Loose Ends from San Francisco
citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Fri, 15 Jan 1999 16:15:50 -0800
This, really, is the last one.
I'll keep on the list getting my digest, in my inbox each morn. Somehow, I
feel more truth, more reality will be in that digest than all of the
world's newspapers put together. Yes, newspapers, term papers, those
monthly bank statements that usually seem too low, the mags with their
unbearable perfume ads, legal documents involving million of dollars. All of
these items are printed on paper.
Its all paper, when you really think about it; all paper that one day will
burn and be but ash. All paper, whether its bible, koran, vedas, torah, the
best poems by the best writers who ever bothered to stop off a moment on
this planet.
I guess, if *I* am going to stand one last time, for one last pledge of
allegiance, for one last rant, before I quietly take my soapbox back to my
rental in SF, I'll call them out in as clear and calm a voice as I can
muster, given another fitful night of sleep:
Homer, Sappho, Dante, Chaucer, Li Po, Tu Fu, Issa, Basho, Shakespeare,
Virgil, Milton, Donne, Blake, Keats, Shelly, Yeats, Eliot, Pound, WC
Williams, Ginsberg, Celan, Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam--read his wife's
memoir (Hope against Hope) if you want to know what literature was really
about in the days of the Soviet rule--what happens in plain old every day
reality when an authentic poet, a Russian Jew, comes up against Stalin--
Valery, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Lorca, Neruda, Vallejo, Machado, Roethke, James
Wright, and , of course, *my* personal favorite,
which does not mean you need to read him, or understand him, or even look
up from whatever you might be doing, in addition to running your eyes over
this thick block of text which really is as
solid as the air we breathe:
Rainer Maria Rilke.
Look, I cant explain why,
why him,
why I read Franny and saw
that strange name and wondered,
and went to my U. library , wrote down the call number, searched through
the stacks.
Marina Tvetaeva. In *my* slightly mad heaven she, MT, sits next to Rilke.
For those of you who might care, look up a book called: Letters: Summer
1926; it was their form of listserve back in the Middle Ages.
It consists of letters between Marina and Rilke. Read them, I almost want
to say, sip them, and remember as you do , and as you read their *poems to
each other*, yes , the next phrase has to be in all caps, please forgive me:
POEMS THEY NEVER REALLY BOTHERED TO PUBLISH
[RMR's never came into the light of day until after Marina hung herself in
Stalin's grand old land. Marina thought as she left her own manuscipts
and the few letters R wrote her (over a period of just a few months) to her
closest friend in the USSr, she thought the poem R. wrote her in summer
1926 was the eleventh Duino Elegy. She called it, the true climax.
I ask, was she insane, fooling herself, delusional? In need of some
really fine professional care?
But before you answer, please
read that volume somewhere up there hidden now from *my* view,
and then read the Duino Elegies,
and after you turn the last page of that,
find a copy of Elegy for Marina, in Uncollected Poems of Rilke, trans.
Snow--
[yet another aside: best trans of Elegies is by S. Spender and Leishman,
beware of a number of horrid translations out there.
Stephen Mitchell does a really fine job in *his* selected works of R.,
Mod. Lib. edition, titled: Ahead of All Parting.]
---without memory we as a race will no longer still be
human
["the Holocaust didn't really happen"--the most obscene words Ive heard in
my life, [and no, neither did Dresden, or Hiroshimo, the gulags of the 30s
were *really* but a soviet form of Disneyland]
--you get the drift.
this morning I took the advice I received from a very dear person, one of
your best and most courageous posters
[another aside: if people *just* lurk, and dont post, isnt that a form of
voyeurism; sometime you *have* to step away from the safety of the one-way
mirror; sometime you actually have to act, commit yourself to that strange
big slightly scary thing out there, called:
*the other* or life and
this odd muckball we
all happen to be on this very moment in time
which will never again happen.
The stream is always moving,
the stream,
*I think* isnt even aware of itself.
All communication is an attempt to bridge the awful--yet, Mattis,
awe-inspiring --separateness that surrounds us all.
Okay, a little exercise:
On a *very* clear night, go out by yourself-- *no* you cant take your
beloved spouse, mate, friend or even dog--and stand there silently. (If
need be, to stauch the noise, stick your fingers in your ears. ) *Look* up
and *look* out as far as you can see.
(Be thankful gravity, our dear friend, is at work, and you dont just float
off into that night.)
