Mary Padilla

On Aggression

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by Mary Padilla

To be dynamic, a snowball must share several characteristics. Having no intrinsic mobility, it needs to roll downhill if it is to roll at all. In so doing, assuming an appropriate degree of friction, it will inevitably pick up speed. Depending on ambient conditions, it will generally gain mass. All this change will drive the process, making it still larger, heavier, faster, and more difficult to stop. As it feeds on itself, acquiring increasing momentum, ultimately we have an avalanche.

But sooner or later it has to hit bottom. Having consumed everything in its path, it will lose motive force. Now its bulk will paradoxically restrict its progression. All that is left to it is to change its state, or, more correctly, to be changed in state, as this is the problem:

It has no mutability on its own, no capacity to become other than what it is, or, rather, than a reduced version of what it was – a random accretion of elements in the surround, stuck together without uniting. Incapable of changing or growing on its own, it must inevitably cede what it has acquired by rolling over things that it incorporated by crushing and compressing them, but that were destined to return to themselves in the eventual and inexorable thaw that will consume even the initial nucleus from which it began.

Mary Padilla: I am interested in exploring ideas by translating them into words.

As Seen Through the Leaves

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by Mary Padilla

There’s a cloud on the pond. You used to see them overhead, looking up from a blanket at the beach or lying in a field. But there the grasses and wildflowers could get in the way of your line of sight. Now it’s the leaves. They roof over everything. You only feel the occasional drop from a gentle rain when it makes it through their overlapping panes. They spread themselves out like that to catch all the sun and stay alive. But this isn’t a dense rainforest. It’s oak and hickory, second growth. So enough light gets through that you can tell where it’s coming from as it shifts through the day.

But you can’t feel its heat anymore. It’s filtered out now. And it’s getting cooler, as the season changes.

Things have slowed down, and you have the chance to notice such things and to see and hear the squirrels, and the birds, and the bugs. And you have nowhere to go, which focuses your attention.

At night in the summer there are fireflies. But last night there were fireworks too, in the sky over the town. You used to go to see them. Last night they were partly visible through the trees from the top of this little hill. Some scattered points of brilliant colored light flickered up in an arc and then down, tracing a parabola on the distant sky beyond the trees. Succeeding waves of them kept coming, seen and not seen, as they rose and fell in volleys behind the leaves.

The booms trailed slightly behind, slowed by the distance, which muffled their loudness. It matched the intense insect sound of the night, and made a fitting counterpoint. The scene reminded you of a forest fire once seen through the trees at night in the Australian Outback.

Part way through, your attention was distracted by a beam of light coming down the road at the bottom of the hill, too slow for a car, too fast for on foot. When it got to some breaks between the trees you saw it was a cart drawn by a dark horse – or pony – going the wrong way for that side of the road, soundlessly. A shadowy figure within was shining a searchlight straight ahead. You couldn’t hear the wheels – rubber? – or the hoofbeats – unshod?

Between these glimpses through the leaves in the dark, so incomplete and intermittent, you kept asking yourself if that were what you were really seeing. But it lasted long enough that you could tell that yes, it was, although it seemed like a dream image, rather surreal.

No matter, you were beyond that now. The fireworks were over. The little interrupted points of life had stopped rising and falling.

Mary Padilla: I am interested in exploring ideas by translating them into words.

Nobody Goes There

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by Mary Padilla

Nobody goes there
who plans on coming back,
because nobody who goes there
ever has,
and there’s no reason to suspect
that you would be the first,
or rather the last.
So better plan
as per usual
and know what it is
you’re risking,
– not even risking,
because this is a sure thing –
so what it is
you’re willing to give up
in exchange
for seeing for yourself
what no one
who’s been seen again
has seen,
or heard,
or experienced,
because
to know what it is,
it seems you need
to give up
what you know
in exchange,
without knowing
what it is
you will gain.
You could just lose
if it isn’t even
a zero sum game,
and the odds are
– well, you can’t know
what the odds are
until you play the game –
the chances are
– well, the house usually wins,
so it’s more of a wager
than an exchange,
a roll of the dice
in cosmic terrain.
You don’t know
until you try,
and chances are
you won’t get a chance
to try again.
But knowing
what you would know then,
what would be the chance
that you would?

Mary Padilla is interested in experimenting with using sound and sense to explore felt experience.

Letter to You

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by Mary Padilla

You are free to say anything
to anyone
– even to me –
about anything.

You have 15 minutes.

I didn’t make it up.
I got it from a book.
No, it wrote itself.
I’m not responsible.
I don’t know what I think
until I see what I write.
It’s all been said before.
There is nothing new.
What is there to say
when you have said before
what there is to say?
I get what I like.
I like what I get.
Are they the same?
Are they not?
And then, what?
Where do we go
when we must go?
Where is there to go?
Where else?
Is there any there?
Why did we think
there might be?
Might there still be?
There might not be.
How would it be
if that were so?
When I say
what I mean,
do I mean
what I say?
Why or why not?
You must choose.
Must you choose?
Why must you choose?
Why not, indeed?
Because that is how it is.
Isn’t it?
How so?
And all this time
how could I
have thought so?
Did I ever
really
know?
No.
Did you?

Mary Padilla is interested in experimenting with using sound and sense to explore felt experience.

Joy

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by Mary Padilla

Joy is what
sneaks in
through the cracks,
not something
we can plan.

It isn’t anything.
Actually that’s it –
it’s not a thing,
a concrete noun.

