Il est mort. (eulogy for Chris Marker)

I learned of his passing

one month after it happened -

a Thursday morning otherwise

consumed with insomnia and

thoughts of work and suddenly

my career didn't seem quite

so important, nor my sleeplessness,

nor my knowledge of either. I

wondered, in the way one does 

before sunrise, if his were the last

images I would ever truly love.

I wondered if I would
ever remember again
without thinking of him.

2106 days ago tomorrow

Last year
she asked:

"Have you
written any
poetry lately?"

Well, I remember

(which does not mean:
I remember well)

one I wrote
two thousand
six days ago
tomorrow

[lapse]

She asked:

"Are you an artist?"

I f a lt e re d

What I meant to say:

"I'm living."

(I guess this makes this
an artist's commune)

Life as Picasso:

Longing an O'Keefe:

Words like teeth do chomp:

"The word 'art' interests me very much.
If it comes from the Sanskrit, as I've heard, it signifies 'making.'"
-Marcel Duchamp

And the one I wrote this morning:

her dancing round heart

the accidental haiku

beating safe and sound

Thank you,
I said, for asking.

Turtle Island Preserve (or, 'About last night...' - a letter to Mardou)

Mardou,

So last night my yin and I went with my dad and his girlfriend to this place called Turtle Island Preserve, which was set up by this guy named Eustace Conway. Elizabeth Gilbert's first book (The Last American Man, which is neatly sandwiched between her time as a relatively obscure journalist for Rolling Stone and her Eat, Pray, Love superstardom) was about Eustace, and apparently he is also one of the stars of some reality show called Mountain Men on the History Channel. 

(This is not beside the point, just backstory.)

We ended up there because my dad and Eustace became friends several years ago after my dad bought a piece of property that adjoined Eustace's 600 acres (or 1,000 acres, depending on who you ask) that crawls down the edge of Watauga County into the Wilkes County, one-time moonshine capital of the world.  As much as possible, Eustace attempts to approximate what it was like to live 150 years ago, and he approached my dad about swapping a small piece of land (0.1 acres) so he could more easily ride his horses to an upper pasture.  My dad is an accommodating and all-around easy-going fellow and agreed without hesitation.  Since then, they have helped one another on several occasions.

Also, Eustace sometimes comes up in the winter to shower at my dad's neighbor's house when it gets too cold to bathe in the creek.

Anyway, Eustace has created this amazing, surreal shangri-la about 45 minutes outside of Boone (or, as his website describes it, "eight miles east") and makes his living by running summer camps, speaking engagements, and charging city slickers to come clean his stalls, clear his land, and do all the manual labor that most of us would do anything to avoid.  I swear to god, Mardou, the guy offers an internship in chainsawing.

(Incidentally, when I told my grandfather about this yesterday afternoon, he inquired if he might get a position as adjunct professor.  I told him I would look into it...)

You enter through this covered bridge:

The sign above the entrance reads: "The finest of the fine arts is harmony in human relationship."

i

m

age

miss

in

g

As you might imagine, Eustace also attracts a kindly number of hippies, and within minutes of arriving my yin and I ran into our friend who owns the local yoga studio and just got back from two weeks in India. My yin had subbed at the studio the previous two summers, and it was nice to catch up with her since this short visit will likely preclude any stops by the studio.

(This is beside the point.)

Anyway, this was how we first met Eustace:

We spent the next hour walking around and taking in the extent of this place.  My dad had told me about Eustace's compound years ago, but I had no idea the scale of the operations:

 Giant cantilevered barns:

The sun through the trees:

Chickens running around:

Giant cocks:

 (ahem)

Goats, badly in need of milking:

And an inexplicable ark in the sky, possibly in anticipation of another 40 days and nights:

Did I mention he did all this by hand?

Eustace insisted that my dad ride shotgun on a buggy ride:

The main event was a group called Rising Appalachia whose music would be best described as folk bohemian pastiche:

Which was fronted by two sisters with hauntingly amazing voices:

Somewhere along their current tour, they picked up a French hippie (by way of Bali):

 Here's what the whole scene looked like from a distance:

 

 I thought it was amazing, but this dog seemed unimpressed:

Anyway, the evening reminded me of you, and I'll leave you with a link (the movie is to big to email) to my favorite part of the evening, Rising Appalachia's opening song, which is a folk song that the sisters traveled to Bulgaria to learn:

l

ink

miss

in

g

(by request of the artist)

Love and light from us both... 

Homecoming

My yin and I are on our way back to North Carolina, almost a year since we last departed. Unlike the previous two summers, this year’s excursion is merely a vacation, a much-needed, much-delayed respite from the Florida summer. I remember last August, when I strapped a bed frame to the roof of my Jeep and wondering whether or not it would be able to stand the 700+ mile trip back to Florida. Amazingly enough, the only difficulty I had was during the first 3 miles on the Blue Ridge Parkway between my father’s house and Blowing Rock. By the time I reached the Green Hill Inn, an errant piece of duct tape had pulled loose and was flailing like a wounded bird in the cool morning air.

