Words that rhyme with themselves

My adventure began quite early today. I left the house at eight o'clock.

As I walked, a sentence fluttered through my mind: "You must know how to love an object to love a house." What a large thing a house is! I thought about all the places I'd lived, and how I used to be so afraid of living spaces. So I added, "And you must be well." The words wouldn't leave, so I sat down in the train station and wrote this:

You must know how to love an object well
to love a house—and you must be well.
I know that I have placed my sadness in spots upon the carpet
and look in fear, not love, upon the corners where the carpet
comes unglued or unstapled or however it is made to stick—
I've never looked and am afraid. And so I stick
to rentals, to monthly, yearly hotel rooms where the sheets
are clean and fresh where I drop my bags. And when the sheets
are gray with dust and dirt, I move on. Another room,
where another's sobs are airing in the drapes and there is room
for another sad wanderer who cannot love an object well,
who cannot love a house, who is not wholly well.

Thus the beginnings of a poem. By the time I had sat down to write, the rhythm of walking (combined with other rhythms, perhaps) had changed the line to "love an object well." Before I knew it, my first two lines ended with the same word. (But are "well" and "well" really the same word? Or is rhyme as close as any two things can get?) As I wrote the next line, and it landed on "carpet," it seemed a challenge: What can I find to rhyme with "carpet"? I tried out several and finally landed on "carpet." Again. And then I made my way through some more lines and ended up back where I started. Always satisfying. I reread the thing, fixed a line that was enormously long and out of place ("where another's sobs have been aired out from the drapes and there is room" -- if you can imagine!), and drew a frowny face complete with tears at the last line.

Working on a poem sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. A friend of mine (and she is not alone) believes that all reworking is a sham that leads to a sham of a poem that is less an individual's intent than an individual's perception of the desires of his prospective readers. I have learned that people will squirm if I do not clean out cliche, trample triteness, and banish banalities. But the heart of an overworked poem turns to mechanism, its pulpy pulsing meat to silicon.

So I walked on, under the Bay Bridge, to Embarcadero Plaza, to Fisherman's Wharf, to Ghirardelli Square, to Crissy Field, and back again. Home again—where there is no carpet, and where together we fight against the dust and dirt.

They're still talking about Beethoven.

"Have you heard his Beethoven?" she asked, her lips behind splayed fingers.

"Oh, mah gawd," I replied, letting my eyelids flutter half-closed.

"Was I right," she asked, "or was I right?" She wrapped her fingers around the straw and sucked.

I rolled my eyes.

"Well, which one was it?" she asked, leaning forward.

"Guess," I said.

Her eyes twinkled. "Hmm." She thought a moment. "Appassionata?"

I shook my head and reached into my purse. I centered my lips in the mirror of my compact.

"Pathetique?"

I shook my head.

"Waldstein?"

I shook my head again and looked in the mirror

"Well, which one then?"

I smacked my newly applied Plum Delish.

"Tempest," I said, peering at her over the rim of the compact.

She broke into a high pitched giggle. "Tempest!" she screeched. Her cackle soared again, and then she let it fall. "Of all the—," she began, pushing the paper cup of Coke away from her. "And did he—? Bum-ba-bah-dum—?"

"Yes!"

"And the sforzandos?"

"Like babies dropped from the seventh floor!" I squealed.

Dinner and a good book

It was raining outside the one-room house on Tulipery Street, but Lloyd was content to lie in his bed because he had one of his favorite books propped up on his stomach. He glanced at the little drops dripping down his window and then turned the page to read more about the adventures of the Knight Rudolph, who was just now about to enter the Darkest Forest.

Just outside Lloyd’s window, a possum was curled in its nest in an oak tree. The possum was dreaming, but Lloyd could not have seen its quivering foot even if he had looked. In fact, Lloyd had no idea there was a dreaming possum anywhere in the world, much less outside his window. And in the Darkest Forest there were only blindits and trillicks — and, according to the Oracle, of course, the Lost Princess.

The sound of the cuckoo startled Lloyd from his peaceful activity, and he looked up to see that it was four o’clock. Time to cook dinner. He grappled for the bookmark on his bedside table and marked his place, then swung his feet over into his house shoes and walked to the cupboard. Tonight it was simmered rice and chicken broth. For desert, strawberries from the garden.

Lloyd boiled the rice in one pot and heated the chicken broth in another, then poured them both together in a great bowl, placed it on the table, and then washed, rinsed, and dried the dirty bowls while his dinner cooled. As he sat he said grace to himself and then drew his spoon.

There was no doubt that the rice was fluffy and fresh and the chicken broth hearty wonderful. Lloyd sighed contentedly as he pushed the empty bowl away from him and grabbed a strawberry from the fruit bowl in the middle of the table. No doubt at all that his stomach was satisfied.

