IMAGINE THE MOON as a traveler—leaving and returning in cycles of light and shadow. This is not an original idea, it’s one that essayist Yoko Tawada writes about in describing the unexpected pleasures of mistranslation. Most poets have gotten bad moon advice—never write about it, we heard—but the moon is the first guest we receive at the poet’s table, how could we not serve her?
A crisis of faith: I’m at that part in the Thomas Merton autobiography when he details a misery so deep as to disturb an otherwise clear desire to give up his life for god. Have we all been there? Well, not on the precipice of monk-hood, but at the brink of a major life transformation in need of a jolt from the divine?
I remember once thinking I had no choice but to quit college. I called my mother from a payphone. “So come home,” she said. I packed my bags. Dragged them all the way to the Amtrak station in Kalamazoo on an icy cold winter night. I waited for the train—and when it finally arrived, I could not bring myself to board it. I started to miss the hatred I felt for my campus and all the people I'd have to face there! So I turned back and settled into my room with the quiet grace of a moon reporting for night duty.
The next morning, the sun shone a little brighter. The campus squirrels had just a bit more pep in their squirrelly step. And the crunch of the ice and snow beneath my boots offered a strange assurance that sent a message within my body to stay—to just fucking stay. The relief was miraculous—I think I even thanked god for ferrying the decision to me just in time. I felt so alone.
Later, I learned from a therapist named Nancy that I only had to be sure 60% of the time—the rest relies on faith.
I’m reading now about how consciousness is “an active force in the construction of reality,” and that every single element of human experience has some spark of consciousness within it, however infinitesimal. As travelers, “we make the road by walking,” writes poet Antonio Machado. The world appears with each step we take toward—what? The moon. And the moon is not always a metaphor (nor a conqueror's destination).
It always breaks my measly human heart to be reminded that plants, too, are conscious beings. The spiky aloe plants I inherited from my mother hold their grievances with me in obvious ways—dark blotches and sorrow at their tips—I am deeply sorry! I pride myself in the poetics of awareness but live in the shame of careless neglect. It’s on my to-do list to hold a special clinic for those that insist on their survival.
Past the initial crisis—on the other side of the moon—there is still life (not a still-life). A world appears when we step into it. A mistranslation is a surprise meaning. I could leave or stay and either way is correct. The train departed that night in Michigan. A girl turned back and chose a path. The moon returns nightly and we forget greetings or goodbyes. The maps we make tend toward the horizontal. But we all know we live in the vertical of heaven and earth.
A crisis of faith: I’m at that part in the Thomas Merton autobiography when he details a misery so deep as to disturb an otherwise clear desire to give up his life for god. Have we all been there? Well, not on the precipice of monk-hood, but at the brink of a major life transformation in need of a jolt from the divine?
I remember once thinking I had no choice but to quit college. I called my mother from a payphone. “So come home,” she said. I packed my bags. Dragged them all the way to the Amtrak station in Kalamazoo on an icy cold winter night. I waited for the train—and when it finally arrived, I could not bring myself to board it. I started to miss the hatred I felt for my campus and all the people I'd have to face there! So I turned back and settled into my room with the quiet grace of a moon reporting for night duty.
The next morning, the sun shone a little brighter. The campus squirrels had just a bit more pep in their squirrelly step. And the crunch of the ice and snow beneath my boots offered a strange assurance that sent a message within my body to stay—to just fucking stay. The relief was miraculous—I think I even thanked god for ferrying the decision to me just in time. I felt so alone.
Later, I learned from a therapist named Nancy that I only had to be sure 60% of the time—the rest relies on faith.
I’m reading now about how consciousness is “an active force in the construction of reality,” and that every single element of human experience has some spark of consciousness within it, however infinitesimal. As travelers, “we make the road by walking,” writes poet Antonio Machado. The world appears with each step we take toward—what? The moon. And the moon is not always a metaphor (nor a conqueror's destination).
It always breaks my measly human heart to be reminded that plants, too, are conscious beings. The spiky aloe plants I inherited from my mother hold their grievances with me in obvious ways—dark blotches and sorrow at their tips—I am deeply sorry! I pride myself in the poetics of awareness but live in the shame of careless neglect. It’s on my to-do list to hold a special clinic for those that insist on their survival.
Past the initial crisis—on the other side of the moon—there is still life (not a still-life). A world appears when we step into it. A mistranslation is a surprise meaning. I could leave or stay and either way is correct. The train departed that night in Michigan. A girl turned back and chose a path. The moon returns nightly and we forget greetings or goodbyes. The maps we make tend toward the horizontal. But we all know we live in the vertical of heaven and earth.
