Oh that my whole life might have had a dead line; a moment when I had to complete; perform; accomplish; time lines set earlier and defined. Then maybe I would be further along. Maybe I would have known what I have needed in time.
Instead, the cadence of my life, runs out like this: Today I called out ill, fortunate or not, I am actually ill. But I also had not filed my taxes, had not made the deposit to my IRA account, had not, had not, had not... until the deadline said to me, loudly and without compromise, "Today."
Not tomorrow, or hey I'll get back to you next week or let's get together sometime but rather TODAY. No other day, no other moment, not one second more beyond midnight on this day. This particular day. So I finished my taxes today. And I drove to my bank where I keep my IRA (50 minutes from my house so I am never tempted to withdraw money without a generous amount of time driving there to consider the consequences. I've thrown away the ATM card, and destroyed the PIN. All I am able to do is show up. It has protected the dollars. But back to today . . . .
I did it. That is all that matters. And then I had the next hoop, work; and I was so grateful that it actually mattered that I made it in, wrote my copy, revised my copy, assisted in whatever manner I could. Yes, that is where I am, thankfully; grateful that it might matter. Maybe it does. It helped.
I am impeccable with deadlines. If taxes were due on Feb. 15th, that is when I would send them in. If all college degrees had to be earned by age 30, I would have done it by then. If only there were a deadline on fathoming your own heart, I would have perhaps performed better. I like to think so.
When we know better, we do better.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Jovian Embrace
no escape from this density
solar nebula dressed with
clouds; tread in silt and
damp and kissing,
every step toward
the core, the center, the
deep, more heated, liquid
nitrogen pressured to metal.
White ovals masking turbulent
atmospheres, the halo and the
gossamer ringing, the giant red
blemish undeniable, gravity,
gravity, gravity, pulling 63
satellites, those unintentional
victories, inescapable.
How could a mere mortal
hope to escape?
solar nebula dressed with
clouds; tread in silt and
damp and kissing,
every step toward
the core, the center, the
deep, more heated, liquid
nitrogen pressured to metal.
White ovals masking turbulent
atmospheres, the halo and the
gossamer ringing, the giant red
blemish undeniable, gravity,
gravity, gravity, pulling 63
satellites, those unintentional
victories, inescapable.
How could a mere mortal
hope to escape?
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Levels of descent
Levels of descent, terra cottaAnd gold, sand and shrub, sloping
To the great gorge, the descent to
Madness, the descent to quiet.
Here is the still quiet point and
The soaring sky, crunch of stone and
Shale. Approach the Canyon from Orayvi,
Corals and plums seduce. The expanse
So far below; descend just a bit, from one
Generous shelf to the next, drawing down.
Here is the loose footing, the sudden slide
Just beyond the switchback and you didn’t mean
To come this far. Sunlight crowning the rim
And sweet shadow below. How many descents, how
Many steps deeper into the chasm unwittingly
and the sun begins to fade and the path
back in shadow, and there at the rim
no one.
This is how we fall in love. Not in a glorious leap
from a precipice. But rather at
levels. At any moment
deciding to continue or climb out
of the abyss
and walk towards the sun.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Just another . . . .
It's another night and I'm tornbetween the river and the fringe
hope of the special two.
The cold pins of numb still,
pitch dumbed to the drum of
heavy mishaps, and light fading
Smoke grey, pewter smudge in
the vein, sh-sh-sh-sh.
It's okay. okay.
And the special two,
too too too two
drowning, gasping for
air, or comfort, or
return. My heart is impoverished.
The wrong girl sits here tonight.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Waving
It has been so long since
I dusted the mirror that
even from the vantage point
of my desk, the swipes
from the day you last visited
rise in peaks, like
fingertips waving
goodbye.
I dusted the mirror that
even from the vantage point
of my desk, the swipes
from the day you last visited
rise in peaks, like
fingertips waving
goodbye.
Monday, March 17, 2008
I keep reminding myself
When I was 14 1/2, I painted the following verses on the exterior of my bedroom door, black paint on a white door, for my mother to read. It is something that I now have to revisit from the other side of the sea.
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
from The Prophet, Khalil Gibran
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
from The Prophet, Khalil Gibran
Friday, March 14, 2008
Pull me out from inside
Tonight Broadneck High School had a talent show, a fund raiser for the Junior class. My son, Dylan, performed. I went alone and exchanged the usual glances with the single moms and single dads who frequent these events. I found myself standing on the side of the auditorium, confusing a teacher who thought he was supposed to be monitoring that spot and asking if I am the new teacher assigned to monitor the students? Even now, I am not quite where I belong in a high school. I seem to assume a persona that is not real.
High school, always dumps one down the memory chute to rejection, imperfection, awkward, outsiderness.
Dylan performed well, as he always does. Beamish, if you have not seen him, go here. And he is so at ease in his skin, that I do not think he will think back on high school as many do. He will be at ease with himself. That is how he moves in the world, at ease (most of the time). And tomorrow you can catch him playing at St. Anne's in Annapolis. A twenty five minute set.
March, 15 2008 at St. Anne’s Parish House
199 Duke of Gloucester, Annapolis, Maryland 21401
Cost : $8/$12
Rock 4 Reasons benefit concert. Tickets are $8 or $12 at the door.
But I am different from him in this. Tonight, I saw them, chatty chatty chatty, the cliques, the self-consumed, the importance of this second that does not allow for listening but only for expressing, the dismissal of anything unfamiliar. It is no wonder that I was ill at ease at high school. That odd girl, whose parents never attended an event; who stood to the side and kept quiet; who sometimes wore her older brother's sweaters; who didn't invite anyone to her house. Yes, see, you know that girl; you remember her. She was a good student. But you never really knew her.
No, this is not a high school photo, it is a photo from May of my graduating year, but not Freshman or Sophomore year, when all is still in transition. If you found my classmates, from any of the six different high schools I attended, they will tell you that was not the case. That I was articulate, not shy, stood tall, didn't blink at aggression, was dependable, was strong. This is why I would hold onto my desk top, the seat of my chair, so no one would see my hands tremble. I still do it.
So much depends on perception, what people can see. The inside invisible. Yes, I do it still.
High school, always dumps one down the memory chute to rejection, imperfection, awkward, outsiderness.
Dylan performed well, as he always does. Beamish, if you have not seen him, go here. And he is so at ease in his skin, that I do not think he will think back on high school as many do. He will be at ease with himself. That is how he moves in the world, at ease (most of the time). And tomorrow you can catch him playing at St. Anne's in Annapolis. A twenty five minute set.
March, 15 2008 at St. Anne’s Parish House
199 Duke of Gloucester, Annapolis, Maryland 21401
Cost : $8/$12
Rock 4 Reasons benefit concert. Tickets are $8 or $12 at the door.
But I am different from him in this. Tonight, I saw them, chatty chatty chatty, the cliques, the self-consumed, the importance of this second that does not allow for listening but only for expressing, the dismissal of anything unfamiliar. It is no wonder that I was ill at ease at high school. That odd girl, whose parents never attended an event; who stood to the side and kept quiet; who sometimes wore her older brother's sweaters; who didn't invite anyone to her house. Yes, see, you know that girl; you remember her. She was a good student. But you never really knew her.
No, this is not a high school photo, it is a photo from May of my graduating year, but not Freshman or Sophomore year, when all is still in transition. If you found my classmates, from any of the six different high schools I attended, they will tell you that was not the case. That I was articulate, not shy, stood tall, didn't blink at aggression, was dependable, was strong. This is why I would hold onto my desk top, the seat of my chair, so no one would see my hands tremble. I still do it. So much depends on perception, what people can see. The inside invisible. Yes, I do it still.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Taken to Task
Writers, we are taken to task and misunderstood, like most artists. Did one of Monet’s dancers feel overlooked because he did not put her in the forefront? Was Mozart’s wife sure that the funeral dirge was written with his father in mind or did she wonder that she was implicated? Surely all of D.H. Lawrence’s lovers thought they were, in one respect or another, the basis for Lady Chatterley.
No matter the creative side of it, when a writer’s husband, sister, daughter, lover, mother, reads her work, they will find themselves, whether they are there or not. Because we bring all of our history and our emotions into every work of art that we experience and the closer one is to the artist, the more likely we will think the work is intentionally personal.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of the “intentional fallacy.” I will not discuss it in any depth for fear you will fall into a deep slumber. But I do want to explain something about the creative process: we start out with an idea, sometimes an intention, but most times with just an image, an overheard phrase, a color, a single musical note. And then we start and during the creating, the work changes, alters, moves beyond any intention originally considered. Artists rarely end up where they were headed.
All too often, I find buried in my disorganized piles of work, a poem or a story, and as I read it, I do not recognize it; do not know what inspired the work when I wrote it; am surprised. I welcome the retreat of the original impetus so that the art can be born.
Will you find my friends, family, loves, in my stories, in my poetry? You will find what you are looking for. So often we can only see what we are looking for.
Everything in my life informs my work; the stranger at the book store, the play I saw three weeks ago, the poem in the New Yorker I read last night, the dog chasing the phantom in my house. Everything and everyone goes into the clay and shifts and alters and slips beneath my fingers into something I didn’t even realize could exist. That is what I do. I watch and listen and pay attention. A very good teacher, many years ago, told me the most important thing I could do was to pay attention; to attend.
I try to pay attention and I do pour it into my work. But please understand that I have stirred the paint of my life with characters from Odysseus and I’ve melded my daughter with Audrey Hepburn and my son with both Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas (simultaneously). So if you find yourself in my stories or in my poems, it is only because I noticed you; I paid attention and some detail or characteristic was so compelling that I was inspired.
I show up to my life; I attend; life gives back what I am seeking.
No matter the creative side of it, when a writer’s husband, sister, daughter, lover, mother, reads her work, they will find themselves, whether they are there or not. Because we bring all of our history and our emotions into every work of art that we experience and the closer one is to the artist, the more likely we will think the work is intentionally personal.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of the “intentional fallacy.” I will not discuss it in any depth for fear you will fall into a deep slumber. But I do want to explain something about the creative process: we start out with an idea, sometimes an intention, but most times with just an image, an overheard phrase, a color, a single musical note. And then we start and during the creating, the work changes, alters, moves beyond any intention originally considered. Artists rarely end up where they were headed.
