“Home” to Pakistan – Poem Reprint – Haiku Laziness and Out of Africa

One of the advantages of having had a blog for going on 8 years and switching platforms and even emphases from time to time, is that one can emulate the scribe that Jesus describes in Matthew 13:52 and bring out ‘new treasures as well as the old,’ only in this case that order is inverted as I bring out the old–you can be the judge of its treasure-worthiness. It is true that such sampling of an earlier version might dilute the current “brand” of the blog a bit, but The Dassler Effect is nothing if not a little mixed up

Today on a whim, I priced tickets to Pakistan, not because I am going any time soon, but just out curiosity. I have not been since 1993, and simply thinking of going produces a complex set of emotions. It will happen some time, and hopefully sooner rather than 20 years further on.

Below are a series of poems I wrote in 1994 which have appeared on the blog before and reflect on my last trip to Pakistan. I am very pleased with some of the imagery here, but some needs work and editing.

In truth, I am rather poetically lazy. That is one reason I love haiku so much Though, I love that form also for its own beautiful simplicity and power, and I know when I have written a truly worthy one and when I have merely gone through the paces. Free verse is rather harder for me, and sonnets harder still, but one day I will try to give those forms a go again.

Partially I have to do this because there are some things one simply cannot capture in a haiku. For example, this weekend I was unpacking my mother’s china, some of which she bought piece by piece from a bank in Illinois, moved in barrels on a ship to Pakistan where she was to marry my father, which was most recently in my father’s house in Illinois before he died, and now is in my brand new house. Surely that deserves a poem, with the interweaving of themes from another story of a woman ensconced in and in love with a land not her own– Baroness Blixen’s story in Out of Africa, which my mother was deeply drawn to even though their outlooks on the world were quite different. I tell you, it could be a great poem, but it will surely take some work…

In the meantime, it’s haiku and photos and reprints for you (oh, and the odd essay).

__________

lambert international

a thousand phrases out of context
sit in these padded chairs
dreaming of verbs
to be and do

a thousand islands float
detached from mainlands
forming these strange archipelagos
these strange bays and headlands

and soon i too will float
severed
trailing a muddy wake
streaming back
diffusing with the distance
into clear blue

soon i too
ripped from my context
will struggle just to be
bleeding my dependencies

nocturne in limbo, 30,000 feet

this strange stillness soothes
the unending muted roar of engines
envelopes and subdues me
like the roaring of a monsoon on a tin roof
remembered in warm sleep

this stillness seeps
through this inch thick oval of glass
from the moon filled space beyond
that holds separate two seas of black

and i hang in between
and ache for each

above
the stars for which no earthly metaphor will do
burn their coldness into me
and something
some longing for eternity
quivers and answers
deep unto deep

below
a cozier vastness beckons me
the desert blackness exhales middle-eastern heat
and in the galaxies of light
that island its entirety
lovers softly sleep
ensconced each in each

return

i stand and breathe
my last few gulps of air duty-free
shuffling up the aisle of this airlock
between atmospheres

soon i will be complete
torn into a duality
that appears unseamed in separate hemispheres
that tears each time they meet
at the touching of my sleeping eastern flesh with east

i walk from the door
and then I’m me
in ways that i have not been for years
as thick warm eastern air enfolds me
and fills my lungs
displacing stale indifference
and leaves me coughing
sputtering
amidst these warm embraces
invading my protesting western space
amidst these cluttered streets
breaking life into me
more honest and complete

it may take some time to breathe

arabian sea – Haiku / Poetry on the Death and Burial of Osama Bin Laden

in murky depths a
body lies a mouldering;
arabian sea

arabian sea,
all the perfumes of the land
cannot clean stained hands

arabian sea,
it cannot yet be that sea,
of forgetfulness
__________________________
Also, though I am not a Catholic and so do not know exactly what to make of this author’s mention of the beatification of John Paul II on the same day that Osama Bin Laden died, I do appreciate his articulation of the Christian teaching on justice and forgiveness, especially as he personally witnessed the horrors of 911 and ministered to its victims.

Photography as Inspiration – Mira Nair – The Namesake

If it weren’t for photography, I wouldn’t be a flimmaker. Every film I make is fueled by photographs. Sometimes it is a particular image of a photographer, sometimes it is what I have learned by seeing the world through his or her eyes. Either way, photographs have always helped me crystallize the visual style of the film I’m about to make. -Mira Nair

I have just finished watching the film The Namesake which always fills me with a complicated set of emotions and leaves me with a sadness and an ache, I am not entirely sure for what. And on another day watching Hoosiers will produce exactly the same combination of feelings, though with a completely different tenor. One day, I will write about all that in more depth, but not today, not aside from reprinting two poems below, which will have to suffice for now.

The quote at the top of this post, though is from a featurette which appears on The Namesake DVD which shows some photographs which supplied inspiration for some scenes in the movie. Though, in truth, I did not need a featurette to tell me of the value Ms. Nair places on visual images and her immense skill in creating them herself. It is as if scene after scene of the movie, both in India and America, snap into stills in my mind and catch my breath. As a photographer, this kissing of the moving image and the still photograph which informs Ms. Nair’s process makes me very happy.

In my opinion such virtuosity would all be of little account if it did not service a great story, with deep themes and symbols. And the movie does not disappoint, though not having read Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel I cannot comment on its effectiveness as an adaptation. With Ashima’s goodbye speech and peaceful final smile at the end of the movie, we understand that home truly can be a many splendored thing.

Watching Hoosiers in the Himalayas

I never thought I would ache for Illinois.
Especially here in this cherished place,
Amidst these swaying pines that whisper joy,
Of windswept hills and cold alpine spaces,
Amidst these pines that wreathed in monsoon mists
Transform the world medieval once again,
That silent stand like monks in sacred trysts.
Yet in this cherished place there comes this pain
For rich, dark, furrowed fields a world away
For harvest leaves that dying golden fall
On silent walks of silent towns that stay
More silent still when winter carpets all
And winter snowdrifts sweep, and families keep
To glowing houses. I watch this screen and weep.

-Image source

return

i stand and breathe
my last few gulps of air duty-free
shuffling up the aisle
of this airlock between atmospheres

soon i will be complete
torn into a duality
that appears unseamed in separate hemispheres
that tears each time they meet
at the touching of my sleeping eastern flesh with east

i walk through door
and I am me
in ways that i have not been for years
as thick warm eastern air enfolds me
and fills my lungs
displacing stale indifference
and leaves me coughing sputtering
amidst these warm embraces
invading my protesting western space
amidst these cluttered streets
breaking life into me
more honest and complete

it may take some time to breathe