It's hard for me to understand why losses that other people seem to take in stride weigh upon me. A simple change feels funerary. Several at once from all sides is like walking the Inferno without Dante. It's worse if even the Hanging Judge (my severest internal critic, a source of unending condemnation) can't find a reason to blame myself. If it comes on several fronts at once, I start to freeze, like the descent of winter, a degree at a time, trying to prevent loss from becoming hemorrage.
I spelled that wrong and I don't have the will to fix it. I sort of like the misspelling. Iron-rage, blood-rage, deep and tidal, power of Mars under the ice. Why must I do without, again?
I'm coherent, but I'm not communicating coherently. Another necessary loss. I can feel my will to understand dissolving, like nitrogen bubbles in my blood. Words go away down here, but syntax goes first. You'll have to supply some connective tissue yourself, Dear Reader.
Emotional shutdown isn't dramatic. Mutism isn't usually sudden. If my larynx is dark, why do I feel deepening shadow there?
Pable Neruda wrote a book of questions:
Do tears spill from
a lake in the heart?
Or do they run in rivers of sadness to the sea?
Sadly, I can't find The Book of Questions, which I was reading yesterday. Another loss to add to what's already upending my world. A brief burst of panic unearths it from its burial ground among my office papers before my energy slump. Neruda actually wrote:
A headhunter...cuts off human heads...[because] severing and tossing away the head enables him to throw away the anger of all his bereavements.
Perhaps you think this does not apply to you. Yet you recall the day your wife, driving you to your mother's funeral, turned left instead of right at the intersection and you had to scream at her so loud other drivers turned to look. When you tore off her head and threw it out the window they nodded, changed gears, and drove away."
Or this:
UPDATE 24 HOURS LATER: This isn't the first time I've written my way through a difficult mental state, but yesterday's was pretty bad.
This writing was a very educational experience. I had not realized just how much poetry does for me, how influential it is. How, like music, it can be a safe guide for articulating a wave of misery and in so doing set boundaries on the force of misery.
UPDATE 34 DAYS LATER: I've returned to the theme, in Grief Prints.
I spelled that wrong and I don't have the will to fix it. I sort of like the misspelling. Iron-rage, blood-rage, deep and tidal, power of Mars under the ice. Why must I do without, again?
I'm coherent, but I'm not communicating coherently. Another necessary loss. I can feel my will to understand dissolving, like nitrogen bubbles in my blood. Words go away down here, but syntax goes first. You'll have to supply some connective tissue yourself, Dear Reader.
Emotional shutdown isn't dramatic. Mutism isn't usually sudden. If my larynx is dark, why do I feel deepening shadow there?
Pable Neruda wrote a book of questions:
Do tears spill from
a lake in the heart?
Or do they run in rivers of sadness to the sea?
Sadly, I can't find The Book of Questions, which I was reading yesterday. Another loss to add to what's already upending my world. A brief burst of panic unearths it from its burial ground among my office papers before my energy slump. Neruda actually wrote:
Do tears not yet spilled
wait in small lakes?
Or do they run in rivers to sadness?
We entertain angels and violent strangers [in our own skins]. I don't know who I'm quoting now. I know where the catalog is, having taken my own inventory.wait in small lakes?
Or do they run in rivers to sadness?
Anne Carson wrote these questions: "Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief...A headhunter...cuts off human heads...[because] severing and tossing away the head enables him to throw away the anger of all his bereavements.
Perhaps you think this does not apply to you. Yet you recall the day your wife, driving you to your mother's funeral, turned left instead of right at the intersection and you had to scream at her so loud other drivers turned to look. When you tore off her head and threw it out the window they nodded, changed gears, and drove away."
--("Tragedy, a Curious Art Form," Grief Lessons, p. 7. Also quotes Rosaldo, "Grief and the Headhunter's Rage," in Text, Play, and Story.)
Or this:
"About suffering they were never wrong,
the Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully
Quite leisurely from the disaster: the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green...
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on."
And where is my faith now? In a book? In The Book? What ink is it written in, tears or blood or the gall of oak?the Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully
along;...
In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns awayQuite leisurely from the disaster: the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green...
and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on."
--W. H. Auden, "Musee des Beaux Arts"
UPDATE 24 HOURS LATER: This isn't the first time I've written my way through a difficult mental state, but yesterday's was pretty bad.
This writing was a very educational experience. I had not realized just how much poetry does for me, how influential it is. How, like music, it can be a safe guide for articulating a wave of misery and in so doing set boundaries on the force of misery.
UPDATE 34 DAYS LATER: I've returned to the theme, in Grief Prints.
