Untitled #9, Behind Two Closed Doors

“Hiroshi Sugimoto | Boden Sea, Uttwil | The Met.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, i.e. The Met Museum.

I wanted to write a poem about sweetness, the good kind of sweetness, not the superficial kind, so I sat down and began to write. Not being sure what sweetness would mean in a poem, I was pretty sure what it wasn't, meanness or the lack of kindness, pressured otherwise from above or below. But it's not just sweetness to consider because salty things can hold a kind of sweetness as well. "A kind, salty poem could be sweet?", I wondered, knowing, for the most part, I prefer salty. And it's not just pressure that leans into sweetness, out of duty, piety or spite (to spite the meanness). A not mean, salty poem, may not necessarily be kind and could be sweet. I wanted this poem to be direct, like staring at the blood orange disc of an eclipsed moon. Or if I wasn't able now, unsuccessful, then to leave a trace, to break inertia and form a moon.

In a distant room, through two closed doors, I could hear Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" being picked out finger by finger, on electronic keyboard by my six year old daughter (six and a half she'd say). It moved sweetly, without bass or counter-point, it flowed in the way that broke the silence like a warm ray of sun. Where there was silence now there was melody, a new one for her and for our home. The melody carried through as written to the last stanza where the last quarter note wasn't held as written. So the melody did not end with the final 'dun Dun' and instead ended with an even quarter repeated 'Dun Dun'. Then it repeated and again repeated, and again, until that soft sweet voice called, "Daddy? Daddy, come here. Look what I learned. Daddy?" I moved to her room, sat on the purple framed bed, nested in an oval cutout with windows draped by purple curtains, and listened, as instructed, to my little girl, clothed in her pajamas, home from school with a winter cold, and caped in the now aging bed quilt adorned with princesses she dismissed as too childish several years ago. "That's love", I thought. This is certainty.

Later that day I responded to a tweet between grading student papers, then scrolled, once published, scrolled down the endless feed. "IGNORE ALL WHITE MEN!" [Student from New York] read the tweet. I scrolled on. "Life has value when we give it, when we give it in love, in truth; when we give it to others, in everyday life, in the family. #SantaMarta" [Pope Francis]. I scrolled on. "I genuinely don't remember making you all this stupid." [Account called 'God']. I scrolled on. "Release him, you repressive ideologues. The Saudis are not our allies. Not when they behave like this." [Jordan B Peterson]. I scrolled on. "Running for President, that's what girls do." [Elizabeth Warren]. I scrolled on. "'I don't see color' is something white people say. Having no color (i.e. Being white) isn't the default identity. It's time for people to start getting how offensive this is." [Zerlina Maxwell]. I scrolled on. "Several animals literally attach themselves to their mates - some just briefly, and some for hours, even for life." [National Geographic]. I scrolled on. "I feel like I already know everything I need to know about white boys." [Chelsea G. Summers]. I scrolled on. "Ellen Page interview: 'Gay marriage is not a debate, one side is right, one side is wrong." [Oliver Willis]. I scrolled on. "Happy Birthday to #GrantWood, 'an artist fated to be perpetually rediscovered'." [Whitney Museum]. I scrolled on. "People can say they want to think more positively or make better choices, but the reality is nothing will change in the way we live our lives if we aren't walking in the spirit." [Daniel Fusco]. I scrolled on. "The Senate Intelligence Committee: THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION BETWEEN THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN AND RUSSIA!" [Donald J. Trump]. I scrolled on. "honestly all i want to do in life is watch dog agility and dogs watching dog agility." [nikki graziano]. I scrolled on. "He did it again !!!!! Woke us up !!! We're still here !!!! Thank God 4 Another Day !!! Have a Great One !!!!" [MC Hammer]. I scrolled on. "I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy she met on Tinder, asking him to not be a total sociopath." [Allison P Davis]. I scrolled on. "Would you trust a robot to deliver the mail?" [Mashable]. I scrolled on. "A woman who can smell guilt and shame meets a man with a similar ability...See a preview of #BorderMovie". [BFI].

There I stopped and placed the phone face down next to some scraps of bread with crusting cream cheese left over from the morning, and thought of every word I ever uttered in vain or rage, love or joy, laughter or desperation. I recognized a kind of halfway house, something I have in the past referred to as 'hopeful nihilism' and imagined it falling off like the shell from a lobster and wading in the currents on the shallow ocean floor, light as it is. Then I thought if there was something that could be done about this, to increase in sweetness and decrease in, in, whatever spoils this, diminishes love, it would have to start now. Now, before the quality of whatever shell would form next was set. Or yesterday even, in the code, somewhere there coded, given, chosen, spoken, written, learned. I could allow that perhaps, could work for it, I could choose to be encouraged, and let those who rage, rage, until they too finally heard and made the plan, and reached out a claw while it was soft, without its ugly armor, before the new one formed, to brave an embrace, to hold another's claw with grace, to choose it. Then to know it.

“Agnes Martin | Untitled # 9 | The Met.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, i.e. The Met Museum.