theunknowingproject

[theunknowingproject]

hear these minor tones, dissonant echoes, nocturnal murmurs whisper of hellhound behind, tremble sound haunting hollow taste of revenant ash in throat, beneath each note this velvet dissonance— here where sea pushes into land: roaring liquid love, thunder crashing at the lip of the last wave—and the next. where Pollock pours black enamel over raw canvas, painting like a man already buried. Here is love freed from time. here are the rites of the bull cults, the fetid silence of hardened blood, evicted angel beating one wing over trembled flame— no longer showing but shown through. no longer singing, but sung into— by jagged notes, passing through the charmed demon winding sand ripping the sails that carried you and when the sails are gone–– all sea all sound.

[theunknowingproject]

Some chase light for warmth, moth confusing flame with home. Boy chariots his sun across the sky. Time folds like fabric near the speed of seeing. Where moth confuses flame with home, an arrival sounds like this is it. Monet circled a single stack for seasons. Time folds like fabric near the speed of seeing—never saying the same thing twice. Monet around his stacks across the seasons, tracing the tremble of vanishing hours, not to say the same thing twice. Photons have no mass, only longing. Where haystacks trembled vanishing, a hundred paintings traced the same mistake, where the longing of those photons ranging altered everything it touched. All these paintings of the same mistake— where truth flickers a lie in the eye, chasing still to alter where it touches, calling each contact proof, making an altar of each touch, calling this assemblage truth. Some follow light for warmth alone, saying nothing.

[theunknowingproject]

If you have a fox, a goose, and a bag of beans, what is the best way to cross a river? In a year of desert driving, I played this question on loop. I wanted a mind for numbers, but seemed to retain only the set-up sequences of word problems. With a tendency to wondering and feeling too much at once, and with enough sky to lose myself in, I thought mathematical thinking might ground me. One recurring problem was this: by a fire, under stars, I would go dizzy looking for farthest ones until my vision blurred. By then, I did not remember most equations, only the premises for which they were needed. If two trains x miles apart are traveling in opposite directions at different speeds, how much time until they meet? If Jack has eleven pieces of fruit and five are bananas, how many apples for Jill? The antidote to dizziness, I was trying to learn, had something to do with overriding my first response, which was to be knocked off my feet by the size of it. The sky, that is. And, when it came to math, it was that fact that someone thought like this, imagined a way to sort a world such that these considerations, one parcel at a time, were all. The brilliance. If a pie and so many guests, cut pieces. Not everyone will want the pie. To calculate circumference, use the number pi. An infinite number to spin the head, but if you knew how to use it, it could help you figure some finite amount of pie, stones, or tire tread. In the passenger's seat, I looked through glass and could not take it in. The riddle at least was a smooth and solid thing I could turn in my pocket like a river stone. The river was part of the set up. Mr. Stone was my teacher. If you have to get across a river by boat. . . the set up went. How do you do it so the fox does not eat the goose, and the goose does not eat the beans?  What relief. To hold one thing at a time, solidly. I wanted a valve for my mind, some pacing for the flow. One challenge. Then another. A way to stop and then go. At that point, the flooding was out of control. My perception far exceeded my abilities to make any sense.   The answer to the riddle was: start with the goose. Mr. Stone told us why. But I was back in the river by then. Where to now, goose? Who do you think you are? This was a challenge that frightened me some, because it tended to come at critical moments with a tone of authority, as if the person voicing it knew exactly what time Train A would cross Train B, how many apples on each, and whether or not the geese should be eating the beans.  If I could focus on one thing at a time, perhaps I would start to see it coming? And have a few answers ready, just in case? I thought string beans would create less disturbance in the goose. But my mind tended toward the pintos I would buy in five-pound bags from Wal-Mart, which I would scatter in batches over a plate every time I prepared to soak them, checking for rocks. To find one was good. Here was a solid thing I could remove. Who do you think you are? When these demands came, I would experience the full force of new awareness of the errors of my ways, in dizzying magnification. I meant to apply this force to finding some solution, but I had none.  Which river? Which goose, fox, season? Is anyone else on the boat with me? Am I allowed to touch the goose? Are there eggs to come? The image of trains hurtling in opposite directions calls to mind rail spine, the nervous condition that did not appear until the advent of railroad travel, caused by the feeling of hurtling through space at speeds disconcerting to a body familiar with horse and foot travel. Not to mention the related and perhaps equally anxiety-producing imposition of standard time. I had once seen a fox while running on a horse trail in lower New York. Much of the trail ran adjacent to the Hutchinson River Parkway, but certain parts meandered into woods and along lakes such that the roar of cars was more muted, the way crashing surf may be if you are several blocks away.

