Moment Magnitude

Persiflage

A snippet of light conversation from last night, after at least one too many glasses of wine:

"I don't want to talk about tennis," he said.

"Then what do you want to talk about? Do you...read?"

"No, not much. I'm a simple guy. But, we could make out for, like, forty-five minutes."

"What, what, what what, what?"

(Why did I sound like Jennifer Anniston just then, I thought, in that almost unwatchable film, The Break-Up? Mortified, face gone scarlet.)

"What?"

"I just wanted to stop that big intelligence of yours..."

C'mon, Eraser.

Third Hand

I have an update on my brother, from my mother, by way of my brother's wife.

It was in writing, either by old-fashioned mail, or by email. Third hand.

Here is the gist.

Mon frere (feeling the French birthright this eve), allegedly has been having an affair for at least the last eighteen months. Probably longer.

The other woman is (by now) a former friend of my soon-to-be-ex-sister-in-law. Dah!

According to said-future-ex, she is no longer friendly with her friend (astonishing), and that she filed for divorce from my brother in January of this year (the latter is actually somewhat astonishing, in that it happened fully six months ago).

My pending ex-sister-in-law alleged that the kids are are better off, now that she has moved them back to her condominium by the beach. Good thing she didn't sell the place.

She added that she knew about my brother's affair. And she said something to the effect that he said  she "couldn't handle the truth."

I thought to myself, what? Was he quoting from that awful Tom Cruise - Demi Moore - Jack Nicholson (playing Jack Nicholson, of course) film? How pathetic (even if fellow alum Aaron Sorkin did pen it). And I wouldn't be the least surprised.

In fact, I wish I could admit that I am surprised at this turn of events. But I am not.

My brother is continuing those patterns he created for himself from the earliest years of his adulthood: Serial monogamous relationships, one woman dovetailing the other, never of his own doing or machinations (he would insist stridently - since it seems to me that he is incapable or unwilling to accept responsibility for his duplicitous actions). He would attempt to control the women (shades of our father), berating her physical appearance, demanding strict diets and health regimens (how screwed up is that?). I know it worked on weaker-minded women. The stronger ones - and they were few in comparison - walked away. One walked away to another woman. I hoped, for a moment, that that might have taught him something about the fragility of masculinity.

Oops. My bad. That would have required some self-reflection.

And so it repeats.

My hope is that my niece, whom I hardly know - in fact I do not know either of my nieces, not being prone to close relations within or among my immediate family - will fare well. She struck me, for all her sleep disorders, as a cool little kid, with her own sense of self, and a real willingness to be happy.

For all my shyte, I have been described recently as a happy person. There is value in that. Even when sad moments offer a counterpoint.

This world and this life are a gift. They are all our swollen neurology can know. I've written it before, in terms of this capricious, unknowable world: The best we can do is pay attention, be mindful, and be grateful.

Someday, maybe, my niece and I will walk along a beach - and have a conversation.

H-O-7-7-Y

When I was three or four years old, just learning my letters, starting to hold a pencil (a new, more grown-up instrument than crayons, though I loved crayons for decades), I wrote my name: H-O-7-7-Y.

"Aitch, oh, el, el, wye," I would say. I printed the letters, all-caps, box-like, and admired the symmetry. They looked so right.

We lived in Okinawa. In fact, we lived there for five years, from 1963 to 1968, during the Viet Nam war.

My young mother suggested to me that my "L's" weren't quite correct. I am pretty sure I either protested, or ignored her. In my mind, I knew that they way I wrote my name was the right way, there was no brooking the argument.

It was only when I started kindergarten that I had doubts about my "L's." The teacher told me my letters were not letters at all, that they were sevens ("Count with me, one two, three..."). I had to admit, in my child's mind, that my letters were indeed, sevens.

Over a few days, I noticed how the other children wrote their letters, and I noticed too that I was the only one writing sevens instead of L's. And then, I doubted myself.

I tried writing my name a new way: H-O-L-L-Y.

I didn't love it right away. The bottom line of the new letter sat on the lined paper, making it stand out less. It didn't look as perfect, but I chose to stick with it.

I think I was embarrassed, for a four-year-old. I didn't want to appear to be too weird. My thick-lenses, magnifying eye-glasses (cat-eye style, of course) made me look strange from the rest of the children. I has been stuck behind Coke-bottle eye-glasses since the age of two.

