This poem's joined The Festival of the Trees 1 --- swing over, hyperlink-like, and read Dave's great inaugural celebration on all the terrific posts submitted. Every month there'll be a blog post by one of the rotating editors :) devoted to collecting all the posts submitted that month on trees. Tree worship is alive and well and thriving!
Paper Wings
I open 500 envelopes a day: transactions, records, letters. Slice them open like pockets, remove sheaths of paper.
Paper cuts, edges like swords.
The first paper was stone. Scrawling on cave walls, then wet clay tablets, wax-coated inscribed by metal, bone, ivory stylus. Papyrus, sheepskin, parchment.
Unfold letters, staple, sort, deliver it to the offices.
Papering the world. It burns. Flames of culture singe.
From pictures to pictographs to abstract figures to alphabets, our grammars of sound ground into ink of soot, glue and water scratched with reeds, or quills, taking the five outer wing feathers of geese, swans, crows, owls, turkeys, hawks.
As body is to breath,
paper and ink are to mind.
Without papyrus, animal skin, parchment, vellum or the plant fibre, cellulose mulch of pressed paper... our history.
The body of language is inked paper.
The Gutenberg Printing Press, replaceable wooden letters. 1436. Cursive handwriting, 1495, Manutius of Venice, the 'running hand.'
Our 26 alphabet letters not till the end of the 16th century.
Mass printing. Mass distribution. Wide scale literacy.
The first paper was stone. You drew on the cave walls.
The world is papered with knowledge. Burn all the paper in the stoneage firepit of our souls.
Smooth burning words under my fingers.
Forests are the lungs of the planet; and wood dust and water promise of immortality.
Give us our words, records, songs, drawings, photographs, to store. Save diagrams of what houses us. Even Capitalism depends on the paper that money is printed on. Bank statements, loans, stock certificates. Cheques, vouchers, tickets. Medical, dental records. Taxes. All the transactions.
Delible records kept in the vaults of time. Mementos.
Ownership tattooed in the ink on the paper that becomes passport of proof.
Birth and baptism and education and marriage and employment and travel and retirement and death certificates.
The paper trail of our lives.
Envelopes as wallpaper. Bodily fluids, tissue papers. Cards, wrapping, origami. Computer paper. Specially treated, bonded. Newspapers, boxes.
The world is awash with paper.
Inscribed paper.
Mind. Hand. Ink. Paper.
My letter opener flashes like a slicing knife.
Envelope after envelope, stack after stack of paper. Filing ourselves. Pixelated language printed out reams upon reams collected, stored.
I wander the stacks of the library afterwards, shelf upon shelf, floor upon floor of bound books of yellowed paper inscribed with words, figures, numbers, images.
This gift of trees,
memory of ourselves.
This love letter
of paper.
________
ah, sigh, I've been tinkering with this for months, it just keeps growing...
Sheath of feeling. Words groping to touch air.
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Goddamn. You've outdone yourself.
ReplyDeleteI just want to insert, parenthetically, that of course paper need not come from pulpwood at all. There are plenty of other plant fibers that will do just as well, with a much lesser ecological cost. (And why aren't we still recycling rags?!)
Dave, thanks -it started out as a dense prose poetry paragraph, a tumbling seed perhaps, and...kept growing- :)
ReplyDeleteThe softwood lumber deals are always in the news, so I guess US pulp & paper mills rely on Canadian trees. Parts of BC, and the heavily treed Rockies are totally clear cut, decimated. It's not so bad if a company has a policy of planting two trees for every one that they cut. Tree farms, in my opinion, are okay since they're managed. As long as real forests are left alone, that is.
What worries me about using plant fibres to make paper is do you know how many cotton fields would be required to feed our paper habits? Unfortunately I can't quickly find an article on the use of corn oil for cars rather than 'earth oil' that, if implemented, would result in millions of deaths in the 3rd world due to dwindling food supply sources that are corn-based so that the developed world can drive their cars. Changing paper source to plant fibres, due to the amount needed, might tip the balance in a world-wide food ecology in terms of land use/farming crops. Not that I'm saying it shouldn't be done, but the consequences of switching over should be carefully analyzed, that's all.
Paper was invented in China thousands of years ago, the recipe written down by Cai Lun in 105, but kept secret from the world for over a thousand years. Hemp and any rags, of course, as you mention, are good for making paper, and the mulberry tree was a favourite too. Spruce is best, though. Soft enough. What I find most stunning about paper is that, ok lignin has to be removed if the paper is not to yellow, but the rest of it is just wood mush and water. Added bleaches & whiteners are just because we like our paper to be white. Essentially paper is a mush that is pressed and dried. No bondings, no glue, nothing but pressed wood fibres. How natural is that?
