Introducing...

Introducing….

I think it’s finally coming back. Once again I can hear myself think after several months of distraction, not being able to make heads or tails of books I read and thoughts about, well, whatever it is that I think about. I know, I know, we all think every day, but this is different. It is… maybe contemplation, or something of the like. It is quiet, like a meditative soul quiet, the sound of a waterfall. Do you know what the sound of a waterfall is?

… When I was walking
in the mountains with the Japanese man and began
to hear the water, he said, “What is the sound
of the waterfall?” “Silence,” he finally told me.
The stillness I did not notice until the sound
Of water falling made apparent the silence I had
Been hearing long before.
- Jack Gilbert

Or maybe this is just a bunch of crap, unless of course you have experienced this before and know what I mean. Or as Meister Eckhart said, “Those who know the truth, know that I am speaking the truth.”
So let’s see. Now that I’ve got it again, what is it that I can tell you? … … … I’ve got a name for my cat. I call her Ele (el-ee), which is short for Eleganza, which is short for the Contessa Maria Teresa Isabella Veronica Multalire Eleganza de Bella Ferrari. As I was driving, listening the The Poisonwood Bible, I was trying to get back this skill of silence. It was some time later in the night, or maybe early, and I was singing to myself like the Hollow Man that I was

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

I was running over these lines from TS Eliot and wanting some lines of my own to sing. It reminded me of another poem by Billy Collins that is written to someone like a pretentious professor or cocky writer or someone like that.

The Rival Poet

The column of your book titles,
always introducing your latest one,
looms over me like Roman architecture.

It is longer than the name
of an Italian countess, longer
than this poem will probably be.

Etched on the head of a pin,
my own production would leave room for
The Lord’s Prayer and many dancing angels.
No matter.

In my revenge daydream I am the one
poised on the marble staircase
high above the crowded ballroom.
A retainer in livery announces me
and the Contessa Maria Teresa Isabella
Veronica Multalire Eleganza de Bella Ferrari.

You are the one below
fidgeting in your rented tux
with some local Cindy hanging all over you.

I can just imagine Billy sitting at his typewriter in the morning, wishing lustfully for a cigarette, and staring at a bowl of fruit while beyond him outside of the window by his desk his dog is barking up a tree at a squirrel. He is lost in thought, where poets belong, thinking himself into a black suit and bowtie. The Contessa is next to him in a glittery ball dress and they are sticking it to those other writers who can write and write and write, most of it garbage, while he grandly stands atop them with but a few words. They are announced into the ball as greatness, without needing proof, because they don’t need any proof because the proof that they are great shows in their dress, their faces, the way they walk, and their air. Just the same, to write one need not have loads and loads of books, but one book filled with greatness. Of course more are possible, but one is enough.
So here I am thinking of this poem with the Contessa sleeping gently on my lap and we are poised on the Yankee throne of the upper Mid-West, heading our way down the interstate highway staircase toward The South. The two of us hovering on a promenade past Chicago who has on too much cologne and makeup; we glide past Indianapolis in a miniskirt and a John Deer hat; strolling alongside Louisville and Lexington with Whiskey on their breaths; and finally there’s Knoxville with the rented tux and that local Cindy, ready to go back to a Truckstop Motel and throw their rentals carelessly onto the orange shag carpet. All of the sudden I am not so Hollow.
We pulled into Asheville at about 12:00 and settled back into home, next to the choir of crickets and the operatic wind blowing through the mountains. We took our stuff out of the car and made up a bed to crash into, a place where we can hear the silence of sleep. Sleep is the sound of the waterfall that we visit every night, a break from the music of day by which we dance our lives away. For a moment the music is quiet while Ele slips her soft bare arm out of the crook of my jacket and puts it on my shoulder. I drop my right hand onto her waist and fold the other around hers. For the night we pause in a perfect pose, waiting for the music to start.
The music starts again and we dance under the invisible chandelier of the stars above Asheville. For at least the next twelve months I will be dancing this dance here and I will teach it to you once I learn to do it well. If I live well, I will write well. I mean, I’ll write again, hopefully soon and hopefully well. Ele was a perfect little passenger and we are loving her here. Soon I’ll have a job and be able to settle myself into a routine that I’m comfortable with. Soon, soon, soon…