The Certainty Dream

by Kate Hall

  and now it’s in there.

  Bruce gets to carry it for a while.

  The pear orchard yields beautiful

  bottles. But we’ve forgotten to

  account for wind. In a storm

  the glass breaks. Around the tree,

  there’s a ring of shards

  we can’t cross over.

  HANDS

  ‘How am I to prove now that “Here’s one hand, and here’s another”? I do not believe I can do it. I should have to prove, for one thing, as Descartes pointed out, that I am not now dreaming.’

  – G. E. Moore

  Suddenly awake in a dream about bubbles,

  in the middle of a calculus equation briefly solved.

  Someone built me a ladder. I never asked for one.

  But when I miss a rung and the whole thing teeters,

  I cling to the structure. Falling will be the worst part.

  From time to time, the bubbles I make drift

  upward. They take on a certain measure of sophistication.

  I replace them with planets. In my zodiac:

  isolation, guilt and humiliation.

  Here I allow a corrugated cardboard

  Saturn to stand for everything I’ll ever suffer.

  Saturn will always be the bastard planet,

  always — a flashing vacancy sign that is really

  a wobbling circular stepping stone in a bankless stream.

  Who built this ladder I have to rely on

  just so I can conclude that I am perched on it and shaking?

  The syllogism causes the argument to fail over and over.

  The premises are wrapping paper

  on a birthday present I sent to myself. When I get it,

  the festivities will have already started.

  If the calculus proofs on the chalkboard

  could not be erased, I would be happy.

  Happy like Moore in his knowing,

  when he extended his arms and turned

  his palms up, one at a time. With a different accent,

  he could have been St. Peter on the windswept rock

  dreaming up a house for God but believing

  in a shelter of twigs called evidence.

  WATER TOWER, 1998–2000

  (after Rachel Whiteread)

  Where there is a harbour

  there is water or at least a place

  where water should be. How much

  garbage can float around a single

  pier? That’s the ocean

  where my pants got wet.

  I cried. There was a prison.

  I saw it from the inside. The ocean

  is not so big. Model boats depend on

  one’s ability to make water where there is just

  a container. Architects build a pond –

  concrete – and the ducks use it. The prison

  in the field could be mistaken for Disney World.

  Except that the turrets look in. Looking out:

  guards, the sky leaks! There is art,

  unless there is so much missing,

  we cannot build a structure around it.

  Someone cast the inside of

  a water tank in translucent resin and took away

  the architecture, so we saw emptiness

  filled in clear-solid and there was

  nothing to hold it.

  MYSELF-IN-ITS-FORM

  (after Claes Oldenburg)

  I. Soft Bathtub (Model) – Ghost Version, 1966

  The emergency dinghy somehow deflated.

  When I reached out for

  the bathtub it was pliable and my fingers

  sank into it and I was digging

  my nails into myself and the curved impressions

  were symbols. In the morning I seemed so solid

  I pulled my orange sweater

  over myself. The builders had drafted

  the bathtub into the blueprints too casually.

  It went in before the walls did. The sheet

  over it protected it from dust and took on

  the shape of it perfectly. The shadows

  moved over the folds as the light changed.

  The bathtub was born underneath and began

  growing. I was waiting for it to emerge.

  I am so sorry I pulled the sheets off,

  my love. Nothing stared back at me

  and the sheet flitted over it. If there were taps,

  they were just flat Xs. If there was a drain,

  it was an unstrung instrument. The bathtub

  was drapery in hand. The flood came later

  and the bathtub yielded and followed the water. What was left

  looked like an acrylic bag big enough to zip up

  a body. To first have form, then suddenly tumble into

  the hole that was present before

  any porcelain basin was there.

