Horses
a chariot is
reply to Isthmian I, via Phaedrus 227β
//
a chariot is artifact entombed
beneath packed sediment
an imprint on the earth
of acts not of the earth
sightless as solitude
lifeless as time itself
rotting perpetual
vehicle disposed
it falls apart
a chariot is
impervious
to crying
a chariot is a paragraph
about ancient technology
symbols illuminated by
old photos from museums
shaded settings in relief
straight lines on pregnant-bellied vases
fragments of singed and tattered verse
reasons described almost
as spatial motion re-constructed
of kingships and bloodline races
past endings to beginnings of
gods animals and man
words used as tools
each one to fix and justify
as evidentiary groping at
a world of human things
we still don’t know
a chariot is an easy gift
against a multitude
of horses
the machines we used to get
from place of rest to planet mars were splendid
magnificent creatures in their own
golden-
ratioed
grammars
and dragons that took hold of drivers' eyes
they thought the wind but caught to ride
a flaming sword instead between her thighs
maidens of modern mythologies arrived
on cliffside edges wearing white
translucent coats
arousal com-
partmentalized
to celebrate new body parts cognized
the jewel-tones of her lacquered toes
the scent of ozone taste
of toxic fizz behind
her sucking nose
her mouth disclosed
she swallows apples licks
a rose the absolute
glory hallelujah
ravenous grows
vulva exposed for clicks
each flick a seed she sows
from echoes loaded lead
her rainbows red as victory
she was the counting down to blasting off
she was four hundred thousand horses yoked
by arc of axel angel burnt tendrils
smoke billows over rocky rough terrain
past battlefields and nations past
her recent childhood and
arsenic smile
their eyes went to
her nippled curves and angles
her thorough flexibility
her starry nights and spangles
her lashes cruelly clawed
her pussies pawed
and oh how they
to her with her and of
her came
as realism
inscribed by god
rendered maidens un-made
oiled python sheen of ageless skin
she was the beauty left in violence
they were materials for war
sapphire eyes emerald or amethyst
you chose the crystal the correction and
the facets for
some child in Africa
was orphaned by each armored scale to feed
her un-weaned toddler burger meat
( at least the blacks buried
and did not eat
their very
fathers
a chariot is
from-dust-
arisen life transcribed )
annunciations posted inter-angel
a holy home a web apart
filters of pale ethereality
content implicitly divorced
from earth’s divided continent
baptismal diamantine written
laws skinlessly conceived that we
may find and hold as work of art
your child’s hunger as forgiven
a chariot is
already cleansed of blood it is
excerpted rage it is
brave forms we made
from partial purpose or
how to make pure
a brilliant woman true to life
but honestly a whore
a chariot is what you drive to get
to work your nightmares harnessed by
engines of piston pretenses
at likely sentences
a chariot is nothingness herself
but full of manliness
the games we play when we
make love in light of day
driving endlessly divine
at origins as orifices flying
a chariot is
a summary
of dying
//
selamat purnama 🌕
“Luckily we thlop-thlopped,” // or, And then there was the drive home.
I preface this to say we made it back safely. Also to warn you that this is a long read. Then also to say that history is complicated and sometimes offers no life lessons. Life is not always an Aesop’s fable! (Well, what is it then?) Yesterday, it was an (euphemistically) eventful drive home.
First, I hit a giant pothole and blew out a tire.
//
No wait, let me back up. First, we woke up before dawn (this happens without an alarm here, for me, if not for E) to walk along the beach during and after sunrise.
(What follows is a sneaky-peeky “behind the scenes” of the blog, and I will share things I typically would not make explicit. These are things anbody should be able to gather from following my blog, I guess. Here is a rule I find myself trying to follow, although I’m not sure it makes sense, of not writing things out if they can be easily inferred. Or mis-inferred, in ways that are interesting or useful, to me. From my perspective, this is just good editing. The problem is, it seems a perpetual project every time. My chiselling process somehow follows its own rule. The longer I “sit in front of” a piece of my writing, the more likely it ends up in metered verse. I’m not making that up. I’m in fact resisting it, now.
