24 March 2020. Black Tea Window.
Certainties and uncertainties. Sometimes it feels as if I make the drawing just so I can write. A way of talking with someone, grounded a bit by the focus of the lines and tones. So that it's not just words. Which make so much sense and then simply vanish. Memories. As of the day when Kory came over, eight years ago--she and M and I sat on the porch steps. I'd found a note in B's chair-side bookshelves--Kory's presence always leading to the revelatory, "Speak now or forever hold your peace." I'm probably mis-remembering--one of my specialties (but sometimes a little of the revelatory as well). I found later that it came from Yates, one of his plays--the besieged king, confronting his attacker at sword point, ready to run him through. Asking for an acknowledgement--or maybe a confession? But it's only after the final brutal act that he finds the invader to be his own son...
I don't think that's how she read it, though. Maybe even not Yeats himself. Yes, it's literally true. The king murders his son. But the key is in the speaking...
There's a truly beautiful essay by Gary Snyder, about why the wild creatures come down to the campsites of the human beings (this in the old days)--even knowing that they'll be sacrificed. That is, they'll be sacrificing themselves. Foodstuff, after all. (He picks out the bear and the deer, the salmon...) What they love are the human voices--the stories--and even more, the sound of people's songs.
For this to give your life, yes...
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Another story, from a film seen many years back. The Siberian tribespeople who would make a long annual migration, leading their animals to new pastures, then returning. Over a great distance, with difficult rivers in between. This took place in the fall, when the waters were frigid--and the older people were not always able to make the crossing. How did they know? They knew. Choosing instead to sit on the edge of the near bank, alone, as their families and horses and cattle crossed to the other side...
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I wanted to add, twice now, the phrase, But never for capital. A cri de coeur...
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Note: I did mis-remember. The actual line from Yeats--(in Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea): "Speak before thy breath is done." Mis-quotes, of course, are significant--so I leave the original in place.
