The Book of Storms

Sunset

tthomaselliott — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:01:16 +0000

That bird. That’s all I can say quietly inside where only I can hear the one I’m talking about. How to describe that chirping already the wrong word there just isn’t, see. They are yelling, I think, glad of this day. Insisting right here in the trees. But there are even more kinds. Smaller birds under the large ones if you listen. Like the voices of children in church. You have to slow, let the whole sound fill like oh big breath. And what what comes of that? The ever smaller sound within. The opening of this strange world. Ah, the sunset, of course. But this stripe of orange through these clouds while this wave is crashing on your own two feet the sand shifting under you the mother coaxing you ever home. This is yours. Never before has just this never again, you drop to your knees the water soaks your jeans through you didn’t come prepared. There’s a cargo ship far off and those crows have found the remains of your dinner here you are longing for your own bed but riveted forever to this one spot. You are impossible, elated with deep sadness. Loss and riches the golden foam lapping you up you give way, you cry and promise to paint it all down, to call your mom, to stay right here. The sun sets like it always does. Your wallet is wet. You are unrepeatable.

Where We Took Mom’s Ashes

tthomaselliott — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:00:31 +0000

Once years ago I looked at a map and decided, there, I want to climb to the highest point in New Hampshire. So I hiked far enough in, slept in a very buggy forest, then spent the whole next day climbing. Food shelter clothing cooking pots flashlight notebook toothbrush forty pounds on my back sometimes climbing with two hands and both feet, up up up, and I was sweaty. It was sketchy, some steps. But I kept myself alive, and I was almost up. I saw a puff of white smoke above. I kept climbing. Another. What could it be? I imagined some geothermal phenomenon. The puffs continued periodically. I kept climbing, curious.

At long last, I reached the top. I pulled myself up over the edge and stood to look around. A tiny train full of children, I shit you not, puffing round and round. A snack bar. People all over the place, dry clean people with cameras. There’s a road to the highest point in New Hampshire, you see. Yes, a road.

So years later, I have a grant, bags with wheels, a family, and here we are in Southern India. I begin to get to know some kind Hindu folks, and I mention that my mom has died recently, that I’ve brought her ashes and I want to put them in the sea. Ah, Varkala, each of them says, happy to know this of me. Varkala is the place, apparently, where people have put the remains of their loved ones for years. There’s a ceremony, and as a matter of fact it also washes away all your sins. Outstanding. We get on a train.

My mom wanted to travel more than she was able in her life. Water, I think, is a good way to travel great distances if you are in tiny lightweight fragments. Or soluble, even. I know, of course, that this is a giant metaphor, that her travels are well underway, but still.

We drop our bags at our grubby guesthouse and walk. I can hardly wait to lay eyes on the Arabian Sea. We walk the dirt path between two shops and go straight to the edge of the cliff to look over at the beach. You know, right? We look down and there spread over the beach are hundreds of Europeans, naked like babies. Colorful umbrellas jammed in the sand like the flags of many nations. Dogs and Frisbees. We are standing in a parade of hotels and shops and restaurants. An ashtray on every table. Jewelry, tapestries, bottles of water on display.

I am cranky, of course. Arrogant. I’m not here for the croissants. I brought my mother here for chrissakes. So we climbed the broken stairs down to the beach. The travelers weren’t really naked, turns out. We played in the sand. Splashed like everybody else.

This too is sacred ground. The grilled swordfish. The Scandinavian party of twelve.

Mom would like it here.

Moth

tthomaselliott — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:58:59 +0000

I wonder out loud sometimes about the lifespan of some flitting animal or other. This moth landing, will it see the light of April? I want to know. But then. Is it my turn to do the dishes? I want to read that trilogy again one day. This is how the mind goes. I am walking just so down this big street. That kid yesterday with the bright orange shoes, can you believe it? The way he could hold his whole body up with one arm like that. If only I could figure skate. Next time I’ll try the green soup. And sometimes it rains hard. Once in a big summer storm, I went walking with my Dad, my small hand in his. This has stayed with me.

Postcard #17

tthomaselliott — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 04:53:12 +0000

I walked by the water too early today. Waiting in the dark for a profound thought, for the famed barista to wake up. Try as I might to be washed over with divine grace in this faraway place, I thought of mathematics curriculum in the United States, I thought of croissants and raisins. At long last, Coffee Temple on the cliff opens. My notebook wet, with sand in it, I want to tell you about the first song. On the way here. In the dirty road, two hundred birds in the dark coconut trees, the laundry hanging still, and everybody asleep except whoever made this fire. The bellowing prayers in the distance, in rhythm, I swear, with these bird bird birds. The bells. There must be, my flashing thought, a composer.

India 31

tthomaselliott — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 03:58:56 +0000

I came to India with my pains. Ready for the rigors, for the herbs and oils wherever they go. Up or down. Waiting for the doctor whose father before father before father before him. My resolve thickening. At long last. Please, he says, gathering his skirts. Be seated. I did not used to hurt, I tell him. Here and here, especially at night. Ah, he says. This is called gravity. Buy an inversion table. Three hundred dollars, on the internet.

