Dark Within Dark Within Dark

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
Romantic Sheepskin ~♥~ Wallet

"Keep the Faith" might not be an obvious love poem, but I think it's a good one for today, with its theme of darkness and depression to match our collective SADness, winter blues, and sunlight deprivation. And, sweetly, after all the darkness, there's a happy ending that revolves around the image of a folded heart -- a Valentine!

I've had a fading, mimeographed copy of this poem by Jack Butler in one of my old notebooks since college days, though in all honesty I cannot recall how or where I first came across it, back in 1983 or so. Was it a class assignment? Did Butler visit campus and give a reading that I attended? Despite my hazy memory of how the poem made its way into my collection of favorites, I could never forget the narrator's despairing descent into that "darkness somewhere in which you do not love me":

Keep the Faith
I think perhaps there is some darkness somewhere
in which you do not love me. Falling to sleep,
I cross that simple zone in which I keep
my solitary vigil. I am there.
And the blue truth of my being is also there,
that I am worth nothing, a heatless flame.

I am that territory and its name.
It is no place for strangers: Beware, Beware
floats over its dark coast in letters of blue fire
that are not reflected in the dark water lapping rock.

Falling to sleep, I think there is some darkness somewhere
In which you do not love me, dark within dark within dark.
I think, Maybe my wallet, folded like a heart
in the dark of my locked briefcase, in the dark of our bedroom.

And then tomorrow, standing in the stink and fume
at the daylit gas-pump, all of us hurrying to work,
my blunt fingers will be astounded to discover
only green bills, that I love and have a lover.

by Jack Butler
American poet (b 1944)

Two more descriptions
of the interior of depression, the "solitary vigil":
1. from Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper
by Harriet Chessman, American novelist (b 1951)

This is a work of historically accurate fiction narrated from the point of view of the artist Mary Cassatt's sister, Lydia. Chessman's lengthy description of the taunting message of self-doubt that plays over and over in Lydia's head reminded me of Butler's poem. Lydia's specific doubts are about being a suitable artist's model for her sister; but more generally, for Lydia and for everyone, the doubts are always about being lovable, worthy of love. In a vivid and painful image, Lydia refers to the emotional noise as a "thousand bees," buzzing all around and stinging her. She berates herself mentally, but her anguish feels nearly physical, akin to the tortured practice of girls cutting themselves. In a similar manner, she goes on to explain that she is both the queen bee and the "object of their attacks," which I now realize is the same thing Butler means when he says that "I am that territory and its name." The problem is circular, not linear:

". . . I think to myself, with hesitant pride, yes, I am, I am quite a good model, and as soon as I think this, I chasten and mock myself, sending my thousand little bees to sting me, and sing their disdain: How could you think, the song always begins, and the thousand bees hum and mumble and murmur into my ear, adding new verses as they find new places to thrust their stingers in. All you've done is sit here, they hum, and you're not even pretty, you're pale as a ghost and a bag of bones too, and then the fiercer ones sing, She's changed you into a figure of beauty, through oil and canvas, but how can you think she's pictured you as you really are? I'm used to these insects. I seem to own them, after all. They occupy a special place on my acre, complete with bee - boxes I myself seem to tend, in my veils and gloves. I'm their queen, as much as I'm the sorry object of their attacks. They fatten on my clover and apple - blossoms and honeysuckle, and they practice their songs in the warm sun on my meadow. So I can't blame anyone but myself when they come to sting" (31 - 32).

Five O'Clock Tea, 1880


2. from The Dogs of Babel
by Carolyn Parkhurst, American novelist (b 1971)
(see Highlights from 2006 & 2007 on my Book List)

Parkhurst's character Lexy Ransome would understand the buzzing, stinging bees of Lydia's self - doubt. Lexy too is trapped in a relentless cycle of replaying the negative interior tapes, hearing the harsh criticism, trying to tune it out, recognizing that she herself is the source of the noise, imploring her smart voice to repeat all the wise mantras that she knows to be true, anything to shout down those bees. Again, I was reminded of Butler's poem: "the blue truth of my being is also there, / that I am worth nothing, a heatless flame." The voice of worthlessness, doubt, and insecurity keeps buzzing: you're so stupid, you're so stupid . . . you shouldn't be here, you shouldn't be here . . . sorry sorry sorry. Things like that. Lexy wonders how alien such internal conflict must seem to the self - confident:

