Writing Spaces

Telling lives by laying out the cards:  a writer's art as well.

The chariot, the tower, the hermit, the queen of swords . . .

For a full novelistic treatment there's Italo Calvino's tarot, in The Castle of Crossed Destinies.




image:  oldest Tarot

Temple

My heart, like the temple at Kyoshu,

is on a windy foot-worn highway,

far above the sea and open to all sides.

Yellow butterflies

play around the clapper of a rusted bell;

I am finally at peace.

Many strangers, who wander and search,

come by that way, looking elsewhere.

It is not their destination—

far from the crux of the road,

and slight shelter from the wind and sun.

But one can pause for a moment there,

contemplate the wind playing through the bell,

break off a crooked walking-stick—a branch

of early almond blossoms—

and go on the way again.  Perhaps

a little brighter-eyed, or forgetting to limp.

—Christie

(spring/summer 1979

Oakland/San Francisco)

Writing Spaces

“. . . the letter writer in the Bonnard continues quietly writing, sending them out onto the scarlet table like toy sailboats, wending their ways to the larger ocean; small but meaning-wrought messengers."  

—gierschickwork

image:  Pierre Bonnard, Young Woman Writing

State Beach

In the parking lot at Half Moon Bay,

sitting and nodding on the lowered tailgate

of their rust-touched station wagon,

three old Japanese men grill

peppers and pieces of white fish

on a charcoal brazier,

and pass around a brown bottle of beer,

smacking their lips.

Sitting cross-legged in the sand

in the shade of the open car door—

the oldest man of all, and nameless dog.

Around his bone-thin wrist,

the frail string of a yellow kite.

A shapeless hat rides down over his ears

and hides his brows, eyes bright-quick

darting about quizzically beneath it.

He takes a piece of fish between his fingers,

blows it cool and holds it

for the dog to take in its back teeth.

The kite grazes the sky, tugs at his wrist

like some persistent, half-forgotten thought

nagging, gently as his dead wife, at his mind.

—Christie

(spring/summer 1979

    San Francisco)

Writing Spaces

Marginalia:  what's happening off in the margins, whether in response to or quite apart from the words.

(Also a lovely poem by Billy Collins.)





image:  Alexander MS

School

Clay faces and windowsill geraniums,

declensions of latin nouns

     escaping the open door.

Lilacs swarming up the adobe walls

left this purple underline

     among the scrawlings of my mind.

Out deciphering the past, I find

     unmarked words and bridges

thrown out carelessly at every crossing,

with inscriptions

     in water birch and other foreign tongues—

they muddy the old pond

     beyond the smoking-shack.

And from paperback, from The Odyssey,

scribbles on the sun there

     flattened out, like beaten gold.

Box Elder bugs,

     tiny amulets of orange and black,

charm back the wistful memory

of lilics and latin grown wild—

     feeding on the clay, the Homer.

—Christie

(Spring 1977)

Writing Spaces

If only I were creative in practical ways, like putting old doors together into such a lovely, shady garden  writing room!



image:  Porch Sitting Union of America

Early Morning Scene

the print

of an old palm

baked in rye dough

the mark

of broomstraws

across wet dust

the oblong stamp

of dangling sausages

against the window

tranquility—

imprint me thus

—Christie

(fall 1976)