Past Events Have Not Yet Occurred
with lines stolen from W.B. Sebald’s Austerlitz
As far back—or ahead—
as my mother’s death I trekked
across an indistinct European city by foot—
Mom had never ascended the Atlantic
to visit the ruins of her family
above—or behind her, the Kabinskies
who shape-shifted into Millers,
the Schultzes who feared American fights
with their red-faced children, a grandfather
asking to erase his accent like the wrong
figure in a General Motors ledger—
here in Paris, “past events have not yet occurred,”
Mom does not smoke for the Berea, Ohio,
high school play, instead in 1958 she takes the final steamer
to study dance and painting in a glass atelier
charged with the silver light of November
for “past events … are waiting (for) … the moment
when we think of them,” then they “occur,”
as many times as needed, a hundred or more,
to correct themselves, to convince yourself,
to escape the inevitable footprints arriving
at death, as far back—or ahead—as necessary
I declare the passing of the mucus-glazed overcast
has yet to be, the brick on the hospital wall
did not crumble into a squall of sick pink paint,
and the books we love we thought we read
will become, again, virginal as spring storms
sweeping the crenellations and hedgerows of memory.
The Invasion of Normandy
November 17, 2001
Shirley’s granddad died with pieces of the war
within him, metal resting next to bone,
like the iron-age cadaver arranged under glass
in the Caen Museum, its puzzle partially solved,
its bones flaking away like a declaration of war
or peace treaty beneath direct light.
“It’s stupid, this war,” Shirley declared
in the present tense, as if the war were still
playing out along the rusted shoreline and bunkers
accepted into the Norman landscape,
her English scattered like shrapnel.
War’s not personal, generals like to grumble—
Shirley’s country remaining in the past
my country’s adversary, certainly Isabelle’s,
whose own grandfather, a Polish soldier,
wilted in a concentration camp
while her mother thinned not far from Vilnius.
The economy depends upon forgiveness,
what tides can be reversed after 60 years
or so until this weekend. The brood of former foe
communicates globally, uses cell phones.
We’ve been speaking French, spats of English,
some Swedish (not me) which leads
to discussions of heavy metal and
what really is a “gang bang,” which one Swede
with a French or English name, Caroline or Caroline,
insists on calling “gong bong” (otherwise, the Swedes speak
the former Allied tongues better than us, whoever “us” is,
as if we’d been conquered, or they, with longboats
and beards and battle axes long ago).
During our version of the present,
two cars disembark above the Normandy Beaches—
one French (Renault); one German (Volkswagen)—while
from their innards, like preserved clowns pour forth:
two Swedes (one with a UK passport engaged
to a French, the other shacked up with a Bosnian); three Americans
(traced to Old World Poland and Germany;
the second Shirley of Chinese-American descent);
three French, one Belgian (awkward, reserved, neutral,
but he’s got a weekend place not far from the beach).
We’re here to see “The Price of Freedom” in 360-degrees, a film
which promises “toute d’émotions” in just 18 minutes—
not only barbed wire and wooden stakes like waterlogged crosses,
but a soldier escorting a housewife through her rubbled living room,
troops trodding waist-deep in the same salted water
William the Conqueror must have also wanted to shun.
What did forty-nine hundred of the 175 thousand die for,
assaulting Utah, Omaha, Juno, Sword, and Gold,
breaching Hitler's vaunted Atlantic Wall in less than a day—
was it for this weekend by the sea? Misbehaving internationally,
consuming badly assembled crêpes
and slurping cheap red wine from paper cups?
Laughing and throwing English toffees from car to car?
A platoon—one American, one German, one Swede—
are sent on a mission for cider and pommeau, part of their minds
asking for the past, to see it—bodies stranded along the sand,
wounds leaking into black and white seawater.
Spare them the reddish shock. Let the cows stand
still dumbfounded as the tanks or rental cars invade
the orchards. Let the bomb craters heal over
with green but also let their scarred contours be revealed
from the air. Among hedgerows dividing fields
where snipers once nested, let the reconstructed towns remain,
forever, and let it seem safe to name French sons Adolphe again.
I have left some little triangles of tomato behind,
also the select sheaves of green peppery roquette,
the lopsided slices of white mozzarella
arranged like slabs of brain on my plate.
There’s a methodical economy of eating
going on here I’d just as soon not apply to my entire life—
always leaving bits of each dish on the plate,
a system of circularity from part to part,
a returning, balancing hunger with what’s good for you,
saving bits of everything for the final bite,
an obsessive mopping up of the spills and disasters
with this sponge or lung of bread.
Must save main dish from mudslide of balsamic vinaigrette!
