Fog at Night

We drove through the fog at night, to Missouri and back, recently. Also, the pouring rain.

It reminded me of this poem, first published in Willow Review.

Fog at Night


In fog, at night, the whole world closes over,
nothing behind in the rear view mirror,
nothing ahead beyond the dome of streetlight mist.

It’s possible to live an entire life
this way, closed in the vehicle of body
behind the gray-draped hospital room curtains of fog.

To drift in and out of awareness
or move in a cushion of fear,
wishing vaguely for two red brake lights to appear ahead.

Those lights could come up
too suddenly, layered in a funhouse of mirrors.
It could be too late to stop.

They could be the devil’s eyes, winking.
The devil might come with his legion of red-eyed angels—
laughing, the tow-truck, screaming, the ambulance.

No use imagining the worst.
In fog, at night, it’s possible to get all the green lights
on the beltway home.

To take the curve gently,
at reduced speed, sometimes lit by headlights
coming up behind, benevolent as guardian angels,

and to believe in such things.

Still Howling, Still Weeping

Today I finished The Bay of Noon, by Shirley Hazzard, because I could not put it down. It was cold outside, and I was wrapped in a sherpa (cozy, very soft couch blankie, a Christmas gift), lost in the world of love and Naples and fine, fine writing, acute observation of human nature, humans still traumatized after a war (as humans always are, since we keep warring). Shirley Hazzard is a genius, and I wept.

And tonight is the official (by some calendars) full Wolf Moon. I hope we can still see it through cloud clover, when it rises, as it's raining.

By chance, I heard the tail end of a RadioLab story, Paul Auster (of Winter Journal, Smoke, Lulu on the Bridge, etc.) talking about how we can't know our story as we move forward, only as we look back, which seems obvious yet turns out to be subtle and miraculous. I've mentioned some of Auster's screenplays here because one of the characters in The Bay of Noon is a filmmaker and another a screenplay writer. This book was first published in 1970, though I am only reading it now, as Picador put it back in print, no doubt because it was up for the Lost Booker Prize in 2010. It has Naples in the foreground, Mt. Vesuvius necessarily and prominently in the background.

Not everyone will like this book, or its kind, but I do. And today, a Random Coinciday in the blog, I connect it to Paul Auster, saying we can't know the narrative of our lives till we look back on it and see it making sense, and to a reflection on water that I heard this morning. Here's Hazzard on the search for water (and sense-making narrative):

"We are like those early explorers of Australia who died of thirst on expeditions to the dead centre of a continent, always thinking they must come ultimately to water--to an inland sea, to a lake, a river, a cascade. Deceived by salt deposits, by rivers that flow inland, by the fossils of seashells, they were driven on by incredulity as well--by disbelief that one could come so far without drawing nearer to what one sought."

There's more, but I've spent enough tears; there are salt deposits on my cheeks. I am a perpetual seeker, and to know this is sometimes very hard.

O, Wackiness! O, Wolf Moon!

I've been in one of those tender, teary, wacky states lately. Animal joy, human melancholy.* Oh, of course! It was the full moon coming on. The Wolf Moon, the full January moon.

Hubby saw it rising last night. I saw it rising tonight while we were traveling. He was driving (with one headlight), and it was not safe for him to look back over his left shoulder at that particular angle. But now we're home, and he can gaze (and howl) all he wants.

So can I!

Two wall calendars in our house say the full moon is tomorrow, but I'll be happy (or sobbing) whenever I find it. Now, thanks to this particular NBC science website, I'll be looking forward to the Full Pink Moon in April.

Meanwhile, I finished Winter Journal and am reading The Bay of Noon (not The Bay of a Wolf at the Moon), by Shirley Hazzard. Oh, what wonderful, subtle, full writing here. I loved two other novels by her, The Transit of Venus and The Great Fire, so I am glad to be reading this one, too. It's our next book club book, and I'm starting it so early, I'll be able to read it twice! It's set in Naples (at the moment).

Reading a bunch of poetry books, too. Very moony and loony am I lately.

*Translation: laughing while crying at an episode of 30 Rock. O, that Tina Fey!

Winter Journals

I'm reading Winter Journal, by Paul Auster, a library book. I went there to get short stories by George Saunders, the guy everybody is talking about, but my library didn't carry anything by him. (Fear not! Interlibrary loan!)

Winter Journal is a memoir, in second person, of all things. I remember reading about it, and here is an NPR mini-review. I've already encountered half of what's mentioned in the NPR account, and I'm only on page 13. Hmm. But I am gripped, maybe because I am so cold, wrapped in a scarf and various sweaters. It's winter in the Midwest.

The other journal--I titled this "Winter Journals"--is my new red leather heart-stamped diary, 30% off Valentine's-Day-related items* at Barnes & Noble, the coupon waiting in my email this morning, found just after coming to the last page of my previous diary. So it's a Random Coinciday in the blog.

To celebrate, uh, besides buying a new journal with a fine discount, I will say that I forgot to mention, in Meetings, that I found out about Jack Schwarz, my most recent poet at Escape Into Life, thanks to meeting in person his daughter Hannah when I was working on Cleopatra in Ohio in November! I do love meeting in person poets I've met online.

*red, heart-stamped

Meetings

And today...I have meetings. A brainstorm meeting for an upcoming writing project, to which I am taking my "brainstorm notes," and a meeting of my book group: we read The Book Thief, by Markus Zuzak. Normally, I don't much like meetings, but these should be good.

Here are some meetings of pages, via spiral notebook spine, in the art of Tifenn Python, paired with Jack Schwarz in the new poetry feature up today at Escape Into Life. I like how I know when an artist is "the one" to pair with a poet in my fantabulous job as poetry editor. It's different every time, but it's some wonderful meeting of poem and art, some set of coincidences. Here, the doubleness of page in the notebook art did something, the mix of animal parts, the mix of words and images.

And that the word "python" appears in one of the poems!

Schwarz is writing about Susan Sontag writing about art, so there's a doubleness in that. In the love poems, there are two people, an "I" and a "you." There are meetings of text and image, of mind and heart, of criticism and creation. And Jack is the father of Hannah Stephenson, featured earlier at Escape Into Life, with the wonderful multiple images of Claudia Rogge, some of which also use writing & image.

And if you don't like art or poetry, you still might want to click on Jack Schwarz's feature because he looks a little like George Clooney, or, as Jack himself says, like "a cross between Paul Newman, George Clooney, and Steve Buscemi." What's not to like?