Later, will I hear reports on the evening news of a million human beings in their offices and cubicles afflicted with seemingly out-of-context desires ... suffering from spontaneous longings for the caress of blossom-scented winds ... suddenly struck by an ungovernable need to emerge unto city streets and genuflect before the spindling glory of these seditious flowers?
So, in short, the ministrations of the mimosa convinced me to keep on living. But I had little appetite for the endeavor.
The meals prepared from this harvest of junk turned my stomach. I clamped my teeth tight against it. I kept searching for hope's greenhouse -- where blooms of human understanding open and breathe -- but I kept wandering into the empire's slaughtering barn.
I began to mutter, "awful."
"Awful. Awful. Awful."
Then I chanted it aloud, "Awful. Awful. Awful."
Then and there, I decided I would make "awful" my morning and evening prayer.
"He's awful, She's awful -- This food is awful -- The news is awful -- Our leaders are awful. You awful people have created such an awful mess by living out the awful implications of your awful lives that all mirrors should be renamed awful frames.
I ask you, Rilke: What awful angels swim through the poisoned sky?
Anticipating the question, Rilke, a century prior, answered:
" I don't have much knowledge yet in grief --
so this massive darkness makes me small.
You be the master: make yourself fierce, break in:
then your great transforming will happen to me,
and my great grief cry will happen to you."
So I riffed on it and rasp it, snarled it and sobbed it, whispered it to myself and posited it in public places. I warbled it and choked on it, laughed about it and wept over it.
I returned home laughing and sobbing. I could no longer keep the floodgates closed: The things of the world, massive and minuscule, tragic and preposterous, came coursing into my consciousness: giant squids and chihuahuas arrived, death camps and Dollywood arose, diamonds and Skiddles were proffered, world-destroying comets and blue snow cones hurdled through deep space, while killing sprees and hand jobs, inspired exchanges and insipid palaver, grace and goofiness transpired on earth as always.
My wife found me in this state, both yearning and mortified, hungry and queasy, desperate for solitude and yet longing to be touched.
She reached for me as the two fronts within me met, merging the moist breeze of the tropics and the cold wind of the Arctic ... creating pelting hail and huge, warm raindrops ... engendering weeping and caressing -- as inundating sorrow mingled with torrents of desire.
So, in short, the ministrations of the mimosa convinced me to keep on living. But I had little appetite for the endeavor.
The meals prepared from this harvest of junk turned my stomach. I clamped my teeth tight against it. I kept searching for hope's greenhouse -- where blooms of human understanding open and breathe -- but I kept wandering into the empire's slaughtering barn.
I began to mutter, "awful."
Then I chanted it aloud, "Awful. Awful. Awful."
Then and there, I decided I would make "awful" my morning and evening prayer.
"He's awful, She's awful -- This food is awful -- The news is awful -- Our leaders are awful. You awful people have created such an awful mess by living out the awful implications of your awful lives that all mirrors should be renamed awful frames.
I ask you, Rilke: What awful angels swim through the poisoned sky?
Anticipating the question, Rilke, a century prior, answered:
" I don't have much knowledge yet in grief --
so this massive darkness makes me small.
You be the master: make yourself fierce, break in:
then your great transforming will happen to me,
and my great grief cry will happen to you."
So I riffed on it and rasp it, snarled it and sobbed it, whispered it to myself and posited it in public places. I warbled it and choked on it, laughed about it and wept over it.
I returned home laughing and sobbing. I could no longer keep the floodgates closed: The things of the world, massive and minuscule, tragic and preposterous, came coursing into my consciousness: giant squids and chihuahuas arrived, death camps and Dollywood arose, diamonds and Skiddles were proffered, world-destroying comets and blue snow cones hurdled through deep space, while killing sprees and hand jobs, inspired exchanges and insipid palaver, grace and goofiness transpired on earth as always.
My wife found me in this state, both yearning and mortified, hungry and queasy, desperate for solitude and yet longing to be touched.
She reached for me as the two fronts within me met, merging the moist breeze of the tropics and the cold wind of the Arctic ... creating pelting hail and huge, warm raindrops ... engendering weeping and caressing -- as inundating sorrow mingled with torrents of desire.
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