Tag: love

“I am a sentence”

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes7 Comments

On Reading in Marriage

They speak of their pleasures, their necessary loves.  There are changes you make.  Some things are not accidents.

In other words, after decades fueled by a fifth of vodka drenched with grapefruits each day, husband is able to leave it behind.  Although he loved it, it was not necessary.

Wife, in her cravings for sugar and salt, discovers with age they are not constitutive, not centrally.

Might be solitude or fine shoes; 80’s music or mountains and seas; active social lives or the thrills of travel, how do you know?

Husband elicits evaluation.  Given impending demise, what gives more pleasure?

Wife admits a necessary love.

Husband responds in kind, having been in partial reverie, their warm bed surrounded by shelves of books, so that as he listens he also corresponds.  She says.  His eyes resting on a spine and the sweet particular music of that voiced tome slithering through him, then the next.  Perhaps like chocolate morsels in their process of dissolve upon her tongue.

“I love sentences,” Husband says.

There ensues a pause, a sympathetic “I know.”

He ups to exit, teeth to brush, clothes remove.

He hears “I am a sentence,” a lilting and playful challenge.  And wonders just what that might be, each person a length of sentence.  The content.  He puzzles the verbiage of his own as toothpaste shuffles into his beard.

He returns to the room, it is dark,  there is no light to see by.

Opening the covers, he approaches the text, eager to find what it says.

“As usual, nothing superfluous”

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Journallings9 Comments

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

AS USUAL, NOTHING SUPERFLUOUS (a document)

Defining Spaces

On By NW FilbertIn Journallings1 Comment

August 14, 2012, the first day (DAY) of rain in Kansas that I am able to recall for a very long time.  Not a passing windy thunderstorm, but a wet dripping sky holding temperatures in the 60s.  A genuine “rainy day.”

We are home.  Inhabiting a structure we have designed and filled up with ourselves, each one, and altogether.  It’s been awhile.

For days we’ve struggled to catch up: reports, bills, groceries, supplies, dust, papers, books, photographs, laundry, enrollments, business, correspondence, maintenance, rest.

Organization as definition.

Definition as form, parameter, boundary.

Defining a space (reorganization) to find or enable content.

Rearranging contents to formulate new space.

Needing the space…drawing the blanks___________…to manipulate a safety, a breathing, an empty, to allow.

In chaos I write, as if pinning down terms could needle a swarm of locusts to a board for inquiry and examination.

In emptiness I build by finding blocks to set: my lover’s eyes, my children’s sounds and bodies and play, a coffee cup, clear desk, blank paper…then Jabes, Shklovsky, Wittgenstein, Blanchot.  Wallace Stevens, Dragomoshchenko, Montale, Bakhtin.

Fencing a fallow field.

I check my pockets for seed.

I’ve been an astronaut.

I can’t remember rain.

I am what I am reported to have said.  As are those around me, if only in our heads or dreams or passion or anger or fear.

Opening an old notebook I am stunned by a page lacquered in heavy charcoals and dark pastels.  I make out in fierce giant letters “WE WILL DIE!”, then scribbled around it, hard to decipher in the noise of the marks, the names of each one in my family.

I think “so begin.”

Stop.  Locate a space.  Breathe.  Then move.

Movement is beginning.

Connectives of  meaning or purpose may follow the following of orders or order the following connections of meaning.

I begin with my body, following my fingers as they formulate form, defining the spaces with words…

“if the meaning-connexion can be set up before the order, then it can also be set up afterwords”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

“each is no more or less than the words he is reported to have said”

-Richard Stamelman, of Edmond Jabes’ rabbis

Edmond Jabes

Weekly Photo Challenge: Movement

On By NW FilbertIn PhotographyLeave a comment

dug about and found this one…2 versions… for the weekly photo challenge, although perhaps I’m a day late…

PHOTO BY HOLLY SUZANNE

Men. Amateurs.

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading2 Comments

Rereading.  Had forgotten how good.

Or maybe things get better – different – time.

