Cut in the land.version 1

The cut in the land finds me here with the AC on burning gasoline to stay cool. Now I've written it, I cannot continue without switching off the ignition--rolling, we say 'rolling' down the windows even though there is retraction, a descent of the glass into the door of the truck, no doubt mini-rollers with some purchase, some grip, able to spin when I engage the buttons near my left hand but we rarely roll our truck or car windows down anymore though we say 'roll' and press the button, just as we say 'hang up the phone,' when we push a button or set it back in the receiver—-which is also in many cases a wireless transmitter—-so I switch all this off this taking away from me my effort my mechanical my physiological opportunities to engage with my machine the black truck and voila the windows now being open I hear the wind in casuarina a phrase I have come to love for what it really means...it's a dance of limbs and leaves of course but really it's this performance of the wind, this orchestration, pulsing like the shoreline with its tidal ebb and flow, that shooshing sound, and then calm and we are pulled along, inside this calm, pulled from our centers as our senses give way, surrender to its charm...the wind in the trees can do this. Hearing ceases to be a matter for the ears. The skin prickles with its listening. The eyes recover themselves, having been lost in thought since arriving at this junction. It's a cut in the land. I mean a cut deep and long enough for a train. But there are no tracks and rails only the hard scrabble, hard-packed back roads of Kohala.

A man's name, Pratt Road, intersecting the road down from the school which runs into Lisa's place——or so I'm told. Three gates mark this place. 12 foot gates forcing all and sundry to park in the shade in the junction for there is no going down Pratt Road. And Lisa's gate. That's open though you wouldn't go there unless you had business. But the windows open down in this intersection of cuts in the land, this blurring of the senses and this dance of the wind in the trees mighty like the ocean, like an empty shoreline, we can say, well, what?

What can we say? Walk away from the truck? Leave it here in the cut. Leave it switched off. Walk.

Chocolate

Dear, dear, chocolate, I have searched for your essence in Manhattan at Christmastime, there by the ice rink, carried you away like the precious body of a new savior come down in small dark mouthfuls. Yes, dear chocolate, I have taken my fingertips to your nightdress with the golden lining there in Antwerp outside Peter Paul Rubens' house and learned how to spell the word 'exotic' in twelve languages and I don't know what to say, really without blushing...I couldn't wait and I'm sorry for that...I live for you...you call to me, London or Paris, San Francisco or Tokyo and no matter how they say 'hello' I am struck dumb with your taste on my tongue, slow, slow taste, a crass word there, my love, more the realm of buds or the sensation of melting or closing my eyes whilst listening for the footsteps of the half-naked warriors who passed you from hand to hand more than a thousand miles from the jungle to the icy slopes until you reached the Aztec king...

To a rock

I look towards you, oh rock, with words on the tip of my tongue, a song, a vibration to you, I suppose. I see you there. I pass your way. I pick you up and wonder what you've seen. If you could speak what heat would come out of your mouth. What depths you could reach. What extremes before one of our kind ever stepped foot on you and instantly regretted it.

Your pockmarked skin tells me how your story will go from here, shadows and curvature for an ant to explore, defying measurement and our smug science...

You will outlast me, that's certain but I'm not envious. Your world's so invested with my own imagination, bringing to you the concepts of journey and narrative but it's ridiculous, don't you think?

You don't, do you? Think, that is.

Perhaps you think that makes you superior but here I go again investing you with my own ways like Walt Disney making the mice talk to each other in squeaky human kid voices. What if I called you a stone, oh rock? What would you do then, eh?

Dirt

Dirt. To really appreciate it you have to be sleek and wriggly just about as non-anthropomorphic as the animal world comes. I remember dissecting earth people in biology. Was it five hearts or three? There's profound significance in those hearts but I just haven't figured it out. Like the mortician who signed his letters "eventually mine" the dirt people have a kind of hold over us—but they don't ask for much. Moisture, darkness and last night's foodscraps. Vegan only, please. Oh and last Sunday's newspaper. The news that's fit for real dirt.

