Barbara Lefcowitz Poetry

CONTAINERS,  OPENINGS, HARRY  HOUDINI
CONTAINERS
No matter how tightly cupped, hands can contain only a small amount of grain or beans–and cannot contain anything liquid at all.  Besides, hands have other tasks aside from serving as miniature storage bins.  Thus the use of animal skins, scooped-out gourds, even skulls to contain, if only for a day or two, goods not required at the moment–and a major stimulus to weave baskets from reeds or grasses, shape the earth itself into jars, bowls, and pots that would harden in the sun and eventually in specially created ovens.
Nobody will ever know who shaped the first basket or pot, no more than anyone knows who tied the first knot, cut the first groove in a stone, extracted the first dye from a snail.  But it is an excusable cliche to say that most likely many people in widely scattered parts of the world accomplished these feats– simultaneously and unbeknownst to one another. Of course, one pot might be squat, another might taper to a long neck crisscrossed with incised lines, another indented with fingerprints.
OPENINGS
The beauty of a spider’s web or a piece of lace lies in the relationship between its gaps or openings and its threads.  Likewise the most interesting clouds have a fibrous texture, such as cumulonimbus or thunderstorm clouds and those thin white veils, cirrostratus, that often produce a halo.  Sometimes I think a filigreed roof would be attractive, at least in a dry climate and assuming its open-work gold or silver wires would tightly enough meshed to discourage mosquitoes. Is there not something melancholy about an abundance of solidity, a wall without a slit for air or light, a fence without a knot hole for peeking through at the baseball stadium?
HARRY HOUDINI
When Harry Houdini died, there was no need to purchase a coffin; his body was placed in the solid bronze box specially  ordered for his latest version of a buried-alive stunt, the highlight of a national tour in the fall of 1926.  After he entered the coffin, it would be lowered into a special vault with a glass front; as the audience watched through the transparent front,  a ton of sand would bury the coffin. Less than two minutes later Houdini would emerge to cheers and applause; even the controversial escape artist’s many enemies had to acknowledge his   chutzpah.   When the bronze coffin was lowered for the last time, into a cemetery in Queens, onlookers tossed a swarm of flowers, in the process causing the film of his burial to end with streaks and blurs that would have obscured his movements even if Houdini had indeed managed to escape a sealed container once more.
CONTAINERS
Long before the invention of the potter’s wheel, most pots were circular or at least had a rounded base.  It’s tempting to speculate about the ancient potters’ magical desire to imitate the worshipped sun or full moon or how they were responding to the universal appeal of the circle as a sign of ontological wholeness.  But the reason is considerably less cosmic: making something round is the most natural way to shape clay with one’s hands, particularly if one needs a vessel that can hold something, whether granular or fluid.
To this day roundness prevails in objects made from clay–though of course there are variations depending on the purpose of the container.  A Chinese rice bowl is meant to be centrally balanced under the chin by conically splayed fingers; the more rounded its sides, the easier it is to hold in such a fashion.  Scholars’ water pots for storing writing brushes worked best as cylinders, so the long brushes could be appropriately placed inside, while large storage jars that rested on the ground had rounded bottoms so they would be easy to tilt, in contrast with the concave “waist” and rimmed base of Persian and Mediterranean drug-jars that had to be lifted from a shelf with one hand.  The least circular pots are those that imitate metallic forms so they might appear to be as luxurious as objects of silver and gold.  A  vase needs a narrow cylindrical neck to keep flowers from drooping; a Peruvian cremation jar may be shaped to include a modelled image of the deceased;  libation ewers used for religious ceremonies in India and Buddhist China called for long spouts.
OPENINGS
From earliest times pots have been either created or perceived in anthropomorphic terms (belly, waist, neck, shoulder, foot) and been equated with the feminine. But the only somatic feature that all share–whether amphora used for transporting wine and oil, spindle bottles,tea cups, egg cups, cisterns, cinerary urns, chalices, grails,  kylixes, pitchers, enormous kraters for mixing wine and water, tiny seed jars, censers, or their many specialized relatives; whether tin-glazed, salt-glazed, lead-glazed, or unglazed; whether embellished with cobalt, manganese, or antimony; painted with black or red figures; lustered; incised or embossed; crackled or mottled–are lips, or labia .
