That Was the Year

That was the winter I went around making false graves. I would tie sticks together into crosses with twine and plant them in the earth in the middle of a forest where few would pass. I was often on all fours clearing snow and leaves with my hands, which were like paws in my big gloves. The gloves were ancient. They were so ancient, they remembered you.  Or I would erect little cairns with white stones. Once, I made a memorial cross using an old bear trap I had found. Such a horrible mouth to think of there in the darkness. In the night. Often, I wrote first names on these monuments, Christian names mostly, but sometimes I chose names that used symbols from other alphabets or languages that are ideograms. Google would help me make the graves. Sometimes I used the names of characters from novels who had meant something to me. I laid these beloved characters in the earth, on which they had never truly lived. For instance, I made a grave for Bartleby. Sometimes I would want the people who would stumble upon one of these hallucinations to think it was an animal's grave rather than a human's. Or I would want them not to be sure. Many names have this ambiguity. The important thing is the feeling the person would have and how the grave might change the person for an instant or longer. I don't think these made people afraid, although it probably did make them wonder. And fear is leaven, anyway. This had nothing to do with art and everything to do with being a person. This is, I suppose, a failing. The thing I didn't want to tell you is that you have to actually dig a grave for this to be convincing. Even if there is no one, no animal, no human within it. But this is good exercise. My blood pressure came down that year.


--after a photograph by Walter Stoltz

If

If the shadows of trees are upon me, if the shadows of the leaves of trees and the shadows of the needles of conifers are dappling my face, the shadows of humans are probably not upon my face. If this condition is true, there is probably less, possibly nothing, to explain. But the thought occurs to me that there is nothing to explain. And I have just put this thought down in words like green leaves in shadow. Why does the thought occur to me? To exonerate myself?  It is a parasite like a caterpillar. The trees themselves do not care for solitude. After all, they are all together. But we believe it is solitude. Probably they are communicating, possibly they even comment on my passing through their shadows. They look down on me in the literal sense. Possibly they do in the other sense too. But I don't worry about it, since they are sworn to their green silence. They talk when the wind picks up, they sound disturbed, but possibly this is an erotic moment for them. Though they lose the most leaves then, in wind, you always lose something in erotic moments, don't you? That's largely the point. Now I feel I have intruded into their secret lives, even if only at the level of speculation. Speculation is an intrusion. I look up and shadows pour down on my face. It is the money shot of darkness. It is cool and smells like nothing. Shadows are the money of the forest. Shadows are the money of trees. I come here to steal and pretend I do not steal.




---after a photograph by Marta Bevacqua

Maybe

Maybe you are strong and already know your way. But I have put these magic gloves on the street for you to find. Just in case. They are not mine. Actually, they are not "gloves." They are mittens. They are a child's mittens. I figure you will find them since you are a creature of wandering. Although this is an empty street with no houses and only trees are watching here. The symmetrical spiderweb patterns with the eyes on them is for you to appreciate the starkness of such childish beauty. Childish beauty, like what quantum mechanics is doing down under the day. All day today.  Didn't you fall in love in childish beauty, with it all your life?  I have placed them, the foundlings, as they would appear in the "natural world," i.e. left on the left, right at right. Although the universe has other symmetries. They are not to keep you warm, but they might. It is bald winter, after all. You may have to stretch them to fit your hands. As you are not a child, except in matters of total darkness. You are totally dark. So you stumble towards a woman's body. Another one then. In a closet you take her. The women's bodies are as illuminated, lit up, x-rayed. They have dark grammar. You should pick up the mittens. The gloves. Call them gloves if you must. You are on your way there. To the place where there are no children. Where the closets are no longer filled with women facing into darkness, but actual brooms and true darkness.


--after a photograph by Atsushi Ito