So forgive me if the following seems pretty obvious. If not now, it will be soon. And I’ll forgive you, as well.)
You see, I have a “beach habit”, I guess you could call it, of taking pictures with the phone. It’s a little obsessive. Every time the light or the clouds or the water or the earth changes, at the beach, I feel quite compelled to take pictures of it. “I feel like Allah is giving these gifts, and I have no choice but to pick them up,” is how I said it to my husband. “Just dropping them down, and what can you do? You have no choice.” (Incidentally, this is the kind of talk that puts him in a husbandly way. That is, speaking in euphemisms. Happy V-day again!) And it feels like meditating, in the sense that, to let myself take those pictures is to let myself be absorbed in this near-“steady state” of constant wonder at the apparent world.
(I assume this is a commonly-experienced thing. On the other hand, that assumption seems somewhat tyrannical of me. Everybody’s different, if not unique. Who I am to say?)
One of my favorite things is to try to catch the shifts and the relationships (of light, I guess, also elements) in (iphone) photos. I’ve tried before to do it with our “real camera”, but these days I can’t bring myself to enjoy that. Something about the limitations of the iphone make it less intimidating, maybe less complicated than the camera. Less pretense at a profession. Anyway, I also enjoy the photo editing process. (I use Lightroom but seek recommendations for open-source or independent apps that would deliver the same kind of thing.) After return, I will be similarly obsessed, or “spend time” concentrating on the relationships between light in its different meanings, in the frame. Figuring out by experiment what I can change, in the editor, in order to bring out the gift of the image. To meet my eyes. I’m still not sure how “seriously” I take it. I consider myself a lover of images, rather than an “artist” (without a “sophistical” camera, lol). Maybe that’s a way to put it.
But then maybe, if it were stripped of the blogger’s ego, that’s what a (written) blog could be too. I’ve mentioned before on here my aspiration for amateur-ism (oxymoron there, oops). Then I might amend it to: I am a lover of images of nature. But what I mean by that would require a very long explanation, including making it clear that I don’t exclude human things from nature, at all. Justice bleeds in, and then everything (through dialectic) becomes inquiries into causes. When the whole point was for a moment not to be Aristotle, but in a way that Aristotle might enjoy. (That would have been his teacher’s task.) So I guess it’s (the photo habit) a small offering out of love for the apparent. Or picking up (as many as I can) these dropped-off gifts of Allah. Other things could also be interpreted in that light, many of them, or possibly everything ever made, by humans, or by anyone else who ever makes.
The point is, I took some more pictures the morning before we left, as one way of saying goodbye. There will be plenty of ocean vibes on the blog over the next however long, weeks or months, as I work through these beach photos. This is how we make time, on the blog, (spending and making time is the blog’s whereto and wherefrom), so yes, Ocean is one of our seasons. (I should make a category and possibly a photo collection for Ocean. It’s not exactly easy to hunt down all these old posted beach pics, from before I had named categories. I guess I should go back in blog-time and bestow upon them their rightful associations. Gather them in harnessable groups. Maybe make a collection for each year? It will take me a minute to figure that out. So many of these normally edited-out inner monologues are strictly bureaucratic. One almost doesn’t have time… except of course, one does. One has all the time.) These photos could last through Cancer, though it’s impossible to be sure. Anyway, Ocean season has returned to the valley below.
//
So we ate our guesthouse breakfast, (veg nasi goreng with plenty of golden-fried tempe, sederhana dan lezat), packed the car, checked out, said our goodbyes and pulled out of the parking lot.
Next, we stopped on the way out of town to get the most amazing tofu bao either of us ever had. These were the kind of dreamy flavor and texture combination that only asian street food can come up with, it reminded me of Singapore. A common response was “Is this dessert or what?” which just means it is irrational and delicious.
(If you are reading this, and ever plan a trip to Bali, no, I won’t name or endorse places on the blog. Bali is dying from tourism, at least, faster than it’s dying from anything else. The last thing this island needs is more advertising hype, in any way, shape, or form. I lay a curse on Instagr-m for this, and all the location-tagging photo-based social media apps. But I would give recommendations by email, so please be in touch. With the caveat that our favorites are the best for us, and not necessarily the best for others.)
