Days Disowned by Memory (2018)

Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and knowledge, whatever is imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its leisure; and all but the present moment, but the present spot, passion claims for its own, and, brooding over it with wings outspread, stamps it with an image of itself.

William Hazlitt

September 1995

Brimful of melancholy roamers, the bus station offered its dim lighting with demure competence. My aunt basked seamlessly in this sham sunlight while she sang beautiful lies. Don’t you worry, dear; we’re waiting for your sisters' bumper blue bus.  A voice whose echo reigned  over every tottering rumor. Near us, trundling back and forth, my mother compulsively stared at her watch, as if the flow of time were her duty. And in a moment the three faces and the offshoot: We’re all going on a trip. And then my mother’s cold hands and the abrupt bus. The engine swallowed our sadness. The tarnished windows left four outlines vulnerable to my mercurial imagination.

July 1996

There was no need for a stricture—  the intermittent roar kept me  at a distance, startled me into a precocious self-consciousness.           Tentative, I approached the tide.       I let its gentle intervals assuage the fear, instill a sense of familiarity. And soon                    I found myself at home.         A modest home, doubtless, quite insignificant in comparison to what was left.        But I had no thought for comparisons— this ever-working portion could not help revealing the whole.

January 1997

I followed the calm man through a road that looked like all too many roads. At that time, I was barefoot and still hadn’t learned that it is bad manners to follow people—  no matter if something about them grips you. We walked at a steady pace: if he contemplated the clouds, I contemplated the clouds; if he wondered at the mourning doves, band-tailed pigeons, and barn swallows, I wondered at them too; if he whispered arcane words, I whispered my own.            Two sound men on the trail: one a mirror of the other. It was only when the ants crept up my legs that I could no longer traverse with my impromptu Pollux.

February 1997

What a bother to live surrounded by facts.   No, the book doesn’t say so. No, you can’t use it that way. No, things just aren’t like that. A cumbersome barrier of haughty adults.     No, it goes beyond you. No, others are staring.           No, you’ll thank me later.      What a bother to live surrounded by crowds who think life a litany  of overwrought rules. 

March 1997

Up went the swing, wishes behind— to be a bird,    to be a cloud, to be the sun, which high enough     covered it all  in a glimpse;  to be anything            but a little boy  stuck with his dreams.

April 1997

The earthworm and the woodlouse always found a way into our garden, reluctant playthings of my curious eye.        The earthworm and the woodlouse   either wriggled or rolled up,   instinctively expecting a return.        The earthworm and the woodlouse lacked a sense of their fragility, dying under a careless embrace.

May 1997

Imitation: a natural tendency,            enlarged as I grew unaware of its abiding influence.         It led my hand when I built cities      out of scraps and litter.          It led my steps when I crossed hedges          at untimely hours.   It instructed a vernal vagrant to keep a ball of thread.         It proved a competent counterpart    to a blossoming whim.

June 1997

The makeshift rigor of creation        

fathered an inadequate world,

one at odds with the alluring

torrent that rippled through my mind.          

To no avail I rearranged       

the blankets and the pillows,

the curtains and the toys.                  

Disenchanted, on the verge of tears,

I knocked a tiny shark and stared,

suddenly seized by a laughable love.           

So what if the row of  soldiers          

had an uncouth appearance   

and the fabrics a garish hue?  

By next morning, I would have to clear it all up.

July 1997

You prepared for the climb.   The tools in your shabby belt and the elderly ladder            glistened under the heavy      sun, stressed the exuberance  of the trunk and far-reaching leaves.             An effortless rise to the top   was followed by a flurry of slashes.   In no time you greeted us      with a handful of dates.         How was this heroic figure    the same as that which slept    through the afternoons and brought groceries on Sundays?  

August 1997

Amid the storm, a vitreous man        covered the blooming bed of his pickup. Stream and wind did not disrupt his devotion to minuteness.             Yet the whole scene moved me little. Where was the joy of rain?    Where the rapt, awkward dancing?   Where the unlearned gratitude?

