Brother Andre's Heart: Montreal, 2003
by J.L. Conrad
In 1973, the heart gone, pilgrims
climb the stairs on knees to eye
the heartless man in his hollow chamber.
Memory's plumbline laid from there to here
on limestone. The mountain around which the city.
Yes, I remember. A new opening
through which the body remade itself.
Rocks knocked from mountainsides
brought here to bear weight upward until
even the impression of weight lifts off into
the recessed darkness pooled beneath the roof.
We stand in the votive chapel six days married.
A bank of candles: whipstitch of lights
sealing the wound. Columns bristle
with rows of crutches. We do not yet know
how bodies cave, how bones surface. We take
no pictures. No, that's not true.
We take two: one into the washed-out summer
sky. Me wearing sunglasses, the carved
angel rising behind my shoulder. And another
on surfacing from the crypt, sun breaking
into pieces, rimming each edge with light.
See how clouds cut into the sky.
See how the geese are black slashes
unstitching the firmament. Beyond
the open door, the heart lies suspended
in a jar, bathed in a red heatlamped glow.
The papers reported it found
in an empty apartment locked in a box
inside another box. How they must
have wrenched it from the body.
You've remembered it wrong
all these years: the jagged undoing,
snipping each stitch so the wound gapes open
again. Today, pilgrims file past the vault
in silence: my body parched, yours
stationed there beside me,
on the near side of desire. Holy water laid
between us. In what voice do I
call out? A brittle light, hearts sundered.
We can't be blamed if things come apart.
We can scarcely be accused of theft. What we take
we take from each other. Our dreams wearing horns
like sacrificial rams. We know in our bones,
which is to say our deepest selves, the world
thrown open, the veil torn, seeded fields ungrown
at last. It falls to us to shovel dirt over the flames.
Sometimes, they say, the heart still beats.
We did not ask for this. The one day a year
wine becomes unsettled, remembering.
Last weekend, while writing an article for a local yoga magazine, I discovered why my article sucked. I was trying to talk about rediscovering Jesus (yes, that Jesus) in my thirty-third year of life, and all that has meant to me and my yoga practice. The problem was, I didn't want to say anything. Not really, anyway. I was trying to write an article about the magnetic pull that Jesus has on my life right now, without confessing that pictures of him draw me in with the same velocity that cupcakes do, or that I now understand why that Bible story about Peter denying his faith three times before the rooster crowed is so valuable, and compelling. I wanted to write a simple little summary of the holy buildings I've been in, without revealing my changing relationships to them.
Then I read this passage in Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. This passage is for real, yo. Take heed:
The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out. Year after year my students are bursting with stories to tell, and they start writing projects with excitement and maybe even joy - finally their voices will be heard, and they are going to get to devote themselves to this one thing they've longed to do since childhood. But after a few days at the desk, telling the truth in an interesting way turns out to be about as easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat.
It's true. I was keen to avoid writing the truth in my article. First, there was the difficulty of even understanding the truth--what has been going on in my psyche, my spiritual self, under all the layers of years. But the real difficulty lay in sticking to that truth--spitting on my hand, clasping that of truth's, and looking into her eyes, pledging, "Me and you, Truth. To the bitter end!" It was very tempting to just pat Truth on her behind (because she has such a nice behind, doesn't she?) and then duck and run when she turned to see who likes her.
Searching tonight for a quote in a notebook I keep, where I copy favorite passages and poems and then let them gather dust, my eyes fell upon something I clipped from The Oxford American once upon a time. I had read a bunch of small tributes which Barry Hannah's students had written about him, and grown smitten with one of the pieces. Now, I have no earthly relation to Barry Hannah, or even an intellectual one. I do know that smart people have nice things to say about his writing. That's great. What I love about Barry Hannah right now is this description of his behavior:
I never knew the old Barry, only the Second Coming of Barry, when he no longer seemed tormented, and instead was so comfortable with releasing his sweetness into the world. I had heard most of the old stories and shuddered at their boldness as well s the anguish they bespoke - the unsustainable amplitudes of howling rage - or fear - and joy. But I only knew the Good Barry - the one who evidently one day had gotten such an extra dose of courage that he shelved all the old stuff and decided to carry forward only the sweetness. His yellow legal-pad letters arriving in the mailbox - the sentences written in a scrawl one had to sometimes divine or intuit rather than read - gave their recipients a courage that lasted and lingered for days: testimonies from a man who had decided to one day embrace and celebrate the world's imperfections. A man who had outlived his demons.
He could still skewer a rat. But all I ever knew of him was his new calling, the one where he told his friends, at every opportunity, how much he loved them.
I think you know where this is going, but allow me to bang us all over the head: I want that extra dose of courage the writer speaks of! I want the courage to tell my best friends that I love them, defenseless, raw, and true. I want to cozy up to acquaintances who inspire me and dare to start a friendship. I want the courage to live so fully in my heart that nothing stands between my experience of love and my expression of it.
