We’ve been in our house for nearly eleven months, so we’ve seen almost a full season cycle here. The sun has moved around, once again peeking in windows to shine in corners that have been dark for a few months.
The family of five crows wintered nearby but were barely noticeable. They have suddenly become much more active in the last week or so, calling to each other in the mornings before dawn.
I may be seeing signs of spring, but two more feet of snow are forecast this week.
Ah ha! The mystery package arrived yesterday afternoon, two days early. I had managed, eventually, to work out what it probably was before it arrived, but I still had my doubts.
If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time.
—Russell Hoban, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz (1973)
Its some kynd of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. May be you dont take no noatis of it only some times. Say you get woak up suddn in the middl of the nite. 1 minim youre a sleap and the nex youre on your feet with a spear in your han. Wel it werent you put that spear in your han it wer that other thing whats looking out thru your eye hoals. It aint you nor it dont even know your name. Its in us lorn and loan and sheltering how it can.
They crave death, they crave sorrow. They fear the future, they fear the past, they fear time. A world that has already ended cannot change; a world that does not change cannot end. Their eternity is that of the flash. Statis, the instant, and eternity — they see these three as the same thing, and they see them as the ideal. Ideals. Ideas without bodies. They fear bodies and they crave living forever solely in ideas. They love ideas because they think ideas don’t change, and they fear bodies because bodies do nothing but change. The petulant glee in their actions. They are driven by a manic fear. They fear lines, they fear circles, and they especially fear spirals. To be starved for certainty but to never have it. To live with certainty always almost within reach but always just beyond your grasp.
Something just happened and, honestly, it’s taken me a few days for the reality of it to sink in. It’s of no consequence to almost anyone else, of course, but it’s rather a big deal to me.
Last week, I signed a contract with Unsolicited Press, which will be publishing my debut book of poetry.
More details soon, but first I need to attend to my chapbook, which will be coming out early next year.
You know that scene where Faye is mailing letters and she hears “That Thing You Do” on the radio and she and the bass player run down the street screaming like lunatics and then they all dance around Patterson’s appliance shop?