A WORLD BECKONS ITSELF INTO BEING
Missive #32.5 - Proto-Missive from 2018
[Today Portland witnessed its highest tides, reaching levels of 14.57 feet. The second highest was the previous record of 14.17 feet set during the Blizzard of 1978, and the recordkeeping began in 1912. This afternoon’s flooding was especially potent as similar flooding occurred only three days ago on the 10th, so many of the usual protections (dunes, seawalls, etc.) were washed out before today’s surge even began. Parks are closed “until further notice” near my home. Most impactful to me is the loss of the three historic fish shacks on Fisherman’s Point at Willard Beach. These shacks have been the destination of my frequent, sometimes nightly, walks in warmer months. Roughly a mile from my home, for years they were the perfect picturesque end goal. Today, around 1pm, all three were claimed by the sea; lifted up off their placements on the point to then float, sink, away from the shore into the bay, into the shipping channel’s depths. Walking over to pay my respects around 4pm, there was scarcely a trace left of them. Some bricks, some chimney fragments, some fragments of wooden beam and concrete slab. They had vanished with the tide. The point was bare, barren. Beautifully so. No scars or gashes. The sea took the shacks away gently. Forcefully, yet without any noticeable damage to the land and rocks they sat upon. Incredible! At first I thought I would feel sad. Then I felt surreal. Then I felt excited, joyous. This land, this place I have known for so long — for my whole life — I now get to have a new, evolved relationship with, a new appreciation for. More of this will happen. Let us welcome it. Let us welcome it all. Every feeling, every sensation, every necessary part that must come undone to make way for what is coming, to make way for the new.
Today’s missive I am numbering #32.5 as it is the partner to #32 - THEIR EYE, DRESSED IN DAISIES, IT FELL FROM THE SKY. It too appeared in Timshel Vol. I (under the name Initium Caiani) and was performed in person at a Love Stories event held on Feb. 14, 2018 at The Apohadion Theater in Portland. The two go together, and ought to be read together, in order, with space between. Today is the perfect day for this missive to reach out to you all, as indeed, and once again, a new world may be found beckoning itself into being about us, around us.] Received 1/31/2018
Listen to the Recitation:
A WORLD BECKONS ITSELF INTO BEING
Braced at our fingertips it leaps up through
The space in-between, among and forthwith
Racing across starstrewn shooting streams
It gallops down paths honored by herds
Heard by not but two, ever lost in its midst
They catch their breath, itself seemingly shared
Clenched upon teeth caught in a moment's calm
Sweltering in rows as they loosen, tighten, let go
And gasp, eyes taut in a glance unspoken, but felt
In all its restful abandon, searing lids to pans, dust to moulds,
Snapping without in a pop, a hiss, slithering
Between dandelion seeds, between blades of grass ten stories tall
Shadows writhe within chasms unshapen, but shaping
We look, and at last see, all that is about us
In this world — our world. For it is our own
And it is by us that it came to be, and is becoming
Here a wonder, therein a memory unfolding
Embracing now a feeling forever unfelt,
Or if not unfelt, then unfeelable, outside this world
Beyond our fingers ungrasping, to a place unreal:
Yet for all its professed realness, it could but be not
And for all its supposed necessity, it could never be.
But we can be, and by grace it seems we might have been—
And if such grace may have it, so shall we again.
Until such a time, this space withheld, that world maintained;
For a canyon so great is but a dream of hands yet to meet.
My goodness... thank you for sharing all of it. xo