Infinite Intimate

Winter or summer, wherever you may be, I hope this finds you well. Upon resuming publication, my thought is to take things slowly, and to add to these pages on an occasional, irregular basis, making each new entry a kind of letter from home, a hodge-podge from this side of the moon, taken from notes and observations made along the way. These “letters,” as I’m calling them, will be collected under the title of Infinite Intimate, which, in Zen terms, might be thought of as a very close cousin of Everything and Nothing, a familiar catch-all phrase and category in use since Poems, Notes, and Drawings began in June 2018 — or, to be more precise, since 2001, for Everything and Nothing is also the title of a book written by Ross Freeman, the writer-hero of my unpublished novel, The Smiling Eyes of Children, references to, and excerpts from which, are easy enough here to track down. I know, because I just did.

Speaking of notes, lately I’ve been making mine in a small lump of a journal with ragged, handmade paper bound in leather. The journal, which looks like something from the Middle Ages, is about five inches wide by seven inches tall, and closes with a nice metal clasp. It’s about an inch and half thick. The paper, which is quite heavy and seems as if it’s been made for confessions, manifestos, and decrees, is sewn into five separate signatures. I’ve written and drawn on the pages in both horizontal and vertical orientations. I use both sides of each page. Nothing shows through. That, I think, would require a whole pot of ink — a medieval term coined by demented monks full of cucumbers and porridge, if not blather and wine.

Here comes a note now. This is taken from one of the books I’ve been reading. It’s called Letters of Edward Lear to Chichester Fortescue, Lord Carlingford, and Frances Countess Waldegrave, and was published in New York by Duffield & Company in 1907. In a letter to Fortescue written July 8, 1858, when Lear was staying in Corfu, the artist says,

“You will be sorry to hear I have had a bad eye, a sty, only more like an abscess. My brain is confused between cause & effect, & I don’t know if my being a pig has produced the sty, or whether the sty makes me a pig. But I know I am a pig.”

The letters are sprinkled with, but certainly not limited to, such profundities. In another to Fortescue, who had been undergoing some kind of water-cure, Lear says, quite sagely,

“Seriously, I should conceive that the necessity of constant contemplation of one’s health can’t be good for the body or mind, & I don’t see but that you are right to cease the trial.”

Wise words indeed. In fact, I recommend you read them again.

Now, as an aside, let me tell you of an interesting experience I had recently at a new chain bookstore here in town that opened its doors in November. Within about fifteen minutes after entering, I felt faint enough that I needed to sit down. This was brought on by the intense, ultra-bright lighting, the wild colors screaming at me from the shelves, and the chemical smell given off by the merchandise. The place didn’t smell at all like a real bookstore. It made me feel like I was in a test laboratory or an aquarium. Had I closed my eyes, I’m sure when I opened them I would have been surrounded by men in white coats. After a few minutes spent in the company of a two-year-old child who stopped dancing to study and smile at me from time to time, we left the store after paying for a book about owls, and one about what happens in our brains when we read, harking all the way back to the invention of the first alphabets. It was a narrow escape. Outside, I miraculously became well again, and was immediately restored.

There are other things in my notes, but, like you, I think this is more than enough for one letter, so I’ll save them for another time. When, you ask? After even more notes have accumulated and more reading has been done, and, most importantly, when I feel good and ready, not a day sooner.

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