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the archive(s):
issue no. 2:
Bobby's Auspices / Uzodinma Okehi
Looking back-and which other way can we look with believable clarity-I'll say that I can't remember much poetry concerning my own life. That is, speaking honestly, literature aside . . . Just a feeling not a confession, a regret, nor necessarily the truth of the way it was growing up through these years . . . Even, for instance, had I the good fortune to come of age on the beaches along the straits of Dakar, I suspect the same could be said. And though I did not, I can still easily imagine it . . . Fortunate if only for those deep cobalt mornings at first light, padding through wet sand with the rest of the fellows, half-naked, shouting, chasing the soccer ball around between the half-submerged, side-lying hulks of ocean liners like beached whales, fast asleep . . .
Or something along those lines . . . Which is what children do on the shores of Dakar, that is, if one is to believe what one reads in the travel books . . . We'd like to argue for truth in literature, for more of it, as if to continue some great tradition, and yet there has always seemed to me little difference whether recounting from memory or the realm of pure invention. I've never been to Dakar, as I said. I've never even considered it, as with so many other exotic locales that captivated me during the few years of college that I spent, propped up on my bed, buried in full-sized photo books such as Hiroji Kuboda's Out of the East. It was scenes from this book, scenes based on a kernel of reality, expanded on a page torn directly from the imagination, that planted the seed within me for future conversations on the subject of artifice . . . Both subject and substance . . . Sights, sounds, and echoes of such breathtaking power, that prove to this day too vivid to render justifiably in words. Up until a certain point in life, even when recounting my own objective truth, or trying to, I would inevitably end with a sinking feeling of guilt about my own equally lurid, suburban life, as much as any Dakar or Bangladesh, Hong Kong or wherever else. Guilt in that I always found it necessary to add things, to invent details in order to speak about any of it, my own life, with any exactitude.
Take for example that inevitable Pandora's box, the spiraling abyss that can almost always result from certain run of the mill questions such as a simple, "Why?"
Why? Well, I broke with my boyhood chum of many years for the simple fact that it was clear to me then that I had emerged from my struggles as a different, more instinctive kind of man . . . maybe not destined but climbing, fighting toward some new ideal, both remote and unprecedented . . .The gist of it was I could no longer go on living the old life in the mundane way that we had been accustomed to in the old days, and which he seemed quite content to continue steeping in indefinitely . . .
Or a more specific offering: what made you drop out of college and head for the orient? What was it about Hong Kong?
Ho, well what is there that I could say, really, about Hong Kong . . . I like the idea of a city bisected with hundreds, thousands of canals . . . A city stacked tier upon tier. In fact, a multitude of cities moving in all directions at once and with every manner of life thriving in between . . . An ambiance, rather than fact, I would say. A trick involved with contrast, shadows and light and misdirection which leads one to invent the sights, blurring past with words like magic, spectacle . . . So much of any city could be explored on identical terms and yet there was something about mornings, evenings in Hong Kong, stepping outdoors, so much to me like zooming down, dropping though feathered clouds into canals teeming with phosphorescent life . . .
And so on . . . bladity-blah . . . All of this to say that there is a certain something, an ingredient not to be taken for granted about anyone's life and experience. Even about the most mundane sort (person or life) that one could imagine. Some certain something that may often get lost in translation, strained out under the herald of "pure truth". I became accustomed to such windy digressions-a kind of lying, I do admit-coming flush up against the frequent occasions where the truth had to be searched for, fished out, and that is if I could come up with shades of it at all. Straightforward questions would cause me to grope about ludicrously, after which I would begin blathering like a high-speed monologue-machine. Fibbing, when in fact there was no good reason I could think of why my age-old friend now disgusted me, as I was and never will be any better than him, any loftier. And we all know how futile it is to describe the subjective appeal of one city over another, any more than one can explain how he has been captivated by one certain woman in particular, above all the rest. It was sifting through my own muddled inclinations in this way, my mis-amplifications and bumbled grapplings with the medium of reality, that I came across this: the role of imagination-- creating truth-- in both fact and fiction.
