meteor showers

[note #16]

Once you live any piece of your vision it opens you to a constant onslaught. Of necessities, of horrors, but of wonders, too, of possibilities . . . like meteor showers all the time, bombardment, constant connections.

—adrienne rich, the hermit’s scream

I keep finding myself surrounded by water, which makes sense, as I’m working on a book about the years I lived on boats. Water keeps appearing before me. Or maybe I keep moving toward it. I believe this is the meteor shower Adrienne Rich speaks of. It happens, at some point, with every project—a moment of total immersion, which, yes, can be terrifying. It has something to do with paying attention, with being awake. Last week I went to 20th anniversary book release of The Seas, Samantha Hunt’s haunting novel (“Then there is the ocean, mean and beautiful”). The event was on the tall ship Wavertree (1885), which is moored at South Street Seaport. A couple days later I went to a baptism and heard the minister chant water above, water below. That night I went to Haleh Liza Gafori’s book release of her latest translation of Rumi—its title is Water (“Here we are today, caught in a whirlpool. / Let’s see who stays afloat”). It was raining as I bicycled into the city. The next day I met my brother at MOMA and we watched a film by the artist collective CAMP about a boatyard in India (see image above)…