Storm Surf at Cape Kiwanda, Pastel, by John Cummings
What Scares You the Most?
For my friend, Dave Mehler
Deep, silent water at dusk, like behind a large dam.
Driving off a tall bridge, especially into “deep, silent water at dusk…”
Asphyxiation of any kind. Knowing that it is, in one form or other, the last destination for most of us, the final stamp on our passport before handing it over at the border.
Feeling, knowing, there are black widow spiders crawling on my feet and legs under bedsheets and blankets and realizing I am awake and not merely reliving a childhood nightmare.
Perpetually reliving, at fifteen years old, the hour-long bus ride home from school. The smell of diesel and rotting cabbage coiling back in through the windows at the rural stops close to my house and the flat, desolate hours ahead once I step off the bus- a bowl of cereal, insipid rerun of Gilligan’s Island, a few hoops to shoot, homework to avoid -dull as Saturday chores – and nothing else to do, it seems, until the next dreary day.
Coming to terms with banality, mediocrity – specifically my own- and a time horizon, waning, in which to maneuver, make adjustments.
Losing my ability to remember, selectively.
Being condemned to remember, unselectively.
That somewhere “out there,” every ugly thought, word, and deed of mine – some suppressed and resisted, some forgotten, some not even known to me- continues to exist; the raw, immediate, intensity of their anger, lasciviousness, deceit, cruelty, cowardice or contempt, unmitigated by the passing of time or fading of memory. The naked, burning, shame of having to witness this, and being witnessed witnessing.
Self-indulgently playing with the pathos of experiencing things as futile or laughing at them as absurd until one day finding oneself stuck, a fly on a fly strip, really believing that “whirl is king and has driven out Zeus.”
Having to own, irredeemably, Waugh’s definition of acedia: “A willful refusal of joy.”
Enduring the death of a child, grandchild, or my wife.
Dying and hearing the words “Behold, I never knew you” or “Depart from me…” and seeing in the distance my deceased loved ones- family, friends- turn away.
Never being willing or able to “get” the joke.
______________
Keith Hansen
Review by Dave Mehler
Keith starts his poem with this line: Deep, silent water at dusk, like behind a large dam.
There is a local lake on the Oregon Coast which the indigenous peoples refused to cross by canoe because of the giant tentacled monster lurking in the depths, appropriately named Devil’s Lake. We get dusk (that inbetween time transitioning from day to night), and stillness which implies depth, and silent (meaning nothing is being directly or outwardly expressed–no words communicated)–Hell is said to be aphasic, without language. Dante disagreed, but I can see how Hell might be bereft of logos or the basis of rationality and language–chaotic to its core. Without mooring, which reminds me of an essay I read recently offering critical analysis of Moby Dick, Melville’s Vision of America, by John Fentress Gardner, which begins, Possibly the most important fact to remember about the story of Moby Dick is that it takes place on the water. Gardner goes on to point out that the ocean is archetypally and figuratively open, endless and depthless like the cosmos. This realization is driven home to the cabin boy, Pip, who falls out of a whale boat, is left alone long enough before being recovered that he is driven mad afterward due to being abandoned even momentarily in the open sea. He is never again the same. Keith gets at this in a private fear in the first line. To be unmoored in a dark and silent vastness, completely alone: the Outer Darkness, another type of Hell. I can’t be entirely unbiased in liking and admiring this piece because in almost every way, it is in conversation with a poem of mine which was a model ‘poem of fears,’ and also Craig’s piece doing similar things. We are sitting and looking across the room at each other, a cigar and a drink in hand nodding and smiling at each other–yes, this is what it’s like. Never being willing or able to get the joke. This poem is all Keith’s but I can easily identify with each proposition, each fear.