"You wake up and you feel -- what? Heaviness, an ache inside, a weight, yes. A soft crumpling of flesh. A feeling like all the surfaces have been rubbed raw. A voice in your head -- no, not voices, not like hearing voices, nothing that crazy, just your own inner voice, the one that says 'Turn left at the corner' or 'Don't forget to stop at the post office,' only now it's saying 'I hate myself' . . . you try to find pleasure in little things . . . but you can tell you're trying too hard. You have breakfast with your husband, your sweet unknowing husband, who can't see anything but the promise of a bright new day. And you say your apologies -- you're sorry, you're always sorry, it's a feeling as familiar as the taste of water on your tongue" (252 - 253).

What would it take for Lydia and Lexy to feel "the promise of a bright new day," to "Keep the Faith," to believe that they are worthwhile as they are? What magical formula, prescription, philosophical stance or inner resources could redirect the bees and quiet the voice of judgment? How did the bees get in there in the first place? Who installed the tapes?

How profound, how accurate is Butler's description of the hurtful, doubtful landscape of isolation inside one's head: "no place for strangers . . . dark within dark within dark." The only way to feel loved once again is to extricate yourself from that "dark coast . . . the dark water lapping rock" -- not always easy. No one can come in and get you; you have to save your own life -- by believing that you are likeable and lovable. I've never really come up with a totally satisfactory interpretation of Butler's closing wallet image, except perhaps to assume that in broad daylight the narrator gains the perspective and security to see that his night fears are unfounded. To see, in the restorative light of day, "that I love and have a lover."

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, February 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Lydia Cassatt Working at the Tapestry Loom, 1881

"Love You Can't Imagine"

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUSSurreal Valentine by William Rowe

“To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."
~ Emily Dickinson ~

*******************
The following long beautiful passage has already appeared on both my book blog and my daily blog, yet it's only right that I include it again, here and now ~ on Valentine's Day! ~ since the title of this post is borrowed from Henley's short story: "Love You Can't Imagine." Even if you have read it before, it is well worth reading one more time:

"Sandra's love for Kelly is not the sort you hear about in songs on the jukebox. It's not desperate or crazy. They met three years ago and it was one year before they made love. Kelly said he wanted to get to know her first and Sandra thought that was a novel idea. When she remembers that year going by, she imagines ranging in the high country on a long hike, when it's tough-going at first and you don't know what to expect. Maybe you slip and fall when the trail crosses a creek bed, maybe the first lake is small, disappointing, but you push yourself, you glory in the little things along the way, the shooting stars and glacier lilies, the marmot whistling, and before long, just as you are simply traveling, putting one boot in front of the other, for the bliss of it, you come upon grand peaks and a string of alpine lakes so rare and peaceful that you imagine no one else has ever been there before you. It's where you belong. That's what being with Kelly is like. Easy, once you reach cruising altitude. Paradise, kind of. And ordinary. Common pleasures renew them. Razzing one another; watching a video in their bathrobes; dividing a foxglove in the fall; lying awake in one another's arms at midnight, waiting for Desiree [Sandra's teenage daughter] to come in from some breakneck double date. Love you can't imagine when you're young, when you think that love is you winning him over, a treadmill of pursuit and chicanery."

from the story "Love You Can't Imagine"
in Worship of the Common Heart: New and Selected Stories
by Patricia Henley
Twenty years have passed since my first reading of "Love You Can't Imagine," and in that time I have collected a number of poems and passages that capture for me the concept of a "love you can't imagine."