Recommended.

Happy Monday this Tuesday. Begin.

On By NW FilbertIn Journallings9 Comments

Today I woke up.

I woke up in love.  In joy.

A song was sparrowing to and fro in my mind’s sky (Boxer Rebellion – Soviets)

We have new puppies and they are loving and cute.

The heat has broken and there were clouds in the sky.

we have twins of these

In love?

In joy?

What might those mean?

We danced the pups to trauma to the Lumineers “Ho Hey”.

Like coming out of a slump.

Like post-coital bliss.

That full, that relaxed and open.

For no particular reason.

For so many particular reasons.

plus we made a pistachio bundt cake

How does the brain chemistry experience?

How do the senses collage reality?

How are we?

this is your brain on joy

 

I woke today in bliss and joy.

I woke today in love.

.

Happy Monday this Tuesday.

Begin.

On the Anniversary of Our Wedding

On By NW FilbertIn Graphotos, Journallings6 Comments

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The Forest of Marriage

(Happy Anniversary Holly Suzanne!)

 

I’ve never felt sexy or young, my memory is chained like an old growth forest accumulating decay.  Remains tough to destroy.  Why would I want to?  Perhaps for you – so lovely to me – youthful, vital, your non-submissive and consistent new growth.  Your winding ways, nubile bends – how do you regenerate yourself?

I’ve no doubt my dying fertilizes and enriches, our scent expands.  Some wreckage crumbles beautifully, overgrown and softened by corruption.  But it’s not the same as planting seeds, a puppy’s not a dog.

Steep.  A word for danger and infusion.  Calamity filters through.

Seed.  It is not uncommon for your resources to sprout fresh things in me.  Renewal, come in.  I am fertile in layers.

Steep.

I’ve aged tall and long and twisted, hoary with moss and tangled by vine.  Formidable, while spongy in places.  Your green shoots pierce me, exposing my slowness and rot, my muffling stance.  You crack me open, engender new soil.  I collapse and give way, I adapt.  It’s a marriage.

I wouldn’t say “handsome,” thought at times picturesque – in a rugged way, and worn – tendriled with you growing green.  The occasional strength to bloom: I mushroom, you flower.  I fungus, you shine.  Together we develop our wonder.  Some stop and look, others stay awhile, everyone traveling through.  The coupling is not unfortunate – providing nourishment and shelter.  There’s always damage.  Having endured, still I am fragile, and you, with your gentle, tenacious roots, ever purposeful and true, yet transplanted and remaking, storms can threaten with uprooting.

We are called by one name and belong – a vast generality for incalculable kinds.  We don’t mind.  Old or new it’s still growth; what dies and what’s born construct a joined density.  I lean on you while providing shade, you straighten me as you fight for necessary light.  We are one seething thing, steamy if un-sexy, cross-generative and moist.

When the fire burns, it destroys and begins.  Gaining as much as we lose.  It takes time – symbiotic – establishing roots we combine and recover, shed and absorb, co-create and depend.  Relying on the same in our differencing.

Reaching again in each instant’s climate.

(I love you beloved wife – happy anniversary – and here’s to continual renewal and the sustenance of old growth)

 

Blurting : what WAS this?

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes5 Comments

Found this in my files…probably isn’t even worth posting, but something kinda fascinates me about it…I’ve never been a drug-user, but something had surely opened the gates of the dam on the day this came forth.  Sometimes writings (by others) do this to me – I read and sort of get “drunk” I guess, with language and then somehow that stirs and stimulates whatever words fill up my cranium and then… well, for what it MIGHT be worth… here is What It IS

What it IS

 

