January 23, 2003
These are dark days, both literally and metaphorically. It’s too cold to go outside. I’m stuck in my dark apartment. I miss the sun. I miss the hope of sun. I miss feeling hope.
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to living on the third floor in an apartment that doesn’t get much sun, even in the summer. It won’t be forever. But it is for now.
Outside of my dark apartment, the happenings are just as dark. My cousin called today to tell me that his daughter (who, along with her fiancé, is in the army reserves and lives in Denver) eloped yesterday because her fiancé’s unit has been called up. Hers probably will be as well. We are looking into the hellmouth of war. It is appropriate that on the TV show Angel, the sun has disappeared.
During dark times, I dig out my copy of Roethke’s collection Words for the Wind and read through the section “Meditations of an Old Woman.” I ride his words into a place beyond light and dark, a transcendent place where every detail of life – stones and bones, ripples in water, moss at midnight – breathes, sovereign yet connected.
There is something about stones that has always fascinated me. I have baskets filled with tumbled stones -- bloodstone, red jasper, carnelian, sodalite, Apache tears..... I’ve learned their lore and their mythologies. I use them to conjure hope. Perhaps I am a stone at heart.
Charles Simic wrote a great poem entitled “Stone:”
Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger's tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.
From the outside the stone is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.
I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all,
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill --
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls.
In dark times, it is good to be a stone.
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Why do we write on 24 Jan 2003
Why do you think it is we write? It is obviously neither the money, nor the fame. I don’t know
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Old Comments (2)
glovefox on 24 Jan 2003
Hi Elaine!
Could you please fix it so my handle here appears as glovefox rather than with my name? A close friend of The Bastard Ex Boyfriend (TBex) found my blog through Blogsisters and the last thing I want is for TBex's clique to even be aware that I am blogging! I know I know--why blog if I don't want ppl to read it etc etc but there's always the safety of pseudonyms and anonymity. I don't mind the blogsisters knowing but for privacy from prying eyes of TBex spies (heavens! that rhymed!) could you please make the adjustments?
Anonymous on 02 Nov 2004
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DATE: 11/02/2004 09:32:41 AM