  II. Clothespin, 1976

  Daisy, last night I overstepped the boundaries

  of this continent I’ve grown a skin

  too large for myself to hang in Daisy,

  it’s not working Daisy

  your freshness hasn’t permeated

  the material I’ve shoved the dark in

  with the light even the jeans

  turned white even the coffee

  stain came out in time

  for the wedding there’s no chance

  of rain there’s no chance

  of shrinkage you’re going

  to put my dress on the line

  with me in it there are grievances

  about detergent and bleach and fabric

  softener Daisy, you’ll think

  this is about one thing and it will be

  about many Daisy, the sheets blew away

  and covered the garden, say,

  say there will be lightning

  to split the steel bindings and unmoor

  the halves of the structure because what’s there

  to hang me is so godly and perfectly

  symmetrical and crushing

  III. Bicyclette Ensevelie (Buried Bicycle), 1990

  there is a bell we do not allow to shrink or ring

  we do not take from the silver tree

  there is a bell as fruit on handlebars we cannot grasp

  there is snow and then there is green and then there is snow again

  if just one handhold if only part of a wheel

  nowhere to sit comfortably if a skeleton

  continues or doesn’t underground

  if I said help me fix it if I told you you would

  the playground fruit contains iron

  as a body is a single handlebar

  as a tire is a dark halo half-buried

  as the pedals sink further

  there is a bell we do not allow to ring the fruit

  we do not take from the metal tree

  SPEAKING OF ORANGE TREES

  I am growing orange trees. Others

  are busy growing human ears

  on the backs of rats using cells

  from a petri dish.

  Mine is a flimsy greenhouse

  with an aluminum frame

  and some foggy plastic

  thrown overtop. When I breathe,

  the walls rattle but that’s about it.

  I throw costume parties

  for my orange trees and dress them up

  in bark and leaves. Sometimes

  I let them wear fruit.

  I turn my greenhouse into a monastery.

  The trees are happy there.

  I stick stars on the ceiling

  and hang the moon as a disco ball.

  I grew the orange trees

  just so I would have something

  to kneel in front of.

  Searle says searching for similarities is a

  useful strategy for comprehending.

  But I know nothing about

  what’s at the heart

  of my orange trees. T
here’s a gap

  between us. Who knows

  how wide it is? I can’t stop breathing.

  These walls won’t stop

  heaving and rattling.

  THE LOST-AND-FOUND BOX

  We are waiting for the claimants to come. You would like to keep the purple umbrella. I would like to keep the orange tree. We’re both hoping no one will claim the blue beat-up dictionary. The dead won’t give anything away. They carefully pick through the big pile of junky objects while we crouch reverently in front of it. A crowd is fighting over the morning star and the evening star, but there’s only one star in the box. It’s stretched thin between them. Fault lines are emerging. People approach from every possible angle. Secretly, we’re hoping for disaster – a chaotic free-for-all so we can make off with as much as our arms can hold. At the door, George Herbert describes an orange tree to the admission clerk. As Herbert glances around, I step in front of it and wave my arms like branches. I feel a little bad because he wants it for God, and I just want it for myself.

  LETTER TO MY FATHER

  Dad, the birds in the backyard are all squawk and caw. You want me to write: The forest would be a quiet place if only the bird with the prettiest voice sang.

  You used to read me a jellyfish poem. The poet was really mad at Hume on account of his theory about existence. That you could only be certain of your own. I was obsessed with it not because of Hume, but because of jellyfish. I’d never seen one before.

  At the conservation area you’re always trying to point out the pileated woodpecker. Apparently he’s impossible to miss with his huge red crest. But I have astigmatism. I can’t see a goddamn thing. He’s rap-tap-tapping away. But you’re almost deaf. As birdwatchers we make quite a pair.

  At one point, Dad, certain doors in my house blew shut and, although I’m running around trying to keep as many open as possible …

  Dad, once you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I hadn’t realized that I had to become something else. I chose the seven-foot-tall bulletproof option. Now I understand that while such things can be useful, they also tend to be freaky. I’m not seven feet tall. But then again, I’ve never been shot.

  What do you think Descartes dressed up as for Halloween? Some philosophers think he was a tree branching off in several different directions. Sosa thinks he turned his mind into a building but without any specific location. The floors are supported by their relationship to one another. The foundation supports everything. But where is it?

  Truth is, I’m tired of listening to birds with crappy voices. The crows in the strawberry patch for example. The woodpecker is okay. At least he doesn’t try to sing; he just keeps the beat.

  I went for a walk in the graveyard. There were all these safety deposit boxes full of ashes. I leaned on them to keep myself upright when it was really windy.

  Dad, I haven’t been a homeowner for very long. I don’t know what to do when my foundation is cracking. Who am I supposed to call? What questions am I supposed to ask?

  I INVENTED THE BIRDCALL

  I invented it with my hands, on the red-eye flight,

  by the light of my laptop screen.

  I invented chatter then alarm,

  quacking krek-krek-krek-krek.

  At times I managed only three syllables instead of four.

  In the air, everything came in tiny packages,

  even the dinner napkin. The man beside me

  used his and let it fall to the floor.

  It rested there inadvertently bird-shaped.

  I made a logical fallacy and felt sorry for it.

