embryology

john martone

 

 

     Embryology

 

 

hcmc

forest

2001


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Although undiagnosed, a certain case. This family circle has many others, more or less “severe” or “gifted,” and the condition is so common among us Campanese, that it is often seen as a cultural characteristic. Perhaps the wedding of nurture and nature.
 
Hermetic mandorla, almond shrine, reliquary, a cousin in earphones, siblings next door, grandchildren born upstairs, fig-tree buried each fall, pomidori.
 
“Repetition compulsion” is inapt, as is the equally clinical “ritualism.” Both connote only mechanical and painful routine. Volute returning is more descriptive. Volute as in a whelk’s lifeway.
 
Pre/occupation with saying this is! this is! and this is! misjudged as shortcoming, as if there were anywhere else to go beyond magnificent arrival. Everything revealed in the ordinary and every verbal language is a second language derived from this.
 
Microcosm, garden, dresser-top, Pietà. (At the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens, a conveyor-belt sidewalk carried us past  Michelangelo’s sculpture. But we Campanese have more in common with his Pietà Rondanini.)

                                         











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solitude
 
Marco Polo returned with the first evidence that Italians are Chinese. Italians are also Vietnamese, as a juxtaposition of maps makes clear. A woman’s boot / a woman’s carrying-pole. Culturally, too: centrally situated imperial and religious capitals Rome and Hué set apart north (civilized) and south (decadent). Exquisite tongues. Love of mother and coffee. Brutal periods of French dominion. American gangsterism.

                                                   


Any life, world, compass…

 

Immigrant thus emigrant. Emigrant thus immigrant. A sea-journey in every case, hurricane or cyclone.

 

Embryonic swirl is dao’s embodiment.





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visionary

 

A preoccupation with microscopes beginning in adolescence, specifically with that birthday gift of a Gilbert  60-400 power instrument. With or without eyeglasses, looking into the eyepiece. Trying not to close the unused left eye (sometimes covering, eventually closing it). Tilt an unseen illuminating mirror until the circular field flashes white. Insect wing or antenna. Onion skin. Rotifer. Diatom. Push slide left to go right, right to go left, up to go down, down to go up—following life.







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as ghost

                                                                                                   

                              as astral wobble

 






                                                as jellyfish






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medical index

 

The embryonic swirl contains:

                                    tree-stump

                                    barrow

                                    heel-print of woman’s shoe

                                    coffee swirl

                                    pupil and iris/ hurricane eye

uterus

tadpole

astral wobble

Aurignacian bead

jellyfish

                                    vertebra

                                    lunaria (silver-dollar plant)

                                    medicine wheel

                                    navel

                                    heart valve

                                    communion wafer

                                    sea-monkey

                                    ghost

                                    walnut shell

                                    spiral petroglyph at Fajada Butte

                                    galactic form

                                    hip-socket


                                                                           





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as tadpole




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as barrow

 

(Neanderthal or Paleolithic tomb, grotto of mysteries or oracle, storm or root cellar, maze or animal burrow.)

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autobiographer

 

These are missives—transmissions from caves, Lascaux and Les trois freres and the lampblack on a peasant ceiling in Avellino. The first painters blew pigment around their hands, negative images onto cavewalls. Repeatedly, and across generations: hands upon hands. After each storm a freshwater stream ran again over stone in deeper recesses until a goddess was left to behold. Spontaneous arising—there’s no other secret.



                 

the end