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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 11 of 11. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Atticus on August 5, 2004, at 9:56:20
Meet Me Under the Blue Whale, 1998
The blue titan has just breached
The surface of a phantom sea,
Its back arched,
Flukes pointed downward,
As it plunges toward us,
The great striations running the length
Of the bottom
Of its hundred-foot body
Mere yards
Above the spot
Where Pez and I sit, heedless,
Sipping coffee,
Far too absorbed
In our conversation
To pay any attention
To the enormous fiberglass eavesdropper
Looming above
The cafe,
Frozen in a dive
It will never complete,
Suspended
On chains of stainless steel.I've loved this room
In the Museum of Natural History
Since I first
Laid eyes upon it
As a child.
Such thrilling power
Married to balletic grace,
Bigger than even the dinosaurs
Upstairs,
More impressive
Than the toothy maw
Of the beast
I dubbed
The Cheshire Shark,
Whose colossal body
Has long since vanished,
Leaving only a set
Of prehistoric jaws
Large enough
For six grown men
To sit in.So when Pez called
And needed to talk,
I asked her
To meet me
Under the blue whale.
No kid
Who grew up
In Manhattan
Needs any further
Explanation.In the corner to my left,
A diorama
Shows
The life-sized head
Of a sperm whale
Entangled in the thrashing
Tentacles of a giant squid,
A fount of childhood nightmares
Too numerous to count,
Yet utterly irresistable
To me.
Only
When I was older
Did I realize that the squid
Was not villain
But victim,
Fighting for its life,
Battling to avoid
Being reduced
To sushi.
No one
Has ever seen
A giant squid
That was still alive.
We only know
They exist
Because the carcasses
Of these behemoths,
Who dwell
In utter darkness,
Occasionally
Wash up on shore.This time
Pez's head
Of orange-toned
Dandelion fluff
Is graced
By an elegant black bowler
With a smiley face patch
Meticulously sewn
To the front.
My spiked black hair,
Frayed motorcycle jacket,
And steel-toed boots complement
Her bib overalls and
Cherry-red
Chuck Taylor All-Star
High-tops perfectly.
We look
Like a living diorama
That should be labeled
"Punkus Artistus Angstum."My legs and feet
Are restless
From the Paxil,
Dancing a relentless
Spastic beat
On the linoleum
Beneath the table,
And not even the Xanax
Is able to control
This dysfunctional
Pairing
Of Fred Astaire
And Sid Vicious.Pez's face
Seems to have been drained
Of its typical
Animation,
As if she had made
A white ceramic mask
Symbolizing Greek tragedy,
And donned it
Before
Leaving her flat.
She'd been swept
From the arms
And apartment
Of her ex-boyfriend,
Acid-Addled Walter,
By a rising tide
Of drug use
That had finally
Overrun
The emotional seawalls
She had built.Pez found herself
Drowning,
Flailing
For solid ground,
Pulling my wife Alyssa
To safety
With her
When my mental illness
And alcoholism
Has themselves become
A torrent.
I glance up
At the gargantuan creature
Hovering serenely
Overhead, thinking,
Only whales
Can navigate
Such dark currents
For any length of time.Tears hover
In her green eyes
And I lean forward,
Grasping her trembling
Right hand
Between both of my own,
Musing about
How desperate she must be
To seek help
From the likes of me.
"Pez?" I ask uncertainly,
Trying to meet
Her lowered gaze."I can't," she says,
In a tone
As delicate and wispy
As gossamer.
"I just can't
Be everyone's mother."
She pauses,
Sips her coffee,
Half-stifling a sob.
"It's OK," I say,
Trying to ignore
The swirling sensation
In my scalp,
As if vicious riptides
And maelstroms
Were churning
Just under the surface
Of my skin.
The Paxil has
My brain
Racing
In so many directions
At once
That it takes
Every bit
Of concentration
I can muster
Just to assemble
A handful
Of words
Into a sentence."What can I do?" I manage
To force out
In a stutter, adding,
"What do you need?"
Before the tiny pieces
Of linguistic driftwood
Are scattered once again.
She looks up
With the same
Defeated expression
I saw
Draped
Across Alyssa's face
So many times.
