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Dear Clarice,
my interest in Rio is my interest in you, in your writing.
I absorb the city through osmosis,
breathing in the place where you lived and died.
I’m not sure what happens when one dies,
having never died before.
So I send you these letters, in psychic space,
updates from life, to the place
in-between imagination and nothingness.
Everything is lush,
ornate, and slightly rotten,
moss and lichens
cover old structures like graffiti.
Everything is sssss
surface for something to sprout from.
The unlikeliest things are growth mediums.
Orchids stare out,
their roots climbing up the city’s trees,
tropical gothic, adjacent skyscrapers
at the edge of ripeness.
I always see orchids as funny pinched faces.
Their subtle scent is welcoming.
Patches of foliage push out from concrete walls.
I saw a tiny citrus seedling growing
in the crumbling mortar of the firestation.
Do clichés hinder observation?
Are we expecting the thing
as a fixed form rather than as potential?
The thing as language rather than the thing itself.
That depends on what ghosts look like.
My portrait as a ghost just wants to feast
on the marrow of things.
My portrait as a ghost is myself, no longer a thing.
I find myself overwhelmed
by the desire to sneak some of this greenery home,
though they are readily available from most hardware stores.
They are the most ubiquitous houseplants.
The orchids whisper to me,
and yet, I never catch them speaking.
I understand little
making it easier
to observe and read the surfaces of the city,
of the things, of place, of scent.
I observe fully, participate minimally.
I hold back. This suits me.
I play the role of compulsive observer
I wish I could be back at home.
You and I, both share this need,
to be constantly and effortlessly observing.
I run my fingers on the surface of this thing.
Plastic and glass, porcelain and epoxy, held together.
In crowded cities, reverie provides us psychic space.
The bright heat means
I need whatever psychic space I can find.
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Dear Clarice,
I bought two of your books in Portuguese,
I’m contemplating bad translation,
the slippage of words,
slippage of meaning as a space to find poetics.
We don’t learn to speak from building vocabulary,
not from collecting words.
We learn to speak by imitation, by copying.
I’m worried
this liberty might make you cross.
I know how translation can be fraught,
with words as smooth as sea glass, scratched opaque.
I understand your meaning, and add my own.
I consult my dictionary and add my own to decode what’s left.
This approach to reading is literal,
it’s childish.
It erases subtlety, wordplay, and figures of speech.
Is this what is like to read without cliché?
Maybe it's what's like to read without style.
Do clichés hinder observation?
Are we expecting the thing
as a fixed form rather than as potential?
The thing as language rather than the thing itself.
My portrait as a ghost just wants to feast
on the marrow of things.
My portrait as a ghost is myself, no longer a thing.
Your writing belies someone ghostly.
Even while you were alive;
someone living inside her head.
Am I getting this right?
I’m surprised that my limited Portuguese
is much more useful for reading than speaking.
When speaking I’m uncertain,
nervous and thick of tongue.
When listening, I’m useless.
While reading,
the words I know provide a scaffold
while words similar
to French, English, or Spanish
suggest that I might know more than I do.
But I’m no fool.
Context is the mortar in-between.
Am I getting this right?
When I write, I want to be right.
My intent is less to create a world or reflect in back
than to make my slice of the world legible.
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Dear Clarice,
I want to take the words
for silver, old, and alterity.
Take these words and consume them
have them become part of me
as I make the books I re-read
become part of me.
I collect these words and preserve them,
arrange them as collections of things.
I inch towards understanding
how you sculpted language
and paid keen attention.
You see,
it’s impossible for me
to not think of how the thing is made.
I inch towards beauty.
I touch the object,
I devour the words,
but I do not wish to swallow the word pain
though I worry I might have, by accident.
But I’m in love with the dictionary
and in love with the accumulation of things.
I copy the words from one language to another,
I display them like curios on my shelf.
A paper collection.
I memorize passages, changing my form.
Is it bringing me closer to understanding?
Maybe, maybe.
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Dear Clarice,
Living tangled in things is an uneasy romance.
