19 January

Rhinos far and near

The Khmer word for rhinoceros – sounds like romias – was the first word I learned to sound out in my new language without ever having heard it spoken. It was one of those moments when everything stops for an instant, and I thought of another rhino far away.

I used to carry a grey plastic toy rhinoceros with me everywhere I lived: from various places on the South Coast of Oregon to a bungalow in that state’s biggest city to Asian Russia to Nicaragua to the southeastern corner of Poland.

The litttle rhino distinguished the place where I wrote from the first day in the 80s when it appeared in my writing room, a surprise from a housemate I’ve lost track of. Twelve years ago I took note of the shadow it cast on my computer in a different writing room, and one year ago, reading about that shadow in a different country, I found myself in a minor panic, scouring my tiny apartment, wondering where the rhino could possibly have gotten itself to.

I comforted myself, as I often do, by recalling what I had written about the missing item, in this case a prose poem:

Passive Resistance

A rhinoceros has come to stand on my writing desk, between the pencils and the paper clips. One of its ears is nothing but a ragged edge of leather; sand and pebbles chafe inside the loose folds of its skin. It looks at me with dull, unblinking eyes, the mute reproach of a wronged, uncomprehending creature.

It will not say why it is here; it thinks I know.

It will not go away; it thinks I can assuage its pain.

What will I feed it? Should I shoot it? What if it dies? Where will I put it?

It neither threatens me nor cowers from me. It is as patient as a stone in my skull. Whatever it wants, it will wait for. It is good at waiting: grey, heavy, sullen waiting. It will wait as long as it needs to. It is waiting now.

I remembered that the housemate who surprised me with the rhinoceros didn’t like the poem because he couldn’t imagine me shooting anything. It’s still a point of pride for me that there’s nothing I can’t imagine.

I thought I was lucky indeed the next summer when I found the toy rhino on my writing desk in the basement apartment where my worldly goods wait for me while I live everywhere else. Unwilling to risk losing something that’s been following me for twenty-five years, I didn’t bring it to Cambodia, but there was apparently a rhino-shaped hole in my life that the universe swiftly moved in to fill. There on the flash card for the consonant ro was a drawing of my favorite odd-toed ungulate.

My new, two-dimensional rhinoceros looks young, strong and peaceful, as if it has never endured a single misfortune. It stands in a field of grass against a pale blue sky, contemplating something mildly interesting in the distance. I don’t think it has noticed I’m watching it. I expect it will travel well.