Nicoletta Arbia

 

Dialogue with a Martian

After ‘Ghost Q&A’ [/] by Anne Carson

.
WOMAN   Did you make the crop circle?

MARTIAN   Once upon a time.

W   It wasn’t here yesterday so once upon a time, to you, must mean today.

M   Time runs differently.

W   Do you know much about Earth?

M    You might think so…but I don’t. Truth is I just fell from the orbit.

W   You just fell all the way?

M   I tumbled over and over like a ball down a million steps…or I was pushed by the sentry.

W   The sentry?

M   Sentries patrol the close edges and the extended ones. The extended ones are stretching too far nowadays, they’ve become troublesome.

W   They are like a frontier?

M   They are full of void but yearning for definition. We help them to definition. A thankless task.

W   Well, now that you are here, have you got any question about Earth? I know a fair amount. I’m going to enjoy the exchange of information!

M   Uhm…

W   Come on, what do you want to learn?

M   For example…is that what humans look like? I mean, are they all like you?

W   A lot of humans look like me.

M   And the others?

W   They walk in the opposite direction, luckily the path is circular.

M   So you meet in the middle?

W   It depends.

M   But I heard that you keep making babies nonetheless.

W   What do you know about babies?

M   I know that we print them while you expel them from your body. An archaic ritual and a very uncomfortable one.

W   What love doesn’t understand is blown in the wind.

M   Like pollen.

W   More like dust.

M   Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

W   Where did you hear that!?

M   I get scraps. Gossip.

W   Well, let me set you right. Birth might be an archaic ritual but it’s inimitable.

M   Wrong. We owe everything to copy, imitation, sample, prototype…and maps.

W   Maps?

M   There’s a map for everything. Here, in the brain.

W   You still bother with brains? Oh dear, if you represent our future, it’s hardly worth the journey.

M   This sounds a bit of an insult.

W   But only for a day or a week, then things settle, and we are friends again.

M   Oh! It’s not so simple, not in this almighty confusion.

W   You sound exceedingly young, how old are you?

M   I don’t get your question.

W   Don’t you age?

M   I don’t get your question.

W   Sometimes you feel the futility of life, the pressure it puts on you and that feeling produces ageing. Your body baulks imperceptibly, it hardens and shuts down for a nanosecond. At the beginning there’s hardly any consequence but when it happens again and again and again…

M   I don’t like the sound of it.

W   Exactly.

M   And when do you start feeling the consequences? Where’s the tipping point?

W   It depends. But I can tell you it’s like a slow reckoning. We have special people who study the process incessantly, they try to keep one step ahead of the game, they try to stem the disorder, gather the fall out…

M   They don’t manage?

W   Usually for a while they have mixed results: maybe things fall apart during the day and mend again at night, or winter scatters the pieces of the puzzle and summer puts them back in place…the see-saw can go on for years but it’s no use, in the end people die.

M   Die?

W   Oh yes. Dying is disappearing.

M   Gone?

W   Vanished. People vanish.

M   How extraordinary! But surely people can be chased back? Where do they go to? There must be an extended edge.

W  With sentries? Oh, you are funny! You make me smile. You are quite lovable you know? I could almost bring you home.

M   Surely you could remember your babyhood, get the hang of it again, reset the system before…

W   Before what? The futility? The pressure? You sweet, naïve soul!

M   I don’t like this conversation.

W   No, you don’t, and you wouldn’t like to know anything about the bit people leave behind when they disappear.

M   This is disturbing. Stop giggling!

W   What else is there to do? Would you rather see me…

M   We have much better guidelines for solving problems! Everything is signposted.

W   Lucky you.

M   And we know how to form good habits. For this reason, we often chain wolves to lambs, so they get used to each other.

W   That doesn’t sound very safe, or very democratic for that matter.

M   I can see we are not going to agree on many things.

W   Nooo, not unless the pendulum swings.

M   But you know what I mean by wolves and lambs, don’t you?

W   Oh, I do, I do. I don’t bury my head in the sand.

M   Only in the mobile.

W   Mobiles? What do you know about our technology?

M   That’s all we see from space: the constant flash of millions of these rectangular shiny things. We used to think they were the faces of humans.

W   You are spying on us! You are here pretending to know nothing about Earth, but you know an awful lot! Every bit of information a step closer to truth, to unlocking the secret of what…anthropology?

M   Everything is very crowded.

W   And mistakes are everywhere!

M   The idea of unlocking anything is risible.

W   I’m glad we agree on this one!

M   Yes, risible, even after light years of collecting data and issuing reports.

W   Ideas.

M   Opinions.

W   Joy and pain.

M   Surprises.

W   Surprises don’t need reports and will last for ever

M   I agree.

W   Joy and pain will also last for ever.

M   Probably.

W   The path is circular.

M   An endless loop with no definitive answers.

W   Did you make the crop circle?

 

 

Nicoletta Arbia was born in Italy and has been living in England for the last 42 years. She is a transpersonal psychotherapist and a poet. Her volume of narrative poetry Otherwise: 5 myths of transformation retold in verse through the voices of women is available on Amazon, Waterstone online and in Kindle format.

Jason Deutsch

 

Song of My Heart

The break in my heart
is the break in the world,
to love,
to love,
to love,
does your heart not weep like mine?

And does your body not ache
with tender compassion
to see the world sleep-walking
to the edge of a chasm,
of hate,
and arrogance,
and murder too?

My soul is yours,
my love, your love,
so let us bow down
before the Goddess
of Beauty above,
and bless this day,
and each other too,
for you are me,
and I am you.

I hold your suffering
in the temple of my heart,
I sing your tears of sorrow,
a mourner’s hymn to art.

And there you are, weeping,
on the other side of the flame,
sharing your heart aching
with the burning of the day.
I love you, brother,
Why are we so apart?
If only I could ease your sorrow,
If only you could mend my broken heart.

The candle flickers,
Your face is half in light,
Darkness is approaching,
The sun makes way for night.

But let us still dream,
Let us dream of the stars,
Burning through the midnight sky,
Casting light through the cracks in our hearts.

 

 

Jason Deutsch lives in Sydney, Australia, and writes at the crossroads of spirituality and the arts. He reflects on deeper questions of life at soulfulthoughts.blog.