Andrew Taggart

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Hospitality in actu: A search term poem

In ethics, meditation, parables on February 24, 2012 at 5:46 am

First Digression

Last night I dreamed I was surfing idly on the internet. Pretty quickly things got dicey. When I entered search terms or a URL into Google Chrome, I was immediately re-directed to a page of ads. “No,” I thought. “This can’t be right.”

No, that’s not quite it. It was rather that “andrewjtaggart.com” did not lead me to my cozy little home, but the name had been thieved and I was held hostage by a wall of ads and text. That page, filled with noise and fuzz, was andrewjtaggart.com.

I thought, “So this is Hell 2.0.” I thought, “So, this is how people experience this site.”

 Second Digression

I glanced at my Dashboard this morning and noticed that someone had searched “resume cv professor andrew taggart.” If you’ve been reading my work long enough, then I hope you’ll laugh at the whole string of characters. (Well, perhaps, the Christian name “Andrew” is not that funny but I digress.)

Preface

The poem below is stitched together from search terms that brought some readers to my website over the past couple days. I fear they came away empty-handed. I hear they are demanding their money back.

The purpose of my modest literary experiment is to see whether, in this threadbare tapestry, this withered linen cloth, I can glimpse something of the diversity of human experience; whether I can enact compassion in the enmeshing; whether I can take the dangerous, the rather dangerous and lewd desires alluded to, and hold them up so tenderly; and, most of all, whether I can let in the vulgar, let in the guttural and raise it up too, allowing it to realize its essence in a higher form. Just as knuckles plead to be wrists, so lust sings to be love.

I do not say that the poem is good. I say only that the poem is right-spirited. Let us say: its heart is in the right place.

A.

—
 
1
 
knuckles feet wrists
arrogant steps
 
2
 
scenes:
touching breasts
touching lovers breasts
lovers touching breasts
 
3
 
scene:
breast touching
breasts touching
breasts touching before
marriage
lovers breasts touching
marriage
lovers breaths touching marriage
 
4
 
rumi
stillness
integrity, integritas
 

Further Reading

I take this to be one example of spiritual exercise (ascesis). The curious reader may learn more about ascesis over here. Scroll down about halfway and, while you’re at it, why don’t you be a good sport and grab the tissue on the floor at your feet.

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‘I fear I am becoming an old man already…’

In ethics, meditation on February 23, 2012 at 5:20 am

I fear I am becoming an old man already. I keep a spare tissue wedged down in the two finger nook of my pocket. Sometimes it is crisp from use or age, and when I am hard up I do not think twice of tearing off a jagged piece of toilet paper from the half-used roll sitting atop the holding tank.

I do not remember the last time I bought a box or cube of tissues. Soon enough, I shall buy handkerchiefs–white, gauzy, spidery ones–and groan a little upon getting into and out of armchairs, love seats, and antique sofas. Oh, I will say, as my leaky body goes down to pick up the drier sheet crabbed on the floor. Taking the shortest route, my body will perform its atonal hymn till it reaches exactly halfway to the bottom.

Oh, I will say. Oh oh.

Oh, they will say, he is on the decline.

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Late afternoon, the fugitive stillness

In ethics, meditation, philosophical counseling on February 22, 2012 at 6:11 am

There’s a moment, not long, sometime after late afternoon but well before twilight. It’s not like the early morning before the signs turn to face you and the feet clap up the stairwells. It’s not like the “dead of night” or the “dead of winter” when stillness is near universal and the “streets are empty.” It’s not like either of these, these rests before generous or strenuous movement. Rather, it’s a fugitive stillness that brings to the most ordinary scene–in my case, the view beyond my window–the slightest touch of sadness.

I

A leaf in flight, doves perch still in the tree. Seagulls… branches… wind…

A coo coo coo. (Caw.) A coo coo coo…

A coo coo coo. (Caw.) A coo coo coo…

II

Chimes tinkle in the garden below. A stove clicks on, then off, then

On. [Pause] Off. [Pause] On. [Pause] Off. Each so slooooowly.

Off now.

Still.

The chime dangles now while the tree arms jangle also. The tree tipping, the evening swooning, roaring.

The early evening sea-swoons.

III

It is now–before New Yorkers come home from work, before the lights flick on, some flickering, now as the day grays over–that life awaits death. It is infinity awakening to itself. It is death childish, embarrassed, a bit cowed.

IV

My belly yens to vibrate like the cello of a body. Please an Om: unembarrassed, a firstling, a first offering, a home howl.

(And is this not the mysterium fascinans? And how can we not rejoice and cry?)

The sadness is light, as light as the faintest word, and then this fugitive stillness, this slightest shiver, is gone.

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