Christian Wiman

Carl Holsoe

몇 년 째 구독하는 포드캐스트들 중 두 번 째 정도로 좋아하는 Poetry Magazine 의 에디터 Christian Wiman이 (이보다 시를 더 시답게 낭송해주는 사람은 요즘 시대에 내가 잘 모르겠다.) 단연 가장 좋아하는 포드캐스트라고 할 수 있는 On Being에 나와서 흠칫했다. 맛있게 잘 듣고도 좀 고팠는데 마침 그의 에세이들과 인터뷰까지 잘 서브되어 감사했 다. 그의 에세이 "Hive of Nerves" 중: 

Life has accelerated greatly since Joyce's time, and now, as ourselves scatter into bits and bytes, and our souls, if we are conscious of them at all, diminish to little more than a vague wish for quiet, even the linear associativeness of Ulysses can seem quaint.

How does one remember God, reach for God, realize God in the midst of one's life if one is constantly being overwhelmed by that life? It is one thing to encourage contemplation, prayer, quiet spaces in which God, or at least a galvanizing awareness of his absence ("Be present with your want of a Deity, and you shall be present with the Deity," as the 17th-century poet Thomas Traherne puts it), can enter the mind and heart. But the reality of contemporary American life - which often seems like a kind of collective ADHD - is that any consciousness requires a great deal of resistance, and how does one relax and resist at the same time? 

Commute (1)

O the screech and heat and hate

we have for each day's commute,

the long wait at the last stop

before we go screaming

underground, while the pigeons 

court and shit and rut

insolently on the tracks

because this train is always late,

always aimed at only us,

who when it comes with its

blunt snout, its thousand mouths,

cram and curse and contort

into one creature, all claws and eyes,

tunneling, tunneling, tunneling

toward money.

무슨 말을 적을까 잠깐 모니터를 응시하고 있었으나 정신이 어서 오늘은 9시 전에 침대로 가야한다고 재촉한다. 몸이 과히 좋지 않다. (... 월요일이라서?) 아, 오늘의 까꿍:

 

아, 컵을 보니 생각나는데 Rest and Restlessness에 대해서 말하고 싶었던 거였다. Well, later.