Sisyphus My Love

(To Record a Dream in a Bathtub)

Laura Hinton

BlazeVOX [books]
Buffalo, New York

Sisyphus My Love by Laura Hinton Copyright 2009 Published by BlazeVOX [books] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews. Printed in the United States of America Book design by Geoffrey Gatza First Edition ISBN 9781935402268 Library of Congress Control Number: 2009925611

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Prologue
Picture: Sisyphus wears a torn Rodier T-shirt gummy Bermuda shorts in the garden of an ancestor farmer son of a Burgundian miner who crawled out of a hole shaved his face and chest polished his nails whistled for a simple glass of Auxey-Duresses whose progeny bore a son wounded in the war who married a coquette wore coat tails in Paris summered on the Riviera dressed in long white shirt sleeves and a bow tie so that when one day a mistral whipped the sea into tall white cliffs he died of a heart attack in his mother-in-laws dress boutique Sisyphus was the second son of this ill-fated man and giggled when he saw his fathers corpse Someone saw a vine shoot spread from the mothers 16th-arrondissement bed to a chipped lip of the Mediterranean sea bowl where Sisyphus the god-man was bred hidden behind louvered windows

Part I: Sisyphus in the Over-world

Abrupt Transition
The sorrow was in the beginning.1 Protests were alive in my Parisian setting But a war that starved cities, bled forests and trees spawned the goods of liberation Mothers passed by on U.S. army trucks waving, makebelieving Paris was a friendly river hollow i remember nothing My carved alabaster skin a gift from the Republic my mother scrapes the white of the walls to sustain me the white of the walls gives my body density and shape In summer Riviera sands they buried my young skin the bones i remember nothing They said it would strengthen

Orphan of the State, I had no father or close kin i remember nothing An uncle in the provinces watched television game shows while cousins climbed a wall it is a time too sensual for heros i remember nothing I prayed to holy martyrs and I washed the baptismal font they refuse to let me serve the eucharist i am too clumsy too small At 15 I was sent to Geneva where I waited on rich people in a big hotel my mother says only cooks ate during the war Are we still at war? Over the great blue lake white rivers poured down glacier mountainsides waters run like rain I poured red wine over white tablecloths i pour black wine over white skin i withdraw behind the wall of my flesh i am paper thin the wall of my chambered heart thin i am paper thin but i remember nothing
[Dream in a Bathtub] To record a dream in a journal in a bathtub To look for the dream later on the page and to see that the ink has been erased To watch About Schmidt on DVD while eating five squares of organic chocolate late at night To learn about a rhythm of poetry and film watching About Schmidt on DVD To be so excited about the rhythm of poetry and film while eating organic chocolate at night that I can not sleep To have a mind so full of wakefulness about the emptiness of Midwest culture and spaces that it makes for fullness in detail about both

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To remember Rapid City waking up at dawn with the candle still burning To see out the blind that the gardens have not yet submitted to light To watch the garden shovel planted sideways against the garden with a longing like addiction like organic chocolate in the angle of the early morning light To think about Sisyphuss face in the pillow resembling Jack Nicholson's in the movie, and wanting to witness it but having his head turned against me To watch Five Easy Pieces again to get the allusion to the scene with the Omaha waitress deleted from the final film cut To disagree with the director about one of the deleted scenes but not this one, and to not know why I disagree To nevertheless feel puffed up in the early morning, like I should have been a filmmaker To wish I could fly to Rapid City next weekend to research a new novel, as if I could write a new novel this summer while escaping the rain To disagree with the New York Times writer who says that Lewis Carroll was not a pedophile without reading the article about this To worry about pedophiles in general while looking at Lewis Carroll's photograph of a little girl sleeping like Olympia on a couch in the Times, only with clothes on but one shoulder of her bodice down, and to think that gesture may be the difference between England and France in the 19th century To worry that people are attacking psychoanalytic thinking as if Freudians are all Freudians as if they are all the same To think about the two editors at the Times who had to resign To remember that there were two editors at the Tucson newspaper who were caught in an explosion and that one died, and that the one who did not die had just before the explosion refused to give me a job as a writer To remember that this is why I stayed in school and received a Ph.D., because I had no work at the newspaper To know that now I am living an entirely different life as a writer To read the life stories of Ph.D.s from the '90's in The Chronicle of Higher Education and to realize that these traumatic stories are all about men in academia To wonder what it would be like to have my stories in academia recorded in The Chronicle of Higher Education To think that we have to do the laundry before going to Walmart for a cheap plastic table to use in the garden for writing, if it ever stops raining

