"counterfeit infinity"

a remarkable life that ends abruptly is just that. there is nothing remarkable about death. it is the lowest possible common denominator of all living things. the only thing remarkable about it is that tragic or stupid or bizarre deaths will inevitably have someone remark on them. other than that, it is base & w/o any redeeming qualities.

i used to say, half-jokingly, that death is the worst thing that could happen to us when we're alive. for the most part, i believed that. but a scene from joy williams' "breaking & entering" made me reconsider. one of the characters, a wild ex-hollywood stunt man, is constantly saying, "fuck death! when death comes for me i'm gonna piss in his face..." & then he knocks back a shot of bourbon. of course, death has other plans for him & when it shows up, rather than take him, it cripples him w/a paralyzing stroke. mute & confined to a wheelchair, he spends most of the novel being wheeled around as an inert object, cognizant of his circumstance but unable to do anything about it.

when considered, that's probably the worst thing that could happen to us when we're alive(or some variation thereof)but god knows we fail to see it. humans are capable of generating so much self-pain over such trivial things: lovers, jobs, lovers, money, lovers. when we're young we have feelings that seem so large, so all consuming that we can't imagine surviving them but we do. then, here they come w/just enough variation to blindside us all over again.

i met charles bernstein the poet once, at uva. i liked his work &, even more, appreciated its significance. i remember richard rorty walked out of bernstein's reading & my appreciation for bernstein went off the charts. i had no idea he was married to susan bee but i'd enjoyed her artworks & her work on various journals associated w/the language poets. i didn't know they had children.

i found their daughter's blog, girldrive, quite by accident. i've always had an interest in subcultures, marginalized voices have always spoken meaningfully to me. women in general & esp younger women of a certain age(just out of high school to a few years out of college, the effects of their institutionalized oppression either taken hold fully or not yet fully shaken off)are marginalized voices. emma bernstein's blog gave those specific voices a place to sound out. her own writing struck me as beautiful but facile. she was gifted w/words(as her father is)but the words seemed to inflate feelings that were small or insular. they exaggerated common experience too dramatically & produced a "counterfeit infinity." it would be easy to get lost in those words & lose track of the actual feelings or even the world itself. beautiful. dangerous. damned.

it is not natural in this new millenium for a parent to bury their child. i'm not sure it's ever been natural. this is one of those empty losses that compels everyone who hears of it to remark on it. the magnitude of this kind of loss is what's remarkable. that doesn't make death remarkable.

inward desolation
horror of
great darkness

great things
on the ocean
break

& counterfeit
infinity

21.xii.08

[italicized lines after Coleridge's notebooks]

EMMA BEE BERNSTEIN MAY 16TH 1985-DEC 20TH 2008



for more info & a link to her blog, girldrive, click on the poetics sidebar.