ode to clarity

I grew up surrounded by books—in the back hallway along which our bedrooms lay, in the living room and the family room, in my bedroom and my brother’s bedroom and my parents’ bedroom, almost all in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined up one beside the next. At my grandparents’ houses, the shelves lined most every available wall surface, running low along the corridors below paintings and portraits, covering the walls of studies, filling the empty spaces at the end of every bed. These books appealed to all ages, including children’s stories my parents or I once read as well as the fiction that youngsters and adults alike can enjoy (Agatha Christie, Dickens, Carson McCullers—you could take your pick) and novelists and nonfiction authors as disparate as Isak Dineson, Hemingway, McPhee, Theroux and Theoreau, and the Russian masters.

When I was little and couldn’t sleep, I sometimes snuck out of my bedroom, tiptoeing not because I was breaking any rules but because I enjoyed having quiet time in the house to myself. There was a particular book on a particular shelf that I always went for, stretching to get it down from its high perch. Sometimes I would sit with it in a rocking chair, turning on just one light beside me; other times, I would lie in my bed with only the desk lamp on, and I would finger the gold leaf of the page edges; run a hand down the soft, smooth leather cover; trace my finger tip over the gold embossed titling. When I flipped the book open, I was gentle with the razor-thin pages that rustled and slipped like the translucent pages of a Bible, turning them slowly, precisely, and reading a few poems as I went. I’m sure that it was the fanciness of the book’s binding, not the contents of its pages, that first drew me to it; but what I found inside was equally magical—the poetry of the greats.

For years I knew no other poets than those highlighted in the verses of this anthology, knew no other compilations of their works. But when I was 14, on a day I remember vividly and have written about before, while seated atop the soft cushion of my brother’s shag-carpet floor, I pulled from a stack of books so deep and wide it took up more space than I did a yellow hard-backed book that I read at once, from cover to cover, and that I continued to read regularly for years to come. It was The Sea And the Bells by Pablo Neruda, and it won me over to poetry for good. I still remember the heft of the book in my hands, the crinkling of the library’s laminate around the cover; I remember, too, the beautiful new copy my brother bought me as a gift, with its thin body and crisp pages that soon softened from my persistent touch.

As a senior in high school I wrote an analysis of that book, having come to know what Neruda believed to be the crisp, clear truth of a bell, having understood all along his love of the sea. (What I wrote in opening the paper to explain all that was this:

When Pablo Neruda wrote the poems which are compiled into The Sea and the Bells, he was aware of his approaching death. The book became his effort at establishing that he had lived and establishing nature as the force that had sustained him until it came time for him to return back to the earth in his death. The sea, along with other aspects of nature, was his driving force; it provided for him spiritual renewal. In this book he wished to express his thanks for this renewal by praising nature and all its glory, which is most resonantly seen in this untitled poem which is an aubade of sorts:
 
I am grateful, violins, for this day
of four chords. Pure
is the sound of the sky,
the blue voice of air. 

For Neruda, the bell was a symbol of truth as he envisaged it: the sound of a bell is clear and resonant, a sound that is known by all who hear it. When heard, it is known to be beckoning home a ship or a loved one or to be reminding someone of something of the past. It is a calling or a recalling, and it is known by all. And what makes this sound, releases this clarity, is but a small metal object enclosing nothing, emptiness. The crux of Neruda's belief about bells was that these truths for which he yearned were released from emptiness, the interminable silence which he sought out in those final days of his life.

 
Is the sea there? Tell it to come in.
Bring me
the great bell, one of the green race,
Not that one, the other one, the one that has
a crack in its mouth,
and now, nothing more, I want to be alone
with my essential sea and the bell.
I don't want to speak for a long time,
silence! I still want to learn,
I want to know if I exist.

This yearning to establish himself, to show himself that he had existed, was driven by his passion for nature and his belief that it was nature that could renew him and give him the vigor to go on until the day when he would return through "the door of earth" to the sea and the ground and the silence. . . .)

