i’m still not quite comfortable in this space.
not sure why.
part of it is that i haven’t been a ‘regular’ blogger lately. entries have been sparse and far between.
part of it is not knowing exactly to whom i’m speaking.
i haven’t sought out any of the crafty strangers whose blogs i read (yet).
and beyond puck, i’ve not really explicitly shared this site with anyone.
i don’t know what to write without knowing my audience, but i don’t want to seek out community until i feel i’ve something to contribute.
part of is me contemplating linking this space to my old one – that way, they can read this, if inclined, and anyone here can look back on my history, get a better idea of ‘me.’
i’ve been in california two and a half weeks. today is my last full day. i came without knitting, without sewing projects, determined to reacquaint myself with words and to gain a feeling of the west coast.
the result? reading science literature & h.d. & ayn rand, scribbling a streak of poems, walks in the canyon, wine & cheese on the beach, coffee & fried potatoes & talk with stephe, and the growing awe in the strength of my relationship with puck. i’ve consistently been aware of the greater aspects of us – mutual interests, compatibility, all of the things that initially draw two people together – but the little things, the small rituals we’ve instilled in our everyday lives, those have been the ones i’ve missed. one can still talk about books and life and watch one another cook and stare into each others’ eyes with a webcam and a microphone, but one can’t live a life together. i miss that.
anyway, here’s san diego, condensed:
and three poems, one with photo, two without.
landing in detroit at dusk
A smear of white beyond the
condensation-streaked glass
A tabula rasa of a world
Then row upon row of suburban house-
holds, snow-
bound, un-
lit.
Wheels hit pavement,
and the plane quivers into smoothness,
the engine quiets.
We see, peering humbly from beneath the weight
of the blue-grey snow clouds.
Like a pajamad child interrupting
the adults’ dinner party,
a rim of light
the peach pink of a two-toned rose
the glow of a young girl’s blushes.
As we taxi back to civilization
a flash of mauve fire sparks
against the airport windows
The great unwieldy flying contraption
turns slowly,
slowly,
to reveal a thing of unspeakable beauty:
the sleepy sun paused upon the horizon,
peeking in to say
good night
only to disappear
so that the grown-ups can continue
their very important conversation.
a day in the life of the universe I
In order to represent to the average reader
the brief scale
of human existence,
Carl Sagan
condensed a history of the universe
into the confines of a
calendar year
Penciled in:
January first: Big Bang
(No wonder we don’t know what happened, if anything, beforehand-
the hangover must have been monumental)
September fourteenth: formation of the Earth
(Just in time for baseball playoffs. Can you imagine the game
before that? When a home run would fly through space forever?)
And at four minutes to midnight on December thirty-first,
a man in China discovered fire
(just in time to light the sparklers before the ball drop. )
On my birthday,
December the twenty-third,
Sagan writes,
“Carboniferous Period.
First trees.
First reptiles.”
Trees, I understand
First rough-barked leafy beings.
First shady, root-stitches patches of earth.
First strong limbs stretching, branching, thinning to tips.
The first years forming rings in pulpy cores.
The first of future textbook pages, pencils, future dining room sets.
And reptiles, too, I recognize.
The sleek armored bodies.
Flickering tongues.
Claws like excessively lacquered manicures.
Dark, empty eyes.
Cold blood.
Bearers of skins that would one day be valued as
handbags and high heels;
woman’s triumph over her deceiver.
But I am unfamiliar with the Carboniferous Period
Until I pull heavy books from dusty shelves
and scour yellowed pages.
A time when beds of coal were forming
in preparation for our Industrial Revolution,
for our Appalachian mining towns,
for our mountaintop removals.
A time when temperatures dropped over the South Pole
And glaciers explored unknown waters.
Sea levels dropping, waters more potent
as a result
and crinoids (‘sea lilies,’ ‘water feathers’) and
ammonites (horned creatures, shaped like nautili, but closer in unseen genes to squid and octupi)
found themselves dying in droves.
Lakes drained low in liue of swamps.
Stagnation.
Oxygen levels in the air were nearly double back then
what they are now.
So what would it have been like
to breathe
such moist, enriching air.
If insects grew to lengths
of two feet or more,
insects that these days would fit in one’s palm,
to what heights might we have been capable
of rising?
a day in the life of the universe II
Sagan’s teachings continue,
and I, the student, attend
as he writes of the brain,
Of the correlation between
brain size and body mass,
the higher the ratio,
the more intelligent.
Homo sapiens rests atop the lists
followed by dolphins
and whales.
Our brains’ processing power so much greater
than that of a computer
(Sagan’s 1977 computer, that is,
and I wonder if technology has overtaken us -
I’ll bet it has -
and how long ago it did so.)
At the close of this chapter on brains,
a brief mention
of the Carboniferous Period,
my birth-day soul-mate
and period during which the first creature -
a reptile in fact -
was born with more information
in its brain
than in its genes.
The start of nurture conquering nature,
The moment when free will grew stronger than fate.
And Eve smiles her sad smile
because she already knew
a reptile was to blame.
