Sunday Evening Blues

It's been a rainy weekend in the Northeast. Today it poured so long and so deliberately that when I went outside the sidewalk was covered in some places with a livid green paste, buds raked from the trees, engorged with water. Squish squish. And now this poem:

"Mapmaking"

As a child in the family trade
I drew, though not to scale,
Sea creatures and the rogue crests
And troughs of stupendous ocean waves
Tossed by calligraphic gusts
Towards the edge of the page.

And on the long, sunlit boards
Of our old Binghampton
Street porch, I wandered.

Once or twice—No,
Many times—I remember now:
Dragon's breath blew through the yard.

Catholic Charities Maine

I spent the last two days at Catholic Charities Maine, "where everything's a dollar, but people are priceless." My favorite department is Refugee & Immigration Services. A Somalian woman with very little English and a babe in arms comes to me at the front desk and eventually I discern that she is here for an appointment with her case worker, Slobodan, a nice man from a former Soviet Republic and the only one of the staff who signs in and out with each trip to the bathroom. I imagine he is gifted at paperwork. I call Slobodan, he comes out, the two of them have a fluent conversation, and I am stunned by the efficiency and aplomb of their bureaucratic mingling.

But mostly I read from "The Cloister Walk" by Kathleen Norris. She says, "Poets understand that they do not know what they mean, and that this is a source of their strength." In other words, a poet can unburden himself of devotion to literal meanings if it interferes with his ability to be receptive to and communicate figurative meaning. The knowledge of poetry is closer to that of the feeling body than of empirical fact.

Love Note

In the shower this morning I thought "you kiss like the rich" and wondered for the life of me why I liked the sound of it so much. I thought drawing a pair of lips might help me understand. But my own drawing didn’t come out so well, so I just traced some lips from a book of someone else’s drawings. Just like that, their drawing became mine—and maybe mine becomes yours for a moment or two while you look at the lips (how green they are!) How easily we give to and take from one another, and how easily this can upset or surprise us! How light is the touch that tickles. The hot water wasn’t working this morning, so I just crouched down in my nakedness and used the tepid gush to make a Clearasil lather for my face. Somewhere deep in my mind the green lips were kissing. Maybe they were green with envy—maybe green with riches.

Walch Blues

Under the flourescent light and humming air conditioning of the offices of Walch Publishing I am patient with my impatience. (There's no reason why "air conditioning" can't refer to heat, I would like to point out. The air here is being conditioned, ruthlessly).

"Nothing's worth noting that is not seen with fresh eyes." -- Basho (1644-1694)

Today it is a coin rolling cleanly down the fire-retardent carpet, doing away with complication as it heads for its host. Probably Sheila in the Art Department. A sad woman with a shiny face, as if rubbed with oily tears, who is getting laid off in a week. On Friday I was her confessor and today she treats me with more deference than a temp usually gets. She is not ambitious; she wants to switch careers and work in a hospital. The thought depresses me, wondering if a hospital may indeed be the best place for her. She looks and sounds exhausted and seems aware of her condition like a frog in an open field. The coin, a rare silver dollar, runs out of speed at the foot of Sheila's cubicle and waits to be noticed.

The Death of Blatt

In keeping with the title of my blog, this post levels a bad rhyme and then deals what could be considered punishment via smart apology--not unlike an unfunny joke that needs its punchline explained:

Today I found out that I won't be returning to Stephen Blatt Architects on Monday. A permanent hire, Claire C., is joining the team. She is 20 years older than me if stress in the bones of one's face is any indication. Her bob of steely gray hair and civil, thwarted countenance will probably generate more business for the firm than I have been able to. I have youth on my side, but this woman wears a black wool pea coat down to her ankles, which are shod in decent boots. I can't compete with anyone so eminently sufferable. Graciously, Claire wished me the best in my pursuits and I shook her hand, my bare skin against her black leather glove. Her available smile and cool grip. The grip of death. Surely, this moment signified for me "The Death of Blatt."

Here, study the famous Neoclassical painting of the French Revolution by artist, executioner, and Jacobin genius Jacques-Louis David, "The Death of Marat":

Here we see the famous psoriatic revolutionary Jean Paul Marat soothing his plaque-ridden epidermis in the bathtub after being stabbed to death. The note in his hand is the petition sent by his political adversary and killer, Charlotte Corday, used to gain entry to his home on July 13, 1793.

Stephen Blatt Rules

I thought I'd start my blog with a sarcastic swipe at my current and temporary employer, Stephen Blatt Architects. I answer their phones, sort their mail, smile sheepishly, etc. The woman at the temp agency called me last week and said I would be needed for receptionist work and "admin," a Latin term I'm not familiar with. Everyone at Stephen Blatt seems to be speaking English, however. I am writing this blog post from their Dell Precision 330, which gives me shit occasionally. But the computer is perhaps my best acquaintance in the office. Together we process and destroy junk email. The Internet is a constant soothing serenade.

The financial guy in this office is C. Cromwell. To protect anonymity I would normally say "Charles C.," but I can't resist the Anglo-pull of his surname. For the curious, you may find him in your Who's Who. Charles is scruffy in a bulldog-on-the-chesterfield sort of way; his big belly completes a satisfyingly round and sanguinary bearing. He has a trusty fireside baritone. Usually he comes in late and smells of aftershave, maybe Old Spice. The other day I caught him napping at his desk, head down on folded arms--a barefaced rest technique I perfected myself in Algebra III. Every day in 12th grade, I came to class early to get the jump on my fatigue. The wet-behind-the-ears student teacher didn't bother me with attendance, and soon enough I became invisible. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of a test and jot down poetry of difficult-to-render associative fancies sprung from my subconscious. I don't think C. Cromwell does this. He manages some residential property and deals in wampum for Blatt. "That's why I'm tearing my hair out all the time," he says, referring to having two professional commitments. His wispy brown hair is combed and left alone with retired musketeer flair.

A pomegranate comes floating into my imagination, red and leathery, and I project it mentally into my physical surroundings. It travels through the air across the reception area, disappears through a passageway in the wall, maybe turns the corner and heads down the hall to C. Cromwell's office. A gift from me to him.

I take a bite of cinnamon raisin bagel and notice how the dough squeezes together where my front teeth have left a bite mark. At the microscopic level the airy cells of bread try to spread away from each other. They have springiness. And maybe their natural expanding is the afterthought of their mother yeast.

I'm not done yet trying to be my biggest self. The suggestion of a bite mark left on my body calls into question what unseen enormity could be treating me as its bagel? My thoughts on the subject yaw in sloshing consciousness. I am tickled by the sight of an office plant's prickly green leaf-spears. The plant is just two stems, each 5-7 inches long, emitting from a woody stump with chopped digits splintering. The 3.5 inch diameter titian plastic pot of soil is itself divulged in a simple blue-grey ceramic with a clean ridged rim. The leaf-spears are the lacquered green of fake plastic vegetation. They shoot off the stem thinly like bullet tracings at a jagged upward angle and splay out from each other like the fingers on two hands joined at the heel to create a supplicant Vee. They look like they could be clapping; stiffly clapping; slowly clapping.

Every posting should have a link. For more satirizing of office culture, read Nicholson Baker's short but labyrinthine novel, "The Mezzanine": "This book may hold the record for the most footnotes in a work of fiction," says a fan. http://j-walk.com/nbaker/mezzanine.htm