Makers

Aug 24 2018

Written by hand.

The kinaesthetic pleasure

of ink on paper,

the slight tug of friction

the easy-rolling nib.

The unmediated path

between brain and hand;

between tactility and sentience,

learning, and remembrance.

This is not the hand-thrown pot

or embroidered tapestry,

objects of heft and touch

and imperfection.

The thumbprint left, the wheel's wobbly travel,

the stitch dropped

fringe starting to unravel.

Love letters

in an old desk drawer.

Her elegant penmanship

my messy chicken-scratch.

The ink she traced

and paper touched

that still contains her scent,

the nib she licked and left.

Reduced to neat uniform script

in light and ink

on paper, screen, and print.

To the alchemy of thought,

the mental image

that only lives

for as long as I exist.

Like all the things

we lost in the fire

we thought would never end,

as if we once actually believed

the comforting conceit

a thing could last forever.

It's all just stuff, they say.

Yes, but the stuff

that makes our lives make sense.

The talismans we hold

and memories we cherish,

the strong gossamer thread

from which we weave ourselves.

It's how the hand that makes

and the words I know by heart.

How there are 3 lbs of matter

in the average adult brain,

and how the human mind

without space, or weight

can occupy the world.

How I still have her picture

after all the photos burned.

I really just wanted to write about the demise of handwriting -- the personal letter, the actual object -- and also how writing by hand is linked to the creative process. And then this general idea of hard tangible things -- the things we make -- as opposed to the virtual worlds we now tend to inhabit:  how things are incrementally reduced to abstraction; how the ability to make -- the competence and mastery of makers -- has become increasingly rare in our lives. But it took its own direction, as these things do.

The Angels' Share

August 17 2018

To age as gracefully as Scotch

in its wooden cask

in its misty highland home.

Mature notes

of malt and peat and smoke.

With hints of tropical fruit

umami and salt

toffee, leather, soap.

And as the barrels swell, the potent liquor concentrates.

So each successive year, 3 percent is lost,

just as inexorable fate

as I approach my end

will be loss after loss, as well.

While whiskey fanciers console themselves

that the scent in the air

is the angels' share

as time exacts its tithe.

As if to appease the gods.

Or as if to declare

that a single malt

brings you closer to heaven

and relieves your earthbound cares.

Tipsy angels

drunk on fumes

cavorting in the boozy haze,

too pissed

to dance on pins

or recite their evening prayers.

But I know nothing of fine whiskey,

taken straight

over spring water

without garnish or ice.

In a thick-walled tumbler

made of plain clear glass,

as unaffected

as the steady hand

in which it's held.

Its heavy bottom

anchored to the polished bar,

a warm amber glow

suffusing its charge.

In an age of instant gratification

a well-aged Scotch

is as close to priceless as it gets.

Because even the richest man

cannot buy time

no matter how much he desires it.

The decades it takes

are irreplaceable,

and his horde of gold

might just as well be dross.

So to stave in a barrel

before its time

is a kind of sacrilege.

Like a chainsaw to a tree

that has stood forever

and the weeds that will grow in its place.

The vandal

who desecrates nature.

The whiskey

we take to forget.

Self-Made

Aug 1 2019

The small ducklings

are little balls of fluff

that seem unsinkable;

like bobbing corks

that would shoot up and out

if a finger forced them under.

They frantically shadow their mother,

webbed feet, beneath the mirror surface

paddling furiously,

a determined flotilla

churning the calm.

So when one pauses, nods

vanishes

I think of dumb luck.

Of chance, fluke, and happenstance,

not Darwin's fitness as destiny

or the deserving rich,

whose article of faith

is that they are self-made

in a world of just rewards.

Because the pike's razor-sharp teeth

which strike from below

are oblivious to such certainties.

Because in life, there is the accident of birth,

and too much coincidence, contingency, randomness

to imagine agency rules

one's fate is earned.

And the children who are watching from shore

and are hustled away

and return to their play.

Or are instructed in the cycle of life,

by concerned parents

who do not mean to be unkind

but are too earnest to shield the eyes

of their impressionable young.

She, too, is a fine mother

and shepherds her little ducklings

as best she can.

As unbearably cute as they are

on this Arcadian lake

on this beautiful day.

Never mind what lurks

in the murky depths

its sun-dappled face conceals.

