FALLING LEAF REVIEW
VOL. 3 # 1 SUMMER 2018
THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW © 2018, Jay V. Ruvolo Publishing and Contributing Editor Jay V. Ruvolo
5 I read your silence, by responding in silence to your heavy absence
A HAIKU SERIES By Jay Ruvolo Variation in Theme… 4 haiku
Serious: 3 haiku
1 On the steps at my feet, bottom to bottom, two cicadas mating;
i a squirrel scurries up an oak with an acorn never to be an oak
2 a seagull gliding drops a crab onto the rocks splitting a wave;
ii sunlight on the sill–– mid-morning shadows––a breeze blows through the branches––
3 pigeons surrounding a woman on a park bench not feeding them;
wrens outside my kitchen window—cacophony with sparrows––a breeze blows
4 waves spread into wakes at my feet sucked in the sands–– I step and stumble 5 I catch my balance quick by stretching my arms out in a cross . . . Again; 5 haiku 1 No moon above; No night of stars—the clouds cover November sky rains 2 not the cruelest month–– November is the cruelest–– everywhere graying 3 through the window, on the bed—the full moon shining the crickets take pause 4 the telephone rings in my dream––I answer it–– no-body responds.
3 by 3 ONE shower water runs down the length of my body down the shower drain . . . TWO the window, I look out to see you––alone with you with me, a lone–– THREE the tree I see in me in the window––leaving a puddle at my feet Contingency Plans 1 a handful of rice at the wedding of a friend–– in my pocket, put 2 I throw rice at them–– I must not have thrown it all–– months later, found some
Outside My Window the window is closed— the morning sun on the sill–– eyes opened wide–– a hole in the bricks of the wall of my house–– perpendicular
6 spinning on the pole on the train, over the bridge— a boy without words. 7 . . . ten hundred thousand, thousand ripples of East River water flowing below me to the sea––waters flowing below my feet on the Brooklyn Bridge to the sea––to the sea
Another's Shoes to the wall with the window I look out—I see sparrows.
BY JAY RUVOLO
Twice Told
When he was an undergraduate, on all forms to fill out
i on the ground, at my feet, shaking—the absence of a leaf above me on a branch ii a boy and two girls run away from a boy with two boys—playing.
[a flash fiction polemic]
for the college bureaucracy, there was a choice labelled "other" when the question of race or ethnicity was raised. He used to check this choice "other," and in the line provided would write Non-White Caucasian. This was the early 80s. There are essays he has written explaining what he thinks on this; however, herein is offered only a quick look at, what might be called a scan of, what he means,
Six Haiku and a Stream 1 without the clock, without you––it deafens even my thoughts of you again–– 2 a toppled bird bath, flower petals frozen in the ice, still colorful–– 3 larger than you–– your still-presence anywhere— your absence tonight; 4 so I can make it to you late—I wait for the doors of the train to close. 5 muted by the train–– guitar strings lightly strummed— I wait for another
might have meant, by Non-White Caucasian, or so you could assume. I know you already have your axe out to grind upon his head. Let's follow her who had known him––you need names now, don't you? I suspect as much concerning place--where is this? You ask. I imagine. Nothing by way of an answer will be forthcoming. She, she, who else, what else, other than, who she is when she is she and not her name, other than what you think defines someone by how they have been described? I don't even know if that is exactly what I wanted to say. And so she said he had said––who is she? You ask, I hear . . . it does not matter, could not matter, only what he said thought imagined matters now, how he found it amusing . . . if not sometimes also annoying, when White Protestants living in New York City from somewhere outside of the city that no one from anywhere in the world not interested in agriculture, or being a rabid Trump supporter, or hunting deer, alligator or students (on days when the world seems bleak) would want to visit, ask me if I know what the Day of the Dead is, having themselves recently discovered it. In a protracted adolescence of
mind, these white people assume they might be some of
Whenever these pasty-faced White people come to
the earliest finders of such knowledge, exactly the kind of
Brooklyn to gentrify black neighborhoods, and then
thinking that lead the West to call Columbus landing on
reconstruct out of their own guilt the term 'White' so that
what he later called Hispaniola, a discovery.
a new-found rhetoric of outrage gets adopted by other
She added that he had said, "I once in a while ask if
really stupid White people, to include all the Caucasians
they are really asking an Italian Catholic, who is also
the term had never included before––yes, there are Non-
Irish Catholic, that particular question because the Day of
White Caucasians. Let me then say that White-White
the Dead and the festival of All Hallow's Eve (the origin
People had never allowed inclusion to me or mine in any
of Halloween) and All Saint's Day, November 1st and All
kind of real or imaginary America before; and so they
Soul's Day, November 2nd, have, all of them, been
now reconstruct Whiteness, principally, so they can then
familiar to me since childhood."
