The Most of It Read online

  THE MOST OF IT

  BOOKS BY MARY RUEFLE

  Indeed I Was Pleased With the World

  A Little White Shadow

  Throughout

  Tristimania

  Apparition Hill

  Among the Musk Ox People

  Post Meridian

  Cold Pluto

  The Adamant

  Life Without Speaking

  Memling’s Veil

  THE MOST OF IT

  MARY RUEFLE

  WAVE BOOKS

  SEATTLE/NEW YORK

  Published by Wave Books

  www.wavepoetry.com

  Copyright © 2008 by Mary Ruefle

  All rights reserved

  Wave Books titles are distributed to the trade by

  Consortium Book Sales and Distribution

  Phone: 800-283-3572 / SAN 631-760X

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  Ruefle, Mary, 1952-

  The most of it / Mary Ruefle. -- 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-933517-30-8 (trade cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN

  978-1-933517-29-2 (trade paper : alk. paper)

  I. Title.

  PS3568.U36M67 2008

  813’.54--dc22

  2007041633

  Ebook ISBN 9781950268276

  Wave Books 014

  TO YOU

  CONTENTS

  Snow

  Camp William

  Suburb of Long Suffering

  My Pet, My Clock

  Hazeline

  Lichen

  A Glass of Water

  Woman With a Yellow Scarf

  The Bench

  Monument

  Beautiful Day

  My Search Among the Birds

  The Dart and the Drill

  The Taking of Moundville by Zoom

  Hard-Boiled Detective

  What Woman

  All My Roe

  Peek-a-Moose

  Sleep

  A Certain Swirl

  Ascribed This Day to the Affidavit

  The Diary

  The Most of It

  A Romantic Poet and His Destiny

  If All the World Were Paper

  A Minor Personal Matter

  On Twilight

  University of the Limitless Mouse

  Some Nondescript Autumn Weekend

  A Half-Sketched Head

  Acknowledgments

  Hardly had we entered the cemetery when we lost one another. The trees that had pushed up between the graves blocked our view, and our shouts went unanswered. And then, just as suddenly, we found one another again …

  —TZVETAN TODOROV

  SNOW

  Every time it starts to snow, I would like to have sex. No matter if it is snowing lightly and unseriously, or snowing very seriously, well on into the night, I would like to stop whatever manifestation of life I am engaged in and have sex, with the same person, who also sees the snow and heeds it, who might have to leave an office or meeting, or some arduous physical task, or, conceivably, leave off having sex with another person, and go in the snow to me, who is already, in the snow, beginning to have sex in my snow-mind. Someone for whom, like me, this is an ultimatum, the snow sign, an ultimatum of joy, though as an ultimatum beyond joy as well as sorrow. I would like to be in the classroom — for I am a teacher — and closing my book stand up, saying “It is snowing and I must go have sex, good-bye,” and walk out of the room. And starting my car, in the beginning stages of snow, know that he is starting his car, with the flakes falling on its windshield, or, if he is at home, he is looking at the snow and knowing I will arrive, snowy, in ten or twenty or thirty minutes, and, if the snow has stopped off, we, as humans, can make a decision, but not while it is still snowing, and even half-snow would be something to be obeyed. I often wonder where the birds go in a snowstorm, for they disappear completely. I always think of them deep inside the bushes, and further along inside the trees and deep inside of the forests, on branches where no snow can reach, deeply recessed for the time of the snow, not oblivious to it, but intensely accepting their incapacity, and so enduring the snow in brave little inborn ways, with their feathered heads bowed down for warmth. Wings, the mark of a bird, are quite useless in snow. When I am inside having sex while it snows I want to be thinking about the birds too, and I want my love to love thinking about the birds as much as I do, for it is snowing and we are having sex under or on top of the blankets and the birds cannot be that far away, deep in the stillness and silence of the snow, their breasts still have color, their hearts are beating, they breathe in and out while it snows all around them, though thinking about the birds is not as fascinating as watching it snow on a cemetery, on graves and tombstones and the vaults of the dead, I love watching it snow on graves, how cold the snow is, even colder the stones, and the ground is the coldest of all, and the bones of the dead are in the ground, but the dead are not cold, snow or no snow, it means very little to them, nothing, it means nothing to them, but for us, watching it snow on the dead, watching the graveyard get covered in snow, it is very cold, the snow on top of the graves over the bones, it seems especially cold, and at the same time especially peaceful, it is like snow falling gently on sleepers, even if it falls in a hurry it seems gentle, because the sleepers are gentle, they are not anxious, they are sleeping through the snow and they will be sleeping beyond the snow, and although I will be having sex while it snows I want to remember the quiet, cold, gentle sleepers who cannot think of themselves as birds nestled in feathers, but who are themselves, in part, part of the snow, which is falling with such steadfast devotion to the ground all the anxiety in the world seems gone, the world seems deep in a bed as I am deep in a bed, lost in the arms of my lover, yes, when it snows like this I feel the whole world has joined me in isolation and silence.

