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Stimulus: Photos Submitted by Northography Members |
Northography participants were asked to submit photos for the current stimuli. They are located in a special gallery. Members may select photos and write creative responses to them. The names of the photographers will be withheld until the end of the stimulus period. Please respect ownership rights until permission to use photos elsewhere is secured from the owner.
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The image on the home page is titled |
| Posted on 07/08/2007 |
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| [Respond To This] | [View All Stimuli] |
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ALL RESPONSES |
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to Last Light
Last night Mercy genuflected after the sun slipped and the sky curled
around her a cobalt blue. Three times she thanked
the heavens for the earth and its surroundings
to include the flutter of the loon
across the water in the distance
synchronized with the swaying
of the lowest branch belonging to the barren box elder
just an arm’s reach away
from where she sat harboring this world of black and blue.
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Breaking the Code
Comsetter’s Eternal Nails for avatars
and liars--itatis comparabaminus--
(doesn’t translate well into English),
nobis snob ineffectua
et nostra ‘tomic
(i.e., “and our atomic”)
should be so triste
(Fr. for sad)
if it should fall
just now when I am
almost ready to
take off, Icarus
has nothing
over me,
locus
(or: loco, loca)
heretic that I am,
or he was.
Let us then commence
with the ending,
wishing Los Oslo
(from a distance),
peace.
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(for the photo: Eternal Home)
(Mallory stands, paper under arm. He is waiting for a bus. Mallorie enters and stands next to Mallory. Neither acknowledges. After a few seconds...)
Mallorie: I’ve a secret.
Mallory: I beg your pardon?
Mallorie: I’ve a secret.
(beat)
Mallory: Don’t we all?
Mallorie: Well?
Mallory: Well...what?
Mallorie: What’s yours?
Mallory: If I told you, my dear, it wouldn’t be a secret anymore, now would it?
Mallorie: Oh, pooh.
(Long pause)
Mallorie: Don’t you want to know mine?
Mallory: No.
Mallorie: Not even a scratch?
Mallory: (Checking watch / Looking down the street) I just want to know what’s keeping the bus. Nothing more, nothing less. (beat...beat) Christ...
Mallorie: ...what a day. (Mallory finally “looks” at her) Christ...what a day. That’s what mama and I always say to one another each and every time she comes home from work. (beat...beat) I hope you don’t mind.
Mallory: Mind?
Mallorie: Me finishing your thought like that. Mama used to not finish hers until I started helping her. She’d come in, all hot and bothered from another night at the bakery....her hair white, her hands pancaked, at least another two pounds lighter than when she left. In the door she’d trudge and loud as can be she’d let loose one big and powerful “CHRIST” before opening the fridge and sticking her head in it for about two minutes. About five years ago I started to shout right back at her “WHAT A DAY” before she reached the fridge. (beat...beat: quite proudly) And now she waits for me to finish for her. It’s quite a scene, really.
(Pause)
Mallory: And?
Mallorie: And what?
Mallory: Is that your secret?
Mallorie: Oh...gosh, no. My secret is way neater than that.
Mallory: I’ll bet.
Mallorie: I’ll bet you are just dying to know my secret.
Mallory: Please...save your money.
Mallorie: Oh, I’ve been saving my money for a long, long time. It’s part of the (beat...beat) secret.
Mallory: I’ll tell you what...if I let you tell me your secret, will you leave me alone?
Mallorie: ...oh, once I tell you my secret, I will definitely leave you alone. Yes, yes...that’s a promise.
Mallory: (Looks again down the street) Well, I don’t see my life improving in the next few minutes. All right...go ahead.
(Pause)
Mallory: What’s the matter?
Mallorie: Nothing.
Mallory: After all this build-up? Come on. Tell me.
Mallorie: It’s just....
Mallory: It’s just what?
Mallorie: I know your name.
Mallory: You...know my name?
Mallorie: Yes.
Mallory: And what’s my name?
Mallorie: Mallory.
(Pause)
Mallory: What is this?
Mallorie: What is what?
Mallory: This.
Mallorie: Mallory is your name.
Mallory: Yes. Now what’s going on here?
Mallorie: It’s a fine name. Mallory. A bit odd perhaps, but certainly there’s nothing wrong with it.
Mallory: Okay. And that’s your secret?
Malloire: Oh, no. I haven’t told you my secret yet. Your name is not a secret. If I know your name, it can’t be. I’ll bet lots of people know your name.
Mallory: I think you better tell me what’s going on here.
