As an image, the scene in the dream was as beautiful as a Japanese print: above a mountain range, a bank of purple-grey clouds, scalloped and fringed, loomed like a massive shadow of the mountains below. Once unleashed, the storm would prove catastrophic. But at that precise moment, there was nothing but awesome, stunning beauty.

In the world of awake, the vistas hold less grandeur. There’s love of small, unimportant moments. Crucial to sustaining a certain link – light and shadow on familiar objects, for instance. Books, music, the re-threading of familiar thoughts into new patterns.

“A man said to the Universe: ‘Sir, I exist!’ 

-However, replied the Universe, the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.”

Stephen Crane*

Years ago, in a cold, cold Montreal flat, I’d written down those words and pinned the piece of paper at eye level near the bed. The bed was a mattress on the floor which I shared with my daughter so we could keep warm. Why the memory crops up this morning, I don’t know. Unexpected bits often show up when the writing is at the early draft stage. Pieces of a larger puzzle, recombinations in search of new patterns.

Another bit floats up from another far-away time. From Carl Sagan, this time, in The Dragons of Eden**: “The world is very old, and human beings are very young.”  With all of us as alive, bizarre, and unexpected, as threatened as the last of the remaining tribes in the Amazon.

Not very cheerful, woman, on this Monday morning? Not very glum either. Somewhere in between, with swings to both sides. Reading through some of the poems in Roberto Juarroz’ quatorzième poésie verticale***, I come to the conclusion that Juarroz had verticality as the defining image in his life. Mine might be the balancing act – the swaying back and forth involved in walking. On a street, in my case. As much as I admire my circus artist friends,  I’m too old to run away with them   and train as a tight-rope walker.

***

*Stephen Crane (1871-1900) – American poet, novelist and short story writer

**Carl Sagan The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, Ballantine Books, New York 1986

***Roberto Juarroz, quatorzième poésie verticale, édition bilingue, traduction de Silvia Baron Supervielle, Ibériques José Corti 1997