ORATORIO FOR LIVING THINGS excerpt by Heather Christian

Oratorio For Living Things— 10 page sample

ACT III: Time at the Cosmic Scale/ Violence COLLISIONS: These thoughts of mine are violent why can’t I just be still I am a thing in motion made of things in motion and I am a part of a moving thing careening The time I’ve made is violent Why can’t I just be still?

What was I made for if not collision What am I making if not a mess Why am I living if not revision as made living by the limitless When talking of the atom when very very small there have to be collisions in order for the light to show us anything had happened there at all and still we say: “People are not like this” When talking of the cosmos When very very big there have to be collissions in order for the light to show us anything exists— and at both levels violence marks the time and at both levels there is no rewinding when its done people are not like this people are not like this people are not like this A descent into the ugly depths of what we’ve buried, what we hide. We put on the mask of historical rage, but it’s not a stretch.

Oratorio For Living Things— 10 page sample

PSALM (108 v) Rail on, violoent Earth, rail on.

Do not hold your peace Do not hold your tongue Don’t speak to me of quiet or of patience.

Rail for me for I am yours Rail for me as all is mine Do not hold your peace Do not hold your tongue. let them not propagate, bereft of pollen. Let their family roam penniless without a roof. let them need to beg for mercy from my children Let them suffer all their questions without proof. let them try to squirrel bread from out a stone and out a crater in a desert that will torment them with heat Let it crease and age his face. let it make him a disgrace, rail on.

Rail on, violent cosmos Rail on, violent ones.

Oil and water oil and water oil and ash and ash and water won’t congeal will not heal do not tell me how to feel

PSALM 35 (34 v) Fight the ones that fight me Dash the ones that dash me Mince their pieces into dust so it blows across the plain while crying out in pain to no one’s ears Prove that I am favored I am kept and I am savored by a thunderbolt, hot magma on the hearth And let them be confounded while they are screaming in the dark.

The world is mine, Prove it or Prove me wrong.

They are bent, let them be straightened Let their road be made of ice make them walk it in the night with the angels now as jackals and the angels now as snakes with the angels now as poison in thier bread and in their lakes and the word he turns against me will be turned on him instead and the arrow just the same let it find him in his bed and in his back. he says I see I see, my eyes have seen it this is why I understand he doesn’t look when I see I see, MY eyes have seen it I understand that he does not understand * this is logic.

And my bones will say this world is mine.

And my bones will say all is divine “What are they here for?

This world is mine.”

When will goodness look?

By the lion, by the hook?

Oratorio For Living Things— 10 page sample PSALM 58 (57v) when you shame your mother you evacuate her. we will not hold you.

Two different ways to die to the memory and to the eye in front of me Alienati sunt peccatores a vulva; erraverunt ab utero* *The wicked are alienated from the womb; they have gone astray from the womb

the snake of you is deaf, you hear only your own blood in your own ears, through your own body you convert fruit to venom and any one who stoops to help you risks undoing. in terra iniustitiam manus vestrae concinnant* *your hands forge injustice in the earth

We take your teeth, we break your teeth by cracking ope your skull When you make the fire fall, no one sees the sun may the moment that gave rise to you completely be undone run off like water on the road you feeding nothing wasting several precious things only one of which is time which is a slug that melts as it is moving Ad nihilum devenient, tamquam aqua decurrens* *they shall come to nothing like water running down

supercecidit ignis, et non viderunt solem *fire hath fallen on them, they shall not see the sun

useful only in your absense, we make a space from you we make a clearing, just in case there is another dawn only when your tree is razed will we dance upon the lawn only when your tree is razed will we dance upon the lawn. into the powder of the ever turning violent churn of Ever will you go

Oratorio For Living Things— 10 page sample THERE IS NO BYSTANDING There is no bystanding. if you’re here, you have to change and will change all around you.

HYDROGEN AND HELIUM: HISTORY OF VIOLENCE My parents have a history of violence.

Hydrogen my mother was uncomplicated with very little agency, an eden of herself, internal tremble generating her own heat Helium my father was created when she aggitated pieces of herself.

Also quite uncomplicated Also easily comported Also now always escoring her and fusing They long to be together and they tear themselves apart and the constant fluctuation simply burns.

Burning and Eternal Burning and Eternal Implicitly infernal, mom and dad my friend.

The hawk flies in a circle and the coupling is a circle of attraction and removal from each others gaze And the constant fluctuation heated up the situation and inspires a propagation, let’s say progeny.

And these children are adapted from simplicity and lightness but become distinct in face and mass and hue and stride But their parents have a history of violence therefore I Burning and eternal Burning and eternal Implicitly infernal mom and dad my friend.

Oratorio For Living Things— 10 page sample

ABYSSUM

Abyssus Abyssum Invocat

“deep calls to deep”

TO PERCEIVE MATTER(S) Aging in blue to perceive matters (forward) to perceive matter that casts no shadow Look forward for its consequence, forward.

Deep time has a color is a room that I have sealed and have divided. Only this much is my life (forward) only here is where I am singing (forward) telling you in kindness what what I’d loved and what I’ve ruined, forward (abyssum, Abyssus, invocat)

blue line blue line now they are of the surface and we are of the depth The rupture is no scar but revalation the depth comes in on wings on incantations we’ve been hearing for a thousand generations (abyssum, Abyssus, invocat) Time is not a compass Time cracks us down the center and we wont go back together There’s a piece of me before tonight that won’t go back together there’s a piece of me tomorrow I can’t find. you are the tempo and the dance you are conducting and are frustrated the music doesn’t move you do you see

and it casts no shadow, to perceive what matters look forward for my consequence forward ,and quickly

Oratorio For Living Things— 10 page sample TABLE MADE OF SAND: What if the table’s made of sand and only temporarily firmed up and eventually a tide comes in because the moon and seasons Will I exhaust myself, friend, trying to prop the falling thing of what I know back up. with what now, with what. with what now, with what.

