THE LITTLE PIECES OF YOUR MIND
IT’S WONDERFUL TO BE WANTED. Someone calls you up wanting you. We want you to read for us, the woman says, and immediately you are the charmed one—wanted. Here all winter you have been the one doing the wanting, phoning people up, telling them they were wanted and now in an unexpected but pleasant reversal you have become The Wanted One. It’s your turn to be wanted. The formerly wanted (last week, last year) bow their heads and retreat walking backwards. It’s the shadows for us, they say, we’re going to be busy erecting the podium, seeing to the spotlight, putting up posters; there’s so many things to do in this declaration of your wantedness because every expense has been spared; there’s so little to spend; we do this all for free, this wanting of others, and this time it’s YOU. Yes, they say, we’ve wanted you for a long time, ever since your last wanting; we heard about it in the northern territories, how everyone congratulated themselves on their choice of The Wanted One, how you performed admirably well, a dash of melancholy amidst the general hilarity and hysteria for which you are known and for which we now want you; we’re counting on you to make our audience scream with glee; our audience filled with mainly temporarily unwanted ones like ourselves but never mind, we won’t stay unwanted for long, we have our own personal agendas, some of us even campaign outright to be wanted, some of us, lacking in our own wanting power, wait to be discovered, to be beheld, to have someone say: Why, we haven’t wanted HER for some time now, what’s she been doing under that stone, in that cave, covered with that cloak of OBSCURITY? The wanting ones say: she’s been forgotten these many merry months, has anyone been wanting her at all? Because once on the wanted list not always on the wanted list. There’s tales of others going wanting for years and years and no one making the evening call when the rates are cheapest, no ring ring hello and the reverential voice on the end of the line saying: It’s you, this time the spotlight’s on YOU. Some of us have been rumored to say no thank you, I don’t wish to be wanted right now. A reckless thing to do resulting in one of two things: expulsion into unwanted limbo or the Salinger effect—MYSTERY and therefore anxious wanting, continual wanting and who will be the first to have this one agree to being The Wanted One? Still and all the telephone rings and it’s someone doing the wanting. But how much are you wanted? Don’t ask. Asking is risky. What’s required is humility and grateful thanks. Because being wanted is wonderful. How pleasant, you say, you want me to come, of course I’ll come, I’ll drop everything on the third Wednesday in January and fly 800 miles north via an intermittently scheduled flight leaving snowdrops on the coast for 35 below. What’s wind chill factor to one who’s wanted? Perhaps not owning a coat suitable for Arctic wear but no matter we wanted ones are warmed by your invitation. The glow we emit is certainly the result of our being wanted; our hearts are ignited by how miraculously our books appear at the back of the local school gym where a formerly wanted one solemnly tends the book table. Because this night you are The Wanted One. You are inexplicably rendered noble, raised aloft, celebrated. The anxiety and organization that is stock in trade of the ones doing the wanting has evaporated and you are full of peace and humble confidence. Why of course, the wanted ones tell themselves, we were wanted all along, we’ve always been wanted; even in the tiny anguished hours of our wanting for others we have been wanted; we’d just forgotten. Such is the literary life. Oh it’s a wonderful life to belong to. So benign and friendly, all this extending of the charmed wand. Taking turns anointing one another, solemnly passing the circle of light, now you, now you. Once you have been wanted there’s no denying the special glow. You are borne into a roomful of maybe twenty people and sometimes fabulously—oh the universe is kind!—one hundred people or more. You are borne into the reading room and all chatter stops, heads turn your way; two or three latecomers hurry to their seats. Someone has draped a green velvet cape over your shoulders. A formerly wanted one marches before you clearing the way. Another scurries behind you clutching your books, the little pieces of your mind that you will impart to the audience this very night. The little pieces trembling beneath the dazzling covers of your books. And now you’re standing beside the podium where a formerly wanted one introduces you. (Such generous, splendid things he says.) Then testing the microphone you say good evening and begin to read. Your words an escaping flock of swallows. And will they find homes this night? And will your words find nests in opened minds? Or will they perish? Crash against the hillsides of stony stares? The little pieces of your mind strewn about the reading room floor, unloved, and in spite of everything, unwanted.
