{"id":36302,"date":"2024-04-30T13:03:15","date_gmt":"2024-04-30T20:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=36302"},"modified":"2025-01-28T11:29:49","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T19:29:49","slug":"if-the-physics-of-falling-is-an-allegory-for-existence-by-roy-bentley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/if-the-physics-of-falling-is-an-allegory-for-existence-by-roy-bentley\/","title":{"rendered":"If the Physics of Falling Is an Allegory for Existence by Roy Bentley"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Issue<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Found inWillow Springs<\/em><\/a><\/strong> 92<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to Author Profile<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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If the Physics of Falling Is an Allegory for Existence by Roy Bentley<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

1. ACME Circus Company<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was Harmony, hoping to get the circus
listed first in the phone books. She got the idea,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

she said, much later, from the Human Cannonball
who could bench-press many times his body weight<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and was wicked-smart. Then, Harmony loved the art of
managing ten or twelve railroad cars of animals. Caricatures<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of what is still being allowed to pass for human beings.
She said the ACME label worked like a charm\u2014said<\/p>\n\n\n\n

more than one Chamber of Commerce businessman-suit
optioning entertainment said that it felt wrong, and right<\/p>\n\n\n\n

dialing the first listing he’d come to. Which was the place
she’d say the Human Cannonball was an expert on falling<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and give him credit for the listing-name. Humble person.
I met Harm booking that circus of hers\u2014straighforward<\/p>\n\n\n\n

exchanges along the lines of this-is-what-I-can-afford-and-
what-will-it-buy-me dialogues ending with a three-day visit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scheduling arrival and departure times, I asked for a bond
against Acts of God and the failure to appear as contracted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She says it’s why she loves me to this day: that I knew
the figure it would take for her to know I valued her, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. A Plummeter’s Guide to the Physics of Falling Objects<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s begin with you skydiving, tandem,
noticing the scrolls of smoke drafting from
the flare the instructor wants you to observe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You guess that it’s there largely to distract you,
the flare, flower-tresses of red a bright backdrop.
All around you, the boulevards of pending grasses<\/p>\n\n\n\n

send up shadow-valentines of sweet warning to say
the planet has no business rising to meet the Falling.
But that’s how it seems, skydivers say: the earth is<\/p>\n\n\n\n

rising. Which isn’t true. Call it The Elevator Effect.
On the ground, someone points to a bird that he says
was struck\u2014an American Crow. It’s no raven, given<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the size and strike-altitude. The bird present in a group
whereas ravens run in pairs. Shrewd-smart birds, both.
You’re hearing that divers have been hit by meteorites<\/p>\n\n\n\n

but never birds. What you smell has lots of names\u2014
you’re confident you kept you sphincter locked tight.
Deferentially, the instructor raises her goggles. Laughs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You say that, while falling, you recall James Dickey,
his poem “The Performance,” where a soldier does all
the tricks he can before the Japanese cut his head off<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and he falls, headless, into a grave. Light thinning on
billboarded horizon, someone has come forth to say
the crow must be up, and all right, since it’s flown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. And Every Cell of Creation Opened Its Mouth to Drink Grace<\/em>
\u2014Joy Harjo, “By the Way” (The New Yorker, <\/em>December 5, 2016)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A promised job in New Jersey sent us home
with nothing to buy a house but my VA loan.
For her, stories were proof of wounding at the<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hands of her wheelchair-bound mother or funny
in the way her father’s joke about a “can of pee”
and canopy <\/em>bed is amusing once. Maybe twice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One story was of a sister pinning her to the floor
under a dangle of saliva meant to tease. Trust me,
to bully. Look closely. See if you aren’t visioning<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the thick cord of spittle fake-launched. Launched.
Lonely is the child and lovely are the russet eyes
flashing as she raises a slurry of damning spells. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’d like a spell for those who took everything.
Once, in Wisconsin; then, in Florida where we
loved sun, the starry dark as surprising as a<\/p>\n\n\n\n

dropped handkerchief. No one gets out what
they put in. It’s not even close. Nevertheless,
sooner of later, they’ll pin you down. Spit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. The Qualifications of Working As a Fortune Teller<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn’t a calling to be entered into lightly. Although
anyone can do a thing, that class of democratic thinking
ends at the wisdom in knowing that not everyone should.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, all right, say you’re clairvoyant. A psychic prodigy.
What Billy Collins would call the bread and the knife.
In his poem, he reaches into a painting\u2014what if I reach<\/p>\n\n\n\n

into Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam<\/em> and slap
away Old Gray Beard’s hand? What if I did just that,
calling attention to the shape in the background behind<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God and the angels? See the halo-shaped cloud encircling?
Is any of this helping you decide if the telling of fortunes
is in your future? All morning, I watched a squirrel mad-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

scamper a stairway-to-heaven of black locust branches\u2014
if any of us is the bread and the knife, it’s a squirrel
storied into at least one future, thanks to a poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s always Forever in a poem unless some asshole
set’s fire to the world, completing crumbling futures
you’d like not to foretell. What is coming to pass is, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

if you follow any part of this, you’re a fit. Go ahead.
Opened your heart to what soundlessness says in words
of wind. Or, as we say in the Midwest, the Mysteries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Bastard<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father had a ’48 Plymouth. A beast-car
with an interior a kid could get lost in. Seats
that smelled of Old Spice Aftershave Lotion,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L & M cigarettes, and gasoline. Taken together,
they were my father’s smell\u2014he adored cars and
told me he was in the Army and overseas in Korea<\/p>\n\n\n\n

before he realized his gift. His mother (Susan) had,
years before, when he was a boy, been shuttled off
to the state sanitarium in Frankfort. He was raised<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by relatives who couldn’t agree with his mother
loosing bullets towards the man\u2014a married man who
said that he wasn’t in the habit of supporting bastards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said it like you’d spit out on e of the Devil’s names,
and my grandmother with a gun she knew how to use.
The story goes, she emptied a Colt and was reloading<\/p>\n\n\n\n

when a sheriff stopped her. Maybe my dad figured
if things went bad (the wheels came off, so to speak,
as they had for her), he’d have that Goliath with the<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hawk’s-beak hood. He had to rebuild the carburetor
in the rain more than once, so there were hood-dents
from his fists. One in the shape of the Commonwealth<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of the Great State of Kentucky. To say he was angry
is tamping it down. To say he had a sort of need to slap
or slug someone\u2014anyone, and soon\u2014would be right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. The One-Night Cheap Hotel of Divinity<\/em>
Answering All Arguments to the Contrary<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s what our god graduated from, if there is one
a God although insisting on one is magical thinking.
So gobbledygook spawned God\u2014rabbis and priests<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and mullahs talk this rabbi- or priest or mullah-speak.
Without physical knowledge of God beyond The Torah
and Talmud, The Quran and Miles Davis. Nevertheless,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

given the argument against the existence of an afterlife
posed using General Systems Theory\u2014if there is a Deity,<\/em>
she has an apocalyptic bent to her, and is a drama queen\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

which centers around the nature of systems and subsystems.
What’s the name on her diploma?\u2014The One-Night Cheap<\/em>
Hotel of Divinity Answering All Arguments to the Contrary.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which correspondence doctoral program? I won’t laugh\u2014
we draw Whoopi-Goldberg-on-a-Good-Day kindhearted-God?
That explains a lot. Mercy in a mini-skirt, stiletto high-heels,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

dreadlocks. Striking but busy filling the job of being God.
And passing the buck back to that old standby Free Will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. If the Physics of Falling is an Allegory for Existence<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questioning things has always been my true north.
So if the physics of falling is an allegory for existence,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

then why not ask what hands will hammock your falling?
Am I hearing William Wordsworth? the Divine in nature?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wordsworth’s connection with the earth is a connection
to something akin to the Divine Spark\u2014and now I’m <\/p>\n\n\n\n

thinking of my sister Steph and her friend Ann Colliver
setting fire to the garbage cans behind our house in Ohio. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was in the Air Force and on active duty in another state
and so I missed my father swearing as he put out the blaze<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by himself and tried to put things right. The world is on fire.
But if it had been the handiwork of kids, general mischief,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

responsible parties would still be getting yelled at. As if
there’s no fixing it, is there? And no end to the scorching. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A big-for-her-age ten-year-old, in rainbows-and-unicorns
pajamas, has come out form a bedroom to face the music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See her pausing in the hallway to beg mercy or promise
an impersonation of the kid in The Exorcist<\/em> in which she<\/p>\n\n\n\n

will start swearing up a not-nice storm. See her making
her mouth dramatically shape the phrase It’s your call. <\/em>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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