  CAMP WILLIAM

  This morning I want to talk a little bit about killing. You know it is never easy. There can never be enough killing. It is the biggest earthly part of time yet we are often shy of it. What a slow, discouraging business it can seem. It’s fight, fight, fight and then some, with hardly a sign of encouragement to keep you going. But each of us must try. When we are young we are anxious to grow up and start killing but as soon as we are older we grasp the full measure of how difficult it really is. The secrets of the dark struggles of the night are well concealed. When I was a child my father often took me with him to visit various military installations, and to enter each one we had first to pass through a little gate where a guard waved at us and we were expected to wave back. It was of course really a salute, but really it looks something like a little wave, it is a little wave, and I was struck, as a child, by the fact two strangers — my father and the guard, who most certainly did not know each other — were expressing such open and friendly affection for each other. This wonderful feeling has never left me, and in many ways has led me to standing here before you today. If two strangers can express such unspoken goodwill toward each other, how much more so must take place when we are killing! For the greatest acts of killing take place between strangers, strangers for whom there exists this wonderful capacity for intimate connection. Think of it! Somewhere there exists a stranger waiting for you to kill him in such an honest and heartrending way. Or perhaps he will kill you, so glorious and inexplicable is life. I actually tremble when I speak of these things, for I know your hearts are good at the core, and that you are deserving of all life has to offer, and that one day your courage will burst its very vessels. Well, I will not keep you from your canoes any longer. But today when you are out rowing upon the waters, I hope each of you will take a moment to consider the strength you possess in your own two arms.

  SUBURB OF LONG SUFFERING

  Fire is my
companion, but I do not talk to it, it talks to me. It has white-hot fissures that quiver and rage and complain and sometimes very tender speech towards morning, a low blue word or two. I never tire of listening to my fire. Music is my companion also, but it does not talk to me, I talk to it, I talk to it and it listens without complaint, absorbing whatever I am feeling and I can feel it listening to me. I think it never tires of listening to me. Together, the fire and the music and me, we make a family that, despite its dysfunction, is able to persevere. Yet I have a complaint. When they are in the room together, the fire and the music, they talk to each other and neither do they talk nor listen to me, as for example on a rainy day when the three of us come into the room together to while away the time: the fire and the music begin to converse in soft tones at first, so as not to disturb me I like to think, but soon their conversation grows to such a pitch that between the two of them there seem to be a great many unspoken agreements, while I am left feeling lonelier and lonelier, and end up by the window, a mere eavesdropper in my own home.

  MY PET, MY CLOCK

  A pet is a good way to tell time, better than a clock, for time is a measure of the changing positions of objects, and soon it will be time to feed the pet, to exercise the pet, to replace its little ball, clip its nails or talons, wash it ever so gently, vacuum up its sheddings and so forth. And eventually the sad day comes when it must die, and then it is time to get another. A clock, on the other hand and against all appearances, is a very poor way to tell time, for all it ever does is sit there or hang on the wall, and very seldom does it do anything of itself to remind you of time. Of course we live in a country where twice a year time springs forward or falls back, and on those occasions — the mock birthdays of time — a little fuss must be made over the clock, but other than that it does not really ask for much. If you are desirous of saving time one of the best things you can do is buy your clock batteries on one of its birthdays, eliminating the need for a gift on the next occasion. But other than these few inconveniences the care of your clock will never be a way of marking time, despite the fact we bring them into our homes for just this purpose. A clock is in fact no better than a dead pet. I myself have neither clock nor pet, and well might you ask what I do for time, though I prefer to put it somewhat differently: what has time ever done for me? Very little, it would seem; time has robbed me of my youth, my energy, strength, sprite, the vigor I was in my childhood famous for, and all the natural oils in my once-luxurious tresses. Once I felt enough for time to invest in a little goldfish, but alas he died two days later in a gallant attempt to jump his bowl, which was successful, though not in time, for in England there is a physicist by the name of Julian Barbour who believes time does not exist as we commonly perceive it to exist, that is in a passing continuum; no, he believes time, our time, time on earth, is made up of unconnected, absolutely discrete units, the length of an instant, which eternally occur, having no past and no future. In this sense of time, my goldfish is forever happily swimming in his new bowl and forever leaping from it in an adventurous frolic, or spasm of despair, depending on your view, which is also subject to time, as it is evident the views of old age do not coincide with youthful ones. But in this other world, the world of discrete eternal units, your pet needs his dinner, as he is whining at his bowl, yet does not need his dinner, as he has just eaten and is lying by the fire. Your pet has become a most inaccurate way of marking time, whereas the lifeless clock on the mantle, a discrete unit itself, dependent on no one and subject not to the passing of time, will finally have its day and serve its true purpose of marking time, which neither moves forward nor falls back, requiring no adjustments whatsoever, though, when this day comes and the clock is restored to its rightful place in our homes, if not our hearts, I often wonder if it will still be said when looking at a clock, as is the custom now, how beautiful it is to have lived, how blessed that one can die.

