john douglas porter @ blogspot
But who am I to decide what I can want
Who am I to decide what I need
Who am I to say that I deserve any of it
And who are they to say whether I deserve anything
Who are they to decide what I need
Who are they to say that I shall not want
What does it say about you when you won’t hear the words
What does one say when the speaker turns away
Where does one go to find the lost silent comfort
Who holds the power to lift a fallen star like me
You’ll need this map. Take the scenic highway out to Trembling Fern, then turn north on the dotted blue line. They don’t show this road on modern maps, but you can see it in satellite view. Go to the very end; then you’ll get out and take a dozen photos, none of which will be good. Believe me, it happens every time.
(2025-07-08)
Would that I were her pillow
to cradle that sacred head
and blot away her sorrow
in blesséd teardrops shed
(2025-07-07)
looking for a place to coagulate my mind
stir a steady precipitate,
form a sedimented state,
a firm cemented solid,
from elemental factors
mental extractions,
abstractions, distractions, excitations, ablations, ablutions, absolutions, dissolutions, dissipations, pollutions, collusions, illusions, diffusions, confusions
(2025-05-09)
"Go to your happy place!" they say
But my happy places all make me sad
Galleries of all I have lost
(2016-02-22)
"It's never too late to become who you were meant to be."
But my fear is that I already have.
(2016-02-22)
No matter how fast I drive,
I can't escape from the grief.
it flies beside me as I travel;
it lies beside me when I sleep.
Grief is but one of the company of phantoms that dog me.
Grief is a golem I conjure with my own hands —
hands of desire,
ego of expectation.
The dark highway before me
will be washed clean by the deluge of my tears,
and a dawn of understanding will break over me.
(2027-07-03)
I wonder if you ever found the note
I left in our flat in Somerville
folded beneath the sugar jar.
Beloved Aine,
I’m sure it began
(2025-07-02)
Backstory
After college, I was living in Allston with my buddy Sam. He met this girl, Jenn. One day, in late April, there was a little party at Jenn's place in Somerville, and I went because of Sam. And there I met Jenn's roommate, Áine. I don't want to say it was "love at first sight", but I was definitely captivated. She was amazing: mysterious, charming, worldly, bohemian, cute, funny, serious. She was wearing this ankle-length white eyelet skirt, and leather thongs; she had a silver ring on one toe. She had on a baggy saffron-colored knit sweater which hung off one of her very slender shoulders, both sleeves pushed up above her elbows. Gesticulating animatedly with a large glass of sangria in one hand, she talked about how her aunt was fighting for women's equality in Ireland. She was swaying to "Kind Of Blue" on the phonograph. I became a mute idiot in her presence.
(Not merely Miles Davis, but vinyl, first pressing, still in its original
sleeve. The one with the liner notes with the mistake. You could
probably get at least a hundred bucks for this on eBay. But she would
never sell it; it was her dad's, and is precious to her beyond any
price.)
Sam moved in with Jenn, and for complicated reasons I followed him a month later.
And there we lived, the four of us -- Sam and Jenn in one room, me on the couch in the main room -- until September, when Sam and Jenn decided they needed their own place. Then I got their room.
(One of the things I found charming, if not exactly endearing, about Áine was that she was a staunch Bostonist. She loves the Cars, Jonathan Richman, the J. Geils Band. (She could even bury you under arguments about why Aerosmith is the greatest hard rock band ever -- even though she personally doesn't care for them.) She used to rail against the Big Dig... but now that it's done she'll defend that, too.)
(One day when we were just hanging around she said she liked my shirt. My favorite shirt - a white Oxford with multicolored stripes, from LL Bean, I got second-hand. Like an idiot, I impulsively gave it to her. She didn't even want it. I never saw it again.)
(One day, as the weather was starting to turn really cold, I went to this cool shop down in Cambridge - I remember they had singing bowls - and bought her some gifts: incense made in Afghanistan and Moroccan mint tea, both in boxes of hand-made paper. I left them on the little table with the mail and the keys, along with a stupid little poem I wrote, and then I disappeared for twelve hours. I didn't want to be there when she found them. Why did I do that? 🤦🏼)
So for about six months I shared Áine's fridge, stove, sink, TV, toilet, shower, air. But never her headspace, her heart, her heat. Oh, we were good friends and we got along fine. Did she ever know how desperately in love with her I was? Every now and then she'd bring a guy home. That absolutely devastated me every time. By January, I finally concluded that I couldn't stay. I had to be in a different house, a different city, a different life.
On the 6th of January - Epiphany - the afternoon was preternaturally dark, louring, ominous. I didn't pack. This wasn't a holiday, it was sheer flight. What I did do, however, was write her a note, because I didn't want her to worry - or call the police. I left it on the kitchen table. But I had also written her a letter, over the preceding week, where I poured my heart out. This one I folded and hid carefully under the sugar canister. I figured she'd probably find it in a few weeks. Then I grabbed my keys and sped away in my beat-up old Corolla just as the first enormous drops of rain began to stream up the windshield.
Forwardstory
The rearview mirror still shows the streaks from the last time she breathed on it and rubbed it with the cuff of her sweatshirt. He knows he must wipe it clean... eventually. But not yet. Not today.
The bright lights of Boston recede in the distance behind him. The miles of pavement between him and Somerville cannot be planted quickly enough.
He clutches the steering wheel as if it were a floatation ring. Great drops stream down his cheeks, as if to reflect the rain on the windshield.
The dashboard illuminates him like a late-night evangelist. He punches every button on the radio, flailing against the impersonal machinery, hoping to get some Elvis, and getting only Orbison instead.