All too often, I find buried in my disorganized piles of work, a poem or a story, and as I read it, I do not recognize it; do not know what inspired the work when I wrote it; am surprised. I welcome the retreat of the original impetus so that the art can be born.
Will you find my friends, family, loves, in my stories, in my poetry? You will find what you are looking for. So often we can only see what we are looking for.
Everything in my life informs my work; the stranger at the book store, the play I saw three weeks ago, the poem in the New Yorker I read last night, the dog chasing the phantom in my house. Everything and everyone goes into the clay and shifts and alters and slips beneath my fingers into something I didn’t even realize could exist. That is what I do. I watch and listen and pay attention. A very good teacher, many years ago, told me the most important thing I could do was to pay attention; to attend.
I try to pay attention and I do pour it into my work. But please understand that I have stirred the paint of my life with characters from Odysseus and I’ve melded my daughter with Audrey Hepburn and my son with both Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas (simultaneously). So if you find yourself in my stories or in my poems, it is only because I noticed you; I paid attention and some detail or characteristic was so compelling that I was inspired.
I show up to my life; I attend; life gives back what I am seeking.
Friday, March 07, 2008
Matter
What does it matter how
I say it? I speak. Or I
dance, or send a single note
into the air, an English horn
haunting the caverns. What
does that matter, how it
happens?
There are pyramids in
Egypt, and Scrolls in the
desert, and slips of paper
left in the silk panties of
Victoria Secret stores.
I speak.
There are sculptures
entwined and bull fights;
I make a beautiful flower
bed of iris, orchids, wild
flowers;
I speak.
When I hesitate or I act; when
I notice the gait and the cut
of another's shoulder just like
your own; when I pull the pillows
to my back.
What does it matter?
I say it? I speak. Or I
dance, or send a single note
into the air, an English horn
haunting the caverns. What
does that matter, how it
happens?
There are pyramids in
Egypt, and Scrolls in the
desert, and slips of paper
left in the silk panties of
Victoria Secret stores.
I speak.
There are sculptures
entwined and bull fights;
I make a beautiful flower
bed of iris, orchids, wild
flowers;
I speak.
When I hesitate or I act; when
I notice the gait and the cut
of another's shoulder just like
your own; when I pull the pillows
to my back.
What does it matter?
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Separate, not seperate.
The word is "separate" -- just like the word karate except with "sep" in place of the letter "k". Separate, as in putting distance between yourself and "a rat."
It's just one of those misspellings I encounter on a daily basis that keeps me awake at night. Okay, so it's not what keeps me awake at night.
The truth is that it is the use of the term "irregardless" that keeps me tossing and turning!
It's just one of those misspellings I encounter on a daily basis that keeps me awake at night. Okay, so it's not what keeps me awake at night.
The truth is that it is the use of the term "irregardless" that keeps me tossing and turning!
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Hunker Down
I sewed a shirt for
your shoulders, with epaulets
to soften the blade; green blue to
match the tint of the veins on your hands.
100% cotton, just like your skin, natural
and far away. I fold the material under my
fingers over and over, sleep with it and set
it in my lap as if it were a napping cat and
stroke, the place where your head would be.
The first time you wore it, your mother
visited,saying "See how the buttons all
align. Look at the
yoke. How broad his shoulders are."
Tapered for your slim torso.
I put it on 74 days ago, the touch of the
fabric wrapping where you are not; the epaulets
slipping off my narrow frame; the hem to mid
thigh; Now it is my flesh too.
The threads are my threads, inside and
out. And if you are never coming back,
then the threads will do, slipping
into pores and tinting me with you.
Your mother has been asking me for
the shirt. She has noticed the collar is
just a bit off. I button it to my chin
and hunker down.
your shoulders, with epaulets
to soften the blade; green blue to
match the tint of the veins on your hands.
100% cotton, just like your skin, natural
and far away. I fold the material under my
fingers over and over, sleep with it and set
it in my lap as if it were a napping cat and
stroke, the place where your head would be.
The first time you wore it, your mother
visited,saying "See how the buttons all
align. Look at the
yoke. How broad his shoulders are."
Tapered for your slim torso.
I put it on 74 days ago, the touch of the
fabric wrapping where you are not; the epaulets
slipping off my narrow frame; the hem to mid
thigh; Now it is my flesh too.
The threads are my threads, inside and
out. And if you are never coming back,
then the threads will do, slipping
into pores and tinting me with you.
Your mother has been asking me for
the shirt. She has noticed the collar is
just a bit off. I button it to my chin
and hunker down.
Friday, February 22, 2008
daughterly affection
my daughter has been here. reminding me that i can't distinquish
between the wet and dry measuring cups.
leaving her trail of breadcrumbs; candy
paper wrapper on the sofa, coffee mug on
the coffee table, a shopping bag disheveled
from investigation.
reminding me that sometimes i get
jealous and in retelling some small
event, i tend to make it less harmful,
less contentious than it indeed
may have been. i change the tone, the
aspect. but mostly she wants me to know
that she is noticing these things, i think.
especially the disregard i demonstrate
on using the cup specifically designed
for measuring dry items for wet and the
wet for dry.
and then there is the moment, i am
leaving for work, despite the ice and
she is staying and the look on her face
is no different from when she was 3 or
4 or 5 and said, "mommie, stay home. don't go
to work today."
it will always be there.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Unerring
it is the dip
of her chin
the way she leans,
but does not stoop;
how her hand is
cupped, nails short
and
fingers never calloused.
it is the hint of a
drawl that slips
through
on "well" and
"honey" and "dog".
it is the peach of
plump on her
cheek as she
puts her hand to
my face and presses
it to hers;
the arch of that right
brow and unhinged
laughter, her arms cast
like moonlight
to gather us all.
of her chin
the way she leans,
but does not stoop;
how her hand is
cupped, nails short
and
fingers never calloused.
it is the hint of a
drawl that slips
through
on "well" and
"honey" and "dog".
it is the peach of
plump on her
cheek as she
puts her hand to
my face and presses
it to hers;
the arch of that right
brow and unhinged
laughter, her arms cast
like moonlight
to gather us all.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Never Dream of Regretting
My cell phone indicated a missed call from my daughter Sara this morning. So I phoned her on my way into work. Seems she had had a dream about me last night. I had painted a painting; midnight blue with ruins of red and blackbirds flying. I smiled because it is exactly like something I would paint. Then she said that in the dream I had died. Dreams about death are not really about death but rather about change; that who we were or who the person was will be unrecognizable to us; that they will change or we are changing in fundamental ways that render us forever different from how we were. The great thing about this death dream is that it was marked with creativity, the painting.
And I’ve been sad lately; well, not so sad as disenfranchised. Misunderstood, detached. Thus the poems of losing gravity and turning to threads, etc. But I do feel I’m learning. And the following quote showed up in my email this morning as well. Wednesday, the midst of the week, suitable for a shift of winds, of currents, or either striving on or turning back.
"The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing
that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you
may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may
miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil
lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds.
There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags
and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never
exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and
never dream of regretting."
- spoken by Merlyn the Magician in T. H. White's, *The Once and Future
King*
And I’ve been sad lately; well, not so sad as disenfranchised. Misunderstood, detached. Thus the poems of losing gravity and turning to threads, etc. But I do feel I’m learning. And the following quote showed up in my email this morning as well. Wednesday, the midst of the week, suitable for a shift of winds, of currents, or either striving on or turning back.
"The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing
that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you
may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may
miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil
lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds.
There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags
and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never
exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and
never dream of regretting."
- spoken by Merlyn the Magician in T. H. White's, *The Once and Future
King*
Monday, February 04, 2008
All this and I'm not even a fan....
"Young people ought to seek that experience that is going to knock them off center."
On February 3, 1907, James Michener was born in New York City. Abandoned at birth, he was adopted by a Quaker family and raised in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. He ran away from home as a teenager and eventually became a teacher. While serving as a naval historian in the South Pacific in WWII, he began his writing career. After winning the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, "Tales of the South Pacific," (later made into the play and movie "South Pacific") he embarked on a highly successful 50-year literary career that was noted for epic documentary novels about exotic locations. Michener liked to say that was not a great writer, but "one of
the world's great rewriters."
On February 3, 1907, James Michener was born in New York City. Abandoned at birth, he was adopted by a Quaker family and raised in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. He ran away from home as a teenager and eventually became a teacher. While serving as a naval historian in the South Pacific in WWII, he began his writing career. After winning the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, "Tales of the South Pacific," (later made into the play and movie "South Pacific") he embarked on a highly successful 50-year literary career that was noted for epic documentary novels about exotic locations. Michener liked to say that was not a great writer, but "one of
the world's great rewriters."
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Dylan plays Zu Coffee
Beamish Boy played at Zu Coffee to a modest but devoted audience, approximately 25-30 people. The window held a sign that announced that Darrell Bargteil was playing. I think someone saved the sign. As I was getting ready to leave, the owner came over and apologized about the sign and added, "Your son Darrin is very talented." Seems Dylan's first gig suffered from an identity crisis!
My friend and poet, Steve, met me there and was moved by the poetry of the lyrics, as well as the virtuosity of the guitar playing. Sara and her army were there. Most of all, Dylan was there, self-possessed and happy; so happy. This is all we hope for or dream; that our children will find their joy, their rapture.
Reality check
So I am back in class - final seminar - poet or prose - choose.
Tough one for me as I am equal parts each and definitive is not my strong suit.
For now, they have poetry. But this work is anything but definitive.
Just as I begin to wonder, reinforcements show up. A writer that I once aided with a novel wrote that he was seeking a proofreader for some academic work. Being under the weight of work and school, I said I was not able but that I would put the word out to the other students, many of them professional editors. He wrote back:
Your skills are for blossoming, not weeding.
I think there is a lot of truth to that, however, because I fail to weed the blossoms sometimes fail from neglect. Blossoming is grand but temporary; maybe a maintenance program is in order.
Tough one for me as I am equal parts each and definitive is not my strong suit.
For now, they have poetry. But this work is anything but definitive.
Just as I begin to wonder, reinforcements show up. A writer that I once aided with a novel wrote that he was seeking a proofreader for some academic work. Being under the weight of work and school, I said I was not able but that I would put the word out to the other students, many of them professional editors. He wrote back:
Your skills are for blossoming, not weeding.