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To sign up for another human rights organization on the web because I can't be in the garden writing while it is raining To want to speak in lines of poetry but to be forced to speak in prose To desire in the infinitive mood as if deflecting a bad mood because it is raining To desire to defer deflecting To think about all those people in the laundromat today and then again in the Walmart in Kingston To remember a time when I would never set foot in a Walmart in Kingston, New York, or a Walmart anywhere, until one boring day Sisyphus and I drove to the Kingston mall and did not shop but played ball in the aisles of the Walmart sports department To think that just five squares of organic semi-sweet chocolate could make me stay up all night To know I need a cheap plastic table from Walmart to write in the garden if it stops raining

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Moving Rock 1 (in two voices:)

before encountering the absurd, the everyday man lives with aims2 Daylight ends moving rock larger it grew out of the soil a density absurd shaped like an egg aims without an edge man lives with vacancy encountering filled space everyday where Monkshood stood man lives with aims absurd lives Botanical Notes: MONKSHOOD a phenomenon that grows out of shadows like sand; gives small
purple flowers in autumn season; shoots restless green leaves into summer air; provides instant death to foraging deer; sends swaths of wide roots to anchor deeply; lives under the most extreme conditions; proliferates in any terrain; requires little water; will not die

doesnt die
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Moving Rock 2; or, Habitat to the Breaking Point (in two voices, continued:)
In places where deer populations have stretched the habitat to the breaking point, confrontations with people and deer have come to an all-time high. Deer Proofing Your Yard and Garden3 If wallowing in idylls of reproduction a textbook species whose dun leaves and lavender volume engenders fall blooming bells poisons reckless deer that stayed around last year ripping fences leaving hides not dying lingering in landscapes margins, their aching bellies of yarrow demanding all the cats catnip a dogs sorrow leaps in the air Irish Spring soap-shavings and human hair dismissed as useless *** Protect your habitat, the neighbors say but youll never get rid of it Could they mean the rock?

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[Dream in a Bathtub] To be lost in a dream of a Mediterranean desert To think that tomorrow morning there will be clouds, so that I will not watch emerging light To think that Sisyphus made a garden by moving rock and cutting trees To see in my mind Sisyphus dragging rocks and trees To yell at a deer who is eating the dead tree leaves, now that the trees have fallen to the ground To think I once liked deer before I had a garden To remember putting an Arrow Book Club edition of Bambi next to my father's bedside the night before the day he went deer hunting To think that the Coral Bells in my garden might croak with rains saturation To realize I am watching tropical fish swim on my screen saver and that Im wishing I were there To forget that when we dig in the garden there will be rocks and roots and rocks and stones, and that digging in the garden will be agony To remember that this agony is a form of masochism when I see Sisyphus dragging rocks and trees around as if this was a necessary ritual To let Sisyphus go to the laundromat carrying five loads of laundry alone, because the five squares of semi-sweet chocolate made me sick last night To wonder how one can write poetry if one is too ill to hold paper and pen To wonder if I should dictate my writing to someone else, like Henry James did, or Milton To realize that Henry James and Milton only dictated their writing to women To wish I had one of Milton's daughters to be my surrogate scribe To think about the film About Schmidt again and again, and the rhythm of film like poetry To think about the film and its flattening of space that is Midwest culture To think about the delicate decisions about pace that makes this a film that actually becomes Midwest culture To wonder how one might make such decisions about pacing gratuitously, while still remaining "inside" the film narrative To think that, to be a filmmaker, one must remain inside and outside the narrative at the