"Talk to Walter," Pez says,
Her voice a watery quaver.
"I've heard he's in deep sh**,
And I feel like it's
My fault."Jesus Christ
On a popsicle stick,
I'm thinking,
You don't send a person
Who can no longer swim
To rescue someone
Who's going under.
"You're his best friend,"
She pleads,
But I'm not so sure
About that anymore.
I think his new best friend
Comes in a syringe.
I want to say,
Walter and I haven't seen
Each other in months
Because even I
Could see
We were dragging
Each other down
Like a pair
Of entwined anchors.
I want to argue
That one Lost Boy
Can't do much for another.
But I owe her
So much.
She hasn't allowed me
To bullsh**
Myself
About my condition,
Not even
For a second,
So I dump
A bunch of Xanax
Into my hand
Like they were
M&Ms,
Wash them down
With the rest of my coffee and say,
"OK."The door
To Acid-Addled Walter's
Apartment
Has been left
Unlocked,
And when you do that
In New York,
That's a bad sign.
I open the door
And step
Into a darkened room
Lit only
By the purple light
Of a lava lamp,
The blobs inside
Engaged in an amoebic tango.
Place smells like a dumpster
On a hot August
Afternoon,
So I light a Marlboro,
And two gleaming feral eyes
Appear in the Stygian gloom,
Widening in apparent recognition.
Even though
I'm just a silhouette in the door,
I figure
He can tell
Who I am
By the spiny shape
Of my hair."Thought you'd be
In a rubber room by now,
Looney Tunes," he says
By way of greetings.
I sigh,
Thinking,
Fools rush in
Where angels fear to tread,
And answer in a cloud
Of smoke,
"Good to see you, too."
My eyes begin to adjust
To the darkness,
Which seems thickened
By the stench
Of decomposition.
"We're worried," I begin.
"Just wanted to see
How you're doing.""Same old same old,"
He answers blithely,
His soggy words emitted
In a kind of contented purr,
And I figure
He shot up some smack
Not too long
Before I arrived.
I decide to stop
Dancing around my point
Like some half-assed ballerina
And spit it out.
"You're going to fu**ing die,"
I say evenly,
My emotions flatlined
By all the Xanax.
"So what's your point?"
He responds,
Lighting a cigarette
Of his own.
In the momentary flare
Of his lighter's flame,
I see the face
Of a cadaver
That doesn't know
That it's time
To stop twitching."Jesus, Gator," I say,
Using an old nickname
That hasn't touched my tongue
Since high school,
The moniker pulled
From a lame cartoon character
Called Wally Gator.
I blurt, "Pez and I ...,"
Freezing in mid-sentence,
Realizing too late
That I've just fu**ed up
This whole thing.
"That b**ch sent you?" he shrieks,
Rising from the couch
And coming toward me,
Face contorted in rage.
"Get out, get out,
Just drag your crazy ass
Out of here!"
I hold my ground
For a moment,
But then turn
And trudge back
Toward the stairs.I plop down next to Pez,
Who's sitting on the stoop,
And I offer her a cig
When she reads the expression
On my face.
"I'm sorry" is all
I can offer.
Sometimes that seems
To be all
I say anymore.
We sit there
For a long time,
Neither looking at the other.
He's down too deep, I think,
Hoping
That the next time
I see him,
It won't be
Because
He washed up on the shore.
-- Atticus
Posted by tabitha on August 5, 2004, at 13:22:13
In reply to poem ... Meet Me Under the Blue Whale, 1998, posted by Atticus on August 5, 2004, at 9:56:20
Wow. Your writing is really beautiful. I felt like I was there.
Reminds me of early Jayne Anne Phillips. She wrote a lot of little bits of urban scenes like that. Very powerful imagery.
Posted by Jai Narayan on August 5, 2004, at 13:46:42
In reply to poem ... Meet Me Under the Blue Whale, 1998, posted by Atticus on August 5, 2004, at 9:56:20
Very heavy.....
was it hard to write?
Did Walter survive?"Jesus Christ On a popsicle stick"
I know this in going to sound weird but that's one of my sayings. I have said that for years. Is it a common expression?
Sometimes your use of language does give me a start with the similarity to mine.Do you think it's the shared background?
