A Sense of Doubt blog post #1997 - "Somewhere I Have Never Travelled" - ee cummings
This is the greatest love poem that I know.
And at the end, 1997.
Just those things.
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
E. E. Cummings - 1894-1962
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
From Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Used with the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. Copyright © 1923, 1931, 1935, 1940, 1951, 1959, 1963, 1968, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1976, 1978, 1979 by George James Firmage.
MINE
CATRICIA HIEBERT
THE YEAR IN NUMBER 1997
People's History
I finally earned both of my Master's Degrees in 1997.
1997 Gas was $1.22 a gallon in the US and 2 Pounds 70 pence in the UK , Great Britain handed back Hong Kong to China and the Dow was at less than 8000 . The first signs of the dreaded Bird Flu in China where the first documented case of the jump to humans causes Hong Kong to kill 1.25 million chickens. In the UK Tony Blair is the prime minister and Princess Diana dies in a car accident.
I am still writing for Gale Research and all the papers and magazines in 1997. I hosted MINI COMICS DAY at a local shop in 1997, even though Chiasmus had begun to fracture and my own hopes of comic publishing were waning.
APPARENTLY, I went to the Neahtawanta in May in 1997 and wrote the following.
9705.25 0:32
I am on fire. My heart is racing like bicycle tires wheeled round and round by the passion of a man trying to get up a hill, to not let it beat him. And look at the time. Quite past my bed time but then I am on vacation, at least for two days, well, really one day, two nights. I do not have to get up any earlier than in time for breakfast at 9 a.m. It's not that I am not inclined to the dark, to night, in fact, I am. I just found I get more work done starting off early in the morning, in the daylight, after sunrise, after sleeping.
Despite how our circumstances have changed, I find myself still thinking of you, still writing to you. This was only compounded by the Manistee National Forest I passed early today and the fact that I thought I saw you in a red car in TC, leaning your head against the window in boredom, sunglasses masking your striking eyes. Also, there's the need to keep exorcising the demons here at the Neahtawanta. Memories. A spot on the beach. Room 3. Wine. The graveyard. A Walk in the Clouds (that we walked on by). So, I feel like making a spontaneous, chimerical journal entry, and I decided to write this entry to you. But I probably won't send it.
So I did the dread thing we discussed. I went to the movies by myself. Note the plural. I love fooling the ticket takers. I know it's wrong. This makes it all the more exciting.
So upon arriving, in the rain and cold, I unpacked a little and struck out for town with the plan to have dinner at the amazing POPPYCOCKS (remember?) and then go off to see the SAINT at 21:30. Somewhere along the way this plan gets changed to grabbing Chinese food (enough for lunch tomorrow as well) and then seeing two movies: CHASING AMY & THE SAINT. This gets modified further still when I realize that Exquisite Edibles is open and is probably quicker. I get two pieces of pizza with sun dried tomato, zuchini, artichokes, and peppers of various colours and a pint of yellow rice. I eat the pizza enroute to the movie theater and in the car once arrived, while listening to the Tigers as they lose horribly to Texas. (Now they may have won in the long run, I don't know...At South Haven I could check either via CNN or via the AP via Csi through my phone, but I have neither a phone nor a TV here...I could go plug into the phone, to learn the hockey and basketball scores as well, but I think I can hold off until morning.)
So, CHASING AMY. Interesting movie. I suspect that you might like it, as it very clever: there was quite a bit of cursing and very explicit sexual discussions (discussions of sex). I loved it. I loved it all the more because it's about comic book artists. The SAINT was good also. I don't know if you have seen this. People raved about his car. So what? it's a car. Big deal. What I liked is the extension of the story past the climax. I love when movies tie up loose ends and provide adequate denoument. Often movies do not. BIG is a good example. I LOVED BIG but they hardly tied up the loose ends. What about all the things that happened to him? That he bought/rented? At the very least, I wanted to know what he told his mother about where he had been. Sure. she's happy to see him for five seconds and then she starts the interrogation: where the hell have you been for months??????
Actually, CHASING AMY was going over the time I estimated. So I had to leave before it was over to see the SAINT, which then started 10 minutes late!! So after the SAINT, I slipped back into CHASING AMY (ironically the screening rooms were next to each other!) and watched the last 10 minutes. YUK! Did not like the ending.
So I get out of my movies, and I am in the parking lot, and it's foggy and damp, but it's stopped raining. So I am driving back and I decide to drive FRONT STREET, which is the main drag. TC has these really high sodium street lights above other regular sized non-sodium lights. In the fog, the diffused light from the perfectly symmetrical row of lights is intoxicating, like hurling down a tunnel that cuts through a mountain or under a river.
