When I first got this manuscript in my hands, I was thrilled. It made pictures in my mind. I could feel each leaf and cold stone, hear the crickets as they hesitated, waiting for me to pass before continuing the song.
Each poet brings us a different offering – this feels obvious, but I think it’s worth contemplating regularly. In each case, though, there’s the same message: Please look at what I found in the world, something you might have missed, or maybe you saw it, too.
In Forest Lawn Poems, I found someone who’d seen it, too.
I was tasked with the layout of this book, and decisions needed to be made. I wanted lots of irregular space, like walking an uneven path between old tombstones. I hoped, through typesetting, to reinforce what the poet had shown me, perhaps to make that uneven path a little more worn. I’m grateful that the publisher and the poet agreed with me.
Each piece is a hyper-focus on a sound that caught your attention or a bit of sunlight catching something glittery. But you don’t worry about what caught your attention; you see what’s there in front of you, in the now. This is a very immediate collection of poetry. Keep it nearby, like a cigarette break or a handful of chips.
Intersections are important to me. So when I recorded a reading, I chose to bring this sweet and sentimental work into the modern age and post it on TikTok with contradictory silly filters. Please enjoy:
Forest Lawn Poems by Gerry Crinnen So many tombstones on the verge. If you died you devoutly almost erased from the 18th century. Face west to feel the ripping weather. On the other side moss mixes mums with ever moisture, tilting work, soapstone turns to soul wafers. One tombstone is off its plinth, another sunk, sideways awkward. If sunk equally in all corners and bent backwards some give shade to near neighbors. Most toppled stones kneel forward or drop full on. igneuspress.com #poetry#indie#smallbusiness
I once had a two-decade long conversation with Peter Kidd, beginning in 1997. Pete told me he was living in three worlds – said that a few times over the years. Sometimes I thought I understood what he meant; sometimes I didn’t. It never mattered to our conversations, though. We built ontology like tree forts, tacking on whatever caught our fancy, borrowing from each other and everyone else.
Sir Roger Penrose penned (ha ha) a Three Worlds theory: He drew a model of human experience with the physical or noumenal world, which is outside us and which we can touch; with the subjective mental world, which exists solely within each person’s experience; and with the Platonic world, which could explain all things in non-physical terms, such as mathematics.
Roger Penrose, “The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe”, Knopf (2005)
Oxford’s English Dictionary provides me with the definition of Platonic I want: Adj.– 2. Confined to words, theories, or ideals, and not leading to practical action.
Discussions with Pete were always platonic, and usually at least one something else at the same time.
When we talk about marshmallow as a word representing a marshmallow – like whether it can be used as a verb (it can; I did it in a garrotín) – we explore the platonic sense of language, or maybe of marshmallows.
Penrose tried to define ways in which each world interacted with the others, and built caveats into his cyclical model:
We access most of the platonic world through reasoning Not all of our mentality stems from the physical world There should be things in the real world that cannot be explained by logic
Connection is a wonderful plaything. We feed observations via senses to our tidy minds; we build internal models, find patterns, and seek agreement with other humans who are doing the same thing. The process is not linear, so we use whatever language seems to fit: rhyme or meter, paintings, sandcastles, mudholes, picnics, music. Marshmallow becomes a verb.
Let me slip another brain into this soup: Carl Jung, who believed in a collective unconscious. I only want to tie a little bit of his theory to Penrose’s with my own interpretation. When we humans compare and extrapolate our platonic interpretations of the physical world, it’s easier to believe that what cannot be explained affects us all.
We can believe in impossibility.
I generally dislike marshmallows, and spent a portion of an outdoor music concert roasting them for other people. When I did decide to eat my creation, there was something ritualistic about it, as if I were internalizing the scene, growing the sum total of me exponentially. Not to go too far off into the weeds, but that marshmallow was a seed that grew into a close-knit but physically distant community sharing pain, joy, and recipes. We mail each other things – tangible talismans. How’s that for extrapolation?
Sir Roger is also an artist, and he liked to create impossible designs. He and his father toyed around with geometry and architecture until they came up with a staircase that perpetually goes up. They presented it to Maurits Cornelis Escher, who elaborated.
Shortly before his passing, Pete told me he thought he’d found a fourth world, and that he would try to find it again. He reported that he did find it again, but he was tired and would get me more details later.
I believe in impossibility – six things or more, before breakfast or after.
I hope I meet up with my friend Pete in that fourth world sometime, so we can continue the conversation.
Further reading:
Escher in the Palace: M.C. Escher and Sir Roger Penrose talk about their collaboration on Ascending and Descending in a documentary embedded on this website.
Carl-Jung.net: Give yourself a crash course in Jungian psychology, and read the man’s own words on the topic of collective unconscious.
Socrates and Meno’s Slave: Socrates strives to prove that since a young and uneducated slave boy grasps geometry he must have learned it in a past life. Socrates was, I think, grappling with the same ideas Jung called Collective Unconscious.
NOVA- Exploring Cosmic Cycles: I’m not the only one who says the universe is cyclical. Check out some trending theories that our universe could one day be reborn. Which world is this?
debnation.com: debora Ewing is a writer, artist, oracle operating out of Annandale, Virginia, US. Read more of her musings and short fiction here, and catch spontaneous nonsense on Twitter or Instagram by following @DebsValidation.
Willie Nelson: Me and Paul – YouTube: Via twisty loops and troubadours, Willie’s song is the inspiration for this essay’s title. Find a friend and go on an adventure. Write a ballad.
