Toly's Troubles or the Hurtful Hernia

The Mark Strand Story. Tuesday March 22nd was official Mark Strand Day at Yale. It was celebrated by him giving a Master's Tea, a poetry reading, and embarrassment. The reading was held at St. A's, the first Henry and I were organizing. Made arrangements, poetry postered the colleges, grew excitement. Walked out of perfect Yale blue skies to 4 o'clock high tea at Berkeley to eat little sandwiches with no crusts, cookies engraved with Y's and to listen to the poet. Painter first at Yale graduate school, got his head turned, turned forty and finally admitted he was one because there was nothing else he had done. Years ago, now he's an old man happy to say he spent his life writing poetry. You may think that's silly, he smiled, but I don't think I wasted my life. Enjoyable character if alternately intimate and disdainful. Ecstatic when he recalled whole poem of one of my favorites that ends "I move to keep things whole." Appreciative of talk of writerly anxieties.

A little anxious for the reading, I headed to the Hall early to set up. Arrived to find Anatoly, who was supposed to set up the sound, was in the hospital having hernia surgery. Hysterical crisis. Strand, who refers to himself as Strand, spoke softly and we'd promised a microphone. Minor panic proceeded. Dragged grad white rapper, former member, only other who knew where everything was and how everything worked, from his day job. Rescued reading. Partly. People poured in and we scrambled stairs carrying bar chairs up furiously in front of the entire English department. Soon gave up on seats. At least 100 bodies packed the living room and listened as poet remarked he felt like a rock star. Cringed remembering forgotten mic stand for Strand. More comments conveyed ill ease with light, mic. Sunk into poetry. Reading over, rose slightly humiliated in front of former poet laureate. No one wanted to ask an autograph to go in the bar with other years of posters. In mermaid skirt and sunburn, spotted, streaked like a cheetah, down the steps of St. A's, I caught him. Mumbled humbly part of a poem, apologized and asked a signature, which he conferred on his forehead with a look of something on his face. His face bore permanent wrinkles of flesh fled in fear from his mouth. They'd run behind the tight lines of trenches in his cheeks afraid of his flow of words, as I was. But the face smiled, still holding his lines, and the look became ironic or comic if anything clear.

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A room of one's own. Roommates went home for Easter. Got the place to myself for the weekend. A Good Friday. Laundry day. Washed Europe, the smell of smoke and sweat earned strolling for miles and miles and miles, from my clothes. Shedding socks and shorts, carried overflowing load back up a winding stair not nearly narrow enough to compete with cathedral's. My only religious devotion this holiday, first day of three-day weekend with three papers to write or clean, is to studies. But not fasting, I won't swoon (like someone in a movie at the top of Sagrada Familia) scared by such greats heights of work. Before diving back into the wreck of writing, going to enjoy the depths of Life Aquatic. Date tonight. Off to wash off run and get ready. I lost the game. Seema, stop laughing.

Broken from break,

awoken as six o'clock sunlight sits in the awkward, acute corner. Disoriented with my body, my bed at an odd angle to room, to Yale, to universe grace of Stiles' sadistic architect. The time is jet lagging behind my mind. Rhythms off, meter strained, lines of flight won't scan till iambic returns in one of my old, tired, used-up, dried-up references. Wordsworth and Annabel alluded to some Milton sonnet I supplied. Reciting it in the context of class, seeing the poem inside of the Prelude, the rhymes reverberated at new frequencies. Meaning added through new associations (I lost the game) each time poem invoked. When I consider how my light is spent, ere half my days in that dark world and wide, and that one talent which is death to hide... Nature of beauty is that it is never spent. Poetry not a currency that dries up. Stockmarket of words always gives good returns on investments. Meaning multiplies, infuriatingly or delightfully, depending on your point of view. Weighed with gold of all their connotations, words might also limit in their approximations. Nobody's perfect. Imperfections are interesting. Can't care for Homer's gods, just so much frozen immortality. So forgetting fear of making mark that might ruin the sculpture, refine your tools. Chisel away at the blunt block carved by words' first estimates of emotion. Integrate and differentiate in order to move always towards, towards the limit of expression. I know no better way. Because being without efforts at expression is lonely. Writing is an invitation to the party I want to be at. An invitation to play in streams of ideas, swim through thoughts, and change their course with the motion of my strokes. When I consider how my light is spent stroke after stroke, constantly thinking, feeling, thinking by feeling, deep joy comes with the revelation that this river refreshes, that meaning and words will not run out or run out on each other, that I am nowhere, and show nothing, and am endless. I am not spent.

Home, with my thoughts escaping,

home, with my music playing. Just from JFK, skipped straight back to Stiles. Missed Manhattan. Kairams kindly drove through the Queens landscape to the quays of my Haven. Stormy port. Walked into dark room and news of friend's father's death. Not a soft landing on the runaway to summer that spring is at school. Back from time outside of life, crashing into courses, applications and most seriously, a sober, somber mood. Going to sound sleep to seek to hear some solace in its depths.