On Looking: Essays (19 page)
Read On Looking: Essays Online
Authors: Lia Purpura
And where did they go after that? After the warden announced he was dead and Donette’s sister, Michelle, raised up the hands of her father and sister’s fiancé and said “Yes.” After they saw the last breath, and were certain he was gone—where did they go? At 10:24 in the morning—out to breakfast? For a walk? To the cemetery? Where do you go and what do you do after watching an execution?
Here’s another scene about staying to see:
Once I wanted to squat down and be with the yellows and greens and trace the U of a crushed frog’s jawline. Its missing belly was a washed-out place. The middle was a smear, a wetness in the ease of light rain. And then its legs picked up again. Bent close to it, I wanted to sing aloud the song in my head, “Everyday is Like Sunday,” and it could’ve been Sunday when this happened, it was still fresh. I was looking for its hand, the longer index finger and little thumb (I’ll call them “hand,” “finger” and “thumb”) pressed white to the bone on the blue asphalt. Why stand over it? Why want to stay if the day is so joyously unfolding? The frog was all mouth. The crush opened and spread it and made it as wide as the day was wide. But I was dragged away. I had plans, a talk to give. Spring air, rain, all the bodies filing into the auditorium—I wanted to stay, but there was so much going on. Only now can I return to it. The yellows and greens and reds gone pink in the rain and spreading. Some brown from tires, and the treads evident. The sky was uncolored and
silent and gray
, the song was saying. But the frog wasn’t silent and gray. Not at all.
silent and gray
, the song was saying. But the frog wasn’t silent and gray. Not at all.
And another:
At the El Greco show at the Met, the paintings soar because they are huge and because the figures themselves are so radically elongated. I’m finally face to face with the one I’ve been searching for, the one I’ve known since I was a child, looking through my parents’ art books, “St. Martin and the Beggar.” And because the painting is so large, I’m eye to eye with the beggar’s hands, his terribly, painfully long, knobbed knuckles. And the others, too, gathered around it comment on his hands. And isn’t this the way children go about looking, those for whom such attention is sanctioned, for whom finding is daily, who state simply, aloud, or pose as a question:
why are his knuckles so long?
Travel up the ripple of the beggar’s arm to St. Martin’s silver armor and over his white-rumped horse into the gray sky behind them. Travel up the leg of the beggar, bent unnaturally in at the knee, the effect lengthening the foot. You come to it, bring all your desire to the painting because you seek in it a mood, a sensation. So that you can say, by way of sight, “the beggar, pained and cold, is receiving a portion of St. Martin’s cloak,” and be in the presence of something unspeakable, by way of the the unnatural bend of the body, the graying and bluing of the body, which is part agony, part beauty.
why are his knuckles so long?
Travel up the ripple of the beggar’s arm to St. Martin’s silver armor and over his white-rumped horse into the gray sky behind them. Travel up the leg of the beggar, bent unnaturally in at the knee, the effect lengthening the foot. You come to it, bring all your desire to the painting because you seek in it a mood, a sensation. So that you can say, by way of sight, “the beggar, pained and cold, is receiving a portion of St. Martin’s cloak,” and be in the presence of something unspeakable, by way of the the unnatural bend of the body, the graying and bluing of the body, which is part agony, part beauty.
And this one, occuring on a day like any other day:
Days after the photo of an Iraqi prisoner is released, the famous one where he is made to stand on a box with wires attached to his hands, black hood on his head and black cloak over his body (he was told not to move or he’d be electrocuted), I walk past a church in Bolton Hill, in Baltimore, on the north side of which is a Tiffany stained-glass Christ in flowing robes. The leaded panes emanate from Christ’s hands, his body inclines toward the street, bending, as if to whisper to me. And the superimposition rises. The images converge. It’s the spring of 2004, and I will be able to say this in America and know, reader, you, too, will have seen the hooded prisoner. First the words:
is he not Christ?
about the prisoner come. Then—though I am not Christian—all those who inhabit Christ’s body populate the glass, and it lights, and the wash of light is suddenly made of motes, of little sharpened points, of heads and bodies like small fists, upthrust. Christ has found the prisoner’s posture, Christ took it on. Or always knew. And since I have seen, since Christ looked into me—what a prisoner I must be. Or speck. Or mote. Or single light.
is he not Christ?
about the prisoner come. Then—though I am not Christian—all those who inhabit Christ’s body populate the glass, and it lights, and the wash of light is suddenly made of motes, of little sharpened points, of heads and bodies like small fists, upthrust. Christ has found the prisoner’s posture, Christ took it on. Or always knew. And since I have seen, since Christ looked into me—what a prisoner I must be. Or speck. Or mote. Or single light.
What to say in a situation like this, when seeing, you are unexpectedly seen?