So for simplicity's sake, I got in the habit of acting coy, of misrepresenting myself as just an occasional liar . . . A spiritual liar . . . Diabolically truthful, as Henry Miller might have once said, but nonetheless a miscreant, feckless, true to type . . . Thinking along this vein, I am remembering my own version of the fabled hanging gardens of Babylon. I should add that it was this fantasy rendition that I preferred infinitely over what I later discovered to be the probable, scientific truth. By my own version, of course, I mean those gardens that I began to fabricate in mind little by little, with the mortar, brick and green thumb of pure imagination, after hearing the few cursory facts preceded with the clause: As legend would have it . . .
In my mind at least, this was the signal as I knew it for the shackles of reality to fall by the wayside . . . One's wildest dreams, or further. The sky was the limit . . . What I imagined was more like a domed city unto itself, looming over the landscape like a great coliseum encompassing dozens of modern city blocks . . . From the outside, an edifice that seemed to fan out for miles, its zenith dissolved near the top by moving clouds . . . But which could in no way compare to the splendors of the inside . . . More like a different, living jungle on each of many floors or tiers, supported by colonnades and archways intricately carved with frieze work depicting great myths and tales of heroism . . . Some ubiquitous stone chimeras, as the Persians seem to favor, which look like stunned lions with tiny serrated teeth and the tongues of snakes . . . So many of these rearing up, sometimes as fountains or forming the bookends of benches in the dense man-made vistas of flora and fauna . . . Mosaics of blue and purple tile . . . inlaid marble footpaths strewn with gravel polished to shine, for these ancient aristocrats to stroll across comfortably, listening to the sounds of this unnatural, natural world . . . The trickle, babbling of a stream issuing from the hidden mouths of insulated ceramic pipes . . . The catcalls of jungle creatures rollicking in the canopies . . .
And for the record, I was not so conscious of the fact that I was, as they say, just daydreaming. The concept of a hanging gardens at all, was in my mind so bold, so fantastic, it was my assumption that whatever I might think up, no matter how outrageous, would only be approaching it halfway. I dreamt of myself there, as the child that I was then, clad in robe and sandals . . . Hanging gardens in the sense and for the way the outgrowth of fauna threatened to overwhelm each respective tier, and the way it was manicured so that it hung down symmetrically in tendrils of ivy, vine and moss, long boughs ripe with olives and draped around columns, obscuring partially the bas-relief dragons, scenes of nautical warfare; but hanging down, down into the space created by the shelf of each concentric level and the mesmerized way that I would on tip-toes peer over the lip of these huge staired balconies down into the void created by such great height and swathed at the vanishing point by mist, what I could recognize only by instinct at that age to be a wellspring of unlimited possibility . . .
Already at that tender age, such elaborate fantasy had become the better part of my life . . . the substance . . . So much so that it wasn't even that much to my dismay learning the minuscule truth . . . If I recall correctly it was The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World by Clayton, Price and Finkel-the book that deflowered my dream, one auspicious winter afternoon . . . And to think how excited I had been, to have finally come across an authoritative text on the subject! . . . The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World . . . And yet as the more rational, scientific-minded among us typically seem to do in trying to explore worlds of wonder, the end result felt more like an attempt to destroy things entirely, beginning with the subtle magic, that possibility that I spoke about. One can almost derive a certain vindictive smugness in the deadpan way that Mr. Finkel describes the various technological limitations that would make any sort of elevated garden a very diminutive affair, to the point that one "must" question whether or not such a wonder even actually existed:
"In our pursuit of the hanging gardens, we must pause to reflect on the unexpected silence on the part of all these native cuneiform texts on the question of anything that could be identified with the fabled Wonder. No Babylonian inscription refers to a building that can plausibly be identified with a royal and spectacular garden, especially one that, if the later accounts are to be believed, was such an extraordinary technological innovation. Let us look at what may be gleaned from later writers on the subject."