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same time an impossibility To think that this is what interests me, how to remain inside and outside at once To imagine that it is not raining and that I am writing in the garden To wish for a kiddie pool from Walmart to place under sunny skies To wish that we had not been visited by the Biblical 40 days and nights To wish for a poetry full of chaos and the appearance of light To wonder why everyone likes the poem with the conventional ending and how I scorn that notion of "ending" even though I wrote the poem To think again and again about a film that so affected me, and to wonder if I could drive across the highways of Nebraska and South Dakota as I did in the old days with my mother To drive and to sweat and to wait for what my mother always called "the viaduct," so we could stop and cool off on the highway in the 100-degree Fahrenheit in the shade fallen over baking asphalt To see nothing but asphalt and flat fields To drive onward through the Badlands and to realize they are ugly but not "bad," and to not have a clue as to where the Badlands end and begin To just stop at a place and call it "the Badlands" sometime in my childhood To take road trips with my mother in writing To take road trips through mountains with a tent like I used to To love every frame of a movie as if it were a single moment To let a movie remind me of a poem's detail To let the detail be the rhythm of a poem like a movie

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Moving Rock 3 (Sisyphus speaks:)

Rock ruins my fertile bliss this habitat abyss of severed ground can describe its own hollow sound My sound crickets write cadences syllables ascend Where is a garden plot that marks underground restlessness?

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(The Wife Appears) i am all i am all female lacking contrition i am all this of hair my power insufficient this absurd mission my abundance of hair lacking i am all ambition i a LOVE man who moves the rock female driven abundance female ambition

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Sisyphus's Lotto Queen Dream

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.4 Riding around in my brothers Citron we are watching Riviera towns wind hillsides where backcountry duchesses once ate men In the front seat sits our own duchess looking for smokes and contraband Lotto queen, Reine of the Dead waves an invalide parking permit in her hand she is screaming S-T-O-P! People stare at our black sedan We pull up to Reine's favorite restaurant where a waitress wears a brassiere snapped around her dress like a waistband Riviera tourist food tastes bland breaded zucchini flowers fried in a pan but this is an absurd dream I scream S-T-O-P Back in the garden a Black & Decker steel-cased fan bobs around and scrapes the land In the dream, I scream S-T-O-P I tell myself: This is only an absurd dream *** On this sparkling Riviera day, my empty table waits to be read as legibly as backcountry stone fog-grey and mist extends times morbid invitation I am a blind man revisiting my last silly show
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watching the subterranean photo play below, at the level of the sea abstract spasms through my lens design white lines I thought all great deeds fed through faux channels these barely dimmed regarding them to be shadows: pre-image (The Wife Interrupts with Her Petite Histoire) so it was pouring that day the woman from the Ecole Normale gave me her umbrella in the Passy caf (in your neighborhood but I didnt know you) I was drenching on the quai anyway it was pouring and pouring when these nomadic scoundrels followed me like prey and next thing I knew I was riding in the back of a van of the Police Nationale 19 year olds with machine guns I hoped and prayed they wouldn't shoot little Saint Chapelle sparkling dark jewels not glass (Nights of Orange, Pink) The windows, the sky its up in an amphitheater clouds bracket orange night (Why do clouds move backward this way?) Nights of (orange) pink, over the barren site of the former Tuileries a queens nest, a garden. (Before I knew you) I watched the nights of orange, pink but I didnt know you cloudy distillery, this hidden castle
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tinted