So I talked myself into accepting H-O-L-L-Y, into preferring it, convincing myself it was okay.

But for a while, I dug in my heels. I was a stubborn little kid. I had to make the change, internally metamorphose, before I allowed anyone to tell me what to do.

Funny, I still behave that way today. Sometimes. 

A Bedroom Occupation: Love Elegies

I met the poet, Mark Scott, in Boulder, when I lived there.

He came to NYC two weeks ago, to read from his latest collection (the title is also the title of this post), at "Sip Lit: A monthly series of readings in a cafe," up in Morningside Heights, Columbia University's 'hood. I drove in from the East End to catch him and the reading.

He sent me a copy of the collection, to be published by Lumen Press. I've never heard of the imprint, but I have heard of the distributing publishing company, Consortium Book Sales, and I know too much about the company that acquired Consortium (I'll leave it at that, 'nuff said). The book publishing world is a very small one.

The cover included the words: "Advanced Galleys." Every time I look at it, I laugh a little.  "Galleys," (a term that describes loosely the preliminary printed copy of a book, usually not preliminary at all) are a publisher's typical marketing device. The word derives from classic printing practices.

But "Advanced?" I am used to the words, "Galleys," or "Galley Proofs - Not for Sale," or "Advance Galleys." No past-tense. These galleys were surely advanced to me, but "Advanced Galleys." It's so precious.

Let me say this about Mark. He is deeply talented.

Poetry, to me, is so dense. Every word has such weight. I find I have to read passages and whole poems several times, often aloud, to get a sense for the interlaced meanings, the cadences, the subtle tongue tones that punch an emotion. Mark's good.

A Bedroom Occupation comprises thirty-four prose-poems, and a slim sixty-six pages, inclusive of backmatter blanks.

And yet. it took me almost three weeks to read and re-read it.

Oh. And yes: A lot of it is hot.

I wonder if the names - for he does name first names, in a kind-of epistolary fashion - are the actual names of people he has known in his life, who are now memorialized in his poems? And if so, I wonder if they know, and if they do, how they feel about it. Lewis? Lauren? Cynthia? Mark (unless he's addressing himself)? Janet? Kathy? Is Kathy the same person as Kate? Paul? Susan? Amy? Deborah? Paula?

There are a handful of passages I will excerpt and reproduce here.

But before I do, I am in awe. Mark included a handful of words I have never seen before - or if I did (Catholic elementary school, spelling-bee practice), I couldn't call up the meanings, and I needed the meaning to understand the poetic context. Herewith:

Blazon: To paint or depict (a coat of arms) with accurate detail.

Casuistry: Specious or excessively subtle reasoning intended to rationalize or mislead. Oh, I like that one.

Intercalate: To insert in a calendar; to insert between or among existing elements or layers (the primary accent is on the second syllable, btw).

Persiflage: Light teasing or banter (v. Jane Austen, don't you think?).

Monadize (I extrapolate from a variety of definitions and explanations of the word, "monad"): To cause an epiphany (aha!), or inspire as in or with "the spark of life." Peut etre.

I have been running those words through my brain - on my daily workout-runs - or at the office, attempting to use the words in sentences. I haven't employed my vocabulary like this in a while. It's fun.

Anyhow, to the excerpts.

From "VI":

"...That age, according to my father, determined the state I'm in: aroused by danger,/doused with grief, by grief aroused, all danger doused."

From "VII":

"...I had to travel to come..."

From "XX":

"...from cumquat leaves/and blueberry, their waxen surface, gaugeless veins, that fruit bitter, this sweet,/stem-end and blossom-end, plum-seam and peach-fold."

And last, from "XXVIII":

"God's as great a bore as the French/when they say He's brilliant fire, a flaming bore, a suck-hole I serve up my big/first serve. That ace fetters me/for the next point, and makes me partial to energy, rebellion, rut -- and I fall to the net/in toil and double, lose love-love/in straights, obey -- am of rigor without pleasure..."

Holy shit - notwithstanding personal reactions, I read the last pages of A Bedroom Occupation today. That line was contained therein - today - the day of the men's final of the French Open. Rafael Nadal defeated Roger Federer, on clay, again.