Irish Catholic Middleclass rebellious artist?I am so curious about your paintings. Do you your images resemble your written word?
Jai Narayan
Posted by Atticus on August 5, 2004, at 14:40:24
In reply to Re: poem ... Meet Me Under the Blue Whale, 1998, posted by tabitha on August 5, 2004, at 13:22:13
Wow, you've got a sharp literary eye/ear. I took a creative writing class with Jayne Anne Phillips in college. I wasn't at all aware of it, but I guess she had some lasting influence. Atticus
Posted by Atticus on August 5, 2004, at 15:20:43
In reply to Re: poem ... Meet Me Under the Blue Whale, 1998, posted by Jai Narayan on August 5, 2004, at 13:46:42
This was pretty tough to write, because at the time, I felt like I'd let down the umpteenth person in my life. First, Alyssa. Then Walter, by distancing myself from him when I probably should have tried harder to yank us both back up to the surface. I wrote about this truly half-assed attempt at an intervention, and how badly I felt I blew it, in part because I was thinking about it and how differently I had handled the situation than I had handled the one detailed in "Picasso at Limelight." There is such a sense of a loss of efficacy with mental illness, and I felt it keenly in this case. And of course, I'd felt I'd let down Pez, who had stuck by me through thick and thin, despite the awkwardness of the situation given her past relationship with Walter and her ongoing, very close friendship with Alyssa. Walter's fate? The storyteller in me wants to leave that for another tale.
As for the expression "Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick," it was just something all the Irish-Catholic kids in my neighborhood seemed to say when I was growing up. In my experience, no other ethnic brand of Catholicism simultaneously expresses so much devotion to the church and blasphemes with such joyous abandon. It's always struck me as just one more of those idiosyncratic dichotomies so peculiar to the Irish temperament. Your use of it too probably has a lot to do with our shared socio-cultural backgrounds. When I wrote "Na," I figured that at least you -- if no other reader -- could relate to all the religious strangeness and ritual that passes for normality in an Irish Roman Catholic household.
Summing up my paintings is a little more difficult, because if I could have verbalized those emotions, I would have written poems instead of setting up my easel and stretching a canvas, which is a hell of lot more work. Generally speaking, they're heavily influenced by abstract expressionism vaguely similar in palette and mark-making system to Willem de Kooning's pieces, but they're also imbued with a lot of symbol systems -- especially Pacific Northwest Indian and Australian Aboriginal pictographs. They have a surreal, psychedelic, mythic quality to them. All of which probably sounds like gibberish to you. But the bottom line is, when I look at a lot of them now, I can clearly see the swirling, almost chaotic presence of an unquiet mind. To get back to your question, writing forces me to organize my thoughts into a more coherent form through the use of language; the paintings capture emotions that are more inchoate, less defined, and less accessible because of this. But that's OK. I just do the oil paintings for me, anyway. There's less of an attempt to communicate with an audience than there is when I write. :) Atticus
Posted by Jai Narayan on August 5, 2004, at 15:41:18
In reply to Re: poem ... Meet Me Under the Blue Whale, 1998 » Jai Narayan, posted by Atticus on August 5, 2004, at 15:20:43
> Summing up my paintings is a little more difficult, because if I could have verbalized those emotions, I would have written poems instead of setting up my easel and stretching a canvas, which is a hell of lot more work. Generally speaking, they're heavily influenced by abstract expressionism vaguely similar in palette and mark-making system to Willem de Kooning's pieces, but they're also imbued with a lot of symbol systems -- especially Pacific Northwest Indian and Australian Aboriginal pictographs. They have a surreal, psychedelic, mythic quality to them. All of which probably sounds like gibberish to you. But the bottom line is, when I look at a lot of them now, I can clearly see the swirling, almost chaotic presence of an unquiet mind.
***It doesn't sound like gibberish because I come from a long line of artists.
I got my BFA in the Portland Museum Art school in Or.
My mother was very versatile in her expressions through art. I have a few of her paintings in my room. They are a mixture of impressionists and Cezanne. She had a curiously delicate touch. (The reason I say curiously delicate is because she used to poke and hit us with her restless hands.)
My sisters are all painters and writers as well.So I may indeed understand your descriptions.
My paintings are for me as well.
