Or to Begin Again (5 page)

 

 

She then wondered if a path was related to
pathetic
.
Pathos
, she heard in the distance, somewhere above.
What is that? she asked.
A bear.
A what?
A bear, an emotional bear.
On that hill? That dark shape?
No, that is a shadow.
And that?
A bird.
What sort of bird?
An eagle.
I don't think so, said Alice. I think it is
a bunch of brown leaves skimmed by light.
The leaves flew away, their wings clutching the failing day.

Alice had spent most of that day reading.
It had been raining, more or less.
The book she was reading was absorbing.
It absorbed her, so she did not think about the rain
but let it fall on and around and beyond and outside of her.
The pages of the book became wetter and darker until she could hardly turn them
without tearing off a soggy slice.
When she finished the book, she felt lonely.
Why can't we see time, she wondered,
the way we can see space?
The book had carved another time into time.
That isn't true, she thought inwardly,
one cannot carve time.
No, but
perhaps, came the insolent, instructing Voice, one can
crave
it.

 

 

Crave
rhymes with
grave,
Alice said after some moments.
I know, the Voice answered.
Alice continued down the path; she did not think the Voice friendly,
partly because of what it said, and partly because
it was attached to invisibility.
Are you a ghost? she asked suddenly.
Maybe.
If you are, then whose?
No one you knew.
How did you die?
I don't remember.
Alice was silent for a long time.
Are you in Heaven?
For response, a great rushing sound, and the tops of the trees
began to thresh back and forth as if violently weeping and there seemed
to be water pounding over itself like a huge crowd trying to escape
through a narrow hall.
Alice decided this demonstration was cheaply
cinematic and that she would not pay any
further attention, but would take refuge in
another book. She sat down under a tree and read:

 

 

April is the cruellest month . . .
She stopped and considered what an odd observation this was. Alice had thought a
lot about the idea that
some things happen because someone intended them to happen, while
other things happen seemingly free from anyone's volition at all.
She continued to read, hoping to find out why April is cruel.
You don't get it, the Voice said in a loud whisper into her left ear.
You are rude and abrupt, Alice snapped.
It isn't intent, it is a comparison.
What is?
April's cruelty.
A comparison to what?
To the other eleven months. It is like the unkindest cut.
You aren't making sense.

 

 

 

 

This speech sounded like a recording.
One cut out of many, one month out of many. The month, April,
is most cruel; the cut, Brutus of Caesar, the unkindest. Get it?
Alice picked up her book and continued to read. An orange
butterfly flew across the page, and Alice thought it resembled
an autumn leaf falling gently through the air's currents.
That's sentimental, commented the Voice, adding,
and sentiment is a failure of feeling, or pathos, as we were
speaking about earlier.
Alice decided to ignore this remark altogether.
The butterfly continued to skim the surface of the air. It seemed
a kind of breathing machine that made
silence visible. She read
. . . Breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

 

 

Alice found this depressing and inaccurate. She loved lilacs,
especially when she walked to the corner and saw them first at
the local Korean market. Well, she didn't so much see them as
smell them, and that changed the aspect of everything.
The land, she continued to herself, is never
“dead” but resting.
If you insist on this kind of truth logic, you will never be able to
read poems.
Alice shut the book. She found it distressing that the Voice could read her mind.
So the invisible gets to speak directly to the invisible; they are audible to each
other, and so the Voice is listening in, she thought, to my thoughts. She had
learned that it isn't
nice to listen in on other people's private conversations, and so the fact that the
Voice could
hear her talking to herself made her mad.
Don't be so prissy and pious, said the Voice, it bodes unwell for your future.
You need to be flexible about rules. They change. Cell phones have changed the
nature of what it means to listen in. Now it is a mere commonplace.
Yes, but you hear only one half of the conversation, said Alice.
Picky picky, the Voice responded in a high singsong.
Alice decided to change the subject.
Can you hear everyone's mind, or just mine?
I tune in and out, depending.
On what?
On whether or not I am amused. Of course, there is often severe interference,
and your thoughts get mingled with others.
Really! This idea frightened Alice, although she could not have said why
exactly. How many others?
Dozens, hundreds, thousands, the Voice said with a weary sigh.
What does that sound like?
The noise of history.
Do you mean you can hear voices from the past?
All the chitchat of the world.
In every language?
All. Plus the animals.

 

 

But you can't understand anything with that kind of racket, Alice said
sympathetically.
I try to tune out, but it isn't possible. It's surround sound.
You need a remote.
Indeed. I ordered one, but it never came. They sent it to the wrong
address, I think to Mars.
Mars? The planet?
No, the God of War. He always gets my stuff.
How annoying. Do you have a similar address?
Just then a siren went off, climbing slowly up and then slowly back down.
I can't hear you, Alice called. I've lost you.