And, of course, all have some sort of opening, though an actual hole is rare.  One exception are the Mimbres bowls of the American southwest, which were placed over the head of a deceased person.  A hole was punched in the bowl to allow the person’s spirit to escape and eventually ascend to the heavens.
HARRY HOUDINI
Harry Houdini’s escapes from various containers were not intended for spiritual ascension.  In fact, he disdained the popular Spiritualist mediums and escape artists, declaring that whenever performers claimed that supernatural forces allowed them to free themselves from handcuffs or ropes, it was a sure sign that they were frauds.  He himself would use only natural means of escape, brawn, extraordinary flexibility, and quick reflexes, much brashness and more than a dash of the masochistic capacity to endure, even enjoy, such discomforts as being drawn, trussed, torqued, pinched, compressed, chained,  stuffed, bound.
After training himself to endure baths of ice cold water and to maximize his lung capacity, he perfected the Milk Can Escape, which involved entering a water-filled can whose lid was then secured with six padlocks, six hasps on the cover fitting staples on the neck. Crouched in the fetal position, Houdini could remain submerged for up to three minutes before making his escape.
Sometimes the container was a solid wooden box whose lid was nailed shut after Houdini crouched inside; then the box itself was bound with ropes thick enough to moor ferry boats.  When he first performed this escape, in Glasgow’s Zoo-Hippodrome, the moment the band  played “Rule, Brittania,” Houdini emerged onto the stage, the only noticeable wound a wrinkling of his pleated shirt front. The box itself remained roped and nailed, a rectangular womb that after “giving birth” appeared to be perfectly intact.  The audience never suspected that one side of the box had been treated in a manner separate from the others and from the heavily nailed lid. They were so enthusiastic about his escape that afterwards they carried him in circles on their shoulders.
OPENINGS
Separation–of good from evil, of the righteous from the sinners, of the grain from the chaff–-is the main purpose of a sieve, whether literal or figurative.  A container with a meshed or perforated bottom, the sieve can be made of metal or baked clay, or, like the traditional winnowing basket, from reeds interwoven into round or ovoid shapes.  In  Amos 9:9, Jehovah threatens sinners by proclaiming “. . .I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth.”
The sieve was also linked with punishment and justice in a more capricious way, suggestive of the Wheel of Fortune: when the name of a presumably guilty person was uttered, an assistant would release a sieve from a pair of tongs and begin to let it spin in slow circles.
But not all holes are round–some may have a ragged shape, like the hole in the sweater I am now wearing, some a greater resemblance to a slit.  And not all involve a separation of one substance from another. A hole represents a threshold, both an entry and exit, both immanent and transcendent.  Of course, we now are so well aware of Black Holes in space that as metaphors for the ultimate escape, being swept up by an implacable force, they have become cliches.
CONTAINERS
Wrapping grains or seeds in skins or large leaves was probably the earliest way to contain things, aside from using cupped hands.  All fruits and all root vegetables secrete their own protective wrapping or enclosures, whether we think of a plum’s glossy skin, the porous rind of an orange, the thick hairy “shell” of a coconut, the thin peel that envelops a potato; other vegetables are contained within casings or protective coverings  called pods.  Most baked breads are contained within a crust which retards the drying or rotting of the inner loaf.
More restraining than protective is the custom of swaddling the newborn in tightly wound cloth, a practice now frowned upon in America but still common in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia.  Quite the opposite with the dead, who are wrapped in linen shrouds or mummy cloths as protection against evil spirits and/or decay. Orthodox Jews’ use of a shroud alone, with no coffin to serve as a barrier, has a dual purpose: to protect the dead from contamination by the earth yet at the same time to return them to God as quickly as possible. Like the newborn, wounded limbs are contained in bandages or swathes, sometimes in plaster castes to prevent movement.