I think there is a lot of truth to that, however, because I fail to weed the blossoms sometimes fail from neglect. Blossoming is grand but temporary; maybe a maintenance program is in order.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
My First Commercial!
If you've read any of the Champion Realty back page ads in the Capital, Maryland Gazzette, or Star Democrat lately, then you've seen some of my handiwork that has resulted from my position as Director of Communications at Champion Realty.
Last night we launched a commercial that will be airing on Comcast, Verizon FIOS and of course, YouTube. Let me know what you think! I wrote the content and assisted with the directing. We have a series of spots planned through the rest of the year.
Last night we launched a commercial that will be airing on Comcast, Verizon FIOS and of course, YouTube. Let me know what you think! I wrote the content and assisted with the directing. We have a series of spots planned through the rest of the year.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Invitation to a Reading at the Whole Gallery in Baltimore
Once upon a time, there was a group of writers referred to as the Bloomsberry Group. While the group of writers at The Whole Gallery are defined by other parameters, I marvel that I am invited to swim in their pool. I am invited to read at a reading that I attended last year - when Heather was still in Baltimore - and I listened to her and others at The Whole Gallery. Hi Heather. We will be missing you.
This year, Heather asked a few of us to get in touch with Ashlie - I did. So I'll be reading. I am distinguished, or rather undistinguished, in that I am referred to as Mary, rather than Mary . . . (fill in a last name, a middle name, a definition).
Here is the invitation Ashlie created. This will be a unique rich night. I am privileged to be among these artists.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Last night I wrote a poem
Last night, late, late
I wrote a new poem.
It is about you.
I don't know if it is about
you. It is always about you.
I wrote a new poem be
cause Ashlie is reading all
new poems and I wanted some
thing new, like you, are all
ways new. And I want to wait
and read it aloud and let the
words reign and the mares
whinny and The Whole Gallery
inhale each c and o and carry
the words around forever.
So I wrote to you.
Again.
I wrote a new poem.
It is about you.
I don't know if it is about
you. It is always about you.
I wrote a new poem be
cause Ashlie is reading all
new poems and I wanted some
thing new, like you, are all
ways new. And I want to wait
and read it aloud and let the
words reign and the mares
whinny and The Whole Gallery
inhale each c and o and carry
the words around forever.
So I wrote to you.
Again.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Kings Contrivance
There is a place not far from
here called Kings Contrivance
where Francesca likes to build
her cardboard condominiums and
structure life into frames.
She fashions a roof then
cuts it to make a chimney; she
shapes a window then decides it's
a door and flies right through.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Manifesting
As some of you know by now, I enjoy getting quotes and words of the day to my email. I find that they deliver an opportunity for me to examine my life and events in light of whatever happens to show up; to trust the randomness and synchronicity of all things moving in concert, even though sometimes the sound can be quite discordant.
Here is what I read today:
"You have everything you need in the present situation to work with
impeccability. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't work toward
manifesting additional resources and opportunities. It does mean that the
present situation supplies you with everything you need to take the next
step."
- Jonathan Zap, "A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler"
I've taken a new job; a position that is not quite within my comfort zone. Yet, with gratitude to my years of experience and subsequent resilience, I find that I am not deterred or even discouraged as I take my small leaps of learning.
I have a firm belief that all will be well. I am doing my best, and it is hard work, but not "hard" work; it is gratifying, engaging, brain massaging, happy labor.
I was out having dinner with a friend tonight and feeling that I was yet again neglecting my son, Dylan. Who had gotten up early, gone to school, made a pit stop at home and headed off to his job at Arundel Computing. He was arriving home from work just as I was headed out. "Tomorrow night is family night," I offered as I walked away, expecting little drop of regret to trail me down the walkway. How come we can never be everything we want to be to every one all the time? Even to ourselves.
I worry that he is too alone. I worry that my daughter is too alone. I know that there are times I am too alone, so perhaps that is the nature of grown children. We are, at times, too alone. That is when the work happens, maybe.
We climb inside, outside, move the furniture on our own, clear the shelves, write the sonnet, the ballad, paint the walls, draw the beloved and the tree, run the extra mile along the creek, knit the winter warmth, see ourselves, truly. Maybe it is the necessary ache to compel evolution, an evolution of self, a space and time of all we might create or become.
After dinner, I stand at the door alone, slip the key and through the turn realize the door was unlocked. Inside, I find Dylan sitting on the piano stool, playing one of his own songs softly, working through a set, timing himself. He was not alone; he was surrounded with his own purpose, his own creation, his next opportunity. He's been offered to play a set in a coffee shop and he is working with impeccability because he knows he possesses everything to take the next step. And although he may never say it, I prefer to believe his veracity, his comfort, his assurance is in some small measure founded on both the times I stayed by his side and the times we both walked on our own. That is what I like to think. Maybe there is some truth to it.
Here is what I read today:
"You have everything you need in the present situation to work with
impeccability. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't work toward
manifesting additional resources and opportunities. It does mean that the
present situation supplies you with everything you need to take the next
step."
- Jonathan Zap, "A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler"
I've taken a new job; a position that is not quite within my comfort zone. Yet, with gratitude to my years of experience and subsequent resilience, I find that I am not deterred or even discouraged as I take my small leaps of learning.
I have a firm belief that all will be well. I am doing my best, and it is hard work, but not "hard" work; it is gratifying, engaging, brain massaging, happy labor.
I was out having dinner with a friend tonight and feeling that I was yet again neglecting my son, Dylan. Who had gotten up early, gone to school, made a pit stop at home and headed off to his job at Arundel Computing. He was arriving home from work just as I was headed out. "Tomorrow night is family night," I offered as I walked away, expecting little drop of regret to trail me down the walkway. How come we can never be everything we want to be to every one all the time? Even to ourselves.
I worry that he is too alone. I worry that my daughter is too alone. I know that there are times I am too alone, so perhaps that is the nature of grown children. We are, at times, too alone. That is when the work happens, maybe.
We climb inside, outside, move the furniture on our own, clear the shelves, write the sonnet, the ballad, paint the walls, draw the beloved and the tree, run the extra mile along the creek, knit the winter warmth, see ourselves, truly. Maybe it is the necessary ache to compel evolution, an evolution of self, a space and time of all we might create or become.
After dinner, I stand at the door alone, slip the key and through the turn realize the door was unlocked. Inside, I find Dylan sitting on the piano stool, playing one of his own songs softly, working through a set, timing himself. He was not alone; he was surrounded with his own purpose, his own creation, his next opportunity. He's been offered to play a set in a coffee shop and he is working with impeccability because he knows he possesses everything to take the next step. And although he may never say it, I prefer to believe his veracity, his comfort, his assurance is in some small measure founded on both the times I stayed by his side and the times we both walked on our own. That is what I like to think. Maybe there is some truth to it.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
At the end of the day
Her mind spinningconversations,
the words skipping
satellites, between
missed heart
beats.
Sleep only for
the innocents,
she dreams with her
eyes open, your words
her nightmare and
lullaby.
Velocity, she's
turning to threads
like jet trails
losing herself,
losing gravity.
The Holiday Never Ends
Last night was the Gardiner Holiday celebration at my brother Michael's house. Michael and his wife, Debra,
hosted and my brother David and his wife Susan joined us
and my beautiful daughter Sara,
Michael's good friend Tommy and his lady, Kathy and Debra's friend, Kathy and my sister, Pam and her husband, Frank.
Food, music, wine, and laughter shared with family and friends are the best gifts. My luck hasn't come in a conventional package, but having two brothers that I can rely on come what may is just about the best luck a girl can have.
hosted and my brother David and his wife Susan joined us
and my beautiful daughter Sara,
Michael's good friend Tommy and his lady, Kathy and Debra's friend, Kathy and my sister, Pam and her husband, Frank.
Food, music, wine, and laughter shared with family and friends are the best gifts. My luck hasn't come in a conventional package, but having two brothers that I can rely on come what may is just about the best luck a girl can have.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
New Job
I start my new job tomorrow. Enthusiastic but apprehensive and curious and motivated and I get to write, wear grown up clothes, be with grown ups! Wish me luck.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Things left undon....
- clear out basement
- lose ten pounds
- eat more fruit
- define "more" - maybe I did
- fathom my own heart
- replace carpet with wood floors
- get to Ansel Adams and Annie Lebowitz at Corcaran Gallery
- double my writing production
- double my submissions (I think I did that one)
- get my laptop to connect to the internet properly
- reload photoshop
- double the number of blog postings (tada!!!!! - did it).
- contribute to world peace (or whirled peas)
- lose ten pounds
- eat more fruit
- define "more" - maybe I did
- fathom my own heart
- replace carpet with wood floors
- get to Ansel Adams and Annie Lebowitz at Corcaran Gallery
- double my writing production
- double my submissions (I think I did that one)
- get my laptop to connect to the internet properly
- reload photoshop
- double the number of blog postings (tada!!!!! - did it).
- contribute to world peace (or whirled peas)
A Good Catch
Two men recently shared with me that they were "a good catch." Interesting development, I think. They are not at all similar. Well, except in the traditional sense of good catch: they each are healthy (relatively), attractive, good fathers, hold good solid jobs that are in demand, own properties, have ex-wives that are truly ex, can dance, can cook, and are gentlemen. They are not gamblers, drunks, addicted, or abusive. But it raises some questions: one, would I be looking for/spending time with a "bad catch?" Two, what is "a good catch?" If I am the short stop and the ball off the batter's bat comes right at me and I catch it, is that a "good catch?" If I throw chum overboard and every variety of fish shows up but I impale the cheek of an oversize rockfish, is that a "good catch?" If I am dating, seeing men of character, substance, humor, kindness and they are, are they all good catches? A good catch may seem like a wonderful prize to someone who is hoping to ensnare, to trap, to capture.
I am not. Just ask anyone who knows me well; catching is not difficult; holding is the tough task. I suspect that is the case for most and I've just got a track record that reveals my truth more than most.
Perhaps it is a romantic notion, but I think, when it is right, we will be drawn to one another, not catching one another, but with that sensation where the heart is overfull at the sight of the other and not at all confining, but open and outpouring.
I'm just trying to let you hear me as I am.
Important things
the last day of 2007
i shopped for doreen's gift
and picked up a white shirt
and confirmed that i do
not ever want to stop in
Marshall's again just to see
if there is something there.
There isn't.