Malaise, Huckabees

I have recovered considerably from the malaise; time and walking have helped. I suppose it is at times important to "feel." While walking to the train I wanted to cry. I imagined myself in a corner of the station, in the bathroom at the Movie Groove. I wanted to cry but I was also angry. I kicked a bottle top on Townsend as I passed all the piles of glass from broken car windows.

As I walked I thought of how opposite forces pull me: I'm supposed to want things, but we are taught to be dissatisfied with what we have. There is always a shinier dinxgalump just beyond our reach. I'm supposed to have feelings, but not too many. I'm supposed to pursue happiness, but I don't know what makes me happy -- and I view the pursuit as a grabbing at meaningless straws.

I'm not living as if each day is my last.
* * *
All this is to say that I've recently seen I Heart Huckabees. I watched it like I watched the Up documentaries: my eyes and ears wide with the knowledge that answers may come.

This from an email to a friend:

"I loved I heart Huckabees... I realize that may mean things about me. But I took it as a sweet, innocent movie about the very real but very vague questions 'of our times' -- at least the ones that plague me: Why am I here? What the hell am I supposed to do? What's it all for? The movie was terribly well rounded around all these things: It poked fun at the malaise but also showed its beauty, funny but also sad, improvised but beautifully designed. Also: I hate this word 'existentialism' and feel like I'll never really understand it, and never really care about its philosophical background (Sartre? I don't know). And in fact I'm a little afraid of it: Yech, too academic. What a weird movie. Could only have come after Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman and Wes Anderson, of course, but a beautiful following to them..."

The movie is at once silly and serious, plain and beautiful, academic and common-sense, high-handed and humble, passive and active. In short it is neither this nor that. Like me, like many (but perhaps not enough) of us, it is gray, ambiguous, foggy.

What it tells me, in the beautiful fumblings of Lili Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman, is that understanding lies in this foggy blanket. We are all part of this foggy blanket. We can close our eyes and feel it. This is nothing new, and to some extent it is less a hooey religion than an old retaliation to the assembly line. The more complex this vast machinery grows, the less any one person can understand the whole, and the less and less we each become as the individual systems required to run the machinery grow more and more specific. Ironically, holism, not specialization, is the path by which we achieve individuality.

In one of the funnier and most serious moments of the film, three characters repeat, though never quite the same way, this question: "How am I not myself?"

How am I not myself?

How am I not myself?

Pathétique

“Truly enchanting,” he says,
as he passes behind me.
Long ago I could
play and speak; today my
fingers demand more of me.
Uncle Ed from Europe – he
never would say where –
does not like my Beethoven.
Twelve-year-old fingers do
things other kids’ cannot,
but Uncle Ed has seen real
talent in the salons of Paris,
or in Berlin or Prague.
He never sits, like my aunt,
or Grandpa, on the creaky
couch to sigh and wonder
at this provincial gift.
There are more pianos there,
he says, than radios
and televisions here.

Once he heard a little girl, no more than eight,
play Beethoven as if it were the speech of gods.

Warm belly, weak legs.

Oh, sure. I suppose I could make myself write, and could possibly even force myself to do a little story, or a poem. But I don't want to. I have my book to read, but it's so peaceful (white noise: air moving) on the train before departure. On the way here I had a coffee and blueberry muffin, then stopped and had a bowl of chiken gumbo, and then another coffee. See how I keep the blahs at bay by filling my tummy!

Somedays I like the thought of taking in nothing but coffee. I have half-suppressed fantasies of collapse. The world could keep spinning but I would lay in a heap behind the counter of the Movie Groove, or at the corner of Jefferson and El Camino.

7, 14, 21, 28

I spent several hours today watching the Up series, specifically Seven Up, 7 Plus Seven, 21 Up, and 28 Up. I've known about the premise for some time: every seven years, director Michael Apted checks in on 14 children originally interviewed in 1964.

At first I thought I did not remember when I was seven. But then I realized I would have been in second grade, and I can remember my classroom, our teacher, and Tuck Everlasting, which she read to us. In second grade a few of us were taken out of class in order to meet in the library. There we were asked our favorite animals, and then given books about them. I read about penguins.

• In first grade I had a camera made of magnets that allowed me to see everyone naked. The ditch was full of fire, and I had a son named Jay.
• In second grade I put my baby unicorn in the oven to keep him warm. I came home crying one day and said I'd gotten bark in my eyes.
• In third grade I played text adventures on a Texas Instruments computer. I had to take the test over, and eventually they decided I was above average, or whatever.
• In fourth grade I kept a notebook of the wrongs my classmates did to me. Patrick looked down Heather's shirt.
• In fifth grade I carried home five textbooks each night. My teachers asked if I was well. One said my forehead was dirty and then noticed it was a scar.
• In sixth grade I sweated in my coat. A woman in a women's restroom said, "You've got to stop controlling his life!"
• In seventh grade I wore green shorts with my name written on them in black marker. And once I thought how impossible that the ball should land on my head.
• In eighth grade I had girlfriends. She said, "Hey, old Red Eyes," and I thought she knew I had been crying.
• In ninth grade I came out to a teacher. In the summer I lost at cards but won at other games. Also, she loved me, I loved him, he loved him, he loved her. One of them was Platt.
• Tenth, eleventh, twelfth: like college, a blur. Or maybe I'm afraid to look too closely.

