Can You Point to Anything That is Not a Gift?
Dear Friends,
This week I’m experimenting with some audio for this post. I live on a noisy street so this is a bit rough in parts, but let’s try it and see. I love to read aloud, so here I am, reading to you.
— Sal
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Poison — which is how the German language sees the gift. But can you point to anything that is not a gift? This begets that. A spring rain is drizzling down and the street trees are beginning to bloom. It’s not too late to look at them. Each day we receive our assignments from what surrounds us. Walking on this side of the street, or crossing over. It’s just the ongoingness of life. Last night I heard a young woman offering very long and intricate sentences, their clauses held out to the audience like pastries. The country she was speaking of is famous for pastries, but I believe this young woman refrained from eating them. Her main pleasures, it seemed to me, were the pleasures of language. Later, at the party, I embarked on a series of social mistakes, and even today I am sipping tea with some chagrin. I forgot who I was in the story.
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There is a silence inside me, dark and velvety. So many people are speaking to each other, and even as we speak, so to speak, I am speaking to you. Language drifts down from the clouds, pushed on the wind. We catch it on our faces and coats. Overnight, pictures vie with words, images I mean, the imaginary. The curtain between different parts of the mind lowers and raises itself in a rhythmic wave. What does it mean to live in this particular century? In this place? (I imagine you in a leafy place or a desert place, while I am, as usual, in the city). This is not the end of the thought, but the thought has returned to its darkness. Let us all return to our places of nourishment and refuge, even as we prepare.
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Let the dreams come, let them rush into the day, let them fill all the spaces between things without judgment. Everyone is so clever, and trying so hard. “You’re trying too hard,” I tell myself. Unobtrusively, someone inhabits a space: do they belong or do they not belong? I do not always know when to begin, when to end, or even how to look back and see where the beginnings began and the ends ended. It goes on endlessly, as they say. Sometimes an allusion ruins the thing you are making. It’s just like what I thought to myself about trying too hard. I’m that person in the story. Sometimes we fail, and the question is just what failing reveals. Like water drained from a lake or an ocean. As she reminded me, there are times when expressing grief can be illegal. Standing under the sky, pigeons wheeling overhead, something as simple as that. What does the thought “this cannot be happening” mean when we think it? When I think it?
I’d love to hear from you!.
Further adventures can be found in my book, The Uses of Art.
Artist Sal Randolph’s THE USES OF ART is a memoir of transformative encounters with works of art, inviting readers into new methods of looking that are both liberating and emboldening.
Dazzlingly original, ferociously intelligent.
— Michael Cunningham
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— Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara
Thank you for this!! I was drifting down the morning steps wondering why all metaphors seem dead in writing and how then can I talk about the garden? Well, you point gentle ways to do just so. "Each day we receive our assignments from what surrounds us."
I am felled by the beauty of this. I really feel like weeping. Certain of these sentences I'd like to inscribe into my heart. Whatever you did to create this post, I selfishly hope you will do more of it. "Each day we receive our assignments from what surrounds us . . .Later, at the party, I embarked on a series of social mistakes, and even today I am sipping tea with some chagrin. . . .Sometimes we fail, and the question is just what failing reveals . . .What does the thought “this cannot be happening” mean when we think it? When I think it?"