Anyway, we picked up some tofu bao for takeaway, along with two chocolate peanut butter banana smoothies, figuring we’d have a nice little meal at a scenic stop along the way.
In any event, we were certain sooner or later to get hungry.
//
Now back to the pothole and me busting the tire.
In my defense. This was bad luck combined with the terrible condition of the two-lane road along the northeast coast. Which is riddled with deep holes, the result of overloaded trucks driving on poorly-laid asphalt, I think? Anyway, in some places it’s like driving on asphalt honeycomb. Usually one can see them in advance and slow to a crawl, so as not to break things. But there I was, passing a local motorbike, at a reasonable speed, in a completely normal maneuver. Being never the fastest, never the slowest, but somewhere in the middle. (It’s not like I was taking an opportune nap. The reins were held not by another’s hands.) And suddenly there was a great gaping hole in the middle of the road. It happened to be right where I was passing. It was disguised by a joint in the asphalt, I think. I was paying more attention to the motorbike on my left and the (distant) oncoming traffic, these other very pressing concerns. I didn’t see the hole in time to avoid. It was ther-KLUNK, and the-whole-car-shakes, sounding like pieces.
And, Oof.
Luckily we thlop-thlopped to a stop right across from a bengkel. We had a spare tire in the trunk and let the mechanic change it for us. (“Contributing to the local economy,” I could call it, whereas E calls it “making friends”.) We “lost” maybe an hour and a half.
I spent a lot of that time watching some chickens in a lovely grove of rambutan trees. Right next to the road, located in the rear of (what seemed like) a large Balinese estate. The tranquility of this place was somewhat surreal. It immediately bestowed calm. The trees were tall, the shade was dense, the ground was covered in brown leaf litter. The sound of chickens scratching, for grubs and bugs, was soft and intermittent in the muffled quiet. Like a cathedral. They seemed happy and peaceful chickens, especially compared to our rowdy bunch. I watched them while drinking my delicious chocolate, banana, peanut butter, coconut cream smoothie. All the ingredients of which were probably grown on this island.
After a while, the car was ready to go. We said our thank yous and our goodbyes, then pulled back onto the road.
//
What happened next was not our fault. At all. I am pinning fault on the app, and okay, perhaps our decision to follow the app. But one really has to side-eye G–gle maps, which fails to differentiate between passable and impassable (by car) roads when it tells you where to go. I’m sure there have been worse examples than ours. It doesn’t really matter what the cause of this kind of error is, in terms of flawed data collection (racist or sexist stereotypes, etc). Trusting this thing will lead you all kinds of un-fortuitous places.
After the blowout, and a break from driving while they switched our tire, I was back behind the wheel. E isn’t enthusiastic about mountain driving, so he navigated. When at some point we made a turn that bore no official signage, we noticed, but we didn’t think to question it. And not for the first time in Bali, but for the first time with me behind the wheel, G–gle directed us onto a “shorter route”. As we would discover, the “shorter route” ended up being an unmaintained treck intended only for motorbikes. We navigated the Dr. Seussian mountain passages with just barely enough room for our tires to squeeze between asphalt edges. The roads were bare pretense fumbling away into nothingness. Thereby I gained plenty of practice, this drive, with “lumayan hardcore” mountain driving. Downshifting into first to manage hairpin turns on hard inclines, wheel placement to avoid the most catastrophic holes, downshifting into first to claw through the unavoidable holes, praying through the sickly whirr of traction-less tires, facing sky or pavement, and squeezing past oncoming drivers, where there is no shoulder. There is only STEEP, blood-curdling DEATH to either side.
Let me tell you, dear blog reader. Our Honda Jazz is no hardtop Jeep. And I am not a Bromo driver. (Those guys are suicidal? And usually drunk? Rumor has it. And now I know why! E says this road was about as difficult as the road we turned back from, when we drove around Tengger. I couldn’t believe that, I was too concentrated on driving to look and be freaked out. Un-filtered side-note, this gives a clue the degree to which my fear of that was a fear of not being in control.)