 

is all of these things, trying to explain,

the trees, the flowers (dying), the grass (needing mown),

in line at the store, filling with gas, last nights’ remnant of dream (also the dreams from before, books read, voices heard/overheard/never heard), a multitude of feelings, the way she draws a heart, a star, what guilt feels like (now, then), the difficult struggle in parenting of love and direction, how language comes (or gesture, vocabulary or intonation), how silence, what we do with it, our decisions, who to love, where to live, how to say, what to smoke, when to fight, where to run, what to eat, why at all, what floating in a pool feels like (or a pond, a lake, the ocean), which music when, where, what we mean into it, the grades we make and receive, how we work, squirrels sounds and behaviours, what friendship is (might be), what is learned, absorbed, observed, what we touch, scents in closets (in bathrooms, at relatives, of genders or nationalities), associations, childhood, ambiguities, paintings and sculptures, religions or symphonies, taxes, liking to dance (or not), with people or alone, the postal service, how often, how much, your mother, who said so, aging,

trying to explain,

divorce, vocations, contradiction, philosophy, hunting, mountains, arrogance, wounds, broken bones (or hairline fractures), colors, fashion, changing the oil in the car (the mower, the boat), politics of oil of belief of emotions and opinions and genetics, diseases (like pleurisy and cancer and rust and decay), who family is, how you come by, sexuality, remorse, pleasure and pain and fences and institutions, architecture, advertising, electricity and electronics, pi, mohair, virtual and visual, palpable and “real,” poetry, names you can’t remember (but what is it you remember), can’t forget, incense, train rails, Marcia’s hair (shimmer and idealized clarity), meat, diapers, rain and humidity, historical “accounting,” memory theory money, mythology, facts and things like rocks and apples, pears science, bronze, doorways, “home” or houses, dead presidents, Casio, intuition, astrology, newspapers, rotations, reciprocation and differences, if anything is the same, what repeat might mean, definitions, experience, gasoline, yogurt, how fast you run, if you have arms or legs or are able to see or hear, clouds,

to try to explain this,

there is more here….

much more,

let’s see, hear, touch, smell, feel

wonder….

and death too…

to explain, include, describe

imagine

Friday Fictioneers: “The Brambles”

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes10 Comments

Another failure…I nearly doubled the word count ’cause he wouldn’t shut up.  Probably shoulda aborted it, but here it is:

raspberry

The Brambles

He was painting a picture for us.  “Now this takes significant time to develop,” he said, “but I promise it’ll be worth the wait.”  “The fruits, they aren’t easy pickings, but if you’re willing to work it, I mean really get in there and give it a go – you’ll find ‘em, and they,” he assured us, “even these beautiful berries, nuggets, sweet bloody fleshes can seem prickly and tart at the first – it’s kind of an ‘acquired taste’ as they say – from years and years of this trying/acquiring and trying/acquiring – but those tiny pert jewels, held deep ‘round the heart of its center, those phenomenal pearls of good juice, as they finally give way and pop open,” he said, “that rush!  That momentary flood of powerful delight, that untangleable blend of most delicate morsel and sun-bittered time, that salting of aging and ripeness – it’s a wonder!”  “You’ve just got to get to them and find them, one after one and by one, have persistence!” he admonished, “far along, deep within, there’s always this unbelievable cluster of most amazing, unique and mouthwatering reward – yes, it seems tiny and ephemeral and difficult to grow or achieve, but it’s worth it!” he encouraged us, “the dedication of labor and time, constant tending and pruning pursuit; the right balance of trimming and rest, nourishment and fallow…”

Why he’d referred to our marriage as “the Brambles.”

N Filbert 2012

Please join us in these weekly forays!

Friday Fictioneers

Recently Recovered

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes5 Comments

Another story I found from a number of years back…still has some oomph I hope….

A Series of Stories about Love

 The first thing that comes to mind is all the breathless tugging.  At clothes, at skin, in her mouth.  The way you squeeze into it, the wiggle and dance, and then you drown.

She told me of her life-dreaming last night, lying in bed.  How she just knew, she really knew, at fifteen or sixteen, her skin first licked by flames, all her dizzy hopes, her victimized newness, those first irisy smelling blooms in her flesh, that she would always love in such a way that men would eat at her, chew her to blood and spit her out.

It didn’t happen this way.  She bought a blender.

