Christmas in the Basement

Bats 

There are two kinds of vision:
the seeing of things, which belongs
to the science of optics, versus
the seeing beyond things, which
results from deprivation. Man mocking the dark, rejecting
worlds you do not know: though the dark
is full of obstacles, it is possible to have
intense awareness when the field is narrow
and the signals few. Night has bred in us
thought more focused than yours, if rudimentary:
man the ego, man imprisoned in the eye,
there is a path you cannot see, beyond the eye’s reach,
what the philosophers have called
the via negativa: to make a place for light
the mystic shuts his eyes - illumination
of the kind he seeks destroys
creatures who depend on things.

“Poems 1962-2012” by Louise Gluck, Winner of 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature

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Dear Alex,

I have been waiting. And it comes to my door this afternoon while I am away working in a windowless office - my first poetry collection by Louise Gluck, her life and lips sealed on 627 creamy pages now opening lids for me.

I have only two other books on verse besides the Bible. Poe and Frost. I thought I was smarter than the average Joe on road but then Poe and Frost bequeathed me fortune I wasted and ruined. So this Christmas I am re-gifting myself poetry I can touch and sniff like skimming on velvet and magic of Santa Claus in red jumpsuit. I don’t need a window anymore to look out.

Via negativa or “negative way” in Latin refers to apophatic theology, the practice of describing God with what we cannot say about Him directly with words. God is too complex for our fixed minds to capture His attributes so we focus on what He is not rather than what He is. He is not human, absent of lies and limits.

By re-phrasing truth via negativa, you begin to see not what you’ve wanted to see. Walter Brueggemann walks us into the darkness of man, who is not hopeless or helpless, not incapable of trusting and being trusted:

“Wisdom affirms first of all that man is able to choose wisely and decide responsibly. He doesn’t have to be wicked or foolish. He really has an option. Wisdom teaching makes no sense if it is assumed that man’s decision-making machinery is hopelessly warped or crippled. The wisdom teachers believe that in every situation the discerning man can make a wise or foolish choice. He may act in ways that draw nearer either to death or to life.”

On my way out of the work building, I like to meander through parts of the oldest corridors below ground level where black-and-white photos of breaking soil for the first construction still hang on walls re-painted over many decades as sprightly as hope soaking through beds and doors on floors above. This time I see a familiar flashing of eyes behind plastic shield. He is delivering supplies up and down the towers now expanding with scaffolds and signs warning you of hot zones vs. safe passageways. He says he has alerted his boss about his team’s need for personal protective equipment before our masking policy goes live.

I ask him if he feels supported (my exact word) in this pandemic exposure on work campus. His eyes surge louder than his muffled voice behind mask. Not scared. Careful, of course, supportive, yes, but no to inaction. This is my gym, he tells me. He doesn’t get to walk this much elsewhere. He keeps pushing past the friction of his platform dolly, wheeling his goods to those awaiting for his good news.

Just before him, I see the electrician running wires over fire-proof walls to power the ultra-deep freezer for storage of incoming COVID vaccines a gaze away from my workbench. He needs help with a special order for 90% alcohol-based solution to serve as a medium for the thermometer, liquid that will not turn into an ice block at minus 80 degrees Celsius in the closed compartment. Plus there are other problems too, he adds, with the freezer. He is not technical or tepid in language, but precise as laser. The 90% content is for isopropyl alcohol. Not methanol, of course, though it would be an easy answer to resisting extreme freeze at the cost of killing us with toxic fumes.

Or maybe for ease, he should just head out to the local liquor store for Everclear approaching 100% alcohol. We both chuckle at his creativity. I hear a man in love with imagining and humoring in his constant toiling and grappling with uncertainty as if envisioning the vaccine on hand when we have none. He cares not for whining or whoring with self-preservation.

To his workshop he returns somewhere in the basement where you find poetry and Christmas.

Yours,
Kate