June Journal
From Issue 0: Commitment
June 16, 2020
Today I begin in earnest. What does it matter that my thoughts are clouded? A light will shine through in the end. I wish to compose on the page as I do in my head, but the page asks more of me. The time I take as I gaze into space, the oblivion to which I abandon the world, are not enough for what I need. To dissolve the world takes a certain mind and to reconstruct it takes another. And then the slightest gesture is often enough to set in motion — how elegant as it turns to each moment, each life of the earth set ablaze. And how loud and brash, manic and forceful, is the music that inspires this dance: bells and drums ringing and pounding, rancorous howls and a confusion of voices, clarion calls, onward marches, a volley of strings like screeching rockets, horns that announce the inevitable end. Truly it seems that all of existence conspires with the forces of fate — that every material fact is a splinter of divine revelation and that nevertheless we must suffer the passing of time. Everything is charmed or charming or seems so — what is a writer to do? How does he choose a subject or even the words to address it? I can rely on what I think I know but to go further means to risk it. To venture out means poor and naked, wandering without a home. To hope that the effort has purpose and to count alone on the strength of this hope. The naive dreams of childhood will render their service to us; to realize the dreams of reality will still be left to the course of our lives.
Rembrandt, Student at a Table by Candlelight, 1642. The Met
June 17, 2020
I know that I write coarsely: that my thoughts are iridescent; that the things I wish to say, I say crudely or not at all; that the words I deploy jangle barbarically, descend from my mouth in a tarnished bronze, shedding the scales of my ornament, the glittering shards, the mangled scraps of twisted metal etched with broken signs, fragments of forgotten patterns, the first words of something unfinished, passing from my lips with a shudder. I give in to the indulgence. I seek it out. I circle the drain that I find in myself, around and around and around. Often a phrase will be asserted and no matter the effort I make, I am helpless to resist its suggestions. Why is it that a word must be said? And that the word must appear in its place and never in that of another? It is certain of itself and I follow: the keys as I type, leap from one to the next, sounding a rhythm I know; something crawls from my mind and demands I express it; my fingers curl at the behest of another. These thoughts are my own, and I am their channel.
June 18, 2020
I wonder whether writing can serve to resurrect an idea. Whether it can burrow down into memory and recover those revelations that only flash for an instant before being wiped from the earth. What mystery governs these events? When one moment the riddle seems solved while the very next the answer is lost, already forgotten, neglected and abandoned to your simple absent-mindedness. Criminal guilt leads to a frantic search but nothing is ever found in the end, only derangement and paranoia result from the misfortune. I imagine that this was the impetus for Poe to invent the detective with his “Man of the Crowd.” Was it really that a face had caught his eye or could we rather not speculate that in the moment when the man entered his vision, something cherished was irretrievably lost — happiness flitted away and replaced with a haunting impression? Baudelaire later returned to make an accussal:
O you I might have loved, as well you know!
Thus we regard our failures, in life or in art. Often we scorn them before they have even had time to unfold, perhaps the shock of forgetting obscures the fear of discovery. As I write I would like to turn back and record the impressions I’ve received so that the thought that they contain can carry forth in my work, but even these are not so readily available. They slip away; are inconsistent; do not mean a thing. There is a painting by Manet I often think of: it shows a boy with a jug held high in his outstretched arms pouring a perfect stream of perfect water into his perfect open mouth. The painting is small and tightly cropped; it is titled simply La Régalade — to drink from the bottle without placing your lips. Even though the background is dark and muddy, everything breathes of the summer — the simple pleasure you take in a cool liquid on a hot day, eyes gently closed, and the water overflowing, running down the front of your shirt. Tell me, do you not also think about such things? Moments that are suspended in time? When the sun suffuses the bathroom, I feel that I am the boy with the pitcher and that my thirst is the one being quenched. Degas and Bonnard had a similar thought in their paintings where the subject turns away from your view, where, in fact, your presence counts for little to them. “There it is,” they say, “the world as it is without you.”
Édouard Manet, La Régalade, 1862/72. The Art Institute of Chicago
June 22, 2020
It passes into darkness… Patience is a difficult virtue; I often sit and rack my brains to no avail, treat myself harshly and accomplish little, attempt to wring from my mind the perfect phrase while on the page it shows its inadequacy, its mangled shape, awkward rhythm, gratuitous indulgence. In my head bells are ringing, struck one after another, a cascade that floods my vision, a series of consequences of which I am one.
June 23, 2020
I think of you, reader, as someone like me “ — Hypocrite reader, — fellowman, — my twin!” as Baudelaire says. Who am I? I wish I knew this myself, as I’m sure you do too. What I can say is what I feel, which is how I grope through the world. Fear and desire, love and hate, attraction and repulsion — what else is there? A kind of ecstasy, a simple nihilism, growing dullness, anesthesia. Boredom Baudelaire says, “Ennui!” You know him too. I have ambition, yes, but perhaps it will only crash on the rocks. To dilettantes have been left the pain and the pleasure of watching the world go endlessly by — or so it seems from the ways I inhibit myself. To think is to learn how wonderful it would be to not need to, but also to know that not needing, one would never know what one has. One must either ascend or descend or otherwise founder on the point of decision. I will drag myself upwards although the path is not certain and the peak may prove a mirage. The pressure I feel is that of being caught in a moment that may yet unfold but has not — purgatory, neither heaven nor hell.
June 25, 2020
Perhaps I could tell you what I see out my window. It is almost evening; the sun is still high and shines brilliantly through a great golden veil. It catches the parapets of the roof of the building that sits across from me, filling the expanse between here and there, a canopy of trees overhangs the street that I live on. From my window I can look out at a sea of intertwining branches just below a glorious crown of verdant leaves that filter light from the sun, casting shadows that move on the floors and walls of my room. When the light shines brightly, I can see the fine, invisible threads that are strung through each branch, connecting the trees with the lines of undiscovered constellations: a network of spiderwebs filling the air. And soon I see the bugs, not always the spiders themselves but small flying things that conveniently know when the getting is good. And the birds come also to get their fill: what a wonderful sight just moments before being devoured. A whole saga plays out before me, with battles and warriors, raids and misfortune. The sun shines on them as it does on us — and I can sit in my room and consider this; I think that I might also shine a light on some portion of existence. Tell me, do I? //
Gisèle Celan-Lestrange, Proximité, 1954. Jewish Currents