The questions I want to ask these 14 children:

Why are we here?
What are we supposed to do?
What can we possibly do?

They are answering me. Even at seven I am a sad talking doll; pull the string, and if you bend toward me you will hear, "I want to be a..." In seeing them I can hope to see what happiness is. (It seems that very few vocations give people true joy. But some of the straws we grab are golden.)

On this day some years ago...

I love you.

By Halves (Half-Remembered)

Remember that time Tom Hanks stumbled around the room hooked up to an IV drip while Maria Callas sang "La mamma morta"? Did you know that he was supposed to be, like, gay? Do you remember Antonio Banderas? Did you know that he was playing, like, Tom Hanks' boyfriend? Freeze-frame it; you'll see they dance together. And you thought they were just being silly!

Corpo di moribonda è il corpo mio.
The moribund body is my body.
Prendilo dunque.
Take it then!
Io son già morta cosa!
I am already dead like it!

There are no idols.

They gave rewards when we were good. The principal would walk down the halls and look at the finger paintings and scrawled rhymes thumb-tacked to the walls. On the good art he would place a sticker, an H.B.I., a seal of approval from the Huddleston Bureau of Investigation. The stickers were green and our mascot, Huddles the hound dog, burst from the center of a star-shaped badge and focused his magnifying glass on us.

Some kids peeled off the H.B.I.s and stuck them onto their Trapper-Keepers, being sure to carry them facing forward down the halls. Other kids muttered children's profanities and peeled the stickers off in the dark corners of their homes and stuck them to the undersides of their beds.

If you were really good, and I mean really good, you might be elected Star Citizen. You might get to walk up to the stage in the sweating winter coat that protected you from the world. You would get to eat your lunch on stage with the teachers and other Star Citizens. Your pride would ooze like peanut-butter between your smiling teeth.

If you were bad, and I mean sorta bad, the teacher might call your name like she was spanking a dog. Sometimes cracking out your name was enough, and your classmates would shrink away from you. But sometimes she had to use all her powers, and she would make you sit in the chalk pentagram until the black clouds oozed up out of the floorboards and covered you.

Sue Ellen's Party, Part Five

When Sue Ellen slammed the car door, shutting the narrator out of her life and out of her party, she shut us out as well. Sue Ellen is gone, and so is her story. Try as he might, the narrator could not leave that car. But I have some idea what happened to him.

He found himself alone. He was not lost, and he was merely miles from a place he knew, but the only warmth in his world came out of the vents of his old Civic. And in the darkness of that country highway it seemed there was nothing for him to do but sleep. Hadn't there been a smile last night? Hadn't, out of the roiling fog of his dreams, a stranger smiled?

There was a strange boy with a soft voice waiting for him, but his skin was like the trails of snails. And this story isn't about him.

This story is about the convenience store just south of Sue Ellen's story, where the narrator stopped as if he were his own person. As he never had before, he pushed open the glass doors and strolled up to the counter.

"I'd like a pack of Camel Lights, please," he said.

The little old woman squashed into a face under a beehive squinted at him. "How old are you, honey?" she asked.

He thought back to himself at sixteen. He reached into his back pocket, fumbled with his wallet. "I think you'll be surprised," he said, for suddenly, at eighteen, he felt very adult.

"Well, I'll be!" she exclaimed, telescoping the stiff card before her. "You look just like a little kid!"

I tried to sound all-knowing. "Sometimes I wish I didn't."

"Matches?"

"Sure."

Suddenly there was purpose. Suddenly he was not simply driving back from somewhere he had been driving toward. Suddenly he had set a course for the unknown, for the unvisited—although he did not think in these words as he rolled the window down, then rolled it up again when he found he couldn't light a match in the draft. He knew, somehow, what to do, though it may have been a little awkward. The smoke gave form to his breath; he could see that he lived. He grew conscious of his arms, which seemed to float above the steering wheel; in feeling their lightness, he learned their weight.

If not in the right way, he felt where the world ended and he began.

Ye Olde Musick

They're still playing Beethoven. Do you believe that? I saw a flyer posted to a telephone pole: "Simon La Jolla plays Beethoven." His wrinkled face. His gnarled fingers. Saturday night at Wurther Hall. What possible reason could there be to perform Beethoven after all these years? And when there are already so many recordings?

One of Beethoven's tricks is sudden dynamic changes. A crescendo leads to a subito piano. A legato phrase is broken by pizzicatos. A soft phrase ends with a sforzando. This makes us sit up in our seats? This keeps us coming back?

Yes, yes, we close our eyes and nod our heads while the cyborg before us transmits the dead man's mathematics.