Mallorie: But that’s my secret. Are you sure you want to know?
Mallory: Christ....
Mallorie: ....what a day.
Mallory: That’s not cute anymore.
Mallorie: What’s to stop? You used to think I was cute.
Mallory: I don’t think...
(Mallory stops and really stares at Mallorie. He looks deeply into her eyes. Mallorie doesn’t back off and gives back his stare)
Mallory: Mallorie? (No answer) You are Mallorie, aren’t you?
Mallorie: You seem surprised.
Mallory: Hell of a secret we have here. (beat...beat) How...how did you find me?
Mallorie: You are not a secret these days, Mallory. Only mine. The internet can find anyone. All you need is a social security number...and a bit of time. I’ve had your number for a quite a while and I’ve certainly had a pile of time on my hands to find you. No...you are not anyone’s secret.
Mallory: But why...today?
Mallorie: Today seemed as good a day as any. I could have picked any number of days.
Mallory: Really?
Mallorie: Oh, yes. I know where you work, where you live, where you’re favorite restaurant is....even what bus you take.
Mallory: I don’t understand.
Mallorie: Nothing to understand really. I’ve got all the secrets and you don’t have any.
Mallory: Mallorie....
Mallorie: I used to think it strange, you know.
Mallory: What?
Mallorie: Mama told me it was because you wanted a boy. But I was a girl. But that didn’t stop you from naming me after you.
Mallory: Mallorie...all this happened over 20 years ago. Why are you here?
Mallorie: And you gave me your name. And then you left.
Mallory: Listen. Can’t we get together later and discuss why....why you’re here. I’ll do my best to explain things. How it was....
Mallorie: It’s unlucky, you know.
Mallory: What is?
Mallorie: Doesn’t matter how you spell it. I looked it up. Mallory or Mallorie. No matter how you spell it, the name means “unlucky”...did you know that?
Mallory: Mallorie...listen to me....
Mallorie: But don’t you want to know the real secret?
Mallory: Yes. Yes, I want to know the real secret. Tell me now so we can stop this madness.
(Mallorie walks quite close. Exaggerates looking around)
Mallorie: I have a gun.
Mallory: (A step back) Mallorie...for God’s sake.
Mallorie: Oh, but that’s not the real secret. (Mallorie’s hand is in her jacket now)
Mallory: It’s not?
Mallorie: No, silly. The real secret I’ve kept for almost twenty years.
Mallory: ...and what’s that?
Mallorie: Someone has to die tonight.
Mallory: Mallorie, please. Stop this right now. Just stop this....
Mallorie: But you don’t understand, Mallory. I’ve thought and thought and thought about this secret for the longest time. I thought about it all the while I searched for you. All the hours I spent searching for you. And then I found you and I thought about it some more. I thought about it all the while I followed you....to work, to home, to work, to home, to your favorite restaurant... I thought about it for the longest time, don’t you see?
Mallory: Mallorie....
Mallorie: Mallory....God, I hate that name. You don’t know how much I hate that name.
Mallory: Don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me. I’m sorry, Mallorie...
Mallorie: Kill you? No, Mallory...you don’t understand. I’m not going to kill you.
Mallory: You’re not?
Mallorie: No. I just need you to watch. A secret this big needs to be shared with someone who won’t suffer. I couldn’t do that to Mama. So I searched for you, Mallory. I mean, you wouldn’t care, now, would you? How could you possibly care? The man who abandoned me so so long ago. It’s per- fect, don’t you see? (Mallorie has pulled a gun from her pocket). Don’t you see, Mallory? (Mallorie places the gun to her temple) This is what a secret should be.
***(Director’s notes: Mallorie’s actions with the gun from this point on are open to interpretation)***
Mallory: You can’t do this right now, Mallorie. Wait...wait. I have a secret too. Fair is fair, you know. You told me yours, and now you have to hear mine.
(Pause)
Mallorie: But I know all your secrets, Mallory.
Mallory: No...no you don’t. You don’t know them all.
Mallorie: Oh, but I do.
Mallory: No...how could you know...it’s a secret I tell you. And you can’t know a secret, now can you?
Mallorie: (Still with gun to temple...wavering) You have a secret?
Mallory: Yes. Yes...I have a secret. And I wish to tell you. Now just lower the gun and I’ll tell you.
(Pause)
Mallorie: Well, all right then. But only for a minute. (Lowers gun)
Mallory: Thank you.
Mallorie: Hurry it up, please.
Mallory: My secret is huge. But you’ve helped me today.
