CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE
THIS MELTING HOUR
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Master of Arts in English
By
Anne L. Yale
May2010 The thesis of Anne L. Yale is approved:
Professor Dorothy M.Jr.1('
Pamela Bourbois, . Date
Leilani R. Hall, Ph.D., Chair
California State University, Northridge
11 Preface
The love vision, one of the most popular literary genres of the Medieval period, narrates a tale in verse that inculcates the complex, but highly fixed value system of "courtly" love. By Chaucer's time, the generic conventions of the form had become strict and unyielding, as well. In the traditional fmmulaic ritual of the love vision, the narrator, awake and lucid, describes a paradisiacal setting, such as an orchard, the Garden of Love, or a park, often just coming into bloom in the early Spring. The speaker/narrator nods off in this pleasant setting, but does not remember falling asleep. Aware of the dreamscape, the speaker narrates the "dream vision" as it happens, so that the audience proceeds through the dream along with the speaker. The speaker/narrator wakes up, aware of his presence in the garden again, and in recalling the dream vision, realizes that the entire story was all in the mind. The paradisiacal setting that opens and closes the dream sequence(s) frame the dream vision narrative. The narrative of the dream conveys a "vision quest" in which the speaker plumbs the mysterious depths of the nature and meaning of love. In seeking Truth, this exploration frees the speaker/dreamer from the limitations of the corporeal body, also freeing the narrator from the conventional restrictions of daily life. In the dreamscape, the impossible becomes possible; surrealistic elements, including the rich use of symbolism that is often ambiguous, may be introduced; and the logic of the rational, or conscious mind becomes subverted by the logic of the "irrational," or sub-conscious mind. In this highly symbolized landscape, buried truths emerge from the normally idle sub-conscious, (with the aid of a dream-world guide) in the form of imagery, unrestricted by the interference of dogged interpretation by waking consciousness. The dream narrative functions as a medium through which prophetic insights, inspirational sources of comfort, and divine or extraordinary metaphysical experiences can be addressed beyond the oversight of the reigning social, political, or religious milieu - forces that thwart the open disclosure and discussion of controversial topics directly. Borrowing the genre's basic framework from his continental predecessors, Chaucer's innovations (besides writing in the vernacular of "modem" English) include using the love vision as a device for questioning the status quo of his time, subverting the conventional social order, and providing his audience with a wittily satirical poke at both the dying ritualistic forms of the genre, and the accepted feudal social order. Chaucer's use of the figure of the dream guide progresses over the span of the four love visions he wrote. Initially a guide to revelation, Chaucer utilizes the guide's characterization to deliver his own creative vision, revealing an allegorical debate on the true nature of love, one that is exacted through an inner (or psychological) struggle: the anima/animus within the poet's own sub-conscious. The poet's elusive guide is actually located in the argument on Love's nature, itself: a struggle that is present within us all. Thus, taking up where Chaucer's unfinished work left off, This Melting Hour enters the conversation and presents a love vision that capitalizes on the genre's formal conventions, while it simultaneously subverts ritualistic expression, to deliver a metaphysical vision, or revelation on the True nature of Love.
111 Dedication
with all my love, for Paul, whose tender and nurturing hand harvests-
IV Acknowledgments
The stars that constellate my cosmos are far too innumerable to name individually in such limited space. That being said, I am deeply indebted to those who have directly inspired and/or aided me in preparing this manuscript, and for reading my drafts and providing thoughtful commentary and productive suggestions:
Pamela Bourgeois for providing the initial impetus for its design: her encouragement engenders fruition.
Dorothy Barresi for attention to detail: her timbre interpenetrates form, fusing the conceptual to material expression.
Leilani Hall for singing lessons: her patient instruction elicits gales from the flutter of hummingbird wings.
I am grateful to the members of my "tribe" for contributing insightful responses to this venture: Deborah Averill-Blakely, Lesley Blake, Liz Caffey, Nancy Carroll, Clint Campbell, Marnie Eldridge, Mike Edwards, Tiff Holm, Rachael Jordan, Leon Khachooni, Rick Kilpatrick, Kara Lawton, Billie Jo Mason, Ramsey Mathews, Loretta McCormick, Melissa Morehouse, Ashlyn Morse, Sophia Petkovic, Laura Salwet, Carly Tibbetts, and Omer Zalmanowitz - their welcoming espouses a convivial community that dances, in love, with the word.
I am thankful for the blending of families that composes my "clan," and extends to all steadfast friends: classmates, musicians, colleagues, poets, mentors, students, writers, teachers, and readers. To you, I send a "shout out," in homage to an endless conversation which provides sanity and sustenance, D. C. al Fine I
I tender thanksgiving to Evelyn Jones, for her courageous heart and generosity of spirit, which generates a well-spring from the Source of all healing.
I owe Tony Columbo at the City of Palmdale Maintenance Department my sincere gratitude for his cheerful assistance with plant identification.
I am obliged to Kristy Anderson for her exquisite scholarship on Zora Neale Hurston.
Finally, I extend my deepest gratitude to Ted Jones for its commencement, and for graciously extending his permission to utilize his unpublished poem, You and I, and present it in conversation with my own work, in recognition of the nature of relationship - the inquiry that carries all things to completion. His match-flare lights streetlamps all along the way.
v Table of Contents
Signature page 11
Preface 111 Dedication IV Acknowledgments v
Table of Contents Vl Abstract vm Introduction: This Melting Hour 1 The Prologue - in paradisum 2 First Episode - Looking Out 4 Desires Armored Sheen 4 Rebbekah 5 Cold Snap 6 Broken Open 7 Empty House 11 Before the Fall 13 Non-native Species 14 Profession of Faith 15 Parked Outside Arlington Metro Station 17 Highway 1 18 Three Churches in Paris 19
Second Episode - The Turn 20 Shepherding God's Gift 20 Steerage 21 The Web 22 Scintilla 23 Swell 25 Moonflower (Datura wrightii) 26 Office of Lauds 27 Rapture 28
Third Episode - Looking In 29 The Prequel - Prayer at Dawning 29 Jonesin' 31 Showy Evening Primrose ( Oenothera speciosa) 32 Sheer Illusion 33 Incubus Tango 34 Parking Structure 35 Liturgy of Small Feathers 36 The Gift 39
Vl Tangled 40 First Communion 42 Praxis 44 Credo of Three Days 49 Astronomical Phenomena- 6:39 Antemeridian 54
Fourth Episode -The Unified Field 55 Apotheosis 55 Mimesis 57 Eye of the Beholder 58 Apocalypse 59
The Sequel - Office of Readings 60 The Epilogue - L'ahlam almin. Ameyn. 61 Notes 62
Vll ABSTRACT
THIS MELTING HOUR
A CREATIVE WRITING THESIS
By
Anne L. Yale
Master of Arts in English
We all wander the space-time continuum, plumbing the nature of being and the relationship between the two worlds we experience: one inner (the life of the mind) and one outer (the life observed through our senses). Mankind's ongoing, unmet metaphysical thirst simultaneously gives rise to art, religion, and science. While science does little to address metaphysical thirst, and religion does little to assuage it, art not only represents it, but often endeavors to respond, providing a means of slaking this thirst.
