Mango

Am I peremptory? Have I ever been peremptory? What does it feel like to be peremptory? Does a certain emotion lead to an outbreak of peremptoriness? Does it require a certain mood? I’m guessing yes, it does require a certain mood, but I’m not in a peremptory mood. I have nothing peremptory to say. Except this: benediction arrives in an exhalation of breath.

It has never introduced me to taking a dance class. None of my shirts are ruffled, but that does not mean I'm not dazzled by the locomotive moving through my blood, or the idiocy of hallucination, or any stimulus that leads to the exploration of dials.

Yesterday I painted the two little sides at each end of our bedroom window. It began in the abstract: a paintbrush moving paint over a surface. Then the details piled on. I had to clean the surfaces with bleach because something dark and mold-like had appeared in the seal between the wood and the aluminum frame of the window. That required a small stepladder and the sports section of the newspaper. I hate the smell of bleach. It reminds me of everything that is harsh and toxic and unnatural in the world, even when it’s a chemical that purportedly makes the world safe for us, rids it of pesky microbes and molds, and provides a basis for good, clean living.

I sanded a little. I scraped. I bought a little brush for six bucks and dipped it in the paint, an oil-based paint left over from another project, I hate oil-based paint, it doesn’t dissolve in water, and it wants to travel anywhere, it has a genius for getting on everything, clothes, rug, cats. I had to mind the door and not let the cat in, who, of course, is obsessed with getting into the room and seeing what was going on, cats have to know everything, that’s the nature of cats, investigate, explore, scrutinize.

I frequently have thoughts about things that don’t add up to anything. Vast, vagrant thoughts of nothing. Mighty galleons of nonsense adrift in an ocean of beautiful pink vapor. Those are my best thoughts. X equals X to the power of X. Implausible occurrences of thirst. A young woman playing a violin under a honey locust.

Bergson had an interesting notion of time and identity as pearls on a string. Moments are pearls. The string is the continuity of time connecting the click and volatility of our moods.

A Wednesday in late April, beautiful sunny day, I watch a Foss tug press against the bow of the Golden Ioanari, a bulk carrier docking at Pier 86 for a load of grain. A group of men on the dock of the pier are shouting up at a group of men at the bow of the ship, who in turn shout instructions down to the tug. The men on the dock need more slack in the rope between the ship and the dock. The tug nudges the ship ever so slightly toward the dock and the rope slackens enough for the men on the dock to wrap it around the bollard.

Is time a homogenous medium, or more like a fish-tank room divider?

History is mostly wigs.

Item in the French news today about Uganda accepting refugees from South Sudan and giving them a parcel of earth and encouraging them to integrate into the population. The refugees are able to grow food and build homes and enjoy freedom. Approximately 1.5 million have arrived so far. Uganda is receiving humanitarian aid from the UN to help with the situation. I see a man working hard to break what is a very hard soil in order to grow a crop of peanuts. Women gather around a well, taking turns at the pump. A schoolroom is packed with children as a single teacher holds an object before them and asks what it is called in English.

Mango.

The world is ravenous for meaning. Its landscapes are slapped by draught and heat. When one stops to consider a rose, the soul expands.

It makes one wonder. What does the dark side of psychedelia look like? I see fancy bags of water walking around sucking acetylene popsicles. Phosphorous camels glowing out of a gray fog. Newspaper taxis. Tangerine trees and marmalade skies. Utah, basically. Only with methane lakes and pressurized clocks telling time as a form of mental construction involving TV dinners and exasperated housewives.

We keep forgetting the world is alive. It needs our attention. The steeples are charming but the washcloths are gifts of geometric advice. Steep them in water and they give us their counsel in silent humility. There is sometimes the clatter of activity in the kitchen. That would be the washcloth telling its story of magic and shame.

It’s true that washcloths normally don’t spout their inner being, however much you twist and squeeze it, but inner experience can never be completely divided from the external world. The internal and the external are married in the jelly of this world, this marbled sphere of marmalade, this roiling ball of turmoil, this jewel mounted in the cold vacuum of space. Science, said Heidegger, doesn’t think.

Ouch. What do you think he meant by that?

There’s a lot to be said for science, but it does tend to put all the emphasis on practical experiment and natural law. The mind is a fountain, falling up, then showering down into its own reflections. Natural laws don’t really enter the picture, except as cherubs taking a piss, or water wheels powering a river uphill. There are diphthongs to consider, and towels. Confession is good, though chocolate is better. Language is its own disaster, creating worlds at the drop of a hat, or meandering into novels, delicatessens and military parades. The occasion requires fiber, anything with a special viewpoint, or cows. We’re fortunate to be this indeterminate. The ratchet works by increment, applying leverage as the device is turned in the desired direction. But that’s not what this is about. This is about adhesion, dissimilar particles clinging to one another, intermolecular forces coming together for meaningful change, or crystallizing a perception in the form of a tangible gestalt, a pulp with a hairy pit, or mango.

Each morning, the cold air on Philip Whalen’s shaved head woke him before alarm clock. Skin is the first response to the headlines of heaven.

The second is the tremble of a cobweb.