Music, of course, was not happening. But in process, I talked through it. I reassured my husband and myself at every turn that we were aman. Even when the engine overheating light came on, I kept pretty cool. (E said it’s ok, we’re almost to the top.) Even when I caught a glimpse of the peak that was our destined passage, seeming still so far above our heads. It was some hollowed-out, long-abandoned villa, a roofless, vine-entangled ruins, on a perch that could only have been conceived by an unregulated and out-of-control tourist industry. Insane. Even when I felt the Jazz shuddering with apprehension beneath my feet, I brought the car around the next turn.
(As for going back. The road was too skinny to turn around. And the only thing scarier than going up these ridges was the thought of crumbling back down, in reverse.)
What did I see, oh Muse, and what did I miss? There were cliffside cabbage patches and lush beds of kale terraced into these mountains, geometrically-planted rows of carrots and potatoes blanketing the valleys below. There were misty clouds concealing almost every precipice, and quaint villages nestled into precarious edges of the abyss. The locals stared, but then smiled and waved back, when we smiled and waved, saying, “Sugre!” (We saw a few working farm trucks, which gave some hope that it would be possible to get through on four wheels. Maybe not by me, but at least by local drivers who call these highlands their home.) We saw ancient Hindu temples, looming in the cloud, vibrant with moss over complex Balinese brickwork. Things were set like jewels into improbable places. These visions would have been breathtakingly beautiful, had my breath not been already utterly took by dread and grim necessity. We could not stop, let alone turn around. The only way out would be up, around, over, and through.
We pressed on, driving sky-ward, as having no other choice.
By the time we curlicued our way out of the absolutely beautiful and yet idiotic Googlian shit-cut, of course my entire body was shaking. I felt ready to collapse into a puddle of whimpers. The final reunion with the main road consisted of a dead stop at a steep uphill turn. And, oh! One last face-full of sky. My nerves (plus the Jazz) were at our final raw edge as I plunged us up into first and around onto the blessedly solid, freshly-painted pavement. Ahh, the main road. The hairpin turns would be navigable, and built for two-wheel drive, four-wheeled vehicles, again.
The rest would be easy, or that’s what I anticipated.
And it really was!
//
Save for one last adventure. Which was, by then I really needed to pee.
We were still far from any mini marts, everything was at best a warung (which don’t normally have public toilets, only private homes, and I was in no state to be a houseguest). Also, the local village seemed strangely infested with flies. They were everywhere, buzzing and crawling all over the human buildings. Anyway, I was in no mood for a local toilet, plus I was wearing full-length pants, which invariably get wet in local toilets. Call me high maintenance, but all I wanted was some privacy behind a bush. Away from human habitation, immersed in greenery.
The first place we pulled over, looking for the right spot, I got chased by dogs. They growled and barked at (poor) me, just trying to be alone. Rawr, I almost barked back! But snarling wild dogs are scarier than pissing my pants, so having secured my modesty, I skipped and hopped back into the car.
I drove us around a few more turns, and pulled over at a sharp enough curve that the car itself, and some well-placed grass, hid me from view of the road. Oh blessed curvy road and tall grass, my cozy cave of green. There, squatting in the shelter of the ever-faithful Jazz, with E standing guard, and gazing up at an elevated terrace of trellised grape vines, it really was heaven. I could finally relax. (The Jazz could relax too! And cool off her engine.) If I measured these things, I think I would say without a doubt. It was the best pee I’ve ever had.
As I got behind the wheel again, those angry dogs showed up. They had chased us down the road. This is typical, Bali dogs don’t play. (I guess they don’t like strangers peeing in their territory either, oops.) The dog snapped and howled at my driver’s side window. But I was inside, we were finished.
E hopped back in the car. We shooed away the dogs and drove away.
//
Finally, we felt good and ready for the rest of the drive home. But first!
