in a jar so clearly full of memories
it enlarges like a trompe d'oeil or realism
of oils. The honeysuckle is vandalized too
from the public road, and wilder because more free.
When will I stop seeing that I have it
all your way and you have it all mine?
And Henry James is as clear as cut glass, books
where no one knows what anyone else means
and everyone acts accordingly. I can't
believe it: one doesn't have to, because it's true.
I see what people mean in saying, "It's worthwhile
if you feel you're being enlightened," and I wasn't.
I see what people meant about the season.
In spring I never knew I never knew.
I don't know how the jar's opaque light far side
Suddenly glows with the minutiae reflected,
what's next to it, becoming photographic
like lamplight through a scene on a shade, but
realer,
of its own depth, unprojected. You see what I mean.
Transformations are real.
We know this because they take time.
The greater the number of transformations
occurring in a spoken sentence, the more time
it takes for the hearer to understand it.
Good evidence for this comes out of tests
in which the hearer is asked to term
a given sentence true, or false.
An example is the sentence:
"Canaries are birds," to which the hearer
responds quite quickly, "That is true,"
and "Birds are canaries,"
to which the speaker says, more slowly, "False."
Non-truth statements contain more transformations
to understand. Amelie says this is intuitively
true, to her: that she responds more slowly
to some statements than to others. This is true.
Good evidence for this is that she told me
two nights ago at dinner, when she'd called me
saying, "I feel as though I'm underwater,"
and I had been afraid all my transgressions
could not reform themselves by a single statement
like, "I'm quite capable of listening
to those who've listened to me," but still had gone
