Marie Howe - The Kingdom of Ordinary Time

THE KINGDOM OF ORDINARY TIME Marie Howe For Grace Yi-Nan Howe In memory of Jane Crowley Howe Contents The rules, once again, appliedOne loaf = one loaf. One fish = one fish.The so-called Kings were dead.And the woman who had been healed grew tired of telling her story,and sometimes asked her daughter to tell it.People generally worshipped where their parents had worshippedthe men whod hijacked the airplane prayed where the dead pilots had been sitting,and the passengers prayed from their seatsso many songs went up and out into the thinning air...People, listening and watching, nodded and wept, and, leaving the theater,one turned to the other and said, What do you want to do now?And the other one said, I dont know. What do you want to do?It was the Coming of Ordinary Time. First Sunday, second Sunday.And then (for who knows how long) it was here. I couldnt tell one song from another, which bird said what or to whom or for what reason. The oak tree seemed to be writing something using very few words. I couldnt decide which door to openthey looked the same, or what would happen when I did reach out and turn a knob.

I thought I was safe, standing there but my death remembered its date: only so many summer nights still stood before me, full moon, waning moon, October mornings: what to make of them? which door? I couldnt tell which stars were which or how far away any one of them was, or which were still burning or nottheir light moving through space like a long late trainand Ive lived on this earth so long50 winters, 50 springs and summers, and all this time stars in the skyin daylight when I couldnt see them, and at night when, most nights, I didnt look. The people Jesus loved were shopping at The Star Market yesterday. An old lead-colored man standing next to me at the checkout breathed so heavily I had to step back a few steps. Even after his bags were packed he still stood, breathing hard and hawking into his hand. The feeble, the lame, I could hardly look at them: shuffling through the aisles, they smelled of decay, as if The Star Market had declared a day off for the able-bodied, and I had wandered in with the rest of them: sour milk, bad meat: looking for cereal and spring water. Jesus must have been a saint, I said to myself, looking for my lost car in the parking lot later, stumbling among the people who would have been lowered into rooms by ropes, who would have crept out of caves or crawled from the corners of public baths on their hands and knees begging for mercy.

If I touch only the hem of his garment, one woman thought, I will be healed. Could I bear the look on his face when he wheels around? The thing about those Greeks and Romans is that at least mythologically, they could get mad. If the man broke your heart, if he fucked your sister speechless then real true hell broke loose: You know that stew you just ate for dinner, honey? It was your son. Thats Ovid for you. A guy who knows how to tell a story about people who really dont believe in the Golden Rule. Sometimes, I fantasize saying to the man I married, You know that hamburger you just gobbled down with relish and mustard? It was your truck.

If only to watch understanding take his face like the swan-god took the girl. But rage makes for more ragenothing to do then but run. And because rage is a story that has no ending, wed both have to transform into birds or fish: constellations forever fixed in the starry heavens, forever separated, forever attached. Remember the story of Athens and Sparta? That boy held the fox under his cloak and didnt flinch. A cab driver told me the part I couldnt remember this morning in Sparta, he said, it was permissible to steal but not to get caught. The fox bit and scratched; the kid didnt talk, and he was a hero.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, Jesus said. He said, The kingdom of heaven is within you. And the spiked wheel ploughed through the living centuries minute by minute, soul by soul. Ploughs still. Thats the good news and the bad news, isnt it? My sister told me that when she was giving birth every time a contraction passed she was surprised she was still conscious, proud that she hadnt passed out. The guy on The Nature Channel said that the anaconda tried to eat the large gazelle, but when his mouth got to the wide horns, he stopped.

High over the city now, one silver airplane flying towards Europe, towards the past. Some of the people on the plane must be reading the newspaper, holding the pages out in front or reading the paper folded as if the plane were a subway. And the woman shot running with her two children towards the forest, shot with one child in her arms is a story someone on the plane is reading. The other child, running behind her, shot tooher body found on the path 2 or 3 feet behind her mothers. And the baby apparently shot where he fell. The anaconda will eat the gazelle until his mouth knocks against the horns his mouth isnt wide enough to admitthen its jaws unhinge and widen.

The man said the anaconda will admit the horns even if they rip its body open from the inside. Would you rather be the woman? Or one of the soldiers? The baby? Or the soldier who shot and bayoneted the baby when he got there? My friend Michael and I are walking home arguing about the movie. He says that he believes a person can love someone and still be able to murder that person. I say, No, thats not love. Thats attachment. Michael says, No, thats love.

You can love someone, then come to a day when youre forced to think its him or me think me and kill him. I say, Then its not love anymore. Michael says, It was love up to then though. I say, Maybe we mean different things by the same word. Michael says, Humans are complicated: love can exist even in the murderous heart. I say that what he might mean by love is desire.

Love is not a feeling, I say. And Michael says, Then what is it? Were walking along West 16th Streeta clear unclouded nightand I hear my voice repeating what I used to say to my husband: Love is action, I used to say to him. Simone Weil says that when you really love you are able to look at someone you want to eat and not eat them. Janis Joplin says, take another little piece of my heart now baby. Meister Eckhart says that as long as we love any image we are doomed to live in purgatory. Michael and I stand on the corner of 6th Avenue saying goodnight.

I cant drink enough of the tangerine spritzer Ive just bought again and again I bring the cold can to my mouth and suck the stuff from the hole the flip top made. What are you doing tomorrow? Michael says. But what I think hes saying is You are too strict. You are a nun. Then I think, Do I love Michael enough to allow him to think these things of me even if hes not thinking them? Above Manhattan, the moon wanes, and the sky turns clearer and colder. Although the days, after the solstice, have started to lengthen, we both know the winter has only begun.