stewart park

Early we stir in j stewart park
away from the banks of lava rock
away from the bloom of auspicuous june
here hemlocks strewn with birch tree bark.
sysiphus in the tent i like to say
to myself, rebellious in the algerian's way;
who would know the tragedy of his fate?
the cat's head? i would be shocked,
(though we all will know)
but we must talk, i said,
(he climbs back down on his web).
we will talk under the walnut boughs,
under feet, the drying amber leaves;
they crunch, but float down so assiduously,
"we will talk" you say, "under the deciduous tree,
among our hammock and tents,"
the rogue flowing underground,
the space we found at summer's expense.
as autumn grows, where it smoked it now snows,
and we must must pack, cold and slow, i believe
you will some distant september see
through the smoke and ash of past
the walnut, and you'll remember me.

Der Zauberberg

I stare out my trailer door, daily, at a girl folding clothes on a platform. She is neither beautiful nor impressive, but I still find myself peering to see her reassuring figure, her slender arms deftly and thoughtlessly folding someone else's shirts and pants. I am reminded of Sommerset's 'of human bondage' and his beguiling waitress; tall and pale with short dark hair, curiously cut and pulled back. She has almost timid features; a small mouth and closely set eyes that stare indifferently out onto her world of foreign garments. Tonight the walnut branches create a pleasing silhouette against the sky, illuminated by the distant flood lights. The yellowing leafs tremble with anticipation. I can see a single star through the boughs and I wonder how far away it is; a billion light years? Perhaps it's an entire galaxy whose light takes a billion years to reach my eyes. It has probably burnt away or exploded, I just don't know it yet. Perhaps, somewhere someone is watching us in a galaxy far away. Am I the ancient light in the eyes of some distant system, am I living out the projected reflections of a planet that died unfulfilled? Maybe somewhere far away a telescope watches me under the tree at night, maybe I am already dead; our planet has faded away and these are the words of my reflected projections traveling at the speed of light in to an infinite abyss. If they had a more powerful telescope they could see into my future, since I am already past, but all i can see is a girl on a platform, standing at my screen door at the speed of light. I seem to always be looking at what has already passed, the distance that separates is always stretched with time and reflections, silhouettes above my evening eyes casting strange shadows on the astral story of my life. Will they see me at the lake standing on the peek, sitting on the deck at the lodge sipping gin and tonic from a collins glass? will they see the turkish waiter? Do they know Thomas Mann, or what a sanitarium is? Did I die a billion years ago? I'm glad I don't know it yet. Maybe this is how i can live forever, as long as somebody out there can see me; the reflection of my life traveling at incredible speeds through the nothingness.

Quincy

the better realities
of the tragic mind,
with fidelity to the past
sew the ephemeral twine
of sleepers thoughts,
my morning dreams to unwind.
lingering like false memories
or hopes which fell behind,
she walks the halls of my closed eyes
where i,
in waking cannot find.
and what am i in waking
that a dream cannot rewind?

----------------


the day has ended,
the sun travelled, burned
and descended.
we now to compose our dreams
out of stories and hopes
which time has suspended.
good night darren,
say a prayer for all those
on whom you've depended,
and farewell we'll say
to this world which god has pretended.

Diaspora

Go beyond the stream, Brahmin, go with all your soul: leave desire behind. When you have crossed the stream of Samsara, you will reach the land of Nirvana. When beyond meditation and contemplation a Brahmin has reached the other shore, then he attains the supreme vision and all his fetters are broken. He for whom there is neither this nor the further shore, nor both, who, beyond all fear, is free - him I call brahmin.

Descartes believed man's unhappiness was due to his being a child first. There is a certain disappointment in the slow realization that you will not always be protected, that with age comes insecurity, comes unwanted responsibility; the burden of hidden fears you never knew your parents bore. It may have been children Sartre had in mind when he said man is a useless passion. As to what or whom they care about, it is irrelevant, but to feel so strongly in youth's fleeting three-day weekend any available passion, this is the heart's learning how to anticipate the philosopher's pain. They send their hearts into the future, they place them on their youthful lovers so they can look back at themselves and feel feel valued, feel the excitement of the new, the expanding consciousness of a world they do not fear. Mental notes i write on the back of my brain as i ride home on the school bus. "Coach," she says to me, "that guy probably thought you were our dad." Children are heartless i think, but perhaps not in the way Barrie meant. Nostalgia, it is often the longing for a tangible past that never really existed, a homesickness for the idea of home more than the place itself. A place you felt protected and carefree, so certain in a world that was only as big as we could see. With age the rhythms of life accelerate at speeds not known to previous generations, the myth of progress is a centuries' neurosis that drives us to hold onto the past in photographs and souvenirs of the mundane. In missing the stability of our youth we develop a subtle fear of change, and ironically that which scares us the most is the idea of a life with no surprises left, such a life would allow us clear view to the end. In an existential angst we would be counting down the days till our death. I sometimes try to collect as many memories as possible to counteract the feeling of the future's gravity, an attempt to capture the present by swallowing it; by mentally absorbing as much of my surroundings as i can. But here too one cannot escape either past nor future as Annie Dillard relates about her youth "noticing and remembering everything would trap bright scenes to light and fill the blank and darkening past which was already pilling up behind me. The growing size of that blank and ever-darkening past frightened me; it loomed beside me like a hole in the air and battened on scraps of my life i failed to claim. If one day i forgot to notice my life, and be damned grateful for it, the great cave would suck me up entire." In response to a fading past we miss and impending future we are not ready to make past, we become too self aware, too conscious of our present. It is as if we are so consumed with extracting value out of each moment we fail to enjoy them as much as our recollections about them. Sometimes it's difficult to enjoy the places i love to be the most because i feel as though i am constantly bracing myself for the disappointment of leaving; time only haunts those who are aware of it. The only way to enjoy the bus ride home is to ignore it, to close my eyes to the shifting bodies and darkening skyline, to breath deep and exist in the space between my rumbling seat and the voices around my ears. In her book on the subject of nostalgia, Svetlana Boym concludes with simple paradox that as survivors of the twentieth century, "we are all nostalgic for a time when we were not nostalgic. But there seems to be no way back."