Perhaps if I had gone beyond 12th grade calculus, I would have developed a more familiar and integrated symbolic language with which to explore the interference effect of a series of infinite variables on a given problem and been more erudite in my explanations about baseline insecurities. But I hadn’t at the time and was still young enough to believe that eventually I might, If I focused harder, see with greater clarity.  The river, between then and now, has continued to flood me. But the goose is still on it, and the fox, and the bag of beans. They rest at the banks, where the goose and the fox appear to wear bemused expressions, waving. I don't know why it is this way, or where the boat has gone, but here I am, waving back. *** This riddle, which I encountered decades ago, is one of those earworms that shows up again and again. I love the setup, the characters, the play, and the mystery. If, in a given year, I scratch 1,000 pages across several notebooks, an estimated 9.5 of them will feature this goose. Who knows why?  Rarely do I publish these, but sometimes it happens. Prior to today, I think the most recent iteration of these creatures in a published work happened in The Closed Eye Open, Issue 10,  Fall 2023, under the title Mathematical Goose.

[theunknowingproject]

my experience is an ongoing experiment, unwilling to stay anywhere as stodgy at the land of expertise, even overnight and every time i start in earnest to say anything true enough to ring, i give my meager savings up again putting all i know at risk to all i have yet to understand * Inspired by Ann Lauterbach

[theunknowingproject]

who is speaking? this question at least as urgent as the other more often asked, on what they say. who is living? who is allowed or encouraged to die? each at least as critical as the issue of how.

[theunknowingproject]

riot of color synchronized in one collective act of protest on stone steps of a locked administration building on a Saturday afternoon wide-armed skirts open petals as they spin joy from low-hanging smog of simmering fear

[theunknowingproject]

Kitty recovers, and so do I. It’s the last week of school, a time of dizzy rush underscored by reflection. I think about endangered creatures. One among these is the flightless parrot of New Zealand, the kākāpō. Who, according to Māori legend, is a protector of the land. And I am thinking about the children. A system built for speed cannot recognize love the slow one who never flew. Who, when hunted, knew to freeze. I think of her, now camouflaged in shadow—an endangered hush—now subjected to another survey. Intended to express how well we care. But a check mark is not shelter and a rubric offers no refuge. How many shine like saints in the chill grasp of their handlers, being measured for extinction while staying faithful to their flightlessness?  I’ve learned not to trust anyone with a grand plan because I once had one, too. Now I only want to shelter who still lives. To protect a child’s right to become what they will, even if that becoming looks like myth, even if they call it pest. I don’t know what school is, only what it is not. One metric involves how well a person can pretend to be a person deserving of award. But that is not the work. The work is learning how to become, and some of the brightest know better than to obey. Do it. Don’t ask. Shut up. Or we’ll fail you and humiliate your mother. And in other news: Kids Fail Critical Thinking Tests. Marcos liked to talk to old people. Liked to hear their lives. He couldn’t focus on any task that felt designed to domesticate his wonder. The first act of a critical mind is refusal. Consider the ones who vanish as portraits in negative space: Now you see me. Now I disappear. Now I am a vase, now I am two people kissing. Now neither. Now both. You thought your five-minute survey could find me? Think again. Ask me who I am before I speak. Ask as if you believe I might not answer. Ask as if you know the form of your asking matters as well as your question. There is much I have not said. Not yet––and no, I do not plan to fly.  I live close to the earth, as I am, in these shadows, or I die.

