well

I'm rereading Bluebeard as a sort of half-cocked tribute to Kurt Vonnegut. I don't guess it'll do much good for him, but I saw the book on the shelf and thought I may as well start reading it. Actually, I looked for it.

For the couple months after my grandmother died I used to sit down and think really hard about maps, to see if I could make myself cry. Even now when something reminds me of her, the part of my brain that's just behind my forehead tenses up like it's about to think about maps.

The thing that strikes me about Bluebeard this time is the narrative voice.The book is written as the memoir of Rabo Karabekian, who describes growing up, serving in the army, his marriages, and his relationships with the Abstract Expressionists, revealing his current life in 1987 as he writes. That's a terrible description of the book on any level beyond its basic structure, but at this hour, I don't want to figure out how to describe Vonnegut's style or pacing.

Whenever I read one of Vonnegut's books, I wonder to myself about his writing: the flatness in his voice makes the more structured moments stand out in a little too high relief for me. At other times, he'll just draw me in, and so I end up vacilitating between being total immersed and withdrawing to resent his lack of writerly-ness.

This time, though, when I withdraw, my forehead tenses. I remember that a dead person wrote this book, and I feel very strongly the aliveness of the narrator's voice. I'm not sure I can explain the feeling, but it's almost the opposite of what's supposed to happen. Poets often boast that their verse will make them last forever, but my believing in Rabo Karebekian reminds me Vonnegut is dead. I just stopped writing to finish reading the book. Not to spoil too much, in the last chapter he switches from the narrative past tense into a present tense active voice. Like all happy stories, it opens up into a continual present that feels eternal.

But I just looked again at the title page. The subtitle is, "The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988)". And so it goes.

If I only

I feel a little like I've delegated responsibility for my life. I've put career decisions on auto-pilot, handed off housing decisions to a friend, left my life decisions in the hands of another friend or two.

I've started walking slower, a little behind whomever I'm with, so as to let them choose the direction. Strange as it sounds, I'm a little quieter, and staying out of conversations, some.

That last bit's not entirely true. I still find myself fighting for attention, but I guess I'm just no longer as bothered when I don't get it.

I mean, basically I'm drifting. I suspect that's why I'm writing again, a little. That microscopic rage for order lets me bob aimlessly on a larger scale.

The image I keep getting is that I'm looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope, so everything looks tiny and far away, while waves dash my boat this way and that.


Here's a Sir Thomas Wyatt poem. It's not one of my favorite-favorites, but I like the pun in the third line: "mine enemy, alas/ That is my lord..." sounds exactly like "mine enemy, a lass/ That is my lord." I think the sexual imagery continues, through the poem, but I'm sure of the "alas." Writing on this one in Molly Murray's class ages ago made me feel a little ingenious, which is one of the feelings I like so much about writing.

My galley charged with forgetfulness
Thorough sharp seas in winter nights doth pass
'Tween rock and rock; and eke mine enemy, alas
That is my lord, steereth with cruelness;
And every oar a thought in readiness
As though that death were light in such a case.
An endless wind doth tear the sail apace
Of forced sighs and trusty fearfulness.
A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain
Hath done the wearied cords great hindrance,
Wreathed with error and eke with ignorance.
The stars be hid that led me to this pain
Drowned is reason that should me comfort
And I remain despairing of the port.