Poetry, as indeed all art, is fashioned by the artist's conscious dressmaking from the fabric of the unconscious. A poem is the product of the interior life of the mind, brought to consciousness and expressed through the medium of language, in order to connect to a reader, a way of sharing thoughts. Working within the conceptual framework of Western philosophy and Derrida's metaphysics, this dialogue considers and utilizes several binary pairs:
inside outside being not-being conscious unconsc10us
Graphically organized this way, with the privileged term on the left, and the subordinate term on the right, reading down each column establishes a correspondence of inside/being/conscious and outside/not-being/unconscious. Bearing the vertical correspondence in mind, I propose the following metaphysical conceit: What if the external world observed by the senses, the outside/not-being/unconscious, is, in fact, as the correspondence suggests, an illusion, a dream? It would logically follow, then, that the internal world (the life of the mind) represented by the inside/being/conscious is, as the vertical alignment suggests, actually what comprises "reality."
Vlll This Melting Hour
There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you. - Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road
1 The Prologue- in paradisum
One resides: in the eye, profound stillness looks on vast reaches of immeasurable light extending in every direction - in unity of vision, the glory of morning stars sounds together, a song of infinite praise, a breath taking flight -
the prism of the eye refracts rays, spelling in all directions
distracting mind's attentive focus for a second
composing a note, the Beloved daydreams aloud,
What would it sound like, ifl wrote alone coming back to oneself concludes, "That's absurd!"
(but the insignificant idea had been spoken. Once uttered, it seemed to take on life)
the infinitesimal division
in time, a possibility oftwo-ness
the Beloved excises the thought, discards it entirely in revision, sends words slumping toward ground-
paraphrasing the once-upon-a-time, those words scamper offlike petulant
2 children, slamming a door on their way out to play, shaking the Heavens. They imagine role-playing games, rouse backyard revolutions, celebrate rowdy victories with sword-play and water, outline word piles in dirt, dig tree fortresses underground, styling a territory their own. unruffled, Day does not move, sheer breeze dapples leaves just enough to slant light -
then, growing tired ofpretending alone, they wander toward the sound oftheir Mother. Sitting down to rest, just for awhile, they drift off, dreaming all sorts ofschemes, lingering in the garden
the Beloved, careful to make no other sound, guards loved ones in slumber, the dreaming:
3 First Episode - Looking Out
0, the murderous deletions, the keening down to nothing, the cleaving. - Li-Young Lee, "The Cleaving"
Desire's Armored Sheen
I pull into the parking structure, blasting Palestrina's Missa Pro Defunctis, bass turned all the way up, windows down. Even in late October, humidity hovers in single-digits, temperatures above 90 degrees. The forecast calls for "abundant sunshine," and life has never been better - except for the day you rescued me, pushed me back up over the wall:
(having jumped the railing on a dare without considering the ten-foot drop or my weak wrists) I'd planned to pull myself back up, prove myself fearless. Instead, I dangle, flanks burning, while she (who issued the dare) runs to fetch you - an impressive introduction. Without question you save me before I know your name.
Bowing, you kiss my hand. Dashing back to what you'd been called away from, you leave me intrigued.
Dazed and still dizzy, I lunge, headlong, into the maelstrom, gripping its precipitous fury, never knowing when it will start or stop again, never wanting to let go.
4 Rebbekah
Words give thoug~t a body, language: the kingdom, clothes. -Hokmah
Whirlwinds utter unrhymed riddles, ridiculous verses, murmured at subliminal altitudes. She speaks for the other: the banished kinsman, the detestable tax collector, the zealous prosecutor, the public silller, the goat-skillled. Railing against battlements, she kicks the chalice, spills its contents, soaks the path.
5 Cold Snap
First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go - - Emily Dickinson, #341: After great pain
Ruined blue highways surface beneath onion-paper skin: at four degrees Fahrenheit, I arrive at the seventh circle of Hell. Exhalation freezes, each word that I speak, gnawing crystals - a hoarfrost that rouges my cheeks, hobbles my elbows, my knees.
Scuttling between the car parked three blocks away and the VA Hospital to visit my son in the psych ward (was it loving him too much to miss the box cutter left open on top ofthe television, or not enough? enough or too much that sent him to Afghanistan) downtown Baltimore, third Saturday in January: brittle bark overgrows my skin, whittles me to a gnarled shrub rooted to the sidewalk.
6 Broken Open
The world stands out on either side no wider than the heart is wide. - Edna St. Vincent Millay, Renascence
Clutter clings to him: this tumbleweed son cloisters himself in a new apartment amidst imperative collections of sketchbooks, newspapers, instruments, magazines, pastels, vinyl record albums, sheet music, discarded typewriters cum "art projects." He watches the man in the trees watching him make the bed every day, although it hasn't been slept in. He begs beer and cigarettes from unemployed men loitering (gainfully) on the comer, all the money sent home from deployment already spent, "Blood money," he terms it. "I have to get rid of it, Mom. This is what they give you for killing people. How much will they give me if I go down to the comer and slit the throats of those stupid kids? Maybe I'll just slit my own. You know, my Corcoran roommate called his mom a lot right before he fucking
7 hung himself... " he says, third day in a row he's called.
* * At ten, he gets a new bike for Christmas and teaches himself to juggle. By February, Mahmud drops the ball - Can't you do anything right? - six killed, a thousand injured but the towers refuse to fall.
