As she wends through the canal leading into the bay, her boat passes under a small, arched bridge. She is alone, strong and slight, a bit of complexity passing over the stillness of the water. Tonight her friend will prepare something for her to eat and wait with it on the bridge. But as the hour approaches, the scene, suffused in the classical tradition of painterly composition, remains as it is. Left to resemble cave sketchings or sand art, time does not move. Hair slicked, shoes polished, the story remains steadfast, indifferent to the observer, needs in tow. The vignette is later described as night fishing.
two
We are attracted to every aspect of life that represents a last illusion yet unshattered. There comes a time when each action emblematic of a principle is graphically depicted in icons crafted for public consumption, a visual etymology a lot like ancient Chinese. The scroll reads best if it is understood as the musings of an outsider: On Tuesdays and Saturdays an unholy mixture of wheat and corn in discordant fields. On most any day, in a wind of pigeons or in complexity theory, the measure of information in a message is our inability to shorten it—tongue, tail, or wing.
three
Unusually high gates: But everyone knows that a scholar or the relative
of a cardinal lives in the guesthouse. Songs and laughter, ducks in pairs,
newly arrived swallows over the morning sand. Now and again vineyards
at dusk, now and again at war. The rumor of a forsaken man drenched in
sunlight, rain dripping from his shoulders. The important instant comes
when he emerges in silhouette: A black figure risen from a ditch carved
from the bog acres before he was born.
four
“Gone Fishing” reads the placard rusting in a desert window, fully inured
to the heat. The more complete information is that everyone in the town
is completely gone. One computation is that if a man hates his job and
shows this in his gestures and speech and then the town’s only factory
is later torched, our man with the surly manners is the arson more than
70 percent of the time. If we apply Master Bayes’s mathematical theorem,
we are able to compute minute probabilities in light of the statistical
record and thereby avoid logical fallacies (or excuses). The Book of Changes
on the other hand cautions the Marrying Maiden to consider her choices
in the light of the eternity of the end.
five
Sometimes the scroll reads best as a bit of courtroom drama, a genre suited
to the public formality of speaking and listening: Everyone dressed for
their parts. The catch is, if you are unable to construct an acceptable
narrative, you lose. The facts alone—all the detail you remember about
the glass and the footprints regardless—the jury still holds perceptions
of their own dearer than their curiosity about yours. Case number 366
(time out of mind): You are the driver in the familiar bus accident coming
down to us across railroad lines: The town’s children scattered, usually
in the snow.
six
What is left of the family picture comes down whittled but saved, parched
by the fire but soaked by the rescuer’s hose. All of it cooling gradually
like a volcano. The rosary from childhood, the rosary in your hands. The
transistor radio muffled by your pillow while someone sings that his guitar
gently weeps. Snow falls in the photograph. More snow etched on the surface
in the pitch of survival and time. At the time of his death: The uncle
in the middle of a painting depicting a brown bear rounding the corner
of a cabin in the high desert woods. The cousin stopping his van to plant
sunflower seeds in the marsh as the viper struck. Death or Satan, snake
or fire, each day like any other day of summer. Morning sparrows and their
rapid titters, afternoon shirt sleeves rendered superfluous by the blazing
sun.
