Snow in the Temple of Memory and Hope

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On Saturday, June 30, 2018, 1:27 AM, Finn Harvor <fharvor@yahoo.com> wrote:

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On Tuesday, August 29, 2017, 7:13 AM, Finn Harvor <fharvor@yahoo.com> wrote:

Below and attached is my submission. Included is the text of the poem.

Regards,

Finn Harvor

Name and duration of Film: Snow in the Temple of Memory and Hope, duration: 9 min 41 seconds

Name of director: Finn Harvor

Country of origin: South Korea

Contact details: fharvor @ yahoo.com/ fharvor @ gmail.com. Ph: 82-10-5696-5812.

Name of Poet: Finn Harvor

Name of Poem: Snow in the Temple of Memory and Hope,

*

Synopsis: Attached is "Snow in the Temple of Memory and Hope,” a poetic treatment of the life and death of my brother, who was also a poet. 

This is a mood piece about an encounter between two addicts: one an alcoholic living on the residue of a divorce settlement, the other a homeless person. The first is aware of the plight of the homeless but, in his guts, too afraid of being ripped off to do much for them; like all addicts, he has a morbid fear of losing his share of what it is that he is dependent on (booze). But he is also painfully lonely. This loneliness manifests itself in terms of a desire for friendship (which is not fated to be), and a deep sense of the past.

This particular work is from a book-length project entitled “Family Maps”, which in turn is part of a much larger text-image-and-music project entitled PLASTIC MILLENNIUM.

*

Filmmaker biography: I’m an artist, writer, filmmaker, and musician who lives in South Korea. I have published poetry and prose in a wide variety of literary journals, and my visual work (both drawings and videos) has been shown in Canada, the US, Greece, Korea, and Cuba.

For more detailed CV, see also:

http://finn-harvor.blogspot.kr/2016/07/art-writing-moviemaking-cv.html

*

Link: https://vimeo.com/169778847

pw: baramone

Text:

Snow in the Temple of Memory and Hope

Or

Winter’s People

Vimeo link: https://vimeo.com/169778847

pw: baramone

Fade in.

It’s a cold day’s end

In downtown Montreal.

The sidewalks are

Crowded with office workers

And students –

The employed and

the employment-wishing –.

There are others, too, on the streets;

They linger more than walk,

And so, logically, should be extra-visible.

Yet, in the eyes of the stressed-out,

Society’s bustling winners,

This last group –

Impoverished, and too degraded to wish a salary –

Discarded and loosened,

And loose-change desiring –.

Does not exist at all.

All these street people are, in the eyes of the healthy,

The ranked successful,

Existentially gone,

Existentially vacuumed.

But my brother sees them.

He sees them

With pity

And multi-tiered fear.

He, with his bad skin, bulging belly, dirty coat,

Smelly hat,

Is, in fact,

Close to being one of them;

He wants what they’re often pan-handling for --.
he’s carrying it, glass heavy,

In his hand.

But even though his attention

Is focused on them

(the normal people disgust him),

When he sees their wrecked faces –

Francophone pale,

Inuit tan,

WASP red –

His heart goes out to them.

But despite this unfaked, comradely empathy,

His anxious desire for distance is primal,

Instinctive.

His food supply

(Correction: liquid bread)

Shall not be shared,

Shall not be depleted,

And so he carries the 

Weight plastic bag,

Filled with bang-clinking

Full liters of Colt .45

(And for, good measure, 

one bottle of Blue),

And proceeds down Parc Avenue,

As determined to ignore the street people

As the office types

And pain-virginal McGillers.

*

The sidewalk is so frozen

Its slushy, then freeze-dried curlicues of kick-coloured ice

Are striated

Into clumsiness-causing shapes.

It’s hard for pedestrians 

To keep their footing.

“Got any change?” a man’s voice says.

My brother turns to it.

He thinks: a native guy –

Indian or Inuit,

He can’t figure out which.

He likes the man’s voice.

