She asks how will you end it, with death? There are small deaths every second,
microseconds. The plant placed in the trash. “Dead” is a word that sounds like its
concept, the consonance. From the outside, you couldn’t really imagine the cocoon
but once on the trail you develop a fervor. If they want to call them majestic you
agree, their brown trunks arising in the sky, a holiness you hadn’t believed. Birds
lacing the leaves, almost lyrical. The sweet density mixes with your oxygen instantly.
To recall redwoods in his room would be a misstep. Would be, this is what he had,
what he is missing. There is enough separation on the screen to know this isn’t “us,”
our lives, our suspense, our joyful laughter. Even the book provides a careful barrier
though there is room for thoughts. What is deeper than we walked? What lives?
What would be the danger? Our bodies physically unable to perform the depth the
walking required.









Goethe said, “A man’s manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.” His were refined, a learned trait from experience and study. He would not be gruff, not publicly so. His stature brought him a firm handshake. Serious topics warranted, otherwise an upbeat rhythm. And yet his own portrait beyond the surface, not looking at the viewer, but into the abstract distance. His glasses framing an intense stare. A portrait of thinking and removal from what?









Or the still life another portrait. The way one imbues objects is always revealing.
Like which object did he choose. In this case a burnished armchair, a table with an
opened book, a pitcher, and a vase of flowers. But it’s wrong. The sunset is splashed
as paint on the walls and the bushes through the window are a green blaze afire.
The warmth aches with something else. Or is it just a serene picture. Your own
projection, assuming intellect equates to depth. Needing a figure to be the one who
carries, who sets the precursor for others, who emulates what it is to progress beyond
your origins. His father shined his shoes with meticulous attention. To split a fresh
avocado and get at the flesh, to admire the poppy, the cholla, the blue-eyed grass,
the milkweed, marrow, mountain violet and sage. Where you can go to a winery.
Pull up a lounge chair with a small picnic basket. The picturesque rewarding.
This is what he’d call a day, a good day.









When you say “mind,” you mean as part of the body. Yet you are not the judge of authenticity, are you? Are you? His story a Greek myth. A hero’s making but with utter quietness. So where is your “heavy heart”? Physically, where do you feel it? When you say “heart” do you mean anatomically or metaphorically? What do people mean? It’s not to lambast those who tried the form, who calculated.









Where is the room of grief? Does it contain enough space, or is it necessary to float in torn pieces through the everyday? Inside your glass of water, and, steps into the yard. Is it “grief” or is that a genre? She said, I think I get it, your book. You did it all along this writing, within the family’s daily movement. When you say “grief,” it becomes attached to a pool of images and then words, and yet you don’t think you want to be alone. At least not now.









Derrida writes, "An act of naming should quite rightly enable me to call any-thing a
self-portrait, not only any drawing, 'portrait' or not, but everything that happens to
me, that I can affect, or that affects me." You can call this a “hole” and put two eyes
on it, assign it a face or a room you can temporarily move into. His face placid, as
if you opened a book and saw text strewn. His holes manifesting through impatience,
a faraway look. In his room, the hole is the center. Staring at it incessantly, a
flashlight circling the wall.










His father took the tablecloth, which was set with plates and food, and yanked it
off, so all the objects sailed. His father worked at his brother’s pharmacy. His mother
not able to hold a job though she tried. He sending her checks and she getting on a
bus to go shopping. The brightness of her you remember, harshness that made for
good sarcasm, the swat of a hand and biting words. That fire-bright mind beneath
limited circumstances. Going to the gift shop of the nursing home to look at earrings.
A tuna melt at the home’s café. Put it on my card. The man, her friend, playing piano
in the background. He never wanted this. A community of elderly. Don’t give me
those sandwiches, that small room.










Going back, back, waves pull, chaos bursting. You were young and he was a stranger,
the man. The one who had the job, the one she said was studying anthropology,
the study of man. His faded wallet held a few bills folded and coins in a bowl on
his dresser. Things obscuring what he was after. And what was that? Placing his
mind into a mode of operation? Restlessness a mode that is familiar.










When everything formulates as judgment. This is learned. Shame is learned.
Authenticity is learned. And yet with all the garbage isn’t there a core? A light that
maybe isn’t flickering but moderate, warm.










Biography constantly changing. Like watching the fish swim. The confession only
brings silver prongs to it. You stopped selecting frames once realizing your screen
frames it all. Every trip, every video clip. At the time it was potent, signaling character.
Now it flies from you, as a movie you might have seen though the images only
register at the tip. Let a desert be expanse if that’s what it is. Let it radiate, not
reflect. The way artists chase desert suns.