Big Bang
William Stafford
A shudder goes through the universe, even
long after. Every star, clasping its
meaning as it looks back, races outward
where something quiet and far waits.
Within, too, ever receding into its fractions,
that first brutal sound nestles closer
and closer toward the tiny dot of tomorrow.
And here we are in the middle, holding
it all together, not even shaking.
Hard to Believe.
*__*__*
Oh I don't know. What does one add? Doesn't morning speak well enough for herself? Night for himself? Loneliness says enough. Bliss smiles at me quietly, makes such a difference.
Dear V,
my sister sometimes has 'dreams'. Certain clairvoyant faculties. The other morning she returned from her nocturnal oracle and asked to be taken for a walk.
____She: I asked.
____Me: and?
____She: He said I have a good feeling about it.
____Me: [dear God, please]
Based on this superstition, I indulged an afternoon to dreams I dare not dream. Impossibilities that only something as unreasonable as Life could allow to happen.
I have it scribbled in my notebook. over and over, page after page of it. He said I have a good feeling about it. Hope. not easily distilled to words, but for me, alive right now in this one phrase only. No lifely force could make it happen, but something that crawls out of dreams, and daydreaming foreheads, and silent hands that rub eyes.
____f(all)
get it?
The other morning, no other way around it, in my PJ pants (dark blue), it was important that sunlight was involved, I stepped outside. I sat in a plastic white chair stained brown. I could not bear the silence, there were too many murmurs I could not tolerate. I listened to Part's Magnificat, the Song of Mary, imagined women's lips and eyes and fingers. (Incidentally, I believe that my soul is feminine, which I cannot explain or understand, and for certain my lines from frowning soo much are all man... and yet, the other afternoon as I took my sunday stroll I noticed trees flowering, and little dogs, and today a little girl with curly brown hair almost made me cry) quia fecit mihi magna, qui potens est et sanctum nomen eius, (Because he that is mighty, hath done great things to me; and holy is his name.)
____I don't remember praying... only listening and scanning my eyes over black and white shapes. (This is not new- often when others pray, I cannot help but to play Schubert's Impromptus in my head) and then... 20 minutes? 30? I do not know. Only that when I came to, the cement ground had the unpleasant feel of dirty cement, and there was no garden but brown dirt, and my chair was coated in it, and I had been sitting on a wet bright orange towel and now my back was wet. I felt confused. In my hand I found a little purple book. I scanned through the pages and found a photograph of my dead grandfather, a little business card- on it written (in the most tasteful font imaginable):
____with the compliments of,
____the Universal House of Justice
a tattered piece of purple scrap paper with a translation of an Arabic prayer for decisions written on it. I once read it, 19 times, in the holiest spot I've found on this planet. I made a decision, then deceived myself, then paid heavily for my indecision. I am hesitant to use that spell again. Towards the back pages, small flower petals, confined to two dimensions. I notice I have a finger slipped onto that page, I take a quick glimpse. Oh. It is a time-machine I discovered about a year ago. I found, entirely by accident, that if I say:
____and cover my face in the dust of that Threshold of Thine
I will find myself in a small room, barefoot and miniature, silent and panting, on a red carpet staring at an arched room ahead of me. To my left is a small window that in the spring months lets in a draft of air that (despite my wishes) compels my body to eventually stand and walk out. (I take my finger from off the page and close the book.)
I seem to have been gone a long while. I do not remember who I am.
(He said I have a good feeling about it.) (please God)
Dear V,
I know you have no idea what I am talking about. Other than it is a story about a rock a child once threw into the sky thinking in a parabola shape it would fall back down and make a dull thud. (only that it did not, and floated on and on... through some clouds, and it got cold, and it got dark, and it got hard to breathe, and it shed its rock.skin and found itself orbiting the earth
____(entirely alone,
____but not far enough away
Another night spent listening to a Brahms slow movement.
I wish I could organize this letter just as sections from music, save myself the trouble of words.
Also, I cannot understand why I am not miserable. Why, time is moving soo fast... why I believe in mermaids and goblins named Scarbo, why I believe that I have no other purpose but to learn to be human, and that I am achieving it as well as many other man might (despite everything I am losing by fighting invisible battles).
yes.
There's a melody, for cello and clarinet, I am listening to it presently. Under a tree, somewhere far, a billion years ago, when God pulled my name out of a hat and blew on it to form the lines on my palms, this is what He was listening to. My soul recognizes it. It calls it home. One day, when my not.yet.babies are to fall asleep, they will dream wordless dreams made up of colors (those of their mother's eyes no doubt), and magnitude (like their father's palms holding their entire head), and emotion (which they will not manage to name) to this music.
The other day, walking under the tree, and smelling flowers I could not see and looking up to see the miracle (that stars could be blue and could hang from branches, and that I could see them in daylight), I hummed Mozart to myself, and realized: i am 25 years old. i have pushed as hard as i could, tackled every challenge, my nerves are the finger stubs of seamstresses, frayed, and hurt... and for my efforts i am no more than a meter away from the start line.
and that the scent of the flowers somehow made it... ok,
and that knowing the right Mozart adagio for the occasion made it memorable
And I am trying to accept the idea that we may not necessarily win in this (short) world of God.
