Mark Cunningham

Clay-Colored Robin

After the cremation, after the scattering of ashes, I was desperate to wash my hands. I was afraid that, before I could realize it, without thinking, I’d lick my fingers. The squeezed eyes, the wheezing: I imagine that one tear starts to expand, like a bubble from a pipe, starts to inflate, to turn opaque, to shine. Its white filminess starts to hold color, blue mostly. Then the leaves on the trees around me take definition. The bubble swells, takes in cars, the rivers it brushes against, until every particle of the world is not merely reflected on its nearly-transparent surface, but is physically inside it. Then it bursts. What’s left? The world.

Kirtland’s Warbler

I have a friend who says the knots and twists of aboriginal painting fascinate him, yet he’s never gone to the aboriginal art museum in town, the largest private collection on display in the country, if not the world. As for me, though I’m basically vegetarian I’ve been hankering for a medium-rare hamburger for weeks. Daniil Kharms concluded that the path to immortality consists of one rule only: “continually do that which you don’t feel like doing.” To make it easier for beginners, this could be paraphrased as “never pursue that which interests you at the moment.” Last week, I wanted to read Rats by Robert Sullivan, but I was half-way through James Crumley’s Last Good Kiss; after I finished Crumley, I started James Meyer’s Minimalism, and I feel fine. I’ve been drawn to such discipline naturally. Even before I learned about Kharms, I wouldn’t discuss any topic I found intriguing: by telling, I’d make that information part of history, and the moment would soon pass. I’ve kept on refining my practice. At night, when I want to go back to sleep, I have to go to the bathroom first, which means I have to get up. In the morning, no matter how much I have to look forward to, my first action on waking is immediately to clench my eyes shut again.

Laughing Gull

My main way to spend time just after dark used to be to search through the house with a flashlight, looking for another flashlight. I'd use the kitchen flashlight to find the living room flashlight, or the living room flashlight to hunt for the kitchen flashlight. For centuries, shamen, monks, philosophers, and physicists searched for reality—but not me. Like a Taoist master, I don't have to look out my window to know the way of the world. I just turn on the TV and watch a reality show. Even then, often the ending is delayed to long. But, as Guy Davenport says, "Waiting is an act of great purity. Something is being accomplished, in a regular and steady way, by doing nothing at all." The water in the pot begins to stir, then bubble, as if it's beginning to breathe. I think I embarrass it into boiling. Since I've rediscovered the Davenport quote, though, I usually relax and ignore any absence. The missing flashlight turns up behind the dish rack or under a cushion, in a place I'd return to in my normal course of movement. I get impatient sometimes, but I know it will pass if I hold out a little while, and then I can start waiting.