Byobu by Ida Vitale

Author:Ida Vitale [Vitale, Ida]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: byobu;ida vitale;charco press
Publisher: Charco Press
Published: 2021-08-08T18:58:22+00:00

Dangerous Misunderstandings

Byobu is not always able to predict how the situations he gets involved in will end. As a result, rough roads, nests of aggressive wasps, and even thunderous chasms can ambush his inability to dismantle proposals in which the lucid see hints of danger. Maybe previsions bore him.

Let’s say he accepts A’s invitation to meet up with stranger C, who is participating in a conference and wishes to meet B. Since C’s from out of town, courtesy dictates that B should be the one to go see him. He imagines a session crammed with participants who at that very moment are accomplishing one of their functions: listening to everyone else. As a special guest, C can’t extricate himself from attending to the work of others once his starring intervention concludes, but it shouldn’t be difficult, perhaps, for him to take a moment so that they can greet each other and quickly wrap up the brief formality that now seems pointless and unctuous.

In the small conference room, the participants sit around a long table. Byobu takes a seat to the side, in an inviting corner, shielded by someone’s back. He already feels the weight of the next two hours whose nets will prevent the entry of even the tiniest goldfish or the gentle flutter of a little lemon-yellow country butterfly. Every now and again C shoots him intuitive glances. Maybe he suspects he’s there because of him and is communicating that he too is being subjected to ridiculous norms. Many long for the ability to retreat into the void when confronted with life’s tedium, leaving a mask of their face in their stead. Could the special guest possess this talent, behind his attentive and affirming eyes?

This digression reflects – but in the rippling waters of a pond – what Byobu is producing on a piece of paper, an exquisite corpse composed alone, a carminative attempt to correct a state of mental gasification that he sacrifices upon the altar of social demands. Isn’t he surrendering to an enslavement of his own making?

In the meantime, other ‘conference’ participants see their moment of pleasure arrive: hearing themselves and making themselves heard in the academic brotherhood, expressing two or three ideas, concerning (sometimes important) works that have no need for the crutches being offered them with restated generosity. (Byobu knows that the real issues certain works raise, generally poetic, are not illuminated as much as he would like.) As he listens to all too common frameworks – not even tucked inside some type of stylish tinsel – time struggles forward like a dogsled over rocky ground, the snow long gone along with the huskies charged with pulling it.

The end of the session grows more remote beneath a string of impassioned voices while he remembers a river that began to freeze over before the despairing eyes of a traveler ill-suited for ice. Could C still be interested in the meeting? Or does he share his boredom? It’s possible that he’s hoping for the session’s close to speak without ceremony and in private with his peers – amongst whom B does not include himself.

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