Archive for May, 2007 Page 2 of 3
All the times I've looked at my foot.
They're not so big. I remember long days in a sunny piece of sand, sitting, my leg pulled to my face, just looking at them. It was on just such an occasion that the man with the electricity came upon me, crossing a field. Nowhere really, off all the paths for some reason, probably that it was my pasture. It was my sunning spot and everyone else just steered clear.
There were no deer trails laden with scat. There was only the peace of the trees and myself lying there soaking up all those great rays, protected by fur, glorious fur that warmed in that sun, those marvelous beams of glory raining down. All of us green with it. Letting the bugs crawl all over us, letting the flies swarm. It was worth it just to be, so living all over. Just feeling it.
I was in a trance, just staring at the bottom of my feet, letting them warm as well in that hard light, from all they endure over roots and through bushes. All that they suffer as I tromp around. It's a lot of work. But my people have big feet. That's all. Big feet. No different than any man.
In human terms I suppose you'd think us a kind of radical hillbilly, some hippy love child gone astray. But who cares about that. It doesn't matter. What matters is to see always such beauty everywhere. No matter what it is. And so I chose to look at man. I wanted to know what this electricity was all about. It seemed like the sun.
The truth is, that day, he electrocuted me. He'd brought a stun gun and some rope. I didn't mind. I wanted to know. And the sensation of all that power running through me, jolted me awake from my slumber and I wanted to learn.
He stood across from me in that field and all I had was smiles, wasn't it glorious? I threw open my arms to him, "brother otter" I cried, at last returned to me.
We stood that way a long while, like stunned and stalking cats, creeping so slow, so slow, testing each other's memories, trying to feel how strong the other might really be. The man slowly, so slowly lifted his hand and reached it inside himself and drew out this weapon.
I wanted only good things for him. I wanted him to forget. I thought I might hypnotize him into forgetting he had seen me. I was already retrieving those memories from him, but he was very clever, that electric man.
He had something in his hand when he pulled it from inside himself. I stared at it a long while. I thought it might be feces and that he was going to throw it at me. To stun me. To curse me. I thought for a second that he was a magician like they said men were. That he was never to be trusted. That's what I was told. That once, long ago, a crime was committed and that we had run away from man. We hated man. But nobody had bothered to worry about man for a very long time.
I thought I might help them. Might lift them over their assumptions about certain things. That we might exchange art and poetry. That we might sing to each other. How interesting that would be.
I reached out my hand to clutch a nearby pine. I intended to rattle it really hard and scare the man away. I thought, I was convinced already, that this exchange was likely not to happen and that if man stayed his side and we ours, all would be best. I would shake the trees till the needles rained down all around me. And then in the silent aftermath, I would grunt like a bore.
I had seen a boar once. They are not just lessons from a far gone age. Though they are not that at all. They have such strange feet! They are cloven like a deer, and when they canter, it is in comic little spasms. They are funny creatures! But then the big one, the bull with his tusks and his black spines like a porcupine. A hideous beast and rude to boot. Never a dull moment, I tell you. Never any peace when a pig's around.
So I grunt, real foul and phlegmy like a boar, real nasty, like someone snorting up the world.
The man reaches his hand like he wants to show me something. Something a little frightening, because I am so curious, I am completely entranced.
The next thing I recall, I was tied to a tree with thick heavy strong vines. He's making funny lip motions at me, as if he were somehow making fun of me. He was making me very angry, I'm afraid to say. I wanted to uproot the tree and bash him with it until I was free. What arrogance!
When I could stand it no more, I fell into a kind of catatonia. I couldn't think anymore. I couldn't see or hear. I had overloaded my mind. We have weak minds after all. Too much stimulation, too many events acting upon things all around was just too much for us to deal with.
Play dead. That's what it was. One of our strategies for invisibility. Become immobile. Awake with renewed energy, new fire stoked, ready to deal with adversity if it hasn't already wandered off.
During that dank slumber, there are only thoughts of blood and derangement. We are berserkers after all. We give one last heroic, ecstatic blood frenzy to save ourselves. Nothing can stop us.
And to die in battle. What an honor.
Little did the man know what he was bringing out in me. When I awoke I threw off his vines in one small flex of my pectorals. I took all my great expanse of chest, that lets me run, far and wide, where I choose, invisible.
I stood with great decorum. I was going to crush this man. But first I would taste his fear. I would soak it all in like some exotic beverage. I would terrorize him with great cruelty. Tie me with a rope!
But when the time came, he was not afraid. He stood there, no longer moving his lips. The electric man. He zapped me again with that horrible, beautiful power! I can't begin to express what it meant to me. That second jolt was the one that showed me, that shocked me into new reason. That second one and things began to come clear. I was his prisoner, if that was how it needed to be.