THE ENLIGHTENMENT BAND
… AND THEN we’ll get these old poets to make a guest appearance on our poem CD and we’ll revive their words somehow smarten up their words and mingle them with the not-yet-great poets and it will be like a supremely meaningful cocktail party with all this clinking of words going on it will be so moving so great with everyone together in the poems the recent greats and the overawed young with all their visions colliding but in harmony like that famous Coke commercial and with former animosities tossed aside like who’s got the corner on vision and which particular vision will best describe the age something every poet’s after so that looking back people will say that was the vision that mattered that was the vision that said it all but in this CD in this poem CD everyone will be sweetly rhyme-less in spite of the gloominess and contrariness of some of the texts because all that will have become irrelevant for the brief span of the CD the CD like a sudden band of enlightenment—the Enlightenment Band!—that you can play over and over whenever the need for perspective arises and for some of us that’s every minute of every day we just don’t know where we sit in the great mush of things we just don’t know what to think about anything and then at the end of the CD for the finale poem there’ll be the sound of brain synapses firing a special sound made large and rocket-like thanks to digital augmentation and then everyone both listening and reciting together in unison will get it get it get it and the poem CD will have done its work it will have caused poetry to regain its old religious ground it will be a truly wondrous event occurring over and over at the push of the play button and immediately there’s sublimity for you the deep measured moving tones of wonder stroking you over and over …
THE PASTORAL SITUATION
I VISITED THE NUNS but the nuns were out of habit. Their black robes lay piled outside the convent door like a messy donation for the poor. I had to wade through them in order to ring the buzzer.
A woman in a turquoise tracksuit answered. Her nametag said Sister Helene. I inquired about a room and she asked if I had a reservation. “I thought that wasn’t necessary,” I said. She said, “It is now.” I said, “Why did you give up your habit?” She said, “It’s not pious to long for the past.”
“Then I must be impious,” I said, but she let me in anyway. We stood in a dark vestibule. I sniffed the air for incense but all I could smell was wet cement.
“Leaky convent,” Sister Helene said by way of explanation. “All convents built since the eighties have this problem.”
“There’s been that many built since then?”
“There’s a convent built somewhere in the world every 40 days.”
“Why?”
Sister Helene cast her eyes towards the ceiling. I took it she didn’t know why.
“What I’m here for,” I told her, “are several nuns for a disaster scene.”
“What kind of disaster scene?” she asked. “Famine, flood, plague, exploding Ferris wheel?”
“The disaster scene which is my life,” I said. “I need three scurrying nuns to cross my path before breakfast.”
“Three? We don’t work in threes. You can have two, four, five, but not three. Three’s our sacred number.”
“All right, “ I said, “I’ll have two. But they must be scurrying and wearing black habits like a portent.”
“Wait here,” Sister Helene said, “I’ll speak to the CEO.”
I stared
at her, trying to suck warmth from her face, a nun’s generous warmth, free to one and all. “Don’t do that,” she snapped. I said, “I thought it was a nun’s habit to radiate unconditional love.” She said, “I’m not in the mood.”
The CEO was a large woman in her mid fifties wearing a mauve power suit and white running shoes.
“I thought you were called Mother Superior,” I said.
“Boring,” she said.
“But if there’s no Mother Superior what’s a Maria with a song in her heart to do?”
“Boring, again,” she said. “Three borings and you’re out.”
“All right, then, I’m looking for a pastoral situation in order to elevate my slum mind, a mind that has become squalid with want. How’s that?”
“Passable. Go on.”
“Few thoughts give me comfort any more,” I stammered. “I’m always cold.”
“What is it you want?”
“Too much,” I said. “I want to be wise.”