[theunknowingproject]

when sharp reach pangs so long for holding & what in need of her lost, where soft grief trills over low branch, see her count our cost, leaf by fallen why and now pause––

[theunknowingproject]

I have been meaning to write a note here for almost a week now. It is Memorial Day in the states, which might occasion a purposeful message of solemn remembrance to honor those who lost their lives in service. A day for remembering fallen soldiers, visiting cemeteries, offering commemorative words. Mine would be inadequate today, so I refrain.  Also in the states, this is the holiday weekend that traditionally marks the opening of summer––barbecues, beach trips, and quite a few celebrations. My love's birthday, my daughter's close-friend's quinceañera, and my brother's wedding.  In preparation for the wedding, I  spent some time extracting stills from a video slideshow of my grandfather, who died of old age over a decade ago. Several of these photos featured him as a smiling young man in his WWII-era Army attire, complete with wool coat. The photos I had were all black and white. But for him, those moments happened in color. The federal holiday means schools, government offices, and many other locations are closed today, so for me it's the first moment I've had in almost a week to catch my thoughts in any meaningful way. It's a chance to nurse a cold in bed instead of rushing to work jacked up on caffeine and Sudafed. And, now that the festivities are behind us, to try to remember what was happening on other planes. I opened Nelle Morton's book of essays to a dog-eared page from "A Word We Cannot Yet Speak" to find this line: As fire is known in the burning, not in the ashes, sight is known in the seeing, not in the eyes. This feels relevant in ways I am trying to access through my stuffy head. The essay is about bodily understanding, the kind often maligned for being associated with women and other creatures outside the traditional loci of Western power systems.  When I opened my notes this morning, I had a sense of wanting to have something to say, but feeling only a dull, achy buzz. Buzz is the name of our cat who has been suffering an ailment that has been mysterious and worrisome in recent days on top of everything else. This morning's online vet visit offers hope, which is much better than enhanced concern and nothing.  And yet. I have no meaningful note. All pain, all ache. As it was in the days leading up to the weekend's events, in no particular way other than how it is sometimes, except that it was time to focus on joy and gratitude for beloveds and friends, for family and love, gratitude for those visiting, laughing and sweating and spinning on the dance floor, all I love you! and Don't go! and You have to stay! until eventual hard-crashing, headache-nursing, morning-after commentary, limpid with excess, a time to acknowledge the sore throat and sneezes are not, as I was claiming earlier, from laughing so hard while responding to insistent protests of,  Stay, stay! Don't you dare leave! Now it's quiet. I try to collect things. I make a list. Back to work tomorrow. Try to remember.  I follow the cat with a warm washcloth, apologizing between bouts of treatment. What was I doing before? With such urgency? So close to something I was meaning to carry it through. I was thinking, just a little longer, stay, before it went.

[theunknowingproject]

I first knew you by your other, less-specific name, as unicorn. Which is to say, as a creature of wondrous, near-impossible beauty. A miracle, so I drew you at the center of a depiction I was prompted to make by my first-grade teacher. This was Catholic school in the Regan Era in suburban New York. This is when and where and how I learned that you were forbidden. “They did not have unicorns in the Garden of Eden,” Mrs. McClosky announced. I did not think to wonder at the time who They were, or how she had come to interview them. She wore a brooch and so knew things. I wore saddle shoes and an ill-fitting uniform and vomited in the parking lot every day, in dread of my arrival in that dark space of stone hallways, urgent bells, and seemingly inexhaustible legions of certainty, all certain I was wrong for fearing them.   I thought I knew you, so had been happy about this assignment, the first I had loved since entering school, other than the opportunity to give a staged reading of the Gingerbread Man to my kindergarten class. You can’t catch me, you can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man! Later I learned the word myth. As in mythical. Which some would use to mean fake but which I took to mean the real in story. Or the real that is larger than seen.  ––And I connected it to this misunderstanding that my first-grade teacher had about you, who while real, were mythical, like The Garden herself. Which naturally led to other questions. These questions led to others, and one day I was old enough to have learned to no longer give my first answer to the question: What do you want to be when you grow up? A Unicorn! I had announced.  This was my first opportunity to learn that you were not a valid response where the subject was imagined possibilities. Having reflexively rejected this wholesale, I had to learn again in first grade. And did––learn something, anyway.  Later still, I began to see this I, whoever she was supposed to be, as a sort of mythical creature, possibly imaginary. She lived in dreams, and she lived in the dark. According to most official sources, most of who she was, was categorically forbidden. She was simply too––much of everything unnecessary, this creature.  Learning this was almost too much. I forgot what I could in the name of persistence. For what, I sometimes could not remember. By then I was half dead ––but the other half was living, as are you.  You only needed cover to persist, and space. Foresters removed your cover and trappers set traps in your space. These were not meant for you, specifically. You died in them anyway. I write this hoping that you will recover. That we may recover––enough forest to protect you in the shadow regions, safely ensconced in the unseen, beyond the range of anyone who comes to count you, beyond the bite of any snare so indiscriminately set that it would capture and kill you in its teeth.  I write this praying that you may continue non-existing for your doubters.  I am not worthy, but believe.  I write this that you heal the rest of me, however well she was supposed to have learned by now, to treat the best of herself as a forbidden creature of mythical fear.  I write that we may live.  I write in the shadows, in whispers, that you may hear me.  And live that I may join you, some forbidden someday.  *** For more about the endangered creature at the center of this piece, consider The Saola’s Battle for Survival on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

