land of bones—but “bone.” As if that were a color along the spectrum. Or a charm—so that, disguised as the thing you’ll surely become, the angel of death might pass safely over your house.
I hated the meekness of that color. Let me never wear “bone” I’d think.
I, who sit daily in front of a collection of real bones, three animals’ jaw bones with rough, flat planes and holes for cords, and sockets for eyes, all flesh picked, washed, burned, eaten away.
I just read: “What others might have called the futility of his passion made an additional delight for his imagination. . . .” (George Eliot)
Well, no.
And yes.
Two of my oldest friends just visited, each briefly, and returned home, one to England and one to Italy. I miss them now, and in their absence, know that I will never see them enough in this lifetime.
And I also feel held by the atmosphere each so recently scented. Right there in my kitchen was the gesture of hers I’d forgotten, long elegant hand at her flushed neck, a moment of restraint before launching her point. And there, still, the sharp tooth that shows when he laughs, and the quick eye that follows the curve of a pear, reddened in one spot low on its rump. So I go back and forth. Bereft/held, bereft/held: my heavy, iambic, two-chambered work.
And yes, the eidetic moments help.
Here is a favorite sentence from Ethan Frome , a marvel of lightness and economy: “Once or twice in the past he had been faintly disquieted by Zenobia’s way of letting things happen without seeming to remark them, and then, weeks afterward, in a casual phrase, revealing that she had all along taken her notes and drawn her inferences.” By the time that first comma arrives, and then the next two which so quickly follow, the route of the whole sentence is cast. I remember my brief anxiety there—feeling the shape of the sentence forming, hoping the second part was up to the task. Of course, that part is up to the task—the whole sentence is clean, spare, beautifully paced. It’s a hinge in the story, too; events turn because of this sentence, loitering intentions ripen, recrudesce at just this syntactical moment. I love this sentence because it points out that a way in which I want to know —as a terrible drive with its end enfolded—will, in fact be dramatized in a much larger field in the story. It’s like a game, reading this sentence. I see the arm cocked and the point let fly. I get a little blinded by sun and step back. I agitate from foot to foot—then catch it like an ampoule of dye, or poison, or perfume tossed from a speeding sled, safely.
Then, too, there is this sentence from Swann’s Way :
She was genuinely fond of us; she would have enjoyed the long luxury of weeping for our untimely decease; coming at a moment when she felt “well” and was not in a perspiration, the news that the house was being destroyed by a fire, in which all the rest of us had already perished, a fire which, in a little while, would not leave one stone standing upon another, but from which she herself would still have plenty of time to escape without undue haste, provided that she rose at once from her bed, must often have haunted her dreams, as a prospect which combined with the two minor advantages of letting her taste the full savour of her affection for us in long years of mourning, and of causing universal stupefaction in the village when she should sally forth to conduct our obsequies, crushed but courageous, moribund but erect, the paramount and priceless boon of forcing her at the right moment, with no time to be lost, no room for weakening hesitations, to go off and spend the summer at her charming farm of Mirougrain, where there was a waterfall.
Waterfall! The cool, mossy relief after the sentence’s journey. The long, bumpy roads, perilous switchbacks and travel-dust clouds—washed away instantly! I read faster and faster, breathless, then—“waterfall,” in its solidity and
I hated the meekness of that color. Let me never wear “bone” I’d think.
I, who sit daily in front of a collection of real bones, three animals’ jaw bones with rough, flat planes and holes for cords, and sockets for eyes, all flesh picked, washed, burned, eaten away.
I just read: “What others might have called the futility of his passion made an additional delight for his imagination. . . .” (George Eliot)
Well, no.
And yes.
Two of my oldest friends just visited, each briefly, and returned home, one to England and one to Italy. I miss them now, and in their absence, know that I will never see them enough in this lifetime.
And I also feel held by the atmosphere each so recently scented. Right there in my kitchen was the gesture of hers I’d forgotten, long elegant hand at her flushed neck, a moment of restraint before launching her point. And there, still, the sharp tooth that shows when he laughs, and the quick eye that follows the curve of a pear, reddened in one spot low on its rump. So I go back and forth. Bereft/held, bereft/held: my heavy, iambic, two-chambered work.
And yes, the eidetic moments help.
Here is a favorite sentence from Ethan Frome , a marvel of lightness and economy: “Once or twice in the past he had been faintly disquieted by Zenobia’s way of letting things happen without seeming to remark them, and then, weeks afterward, in a casual phrase, revealing that she had all along taken her notes and drawn her inferences.” By the time that first comma arrives, and then the next two which so quickly follow, the route of the whole sentence is cast. I remember my brief anxiety there—feeling the shape of the sentence forming, hoping the second part was up to the task. Of course, that part is up to the task—the whole sentence is clean, spare, beautifully paced. It’s a hinge in the story, too; events turn because of this sentence, loitering intentions ripen, recrudesce at just this syntactical moment. I love this sentence because it points out that a way in which I want to know —as a terrible drive with its end enfolded—will, in fact be dramatized in a much larger field in the story. It’s like a game, reading this sentence. I see the arm cocked and the point let fly. I get a little blinded by sun and step back. I agitate from foot to foot—then catch it like an ampoule of dye, or poison, or perfume tossed from a speeding sled, safely.
Then, too, there is this sentence from Swann’s Way :
She was genuinely fond of us; she would have enjoyed the long luxury of weeping for our untimely decease; coming at a moment when she felt “well” and was not in a perspiration, the news that the house was being destroyed by a fire, in which all the rest of us had already perished, a fire which, in a little while, would not leave one stone standing upon another, but from which she herself would still have plenty of time to escape without undue haste, provided that she rose at once from her bed, must often have haunted her dreams, as a prospect which combined with the two minor advantages of letting her taste the full savour of her affection for us in long years of mourning, and of causing universal stupefaction in the village when she should sally forth to conduct our obsequies, crushed but courageous, moribund but erect, the paramount and priceless boon of forcing her at the right moment, with no time to be lost, no room for weakening hesitations, to go off and spend the summer at her charming farm of Mirougrain, where there was a waterfall.
Waterfall! The cool, mossy relief after the sentence’s journey. The long, bumpy roads, perilous switchbacks and travel-dust clouds—washed away instantly! I read faster and faster, breathless, then—“waterfall,” in its solidity and
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