First of all, these quaint lines from Doctor Zhivago describe a simple quest for companionship and sustenance, no frills, no chicanery:

Now my ideal is the housewife
My greatest wish, a quiet life
And a big bowl of cabbage soup

by Boris Pasternak
Incredibly straightforward, yet undeniably romantic, that "big bowl of cabbage soup," no matter how homely, is the perfect metaphor for "love you can't imagine." The same metaphor appears in this next tenderly crafted poem about making soup as an act of love. Like Sandra and Kelly, this couple is renewed by the ordinary, common pleasures -- "day after day." Their love is deep, soft, and wise, despite the somewhat incongruous reference to "decay." Like William Blake's contraries of Innocence and Experience or Heaven and Hell, Baker gives us decay and wisdom; weeping and song:

The Couple
Day after day their deep love softly decays.
This makes them wise. It makes them want to sing.
Sometimes, over cups in the kitchen or stirring
a warm soup in the dark, they feel such tenderness
as to turn quietly weeping for each other's arms.
Weeping. Song. They are so much alike after all.

in After the Reunion: Poems
by David Baker
Reading Couple by Renoir
Novelist Kathryn Harrison explores in more detail the sacred connection between decay and a love that is strong enough to "contemplate death":

" . . . the point Shakespeare makes in one after another love sonnet is that a rose can only smell so achingly sweet to those who know that someday they will die to that smell, to it and to every other joy and sorrow. . . . Marriage is made, from the start, between two people who are willing to contemplate death together--to have and to hold, until death do them part. Such contemplation is possible only for those who understand and embrace the boundaries of a life, both temporal and existential."
from the article "Connubial Abyss"
by Kathryn Harrrison
Andre Dubus explores the idea of this connection even further in this long and sadly tender passage about sacraments and sustenance:

" . . . one of my favorite scenes in the movie [Bergman's The Seventh Seal] is the knight sitting on the earth with the young couple and their child, and the woman offers him a bowl of berries; he reaches out with both hands and receives the bowl from her, and eats; and the scene is invested with his awareness that his time is confused and lonely and fearful and short, but for these moments, with these people, with this gift of food, he has been given an eternal touch: eternal because, although death will destroy him, it cannot obliterate the act between him and the woman. She has given him the food. He has taken it. In the face of time, the act is completed. Death cannot touch it now, can only finally stop the hearts that were united in it.

Apple Blossoms by John Everett Millais
"Yet still I believe in love's possibility, in its presence on the earth; as I believe I can approach the altar on any morning of any day which may be the last and receive the touch that does not, for me, say: There is no death; but does say: In this instant I recognize, with you, that you must die. And I believe I can do this in an ordinary kitchen with an ordinary woman and five eggs. The woman sets the table. She watches me beat the eggs. . . . I take our plates; spoon eggs on them, we sit and eat. She and I and the kitchen have become extraordinary: we are not simply eating; we are pausing in the march to perform an act together; we are in love and the meal offered and received is a sacrament which says: I know you will die; I am sharing food with you; it is all I can do, and it is everything.

"As lovers we must have these sacraments, these actions which restore our focus, and therefore ourselves. For our lives are hurried and much too distracted . . . We can bring our human, distracted love into focus with an act that doesn't need words, and act which dramatizes for us what we are together. The act itself can be anything: five beaten and scrambled eggs, two glasses of wine, running beside each other in rhythm with the pace and breath of the beloved. They are all parts of that loveliest of all sacraments between man and woman, that passionate harmony of flesh whose breath and dance and murmur says: we are, we are, we are . . . "

from the essay "On Charon's Wharf," in Broken Vessels
by Andre Dubus
Girl Reading by Picasso
And finally, from Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler, the endearing image of reading in bed. What better way to end the day, after preparing and sharing a big bowl of cabbage soup:

"Tomorrow, Reader and Other Reader, if you are together, if you lie down in the same bed like a settled couple, each will turn on the lamp at the side of the bed and sink into his or her book; two parallel readings will accompany the approach of sleep; first you, then you will turn out the light; returning from separated universes, you will find each other fleetingly in the darkness, where all separations are erased, before divergent dreams draw you again, one to one side, and one to the other. But do not wax ironic on this prospect of conjugal harmony: what happier image of a couple could you set against it?"
[See my book blog for more Calvino]

~ HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! ~
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com