Mallorie: I have? How?
Mallory: How long have you been following me?
Mallorie: Oh, off and on for three weeks now.
Mallory: Then you wouldn’t know.
Mallorie: Know what?
Mallory: That my secret just became a secret about a month ago. I’ve been looking for the right moment to tell someone...and, well, here you are.
Mallorie: You’re lying.
Mallory: No, Mallorie. I’m not lying.
Mallorie: Tell me.
(No response)
Mallorie: Tell me.
Mallory: First, you have to promise not to tell anyone else. That way, it’ll be our secret and no one else’s.
Mallorie: But I’ll be dead. I won’t be able to tell anyone.
Mallory: Of course, of course. How stupid of me.
(beat...beat)
Mallory: I’m....dying.
Mallorie: You’re lying.
Mallory: No...no, I’m telling you the truth. I have pancreatic cancer. Doctors have only given me six months. I was told one month ago. (beat...beat) But that’s not the real secret, Mallorie. Not by a long shot.
Mallorie: It’s not?
Mallory: No. I’ve spent the last three weeks on the internet myself...looking for you, and just last night I received an e-mail informing me of where you and your mother lived.
Mallorie: You’re lying. You’re lying...
Mallory: No. I’m dying.
Mallorie: You’re lying.
Together: No. I’m DYING. You’re LYING.
(Pause. Both breathing heavily)
Mallorie: Where do I live?
Mallory: Buffalo.
Mallorie: WHERE?
Mallory: I told you...Buffalo.
Mallorie: WHERE in Buffalo?
Mallory: It’s in my house.
Mallorie: What’s in your house?
Mallory: Your address.
Mallorie: You’re lying. You’re lying. You’re lying.
Mallory: I need the gun.
(No reaction)
Mallory: That’s my real secret, Mallorie. I need the gun. Now.
Mallorie: Why?
Mallory: Because, I’ve been thinking of suicide for quite a while...thinking of the cancer...and...and you showing up here today has convinced me it’s the proper thing to do. Now give me the gun, Mallorie.
Mallorie: I can’t.
Mallory: Yes, you can. Give me the gun, Mallorie. I need the gun. (beat...beat) NOW!
(Mallorie is an emotional wreck by this point. She heavily drops the gun to her side. Stares at it for a few seconds. Slowly and deliberately she hands the gun to Mallory. Mallory quickly snatches the gun into his hands)
Mallory: Thank you. Now that’s the first sensible thing you’ve done since I’ve met you.
(Mallory “feels” the gun’s weight for a couple of seconds. Points the gun at Malorie and fires. The gun “clicks” an empty chamber)
Mallorie: I have another secret, Mallory. This gun is loaded. (She takes a second gun out of her pocket, trains it on Mallory, and fires. Mallory falls to the ground. Mallorie takes a deep breath and drops the gun to the ground)
Mallorie: I’ve been waiting 20 years to let you in on my little secret...Daddy. Today seemed as good a day as any.
--END-- |
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I would like to write of Barcelona, babies and beer,
of tombstones, of trees, or of the State Fair,
but I don't have time. So. I will write of elegance,
a machine screw as it turns in the rack mount,
blue shielded cable draped in heavy bundles
between machines; blinking, humming, thinking;
of mothers who work overtime for extra pay,
and fathers who think that there's a better way. |
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For the photo, American Dream
The homeless have arrived in the suburbs. Each weekend a man stands at a busy freeway exit near my home with his sign saying, “WILL WORK FOR FOOD.” As I wait at the stoplight, I ponder how liberally he defines “work.”
Then I think how bum-beating is en vogue nowadays with bored teenagers and I feel a sudden urge to protect this man. My lungs fill with strange maternal sympathy and I ache to wrap him in my arms, salve his sorrows with my bleeding heart. And for that moment, I actually believe giving him odd jobs to do might just heal him.
Then I’m reminded of the importance of my personal safety and that Smart case in Utah comes to mind: how wanting to help, the mother gave work to a vagrant man and he, in turn, stole her daughter. Of course, this makes me think of how my ex-husband once picked up a hitchhiker, who not only robbed him blind, but also gave him a good pummeling. My ex had just been paid and had a wad of cash in his wallet to buy me a birthday present. With his fists, the man taught him a lesson in trust, leaving me the lousy present of spending my special day nursing my husband’s wounds.