  HAZELINE

  After father died, he said that dying had taken a longer time than he had previously imagined possible. He was not dead at that time but we did not know it, his eyes had long ceased being the source of anything, he was stiff as a board and he had no pulse. Mother and I were very interested in everything he had to say, the way the living are with experts. He said it was extremely painful, even now, but not in any way that he could explain or describe. Speaking was painful, he said, more painful than anything else, because being dead — he couldn’t describe it — it didn’t amount to very much, there was no way we could understand, and by the time we ourselves died he would be long gone. He said there was a woman down the hall who was also dead, though no one knew it yet, and he could talk to her, but she wasn’t listening. Mother bristled when he said this, and I put my hand on her arm. He was telling about how people when they are dead know each other by little signs that are not of this world when Doctor Fillmore came in and said Dad would be fine, though he didn’t use those words exactly, he used “the old board with iron nails in it is an otter again.” That was Dad. It didn’t take anyone long to get to know him, a lot less time than it took to die, according to him who died six hours or days or weeks later, we could not be sure, as he had always been fond of making us feel we were floating away while he was standing on the coast of Iceland singing.

  LICHEN

  I wanted to go into the forest and collect lichen. I wanted to use the lichen in an art project because it had a crumbly, scaly texture and various shades of the same color appeared in the smallest patches. I was pretty sure lichen was rootless, but whether its living would be interrupted or unsettled in some way I was unsure. I didn’t want to pick lichen if picking it in any way resembled kidnapping. I seemed to recall lichen was very old, among the oldest living things on earth, and that deserved considerable respect, but at the same time there had to be young lichen, if lichen was living it had to reproduce fairly regularly and so some of the lichen had to be young. I did not know how to tell young lichen from old lichen, I did not know if young lichen and old lichen lived together, I did not know which of them, the old or the young, was better suited to kidnapping, I thought it true in general that the older the living thing the closer it was to the end of its life cycle and the less harm there was in kidnapping it, but also true in general that the younger a thing, the less its grip was on its own life — in this case the rock or bark — and the more willing it would be to be lifted out of its environment, I mean the easier it would be to take. If the old lichen clung most tenaciously to its rock or bark, it would be more difficult to do the “right” thing, and if the young lichen could be fairly coaxed off the rock or bark, the easier it would be to do the “wrong” thing. I sat and had these thoughts before I put on my coat to go into the forest and collect my lichen. “My” lichen — it seemed already to be in my possession. To eliminate as much confusion as possible I decided I would collect only dead lichen. I knew that lichen was not of my species and certainly did not bury their dead; therefore the dead lichen must be everywhere in the forest, among the living, among the very old lichen and among the young lichen, and I would find them. But how? How could I recognize the dead lichen among the living lichen? Surely the dead lichen did not perceptively move, but nor did the living lichen perceptively move. I had to admit I could not tell the difference between the living and the dead. Such an incapacity shocked me. If that were my criteria it would be easier to collect bears, though, of course, in other ways, more difficult, and as I went out the door I understood, with some certainty I think, why bears are often on the minds of those who brave the forest.