Perhaps I had suspected this kind of truth from the beginning, while delicately weaving my own impression, strand by strand . . . It wouldn't have been the first time . . . Possibly this was just what made my mind's work into such a desperate opus of hyperbolic reinterpretation. Or maybe it is the effect reality is always doomed to have on our wildest dreams, dimming the lights so to speak, cropping the perspectives. Whatever the case, almost involuntarily, I continued to describe the Hanging Gardens in the previous way, more vividly in my opinion and as confident as if I had not only intricately toured their regions but also built them, by hand, from the ground up . . . Not just visually but structurally sound, as I had continued on to fathom the reasonably complex scheme of mirrors (light) and hydraulic pumps that would have been necessary to support such an expanse of greenery . . . If anything, the notion that I had out-dreamed on the so-called Wonders of the Ancient world gave me pause. It was a pat on the shoulder, needless to say. More important than any of this, though, was the fact that I began to prefer the idea of an imaginative life. That is, over what may have been the more practical options, suspecting that this was the better way. To me, the moral was that each of us has in mind more Art than the world can safely contain . . . More confusions . . . More daydreams . . . More observations, nagging at us . . . More big ideas about love and civilization . . . More hypocrisy, which sometimes only amounts to changing one's mind, as is to be expected . . . Also, more bitter moments, more secret doubts about oneself . . . himself, herself . . . Quixotically, more love for one's fellow man as well as more qualms against him . . . More morphological schemes concerning flamingoes and sunken treasure . . . More sights, smells and sounds, I think, than actually exist in nature . . . And of what I imagine, more than that, more imagination per individual than any other of God's creatures, catalogued by phylum and therefore that much less of an excuse for living any other way than with the utmost compassion. A great irony, I would say, that though endowed with such superior human faculties as self-esteem, courage, etc., we nevertheless seem to remain stultified by this everyday world of our own creation, shrieking at the controls like monkeys adrift in space. Short of proselytizing, and to speak for myself, I would just like to remain thankful for my one tether, and that it was not clipped as with the umbilical soon after birth. Not truth but imagination!
But even this, the idea, would just be my truth, my objectivity. All of it I choose to mention circuitously, under the auspices of a more compassionate approach. Because, from my experience, it takes a wealth of imagination to live with compassionŠTo say the least . . . I might add, a conclusion at which one is always fated to arrive, one way or another. To live with this credo, to persist in it, even where circumstances tend to explode beyond reasonable comprehension; this is the fork in the road, opened, seemingly, with each and every one of our encounters, day in, day out. A penultimate compassion, as impossible as it sounds, that is the challenge. While on the other hand lies a charade ending in destruction, like an empty, soulless mirth.
Yet by the same token, it can often be quite shocking how few of us, comparatively, think to give this challenge even a fraction of the effort and consideration at our disposal . . . Much less the whole of our imaginations! . . . And I include myself in this indictment, first and foremost. I am in fact admonishing myself continuously, that I must learn how to fight with compassion, in that I've never been much of a tough guy. And I've seen too many movies where violence begets an excruciatingly uncomfortable death, befitting allegory, often rain-drenched. Nor am I a writer, or would I submit to the definition per-say, which is just a formal way of giving one's every little thought an unqualified emphasis. Why be formal about it? That's the way I've always felt. Why bother pinning on nametags when the important thing is to live with one's back up, whether as a writer, a charlatan, cosmonaut, professional custodian, or some secretary-type? . . . An architect! . . . As a bullshit artist! . . . Maybe as a raconteur, since leisure is what I mainly like to think about . . . But the reliable fact is that no matter how far-fetched one goes with his or her take on life, there will always be intervals, possibly even a bulk of the time when the weight of the world becomes too much, too crushing. Too much civilization and too little refuge! Whether real or imagined, there are bound to be instances, surely, where one feels abused, belittled and trod underfoot . . . Fatigued . . . Punished, at wit's end . . . Whipped . . . Torn apart by life itself . . . It can never be more crucial than at these crossroads that one be able to dredge up from within, whatever gumption necessary to strike back, to lash out with all the compassion and humanity that one can bring to bear.