Much of the fun of receiving gifts consists of removing the brightly patterned wrapping paper so the inner secret will finally be revealed, and in some places wrapping is an art form with symbolic implications.  In China–at least traditionally– wrapping is a ritualistic process that has nothing to do with the shape of the object being wrapped:  the paper is placed with each of its corners  oriented to a point of the compass,  the object itself in the middle as a fifth point.  Then comes the careful folding, the object eventually contained without the use of string or tape.  Likewise in Japan.  The more concealed the object in layers of tissue, paper, or boards, the less important it appears to be compared with the total package, a concrete version of our own verbal insistence that “it’s the thought that counts” no matter how humble or inappropriate the gift. Even in contemporary America, the taboo against giving an unwrapped gift is so strong that even a paper bag will do or–in a terrible pinch–some folded newsprint.  Once, when my children were very young, one presented me with a gift wrapped in a (clean) diaper. . .which raises some questions about the link between giving and concealing.
HARRY HOUDINI
Among Houdini’s tricks was escape from a tightly wrapped leather bag; a chain was drawn through a dozen eyelets on each side of the bag and the bag was also secured with several padlocks.  Another wrapper consisted of a heavy web of knotted cord and fishing line, within which his entire body was concealed.  As if this weren’t enough, each of Houdini’s fingers was tied separately to the next finger.  Though his fingers were mangled in the process, he managed to pick apart the web quickly enough so the audience would not become bored.
Though he was usually skeptical about the talents of other escape artists, Houdini did admire the Davenport brothers,  two short men with identical  mustaches and goatees who combined Spiritualism with muscle power to free themselves from body containers of copper wire or thick twine, the knots sealed with wax.  Their most famous trick, the Davenport Rope Tie, involved their playing several musical instruments hung on an out of reach wall while they were lashed to their seats with sash cord.  The brothers appeared before Czar Alexander 11, Queen Victoria, Napoleon 111, and several European monarchs.
He wasmasked to perform with the Davenports, but never got the chance.  So when my maternal grandparents, both music-loving immigrants who had escaped from Czarist Russia, were given tickets to attend a Houdini performance at New York’s Hippodrome sometime around 1920, they couldn’t possibly have heard the rope-enclosed concert.  What did they see and hear?  I’ll never know.  I only learned about their going to the Hippodrome many, many years later, from an uncle who had met Houdini when the latter was called upon to open a stuck safe in a law office where my uncle was then working. Apparently, Houdini gave my uncle the tickets and he in turn passed them on to my grandparents.
I hope they enjoyed themselves– but given my memory of their personalities and their devotion to classical literature and music.  I suppose that at best they shrugged off the evening with comments in Yiddish about how only in America could people get so excited about such  a mishugane (mad man). And what was Houdini, nee Erich Weiss and the son of an orthodox rabbi,  doing by indulging in such crass pursuits as escaping from milk cans or sealed chests?
OPENINGS
I remember once running very fast when I was about seven or eight–I forget why. But I tripped so my foot got caught in a hole in the ground, probably made by a rat or maybe some neighborhood kids looking for treasure buried beneath the broken sidewalks of New York City.
But not all holes are dangerous or even bad.  “I need that like a hole in the head” may be a common expression derived from the Yiddish  loch in kopf,  but Athene was born when Haiphaistos created a hole in Zeus’s head with an axe– a most curious inversion of the usual birth process.
And a hole must not be confused with a void. Whether or not one finds buried treasure by digging a hole, the latter still has the potential of containing such–or, in somewhat different terms, it is a gap that at the same time can contain. In addition to the obvious analogy with the female genitalia, especially the birth canal, a hole also represents a gateway to the unknown, especially the other worldly.  The hole in the middle of the Chinese jade disc commonly hung on a wall or worn as a pendant symbolizes the heaven that is at the center of all earthly riches.
