CHARLIE MOSES
Dear Friend
I just got done recording vocal harmonies in a really nice studio. It was almost too nice. I sang into an original U67 mic—the kind Bob Dylan and John Lennon used. Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize earlier in the month and no one had heard a peep from him until today. Reporters were describing his silence as arrogant and he responded today by saying he was literally speechless. Wouldn’t you be? But we assume someone of that caliber wouldn’t be caught off guard by an award like that. I’ve been thinking about misinterpretation lately. I think there’s a movement of spirituality taking place that urges women to be closer in tune to their intuition as well as divine forces—love and sensing energy and the spirit world. Though it was recently Halloween season so maybe it’s more in my face. But part of me feels this movement also amplifies the misinterpretation of others. We follow our intuition but sometimes it needs clarification to avoid making an assumption. I keep being told my veil is thin. And I keep being advised to place crystals in the corners of my room. And it’s also been suggested that I pour a circle of salt around my bed and that I sage smudge the creepy coat closet and that I brush my body down with a bundle of specific herbs (that I’m forgetting the names of now). Rituals are important. I grew up Catholic. I still identify as a Catholic at least in a cultural sense but experiencing dogmatism in an extreme way has put me off to what I feel is a sort of pagan, occultist, wild feminine mash up. I think we’re all searching or reaching. I think we all want purpose and meaning. My Grandma Grigar identified as a clairvoyant. She would communicate with the dead. Her father would too. And the other night I dreamt I didn’t have a body and it was the day after my Grampy Moses had died. I was a blanket of energy that transcended time and space. I woke up and wrote to him:
are you the celestial watchmaker?
a blanket enveloping time
whose sleeves are
the edges of loss and love
do you reside in the past present and future?
where the the bezel of your spirit
is the work of tinkers
please wont you wind up again?
so we can witness the brevity of your body
just one more time please
we were not ready
in the royal blue of october
to see your sleeves thrown over the rim
in repose
I explained the dream to my dad as well as another dream I’d had about Grampy returning from the dead. He had white light encircling his head and he looked younger. He walked in through the front door of the family cabin and it looked as if he were learning to walk for the first time and he had this huge smile on this face. The whole family was there and I turned to my Grammy speechless. She said Didn’t you hear, honey? They made a mistake. He’s not dead anymore. And in that same moment a bunny hopped through the open front door and jumped up onto the countertop where there was a large silver serving tray—the kind with handles on the sides. It was filled with oversized vegetables Grampy had grown and picked from his garden; radishes, cabbage, carrots, and celery. And the bunny began eating away at the celery—its soft, white body leaning over the tray. I could hear its small crunching sounds. Everyone in the room began cheering and celebrating and I started to cry and I woke myself up and my joy shifted into longing to be back in the dream so that I could be with his spirit again.
My dad told me I have a gift. I think I have an imagination. It’s why I sleep with a light on—in complete darkness my mind gets away from me and I can feel things lurking. Sometimes they feel like people and sometimes they feel like animals. I was shooting a music video last weekend and one of the locations was my childhood backyard. It’s a forest that backs up onto the Veteran’s Memorial Cemetery—the same one my Grampy’s buried at now. It was my favorite place as a kid. I would pull ropes of English ivy from the trees and wrap them around fallen branches to make walls for structures. I’d collect spiders and catch salamanders and build them habitats of twigs with leaf bedding. I buried my dog and my guinea pig there. I made paths through the ferns and I’d sneak back past the property line and hike into the cemetery on clear, brave days. And last weekend I was there in the dark walking the same trails I’d made as a girl and realizing that what the forest held in the day was a curiosity and excitement that made way for my demons to rise up at night. The trees became waxy and thin. The sounds of nighttime animals blended together to form one beast and I could sense it lurking from the tree I used to climb—beckoning me to come back. I walked in a straight line while the director of photography and camera operator projected time-lapses of the shifting sky onto my body. We did this take at least twenty times.
I liked getting to show them my favorite childhood place and at the same time I knew my young self wanted to keep it a secret. I could hear her raspy voice telling me so—it felt like the exploitation of something sacred, which is the same feeling I get when I see this strangely popular spiritualism in practice, because it also feels consumer based and has us buying crystals and smudges and paying money to go to workshops. Christ’s church turned into a marketplace and his reaction is to tear it all down. But what do I know? I’m so culturally Catholic I’m not even sure which passage from the bible I’m referencing and I’ve definitely bought a rosary before. My hope is that I choose to do things with an understanding of what they're rooted in or at least with an awareness as to why I choose to do them. I apply meaning to my actions and sometimes it’d be nice for someone else to tell me what the meaning is. But I don’t want a priest and I don’t want a high priestess. I assume Dylan would readily accept being awarded something as sacred as the Nobel Prize but he sat with himself first. I wonder what it was like to be Dylan attempting to apply meaning to something so large while the rest of us made assumptions or wondered about what he was feeling. Please speak to us, Bob. Are you not a righteous man? You’ve shown us so much with your words before now. Won’t you tell us what is holy? Wont you confirm the existence of the spirit?
