Heavy ppt
- 1. Heavy On Loss and Healing Jane Olmsted
- 2. I am struck by the way that loss— which suggests an absence of something important—is actually much more the presence of the thing that is missing. In other words, the loss of an important person in our lives is much more a weight, the heaviness a new load we must carry—not necessarily a load that we resist, but one nonetheless that we must shoulder and that we are not necessarily prepared for.
- 3. This, then, is a meditation on loss, heaviness, and lightness of being, through poetry and photography.
- 4. This first poem is called “Architecture of Loss”—I wrote it about a year or so ago, when the feeling of loss as weight first entered my consciousness as a thing both inside me and external to me.
- 5. Architecture of Loss I A clear bell, clapper worn to a strip of leather, still the glass shivers and mourners set down their work and draw near.
- 6. II Words blister off the page and float through the open window, catching in the branches or whirling toward the hills. People swim by, their mouths wide, elbows cocked. Once dimensional they are stripped to the basics, like paper dolls. They don’t notice the air has been brushed with a graying wash.
- 7. III The doors slam shut on the night-time river of sliding images as the boy rises, brushing leaves and debris from his shoulders. He looks up, a grin spreads slowly across his face . . . but something gives him pause—is it in my reach for him or my shadow on the vaulted ceiling?— Oh, to stop that cellular movement of knowledge across the eyes, nose, mouth drawing down— What am I doing in your dream? There, there, my darling, come and let me hold you, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry . . .
- 8. IV Matter condensed and carried just inside. If I pull it out and show you, it will sit in the center of my palm for a moment and then pull my hand to the ground. You will kneel down as well, curious, and then the earth will tremble and you will notice that a crater has formed around us, my palm and the thing I wanted to show you there at the center, attached by an arm, a body. You will scramble away, pulling yourself branch by branch toward the crest, and wave over your shoulder—I don’t blame you for your swift departure.
- 9. I look at the hand that holds the matter, pulsing black on an open star. Do I return it to the place, just here, where the heart once stood its post, or let the eclipsing rim pull me in? I think of Christina in the Wyeth painting. Turned away her face might be awash in tears or lit with gratitude, her body grounded but light. Maybe she is the darkened house on the hill and the vast landscape of golds and browns the loneliness that bids her go on.
- 10. In that poem I was trying to explore the way loss has a certain structure and that the structure varies—sometimes watery, sometimes rock-like, occasionally as clear as the ring of a bell. The most powerful image for me was that of a weight in my heart, which I would like to show the person listening, pull it out and hold it in my hand . . . no matter how terrifying.
- 11. This next poem is called “Second Year,” and though we are now into our third year, the idea of increasing weight carries with it the notion that loss does not simply fade away.
- 12. Second Year The first year the sword made its home in the tight place between the atria of my heart. Some days it seemed the point had broken away and traveled to my eyes so that the world fragmented and shone more brightly.
- 13. At night my fingers could not dislodge the handle and I dreamt of goblins’ breath— the fairy tale woods of malevolent branches and roots all grown up now and serious. Faint lights pulsed in the darkness. Other times the blade seemed to have slid out of its silky red home and then the place it left longed for its return.
- 14. I miss the way the edge made shapes of the body’s meat, drew Z’s in the dark where the light would creep, or slid filet-like between the ribs and opened them. As snow flakes mount their second dance in the oak tree’s branches, one limb still wearing its ragged skirt of brown— something new is taking shape.
- 15. It grows long as a river, dragging across a land that falters and then crumbles . . . a hunching thing no longer in the river but of the river and watching as dreams thrust up their skinny arms and fingers catch the light before sinking into marshy sag. There is no desire. It doesn’t want to eat the rest, it just does.
- 16. Because those poems are sad ones, I’d like to close with one more— one that I hope offers a little more “lift,” a sense that although the weight is there it is not always so heavy as it was once upon a time.
- 17. But first, a word from our sponsor: Ginger, my lost dog found, here leaping for what I can only presume is a dog’s version of joy.
- 18. When I Fall yes, it’s there. When I fall, I’d like it to be in a very clear lake When I fall, I’d like to know it’s near home, at the top of a mountain. that my roots, even exposed are familiar I’d like to know that I will see if not exactly what they were before. the mounting fuzz of moss and beneath, the hard calcium Make it green, a hint of blue, of other elements and me, bleached of all color that fishes dart beneath me just a path, narrow and tentative in the sun, and above, the brilliant stars for some tiny creature pulse in harmony. seeking the other side. I’d like to fall with a splash and ripples that hit the shores and come back to me, saying