Time and heat are the only things that have a one way forward.

If you’re looking for the past go where it’s hotter.

Et vulcani intra murum.

Alius, aliquis…

Oratorio For Living Things— 10 page sample

VESUVIUS

Now we have arrived at something truly Frightening.

I. “Dormancy” 1.

Everything that lives today owes its life to survivors of the great dyings the great late heavy bombardment the strength of the dead is something you can draw upon do not mistake dying for stopping. time scars slope, slowly to you, relative to what? to you? an eternity.

4.

Plinian eruption six hundred years until Pompeii til Herculaneum then quiet do not mistake quiet for death, do not mistake death for ending. barren summit dusting flake-rock at the same place there was fire in a crater is a shifting plate that makes a new mouth—

2. fold up. fault up. igneous intruding metamorphism viscous lake cracking plate mountain. subduction which is sinking igneous ignited rise of ones own volition great dying relative to what quiet phase new phase relative to what? magma network magma system still moving active relative to what?

3.

One large cone and the steep rim of a summit caldera a collapse of a structure that was higher who remembers? does it matter? a collapse. then caldera so then stone cloud ejected, into ashes into gases

5. collision, slow collision tiny melt riding and buckling folding fault at the boundary that is the boundary now, and not tomorrow, or was yesterday but the boundary today. slow collision slow Hot spot, quick hot spot mantle plume continuing cooling very slowly

Oratorio For Living Things— 10 page sample II. Is not “Dormancy” 1.

Vesuvius vulcanism stone cloud makes a divot makes a valley grows a scrub maybe grazed, maybe not. subsequent ejection hot retort to a seismic event over and over over and over over and over and The volcano, earth shake coastline, landscape the island is no more or is all of a sudden and no regret in the dancing 4. makes a new coastline in the water nothing stays never dormant don’t mistake monotany for stillness the discernable top the discernable skin the discernable complexion, not a reflection of the heart.

2. scoria full of crystals liquid dark purplish red descending browns from the pulpit from the mouth heart too hot thirty six thousand days heart too hot dormancy is relative to fifteen million years of violence into the flank into the time before the rock until a glimmer Basal Pumice, Green pumice somma caldera eruption, ejection Avellino, in the bronze age relaitve to relative to what

3. and pumice minced pummice hammered, being blown.

Then again, a resurgence thermal energy, heat finds a space occupies it builds a new roof and again. And again and again. And again.

Height ever changing so relative to what Relative to what there is no fact of my size, I am growing.

5.

Folding— which is meeting something too hard but slowly so that it must rise in an embrace and sometimes flop over at the apex if rising too quickly or too much for atmosphere like a paper crane.

Oratorio For Living Things— 10 page sample III. Eruption this is a canon that slowly comes into unison focus (bolded) and then slowly slides out of it while the 1’s list the years in which historic Vesuvian Eruptions occured.

1 2,3,4,5.

79 none of us will go home 172 an infinite going on 203 an infinite red pen 222 revising.

303 Deposits by dune and cross bedding formations 379 not by fallout but events 472 from the heart 512 536 the only thing that moves with time 685 is heat, and heat will only pass 787 from a hot thing to a colder and 860 time will only pass from the younger to the older 900 968 mountain emerging 991 mountain dashed 999 something ruined made you 1006 dust to dust 1037 ash to ash A thousand years of hiccup 1049 between things I have to say 1073 or things I’ve yet to do 1139 to the face of the face of the face 1150 of the face of the face of the crust 1270 1347 this is not a silence to me but a stammer 1500 as I am remembering a word or waiting for it to occur to me, how I feel next.

1631 1779 we are in the middle 1794 we aren’t at the end 1872 of a loop 1906 late greatheavy 1929 bombardment we are in the middle 1944 we aren’t at the end and when of a loop again late great heavy and when again bombardment everthing devolves into a morphing chord scream, a slow motion explosion then a silence which is a little too long. The guts of everything are shown, the bones of the oratory illuminated. The scream is a Francis Bacon painting of all the heart and verbiage.

Oratorio For Living Things— 10 page sample

ACCUMULATION ARIA: AN EPILOGUE Astra sunt fratres.

Brevior tam vita, Obscurior tam mors mea est.

Memoror non ego iens ab luce.

translation:

The Stars are my brothers Tho my life is shorter Tho my death is dimmer And I am not remembered in traveling light

and still: (silently) two thousand one hundred sixty hours learning math Three hours crying in a bathroom Thirty three minutes taking in unexpectedly good news Eleven hours wondering if something that you’re doing is “normal” six hours climbing trees six hours saying the wrong thing two hours and forty eight minutes on rollercoasters three full days sneezing sixteen days trying to remember what you were just about to say five days watching a fire thirty one minutes at the edge of diving boards seventeen days wiping one hour apologizing to furniture thirteen minutes with a brain freeze forty two hours looking at a clock nineteen minutes being genuinely afraid for your life fifty hours missing your grandparents seven hours saying good bye at parties two and a half years being annoyed two full hours trying to hug a cat one week putting coins into slots three months learning how to spell your name—