“The CEO smirked, “I’ve heard that one before!”
“What do you mean?”
“The desire for wisdom can be habit forming.”
“And that’s bad?”
“That’s a nuisance. Too many seekers, too many questions make for a Roman headache.” She stared at me for a moment, a piercing stare, her eyes like searchlights skilled at penetrating souls.
“I also want two nuns to scurry across my personal disaster scene,” I added. “Each day before breakfast.”
“A cliché,” the CEO said, irritated, and then added, “I’m conducting a Dispute Resolution workshop in five minutes. We’ll speak later. In the meantime, Sister Helene will show you to your room.
I have seen buildings shaped like stars or wheels or rocket ships or bells but never one shaped like a human body. As we walked the length of the cement building, Sister Helene said, “The offices and meeting rooms are located in the torso and along here, where the nuns sleep and where the guest rooms are located, are the arms and legs.”
“Whose body is it?” I asked.
She smiled. “Our Savior’s, of course.”
“So you haven’t given Him up.”
“Just the fashions, dearie.”
My room was at the end of a long hallway, a right leg I judged if the body was laying on it’s back. It was a large and sunny room with a double bed, kiosk for writing, a sink, and an easy chair. A thick duvet covered the bed and the pillows were soft. A sign on the door said: Guests are not allowed to eat or drink in the rooms. The windows faced a lawn and a stone pathway; bluebells and red and yellow tulips grew along the borders.
I climbed onto the bed. Fetal in the femur of Christ I sang before going to sleep. I dreamed I had entered a convent and been embraced by a hoard of mothers who fed me and sang to me, tirelessly, throughout the night.
Later I went into the dining hall where dinner was being served, cafeteria style, and stood in a lineup of elderly women. We helped ourselves from stainless steel warming bins: mashed potatoes, creamed corn, meat pie, sliced beets.
I sat alone at a small table by the window. Like a nun, I thought.
Looking out the window, hoping to see a scurrying band of nuns over-brimming with good works, I saw, instead, the lovely, though empty, grounds. Then three middle-aged kitchen staff, two women and a man, all of them fat and wearing white uniforms, came out of a building across the way and leaned against the wall smoking and talking. I watched them stub out their cigarettes on the pathway, grinding them with their heels.
The next day I encountered many of the resident nuns. No longer did their faces peer sweetly from rigid headdresses but from an aura of identical curly perms. It was plain that they’d become invisible like the rest of us. They wore leisure suits or plaid skirts, and Birkenstocks. They wore anything they liked. Walking through a mall they could be any plain looking woman. If I wasn’t at a convent I’d go around asking, “Are you a nun? Are you?” It was disconcerting. What was a casting director to do? “Get me four nuns for this disaster scene!” was a command that now went nowhere. The nuns had sabotaged “B” movies. Where were the singing nuns and the flying nuns and the dancing nuns? Where were the nuns who had gone to the dogs? The ones tending strays, their habits torn and dirty? Where were the Nursing Sisters, tirelessly working without benefit of a union contract? The nuns had sabotaged the idea of nuns.
I thanked God for my smuggled-in bottle of wine.
I asked a nun about recruits. She was the youngest nun, the one who wore white satin ballet slippers to breakfast. She told me she was forty-two years old. She had a perky attractiveness. I could picture her driving a Minivan, a load of kids in the back.
“I’m the youngest nun in the Western division,” she told me. “We can’t get recruits. The young women want the veil, all the old traditions. We’re too liberal for them here.”
Devils of confusion lurking everywhere.
The chapel, located in the throat of the Savior, was Modern Barren—concrete walls, wooden pews. The nuns attended discretely, two or three times a day, almost embarrassedly, as if they were visiting the bathroom too often.
All the nuns wore large, silver crucifix necklaces. And wedding rings of white-gold, thin as electrical wire. A small sign in the hallway said: Protected by Angel Security Systems. This was confusing. What about divine protection? Weren’t He and His host of underlings supposed to be on duty here?
