Le Bateau Ivre 1

Rimbaud seems to be one of those super-translatable writers, a fact that I didn't understand until last night when, after reading Paul Schmidt's version of "The Drunken Boat" next to Wallace Fowlie's, I began to experience a strange, stereoscopic blurring. It was like I was trying to listen to two men tell me the story of a trip they'd taken. One of the men (Fowlie, who appeared before me in a pastel-blue vest), was bearded and dour and obsessed with telling me exactly what had happened; while the other (Schmidt, who was also wearing blue, but who looked like an older, somewhat-less-androgynous Stevie Nix with his ridiculous menagerie of scarves and bangles), was trying to entertain me. I listened to them both; but after a few minutes I realized that I wasn't really listening to either. The story itself faded into the background, transforming their flailings into a sort of dance, though one whose gestures served a purely decorative and abstract purpose. I watched it hypnotized - and then as I watched, I began to notice something moving behind these patterns: something coiled and mangy, like a sick zoo animal. The whiffs I caught of this strange beast were so pungent that I immediately focused on it exclusively, ignoring the dancing men despite the fact that they had redoubled their efforts in the face of my obvious boredom. Their arms whirled to the point that it became almost impossible  to see what they were hiding behind their backs. Or was it whom? At this point I couldn't be sure, though of course as soon as I realized that I couldn't be sure, I was. I was completely sure in fact, for I could see now that the flashes of snot covered-tunic I'd been glimpsing belonged to the man himself, or rather the Boy himself. I shoved the other two aside testily (a reader's work is never done!), and grabbed his arm. What happened, I asked him? His velveteen jacket had the disastrous heaviness that all fine fabric does when wet, but his candy-cane pantaloons were dry as bones. Holding my palms out, I could feel the heat radiating off them: an impossible heat, as if they'd just been taken out of his mother's machine. And now he was talking, too: automatically, like an athlete running an obstacle course that he's done so many times he dreams about it. I, I, I he said; but by this point, I wasn't listening to him anymore. I wasn't listening to any of them: I was sailing or floating, or anyway just sloshing side to side, like the inch of bug-juice and gasoline that floods every boat no matter how clean. And I was sailing too. I had cast off, or was cast off, to go looking for the poem I'd read. Did I think I would find it? Not really, no. Not at all, actually. But it didn't matter. I was gone like Cortez - almost exactly like him, in fact. Cortez, Cortez, I hummed, as the wind plucked vacantly at my rigging. As for my companions, I found out later that they'd been stapled to my masts like children's drawings on a refrigerator. What music they'd had was used up, and though they thought that they'd escape, they hadn't. It was a crying shame, really; at the same point it was my only hope - for in the pit of my heart, I knew that I knew something they didn't. I was safe, even in the storm's heart, for I had God's arms around me like a lifejacket of love. So I sailed on, pinned like Sebastian in my rigging - of happiness or sadness, I repeat, it didn't matter. I had everything I need, and I couldn't stop, so I didn't. Until suddenly, one blood-red morning, I did.

Nature Writing

Another chapter of Eugene, OR. I'm letting them land pointillistically, which is a fancy way of saying cut me some slack for this having apparently nothing to do with the last one. The title has a "II" at the end of it because this is the second chapter of the novel "Nature Writing" (one of eight novels in the cycle). Don't worry: I am fairly certain that this will all make sense, at some point. Or worry. That would be refreshing. 

Nature Writing (II)

Then I made my body into a bear’s body – for her, I said. It happened after one of our terrible dreams. My wife was lying in bed thinking about the fight we’d had, about the silverware, which I could never get clean, and about the correct way to floss teeth. Her long thumbs made her a natural at the serial pick-and-slide; but the rabbit, who was also there, found faithfulness of any kind bourgeois. He believed that a true flosser – an artist in other words, displaying an artist’s playfulness with the limitations of his medium – would gravitate naturally towards risk. One of his more popular demonstrations of this hypothesis was to spool an entire box through his lower jaw and then jerk it out, like a magician removing a tablecloth. He called this trick “Tullaine”, after a lost love. But my wife was skeptical. “What does a rabbit know about flossing teeth?” she asked, meeting his eyes in the mirror. 

That was the dream; but then later, while I was taking a shower, I noticed that my shoulders had developed two thin ridges of fur on them, right along the top. I knew I had to think fast; so I focused on my right arm, which is my brave arm. “Epaulettes!" I shouted at the showerhead, which in our apartment is even better than a tin can. Sure enough, in a few seconds my wife’s voice came trickling out of it. "Epaulettes?" "Epaulettes," I repeated. "I’m sorry about the silverware." “No you’re not," said my wife. "You just don’t want anyone to be mad at you." The dripped syllables sounded distant: as if she were stuck in the plumbing somewhere. I wanted to twist the shower-head off and shove my paw down it until I felt the soft water of her hair. But I was too big now to do something like that, which meant that all I could do was tell her to wait. "That's what I'm doing," she said. "I'd be down there now, but bears hate water," I said. "Cat's hate water. Bears love water." "I'm changing," I said. "Well then turn the water on," she said. So I did. It rushed over me like an embrace, and I howled for my life; but this, as my wife explained in a letter she sent me after it was all over, only proved that she was right. I hadn't changed a bit. 

Progress

Here's something from a poem in novels I'm writing called Eugene, OR. It's in progress, of course. Actually, I just spent the last hour writing it.

The Prose Poem

One night, when the moon was in the sky and the smell of wet grass clinging to the earth like a torn shift on the body of a drowned girl, the prose poem went down to the river. Behold me, said the moonlight! Beheld, said the prose poem irritably; only in truth this answer had less to do with the transcendental qualities of moonlight than with the darkness and uneven earth. We can assume there was a woman in it somewhere: not the drowned girl, we’re not talking about her at this point, but a woman, meaning a consummation. Something devoutly to be wished, as the prose poem described it while dipping its feet into the river’s edge. What do you mean “devoutly”, asked the moonlight? I mean devoutly, like on your knees and with your eyelids droopy, almost asleep. Your remember Sunday mornings? (Of course the moonlight remembered Sunday mornings) Well, there is a certain feeling that one gets, no matter what one’s spiritual orientation. There’s the left side of the sky looking bright and the right side dark beneath a quilt of clouds. Do you follow? Behold, whispered the moonlight, more insistently now (for it was nearly dawn). Behold, behold! But by this point the prose poem was starting to see it. You never washed my dishes, you never cared – or rather, you did these things, but without any of the sexually-suggestive aprons that men secretly expect from a lover. Your complaints became verbose, dead on, to the point that soon I watched you like a man watching his house burn down in the middle of the night. Literally burn, asked the moonlight? But the prose poem shook its head. As usual, he was getting tired of explaining himself. There are stellar bodies – stars, so to speak – and then there is this moon, this hole in the sky. The light drains through it until it’s all gone, at which point god takes the waist and turns, like this. Moonlight: Well, ok, that works, but now you've missed her. Prose poem: But I always miss her. That's what she loves about me.