But this is beside the point.

The point is that I had grown attached to our summers in the mountains, and more than once I’ve felt that wishing twinge of nostalgia, the slippery slope of “I remember when…” that oftentimes finds its way to becoming “… it should have always been.”

But this is not the way of the material world.

Everything that has a beginning has an ending, and the pain we wrongly attribute to the ending itself its actually caused by the attempt to hold onto something that has already passed.

Vacations (like this one) are a good opportunity to remember...

I hope he left a little wisdom...

Yesterday morning I had wisdom teeth removed, approximately 20 years later than everyone else I know.  I thought the fact that all four came in, without incident, back in college meant that I was safe. However, back in grad school my dentist told me that it would be best for me to have my back four molars extracted. Perhaps it was because I hadn't been to the dentist in more than a decade at that point, or perhaps it was because my mind simply couldn't comprehend the notion of preventative surgery, or perhaps it was her diploma was from Romania and I harbored some secret resentment or prejudice against Ceauşescu and his kinfolk.

 Whatever the reason I did nothing.

[lapse, two years]

About three months ago, I went to a new dentist, who happens to share a name with the designer of my glasses:

image appropriated from Scott Harris

But this is beside the point.

The point is that this second dentist told me the same thing 3 months ago as the mad Romanian back in 2010. One referral, one consultation with an oral sureon, and one hefty dose of nitrous oxide and I.V. sedation later, I have four fewer teeth than I had yesterday morning.

Amazingly, I remember nothing about the procedure whatsoever. Nothing. Intellectually, I knew this would probably be the case, but somehow I didn't really understand the full extent of it. One minute, I'm inhaling the laughing gas, doing mantra, keeping my left hand in chin mudra as the surgeon asks me, "Are you starting to feel relaxed yet?" I tell him I do, and ask him to turn down the gas a bit. 

(This was also my first time under the effects of nitrous, which feels like nothing so much like as being fifteen feet under water while holding your tongue to a 9-volt battery.)

Anyway, I'm watching myself in this state, hear myself responding to questions, and the surgeon asks me which arm I prefer for the I.V. 

"The right," I say.

He asks me to pump my fist, compliments my veins, and I can barely feel the needle piercing the skin. Then. a flurry of sounds as the surgeon and his two assistants begin taping the stint into place. It sounds like a wrapping station at Boca Town Center Mall on the day before Christmas.

The next thing I know, I'm awake.  My yin is there, and the surgeon is saying that everything went well. I'm neither groggy nor in pain, and other than the fact that my jowls are packed full of gauze, everything feels fine. I drift in and out of consciousness on the way home, and somewhere along the way my yin stops to fill prescriptions for antibiotics, painkillers, and some mystery mouthwash that I didn't even know existed.

The rest of yesterday passes in bed, with a disturbing - though not frightening - amount of blood dribbling out of my mouth.  Apparently they use enough Novocaine to kill a horse when they pull your wisdom teeth because my chin and front lip feel like a dead fish until sundown. This made it next to impossible to drink anything without leaving a pinkish spill of bloody water for a two-foot radius around me. I keep an ice pack on for 20 minutes out of every hour, and my yin, amazing as always, nurses me through it all, mashing potatoes and blending in broccoli so I can get some vitamins before finally going to bed.

I wake inexplicably at 2am, lie in bed for two hours, then get up and move to the living room.  By this point, the swelling has gone down and there is surprisingly little discomfort.  In fact, other than the constant, metallic, oozing taste of blood, I seem to be more or less okay. My appetite is beginning to return, I can actually touch my front teeth together, and ibuprofen is le drug du jour.

All that remains to be seen is whether or not the surgeon was able to follow-through on the last request I made before he turned on the nitrous: "If possible, when you pull the teeth, please try leave the little bit of wisdom I've accumulated."

Time will tell...

Two Exhibits, One Graph and Chickens Coming Home to Proust

Exhibit #1:

Conclusion #1: This blog is more volatile than the stock market.
Conclusion #2: Invest in tech stocks.

Exhibit #2:

     “Thank you. But I think I have everything I need.”
     “How about books and videos and the like?”
     “I can't think of anything I particularly want.”
     “How about Proust’s  In Search of Lost Time?” Tamaru asked. “If you’ve never read it this would be a good opportunity to read the whole thing.”
     “Have you read it?”
     “No, I've never been in jail, or had to hide out for a long time. Someone once said unless you have those kinds of opportunities, you can't read the whole of Proust.”
     “Do you know anybody who has read the whole thing?”
     “I’ve known some people who have spent a long period in jail, but none were the type to be interested in Proust.”

Conclusion #1: Haruki Murakami has a keen sense of conversation.
Conclusion #2: I'm probably never gonna make it all the way through Proust.

In Response to Alison Luterman's "Because These Failures Are My Job"

These images are neither the ghosts of the past

nor the promise 

of a future.

They are merely an observation:

everything that can pass

will.

     But let also us remember: these failures –

whether "offering"

or "apology"

or "thank you"

 

 – are miracles nonethless.