condescend to Northern, Eastern, Urban ethnic
How many tangents, diversions, digressions could I follow here? And she said he had said that these were ". . . familiar
Caucasians, most often Catholics because in their Protestant uptightness, greed and prudishness, they found themselves compatible with Northern Urban Ashkenazim,
to my Irish Ancestors since the fifth Century A.D., as
allowing the Neo-WASPS to point a finger at these Non-
Catholics, and centuries before that, as Celts, in Ireland,
White Caucasians as if these non-White Caucasians were
celebrating their Ancient Festival of the Dead that
like their pasty-faced Protestant Grandfathers--whether
coincided with their New Year, which coincided with
Klan members or not, or whether among those who
what became our November 1st. Our October 31st was
benefitted from Klan or not . . . I won't say how my skin
Celtic New Year's Eve and was a time when the Here of
crawls when around the White Protestant Neo-liberal
the Living converged with the There of the Dead."
Bourgeois, any more than I will say the same is true when
She paused thinking of what it was he had said after what she just said he had said. She then said he had said: "Patrick Christened it, and November 1st became All
around White Protestant Conservative Bourgeois––let it go! She said he did not mean Anglican when he said
Souls Day until it became All Saints Day, a day
Protestant--yes, whenever these contemporary Brooklyn
commemorating the lives of Saints and the Death of
White-People assholes talk to me like they are going to
Martyrs." She had an incredible memory, powers of
educate me in the ways of my own culture, it reminds me
recollection few I have ever known possessed. (So, who
of college students I've met over the last thirty years
am I? I suspect you ask.)
talking to me in their half baked, pseudo intellectually
She then aid he had said: "The following day,
managed third-hand dis-coveries of Post Structuralist or
November 2nd became All Souls Day, and thus there
Post-post Structuralist critique, as if they were the first
were two days commemorating the Dead, the two
ever to think what they were parroting in one American
principal days of the three days of Mexico's Day of the
received idea after another––all or some of it, most
Dead Celebration."
assuredly usually, from some pseudo intellectual
To say or not to say has become her question? Another
rehashing of French anti-humanism.
to be or not . . . and she continued on what he said, saying
Enough!
what she thought she recalled, sometimes apart from
Yes, real White people parroting received ideas about
what she would and could recollect, recollection and
diversity while remaining truly terrified of races other
recall not being one and the same thing, just as all
than their own . . .including all the ethnic Caucasians they
recollection is remembering but not all remembering is
manipulate the image of in order to deflect critique of
recollection––yes, it was annoying
white-white people and hopefully get them to share some
When White Protestant farm boys and farm girls from
of their over-burdened WASPy guilt––and yes! fuckin'
Nebraska, Iowa, North Carolina or any place else where
WASPS are not just the Old Money WASPS, nor are they
everyone is, how should I say it, pasty-faced––yes!
the old New Money WASPS trying to lace curtain
themselves away from their cracker red-neck ancestors. And after shitting where they live and eat here in Brooklyn, they mostly go back to their White People lives, the fucking closet Crackers! He paused, she said. She then said he said, I am
The italics used are what they are what they are when they are how you should read them–– She said he had said as much. The when and the where and the to whom are not important, are they? He said: And you want more, I can suspect, have suspected,
Italian and Catholic, and more intelligently so than many
do know from experience--I cannot say that I really
who also claim as I have here; so I will assume that
cannot stand Protestants--I can't. I grew up imagining that
there's nothing contemporary White Protestant
Protestantism might be a disease, at least one of culture . .
Americans can teach me in just about anything,
. crackers are WASPS, red-necks are WASPS, the KKK
especially concerning Passion and Death.; that is, as far
are fucking WASPS irrespective of the pretenses many
from their traditions as too many of them are, becoming
white Anglo-Saxon Protestants want to evoke . . , of
as heinously bourgeois as too many of them have, even
course, I cannot say all Protestants are uptight, pasty-
when they think they are continuing traditions, only
faced, narrow-minded, fat mother fuckers––although a
managing to make one grotesque bourgeois revision or
whole lot of them are.
another, themselves lost to their Folk wisdom, and Folk
But there is something metaphysically incompatible
traditions and culture, succumbing to one semi- or il-
with me and mine and them and theirs, something I know
literate notion or another, half-baked as they persistently
I have felt, have seen obliquely, understood intellectually,
are, always criminal as illiteracy is in bourgeois terms;
historically, interpersonally in incidental and other than
but then, as mentioned above, they want to forget their
incidental communication . . . mea culpa, mea culpa, mea
Folk and so become even more insipidly bourgeois. But
maxima culpa.
then, I can't even begin to ell you how many people share
I want to say in order to say that I understand I should
one or another of my identities who are equally lost to
have another understanding, the ability that comes from
their traditions, their culture, their Folk . . . or so I have
having stood under what I need to carry, hold up, a
begun to think as of late.
variation on walking in another's shoes?