Trees give us this immense gift... paper, where we've recorded the history of ourselves, our culture, & civilization I guess.
Fully biodegradable too.
Don't know if hard drives and discs are biodegradable, but they are the future's replacement of wood pulp.
Thanks for your comment, as usual, you got me really thinking...
The old template, paper; the medium, ink.
ReplyDeleteThe new template, microchip; the medium, electrical current.
And paper becomes a luxury product.
Beautiful post!
Brenda - Again, to make an obvious point that your comment suggests but does not state outright: we need to radically reduce paper consumption, and recycle all we can. Even with the internet, people still print out way more than they need to. i used to print out a ton of articles that went straight into my files, never to be looked at again. Then my printer broke two years ago, and I found I can do without. I have been trying with mixed results to wean myself of the typical intellectual's impulse to hoard knowledge. It's a form of materialism no less damaging than any other, I think.
ReplyDeleteO.K., enough of my rambling. Gotta unplug here - a thunderstorm is on the way.
While I don't know the stats, I wouldn't be surprised if paper use hasn't increased with the advent of the computer. I'm thinking of business, which prints everything out because electronic media is unstable. Discs might be good for a maximum of 20 years, or less. The data will disappear. I think that the typewriter era produced less paper because there was only carbon copy and it was all done by hand.
ReplyDeleteRecycling is essential, of course it is. But paper can only be recycled so many times. Surely the solution is an indelible space-age material on which our precious words can be inscribed and which is very, very tiny. But then there's the problem of biodegradable - at least paper can be composted...
Thanks, Chuck! I wonder when digitally stored media will become trustworthy and permanent... it isn't there yet, and it's sad to think that much of what we produce today will be lost forever, our photos, our writing, but, on the other hand, once the technology is perfected, then, oh inscribed for infinity!
ReplyDeleteThanks for dropping by...
4 June 2007
ReplyDeleteAfter the storm, my mind cleared.
And a high wind arose and blew the tropics north.
running quartz crystals through a blender.
sand through your engines.
bubbles in your bays.
estuaries reaching out toward forbidden seas…
sand through your eyes.
5 June 2007
Calm as baby’s breath
as peaceful as the storm’s eye
Clouds spread and drawn with rough strokes of stratospheric winds
a warm and windy tropical day.
7 June 2007
Black water at dusk.
Lighting on the horizon.
Warm winds coming in across the darkening waters.
A flash of white wings as an egret takes flight.
And Thunder like God clearing his throat.
8 June 2007
Morning star in the still of the clear, dark waters.
a sky as clear eyed as a young girl.
bruised and tattered storm remnants limp off in the gathering light.
9 June 2007
Tickled her fancy.
giggling all the day long.
pretty good for a Saturday.
Clouds on the lake floating aimlessly by.
She smiled big–grinned really.
12 JUne 2007
A silver sky
ripe for the mirror.
you can not see yourself in this mirror
you can only see others
moreover, you can only see what others choose to expose.
Their houses, their boats, their sea-doos.
Birds skimming low over the water could
like as not
see them selves if they were to look down
as they skim low over the water
but they never do.
Rather they allow their reflections to chase them
quick and sharp over the still, glistening waters
while the bird’s mind remains ever fixed on
food, or other birds, or escaping those damn noisy humans.
A dense forest impenetrable as a gaze.
13 JUne 2007
Like angry bee’s eyes
the metal screen seen through the bamboo blinds.
A million insects dot the lake spreading micro ripples
14 June 2007
Of Fly Catchers and hidden lakes.
Of sleeping lizards and morning dew.
It is of birdsong and misty dawns
and fleeced clouds floating in a still pool.
The waters ripple awake in the gathering morn.
The first water birds head out for the far shore.
20 June 2007
A garden of elephant ears.
A lake of light.
A furrowed sky.
Warm air, tinged with the coolness of a passing shower.
A swath of short green swords with serrated edges.
22 JUne 2007
Of Stone Poets and shattered wooden quays.
Bolts of clay and carpets of mud.
Footholds on pyrrhic shores.
Fusillades of futilty and wars of choice.
23 June 2007
Wind and water.
Stone glass and stone poets.
Air plants and sudden acts of Feng Shui.
24 June 2007
Seaparate ponds like a string of pearls gleaming in the twilight.
The ages of man, the lovers of a lifetime
bright and shiny thoughts flickering like little fires banked against the great dark.
The toothy smiles of a pretty woman or two.
Events and ages the like of which will not be seen again.