Phantom Limbs, Anne Michaels

In honor of the next book selection .... I spent the day haunted trying to recollect my connection with Anne Michaels. Then I remembered (well, I searched my journal) and found from 1998 the poem below, which I love.

Patrick

Phantom Limbs, Anne Michaels

So much of the city
is our bodes. Places in us
old light still slants through to.
Places that no longer exist but are full of feeling,
like phantom limbs.

Even the city carries ruins in its heart.
Longs to be touched in places
only it remembers.

Through the yellow hooves
of the ginkgo, parchment light;
in that apartment where I first
touched your shoulders under your sweater,
that October afternoon you left the keys
in the fridge, milk on the table.
The yard - our moonlight motel -
where we slept summer’s hottest nights,
on grass so cold it felt wet.
Behind us, freight trains crossed the city,
a steel banner, a noisy wall.
Now the hollow diad
floats behind glass
in office towers also haunted
by our voices.

Few building, few lives
are built so well
even their ruins are beautiful.
But we loved the abandoned distillery;
stone floors cracking under empty vats,
wooden floors half rotted into dirt,
stairs leading nowhere, high rooms
run through with swords of dusty light.
A place the rain still loved, its silver paint
on rusted things that had stopped moving, it seemed, for us.
Closed rooms open only to weather,
pungent with soot and molasses,
scent-stung. A place
where everything too big to take apart
had been left behind.

War is a Meaning Forced Upon Us

Easy read, some good insights, too quick of an end: too pat. Love is all you need doesn't work after the prurient voyeurism of violence that makes up most of the book. It did make me go find my copy "War Music" and "All Day Permanent Red" by Chistopher Logue, so that was a good thing. The Illiad is still one of the best war books going. I loaned out my copy of Hedges so I am going to just give a few general comments. Hedges spends a large amount of time cataloging the horrors of the wars he has encountered, doing little to justify his conclusion, other than God I hope Love is the answer because hate sure is nasty. I liked the differentiation of Mythic and Sensory view of war and war reporting. His idea of Mythic reminds me of the "magic' idea of glamour: a dazzling that makes others believe what is really not there. I guess it is that desire to be a part of something bigger than yourself that attracts us to the "myth" of war, because no one really wants the reality of war in their part of the neighborhood. Blood is messy.

The End and the Beginning

by Wislawa Szymborska


After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

We'll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.


Reading the introduction of "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning" made me think of this poem.

The Berlin Wall Fall Anniversary

Wow. We read Niebuhr, discuss his anachronisms re. communism on Sunday, then hear today of the 20 year anniversary of the Berlin Wall Fall today. Poignancy.

The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr

I have heard that this was/is the most significant contemporary book on American foreign policy. To some extent, it shaped our cold war policies, and perhaps it needs to shape American policies toward a u/dystopian Islamic movement, as it did toward Soviet communism.

The Road

I will occasionally allow myself to revisit a valued novel, play or other piece of written word. There are usually a few stipulations that I require for such an engagement. After all, there are a lot of books out there to read and it seems silly to just trivially read something over (and over) when the new is waiting.

Such stipulations include:

a) a commitment to do so quickly, very quickly
b) a need to get something out of it, a reason
c) a desire to look to add to my previous experiences, search the headphones for sounds once missed
d) a creative need to clear the palette with .... well ..... perhaps not exactly clear, but at least sate the palette
e) a creative need to remind myself how well something can be done, a vicarious roll in the creative dirt

I have read my favorite play Art no less than 30 times. In it I am usually seeking a re-education in simplicity, effective translation of worlds (French to English holds up) and the child-like nature of adult human relationships.

After reading White Tiger I had an uncontrollable urge to revisit The Road. I know, I know .... but I think it's amazing. Of all the forms of art I claim to appreciate, I consider it to be an instantiation of perfection.

In my mind, in my experience The Road is more of an enormous life-sized painting than a novel. I say that with a complete inability to really understand or see the painted form as most experts can. I think it's a color thing.

Standing far, far back you see the purpose, the big picture of The Road. Sure, it's about obvious and well-trodden themes: apocalypse, savagery, survival, a race against odds and time. It's about a father, sure. It's about a son, sure. It's about the crystalline fragility of this tottering empire we call society. Sure. Whatever.

As you begin to walk closer and closer to the enormous canvas, however, the big picture becomes less distinct. The parts even begin to lose focus. You see more and more of the paint strokes themselves. The original texture of the suspended and hued mass as it was slavered across its native substrate. In those details, in those cracks the real purpose begins to emerge. It's about questions. Are there uncrossable lines that separate who we might consider man to be from a matching organism without a unique internal fire? What are the consequences of straying across those lines? Forever? In a world that tells you, that demands it of you, are you a fool for holding to the side of light? Just how easy is it for anger, fear, or disgust to catalyze us over and beyond? Do we gain something in the fight against it or remain the same with a bit lost in each battle - a little less capable of fighting the next time we are challenged or required to do so? So many questions - so little time, frequently tested. Then and now. Always then, always now.


Hold your hand in front of the flame.
Don't let it go out.
He rose and took the pistol from his belt.
This door looks like the other door, he said.
But it's not.
I know you're scared. That's okay.
I think there may be things in there.
And we have to take a look.
There's no place else to go.
This is it.
If you want to help me.
If you don't want to hold the lamp.
You'll have to take the pistol.

I'll hold the lamp.

Okay, this is what good guys do.
They keep trying.
They don't give up.
Okay.


It is this subtlety of purpose that disappointed me most about White Tiger. I cannot believe this book is beloved by so many much less considered worthy of such an award, any award. The setup was adolescent in structure and tone. I machete-chopped my way through the first 30 pages on sheer will alone hoping to God the author would stop the self-aggrandized tone of the faux-conversation. Good luck with that. What then emerged was a character and story without purpose. This was not a unique man, this was not a good man - this was an opportunist not unlike anything he saw or smelled around him. No questions were asked of lines crossed, no investigation into the damage points possibly taken on by choices and actions. This was a man and story no different from any modern tale - any modern day. There are those that have and there are those that wish to have ... and given the opportunity the wishers will say and do anything to join the other club. Thanks for that 300 page insight there, Mr. Award Winner.

Werds about The White Tiger

This book moves very quickly, the rich/poor disparity does not get into too much detail, only to support the narrator's indomitable desire to leave his "coop" and become a survivalist, which in India means get a real job where you're not someone's bitch. My initial thoughts before reading were very high, I thought it would be this intricate novel evincing the complexities and hidden travails of India. What it does is tell a story about someone coming out of this Darkness that is Bangalore, but doesn't really give him an encompassing life, just just a mere existence predicated on menial success, He is agonizingly free at the end, yes, but the path was very linear and terse. It worked in the vein of the narration because it was an intense story, which I liked. I saw Balram really trying to figure out the Light in Delhi, and I became frustrated when he was the scapegoat for his driver's wife. But this guy's supposed to be a pretentious dick, this character, and the author attempts to create this love/hate personality. Unfortunately, at the end, you're just saying, "good job, buddy. Now what's next to read."