Maintain the purity, yes, this runny dark muck
must not be flecked with white or red.
As for the fidgeting of my fingers
freeing themselves from crumbs, I can’t say,
or my knee pistoning like a garlic chopping machine.
I saw the basil on the kitchen counter,
talons still grabbing onto its clod,
the dirt ball it preserved from field to truck,
from vendor’s hands to brown paper bouquet.
Oh basil, desperate for your home.
I washed away your memory of earth,
I severed your connections
and plucked you bare
and sprinkled you liberally
on what I was about to consume.
Headlines from Childhood
after Melissa Arnold Adams
Boy catches falling television: Wheel of Fortune saved
How to eat zucchini: ‘glass of milk’ secret revealed
Fluffy found under snow bank in May: the shocking details
The Wellington boys: Are they cold-blooded?
Living room study: dog farts cause drowsiness
After divorce, sad family eats omelets, yogurt shakes for dinner
Don’t use pencil sharpener, student warns: “It sucks”
Walk to store: not exactly “miles”
Recovering Mom tosses buttered roll
Mr. Bonnacorsi: Does he really hump lab station?
Gov’t study: 1,023 PB&Js eaten since 8th grade
Historic agreement reached: Step-mom lets Dad in house
Math teacher insists trigonometry is useful
College-bound boy avoids girls until senior year
High school musical proves even geeks can sing
[..back..]
Blonds Have Less Fun
by Ethan Gilsdorf and Lisa Pasold
regular=Ethan reads
italics=Lisa reads
bold=we read simultaneously
Blond, also ‘blonde,’ from Middle English ‘blounde,’
Blond as cheap beer, blond as cheap fun,
blonder, blondest
a 22 billion-dollar industry in North America
blondish, blondness
from Old French ‘blonde,’ see ‘bhel’ in appendix
(‘to shine, flash, burn; shining white’)
The Paris Exposition of 1867 advertised the first hair bleach,
a surprising alliance between an English chemist and a French coiffeur
derivatives include blue (the colour of the chemical), bleach (the ingredient),
blind (the side-effect), blond (the desire)
also: blanket, black, fragrant and flame,
he called me his Blonde, he meant well, I was
brunette at the time, so were we
a flame or blanket, cheap or shiny?
As an adjective, always drop an ‘e.’
When used as a noun, spell it ‘blonde’
(unless the noun’s a platinum man, then write ‘blond’
sans ‘e,’ alongside his phone number).
all those blond blue-eyed boys, hair
greenish with chlorine, dulled with tobacco,
those girls deemed ditsy as they crackle
with green shadow before the weather map
It’s a world dominated by blond ambition, they say,
‘they’ being designer Donatella Versace:
“For me being blond is not just having a hair color—
it is a way of being and a state of mind: both tender and strong.”
What-ever.
But it’s inconvenient being blond, we get
picked up and put
down
more rapidly than most. We gleam
down darkened streets after midnight in the 16th.
In a recent Clairol survey, 56 percent of gentlemen preferred us,
we’re supposed to be virtuous, precious, rare
and exasperatingly good, we take tranquillizers
to keep our Machiavellian cunning well hidden beneath our peroxide fringe.
It’s so painful trampling the hopes of the drab and dull coiffed.
The search for a chemical solution started early on:
history shows the glamour factor motivated sad Chinese
with hair like calligraphy ink, dissatisfied Egyptians,
Persians, Assyrians, Romans and Greeks, all convinced their low self-esteem
would lighten with a bit of quicklime, some nutshells, assorted wood or wine,
a layer of rock alum. Desperate to have more fun, lighten up.
The World Health Organization says it never predicted
the last natural blond would be a Finn in 2202.
As for iconographic proof that blondes last forever,
okay, things went well for Cinderella, but Goldilocks
was thrown from her bed by bears, and Rapunzel
wandered shorn in the desert with her blinded prince,
modern-day blond power’s linked to untimely death—
Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, the fairytale Princess Di?
All Nordic, clean and flaxen-haired, but pursued by villains
in dark-lit cars. Picture Barbie, symbol of sun-washed
vacuity racing down the Pacific Coast Highway,
her long hair trailing behind her pink convertible
tumbling end-over-end to the sea. Where’s the fun?
Would Monroe be immortal had she stayed brunette?
If “ever after” means death, the golden-haired heroine
is destined to live happily ever after. Perhaps happiness is overrated.
Perhaps Marilyn is quite happy these days, blowing off
her peroxide appointments and getting fat.
While elsewhere, rubber gloves are donned. Toxic peroxide
like refinery fumes fills our kitchens after midnight.
What does not kill us makes us blonder.
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