I know you don’t like poems, especially mine
and especially since mine never get told when
you need them, and I know that I live some
inner life that thinks it’s living outside but
isn’t and only wakes when something knocks
too hard and when something is gone as if gazing
up the road I miss the bus and wave a poem at
its shadow…
i haven’t been writing for a few months because the fall of every year has—for the last seven years—been dedicated to the film festival and the community of beautiful people that gather for events, film and art. to say this returning season of my life is foundational doesn’t do any justice to the sheer amount of things it’s given me.
i love this job. that’s why i’ve stayed in it for so long. even though i profess to love literature best. even as the PhD appeared and the double-tracking was inevitable. even as i wasn’t sure when the end of this journey would be and how i’d be able to let it go.
but this year was that year. it became clear that the paths were diverging in a way that made it impossible for me to walk both. and the dissertation was a mountain looming that i needed to climb. so this was my last year at the festival.
for the last few weeks, as the festival was in full swing, i kept the last milestones close to my chest: small celebrations, small reminiscences, and small savourings of the things i love best about my festival work. i hugged many people i’d met over these 7 years, debated films with them, wrote my programming notes on the day of (as i do), caught up with people hurriedly in the theatre lobby or whispered in their ear over loud music at parties, had late night dinners and laughed and laughed and laughed.
then the festival wound down. post-fest duties executed without much fanfare. my tired body curled up in the quiet of the apartment, sleeping back hours i’d lost over the last 6 weeks. words returning to me in slivers before i drop off into dreams. waking up hurriedly to type something out in my phone before falling back asleep. pulling books out from the shelf to muster up energy to open them someday. tomorrow. next week. the iPad finally getting charged.
these are the rituals i’ve practiced year after year, transitioning from one path to another. this will be the last rail change in a long while and every motion has felt diffuse, perhaps, because part of me is reluctant to leave things behind.
…But bus and shadow exist all the same
and I’ll send you more poems even if they arrive
late. What stops us from meeting at this place
and imagining ourselves big as the world and broad
enough to take it in and grow ancient is fear and
our carelessness, and standing in the thrall
of the wicked place we live in and not seeing
a way out all the time and never clearly all at once
and not at the same time and abandoning each other
to chance and small decisions,
regardless. i have turned a few more pages. resumed annotating my pdfs. i am setting my body up for a long season of reading and writing. attending to another kind of work. getting ready to grapple with and in language. to climb a very large mountain.
actually, at this point i’m not sure what i’m trying to say in this dispatch. maybe i am building a small mound for commemoration. a rehearsed goodbye that feels jostled by incoming tasks. a messy goodbye that won’t feel complete, because of how many people and things carry over.
oh well (i use this as a transition too often as a crutch. a linguistic shoulder shrug).
returning to sift is my next gesture in this series of return moves. last night i opened my iPhone note that i’ve been typing into over the past year. the note is called “Word Pile” and it contains little phrases and sentence fragments that have floated up at random that don’t yet have anywhere to land.
to remember the last seven years and to welcome the next seven,
like stacking rocks by the side of the road, i’ve collected the first line of fragments from the “Word Pile” and arranged them into an order just for today.
parentheses are freshly added.
(like a sendoff that is also a beckoning. please go. please come.)
walking along the danforth bridge, i followed the shadow of a butterfly
without sense, safety or certainty—
i became a girl who sleeps with death close to her chest.
(i want to let her go; i have not yet figured out how)
i close my eyes and the fear of loss hovers in my body
i want to say i’m grateful (it hovers)
i only want to like a thing after i’ve seen its ugliest belly (i turn my belly)
(so ugly. ugly. ugly.)
the precondition to writing about something is that i must love it:
my hands and the air they grasp at;
sleep not as escape or respite; (how about choice. accident. feeling.）
(the other precondition to writing is that i must have words)
imagine you stand on the precipice of adventure. (this is overwrought and will eventually be discarded)
you hit the bus stop and two seconds later the rain pours,
who is the enemy? (not the rain)
i learn every day how we outgrow almost everything.
this is the grace of my own life.
what are you to me? (again, overwrought, but this time necessary)
here i am—
the lore of your own life cannot hold
no matter what field it may be—
so then what?
and then what?
but if I ever thought
that I could never recover the thought struggling
to live through my imperfect youth and life and way,
if I thought that I could do nothing about the world
then…well, and we’ve hung on to old hurts as if
that was all there was and as if no amount of sadness
would be enough for our old, insistent
not becoming selves; and as if sadness should not end,
so for this I’ll send you more poems even if they
only wave and even if I only look up late to see
your shadow rushing by.
—“XIV i”, from Land to Light On by Dionne Brand