It’s more of a verb –
something that
just happens,
and exists only
in the moment.

It’s just a bubble
whose essence lies
in the immanence
of the “pop.”

Mary Padilla is interested in experimenting with using sound and sense to explore felt experience.

Improvising

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by Mary Padilla

If we’re too busy codifying,
we can’t also be improvising,
not making it up as we go along,
or being the only ones deciding.

We can’t know just what we think
until we write it down or say it.
We don’t know what it is we see
before we draw or sculpt or paint it.

We can’t know where our step will go
until we’re almost ready to take it.
We don’t know what our sound will be
before we actually begin to make it.

The only true way in for us
lies in our trying not to try,
because it represents the key
to the how that underlies the why.

Mary Padilla is interested in experimenting with using sound and sense to explore felt experience.

The Egret

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by Mary Padilla 

There was an egret by the pond today.

Violets were appearing now on the verges of the wood.

It flew off to the shallows a bit further along the bank

when I came to sit on the cliff at the overlook.

Puffs of flowers in the trees were casting patchy shadows,

but there were no leaves yet.

It stood by the bank, utterly still.

Spring was still spare,

deceptively simple,

re-contextualizing.

A little later it had moved further along

somehow without ever moving,

utterly calm

but alert,

poised,

hunting.

Then it was further yet –

but still immobile,

coming from a deep place.

Why do flowers come back

when people don’t?

 Since coming to the LP2 several years ago, Mary has been trying new things, like applying the economy of the poetic form to expressing what can be more felt than understood.

 

Gallery View

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by Mary Padilla

A moment in time
and space
–  frozen  –
as in Zoom,
suspended.
–  Leave and Return  –
They have to let you in.
You are in the Waiting Room.
What is on the other side
of that door?
Doors are virtual these days,
and apocryphal.   

But the link is still there for 30 days.
There is no end time.
What does Time mean now?
It should be what keeps everything
from happening at once.
But what about
the parallel universes
we inhabit,
where we click
from one reality
to the next
and back again –
or not.

Everything happens
at once there,
except that there is
no single there.
but rather,
three-ringed circuses,
the net of Indra,
the many-stringed
multiverse. 

And where are we in all this?
Are we in this?
If outside, where?
Given a place to stand,
could we move it?
What if there is
no place to stand?
And what would it mean
to move? 

If nothing is fixed,
what then is our perspective?
That of the omniscent narrator?
Of the fish eye immersed
in a medium it can’t fathom?
And of what significance this?
If we can sense only
what we are primed to experience,
then we cannot perceive
what we do not expect. 

Sensations are feelings.
We will not feel
what we cannot know.
Oblivious to the rest,
we each live now
in a world
of our own creation,
socially distant
in a fundamental way,
and alone.
What would it mean
to connect?

Since coming to the LP2 several years ago, Mary has been trying new things, like applying the economy of the poetic form to expressing what can be more felt than understood.

 

 

Artistic Constraint

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by Mary Padilla

A constraint can be freeing
But this approach does
Cause you to
Disregard what might be
Equally appropriate in
Favor of something that’s
Good technically, not
How you would necessarily
Imagine the choice,
Just privileging this
Kind of technique,
Letting the form dictate the
Meaning, allowing for
No chance to
Override the
Presentation, however
Qualified the
Result,
So that
The
Ultimate
Version
Won’t
Xemplify
Your
Zenographic limitations.

Since coming to the LP2 several years ago, Mary has been trying new things, like applying the economy of the poetic form to expressing what can be more felt than understood.

 

Annunciation

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by Mary Padilla 

xxxIs that what it is, then?
xxxSomething that puts in motion
xxxa sort of cascade?  Personal?
Write it down
before it slips away.
xxxSuch things don’t usually
xxxneed setting up.
xxxThey come into being
xxxby themselves.  Impersonal.
Maybe the pieces aren’t ready
to be locked into place yet.
xxxTo need to do this thing,
xxxbut not necessarily
xxxbecause it’s likely to succeed,
It’s an exchange with the part that
observes, integrates, and only manifests
when the synthesis is complete,
xxxto wake up with it in mind,
xxxand live with it always before you,
xxxas a sort of waking dream –
like the cuckoo in the clock
that makes its presence known
only intermittently – rarely –
then quickly disappears again.
xxxwhen the fit is on, you must do it.
xxxAnd so you discharge it, this necessity,
It won’t be coaxed out again
until it has something else to say,
and that fully formulated.
xxxdeliver it in the doing.
xxxOr don’t, but then it will persist.
This sort of thing doesn’t – can’t – happen
on demand, under contract, or by a deadline.
xxxNot exactly taken over,
xxxhaunted, preoccupied, obsessed
xxxyou simply must pursue it,
xxxif you are possessed by it,
xxxor it just might destroy you.
It just bubbles up
when it’s ready
and can no longer be contained.
xxxNot its agent,
xxxbut rather reduced to it.
All that can be done is
to give it the time it needs,
xxxas everything else is stripped away,
xxxsuperfluous to what it in essence is,
xxxthis thing that can exist only through you.
and then record the result
xxxWhat matters is the essential need
xxxfor this inessential thing,
xxxmeaningful perhaps only to you,
xxxto be,
when it’s ready
xxxand to continue being,
to be delivered.
xxxeven after you no longer are.  

 Since coming to the LP2 several years ago, Mary has been trying new things, like applying the economy of the poetic form to expressing what can be more felt than understood.