But I notice this man at the freeway exit isn’t so damaged yet, because there’s a crazy sort of esteem in the way he proudly holds up his sign as if he has something fine to offer anyone who’d overlook his matted hair, scummy teeth and dull, bleary eyes. He gives the mistaken impression he has chosen his world of few possessions, instead of it choosing him.
Maybe I should at least offer him money; after all, I can afford to be kind these days. Like everyone else in the suburbs, I live as if I’m entitled. Oh, but it’s not where I came from. I’ve known only too well the kind of hunger this man must be feeling big in his stomach, plucking on his ribs like a banjo aching to play a tune with food. More often than I want to count, I’d been forced to go to the blood bank where to supplement pay from low-wage jobs, I learned the degradation of giving blood for money. Plasma extractions pay even more than blood and I gave as often as I could. I used to sit in the lobby, waiting to be called into the back where the nurses were kind. For a time, I’d forget that I wasn’t a patient until the needle drew life out of me in trade for a lovely little piece of paper that for a fee, I could cash immediately at Money Express next door.
I remember those used-up strangers seated in that blood bank waiting room and how I felt when I looked at them, believing myself superior because I wasn’t as low as the others who’d neither showered nor dragged a brush across their teeth. Pride is a relative thing. I was still able to manage rent on an apartment with a working shower, they weren’t.
But even then, I hadn’t reached their kind of sadness. It was obvious that beyond the tired hunger, the hang-dog expressions, there lived the next level of grief, manifesting in the ugly glint in their eyes as they looked at each other with distrust. Under the surface, the potential for violence was always there, because deep down, they hated each other and themselves. And savagery happens out of gritty want. It’s like a black hole, eating away inside out all that makes one human. So despite their overtly docile demeanor, they were ever alert for signs of thieves trying to steal what little they had left in their road-weary knapsacks. Sometimes, outside the front of Money Express, they were no better than demented hounds turning on each other for scraps. I usually went out the back door because I had a car to protect me.
I think, too, of the mentally ill with no insurance turned out onto the streets by hospitals. But even a sane person could go nuts waking each morning to face the swell of days without hope, one no different from the next, always obsessing on a next meal or drink.
And that reminds me of the uncle I never knew—the one not loved enough as a child. He started out in the 1940’s hopping boxcars to see the country. Darkly handsome, he, at first, had the kind of desperado dignity of a young Kerouac hipster, but without a poet’s vision, he lost himself somewhere on a freight train speeding the dusky night. And in the process, he forgot his old dreams, drank them up in the bottle.
A few times over the years, my uncle came to visit, but never for more than an hour or so. I think of the shame on my father’s face when he opened the door to Uncle Dick who would be puffed up with promises of quitting drinking and finding a job, and how my father’s look would soften then into a quiet hope. But in the end, it always turned out that all Uncle Dick wanted from us was a handout. I suppose, the lure of the road was what called him away. He was probably too far-gone by then anyway. The sad part is the road doesn’t just break people like Dick, but also those who stand by waiting at home. One day, my father’s hope just blew right out him like a worn radial tire. As he gave Uncle Dick the final handout, he told him never to come back again. That was the only promise Dick managed to keep.
The unfair part of it was my teetotaler father, who tried to live the American Dream in the manner men did of his era by pinching pennies, buying only what he could afford, never anything frivolous, died debt-free at age sixty, wanting nothing more than to hang onto the simple life he had. Meanwhile, my wild Uncle Dick, who had tried everyday to off himself with drink, outlived my father by fifteen years. Go figure. And in the end, even alcohol couldn’t kill Dick. A bash on his skull from another homeless guy trying to rob him accomplished it, or at least, eventually did. As usual, the stubborn old sot couldn’t do us a favor and die right away, instead, lingered on for years in a Montana nursing home before health complications related to the injury finally caught up to him. Ironically, the knock on the head made him a complete amnesiac, sweet in his frailty. And since he couldn’t remember who he was, he finally achieved what he’d been promising all along: the dream of a sober life.
Lastly, I think of my mentally ill, alcoholic ex-husband, who before I’d met him, had been homeless. In picking up that hitchhiker, I believe he dreamed he was, somehow in the process, helping his own self too. In the same way, I wanted to make my ex better by nurturing him with emotional and financial support. But the truth is, he was as much a ghost to me as my uncle. And like an apparition, I should have seen him for the half-man he was, half in this world and half into the next. Yes. I should have looked right through him the way I look through the man raising the sign at me as I drive past. I’ve already given enough to the homeless.