[theunknowingproject]

Listen, honey. I know what I did and I know what I wrote. And I meant that. I lived that––wonder in their presence. Those gorillas. . . and me in their midst. But I have to tell you, babygirl, some days I really regret the title. Gorillas in the Mist? I mean. Say "mist" and the next thing you know, you've conjured King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, and now I've inadvertently cast myself as some twisted Guinevere waiting for her Lancelot except instead of being in the castle, I'm in the jungle with my long blonde hair on the cover to boot––a young woman in the rain with a professor who looks at me alternately a little too long or like a piece of furniture in the tent, and I'm there in my twenties and still thinking, you know––I mean, I hope you don't, Babygirl, but probably you've heard already, this can happen–– Here is how you enter into a group. Here is how you sit in the open. Here is how you breathe when you begin to understand that at any given moment, any given member of the group might kill you, and yet–– Even then, the thing you have in common with these would-be killers is a fear of the ones who are all around, keeping watch, to protect you. You know these smiling watchkeepers in their official university garb are the real ones to watch out for, but if you let them know that you know this, you––like any one of these gorillas in their presence, will be in more serious danger than you are now. So you stay, sitting and breathing and then one of them approaches you to sniff at your neck and pick at your hair and meanwhile an insect bites again at your arm as if to remind you, this is why you got your shots, this is why you asked for this, this is why––you wanted this, didn't you? To be here, not in the vague midst of some deity, but in this. It's torrential now, the rain, and there is lightning, and then comes crash of storm and shriek of mammal, followed by another and another––and then, an animal tear at your throat. It is your throat shrieking too, wild with something you have never known to call yours––never called voice, never called any sound you knew, much less gave birth to. You let it go. One of the women in my Tuesday writing group was talking about how the process of excavating story sometimes feels like gorillas throwing excrement around a cage, and then we had a prompt about letting go, so what happened on my page after that happened in an imaginary voice of Jane Goodall, addressing a granddaughter.

[theunknowingproject]

all web all weft, warp all woven in why whistling underwind & winding back as if to tie you to its waving & away from what you thought known of who you were

[theunknowingproject]

what might a whole faith sound? with her heartmind with her souled body in denial of dictates by keepers of orders to wrench by flawed reason mind from herself being from womb also her how would her chorus shiver grace back to her flesh light back to word mystery returned to these folds within her

[theunknowingproject]

We need to talk about time & to talk with Time eventually instead of scheming how to use it to make the most to have a good one to have the best to name its price as with any commodity any resource as opposed to Source to spend instead recklessly & listening for language & other creatures is to be folded inside embraced by layered fabrics of Time & their attendant creatures in immersive intimacies of waters, skies where each breath comes to carry the next, yet uncaught.

[theunknowingproject]

to be a husk returned to soil by way of river over falls & under bed. what good is this? someone asks & one answer is another voice, yes what good is this.

[theunknowingproject]

If children are disappearing it does not seem like a stretch to wonder if some have decided that there is no place for them here. Most of us are made of something that does not innately know its place & must be welcomed into being. Let’s do more of that & more to read them, and more conversing with---and much less of the poking, prodding, scrutinizing “temperature checks” that are supposed to pass for paying attention to their needs & wondering why they look away.

[theunknowingproject]

why not make a map of us, then––? all reflection & non-linear equations, light upon light to play on a practice of not sleeping but holding as marrowed minerals in bones whisper another kind of living light only the trembling know.