in memory of memory

i sat in my swing in some late- autumn sunshine, watching the rays catch a column of tiny flies -- large colonies fly intricate patterns with no clear order, never brushing each other, like a huge flock of snow geese turning in the sky. not for the first time i wonder about them. what kind of insects are they? why do they occupy the same geography of the air for hours at a time, going up, or down, or in a circle? (it might be simplest to assume their zen nature, but then everything has zen nature.)

how will i find this information? i will probably phone the insect department at uc berkeley and ask. it's the kind of thing that i think i need more information than i have even to google. then it hits me like a bolt from the blue: even if i find the right person and ask the right question, i will not remember the answer. i've proved this to myself over and over. for one, there is a reedy kind of plant in my pond and i can never remember its name! i have looked this up dozens of times, and am today still unsure. or like spelling. if one is referring to other human beings, or rather the lack of them, are there two o's in the common word for that? again, i've looked it up. many times. i just say 'nobody' instead.

there have always been things i can and cannot remember. i can remember phone numbers for many decades, but that's because, as a synaesthete, i remember their colors. i have never remembered names, even when trying those 'cute' memory prompts. and as is not unusual amongst aspergergians, i feel an almost undeniable urge to nickname everybody. the length of time someone's real name lasts in my memory is about one minute. i'm not bragging, nor am i complaining. i accept that this is how i am.

more disconcerting are the actual changes. now, to give you some examples of the memory that was: in my early 20s i worked for a few months in a real estate office answering the phone. there were maybe fifteen agents with as many phone lines and i could easily, always, remember who was on which line and who it was for. no notes. a decade later as i became editor, publisher, designeer and everything else of a literary magazine. i kept many tiny items in my mind at a time and still could remember the addresses of my subscribers.

i still fool myself, saying, 'ok i don't need to write it down -- i'll remember.' why do you think there are too-frequent omissions of artists' names? (there would be more, but for the hours spent retracing my steps, trying to find the missing info.) i know people who remember everything. every- thing. i remember small bits and pieces of events, conversations, but the vast majority of time is forever gone. i used to be better, though, it's clear. i assume it's age, but don't people say of children, 'he'd forget his head if it wasn't screwed on.' it could also be that much of my past is not worth remembering; i'll give you that with the acknowledgement that it's mind-fucking.

but the period of time that's missing grows larger and larger: in the last couple of years, i have shown up on the wrong day for doctor appoint- ments three times. i forget in their entirety phone conversations and one's in person as well. i lose the lists i make to help me remember. if i want to look something up online i have to remember to do so quite a number of times before i actually do it. i do look things up by the dozens most every day, so compared to much of the human race i am probably unusual.

did you wonder if this all bothers me? i nonchalantly throw caution to the winds, embarrassed occasionally, yes. but i forget that too. apparently the time one spends in the far reaches of the right brain gets deducted from the time in the left. i am consistently happier that any time i can remember, but then.... when i lose my way, i rest relieved in the fact that i will remember too little to be bothered in a day or two at the most. in the land of the imagination, in the land of awe and wonder, it's the present that is what counts, and none of this has hampered my ability to be there.

if i have a total lapse and post the same post more than once, something about which i worry, you will forgive me, won't you?

firebird

FLAMINGO WATCHING

Wherever the flamingo goes,
she brings
a city’s worth
of furbelows.
She seems

unnatural by nature—
too vivid and peculiar
a structure to be pretty,

and flexible to the point
of oddity. Perched on

those legs,
anything she does
seems like an act. Descending
on her egg or
draping her head

along her back, she’s
too exact and sinuous

to convince an audience
she’s serious.
The natural elect,
they think,
would be less pink,

less able to relax
their necks,
less flamboyant
in general.
They privately expect
that it’s some

poorly jointed bland
grey animal
with mitts for hands
whom God protects.

Kay Ryan

Kay Ryan, “Flamingo Watching” from Flamingo Watching (Copper Beech Press, 1994). Copyright © 1994 by Kay Ryan.

(over to you, m. ghost)

the nest of rapture

RHAPSODY

No one says
it anymore,
my darling,
not to the green leaves
in March, not to the stars
backing up each night, certainly

not in the nest
of rapture, who
in the beginning was
an owl, rustling
just after silence, whose

very presence drew
a mob of birds--flickers,
finches, chickadees, five cardinals
to a tree--the way a word
excites its meanings. Who

cooks for you, it calls, Who looks
for you? Sheaf of feathers, chief
of bone, the owl stands
upon the branch, but does he
understand it, think my revel,
my banquet, my tumult,

delight? The Irish have a word
for what can't be
replaced: mavourneen, my
darling, second cousin once
removed of memory, what is not
forgotten, as truth was
defined by the Greeks.

It's the names
on the stones in the cemetery
that ring out like rungs
on a ladder or the past
tense of bells: Nathaniel Joy,
Elizabeth Joy, Amos
Joy and Wilder Joy,

and it all comes down
to the conclusion
of the cardinal: pretty, pretty, pretty
pretty--but pretty what?
In her strip search
of scripture, St. Teresa
was seized, my darling, rapt
amid the chatter
and flutter of well-coiffed

words, the owl
in the shagbark hickory,
and all the attending dangers
like physicians
of the heard.