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(For: Three Lines)
we are here because time said
three lines of “i love you”
as easily as water might walk
we were attached
at the hips like two apples
on a thin branch
waiting to become applesauce
in a pink bowl
is easier than mist grabbing at purple
lilacs on a June morning
back in 1985, that same water came
drop-by-drop standing
on white stones near our doorstep
and we listened as time took
two parts of our hydrogen for each
oxygen we shared |
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to last light
somewhere
there is a fall
of water
still falling,
and a stand of trees
still standing,
whose branches
clutch leaves
still waving
in the dark that is,
well, still darkening.
My feet hush
and remember
long buried
memories
who lie under
pine needles
soft enough
to sleep
the night
through
for now
soft soft
enough to
listen through. |
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I.
Paul likes to come
home from work
and scold his son
before the youth hides from the moon
in blankets, eyelashes, and daydreams
his son at ten years old
has a bedtime before
dark and rises when
the horizon's sun is the same color
as orange juice
with eyebrows a different
color from his hair,
Paul knows angry
love
Paul's life replays
in the same manner as remembered
nightmares whenever he yells.
II.
A broad face
and leg hairs
grew to be seen
in rehearsed light
but pimples
hid like crabgrass in
the shadows of trees
while he walked with
company but by himself
in the mute light.
tipsy lovers,
like the change inside laundromat
dryers that clinks
and flirts with midnight
silence,
were pocketed
but dropped on the linoleum
never to be picked up
with such sweaty
drunk palms
the wedding dance
was done in
black and white,
his tie and his wife's necklace
hung around their necks
like cow bells
children were caged in cribs while
he was imprisoned
in the bars of business text
and the
days
f e l l o u t o f
the sky
like his hair did in the sink.
III.
Paul knows contrast better
than static daylight
and separates
dawn
from dusk
by picking out the
strands of gray aurora
in dusk's black hair
or
by seeing the moon face
of his child
afraid of time's
unequal items squeezed
out of an ironic reprimand.
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Twixt two eternities,
twin halves of dread-filled night
there lies the end
and the beginning
of every earth-child's flight.
Rainis
Latvias first poet laureate. |
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The stone pillars of the porch frame a view
of the Sound, steely blue this afternoon
with silver cresting waves.
My father in law asks, who’s winning
the cancer race, your mother or me? She’s
so much younger, it’s a damn awful fate.
He takes a sip of his vodka tonic
gazes at the sea, says, I don’t want to die.
but living like this, with this, isn’t much of a life.
It’s exhausting, humiliating, and at times painful.
I realize I know so little about these.
With my mother, it’s the same thing all over again
and harder the second time, I tell him. She will not
be cured, the chemo will battle the cancer, keep it
at bay.
I watch a butterfly flit from one daylily to the next.
She is made of nothing but curves and light.
I watch one wave roll and curl, collapse
under its own weight
and then another
do the same.
Our drinks are finished, the glasses beaded
with tears of condensation, our limes buried in ice.
My breathing mirrors the waves now. The sound
Of each one, an exhaled breath, resolute and final.
Let’s have another drink, my father in law says.
It’s happy hour.
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Within life’s hurried, quick, relentless stream
what is, for me, a slow and endless night
is a mere blink, a trifle of a dream,
the tiny sliver of a silver pin a bit of silver star-bright,
like my soul’s agony now made sublime,
pinned by your dreamed for hand to quake in fright
on that cold, dark and boundless cloth called time.
transposed from a Latvian poem by myself |
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Not sure how workable this is. Typing it in Latvian on site did not work because trying to make some of the soft-sound marks erased all previous. To meet the more exact soul of the poem the transposed version has more lines to alow for the rhyme interplay. The original is not a Canopus form and is rhymed somewhat differently.
Viņas atbildi gaidot
Iz dzīves straujā, nemitīgā rituma /Out of time’s quick, relentless stream/
šī bija man bezgala gara nakts. /this was for me an endlessly long night/
Tik mirklis niecīgs bij tā mūžībā un īss /a trifling moment in eternity it was/
kā sīka absūbēj’si sidrabsakts, /like that small tarnished silver pin/
no tavas rokas iesprausta kas trīss /by your hand pinned to quake in fright/
uz laika tumšā, bezgalīgā auduma. /upon the dark and endless cloth of time/
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Fat fruit of incandescence
sphere of peeled silver.
A world of soft collusion
moonlight’s architecture.
Ambition faded and rage
become luminescence, slid
inside things so they shed
the burnt skin of what goes
day by day. Start breathing.
Catch moon, the last boat out.
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