The summary of me
I found myself on the Internet:
Such a magical film is Mirrormask. The music makes me yearn for a sense of--and heart for--adventure.
I bathe in warm water and whimsy.
Istanbul, Billy Collins
It was a pleasure to enter by a side street
in the center of the city
a bathhouse said to be 300 years old,
old enough to have opened the pores of Florence Nightingale
and soaped the musical head of Franz Liszt.
And it was a pleasure to drink
cold wine by a low wood fire
before being directed to a small room in an upper gallery,
a room with a carpet and a narrow bed
where I folded my clothes into a pile
then came back down, naked
except for a gauzy striped cloth tucked around my waist.
It was an odd and eye-opening sensation
to be led by a man with close-cropped hair
and spaces between his teeth
into a steamy marble rotunda
and to lie there alone on the smooth marble
watching the droplets fall through the beams
of natural light in the high dome
and later to hear the song I sang--
"She Thinks I Still Care"--echo up into the ceiling.
I felt like the last of the sultans
when the man returned and began to scrub me--
to lather and douse me, scour and shampoo me,
and splash my drenched body
with fresh warm water scooped from a marble basin.
But it was not until he sudsed me
behind my ears and between my toes
that I felt myself filling with gratitude
the way a cloud fills with rain,
the way a glass pipe slowly fills with smoke.
In silence I thanked the man
who scrubbed the bottoms of my feet.
I thanked the history of the Turkish bath
and the long chain of bathmen standing unshaven,
arms folded, waiting for the next customer
to come through the swinging doors of frosted glass.
I thanked everyone whose job
it ever was to lay hands on the skin of strangers,
and I gave general thanks that I was lying
facedown in a warm puddle of soap
and not a warm puddle of blood
in some corner of this incomprehensible city.
As one bucket after another
of warm water was poured over my lowered head,
I stopped thinking of who and what to thank
and rode out on a boat of joy,
a blue boat of marble and soap,
rode out to the entrance of the harbor
where I raised a finger of good-bye
then felt the boat begin to rise and fall
as it met the roll of the incoming waves,
bearing my body, my clean, blessed body out to sea.
Think of Damien's jet lag theory, wherein one must patiently collect a mortal soul, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane...Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage. For how long, how far, have I been travelling, to be this tired?
Splash the bathwater, observe the dusty detritus of you, evidence of a humanity spent. Gorgeous bathing weather: crisp wind and visible sun in a not quite Chagall-blue (but trying) sky. Better this than the crunching, crackling breakfast cereal sharpness of snow and chips of ice to welcome me into my room. The bathwater--it reminds me how there is something of yourself in snow, a little piece of us falling amid the crystals. Something I read, from the mind of a physicist. Water evaporates from skin, vapor released into the air with every breath; approximately one litre of water is exhaled every day. Then down come the waters, and we all fall down. I tasted you, as a child, when you didn't dream me and lived on a different continent and I stuck my tongue into the air and laughed and spun and fell in love with a world without you in it.
Perhaps I imagine dancing in a television-grey club, or beneath an August open desert sun, where you don't smoke and I am stripped to my camisole. You are sensible. I am courageous. We are not bothered.
The danger lies in believing daydreams end with commitment.
Following are theories regarding the dematerializing and disappearance of earthly things:
1. The world is merely a dream dreamt by god who is waking after a long sleep. When he is properly awake the world will disappear completely. When the world disappears we will disappear with it and be happy.
2. Prolonged exposure to the sun has made the world sensitive to light.
3. If humanity doesn't need something it will disappear. People who are not loved will disappear.
I want to be more awake--"eyes wide open to the great train robbery of my soul."
I often am too busy and sleepy and happy and full yet occasionally slip and notice the press of Saturday night, surviving Sunday sadnesses.
It's going to be a good year for the roses.
Postscript: The bursts of colour sent by post were very well-received, you should know.
I found myself in your thoughts.
Such a magical film is Mirrormask. The music makes me yearn for a sense of--and heart for--adventure.
I bathe in warm water and whimsy.
Istanbul, Billy Collins
It was a pleasure to enter by a side street
in the center of the city
a bathhouse said to be 300 years old,
old enough to have opened the pores of Florence Nightingale
and soaped the musical head of Franz Liszt.
And it was a pleasure to drink
cold wine by a low wood fire
before being directed to a small room in an upper gallery,
a room with a carpet and a narrow bed
where I folded my clothes into a pile
then came back down, naked
except for a gauzy striped cloth tucked around my waist.
It was an odd and eye-opening sensation
to be led by a man with close-cropped hair
and spaces between his teeth
into a steamy marble rotunda
and to lie there alone on the smooth marble
watching the droplets fall through the beams
of natural light in the high dome
and later to hear the song I sang--
"She Thinks I Still Care"--echo up into the ceiling.
I felt like the last of the sultans
when the man returned and began to scrub me--
to lather and douse me, scour and shampoo me,
and splash my drenched body
with fresh warm water scooped from a marble basin.
But it was not until he sudsed me
behind my ears and between my toes
that I felt myself filling with gratitude
the way a cloud fills with rain,
the way a glass pipe slowly fills with smoke.
In silence I thanked the man
who scrubbed the bottoms of my feet.
I thanked the history of the Turkish bath
and the long chain of bathmen standing unshaven,
arms folded, waiting for the next customer
to come through the swinging doors of frosted glass.
I thanked everyone whose job
it ever was to lay hands on the skin of strangers,
and I gave general thanks that I was lying
facedown in a warm puddle of soap
and not a warm puddle of blood
in some corner of this incomprehensible city.
As one bucket after another
of warm water was poured over my lowered head,
I stopped thinking of who and what to thank
and rode out on a boat of joy,
a blue boat of marble and soap,
rode out to the entrance of the harbor
where I raised a finger of good-bye
then felt the boat begin to rise and fall
as it met the roll of the incoming waves,
bearing my body, my clean, blessed body out to sea.
Think of Damien's jet lag theory, wherein one must patiently collect a mortal soul, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane...Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage. For how long, how far, have I been travelling, to be this tired?
Splash the bathwater, observe the dusty detritus of you, evidence of a humanity spent. Gorgeous bathing weather: crisp wind and visible sun in a not quite Chagall-blue (but trying) sky. Better this than the crunching, crackling breakfast cereal sharpness of snow and chips of ice to welcome me into my room. The bathwater--it reminds me how there is something of yourself in snow, a little piece of us falling amid the crystals. Something I read, from the mind of a physicist. Water evaporates from skin, vapor released into the air with every breath; approximately one litre of water is exhaled every day. Then down come the waters, and we all fall down. I tasted you, as a child, when you didn't dream me and lived on a different continent and I stuck my tongue into the air and laughed and spun and fell in love with a world without you in it.
Perhaps I imagine dancing in a television-grey club, or beneath an August open desert sun, where you don't smoke and I am stripped to my camisole. You are sensible. I am courageous. We are not bothered.
The danger lies in believing daydreams end with commitment.
Following are theories regarding the dematerializing and disappearance of earthly things:
1. The world is merely a dream dreamt by god who is waking after a long sleep. When he is properly awake the world will disappear completely. When the world disappears we will disappear with it and be happy.
2. Prolonged exposure to the sun has made the world sensitive to light.
3. If humanity doesn't need something it will disappear. People who are not loved will disappear.
I want to be more awake--"eyes wide open to the great train robbery of my soul."
I often am too busy and sleepy and happy and full yet occasionally slip and notice the press of Saturday night, surviving Sunday sadnesses.
It's going to be a good year for the roses.
Postscript: The bursts of colour sent by post were very well-received, you should know.
I found myself in your thoughts.