He questions himself, just for a moment: Why I am trying so hard to keep the car on the road?
He sees the bridge abutments and thinks: If I paint myself across one of those, it won't be the worst pain I've felt today.
He drives headlong down the deep black tunnel of New England forest and overcast sky. He does not have a specific destination in mind. At each intersection he chooses the road which seems more likely to lead to oblivion. He thinks he will go to the edge of the Arctic sea. Is not the end of the world the most fitting place for the end of life?
He runs into the arms of the night, the stars, the void - the eternal unquestioning lover.
Coming round a bend deep in the Acadian forest
I thought I caught a glimpse of your ghost in my headlights
Just before dawn, he finds himself standing at the northernmost brink of Prince Edward Island, under a crisp cloudless sky, transfixed by Arcturus and the whole icy panoply wheeling overhead.
The understanding hits him: why the ancients thought the heavens were full of angels.
Under the bright gaze of these angels, the world turns. Lovers in Taos feel the warm embrace. People in Christchurch are enjoying a balmy stroll under the stars.
His project of self-annihilation can wait. He will go to Avebury and Avignon. He will go to Andalus, and to the Acropolis. He will see for himself what the stars look like from the top of Ararat.
Take the last train out to the highest mount
Remain three days
Eat lichen and shrike eggs
Follow the flocks through the gorge of grey rocks
Trace to the source; melodize with the spring
Then you will receive word -
Latent history foretold
Abide ten thousand years til next Spring
Larksong -- too high, almost, to be heard;
Swallows swinging low over dolomite lake
And diving into cathedraline crevices
Hear the frozen mountains' tongues proclaim
your name in the chatter of new-thawn streams
Moraine-enciphered rumors dispelled
शृणु - Attend! La baguette du dôme céleste
touche le bol doré terrestre!
It was a pretty successful dinner party.
He had brought up several different kinds of wine from the fridge in the basement: A couple different reds, some whites, a bottle of something fizzy, and a split of sauterne. And some of the guests brought various bottles of wine as well. In the end, people pretty much just stuck with reds. After everyone was gone, and he was cleaning up, he made several trips back down to the basement with all the bottles of leftover wine. On the last trip down the basement stairs, he lost his footing –– maybe he had too much wine –– and he stumbled, and several bottles of wine broke, and some shards of glass lacerated his arms, and he bled profusely, and the wine and blood commingled in his hair as he died.
Here's what happens when I cook:
I put too much butter in the pan
and heat it until the detectors go off ...
I dice the onion and peppers far too small ...
I cook the pasta until it slumps into mush ...
I sauté the veggies until they're nearly burnt ...
I use too much cumin, thyme, and paprika ...
I put too much salt, and too much pepper ...
Then I boil it all
until it's tasteless
and satisfies no one.
Taimane is the name of a famous 'ukulele artist of (mixed) Samoan descent. Her web page states that taimane "translates to diamond from Samoan" (and the Wikipedia page repeats this). I got to wondering: Is this really a Samoan word? Isn't it likely to be a loanword from English?
First, I note that no Wikipedia nor Wiktionary for any of the Polynesian languages have any entries for diamond - for whatever that's worth. As a double-check, I also tried searching the Samoan and Maori Wikipedias and Wiktionaries for "taimana" and variants thereof, with no hits.
Google translate certainly maps "diamond" to "taimane" for Samoan, "taimana" for Maori, and "daimana" for Hawaiian. Tahitian uses simply "diamond".
So if this word is borrowed from English, we should be able to establish that it is of recent provenance.
Helpfully, there is a Samoan language Bible on Archive.org. It was published in 1887.
BibleGateway doesn't have a Samoan version, but does have a Maori version. (Unfortunately, there is no information about it, including publication date.)
The word "diamond" does not occur often in the Bible. A couple places are:
Jeremiah 17:1(a):
The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond ...
Ezekiel 28:13(b):
... the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle ...
These are as found in the King James Version (KJV). The Revised Standard Version (RSV) has "diamond" in the first passage, but "chrysolite" in the second. Young's Literal Translation (YLT) is similar to the KJV: it likewise has "diamond", but has "ruby" in place of "sardius".
Here are the corresponding phrases in the (modern?) Maori version:
Jeremiah 17:1(a):
Kua oti te hara o Hura te tuhituhi ki te pene rino, ki te mata hoki o te taimana ...
Ezekiel 28:13(b):
... ko te harariu, ko te
topaha, ko te taimana, ko te perira, ko te onika, ko te hahapa, ko te
hapaira, ko te emerara, ko te kapakara ...
Clearly "taimana" is the word which the translator used for "diamond".
Now what about the 1887 Samoan translation?
Jeremiah 17:1(a):
Ua tusia le agasala a Iuta i le peni uamea ma le mata o le samira ...
Google translates this to:
The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron and with the point of a samarium ...
Ezekiel 28:13(b):
... o le salikea, ma le topasi, ma le ialoma, ma le tasesa, ma le soama, ma le iasepi, ma le safaira, ma le nofeka, ma le pereketa ...
Google translates this to:
... the sardius, the topaz, the jasper, the onyx, the beryl, the onyx, the jasper, the sapphire, the onyx, and the beryl ...
Google seems to struggle with some of those words, punting, in several cases, to "beryl" and "onyx".
Even so, none of the words in the original even remotely resemble "taimane".
Therefore, I believe it is reasonable to conclude that "taimana" was introduced into Maori and certain other Polynesian languages, including Samoan, in the modern period.