Well, it was quiet.
And boring. The nuns were too busy to talk.
After three days I left. True, habit-less nuns had crossed my path on several occasions, hurrying off to give workshops on nutrition and spiritual wellness, their plaid skirts flapping. But it wasn’t the same; it didn’t have the strength of the black-habited original. I’d entered the convent to say I’d entered a convent. This much was plain. . But nuns had gone the way of the Romantics, leaving some of us pious for the past.
I had definite ideas about the past, certain it was a softer, more welcoming place, and I wanted to go there. I had definite ideas about cliché’s, too, one of my favourites being to have nuns crossing my path, habits flapping ominously. In fact I had a perfect love for clichés, every cliché, those rescue rings of hammered-out meaning; those dependable old repositories of wisdom. Old wives’ tales. Old nun’s tales. Anyone’s tale. That’s what I was after. Tales, clichés that announced: At least 50% wisdom contained therein. A stitch in time saves nothing … Better to be a totem than a harlequin … He who laughs, laughs thankfully … God is in His hedonism, all’s right with the worship …
THE AIR IS THICK WITH METAPHORS
WE’LL SCORE THE WINNING GOAL, capture the Grand Slam, get the hole-in-one. After that, in the Pairs Free Skate, we’ll execute a perfect triple salchow, a transcending move so unexpectedly pure that simultaneous orgasms will occur amongst those watching, perhaps millions of them.
We’ll change our names to Cheeky and Markita and clean up in the Latin category of Ballroom Dancing in America. The crowd will love our sleek and piquant moves, our predatory Salsa, the way you push and pull me with your hot, animal eyes.
We’ll shake champagne bottles and, ecstatic, pour the contents over each other’s heads. This will be on the podium after the Indy win, after the sudden death playoffs, after the gold medals, after the successful births of our children, after the successful birth of anything.
We’ll pose nude for National Geographic, part of a special feature entitled, “Undiscovered Lovers of the Pacific West Coast.” Following this we’ll appear on the cover of the Canadian Tire catalogue in a tribute to long-term domesticity. You’ll be cooking hamburgers from a dazzling silver barbeque and wearing a brilliant grin. I’ll be wearing slim suburban slacks and smiling demurely while serving plates of food to Grandma and the kids. The sun will be shining. There won’t be dangerous shadows anywhere.
During long summer evenings we’ll give dinner parties for our friends with which we’ll celebrate everything, moment by dissolving mom
ent. Over candles and our favourite French Merlot. We’ll watch the watercolour sunset. “Look!” we’ll say, “the air is thick with metaphors!” This phrase will haunt us with its multiplicity of meanings, for years and years.
We’ll do commercial endorsements for rare and thrilling music, especially cello solos that break your heart, and for golden retrievers, which also break your heart. In fact, we’ll endorse rare and thrilling passion in a big way. Even while scrubbing the soup pot, even while buying dog food.
Together, like gladiators, we’ll battle six-hundred-pound poetic chickens, reminding each other that so much depends upon the white chickens, the red wheel barrow, the rain, and on their enormous breasts which, when metaphorically cut up and stir-fried, will feed a dinner party of thousands. After the meal we’ll run the 100-meter dash, breaking through the finish line together, arms secure around each other’s waists, laughing, coming first.
We’ll pretend we’re a species apart and, like anthropologists, stalk couples that are dressed alike. Hanging out of car windows or climbing portable aluminum ladders, we’ll sneak up on them in streets or in restaurants, shrieking together over a rare shot. Then we’ll fill a gallery with our pictures, calling the show “Fusion.” Thousands of couples will come to look at themselves, or couples like them, on the gallery walls. Afterwards they’ll leave smiling, feeling pleasantly confirmed. There’ll be beige couples, and blue couples, and plaid couples with rakish matching tams. On a wall by itself will be our prize photo, a really interesting blonde pair. Our self-portrait.
Darwin Alone in the Universe Page 10