In that silence that your eyes perceive, [please, gentle reader note I
said eyes, not ears, for, in the last and final damning analysis, Buddy is
right about Seymour's eyes,]
listen for a voice to tell you what you value in this life,
what kind of paper truly you want
your eyesight to lose itself upon.
Whatever kind of paper you choose is fine with me.
Remember, please, awhile ago I alluded to, yes, its up there somewhere in
the invisible part of this damned screen
[that fate has decreed to separate, rather than unite--so be it--]
I alluded to one of our dear posters.
She once invoked the first sentence of Catcher
--the probable fly paper that first trapped most of us--
as a good test for a writer or reader, one might say.
So this morning I took my copy from the bookcase
[yes, because actually I care about you and your eyesight, I'll spare you an
entire inventory of my bookcases, sort of a la the end, you *surely*
remember, Hapworth.
And you surely remember Tom Lantern.
And that vision of the seven year old Seymour of his dearest Buddy
--if indeed S had a dearest.
No, no , S didn't play favorites.
He loved all of the siblings as the same.
One could say, he *actually* in his heart of hearts, *really*
believed that parable of the Fat Lady,
that the radio then was sort of like the Internet now.
Instead of a voice coming out of a little box the family is gathered
around,
it is a silent voice, the mystery voice,
the voice you cant buy at Tower Records,
the voice that *almost* speaks as you ,
whenever you are *truly* attentive,
the voice that echos inside of your head,
its almost perfect,
its almost
like those late late works of
dear Beethovan
[another damn aside: okay, Mozart would have served as well]
Its, yes, I'll stop very soon,
its the author's voice speaking across the separateness of time and space
[no, no capitals now, no exclamation points; what is grammar and these
glyphs
but ways of trying to bridge the separateness,
almost as the Golden Gate Bridge bridges a city named after a saint
, and a odd county called Marin,
where, yes, Joyce Maynard lives.
She is not Satan. Joyce didnt write JDS. He wrote her. And probably
deeply regrets it as he sits in the lotus position, if indeed he does.
Why men seem to need, esp. older men, to project their own inner anima
onto young women, I cant say.
Oh, next time you nearly run into JDS on the hills of Cornish, or
the streets of NYC, you might ask say Woody Allen,
or another million fat cats with the trophy wives-
-but is that *truly* a transference to use pysch. terms,
*or*
to use the classical term of poetry--remember poetry, way up there hidden
from view
[another bracket: might be best to print this out; might be best to read
it through once, quickly, just to get the Cliff Notes effect, and maybe,
when time allows, go back to it with a strong pot of coffee]
, yes, I repeat , poetry.
Stop and read the first chunck of S: an Intro.
JDS seems to place a lot of credence in this.
Even uses footnotes re Chinese and Japanese poets;
really,
you *should* read RH Blyth. The four vols. on Haiku hold quite a few
satoris.
Ok: the classical term is, yes, the Muse. That tired old word your
profs like to refer to with a bit of a wink, and then get off a good one re
Seymours double haikus and martinis. Yes, the hour is almost up. Class is
about to be dismissed. Time for a smoke if youre in a nonsmoking sector.
Soon one can get back to real life.
[Real life is real life too. The quotidan is fine. The bank statements
*are* important. Its just,that, well, so is poetry.]
So is wanting to hear that silence invoked way up the screen, to hear that
silence as you stand on the edge of your
*own* heart, and god knows why,
write down the words your *eyes* are hearing at that very moment.
Yes, after all this, all this verbiage, all this effort to write,
one *could* say, a very very very long communique a la the two dust jackets
of the Glass Stories
[yet another bracket, *I* , cant help it:
question: will Hapworth *have* a dust jacket, and, if so, will it have
words on it
or
just be blank ,
you remember, like that wonderful touch at the end of Raise High, by way of
explanation. ]
We are waiting, sort of like, Beckett's Godot. 97, 98, 99....
Wont it be much better if it came, yes!, on say, oh, as the official pub.
date of: January 1st, 2000? What a pratical joke, sort of,
but *I* still *cling* at least in theory, to the idea Camille expressed in
digest 570, re the jigsaw puzzle pieces. That little bit of insight she
*shared* with us.
(OKAY, I'll *really* say it straight, whoever *I* am-
*I* dont think Im tapping this out with an unbalanced German keyboard .
unless *I* missed it,:-------
I dont think there has been a post from Sonny since:
I first posted in early January!