What is it. The dirt. We want it when we have had enough smooth talking banter about the weather and other small nothings. Martha could tell you all about the real dirt over the fence. Or sitting at the mahogany shoreline of the local bar. Or one ear pressed to her wireless ATT receiver.

We seem to need it like those wrigglers. It breaks us down.

Blank bulletin board

For the unforeseeable future and the forgettable past there will be nothing happening of any note. Thumb tacks brass and plastic-headed will remain like unnamed constellations in a cosmic void made of black construction paper but of one thing you may be certain, this space is saved. Watch it. Watch this space. Where the general announcement is that there are no announcements whatsoever, no births, deaths, parties, sorties, camping trips, country western blue grass reggae island music bands this Saturday or next Tuesday, no massage sessions, nor yoga, nor selling of imitation Balinese artifacts or refrigerators or '53 Chevy pickups with wraparound windows, or great deals on nutrimax vitamin suppositories, or dog stories, or worm casting—none of it—though this these those though they be not here nor there will however for the benefit of all and sundry—these shall in their absence be framed. Stalwart as a ship's cabin and permanent as a wine stain on mother's dress, this frame is heretofore hung for our community's pleasure and everlasting plethora of inactivity.

Everything happens at night

For one thing your feet grow.
Toenails faster than that.
Armpit hair—it goes, or rather, grows, without saying.
Nose hair. Yikes. At night. It happens. Somewhere at night a toilet flushes, a fart resounds in the porcelain bowl of night's intermission. All in the night. Poets dream whole entire poems in the night and then only reach line 56 when the postman knocks in the morning. Cats, this is a fact, grow big as houses each night. Just ask a rat. It happens at night, of that there is little doubt! All the news that's fit to print? At night. And don't forget: night wears long slinky dresses and no underwear, blue tuxedos and string ties, pleated shirts and laundry tickets in its hatband. Night gets drunk, drives on the wrong side of the white line because there are no lines in the night, that's why bird don't sleep on telephone wires—Night will not stop to spare you or forgive you—will not answer your pathetic question about guardian angels and swords of fire. Night is black fire. It is breathing in, without end. It is the dark felt dryer lint in God's navel and he's going to pick through it after a cold one.

LS Lowry in New York

Out there on the streets the children stand about the dirty town. Above them factories belch their smoke, their exhalations——what am I trying to say? Their filthy breath pours out the chimneys making, making, and the fathers came in from the fields decades ago. They're locked up in bricks and mortar now, making, making. Nowhere to be seen, the fathers. They went to war and then they went to work and all the little people, not children, you see, that gift was denied them, the little grey people hunched and sticklike, a few brave souls wearing red, a brighter red, a poppy red, against the red brick school house where they turn the pages of their books, pick up their pencils, put them down again, hunch down into their desks and practice making, making.

And he watches all this. The watcher averts his eyes for the camera——he does not wish to be the subject matter of this tired story. A couple of days now he hasn't shaved. His hair tousled since time began. He tries not to judge the living and the dead, the factory owner, the mothers standing like stunted trees in January in the street with the youngest attached at one hand, the heavy coat, the faceless hat, heavy with melancholy. He looks down and away, unshaven and unkempt. He doesn't care about anymore. He hears footsteps in the hallway outside his studio. Like a church all quiet otherwise. He keeps his lips together in prayer, without judgment. His face begins to show the lines of the city, the lanes, the avenues, the alleyways and side streets, the dark places like crooked scars where you could go hungry.

It is a day like no other. And yet it is the only day there is. There is no way out of this day, this hour. In his hand he holds the brush and touches the canvas lightly——another child, this time, movement.

Across the river the ferry boats and tug boats break through this scene. Beyond this scene there is no time for contemplation, the guardian rises out of the foundation the first foundation. High above the trees she rises, holding aloft the torch that brought so many to the gates of the city. And the ships come in by night and day. And the people dream of making, making.

I'm only flabbergasted...

