We are Our Stories

There are people whose reputations
are trails of light across the sky.

I do not know them.

I am a pack rat. That is no trail of light
behind me. There are only scuff marks
left by the things I drag along.
That is about to change: I am certain
about it. Just this month . . . or rather
earlier this year . . . a while back . . .
I almost decided to throw something
away, but since it was not a Monday--when the trash man
comes by--I put the urge aside, congratulating myself on having
come to a new phase in my life.

I promised to become lean and spare.

But then I look around. There are stories everywhere!
There are the masks we bought from the couple who
had lived in West Africa for years. There are more pots
from Dean Schwarz than there are pictures of our kids.
There are glass urns, and old wooden dough troughs.
There are chairs from Tennessee and tables from a bakery
in Decorah that was closed for insanitation. We have
detrius from Mari's family and a ton of old tools.
A Chinese General guards our front door, beneath
a gong we bought somewhere in Washington State.
There are a thousand rusty nails rusted when the Fire
Department put out a peculiar fire while I was building
a boat, and there are more cups than coffee in Java.

There is an old door from a building in Mexico,

hanging unhinged on our wall, with an Olmec mask,

and something unhinged from a potter in California.

I would rather tell stories

than leave a stream of light.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...

Best Not Noticed Among Friends

"If I have told you once, I have told you a thousand times: don't exaggerate!" That isn't what this post is about, except that is has to do with the way we use language, or how language reveals how we think. What has been intriguing me lately is the growing habit of saying everything twice, or repeating the same idea with different words. For example: "When the barrage comes, it comes in bunches." I rather imagine. A barrage of one is such a lonely thing, by itself. Here is a list of recent examples: "for each respective team" "both teams have only one timeout, each" "there is this sort of, like. . ." "retweet it out" "but lying about the same, exact. . ." "then elevate up" "He's very good at parceing these arguments apart" "and lied, over and over and over again" And then there are just curiosities: "A man who, everything he touches, turns to g...

SmokeSound

Search This Blog