. . . and he said, being a man who used to walk around
I do not want to walk in any other's shoes.
with a copy of the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, a
No one wants to walk in another's shoes.
transcription of the Papyrus of Ani which was nearly
It's bad for you to walk in another's shoes, structurally.
4000 years old at the time of Christ, myself chanting some of the Hymns to Amon Ra and Osiris in an invocation to the rising sun on the sands of the beaches in
Brief Encounter
Rockaway when I lived there how long ago now I will not
by Jay Ruvolo
count, having viewed as many corpses and carried as many coffins as I have.
[. . .]
Hail Horus of the Horizon . . . "I really do not suspect that the pseudo intellectual,
A crazy man speaks of his having discovered he was
systematically under-educated college under graduate
crazy in a world far madder than he, or so he wants to
today has a whole lot to offer in the ways of
think, thus believe, know in a way other than how others
understanding Death, or any of the ways people deal with
know the things they say they know for certain, or so I
death, as grotesque as his being has become, as crassly
imagine, of them and of him; or as I think from time to
bourgeois, as insipidly Wonder Bread, hopelessly
time about him, remembering quite accurately everything
materialistic, a-historical, contempo-centric, emotional
this man has ever said.
rather than passionate . . ." Don't puzzle too much over the use of quotes and absence of them in other places.
Who is he? You ask. Who am I? I need to know when
potential as it is, what do we actualize? No, I am asking.
considering this man I am, was will be might have been
What do we?
in another time wearing another mask, the many roles I play in the world, in a series of contexts differing from
"Adam would have needed infinite time to name infinite
one another greatly, slightly, at times I discover new men
things," he said. Paradise is heaven on earth? If so, then it
to be, I have never had the fear of being crazy that so
is of eternity and does not participate in the laws of
many I have known over the time and course of my life--
infinite space, infinite time, duration, bow do you count
living has provided me with many courses to take,
infinity? You cannot. Yes, infinity never comes. Infinity is
traveling them as I do, the morels travelled ones, you
never reached in time or space. Infinite time would not be
remember; has provided me with many roles play, all the
enough time. No amount of time would ever come closer
world we remember, a stage, the many stages I have
to infinite time. One billion to the one billionth power is
walked on, fretting about an hour or two or more,
no closer to infinity than one. How do we not see that
sometimes repeat performances, we are always acting,
infinite possibility is an avalanche waiting to bury us, as I
acting, acting; and yes with many transformations to
have said before and again after that, before.
make, take, endure--we do endure our transformations, one or another metamorphosis, yes, who can really say he
Eden was a space for eternity to exist--the walled garden
is the same person today he was last week--and I am not
where heaven on earth . . . how does Eden relate to the
talking about Gregor Samsa transformations, you know.
Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem? But
Yes, no one the same today as he was last year or at any
nevertheless, yes, Paradise in this way was heaven on
moment or string of them extending for minutes, hours
earth. It is only from eternity that infinity is resolved. It is
days weeks months, whatever have we at our finger tips
only in this way that the Incarnation of the Son of God
to say At that time then I was nothing like I am now.
begotten not made before time and creation could be Alpha and Omega, beginning and end at once. You do
Is it only about lessons learned, or is it otherwise
have to get this, that infinity and eternity are not
something else in the metamorphosis of the being I am--
synonyms, never have been. It is confusion that allows
what is it about being and existence that I recall from
this to persist in our contemporary meaning.
some discussions I think I could recollect having had about the distinctions between existence and being . . ,
I could have considered more here, no? What else could I
what is it about my being? Firstly and lastly I have it, no?
say about existing without being--isn't that about what the
I mean, the tree outside my window exits but does it have
state wants from you, from me? Why am I again posing
being? No, right? I do--I have being. See what I mean?
the questions of we,excepot in the ways that I am this we,
No? Of course, you do.
right? So what is it that the new State as God wants from us? Or from whomever it might be possible to thrust this
He said, "One does not explain all things by one thing
upon? Existence for people--what people? For humans?
alone, but by explaining all things by all things at once."
