n i g h t i n g a l e s h i r a z / blog
Here be Gorgons...

june 2023
january 2023
december 2022
september 2022
august 2022
july 2022
january 2022
november 2021
october 2021
september 2021
august 2021
july 2021
june 2021
may 2021
april 2021
march 2021
february 2021
january 2021
september 2020
august 2020
july 2020
may 2020
april 2020
march 2020
february 2020
december 2019
october 2019
july 2019
june 2019
may 2019
april 2019
march 2019
february 2019
january 2019
december 2018
november 2018
october 2018
september 2018
august 2018
july 2018
june 2018
may 2018
april 2018
march 2018
february 2018
january 2018
december 2017
november 2017
october 2017
september 2017
august 2017
july 2017
june 2017
march 2017
february 2017
january 2017
november 2016
october 2016
september 2016
august 2016
july 2016
june 2016
may 2016
april 2016
march 2016
february 2016
december 2015
november 2015
october 2015
september 2015
may 2015
march 2015
february 2015
january 2015
december 2014
november 2014
october 2014
september 2014
august 2014
may 2014
april 2014
march 2014
february 2014
*april 2013
*march 2013
*february 2013
*january 2013
*december 2012
*november 2012
*october 2012
*september 2012
*july 2012
*october 2011
*september 2011
*august 2011
*july 2011
*june 2011
*may 2011
april 2011
march 2011
april 2010
march 2010
february 2010
january 2010
december 2009
november 2009
september 2009
june 2009
may 2009
february 2009
january 2009
december 2008
october 2008
september 2008
august 2008
july 2008
june 2008
may 2008
april 2008
january 2008
december 2007
november 2007
october 2007
september 2007
august 2007
july 2007
june 2007
may 2007
april 2007
march 2007
february 2007
january 2007
december 2006
november 2006
october 2006
september 2006
august 2006
july 2006
june 2006
may 2006
april 2006
march 2006
february 2006
january 2006
december 2005
november 2005
october 2005
september 2005
august 2005
july 2005
june 2005
may 2005
april 2005
march 2005
february 2005
january 2005
december 2004
november 2004
october 2004
september 2004
august 2004
july 2004
june 2004
may 2004
april 2004
march 2004
february 2004
january 2004
december 2003
june 2003
april 2003
march 2003
 
Because every last day of May belongs to you.

You would have been forty-six this year, and maybe we would have talked of it.  Of things like this—aging and whatnot—how they are happening, even to us.

Maybe you would have chosen to dye your hair.  Karachi can be a hard place, after all, for human women.  Maybe I would have talked you out of it.  (Though I know I wouldn’t have wanted to.  Everything you wanted, all of us wanted for you.)

I call Akki and ask how she is doing today.  We make words with the feelings we have on hand, like pushing Scrabble tiles out onto the board between us.  (Except with you it was always Monopoly.)

I don’t tell her how I’ve been thinking, now that enough years have been and gone, that it’s finally happened.  That there are now more conversations I wish I could have had with you, than the other kind.  That the rest of my life will be this way.

I don’t tell her how when I have nested dreams, one inside the other so that I keep waking up from a dream in which I’m waking up from a dream, they are of you.

Auri said for years—who am I now to know if he says it still—that it wasn’t fair he had to lose both his parents by forty-three.  But like so many things he is so wrong about...

Whatever.  You knew better than anyone, about things that weren’t fair.  You loved it all anyway.


[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Santo Spirito, Firenze]
[giovedì 31 maggio 2018 ore 11:03:06] []

Something there is...

In my 1962 copy of Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein (I always wanted to be historical, from almost a baby on...), from the wondrousness of a bookstore in Madrid called Desperate Literature:

Sentences not only words but sentences and always sentences have been Gertrude Stein's life long passion.

Impossible not to think of Annie Dillard (If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin...).  And from there, Billy Collins (If someone carves swans and animals out of soap, that person loves soap...).

And then, for me maybe because I'm me, Hemingway (All you have to do...); and Didion, on Hemingway (...smooth rivers, clear water over granite, no sinkholes...), and finally Didion again, on Didion (Grammar is a piano I play by ear...).

Of course I've told you some of this before.  I go back to see where, and so I see when: two years ago, to the week.


[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Santo Spirito, Firenze]
[martedì 22 maggio 2018 ore 11:03:00] []

Belsoggiorno

I spent much of the weekend watching waves advance and recede across the kind of rockpools that make you miss David Attenborough.  Tracking the appearance and disappearance of an island on the Mediterranean horizon (the Gorgona, no relation though, to Medusa).  Reading Woolf on “How Should One Read a Book.”

Ritiro as in retreat.  Ritiro as in, I pull (back), again.  Ritiro too, as in another pull—of a joint or a pipe, a hookah, a sheesha, some such thing.  Another breath.  Inhale, again.



This included an afternoon with a wonderfully cool and collected gentleman by the name of Kerner.  But like the artist Blub, maybe Kerner is a woman.

An afternoon too, of writing some very many lines of what could have been a poem, if I had not, about three hours into it, hit some cryptically disastrous combination of keys on this damn tablet and caused all those little black letters to effervesce forever into whiteness.

(Also the second sunburn of my life.)

But look, look at what my working title was, for that poem:

Again.


[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Santo Spirito, Firenze]
[martedì 08 maggio 2018 ore 18:05:18] []