Category Archives: Chuck Willer

just short of discursive meaning

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In DC we went to an atheists rally, but I am not an atheist. It was the biggest atheist rally in history, or something like that. The periphery was lined with people wanting to save our souls, which is something I never understand. I went with Chuck and Maggie. Two atheists whose souls no one should ever worry about.

Afterwards, we went to the National Gallery of Art and looked at paintings by Cassatt, Monet, Manet, Degas, Matisse, Renoir, and Cézanne . In his essay “Impressions of Ernest Hemingway,” Paul Smith says that from Cézanne, Hemingway learned to write sentences that “end just short of verbal or discursive meaning.”  Hemingway himself says, “I was learning something from the paintings of Cézanne that made writing simple true sentences far from enough to make the stories have the dimensions that I was trying to put in them. I was learning very much from him but I was not articulate enough to explain it to anyone. Besides it was a secret.” From Cézanne Hemingway saw that what we leave out is as important as what we put in. I used to disparage Hemingway but that’s when I was an ideologue. That’s when I thought I knew so much. When I was like the people on the periphery holding signs warning us about hell.

sinner

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Indries Shah says we have forgotten how to listen to stories. Do you remember reading stories as a child?  I want to read like that again, like nothing else matters.

I grew up near a small woods in Greenville, South Carolina. I played there everyday, almost always alone. That was before everyone was afraid and stopped letting their little girls go off by themselves. When I started Catholic school in first grade and found out about sin, I was afraid that what I was doing in the woods was a violation of the First Commandment. I was afraid that I was putting the woods before God.  At any rate, when I was in the natural world it was like I was an animal, a fox or a bird, with just my body and my senses and a feeling of belonging. I can’t feel like that now. Now in the woods, I’m mostly in my head. Sometimes I think about murderers. I think my husband still feels that way, the childish way, when he goes into the forest. I love that about him.

just for saying: Plum

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The plums are ripe and summer is over. I am back at work. Chuck has made a studio for me, a room in the back yard near the garden, so I have a place to write. I would rather write about my life than live it. That is a terrible thing to admit.

Oh, today is Tuesday already. What happened to Sunday, poetry day on my blog? I am trying to be organized, to give you something you can count on. Here is one of my favorite lines in poetry. It is by Rilke.

 from Rilke’s Ellegy #9

Are we, perhaps, here just for saying: House,

Bridge, Fountain, Gate, Jug, Fruit tree, Window, -

possibly: Pillar, Tower?… but for saying, remember,

oh, for such saying as never the things themselves

hoped so intensely to be

another word for hell

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I was reading Night and helping plan a fundraiser for an elementary school in Gaza. I was reading Night and writing a novel that includes the Kabbalah, which is a form of mystical Judaism. The Kabbalah is also called The Tree of Life, and included in this Tree is its shadow, which is known at Qliphoth. Qlipoth is the place where all the half- formed things of creation go, the mistakes, the monsters. When you read Night, it’s easy to imagine that the landscape is Qlipoth, which is another word for Hell.
My husband’s paternal grandfather is German, but when a genealogist discovered that he was Jewish, his great aunt stopped the research. When I read Night I thought about the Palestinians and I thought the worst thing that can happen is for the victim to take on characteristics of the oppressor.

Alma not representative of all Swedes

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A cool summer, but my heirloom Glaciers have been ripe for weeks. They are a Swedish tomato. I like to imagine someone gathering their tiny seeds and bringing them all the way here to grow in my little garden on 13th Street and to feed my family, who are part Swedish, too. Using Chuck’s grandmother, Alma, as my representative Swede, I always assumed that they were relaxed, uncomplicated, easily- pleased people but after a summer of Bergman films, I’ve changed my mind.

the day I fell in love and lost all hope of earning a living wage

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I hardly knew Chuck when he came to the bar where I worked years ago and gave me a copy of Ivan Illich’s book, Deschooling Society. I read it and dropped out of college. Illich, in case you don’t know, argues that education isn’t really about learning but about maintaining class structure. More broadly, he argues against experts mediating and defining our experience.
Chuck says that if he had his way no employer would be able to discriminate based on educational background.

>diary 1980 vegetarian in Antigua

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In 1980 Chuck went to Antigua to help members of the Antigua Caribbean Liberation Movement set up a printing press, after the right wing government destroyed the one they were using. We were in Antigua for three months.

February  1980
Antigua
Saturday is market day and the day we go to JP Market, crowded with people from the countryside. In some of the towns men will set up a table to sell a newly slaughtered cow or pig by the side of the road. On the tables are piles of red flesh. chop chop chop goes the cleaver. The intestines are hung in a string from a nearby tree. Last Saturday the pig’s head sat on the table, its ears sticking out.