I read a poem today by Jack Gilbert, and I’ll include it here, right now, first of all:

Measuring the Tyger

Barrels of chains. Sides of beef stacked in vans.
Water buffalo dragging logs of teak in the river mud
outside Mandalay. Pantocrator in the Byzantium dome.
The mammoth overhead crane bringing slabs of steel
through the dingy light and roar to the giant shear
that cuts the adamantine three-quarter-inch plates
and they flop down. The weight of the mind fractures
the girders and piers of the spirit, spilling out
the heart’s melt. Incandescent ingots big as cars
trundling out of titanic mills, red slag scaling off
the brighter metal in the dark. The Monongahela River
below, night’s sheen on its belly. Silence except
for the machinery clanging deeper in us. You will
love again, people say. Give it time. Me with time
running out. Day after day of the everyday.
What they call real life, made of eighth-inch gauge.
Newness strutting around as if it were significant.
Irony, neatness and rhyme pretending to be poetry.
I want to go back to that time after Michiko’s death
when I cried every day among the trees. To the real.
To the magnitude of pain, of being that much alive.

Out with the New

I realize how full of shit I am, first and foremost. I love this poem, I love the line, “Newness strutting around as if it were significant.” And I’m writing about this on the fucking internet. I mean, I can cry, complain, I can shake my fist at all of this new stuff. And I do.

But that doesn’t mean that my cell phone isn’t always within a hand’s reach. And I do like using the internet. I google things. I’ve learned a lot from YouTube.

But today, I’ve spent four hours inside. Writing. Making my cappuccino. Listening to my Jazz station (via an app on my cell phone and speaker). I took the trash out, and felt alive. I knew I should go for a walk. But maybe later.

Maybe later

My eyes. My eyes are forgetting to adjust to things farther than 6-20 feet.

All of it. All of it is bullshit. Maybe I’ll go and live in a tree somewhere.

Out with the Old

I like heaters. I like the “technical” dry-fit whatever in the hell they are leggings I’m wearing that keep me warm. I like my glasses, I like disposable contacts. I like driving.

I like walking. I like taking off my glasses, my contacts, fully submitting to my astigmatism. Hoping that my big optic nerves aren’t signs of glaucoma. Hoping it is just me, just my genes. Like my episodic heart.

I like my pacemaker.

I like dark, dark skies. The skies in Northern Arizona. In Sedona.

I like looking at the pictures of the stars from the James Webb Telescope.

Spiraling

This post is too navel-gazey, and if I were you, I’d never read it.

The Weight of the Mind

As Gilbert wrote: “The weight of the mind fractures // the girders and piers of the spirit, spilling out // the heart’s melt.”

Maybe that’s the key here. The weight of the mind. What is the weight of our minds, anyway? I realized a few days ago that perhaps our “Spirits” are only the synapses in our brains. That we need to be alive in order to have any kind of spirituality. And when we die, when we stop having those beautiful electrical impulses, as intricate as the galaxies, then our spirits stop.

It’s nice to imagine a ghost. Hovering. Hanging out around us. We feel them, right? Like, when my brother died, I felt his spirit, and I felt the spirit of all of my grandparents, and others who had died. And I knew he was with them, and he was okay.

I can still imagine him now. I can see him as a three year old, refusing to go potty anywhere other than in the the little potty that we put into the minivan.

I’m still there, on Netherwood Drive, walking into the house, when he announced that he’d name the doll my stepmom bought him (in preparation for the baby on the way), “I’ll name the baby, Baby Horny.” As a 17 year old, I thought it was the most hilarious thing I’d ever heard. All of my friends at the time agreed. He said it, then honked the bicycle horn he was looking at when he’d had that stroke of genius.

When he passed away, I told that story to all of the people, over 700, at the funeral. He was only 18. No one there had heard the story, and all of his friends thought it was hilarious, just like I did when I was their age. I know he was laughing, too. Because…it was funny.

But, like. That’s the thing. He’s in my mind. His soul is in my mind. It’s my own grey matter, white matter, lighting up. And that knowledge. It’s all because of those steel mills, the forging, the printing presses, the microchips.

I like it when my spirit spills out. When my heart melts. I don’t mind the mind fracturing everything that felt iron-clad.

Why Go Back to Pain?

Gilbert wanted to go back to the time after Michiko’s death. Not before. He wanted to cry every day among the trees. To the real.

I get it. That’s why I liked getting a tattoo so much: it hurt. That pain gave everything that had led up to the moment some kind of meaning for me.

Measuring the Tyger

I’m going to assume that Gilbert was alluding to Blake. (Why the hell wouldn’t I. He was constantly making references. I imagine if he would have been into movies, then he’d have the perfect movie quote for any every moment.) Blake asks, “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”

I’m not a poser. I’m dual. Polar. I’m not talking about mental illness. I’m talking about polarity. Duality. No. It’s more than that. I’m not simply an x-axis/y-axis type of being. I’m nonlinear. complex. We all are.

And maybe we’re just part of something bigger than we realize. This thing—this evolution. What will we be next? Would it have been better if Homo erectus could have won out over Homo sapiens? Doesn’t matter. Because, well. Because here we are.

The answer, I guess, is yes. He who made the lamb made us. Far more menacing than Tygers. Here were are.