* * In Afghanistan: field artillery. He teaches himself a few Pashtu phrases so he can converse with the villagers, who teach him how to make a proper cup of tea. He watches a cow slaughtered: hears its guttural death cry, butcher's precise dissection sawing into the distressed animal's neck (two attempts before final decapitation) its lifeblood coursing toward the ground. He partakes of the meal out of courtesy, collects native textiles resembling India ink etchings, sends packages home. On the worst day, it rains fire as he crouches in a bunker, and "basically, Mom, I bungee jump into a well deep inside myself and yell, am I going to die today?"
* * Moored in Aden that charged October morning, were the seventeen sailors killed, or the thirty-nine injured
8 among those who smiled, waving back to friendly men on the garbage scow just before the blast?
* * Senior year: he wins the one-hundred dollar Grand Prize for Portrait ofJohn - larger-than-life, forfeits desert for Art School back East, calls home to ask for chicken recipes, pins "A" papers on his tiny fridge, learns to walk like city-dwellers: fast and on the right, stopping traffic to give money to the homeless. On our nation's worst day, "I just called to tell you I'm not blown up, Mom!"
* * That crystalline morning shines when worlds collide, East greets West: plane and tower in kiss, consume.
* * Nine-one-one, what's your emergency?
* * "No one is fit for combat, Mom. No one."
* * At Peny Point: hatching from rnbble, he flocks to his brethren, another wounded bird, plays acoustic guitar for Vietnam veterans - musical therapy: grappling harmonies under his hands, strings a collection of disparate people into singing along, jokes about government planning - the artillery range right across the river from the clinic for PTSD.
9 His mind suffers this violence as he battles now to see again - both eyes (inner and outer) taken by force, irreparably blown open.
10 Tattered-windmv shades rattle - brittle bones against wind's whirring edges, seeping through skeletal remains ofthe house ·s spirit!ess.fi·ame. Through the open door, jilted.floorboards expose cellar rqfiers in disarray. jutting out at odd angles, foundation shaken.
Empty House
Nothing happens unless first a dream. - Carl Sandberg
I walk westward along Michigan A venue: my village- siren-traffic-gingko leaf clamor still clogs its intersection with Franklin. From the comer, I spot the row house in the middle of the block, unlock the double-dutch girlhood memory:
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack All dressed in black, black, black, With silver buttons, buttons, buttons All down her back, back, back -
Out the back - always picked last to jump into the ropes, I stood in the alley, turning, the bend in somebody's green, plastic-coated clothesline wrapped around my waist.
Virginia creeper shades the back brick wall, its tendrils climbing toward the bedroom window I used to slide from at fifteen. Onto the tin roof of the back porch, I'd spread out my daydreams and sunbathe, pretending the Chinese sumac is really palm.
I will leave this house, this neighborhood, this sheltering city behind me, and continue westward, walk the entire continent. Hunting marriage and stardom, I will not recognize
11 (even after my children grow into their own transient pursuits) that this quest constitutes only loss for my father.
Halfway through his seventy-fifth year, my sister calls, her urgency measured - come now. School-year, rehearsal schedule, holiday celebration with in-laws? No, come now.
My father's grown delicate while I've been away. Skin on bone, limbs trembling, vigor spilled - a libation over spare ground. Fragility unmasks his peregrine nose, remnants of Pothier genealogy. I kiss him, relieved that I got there in time, grateful for farewell's possibility.
Two years after death cancels my father's yearning, I grasp the end of every visit: hugging me good-bye, he would tum back, tears welling because he missed me already, finding that it's not distance that separates us, but absence.
12 Before the Fall
Impressions ofEast Berlin, August, 1979
The radio tower looms stark above a lean landscape. The singularity of gray reigns in the atmosphere unsmiling, hard says the eyes of its people.
The scars of World War II repose untouched, pock-marked buildings - mute monuments to the "evil West." Their pitted witness testifies to a simple commerce exchanged - communist pillaging raids the tomb: tourist maps exclude churches, chronology begins 'Jahr zero.'
Yet here, its specter raised: the Ishtar Gate in sanctified lapis and gold, King Nebuchadnezzar II's ancient wonder - forty-seven feet tall and a hundred feet wide, its blue tiles boast dragons and aurochs, one hundred-twenty lions anointed in regal-gold line the Processional Way.
Reposited to the Pergamon Museum brick by brick, the walls of Babylon, expected to weep in captivit-y, send up its plaintive wail. These very stones cry out, mounting with new mortar and sand, sing defiance: We have risen! forHGH
13 Non-native Species
I've heard this story repeated often- the bride of a homesteader, or fighter pilot, alfalfa farmer, or real estate developer (all prospectors of a different crop) who sobbed at first sight: beige grasses lean, parched and weighted with unseen heat; elm, chestnut, and willows weep, all bowed in the same direction.
Fine brown silt collects in all the windowsills
(the wives weep frustration trying to keep ahead of the dust) the raven's constant cah, cah, caveat: attempts to crowd out desert, either madness or folly.
Even the iconic tumbleweeds themselves rolled in from the Russian tundra on another famed migration.
What bares the seeds of our great suburban discontent? the relentless wind? or the shallow-rootedness which brought us to this place?
We come, searching entrance to the well.
14 Profession of Faith
I believe her footfall fractures light, her facets so vast, her beauty prisms.
And two-hour bus rides cross-town on Saturday mornings inspire camaraderie; barbecue sandwiches, Red Zingers, root beer bought at the transfer point: our communion of saints. She shares my elation when I blurt my crush, my pain when he grows cold, my grief when life seems hopeless.
She soothes me in the calm of her house when mutiny threatens mine, sharing cigarettes, smoke fingers the open sash, the trees beyond. She speaks her torments, rather than pestering her skin, irritations hidden with long sleeves and thick black tights, and questions the efficacy of an aching universe, the people she loves most allowed to die, God's extinction. She plaits my straight brown hair in cornrows, hears my confessions.
She lurks in my shadows, follows me to university, drinks coffee with my classmates in the quad, so sore with longing she auditions for chapel choir, sings my melodies, covets my soliloquies, liberates the dying light from the eyes of my lover, embezzling his heart.
I wear her favorite clothes, bear their sting, but cannot tolerate seeing her with him. She watches me pray in church after altar call, on my knees, face buried in the pew, and whispers,
15 You 're praying for the wrong thing!
I believe she is the only one I can rely on for consolation - And the world cannot possibly contain the enormity of this numbness. forCKTB
16 Parked Outside Arlington Metro Station
Week after week, I sit with him on coffee breaks, drinking the espresso color of his hair, inviting the green glass Mardi Gras beads of his eyes.
