Notes and tea

I'll put the Thursday on, wash the tea,
since our names are completely ordinary--
- from "Identification" by Wislawa Szymborska

There's water in the kettle, the tea bag waits in the cup. The book I'm reading has tea in it, has teaism and Okakura Kakuzo in it, has Basho and Sei Shonagon in it. My eyes automatically dart toward my bookshelf, where my copy of Shonagon's Pillow Book is, and I remember the lists my teacher in poetry class once asked us to make. Lists like "things that make your heart beat fast", or "things that make you sad". I don't remember the items in mine. My recall of details has become feeble, and clutching at memory's hems requires much effort, most of the time.

"And then one comes across the letters of a man one used to love.

Last year's paper fan. A night with a clear moon."

- from the Pillow Book

But, tea. Tea pots, tea cups. I have lingered over store displays a few times, trailing my fingers along the tea pots' thin, graceful necks, inspecting the cups' ears, admiring the artwork. They are the daintiest things, but I've never bought any. Maybe I didn't feel I'll have use for them, maybe I felt that it was too early in my "tea stage" to buy them. My knowledge of tea is confined to Lipton, Starbucks, and the instances it has come up in the English novels and Zen stories I've read. And, of course, there's the memory of poring over Proust's In Search of Lost Time and being profoundly affected by his tea-and-petites-madeleines passage.

photo from dinahfried.com

But I will buy a set, one of these days. It's on my list, definitely. Something that has little flowers on their faces. In white and blue, perhaps.

Meanwhile, the kettle sings.

"Come along inside...

We'll see if tea and buns can make the world a better place."

- from The Wind in The Willows

Good morning, Thursday.

from www.newyorker.com

Horrific.

In case you haven't seen it yet.
Poor Sylvia Plath. She would have cringed at this.

More here. (Thanks for the tip, Mr. K)

Meanwhile, I recently discovered lettersofnote.com. My starter meal was Doris Lessing's letter declining Britain's offer to make her a Dame. A delightful read, feisty and brief.

Notes and photos

I'm reading an interview on Jack Kerouac and I smile when I get to the part where I discover he's a Pisces. My mind drifts to James Merrill (he's a Pisces, too) and the James Merrill phase I went through after discovering him in my Contemporary American Literature class in college. I feel a pang of sadness as I think about the thick James Merrill book I found at a book sale (I don't remember where). It's one of the books I've lost in the turbulence of '11. I remember the Irish Setter in one of his poems, "The Broken Home". I can still recall, quite vividly, the smile James Merrill was wearing in the picture on the book's jacket. His smile was shy and sad, a faraway look in his eyes. He didn't seem to be where he was. Very similar to this one, though he was a little younger in the other:

Something in me grows heavy, silvery, pliable.

- from "The Broken Home"

But yes, Jack Kerouac reminded me a little of you.

photo from www.brainpickings.org

And that's probably why I started jotting down these notes.

Notes and flowers

Living things don't all require 

light in the same degree. Some of us

make our own light:

- from "Lamium" by Louise Gluck

This poet's obsession with flowers has single-handedly strewn your mind with blooms. Never mind the uncertainty that lives there, or the sadness that comes for occasional visits. You can count on them not to mind.

The poet has a book filled with flowers. Roses, zinnias, irises, daisies, asters, buttercups, lilies. The pages whisper pinks and lavenders, burst into yellows and oranges, spew out reds and violets, echo blues and incidental blacks. They speak of living, and pain, and sorrow, and death, and hope. So much loveliness lining the hedges, colors brightening the pathways.

But you have zero interest in gardening. Once, you planted lavender Milflores (scientific name: Hydrangea Macrophylla, the internet says) in some grassy front yard from your past. They died, all four of them. Did they know you were going away?

photo from houseonahill.net

Your shopping list has only once included "flowers" (you can picture Mrs. Dalloway shaking her elegant head in disapproval) and the ones you bought were plastic. Tulips, they were, and white. Or were they purple? You wonder.

Are there even purple tulips?

You must remember to buy a vase, next time you go out. Write that down. Now.

From this point on, the silence through which you move
is my voice pursuing you.

- Louise Gluck

Naming

The beloved 

doesn't 

need to live. The beloved

lives in the head.

-Louise Gluck

From that conversation and others that came before, I am able to see that your proclivity for naming things stems from your almost instinctive tendency to dig up graves for what you refuse to deal with.

Pain, memories, losses. Things that matter enough to be seen, acquiesced, named. Guitar strains you once loved, warmth you once felt, dreams you once conjured, luminous tears turned to dim aches, questions you once asked, over and over.

Names. Faces.

You close your eyes and push, push downward, push, until they're deep enough, until they're gone enough.

So they haunt you in your dreams, people your untold tales, disappear into deliberately forgotten landscapes, blur into uncertain photographs.

You end up drawing blanks. Blanks you're unable to fill.

For C--

Day 5

Waking up to CNN's Anderson Cooper's coverage of Typhoon Haiyan's aftermath in Tacloban  has paved the way for gloomy thoughts to come.