Do you think things could get dangerous, quickly? I do. And it could be really fun.
I am currently in a drawn-out conversation with a best bud about whether or not you can really be sexy and sweet at the same time. I say, why not? I say the most profound experience of love can also be the most erotic one. And the most erotic experience can be so foundational because it has pulled back the societal curtains of what you think should or ought happen, to reveal the beating animal heart of what really turns you on, to find out why we are really all here: which is to experience, taste, dance and divine.
If by sweet, you think, pleasing all people and being all things to everyone, then yes, I do not think you can be sexy and sweet at the same time. But if by sweet, you mean, so deeply in your heart that you are like a bad ass backer of Truth and her band, then hell yes. I know of nothing sweeter, nothing hotter. And I say, go on and rock them both.
Therefore, whatever your truth, and wherever she is hiding (or wherever you are hiding from her), may you go to her and take that hot lady's hand, and together knock back a few shots of courage tonight.
With love and November's skittering mischief,
As always & most sincerely,
Kara
by J.L. Conrad
In 1973, the heart gone, pilgrims
climb the stairs on knees to eye
the heartless man in his hollow chamber.
Memory's plumbline laid from there to here
on limestone. The mountain around which the city.
Yes, I remember. A new opening
through which the body remade itself.
Rocks knocked from mountainsides
brought here to bear weight upward until
even the impression of weight lifts off into
the recessed darkness pooled beneath the roof.
We stand in the votive chapel six days married.
A bank of candles: whipstitch of lights
sealing the wound. Columns bristle
with rows of crutches. We do not yet know
how bodies cave, how bones surface. We take
no pictures. No, that's not true.
We take two: one into the washed-out summer
sky. Me wearing sunglasses, the carved
angel rising behind my shoulder. And another
on surfacing from the crypt, sun breaking
into pieces, rimming each edge with light.
See how clouds cut into the sky.
See how the geese are black slashes
unstitching the firmament. Beyond
the open door, the heart lies suspended
in a jar, bathed in a red heatlamped glow.
The papers reported it found
in an empty apartment locked in a box
inside another box. How they must
have wrenched it from the body.
You've remembered it wrong
all these years: the jagged undoing,
snipping each stitch so the wound gapes open
again. Today, pilgrims file past the vault
in silence: my body parched, yours
stationed there beside me,
on the near side of desire. Holy water laid
between us. In what voice do I
call out? A brittle light, hearts sundered.
We can't be blamed if things come apart.
We can scarcely be accused of theft. What we take
we take from each other. Our dreams wearing horns
like sacrificial rams. We know in our bones,
which is to say our deepest selves, the world
thrown open, the veil torn, seeded fields ungrown
at last. It falls to us to shovel dirt over the flames.
Sometimes, they say, the heart still beats.
We did not ask for this. The one day a year
wine becomes unsettled, remembering.
Last weekend, while writing an article for a local yoga magazine, I discovered why my article sucked. I was trying to talk about rediscovering Jesus (yes, that Jesus) in my thirty-third year of life, and all that has meant to me and my yoga practice. The problem was, I didn't want to say anything. Not really, anyway. I was trying to write an article about the magnetic pull that Jesus has on my life right now, without confessing that pictures of him draw me in with the same velocity that cupcakes do, or that I now understand why that Bible story about Peter denying his faith three times before the rooster crowed is so valuable, and compelling. I wanted to write a simple little summary of the holy buildings I've been in, without revealing my changing relationships to them.
Then I read this passage in Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. This passage is for real, yo. Take heed:
The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out. Year after year my students are bursting with stories to tell, and they start writing projects with excitement and maybe even joy - finally their voices will be heard, and they are going to get to devote themselves to this one thing they've longed to do since childhood. But after a few days at the desk, telling the truth in an interesting way turns out to be about as easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat.
It's true. I was keen to avoid writing the truth in my article. First, there was the difficulty of even understanding the truth--what has been going on in my psyche, my spiritual self, under all the layers of years. But the real difficulty lay in sticking to that truth--spitting on my hand, clasping that of truth's, and looking into her eyes, pledging, "Me and you, Truth. To the bitter end!" It was very tempting to just pat Truth on her behind (because she has such a nice behind, doesn't she?) and then duck and run when she turned to see who likes her.