Clutching each other in the backseat after a twelve hour shift, I abandon what clings in the day's rational hours for one arid sigh of submission.
I crave the heft oflove's hard evidence -his offertory, quenching animal craving, does nothing to cure the mind's deeper desire.
I have tread this path before, leaving dust in my wake and effacing what went on here in this melting hour, the knowing always the same - vision pales when held against the warmth of our breathing - those coffee conversations still reaping intangible blooms.
17 Highway 1
Marooned car on the right shoulder, I dodge acrid smells and metal squeals, burning breaks? tire shards roll by car on the right shoulder reflective white lettering on green signs the way overhead, I search passing markers, watch for direction - have I traveled this route before? where lights flash red and blue car on the right highway patrol crmser pulls over
semis box me in occlude access snared: the sinistral lane
18 Three Churches in Paris
Jfound God in myselfand I loved her fiercely. - Ntozake Shange
I. Sainte Chappelle
Filtered through air thick with antique dust, sunlight fills the vacated chamber of blanched stone. The vaulted hall idles spiritless, a holy relic of the faith it once housed, its vestige pale with resignation, a hollow kind of grief.
II. Notre Dame
Journey-weary pilgrims enter ushered daily by the thousands through weighty oaken doors, the cavernous dark of the nave blinding. Unaware, they cross groves sacred to ancient pagans. A chorus rehearses for Sunday Mass, their swelling anthem arrests eyesight, gradually restored - admits light spilling on clustered pillars. Startled by the Rose Window, revelation strikes the distinctive nature of sanctuary: the temple of inner being.
III. Sacre Coeur
An alabaster sepulcher roosts atop the chief hill in Paris, an unconscious topography. Pick-pockets and street musicians work the congregation bloated with tourists waiting to make their propitiatory offerings. There's no need to go inside. forHGH
19 Second Episode - The Tum
Be slow to judge. After all, who is to say what form your good luck will take? Something terribly inconvenient will turn out to be fortuitous. - Holiday Mathis, Horoscope - Cancer
Shepherding God's Gift
I spin, and in spinning weave an intricate scrim from your fanciful semantics and my mystical dreams - a fabric that shines long into morning, but speaks Night:
I sleep at your house the whole week, so I won't have to stay alone while my parents vacation at the beach. The last evening, you announce your engagement to her, incising the wound-
(I never let it heal) we talk for hours, suffering for art, theology, music - spinning elegies, sing a dirge to what's passed between us: we think in the same key. You read me more deeply than I even allow myself.
From uncrossed shores, we listen, in waves, to each others' secret hearts, voices smooth like skipping stones hop-scotching across water:
It could have been you.
Barring release, I seal the words, unsettling them for no one, save him.
20 Steerage rafting adrift a darkening sea storm-whim bandies toothpick life boat unfurled without sail, lacking anchor swell-battered debris-splintering foam churns unnavigable channel shafts through cloud-break rays negotiate an oar
21 The Web
Measuring distance between us, dozens oftiny spiders slender threads rappelling from attic spaces - slim memories, like when I was fifteen - was it October? November? We drank hot chocolate at the Coliseum, filmed novices on ice. My father drove us, bundled in the van. Delivered last, you held my hand all the way across town, between streetlights, passing darkness interrupted - that thread of light,
the dreamscape where first I learned to measure by heart.
22 Scintilla
I schlep the grease-blotted box marked for eight-ounce cans of tomato sauce, down from the shelf, spilling its heft of letters, photographs, concert programs, my children's art, their special baptismal candles. Battered after a half-dozen moves, it now binds a lifetime's anthology, pared down to central issues neatly sorted, unresolved.
I retrieve his letters. The oldest envelope sallowed with age, its content tattered from rumpled years' unfolding, the painstakingly typed pages, on bond, spotted, like me- first found in cavernous darkness, nailed to my locker the day he called me out: You wish to ignore me? erect a wall around you that encompasses nothing save you and your art, or should I say you and your everything but me?
I had been singing solo from safety, roosting atop stone bluffs, listening to the demand of the peerless wind, soar higher!
The fall from grace takes only that instant: yellow balloon hurtling, blue sky crushes - I grant his scathing allegation even now: my omission of love, an unwillingness to cede even a tiny bit of self. Ego, a killer.
23 I rehash my error: grieving love unspoken, what I thought I had squandered consumes years counting losses, while I was reluctant to claim what I had forgotten I already own - the return, an instant more: all I lost was an opportunity to accept a gift, the voice for love burning the inner lyric: flirt sun without scorching - Jam identical essence as flame.
24 Swell
In the subterranean dark, the barb pierces layers of night, pinching right through the middle of my spine. I know I must get past that sting-ray, grey and brown - all eyes and teeth, to reach Light beyond the open doorway I didn't know would come so soon, dissolving sunset with such flash.
25 Moonflower (Datura wrightil)
Spring-loaded desert plants flash brown recluse, red-tailed hawk. Couched in green, she waits along the roadside, nodding her sweet fragrant head to passersby.
Moon hears her confessions (as Sun cannot keep confidences). She covets lilies' shimmering threads. Swallow her - visions flee all borders to escape us.
Night holds her in secret like a mistress, knowing, should she break free, she will strike us blind.
26 Office of Lauds and making no apology for who I am, I wake, discover myself stripped, disrobed of the Hours
27 Rapture
The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They 're in each other all along. Jalal ad-Din Rumi
Marrow aches for the anchor of your touch. Reclining, I rest, head to breastbone, barriers gone.
Drenched by a needling stream, your silent advent transforms me: mere ounce of dust to blush -
joy, shared breath, spun scrim dissolves.
Communion transports us: in this holy instant, home. for WTJ
28 Third Episode - Looking In
There is someone who is always happy to see you. Your bond goes beyond what you can both comprehend in this lifetime. - Holiday Mathis, Horoscope: Pisces
The Prequel - Prayer at Dawning
Ifyou bring forth that which is within you, then that which is within you will be your salvation. Ifyou do not bring forth that which is within you, then that which is within you will destroy you. Gnostic Gospels
You write- and I envision: SOULS one mind, Cast on Winds undivided, Reaching through Crosscurrents a pre-linguistic conceit TOUCHING!! before the worlds were - Apart, Never Parted always inseparable. nearing Reaching REACHING Passing passing All long night Separated by Barriers in the comer, Seen and Unseen sits the string Cast Togetherapart unplucked- Touchingnotouchingtouching listening SOULS, Souls in the nexus, Touching our duet Souls, souls resonates beyond us, souls extending
a shared voice, the triad
29 (beMeen lines) strumming (harmonic overtones) a chord recalls the One.
