Metzger flashed her a big wry couple rows of teeth. “Looks don’t mean anything anymore,” he said. “I live inside my looks, and I’m never sure. The possibility haunts me.”
“And how often,” Oedipa inquired, now aware it was all words, “has that line of approach worked for you, Baby Igor?”
(from The Crying of Lot 49, page 21, by Thomas Pynchon.)
So they sat there in the shade where the camp was pitched under some
wide-topped acacia trees with a boulder-strewn cliff behind them, and a
stretch of grass that ran to the bank of a boulder-filled stream in front
with forest beyond it, and drank their just-cool lime drinks and avoided
one another’s eyes while the boys all knew about it now and when he
saw Macomber’s personal boy looking curiously at his master while he
was putting dishes on the table he snapped at him in Swahili. The boy
turned away with his face blank.
People who say Hemingway only wrote in terse, simple sentences forget passages like this one. That whole graph is just two sentences, and the first sentence has three hyphen-words spaced in such a way that they balance and even out like lines of parallel Hebrew.
I planted wildflowers in my yard.
I know that sounds stupid. Wildflowers are supposed to be wild.
I don’t check them everyday, even though I know that botany, or whatever it is I’m doing, is not like physics. Plants don’t mind being observed, they don’t hide their position or speed. But still, there’s uncertainty. It shouldn’t feel so much like luck; it is, after all, some kind of science.
I think we often forget how big a part uncertainty plays in the math of the universe.
Biochemistry, for example. We don’t really know how all of that works. I don’t feel any need to check the progress of my wildflowers every day. That’s markedly different from the fights I’ve had with myself over wether or not the door is really locked, or if the handles on the faucets are actually clean.
I want them to grow, understand. I do what I’m supposed to do. But I don’t obsess about it. I’m not sure why. Maybe I know that sometimes, even when I’ve been as perfect as I can be, things can still go sideways. Maybe I’m willing to late nature — botany, physics, whatever — share some of the risk. Maybe I’m still mystified enough by the whole process of life to believe that I’m not the Prime Mover when it comes to the fate of these tiny lives.
There’s a lot to unpack there. In the meantime, enjoy this. There’s a lot to enjoy.
I have been weaning off of social media. Yesterday, I deleted my Twitter account entirely. I’ve decided to be far less active on Facebook, except for sharing things with people who might be interested.
The Feed is was gets me. It’s too much. It’s too much all at once. I gave it a shot. I gave it ten years. I told it everything I liked and everything I didn’t. After ten years, it was all at once too much.
I don’t need all of those inputs.
I just need a few.
I don’t need to play emotional/mental/spiritual roulette, good news, bad news, red space, black. Hot takes, rants, yours and mine. Pictures of everything just so.
I don’t want all of those inputs. I want the sun, the rain, the seasons. Sometimes, I want Pennsylvania to be more like California, I think, though I’ve never been there.
I want to go there, though.
I want the inputs of voices and eyes and inflections. People stuttering and blushing. The rolled-up gum of sweat and dirt and effort in the creases of my hands.
The Feed is what gets me. It’s left me overweight and undernourished, it’s an anemic drip I’m done stabbing myself for.
Today is the first sunny day in Pennsylvania in what feels like a week. There are goldfinches outside my window, eating seed I put there just for them. They are common, people say. I have never really noticed.
Even so, they’re brilliant.
Dear Editors,
Please find attached a salty poem about being frustrated in bookstores (but never with lit mags).
Thank you for your consideration,
Chris Cocca
It has been raining for a near-biblical period of time in Pennsylvania. Maybe not forty days, but certainly six.
This morning the sun is shining and it looks again like May. Today I will mow the lawn and pull some weeds. If I have (make) time, I’ll do some writing and revising, which is also like pulling weeds. There’s something very satisfying about these actions.
In honor of the passing rain, here is my current list of Best Songs About Rain, totally off the top of my head as I type:
“Who’ll Stop the Rain?” – Creedence Clearwater Revival
“Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” – Creedence Clearwater Revival
“Purple Rain” – Prince
“Novemeber Rain” – Guns N’ Roses
“Live Forever” – Oasis
“No Rain” – Blind Mellon
What are yours?
One of the hardest things about writing poetry is not being too precious about it.
I try to strike all the preciousness away. And then I read the newest mags and journals or html broadsides, and find amazing work, and many precious lines I’d probably strike.
The word amazing is, itself, a little precious. A little over-used by adults.
The only people who really know what it means are children. They are almost always right about it.
Chris Cocca 