Sleep Walk: May 2012

Friday, May 18, 2012

Anais Nin

"There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest."

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Anaïs Nin

We have a soul at times.
No one’s got it non-stop,
for keeps.
Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.
Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood’s fears and raptures.
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.
It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.
It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.
For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.
Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.
It’s picky:
it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,
our hustling for a dubious advantage
and creaky machinations make it sick.
Joy and sorrow
aren’t two different feelings for it.
It attends us
only when the two are joined.
We can count on it
when we’re sure of nothing
and curious about everything.
Among the material objects
it favors clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which keep on working
even when no one is looking.
It won’t say where it comes from
or when it’s taking off again,
though it’s clearly expecting such questions.
We need it
but apparently
it needs us
for some reason too.
— Wisława Szymborska, translated by S. Barańczak and C. Cavanagh, with thanks to journalofanobody

Picasso to Gertrude Stein

lovely things

Typewriter Series #44 by Tyler Knott Gregson

I am a lonesome sea and my depths are dark.

I want you to know I will understand
if you wish to never sail
upon me,
and choose instead, so sit and stare
with wonder
at what it would feel like to be
sailing through the starlight
reflected on me and feel the
entirety of your weight
carried by the water
beneath you.

-Tyler Knott Gregson-