When I awoke a second time, I was in a more reasonable frame of mind. Going berserker can take a lot out of you. It is a sort of explosion. Electricity of my own crackles in my fur and it stands on end. I am entranced by a frantic star above the tree line, I am falling to the ground again and rising up as well. I am caught very much in between things.
The third jolt and all of those that came after, during our whole long friendship, were at my pleading. I would do anything for another sizzle, another halo of smoke above my head. I wanted all of it. Teach me! Teach ME!
The man became very patient with me. We negotiated a series of signals at first. I could ask for food and just what kind from my place beneath the great oak tree I was again roped to. It was a long time before I left that tree. Its energy became a part of my own as well. I grew so strong tied to that tree, basking in its glow.
I hear tell that the old people of long ago, the vicious ones who made us flee to our father otter, would hang small men by their flesh and spin them round until they tore free. It was like that. I had beaten a track around the tree and broke my bonds many, many times. I had a place to shit and a place to eat.
It was good enough to survive on. My people are great survivors. If a cave-in traps us, we can last many moons if we have to. There are times when our fathers had to gnaw off their own limbs to save their lives. We can survive anything. We grow right back. We are full of life!
We hear stories about the great mother who they keep sequestered in their great ideas. The one who loves them all and keeps them happy and strong. Father is just an idea perhaps as well, but his visage is grim and he sits in a dank room at the bottom of the world and just sort of broods over everything. He's not a happy man. We miss our mother's love.
As fast as I could make the symbols and gestures, I asked the electric man about the great mother. I'm not sure if he understood me. I suppose it doesn't matter. Given everything else that happened.
When I felt I had made myself plain enough, I gave him silence to try to explain.
He took up a rock that was too heavy for such a little one as he. Men are weak after all. They are like ants and must invent great monsters of metal to help them with everything. It is silly to think that anyone decides his fate. But man seems convinced he can rewrite the world however he likes. How fascinating!
He shuffled this rock, inch by inch, over into the clearing.
Then he took another one such as he, with his present resources, could manage. He pushed it up onto the other and scrubbed his hands clean of dirt.
Then he took a third one in one hand. He tossed it into the air a couple times and caught it. He turned his head to the left and to the right until his neck popped. I did the same. My people have big necks. Too big perhaps. They are for swinging into trees when it's called for.
He placed the third stone on top of the second with an air of finality. He did another cursory brush of his hands and ran them through the hair on his head as if he were waving his scent all about.
Then he made some funny lip movements again. It took me no time to realize what the strange charm of those sounds was called. The word was there in my head, though to my knowledge, I had never heard it. It was as if the strange warble of his voice were a sort of bird noise. He was working his magic on me. I could feel it. It was like the electricity again only more vivid. Music.
I learned this song from him, though it took me many years to decipher the full range of its meaning. I can only tell you of it. I can't sing it to you. I can't talk and sing at the same time like the great poets. I can only make these sounds.
The song was about a woman who seemed very happy to be free with herself. Who lived in a very perfect place and spread her legs wide for many men and everyone was happy and drunk. A country song he called it. Hillbilly music.
I tell myself I shouldn't be talking about all this. They can't know about this. But then, I don't understand it myself. Maybe if I tell it, it'll come plain to me along the way.
He sang me this song and then his face split open very wide and pulled apart. I thought for a second he was transforming, turning into some other creature all together. My people never look at each other. We don't really think about faces. We have our other senses. We don't see real well, except in the dark. In the dark, everything is different.
Later he explained to me that he had been smiling and laughing, because I was crying. I was heaving with sobs and moaning helplessly like a small child. I was completely crushed with emotion I could not express. I wanted to just die. Such beauty! Such beauty!
What saved me at last was sitting there in my tears and my snot and my piss. I stared down at my foot. It just lay there, forgotten. I'd been tied to a tree so long already. What could I do? I thought of all the times I'd stared at the foot, all the times I could recall.
And I had never thought about the passage of time like that before. How things change. They had always just been what they were. If things changed every few minutes, well, so what? It hardly mattered. Everything is beautiful after all.
I'm tired of all this talking just now. How the tears well up even now. That this thing was also that thing and that thing from back then. How it all was connected. At last! The great wisdom the elders had spoke of. The great wisdom that came from the sky with the rays of the sun. Only here it was again like an electric shock, ravaging my mind with fresh ponderance.
Oh, I can not bring the memory to the forefront. I have no words for it.
killhambone and I have just launched Hex and Haiku at last after endless delays.