Minding my own business gets more unattainable with age. Our young friends had their child on Thursday and I saw him back at work on Sunday. I take exception to this flagrant abuse of hard-won paternal rights. It's a perfect example of how the State steps in with common sense in the rule of the law after centuries of dismantling both the commons and the sensible. And it's hard-won, damnit. I want to say, get your ass back home where it belongs, I don't care how tough and capable she says she is. "There's nothing I can do" is a pathetic statement that makes me ashamed for the male of the species. I used to be one. Now I can claim general membership in the human race but there are moments, sometimes more than one a day, when I do revert to that shameful state by asking too many questions and/or allowing Her to attend to the basics of our survival while I simply stand there and watch. So you can see that membership in humanity——I am loathe to call it civilization anymore——is renewable daily.

Back to our young man, the first-time father. What is he? Out hunting? Dragging the boar home by its heels to the pit fire? She looks up at him as he enters the cave and smiles and the babe's mouth falls from the tit. They are agog at his return.

Or is it that he can't wait to share that cigar? What is he? Part rooster? People line up to shake his hand and congratulate him. Meanwhile the miles of separation between him and his new family are palpable.

Am I being a bit harsh? His co-workers response to my questioning and bafflement was quick: women have been popping out babies since time began. Vietnamese women gave birth in the rice paddies and kept on working [someone actually said this]. Now that's the shameful sort of reaction that wipes out all our extra credit as males. What's wrong here? Mind my own business? This is where I step in and say with a slight tremble in my voice, When I was a young man...like the character of Aubrey in 'Brief Lives'. The point is, some of us worked hard to win the right to stay home with our newborn. We don't want to throw that away, even if it means cleaning out the garage or digging in the garden if we can't think of what to do. We must not leave the sphere of new life. If we follow that hard-won rule, we might discover something profound. We might actually get to live outside our own heads, even for an hour. Wow! Think of it! Just stick to the home territory and accept one basic tenet of the Secret Oral Teachings of Being a Better Human Being: If you stand still long enough, you'll learn something. Okay, you can sit down if you need to. Knuckle the sleepers out of your eyes so you can see the world around you better. How many hours were you missing in action? What's that? Two hours' worth of driving? Cool. That's some serious interaction there, you know, traffic, the right radio station, finding the cup holder. And how many hours total? Eight? Ten? Twelve? I'm only guessing here. I'm only flabbergasted.

Oh let's see, my son's three days old and you're saying I have a choice? On the one hand, hang out with the woman in my life who just did this extraordinary thing called giving birth to a little person...oh my God, it's a miracle! A person who's going to grow up and continue the species wearing my genes and following my noble example, oh my God! Think of all the things we're going to do together. Wow! I just want to see him and be around him because he's changing so fast I don't want to miss anything or...

...on the other hand, get in my truck, twist that key in the ignition, find the right side of the road 'cause this is America, land of opportunity! I'm going back to work! Do my part! Everything's under control now. She doesn't need me. I'm not superfluous, you understand, I'm doing my bit. This is what guys do, right? Head off down the road like a rubber toad and back by sunset...if you're lucky, honey. God! I'm tired of superwomen. Why don't they just keep their mouths shut and keep chopping those vegetables? Get the laundry done? Take out the garbage——oh, well, I'll do that one, that's cool. Pay the bills! And change his shitty nappy (diaper)!

Okay, okay. I've said my bit. I accept that paternal leave is there in case you need it and in your case you don't. Nope, sorry. It's (I'm) like a dog with a bone. Can't seem to give it up without a little snarl, even when my best friend takes it away. It's that New Life thing, see. He's just a little guy. And you're not there.

That would be a good place to shut up and leave you alone but I need to add that you have to take the long view sometimes. Sometimes there will be separation and it will be painful and difficult——Go on, tell me You gotta think positive, here, Uncle. Tell me you're just going with the flow. I'm just saying intimacy is where it's at. It's the point of contact. The little one is teaching you now. "The child is father to the man," as the poet Wordsworth said. This is the first, the original textbook and the pages are made of skin and the chapter headings say things like mother, father, and child. There will be a test.

Go make a peanut butter sandwich.