Ewa Chrusciel
a Life
photography by
Urszula Lukaszuk
corpus Christi
Kanonicza Street. In the windows Holy Maries basking. Like dignified flower-pots. On the sheets of rain the divine and human features brailing. The procession of cobbles. Raising and swaying parasols. Coming to Grodzka Street. Gilded lions, brass angels, (elephant anorexic) stirred in worship. Proceeding petals by petals. Streets clogging and kneeling. All the gilded dust chipping off Market Square. Sealing up in yodels - merging with the Invisible Body. What world you died for? Leaving lashings of frou - frou cloaks. Flirting Violins. Waltzing glass wines. Elations of masques. So lean the wings of angels. Nesting the eyes high above. We put you high up. Always up. What is Up is Good. They will always look for you in the vertically climbing abstractions. Where they have elevated you to cast you down (for you are the Holy one, for you are Aloof and Ungraspable). You are in my fathers wrinkles. In the slow decay of his body. I saw you sitting in those benches among the Beslan children. You were breaking the bread whose little tiny vessels started firing. You extended palm whose nerves exploded and scattered into the map of our suffering. I’m trying to collect them now. High-strung beads. Which might have saved the world. That dispersed.
does dwelling occur in the box?
A man is insofar as he dwells. I’ve been busy watching aspen birches. They depend on a disturbance - primarily fire - for regeneration. And yet display wounds very clearly. Anything carved into them heals into black scars, recording the event. The clothes I liked the most would disappear secretly. I had to lock my wardrobe. Anything I liked was under suspicion. When she discovered my wardrobe was closed, she figured out there were drugs inside. I was her biggest cat. In a basket case. In storms I close the windows. Dwelling - Old English dwalde - go astray, err, wander. Lord God! Ivory-billed woodpecker is back. The land that runs barefoot. Rather we always go through spaces in such a way that we already experience them by staying constantly with near and remote locations and things. What if this place is not a matter of arbitrary placing? “Horror vacui.” The fear of empty mind is really the same fear. Does God have the address? Is it also a box that God has? My dad bought himself a mountain. A hill rather, but whenever I speak of him, my imaginations turns moles into mountains. He produces honey there. He’s a bee-master. For bees he is a very cosmonaut with his out of the blue accordion. Or he is a minister and his blow - pipe is an incense. Bees like pythias offer him swinging bows. On Valentine you borrowed a tulip from somebody else. Did it have thirteen petals? Signs were discernible in their silence. Until they disassembled. Did we unscrew mystery?
dear owl
Thank you for stopping by Normal on 23rd March 2004 and perching on this little pot-tree in front of “Other Ports.” It’s been a week and I’m still thinking about you.
Thank you for overlooking the fact that the little porch of the other port was by no means a cannon. And those passing by were no mice. I am delighted that taking into consideration those slight landscape changes, you nicely dozed off, replacing a little statute of Buddha bored to death with this mercantile day- to day meditation. I (having a little weakness, that of Zelig’s syndrome) perched on the little bench opposite and like you, tried to maintain my balance too. People passing by with fully-fledged American smile and understanding were saying: “it’s nice to be taking the air outside.” Some more observant, would look up and see you and yet exclaim: “Oh, it can’t be real.” Being a responsive person in every possible manner, I examined you critically. Thought of Dürer: Das Käuzechen, then the other possible names: civetta, choutte, otus asio, bubo virginianus, Amirus Barakus. Explosion of owl. The desire to have all. Horror vacui. Dear Eastern Red Phase Owl. Find this poem enclosed. Please consider this for your beakation. With every kind wind, yours tuftully, Ewa Chrusciel, the family of crex paternus, wading crane.
Dear Owl, I have sent you a letter a week ago or so. No answer received. I wonder where have you been? Perhaps my letter to informal for your highbrowness. Perhaps a bit too editorializing. You are a bird of considerable sageness. There is no country without an encounter. Please reconsider my poem. Please find corrections enclosed. Attached below:
Eastern Red Phase, all day clenching with little tufty claws to one chosen branch of a little tree-pot in front of the "Other Ports" shop on the North Main street in Normal.
"It can't be real" people passing by said. Each feather swaying to only one key.
Can it be real? Little Eskimo. I will never write to you again until I have flown a mile in your fluffy moccasins, in your fluffy moccasins.
sometimes
sinking in
imitative
thoughtlessness
The threat of atopia calls forth a veritable ontomania - irrational desire to have and to know as much determinate presence as possible. Fear of having an empty mind is really the same fear. Should I call him? Instead I write. The lamps are the whales of light. Instead, I would let the budgies free. We found a wriggling egg in our garden. We warmed it up at the bonfire until it broke open. Baby Quail. We had to feed it with milk. Even mother warmed up. We took it to our grandparents. They told me it died when trying to fly. I suspect someone accidentally squeezed it with a cooking pan. I am just on the other side of the mirror. Everything preserved under the glass wall. We do not know how to remain in repose. (is that why the Tibetans tie their children to the poles - in case they might wander off, get lost). I was called a chocolate missie. My parents would hide the chocolate in the highest cabinets. I would compile desks and chairs and climb on them. Once I fell and lying on the floor could not catch breath. We would like only for once to get where we are already. And all of it for the love of chocolate. My grandma had a big drawer with sweets which she distributed freely. What are the true desires in this disguise? During fights my father would remind my mother she was a Tartar. You said not even grass has such thin hair. Everything was under the custody of 13. It entered us perplexed by the theory of our non-incidence. The signs were sprouting. Too discernible in their silence. Until nothing clicked anymore.
