the mirror is broken, so it reflects
After the movie ended, I sat for a moment. I imagined a moon rising behind the clouds, so that the weather’s back was lit all silver, while below the rain fell easily down. Nothing easier than letting go, from a great height, and being received, at sea level. That was not what I thought. That is what I was.
What I thought took place in the mind, while everything important was going by. The mind felt alone, even lonely (of course): that is how a mind lives. The body, it simply touches or does not touch, feels rain or does not get wet, stays long in the sun and turns red or does not turn red. The mind, meanwhile, reaches out with no fingers, speaks with no voice, feels the beautiful curve of no lips, recalls the graceful arch of the body, the arrow loosed, the heartbreaking arrival (you cry, because beauty breaks the heart, whereas horror merely hardens it); the mind reaches out with fingers fragile and tenacious as a spider’s web, tries to catch the breeze, the dew, maybe time.
It makes no sense if you think along a line. A-B-C-… the next letter was at the tip of your tongue, but you did not release it. That is the line, a highway lane, a ferrocarril… but. A swirl creates a similar connection, but makes no sense, because it is felt. It is the shape of the hope and the sadness in a long, sweet kiss. It is the sound of a child’s song in the meadow full of honeybees. It is a Buddha, carved from stone. It is your hand, when I have released it. It is my palm, empty of your warmth, but with warmth’s memory.
~
Three paragraphs are your introduction to a film. After the movie ended, I sat for a moment. I didn’t imagine anything. I felt a lot. I thought, who could I recommend this to? I used poor grammar, as though common parlance would find an echo. In fact: I thought of no one. Not the woman and man who treated me to a film last night. Not my trekking troupe, dear as they are, and delightful as they are. Not my ex-wife nor my children (never to be ex, this is how grace works in the world). Not my coworkers, intelligent and invested as they are. Maybe my old film-maker friend Jamilah on the west coast. Maybe Philip Seymour Hoffman, the movie’s lead. Maybe the many characters in the film. Certainly its director.
~
It’s as though I lifted a pine cone in my hand, and felt the resin stick to and blacken my palm - knowing it would not wash off, but if rubbed would only adhere more - and held it up before your eyes and said can you smell beauty? Believing that, in a moment’s fragrance, you would experience the small island, crowded with the largest Norway pine; the bridge over the blackwater river, its stone carved into pots and kettles by the eddies of swirling pebbles, its voice a rush and roar; the small movements of birds among the limbs, careful yet careless of your presence; the hand of a mother, then hand released, then hand taken up again; the size of things when you are young; the size of them again, when you have grown much older; the sharp chalky flavor of a wintergreen berry; the fear and attraction to the waterfall; the sound of the suspension bridge swinging from there to there; the sound of that bridge; the sound of that bridge.
~
After it ended, I sat for a moment, because I had witnessed life in abstraction, and the broken mirror reflected my face as clear and true as Picasso’s brush. If I told most people that Picasso’s brush was honest, and the Realist’s a lie, the reaction would be the same as to an affront. Because most people let nothing break, of course they anger when a broken thing is called beautiful. That a tear should be called love. Or a smile, at times, labelled aggression. That fitting together in a bed of love should be as humanizing as being called out in failure - but gentler. That the first memory you have is the same as your last, and every memory in between: you should not make distinctions. That a hand held when a child, is as warm as one held when aging, only less informed. That information can make a kiss softer, and the heart larger. That night is dark only because we are impatient. That nothing makes sense if you try, and everything makes sense if you do not.
~
Synecdoche, New York. Worth it if you are ready and able to let go.
