Catastrophic Awareness
Free Verse
“I am aware, sure, I am aware. Catastrophically aware.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
A time unwelcome
It would be grandiose to characterize it as a reckoning
Strange, sick old men seldom experience that sort of thing
Part of the trouble with this time is its anonymity
Is it typical, conventional, simply a specific case of a widespread malady?
Or is it idiosyncratic, abnormal, peculiar?
Imagine doing something with some skill and panache
Cooking, dancing, coding, mopping--grab a gerund
For long enough to forget that you learned to do it well
Hubris intensifies our amnesia
Now conjure a context in which it becomes alien, awkward, unfamiliar
It's always risky to cite Heidegger, but hold your nose
He wrote about the difference between presence-at-hand and readiness-to-hand
Think of the carpenter's hammer, or the waitress's tray, or the defenseman's skate
Something so intimately familiar that it isn't some thing, but mine, or yours--the one that is warmly woven into your hand before you are conscious of reaching for it
That is readiness-to-hand
Presence-at-hand (I think, in my own, clumsy way)
Reveals itself when things break
When familiarity freezes and fragments
When the smooth, faithful instrument of your will
Shifts into the mode of surly strangeness
How ought one to describe the hour when that comes to pass?
Not just the tool turned traitor or the pants split
But the way you felt best being
When that stutters and stumbles and seems absurd
When the probing question elicits a blank stare
Or snickering indifference
Or panic
When minds clench
When words scatter like senators when the brothel is raided
When reading is mistaken for a chore
When remembering masquerades as thinking
What then?
When you have made your living having conversations
About little worlds of words
And few wish to greet them
Let alone love them
The problem is not that I am not aware of the existence of a problem
I am catastrophically aware
See how casually I play the parrot
Burned beautifully by her awareness
Eating men like air
What wood could house her spirit?
I am not beautiful
I have never aspired to be beautiful
But I have been at home
Now I feel foreign
The petulant night has changed the locks
I know there is no one coughing to prepare
A chuckling salutation
I am muttering, frustrated
Turning out my pockets
Pretending that the key is the villain
Trying to elicit some consoling conversation
From the obstinate, mute door
How easily you used to swing
Slutty old portal
What made a nun of thee?
About the Creator
D. J. Reddall
I write because my time is limited and my imagination is not.
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More stories from D. J. Reddall and writers in Poets and other communities.
"Hear Me Out"
"Hear me out, what if we ran away together?" "Where do you want to go?" "Anywhere but here. We could move to a new city or to Canada, or we could disappear from society to live in the middle of the woods. Maybe a combination of two of those things would be good. What do you say?"
By Kay Husnick7 days ago in Fiction
Comments (9)
The way you weave Heidegger into heartbreak, tools into identity, and Plath into the quiet crisis of relevance—it’s devastatingly precise. There’s something profoundly human about the grief for fluency lost—not in language, but in being. The familiar has turned its back, and you’ve caught that betrayal in prose that almost winces with awareness. It’s not just thought-provoking; it’s soul-jarring. Thank you for writing this. It doesn’t answer the questions, but it names the ache. Sometimes that’s the only kind of companionship that matters.
The glasses prompted me into thinking of memory loss and old age, though there was a suspicion that this was about our current society and twisting truth/forgetting the past. "the one that is warmly woven into your hand before you are conscious of reaching for it"- loved this line. I'm usually not a fan of free verse DJ, but I liked this one, and you have some wonderful imagery woven throughout this:)
There are many key lines in this wonderful piece, yet the final two stand out to me: 'Slutty old portal What made a nun of thee?' Congratulations
"Pretending that the key is the villain..." I'm in this photo and I don't like it. Well done.
This is very good, D.J.! That feeling of being a foreigner and so clearly aware of the shift ant its causes comes through so acutely!
The rupture between self and world - insidiously. Incredibly done, DJ! ✨💖
It's a strange world indeed. I'm thinking of the defenseman and his skate and am reminded of watching one (I think it was McCabe) have his blade snap off, and him having to hop to the bench while the teammate dragged him along. I think where we are, the system is broken, and we need better teammates, and certainly better equipment managers.
I read this many times. I feel the frustration and also displacement. There's a weary resignation too. It's made me feel deflated reading it because it struck something within me. I feel like I've been/maybe am here too.
Got damn, killer last line!