Angie Estes


From Voice-Over by Angie Estes. Copyright © 2002 by Angie Estes.

so many love the bullfinch! a cross-cultural item of adoration. looks more like the grosbeak we have around here than any of our local finches, but still, who knew? this sweet little offering is dedicated to gerrie at his blog the linosaurus. his blog is the source for the top left image of this post, just part of the ongoing introductions to gerrie's finds in his tireless searches.

flipping the american bird

enough for any heaven

BEYOND EVEN THIS

Who would have thought
the afterlife would
look so much like Ohio?
A small town place,
thickly settled
among deciduous trees.
I lived for what seemed
a very short time.
Several things did not work out.

Casually almost,
I became another one
of the departed,
but I had never imagined
the tunnel of hot wind that pulls
the newly dead
into the dry Midwest
and plants us like corn. I am

not alone, but I am restless.
There is such sorrow
in these geese, flying over,
trying to find a place to land
in the miles and miles
of parking lots
that once were soft wetlands. They seem

as puzzled as I am
about where to be.
Often they glide,
in what I guess is
a consultation with each other,
getting their bearings,
as I do when
I stare out my window
and count up

what I see. It's not much really:
one buckeye tree,
three white frame houses,
one evergreen,
five piles of yellow leaves.
This is not enough
for any heaven I had dreamed,
but I am taking the long view.

There must be a backcountry
of the beyond,
beyond even this and farther out,
past the dark smoky city
on the shore
of Lake Erie, through the landlocked passages
to the Great Sweetwater Seas.

Maggie Anderson

From A Space Filled with Moving, University of Pittsburgh Press. Copyright © 1991 by Maggie Anderson.
(the top image is from here)

all fish all the time! • part ii!

CLEANING A RAINBOW

I open it with my long blade under the bright flow
of well water and there lie the finny wings
a moth is beginning to fold,
and then I see the river again, and where I stood
in sun- and rain-slant, that arc of color, the trout
coming down, pulling everything with it,
the cold mountain
stream, the boulders blue and yellow and red,
pines wind-pushed
among them and scrubbed to a slivery finish, current-salved, their limbs
lashed by tendrils of pale canary grass, all inside it and coming down,
the veined pebbles inside it and coming down, rolling, even the pearly
stone a raw-throated raven kicked loose, the love-sick bray
a wandering mule gave out causing a moose at first-
light browse to look up, the moony call

an owl still can’t stop giving softly inside it, the slow-waking
kayaker’s deep satisfying sleep washed from her eyes vividly inside it,
all inside it and coming down, finding their places, the feathered layers
of flesh making room, the pursy fir and lean young alders
in league with the willows, all bending, their refusals to snap

quietly folded inside it, their needles and leaves and aspirations, too
subtle to separate, completely inside it, tracks large and showy
and barely there becomes petite, hair-thin bones, become murmuring
rib-chimes, choirs, echoes from the lightest touch inside it and coming
down the river, embraced by the scent of cherry and musk, by the shy
fairy slipper, by bear’s breath and the must oozing
from a single wild grape, by incense cedar, myrtle
and skittish skunk. all rank and sweet together, all
brushings and sighs coming down, through slick spidery worm-scrawl

falling, flicker-knock, locked horn and cocky treble-cry falling, famous
stalkings and leaps lost in the furling eddies, the heart sucked
under, fibril and seed and viscid yolk sucked under, necks
nuzzled, licked, whirling round astonished, dogtooth violet and thorny
rose bush torn from their root mesh, garnishing all,
and everyone rushing
down, down to this small washing, this curl of final composure
I hold in the bowl of my hands kneeling to receive it.

Gary Gildner

Orion Magazine
(for consciousnesswalk)
part i

JAPONISME Turns Three!

1795

.遠かたや青田のうへの三の山
ochikata ya aoda no ue no mitsu no yama

far distance--
above green rice fields
three mountains

1804

.雨だれや三粒おちてもけさの秋
amadare ya san tsubu ochite mo kesa no aki

from the roof's overhang
three drops...
first autumn morning

1812

.露三粒上野の蝉の鳴出しぬ
tsuyu mi tsubu ueno no semi no nakidashinu

three dewdrops--
Ueno's cicadas
break out into song

1817

.雪どけや鷺が三疋立臼に
yuki-doke ya sagi ga sambiki tachi usu ni

snow melting--
three herons perch
on the rice cake tub

1820

.親と子の三人連や帰る雁
oya to ko no sannin-zure ya kaeru kari

parents and child
three in a row...
the geese depart 1

APRIL

Nympharum membra disjecta

Three spirits came to me
And drew me apart
To where the olive boughs
Lay stripped upon the ground:
Pale carnage beneath bright mist.

Ezra Pound

DRINKING ALONE IN THE MOONLIGHT

A pot of wine among flowers.
I alone, drinking,
without a companion.
I lift the cup and invite
the bright moon.
My shadow opposite certainly makes us three.
But the moon cannot drink,
And my shadow follows the motions of my body in vain.
For the briefest time are the moon and my shadow my companions.

Oh, be joyful! One must make
the most of Spring.
I sing—the moon walks forward rhythmically;
I dance, and my shadow shatters
and becomes confused.
In my waking moments,
we are happily blended.
When I am drunk, we are divided
from one another and scattered.

For a long time I shall be obliged to wander without intention;
But we will keep our appointment by the far-off Cloudy River.

Li-Po

years, that is