Oumuamua

Around this time last year, the solar system's first observed interstellar object came into the view of astronomers atop a Hawaiian volcano. They were able to determine that the object originated outside our solar system. There is an air of mystery to this "exotic" object (named Oumaumau, meaning "scout"), as it behaves oddly, has a unique cylindrical shape, and tumbles, rather than glides, through space, something which I find incredibly violent and obscene. When reading the article I was struck by a certain phrase, that the object could be a "shard of a planet" that broke off when a planet was destroyed via proximity to a dying star. It resonated with me in a way I really can't explain, the only thing is that it recalled certain similar lines from Shakespeare's Coriolanus, in which the main character, Coriolanus, is described in battle hitting a city with such force "like a planet":

from face to foot
He was a thing of blood, whose every motion
Was timed with dying cries: alone he enter'd
the mortal gate of the city, which he painted
with shunless destiny; aidless came off,
And with sudden reinforcement struck
Corioli like a planet.

II.ii

I can't help think, also, of the final scene of Melancholia, in which an interstellar planet collides with Earth. These planetary images are so haunting and resonant I think because they are true visions of our apocalypse. No whore of Babylon, no horsemen. Just the random violence of space. What better subject for a poem?


Oumaumau

After the blast,
who knows how long it took.
A shard of a planet
Hit by a mutinous Roman sun
liquidated
or cracked open like an egg
at Sunday brunch.
As we calm our children
You hurl yourself onward, an unnatural conquistador,
How can you be our first?
We live in isolation that is too dark to fathom. Your
chaos is the only truth we have while we await
our own arable collapse.

A Spatial Reading of Three Films

Its October, which means its scary movie season! However, since being inspired by a recent paper delivered during the Geocriticism and Literary Cartography panel I co-organized at this year's SCMLA conference in San Antonio, I find I am applying a spatial lens to films that I usually don't consider critically. The paper read during the session was written by Dr. Dale Pattison of Texas A&M Corpus Christi, entitled, "The Violence of Gentrification in David Robert Mitchell's It Follows." It Follows is a gorgeous little art house/ indie horror flick, but Pattison's reading showed me that you don't have to be an RTF major, or even use traditional film terminology per se, to do a great cultural critical reading of a Hollywood feature. So, some title ideas for my own film readings would be:

1."The Other Space of Trauma in Jonathon Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Neil Gaiman's Coraline."

I am not sure how to make this title work with the film versions - or if I would be better off reading the novels. I think for Extremely Loud, a reading of the film would be best, the film's shots of ppl/spaces of New York are important in itself. These probably could be two separate papers, one taking the film and novel version of Foer's text, the other just a filmic analysis of Coraline? At any rate, JSF's narrative involves a boy searching for what his father calls "the sixth burrow" of New York. I read sixth burrow as an unseen "neighborhood" of trauma victims, an imaginary community of sorts. I consider it a heterotopic space, an other space that contests the "real" geospaces of the other "regular/real" burrows. It also shows how trauma creates spaces...spaces unseen...

2. "Other Space and the Violence of Unsustainability...in the Netflix Original Film 'The Apostle.'"

I don't even know about this title but with The Apostle, I think a great reading could be done on the fairly explicit ecological argument its making, but what would take the reading to the next level, I think, would be to examine the spatial element of the film, i.e. the fact that Erisden (if I remember correctly) is a "new world" sort of island. This could be just a thinly veiled allegory for America, but perhaps there is something here about a new/other space? There is mainly lots of violence to bodies, blood, oozy gooey stuff...blood bursting from mountains! Can this be something worthwhile to view with regard to concepts such as planetarity vs. globalisms? Maybe. I also think a discussion of this new medium of Netflix original content as a new space is interesting too.

On Receiving a Push Notification About A Recently Discovered Mass Grave

Recently I came across an article about Sandby borg, a new site archaeologists discovered in Sweden. It seems that several people were massacred in a raid, mainly males and small children. No female bones were found. A narrative presented itself. While I read the story, I mediated on my own existence as a mother and found that I could not bring myself to imagine what these women went through. The only thing I had to offer was the following.

On Receiving a Push Notification About a Recently Discovered Mass Grave

I cannot inhabit you.
Trapped safely behind a blurry wall, dulled by routine and joy,
I read their bones and your grief,
digitized in the glow of my device.
Like you, my daughter sleeps beside me in the dark
But I cannot inhabit you.

Where did they take you?
Bones of men, boys,
infants.
Trauma.
Blunt.
Cracking your life in half. Everything
Shattered. You
Whisked away on the brutal tide of ancient violence
Of which I've written of before but not like this.
I can't come close to comprehending your grief.
I gave birth to my own soul. It lays
Beside me in the dark.
My mind creeps up to yours,
But I cannot inhabit you.

How long did you last? What other terrors occurred that remain unread?
Or.
Wild age,
Did you find something new?
Surely you couldn't mend after that. Surely you were a ghost of yourself.
Your pain was hard and harsh and
I blaspheme your name by writing about it
Behind my soft, fleshy wall.
Recognition of your uninhabitable pain is all I can offer.
Seeing your baby's bones my nerves scream.
I'm sorry your pain is mere allusion.
But you were real.
And I cannot inhabit you.