wild(d)éornes
In Bob Moon this drunk, black as soot, God lives. In him evil and good spirits commute. The first time I and Kasia went to Colorado, Bob - a property manager - would take care of us. I was doing a linguistic research for my sociolinguistic project and I secretly recorded Bob. I kill’em – mountain lions, poke their eyes out, poke’m out, cut their throat, kill’em or they gonna kill you. You got to be straight. You hit directly in the eyes, you poke’m out. You think I’m joking? They ain’t too friendly – Ha, ha, ha I don’t take shit of nobody. It’s those people’s fault. You tell’em. I’m a redneck. I’m a cowboy. I don’t take shit of nobody. Bob’s style displays high level of informality and casualness. It is affectedly charged; high pitch voice, sharp pitch contours and exclamation marks help to convey his temper. I ain’t no joking. Patty Ann Stuart. Sweetest, nicest, most innocent girl. I ruined her. His highly-emphatic style, the use of gestures and characteristic laughter introduced almost every third sentence, makes Bob’s speech very animated and informal. I did! I ruined her! Heh, heh! The most salient features are the use of the double negative, characteristic of the working-class speech. The speed of his speech is rapid and he constantly swallows or abbreviates certain consonants, such as in: “kill’em,” (line 5); “poke’m” (line 7); “tell’em” (line 11). I returned to Colorado every year for my birthday and deer would be there graven on the palm of the road. Like horned walls continually raising before us. On my birthday we were returning from the slopes and I was praying for some deer, when we saw someone following us in a truck. On a dusty and empty road. Scared to death, we pulled over. It was Bob, almost bashfully he said: - You want me take you to the place with deer?
topology must triumph
over no place
I multiply my flats blueprints palimpsests. This is a reproduction of Being.
Friends, I’m writing to you from US where lots of reality shows and viagra gets shipped to you overnight even if you did not ask for it. You get all the prospects of singles in the neighborhood in your daily bottle of milk patiently browsing outside. I’m trying to be socially involved: I watch Average Joe, War on Terrorism, Empire Strikes Back. I also date on a full scale. Our secret meetings Between the Rockies and Appalachians. He is unpredictable. Whenever he comes near I tremble and lie down. We define ourselves On Fujita Scale. When it’s up I toss and hurl. Yet I learn that his size is not necessarily indication of his intensity. Any time you deliberately put yourself above ground you are putting yourself in his arms. My Tornado Alley. The tip of the day is: when you come round, stay close to the ground. Stay close to the ground.
The threat of atopia calls forth a veritable ontomania, irrational desire to have and to know as much determinate presence as possible. Fear of having an empty mind is really the same fear. If Hebrew Makom means both God and Place, does God have the address? Encounter is a lingusitic cousin of country. A man is insofar as he dwells. I suffer from excess. A fish in water that suffers of thirst. The desire to be everybody. ( Zelig’s syndrome?) A desire to have everything. To transgress. Maybe it’s the same desire that Lascaux Man had? (is that why Tibetans tie their children to the poles - in case they might wander off, get lost?). (Am I a fractal?) The size of my radiance is precisely that volcanic lavish. A sponge suffering, because it cannot saturate itself. A river, suffering because the reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.
when one travels, one might hit a “storm.”
When one travels one might hit the words. Should one dwell, so someone else might rest? My father takes me on an organized trip to Romania. I find myself being nasty and hated. I find myself being a visionary. My father takes people on a mountain hike but forgets where. I want to help him so much that I only keep praying. Prayer is really an attention. One day it becomes pregnant and through my mouth splits open. Pietrleni Dominei. A big moment yellow. The word is a bottomless pit. It is anima apex. I save his honor. Perhaps it is the shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors. We detour from the road to the monastery. People fight. When one travels, one might heat the words. Monastery splits open. As we are in hot water, this is our last resort. Encounter is a linguistic cousin of country. A monk looks inside my eyes. I ask him to report all he saw. Beads of English trickle down his Mouth. The Icon was flying, he says. And Mother of God was there. Fragrant petals her tears. Her Face kept sowing. I prayed every night that she does not appear to me. It is a cascade. I wish they took off like cranes. Her face keeps sowing. And the angers take off beating their electric letters in the air.
all the narratives
exploded
You say there are no angels yet you see a host of molecules descend and congregate.