I mean now only to speak imaginatively, in the present tense, or possibly, past perfect . . . Better participles, to cover all my bases. I have so far outstripped myself putting an answer first, before that all-too familiar and perplexing question . . . Why write? Why do anything? Why even make such an appeal, in such left-handed style, and for whose consideration? And as for me, now, mentally typing, writing this all out in my mind while I idle my way through another futile shift at my day job, from all of this talk, what's the big idea? Furthermore, what does any of it have to do with compassion? I ask that of myself with the same degree of concern with which I notice in the world-at-large that we are now a nation at war. That is to say, for all the difference it makes to me and those of my ilk. Or to put it another way, what difference does it make while we all still have to put up such a struggle just to live with compassion. I want to relax, nothing more. I haven't even begun to think about peace on earth, nor will I be able to in this lifetime, the way things are shaping up. What could seem simpler than a lifelong siesta? And yet I find that for a moment's peace it can often be necessary to go all the way to Hell and back. Thus I put pen to paper. I attempt to do so imaginatively, under the auspices of another, better tomorrow that lies waiting in the wings. Wide awake, I find that I can fantasize unabashedly while tethered by a gossamer strand to what remains objective about reality.
And I admonish myself, fight harder, standing on the corner of Twelfth and Broadway, waiting for them to close up shop outside the bookstore that, for me, is just another in a long line of hopeless bookstore jobs. But it is a swell autumn night . . . Nicely lit from below with searing lights, blazing, clangorous traffic and a pitch sky touched with purples . . . I am standing with Doug, from the review department, and he is waiting for a girl who works behind the registers. It is their first date and he is nervous, fidgeting with his satchel, though I can tell it is comforting to him for us to be standing together this way, both of us pretending to be so aloof. He insists that I am here to ridicule him and I choose to talk around this point, as it is, like most points, only partially true. I've been laughing about it uproariously, his date, all evening, very true, and it is a delicate balance. The reality may have something to do with an erotic coloring book that I came upon while shelving medical reference earlier in the week. Amidst the predictable pornography shots was, inexplicably, a picture entitled La Gormande . . . Like some kind of snouted, hairy incubus, that at first glance appears to be sucking its own dick . . . But in fact it is only a plant, the edge of which the creature is holding between its legs . . . A thick tropical bush, sprouting a fan of penises instead of blossoms, or penii, as it were-which is neither here nor there, only that the resemblance has caused me to begin calling him petit Gormande in my mind. As in: bon chance, frere Gormande! Doug in his jean shorts, with a long scar down his face, only superficially concealed by his beard and mustache. That and his thin-lipped smile, all of which has been the fuel for my hilarity throughout most of the evening. I realize, both through instinct as well as second-hand information that the girl is only pitying him by going out tonight, that there is no legitimate chance and that his hopes will most probably be ground into the dust. He is killing time now, telling me about being a writer, how it comes in so handy for him, talking to girls. Not that he plans to brag about it, but if the subject comes up he won't hesitate to use it to his advantage. It's what he does after all, a good use of his keen insight into the human condition. And listening to him saying this it is all I can do to keep my sides from splitting. But at the same time I realize I am also just as fallible. Just as human, in the same hopeful way. All of which makes me a type of vassal to his cause, in that I want him to beat the odds, to win her heart somehow . . . More than that, if it were in some way possible, under the circumstances, to comport myself with empathy, compassionately . . . And I try to imagine what he must dreaming about at this very moment, beneath all the bravado . . . What he dreams about on nights like this, no matter how sentimental or beyond the pale . . . Here along with him, reaching out, I strain toward life beyond the pale, outside of the rules, I stretch my imagination . . .
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