garden behind a castle wall now, a ruin Once upon a time a garden, a sun I walked the orange, mine yours. (I didnt know you yet) The very late pink evening set over the Jardin des Tuileries where a queen with her bridegroom, king and queen on summer green lawn, they make dark symmetry, a photograph photographs on a white wall in a womans boarding house in D.C. taken of a Paris sky somewhere high before dawn, pink every night the summer sun set so late, I watched, I knew the sunset came late over the Orangerie And I would know that pink rise of light over Seine bank every morning going to work during winter rose light Call this my sunrise sublime pink so late, they put me on a bus On the bus over the Seine, I recalled that womans photographs the garden, a queens ruin me, the Tuileries my own warm ruin Queen of desert sunrise, or was it darkness, dusk? Every light has a correspondent the sun burns everywhere, in every corner, every aspect of dry species in hiding bunnies in pens, theyre panting little brother with blond hair removes the bunny while next to him an orange ocotillo blooms pink bunny in his arms, in picture pink light, the river is dry always dry, we know no rivers, except a flood sunset fade, carpet the picture moves like stars, proverbially useless so many rays of light untapped at a distance, does not make a difference this night marked up my life tasseled blocked off
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a part

I would never know ruins

like

these

Orange night, pink day and night and day and ( I am lying in an open tent) From Quai Voltaire in Paris, I send the photograph the shred remains pink particles in the photograph those over the Seine me on a bus orange over a river bed, pink *** Over the table, you and I both have passed the salt

Moving Rock 4
(Sisyphus speaks:) Exterior The rock moves backward battered Earth splatters bird nests fall out of trees my knees knocked by wind Upon Earths surface I arrange a hoax I outwit the 40 days and nights of torrential pools that ruin fools summer

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A false game is melancholic equal parts to lucrative omission I lie on a wooden deck I act on my back I think of a ruse to defuse submission Interior Misaligned elegant contours of a planet's secret inclines propose holes for worms (their recesses suggest dim caves of human thought 5) *** Ignore this cacophony Earths rot Everything predicts the coming delirium

[Dream in a Bathtub] To think that the deer we chased from the garden with rocks and sticks has now adopted us as our pet To see that the deer is sleeping in the grass near the garden this morning and that he doesn't move when we fling open doors To think that we haven't gone to Walmart for the cheap plastic table because it is still raining To think that it continues to rain and pour, and that the saturated Northeast might be swept into the sea while the desert of the Southwest will crackle under a dry burden of heat

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To see that the reviewer of a poetry book I am holding had nothing to say about the poem except to quote from it profusely for the sake of the book jacket To think that Sisyphus and I pulled a 400-pound rock out of the ground in order to plant Monkshood where the rock previously stood To realize that we pulled this 400-pound rock out of the ground with a thin plastic rope tied to a 1994 Honda Civic, even though the rock was egg-shaped and had no edge To realize that Sisyphus nearly lost his fingers pulling the rock out of the ground because he was holding onto this rock with no edge To think that I was pulling the rope with the rock and Sisyphus, too, as I drove the 1994 Honda Civic in first gear To remember that this happened only yesterday To realize I forgot all my dreams yesterday To not want to rise out of bed this morning because the rain from last night continues into the day, and to feel a little depressed because I feel cheated out of my summer To like the sound of the rain on the roof anyway, in spite of the depression To remember the sound of the rain on a tin roof in a desert To remember that I gave birth to a baby in the desert To remember that I had actually never seen a very small baby until I gave birth to one myself To remember the labor of giving birth a quarter of a century after the fact To remember that, the day after giving birth, the father of the baby and I walked around the Santa Fe Sears and bought diapers To realize that I hadn't thought about buying diapers until after the very small baby was born To wish I could live like that now, not thinking about buying things until there was a necessity To not think about occurrences until they actually occur To realize that today is two days after the babys 25th birthday and that it is Friday the 13th, which might be a bad sign To be annoyed when Sisyphus shouts from the bedroom: do you know it is Friday the 13th? To write about something I do not understand so I can invent other languages for knowing To think that I want to figure out and that I cant

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