Today's rain seems a fitting backdrop, too, highlighting patterns of grays and blues, and grays again. I have been told to stop following the news, but an inner voice is telling me that isn't the way to go. That I have been spared by this catastrophe should be reason enough to be in accord with what is going on. My sense of decency tells me that anything in proximity to celebration (the sumptuous lunch we just had, the weekend party we've been planning), luxury (that expensive gadget we've been wanting for months now), and pettiness (the headaches and traffic we normally complain about) have absolutely no place in the middle of all the grief, desperation, and destruction that the people in affected places are currently going through.

photo from www.nationalreview.com

But let me stop there before this turns into a lugubrious and preachy post, if it isn't already one.

Aid continues to come from all over the globe. People are braving the backwash of the storm, setting aside differences and comfort and safety in order to rebuild. The days and nights to come will be long and dreary (as they have already been), but so long as there are people like the ones out there who are lending out hand and limb and heart, the sun will shine again.

Sketches

I can almost be sure I had warned you before: you will find your way here.

Hope Floats: Baby being rescued in Tacloban.

I found this on Ninotchka Rosca's Facebook wall, and was haunted by the image.

Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda has ravaged so many, but hope lies in those who help bring to shore whomever, and whatever, can be saved.

*Photo posted by Armand Bengua Frasco, courtesy of Gen. Charly Holganza/ via Willy Ramasola

Because this miss is on my list (ugh)

I have decided to give up on the book I've been reading. I seldom ever go this far into one (3/4) and not finish it, living by the belief that if the first few pages of a book doesn't appeal to me, the only recourse should be to put it down and move on to the next. One of the very few exceptions was Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, which somehow proved my judgement on its beginning chapters wrong, and it was, perhaps, the memory of this experience that was one of the reasons why I stuck to Kundera's Life is Elsewhere; the other being that of reading his The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and liking both.

The book has its merits, but the current mood I'm in has been unable to find a juncture to settle in, so for now, I'm putting it back on the shelf. I could probably pull it out it at a later time, though judging from the list of books I still want to read (not counting the ones that are yet to be added), I'm predicting the chances to be very, very low.

Meanwhile, I'll be having this for breakfast, lunch and dinner:

Sheltered by this roof

In the wake of the typhoon that has passed our way, the slightest darkening in some patch of sky now brings with it some foreboding of disaster.

The mind's eye conjures an entire city well on its way to being wiped out of the map; the heart remembers the shudders that came with the images flooding the news; a little fist of conscience recalls the shame one felt while digging in to a tub of popcorn to chomp away the fury one felt because the internet connection during the last few days was faulty, when distances away, families may have lost everything they had worked all their lives for, death tolls have come up to alarming heights, psyches have been forever tainted by the trauma of having lost so much, of having been lashed at by winds and rains so merciless, that living will never be the same again, even after the wounds have become scars.

It seems almost a sacrilege to be surrounded by so much warmth and safety, and to still be wanting more than what comfort and luxury there already is, when one has become aware of the loss and devastation that has been gone through by countless others, in one single afternoon, within the stretch of one night. 

If one were to look back at the headlines, one would see the glaringly sorry state that our corner of the world has come to: Trailing the Napoles brouhaha, typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda comes along. Do not mistake me for blaming one for the other; because in the scheme of things--where, after all, there is no scheme--there is no connection, whatsoever. I juxtapose these two events not out of superstition, but merely to illustrate--and highlight--the outrage that the former ought to incite in us, and the contemplation that the other inevitably brings with it.

It is at times like these that one, in spite of oneself, is made to pause, and reflect on the the significance of living: what is it that truly matters? 

You've been having dreams lately and, as you wonder about it now, you remember thinking about it some days ago, though which day it was, you don't remember. A line of words dances before your eyes: cease, seize, bees, sky, window. Another follows its tail: chair, smoke, bloom, tea, pavement.

The attempt to rationalize is quickly assaulted by the reprimand There is no pattern.

Last book I read:

What I'm reading now:

Morning

See how the day glimmers with clarity, framed by the four sides of your window. The corners are there so the eyes do not stray. Take a step back and keep enough distance, should the longing to look beyond them seize you.

If the distance doesn't douse the impulse, take a walk outside.

Remember how you described that movie in a conversation from years ago. Remember how pinpricks feel. Remember the lilt in voices. Remember voices. Remember the way a surface can both be sunlit and not. Remember how a smile tugs at your mouth. Remember the distance between your eyes and that wall from years ago. Remember that wall. Remember distances. Remember how a crease can draw attention to itself. Remember how empty losses can feel. Remember how rain feels on your face. Remember the sound of a car being driven away. Remember the oblivion in corners. Remember the strangeness of cold floors. Remember how nights can stretch for miles and miles. Remember the strangers in your dreams. Remember dreams. Remember your dreams. Remember what weariness feels like. Remember that chair. Remember all the keys you've lost. Remember doors and doorways. Remember that hall. Remember what vagueness feels like. Remember the sound of wind chimes. Remember violins. Remember the impossible softness of this pillow. Remember water. Remember the smell of an early morning. Remember rain-soaked mornings. Remember the sounds of morning. Remember how quiet sadness can be. Remember what laughing feels like. Remember how your laughter echoes upward. Remember the falls you've had. Remember how soft surfaces can be. Remember how hands are surfaces. Remember soaring. Remember solitary silences. Remember shared silences. Remember what hunger feels like. Remember sweetness. Remember what bland tastes like. Remember soaring. Remember how awake the mind can be. Remember lullabyes. Remember Thursdays. Remember that Thursday. Remember forgetting. Remember the comfort in slumber. Remember this road. Remember your footfalls. Remember remembering.