country dark

For the past two days I have been looking at a book of Charles Burchfield paintings. I am looking at these paintings (as I did at their Guggenheim show last year) as something known, something recognized, not brand new to me. They are forest magic, they are sun through trees, they are the painter sitting quietly in the woods and watching everything that happens, filtered through his own lens, through the experience of his emotions and new lexicon of his senses.

I am seeing these paintings in the same way that I think about landscapes I have never seen, but know, landscapes of red dirt, James Baldwin landscapes, blood-soaked landscapes, haunted coasts, landscapes of the South. I remember the physical shock and tangle of reading books like 'Sula' by Toni Morrison, 'Beloved', anything by James Baldwin, stories stories REAL stories.

I was just watching a 'documentary' about a family in the South that was haunted by spirits, their house was inhabited by older spirits, older dead. The daughters were haunted, the houses were dark with it, benign and lurking dark spirits. I didn't catch the beginning and am not sure exactly where this took place but they revealed that the mother had grown up in a place called 'Haunted Holler'! Even through the screen I could sense a thickness of the sir, like fog or pea soup, a field of something collected, stronger particles that had grown. When they showed footage of the house I wondered, is this 'haunting' or is this the very similar experience of living next to a forest, in a single lit bejeweled tiny house, next to looming dark, black night that falls without any reflection from cities or street lights, living in true country dark?

(In Marfa) when we heard owls hunting over our heads at night, when we were separated from the wildness outside by a thin screen, when we lived exactly one and a half blocks from the drop-off edge of town, with skunks, and trains, and husked quietness, other cries? How different did this feel? It took me at least two months to get New York city out of my system. I was shaky and thin there, translucent for a good cold month of March and then into April. I took walks at sunset, I collected rocks, I tried to write, I planted seeds in the strange white ceramic planter in our backyard with a stone rabbit on top. I took pictures of storms that rolled in off of the high plains of Colorado-- flat and roiling, flat desert edge to black clouds, backdrop to clouds that felt wet and were driven by static.

It is raining in Brooklyn today, and I am at home. I am surrounded by lamplight. I
am remembering the high desert at night, missing earth, land, soil, roughness, living on top of a place that felt like something. I am remembering these things, but have a feeling that I am also trying not to remember them. The edges of my memories creep in, and I try my best to separate them into shades of light, fragments, stones strung, words.

foods, wines.

new house

soft focus

To have steady focus on any one thing, it seems necessary to have the outer picture, the over-structure, the surrounding atmosphere be calm. It seems necessary to have a steady, if static hum around the edges of what I am looking at. In the city we are inundated with so much noise-- so much stimulation, so much sensory overload. I am not advocating a change from this. I am however, with some space and distance from it today, recognizing the fact that I am in motion, that I am changing, and adding to a body of knowledge that is vast. I am allowing myself to be satisfied right now. I am letting myself sink a little more into the sensation of Now, of the present moment. This allows a two-fold effect: access to a realm of listening and accepting, and also the rising up of the many facets that comprise myself-- the many strands and threads of thought that combine to actualize in this moment.

I feel driven, and precise, and ambitious, but I must acknowledge the areas of my life that need this attention. To fill in the cracks and crevices that are blank, to repack soil into the areas where it has crumbled away may take something more akin to compassion than brute force. I may want certain things NOW, or the outside shape of them, but the way towards them is within. I may feel the need to be razor sharp and laden with successive victories, but to truly absorb anything new I need to soften a little. I can set goals that will propel me, I can incorporate chains and ropes of accumulated blood-consciousness, but I have to let these things congeal naturally. I can face everything, but need to inhabit the space around me powerfully, and with intention, with drive and hooked eyes, but also with softness, and laughter.

So, acceding to a sedimentary life, agreeing to a quietness sometimes, feeling grateful, feeling warm, being soft. What a serious and fearful gift it is to have family, to feel family bloodties, to feel the pull and response of friends, to be active, to be acted on, to be loved.

new place.

The Song Taught to Joseph

by Ray A. Young Bear

I was born unto this snowy-red earth
with the aura and name of the Black Lynx.
When we simply think of each other,
night begins. My twin the Heron
is on a perpetual flight northward,
familiarizing himself with the landscape
of Afterlife, but he never gets there...
because the Missouri River descends
from the Northern Plains
into the Morning Star.

One certain thing though,
he sings the song of the fish
below him in the mirror
of Milky Way.

In this confrontation,
the gills of the predator
overtake me in daylight near home;
in this confrontation,
he hinders my progress with a cloud of mud he stirs.
Crying, I ask that I not feel each painful part
he takes, at least not until I can grasp
in the darkness the entrance
of home.