the poetrysheet
whimsy, subversion, bowling
Number 504, June 7, 2004
Rami Saari (1963- )
“Let me be the first to admit that the naked truth about me
is to the naked truth about Salvador Dali as an old ukulele in the attic is to
a piano in a tree, and I mean a piano with breasts.”
—James
Thurber, “The secret life of James Thurber” in The Thurber Carnival
Getting started
It’s one of those days, and that is every one of the
days a writer lives. Not that being a writer is a horrible thing. It’s not.
It’s wonderful. But it’s wonderful in the way an addict finds him or herself as
they open their eyes:
What happens next?
Of course, what happens is exactly what’s happened
every day since writing began. It’s time to write, much in the same way an
addict knows it’s time to get up and do the things one has to do to shoot drugs
or smoke crack or drink booze. A regimen, finely tuned, honed over weeks and
months, takes over.
Feet on the floor. That’s first. After that, it’s a
melancholy march that includes, among other things, the newspaper, walking the
dogs, fixing this thing or that, turning on the television two or three times
(only to find nothing on, or, if there is something of interest, feeling guilty
about watching it), and eating between every step.
When, finally, the writer can find nothing else to
stand in the way, he sits down to what he knows he has to do. This is akin to
the heroin addict opening his or her kit. There’s a certain ceremony. First the
preparation—the readying of the materials and the solemnity of the process.
Only, instead of drugs, the writer has to get into
the mind of disappearance. He or she has to disappear into this space that no one
can know, and which he or she cannot describe.
In this space, which solely exists between the ears
of the person who has not become an artist, time begins to float, it ceases to
have meaning, and soon, it, too, disappears. Deadlines are real, but they are
merely goals, pressures that the writer pops up every now and again to see to
add to the fever of the process.
Thoughts now flow, and the artist begins to decide on
which thoughts or ideas should make it through the filter. Those that don’t
ought to be put somewhere, but they aren’t. They can’t. Such is distraction.
Those that do make it through are put down, pared and repared, cut, reordered,
cut again. Corrections begin, but these can be distractions and often wait
until later.
Until now, concentration has only been a complex and
abstract idea, and one that had prevented the artist from getting started in
the first place. This concentration was what the artist feared, much like
looking into a deserted mineshaft where the artist know he or she has to
venture, but before which, without a flashlight or candle, he or she hesitates.
All of the fitfulness is this hesitancy—the snacking,
the napping, the phone calls, the television, the newspaper reading all keep
the artist from the real thing. But they are, oddly, as necessary to getting to
the beginning as the actual beginning itself.
When finally, they make the plunge, it is with a
singular idea, almost like a funnel that brings them fully into the dreaded
darkness of the process turned on in full. What is it like there? Who knows.
One only knows when they are there, and when they have been there. Calls back
from the space—telephone rings, dogs barking, washing machine buzzers—are
deeply disturbing, as if being awoken from sleep.
Today, the thought is this:
The surreal quality of a dog asleep, shaking in
dreams, on the seat of an armchair. What kinds of visual and olfactory thoughts
must be raking the mutt’s brain to make it jerk and moan, huff and howl.
Rabbits, perhaps, or squirrels. How different the world must look and feel when
one’s view is only a foot and a half from the ground. How must people look,
always extending a hand to the nose, or rubbing the ears, bending down like
they do. The smells they have, what they’ve done, eaten, whether they’ve bathed
or gone to the bathroom, when they’ve washed their hands and with what. And the
messages all around, a world as real to the hound through its nose as to a
human through its eyes. The smell of tree bark, succulent plant, and prairie
flower each brushed with the fur of another beast…
Now finally, the addict has found the fix. The artist
is in the mineshaft, somewhere in a dog’s dreams. It’s time to get to work.
linden
leafy
boughs hide
lovers
kiss
fingers
run over lips
necks,
hips
in
the limbs
headlights
deep
breaths
whispers
in
the night
a
fragrance
seminal—cut
grass and green leaves
arboreal
silence
This week!
June 7, 8
Local members of Actors' Equity Association, the
union for professional actors and stage managers in the United States, present Seven
Short Plays:
The Individuality of
Streetlamps by Anna Gorisch
Playing Othello by Frank Higgins
The Rothko Room by Stuart Spencer
Yellow Wood by Karen Paisley
Blackout by Matthew Webb
Choices by Jeph Scanlon
Rex by Joe Pintauro
7 plays, 7 directors, 15
actors—all in one memorable night.
It's a
short-attention-span theatrical dream!
7 p.m., Studio 116 (1st floor), UMKC Performing Arts
Center (PAC), 50th and 4949 Cherry St., Kansas City, MO
Suggested
$5 donation
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