I've been reading a lot about something called the Universal Basic Income, a concept for a government program that will, depending upon your ideological worldview, either revolutionize social welfare or signal the beginning of the end of civilization. This sharp divergence became clear as I debated my sister-in-law. All she can see is moral hazard and the undeserving poor. While I see the research that shows how unexpectedly beneficial programs like this have proven not only to the disadvantaged but to society as a whole (for liberals like me, and especially in a society that is becoming more unequal and more resistant to social mobility); to cost saving (for the tax-cutters), and to efficiency (for the libertarians who champion small government and less bureaucracy). Really, I think her attitude comes from a worldview that believes we actually live in a meritocracy: that successful people are self-made; that the system is not rigged to favour the already rich or well-connected; and that the poor are deserving of their fate as much as the rich have earned theirs.

I'm also a fierce Darwinian. My intellectual formation has led me to reduce everything – from human behaviour to my understanding the natural world – to evolutionary biology, where all comes down to survival and reproduction. But truth is, the process of selection is not so clean. The sardine that gets plucked and eaten from a vast wheeling cauldron of sardines was no less genetically endowed, no less fit; it was simply the victim of dumb luck. There is no “selection” here, just randomness and chance. And yesterday, when I saw the ducks obediently trailing their mother – so at home on the lake, innocent and oblivious – I immediately thought how vulnerable they are here in open water; wondered how many will ultimately succumb to the perils of early life; and affirmed this notion of fluke and happenstance. Darwinian pruning works in theory and on average and in the long term; but you can't rigorously apply it to individual outcomes. Contingency rules. 

But while Darwin had it right, “social Darwinism” is intellectually dishonest. The “accident of birth” is not just genetic; it depends on the social environment. So outcomes should be seen as much through a sociological as a psychological lens: that is, not just the responsibility of the individual's character and choices; but of institutional impediments, social organization, and the unequal opportunity that comes from being born poor, or of a certain race or appearance or population group, and in a place and time. There may be the “undeserving poor” and the irredeemable; but their numbers are inconsequential enough that their existence should not determine social policy. And while there are, indeed, self-made men (and women, of course!), here again outcomes are due to so much more than individual fitness. Because so much in life's long passage is chance, not just preparation and initiative. Even the fact of being born well-off confers great advantage. So the rich do get richer; but by and large not because of any inherent justice or moral superiority or personal attribute.

Anyway, I saw an opportunity to write a political poem on the fallacy of the “self-made man”, but one that wouldn't seem quite so political, or pretentious, or preachy as that sounds.

I'm a congenital pessimist, and generally pretty morbid. Danger lurks everywhere. And death is the single thing all living beings share. So the ending is all me. But for those looking for uplift, I can only hope that its darkness is somewhat redeemed by those cute little balls of fluff!

Inland Sea

July 23 2018

I forgot its salt.

Its caustic brine

its cloying sating stickiness.

A glistening bead, like mercury

but red.

I am an inland sea, confined to flesh.

And, like water, seek my level

pour myself out

conform to the shape

of whatever contains me.

The ocean seems eternal,

lapping at the shore

with hypnotic regularity.

Contains multitudes

we rarely see.

While I am mortal

and singular;

a solid-seeming form, who bleeds

so much more

than I thought possible.

This poem started with the first drop of blood from a nosebleed. It was inspired by this poem, which appeared in the July 23 2018 edition of The New Yorker:

The Pond

By Charles Rafferty

The world is in short supply. This field of goldenrod will never be enough, and the ocean feels suddenly crossable. In every apple an orchard waits, but who has twenty years to cultivate it? Above our house, the contrails of the jets have turned into actual clouds. The rain they promise is another lie. Meanwhile, the taste of my blood implies that I am rusting, that a broken machine lies half-submerged in the pond I carry with me.

Standing Abreast

July 2 2018

In a ripening field

two horses stand abreast,

head to tail, facing away.

Their muscled flanks, sheened with sweat

are ever so lightly touching,

a chestnut mare, and her roan cousin

in the hot and torpid air.

A wild pasture, far from man,
with tall grasses, heavy with seed

wild flowers, in promiscuous pink

and a scatter of blue and gold.

In the indolent heat, flies buzz

bedevilling each massive beast.

Infesting

her enormous eyes;

the rheumy whites,

the trail of mucus 

running down the inner crease. 

Alighting

on the moist margins of her lids

so they twitch with every touch.

And probing

her ears' warm recesses

and ever so sensitive nose.

