MHT to BWI (happy new year/suspended between years)

Medial spaces

Holidays are dark not light

BWI to MHT

At the Museum of American Art

Wandering the day. Canvas of blood, revelations shouted to the vaguely amused. Monuments to a god who tells his chosen to sculpt fat Jesus in limestone, to fashion a cathedral's interior from tin foil and gift scraps, and to keep this monument to divine election unfinished in a garage in Shaw. Art and religion, revelation's siblings, not even a distant cousin, but there we stand before.

suspended

Upended from the rhythm of a week, the space between holidays is food after feasting, travel after movement, a broken yearning for quiet.

december 25

hesperidium (for Vivienne)

Algerian orphan fruit

Are those clementines or clementina on your shelf? So orange like in Italy where they sell the leaves still on.

tough rinded, limonene oil

Where I buy them when I buy them sweet fruit at three euros not a pound but a kilo

or Canton Guangxi mandarin

At the supermarket on the hill where I do not shop, only two euros fifty for the same amount.

Christmas oranges

I bag them myself, with that juice that is bitter and the cheese your mom likes. The lady at the register doesn't speak English but she's efficient, the line moves

Father Clément Rodier in his garden, seeking for the children

and then I am home, but never at home when this world's not mine.

the unexpected, mercy of a desert place

Do you know that I always think of you, when I peel the clementinas, sweetness of a bitter life?

Did you know that Segni used to have a Jewish quarter (Via della Giudea, recognisable by the telltale horseshoe loop shape of a miniature ghetto)?

Coming back, coming back soon, but never close.

the future is a prospect yours not mine

I.
the future is a prospect yours not mine
whatever slope you'll clamber and not regard who's left
I'll watch you recede, and wonder at the day
you rose so quickly and without my fear
that the future was a prospect yours not mine

II.
A day with you as any other day
but you are not the you you were
Traces linger (Sprite with your dal) but
now you are past my shoulder
The future is a prospect yours not mine

III.
white mountains
each day for me and I think so few days
each day for you to clamber and recede
sometimes I think I'll lose you at the verge
you'll topple and I'll be here and I'll be here and
the future is a prospect yours not mine

snow day

A record fall of December white, called by the locals the Snowpocalypse. Holiday break, we have learned, has had an early start: no school now until January.

Today we took the Metro to the Air and Space Museum. Both kids wanted to ride the flight simulators; both hoped to glimpse Miss Alexis, a former teacher of theirs who works at the museum. The entrance we use for the Friendship Heights station requires deep elevator descent. The doors opened to reveal a station trimmed with tinsel and hung with Disney Christmas posters. The station manager gave K. and A. a small bag filled with cookies, a candy cane, and hot chocolate mix. "Can Jews take them?" I asked. She smiled (she had heard that one before) and said "I make these gifts for everyone."

So we spent the day throwing snowballs on the Mall, wandering a museum filled with jets and spaceships and the detritus of war, watching a planetarium show about black holes and the engulfment of space into time. The snow gave a day we will keep for all time.

The wailing escalator at Tenley

An entrance to the Metro at Tenley is carved beneath an apartment building that used to be a home improvement store. The moving steps groan against the constraint of metal sides. Tired, I sometimes think, of bringing commuters to their work or towards their homes, but never themselves arriving, a doom of perpetual circles.

And so from the darkness of the entrance comes the endless wail, complaint against drudgery. Or a sound of whales, submarinal or subterranean babble not meant for eavesdropping, but always heard. Each morning at 5:20 I run up Tenley's hill. I hear the reverberation through my headphones and wonder how those who dwell above do not sleep troubled dreams, so much metal kvetching.

This morning on the way to work I saw the man who gives free newspapers at the entrance to the Metro. He was dancing. He said the wailing was a rhythmn, and that we needed to be cheered by it.

a day like childhood

White and blue, slope and snow, sleds and forts, a day to keep.

snow was general all over Washington

The view from the bedroom of the Six Month House, a record December snowfall of 14" or so piled on trees, houses, car. A calm holds Wisconsin Avenue, barely visible beyond the back of the bank.

change

I emptied my seventh floor office of its books and folders and notebooks today. Also moved are the many tchockes I've gained over the years, the small gifts like antelopes and boomerangs and dishes with the queen's head that colleagues have given me when they traveled.

the house is not strong

The house is not strong but we are propping its walls with bits of red steel. The foundation is moving but we are piling rocks. Water enters so seals and pumps array. The house is not strong and as all in the world the pieces move away. The cracks are there to be seen. We are patching and soldering and wanting some years before the house is not strong and moves into cracks again.

gifts

Tis the season. From a friend: a gingerbread blemmyae, or acephalic gingerman.