By that time, I owned at least 10 volumes of his poetry (within a few more years the count would reach 17, including his autobiography), all bilingual editions from which I learned the Spanish words for everything to do with nature, love, and passion. In college, my brother—knower of all important things—took me to the Harvard Poetry Bookstore, introduced me to the one-room shop from which I would buy all my poetry over the next four years. The store had a single owner and seller, a quiet older woman with a serious expression and a tendency to hand me books without speaking more than a few words (I think you’ll like this one. / Try it. / Let me know what you think.). The store brought new meaning to bookshelves everywhere, with books filling every inch of space from the floor to the ceiling, covering every tabletop, standing propped for display in each window. She had to climb a ladder to find some of the rarities, but she had everything, it seems to me now (having failed, recently, to find a particular book I wanted to give to a friend in any of the mainstream bookstores in the vicinity), and more importantly, she knew every one of them. And she knew me.

The first time we went there, my brother told her my passion for Neruda and she handed me Octavio Paz, assuring me that I would enjoy him, and she was right. Later I told her the poems I was liking in English class or had stumbled across in high school—Adrienne Rich’s “Solstice,” Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese,” or A.R. Ammons’ “Easter Morning”—and she would find me books by these poets or by others with similar tendencies; she would educate me, enliven me—this quiet woman with the serious face. I’ll never forget her expression when one day after four years like this I showed up with a friend in tow—a smart guy built like an athlete, dressed perpetually in exercise wear, and though she may have sized him up one way she did not smirk when I explained that he wanted to learn poetry “from the beginning,” as he had put it to me; she did not frown; did not even hesitate. Instead she pulled from a shelf one of the fattest books of poetry I have ever seen, a Norton anthology that started with Blake and Byron, and as she handed it to him and he began to—like she would—study it quietly, she stepped back from us and took a seat at her desk and then smiled at me, just that one time, a radiant vision of satisfaction. She thought I had found a new kind of love and so did I, but what matters for this story is not him or that feeling I had but rather her pleasure in being the provider of all these wondrously arranged words about such feelings and many, many others.

It is she who, without ever speaking it, taught me that there is a poem to encapsulate every experience, a poet who has felt something like anything I’ve ever felt. Like the books in my houses, these poems have surrounded me in my life, have quietly, restfully always been there for me, reflecting back at me whatever I am thinking; expanding or reframing or perfectly capturing my understanding of the world around me. For years these poems and distant poets have kept me company. To them and to her I am grateful; of the clarity of the emptiness from which each one forms the crisp ring of a bell I am constantly in awe.

phenomenal woman, that's me

Back when I lived in Cambridge and volunteered as a tutor at a homework center one or two nights a week, there was an evening when a girl I’d known for a few years but never really connected with brought in a poem and read it aloud to a small group of girls and myself. I remember Dominique standing in the doorway, holding open the anthology of African American poetry with pride and reading with intense focus. Dominique was 13 then, a gorgeous girl with a womanly body already well developed. She got attention from boys constantly, and the previous week, I’d found her tucked into the space behind the half-open classroom door, hand pressed to her mouth, modeling for a friend how to kiss a boy. I might have overlooked the scene if I hadn’t been at the same time listening to the chatter of the other girls in the room, hearing them whisper about Dominique and the older boy she was dating; but having heard all their theories, and watching as she held the one hand to her mouth and slipped the other around her own back, began to caress and wiggle her hip, I’d decided I had to step in. I’d pulled her aside quietly, not making a scene, but I could see she was flushed with embarrassment. When I’d explained to her that the only tutoring that was appropriate in that classroom was the academic kind, the red in her face had deepened and she, like a much younger child might, had slipped her hands into mine, letting tears come freely to her eyes, and promised me that she had done nothing bad, that she had only kissed him and only just a little. She’d told me her mama would have had her hide if she’d done anything more. She’d squeezed my hands, eyes pleading with me for trust.

I’d told her I believed her and was proud of her because she was a beautiful, smart girl who clearly knew that she had years and years ahead of her for dating, that there was no rush. She’d nodded vigorously, hands hot within mine, and promised me she was still a little girl. I remember, then, feeling a little regretful that I’d made her feel inappropriate, so I’d assured her that my concern was only that we not teach the younger girls anything they weren’t ready for, that I trusted her and knew she would make good decisions for herself. Her eyes were glowing by the end of the conversation, pride shining from her radiant face. She was responsible, she’d promised me, and finally let go of my hands.