30 Jonesin'
I look for you in secret places, where hidden eyes on discreet faces do not see-
in surrender, we yield
a last breathing from soul to soul: the prayer of thanksgiving opening your hands at long last to release me, givmg me a way to those greater hands you trust will keep all things from falling.
31 Showy Evening Primrose (Oenothera speciosa) creeps up rocky inclines along freeway entrances, invading alien soil. Like us. Another disturbance-loving species, homeless immigrants in exile. Our addictions banish us, too restless to be still, too restless to go home.
32 Sheer Illusion
It chases me night after night down anonymous alleys in the seedier parts of unnamed burghs
along dingy streets, through crime-ridden shanty towns
creepy corridors unlit halls railroad lean-tos
into deserted areas night after night, lurking behind
amorphous gloom closing in, exacting the complicated universal ritual of avoidance.
One night, it chases me right into my living room.
I tum to face it, reaching out to clasp its hand
thin air
to Lesley
33 lvfy soul, an ashen Shade. planed away from Se(l- in the shadow position. a .nveetheart promenade:
Incubus Tango
my hips hold the memory of you in a cling and sway that scandalizes the neighbors, a slow drag, a glittering snake embodied with beads in glue sidling the length of the long sleeved brown scoop-neck tee you gave me for my sixteenth birthday. Playing bid whist and Motown at basement house-parties, we bopped, bumped, and hustled, memorized each other's grooves escaping body's shackles: golden light body incorruptible lays beside me shins touching go this weekend? one hand on my shoulder to Coronado the other rests on my heart nightly - flies to meet the Lover that imprint of love liberates my fugitive self, rising uncoils its bonds foreheads together, we embrace hand to heart, intertwined in slink and strut, the unitary glissade sinuating across a star-filled night.
34 Parking Structure
4 am - the very darkest part of the night
four stories up no space to claim
Startled awake, I drop the map: pulled back into body - sucked into time, unsure if I number among the quick, or the dead.
35 Liturgy of Small Feathers
He said that after a certain period's space Each star would be restored to that same place Where it began, and all works ofmankind On earth be lost to the eternal mind - Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Parliament of Birds"
A single silver filament, a silk cord: a lifeline
spins a web out from its center
connecting us, in the nebula to one another, threads each back to the whole - perfect circle, created before the worlds were sound. Affixed, feather offerings adorn its frame: red rooster - puffed up and crowing a vociferous alarm, he proclaims mastery of his territory, feathers fly incriminations, attacking any other rooster who challenges his domain mockingbird - moved by every puff of wind, she duly notes every single slight, indiscriminately repeating everything she hears, a crestfallen mimic trapped in every passing change, her disconsolate cry taunting, victimhood, victimhood, victimhood
36 Sheep-snares expunge me: the narrative I've created gives meaning to the world I see - I've peopled it with angels, and daemons, given
away my power, I forget the silver strand that secures those feathers
canary- domesticated busybody, her gregarious detailing of every incident resuscitates its chattering hold. She wastes her birthright vacillating between unpolished spirits, afraid to make a decision that's bound to displease someone, either way.
I forget what I've heard, all that noisy, bothersome prattling, as I recall the turquoise gemstone ornamenting the web: with discernment, I see that even unripe spirits serve as teachers - as I learn to release the crowd pigeons - aggrieved, they think the world such an irritation. Crowding our skies, they complain every slight. They denounce our indictments (choiring conspiracies) plot our demise
I can revision the world that I made if I forgive my errors, sacrifice attack, choose to look through to the whole in the center, I hear Heaven smile
In precious hours, twilight sleep a little after dawn, I listen each day to the tender coo-00-oo-oo of the mourning dove calling out for its mate -
37 a tranquil greeting quells all the clamor a good dream slips down through its plume:
I can choose to see peace passing through the eye of God.
38 The Gift
When you meet someone you love, do you kiss their clothes? - Jalal ad-Din Rumi
Last night, I dreamt
elephant surfing a tidal wave, fast upright burly
Cradling it within ink-stained palms, I tender its gift to your hands, creased with care and worry.
What I gave you: a tiny box, meticulously wrapped in chic paper patterned with multi-colored patchwork, embellished with celebratory white stars and swirls.
What you give me: shearing the wrapping, you gingerly lift the lid, and gape the empty within - sprmgmg the mammoth trumpeting packed inside. for Paul
39 Tangled
Snarly brownies! mother decries, sweet-talking a comb through filigreed strands, they tiptoe in while you sleep, tatting your hair to make lace.
Her hand sure, she tenderly undoes their piecework, methodically taming each snarl, re-plaiting smoothed tufts into orderly braids.
Finishing my hair with a tie of gross-grain, she turns her attention to my three younger sisters - a ritual learned by heart, repeated daily over dozens of years.
* * We're late for school. Ouch! yelps my daughter as I yank my comb through her hopeless tangles. My mind frets over the day ahead, anticipating a throng of improbable scenarios, rehearses 'B' plans.
Focusing again, her fine gold roiled into knotted mats, Snarly brownies! I hear myself say, surprised by the voice of my mother - unexpectedly, I understand her capacity for waiting, an inclination that soothes the wilds of insecurity, impatience, hair.
40 Interweaving my mother's hand, those brownies can't help it - a finger comb, your hair is so beautiful, they sneak into your bed at night, unsnarling tangles sizing up your hair - a storied raveling. for Portia, in magenta & spades
41 First Communion
This is my body, which will be given up for you. Do this in memory of me. - Institution Narrative, Eucharistic Rite
Jump-rope snapping blacktop, we chant our communal hymn in St. Martin's schoolyard. The home-harkening smell of Wonder Bread baking drifts up the hill from Georgia A venue on thin winter light.
On Wednesdays, we parade in pairs two blocks down T Street to church. Red-faced Monsignor rages up and down aisles shrieking, Girls! Cover your heads!
While Jackie Kennedy suits herself in waist-length veils of sheer black silk, our piety only weighs enough to wad tissues into paper footballs, affixed with bobby pins - a sufficient display.
