Reviewer Bernie Gourley recently described The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien’s collection of short stories about American military personnel serving in the Vietnam War, as ‘disjointed,’ yet he saw this not as a failing of the book but a reflection of the dislocation of war.
While not always as psychologically intense and disordered as the battlefield, regular life can also be disjointed. Our pasts intrude upon our present, our relationships don’t always come together, and people don’t always tell us what’s true or what makes sense.
This issue, with a collection of pieces written in different styles and for different purposes, hangs together loosely. But perhaps we can see this, as with The Things They Carried, as a look at what things and ideas stay with us as individuals and as cultures, what we can keep and bring forward and what often burdens us, and whether healing is possible. And, also, when and how we ‘carry’ each other through challenging times.
Members of the Costa Rican Red Cross transport a 65-year-old female earthquake victim here from a Joint Task Force-Bravo helicopter to a waiting ambulance Jan. 10 in San Miguel, Costa Rica. Four JTF-Bravo helicopters and 34 American servicemembers deployed from Soto Cano Air Base, Honduras, at the request of the Costa Rican government to provide lifesaving support to those affected by the earthquake. (U.S. Air Force photo/1st Lt. Candace Park)
We carry ourselves with us wherever we go, and unfortunately that can mean that the memories and habits that come from and got us through past traumas stay with us even in new situations.
Some pieces speculate on whether the memories or thoughts we carry truly reflect reality or are in fact projections of our own psychology.
Jaylan Salah’s feature on Indian indie film directors, the brothers Santosh and Satish Babusenan, gives them the space to explain how elements of film, including character nudity, don’t have to be interpreted in one particular way, but reflect the state of mind of the viewer. To the Babusenans, nudity isn’t necessarily sexual, it’s just that the film audiences choose to see it that way.
Some writers demonstrate the possibility of overcoming our pasts, letting go of baggage that no longer plays a useful role in our lives.
In Allison Grayhurst’s poetry for this month, romantic love is a major theme. Some lovers aren’t quite together, physically or psychologically, and the past encroaches on some people’s lives. However, other pieces in her set show us couples who have connected and a person experiencing the warm, daily comfort of a relationship. So even though we don’t always realize it perfectly, Grayhurst points to the possibility that true love is something humans can enjoy.
In a different vein, Mike Zone’s short story renders survival and competition in our modern low wage work ecosystem in a supernatural, mythological manner. His ‘everyman’ hero has to fight off a bully who is really a negative projection of who he could become before he can have a relationship with the woman he loves.
Life is cyclical, and the changing times of day and seasons encourage some authors to let go of past toxicity with a new season and others to maintain the good aspects of their lives.
Michael Robinson’s poetry celebrates long-term love: romantic relationships, spiritual faith, and just finding joy in being alive. He uses natural metaphors to illustrate how the love lasts from one season to the next.
Marshall Ginevan’s law enforcement hero Eddie Donevant, in the Wrong Side of Loyalty, fights a physical battle with fellow officials who have been corrupted by drug money, while Chris N.’s protagonist in The Place Where the Metaphor Hides rescues her loved one from a fantasy world that incorporates personified elements of literary craft and thus suggests a psychological as well as a physical journey. Ginevan has also said that his hero represents a person trying to live a life of faith in a corrupt world, that his book conveys psychological themes in a subtle, non-explicit way. Avinash Jalani’s poetry collection Little Meditations centers on the internal journey of thinking and understanding oneself.
Mahbub’s poems this time around convey loss and grief, and also encourage us not to discount the wisdom still held within older beliefs and traditions. He also includes a piece pointing to the gentle hope he finds in life’s continuing through his baby daughter.
Arthur C. Ford’s piece shows us a paradox: trees have died to produce the paper to print books, but ideas will die when people don’t even open the books. He suggests that we should not let the trees, or the wisdom, die in vain.
Chimezie Ihekuna, in the penultimate installment of his drama The Success Story, shows the moment when his protagonist receives the fruits of success on his unconventional life’s path and acknowledges and thanks all of the people from his past who have helped him move forward to where he is now.
We hope that reading this issue will be a good use of your time and that you will choose to bring Synchronized Chaos forward into your future. Please feel welcome to read all the pieces here and to leave comments for the authors!
It felt so real. The rain, the leaves, the lovemaking (but was there any passion, or was it just perfunctory. I did not feel any pleasure. It felt like I was twenty-two again. Living amongst xenophobic South Africans, and Johannesburg people, I sensed winter coming on acutely).