September 1997

I asked sleep for a few favors.

So a lightbulb became          

the sun’s sojourn;      

a notebook, the expectant grass;

a crayon, the watering pot;               

a scrawl, the gathering dusk; 

a train horn, the private night.

October 1997

With what confidence I let my hands           

try to help build the kite that eluded you. I was sure there was a missing piece.

We kept at it, both in earnest.

Around us, the cloth-shrouded sky

graced the sloppy children below.                

Would you be able to recall the moment     

this turned into a grave undertaking?           

Not once did we feel bored.             

Not once did you doubt trial and error.                    

Not once did I doubt my hunch.                   

But facing the result we couldn’t resist laughing.               

Go on. It took us long enough.         

And I ran and seemed as clumsy as everyone else. 

And I believe the kite never really flew.      

Yet you cheered and the current was pleasant.                   

Why not imagine the fitful tugs meant much more?

November 1997

During recess, she read near the modest bookshelf.              One heard a uniform flow of theories.          She wants to impress the reading boys. She expects the teacher to look.        She has no friends. But the reading boys didn’t read after hours, the teacher always left the classroom, and friends were plentiful. I had no theory of my own.    I liked her. I liked books.       The union was as unproblematic      as that between my mother and her morning prayers.

December 1997

Life revolved around school and home, with odd forays into circling terrain.             It all felt planned by others, even at its most spontaneous, when familiarity didn’t loom large.   Growing weary of the life-schedule devised by conscientious shadows of former youths, we journeyed to the limit.      Nature-struck objects led to an illumed mosaic. On the other side emerged a land devoid of green.       Though unsure at first, we searched for a way out, desperate and thrilled, afraid and confident.   How much we owed the one who called attention to a quiet crevice. Our sense of awe surveyed    the eremitic vision,    wanting its commonplace craft;        for a sumless yellow  proved more than we could carry.

January 1998

What is it to be unheard? A polite smile fixed to the motion of a nod. An unvarying repertoire of curt remarks.      A stare that strays inwardly.  A body oblivious to its own vacillation.       It is a courteous demand for silence, the Morrison Pill of overworked minds.  It is to become a task.

February 1998

Mine was an elastic woe, readily amplified by uneasy gestures spread across the house, carefully quelled by a milkshake, easily restored by a lost toy or a puzzling whisper. A vain cycle of evanescent success: even at this scale a tyrant       receives his due; even at this scale a tyrant forgoes retention and persists.                      Yes, life was the grandiloquent speech         of one who knew only consonants.  

March 1998

The afternoon of cap guns brought about the rocking chair, my first taste of moody contemplation. Wounded, I proudly gazed at the jejune bedlam. I took a sip of my cup  and strove to accept comfort. But the puffs and gunshots called, the wild exertion chastised. Wasting away an epoch—for time imposed itself that way—was too much. I rose and limped to the playground, not a little boastful of my bandage.

April 1998

I found a crack in the stout oak’s trunk.        It wandered from the highest branch down to the lowest root.        An inchoate hint of weakness tolerated by a matriarch that stood impassively day in and day out while I wept for big and small matters. It was as if there were nothing left to lean on— an invitation to stand on my own frail legs.  

May 1998

Who in the classroom grasped Rebeca and Martín’s silence?            We were told about their language: its richness, its foreignness.               But no words were describing the cage-like quality it acquired        when others had no use for it,            when it seemed hardly more significant than a secret handshake.                    Locked away, they struggled to seize the key that routinely rattled   out of everyone’s mouth.       Then we spoke.          To me, it had just been the language of the house—            a domestic duty.                     Yet through them it became erratic, cloddish, clattering, flippant. I listened anew.                                  Our odd exchanges didn’t turn into a friendship;     a common tongue is no match for a common laugh.                        There were three of us now, however. The key mattered somewhat less.