Black and white photographs chronicle this same procession of 7-year-olds one Sunday in late May: twenty-one girls in virginal white dresses, gloves and veils, and twelve boys in white shirts, dark pants and ties, all hands clasped in front, heads bowed, enter the sacrament of consecrated bread and wine.
42 When bitter incense and holy water instruct us - by rote we sing faith by the numbers. Priests intone magic words, transforming wafers into the presence of Christ - served up in vessels of gilt.
I wander deserts forty years before the altar shifts from stone table to third eye -
Spirit is Life, come, follow Me: give up suffering, relinquish body lifeless vestment.
The feast - not found in breaking flesh or bread, but the prayer of thanksgiving: the doorway through which I enter Eucharistic mystery.
43 Praxis
Nothing prepared me for Thomas Morales, sweet teddy-bear
who sports number eleven on game days
who toils toward a 2.0 although he cannot read
whose summer job between junior and senior year involves marketing and distribution of illegal narcotics
who bleeds out from a gunshot wound in an alley in Inglewood at 17 whose mother was his supplier
and whose coach grieves football almost saved him. * In Chicano Studies I read Raising Silent Voices, took turns bringing Latin American foods, discussed Hunger ofMemory, the need to blast open The Canon to appreciate literatures from cultural perspectives other than my own.
Nothing in this discussion saves my Thomas from the bullet that rips through
44 his stomach, wasting his life on pavement. ** All practices scheduled for after school today have been cancelled due to rain. I repeat, all after-school practices cancelled today because ofrain. That's all practices ... drones the Intercom Voice. *** No one warned me hording 45 freshman into a room invites violations ofFire Code- just a juvenile prank claims the mother of the black boy who attempts (somewhat successful, after all - give my boy his due) to give the German boy a hot seat, immolating the German boy's down jacket with him still inside.
I want this prosecuted as a hate crime insists the German boy's father, cautious only in his choice of the appropriate English wording.
Never mind the round-faced white girl, the sheep wearing F oxRacing®
45 who boasts the lighter to impress the cool kids who was only holding it for a friend, a senior and fellow band-mate because he is sooo hot! who passed it off to the black boy, her classmate, so she appears to fit in * In Classroom Management I examined merits (and demerits) of Assertive Discipline, practiced "transitioning" from one activity to the next, discussed methods of creating "suitable environments" for large-group instruction and self-directed study, discovery- constrained only by imagination and the number of desks breaching one room.
I don't recall the topics of random pandemonium, or clogged and swarming Lord ofthe Flies hallways ever being addressed.
** Teachers: Code Blue in progress! Teachers: Code Blue - We have a Code Blue - please unlock your doors! buzzes Intercom Voice during lunchtime one sunny day.
46 Teachers: please! Let students into your classrooms! This is NOT a drill! Code Bluel Code Bluel 1
*** Nothing blind-sides me more than the Kingdom of heaven.
In Senior Comp, we mark the opening of school with an art project: using only a colorful assortment of construction paper, scissors, crayons and glue, each student fashions a flower representation of self. I capture a thumbnail Polaroid portrait - affix one to the center of each bud, cut green bulletin-board paper from the roll, cover the entire back wall in rolling hillsides, attach each student's blooming likeness, reckon a kindergarten: a garden of children, germinating - glimpses of unexamined potential residing behind each face.
Here, I scout miracle - aware that they stand on the precipice, unchallenged, about to endure a Daniel-ian crucible, their senior paper, the forge that will smelt the ore of imagination, refining it: pure gold.
* Standing back, away from my reckoning, I review my artwork: I inherited this classroom,
47 its textured wall-coverings worked loose, the blossoming mural concealing gouges and tears and I marvel, recalling the white girl and black boy reaching across the aisle toward one another.
I think of the German boy and his father, a new culture baffling them, decoding mistaken cues.
Then, I think of sweet Thomas - hip hop hope swaying his eyes cutting him short of self-realization so close to the brink - in that summer, voluntarily attending supplemental instruction, he had been, like me, finally learning to read.
1 "Code Blue" announced over the intercom indicates an "active shooter" on campus.
48 Bm?lires wrest night jiwn obsidian. scattering darkness. The lefi-handed niece lfa healer pours a wide circle lfsal/; then another by its side. limning a universe tender~v seasoned. F'ather. daughter, mother. son: allpresent travel the rims, .kaming the centers. hallowing bare ground Priests incanr a tacit rite. the bonds ofkinship running deeper even than blood, beyond a common ancestly. dcnvn to the marrow £?/our shared narrative.
Banners: rel!, ·white. pwple. and gold ring the ceremonial border. Outside its boundaries. snowfalls.
Credo of Three Days
I. Louis
Symbols of his dedications: a white silk heart ared rose a Mounted Patrol patch adorn the flag-draped casket. At the wake, his neighbors fondly recollect their favorite anecdotal stories:
All hands lost - an explosion at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard rends the warship Louis and his colleagues had just overhauled, irreparable. Louis' daughters recall their father cried. the teardrop hull subsequently hailed as a design innovation, commemorates mariner's gain. Louis tires of the other draftsmen sponging his pencils and supplies. Staying in at lunch, he fashions revenge: cuts two miniscule footprints from rubber stamps.
49 In the emptied workspace, he inks a diminutive hike up one side of his colleagues' desk blotters, relieves all their tools, inks a tiny escape.
II. Ben
Louis DuBois, 81, died last weekend in his home after a brief illness, announces the obituary that came in the mail. Ministering vigil over Ben's decline, his wife omits the news. remember your loved one can often hear you up till the very end, even though he or she cannot respond by speaking. Ben's grandson phones from deployment in Afghanistan, chatting away, fully expecting Ben to answer, though Ben cannot talk at all anymore. traffic noise major road right outside Ben's bedroom window: over this din, can he possibly hear the evening stars singing? Ben's nurse, Kalu Mba, shares native Ibo dishes with his charge each day. Warming them on the gas stove fills Ben's kitchen with equatorial aroma: red chili peppers waft through the small house, a palliative for Ben's bedridden senses. Kalu, aware his ancestors' spirits watch over him,
50 considers feeding Ben his moral obligation failing this would call dishonor in their sight, invite misfortune.
in Jubilee Years, the pall draped over the casket, and the sacramental vestments will be white. Sensing the spirits of Ben's ancestors gathering in wait, come to take him home, Kalu turns the light on in Ben's closet each evening as he departs, tells him: If they come for you, go toward their light. which more fitting for the death mask: black? or white? Absence ofall color spells presence ofall light. Is black, then, devoid oflight, attendant by all color, really the optimum depiction for the vacuum ofspace? Not this night! Ben's wife decrees, turning the light off inside his closet. Everyone is coming. We 've got a big party planned for you tomorrow.
