xxiii. swampland
26 december
dear simon warren, i had my tornado dream again, black funnel cloud dropping from a calm sky. i try to understand it. is it mystical, mythical, one of james joyce s epiphanies, or something like simone weil s visit to a mystery-garret where she heard truths she never expected.
i have two dogs, a male and a female. every day the male licks the female s hind parts, which both enjoy. witgenstein said man has to awaken to wonder while weil feared the germs that come from kisses.
thank you for descriptions of your neighborhood in tring. where i live is wet and prone to storms. a few years ago i had a small tornado in my yard. it was so astonishing that I couldn t take my eyes off it. it gathered leaves, shattered chairs, then suddenly disbanded.
this was once swampland. everywhere are bottomless ditches. mosquitos are trouble though i ve had worse … a long time ago i spent a night in the northern woods, and their sound was deafening. the patience of animals … i watched a moose calmly dip its head to a pond while mosquitos nibbled my fingers.
i liked finding out about your flat. my house from a distance looks like simone weil, like a shipwreck on land, like a pale countenance overpowered by a hideous black roof. this year christmas in ohio came and went without snow. i baked bread, thinking about the lonely.
xxiv. the ice house
13 january … friday
dear simon warren, i know I haven t written but after christmas came a mental whiteout, an awful blankness. they say truth won t run away from us. i m better now. you won t believe how cold it seems after days of unseasonable warm that has daffodils pushing through soil that should be hard as stone. is it blessing or curse to see through exteriors of things that are whitewashed though broken.
i remember river towns…a pink trailer beside a rotting house, dollar stores, an old mother poking for aluminum cans with her grown son. they told us the locks would save us, she said, but the water reached even the second floor and now we have nothing. perhaps saddest of all were the laundry mats with their many wrecked agitators, their vending machines holding detergent brands from another age.
when i was 13 i stood near a pharmacy with a handful of paper poppies and a cup jingling with change for american vets. precise details escape me, so the rest i invent…my black jumper, my flowery blouse, my thin legs wrapped in cinnamon-colored stockings, my nervousness, sweat trickling down the insides of my arms, but it s okay, it s for the boys.
on tuesday i had business in sandusky, city beside the lake which should be frozen this time of year. there were so many birds…ducks, swans, even an eagle in a bare tree against the last blaze of the sun. and standing alone on patched asphalt, a dinky rectangular building that said ice. at first i thought it was a store, then i saw it was an automated dispensing machine. then i saw the american flag.
xxxiii. in ohio
23 february
dear carina,
some of us know accutely that we live within a universe of things which exist for our pleasure, or, as rilke would say, so we will notice them and by noticing learn to love the world.
words are concrete signs of things i can never hold, yet know. for instance, the words friend or thank you enter the self, also what they mean, also the person the words are for.
for instance, the postage stamps you sent from your country, the kings and queens that once so faithfully guided letters across waters, mountains, and snow, or even the tiny slick envelope that held the stamps. touching them now in ohio, i know your hands, how they have traveled across so many things, telling you what you needed to know.
what are letters but lost pieces of ourselves coming back to us.