(In reality, the man is neither: 

He's a Chilean who was a refugee

Then a regular guy with a regular job

And a marrow-painful past: 

It all 

Crashed –

There's only so much

One bodysoul 

Can take.)

“Got some extra change? I need some food.”

My brother looks at the homeless guy;

His face is oval,

His skin is pocked –

Handsome and haggard at the same time.

He has good features that’ve been

Kicked around.

The homeless guy looks at my brother –

He has pales skin with cheeks both white with too much inside

And rawly reddened

By the cold.

But the reddening continues;

It climbs up the bridge of his nose

Like an ant up a tree,

And is on either nostril

Like red lights on a toy car.

And he has a big, bushy beard –

A beard so thick that it 

Looks animal:

Rough and wild

And flecked with odd substances.

My brother looks at the homeless guy

And knows he’s a drunk.

Inside his mind-guts: shame

That the homeless guy – whose eyes seem fixed

On the plastic bag in my brother’s hand,

With its four-bottle content,

Knows him, too – sees through his privilege and his apartment and his 

Spoiled doom.

Sees him as a drunk

Without even the courage

To plummet.

A moment of humiliation

Suddenly bursts.

“Sorry,” my brother mutters.

He walks on.

*

The earth, 

Which has been continuing its spin

Has moved Montreal farther

From sunlight,

And now the cloudy winter sky

Is at its deepest evening blue 

And grey.

The temperature drops another degree.

The ice on the sidewalk

Hardens its unevenness,

And cold water

Begins to fall.

*

My brother hears a plaintively vulnerable cry –

The shrunk meowing of an animal baby,

And spots a little cat.

It’s a tiny creature

Maybe an adult whose size

Has been limited 

By limited food.

The cat’s face – direct, humourless,

Ignorant of charm –

Looks right back at my brother,

Its mouth opening (teeth looking like model dinosaur fangs).

It meows again –

Meows rights into my brother’s heart.

My brother stoops to pet it,

The dear creature;

Stoops with his blurry, badly coordinated balance --.

Clunk-heavy clink --.

The cat flees, and my brother, straightening,

Harrumphing at this feline snub,

Doesn’t notice that his grip has weakened.

Kee-RASSSHHHH!!

The bag of heavy bottles is snatched by the earth’s gravity

And breaks cleanly and multiply

On the hard street.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck! Godammit! Shit! FUUUUUCKKKKK!!!!!”

Passersby glance at my yelling bro,

And close their nostrils

Against the broken smell

Of spilled beer.

‘FUUUUCCCCCKKKKK!!” My brother’s rage is boundless –

And useless.

Cold, cold, cold.

He staggers another block

And turns his head

To the omniscient sky.

It, too, has its way of blinking.

Flakes of snow,

First tiny with cold tentativeness,

Are falling from the sky,

Then bigger.

These flakes,

Like spittle,

Fall on my brother’s face

And the memory of childhood

Fills him with such absoluteness

It is like –

*

Recalled: Ottawa, 1969 –

Walking with Mom, Dad and me

To a neighbourhood rink.
outside sensations:

The feeling in old, gone memory

Of living on a quieter, nobler planet --.

The feeling of great, pervasive quiet.

The feeling, too, that the past equals the present,

And has the power to enter it.

Inside sensations: our rickety home,

Our bright kitchen.

Skating for hours outside,

Returning to heat.

*

My brother suddenly remembers the homeless guy

And feels a big regret.

He feels like he just let down a friend.

He backtracks,

His movements a little more agile

Than they’ve been recently;

Like any addict, being denied his addiction

Cheers him up.

But the homeless guy’s spot is empty, now

The past is shoveled aside by the present.

Friendship-potential is – these are the odds – usually bombed into oblivion

By reality.

My brother keeps walking,

His face and hands

Turning more and more raw,

And he leaves the present

Once again,

And he walks down side-streets that are

Concrete portals,

Simple temple doors,

To childhood

And past. 

Finn Harvor