It\u2019s hard to concentrate. Ping pong of the mind is in play \u2014 sometimes that restless movement is productive, but not now. I\u2019m sitting on home, but mind is racing through history, through ditches and pogroms, uneasy peace, good & evil, unstability of thereof, pronouncements and truths which in a silvery instant become their opposites. Other war zones, names of weaponry, mass injury, mothers. The mind ping pongs. I can hear the echo across screens all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I been reading the work of a Polish poet whose mind ping pongs, Czeslaw Milosz. A witness of multiple 20th century cataclysms, Milosz followed the tortuous turns of his fractured consciousness. After he arrived in Berkeley, California, he wrote, \u201cWho will honor the city without a name\/If so many are dead and other pan gold\/Or sell arms in faraway countries?\u201d He was remembering his hometown, Vilnius, then in Lithuania, later a part of Poland in the poem, \u201cCity Without a Name.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blink in the poem, then ask where are we now? We\u2019re in Death Valley.\u00a0 We are lost in wonder.\u00a0 Also at the zero point for the imagination.\u00a0 A place of not extinction but a low buzz, imperceptible murmur, desolate, alien.\u00a0 A place of immersion. As is true with all darknesses, it is alive with potential.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I thought of the zero point as Orthodox Christians were celebrating \u201cForgiveness Sunday.\u201d To be a fly on the wall in the Orthodox churches! Imagine the buzz inside the heads and consciences of Russians and Ukrainians alike. What are Russians murmuring to themselves? I imagine a descent down to a void, wildness, to experience the howl, a cry of anguish. Radical insight, a shock of recognition. To be a fly that could make a swerve, a turn in action. The small voice longs to be heard. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s hard to concentrate. Ping pong of the mind is in play \u2014 sometimes that restless movement is productive, but not now. I\u2019m sitting on home, but mind is racing through history, through ditches and pogroms, uneasy peace, good & … Continue reading