We’ve been exchanging this assignment for over 2 years now. Each day I give him a hex topic on a post-it note and he gives me a haiku topic. We’ve got hundreds of them and we decided to share them on a website.
Code Poetry, hex haikuCode Poetry, hex haikuAnthropology, Part 3
Some creatures make sense of the world with their noses. To them go the smells that issue from all things. Some creatures will only know by taste, those mealy ends we face. We ourselves make sure of things with eyes. We look for correspondences and contrasts, explanations, any will do. Great spirits are better at this than weaker spirits. They can hold a form of great character for a long time.
When I first began to study bigfoot, he did a lot of things that confused me. We had many unusual confrontations before we came to understand one another. I am happy to say that our friendship flourishes to this day, though we haven't seen each other in years. He is a dear friend to my heart and I will not let anyone speak poorly of him.
His senses are stronger in just the way color makes it easier to distinguish the spectacle of light. It is no surprise that people paint. In my own way I've tried to express the beacons of shadow that coat the fields as the clouds dapple the Spring corn. How the brindle cow is figured so marvelously that we consider there is some plan to everything.
Strapped and clattering, we spent many days in close conference with each other. We were both on the edge of madness with our fire to communicate. We invented our own language just to be heard.
Madg melaan gosse tongue.
which means:
Anthropology, bigfoot, The Light on the HillAnthropology, bigfoot, The Light on the HillTake heed, my friend.
The Long Otter
Once upon a time there was a long otter that ruled a great lake. Whatever he wanted was his. All made offerings to him except for the men who rowed their canoes away from shore to cast nets into the deep. They pulled a great bounty of fish up but left nothing for the long otter.
The otter watched these men work and wished he had such powers as well, so he took a bride from among their people.
She washed clothes at the lakeside where he was always bathing. She carried a big basket on her head when she came down the beach.
She was very pretty in her way, but there was something wrong with her that the other men did not enjoy and so she was alone.
He would watch her as she scrubbed old shirts among the rocks. Eventually he decided to ask her on a date and she agreed.
They had two sons, one who looked more like an otter and one who looked more like a man. When they came into their urges, it was decided that the otterish son would stay with his father while the mannish son would go with his mother. They said their goodbyes and made off into the world.
We descended from the mannish son. I've always wanted to visit the great lake.
bigfoot, long otter, once upon a time, The Light on the Hillbigfoot, long otter, once upon a time, The Light on the HillA circle of rocks in the basement of the French hospital in Jerusalem. No one knows what it is and the staff has no time to investigate. Everything is always a frantic last minute emergency of irrational promises made long ago, their reasons lost. It is just a legend the laundry workers propagate in those far dank corners:
Once it had been a tower of Goliath’s fortress. Now it rests beneath the great boiler that heats the whole hospital. A boiler that always seems to run.
One strange nervous man, a man like a rat with his dull courtesies, guards it as much as repairs it. The boiler must always be kept secure in case of terrorists. This one man knows the whole story of what the Muslim’s call Kalaat Yalud.
A beautiful name for a dank corner fit only for worms, a place that constantly screams with the strength of the mighty furnace, a place with giant fans tearing the air with great force. Heat is thrown from the fire like an endless stream of daggers.
One man stands at the edge of light in a dark passage, losing his mind with loneliness to keep the great and terrible secret alive.
Goliath, Goliaths Tower, philistineGoliath, Goliaths Tower, philistineA Trip to the Barber
Each night was as particular to me as if it were an entire phase of my existence. I was metamorphosing. I grew completely tame with all the fascinating possibilities of the present.
I was in control of myself, disciplined and sure. I was a man perhaps. Perhaps I had been a man all along, despite my hirsute tendencies. A strong man, a big man, with a preposterous destiny. I was not the first to make my way in the world.
Looking back now, I think I would have been happier had I stayed in the forest, but then there are other interests to hold the mind than happiness. I would say it has been an inspired life, raised up by a man shining a light into the sky.
A great man, a man who owned much electricity and tossed it into the sky to write truths that are like metal in the bellies of the clouds, in my belly as well.
What I had not learned as yet, and could not have guessed, was the value of a dollar. It was struggle enough to keep up with why the big trucks ran at night through the trees on the roads, why the towers blinked their lights over everything, why the streets were paved and why there were curbs and sidewalks and even what a street light was or the language of signs the people of the road spoke.
I did not know yet that the people of the road and the people of the houses were not the same people, but sometimes people who had come from far away for no good reason, just to visit from other equally plentiful places.
It was a long while before I learned of the law and that I had no legal rights to the corner of the field, no capital at all. I became very concerned with money, what it looked like, where it came from, how to receive some in payment for services.
