Back to Life, Back to Sense

The past month has been a whirlwind of travel from Poland to the US, from the US to Germany, from Germany back to Poland, and now...stillness.

It's so interesting how we (at least I) don't appreciate stillness, the sensation that the ground is solid under my feet until after I've been living like I don't belong anywhere. I've read of customs from various cultures that seem to obsess over ensuring that a body and soul BELONG somewhere. I have read of tribes where the umbilical chord is tied in a bag and worn around the neck for the entirety of one's days on earth. Losing this talisman is catastrophic. It's a loss of self, a loss of heritage, a loss of belonging. Similarly, and perhaps more familiarly, I have read of mirrors being covered when a person dies to ensure the soul moves on and does not remain trapped in a place where s/he doesn't belong.

It's so interesting to consider the associations we have between calmness and comfort. For the first time in a month, I feel entirely calm. I have nothing looming, no major travel, no obligations beyond the ordinary. It is a stillness that I treasure entirely. I am not the kind of person who needs covered mirrors or leather sacks full of discarded body parts to feel a sense of belonging. I crave only stillness, the luxury of a moment to write, the prospect of scribbling a poem or sketching something in thick black ink. It's an assurance of selfhood and it's entirely wonderful.

I've spent the past few weeks readjusting to cold and dark. I don't think I'll ever fully trust a 4:30 sky that's full of stars (more accurately, a 4:30 sky that would be full of stars without a smog of black clouds that seem especially grim against a night sky). The cold hasn't truly been that terrible. Every person I've met here has dismissed complaints of the weather with a swipe of the hand and an anecdote about winters past where there was REAL cold and one could not ensure that his/her hot water would work 24 hours a day. This may be true. I may be the benefactor of a meteorological oddity that has kept temperatures hovering slightly above freezing and warding off serious snow. However, regardless of my fortune, I'll enjoy the return of warm rays of sunshine and I can't help it if I think so.

As for other updates, I've returned to an especially haunting image that captivated my attention one of my first days in Poland. I was walking down the street and passed a bakery which contained two gigantic loaves of (artificial) bread. Seriously. These were the size of layer cakes. However, some unfortunate little bird was hoodwinked by them, wandered inside, and became trapped behind a layer of glass. He flailed and flailed against it, growing visibly more panicked, and shedding feathers across the loaf. I recalled, at this point, the story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba during one of their visits. The Queen decided to test Solomon's wisdom by placing a real flower in a room of artificial ones (paper? glass?) and challenging the king to find the actual flower. It honestly seems like a pointless test. I don't understand inconsistent mandates about the importance of proof in biblical contexts. The rules are confusing. Anyway, Solomon opened the window and bee flew in, going to the only real flower in the room. Realistically, it was the bee that was talented, not Solomon. However, it pointed to some nonsensical "sixth sense" animals may have about knowing what's real from what's replication. This bird, however, received no such instinct and he continued to beat his wings against the glass. Eventually, he was shooed out but not before creating a truly spectacular image. I've struggled with how to recreate the image in writing and settled on a poem attached below.

I swear I never meant to be the kind of person who posts his/her poetry on a blog. It's like the guy at the party who brings his guitar despite no one asking him to do so. "Oh look. Jimmy brought a guitar...See that? He's here...with his guitar! OH! He's playing it now. I'm shocked he knows how to play Blackbird... on his guitar."

However, it was moment I couldn't get out of my head. It was a perfect personification of chaos against order, the turbulence of the natural world against our best attempts at...well, stillness.

"Ovens"
I read of the unwed sisters

who, I am told, would climb

onto the ovens as they cooked

bread, waiting to be filled

as soft brown loaves took

form beneath them.

In desperation, they recalled all

of their good deeds, remembering

the coins tossed to beggars,

the last bite of supper slipped

into the wet jaws of a stray.

I think again of these women,

with their ordinary wishes 

as I stare at cakes glazed like

frost on a window above

heartier loaves with nuts 

and seeds baked inside. 

At the window, a bird has

been fooled by subversive

bread, plastic and glued 

together to tempt the hungry.

I, too, have been tricked

by such a promise, I 

realize as I watch two hands 

fold around the erect wings of 

the bird as he smashes against

a pane of glass, hurt by the 

betrayal of what he loved

and what he need to survive. 

He is tossed on the streets 

and pauses for a moment, 

tilting his head as he regrets

his desire and his stupidity. 

Perhaps, I realize, there

 are those of us better suited

to perch on the ovens

rather than to flail against

what we cannot see.