Let’s not forget the lowly doughnut.  Is the hole part of the doughnut, a separate entity, an example of negative space?  Students of topology –the investigation of the properties of geometric forms that do not vary when the form is stretched, bent, or otherwise changed–cite as their primary example the continuity between a coffee cup and a doughnut, based on the presence in each of a single hole.  In one text,  Ian Stewart’s  Concepts of Contemporary Mathematics, there is an amusing chart of topologically equivalent objects, including not only the   torus  (the technical name for a doughnut-shape) but such hole-y things as a water jug, a swimming tube, a cream pitcher, a tea kettle, and what appears to be a spoon with a hole in its handle so it can be attached to a hook.  All of which has nothing to do with settling the doughnut-vs.-hole question, but certainly extends the definition of a hole so that it’s linked neither with containing nor escaping but rather with ascertaining the nature of form.
CONTAINERS
There’s the carved wooden box from Norway, the Korean enamelled box with two satin-lined drawers, the gold-embossed Florentine leather box, dozens of other quite ordinary boxes, mostly from shysters.  For years I’ve been using them to contain a variety of objects in no particular order: small rocks, bits of seaweed, stray earrings, calling cards from around the world, scraps of cloth I might someday incorporate into a collage, coins, stamps, safety pins, postcards of more than routine interest, hair ornaments, beads and bits of lace I found in a box my late mother kept in deep in a bureau drawer. . .It’s not that I’m a pack rat.  In fact, at least four times a year, I sift through these boxes and throw out what I can bear to throw out, sometimes regretting my decision at some later date.  I guess these boxes, none of which is exclusively dedicated to any particular object, are my equivalents of winnowing baskets.
Sometimes I think I should simply scoop up some objects in a net and let whatever falls through its reticules make its way into the trash.  But that would deprive me of the pleasure of agonizing over whether the mateless mask-shaped earring I bought at a street bazaar in Java is worth keeping or not.  Will I ever find its mate?  Affix it to an ear of a face embedded in one of my collages?  Perhaps because it is silver it is worth something?
On the whole, boxes get bad press when compared with jars, amphora, bowls, even cauldrons.  Probably because they can’t escape the mythic association with Pandora.
Nets, too, may have negative connotations, often being linked with snares and traps.  But they also suggest a joining together, a web-like conglomeration of gaps and string which can both hold and release–hold a fish, release the excess water.  Too bad the word “net” now almost exclusively refers to the Internet and hence has become an abstraction.  Too bad especially if you’ve seen fishermen making nets made by hand in the islands near Venice, a favorite memory of my first trip abroad several decades ago. Having been raised in New York City, it strikes me that I was surrounded by escapes that weren’t really escapes; that is, Houdini would not even have blinked at the typical wrought-iron fire escapes that still protrude from many of the city’s older apartment houses.  For city kids like myself, the fire escapes became our patios, our decks, our backyards, the metallic equivalent of tree-houses, places where we ate picnic lunches and played “house” or even–if we were sure there were no grownups around–played “doctor.”

OPENINGS
The brain itself is the greatest container, especially those neurons that retain memories, even though the most solid memories are full of gaps, reticules, distorted interweavings of fibers.  And some memories are so tightly contained they can never be retrieved.  Or the opposite: they have long ago slipped through some porous neural cells.
Containers which can be closed up have always implied the hiding of secrets, whether secret objects, secret codes, secret thoughts.  The secrets may be malevolent, as in Pandora’s box, or beneficent in a particularly mysterious way, as in the Ark of the Covenant that contains the Hebrew Torah scrolls when they are not being read.
HARRY HOUDINI
World’s Greatest Mystery Man and Escape King.  So says the scroll atop one of Houdini’s letterheads, accompanied by a round photograph of the magician, a curved line holding various flags of the world and several square or circular drawings of the man leaping from bridges and buildings or ensconced in a transparent crate.
“escapemaster-in-chief from all sorts of houdingplaces”– James Joyce,  Finnegan’s Wake
“His life is a pursuit of a pursuit forever”– Robert Frost, “Escapist–Never.”
Simultaneously to retain and to release, to conceal and to reveal: the ability to accomplish both at the same time would distinguish the ideal container, the container of containers, the ultimate winnowing basket, the bowl shaped from a material resembling skin, which encloses all of our internal organs, physical and mental, yet whose small pores allow the escape of noxious chemicals, excess water, bits of dirt, harmful microbes, contaminants that may be invisible even to the most capacious imagination.