And I returned the laser level
to home depot and went to
best buy and bought a 19"
flat screen monitor that
I can return
And a dvi to vga converter
and came home to help
dylan fix his computer but
turns out it's not the
monitor after all and as i was
downstairs on my laptop
finally checking email from two
days ago, and sara phoned and
checked in for the year end
and before her evening begins
with friends. when we hung up,
i heard the tv on
and dylan rarely watches tv.
yes he was watching.
What's this?
Donnie Darko.
What's it about?
Uh, it's about a teen-ager. It's, well,it's about
a teen-ager.
And I sat down to watch
it with him. Because it
seemed like it might matter
and if it didn't, what costs? But
if it did, what loss.
It was about a teen-ager
and so much more. The tenuous
connection between what does happen
and what can happen and how we all
are knitted together.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Points of No Return
Kismit; synchronicity; fate; luck; puzzle pieces falling into place; happy coincidence. This is my day of happy coincidence.
I woke this morning from a dream; a dream that I was still working at the Temple; searching through a stack of papers to find some detail for Beth; going to the sanctuary to make sure the candles were in place; then to an auditorium and outside in the courtyard, a statue and in front of the statue Sara, as a girl of ten or eleven, with her friend, Beth, taking turns at performing cartwheels; their limber backs, long arms, stretched and easy with life, no future but the promise of anything they might imagine; sunlight on the grass and strands of Sara's sunstreaked hair winking with the light, swinging around her cheek as she landed hard on the ground in an imperfect cartwheel, smiling. She is undisturbed by her imperfection. Then I was back inside and Charles asks why I am in the building and I realize I don't have the keys anymore, that I'd turned them in, and a woman was just leaving my office and before the door shut, I slipped inside to get the piece of paper and left it on Doreen's desk and woke wondering what I've left undone.
Stretching in my sheets and wondering what day is this? Is it a work day? Where am I to be? The muddled mind of a few extra days off trying to organize my orbit. Slowly realizing, I belonged no where. No one anywhere was waiting for me; waiting for me to show up, to call, to clean up, to even get up. This was the start of my day; a dream of a place I don't belong and will not return and a dream of Sara to a time that she cannot return. The steps we take, tapping along the walk, not even aware of the door slowly closing behind us.
At the end of my day, I was driving home with Sally and as I passed the intersection at Cape St. Clair, a small car merged behind mine, turned into my neighborhood, turned down my street, all the way down, allowing me the space to pull up a bit and then back into my parking space. Dylan, smiling his same smile that to me is just as the smile he has had since a toddler, generous and genuine. He'd been driving to his father's house but at the intersection, he saw a red Prius and realized it was me and followed me home. Dylan has a new guitar, a Les Paul Gibson, beautiful and suited so well to him. He followed me and showed it to me and said he'd spent two hours playing it and it was so beautiful that he thought he might cry. That is who he is now; a musician. My son is a musician who has played long enough and has had music throughout his life, such that he'd spend all his savings so he might make a beautiful sound. He will never be without music, without his fingers plumbing notes out of the dark. Sara will never be without her friends, even the ones who are gone like Beth.
There are moments in our lives that are informing our future from which we are blinded in our blurry life. And in the background, maybe in our peripheral vision and just at the zenith of our hearing, the door softly clicks, closed.
I woke this morning from a dream; a dream that I was still working at the Temple; searching through a stack of papers to find some detail for Beth; going to the sanctuary to make sure the candles were in place; then to an auditorium and outside in the courtyard, a statue and in front of the statue Sara, as a girl of ten or eleven, with her friend, Beth, taking turns at performing cartwheels; their limber backs, long arms, stretched and easy with life, no future but the promise of anything they might imagine; sunlight on the grass and strands of Sara's sunstreaked hair winking with the light, swinging around her cheek as she landed hard on the ground in an imperfect cartwheel, smiling. She is undisturbed by her imperfection. Then I was back inside and Charles asks why I am in the building and I realize I don't have the keys anymore, that I'd turned them in, and a woman was just leaving my office and before the door shut, I slipped inside to get the piece of paper and left it on Doreen's desk and woke wondering what I've left undone.
Stretching in my sheets and wondering what day is this? Is it a work day? Where am I to be? The muddled mind of a few extra days off trying to organize my orbit. Slowly realizing, I belonged no where. No one anywhere was waiting for me; waiting for me to show up, to call, to clean up, to even get up. This was the start of my day; a dream of a place I don't belong and will not return and a dream of Sara to a time that she cannot return. The steps we take, tapping along the walk, not even aware of the door slowly closing behind us.
At the end of my day, I was driving home with Sally and as I passed the intersection at Cape St. Clair, a small car merged behind mine, turned into my neighborhood, turned down my street, all the way down, allowing me the space to pull up a bit and then back into my parking space. Dylan, smiling his same smile that to me is just as the smile he has had since a toddler, generous and genuine. He'd been driving to his father's house but at the intersection, he saw a red Prius and realized it was me and followed me home. Dylan has a new guitar, a Les Paul Gibson, beautiful and suited so well to him. He followed me and showed it to me and said he'd spent two hours playing it and it was so beautiful that he thought he might cry. That is who he is now; a musician. My son is a musician who has played long enough and has had music throughout his life, such that he'd spend all his savings so he might make a beautiful sound. He will never be without music, without his fingers plumbing notes out of the dark. Sara will never be without her friends, even the ones who are gone like Beth.
There are moments in our lives that are informing our future from which we are blinded in our blurry life. And in the background, maybe in our peripheral vision and just at the zenith of our hearing, the door softly clicks, closed.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
In the Stacks
Well beyond her reach
on the highest rack, Cordelia
searches the stacks.
Rare manuscript, not for the gilded
page, the gold embossed leather title
like royalty. Blind, her fingers
know the skin, rubbed and oiled,
trace the crease of the elbow
where the binding forms the spine.
He is here, in the stacks, in the
yellowed pages, caught in the maelstrom,
undone, well beyond her
reach.
on the highest rack, Cordelia
searches the stacks.
Rare manuscript, not for the gilded
page, the gold embossed leather title
like royalty. Blind, her fingers
know the skin, rubbed and oiled,
trace the crease of the elbow
where the binding forms the spine.
He is here, in the stacks, in the
yellowed pages, caught in the maelstrom,
undone, well beyond her
reach.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Solitary Second
The road under her feet,
her ally; road grit, shin splint
sorcerer. The solitary champion,running
against her shadow,her heart beat,
leaping the felled log, cutting
the corner close, branch braising
her hip, leaving a lover's blush
against her hip.
As on the court, her back-
hand stronger than straight on, left-
handed inconsistency flying
over the fence or
right at you. Duck and cover,
play the net, go for the long
shot. He passes near, running close
to the tree line, ahead and
behind the blind. His courage wrapped
in the knot of terror snaking
along his satorious. Blazing
impoverished trails to Atlantis
never arriving, fishtailing into
the drift, collision muffled by enjamb-
ment. She traced his trajectory,
gathered bark, created salves,
massaged, grew titanium thin, perfected
her forehand, still left-handed, ill-
suited for partners playing, returning
to the grit beneath her sole, running solo.
her ally; road grit, shin splint
sorcerer. The solitary champion,running
against her shadow,her heart beat,
leaping the felled log, cutting
the corner close, branch braising
her hip, leaving a lover's blush
against her hip.
As on the court, her back-
hand stronger than straight on, left-
handed inconsistency flying
over the fence or
right at you. Duck and cover,
play the net, go for the long
shot. He passes near, running close
to the tree line, ahead and
behind the blind. His courage wrapped
in the knot of terror snaking
along his satorious. Blazing
impoverished trails to Atlantis
never arriving, fishtailing into
the drift, collision muffled by enjamb-
ment. She traced his trajectory,
gathered bark, created salves,
massaged, grew titanium thin, perfected
her forehand, still left-handed, ill-
suited for partners playing, returning
to the grit beneath her sole, running solo.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Everyone just wants to be . . .
happy. Right?
We think we know what makes us happy:
- a new car, an expensive new car, with a moon roof so we can always see the moon. (Well not always. Sometimes the moon isn't visible. We are already wasting our happy.)
- losing eight pounds. (Unless you are underweight and then you would want to gain, but the point is that somehow your body comes in sync with that perfect vision of your body. For many women that might be Angelina Jolie or Charlize Theron, but for someone who always longed to raise her leg in a perfect arabesque, like me, my perfect body would be the body of Suzanne Farrell, with fabulous turnout, great feet, doe-like eyes, a long neck.)
- landing your dream job with a private office, a key to the executive suite, a private plane at your disposal, minions. (Except that for me my dream job would include horse stables converted into writing kiosks for writers visiting my writers' refuge and the doors would be unlocked and my dog would have run of the house and the grounds and I might go months without using or thinking of the word "executive.")
- winning the lottery. Yes, that one might enable me to achieve the Demeter's Den dream, but would it come with publicity and difficult decisions regarding who to help and how and resentments when I said, "No." So winning the lottery would not make me happy.
This morning, I was happy. Why was I happy? What happened? What amazing windfall did I experience that I stood in utter joy, in the moment, glad to be alive?
I "had to" walk the dog before I went to work. It was cold this morning, 28 degrees with a light snow and just enough wind to cut right through my skirt and leggings cold. I grab a plastic bag to pick up Sally's droppings. I wrap my scarf over my head like a hat, put on my coat and zip it so I can turtle my chin into it, and pull on gloves. I put the leash on Sally and she tugs me down the front steps. As soon as we reach the grass across the street, Sally halts; her nose twitching, her ears like signal receptors on full alert. She jerks towards the woods, her nose mapping the ground. Insistently, her paws clawing the earth and pulling as if I were a barge she had to bare.
"No. Stop Sally." I pull hard on the leash. "We go this way." I try to lead her up the hill, to our little bluff where she quite efficiently "gets busy" for me in the mornings so I am not late to the office. Sally is a good girl. She does stop. She does turn. She starts toward me and seems as if she will walk up that hill. But her nose hits the ground and she turns and leaps back toward the wood, toward the small hill that goes down and around behind the last townhouse, where the woods are deep and a muddy artery runs through the base of that gully. I stand still.
