Transformation
Understood
Through the body.
I cannot point to my thought
I can’t gesture at my feelings
I can only show you my head
In a different place on my neck
My neck related to the shoulders
And so on and on.
You will see the change
Or maybe you feel it.
Horatio
Armed, my lord.
To have arms –
Well, that’s lucky
Arms and shoulders and wrists
And hands
All the territory of arm.
I’m grateful to be armed
Even when my recalcitrant wrists won’t bend
In quite the way I’d like
Even when my shoulder clicks when I turn it forward
Even when the flesh on the top of it
Flops just a little bit and makes me self-conscious
Even so –
I am armed to hold people that I love
Armed to comfort
Armed to gather things and carry them
Armed to carry
Armed to lift
Armed to open doors and windows
Armed to dance.
That’s well armed.
We do, my lord.
We are human doings, really.
The spiritual teachers will remind us that we are
Human BEings. They suggest we give up our human doing-ness
To simply be human beings.
Being is good
Certainly.
But we’re born doing
We’re born moving.
I learned today that babies never stop moving
They are constantly in motion
Constantly discovering
Constantly making connections
Between one thing and another
Between a hand and a mouth
Between a foot and the floor
Reaching for a bright object
Learning to crawl in pursuit of a toy
Learning to stand in order to reach up
Even in the womb, we’re told.
They are directing their own direction
They move in response to the world around them
To light, to sound, muffled by the protection of the mother
But they’re
Pursuing something too
Something ineffable
Something only they know.
And we did think it writ down in our duty To let you know of it.
The book, thick, bound twice over, just to be safe.
The leather is soft, though, after years of handling and
Printed in a bold strong font.
The pages have yellowed on the edge
But open the book and they’re white again.
There are chapters and sub chapters
Indexes and tables of contents
With many jottings in the margins
In handwritings that vary according to the year
To the ink
To the writer
Each bit of instruction modified for the owner of the book
It may be a living document
But it is treasured
Held close
Not to be trifled with.
As I do live, my honored lord, tis true.
Swearing by God
By my honor
By my virtue
By my art
By my love
I swear by my life
As I do live
Swearing upon one’s very breath
We give the oaths
Such weighty companions
Hoping to lend them credence
But we don’t have a word
For “forsworn” anymore.
If you swore, on your life,
And then broke your oath,
You might be applauded for doing so
You might be chastised
But it is only for the Gods
To tie your promise together
With your breath
As you suggested.
Tis very strange.
A lifetime’s unlearnings
The surprise of an expectation revealed
By its denial
The march of time
The shifting of belief
The rise and fall of hope
An absolute turn around in outlook
One organ exchanged for a machine
Eyes from one head to another
Food grown in a test tube
Pictures flickering across a screen
Talking with a friend across an ocean
The depths of feeling
The creatures in the depths of the ocean
The creatures in our bowels
The creatures who turn our bowels inside out
Fear delight
Desire pain
Despair euphoria
But even then the morning cock crew loud, and at the sound it shrunk in haste away and vanished from our sight.
My mind must be in the gutter today
Because all I can think about
Is a morning cock crew.
I picture a team of uniformed fellows
Sent in, running, first thing in the morning
To address the needs of the cock.
Perhaps they erect it
Get it up on blocks to look under the chassis
Take it for a spin
Bring it in to the garage
To fine tune it.
The morning cock crew
Bustle about
Making light work for the crew
That comes in the evening.
Yet once methought It lifted up its head and did address Itself to motion like as it would speak.
The dance of almost speech,
The body arranging itself for words
Will be visible from a great distance
No matter how subtle.
One could not say what we see shift –
But our eyes are primed to notice the preparation for a pronouncement.
I think it is the breath, perhaps,
Swelling out the chest.
Or a kind of forward momentum
Or maybe just a slight tilt of the chin upward
A subtle cue
To muscle one’s way into silence
Or among a tumult of voices.
Those who wait their turn to speak
Will watch for this flag and wait.
Those whose pleasure it is to claim space
In conversation
Will watch it like a car on the entrance ramp of the highway
So they can speed forward before the car on the lane arrives.
The about to speak-ness broadcasts itself and is received
According to the system that reads it.
My lord, I did, But answer made it none.
Not answering is always an answer.
It’s an answer full of nothing and everything.
It’s the fullest of potential and most void of certainty.
An unanswered answer answers with silence.
These hands are not more like.
Not like water falling over stones
Or hard shelled little creatures on their backs, kicking to the sky
These hands are not more like
A sea urchin, grasping for food
Or a heart beating
Especially not when closed into a fist
Not like a jellyfish, no.
Not like a star, drawn by a child
Not like an alligator with two sets of jaws
Or a sculpture in the sound
Not like my mother’s hand
Not like my grandmother’s
No not yet
Though soon
Soon
The Hamlet Project 