To think that the future of the Plinian races should be as baked goods.

the dance

No matter how hard you try, no matter what festive frock or attractive chapeau you don, the dance just won't allow you your entrance, or moves on and leaves you behind.

Steps that do not lead, doors with drops

A house that Katherine spotted near the Six Month House, herald of indefinite futures, places not to be reached and movements towards wicked surprise.

dogs from kabul

Our neighbor's dogs bark and bark, sometimes in the window (movement on the sidewalk, and they throw themselves at windows, with happiness or something else), sometimes in the yard (someone at the trash, or a squirrel, or the sun is high and the day is brisk). Are they thinking of their other life, war and wandered streets? Who transports such dogs, who saves them from a city where people need saving? Are they barking at the smallness of the new world, at the great age of their keepers, at the orientation of the sun? Do they remember better days? A flight on a plane? Could they have wanted the life into which they were flown?

The end

See the post here.

Hanukkah O Hanukkah

[window of the Six Month House]

First candles tonight. The miracle will not involve oil this year, but -- should it happen -- my getting home by sunset and wrapping a buttload of crazy small gifts. Favorites: a frog holograph generator, a Cat-a-pult that flings small fake felines, and a collection of multilingual document clips (all variations of the English word "crap").

dogs in salerno

(a chain of remembrance)
1.
Morning run and a dog not controlled, white sound from its teeth. I cross the street but the walker has no management, he is pulled, the dog nears, leash taut.

2.
Alien city and a language I can almost grasp, though words of sense elude. These are the days before running, so I walk the promenade, cement healing of a war wound. The sun is yellow on the Mediterranean. Up a hill then and into the sleeping city. I am thinking of an evening when a choir's practice made a warm night glint. Lost in remembrance of voices, then dogs appear. The streets are vacant, just these strays and me. At a distance, always at a distance, but they are eying, and keeping pace.

3.
I have few memories of the child I was. A gift of a scooter, or the photograph recording that gift. Nightmares of giants wrought from stone. A day with an ambulance. And subtending fear, as in the morning a wandering dog noticed a wandering child, and the child ran for the door and found the door locked. Of all the stupid barricades he used a plastic pool, and the dog hurled itself, and hurled itself.

novel author

I.
Sometimes I think of him as me, the me I would have been had I been as smart as I desired, had I possessed the eloquence that escapes me, were my memory not deficient, had I succumbed to a desire to live in solitude, roam inner worlds. I tried to say hello at the supermarket (I had latkes, blueberries and applesauce in a basket, he had chicken and cheese and milk in a carriage). I wanted to tell him I am here, hello, but he ran me down with a casual excuse me.

I didn't register. I'm not the him he might have been. I am buying food for a family dinner. He is writing novels while in a space he does not dwell.

II.
Sometimes my archivizing bends the world. It is possible the author was composing a vignette. He told me once that he pieced together a novel while at Safeway. But maybe he was hungry to eat his chicken, and maybe he isn't fodder for metaphor, and maybe my life expands too much when it includes him as a character, to be surprised without reciprocity.

celestial eye

אל
Morning drive, and a swirl of clouds has become ocular. The sun is smearing their bottoms pink.

The empty circle that is their middle hovers over National Cathedral. I smile because God is angry, or vamping for photography. I might pull to the side, record some livid beauty, this rose of blood. I don't. I don't, because I don't want what the cumulus fluff wants of me.

Past Micah. No thought of it, nothing of adonai or elohim, nothing until I write.

Wisconsin to Massachusetts, eye always on the eye. A minaret looms, the Islamic Center and my turn to Rock Creek, hematic sky gone orange. A postcard, I think, from Allah to Switzerland, a raised middle finger against banning of majesty.

Orange to pale to ordinary, a morning like every other morning. Thirty-seven degrees and a man is washing his clothes in a creek cold with melted snow. When I turn onto Virginia the eye is nearly gone, distant tatters obscured by a monument.

day at home (not snug)

rise shower dog breakfast dishes lunches kids to school email blog email apple walk to hardware store caulk the bathtub email laundry tea report lunch email dog walk to grocery email broken iPod restore calculate proposal impact Alex and Wendy home Hebrew tutor to arrive off to get Katherine email dinner ...

