27 II 2003 - 12:44 - verba44

It's been an interesting month for the Alchera project, with the sorts of crises that one never quite knows how to respond to. I've been reading some of the other people's writing for quite a while now (after all, I joined up during the second project option, and this is the fourteenth), and so yes, to some extent I know them. But then I have no idea if my poor words will ever be enough of comfort, and I wonder if it can really be true that (as one of my friends says) the comfort is really in having cared enough to try. That's an interesting question in itself -- if you don't talk to me in real life, do you really know me from my writings -- and even if you do, can you ever really know me?

Also, there are other developments afoot -- for instance, Alchera may soon be moving for the third time; I'll let you know as I find out more, which will happen when L. finds out more. But enough of that -- let's go on to talking about the writing of the project.

Without question, these lines have had the longest journey from beginning to tentative end. When I looked at the option, I knew it was for me (although I didn't think I could write it in the blank verse of Paradise Lost -- after asking L. if Eliot's style was fine, and you'll notice I didn't manage that, either, and after reading a couple of the other submissions -- as of now there are only two, one much more formal than mine, the other a little less, so I think falling somewhere in between should be quite acceptable). Some of these lines I found and reworked from scraps of paper that from context and handwriting appear to be two years old -- yes, I cannibalize a lot, although I'll be the first to admit that the great part of what I write, even now, is fit only for the trash can -- and certainly I don't think I've ever used anything older than that for an Alchera project. But there is this as well: although I have submitted projects quite close to deadline before (I think I sent a couple out just before midnight on the last day possible, and because of the magic of time zones, that means I was slightly past deadline, ack!), they were always ones that I didn't start until the last few days before that magic date. And while it's true that the bulk of the work on this (work? what work? they're not good enough yet to admit doing real work) did come over the past two days, with the motivation being the impending deadline, I had entire stanzas on the third day of the project's appearance.

Which delay just goes to show that sometimes events can sort of overtake one. Yes, I meant to work on it for ages, and maybe I even meant to get to another option one of these days (wasn't there one time when I did all of them? That was, of course, in the days before genre-specific assignments, when we had two months to complete everything). But then there were papers to write, and Rostropovich came to the city and I had to go to his concerts, and the American Symphony Orchestra League (ASOL -- fitting, huh?) had its conducting workshop here and we were the training orchestra, and there's another weekend gone, and on top of that all, this last break sent me into a huge funk that I have just barely managed to repress now that school's started again.

So I'm not entirely sure what I'm saying here -- I might be saying that it's a shame such lines took so long to write, I might be saying that I'm a slacker, or maybe I'm saying that it's a miracle they're here at all, considering. With that in mind, here's the option, and here they are.

For a title? I toy with six statements -- I'm all for truth in advertising -- until I come up with something better.

what consumes you, little one?

the works of school; a flood
of integrals, waves, curves rises
and swamps the gentler touch
of histories and fictions, if i but let it.

what else do you, little one?

on the long afternoons,
something of uncertain
provenance stirs in the blood,
testing moist wings,
probing those starts
(the seeds of new lines)
that do not yield to description.
in desperation, sometimes,
the work is restoration --
finding in ancient choriambs
or the ordered tracks of notes
the words i thought i had dreamt, once,
to touch the essence of all holy things.

the weekends no time for myself --
join i with others of similar spirit,
producing sweet concords and fiery passions
whether the labor is of the cutting-board
or of the violoncello.

what rest holds you, little one?

one granted by nightfall,
and the stillness of passages darkness brings.
sunk into bed, limbs find their rest,
dream up cities, hexameters, joys.

what am i, then, some years from now?
perhaps at peace with self at last
or struggling still with deeper doubt?
great things i seek, their number three --

the work to index others' words
(sometimes, to lead from foreign tongues
those monuments more true than bronze)
in book-halls, in a seaside town.

perhaps the moist air of the town
grows strong those half-forgotten seeds
of lines not written for light fame
but rather beauty, captive, live.

among the people of a life
some friends appear, new mixed with old,
and all in love with knowledges --
not least of them, a hard-sought man,

a mind kindred of intellect
who suffers me to set in text
his long-familiar curve,
that well-beloved chest.

we two would share that wanderlust
that fights, well-matched, a love of hearth;
would find a grace with gentle age,
will dance the dance of pairs in joy --

will travel yet, and yet return,
not powerful to fight our drives:
   ever-seeking, ever-treading
   different nostoi, our returns.