untitled by amber marie chavez
at the outset, i want to say this thing: towards the end of every year i do a recap. often this involves lists. i was trying to find my tune/album/music of the year, that is, number one on my list. there's an obvious winner, but it isn't what i thought it would be. in fact, it's not even from 2012 (i understand it was composed in 2001). but it means everything to me and i found it this year. maybe that's not true. whatever, this is its year. almost every emotion i can muster feels like this. it's what i think heaven sounds like. it's what despair sounds like. (everything to me). it's patient music, so... be patient. if that is difficult for you, watch the below version, someone's set the music to scenes from an (apparently brilliant) hungarian film: arvo part's salva regina and... (everything).
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Introit
there is a war here. a devastating one. there's soil everywhere - it's been upturned and now shows its dark(est) underbelly. lush. cool. everything moves because the worms and bugs are stirred. a war is being waged. the roots of wretched bamboo hold my home's foundation in their claw. meters of upturned roots lay on their sides like ever-extending vertebra. there's a central nervous system under my house. around my house. extending everywhere.
Scene 1
- this is a war?
- aye m'lord, a war indeed.
- a war with adversaries and victors and those left devastated?
- the same.
- and the magnitude of this war?
- depends m'lord -
- are they old adversaries?
- both they are, and are not -
- h-
- only recently acquainted this here man and this here foe, and perhaps only a moderate plot of soil, but the feud is ancient. the oldest. that of man versus nature.
- this is no war son!
- how not?
- wars have victors. wars have defined boundaries. wars are commenced and played and concluded, each to cry their losses, this is no war. this feud, to mirror thy words, is perpetual. man's hopeless attachment to hope met by the mechanism of nature. nature's patient, perpetual, unmitigated rules. always always good son. no winners here. no losers. this is no war, this is, simply: life. it is what there is.
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just get someone to do it...
but i cannot. i cannot. this is my earth you see. my land. these roots, these hold my home in their gasp. it cannot be delegated. cannot be entrusted. it is how love is shown (this above all:
you meet, you kiss. that's love not. love is in the caring : in the protecting - in whatever way it is you can donate ( and when she sleeps at night, and i am her blanket, then she is loved, not before)
on the ground with black soil in my face. crawling up my arms. under my fingernails. gloved hands pulling and shaking. inches coming free. these are the first gazes of a mother and child.
)
this house will soon by home. you see, my hands are cut. i have bled now into the ground. the next weed to sprout will be me. i will know it. it will know me. we will be forged. this is love (i want your blood in me, i want mine in you. i want your petals, your flutters, the length of your hair matches my arm-span perfectly, line my arteries with it.___ i am yours)
q, it's dangerous!
i am fascinated by this proposition. beware your garden, it has spiders. it has snakes. beware the sun it has cancer on its lips. beware walking on your roof, gravity is relentless -
what's is more fundamental than soil and plants and sun? i do not understand it - for the entire course of history, men and women have laboured under the sun. have toiled in the fields. have trail-blazed through forests. have submitted themselves to the so-much-bigger-than-our selves.
i will tend to my own garden. i will stand on my own roof, and clear my own gutters. and why? :
(she hands me my breakfast, a skinny latte and a pain au chocolate
- do you like my healthy breakfast?
- [smirk]
- you only die once. ___)
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i think i want to write something big-ger. a short story or something. about roots. and homes. and people. or whatever it is that ties us. networks and pivots and things. i'm not sure. i don't have a story (i never have a story). all the words in the world and not a story to tell.
(and the funny writing before? i'm kinda reviewing some shakespeare. so. i was amusing myself.)
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my hand has been shaking all day. i'm terrified. i have soo many things to say. but i have not written in too long. i want to pace myself. this is me stretching. i'm trying to stretch. to prepare. we're on the verge of something, i feel it _(i feel something!)_ but i don't know what. there's a fear, and a longing. and i know neither of them - what it is i crave, and what it is i'm scared of. i don't know how they're intertwined. all i know is... i have two months off. at least for now, it's just me. alone at last. it's quiet and sunny and alone. and the garden is large. and every wall needs to be painted. and things need to be sanded. and mended. and i want to be lost here. adrift.
adrift.
adrift.
while i think it through.
and when i wake up from this meditative spell, i want to never remember who i was.