"Sally." She does not turn toward me but her right ear flicks in my direction in recognition. "Sally," I command with all the sternness I can muster. She turns her head, appeals to me with her eyes, gives a small whimper, and returns immediately to her watch. Sally has important business. Sally knows why she is here. Intent, focused, all her senses engaged, she is truly here. I don't think I should resist that. So I follow her lead. My shoes slip a bit on the muddy silk and we go toward the gully, round the bend, reach a crest. The air is sharp with snow; my lungs braced with cold, my heart happy.
Sally stills. Her posture very solid, her tail raised. I follow her line of sight; between the brown tree trunks, the fall leaves, a rack of a buck, then the majestic chest and shoulders, frozen cadence of a stilled buck comes together, like the fragmented moments of our lives that end up telling the real story come together. Once you can get paste the bracken, your sight is clear and you wonder how you hadn't seen it earlier. I can see the buck. I see the buck see me. We are looking at one another. We stand and breathe and look and I am full of the recognition of something I don't need to understand. Three seconds at best, but the reach is much longer. Sally's softest whimper sends the buck fleeing for shelter, the heavier blanket of deeper woods.
"Good girl, Sally." I rub the hair soft as pudding behind her ear. "Good girl. Thank you, Sally." And for moment, I feel like Suzanne Farrell knowing I'd turned out of my routine, had sure footing, and at least, for a moment, a buck had looked into my eyes. I was happy.
I am happy. This is that nature of happy. Creating, writing, looking at the world, engaging, slurping it up; this is my definition of being happy.
We think we know what makes us happy:
- a new car, an expensive new car, with a moon roof so we can always see the moon. (Well not always. Sometimes the moon isn't visible. We are already wasting our happy.)
- losing eight pounds. (Unless you are underweight and then you would want to gain, but the point is that somehow your body comes in sync with that perfect vision of your body. For many women that might be Angelina Jolie or Charlize Theron, but for someone who always longed to raise her leg in a perfect arabesque, like me, my perfect body would be the body of Suzanne Farrell, with fabulous turnout, great feet, doe-like eyes, a long neck.)
- landing your dream job with a private office, a key to the executive suite, a private plane at your disposal, minions. (Except that for me my dream job would include horse stables converted into writing kiosks for writers visiting my writers' refuge and the doors would be unlocked and my dog would have run of the house and the grounds and I might go months without using or thinking of the word "executive.")
- winning the lottery. Yes, that one might enable me to achieve the Demeter's Den dream, but would it come with publicity and difficult decisions regarding who to help and how and resentments when I said, "No." So winning the lottery would not make me happy.
This morning, I was happy. Why was I happy? What happened? What amazing windfall did I experience that I stood in utter joy, in the moment, glad to be alive?
I "had to" walk the dog before I went to work. It was cold this morning, 28 degrees with a light snow and just enough wind to cut right through my skirt and leggings cold. I grab a plastic bag to pick up Sally's droppings. I wrap my scarf over my head like a hat, put on my coat and zip it so I can turtle my chin into it, and pull on gloves. I put the leash on Sally and she tugs me down the front steps. As soon as we reach the grass across the street, Sally halts; her nose twitching, her ears like signal receptors on full alert. She jerks towards the woods, her nose mapping the ground. Insistently, her paws clawing the earth and pulling as if I were a barge she had to bare.
"No. Stop Sally." I pull hard on the leash. "We go this way." I try to lead her up the hill, to our little bluff where she quite efficiently "gets busy" for me in the mornings so I am not late to the office. Sally is a good girl. She does stop. She does turn. She starts toward me and seems as if she will walk up that hill. But her nose hits the ground and she turns and leaps back toward the wood, toward the small hill that goes down and around behind the last townhouse, where the woods are deep and a muddy artery runs through the base of that gully. I stand still.
"Sally." She does not turn toward me but her right ear flicks in my direction in recognition. "Sally," I command with all the sternness I can muster. She turns her head, appeals to me with her eyes, gives a small whimper, and returns immediately to her watch. Sally has important business. Sally knows why she is here. Intent, focused, all her senses engaged, she is truly here. I don't think I should resist that. So I follow her lead. My shoes slip a bit on the muddy silk and we go toward the gully, round the bend, reach a crest. The air is sharp with snow; my lungs braced with cold, my heart happy.
Sally stills. Her posture very solid, her tail raised. I follow her line of sight; between the brown tree trunks, the fall leaves, a rack of a buck, then the majestic chest and shoulders, frozen cadence of a stilled buck comes together, like the fragmented moments of our lives that end up telling the real story come together. Once you can get paste the bracken, your sight is clear and you wonder how you hadn't seen it earlier. I can see the buck. I see the buck see me. We are looking at one another. We stand and breathe and look and I am full of the recognition of something I don't need to understand. Three seconds at best, but the reach is much longer. Sally's softest whimper sends the buck fleeing for shelter, the heavier blanket of deeper woods.
"Good girl, Sally." I rub the hair soft as pudding behind her ear. "Good girl. Thank you, Sally." And for moment, I feel like Suzanne Farrell knowing I'd turned out of my routine, had sure footing, and at least, for a moment, a buck had looked into my eyes. I was happy.
I am happy. This is that nature of happy. Creating, writing, looking at the world, engaging, slurping it up; this is my definition of being happy.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Destination
No one comes here to lose. We don't show up to fail, to be
alone and lost.
And the most selfish action is
to create, to build, to embrace,
to persist and succeed.
Never doubt the strength that selfishness can wield.
Why I left....
What is this place of dispossession? No.
No is the place.
There is only one way in
and one way out. So go,
go as deep, walk as far,
scratch as hard as you can.
Your nails succumb
and still dig.
Stop at nothing. Don't stay
outside. Slip undetected;
shadow behind the homeowner. Grab
the door handle at the moment
before the lock
locks;
knock; smile;
smile; ask.
If the door closes, find the
worm hole, the chink; find the
way inside.
It is dark inside. Air
rank. Breathe. Souring
from the inside out.
Let the dark settle, gather;
gather in the dark;
suffocate a little; feel
the drowning;
let consciousness beige your brain.
Sleep. Do not open the door.
The door is as solid as when
you arrived.
Gather in the dark.
Hold a pillow over your mouth.
Wait.
Wait in the dark,
in the silence.
Gather the dark,
the quiet, the
steel. Then
shimmer.
No is the place.
There is only one way in
and one way out. So go,
go as deep, walk as far,
scratch as hard as you can.
Your nails succumb
and still dig.
Stop at nothing. Don't stay
outside. Slip undetected;
shadow behind the homeowner. Grab
the door handle at the moment
before the lock
locks;
knock; smile;
smile; ask.
If the door closes, find the
worm hole, the chink; find the
way inside.
It is dark inside. Air
rank. Breathe. Souring
from the inside out.
Let the dark settle, gather;
gather in the dark;
suffocate a little; feel
the drowning;
let consciousness beige your brain.
Sleep. Do not open the door.
The door is as solid as when
you arrived.
Gather in the dark.
Hold a pillow over your mouth.
Wait.
Wait in the dark,
in the silence.
Gather the dark,
the quiet, the
steel. Then
shimmer.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Kendra Kopelke and Steve Matanle
Readings are inspiring. Tonight, Kendra and Steve (I actually get to call them that if I want) read at the University of Baltimore. Awesome. No. Quieter than that. humbling; not the work - which is rich, generous, not their presence and rich voices, but the resilience, the showing up. That awes me.
I am always uncomfortable in their presence like an add-on guest, stepchild, chipped glass at the table, smeared lipstick (I think they will be surprised). It's okay. I show up anyway. I'm practiced.
I challenge myself: Can I find a place to put it down, a vehicle for the writing, the work, the tencity that Steve and Kendra possess.
____________________________________________________________________
I am always uncomfortable in their presence like an add-on guest, stepchild, chipped glass at the table, smeared lipstick (I think they will be surprised). It's okay. I show up anyway. I'm practiced.
I challenge myself: Can I find a place to put it down, a vehicle for the writing, the work, the tencity that Steve and Kendra possess.
____________________________________________________________________
If you ever did believe
It is 12:03 AM. My daughter and I just got off the phone. This is my litmus, my balance, my gravity, my solid center. Tonight was not a very special night but it was one of those nights that no matter how old she grows to be, she will recall. She will know I was in her corner, listening, sharing, loving. This night in my life will matter. This is important.
Two writers, who also happen to be instructors of mine at the University of Baltimore read tonight - poetry. Brave, raw, new work; they have yet to render or polish or rethink or craft. They put their early work out for the students to listen, learn. That is how generous they are as instructors, as artists. My daughter, Sara went with me; no one else has heard as much of my raw work as she; no one has stood as solidly in my corner as she; no one knows all the dark and all the bright in equal measure as much. And she knows she is made of some of the same fuselage: It burns brighter in her though and gets better mileage.
I got to Sara's apartment, third floor walkup on North Calvert, guided by the Christmas lights she had hung on her balcony and divine providence had granted me parking just a half block away. I phoned from the vestibule, "You're 3F, right?" "Yes." And she buzzed me in, but I was thinking of the next time, when I can push 3F and lean and say, "Hi, this is Carlton, your doorman." and listen to her peel of laughter as the buzzer buzzes to grant me admittance.
We share a glass of wine and see her holiday decorations, how she has broken the room into functionality and social interaction. She is a master of space. If there were a crown for that, Sara would win every time.
Then she goes with me, to my place, to the space where my work and life thrives: we go to the reading at UofB of the professors I most admire for both the way they teach and for what they write. I want to be as honest as they are; I want to move the world the way they do; I want to be able to say what I see as they do.
After, we return to Sara's latest haven. She is on a path and I do not see the end. She makes me salad with chicken and ginger sesame dressing. "You have to eat something if you are drinking wine," she says. Yes.
She sits on her small couch with me, and we unveil the day and our lives.
She is so alive in this space; her balcony, the moon to the right, the stars all above, her smiling leaning over the railing waving. In her living room with ceilings twice again her height, with a bricked up fireplace, with wood floors thick with paint, with art hangings about her and her smile and dropped right shoulder as she tells me a story of her father, and I tell her of the day she took her first steps between the two of us and of our celebration and there she was, connecting everything. And then she pulls out an album and in it, a photo of me; young, young. Maybe two, three. Walking. Balancing. She had snagged it, my childhood. Precious to me, but more precious to think it was precious to her. "I show this album to my friends. I say, that's my mom." and how I don't overflow with tears is a sign of the shield we build. "Yes." I say. I mean "Thank you."
