oh, dang! it’s febuwary. oh, dang! it's march. hello again, Osip Mandelstam

 Babes and bots, 

I have one very important question for you: how do you pronounce February? Because I pronounce it like Feb-u-wary. Normal or abnormal? You tell me. 

A few musings

The first book I finish in 2022 will probably be The Road by Cormac McCarthy and this is my final confession…I’m sorry to all the writers out there who make art out of commas and dialogue. Cormac needs you, and so do I. 

Children's books are underrated masterpieces.

Biden might as well be a pencil. 

Graveyards are weird. 

Why don’t people cry more? 

A few updates

I got into graduate school! You heard it here first, folks! And it's fully funded, so rejection specialist my ass...

Apparently we are going to war with Russia?

I'm still so convinced that Osip Mandelstam is not a straight, cis-man, it's not even funny. I just don't see how these words could be true unless the human writing them was queer. 

She may be known among her companions by her headband
that preserves her from fainting, from too-strong numbing
    odors
weather of the nearness of man,
the fur of a powerful animal, or simply
the smell of savory rubbed between hands.

I mean, come on, who says "weather of the nearness of man" unironically? Also, what unquestionably cis 20th century poet writes seductive love poems about their lovers like this:

Let me be in your service
like the others
mumbling predictions
mouth dry with jealousy.
...

for me the dry air is empty
again without you.
...
All my own blood is gone.
Something strange paces there now.
Another moment
and I will tell you:
it's not joy but torture
you give me.
...
Come back to me,
I'm frightened without you.
Never had you such power
over me as now.
Everything I desire
appears to me.
I'm not jealous any more.
I'm calling you

This might be an unpopular opinion. I might disagree with myself later. But "Let me be in your service...I'm frightened without you"? Was that even safe to say out loud as a man in Russia in 1936? Osip is a gender-bending radical; you can't even tell me I'm wrong. 

This reminds me of the sculptor who made vagina boats not knowing, I assume, that all of his boats looked like vaginas. Except I love Osip too much to assume he had no self-awareness, and I submit fully to my own bias: queer poets are cooler than everyone else. 

a brief pause for the dino

Check out this dino ready to pounce on dino friend. Me and my sister in a painting. Bam. 

back to Osip

I have studied the science of good-byes,

the bare-headed laments of night.

The waiting lengthens as the oxen chew.

...

A thing I love is the action of spinning:

the shuttle fluttering back and forth, the hum of the spindle

Of course, I thought of grief and the way new relationships create future losses. All very depressing and sad and meaning-of-life crap. But there is also this lovely little interlude: "the action of spinning." What would it mean for me to love the action of spinning or, perhaps, the science of good-byes and their bear-headed laments? How might the particular sadness of loosing or leaving flutter, hum, or spin? A poet so entrenched in loves and losses (aren't they all?) has the space and time to love what they love and lose equally, or at least emphatically...how is that? 

I think of the existential crisis I had in high school in which I questioned the meaning of life every day in my religion class. I was shocked when none of the religions we studied handed out a reasonable explanation for the existential crisis, at least not one that I fell for. I think of the particular sadness of losing people and losing places, the climates one has seen and forgotten...I realize now that my recent obsession with dinosaurs is tangentially related in the same way an archeological dig might inspire love poems, in the same way the study of history is, too, a science of good-byes. 

I'll leave you with the handsome, ageless and ageing faces of Osip Mandelstam. 

Thanks for taking a bite out of the sandwich with me. 

xoxo

BLT