ariana reines

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• HAPPY HAITIAN INDEPENDENCE DAY

  

  yesterday i saw two conch shells for sale on a table in greenpoint

  also on the table were polish science fiction novels, a golden apple, and a broken typewriter

  the man selling the things on the table is a polish man, a homelessness outreach worker

  he has a passion for japanese culture and a particular passion for western culture as gazed upon and made sense of in japanese thought

  he described to me a japanese book about boticelli

  how much are the conch shells i asked him

  look he said, first i must show you that this one is chipped here, here, and here

  japanese people will only buy a shell if it is chipped he said let me explain to you why

  do you want to know why

  yes i said i want to know why

  because it has been touched by life he said

  and that is the only way it can be beautiful

  he stood close to me as he talked, too close for the new world, close enough for the old world

  but i sometimes don’t know if i am in the new or in the old world

  i love to read said the man

  i read many books

  i decided this man is marvelous

  and that he could stand too close to me

  i felt restless but grateful bleeding through my tights thinking

  this will be an old-fashioned transaction, a neighborhood experience

  and a family one

  a polish regiment deserted napoleon’s army and fought on the side of the haitians in haiti’s revolution

  those poles went far far away to the right side of history

  you can see pictures of their descendants, who in haiti are legendary, here

  the conch is an emblem of haiti’s revolution

  and january 1, 1804 is independence day

  thus to buy a conch from a polish man in greenpoint

  being myself descended from slaves who died in poland

  was for me a touching thing though its logic doesn’t resolve into a knot or conclusion but whose rays rather are gathered in only to open again, their ends splaying out like a hand’s five fingers

  blown as a horn, the conch was a call to assembly or a warning of danger

  its sound’s the sound of a credo, too, like the sound of a shofar, say

  is the sound that is to rouse the essence in the jew, so

  the conch is a call for liberty meant to stir the pit of liberty in the essence of you

  so i bought two conches from a polish admirer of japanese culture in celebration of haitian independence

  yesterday

  and although today i have a hangover

  and

  although the first call i and many of you heard and answered was an earthquake

  and although the man who sold me the conches at a low price also made me a gift of a stuffed lamb

  and although the creole word for conch is lambi

  still today i feel that to write a single word is to cross a fault line or to put it another way

  that to write a single word is to step on a crack as one of those obsessive compulsive people who won’t step on the cracks, who is terrified to step on the cracks

  that although i feel that way um basically also

  i love blogging with a hangover

  it is my favorite thing to do with a computer

  but let me say one last thing about cracks

  this part is about greece

  at delphi as some of you may know there was an oracle

  and a great temple complex with buildings of all kinds

  delphi is high in the mountains and like other places of spiritual and religious import

  it exists on convulsive land

  and was like leogane for example several times destroyed by earthquakes

  there is a wall in delphi

  i don’t remember at all from the day i was in delphi or the night either

  this wall is called the polygonal wall

  and it’s built of stones that are not square or rectangular

  stones that interlock in such a way that in an earthquake they would only lock more tightly together

  rather than topple the one upon the other

  and for some reason across the cracks in this wall

  the cracks between the polygonal stones of the polygonal wall at delphi

  are inscribed the names of slaves

  who had just won or been given or earned or achieved their freedom

  (which, of course we agree, should have been theirs by virtue of their existence alone)

  there is something about this

  the writing of the name of the slave

  who is no longer a slave

  across the cracks in the wall

  built to fall only more tightly against itself, to only gird itself more closely in the event of an earthquake

  there is something about the mortar jews eat as haroset on passover

  in order to commemorate our having built the pyramids as slaves

  (although the pyramids were built without mortar)

  there is something about writing itself that is what forges

  the truth across every fissure and even the broken names, the broken pottery

  the broken continents and broken promises across which we move

  where the name of the slave who is no longer the slave is inscribed feels to me like

  every real word any true writer ever wrote,

  ever.

  happy new year.

  love

  ariana

  

  

  • #haiti
  • #poland
  • #conch
  • #happy new year
  1 Jan 2012 / 11 notes