We're hurled through the abyss like a stray discus— new, alone, and frankly, perfect. We refuse to be bound! What follows is a fundamental misunderstanding.
We don't have those avian magnets in our skulls, just cavities of marrow and a want bone that never stops aching. Our craving to know manages to shout down our smallness– it's how we fill the space.
So I learned the vanity of wanting to be well-read; That mercy is a muscle you can strain if it's been still too long; To eat the pain and hold it down; How to raise a banner of friendship, above our very own den. If you've taken the English side you pronounce it Agincourt— if you say Agincour-, you've had too much high school French. I hated Shakespeare between twenty and twenty-five, but he's a hum in my blood I can't quiet now. On West 50th Street, I learned about the long con from Dick Cavett. Art was just another unsatisfied mouth— I do remember Carol's stained glass Aachen slides, the colors tore my eyes.
Rooftops can be a classroom, amaretto a chalkboard; At Sarah's I learned that The Master and Margarita won't burn, even in paperback, when kicked across a linoleum floor; In a Florida parking garage I learned the value of silence— she still brings it up to this day; I learned to hide all night with prayer on my tongue, begging not to be found. I learned the scent of polishing oil on red oak, and the coarseness of blue limestone; Pointing my speakers out the window allowed me to learn your name. What came next was not on the syllabus.
I learned to fear bishops, especially when they are smiling; Outside of the post office on South Liberty I learned to hate bees, and envy the confidence I was lacking; At 2am I learned the stiffness of bricks against the back; it turns out the nature of belonging is fraught with loneliness.
I learned that one train may hide another, so it's always best to wait. People can be like trains– learning to watch them go might take a lifetime. When they say Cypriotic, I hear symbiotic. And when they say convalesce, I begin to cry.
I learned the unkindness of ravens as they collude by the sulphur spring; The smell of rain has a real name, but I've learned it and forgotten it time and again; I learned that benevolence is often just debt with a prettier name; How cavernous the Midwestern sky is, and the endless fields of maize; the imperturbable way a cat lies on a restaurant counter. Languages? Right out.
Volcanic breccia fractures in a fractious way (I learned); The smell of the silk road; The origins of astronomical nomenclature; What you meant by needing distance; How to create a home; So many things about arches. I learned what we had, was not what we had.
It was spring, which is the best time for a crisis, and we were pilgrims wandering around Patmos, a very 19th-century thing to do in the 21st. The roads didn't have names, just dust— a very specific, Greek kind of dust that sticks to your loafers. The goatherd, carved from a dry olive tree; Those eyes—Apollonian, I guess, if Apollo spent his weekends in Skala yelling at livestock. His flock regarded us with horizontal pupils, that unknowable, rectangular stare that says: "I am endless, and you are just a tourist in a linen shirt."
We tried everything: My high school French (useless) Your perfect English (too loud) A bit of Spanish and some dusty Latin (because we thought we were being clever). We were a sentence where someone had stolen the adjective, trading our dead myths for his living ones— a bad bargain in the sun. "Spileo Apokalipsis," he croaked, with a throatful of Aegean gravel.
The stinking, rhythmic menagerie shuffled on, while the Cave of the Apocalypse waited just around the bend, smelling like the rain at Sounion and old echoes.
O wayfarer, read this if you can find the light. Maybe it was Karneios Apollo? The patron saint of "I'll get there when I get there." He made the Spartans late to the wars so often you'd think they'd have learned to knit. But they were born in the delay!
Don't eschew choice. Gouge the moment if you have to and be gratified with your own hewn path.
In Reykjavik, the Klais organ— three thousand miles from anything else familiar— a rookery of faith at the crown of the world, circled by gulls who don't care about liturgy. The world is a lot to swallow.
January in the Negev: on camels. Not "astride," but swallowed by their center of gravity, that made me worry for my future lineage.
No horses, though. Never tasted, never ridden. Almost in Akureyri, but the sea-sickness was a real viking funeral for my dignity. The Icelandic grandmas made a fish stew I was sure would be heaven, but I couldn't touch it. My body had its own plans— I hope they don't hate me.
We rode donkeys up the Old Harbor Trail with the reluctant extravagance of those who have never actually lived through hard times. I had a copy of Ritsos in my back pocket— very heavy, very serious—and the donkey kept stopping to graze. I was looking for a revelation and he was looking for a thistle. Is he still there? Maybe he's the thistle now. And me? Maybe I'm still waiting.
So what's the lesson? Is it that old-world darkness again? Are we just rivals in the badness of our case?
Someone said we are sick with space—but it can't be! We've mapped ourselves and curated the void! We've learned to love ourselves in the Grand New Style, which involves less self-reflection and much better lighting.
Those other guys are obsessed with Memento Mori— polishing their skulls and chatting with the wrong ghosts— you and I are going to write our own damn story. It won't be empty, it'll have the grief and the gin, the joy and the stones, but at least it's ours.
We're just heavy creatures, but God, look at us go.