And every time, at just the right (or very wrong) time, she stuffed them in, ground them to pulpy bits, and poured them down the drain.  This is my wife we’re talking about.

The blender is out.  The blender sits on the counter.  It’s been four years.

First the sun rises.  Everything warms, your legs glow into coals.  Arms flush with melanin, forehead beading sweat.  Her ears are red.  Your mouth gasps and gulps at the air of the others language.  Someone lights your fuse.  The booster rocket burns away.  A holocaust of flames.

She’s never stayed friendly with a man for so long she says.  She makes a list of what’s necessary to her life.  Your name is not included.  I wonder if the blender is still working.  The right very wrong time is past.  We are nowhere.

I consume alcohol like fields do liquid in drought.  I smoke like an oil field already spent.  I caress and fondle a fuzzy June-bug in my palm.  With my lips.  I tossle my son’s hair.  I cry.  I love everything one way.  Addiction.  Obsession.  My love is a jet turbine (I say), a swallowing vortex, a whale.  My love is neuroses.  You’ve got the wrong each other, the weather says.

First there are nine kinds of electricity.  One for each of the senses.  And they all get plugged in at once.  Except mine were never unplugged.  Rain-powered, blood-powered, keeps going and going and…

I would not have your name tattooed on my body, she says.  Only permanent things, she says.  Like zodiac.  Like turtles.  Like signs for god.

Everything hurts, but we knew that already.

This is my wife we’re talking about.

I have a lazy eye.  It wanders about and falls asleep at random.  Its dreams are split away from the rest of my body.  I blow lightly on the spiders.  I stroke her calf.  I read a line of words down a page and get inappropriately, inexplicably charged.  Most things turn me on.  The turbine has only one speed.  It’s what makes the planets move.  It hurls the moon’s stones.  It fills stars.

The glance of fingertips on arm while walking one night: first strawberry in the mouth.

Strips of fresh mango: her first song.

She will not be overcome.  She fiddles with the blender’s buttons.

We have made children together…

I love mountains.  The sight, smell, rocks of them.  High, cold streams.  I love temperate woods.  The tall soft spike of giant firs.  The drape and droop of their large limbs.  And mermaids.  Salt on liquid skin.  I suffer from addictions.  Rituals.  Habits.  Gas for the turbine.  Sight.

Shoulder.  Tattoo’d calf.  Waistline.  Ankle.

Knuckles on a hand.  Hair over neck, down between shoulder-blades.  Belly buttons.  Crotch.  Wrist.  Veins at the back of the thigh.

Fuel for the turbine.  Touch.  Smell.  Thinking.  Dreaming.

I hear the blender in the kitchen grinding frozen fruit and yogurt.  Bones.  Blood.  I shiver.

“I could not be intimate with you if I didn’t care,” she says.  “It’s 50/50 my like and dislike, my hope and depression.  I want to be in love again, but not out of love again, so I stay.”

(This is my wife we’re talking about.)

“But you should be loved like an engine too,” she says.

Just let the engine run, baby, I say.

Love for a woman is systemic.  Like cancer.

The blender is like chemotherapy.  No one really knows how much it destroys.

Love will destroy you, she implies.

Like alcohol.  Like war.  Like fire.

Maybe we shouldn’t own guns.

But that first day at the range.  The charge of the buckling of your shoulder.  The loudness of the rifle’s shout.  Those sudden bursts.  The sheer power and speed.  You fire, again and again.  You conceal it in your hand.  They live and fill your pockets.

We possess many weapons.

A person is an armory.

She is a turtle mostly, she says.  She carries it all on her back, she says.  She can retract at any time.  Be saved from the flow of hot wind, the battering of sound, and the flood of all at once, if she needs to, she says.

The turbine spins (it’s the size of government buildings), it blows, rages, floods.

We draw letters in the mud.  It dries, cakes, molders.

We set these things in concrete stamps.

We yell permanence.

(The blender is whirring in the kitchen).  Even rock will ground down.

“I have the sense that the meaning of things will never be sorted out,” the poet says.

There is no hope.