A reward, for making it through. We pulled over in the next mini mart parking lot. (There were no scenic views left. After all that, our priority had become stable concrete.) Upon noticing that the front of the mini mart was crawling with flies. – (Again, what is this? Is it the fertilizer the local farmers are using? Is it cow shit? We live near cows, and surrounded by farms, but nothing happens like this. Is it a poorly-placed garbage dump? Or something more sinister? I worry about large-scale farming setups that overwhelm the local ecosystem. It’s probably that. But we really don’t know. Strangely, the flies seemed attracted to glass and plexiglass surfaces, like windows. There were no flies at my heavenly grassy bend in the road.) – So at the mini mart, we decided to keep the car doors and windows closed. We were fully furnished (by E, not me. I’m in charge of toiletries, clothes, electronics) with alcohol spray and napkins. And we sat inside the Jazz and ate our tofu bao. They were soft and pillowy on the outside, the insides sweet deep-fried caramel chili perfection, hiding mildly-cheesy tofu, with crisp carrot-daikon pickles, crushed peanuts and coriander leaf, incredibly delicious.
After that, the rest of the way home was blessedly easy. A little rainy, no problem. The roads were clear, with not very much traffic, and the car drove fine. A bonding experience with the little Jazz, who has probably taken over blog vehicular duties from Sweet Orange. (Thanks for the memories, dear, animated Sweet Orange.) We’ll take the little Jazz in for maintenance and get the ripped-up tire replaced. Perhaps we’ll upgrade to tires with more traction. Next time driving that route, we’ll pay less attention to the app and watch for official route signage. I think that’s the best solution? To avoid the remote, unmaintained roads. And stick with the official, unmaintained roads. Lol. I love Indonesia!
//
Wrapping up, I found myself reaching for reflections, and had to slap back my own hand. If there was a lesson here to learn, I do hope we’ve learned it. (F-ck tech it isn’t. The above is such a victory for the Jazz, it may as well be called “the Jazziad”. But please not “the Jazzidy”.) Like picking up these dropped gifts of Allah, because what else can you do? Catching the images, as having no choice. Maybe there’s no learning sometimes, only history and the fact of it having happened. As E pointed out, “you got us home safe. Everything in the end was aman. And what’s most important is love.”
(He also speculated that his wife might get addicted to mountain driving. The possibility cracked us up. It hadn’t occurred to me until he mentioned it, but I won’t say it’s impossible. Who am I to place such limits on myself?) Love is, in no small way, sharing in the creation of euphemisms.
Regardless of all that, the cats were happy to see us. Ismail yelled with anger / whiny relief, Lalah hid / came out / hid / came out again, in histrionic excitement, and Sri Rejeki got super-puffy / nearly catatonic with joy. And Alhamdulillah, we were happy to see the cats too.
The end.
//
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌖
A festival of purgation. //
“Being sick” is also a negotiation between myself and the world, I was thinking yesterday. As we kept progressing through this illness, as if it were an argument, the subsequent days offering different perspectives on it, beginning with aches, shakes, and nausea, that climax in a night of vomiting, (un-willing efforts to empty an already hollowed stomach), disease passing as through a spectrum of these bodily systems, modes. The last few days it turned into the upper part of the body, head and chest, which are now swollen with mobilization, inundative rescue efforts, wracked by sneezes and coughs. So chapped lips and nose, morning voices cut with sludge, and sinus headache. My trifling desire to shut out all light and sound.
This is not me falling prey, I (comedienne) assure my husband, who tends to view illness as weakness in surrender. This is a battle, this phlegmy mess is our mounted defense and a glorious victory in progress… And then (feeling very American) meekly apologizing for being a burden while thusly underway.
My mind has been so sluggish, especially after that weird mania of day three. The last thing I want now is to focus on the specific task of writing. Which requires razor edges and piercing sight, building by division and seeking subtler senses of coherence, not to mention, setting out the beggar’s bowl for inspiration. (And caffeine, now seven days without. Who even am I?) You never know what gift you’ll get. Reading, ok, I’ve done a lot of that, in a hazy stupor absorbing many terrible things. What else is new.
