CLOCKS AND MIRRORS tell us when and where, but not how to live our mysterious lives. Swahili time aligns with the sun rise, so seven is the first hour and eight is the second and so on, and this often confuses foreigners who make appointments with fishermen for boat rides to nearby islands. Is it true that mirrors are portals? I only know that we cover them in a house when grieving the dead.
After many years in storage, I finally unpacked boxes of books and placed them on a newly cleared bookshelf. Why does it feel like such a victory to find a place for all one’s books? There’s something so tender and private about the way we organize these miracles, in order of subject area, my preference. I realize these books are like clocks and they’re also like mirrors.
In middle school, I choreographed a dance with two classmates to the song “I Need You Tonight,” by INXS. We practiced so hard to get the steps right and then performed it on blue mats in front of the entire class. For a brief period in my life, I was a serious dancer with steps to memorize and I took this work so seriously that all my other homework suffered. I lived for this dance and this song. “I’m lonely!” The song was a mirror.
Sometimes a leaf picked up by the wind looks like a baby rabbit running across the lawn. The leaf is a clock. The rabbit is a mirror.
My daddy was a spiritual man who taught us his beliefs one at a time over a lifetime in what I like to call childhood chants. One of his classics went like this: “yahweh power’s where it’s at, hey! I ain’t no old doormat!” This chant followed the cadence of that old “High Pro Glow” dog food commercial that I think was borrowed by an old military marching chant. Don’t ask me why this worked—I learned the word yahweh and connected it to power and the song itself gave me a pep in my step. My daddy was a mirror and a clock.
A creative writing exercise to try: Listen to the sounds of the birds singing or your dog barking or a tree swaying in the wind and attempt to translate it into language you understand. Think about the “landscape as a foreign language,” writes Yoko Tawada, the land must be read by the observer to become a text. “Once we become more aware of that, it can change what we see.” This exercise is a mirror.
Or, as Gwendolyn Brooks used to tell us, go look out the window and write exactly what you see and that’s also a kind of poetry (and a clock, and a mirror).
After many years in storage, I finally unpacked boxes of books and placed them on a newly cleared bookshelf. Why does it feel like such a victory to find a place for all one’s books? There’s something so tender and private about the way we organize these miracles, in order of subject area, my preference. I realize these books are like clocks and they’re also like mirrors.
In middle school, I choreographed a dance with two classmates to the song “I Need You Tonight,” by INXS. We practiced so hard to get the steps right and then performed it on blue mats in front of the entire class. For a brief period in my life, I was a serious dancer with steps to memorize and I took this work so seriously that all my other homework suffered. I lived for this dance and this song. “I’m lonely!” The song was a mirror.
Sometimes a leaf picked up by the wind looks like a baby rabbit running across the lawn. The leaf is a clock. The rabbit is a mirror.
My daddy was a spiritual man who taught us his beliefs one at a time over a lifetime in what I like to call childhood chants. One of his classics went like this: “yahweh power’s where it’s at, hey! I ain’t no old doormat!” This chant followed the cadence of that old “High Pro Glow” dog food commercial that I think was borrowed by an old military marching chant. Don’t ask me why this worked—I learned the word yahweh and connected it to power and the song itself gave me a pep in my step. My daddy was a mirror and a clock.
A creative writing exercise to try: Listen to the sounds of the birds singing or your dog barking or a tree swaying in the wind and attempt to translate it into language you understand. Think about the “landscape as a foreign language,” writes Yoko Tawada, the land must be read by the observer to become a text. “Once we become more aware of that, it can change what we see.” This exercise is a mirror.
Or, as Gwendolyn Brooks used to tell us, go look out the window and write exactly what you see and that’s also a kind of poetry (and a clock, and a mirror).
