadian rhythms of old

Shake Shake (not in the Yin Yang Twins way)

I was startled out of my sleep early this morning, around 4:30am, by an earthquake. My heart leaped into my throat. I quickly jumped out of bed, but the earth returned to calm before I reached the doorway. I couldn't catch my breath for 5 minutes. My psyche doesn't respond well to lack of control. I will move myself if I fuckin feel like it...thank you very much. When I have no say and come directly into contact with outside forces, I am humbled by my own powerlessness in the web of things.

This morning when discussing with friends what type of earthquake we prefer (eg: slow, long rollers or hard, quick, forceful booms), I realized we were talking about something more than tectonic plates shifting. It's kind of like the question "how would you prefer to die?"
-slow cancer?
-or an unexpected bullet through the heart?
Such questions and answers, preferences and dislikes, point to our ideas of how things ought to be. The mind has all kind of ideas of life, death and freedom from fear of death that we transform into philosophies and theories. But in the end, I think folks want to control how and when and why things happen to them. (Hence the virtual worlds and "second life" type spots where people have complete artistic control over how they appear) Regardless of our desires to avoid being victims of reality--we always will be. Like Hillary said last week: life is messy.

I didn't want to wake up 4 hours early this morning. But I did like the extra time I had to watch the Sopranos. Sometimes the unexpected is a good thing. Touche :).

Back to Poetry

This one was passed on to me by Steven Peele. Who knew the man recites poetry on a regular basis? It's the surprises in life that keep us going.

WHAT YOUR BODY HOLDS AGAINST YOU

could be love in the right proportions. Don't confuse
form and content where a good sense of humor becomes

the kind of curves that makes a room loosen
around her. Look for a woman that listens to music

drifting over a lake, hovering like flies, or someone who will watch
the landscape emptied of azaleas under a setting sun

with you. By forty there is a sideshow of vanities:
the dragon breath you wake to, bones tossed

against your skin like saves, or the flesh that grows
where a waitress tucks her loose change. We measure

time with our lives, counting out the coins
year by year. We all become detectives of broken

hearts in off-season hotels where love and its accoutrements
wait by the roulette wheel for once chance at the big time.

--Laurie Blauner

Quote of the Day

Yesterday it was poetry; today it's a quote by Charles Hartshorne.

"It will eventually be acknowledged that women are wiser than men. The essential proof of female wisdom is that women commit far fewer crimes and antisocial acts."

Word up.

Art Supreme: Elias & Gregg

I am currently listening to Johnathan Elias' "The Prayer Cycle," (thanks to Wade). And this...this is a poem worth reading. Enjoye.

The Precision
By Linda Gregg

There is modesty in nature. In the small
of it and in the strongest. The leaf moves
just the amount the breeze indicates
and nothing more. In the power of lust, too,
there can be a quiet and clarity, a fusion
of exact moments. There is a silence of it
inside the thundering. And when the body swoons,
it is because the heart knows its truth.
There is directness and equipoise in the fervor,
just as the greatest turmoil has precision.
Like the discretion a tornado has when it tears
down building after building, house by house.
It is enough, Kafka said, that the arrow fit
exactly into the wound that it makes. I think
about my body in love as I look down on these
lavish apple trees and the workers moving
with skill from one to the next, singing.

Happy birthday to my lovely and lively Joy Lynn!

Dave Zirin

I went to hear sports journalist & political activist Dave Zirin speak about his new book Welcome to the Terrordome at Cody's Books on 4th street last night. The event was the highlight of my summer thus far. This man is doing incredibly important, virtuous, commendable work. He writes about the "pain and politics" of sports from a social justice, left wing perspective. The man is hillarious, brilliant and one-of-a-kind in his field. He encourages sports fans, in no airy fairy way, to resist the commodification and corporate take over of athletes and play. If you don't know about him and the movement he's a part of, please check out the two things I have posted below.