We talk on a bit but all the ride home, I carry that photo and that thought in my mind. I marry it to the memory of her peel of laughter, unchanged since she was two.
Two writers, who also happen to be instructors of mine at the University of Baltimore read tonight - poetry. Brave, raw, new work; they have yet to render or polish or rethink or craft. They put their early work out for the students to listen, learn. That is how generous they are as instructors, as artists. My daughter, Sara went with me; no one else has heard as much of my raw work as she; no one has stood as solidly in my corner as she; no one knows all the dark and all the bright in equal measure as much. And she knows she is made of some of the same fuselage: It burns brighter in her though and gets better mileage.
I got to Sara's apartment, third floor walkup on North Calvert, guided by the Christmas lights she had hung on her balcony and divine providence had granted me parking just a half block away. I phoned from the vestibule, "You're 3F, right?" "Yes." And she buzzed me in, but I was thinking of the next time, when I can push 3F and lean and say, "Hi, this is Carlton, your doorman." and listen to her peel of laughter as the buzzer buzzes to grant me admittance.
We share a glass of wine and see her holiday decorations, how she has broken the room into functionality and social interaction. She is a master of space. If there were a crown for that, Sara would win every time.
Then she goes with me, to my place, to the space where my work and life thrives: we go to the reading at UofB of the professors I most admire for both the way they teach and for what they write. I want to be as honest as they are; I want to move the world the way they do; I want to be able to say what I see as they do.
After, we return to Sara's latest haven. She is on a path and I do not see the end. She makes me salad with chicken and ginger sesame dressing. "You have to eat something if you are drinking wine," she says. Yes.
She sits on her small couch with me, and we unveil the day and our lives.
She is so alive in this space; her balcony, the moon to the right, the stars all above, her smiling leaning over the railing waving. In her living room with ceilings twice again her height, with a bricked up fireplace, with wood floors thick with paint, with art hangings about her and her smile and dropped right shoulder as she tells me a story of her father, and I tell her of the day she took her first steps between the two of us and of our celebration and there she was, connecting everything. And then she pulls out an album and in it, a photo of me; young, young. Maybe two, three. Walking. Balancing. She had snagged it, my childhood. Precious to me, but more precious to think it was precious to her. "I show this album to my friends. I say, that's my mom." and how I don't overflow with tears is a sign of the shield we build. "Yes." I say. I mean "Thank you."
We talk on a bit but all the ride home, I carry that photo and that thought in my mind. I marry it to the memory of her peel of laughter, unchanged since she was two.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
If not you
We are so powerful. Immensely strong.
Responsible. We know what is right, almost
every time.
I was at Barnes and Noble today picking out a special card. A few feet from me, a large man, khaki jacket, jeans, hair curling over his collar, two days beard on his face, sat with a book in his lap, his beefy hand at his brow shading his face, seemingly intent on reading. Except he was not reading; he was crying.
How could I be certain? Was he crying? This large man, slumping in the reading chair, an open book on his right thigh, is whimpering, his chin trembling. The card in my hand is a photo of friends leaping from a cliff into water. I glance again, at the book in his lap, at the tilt of his fingers veiling his eyes. I focus on the card rack, open the card, "I'm here with you. Leap."
I want to buy the card. I want to say something to the stranger in the chair. I want to see the title of the book. I want to put my hand on his shoulder. I put the card back in the rack. New Fiction is just to my left: The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Breakable You, Trespass, One Mississippi. I step back to the blank journals, plain covers, sunflower covers, leather bindings. He is still in the chair. His hand is still at his brow. His chin is quiet. I move to the back of the store, far from the stranger in the chair.
"Getting and spending
we lay waste our power..."
It is our responsibility to care for and protect every single living being. I shirked that responsibility. Did I?
Infinite power. What if the stranger had been a child? I would not have hesitated. But we are all children. We are all frightened children and we cannot afford to be so. Everything and everyone is counting on us; to take care, to evolve, to leap together.
I went back to get the card, to touch the man in the chair. He was gone.
Responsible. We know what is right, almost
every time.
I was at Barnes and Noble today picking out a special card. A few feet from me, a large man, khaki jacket, jeans, hair curling over his collar, two days beard on his face, sat with a book in his lap, his beefy hand at his brow shading his face, seemingly intent on reading. Except he was not reading; he was crying.
How could I be certain? Was he crying? This large man, slumping in the reading chair, an open book on his right thigh, is whimpering, his chin trembling. The card in my hand is a photo of friends leaping from a cliff into water. I glance again, at the book in his lap, at the tilt of his fingers veiling his eyes. I focus on the card rack, open the card, "I'm here with you. Leap."
I want to buy the card. I want to say something to the stranger in the chair. I want to see the title of the book. I want to put my hand on his shoulder. I put the card back in the rack. New Fiction is just to my left: The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Breakable You, Trespass, One Mississippi. I step back to the blank journals, plain covers, sunflower covers, leather bindings. He is still in the chair. His hand is still at his brow. His chin is quiet. I move to the back of the store, far from the stranger in the chair.
"Getting and spending
we lay waste our power..."
It is our responsibility to care for and protect every single living being. I shirked that responsibility. Did I?
Infinite power. What if the stranger had been a child? I would not have hesitated. But we are all children. We are all frightened children and we cannot afford to be so. Everything and everyone is counting on us; to take care, to evolve, to leap together.
I went back to get the card, to touch the man in the chair. He was gone.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Change Everything
In your dreams, you see her
Tall, broad brow, narrow chin
Strong shoulders, square teeth,
The names of international leaders
tripping off her tongue.
Straight to the college
her Daddy graduated, finished
in three and half, played the cello
and once sang in the opera. Somewhere
in her lineage is a member of the DAR.
Graduate school at 22. Ph.D.
at 25. During the summers,
she volunteered at the therapeutic
riding camp, fed Biafra, saved
the whales, saw a dermatologist.
But you are cut from thinner cloth,
a world of untidy lineage, of a
firm grip, narrow, slipping
unnoticed behind the chair, feasting
on the image of his
hand holding her elbow.
Tall, broad brow, narrow chin
Strong shoulders, square teeth,
The names of international leaders
tripping off her tongue.
Straight to the college
her Daddy graduated, finished
in three and half, played the cello
and once sang in the opera. Somewhere
in her lineage is a member of the DAR.
Graduate school at 22. Ph.D.
at 25. During the summers,
she volunteered at the therapeutic
riding camp, fed Biafra, saved
the whales, saw a dermatologist.
But you are cut from thinner cloth,
a world of untidy lineage, of a
firm grip, narrow, slipping
unnoticed behind the chair, feasting
on the image of his
hand holding her elbow.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
I don't want to be in love!
It's not that there are not men. There are always men, right? Just as there are always women.
Available, interesting, attending, listening attentively, nodding, smiling, practically fawning.
Because we are all alone. We are not alone. But we are alone. When it matters; in that small moment when you set your jaw, when you turn away with burning eyes, when the center of your chest cracks; we are alone.
Are you available?
For what?
Rubbish. What is the point if the potential is not there? Why bother?
I understand, the desire, though, to not dive so deep, to tread water. Isn't that what the recently abandoned, abused, forlorn, do? And while they are treading, they hold onto a bit of drift wood, just to get through, just to keep from going under again. Meanwhile, the drift wood grows saturated, heavy, weak, less buoyant. There is no where to go but under.
Available, interesting, attending, listening attentively, nodding, smiling, practically fawning.
Because we are all alone. We are not alone. But we are alone. When it matters; in that small moment when you set your jaw, when you turn away with burning eyes, when the center of your chest cracks; we are alone.
Are you available?
For what?
Rubbish. What is the point if the potential is not there? Why bother?
I understand, the desire, though, to not dive so deep, to tread water. Isn't that what the recently abandoned, abused, forlorn, do? And while they are treading, they hold onto a bit of drift wood, just to get through, just to keep from going under again. Meanwhile, the drift wood grows saturated, heavy, weak, less buoyant. There is no where to go but under.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
His Heart
Some adults, if they are lucky, overcome whatever losses they suffered early; the childhood horrors large and small. My children have been my gravity belt; they hold my center; not in a way that I must hold onto them; but rather through the tenuous utter faith that we love one another and are in this life together, come what may. Gravity/grave. Is it a grave responsibility? I don't think so. I think I am their gravity too. And if I go with what Sara said, I'm also the lighthouse. This poem is not about me. It about a father and his daughter. She's part of his gravity.
His Heart
Impecunious planet,
Denied a moon,
Erratic orbit.
Orbited by
A sanguineous heart,
Bereft of center.
In this inimical atmosphere,
A barefoot warrior
Wings through his heart.
Julia plants
Gardens of tulip
Rose trees and
Full leafed trees
Birds, butterflies,
Over his navicular.
Lassoing the heart,
She tethers
Precious gravity.
Jm oct 28 2007
Sweets
Ducking the saffron stars
landscaping hyacinth skies,
we trail urchin footprints
disappearing in the new night.
Dew of last October, a waning
moon setting early and
shadows like pewter bamboo
strands falling into a low river.
We trail singed pumpkin smoke,
sighting witches snagged in
the old oak branches, river winds
scrambling their cries. We
trail the ladybug, the witch, the
butterfly, the sugar maple leaves
skittering like rats at our feet.
Asphalt diamond and grape soda
Pooling at our feet, spells lifting
strands of hair at the back of
our necks and at every door, a
sweet hospitality and we
flee, seeking the next.
Word choice
Recently I told a friend that I'd written a new poem and the very first phrase was "Impecunious planet". He asked, "Why would you start with a word no one knows?"
He has a point. If a writer wants their work to be something any one can enter easily, slip into like a McDonalds, into the familiar, nutritionally weak but filling substance, then any word would do. The word "impoverished" would work just as well. Except that in poetry, sound matters. One might ask, "Why did Mozart use so many notes?"
The answer: My poem would not be served by the soothing "sh" and the forgiving "r" in the word "impoverished." My poem stands solidly due to the harshness of the hard "c" and the sibulent "s" sounds in "impecunious." And what risk? A reader may like the sound and not truly know the word but if they read on, the meaning may become clear or they may seek the answer by finding the word in the dictionary and saving another word from extinction. But that is not why I choose the word. I choose it as a chef chooses the right spice and a musician the right chord and a painter the right color; because it is the word that must be used; it is correct.