The next week she came strolling into the classroom with one hand holding up the anthology and the other firmly planted on her small hip. She stopped dramatically in the doorway, asked for an audience, and then began reading: “Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. / I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size / But when I start to tell them, / They think I'm telling lies. / I say. . .” As she read, I could do nothing but grin. Somehow, Dominique, who rarely stayed put in a desk long enough to get any homework done, had found and studied one of the most womanly self-empowerment poems of all time, and she’d gotten from it, even at the confusing age of 13, that there is more to sexiness than just physique, more to appeal than just physical beauty. She read the poem terribly, stumbling over each line and sometimes going back to try to get each word right, but I could tell that she could tell what it was about, that the poem helped her take pride in her own newfound womanly-ness.

When she was done I asked for the anthology, and then I read the poem back to Dominique and the other girls with all the sass and assurance I can muster into my voice. I read with a careful cadence, giving time for certain words to hover, for the grin on my face to surface between verses, for the grins on their faces to surface too. These girls all got the poem after I read it like that, all sass and self-confidence, and to my delight, at the end-of-the-year celebration a few months later, three of them read it aloud together, gliding over words they’d clearly rehearsed numerous times, beaming as they spoke, cheeks filling with the best kind of color—with exhilaration, and purpose, and passion. They’d grinned at me at the end, and I’d wiped my eyes and wrapped those girls into my arms and promised, silently to myself, that I would never let go of the feeling that poem conjures inside me. That I would never, no matter what I faced, think of myself as anything less than what Maya Angelou assured me I could indeed be: a woman, phenomenally.

“Phenomenal Woman” by Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

dating paradox

Do you ever leave a situation feeling like someone else has just been an asshole and then realize, in one clarifying moment, that it’s not quite the case? You suddenly hear the truth of it loud and clear in your mind: I’m the asshole. I’m the one who hung in.

And yet you know why you did that—you know what you believe in. First there is the fact that you trust people; that you by policy take them at their word. Next there is the fact that you are open to prospects; that you by policy let things wander, wait and see where they might go. Though you were born with little of that gem of a virtue called patience, when it comes to things of the heart you believe in letting things breathe and grow. You also believe in trusting your own instincts, which is a harder one for you in this arena, because you had to rebuild that skill a long time ago. But you try to believe in trusting your own instincts; you try to remember all the rest of what you believe in, too. That’s supposed to be the buffer against the I’m the asshole feeling, after all. It’s supposed to be the way you know you’re giving your all. You know how hard it can be to go out looking and actually find someone, so you try to just lead your life and be open to everyone who comes along. That attitude is supposed to be your buffer; yet sometimes it leads you straight into disappointment, and then you wonder what it was all for.

Perhaps it’s just a dating paradox, whether you really can have one without, at least sometimes, the other: the utter faith in waiting and seeing, the knowing in hindsight that you probably should already have let this one go.

the top grain on the peak

The top
grain on the peak
weighs next
to nothing and,
sustained
by a mountain,
has no burden,
but nearly
ready to float,
exposed
to summit wind,
it endures
the rigors of having
no further
figure to complete
and a
blank sky
to guide its dreaming

-- A. R. Ammons, “Uppermost”

Ten years ago I used to read that poem regularly, standing as it did atop my dresser; pasted toward the top of a pale-blue-and-white gingham-patterned piece of cardboard I’d gotten somewhere; rising, it seemed to me, upward. It was my senior year of college, and for the first time since age two I faced no more school to go to once that last semester was over. No more of the exams I’d been taking every semester since sixth grade; no more of the hours and hours of studying I’d always done on weeknights and weekends. I’d been a well-rounded kid and a somewhat well-rounded college student, but I’d always put a lot of effort into my school work and so it was novel, this thought of doing anything else every day, and so exciting.

The morning I took my last exam I felt elated; I’m never taking a test again! I’d shouted as I ran into Jenny and Olivia’s room and grabbed them, and dragged them across the fire escape and into my bedroom, and danced with them atop my bed as I blasted Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration” at full volume. I had no job lined up yet, no clue what I’d be doing next. There were just a few days left before graduation, before adult life started, and my mother was beyond worried about my lack of employment; but I just felt elated. Anything and everything lay before me; for those next few days, I remember feeling like I was floating.

One week from today I know I’ll feel that way again. These moments of transition are rare in life; and brief; and so worth savoring. They bring such marvelous things: That feeling of completion and new beginning; that knowledge of the mountain of effort and experience in between; the empowerment of it. The thrill of looking upward, and outward, after such a long period of looking inward. The elation of not knowing, of having yet another blank sky to guide my dreaming.