(Light takes delight in its quantum puns). 330 children in loops and whorls. Now In Beslan children know how to play hide and seek in school. Particled skin, feet, fingers. Hair and nails growing. Laughing kookaburras fly. Yet you see a host of molecules light takes delight in its quantum puns. Stellar dendrites crystal partition space descend and congregate.1200 hostages in loops and whorls with intersecting arrays. You say there are no arrays of parallel lives. Those kids enter us hard-faced like dybbbuks. The Host beyond crisps. 176 orphans. Hair and nails growing. Those kids enter us hard-faced like dybbbuks straight into the belly of a frozen whale. We’ll have to raise them.1200 hostages in loops and whorls. There is gravity and grace and those lines interwoven together. Miniscules of plots that exploded hair and nails growing straight into the belly of a frozen whale. We’ll have to raise them. There is gravity and grace and these lines woven together. Pebbling into your eyelids, bags, pockets, there is gravity and grace fully furnishing the hard-faced space. Through the specked air archangel surged. Coiling into the tattoos of mourning light .Your eyelid flutters cascades. And now undying iterations of this moment. Between you and you - grave child. Between you and me cross - two meeting lines for a few seconds they produce motion. Amid the fixity of lines loving gaze. Insnailed into coils of your name. You say No Angels. We’ll have to raise them.
today the taste of guava.
On a bus from Oxford to Cambridge a bus driver weeps. It is a loud weeping. After a while a man approaches him and offers some help. Things break in order to reveal. The bus driver says his grandmother died. A big moment yellow. Only after the funeral, at the cemetery, my face resurrected. With a serenity. I saw her in a white wedding dress with my grandfather. The man kneels and prays for her. The bus driver stops weeping. We are riding. We are on the road. And I get to where I want. Little blobs of colors. Little blobs of juice. What a wedding feast. And a starfruit. Burnham Overy. How to express the sound the masts of boats make? The whole village of masts chatting, clacking, clinkering. The congregation of lepers with bells? And did you know that the sand is a cemetery and the souls whirl and seep into your multiples? Did you know that sand is a foggy land? Kraina na bosaka. We strand everything by a metaphor. Birds are little boats swaying on water. One can say: the reeds rustle. Or: the reeds are enamored by wind. They swing and sway. They bow. They tend into the sea. This is the music of their longing. Yet they swing back into their vertical position and amidst distraught and all their restlessness they root. I am routed.
it was 4 pm
My Mother used to collect cactuses. I waited all my life to see pink luscious fruit grow out of them. What splendid flowers emerge. We would like only for once to get where we are already. In storms I close the windows open the doors. This is the size of my radiance. Love is pinching. When threatened or amorous, the devilfish will bare the brightly decorated inner surfaces of its pectoral fins, warning intruders of its venomous spines. It took 10 million years to create Grand Cannon and now in this instance it becomes mine. Explosion that occurs simultaneously everywhere. It is a belonging that takes 2000 years. One must have been hurt and listless not to see a face. Amidst rocks. Native Americans believed these were people whose a coyote- trickster changed into rocks and boulders. Like monks they climb their faces up. Petrified prayers. Inverted cathedrals. Hoodoes with anti-corrosive caps. Is each gaze a prayer? Or: funny asparagus reminiscing. The grottoes are washed faces. What are their true desires in this disguise? It’s not your face I desire. It is something inside it. It is not your body. Something inside where I cannot get. Instead the topology of air bubbles. And always 3.59 pm. Just one minute away from a true encounter. Trapped air inside a soap bubble – separated from other trapped air by smoothly carved surfaces. How much would a soap bubble cost, if there was only one in the world? Instead multiplicity of bubbled faces. Can they inflate? The entire world is an egg.
the Roads Diverged in a wood
And I took all of them
Can all those histories jump out at you simultaneously? From the front, back, top, bottom, and sides? Explosion that occurs simultaneously everywhere. I suffer from excess. I multiply my blueprints, palimpsests, flats. This is a being of reproduction. To know where I am is to know that I am determinately there. Bodily here in relation to an already known there or set of theres. There is no there there. And yet there are layers of invisible belonging. To have all. To transgress. Writing will not do to fill in the billions years of loneliness. A veritable ontomania. Irrational desire to have and to know as much determinate presence as possible. Unborn designs circle over unpatched roofs. Multiple polarity of the text in which relativity means the infinite variability of experience as well as the infinite multiplication of possible ways of measuring things and viewing their position won’t do in face of billions years of loneliness. Of cooling of the universe. Amidst disruptive forces of indeterminacy and discontinuity there is still an organizing rule which governs all the relations. Even God needs a companionship. Lexicons reterritorialize, trespass, cross-code breakdowns. Crowded loneliness. What if this place is not a matter of arbitrary placing? There are places. Pattern masquerades as randomness. The universe has every possible history. Some of those histories will contain people like us some of them not. They never stay together – they know that nothing stays. So does mystery never stay. I never possessed you. You are always and never now and there. I just imagined holding you for a moment, but really can you hold water? Instead I would let the budgies free. After feeding let the birds take off - beat the electric letters in the air.
