Unfamiliar People (2022)

 

Strawberry

I am going to fail.

I’m going to fail cartilage and plastic, camera and arrow.

I’m going to fail binoculars and conjugations,

all the accompanying musics: I am failing,

I must fail, I can fail, I have failed

the way some women throw themselves

into lover’s arms or out trains,

fingers crossed and skirts billowing

behind them. I’m going to fail

the way strawberry plants fail,

have dug down hard to fail, shooting

brown runners out into silt, into dry gray beds,

into tissue and rock. I’m going to fail

the way their several hundred hearts below surface

have failed, thick, soft stumps desiccating

to tumors; the way roots wizen in the cold

and cloud black, knotty as spark plugs, cystic

synapses. I’m going to fail light and stars and tears.

I’m going to fail the way cowards only wish they could fail,

the way the brave refuse to fail or the vain fear to,

believing that to stray even once from perfection

is to be permanently cast out, Wandering Jew

of failure, Adam of failure, Sita of failure; that’s the way

I’m going to fail, bud and creosote and cloud.

I’m failing pet and parent. I’m failing the food

in strangers’ stomachs, the slender inchoate rings

of distant planets. I’m going to fail these words

and the next and the next. I’m going to fail them,

I’m going to fail her– trust me, I’ve already failed him–

and the possibility of a we is going to sink me

like a bad boat. I’m going to fail the way

this strawberry plant has failed, alive without bud,

without fruit, without tenderness, hugging itself

to privation and ridiculous want.

I’m going to fail simply by standing in front of you,

waving my arms in your face as if hailing a taxi:

I’m here, I’m here, please don’t forget me,

though you already have, I smell it, even cloaked

with soil, sending out my slender fingers for you,

sending out all my hair and tongue and brain.

I’m going to fail you

just as you’re going to fail me,

urging yourself further down to sediment

and the tiny, trickling filaments of damp;

thirsty, thirsty, desperate to drown

if even for a little while, if even for once:

to succumb, to be destroyed,

to die completely, to fail the way I’ve failed

in every particular sense of myself,

in every new and beautiful light.

Paisley Rekdal

wanderlusting: delicious destinations

 #fortheloveofgoodguk

omm: sailing

I miss you.

xo

hacks: the click

 

Anthem

The birds they sang

at the break of day

Start again

I heard them say

Don’t dwell on what

has passed away

or what is yet to be.

Ah the wars they will

be fought again

The holy dove

She will be caught again

bought and sold

and bought again

the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

We asked for signs

the signs were sent:

the birth betrayed

the marriage spent

Yeah the widowhood

of every government —

signs for all to see.

I can’t run no more

with that lawless crowd

while the killers in high places

say their prayers out loud.

But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up

a thundercloud

and they’re going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring…

You can add up the parts

but you won’t have the sum

You can strike up the march,

there is no drum

Every heart, every heart

to love will come

but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

That’s how the light gets in.

That’s how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen

late night listening

“He who acts like a jerk 

on an island of his own creation 

will only have the horizon for a friend “

Petrarch

Objectivity 

Banana

His whimsy makes me smile 

And death as I watch my stepfather in rapid decline 

Despondency 

Can we work as a team for once?

Unwritten Law

Interesting how we fall in love:
In my case, absolutely. Absolutely, and, alas, often—
so it was in my youth.
And always with rather boyish men—
unformed, sullen, or shyly kicking the dead leaves:
in the manner of Balanchine.
Nor did I see them as versions of the same thing.
I, with my inflexible Platonism,
my fierce seeing of only one thing at a time:
I ruled against the indefinite article.
And yet, the mistakes of my youth
made me hopeless, because they repeated themselves,
as is commonly true.
But in you I felt something beyond the archetype—
a true expansiveness, a buoyance and love of the earth
utterly alien to my nature. To my credit,
I blessed my good fortune in you.
Blessed it absolutely, in the manner of those years.
And you in your wisdom and cruelty
gradually taught me the meaninglessness of that term.

