From Remainders


The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second..and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.
    
                                                             R.W. Emerson


                                                      ~

*Heart.  A hollow, muscular organ.

*Heart.  The center of a person's thought, emotions.

~

My heart achieves itself a little more
this morning through a distillation
of personal anecdotes, facts, facets. 
Twilight is bought
out by day, light
reaching beyond closed windows. Sometimes
it takes a long
time to accept what's
occurred -- whys, whats, whoms. Memories as
adaptations, lines we scar canvases
with to break
ordered frames. Is it less cynical to say
memory is simply a fact, what happens

physiologically -- we
do not choose? Each morning's
simplicity
is that it takes it.  Sirens, lines
cars follow, cars, impatience, 
people, staying asleep, imbalance.

What do we mean when we say,
'It is the heart that remembers.'

The heart as a painting
would be an imperfect circle, as its
colors would display its diffidence, its
convulsive nature. 

Heart : contradiction : pattern.
Heart : hippocampus : memory. 
               
 ~

The perfect number, we know,
is zero. Zero
as a perfect
circle, a balance in constant
return, circles that at any point,

end where they begin, vice-versa. 
Yet what do we really
mean when we say

we return? 


"Again, we return." 

Not repetition, no
no-sum game.  Return, not
as in the ritual of a circle's
path but as center -- full,

unknown, a heart.  We return again and again

to facts, facets, faces,
resemblances.  Memory as multivalent,

emptied matter. 

~

Personal justice that keeps us is not
blind, it chooses. Heart is memory, an imperfect
depth.

 

 

 

 

 


apocryphaltext Vol. 4

Cristiana Baik works as a freelance editor and lives in Boston.  She's currently reading Night Wraps the Sky:  Writings by and about Mayakovsky.

 

 

an excerpt by christiana baik