“Solstice, Chen Chen

I like the yellow here, lol, and this general form of weaving in words and their meanings and sounds and all. Sort of how I consider in “Definition Study”.

I don’t have anymore poems today, but some other things. A few Bon Iver tracks I’ve been getting really into over the past few days or so: “Wisconsin”, from whence the love is love’s reprieve and love is love’s critique come from; “Michicant”, which is just nice in tone and muted vocals but also gave the line, love can hardly leave the room / with your heart; “Towers”, which is a song where when you start to hear the opening you know it’ll be lovely, and the turn (or bridge?) is beautiful too, Well, you’re standing on my sternum / don’t you climb down, darling, one of my favorite lines, and so on. Really very good.

I was rereading “Cherry communion” and thinking about how technically good it accidentally ended up being, all the alliteration and the wording and structure and really all of it unintentional, just me letting self flow. Like, how was that the first poem I dropped on the class last spring? Wild. I especially love the final stanza, the chunking and the gentleness. How good.

I went to a “summer evening stroll” at the Huntington and did a pretty good job of letting myself enter the moment. What do I mean by this? I want to let more of the world in. It’s very easy to live in one’s own head and body, and as I was walking through the Huntington alone, I realized that I don’t even know how to interact with plants and things anymore. Only people. Only people, it seems, are complex, real enough, able to be connected with. Which, I mean, this is really the Inception disease in some form. I broke into this in part by lying on a bench under a weepy-looking tree, letting myself drift off and doze, coming back, thoughts removed and that sleepy gentleness spread across my eyes and face. As I proceeded to walk around then, to feel my feet slide over the rocky patterns in the concrete, to feel my breathing through and through, sort of flowing through the world without too much thought. And it’s not an absence of thought, but a certain type of fullness such that the usual thoughts aren’t there, and the ones present are more gentle and poetic. I want to be more conscious of myself, of where I stand and how I come down on the world, without being self-conscious. Does that make sense? I want to do more kindnesses unto the world, touch it as softly as I can manage. When you look straight down on a bike, the ground just passes under you. Unfocused. Blurs of gray and darker gray. A few meters ahead, it’s slow as ever.

I stand next to the waterfall at the Huntington. I think about how maybe, maybe it could drown out my thoughts with its loud lull. I remember your voice, how nothing else seemed real, even existed at all to begin with, when it permeated the air surrounding me. This is the real danger of people. That they can make me feel this way, and what that means for everyone and everything else. And now that I’ve had that thought, I’m hearing you, your loveliness, in every waterfall.

A group of fish, one wanders off. Should he come back, I doubt the others would push him away. The question is only, how does he come back?

This all reminds me of a line from Catherine Pierce’s “Planet”, I’m trying to come down soft today. / I’m trying to see this place even as I’m walking through it. The title, from this and from “Fake mint, or I love you”, a sort-of-poem I wrote a while back.