Jai Narayan
Posted by Atticus on August 5, 2004, at 20:07:44
In reply to Re: poem ... Meet Me Under the Blue Whale, 1998, posted by Jai Narayan on August 5, 2004, at 15:41:18
Hi Jai,
The more info we exchange, the more I start to feel like we're echoes of each other. What kinds of paintings do you do? I'm very curious. It must be nice to come from a family of artists; as I noted before, in terms of my family, I'm absolutlely alone in that regard. No one can recall anyone in the family history who ever did these things, or had any interest in it. I really started painting in earnest as my illness deepened in the late '90s and I increasingly found myself losing my facility with words; I could no longer use writing as a much-needed creative outlet. The results were just too disjointed, and worse, I just felt no motivation to do it anymore. It's really crushing when you suddenly find yourself uninterested in something you once loved so much. I took up painting, which I hadn't really pursued (except sporadically) since college. It took about a year to finally loosen up enough to make the kind of marks I'd been seeking to, but I found the experience hugely satisfying because I'd found a way to express myself again. The utterly non-linear type of thinking I brought to the canvas worked well with the medium, and I began banging out paintings with the same intensity and frequency, at first, that I've been bringing to the poems you've seen here. Eventually, though, the depression slowly ate away at my enthusiasm for visual art as well. I think when I'm more lucid calm, and reflective, I tend to write; when I'm caught up in one of my emotional maelstroms, I tend to paint. It's very aggressive painting done with large brushes, and I know when it's going well because I can hear the taut stretcher sort of twanging with the impact of each stroke (luckily I have a very large, very sturdy easel, otherwise I'd be tipping these big canvases over all the time). Actually one of my favorite pieces I've done is based on a sketch I did of a young woman at the Cafe du Monde (done on a different morning from the one described in the poem I wrote for you), who was clutching her coffee cup with the sort of nervous, insectile posture of a praying mantis. She looked as though she was pretty strung out -- on what or from what I don't know. But she struck an empathetic chord and now she hangs framed over my little breakfast area. I squeezed blobs of paint directly onto the canvas for that one and mixed them there; I wasn't getting enough texture using a palette. I'm kind of curious about what kind of paintings I would do now if the urge struck. Would they reflect a kind of serenity that's utterly absent from anything else I've ever done? Don't know, but it's an intriguing question. Take care. :) Atticus
Posted by tabitha on August 5, 2004, at 23:39:31
In reply to Re: poem ... Meet Me Under the Blue Whale, 1998 » tabitha, posted by Atticus on August 5, 2004, at 14:40:24
> Wow, you've got a sharp literary eye/ear. I took a creative writing class with Jayne Anne Phillips in college. I wasn't at all aware of it, but I guess she had some lasting influence. Atticus
Amazing! I did not know she taught. I really loved "Black Tickets", plus a couple of her poetry books from small presses. Then when she started writing novels, I was disappointed-- they just didn't grab me the way her shorter pieces had done. And I'm usually not a short-story person.
Posted by Atticus on August 6, 2004, at 10:19:45
In reply to Re: poem ... Meet Me Under the Blue Whale, 1998 » Atticus, posted by tabitha on August 5, 2004, at 23:39:31
I don't know how often she teaches (or taught -- I've been out of college for 12 years), but Jayne was the what the school called its "Writer-in-Residence" for an academic year. The English department always picked short-form people, probably because the powers-that-be figured none of us was going to crank out an entire novel in just a semester, and besides, who'd want to pore through a dozen novels, mark them up, and grade them? Atticus
Posted by Jai Narayan on August 6, 2004, at 16:01:24
In reply to Re: poem ... Meet Me Under the Blue Whale, 1998 » Atticus, posted by tabitha on August 5, 2004, at 23:39:31
> I really loved "Black Tickets", plus a couple of her poetry books from small presses.
** Hi tabitha, I rushed out and got "Black Tickets" from the library. Thanks for the recommendation. I don't like short stories either but I will give it a try.
I am always looking for good reading material.
Posted by tabitha on August 7, 2004, at 17:50:09
In reply to tabitha Black Tickets, posted by Jai Narayan on August 6, 2004, at 16:01:24
This is the end of the thread.
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