Now raise your hands, who
for a nano-second thought, oh,
what if,
nah, couldnt be,
not that old guy, up in cornish,
always referring to Adviat Vedanta,
who liked to visit the Ramakrishna center over
on Park Ave near his parents house ,
no it just couldnt be, cause
old folks dont like the net,
old foggies cant learn the twist,
old folks wouldnt go *anywhere near* a mosh pit,
old folks , probably senile by now,
dont remember that ole trickster
radio invasion from ,
*where*,
old folks just read that the printed book
is dead and gone and
the new medium is the electronic book,
and, hey, where
do these email addresses
really come from, and
what if,
I,misunderstood author,
you know,
the critics, et al.,
gee, maybe, saw this darn thing on the
, whats it called ,
ah, yes
the Intenet,
this germ of an idea,
a JDS FAQ,
that,
well,
you
might
just
highjack for awhile,
run it out of New Delhi,
(does it *really* have to be there);
slowly build the answers,
some right , some wrong,
sort of like your author notes
No,
not for a nano-second did I believe that.
No way.
I am composing this at the keyboard without notes,
I am just tapping out some rhythms that sound,
at least to my listener's ear
interesting,
since we on this listserve profess
to be somewhat
unduly
interested in this corpus of work.
To repeat, not for a nano-second
would I allow myself to think for
a fraction of a nano-second that
Sonny
was truly ,
you know,
Sonny.
It cant be.
So Sonny in New Delhi,
I'm closing now.
(Maybe all this is my own private post to you,
you who are able to imitate the master's voice really quite well.
Honestly, I have enjoyed the FAQ.
And in my posts over the past oh 10 days, I believe I have addressed you
twice or thrice.
So if you are you who say you are--
Camille, please
remember my paragraph to you re gender,
the best is neither female nor male, but
the "S" shape formed where
yin meets yang,
where author meets reader,
where the lover meets the beloved,
all for the sake of overcoming,
yes, the word again,
the separateness
of this, our human condition.
As if God has played a terrible joke on us, left us here without a road
map.
But no,
there are road maps, in religious texts, in literature, in the eyes of
children before all innocence has been drained out of them and they have
been turned into ....
Goodness,
lets all reread,
soon
For Esme.
Okay. Somehow at this moment it really speaks to me.
And Sonny, I give unto you
the two long rants re RMR
for the FAQ, if indeed you want them.
And if, by chance , you *could* track down Som P. Ranchan's address in
Simla, I would be most grateful.
[I'll write him later when I feel a little better.
Actually his wife
was my,
yes,
first, I'll say it straight,
Muse.
Indu,
I kiss your feet,
wherever you are.]
Really,now,
kids, Im 48,
most of you must be younger and have more endurance than I. My
cardiovascular aint the best, and neither was
Joseph Brodsky's. [JB, *you* are the most perceptive reader of Marina, and
the nature of poetry since Rilke; see the volume of essays: Less Than One
Dear amateur reader, or anyone who just reads and runs:
Remember, once again, that reference to digest 570. I know you do.
I happen to have it here on my lap, along with the Catcher in the Rye. I
have the Catcher *only* because that lady in Australia, C.S., took the
trouble to mention to me in a private post
--no, I wont quote it, because of privacy
--about reading the first line of a book, a very good test, to see if said
book might suck you down
the alice in wonderland, was it
*rabbit* hole?
So this morning,
when I dragged a very tired body,
and a very tired mind out of bed,
I went to my bookcase [no description forthcoming, thank god ] and pulled
down Catcher, and started to read.
Was sucked in.
What caught my attention, my tired reader's eyes' attention , were some
words. Maybe I *am* in need of an instuition, or at least a good year of
indepth psychotherapy, but listen:
Holden is talking about , of course, D.B.,
and how D.B. comes and visits practically evey week.
Going to drive Holden home,
maybe next month maybe.
"He just got a JAGUAR."
[yes, I supplied the all caps]
Perhaps I am totally loopy, but....
Let's now turn to our printout, at least I have a hard copy print out , of
the above referenced digest 570. Following?
You see, bananafishers, its like reading *together*,
not *separately*.
It feels, yes, I'll say it plainly
, to me at least, good.
[like when my friend Eric and I meet once a week to look over a few pages
of that big tome of a thing: Ulysses, more or less, line by line. We have
tea, talk about our problems, compare notes on how Prozac compares to
Zoloft, ect.]
CAMILLE, MATTIS, WILL, "Sonny"
[yes, once again: I guess I'm still hovering in that nano-second business
above, hence my deliberate use of quote marks around Sonny's name]
[again: because no one really knows
except Sonny, yes?-
-or has someone on the list visited him in India?]
ARE YOU THERE???? [you each get a quesion mark as a party favor].
