Wednesday, March 2, 2005

The other night I dreamed I owned a third car. The dream car, one I'd forgotten about, was still at the mechanics', its repairs unpaid for. And so I went there and bailed it out and brought it home; they hadn't fixed the brakes, though, and I couldn't make it stop.

It was an enormous black Checker, like a cave on wheels. A man we lived with years ago, 1977 to '82, had owned just such a Checker. Bought it in Iowa and drove it west to California to move in with us. He was a large man, a great blond Scandinavian not many years off the farm--6 foot 5-1/2 inches tall, 280 pounds--and only a car that size could contain him comfortably. At our landlord's insistence, he used to park it in front of our neighbors' house. They were an elderly couple, and one day the old man came raving out the door at us as we were parking there: had we no consideration? did we not think about how it must feel for someone his age to look out at a car of death parked in front of his house every day?

Last night I dreamed of my friend DP--how he drove here and was so unhappy--and this morning I awoke with "Spirit in the Sky" playing in my head, not the Norman Greenbaum version, but a newer one by the Blind Boys of Alabama. Over and over. Could be worse. I don't mind it. They treat the song very well.

* * * * * *

Greta did her best to rouse me from sleep this morning, perching by turns (as I turned to escape her) on my belly, hip, and back, kneading and purring for all she was worth, and finally resorting to extreme measures--one paw grasping at my nose, claws partially out, as if to pull me upright without actually hurting me. But I wasn't to be evicted from Dreamland so easily and I stayed under blankets until 8 o'clock!--horrors! slug!--and when I finally did sit up I found that--horrors! again!--last night's soft spring rain had become this morning's soft four inches of snow, and still, now, at 9 a.m., it falls steadily from a flat white sky, and no end in sight. I am relieved I chose to put the gas money in the 4WD pickup yesterday. But what a blessing, really. If it will do this all month, we will have water all year.

* * * * * *

I've been reading Jane Kenyon essays before bed, and Louise Gluck poems, and Agnes Martin--Writings/Schriften--so I'm steeped in femaleness, and a vast spectrum of its expression. I find little I want to quote in Jane. These are so far homely, localized essays. But the rhythm of her prose is contagious, and her sweetness and volubility, and I find myself every night after reading her compulsively adding paragraphs to a broad-ranging essay of my own, on love.

The Gluck poems are not brilliant, so far. But the anguish and passion she expresses here align closely with mine, sort of spectacularly, and from time to time her words catch fire in my mind:

...And I remember my mother turning away from me
in great anger. Or perhaps it was grief.
Because for all she had given me,
for all her love, I failed to show gratitude.
And I made no sign of understanding.

For which I was never forgiven. ("Timor Mortis")

Finally, the Agnes Martin, as severe and disciplined an artist as can be imagined. I bought this beautiful volume at the behest of Mark Boyd at small ponderings, and I am so pleased with it. (I find the image now at Amazon, but this paperback apparently costs $85 now! How did I get mine a month ago for $16??) The pages of my copy bristle with yellow Post-it notes; Agnes is brilliant. Here is a good chunk from the middle to give you some idea:

The Dragon really pounds through the inner streets shaking everything and breathing fire. The fire of his breath destroys and disintegrates everything. The Dragon is undiscriminating and leaves absolutely nothing in his wake.

The solitary person is in great danger from the Dragon because without an outside enemy the Dragon turns on the self. In fact, self-destructiveness is the first of human weaknesses. When we know all the ways we can be self-destructive that will be very valuable knowledge indeed.

The terrible thing is that we are not just the Dragon but the victim even when he is destroying someone else, and our suffering is according to just how destructive he feels. So we cannot afford to have one moment of antagonism about anything.

I hope that it is quite plain that I am not moralizing, but simply describing some of the states of mind that are a hazard in solitude.

...

We cannot and do not slay the Dragon, that is a medieval idea, I guess. We have to become completely familiar with him and hope that he sleeps. The way things are most of the time, is that he is awake and we are asleep. What we hope is the opposite.

I have known some very young artists who are familiar with the Dragon and know many of his ways. They also recognize fear and are independent of judgment. They recognize themselves as mere shadows in reality. They like to be alone and seem to have had plenty of practice of being alone since early childhood. All that is a tremendous head start in art work and these artists are correctly recognized as geniuses.

We all get there someday however and do the work that we are supposed to do. Of all the pitfalls in our paths and the tremendous delays and wanderings off the track I want to say that they are not what they seem to be. I want to say that all that seems like fantastic mistakes are not mistakes, all that seems like error is not error; and it all has to be done. That which seems like a false step is the next step.

* * * * * *

Sometimes I find I want to write a poem about something. About x. I have a list, in fact, of topics I'd like to write poems about. For example, recently I wanted to write about wild fennel--about the vacant lot alongside my childhood home in Culver City (Southern California) that abutted the concrete gouge through the city called the Los Angeles River. At first this lot was a sea of wild mustard, yellow flowers and damp tender stems crowded into a tight mass in the little triangle of undeveloped property. But later fennel came there to live. It made great sticky structures, tall clumps, that smelled of licorice, and I would climb inside them as if they were Narnian wardrobes and sit very still and the foliage would draw itself close around me, would embrace me, the sweetness of that, and I never knew then what plant that was, what name it had. But this poem won't be written, as with the others on my list of topics. That is, they can be poemized, poorly, from the outside. But any satisfying poem grows from the inside out, and you can't stop it, and the words go down and you say, Oh, look, there's fennel in the poem. I'd forgotten.


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