The elation that the snow causes is nearly as beautiful as the falling snow

goyische festivating

My failures of seriousness are so profound, so chronic, that a post like yesterday's surprises me.

Today's archival photograph: the GW English Department office, festivated. We use this peculiar verb annually to announce the successful deployment of the materials we keep in a box marked 'festivating apparatus.' The theme of such festivation is typically "decorating to annoy": we dangle colorful ornaments at precisely the height at which people are most likely to walk into them, turning the office into a labyrinth that must be negotiated with a fair amount of agility. Admittedly, many who pass through swat at the ornaments, cat-like, to move them from their path. Since these colorful globes invariably swing back and hit them, the office staff watch a perpetually unfolding comedic show. Isn't that what the season is about?

Many of the decorations are silver and deep blue. White and blue are the colors of Israel flag, and I believe this accounts for why so many Hanukkah decorations appear in these shades. A menorah (actually a chanukkiah) or two can also be found scattered among the baubles. But Hanukkah is not an important holiday, in the end; it has been magnified to compete with the one that features indoor trees, a discotheque of lights, wreaths, stockings, gifts. And that list only goes to show how many other traditions have been absorbed into December 25.

Still there are some who are displeased with our festivating. For some we seem to be mocking what ought to be taken seriously; for others we've succumbed to goyische celebrations. No matter what, though, this year is likely the last in which the office will be transformed for a few weeks. The next chair does not like decorations of any sort.

shabbat shalom

This bar mitzvah year, we spend more time at Temple Micah than we ever did in the past. Tonight we coordinated and then set up the oneg, the small meal we eat as a community before kabbalat shabbat (welcoming the sabbath). Wendy is in California, so the arranging of the plates and cheese and hummus and fruit belonged to me and Katherine and Alex. A few other families assisted. By the end of the evening Katherine had smeared cheese on my shoe and cupcake icing on my suitcoat: minimal staining, for once.

All those adonais. A part of me is irremediably uncomfortable with prayer. Even the word prayer, a human impulse that I do not understand -- even when it is not petition, even when it asks for nothing, even when it is ritual without request. Without belief in god or gods or in a way much of anything at all, what am I doing in a synagogue? A part of me, though, feels even worse, because there are times when I, born with a lack of spirituality, feel myself at home in the place.

last of the litany of lasts

My last faculty meeting as department chair.

Today's was supposed to be the one where a semester's erratic behavior would make them happy to be rid of me. After the mood swings, the sudden amendments of the schedule, the mandatory Saturday powwows, the shuffle of offices: after all these disruptions of the semester's arc they were supposed to drive me out with pitchforks, or at least sharpened pens. But now we're at grading, end of courses, finished business.

This last term was too full to practice antics. Instead I will conclude without concluding. I will not mention at the meeting that it is the last. We'll carry on as the world carries on, indifferent to something momentous only to me.

day of broken things

Today I reign over broken things: the unraveled strand that pings from my daughter's bookbag, sorrow of scattered beads; my car key, its inside gone missing, lost to a leafpile during the walking of the dog. Everything breaks, small shatterings, little signs yearning to portend.

Catastrophe.

Each day I reign over broken things: families that unravel, and leave their members pieced; friends who depart on airplanes, hoping to mend what a telephone broke; a gunshot; a cleaning spree; the end of an impossible sojourn to a foreign land. All these pull and pull apart.

Yet the scattering of the beads is more hopeful than it wills itself to be. Something in its chunky plastic, something of its desire to hang once more on a running bookbag, something about the beauty of its little morning tragedy moves on.

this the verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

Waiting for As You Like It. Alex beside me, slumped.

They may not mean to, but they do.

He reads his book (the undead are fighting somewhere), I read mine.

They fill you with the faults they had

I show him a poem in my open book

And add some extra, just for you.

And he laughs at fuck in poetry.

But they were fucked up in their turn 

But then I apologize

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

And tell him that I have lived around my faults

Who half the time were soppy-stern

Parental gifts, that hounded me when young,

And half at one another’s throats.

And keep them in a circle, middled,

Man hands on misery to man.

So as not to pass them along.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Have they deepened like a coastal shelf?

Get out as early as you can, 

Beneath the waters, all the same?

And don’t have any kids yourself.

Have I loosed them from myself? Or dumbly passed them on again?