The whole Neil Gaiman situation is gross and fascinating, (the archived link, at six days old, is already obsolete?), with offshoots to and from nearly everything relevant, to me and my humble epic, an irresistible exemplar of subterfuge poetic manipulation. Or as (poor, dear) Tori put it, last year, a wolf disguised as sheep. How blessed we are to have our own contemporary Lysias. Good thing we’ve got horses, as those armies really kept perfectly still. It is not mine but my other favorite response so far is this one. (Is this guy an asshole? or just ornery? I don’t know these people, their whisper networks, and yet,) It brings a shiver to read such incisive commentary, or perhaps that’s just leftover fever.
I have some digesting to do, and further healing, before offering my thoughts on all that. Other than, to celebrate its coming out. A festival of purgation.
Then yesterday I was thinking, while coughing until the gag reflex came, (apologies but I guess I will add Montaigne to the inevitable list of influences around here, who really put no limits on the observations he would share), and why not? These sensations and this experience are no less expressions of something true than, well, a tree growing, or an approaching storm. The red rose blooming. Baudelaire’s “take” (“take” = “make”) on a rotting corpse. (The ever-unheeded warning that “anyone can do it”.) This too is experience and introspection is in theory possible, here as everywhere, in war as in peace, in decay as in life.
Perhaps it is a reliable cornerstone of interpretation for these modern horrors, as purgation. (Or as Americans call it these days, inauguration.) We have ceremonies too for calling out the demons, for coughing them up and spitting them out, the upending of bodily-function as vomit, (I despise and resist this feeling, to no avail), as banishment of the enemy one made of oneself. (Must we deal with it now, the nightmare of involuntary anal penetration? Dear God, what would Jesus do? With Christ’s remains interred in this necessary question.) Or what else is a virus? Embrace your closest intimate, the toilet bowl. Disease as ecstatic dance, revelling in the expulsive revelation of noxious bodily fluids!
I’d been thinking lately also, here is another possible referent of Morychos. A cthonic deity, local and obscure, the kind whose worship seems to have been ubiquitous in Ancient Greek “civilization”, as folk practice. These things rarely if ever made it into the written record. Modern historians had (imagine it) interpreted a whole society based only on its polite conversation. Ye noble Greeks. Here’s yet another way of cultivating a partial truth, by limiting your resources to official, state-sanctioned documents. Well history, which is human, will always be more akin to “the state”, than to “the true”. Disregard images on vases, atypical animals represented on temple reliefs, a coiling snake on the throne of Zeus. Which figure was the interloper? To which one did we sacrifice our children? This is not modern, not at all. It has ever been difficult for us to see through the deception of our ongoing efforts, “to groom”.
So I started reading (pre-flu) Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion by Jane Ellen Harrison, (a fascinating historical figure in her own right), the seminal academic text on stratification of divinity in the ancient world. Written word versus unrecorded ritual, text versus ceremonial relief, the one kind of god you like to talk about, the other that doesn’t bear mentioning. Indispensable reading for students of invisibility, (in whatever dialectical direction), a constant reminder that we are secrets kept from ourselves,
Of mystery as the shroud.
You will never understand anything unless you assume the unmentionable, subterranean. Dead bodies. That said, I’m not convinced I contain multitudes at all. This skin is too fragile, this spirit bloated, and this willing, quite broken. It seems more to me that they (or we, the multitudes) come spilling out, un-contained, as yellow bile. Seemingly seamless stories vibrate with fever of the undisclosed. We, who remain unread, unwritten will be known as forgotten prisoners of his, awaiting our climactic liberation.
This is the radical steadfastness of faith, as Furies. We do not look at the time.
The first lesson of the chariot is maybe not to put the chariot in front of the horses.
There is VERY IMPORTANT chicken news // that I’ve been trying to squeeze in “here” for a few days.
(Sometimes one lets the horses run.)
We were shocked to learn, Grace’s nine offspring aren’t nine roosters. They are four juvenile roosters and five juvenile hens. This feels something like a miracle! It’s a shift in household energy and a change in the meaning of things.
There will no longer be ten roosters crowing, at our house. (I am honestly relieved. However,
There still will be ten roosters crowing in beta.)