Todays word, delivered by word of the day, arrives just in time as I need it for what I will write later today, perhaps tonight. I think I knew this word before but I've fallen out of using it. But I am fortunate that I am reminded and just in the nick of time.
peripeteia \pair-uh-puh-TEE-uh\ noun
: a sudden or unexpected reversal of circumstances or situation
especially in a literary work
Example sentence:
In the last act of the play, the king's decision to avenge his brother
leads to a peripeteia that leaves him bereft of his throne and his family.
Did you know?
"Peripeteia" comes from Greek, in which the verb “peripiptein” means
"to fall around" or "to change suddenly." It usually indicates a turning point
in a drama after which the plot moves steadily to its denouement. In his
Poetics, Aristotle describes peripeteia as the shift of the tragic protagonist's fortune from good to bad--a shift that is essential to the plot of a tragedy. The term is also occasionally used of a similar change in actual affairs. For example, in a June 7, 2006 article in _The New York Times_, Michael Cooper described William Weld’s second term as Massachusetts’ governor as
“political peripeteia”: it “began with a landslide victory and ended with
frustrated hopes and his resignation.”
He has a point. If a writer wants their work to be something any one can enter easily, slip into like a McDonalds, into the familiar, nutritionally weak but filling substance, then any word would do. The word "impoverished" would work just as well. Except that in poetry, sound matters. One might ask, "Why did Mozart use so many notes?"
The answer: My poem would not be served by the soothing "sh" and the forgiving "r" in the word "impoverished." My poem stands solidly due to the harshness of the hard "c" and the sibulent "s" sounds in "impecunious." And what risk? A reader may like the sound and not truly know the word but if they read on, the meaning may become clear or they may seek the answer by finding the word in the dictionary and saving another word from extinction. But that is not why I choose the word. I choose it as a chef chooses the right spice and a musician the right chord and a painter the right color; because it is the word that must be used; it is correct.
Todays word, delivered by word of the day, arrives just in time as I need it for what I will write later today, perhaps tonight. I think I knew this word before but I've fallen out of using it. But I am fortunate that I am reminded and just in the nick of time.
peripeteia \pair-uh-puh-TEE-uh\ noun
: a sudden or unexpected reversal of circumstances or situation
especially in a literary work
Example sentence:
In the last act of the play, the king's decision to avenge his brother
leads to a peripeteia that leaves him bereft of his throne and his family.
Did you know?
"Peripeteia" comes from Greek, in which the verb “peripiptein” means
"to fall around" or "to change suddenly." It usually indicates a turning point
in a drama after which the plot moves steadily to its denouement. In his
Poetics, Aristotle describes peripeteia as the shift of the tragic protagonist's fortune from good to bad--a shift that is essential to the plot of a tragedy. The term is also occasionally used of a similar change in actual affairs. For example, in a June 7, 2006 article in _The New York Times_, Michael Cooper described William Weld’s second term as Massachusetts’ governor as
“political peripeteia”: it “began with a landslide victory and ended with
frustrated hopes and his resignation.”
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Invocation
Here is the silky slip of hair
between my fingertips; Julia
whittling my waist with her legs
to see the Lincoln Memorial,
Her sucker sweet cheek near my face
and our breathes brushed back by the
chill autumn air. Here is the easy
hand up, Julia's cartwheel on the marble
wall, Francesca's visage in the
reflecting pond. She is
water and sky and the crimson,
amber, cinnamon tinted leaves and her
eyes level, spot on.
Her chin is true north.
All the porcelain of my life is
pulling together. All my joy is gathering
swept up in this vortex; surely
happiness and forgiveness will follow
for the remainder of our lives.
between my fingertips; Julia
whittling my waist with her legs
to see the Lincoln Memorial,
Her sucker sweet cheek near my face
and our breathes brushed back by the
chill autumn air. Here is the easy
hand up, Julia's cartwheel on the marble
wall, Francesca's visage in the
reflecting pond. She is
water and sky and the crimson,
amber, cinnamon tinted leaves and her
eyes level, spot on.
Her chin is true north.
All the porcelain of my life is
pulling together. All my joy is gathering
swept up in this vortex; surely
happiness and forgiveness will follow
for the remainder of our lives.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Mercury
Remember, mercury is in retrograde;
our past is often revisited
made evident at this time.
Or maybe I just notice
because I know mercury is in
retrograde
and it really happens that the past is always present in the
present and in the future,
just as TS Eliot suggested.
our past is often revisited
made evident at this time.
Or maybe I just notice
because I know mercury is in
retrograde
and it really happens that the past is always present in the
present and in the future,
just as TS Eliot suggested.
Monday, October 22, 2007
A Winter's Tale
a quote from the Shakespeare play:
HERMIONE
Sir,
You speak a language that I understand not:
My life stands in the level of your dreams,
Which I'll lay down.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Friday, October 19, 2007
New Friend
I made a new friend recently. Her name is Stella.
My dog, Sally, was not too fond of this idea at first but she has warmed up to Stella. The whole process reminded me of the old story about when a couple has a second child. The couple brings home the "new" baby and says to the other child (who was just moments before the only baby), "Look at this wonderful, amazing, beautiful baby who is now your baby brother/sister." The older child is usually not so enthusiastic about this development. The explanation I heard regarding the child's reaction was: "Suppose your boyfriend/husband came in the door with a younger, perfect woman who had never disappointed them and asked you to be happy about this." Ahhh. It all made sense. This is why older children sometimes try to smother the new baby and why dogs are not always as welcoming of a new dog.
Yet, once Sally realized that not only do I possess enough affection for both, but that Stella turned out to be quite an entertainment, she became fairly happy about the development.
So, meet Stella. She doesn't have Sally's energy or Sally's long limbed grace, but I am confident that you can see she has something charming.
My dog, Sally, was not too fond of this idea at first but she has warmed up to Stella. The whole process reminded me of the old story about when a couple has a second child. The couple brings home the "new" baby and says to the other child (who was just moments before the only baby), "Look at this wonderful, amazing, beautiful baby who is now your baby brother/sister." The older child is usually not so enthusiastic about this development. The explanation I heard regarding the child's reaction was: "Suppose your boyfriend/husband came in the door with a younger, perfect woman who had never disappointed them and asked you to be happy about this." Ahhh. It all made sense. This is why older children sometimes try to smother the new baby and why dogs are not always as welcoming of a new dog.
Yet, once Sally realized that not only do I possess enough affection for both, but that Stella turned out to be quite an entertainment, she became fairly happy about the development.
So, meet Stella. She doesn't have Sally's energy or Sally's long limbed grace, but I am confident that you can see she has something charming.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Missed Connections
My friend Dave sent me to Craigslist this morning thinking that one of the "missed connections" may have been directed at me. My only familiarity with this aspect of Craigslist was via my friend, Heather, who once upon a time made contact with someone via this feature.
It sounds like an intriguing and simple and altogether delightful way to let someone know that you noticed them and give them the opportunity to respond if they wish. However, as I was reading some of the postings I discovered that something more was happening.
One post was full of such despair that I wished to find the person, give them a hug, a pat on the back, reassure them that all would be well and the sun would shine on them again. I was surprised at the intimate disclosures that would only be known by someone whom the writer knew. This very public forum was a way of reaching across the abyss of loss, of broken communications (thus the name "missed connections") took on deeper meaning.
Here is a string of posts I found particularly tender:
i had to.
Reply to:
Date: 2007-10-13, 11:35PM EDT
I'm sorry i had to leave. I know you understand. It was all just too much for me. I wish i'd been able to spend more time with you, to feel your arms around me for one last time, but it only would have made my decision even harder. I love you. I never told you, but i felt it every day. i still do. I hope you understand, i had to...
re: i had to.
Reply to: Date: 2007-10-15, 3:54PM EDT
it's ok. i know you did. doesn't make it any easier, though. i feel the same way you do. i hope you know that.
RE: i had to. (more info?)
Reply to:
Date: 2007-10-15, 4:41PM EDT
Can you give any clues re who you're posting this for? male? female? age? first initial?
If by some chance it is for me: I do understand why you left, but I'm more ready now. I've made room. Give things another try? If it is for me: you know I've been asking you to come back to my life. Think it over. And if not for romance, then as my friend.
More likely: it is not for me. Was soon for the L-word. But sometimes love is surprising like that.
I realized that any number of us may read this post and wonder if we are not the intended recipient of the posting. If not right now, then perhaps a while ago. If I go back to last year, would I discover some secret communication that I had missed because I didn't know this venue was out there, as big as a billboard and yet as easy to miss as a penny we've tossed into a wishing fountain.
I am sad for i had to and sad for the one responding. With all the ways we can touch one another's lives, why can't we stay connected? Why can't we speak the words that are most difficult. Why does the L-word make its appearance on a bulletin board instead of our lips?
BTW, I was not the subject of the post my friend thought might be meant for me.
It sounds like an intriguing and simple and altogether delightful way to let someone know that you noticed them and give them the opportunity to respond if they wish. However, as I was reading some of the postings I discovered that something more was happening.
One post was full of such despair that I wished to find the person, give them a hug, a pat on the back, reassure them that all would be well and the sun would shine on them again. I was surprised at the intimate disclosures that would only be known by someone whom the writer knew. This very public forum was a way of reaching across the abyss of loss, of broken communications (thus the name "missed connections") took on deeper meaning.
Here is a string of posts I found particularly tender:
i had to.
Reply to:
Date: 2007-10-13, 11:35PM EDT
I'm sorry i had to leave. I know you understand. It was all just too much for me. I wish i'd been able to spend more time with you, to feel your arms around me for one last time, but it only would have made my decision even harder. I love you. I never told you, but i felt it every day. i still do. I hope you understand, i had to...
re: i had to.
Reply to: Date: 2007-10-15, 3:54PM EDT
it's ok. i know you did. doesn't make it any easier, though. i feel the same way you do. i hope you know that.
RE: i had to. (more info?)
Reply to:
Date: 2007-10-15, 4:41PM EDT
Can you give any clues re who you're posting this for? male? female? age? first initial?
If by some chance it is for me: I do understand why you left, but I'm more ready now. I've made room. Give things another try? If it is for me: you know I've been asking you to come back to my life. Think it over. And if not for romance, then as my friend.