The farmers paid me to move heavy things and to watch over the cattle at night. I was the night shepherd. They paid me with money left beneath a rock on the fence post. They gave me whatever they had at hand. Sometimes they gave me apples. (I wept from their kindness, I couldn't stop myself. Just to have a message sing out for me alone...)
With the few dollars I'd gathered, I walked right off the street in a pair of jeans I'd found in the woods and a plastic wind breaker from the trash. I went to the barber shop and gestured frantically at my face, trying to make clear how important it was that they shave me before anyone noticed.
The barber stood chagrined at the counter, saddled with impossible duties but up to the task. He gestured towards a chair, then tossed a towel easily on his shoulder.
He covered me with a sheet and I fell asleep almost at once. I had never been swaddled before. I closed my eyes. I didn't want to see myself in the mirror, couldn't bear the horrible presence of my own gaze. When I awoke, the barber was buttoning a shirt over my chest. My friend from the field stood by smiling. My skin itched all over.
I was pink and raw like a newborn rat.
bigfoot, The Light on the Hillbigfoot, The Light on the HillI can crack a rib as easily as a smile. I am Goliath and I will toss all your promise in the sea. I care more than some. I need things to crush. I need to unleash the burden of my strength on someone. All these conjunctions crushing the sound from things, all the risks of normal men bounce from my chest and fall broken at my feet. The fates themselves are powerless before me. I am like unto God with the testament of my will. Let stars conjoin as they may. All supplicate to me.
There is a lot of busy work to this sort of dominion. Those who reign with love rule weaklings. My men burn up like torches. New conscripts are necessary every day to feed this juggernaut. I offer myself, the whole kingdom of Philistine as collateral.
I take down whole armies at one blow and am left with gore. I must temper my rage a bit so prisoners can be taken. But I only crave the smashing, the plunging of fists into frail bodies, the tearing limb from limb. Blood-drenched and bristling, here is my glory. I could blow them all down with a breath.
I require these chains some nights. I have my men shackle me to a great stone so I can strain myself against it till my blood boils. Some days, I have the men sit upon it. Some days I have them pull in the other direction. Sometimes I use oxen. Sometimes nothing can hold me back.
It is absurd to say I am the strongest man. I am not a man at all. I must be part divine, whether devil or angel. Some otherworldly seed took root in my mother and grew too big for her to survive. I burst from her belly of my own volition. Such things hardly matter.
Men are things of destiny. Their lives are written out for them on clay tablets. My life cannot be written by their wedges. No scar sits my flesh. Only my heels could tell my story true. My prints scorn the plain.
Goliath, Goliaths Tower, philistineGoliath, Goliaths Tower, philistineThe Night Shepherd
- So far as I know, there was only ever the woods. I knew about the road and not to go near it. I knew about the tracks and the late night train. I knew about the beasts in the field and the men who worked among them. Mostly I knew about nuts and berries, good grasses. It seemed like I was always eating, growing bigger and bigger, taller and taller. It seemed a long and wonderful while before I came into my urges and had to leave home.
- Where was I to go? Should I go live among the men? I thought I might do some service to endear myself. I knew how to bend the tree branches till they sang. I knew how to make the forest music. I watched the man come paint the clouds with light. It gave me a good deal of courage to think there were such cool things in the world.
- A sensation came over me while I watched him make his light. I can only call it a particularization. All those things that had seemed for all time were suddenly of the now, this moment here. Details blossomed in my eyes. I saw how the bark chipped in my hand. I heard the wind as if for the first time, so full of information. I felt it through my hair.
- It was no different than it had always been, but somehow I noticed how things were organized on a greater scale than I had previously assumed. I had millions of assumptions that guided me through the world, but recently I had had doubts as well.
- I heard the train rolling past as a whole thunderous rain storm of sounds, lights and sensations. I stood, dumb with awe, as things grew more localized and precise. I grew sure of what I saw: the wheel, the working of metal, the boiling of water, the nature of electricity, weather, the purpose of the gates and the field and the beasts upon it.
- I could even begin to understand this man and the train and the reasons the light grew from his hand as if he held a fragment of the sun (electricity!) The whole electromagnetic spectrum lay down before me and gave expression to all things.
- I stood there caught up in a gigantic shrug I could not shake off. The world seemed to collapse and rise again at the same time. New realms of insight revealed ever deeper truths to me about the nature of these strange beings who guarded the field from the advance of the machines and yet make a sort of sacrifice to the rail in homage to some greater intent. I came night after night to learn more from these sights.
- The strange worshipfulness of men. I never believed that before. I never saw such a thing from them. Mainly the men I saw were working at something to enrich themselves. They were great encroachers is all, to be dealt with one day.
