This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art.
I like a barber shop. It’s one of those places where things make sense, where there’s no subterfuge or duplicity. Guys are getting their hair cut; besides some conversation to pass the time, that’s all that’s going on. No one tries to sell you something you didn’t come in for, nothing you didn’t know you needed. The arrangements may involve subjectivity, but when you’ve been getting the same haircut for so many years, there’s zero temptation to be impulsive anymore.
When I finished college in 1986, I wandered the wasteland of hair salons for 5 years. Then my brother recommended this place in 1991. Since then, every haircut I’ve gotten has been in this simple but perfect barber shop; except one, because I needed a haircut when I was traveling. Best guess, about 150 haircuts in 27 years, all in the same chair. And 3 generations of the same family have been my barbers there.
In a world rushing headlong into an inscrutable maelstrom of change, I cherish continuity, simplicity, and the extraordinary gift of someone who knows what you like and appreciates a joke. I double dog dare you to name a better place to find that than a barber shop.
I am reminded tonight, adrift as I am again in the horse latitudes of creative inertia, of a line from the writer Anne Lamott.
“Ah! Stuck in the shit! And it’s your fault, you did this…”
Believe me I’m deeply motivated to blame others for the reality that I’m creating nothing out of nothing. Jean-Paul Sartre said “hell is other people” because the judgments of society are always in our minds, so we are never free. Even now as I type this, all alone in my condo — with no impressions of the outside world but the gentle exhalations of the freeway and the whisper of the sprinklers coming on — I am not free.
You are going to judge me, aren’t you? People who know me and people who don’t are going to read this and make calculations, draw conclusions, read between the lines, assume and presume to understand. And brains will have reactions. So you have a claim on my freedom from the future, as I have a claim on your attention from the past.
That is a weird concept: You’re in my head, for better or worse, and I’m in yours. And it seems to be a kind of magic. But if we’re not careful, it’s more disillusion than illusion, less trick than trial.
Sadly, that is the Grand Illusion, that we have the capacity to know each other, or even to know ourselves. Nevertheless, that is the poet’s job: to look out at the world and explore and illuminate moments subjectively, with the self as primary subject.
It’s late – the mind drifts. I leave you with a few ponderables from my Commonplace Book, perhaps to be parsed furtively in a future post, if God wills it:
“No matter how piercing and appalling his insights, the desolation
creeping over his outer world, the lurid lights and shadows of his inner
world, the writer must live with hope, work in faith.”
— J.B. Priestley
“Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.”
— Sartre
“In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.”
— John Steinbeck
“No one deserves to know the real you. Let them criticize who they think you are.”
— Unknown
Up with life. Stamp out all small and large indignities. Leave everyone alone to make it without pressure. Down with hurting. Lower the standard of living. Do without plastics. Smash the servo-mechanisms. Stop grabbing. Snuff the breeze and hug the kids. Love all love. Hate all hate.
– John D. MacDonald
novelist
1916-1986
In the forest you belong to the trees
and the trees will behold you
as you come and go.
In the desert you belong to the rocks,
the hard earth, and the sun.
The shadows in the long valley
have shadows and the lights
from the houses reflect
from the asphalt if it rains.
I don’t know which element
we belong to here.
Is it the ocean, or the mountains,
or the broad curves of sand?
To which do we retire when it’s time?
Now there is only the celebrating sky
or the dull overcast of coastal air.
No help for the soul to find its way.
I think that we will have to wait and see.
Another in what seems to be a series of poems exploring the concept of place as spiritual corollary. I think it’s interesting that over the years I’ve repeatedly postulated that the place where I live, though beautiful, is less intrinsically spiritual than other places I’ve been. That has to be because I’m used to living here, that I don’t see what I want to find here, beyond the visual. There must be a reason why a vision quest traditionally involves going out, away from the place where the spiritual seeker lives. A vision quest in my own hometown isn’t easy.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
Creative Commons Licensed
I begin to write: the little dog
is sleeping by the door, breathing
the sour dampness of the yard,
her paws moving slightly, dreaming
of rabbits and the taste of grass….
I have come to know this pen,
the weight of it, the point
which must be turned just so.
The cheap gold pitted
by the sweat of my hands.
My pen is hard and cold;
with it, I can write only words.
Your voice and even least
amazing smile are lost
to the physics of thought.
The ink I use is black.
I used all the blue for failing at love.
I thought love was soft color,
carousel horses and a rainy day.
But maybe it’s arc light and violence,
a tiger and a spray of blood.
So I was wrong, and this old
pen is useless, dead
without the rhythm of your step
and the flight of your hands.
But now it’s all I have, because
the dog has drifted off to sleep.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
Creative Commons Licensed
Note: This is an older poem. It’s been published in print before. But I wanted to share a link and couldn’t find where I had posted it on this blog before. Weird.
If I had only film for one picture
I would hand the camera
to a stranger passing by
and have them point it back at us.
I don’t want to be left out.
Get us all with the sun
on our faces as it sets
and the sky behind us darkening blue.
Don’t miss anyone, not even
the beloved dead,
captured as a shimmer among the roses.
Not even the lost and unborn,
whose story is twilight
and the streetlights coming on.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
Creative Commons Licensed
I found a list of daily journaling prompts online and the one for yesterday was “you have film for one picture.” I’ve also been thinking about the word shimmer. It’s a good word. So I’m working on a poem inspired by that idea and that word. Maybe it’s a poem; it’s something that wasn’t there before.
Here’s a quote for your day:
“There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don’t expect you to save the world I do think it’s not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary and remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect.”
— Nikki Giovanni
I’ll re-share a flash fiction piece from 2014 today. I’m working on something with a similar theme.
“We grew old. We sat in the shade outside and let the bushes go wild. I would doze in the afternoon and hear the falling oranges.”
The poets are all growing younger
than me, awake as holy light
descends in a gray morning.
The ring neck dove stands
on the peak of the house
and calls for a mate. The sun climbs
and I sleep on, and the black dog
watches over everyone.
Another day of fishing boats
that pass unseen in a dull fog.
The young poets have been up
all night, traveling from light to light.
The gloom of May and the rains
that brought us fear bring new grass
to the hills. I will not be afraid
of storms anymore, or of hatred,
which is nothing. Nor am I afraid
of ghosts. I need someone to
remember with or the memory
is lost. We talk about twilight
in vineyards, and the odor of grapes.
The children are in school today.
I hope they will learn geometries
of love beyond three dimensions;
learn that someday they will live
and talk with ghosts; that pain
can be endured for a moment
or a cause; that change is a promise
that the world never breaks;
that old people never hurry the clock,
even when summer is coming
with a thrum of bees.
J. Kyle Kimberlin
Creative Commons Licensed
I just heard this very good poem on a podcast. This poet is digging, very effectively, into his Portland OR neighborhood.
Metaphor 