Time Capsule is a weekly series featuring the writing of Robert Gibbons
On Solitude
Sun’s up, but not out yet, presenting a deep atmospheric mortality to the end of the month of June. Not that one wants to run from it, but tempted to turn away, inward. Leave the room with windows. Open the book closed after midnight with only a few pages left, unwilling to finish it. Turn away from Telemann on the classical station as way too linear against these tail-end calendar squares. Rather dark beat & collaboration (with & against each other) Mingus, Roach, & Ellington on Solitude gathered together & alone to suit individual needs on this day attempting to remain anonymous, June 26th, 2012, but the Time left within the Soul won’t let it. Or, after hearing her voice on the phone in the next room, (listening filled with gratitude ahead of Time), simply eavesdrop on the rain sent down as message from deep atmospheric mortality of a day with sun up, but not yet out. Silent patter rolling off rhododendron leaves. Rain heading underground to erase the fears of the dead, & resurrect a stern will to continue on on a day trying its best to disappear. Look at that! It just this instant reentered my realm after writing the previous sentence. May still have the image somewhere upstairs: black & white photo taken by old friend David Russo of the Intihuatana stone at Machu Picchu, where at both equinoxes Sun Stands directly above casting No Shadow. That’s it! Took an entire lifetime today on a remote Tuesday before noon to return to the image of the Intihuatana stone believed to hitch Sun in Place above right now.
Warp & Weft of the Fabric of the World
See, they return is a rhythm none can improve upon, so it rose up from the depths to address the fact that I do, & they do, when there at the Ferry Terminal yesterday morning two men wearing camouflage jackets & pants, no less, one smoking, delayed my walk in their direction. Opened a book from my black canvas bag in the passenger seat of the car, in which George Seferis writes in his journal on October 17th, 1946, (two weeks after I came into this world), of meeting the young painter, Lucian Freud, for the first time on the island of Poros, just after finishing the Iliad. He adds how enthralled he is by Achilles’ speech to Priam, calling it “a vibrating chord” & “a harmonious sound.” = “In Homer everything meshes, the whole world is a woof of ‘umbilical cords’” knowing I’d track down the epic, but not before seeing my world in its rhythms similar to the Aegean, yet so far away: ocean, stones, air redolent with plants & waves, these three-hundred & sixty-five off-shore Calendar Islands. “Rage-” Fagles translates the first word of Homer, making me think of War & America & Achilles, who gets (horizontal weft against longitudinal warp of the world’s fabric) from Priam, (kissing the hand that killed his sons), that he’s done enough vengeful violence to dead Hector in twelve days, including dragging his body three times round the tomb of Patroclus, & can now hand the bones back for burial. Seferis cuts wood after lunch. Empties his head of any poetic mood, relaxed, at the animal level. “Don’t forget,” he writes the next day, “that you must leave & return.”
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