Best Regards,
q
William Stafford
A shudder goes through the universe, even
long after. Every star, clasping its
meaning as it looks back, races outward
where something quiet and far waits.
Within, too, ever receding into its fractions,
that first brutal sound nestles closer
and closer toward the tiny dot of tomorrow.
And here we are in the middle, holding
it all together, not even shaking.
Hard to Believe.
*__*__*
Oh I don't know. What does one add? Doesn't morning speak well enough for herself? Night for himself? Loneliness says enough. Bliss smiles at me quietly, makes such a difference.
Dear V,
my sister sometimes has 'dreams'. Certain clairvoyant faculties. The other morning she returned from her nocturnal oracle and asked to be taken for a walk.
____She: I asked.
____Me: and?
____She: He said I have a good feeling about it.
____Me: [dear God, please]
Based on this superstition, I indulged an afternoon to dreams I dare not dream. Impossibilities that only something as unreasonable as Life could allow to happen.
I have it scribbled in my notebook. over and over, page after page of it. He said I have a good feeling about it. Hope. not easily distilled to words, but for me, alive right now in this one phrase only. No lifely force could make it happen, but something that crawls out of dreams, and daydreaming foreheads, and silent hands that rub eyes.
____f(all)
get it?
The other morning, no other way around it, in my PJ pants (dark blue), it was important that sunlight was involved, I stepped outside. I sat in a plastic white chair stained brown. I could not bear the silence, there were too many murmurs I could not tolerate. I listened to Part's Magnificat, the Song of Mary, imagined women's lips and eyes and fingers. (Incidentally, I believe that my soul is feminine, which I cannot explain or understand, and for certain my lines from frowning soo much are all man... and yet, the other afternoon as I took my sunday stroll I noticed trees flowering, and little dogs, and today a little girl with curly brown hair almost made me cry) quia fecit mihi magna, qui potens est et sanctum nomen eius, (Because he that is mighty, hath done great things to me; and holy is his name.)
____I don't remember praying... only listening and scanning my eyes over black and white shapes. (This is not new- often when others pray, I cannot help but to play Schubert's Impromptus in my head) and then... 20 minutes? 30? I do not know. Only that when I came to, the cement ground had the unpleasant feel of dirty cement, and there was no garden but brown dirt, and my chair was coated in it, and I had been sitting on a wet bright orange towel and now my back was wet. I felt confused. In my hand I found a little purple book. I scanned through the pages and found a photograph of my dead grandfather, a little business card- on it written (in the most tasteful font imaginable):
____with the compliments of,
____the Universal House of Justice
a tattered piece of purple scrap paper with a translation of an Arabic prayer for decisions written on it. I once read it, 19 times, in the holiest spot I've found on this planet. I made a decision, then deceived myself, then paid heavily for my indecision. I am hesitant to use that spell again. Towards the back pages, small flower petals, confined to two dimensions. I notice I have a finger slipped onto that page, I take a quick glimpse. Oh. It is a time-machine I discovered about a year ago. I found, entirely by accident, that if I say:
____and cover my face in the dust of that Threshold of Thine
I will find myself in a small room, barefoot and miniature, silent and panting, on a red carpet staring at an arched room ahead of me. To my left is a small window that in the spring months lets in a draft of air that (despite my wishes) compels my body to eventually stand and walk out. (I take my finger from off the page and close the book.)
I seem to have been gone a long while. I do not remember who I am.
(He said I have a good feeling about it.) (please God)
Dear V,
I know you have no idea what I am talking about. Other than it is a story about a rock a child once threw into the sky thinking in a parabola shape it would fall back down and make a dull thud. (only that it did not, and floated on and on... through some clouds, and it got cold, and it got dark, and it got hard to breathe, and it shed its rock.skin and found itself orbiting the earth
____(entirely alone,
____but not far enough away
Another night spent listening to a Brahms slow movement.
I wish I could organize this letter just as sections from music, save myself the trouble of words.
Also, I cannot understand why I am not miserable. Why, time is moving soo fast... why I believe in mermaids and goblins named Scarbo, why I believe that I have no other purpose but to learn to be human, and that I am achieving it as well as many other man might (despite everything I am losing by fighting invisible battles).
you know that feeling when you recognize somebody (from a previous life... the previousness of your same life)
yes.
There's a melody, for cello and clarinet, I am listening to it presently. Under a tree, somewhere far, a billion years ago, when God pulled my name out of a hat and blew on it to form the lines on my palms, this is what He was listening to. My soul recognizes it. It calls it home. One day, when my not.yet.babies are to fall asleep, they will dream wordless dreams made up of colors (those of their mother's eyes no doubt), and magnitude (like their father's palms holding their entire head), and emotion (which they will not manage to name) to this music.
The other day, walking under the tree, and smelling flowers I could not see and looking up to see the miracle (that stars could be blue and could hang from branches, and that I could see them in daylight), I hummed Mozart to myself, and realized: i am 25 years old. i have pushed as hard as i could, tackled every challenge, my nerves are the finger stubs of seamstresses, frayed, and hurt... and for my efforts i am no more than a meter away from the start line.
and that the scent of the flowers somehow made it... ok,
and that knowing the right Mozart adagio for the occasion made it memorable
And I am trying to accept the idea that we may not necessarily win in this (short) world of God.
Best Regards,
q
1 comment:
I get it.
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