That does not amount to what being is; thus, another form
yes, he did when I did as I did as he does will do, he and I
of not to be comes with this existence without being. Yes,
another wee I become. I am we as I have said before here
not the suicide we imagine Hamlet thinking out loud
and elsewhere, over and over saying the same things
about--and is it interior monologue or soliloquy, his to be
again and again. Not in time extended can anyone explain
or not? They are not the same thing, you know, to be or
everything needing to be explained, but by explaining
not to be, being and becoming. They serve separate
everything needing to be explained in pure simultaneity.
functions, don't they? What has utility to do with what we
Pure? What is it about anything we have we do we
are talking about here. Metaphysics; Ontology;
become we say think write paint compose that is pure?
Epistemology--I remember these from Philosophy classes
There is no purity in our being so composed of uncertain
as an undergraduate when I thought I might want to be a
shore at surf's edge in Montauk. 180 degrees of ocean
Philosophy major.
horizon, from the shore looking out over the ocean to the horizon, all directions, from left to right, ocean and sky, a
I wish I had the time to make clear to you this suffering
line that sometimes appears as if it were wobbling,
of folly or madness or something else quite synonymous
horizons in New York are foreshortened, unless you get
in the mind of another, not so synonymous in mine--no two words share complete or absolute synonymy in every context of usage. I do not even imagine that they share anything other than a limited synonymy. What more will I say could only be completed by you, the reader--and now a new rub is introduced. You don't think that it is
high enough up, everyone needs to get to the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, at least once in a life. I do not recollect how many times I've been to the top, in the day and at night, clear skies most preferable, of course, the horizon is not foreshortened at Land's End, as far
interesting, at least for incidental consideration, if not
away as the curvature of the earth allows us to glimpse
ordered inquiry?
when there are no obstacles . . . Obstacles are at the ready wherever we go, wherever we are, however we arrive. No matter how we imagine
[. . .]
we can avoid them, they are ever present, and not within our control as to whether or not they come up before us . . Past Perfect; or,
. memories of the ocean, memories of the shore, more
The Reconciliation of Inaccuracies
memories of the sand of the sun of the sky, of the photos by Jay Ruvolo
I remember you every day. I am remembering you now. I remember you always; I have remembered you since the day we met. Memory engaged in the act of itself for you, I remembered you this morning. I had remembered you in my dreams. I am remembering you fondly; I was remembering you fondly; I have been remembering you fondly since we first . . . I will be remembering this for many years to come. I will have been remembering this for many years when it comes time for me to die. I have remembered fondly many times in my life; I had remembered you many times before we separated. I will have remembered you for my whole life when it comes time for me to die, I suspect. I would remember you even if I forgot my name; I would have remembered you even if I had forgotten my name; equally, I could and I could have; I should and I should have, however, whenever, wherever. To remember is to become a member of the past again. Once more ,this special membership of the mind. In memory---you are all about in memoriam. Living, an old man once told me when I was a boy, is an accumulation of death and dying; and here I am on the
I took of the clouds, the horizon, the surf with the waves rising, curling, turning, tumbling one after another in perpetuity forever and ever no mater how the beach shifts, erodes, changes irrevocably as we would see if we were to have a glimpse of things as they happen millennially. Reveries now and then, of all--how can we remember all the things that have happened except in some hyper-fragmented way, like trying to collect confetti and piecing it together into the sheets of paper they once were. I recall of each of us, both of us, there, as we were, have been this time or that, on the beach... I see her walking ahead of me. I turn to find her walking behind me. I reach out to touch her as we walk side-byside. I recollect mornings on the beach in Montauk waiting for sunrise . . . standing in the changing shades of the gloaming I cannot put precisely in words, I record on film, digital, video. I also take in photographs of the sun over the horizon, the length of shadows it casts and the changing length of the shadows as it rises higher and higher, the light in the sky from gray to blue gray to an enriching blue, at least on the day I last recorded sunrise from the shore---what the fuck is an enriching blue?