  A GLASS OF WATER

  I needed to open the refrigerator — the water I wanted was there, sitting inside a glass pitcher on the uppermost grill, cold and clear and perfectly suited to my thirst. But I was afraid of the light, the light that went on whenever I opened the door, or the light that was always on — it was hard to tell — and I was more afraid of the light than I wanted the water. Still, my desire for the water was so strong I sometimes put my hand on the doo
r, preparing, in my mind, to open the door more quickly than the light could respond to the door being opened, and sometimes I tried a completely spontaneous approach, believing if I opened the door very quickly, without thinking of either the water or the light, and most of all without thinking of opening the door (while I was opening it), I might be able to overcome the light, my fear, like most fear, being predicated on premeditation, but when this didn’t work I entertained the very reasonable idea of waiting until the source of the light — the lightbulb — burned itself out, as was inevitable, though how this could happen if I didn’t open the door once in all those years was a problem, compounded by the very real possibility of my dying of thirst while I waited. To use the light again and again seemed to be my only recourse if I wanted to burn the light out, and as it happened I opened the door again and again, but now I was more intent on the light than I was on the water, and forgot to drink altogether as I stood in the kitchen in my stocking feet in front of the refrigerator, opening and closing the door in rapid succession, driven by dehydration and fear to take risks that led me deeper and deeper into crisis.

  WOMAN WITH A YELLOW SCARF

  I was reading in bed in the morning, something I like to do, something I try to do every thirty days, two or three hours, usually on a Sunday. Reading in bed in the morning is not like reading at any other hour — first thing! — your mind fresh and alive and responsive, sometimes you read something you would miss at any other hour, especially the late ones, midnight, that’s another time for reading and there are things you don’t miss at midnight but they are not the things you don’t miss in the morning. That was when I saw her. A woman passed holding a yellow scarf over her head. She does this in a story by Albert Camus. A French engineer is in a remote village in Brazil, the mayor has given him lodgings in the hospital, which is called by the curious name of “Happy Memory,” which is not so curious when you consider the building of a hospital in a village that has none is a happy memory for those who live there and will use it. Our protagonist wakes up in Happy Memory hospital, it’s raining, he looks out the window at a clump of aloes being rained on, and then the sentence happens. A woman passed holding a yellow scarf over her head. A simple sentence, of no import in the story — our lady never again appears, and without her presence on page 169 (in my copy) the story would not appear to be missing a single necessary moment. Yet the yellow scarf is needed by this woman at this moment, it is raining, she is passing by the hospital, she doesn’t want to get her hair wet, or her head, or her body, luckily she has a yellow scarf she can hold over her head, stretched like a sail between two hands, or maybe not, maybe the scarf is triangulated and she is holding it under her chin. Who is she? Where is she on her way to, or coming from, how old is she, is she married with children or not? What difference can it make, this fictional woman is born and dies in the same sentence, her moment passes us holding its yellow scarf, her fate is to appear in a story by Camus, and when I think of her fate I realize it could be worse, she could be walking past a window in a story by Thomas Gilbert, surely a woman can sense the importance of whose story she is in, perhaps that is why she chose, this morning, to bring along her yellow scarf — a keen author couldn’t fail to notice that. Still, her fate cannot be commended, one day it is raining, she puts on a yellow scarf and goes out in the rain, never to be heard from or seen again. She is among the missing, but we don’t even know her name, or what she looks like. I doubt the scarf was made of silk, canary yellow with a map of the world on it. I have such a scarf draped over a wooden hanger in my coat closet, I have had it many years and never once worn it, rain or no rain, I do not recall how I came by it, perhaps it was given to me. But in this remote village in Brazil in the nineteen hundred and fifties, this yellow scarf — well, maybe, ok, silk. I often fall into the habit of thinking anyone born in the ages before I was born lived in the dark ages. Nothing could be further from the truth, as they say, but I’ve noticed people everywhere stand as far from the truth as possible. A woman passed holding a yellow scarf over her head. I don’t remember half the scarves or half the women I see in an ordinary day. But this woman was different. She held her head up high as she walked across the street in the rain, and I came to believe she was on a mysterious and important errand, whose nature I might never know, and that somewhere concealed on her body she was carrying the tip of a forefinger wrapped in a bit of yellow fur inside a white leather ring box, and that the finger was mine, I had used it to follow words, for words seemed to me to be always walking alone at night, even in broad daylight they were walking alone at midnight, and I confess, yes, I shadowed them, I shadowed them by way of the alley that is always there and always empty and narrow and hopeless and yields not a single clue.