 

 

Alice began to read again, but the words came out
confused and intermittent. Her mind interfered.

 

 

with dried
without pictures or conversations take the laundry in
over the Starnbergersee
what is that?
shower of rain for the hot day the pleasure of making
water the roses
in the colonnade
in sunlight I have never seen a colonnade
of getting up with pink
I hate pink
into the Hofgarten.

 

 

in that, in that
for an hour
Hofgarten
? Looking into the distance.

 

 

 

 

Roots, branches, rubbish.
At this time it all seems
unnatural
kiu

 

 

kiu
la la

Alice gazed down at the ground, covered in wet multicolored leaves.
It had been raining leaves all day.
You probably should fill out a form.
Why?
Because by responding you will be disclosing to the merchant that you meet these
criteria.
What criteria?
For understanding that which makes no sense for you.
What are they?
They are, for example, what crosses the path at the
place of form.
Alice found this inscrutable. You mean if I walk along the path and come to another
path that crosses it, that is where form is?
Sort of.
Alice walked on some way until she came to a path that crossed the one she was on.
I do not see any form, she said.
You are too empirical.
But I have no empire, Alice replied truthfully.
That may be, but do you have permanent interests?
Alice had lost the argument; it seemed to progress without clear incentive, like
lightning.
What the thunder said,
the Voice roared and then again roared from a farther place.
Wait, Alice protested, you are getting away from me. Can we back up?
Nothing can go in reverse, unless you are a machine, shouted the Voice.
I can retrace my steps, Alice said.
That is not the same as going back in time, which is nostalgia.
Nostalgia sounds like something for which you take a drug.
Nostalgia
is
a drug.
Jug jug jug jug,
came a sound from the pond.
You need to study the difference between things as
they are and things as they might be.
But no one can predict the future.
Pick a card, any card.
Before her, the landscape changed into a huge deck of cards swaying and floating,
in radiant black, red, and gold.
Alice reached for a card and turned it over. It was the Ace of Spades.
As she did this, the other cards spun away, and she found herself standing with a
spade in her hand, like a farmer.

 

 

Just then a Cat came out of the brush.
Alice of Spades, it said, and smiled broadly.
Now you are the most powerful card in the deck.
NOT! Came a roar. I am! I am!
The Cat turned slowly toward the chorus; Alice nearly dropped her spade.
Suddenly, a procession of Ings and Eens and Acks came forward, marching.
The All spoke at once.
I All-Powerful! I Anointed! I the Decider!
Put down your arm or I
will arrest you!
Pay no attention, said the Cat, it is only an army of benighted believers who think if
it plays its cards right, it will win.
Off with your head! shouted the All.
Fine, said the Cat, I have many lives to spare, and disappeared.
Off with her head! shouted the All.
Alice started digging furiously with
her spade and jumped into the hole just as the
All charged at
her, calling: Ready or Not! Ready or Not! Here All comes!

 

 

But Alice was far out of reach.

One day, Alice is reading about another Alice.
What haunted her in this wasteland vision may have had to do with a sense of
deprivation, of there not being enough love in her own family to go around.

 

 

Does love have a quantity, like acres and dollars? How peculiar.
She imagined
a household with love moving outward
and not reaching the far corners.
This other Alice lay in the unloved space
like a discarded doll.
Why, she wondered, do people lose interest in some things and not in others?
They die, said the Voice dryly.
You again.
Have you lost interest in me?
I think so.
You think so? You think enough to know or not to know so.
Thinking and knowing are not the same, Alice said.
In fact, she added bravely, thinking is almost the opposite of knowing.
Don't be pretentious.
I am not pretending, I am thinking aloud, and that is the way I come to know.
Then thinking, in your view, is a prelude to knowledge?
Prelude is a lovely word, Alice commented.
Is it?
Yes, it has a feeling to it, as if in the uncertainty of things there were a
mysterious beauty, as if only one instrument were playing, only one bird singing.
Dawn?
Yes, the dawn's early light.
No comment. Do you play with dolls?
Yes, I have many of them, and I make them do things and say things.
Did they always agree to this doing and saying?
Of course. They have no choice in the matter, since I am the one who is playing.
Do you play with soldiers too?
Girls don't play with soldiers.
Why not?
A doll was on the floor, facedown.
There was a rip in her arm and another on her ankle.
Alice had wrapped blue bandages around both these wounds.
Because soldiers take orders to kill.
Just then a huge limb of a tree fell to the ground, making a terrible thud.
The Voice, now far off, called