Once I saw something that could’ve been a horror but wasn’t—my friend’s arm around his daughter, first at rest on the small of her back, then wrapping further to make a full circle. It was beautiful. Loving. There was no swarm of bees in the girl’s stomach. I didn’t have to see, in her place, that other girl, too big on a man’s lap, on the bus in Warsaw, being “dandled”—awful word that came to me and was everafter poisoned—and try, in a language I hardly spoke, to say “stop.” I didn’t have to see, for once, as a mother and leap up. Or remember anything with my body.
I look away. And if she’s still there, and she is, the girl in the bathtub, the girl in the article held by the words, and her name is Sylena—if I look away and she is still there, then I am not free.
How to stay with her? As if with the dying, by way of a vigil, which is to form, with others, a house of shelter, to make a green respite, a
hospice
, a place a traveler might rest while passing though? I watched the sun at the window over the—how strange the precision while my friend was dying—
cafe curtains.
The cool June afternoon resounded with, only once but loudly, a car alarm, and neighbors’ voices. I watched from the foot of the bed past the boxes of meds and the useless hundreds of vitamin bottles, and didn’t turn away from the moment of passing, though it was more like a ceasing. Because nothing stepped forth in the form of announcement, no herald. The light was just part of the branches scratching, and the scratching bore no message. It was June 24th. I did not turn away. The knob of the bed was an anchor, burnished. Like—may I veer, just briefly here?—the bare breasts on the statue of the muse on 33rd and Charles Street, her bronze breasts shining from touch, from men late at night, boys after school just touching for luck, and why not, walking with buddies and laughing, everyone does, it’s just a moment to be alive. So alive.
hospice
, a place a traveler might rest while passing though? I watched the sun at the window over the—how strange the precision while my friend was dying—
cafe curtains.
The cool June afternoon resounded with, only once but loudly, a car alarm, and neighbors’ voices. I watched from the foot of the bed past the boxes of meds and the useless hundreds of vitamin bottles, and didn’t turn away from the moment of passing, though it was more like a ceasing. Because nothing stepped forth in the form of announcement, no herald. The light was just part of the branches scratching, and the scratching bore no message. It was June 24th. I did not turn away. The knob of the bed was an anchor, burnished. Like—may I veer, just briefly here?—the bare breasts on the statue of the muse on 33rd and Charles Street, her bronze breasts shining from touch, from men late at night, boys after school just touching for luck, and why not, walking with buddies and laughing, everyone does, it’s just a moment to be alive. So alive.
The bedposts were mahogany and they shone too, from years and years of touching.
In Tod Browning’s film,
Freaks,
the side-show performers “live by a code unto themselves,” says the narrator at the begining. The pinheads, the dwarfs, the bearded woman, the worm-man in a sack, the Siamese twins live in a camp in their carved and painted folksy caravans. The interesting tension in the film is between the arc of the story line and the viewer’s desire to see the freaks, to be allowed to see and not have to turn away, a kind of sanctioned privacy. The camera lingers over them and gives each the space to perform his or her own calling-card trick or accomplishment. The woman who used her feet as deftly as hands. The limbless man who moved like a worm and who rolled his own cigarettes with his teeth and struck a match and smoked. Beyond this, we are aware of waiting for
something
to happen. And it does. All the freaks, seeking revenge on the duplicitous “normal” performer, assemble under a rickety caravan to launch their attack; it’s raining, the freaks are crawling on their bellies in the mud toward the beautiful/evil one to do her in. But then, they all fall together in a crumple and each of them is lost to the pile, and their singularity, yes, their
nobility
, dissolves.
Freaks,
the side-show performers “live by a code unto themselves,” says the narrator at the begining. The pinheads, the dwarfs, the bearded woman, the worm-man in a sack, the Siamese twins live in a camp in their carved and painted folksy caravans. The interesting tension in the film is between the arc of the story line and the viewer’s desire to see the freaks, to be allowed to see and not have to turn away, a kind of sanctioned privacy. The camera lingers over them and gives each the space to perform his or her own calling-card trick or accomplishment. The woman who used her feet as deftly as hands. The limbless man who moved like a worm and who rolled his own cigarettes with his teeth and struck a match and smoked. Beyond this, we are aware of waiting for
something
to happen. And it does. All the freaks, seeking revenge on the duplicitous “normal” performer, assemble under a rickety caravan to launch their attack; it’s raining, the freaks are crawling on their bellies in the mud toward the beautiful/evil one to do her in. But then, they all fall together in a crumple and each of them is lost to the pile, and their singularity, yes, their
nobility
, dissolves.
Once there was a green elephant and a purple elephant and they lived in a house together. The house and the elephants were part of a old German children’s game I played with at my grandmother’s house. They lived together in other ways, as shapes and textures, quite aside from being elephants, and now they come back to me as the pleasure of colors paired up in the garden world of alysum and lavender, purple aster and moss. The elephants sat squatly with their fat legs out in front and stomachs curved over. And the little wrinkles in their trunks were nice elephant touches. They were made of soapstone and were nicked with fingernail scratches. But they lived as colors best.