One's face

brushed by the other's tail

back and forth, and back and forth.

Long coarse hairs

that flick with surprising force,

a whipsaw whisk

swishing the flies away.

Not survival of the fittest

as in dominance and death,

but a herd of wild horses

who know to stand abreast

as is the way of their kind.

Her sturdy frame leans in,

so the incremental pressure

of each intake of breath

is like a reassuring presence

against her side;

the power of touch

the constancy of friends.

Herd animals, working together

to give, as well as get.

We misread Darwin. Survival is as much about cooperation as it is competition.

And no, it's not romantic anthropomorphism to say that there can be friendship among animals.

Nor is the power of touch any different; whether it's herd animals, like wild horses, or social animals, like us.

I was watching an episode of Nature, on PBS (Pets: Wild at Heart - Episode 2, which can be seen at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/pets-wild-at-heart-episode-2-secretive-creatures/13220/) and this instinctive (learned?) behaviour among wild horses was shown. I was struck by its cleverness; and knowing first hand how flying/biting insects can persecute me, I also felt a great deal of empathy for their plight! There was something compelling about this image, and when it returned to me the next day, I thought this might make a nice lyric poem: small, descriptive, self-contained.

And I also thought it might be good vehicle for a rumination on friendship among animals, as well as on the concept of reciprocal altruism. Reciprocal altruism is the utilitarian basis of morality; and what we privilege – with our conceit of personal agency and free will – as rectitude and goodness when it's done by us.

And it's also an important mechanism in evolution: one that is counter-intuitive to the usual understanding of Darwinism and nature as dog eat dog, and “red in tooth and claw”.

Tilted Arc

June 25 2018

As you journey further and further north

   —   plodding by foot

along a line of longitude

that stretches from pole to pole   —

the day steadily lengthens,

every few steps

seconds more.

Between the first day of summer, and winter's depths

it's as if you can actually sense

in the heat

soaking into your skin

and the light

holding back the dark

the vast geometry

of circling planets

in their intricately choreographed dance;

in the passage of time

the measure of space.

Feel yourself

an infinitesimal speck

on a constant patch of land

all your senses tell you is flat,

on a rapidly spinning sphere

too massive to make sense of,

travelling in its tilted arc

around a yellow star.

Or, you can simply sit,

leaning back

in the languorous warmth

as your heavy eyes drift shut.

The red glow behind your lids

the penetrating heat,

the insect buzz, a puff of breeze

the sultry flush of sweat.

Thinking that 6 months hence

you'd be buried in snow;

a Siberian mammoth, preserved on ice

until the next big melt.

The cycle of freeze and thaw,

of ice age

and interglacial.

Because what goes around comes around.

As planets revolve and rotate

stars spin through space

and galaxies majestically wheel.

A clockwork universe

in a perfectly balanced dance

of distant attraction

and invisible lines of force.

And you

alive, for this blink in time

on flotsam earth.

I like the way this poem moves in and out, and does so in both time and space: between days and season and epochs; from the personal and circumscribed to the unimaginably large. It starts small, and then – after the aperture dilates and narrows and dilates again – ends in much the same place.

I think this reflects a theme I return to often: the idea of humanity's insignificance in a cold indifferent universe. Which is not a message of nihilism so much as one of humility. And which is where I depart from both the religionists and the modernists: instead of putting self-important man at the centre, I make us out as marginal and transient.

Pray For Rain

June 16 2018

Even the weeds have withered

in this long dry spell,

their zigzag edges browned

fronds dulled by dust;

oppressive stillness

for days on end

in unremitting sun.

But now, it's steamy hot

and you can feel the building storm,

something electric

unsettling the air.

The laundry hangs heavy

still stubbornly wet.

My sodden shirt sticks

seams chafing with sweat.

And it's harder and harder to breath,

as if water and heat

had displaced essential oxygen.

In the distance, there's a deep bass rumbling

which I feel, more than hear,

anxiously expectant

in this deceptive calm.

Like the muted sounds of war

inching closer and closer

but still too far to see;

the thud of cannon, and strafing runs

the flat repeat of guns,

armoured dozers' diesel throb

the trudge of weary grunts.

The sky darkens, the ceiling lowers.

And we reflexively duck

at the first boom of thunder,

as a fitful breeze quickens

and sprinkles pit the dust.

Then a blistering volley of gusts

from all directions at once,

as lightning cracks the sky

and rain comes bucketting down.