And then there was the kiss. Something inside of me died (well I always felt a succession of deaths after writing, and I went cold). Yet there was something there that was still absent. I woke up then. How could I put it into the words? There are no consequences on the astral plane. You lose everything if you think of desire as being simplistic. Oh no, it is much, much more complicated than that. So complex that scientists in North America are studying it. My dreaming of late left me depressive. The illness was returning. There were signs. A homosexual man with beautiful eyes, and sensitive hands passed me on the street. I wanted to find that confidence that I saw in his swagger on the page. I thought if I could do that it would explain everything, especially what I had been dreaming about. I needed to know why romance to me was like a lighthouse. I was always swimming away from it, backing away, getting shipwrecked. Left wondering why I was never anchored?
that rises great heights, separating pockets of sky
– some blue, some with clouds –
layers, textures swaying in gentle phrases,
opening the hilltop-cap of grief
more like pouring in
the truth of helplessness,
setting free depths unspoken,
domed in such beauty.
Perfection that cannot be matched
or misplaced as mediocre or somewhat flawed,
but is flawed, not one straight line
or obedience to symmetry,
all space taken up with its fecund flesh.
No cell or stem rotted without reason, rotted
because of regret or the weight of culture
or the ridged mind-set of past tradition, but all the past
contained within it.
The ancient trunk expanded equally in the roots
and the leaf currents, intertwined with other currents
to build a blanket, thick enough to feel protected,
mesmerized by the soft motion overgrowth bloom,
a place to anchor a home, release all weapons, comforted.
Dream
I dreamt again
of the past encroaching
like a wet towel, tight
around my clothed body.
I dreamt I felt alone, doomed to dance
on a suspended scaffold’s floor.
Among the bitter people I walked,
near their self-pity and inconsolable isolation.
I tried to separate myself, split the heavy air
with my fingers. I tried
to wave their fear into the mouth
of everlasting light.
But love was bitten at the stem,
and the hideous thirst within
grew again like a snake its second, tougher skin.
I dreamt I wandered half-made buildings,
where squatters lived, sheltered
in the dank concrete ruins.
I travelled through without shoes, dreaming
of sand-soft ground.
After the Day
Love is in my belly like evening tea,
comforting after the day’s rush.
Love is there like a discipline
I used to own, exciting
because of its blind determination.
The old man walks the alleyway
with his cane and curious eyes.
He waves to me from the window, then
stretches him arms to cup the wind.
Somewhere the stray has been saved
from the freezing-frost. Somewhere
a woman has conceived, and a dog
has found his favourite toy.
Love is a monk’s old robe
tainted a rich bluish green.
Like twilight blankets the day
it sits on my lap covering –
cherished, unclaimed.
We Rode
We rode our wounded dream
to a place drawn out like Prairie
ground. A washcloth was all we needed,
a scared rock or stepping stone.
Lingering there with useless hands,
many times ready for the culling field,
holding elephant bones under
condemning light.
We swept the dead-end from our horizon.
We lived looking within, seeking out some mercy
behind our bondage.
This land knew our pacing,
our ineffectual pilgrimage.
It was fire and still burns like war or
a fallen constellation.
We spun our wishes in mid-air,
tilled the lifeless soil
mourning the hot metal
that poured between good fortune
and the bloodstains of destiny.
Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Four of her poems were nominated for “Best of the Net” in 2015/2018, and one eight-part story-poem was nominated for “Best of the Net” in 2017. She has over 1200 poems published in more than 475 international journals and anthologies. In 2018, her book Sight at Zero, was listed #34 on CBC’s “Your Ultimate Canadian Poetry List”.
Her book Somewhere Falling was published by Beach Holme Publishers, a Porcepic Book, in Vancouver in 1995. Since then she has published sixteen other books of poetry and six collections with Edge Unlimited Publishing. Prior to the publication of Somewhere Falling she had a poetry book published, Common Dream, and four chapbooks published by The Plowman. Her poetry chapbook The River is Blind was published by Ottawa publisher above/ground press December 2012. In 2014 her chapbook Surrogate Dharma was published by Kind of a Hurricane Press, Barometric Pressures Author Series. In 2015, her book No Raft – No Ocean was published by Scars Publications. More recently, her book Make the Wind was published in 2016 by Scars Publications. As well, her book Trial and Witness – selected poems, was published in 2016 by Creative Talents Unleashed (CTU Publishing Group). She is a vegan. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com
Collaborating with Allison Grayhurst on the lyrics, Vancouver-based singer/songwriter/musician Diane Barbarash has transformed eight of Allison Grayhurst’s poems into songs, creating a full album. “River – Songs from the poetry of Allison Grayhurst” released October 2017.