I drive through alleys and around blocks because FRONT STREET is one way and I am not at the right end to drive it. Young students are milling about enroute to the UNion Street Station, a bar with band and pool tables and $1 drafts and such.
Then I am out on the peninsula. The Neahtawanta, which you may remember is an Ottawa word for "place I would like to visit and stay a while" is on Old Mission Peninsula, on the west side forming the eastern coast of west bay.
The fog is thicker here and the road is twisty and wild and I am driving really fast on the wet pavement, downshifting to keep in my lane.
And I remember why I love it here, why I offered to make you a reservation for your own getaway.
I grew up here. I lived here until I was after kindergarten and then we visited every summer. So this place is about childhood, it's about summer vacations, happy, carefree times with no responsiblity.
There's this one place along the road, at the top of a high hill, where you can see both bays. It's "transplendent" (Woody Allen Movie word fr. ANNIE HALL). I am listening to a tape I made with music from THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS and TEQUILA SUNRISE, which both ironically star Michelle Pfeiffer. Beautiful sexy music from one of the tapes I made you with the Spanish titles from Neruda poems.
At the top of this hill, I am filled with a sense of grace, a confirmation of my place in the universe, why I am here.
I am here to give voice to my passions. To tell stories. To scorch the page with my fire. To spill from my mouth marbles of pure light on to the page which is a glass table.
And I am revved. I know I won't sleep right away. And I notice that I have been writing this to you in my head. And that I will not sleep until I get it out. But more than that. I'll explain in a minute.
So I get back to the Inn and put my rice in the spare fridge. I drop my bags in my room and slip out the door. I am in room two next to the door to the staircase on the outside of the building.
I walk down to the beach. My eyes adjust to the darkness almost immediately. There are no stars or moon because the sky is clouded. The wind has vanished. The bay is like a glass table. I know that's such a typical image, but that's what it is. The water is so still I have to crouch down close to it, almost put my ear on it, to hear its almost imperceptible movement.
And I understand that there's place in myself that comes out when I am alone, and it is brought to surface when I go see movies by myself. I lose myself in the movie story, and then when I come out of the movie, I am transformed. I am made new. Sometimes the movie so DISTURBS me that I feel like I am MAD, as in crazy. This is why there are times that I just do not want to see movies with ANYONE. I want to be alone, as Garbo would say. I don't want someone there with whom I have to be conscious of the fact that I am not speaking to her. For me, as a writer (and I doubt this true of all writers) it's this moment of transformation that I long for, that I live for and I rarely have it when I am with someone. Only alone.
John and I were talking about this today. (Rybicki. Did you meet him. Poet. His book was just published by WMU. You'd like it!)
What draws us out of ourselves so that we can come unguarded to the page?
He mentioned movies. I added "seeing them alone." Ultimate frisbee also does it for me because I become a body and I don't have to think, i can just exist, I just am. being purely and completely int he moment.
I have been on fire these last few weeks. Planets have aligned in my life. Comets have passed from my solar system. Solar flares have diminished. This is in conjunction with you showing up. I am not sure if heightened inspiration is due in part to a new sense of freedom that I feel but certainly I feel energized, inspired.
So I am having all these thoughts and feelings and experiences, and I think, I want to share them with Molly. And then, my rational mind says: but you should not burden Molly with these things. It's over. But then, I think. It's this mood, this tendency of my spirit that drew you (Molly) to me in the first place. And writing it to you feels natural, right. And I probably won't send it anyway...
I could stay up all night walking beaches with you in the dark...
I am getting sleepy.
Well, not really, but I want to read Atwood and lie in bed wondering why my mind is filled with poetry and stories and feelings and passions and I never seem to be able to let it all out.
Anway, I will sign off for now. I may get a massage tomorrow. Sally may bring in a masseuse for another guest and asked if I would also like a massage. She and Russell want to see the Fifth Element, and we may go tomorrow. They love me. :-)
Off to Margaret.
christopher
9705.25 1:21
.jpg) |
| https://365-tshirts.blogspot.com/2013/09/t-shirt171-neahtawanta-inn-goodbye-bob.html |
 |
| https://365-tshirts.blogspot.com/2013/06/t-shirt-85-up-north.html |
Apparently, I went to New York City and hung with my friend Ginger in 1997 as I wrote a letter to my Dad from there in her apartment. I am not going to share that letter, but it's good to have a connection for when I did a thing. I am trying to piece together my life as I add some year information in these blogs and find that I cannot always reconstruct what I did in a given year.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2008.06 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1861 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
No comments:
Post a Comment