III. Last Rites
Father Joe arrives, arrayed with a length of ochre, amber, gecko, iris kente cloth as tippet, alternative to the ordained white. He finds Ben's bedroom
51 crowded: Kalu, Ben's wife, their six adult children, assorted Significant Others all squeeze in around him, telling irreverent jokes with familial ease.
Ben's eldest son recalls Christmas dinner, circa 1980, Ben crafts a feast - filet de boeufen croute for sixteen people, nine different varieties of red wine line up across the tabletop: midshipmen on leave.
His youngest daughter recounts: the first time Ben attempts a flambe entailing equal parts brandy and kirsch, it fails to light. He adds more liqueur, kindles pyrotechnic cherry missiles that bomb the Boardroom carpet, ignite the drapes. Frantically, he stomps from flare to flare, certain he will be fired, thinking What will I tell my wife?
Mother Superior finds him head hung low in hands, assures him instead, Why, Mr. Muise, we 've been trying to get rid ofthat rug for ages! Welcome aboard! this is why setting anything on fire (especially dessert) should be referred to as Jubilee! Nourishment for the final journey, invokes Father Joe, placing the Eucharist on Ben's tongue, dry wafer difficult for him, barely able to swallow.
52 Life marked in celebrations, each communicant anoints Ben with sacramental oil, shares a favorite story, recalls meals Ben prepared, recounts an anecdote, speaking aloud through choked tears, tell him it's okay, we understand, you've always done right by us, ifyou wish, you can go.
IV. Crossing Over
Around midnight, Ben sits straight up, both eyes suddenly focused, then smiles, relaxing, he exhales. the face ofthe beloved His wife watches until the light 1s gone from his eyes.
Unsummoned, Kalu appears, ready to dress Ben's body for the undertaker. Very important the eyes be closed, he reports, massaging Ben's uncooperative lids. Alpha and Omega Porters come from the mortuary at four a.m., to claim Ben's body, carry him out. the last thing he sees, the first: Crossing the threshold, that stubborn right eye pops open - winking- divulges the presence of his favorite uncle, Louis, loitering to collect him, help him across.
53 Astronomical Phenomena - 6:39 Antemeridian
Moon faints against the sturdier light reflected in my rearview mirror: Eastern sky ablaze with nsmg.
Hills clad in creosote, sagebrush, Joshua trees coax her: dropping behind the Western horizon, she sheds her robes.
Had I mountain-moving faith to remove these blocks of clay, I'd part these knolls, watch wordless Moon subside, sink into willing Sky's embrace - uncontained, subsumed in greater light.
54 Fourth Episode-The Unified Field
When you make the two into one, the inner like the outer, and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male andfemale into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female will not be female .... then you will enter the Kingdom - Gospel of Thomas, Logion 22
Apotheosis
Angry people plug Sky Harbor Airport, spill from passageways shouting acid declarations. Frustration curls their faces, fuels bile spewing from fashionable lips. Squirming free from the glares of the distressed, perplexed clerks look away toward the terminals, look again at their monitors, shrug.
Bound for destinations habitually overlooked on December's whistle-stop tour, stranded - twenty-four hours or more. Some blip in Winter's teleprompter copy lures passengers: on time to Chicago, Denver, Boston; while :flurries in Las Vegas (Las Vegas!) shudder all hamlets West.
Stalled passengers accumulate in the Sky Box bar, load barstools like bases in the muted ball game shown on televisions above their heads, pack in a second, then a third row - standing room only. Patrons gaze up at the screens,
55 hoping for a promising forecast - snow seizes all means of ground transportation, scuttling final destinations.
Across the aisle, sudden comrades chat, queued for boarding en route to Burbank - exchanging details of each traveler's scramble, share the same plight.
Thrust 30,000 feet above the surface, visage transforms - omnipresent white quilts the sorrel ground, bares the unvarnished democracy of snow.
56 Mimesis
Cirrus strafes the snow-capped peak: feather-breath ribbons early spring, conceiving snow-melt streams down through the conifers rimming a looking-glass lake.
At the shoreline, peering its reflection - a pentimento: when I am still, I see the mountain in me.
57 Eye of the Beholder
Venus of Willendorf, from Austria. Upper Paleolithic, c. 25,000 - 20,000 B.C.E. Carved figurine, non-local oolithic limestone, height 4 3/8" (11.1 cm).
Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna
Her circlet hides a giggle in the eye. Her body, just a communication device - an array that foils viewers from unearthing her secrets: the source of her power originates in visualization, before things were made. The dimple of her navel collects her true nature: she belongs not to the earth, but to air. Having no feet, she cannot alight ground.
Surveying the seven concentric circles neatly woven around her head winds up in convergence - her queendom enthroned within a mind so active, she can no longer sleep.
In her image, I recognize the verdant shape of generation, and I see the waters of paradise release incalculable tiny fire opals to debride old wounds. Her idol and the Earth, artifacts carved from primeval stone, both resonate anima, the feminine in all.
So ablaze with her flare, I, too, embrace her, lighting a candle to honor her core. I fan her votive prayer:
0 Goddess! I claim you - a beacon ofclarity that sharpens intention. With your endowment, let me be blessed.
I know I must cradle her, carry her, ancient mother, as she surely carries me.
58 Apocalypse
Behold, I show you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. I Corinthians 15: 51 (KJV)
I envision cataclysm, roaring world halted but then, the jacaranda blooms, the parade of days ushers resurrection into the yard.
Thunderstorms blister June, the evening I wait alone for you, secret stinging. When you don't come I gash my blouse, cover my head in soot, bury the wound under heaps of flax and burlap.
Decades, I lug it with me, letting it ferment until berm breached, it gushes out. Looking for sin, I find the fallen.