Today, purple calls sun down to light the soft green of thyme, undried and fuzzily growing. Green and purple pair themselves so the eye might gather on clover, lamb’s ear, morning glory.
What did the colors do to my eye?
Not once have I forgotten that the elephants were contorted, stubby, disproportionate.
Reader, I finished the article. About Sylena.
When I finished I had an inkling about a word. The word
strafe
came forth, unbidden. I looked it up for confirmation:
to punish. To reprimand viciously. From the German.
strafe
came forth, unbidden. I looked it up for confirmation:
to punish. To reprimand viciously. From the German.
What did I see, after I read? After I read, I stared out at the backyard and made a calming list: apple tree, loblolly, morning glory, ash. Rose-of-Sharon, tiger lily. 1-2-3 of black telephone wires against the blue sky, the Every Good Boy (Does Fine) for the invisible notes to climb. Checked the porthole of leaves that lets me see through to the next street. Sunk a bit into the deep brown of the shed. Opened the window a little for breeze.
What did I see while reading?
That once I used steel wool as a ball of tinsel in a pinch.
That when I said
fuck you
to my great aunt, and she washed my mouth out with soap (as soap occurred in the article, too), I studied the scratches in the very dull, very clean silver spiggots and, so close, saw the green spot where a drip wore the porcelain away.
fuck you
to my great aunt, and she washed my mouth out with soap (as soap occurred in the article, too), I studied the scratches in the very dull, very clean silver spiggots and, so close, saw the green spot where a drip wore the porcelain away.
Such focus made me dizzy, even then. “Custody of the eyes,” my friend, a former nun tells me, is the practice of training your sight to focus only on the meditation, task, prayer in front of you, and you let nothing else in. But what if the object in front of you swims, dares swim away?
I will tell you a silver spiggot can swim. And the sky be white. And a faucet bear a hurricane.
I focused on the green porcelain spot as if it were the sun. I found I could make it be many pictures—a mossy rock, a turtle’s back. But I tried to keep it the sun. I was maybe eight at the time.
Even then I focused hard.
I felt I might be tested on the things I saw.
NOTES
“Autopsy Report”:
. . . the silent part of my life as a child
is from Virginia Woolf’s essay “A Sketch of the Past.”
. . . the silent part of my life as a child
is from Virginia Woolf’s essay “A Sketch of the Past.”
“On Form”: some italicized lines are from various poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins.
“Recurrences/Concurrences”:
When a man dies, his secrets bond like crystals, like frost on a window. His last breath obscures the glass
is from Anne Michael’s novel
Fugitive Pieces.
When a man dies, his secrets bond like crystals, like frost on a window. His last breath obscures the glass
is from Anne Michael’s novel
Fugitive Pieces.
“Sugar Eggs”: Max Picard’s
The World of Silence
was consulted, as was
Faberge Eggs: Masterpieces from Czarist Russia
by Sussana Pfeffer, for historical material on Faberge eggs.
The World of Silence
was consulted, as was
Faberge Eggs: Masterpieces from Czarist Russia
by Sussana Pfeffer, for historical material on Faberge eggs.
“The Space Between”: quoted material is from
By the Shores of Silver Lake,
by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Max Picard’s,
The World of Silence.
By the Shores of Silver Lake,
by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Max Picard’s,
The World of Silence.
“Glaciology”: Italicized geographical material is from
A Geomorphical Study of Post-Glacial Uplift,
by J.T. Andrews.
A Geomorphical Study of Post-Glacial Uplift,
by J.T. Andrews.
THE AUTHOR
Lia Purpura
is the author of
Increase
(essays),
Stone Sky Lifting
(poems),
The Brighter the Veil
(poems), and
Poems of Grzegorz Musial: Berliner Tagebuch and Taste of Ash
(translations). Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Prose, a Pushcart Prize, a Fulbright Fellowship, the Associated Writing Programs Award in Creative Nonfiction, and the Ohio State University Press /
The Journal
Award in Poetry. Her poems and essays have appeared in
Agni Magazine, DoubleTake, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Ploughshares,
and elsewhere. She is Writer-in-Residence at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland, and teaches at the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program in Tacoma, Washington.
is the author of
Increase
(essays),
Stone Sky Lifting
(poems),
The Brighter the Veil
(poems), and
Poems of Grzegorz Musial: Berliner Tagebuch and Taste of Ash
(translations). Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Prose, a Pushcart Prize, a Fulbright Fellowship, the Associated Writing Programs Award in Creative Nonfiction, and the Ohio State University Press /
The Journal
Award in Poetry. Her poems and essays have appeared in
Agni Magazine, DoubleTake, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Ploughshares,
and elsewhere. She is Writer-in-Residence at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland, and teaches at the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program in Tacoma, Washington.
Copyright © 2006 by Lia Purpura
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Louisville, KY 40205
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