Pain Machine, and: Wonder Machine, and: Terror Machine

Abstract

Pain Machine, and: Wonder Machine, and: Terror Machine Claire Wahmanholm (bio) The rain in the morning isn't good or bad, comforting or threatening. It's not even "rain." —Pema Chödrön Pain Machine But my favorite thing to do is name. My favorite thing to be is rained onand then to say I have been rained on. When I read the word rain I feelthe feeling of being rained on even when there is no rain.It's like having a rain machine. The poem is a rain machine. ButI worry that another name for rain is craving. The poem is a craving machine,but we all know that craving is another name for pain. So the poemis a pain machine. I like this less. But it's my machine, so I guessI can push stop whenever I'd like. I'm not going to push stop yet.There are other ways. For example: the rustle of leaves always sends mehopefully to the window but leaf is not rain unless I close my eyes.So I close them and allow leaf to be rain but why stop there. Wind can be rain,river can be rain, traffic can be rain, [End Page 96] the machine in my pocket is rainand Japanese garden and Finnish sauna and demolition site. In the meantimeI have walked through the traffic and into what we often call the woods.My hair is neither my hair, nor wet. I am many years into what we calla life but which we could easily call a room or a teacup or a demolition site.A machine's name doesn't change how it runs. Rain is not betteror worse than pain. Go ahead and take your finger off that button. [End Page 97] Wonder Machine Anatomy: made of bells or bone. Runs on your own blood. Runs on birdsong. Smells of chrysanthemums orcherry stones (like nothing, like the words themselves). Delves or wheels. Moves like fire in a field; also plinks, alsoevaporates, also condenses onto your face when you walk from here to anywhere. It is everywhere, like my failures—likegraspingness, like envy, like being despicable and assuming humor would save me. I have been petty, have hated, haveintended to wound and then done it; have said just joking without meaning it; have said just tell me with no intention ofkeeping the secret; have puked on my own shoes; have let my longing scare people; have scarred myself; have drunk somuch I wondered if I would die. Haven't. It's a wonder not unlike a lighthouse or a dam or pyramid or anyother marvel of engineering, except there's no engineer. Purpose: to generate further wonders, to be wonderful, toquell an everyday terror. Word-wise, no one knows wonder's root. Like most astonishments, it is unlooked-for, a volunteer.Size: that of a sequoia, that of an opal, that of a tarpaulin, that of a child's ear. Which my body has engineered underun-astonishing circumstances. Most circumstances are so: vermillion sunrises; warm lagoons; not dying. These are defaults. Sowhere is the switch that all machines are built with? Each Xanadu has a button that drains the sacred river. Each of my luckyyeses has been bought with a certain number of noes. All those zeros, and less and less future to fit them into. This is why some people build machines: so their wonder will always have a body to run through. [End Page 98] Terror Machine alone—at work—at the mall—with my throatbitten-out and throbbing between some dog's teeth— cartoonishly, by jubilant clanging piano—tumblingdown my own basement stairs—dehydrated by doubt— empty as a drought—popped to pulp in the ocean'sfist—in front of my children—by any size of fire— gutted by grief—gutted for real—hungover from living but stillhanging on—by the sloppy incision, the thread slipping in the intestine, the uterus, the brain—in my favoritejeans—in July—jammed into the mouth of a machine— knowing it...