So it seems that we trusted some fake news a false prophecy. A family member had worked in a chicken factory, claimed expertise in identifying their sex, as chicks, and we believed him. It turns out, he was wrong. Pak and Bu S. came over for purnama and we gave them a tour of the “orchid hallway”, that is my husband’s work-in-progress, they played with the cats through the trellis, and commented how nice it was to have a family of chickens. Pak S. wrinkled his nose and said, “Mas, those aren’t all roosters”.
(A few had started growing horns and cockscombs, a few hadn’t yet. It turns out, they never will.)
We were all amazed. Us at the mistaken chicken sex, them at us being goofy. We all laughed. Me, at the serendipity. It was a comedy of errors, perhaps even a gender-(perception-/deception-/substance-)switching/sacrificing “As You Like It” moment. This is one of my favorite genres!
As a couple, we make these mostly harmless, and yet significant, mistakes, like the old tv land “Beverly Hillbillies”, or dreamy airheads, floating through farm life. Even my husband, who grew up in a village, and his parents kept chickens, never paid much attention to their lives, their parts and their wholes, how they work as families or breeding partners or rivals. (Side note. He does have chicken stories, however, one of which involves him, as a child, persuading younger children to eat chicken poop. To this day, he maintains that eating chicken poop was, at the time, a good thing to do.) (We live in such suspended realities.) So we did not know, what now we know. Because we are watching and learning, as they do their things, and watching and waiting to watch them some more.
This is not business. This is the school yard proper.
Things “here” are like that.
Sometimes a game and sometimes a miracle, not in the sense of divine intervention, but of the hanged man. We are fools who suffer the foolish reversal of folly, we receive reconciliation, we say, Alhamdulillah. (Allah is ever, over all things, an accountant. And rizq, there shall be many more eggs than we planned. Where shall they go?) Every error, forgiven, is a re-marriage, no less joyful for its lack of positivity.
We are (but) wholesome entertainment, after all.
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu 🌓
But, Lysias
Σωκράτης: καλῶς γάρ, ὦ ἑταῖρε, λέγει. ἀτὰρ Λυσίας ἦν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἐν ἄστει.
Socrates: Beautifully said, fellow. But Lysias was, as it seems, in town.
//
(“What even is Athens?” asked the blind, somewhat frustrated, woman.)
When I was twelve, I got thrown off a pony. Bocara, reddish-velvety-brown, with black mane and tail and an opinion of her own. Or something less accessible than opinion. So we were out for a ride one day, and she spooked when she noticed something “off” in the other field, man or machine, she didn’t like it. The instructor said, go. The third time around was the third time she bucked, and I was thrown, landing dirt-hard on back, face-full of sky, chest spasm for air. (Damn.)
That day. Writing this other post, which was about (what we do with) time, made me late for what was next (on our schedule). Now as I was on the way in Sweet Orange, who also is an incubator, a protectrix of time, at present of Duckworth time, (listening to DAMN., by Kendrick Lamar, to summon this artist from the other side, of the earth,) we stopped to pick up bricks, (exchanged looks with Sundanese brick-makers, but the bricks were “belum matang”), then re-entered the churning sprawl of I-cannot-tell-you-how-many pale riders on motorbikes. (Sweet Orange drives slow behind a couple, two probably fine fellows, and total nerds, out on holiday, who, having not made it, push theirs up the steep slope of a ravine. Frustration metamorphs into sympathy, inside Sweet Orange, for how many of us, one, has been caught under such circumstances, but without the solid-pack of traffic to witness. To whiteness. Laughing sympathy, but sympathy, nonetheless.)
There is a body, and there is a virus. No, back up. There is an island, and there is a world. There is an interaction between these two things, the city and the jungle, (a person and a blog), and I interpret it as, There is a body, and there is a virus, and there is a coordinated response, of the body, to the entry of the virus, and I call it, an immune response. The virus multiplies. The immune system, to defend the body’s living soul, which is mine, which is sacred, targets viral particles for elimination and expulsion. The immune response is the xenophobia.