The washing whips free

and the line rips from its wheel;

and we lean into the wind,

shrink-wrapped

in sopping clothes.

The water rising

on impervious  earth,

running-off, instead of soaking in

to the hard-baked soil.

The rain we were praying for.

Even the non-believers, like me

who scoff at an absent God

and resist superstition.

A God, so quick to temper,

so cruel and contingent

in His whimsical gifts,

so unmoved

by our offerings.

We, too, looked up to the heavens

along with the rest;

the devout few

who are sure of their faith,

and the many more

for whom it's a struggle.

As if hope and need

could conquer doubt.

As if an act of will

could end a drought.

Life Force

June 6 2018

So, even NASA clean rooms

are contaminated.

Because bacteria have learned to eat

the hissing liquids, and blistering suds

the frothing foams, and caustic scrub

we were certain killed.

How clever

uncanny

unstoppable.

The life force

pushing ever outward,

like a heated gas

irresistibly expanding,

a mushroom cloud

billowing up, and out.

An animating God,

who breathes into life

and decrees it sacred.

Bacteria in rocks, volcanoes

the abyssal deep.

The dry Atacama

blasted by sun,

among our cells, and in our blood.

Exported to space

on the sleek metallic skin

of moon-landing rovers

and rockets to Mars.

Metastatic life

colonizing this blue and green planet

with its imperative to grow

couple

survive,

filling the place

until even the most extreme niche

is occupied.

If you've ever tried to kill

you know what I mean.

The crunch

of the hard coat

of the small black ant

zig-zagging blindly past;

the identical clones

who swarm in its place.

The man, gasping for breath

who simply refuses to die

no matter how battered and beaten and bled;

the faraway look in his eyes,

as consciousness flickers

and the death grip

pulls you frantically in.

The bolt to the brain comes closest.

The efficiency

of the killing floor,

when the big animal's legs

collapse like a marionette's,

and the dead weight of the carcass

seems even heavier.

Rigor mortis meat

with its pungent adrenaline edge.

But life persists.

The living consuming the dead.

Malignant growth, for its own sake

exponentially outward.

Here's a link to the article, by the Atlantic's outstanding science correspondent Ed Yong, that inspired this poem:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/bacteria-can-eat-the-cleaning-products-nasa-uses-to-sterilize-its-spaceships/562016/

On reading this, I was impressed by how indomitable life is.

And also, by nature, how malignant it is: like a metastatic cancer, growing until it outgrows its substrate, and for no reason other than the imperative of growth.**

And, by analogy, our own species: spreading relentlessly over this rare and precious planet like some Malthusian nightmare, until we will have destroyed it, and ourselves, with our insatiable appetite and extravagant waste.

So I suppose this poem is both an environmentalist's screed and a misanthrope's indulgence. With a little nod to the inner vegetarian, who wags his accusing finger every time he finds me eating meat. But no, it is not autobiographical: I have never tried to kill, except for the odd ant and biting insect!

As you can see by the date of my last post, it seems as if I haven't written forever. Amend that; I haven't written poetry forever. But there is a certain writing bug than can't be expiated via letters, and I had been hoping some inspiration would strike. So it was nice when I felt a little jolt after reading this article. But then I sat down, wrote a lousy few lines, and decided I wasn't feeling it. It was as I started to get up that another first line came, and suddenly I was into it, and that old pleasurable experience returned:  I lost track of time; and the writing came almost automatically, as if I were taking dictation and not composing. After being away from it for awhile, it definitely felt similar to exercising when you've gotten a little out of shape: hard at first, but then the muscle memory and the residue of training soon get you back up to speed.

** I realize that reducing all living things to a malignant imperative to grow would seem to demean our humanity, since we are certainly among the living. After all, we humans are much more than a mindless mass of exponentially growing cells; we have consciousness. Conscious not in terms of a state of wakefulness, but in the sense of self-awareness and the boundary of ego and and a desire for meaning. Not to mention the awareness of our own mortality! But we are the exception. Because the vast majority of living things are essentially automatons, guided by the simple algorithm of survival and reproduction, and to whom consciousness is of only limited use – an evolutionary innovation that enabled the increasingly complex systems of big multicellular organisms to interact with the outer world. Of course, this could only be the point of view of someone who is very reductionist about the great mystery of consciousness: believing that the mind and brain are one; and that consciousness resides in that 3 lb mass of protoplasm, not some hovering or indestructible or divinely created soul.