Photo Album

In the end it may be that others

perceive us only as snapshots,

points in time stilled by the

blink of an eye, the frame of memory.

Even close friends and family are

vulnerable to singular interpretations,

no fault of their own; we reveal who we are

in the light by which we prefer to be seen.

The personality test (I wonder how I might

fail at it) insists I select from  

myriad adjectives to describe myself.

Gregarious, introverted, insecure, confident,

ambitious. There was no checkbox for

“all of the above at different times;

occasionally, all at once,” because we must be

absolute and definable to be swallowed.

It is possible I am simply advocating for nuance,

a relatively unspectacular proposition.

In Saint Lucia, the travel writer whose

            name I don’t recall, boarded the yellow bus

bound for the top of Soufriere. The sad and

            reticent volcano spews the stench of sulfur and

boiling springs. The stones around them ashen,

 white as prehistoric bones. One is forced to

ponder then when history began.            

We retreated to the dilapidated

row of shops where local women sold

colorful batik, then ditched the island’s PR

lieutenants to opt for bottomless plates of

conch and callaloo (made from the dense green leaf

called elephant ear), supplemented by thoughtful

doses of rum. Looking for a story, we might

write ourselves. Our glasses never emptied. 

I chased a shy lizard from her bed before

kissing her quietly and without need. We

smiled and I left her room. There is something

gratifying about loving a woman without desire,

as if we have momentarily conquered the

inevitable appetite of our species.

To carry a barracuda from boat to pot

you must pierce thumb and forefinger through

each eye socket. Natives of the island of

Ambergris Caye, Belize make a starchy soup from

vegetables, onions, herbs and the bony fish,

satisfying paired with a Beliken or Guinness.

Lazy, we paid $200 US to fish the shallow waters

inside the reef, where sea life boasts improbable colors.

In the nature of our world living things defy the

best intentions of artists and photographers.

Indigo bunting, queen angelfish, yellowtail damselfish,

tulips in spring; Monet came closest, perhaps, in

Water Lilies but was tormented by color, a sad tradeoff.

Snorkeling at night the water condenses the

diving light to a perfect cone. Underwater, the

speed of light is reduced to a fraction of itself.

In front of you is nothing but the dark sea.

Beside you, barracuda flash in silver-lit streaks

so close you can feel the current of their

passage. This is as close as I will ever be to the

lead goose in a V-formation. The water is silent

except for breath through this hollow tube.

Separated from the normal corridors of

human existence I am untethered and yet

profoundly centered, adrift but

self-propelled knowing only that

destiny must surely be contained in

darkness. It would be years before the

scent of coconut oil failed to remind me of

Lynn, a smell so erotic – the oil itself so sensual –

that my skin long remembered the buttery

contact with hers that followed weekend afternoons

at the pool and one particularly decadent

vacation in the Keys. Visiting her ex-boyfriend, we

smoked from a bail of pot he had discovered

floating off the beach; I learned how to clean

lobster and to keep to myself when personal

histories are relived. Fortunately such errors in

judgment are rarely fatal. I left her only weeks

after I had come home to find her sitting in the

kitchen dropping steak knives from

table height onto her foot in a sadistic game of

mumblety-peg. The fresh bottle of frozen Stoli’s was

two-thirds gone, her eyes cast in the glaze of

someone who is ultimately lost. There is no way

to count the population of people 

who are repulsed by their lovers.

Keep passing the open windows, she said,

the tragedy lost on me until she explained:

When you want to kill yourself you have to

keep passing the open windows. I left because I

like open windows, the attraction being not height but

distance and the cool breeze of foreign moments.


c. 2012, by Martin A. Bartels (working draft)
Part of my new collection, "Unlanguage."

The Unbearable Weight of Nothing

I thought I had many years to

prepare for your major questions:

Where do babies come from?

What is the meaning of life?

Dad, may I use the car tonight?

But at four years old you asked this:

Are adults scared of anything?

And I had no answer.

At the middle school talent show, the

young girl stood on stage,

quiet and shyly poised. When the
emcee announced her song, we gasped.

“If I Die Young,” she said, by

The Band Perry, the

poignant ache of lyrics we all knew

sung by a girl too young to appreciate

our fears. We applauded loudly when

she finished, raised up by her a cappella

rendition, relieved to think, finally,

it was only a song.

Are adults scared of anything?

The house stood empty as the

day we first moved in, sunlight

pouring through bare windows, the

scattered dust of boxes and memories

tangible as our shared fear. With nothing but

our possessions in hand, the future was

exposed as truly unknowable as it is;

our greatest vulnerability revealed as the

chance merely to influence probabilities,

weak at that. Stripped down,

bare as the empty house,

this is all we are, we thought,

and it was an unexpected relief.

Adults are scared of almost anything, I thought.

Our childhood fears evolve from imagined

beasts and abandonment anxieties

to the usual cast of unbearable realities.

At first fear is imagined, then

learned; the deaths of loved ones,

sordid acts of violence, ultimately

reducible to simply loss, plain loss.

Buddha intoned that life is suffering,

that we might overcome such pain by

enlightened detachment, but for all his

later incarnations we remain

simple peasants of peculiar glory.

Are adults scared of anything?

Yes, string bean, we are.

But we endure because of love.

c. 2012, by Martin A. Bartels (working draft)

part of my new collection, “Unlanguage”

The Unbearable Weight of Nothing, Part 1

I thought I had many years to

prepare for your major questions:

Where do babies come from?

What is the meaning of life?

Dad, may I use the car tonight?

But at four years old you asked this:

Are adults scared of anything?

And I had no answer. 


c. 2012, by Martin A. Bartels
part of my new collection, "Unlanguage"