Eagerly awaiting your reply.
are you the celestial watchmaker?
a blanket enveloping time
whose sleeves are
the edges of loss and love
do you reside in the past present and future?
where the the bezel of your spirit
is the work of tinkers
please wont you wind up again?
so we can witness the brevity of your body
just one more time please
we were not ready
in the royal blue of october
to see your sleeves thrown over the rim
in repose
I explained the dream to my dad as well as another dream I’d had about Grampy returning from the dead. He had white light encircling his head and he looked younger. He walked in through the front door of the family cabin and it looked as if he were learning to walk for the first time and he had this huge smile on this face. The whole family was there and I turned to my Grammy speechless. She said Didn’t you hear, honey? They made a mistake. He’s not dead anymore. And in that same moment a bunny hopped through the open front door and jumped up onto the countertop where there was a large silver serving tray—the kind with handles on the sides. It was filled with oversized vegetables Grampy had grown and picked from his garden; radishes, cabbage, carrots, and celery. And the bunny began eating away at the celery—its soft, white body leaning over the tray. I could hear its small crunching sounds. Everyone in the room began cheering and celebrating and I started to cry and I woke myself up and my joy shifted into longing to be back in the dream so that I could be with his spirit again.
My dad told me I have a gift. I think I have an imagination. It’s why I sleep with a light on—in complete darkness my mind gets away from me and I can feel things lurking. Sometimes they feel like people and sometimes they feel like animals. I was shooting a music video last weekend and one of the locations was my childhood backyard. It’s a forest that backs up onto the Veteran’s Memorial Cemetery—the same one my Grampy’s buried at now. It was my favorite place as a kid. I would pull ropes of English ivy from the trees and wrap them around fallen branches to make walls for structures. I’d collect spiders and catch salamanders and build them habitats of twigs with leaf bedding. I buried my dog and my guinea pig there. I made paths through the ferns and I’d sneak back past the property line and hike into the cemetery on clear, brave days. And last weekend I was there in the dark walking the same trails I’d made as a girl and realizing that what the forest held in the day was a curiosity and excitement that made way for my demons to rise up at night. The trees became waxy and thin. The sounds of nighttime animals blended together to form one beast and I could sense it lurking from the tree I used to climb—beckoning me to come back. I walked in a straight line while the director of photography and camera operator projected time-lapses of the shifting sky onto my body. We did this take at least twenty times.
I liked getting to show them my favorite childhood place and at the same time I knew my young self wanted to keep it a secret. I could hear her raspy voice telling me so—it felt like the exploitation of something sacred, which is the same feeling I get when I see this strangely popular spiritualism in practice, because it also feels consumer based and has us buying crystals and smudges and paying money to go to workshops. Christ’s church turned into a marketplace and his reaction is to tear it all down. But what do I know? I’m so culturally Catholic I’m not even sure which passage from the bible I’m referencing and I’ve definitely bought a rosary before. My hope is that I choose to do things with an understanding of what they're rooted in or at least with an awareness as to why I choose to do them. I apply meaning to my actions and sometimes it’d be nice for someone else to tell me what the meaning is. But I don’t want a priest and I don’t want a high priestess. I assume Dylan would readily accept being awarded something as sacred as the Nobel Prize but he sat with himself first. I wonder what it was like to be Dylan attempting to apply meaning to something so large while the rest of us made assumptions or wondered about what he was feeling. Please speak to us, Bob. Are you not a righteous man? You’ve shown us so much with your words before now. Won’t you tell us what is holy? Wont you confirm the existence of the spirit?
Eagerly awaiting your reply.
Copyright © October 2017 Map Literary and Charlie Moses
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Charlie Moses is a writer, performer, and visual artist from Portland where she owns and operates Kenilworth Coffeehouse. She has published creative nonfiction work in Knee-Jerk Magazine & Pom Pom Literary Journal. She has a book in the works for 2018 and her forthcoming album will be released November 17th via No Movement Records
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