June 1998

On the back of the truck, I wondered whether the star-burdened night sky meant anything to you, the robust figure at the edge; I wondered whether your eyes would someday let go of their anchor, drifting toward useless places; I wondered whether you didn’t look up for fear of losing your cap, a marred, steadfast companion. I wondered whether the can of beer you held close had made a surreptitious claim on you one nameless night. I wondered whether you would dream for once and leave.

July 1998

How could I be attuned 

to the high-minded sounds    

that came from the pulpit?    

They struck me, if at all,       

as belated echoes 

of parental warnings.             

And the absent faces,

in their way, respected

my lack of decorum,

as if whispering:                   

“To you the subdued joys

of boredom are granted.”

August 1998

We sped through the sinuous highway.

I was overcome by expectation—    

one trip that contained a hundred others.     

In the homely cab, my restless gaze             

molded nature from scratch.

A tree was not an inviolate presence,

but a contorted trunk that sheltered stray dogs,                   

or a rugged branch that clasped old swings.

A flower was not a delicate growth,  

but a lonely stalk near the rusty bike of some dirty boy,     

or a withering petal in a pink plastic chair. A field was not a mere expanse of green,    

but a resilient soil that sustained the pummeling

of wheels and shoes and bricks.       

And a mountain was not a sublime background—

it was a relief that led the way of burnt-out travelers.                     

I promised myself to embrace each revelation tightly.        

I knew, nonetheless, that even if I failed,

everything would remain waiting.

It is perhaps obliquely that the world

offers itself undiminished.

September 1998

The dumpster was overflowing with toys     and rapturous children.                      To the tired eye, it may have appeared         a call to swift order. To us, it was sudden communion. All born from the travails of an ascetic neighbor, blind to the outer sources of bliss.

October 1998

It was the third night I had to bear the long-winded chatter that finds in the details of daily life a maze worth navigating. My studied yawns were not emphatic. And I was sensible enough to discard the expected grumble. So digressions on the fluctuant price of fruit kept coming, and dithyrambs on second-hand goods kept piling. Lists and classes and subclasses. Descriptions and labels and orders. A Linnean rigor bringing to the foreground the fear of an empty room;    endurance underlining a pale truth—  the day would come when no sound of shifting sheets would confirm company. 

November 1998

My uncle dozed off in his chair,        a rigid expression on his face— an all-around stilted pose complementing theatrically.  Had I known Mannerism, I would have pinpointed the state of his conscience.  Silence was to him no rest.    Corners were to him no refuge. Even far from us, he hid.

December 1998

A select circle of eyes widened as I received the battered branch. At my feet a quivering lump of fur awaited. All over the ground were the signs of an unfair struggle. Wherever I looked, the simple task— to end it and show contempt of cowardice. Dirty faces, dirty arms, bruised knees, miscellaneous cuts, haphazard panting— stock proof. My cleanness had to be redeemed.    Noticing the hesitance, they began chanting.  I saw myself strike.    I saw myself congratulated.   I saw myself return.   I saw myself cry after realizing there was nothing to bury. The playful dog that sought the ball of strangers, the noisy cats that lulled almost without willing, the injured dove that huddled up against an unknown chest, the diligent ant that visited scores of afternoons overtook memory. I remembered, and I faintly understood that no action is isolated.

1999

To see in the world a narrative one needs loss. 

It is only then that the halt awakens a yearning for sense.   

Half-hearted hands become a mainspring; disjointed calls, transitions.     

We now reside above the frenzied outflows,

industrious masons who grow skeptical of movement.  

It is the loaded truck and the run down engine

I think about when the end comes to mind.

Acknowledgments:

FEED: "March 1998" and "April 1998."

ONE ART: "1999."

Dreich: "May 1998," "June 1998," "July 1998," "August 1998," "September 1998," and "October 1998."

Visitant: "September 1997."