Word of the Week - 136

With thanks to Plaisanter's Flickriver site.

Word of the Week:  MUCILAGE

These are days, it seems, to think about what exactly IS the glue that holds us together, either to maintain a congruity with self or a plural binding of one to another.  There is something, beyond gravity, centripetal force, magnets, chewing gum or baling wire, that stops us from dissolving into fragments.  Its forms are as numerous as are we who rely on its existence.

At its most exalted it is sticky and honey-sweet, with names like optimism, kindness, beauty and love.  It is scent, known to transport us in memory to other realms and times, or words, as used by poets to translate, impossibly, the ineffable into language.  It is color or form that jars the heart.  It is magic, mostly unintentional, the product of man or nature simply bringing forth what must be brought.

It is experiences shared, even if known in solitude.  It is recognition of me in you.  It is music, sounds raised in thanksgiving or lament.  Perhaps beyond all else it is music.

If I understand anything of the universe, it is this:  we are not meant to be divided nor to seek or invent ways that make us unalike.  We survive with each other, it is how we will thrive.  Our hands reach out to comfort.  With vocabulary we soothe and support.  In the rock-hard moments we remind one another that there are softer times.

We are the glue, aided by the wonders amid which we sometimes flounder, wonders which lift our spirits, replenish our hope.  There is no wonder too small or obscure to be considered medicinally adhesive.  It only requires - demands - the ability to illuminate what has been dimmed.  Circumstances have been known to abandon us in dark caves and haunted houses of the mind.  For me, the image of a rose, bodies of water from a puddle to a fountain, canal, river or ocean, the thought and, one hopes, the taste of dark chocolate, works of art, a hummingbird outside the window, the voice of a loved one or even sight of their name reconnect me to frightened and lost parts of myself.  They secure me to a greater circle where light prevails.

This is a gummy business and we serve as human fly paper to one another.  As we abide, fastened, we joke, we sing, we listen, we doze.  Our thoughts may wander but we, it is hoped, do not.  We are tethered for the long ride.  That is what's real.  Anything else is the illusion.

Rosa Mira Books and Melissa Green

If we are fortunate or paying attention, beauty dances across our path more times a day than we can count.  I will take this occasion to share a bit.  Before I link you to the announcement by Rosa Mira Books of the newest work from poet Melissa Green, I wanted to include DAPHNE IN MOURNING, which was printed in the New York Review of Books.

Daphne in Mourning

July 19, 2001

Melissa Green

Palm fronds have woven out the sky.
Fog has infiltrated every vein.
My hair has interlaced with vines.
Cobwebs lash their gauze across my eyes.

I’ve stood so since the world began,
and turned almost to stone some years ago.
Who passes by perceives a lichened post,
my girlish features, ghostly, nearly gone.

My bark is warmer than the dead’s.
Human blood still lulls the underside of leaves.
My fingers hold the very dress I loved
to dance in, when dancing mattered—and it did.

And now, the unveiling of Rosa Mira's and Melissa's collaboration.  A gift for us all.  Hooray to everyone concerned.

Rosa Mira Books: Melissa Green, poet extraordinaire, writes memoir

Lynda Barry and fantasy

Art by Lynda Barry

Lynda Barry quote, one of many at Brainy Quotes:

"There are certain children who are told they are too sensitive, and there are certain adults who believe sensitivity is a problem that can be fixed in the way that crooked teeth can be fixed and made straight. And when these two come together you get a fairytale, a kind of story with hopelessness in it.

"I believe there is something in these old stories that does what singing does to words. They have transformational capabilities, in the way melody can transform mood.

"They can’t transform your actual situation, but they can transform your experience of it. We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay. I believe we have always done this, used images to stand and understand what otherwise would be intolerable."

Lynda Barry in WHAT IT IS

Well of course we create a fantasy world to be able to stay.  I've said it here before and will surely say it again:  Lynda Barry is one of the masters of the universe.   Someday I need to make a comprehensive list.

A phrase came to me not long ago that describes why so many of the things on my imaginary list remain undone, why it may take me days to respond to email, why deadlines are unmet, all the whys of what would appear to be avoidance or neglect.  I wander off.  I leave this place and go somewhere else.  Yes, I am lured by shiny things, or more accurately by beautiful things, optimistically resonant ideas, those elements which still and soothe and act as industrial strength Spackle for all the cracks and divots in ordinary life.  Beauty may be used as a distraction but it has a strongly medicinal purpose, the tonic for what ails us.  What a sweet job that would be, selling it by the bottle from the too-gaudy wagon drawn by a wearied horse, glad to stop for water and feed in another frontier town, hoping with horse-hope that a swift departure will not be necessary.  Today let there be satisfied, paying customers.

Thought for the day

 Be in love with beauty.

Whatever speaks to you expands the heart.