(I am a stranger. Xenophobia is relevant to me.)
An immune response, whatever that is, and all of its analogues, would be one way to know or understand a moving thing, something coming and going, or something that’s born, and dies, as well as something that has a wall, with people going in and out, no matter how porous, and oh, yes, laws, written, unwritten, and weird, an immune response. Athens also might have an immune response, with, well, a soldier’s DNA., who would target the foreign element, (disguised-stranger emoji), they would be a sort of philosophical guard dog, barking at everything they don’t already know. (The hounds of hate? Or of jealousy?) But in addition, Socrates, who might as well be on a leash today, has been led outside the wall. (Is it you, ghost-of-Snowden-flake?) Whereas the virus is at another professor’s total party house, seducing of-age students with unlicensed garfield merchandise, and the lines of the battle, here, are somewhat unclear.
Who is the aggressor? What needs a defense? (I thought we’d grown tired of the city?) (Everyone agrees, by the way, that this is the most boring part of the dialogue. Like a plane, delayed on the runway, it must be endured, and quickly, to make the connection in Singapore.) But whichever direction is inward, and which outward, we are being steered into Lysias, like a T-cell with confirmed coordinates. Except for one thing, which is, the coordinates are… algebraic. (It’s a Boeing-built plane.) The virus isn’t here. Or, what was the virus, again? Man, or machine. A gadfly, round the bud that forks the corner of a dark-lashed eye.
I woud never blame her, beautiful, spirited Bocara. She is a genius and a horse is never wrong. The instructor was a jerk, “instructors” nearly always are, but let’s be honest, the instructor wasn’t wrong. (And I held the crop.) I was a fool, and a child, and I won’t blame myself. But sometimes, on a horse, you must be direct, and you must welcome judgment day with open arms. I did not. Like I said, I am messy. Wrong was done and a lesson had to be learned. It was one of those moments around which everything changes, or breaks, and I carried Bocara with me, after that.
Fun fact. “No feelings involved” is impossible with horses. You can’t remove yourself, it’s impossible. She follows you, she sticks with you, you carry her, you might hide her, or become her without knowing it, or you love her, and her things that she sees, her ghosts and her witness, her trumpets and her fire, and she appears before you, at night, in your secret life (crying, confused). Something was beautiful, then everything went wrong. She/he/they haunt you. Hidden in your heart, in your tunic, or in the iPhone that you carry in your pocket, until it’s m.A.A.d. as Compton to tell what is the virus, and where is home. Silly Phaedrus, with his concealed scroll, and his leopard-skin pill-box hat, thinks it’s not-a-thing to step outside a wall. But, look,
there’s a war going on. Of all against one, or one against all, or all against all, (based on gender pronouns and deity preference), or it’s one against one, and it follows you, the war, tapping its pocket. Like blood, or a bloodhound, it will track you down, and you will be there, again. Landing dirt-hard on back, sky-full of face, chest spasm for air, (like I can’t breathe. Look,) a caught body, again. Until you win the war. Which you cannot win, because you are a single soul, brave, clever, damned Duckworth, fleeing from, pursuing, (whereto and wherefrom), human nature itself. You are so many terrible, body-caught things. You are Socrates, in America, you are Phaedrus, out of (what even is) Athens(?). On an island all-but-destroyed by pale riders, (no feelings involved), you are red horse, and pale rider. You are, the war, so it rules you, the war. Unless
(I) just love (you) and (learn
how to put down the weapon.)
//
(About.)
Through it all, he promises to wait.
The storm has passed. He opens,
and she puts her face against the
fragile thing. Knowledge is there,
of the falling (apart), and the
passing away of something loved.
Skin palm sugar brown, limb narrow,
face is wonder-young, the scars
and creases deepening into
pools of brave obsidian,
and nothing else is worth a thought.
Hair, like mermaid horses riding,
silver-black and torn by wind
and wild waves, is soft. She cannot
breathe for hiding in it, wishing
most of all to go with it,
dissolving, holding, as to life,
to leaving. Every wanting cell
rehearses promise breaking.