Untitled 7

tthomaselliott — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:45:21 +0000

This has never happened before unless of course it has and so have you again and again back beyond memory and there the guy who had been yelling into traffic now before anyone really knows what’s happened he’s on his knees with the fallen biker gently disentangling his legs saying something quietly maybe stay still let’s make sure there’s no head injury there’s a tree above them riotous as they say with crows and here you are stuck on the corner with your salted peanuts for sale rolling a cone of newspaper for anyone who cares here you are watching there seems to be no blood and all you can think is they better hurry what if a crow shits on them it’s happened before.

Untitled 34

tthomaselliott — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:41:36 +0000

Once upon a time a tall tall maiden with flaxen locks all the way down her long long back, she lived in a kingdom of sparse trees, rolling rolling hills. A tree here, a tree there but space oh space between and nobody but sheep here and there. Oh, the good sunsets. Once she was of course riding her horse. And this one long day almost home from flaxen locks blowing behind her: lo, ragged boy asleep under a bush. Our maiden dismounts quick and wakes the boy with a toe.

Turns out of course he is seeking the long-forgotten golden dragon egg potion in these good hills. Off they go. One, two, one, two. The ice storm, the nine bandits, all the usual. Courage. Both transformed ever so. She listened good atop crumbling cliff: how he likes boys and all. He breathed good in the vapor cave she’s shown no one else. So.

At long last, the golden dragon-egg potion is delivered to the boy’s ailing mother on the distant shore. The mother squints at the tall maiden. Have I died? This white robed figure the cascading curls the smell of a grand horse. They touch the mother’s hot head, girl and boy both. She closes her big eyes.

Walls

tthomaselliott — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:19:27 +0000

We build them, don’t we? For shelter, or for the simple act of demarcation. You could step right over this, but now we both know it’s my yard. There are good colorful toys for wall-building: they click into place just so. There’s sloppy mortar too, bricks of all kinds or stones of all sizes puzzled together, make some of us very happy like here we are just like our ancestors with all that patience. Walls of dung, yes? Walls made of tires, of rice paper, of corrugated cardboard with exacto little window flaps. Tiny sand walls with fingerprints all the way around the moat. And of course, those framed first with twobyfours, yes, yes, sheetrock.

We build walls of dirty dishes sometimes, broken promises. The wall between this boy and this girl, they didn’t know. They just didn’t see each harsh word dripping and hardening over the last. All those flowers. Still.

And this one here between father and son. The things said, the things unsaid, over the years. And now, well, what can be done about it? The tide might come in. The father’s chest, at this age, might rise with one good breath. He might take the blade in his hand, extend the knife’s handle to his son, say, you carve this year. Later the father might say, I know a good place to get those shoes of yours shined. Or better yet, wait. That kit’s here somewhere. The soft brush with the wooden handle. Remember? When you were a boy I’d let you brush after I rubbed the polish in. That’s when I wore boots every day. Now these goddamn white walking shoes. I feel like a nurse. Yes, I remember, the son might say. Mom would get mad at you when my fingers were blackened. Oh, says the father, you can’t keep your hands clean polishing boots now, can you?

Bug 2

tthomaselliott — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:09:09 +0000

I reported before that we had rented a giant bug to live in. You must remember. How we rattled around in three large stomachs, dried the laundry on threads between the antennae on the roof, yes? Well, I’ve been thinking. Let the bug be larger. Much larger, such that our apartment is one of its cells. Now this whole bug is a big city. Bombay, say. And let this be one of many bugs, as ever there are. One of hundreds, nay thousands. This is how the world is, is it not? There’s never just one bug. So, thousands of cities and each multi-cellular. With coursing veins. Some are winged. There’s something. And the ones without wings may walk. So. In the morning you live in a coastal city, but in the afternoon, no, here’s the desert. You have sand in your eyes, you curse the heat. Tut, tut, says your good neighbor, this too shall pass. You sigh and shoulder your load. Off to market.

Confidence

tthomaselliott — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 03:58:25 +0000

Oh, yeah, we were all over each other in the beginning. A thousand tangled Saturdays. Remember? But eventually, like everybody, we’d fall asleep having talked of money and yardwork. Or mad. Still though, sailing in the same craft, finding each other in the night or across the big party. Hours on that white couch.

Then something happened, not that we didn’t see it coming. Your belly, oh, your belly grew. I took your feet in my hands every day, least I could do. And one day one day there she was, alive and wiggling. Her head gray with afterbirth and everything was different.

She was all over us in the beginning. We wrapped her on like Africans. Slept between us, that one, in a little foam boat. One day, of course, she climbed off my lap and ran through the yard, shouting no, no, no. We gave our bodies, sleep and all, to grow this confidence. She has a lot to say.