RICHARD: YOU MUST ADD JELLYFISH TO YOUR OBSESSION WITH PAINTING HORSESHOE CRABS

by Vincent Czyz

Dear Richard,
Thanks for the postcard of your painting

“Girl with Horseshoe Crabs.”
Sorry the health-food store in Montclair went under,
they made vegetarian chili like nobody’s business.
The quantum physicist you mentioned, who says consciousness
is mostly empty space with a few thoughts whizzing through,
a grand inner dimension that can float a galaxy of ideas
but hardly feel a dimple in its overall capacity,
I got a feeling he’s right.
What’s life like in Istanbul?
Forget about the minarets and Byzantine cathedrals for a minute,
think of the Bosporus

dividing the city into Asian and European sides,

think of the jellyfish I see,
lots of them, hundreds sometimes.
The most primitive, I’ve read, are 95% H2O,
which has got to be how life got started,
as tiny envelopes of seawater. So there they are,
our ultra-great-great grandparents,
adrift in water sloshing against the cement shoreline,
a wall along the road that follows the strait.
Circular echoes of ocean,
the ones around here are divided into four equal parts,
sea-animal mandalas spangling the water,
silver dollar to Frisbee size, milky and translucent.
I like to watch them sort of sway in the current
just beneath the surface—
they’re a good way to meditate.
This must be the lure of the lava lamp,
magma that predates even your trilobite look-a-likes
in lethargic motion,
I’m surprised you aren’t onto jellyfish in your paintings.
I guess because they don’t have shells,
no husks to leave behind,
I s’pose they just dissolve when they die.
I wish I could get them floating around my room,
they help my thoughts circulate is the thing,
they lullaby my soul side to side.
Mother-of-the-sea is how the Turkish name for them translates,
probably because they’re only 5% different from seawater,
but a five-percent difference might be all there is
between consciousness
and the vacuum.

Ithaca

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty,
if a fine emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)