Searching tonight for a quote in a notebook I keep, where I copy favorite passages and poems and then let them gather dust, my eyes fell upon something I clipped from The Oxford American once upon a time. I had read a bunch of small tributes which Barry Hannah's students had written about him, and grown smitten with one of the pieces. Now, I have no earthly relation to Barry Hannah, or even an intellectual one. I do know that smart people have nice things to say about his writing. That's great. What I love about Barry Hannah right now is this description of his behavior:
I never knew the old Barry, only the Second Coming of Barry, when he no longer seemed tormented, and instead was so comfortable with releasing his sweetness into the world. I had heard most of the old stories and shuddered at their boldness as well s the anguish they bespoke - the unsustainable amplitudes of howling rage - or fear - and joy. But I only knew the Good Barry - the one who evidently one day had gotten such an extra dose of courage that he shelved all the old stuff and decided to carry forward only the sweetness. His yellow legal-pad letters arriving in the mailbox - the sentences written in a scrawl one had to sometimes divine or intuit rather than read - gave their recipients a courage that lasted and lingered for days: testimonies from a man who had decided to one day embrace and celebrate the world's imperfections. A man who had outlived his demons.
He could still skewer a rat. But all I ever knew of him was his new calling, the one where he told his friends, at every opportunity, how much he loved them.
I think you know where this is going, but allow me to bang us all over the head: I want that extra dose of courage the writer speaks of! I want the courage to tell my best friends that I love them, defenseless, raw, and true. I want to cozy up to acquaintances who inspire me and dare to start a friendship. I want the courage to live so fully in my heart that nothing stands between my experience of love and my expression of it.
Do you think things could get dangerous, quickly? I do. And it could be really fun.
I am currently in a drawn-out conversation with a best bud about whether or not you can really be sexy and sweet at the same time. I say, why not? I say the most profound experience of love can also be the most erotic one. And the most erotic experience can be so foundational because it has pulled back the societal curtains of what you think should or ought happen, to reveal the beating animal heart of what really turns you on, to find out why we are really all here: which is to experience, taste, dance and divine.
If by sweet, you think, pleasing all people and being all things to everyone, then yes, I do not think you can be sexy and sweet at the same time. But if by sweet, you mean, so deeply in your heart that you are like a bad ass backer of Truth and her band, then hell yes. I know of nothing sweeter, nothing hotter. And I say, go on and rock them both.
Therefore, whatever your truth, and wherever she is hiding (or wherever you are hiding from her), may you go to her and take that hot lady's hand, and together knock back a few shots of courage tonight.
With love and November's skittering mischief,
As always & most sincerely,
Kara
oh hurray, you wrote!
ReplyDeletei dare say, i'm with you and see nothing mutually exclusive about sexy and sweet - save that many people strive to do both in a faux way that makes them so. done naturally, allowing ones innate sexuality to simmer, to beckon, while also letting the heart (or soft animal), as mary oliver says, "love what it loves" in an offering that is nothing short of the most aching sweetness... well that particular yin/yang is ambrosia, is it not? delicious & divine. yet, rare enough to be sought by gods. i see no reason to choose one or the other. in fact, i don’t think i could!
the religion (faith?) + truth bit is also tres interesting, not least because it's exactly what i've been probing and poking with my own writing. i recently stepped back to survey my clever narrative only to realize i need to strip off the paint that made it pretty in order to make it true.
here’s to courage, danger and the ugly things that make us sexy
x
Ms. Noziskova said it so well, I will repeat her: Oh hurray, you wrote!
ReplyDeleteThis post comes at such an interesting time for me--a time when I'm struggling to figure out what exactly the truth of a situation is so that I can write about it as accurately as possibe. See, there is today's truth and there is the past's truth. And the two are getting all muddled together as I write.
OH dear. Think I better go work this out in a Word document. Point being, thank you for writing, Kara! Your courage and openness is an inspiration.
Thanks wonderful ladies & friends! I was thinking, after I posted (which my soul has been aching for, for weeks, by the way. Alas, I had that article to write!) that I'm not sure there is just ONE truth. I mean, of course that's obvious in terms of everyone having their own perspective. But, I think I used to think that if I dug down deep enough, I would find one thing. And maybe there is a singular radiating seed from which all things sprout, but even within that seed is a whole universe...
ReplyDeleteWhich is all to say, Thank God for writing! A place to explore all the sides of a seed, and the textures and colors and universes within.
Whitney, that's a beautiful way to say it (although I always have to look up the word ambrosia, ha!) about the yin/yang yumminess. For another discussion, Tim and I got into a long talk about whether or not it matters if Jesus was celibate or not...for instance, is the modern Xian tradition missing something by painting itself into a patriarchal corner? etc etc. Where is the Divine Feminine in the Christian tradition? There are women, but is that the same thing? Sometimes I think the Holy Spirit is being asked to do all of the feminine lifting in this tradition's lore...
As you can imagine, it was an arduous, brow-knitting discussion. But I ultimately got to thinking, whether or not there has been a conspiracy somewhere, covering up all the goddess figures in this tradition, what draws me so tenderly to Jesus as a saint/teacher/energy is that there is SO MUCH of the feminine in his message and being. (And maybe that's why he makes us so uncomfortable, as a wider culture...not to mention the interesting PR he's gotten through the years.)
ANYWAY...thanks for writing! Amelia, back to Word. Whitney, to back to paint stripping. Myself? Any orders for me? :)
xo