What more do I say? else can I? I do not need to
opposite the window perpendicular to the window that
consider this at present . . . what present am I talking
lets in the morning light. I have tried to catch the
about? You might think to ask, ask in-loud . . . a present
shadows in the knotted hollows of the cliffs of Shadmoor,
in time, now at this moment; present in time now in my
the Hoo Doos, the natives called, the spirits that dwelled
life; present as in present tense, usually, not now at this
in the echoes, we used to pause to listen to the ocean
moment, but maybe now in my life, as what I usually do I
echoing off the cliffs of Shadmoor coming to them from
am doing now in my life, darkness everywhere pervading
our room, coming back from them, times of the day
my life . . . the shadows are shades are ghosts--ghosts, I
different, walking there late morning, coming back early
have imagined; ghost stories I have always liked more
afternoon, walking there, virtually due east, some time
than horror stories with monsters. I have learned others
mid afternoon, coming back with the nearly late
have believed in ghosts . . . all of them, these shadows,
afternoon summer sun in our eyes.
these shades, this Wayang performance I once saw,
When I was a boy walking at night, I imagined the
puppet master from Indonesia . . . all of them--are they
shadows clutching me jumping out at me grabbing me,
them there . . . here and there, now and then, everything
taking me to some unknown between, what lies between
falling between, all reaching for me, clutching at me,
here and there, I have asked this elsewhere. I watch the
scraped as I have said elsewhere . . . ghosts--I have not
branches, winter bare, on my block all the way home
seen a ghost in a long, long time.
alone after after-school, look to, look at, watch. The
A skeleton hand clutching at me from behind, not the
London Plane trees in my old neighborhood--East
ghost's hand, the ghost did not have a hand I could see,
Flatbush--we had a lot of trees on our streets. Winter bare
no skeleton ghost, always close behind me, behind
trees shaking in the wind--I would sometimes scare
everyone, the icicles of a skeleton hand. The fear of the
myself and have to run home beneath them, convinced
dark is another kind of fear of the unknown . . .
that if I slowed, they would bend and grab me, pick me
remembering is by volition or without volition,
up and that would be it, I'd be gone, I used to run out of
recollecting is to remember by volition, and to recall is to
rooms after turning out the light when I am a boy, not the
bring to mind, remember by volition, that is, to recollect
same fear now, but the memories of then are fiercely
with the intention of telling. No one recalls without
vivid, and sometimes I find myself hastening my step out
telling, even if we recollect to tell ourselves, an attempt
of room after turning out the light at night, recollecting
to fix more securely in mind so recollection can be had
with the same intensity as the felt what I had experienced
and it will not be subject to the random side of
as a boy.
remembering.
To remember, to recall, to recollect, to remind, how is
We would walk to Ditch Plains and collect shells,
it we keep track of which one to use? What then do I say
collect rocks, pebbles, I have a collection of wave worn
about what it is I do in mind, in, with and for memory? I
stones on a window sill in our bedroom. I have them
now recall what the French say when they want to say I
arranged around the small pieces of driftwood we
remember; they say, Je me souviens, or, literally, I
brought back from Montauk after our son found them and
overcome myself, the French souvenir a compound of
picked them up from the beach one walk how long ago I
over and come as in the English to overcome or to be
cannot say.
overcome, a different connotation, but then, to remember
I have tried to sketch the shadows of the rocks on the sill in the afternoon light, the window in the wall perpendicular to the wall with the window facing east and the rising sun. The setting sun reflects off the windows
is a way of overcoming one's self, to be overcome with images or emotions or the echoes of words . . .
And why he imagines that he has not mis-taken the word is not beyond me. I can see why he thinks souvenir is sous venir. I just do not understand how he has not understood
rest of it is confused. Maybe not the rest of it? He is in fact only mistaken about "over" and "under" . . . Perhaps it is memory that comes under you when you remember, thus upsetting you, which does not always
that he has mis-taken sous for 'over' and not 'under,' so
mean to make you sad or angry, but just some experience
then the compound, if it is in fact one, would be under-
that takes you off of your firm position, a pulling the rug
come, or I under-come myself? What he says about
out from under you, if you need another idiom to explain
memory being a way to overcome one's self is true. The
an idiom.
ALL PHOTOGRAPHS (herein this issue) BY JAY V. RUVOLO © 2018 JAY V. RUVOLO
A Consensus Among Selves in the Self . . . and this peopled world––
you in form, she informs
a world of she and I peopling
in form–– and so on, and . . .
as might motes in a sunbeam?
What kind of phrasal verb is that?
only however yet without her here––
Is this?
I wish she were more than I wish otherwise with
All information just what seems,
her here–– summer showers
what it says, in . . .
now falling as rain falls falling
formation, the rows and columns of infantry
summer grass brown tipped blades
on parade:
once bold green outside my window
raise the child to expect death;
looking down onto a broken fence peeled of paint chips lost in the tall grass high as the post
7:51 AM Coffee and cream with a croissant, raspberry jam on the side––to inform is to put in form in order to form in the shape of data and facts . . . facts, facts, nothing but facts, nothing to add–– I in form,
raise the child to expect destruction; raise the child to accept instruction; raise the child to hope for hopelessness–– the child raised is the father of the poet