he looks around
his house was full
of stuff and junk
things he keeps instead of memories
that he rarely revisits
unless he happens to come across the object
which encapsulates it
when he's looking for some other thing
he looks around
and sees the accumulation of years
like a mountain he tries to carry with him
and he wonders
if by entrusting his memory
to dead objects
he relinquishes their vivid life
once his memory
was a time machine
he had but to think of a lovely moment
and he could smell the rooms
of his early manhood
and see the dapple of the sunlight
on the hardwood floors he loved so well
in that house full of people
whose door opened upon the wide world
for each of his wild companions
back in the days before they were tamed
and separated
he looks around
and cries out enraged
by the patina of dust
occluding his trapped memories
now so very heavy
and he stands in the house
surrounded by the possessions
that own him
vibrating with an agitation
he grabs a book
and throws it at the mantle
crushing his keepsakes
with bound words
he steps into the night
and under a sky of silvery dust
he whimpers
as the liberated memories flood
his awareness
and time reveals her illusory nature
he is his memories and dreams
and the misery of the present
passes away
like a terminal patient
who learns the value of minutes
and bursting with the news of life
wants to share its warmth
and to say how the coldness creeping closer
is mimicked in the isolation
of large empty houses
filled with old dusty stuff
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Well, this is beautiful. After having spoken with you so much about dance last night, I was so pleased to find that I could in fact access your writing as well. I hope it isn't presumptuous of me to share my experience of this piece; just because "comments" are possible doesn't always mean that the author is soliciting the reader's commentary. But I think I'll risk it and hope that engaging with your writing is meaningful for you in a way that is similar for viewers engaging with my choreographic work.
ReplyDeleteI am moved by your description of the transposition of memory into object. I am moved by the evolving description of these objects of memory. First it seems that the object is indicative of memory, it "encapsulates" the memory, a summary of memory (but also a container for it). At first it is almost a reminder, an agent of memory, but this shifts. It seems that it isn't simply that the object is associated with memory, but that the object, his possessions, are keepers of the memory, traps for these memories; the objectification of the memory makes it less accessible. I am moved by the sense of regret, as if he is somehow responsible for this inaccessibility of memory, and I am moved by the sense of betrayal, as if these objects that were trusted with his memories now withhold them, and impose their withholding as a kind of ownership (as an aside, this is a fascinating tension between the word "possessions" and the mention that they own him, the play of power as negotiated through memory). It is moving that he destroys an object of memory, and that the weapon for its destruction is a book, bound words (words perhaps bound into the book similarly to the way that memories are bound within the objects). In fact, the very words I am reading become implicated in a new way; they now possess the potential to be bound, the destroy.
I enjoy the repeated metaphor of dust, the dust that occludes both objects of memory and the natural world (the sky, perhaps even the experience of the world, perhaps even his whimpering). It sends me into a spinning conflation of matter and experience and memory and emotion, the natural/material world, etc. Just in the simplicity of a shared metaphor.
And perhaps the most powerful metaphor is that of space, these rooms and houses. That his early manhood is described in terms of a material space, where there is hardwood (potentially a euphemism in his early manhood?) floors, dapples of sunlight, and open doors that give way to untamed companions, is fantastic. The contrast of that space with the present space, both empty in its fullness of dusty objects of memory, it intensely moving. I am brought into his sense of absence, of longing from what is for what was. I find myself imagining the former space, the space of light and wood and open doors, and feeling trapped in a desolation of the present space. One is life, the other death. I am moved by the sadness that the latter is described as the present, the former a merely a memory, now bound within lifeless objects in a dying space. It is wrenching to emphasize this difference with his moment of liberation, of relief/release, only to be thrust once more into the lifeless spaces of the present in the final lines.
Thank you for sharing your rich words. Clearly you have given me much to think about and consider. Your are truly gifted, and I look forward to reading backwards into your writings posted here.
-M
i just logged on after a long hiatus and wow what did i find... thank you for your interpretation ... you opened my eyes to some ideas that i missed in my own work
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