The more there are, the more they knot up,
stepping into each other’s space.
Re-defining their borders and edges.
Our identities tangle. My body is altered.
Extended, reshaped by things.
I swallow the pill, and it merges with me.
I wear the jumper, and it becomes my skin.
I hold the thing, lay on the thing, lean into the thing;
it responds to me. and I respond to it.
I eat the fruit. I wear the glasses.
I spray the fragrance on my skin, I brace myself on the object.
Strips of torn fabric tangle. My body is altered.
Extended, reshaped by things.
The things move in the corner of my eye,
fixing the second I fix my gaze.
The line between the thing and self is wobbly;
it requires an inclination towards fantasy.
It asks- how can an object be useless?
I brace my body!
We build fortresses of stuff, identities of things;
we tie ourselves up in knots, onward march.
A hoist. A slip. A reach.
A slip a creak, a crush.
Lines on my forehead, bruise on my chin.
A stain on the rug, a ring on the table.
I hold it in my hand, I balance it on my ribs.
Fascia squeezed, tendons arched.
It creaks under weight,
a spot to repair.
The things are scuffed,
their eyeless stare says: ‘we are a bit damaged.’
Epoxy and strips of old fabric.
A clicking sound, a hissing sound;
teeth and tongue. Popping lips,
a soundtrack of crackling nerves.
The sound of running out of steam.
I like to think that expression arose
because rising steam looks like a ghost.
I don’t remember an agreement on what ghosts look like. Do you?
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Dear Clarice,
I notice Rio being fucked up
the way other cities are fucked up,
the way all cities are fucked up.
Dear Clarice,
in this way, it feels like home.
I navigate the crowds,
the tripping hazards
and refuse piles,
I wrinkle my nose at the scents.
Dear Clarice,
I’m a city woman,
city crowds, city sounds,
my eyes darting faster than my thoughts.
I’m a city woman,
city places, city mazes,
my eyes darting faster than my mind.
In its ornate beauty, a palimpsest of styles,
patina of grime, soot, and moss.
Lush colours and lush foliage
dripping and pulsing with life.
So fecund it feels obscene,
it’s a place of every fantasy I’ve ever had.
How could anyone bear
to live anywhere but a city?
Did other places seem dull to you?
How could you bear to leave?
Dear Clarice
How could anyone stand
to live anywhere
but a city?
The noise and the crowds and the trash
of so many cities are signs of life,
the thingness of cities made animate,
electric, as fecund as the foliage or moss.
People in large numbers
their routines resemble those of ants.
Reminding myself I’m like an insect too.
How could anyone bear
to live anywhere
but a city?
Did other places not seem dead to you?
How could you bear to leave?
How could anyone stand
to live anywhere
but a city?
To be condemned to boredom?
Quiet streets, so loathsome.
Cities are the place of every fantasy I’ve ever had.
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Dear Clarice,
Certeau writes that death effaces all difference.
Has death smoothed your spiky edges?
Because you live in your work,
does death fully affect you?
I’m guessing your edges were spiky
from your prose and your cheekbones,
your constant cigarette,
your admitted neuroticism.
All the women I know read you.
Does being read constitute a type of living?
All the women I know quote you.
Does this constitute a type of haunting?
Do you ever look out
from the pages of your own books
to see the world as it is now?
Do you look up to see what type of person is reading you?
What are the powers of a ghost?
Brilliance is as crippling as it is inspiring,
perhaps more so for sustained brilliance.
This is most certainly a type of haunting.
Your writing suggests something spectral.
Someone haunted by all the possibilities;
in prose, and flesh, and material.
Am I getting this right?
I build fiction on the scaffold of fact.
I pay careful attention blood, concrete and sap.
Scrawled smeared ink, I transcribe— make it legible.
Legible for who? Who knows?
My success has thus far been modest
this keeps me awake at night
like my muscle spasms do.
I’m very nervous about the future.
I’m very nervous about all our futures.
My future self as a ghost needs to feast
on the essence of things and drink down the vapours of words.
My former self as a ghost lost forever,
no longer a thing.
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