Louise Glück

"Our bodies are not designed to absorb and process this much violence, loss, and grief." #minjinlee

For What Binds Us

There are names for what binds us:

strong forces, weak forces.

Look around, you can see them:

the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,

nails rusting into the places they join,

joints dovetailed on their own weight.

The way things stay so solidly

wherever they've been set down—

and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back

across a wound, with a great vehemence,

more strong

than the simple, untested surface before.

There's a name for it on horses,

when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,

is proud of its wounds, wears them

as honors given out after battle,

small triumphs pinned to the chest—

And when two people have loved each other

see how it is like a

scar between their bodies,

stronger, darker, and proud;

how the black cord makes of them a single fabric

that nothing can tear or mend.

Jane Hirshfield

“The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do / without,”

from “frank: sonnets” 

by Diane Seuss

I could do it. I could walk into the sea. 

I have a rental car. It’s blue and low on fuel.

I have feet, two, and proximity. I could do it.

Others have before me. Jeff Buckley (1997) he

was only 30. Carol Wayne (1985) the Matinee Lady

and a photo spread in Playboy. Dennis Wilson (1983)

after diving for a photo of his ex-wife he’d tossed

overboard years earlier. Hart Crane, well of course

Hart Crane (1932). Socialite Starr Faithfull (1931),

she was only 25, she drowned in shallow water near

the shore, her lungs all full of sand. Starr left behind

her sex diary, current whereabouts unknown. 19 men.

It’s dark. I love the dark and it loves me.

It would be fun! I could walk into the sea!

Sometimes I can’t feel it, what some call

beauty. I can see it, I swear, the conifers

and fat bees, ferns like church fans and then

the sea, its flatness as if pressed by stones

like witches were, the dark sand ridged 

by tides, strewn with body parts, claws,

the stranded mesoglea of the moon jellyfish,

transparent blob, brainless, enlightened in its clarity.

I stand there, I walk the shore at low tide, the sky

fearless, not open to me, just open, there it is,

the wind, cold, surf’s boom drowning out

thought, I can photograph it, I can name it

beautiful, but feel it, I don’t know that I am 

feeling it, when I drown in it, maybe then. 

Rare find: Perfection by Dries Van Noten

 

Empathic Overflow: Our Blues

 

Indulgence: Vosges Sakura Collection

 

(2) RURIKO: Kokuto black sugar caramel with double fermented shoyu + 62% cacao dark chocolate ganache + electric blue algae-hued 36% cacao white chocolate

(2) MOUNTAIN OOLONG: Oolong tea +45% cacao deep milk chocolate + candied orange peel

(2) MOMOKO: white peach + bitter almond + peach eau de vie + beet-hued 36% cacao white chocolate

(2) HIKARI: Hateruma brown sugar + 5-year aged purple potato vinegar + 72% cacao dark chocolate + ube

(1) SAKURA: cherry blossom + Anko white bean + 36% cacao white chocolate + dragon fruit + white poppy seed

(2) BERI: wild strawberry + pink peppercorns + 45% cacao deep milk chocolate

(2) CHIBA: Hateruma brown sugar caramel + 62% cacao dark chocolate + Japanese Chiba peanuts

(2) CEREMONIAL MATCHA: ceremonial grade matcha tea + 62% cacao dark chocolate + white poppyseeds 

(2) JASMINE FLOWER: Japanese pear + jasmine flower tea âte de fruits + Wakaya ginger + 36% cacao white chocolate 

(2) YUZU: fresh yuzu + coconut + almond + 36% cacao white chocolate 

Cultivating Courage

 

Fujis from the motherland ❤️

Omm: Regret & Redemption

 

Omm: Melissa Febos

 

#dianeseuss

“I wish you solitude, yes, but also loneliness, the aching, fruitful kind.”

To say: no person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone. There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors. (I make up this strange, angry packet for you, threaded with love.)

I think you thought there was no such place for you, and perhaps there was none then, and perhaps there is none now; but we will have to make it, we who want an end to suffering, who want to change the laws of history, if we are not to give ourselves away.

Adrienne Rich, Sources