The Book of Seventy

Approaching Seventy

3 ApproAching SevenTy 1. Sit and watch the memory disappear romance disappear the probability of new adventures disappear well isn’t it beautiful when the sun goes down don’t we all want to be where we can watch it redden sink to a spark disappear  Your friend goes to Sri Lanka and works for a human rights organization in the middle of a civil war where she too might be disappeared any time and another friend goes to retreats sits miserably waiting for ecstasy and ecstasy actually comes, so many others so many serial monogamists seeking love some open doorway some wild furious breath  4 Please, I thought, when I first saw the paintings de Kooning did when Alzheimer’s had taken him into its arms and he could do nothing but paint, purely paint, transparent, please let me make beauty like that, sometime, like an infant that can only cry and suckle, and shit, and sleep, boneless, unaware, happy, brush in hand no ego there he went  A field of cerise another of lime a big curve slashes across canvas then another and here it is the lucidity each of us secretly longs for as if everything belonging to the other world that we forget at birth is finally flooding back to the man like a cold hissing tide combers unrolling while he waits on the shore of the sandy canvas brush in hand it comes  5 So come on, gorgeous, get yourself over to the shore with the sleeping gulls —does the tide rise or doesn’t it and are you or are you not willing to rise from sleep, yes, in the dark, and patiently go outside and wait for it and do you know what is meant by patience do you know what is meant by going outside do you know what is meant by the tide  6 2. Now go dance with the skeletons feed them word meat be their slave that worm there is hungry that rubied iridescent beetle that fly making a path through some sour dirt you hairy impertinent bag of water what do you know about hunger  You hairy impertinent bag of water says the fly buzzing on my windowsill late in the fall about to die tumbling over in its agony leave me alone for God’s sake leave me my pitiful dignity The day is azure and breezy there outside yet I cannot look away from the anguished fly on the sooty windowsill  7 Buzz buzz: what if you feel like tepid dishwater, like a rusty Dodge, the fly says, you are still a member of the privileged species the killer species that uses its intelligence to be the world’s butcher and poisoner A toxic cloud floats by, alabaster and rose go watch the salt seas rise and the earth crack eager to return your insult  So here you are with your meaningless choices this way and that hesitating, fearful should you tell the truth to your daughters should you forgive your husband how boring shouldn’t you spend more time trying to heal the world if you would only recognize you are no more than this fly or that cloud  8 Everything would change, you would find yourself illuminated from within like a paper lantern carried by a whore in a Paris street fair or like a dragon kite you would fly in a high wind and be pulled back to earth by a string in a child’s hands, or you would be cactus blooming blood-orange in sand, or monsoon charging across a grateful subcontinent, or lava plunging over old cinders to the seething sea  9 3. Espresso bubbles, I shout Breakfast in a minute up the stairs he comes down robed, we have coffee, toast, cherry tomatoes, cheese, fish, juice, almond pastry, the Herald Tribune then the long busy day then evening in the tub after a smoke I remark economics doesn’t interest me the three things I care about are individual human lives, then art and beauty then politics and cultural history and mythology I’m thinking: apart from the personal stuff on the other side of the tub my rational man says truth then fun then honor, by honor he means both reputation and...