  So this was life now;

  we were no longer grounded.

  Mid-flight, I lost a piece of my sight.

  It was jagged-edged but not dark inside.

  Let the white places represent nothing

  except blindness. The world was broken then

  and fleeing. I was left with a series of chirps

  that were mine but too small to carry anything.

  I meant for them to say Help

  but when uttered, they meant

  something else.

  REMIND ME WHAT THE LIGHT IS FOR

  Dear occupants of the matchstick forest,

  we are getting taller. I lit my friend’s barbecue

  by striking a simple idea against

  my visible landscape. Occupants,

  I know you are thinking

  if we left the twigs with leaves

  they could grow up to be big enough so

  our buses could pass through them.

  But this would take time we may

  not have. The world

  is shrinking as the universe expands,

  and remember, it is possible

  to set all of it on fire,

  then have it seed itself in the ash.

  Dear occupants of the moving boxes,

  there are days when I forget

  you have to live here too, in cardboard

  cubes, tossed inside with lamps

  that do not work. Everything is labelled but

  because we’ve reused the boxes, the objects listed

  are not what’s inside. So, occupants, I am losing

  faith. The movers are also in motion.

  You’ve seen how the basement can flood.

  I’ve looked to Saint Thomas, as one would

  a plumber. I am motion-sick.

  Remind me that I live here, even if

  I do not. Let the architecture go.

  If the moon must be a pendulum,

  let the reflection remain still.

  Dear occupants of space and time,

  subject to causal laws, I am escaping

  through a shattered window,

  out to where the stars are, looking in

  on myself through myself. It’s so cold.

  These are strange gifts. I gave my friend

  hypothermia. We were wearing moon suits

  tied together on strings tied to

  floating objects. I transferred the ice crystals

  through this composition. Occupants, the soul

  is asking too many questions. It wants

  to know if it has a beautiful form. And I do not

  know how to answer.

  SUSPENDED IN THE SPACE OF REASON:

  A SHORT THESIS

  ‘What I thought I had seen with my eyes, I actually grasped solely with the faculty of judgment, which is my mind.’

  – René Descartes

  I. Abstract

  Bats basically scream

  until they hear their voices

  echo off bugs and trees. Then they know

  where they are and exactly what and how large

  the thing is they are hunting. If we had

  a precise stopwatch we could tell

  how far it is to the other side.

  In the middle of the night even my own

  breath sounds loud. I’m not an expert

  in echolocation so I just open the fridge

  and use the little light. Half asleep, I eat

  an entire jar of chipotle-lime mustard,

  I’m not sure why. According to one health pamphlet,

  asking questions is a roadblock

  to real communication. Dennett says

  we’ll do whatever it takes

  to assuage epistemic hunger.

  But my findings are inconclusive.

  Yesterday I yelled at myself and

  nothing came back at all.

  II. Introduction

  We’ll begin in a vacuum with

  artificial tools. We’ll assume the big bang was

  the origin of the universe and there was

  nothing before it. Nothing will be

  a substance on which to suspend years of facts.

  A game show will turn into a sparkly thought experiment.

  People are running around behind the set but

  god knows what they’re doing.

  Faced with three i
dentical doors, you choose one.

  Goats are hiding behind two doors and there’s a Mercedes

  behind the other. Success with reality is the car.

  But I will also try to love the stage lights.

  And I will try to love the goats when I find them.

  The hypothetical host reveals one of the losing doors.

  You have to decide whether to change

  remaining doors mid-game. The mysteries are in need of

  continual rephrasing. After seeing a loss,

  change is always a good idea.

  III. Literature Review

  (a)

  The envelope of pills you sent

  arrived the same day as the shipment

  of elephants and disembodied

  voices. Skeptics do not believe

  we can prove we are not dreaming,

  but they are very grateful for the existence of

  anti-psychotics. Exiled on a rock

  in the middle of the ocean, this haunting

  would cease to be a reality problem and

  become a mere disturbance.

  Stevens wrote many a sun and even a green queen

  into existence. Sometimes I understand I’m just one elephant

  in the crate of elephants left on my doorstep.

  Stevens was vice-president of the Hartford

  Livestock Insurance Company and in his final

  days at the hospital he confessed to having

  a certain emptiness in his life. Disembodied voices can be

  a kindness. Most people would never admit to

  having poetic conversations with a dead

  insurance broker, yet many have memorized Stevens’ lines.

  There have been many philosophical arguments about