Being Ali Or Being Owned: An Open Letter to LeBron
By Dave Zirin
At the tender age of 22, you have the galactic talent to make us wonder if a mad scientist had Magic and MJ genetically spliced. But talent ain't wisdom. In a recent interview, you said that your goal in sports was to become "the richest man on earth." You also told ESPN, "I'm trying to be a global icon...on the level of Muhammad Ali."
These dreams are compatible only if you choose to emulate Ali the icon and not Ali the man. Ali the icon is used to sell books, computers, snack foods, and anything not nailed down. Ali the man sacrificed his health, future, and untold millions by standing up to racism and war. No one is demanding you do the same. No one is insisting you get in front of a microphone and say, "I aint got no quarrel with them Iraqis."
But you should understand that the reason Ali remains a "global icon" is precisely because he didn't define himself by his corporate sponsors. When his handlers told him to stop throttling the golden goose of fame he said, "Damn the money! Damn the white man's money!"
Evidence is accumulating that this won't become the King James catchphrase of choice.
Your teammate Ira Newble tried to get every member of the Cavs to sign a letter calling on China to stop exacerbating the genocide in Darfur by dealing arms to the government. "There's innocent people dying, and it's just a tragedy to stand back and let them do what they're doing," Newble said.
One of Newble's inspirations take a stand has been the person he "idolized as a child": Muhammad Ali. That would be Ali the man, not the brand.
Newble stuffed fact sheets and articles in the lockers of every member on the team. He organized almost the entire squad to sign a letter that reads in part, "We, as basketball players in the N.B.A. and as potential athletes in the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, cannot look on with indifference to the massive human suffering and destruction that continue in the Darfur region of Sudan." Larry Hughes signed. "Big Z," Zydrunas Ilgauskas signed. Drew Gooden signed.
Only two people refused and one was you. Nike, with whom you have a $90 million shoe deal, does business with China so you treated that letter like Dick Cheney treats a salad.
[There's no guarantee the young Ali would have signed this letter either. He may very well have said he wouldn't sign any letter telling China to get out of Darfur until the US was out of Iraq. After all this was a man who said, "The real enemy of my people is here." But one thing is for certain: "show me the money" would not have trumped "damn the money." No way.]
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader also tried to give you the chance to walk the Ali path. He sent you a public invitation to a forum about conditions in Nike factories. In the letter, Nader wrote,
"Mr. James, you are in a unique position to stand up for the people who make the products you endorse and to make the world a better place in the process. You can improve their working conditions in the contracted factories and pressure the entire sports shoe and apparel industry to change."
You replied to the press: "No, I haven't responded to it. But I think Nike's a great company and they would respond if need be."
The shoe wars continued in March in New York, when you dissed and dismissed Stephon Marbury's $14.98 sneaker line. You, whose signature Nikes go for $150, were asked whether you would ever sell a shoe that didn't cost a week's pay at McDonalds. You said, "No, I don't think so. Me being with Nike, we hold our standards high."
Marbury answered your words with the underreported smackdown of the season, saying, "I'd rather own than be owned." Damn.
Jim Brown once explained the allure of Ali in the 1960s this way: "White folks could not stand free black folks. White America could not stand to think that a sports hero that it was allowing to make big dollars would have the courage to stand up like no one else and risk, not only his life, but everything else that he had."
The choice you face is frankly quite stark: how free to do you want to be? Do you want to be "King James of Nike Manor" or the King of the World? Only by refusing to be owned, only by displaying independence from the very corporate interests that enrich you, will you ever make the journey from brand to three dimensional man.

Accreditation

Any credible academic institution
must undergo accreditation
every ten years. My school is currently preparing for
this arduous process by compiling data that either
confirms our consistency in relation to
or calls attention to our inconsistency with
the mission and goals we profess to guide our work.

Because I am a student worker in the office of the president,
I have been asked to use my 20 hours a week
to help prepare the report
before the accrediting team arrives in
September to see things for themselves.

My specific task is to hyperlink the data
(visual, charts, graphs, statistical analysis)
component of the report
to the narrative
(written explanation in paragraph form)
component of the report.

I am, in essence, making the walk match the talk, on screen.
Really: it's just a click away.
I must, of course, first convert and transfer all kinds of documents.
And you must, of course, first slip the disc into the drive,
and hope your PC or Mac likes the disc,
and hope adobe acrobat (or adobe reader--based on your budget) behave,
and, of course, you must be able to understand, interpret, and make decidicions about (without ever having actually seen the students, faculty, administration, staff, buildings, curriculum, & classes in question)
the data.

But first off: i have to learn these conversion & transfer tricks.

Lincoln left yesterday.
Funny how the professional often mimics the personal.
How do you hyperlink lovers
across freeways
or air traffic lines
over minutes, days, & months of uncertainty?
There's data and then there's narrative
but they are off screen
and intertwined--already--so
our chances of passing the accreditation process
are high because
the mission and goals we profess to guide our work
were dually chosen
and no one is coming, except ourselves in the future,
to judge the (in)consistencies.

But first off: we have to learn these conversion & transfer tricks.