Ok: Camille first quotes in her post,
will's quotes from something he read somewhere:
ah, yes, *here* it is:
Yur reader's mind should, at this moment, if you want to fully get what that
word *here* sounds like, must think back to hearing an actor's voice that
once performed Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape. You know, the entire skit re:
Box thrree, spool five. ... Spooool! ( I'll take recourse in a Salingerian
parenthesis: author, and the transcriber, *deliberately* tapped 2 'r's,
and yes, 4 'o's. He and I were *not* being simply poor typists. Trust me,
if you dont agree already.)
'''My book?' His voice was low, confident, and confidential, from the
driver's seat of his JAGUAR (yes, *my* emphasis) sedan where he sat behind
the wheel. 'Richard,' he said, 'it's really nice not to have to publish
anything until the work is completed...and that's real nice, Richard.'''
Plenty of austere blank space
around that, yes "Sonny."
(For the forgetful, please see Sonny's site, oh, hell, I just left my city
cabin (hello, Holden!) and dragged me and my, yes bathrobe up the stairs
-sort of like that time, about 28 years ago, when a young boy named Bruce
Frederick Mueller went looking for a strangely named poet
(people's names, yes, Camille, fascinate me.
But the reason I wrote you that very very first
offline email, was, no,
not your name dearest,
but for the most simplest of facts:
after I held my breath and subscribed to the list,
I tapped out that very very short introduction--surely you and others
remember
--and how long,
my god
how long ago
that seems at this very moment in the stream of it all,
and do you dearest C.S.,
recall that it was you
who first , yes,
all it was
was,
your welcome to me,
it was along the lines of,
wow, impressive chronology, Bruce!
Yes,
that was what
set ALL OF THIS into motion.
What ten or so days ago?
That simple line of yours to the listserver.
And, sitting here I thought to myself,
who
could
this Camille Scaysbrook
be?
(You, and only you know the rest.)
To finish the thread:-----started way way up there almost beyond even my own
eyes--
that strangely named poet with the feminine middle name:
RAINER MARIA RILKE.
--and, yes,
Still havent lost the thread:
I quote:
I had always thought that the best way to pay homage to JDS would be to
have a blacked out 3cms by 5cms box in place of a photograph, surrounded by
austere blank space, by way of an explanation.....
it's on, or *was*, the screen YET ANOTHER PAGE ON J.D. SALINGER?,
according to the trailer on lower left of *my* printout
: http://members.tripod.com/~SundeepDougal/jds/html
(I think my html problem is over, yes).
My question, I guess, after all this
, ( maybe I could get Mattis to phrase it best
, his post the other day re us getting
OFF the JDS FAQ
and ON
to some *other* type of questions,
seems , oddly
, at this very moment,
rather
interesting, to say the least.)
But since dear Mattis isnt at *this* keyboard, it's only, you know who,
how do you, my fellow bananafishers, my fellow aficinados of things
Salingerian,
FEEL
-- running your eyes over this double occurrence of JAGUAR???
that is,
after all this,
all of this above,
and what little will remain below,
my question to you
(NB, dearest Mattis:
I would not have the energy, let alone sheer persistence, to tap all this
out, WITHOUT FIRST reading *your* email to me,
which is what my eyes,
yes, the eyes again, I am afraid,
saw first thing this morning on this screen that looks out
unblinkingly,
for a tiny moment,
into the void.
I will answer *your* email in a few days. I am, as you surely know, very
tired at the moment.
But before I sign off, lets all, yes, say a little prayer, for, yes :
the dear, dear sister of one of our bananafishers, again, I cant find it:
oh, well, I think, in my heart of hearts, the young lady's name was, could
it be,
(RMR's bowl of -----, in the volume titled: New Poems
--Camille, remember my early email passage re the vase and what it holds,
[that what the vase looks like is a moot point, the real point:
the flowers inside it]
[yes, I think you do,]
-- that as *real* readers of JDS's canon,
that everything turns out okay for her, and her sister and their family
--last name, Glass, no, but,
yes,
perhaps
--okay, I now, really, am ending,
I *think* the young lady's name was:
Rose.
No Murad for me. I want poetry out of the silence. Not prose,
alas.
So I am now off to bed,
Been up since, oh, 3:00 am , lying in bed, thinking,
Please know I wish all of you the very best in the world.
I feel, somehow, all of my years of being a lonely reader has been answered
by the chance to send this long rant, chant, call it what you will, off to
bananafish.
--Bruce in San Francisco, CA, USA