Expressions I could never have conceived tumble from the world in your mouth: how devastated you'd been with the news, how you'd already chosen names (for five children), how you'd loved me then, and still
we divine sweet water: forgiveness rests between isolation and solitude. When we disturb stones, we see everywhere Spirit in disguise. Without fanfare or retinue, we exhale, sighing earth to a close. forMEPH
59 The Sequel - Office of Readings
Recovering the doorway, we come to a threshold words cannot cross, their indelible inscription encoded, tacit echoes convey us in direct translation, through the eye of the vortex,
We pass-
60 The Epilogue - L 'ah/am a/min. Ameyn.
lifted by the breath of Sacred Unity -
a grace: sovereignty restores awareness, the unified field, fertile and abundant, makes the eye whole,
the sound of the Word intoned, a tiny brass bell ringing fear's faint glint- absent, dream dissipates in morning light gathers horizons, rolling them up like a scroll-
generative fire sings in unison the beginning, the end: endless uncontainable the BelovedLover: One
61 Notes
The opening epigraph is taken from Zora Neale Hurston's autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road (Harper Perennial Modem Classics, 2006).
The Prologue - in paradisum: The phrase translates from Latin into English as "into Paradise," and belongs to the traditional Roman Catholic liturgy of burial. Although the full text, In paradisum deducant Angeli, in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te incivitatem sanctam, Jerusalem. Chorus angelorum te sucipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere, ceternam habeas requiem. is popularly positioned as the closing chorus in musical settings of the Requiem Mass, its usage in the burial rite occurs as an antiphon sung by the congregants and clergy in a final blessing for transportation of the soul into heaven, while the congregation transports the body in procession from the church to the gravesite. A possible translation of the liturgical text may be rendered from Latin into English as: May the angels escort you into Paradise, at your ripening, may the martyrs receive you, and advance you into the holy city, Jerusalem. There, may the choir ofangels accept you, and, with Lazarus, once a pauper, may you have eternal rest.
First Episode - Looking Out: The epigraph is from Li-Young Lee, "The Cleaving," the final poem in the city in which I love you (BOA Editions, Ltd., 1990).
Desire's Armored Sheen: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (ca. 1525-1594) was one of the most well-known composers of the Italian Renaissance. His sacred choral music is the epitome of a cappella polyphonic counterpoint, and has an ethereal quality that transports listeners beyond the physical sensations of sound. As such, his music had a profound influence on Roman Catholic church music. The Missa Pro Defunctis is the liturgical rite of the Mass for the Dead.
Rebbekah: The epigraph cites Hokmah, an Aramaic expression of Sophia, or Wisdom.
Empty House, Incubus Tango, and Credo of Three Days: The italicized text before the poem's title presents a dream scene from interior awareness, or the subconscious. Each of these italicized dream texts frame, and thus inform the poem that follows.
62 Non-native Species: The inspiration for this poem comes from the shared experience of innumerable wives on seeing the Antelope Valley for the first time, and a newspaper story about the tumbleweed's first infestation in California, which occurred in the Antelope Valley in the late 1880's. The story, "Russian invader hits Valley first," was compiled by Managing Editor Charles F. Bostwick, and appeared in the "History" feature of the Antelope Valley Press on Sunday, October 11, 2009.
Three Churches in Paris: The epigraph comes from Ntozake Shange's 1975 stageplay, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf I attended a performance of the work in Washington, D.C. in 1976.
Second Episode - The Tum, and Third Episode - Looking In: These epigraphs are taken from Holiday Mathis' horoscope column, published in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, February 21, 2010.
The Prequel - Prayer at Dawning: The lines presented in italics down the left side of the page are excerpted from an unpublished poem, You and I, written (ca. 1976) by Reverend William "Ted" Jones. His abundant gift for the art of the word continues to inspire me; therefore, the poem presents his lines, as they engage in dialogue, with mine, in depiction of a work that is representative of our lasting friendship, which is based on profound conversations.
Liturgy of Small Feathers: The epigraph quotes lines 67-70 of Chaucer's "Parliament of Birds," in Brian Stone's translation of Love Visions (Penguin Classics, 1983).
Eye of the Beholder: This poem was inspired by a stone figurine, the "so-called Venus of Willendorf," one of many such female fertility figurines, [which] has a bulbous roundness of form that recalls an egg-shaped 'sacred pebble'; her navel, the central point of the design, is a natural cavity in the stone." from Part I: The Ancient World, the first chapter, Magic and Ritual: Prehistoric And Ethnographic Art, the first section, The Old Stone Age, "Carved Objects," in H.W. Janson and Anthony Janson's art history text, A Basic History ofArt (Harry N. Abrams, Prentice Hall, 4th Edition, 1992, p. 35).
Dozens of similar figurines have been discovered in Northern Europe. While anthropologists, art historians, and other scholars continue to debate the purpose and function of the figurine in Stone Age societies, the poem revisits the artifact of the carved stone feminine figurine, and re-visions her "image."
See also Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe's "Women in Prehistory: The Venus of Willendorf'
63 First Communion: The epigraph comes from the Roman Catholic missal, or liturgical text leaflet, and occurs in the section of the Mass known as the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Part of the Eucharistic Prayers, the epigraph quoted comes from the Institution Narrative, which has its biblical basis in I Corinthians 11 :24, and recalls the words Jesus spoke to his apostles at the Last Supper; see "Basic Texts for the Roman Catholic Eucharist: The Order of Mass"
The Epilogue - L 'ahlam almin. Ameyn.: The title phrase is Aramaic, and comes from the last line of the so-called "Lord's Prayer." A scholarly translation from Aramaic into English may be rendered, "from age to age. Amen." Entering the conversation through the traditional practice of midrash, translator Neil Douglas-Klotz renders the words of Y eshua into English directly from the orginal Aramaic, often with astonishing results. See Neil Douglas-Klotz discussion of Jesus' sayings, including the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes, in Prayers ofthe Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic Words ofJesus (HaperCollins, 1990).
The Sequel-Office of Readings: The Divine Office, also alluded to in Office of Lauds, is the set of obligatory daily prayers recited at the canonical hours by Catholic monks, nuns, priests, and laity. The appointed times occur every three hours throughout each twenty-four hour day. The Office of Lauds is the prayer offered at dawn, or first light; however, the communicant was required to rise at 3:00 A.M. to officially observe the practice of its recitation. The Office of Matins, observed at midnight, was also known as Vigils or Noctums, or the Night Office; however, "matins" actually refers to the Morning Office known as "Lauds." As everything after midnight celebrates morning, or service of the new day, the two appointed hours have been combined into one office, observed at midnight, and wholly re-named: the Office of Readings.
64