More likely: it is not for me. Was soon for the L-word. But sometimes love is surprising like that.
I realized that any number of us may read this post and wonder if we are not the intended recipient of the posting. If not right now, then perhaps a while ago. If I go back to last year, would I discover some secret communication that I had missed because I didn't know this venue was out there, as big as a billboard and yet as easy to miss as a penny we've tossed into a wishing fountain.
I am sad for i had to and sad for the one responding. With all the ways we can touch one another's lives, why can't we stay connected? Why can't we speak the words that are most difficult. Why does the L-word make its appearance on a bulletin board instead of our lips?
BTW, I was not the subject of the post my friend thought might be meant for me.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Oh Henry!
So I've been back to the Renaissance Festival (I haven't been in several years). And what is the thrill moment? Maryland's State sport, of course, the joust!
And what is even more unimaginable to me is that my favored knight from years ago is there once more.
He is valiant, true, and victorious. Well, I assume he is victorious, because I leave well before the end and the local papers have not published the results of this contest so it is left to my imagination.
AT this particular Renn Fest, the year is 1540. The season of mourning for his late, beloved Queen Jane has passed, and now King Henry awaits the arrival of Anna, princess of Cleves. Anna, the woman who will become Queen of England and Henry's fourth wife.
Ever the romantic, Henry must marry for love, even if the alliance is political. He has been captivated by Anna's portrait and reports of her charm, beauty and talents.
The King, his Courtiers, and Councellors are in Revel Grove, eagerly awaiting the arrival of Anna. Will this first face to face meeting spark the passion of love as Henry fervently believes? And what will Anna think of Henry?
How can women be so deceived? Remember, it is 1540 and very few of them believed they had options.
So I took a quiz to see which of Henry's wives I am most like. I can't say I'm disappointed with the results. :
>
>
Which of Henry VIII's wives are you?
Well, she did manage to remain Henry's wife for 24 years. Till the end of her life Catherine of Aragon would refer to herself as Henry's only lawfully wedded wife and England's only rightful queen consort; her faithful servants continued to address her by that title. Catherine has long had her admirers for the bravery and courage she displayed in contesting her divorce and fighting for her daughter's rights. She became a symbolic representation of the wronged woman. I guess you could say that the similarities speak for themselves.
And what is even more unimaginable to me is that my favored knight from years ago is there once more.
He is valiant, true, and victorious. Well, I assume he is victorious, because I leave well before the end and the local papers have not published the results of this contest so it is left to my imagination.AT this particular Renn Fest, the year is 1540. The season of mourning for his late, beloved Queen Jane has passed, and now King Henry awaits the arrival of Anna, princess of Cleves. Anna, the woman who will become Queen of England and Henry's fourth wife.
Ever the romantic, Henry must marry for love, even if the alliance is political. He has been captivated by Anna's portrait and reports of her charm, beauty and talents.
The King, his Courtiers, and Councellors are in Revel Grove, eagerly awaiting the arrival of Anna. Will this first face to face meeting spark the passion of love as Henry fervently believes? And what will Anna think of Henry?
How can women be so deceived? Remember, it is 1540 and very few of them believed they had options.
So I took a quiz to see which of Henry's wives I am most like. I can't say I'm disappointed with the results. :
>
>Which of Henry VIII's wives are you?
Well, she did manage to remain Henry's wife for 24 years. Till the end of her life Catherine of Aragon would refer to herself as Henry's only lawfully wedded wife and England's only rightful queen consort; her faithful servants continued to address her by that title. Catherine has long had her admirers for the bravery and courage she displayed in contesting her divorce and fighting for her daughter's rights. She became a symbolic representation of the wronged woman. I guess you could say that the similarities speak for themselves.
What confounds me
"For those who are walled up, everything is a wall . . .
even an open door."
French poet, René Char
even an open door."
French poet, René Char
Saturday, October 06, 2007
You Know Everything
Karen London died today. Karen left this place. And my life seems such a sham.
This is no pity party for me. This is not self-punishment in hopes of some redemption. It is just that when life/death stands right up to you, challenges you, deserts you, places the lump in your breast, the lump in your throat, the speeding train, the crash position on the airplane; you know. You know everything.
Every frivolous breath, every protective posture, every missed chance to speak true. You know and you can't close your eyes because it is within you now.
So all your falsehoods are laid at your feet. This is not the work I am supposed to be doing. This is not the man I love. This is not the right house for me to make art. This music on the radio, this snippet of conversation, this gossip at my feet, is fetid, rotting, unworthy.
And all that is worthy of attention, time, breath, step, and reach is that which is folded in grace.
Karen is gone but the love, of her husband, her children, her work, her friends was so true and so absolute that they will always possess it. Karen died today but nothing died, nothing passed away. Nothing at all.
This is no pity party for me. This is not self-punishment in hopes of some redemption. It is just that when life/death stands right up to you, challenges you, deserts you, places the lump in your breast, the lump in your throat, the speeding train, the crash position on the airplane; you know. You know everything.
Every frivolous breath, every protective posture, every missed chance to speak true. You know and you can't close your eyes because it is within you now.
So all your falsehoods are laid at your feet. This is not the work I am supposed to be doing. This is not the man I love. This is not the right house for me to make art. This music on the radio, this snippet of conversation, this gossip at my feet, is fetid, rotting, unworthy.
And all that is worthy of attention, time, breath, step, and reach is that which is folded in grace.
Karen is gone but the love, of her husband, her children, her work, her friends was so true and so absolute that they will always possess it. Karen died today but nothing died, nothing passed away. Nothing at all.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
The other side of the world
A few weeks ago, working on a new book, a handmade book based on Chinese cookie fortunes; well that is not what the book was based on, it was a part of the "trusting the random" process to use fortune cookie fortunes to make up the content (this would eventually be eliminated as the good idea). The book was a gift for Sara's birthday, a treasure of all the words, messages, that might inspire her, hold her, shake her, comfort her, for the next year.
Measuring and precision cutting of book board, measured folding along the creases of the bone folder, colorful marble end papers on a slat of deep pewter, all for my sunshine girl, Sarasita. Everything in place but the content.
So I dive into the trove of cookies of fortune. Crack open the first, nibble on the crisp sweet almond husk and read the first prophetic words, "Practice makes perfect."
Seriously. Come on. I studied classical ballet; fifth position - tendue - fifth - tendue second, close back, tendue dégagé , close back, relevé , turn, repeat on the other side, relevé , balance, hold, hold, hold, hold. . . .
I know practice. Sara studied too. We know practice, balance, the focus on the spot on the wall that does not move, breathing, the energies in your body reaching in opposition. We have spent years at it.
So the cosmic forces were mocking me in my little book effort? No. There must be something more. I dig deep into the brown sack and pull out another cookie, split it and the pieces tumble onto the table.
"Practice makes perfect."
Okay. There are times when it is best to just listen. Practice. Practice listening. Practice patience. Practice life. No. Practice my craft - practice, the craft of art. Abandon the dive to the bottom of the brown sack of fortune cookies. Go to the source. Find her fortunes where I always have found them - in story - in poetry - in art.
From the bookcase, I gather the texts, Recipes from the Wizard of Oz, Naomi Wolfe's Fire with Fire, The Little Prince, The Dogs of Babel, Daddy Long-legs. Here is Sara's fortune. I add a few grants of my own design, reminders. I flip through the books, I let my eyes fall on the pages and the words reveal themselves, as they always have. "Have a little courage. That's all." "It is only with the heart that one sees truly."
I print them out, fortune cookie dimensions and glue them in her book. I paste in the final one and open and close the edition several times, testing the fold, the weaving of the flags, the binding.
I allow myself a reward - a fortune pulled without agenda, without necessity, without without, and I feel as if it is a ballet - with out, the seeming effortless piorrete, that does not know friction, that turns without resistance. This is how I reach into the bag.
"Your love life will be happy and harmonious."
I set it on the table. This was obviously a mistake. I've been lost and blind and quincunx in matters of the heart; which is hardly a happy and harmonious state.
Oh, sweet denial, rains over me. I pull Sara's book into proper form, wrap a purple rubber band around it to hold it through the night. And shake my head in waves of no ~ no ~ no ~ no. Obviously the cosmic gods are not done having their fun with me. Practice makes perfect. and Your love life will be happy and harmonious.
I lean on my elbows, prop my chin in my hands, and sigh, the long breathe of oh no and oh please and okay. Okay. Well, this has not been my experience. And I have to wonder if it is even what I would want. What would I want? Who would not want that - harmonious and happy? Yes. I want that. I do.
But that doesn't happen. Does it? Not if my experiences are any indication. Well I took the end of the summer and threw a lot of the bundled memories away or buried them with the accompanying redoubtable ghosts.
I decide the Chinese fortune cookie gods are just having fun with me. I plunge in once more, hopeless optimist, seeking the authentic truth in my brown paper bag of fortune cookies. I pull one off the bottom. Weigh it in my hand, it is almost nothing, the weight of three feathers, three wishes. I snap it with practiced efficiency, and slip the paper out. I won't give up.
"Your love life will be happy and harmonious."
I start to hope. After all, this is about the future. This is what "will be" and why can it not. If I seek that, surely I can discover it. Happy and harmonious. Guess it is time to look up the definitions of those terms!
Measuring and precision cutting of book board, measured folding along the creases of the bone folder, colorful marble end papers on a slat of deep pewter, all for my sunshine girl, Sarasita. Everything in place but the content.
So I dive into the trove of cookies of fortune. Crack open the first, nibble on the crisp sweet almond husk and read the first prophetic words, "Practice makes perfect."
Seriously. Come on. I studied classical ballet; fifth position - tendue - fifth - tendue second, close back, tendue dégagé , close back, relevé , turn, repeat on the other side, relevé , balance, hold, hold, hold, hold. . . .
I know practice. Sara studied too. We know practice, balance, the focus on the spot on the wall that does not move, breathing, the energies in your body reaching in opposition. We have spent years at it.
So the cosmic forces were mocking me in my little book effort? No. There must be something more. I dig deep into the brown sack and pull out another cookie, split it and the pieces tumble onto the table.
"Practice makes perfect."
Okay. There are times when it is best to just listen. Practice. Practice listening. Practice patience. Practice life. No. Practice my craft - practice, the craft of art. Abandon the dive to the bottom of the brown sack of fortune cookies. Go to the source. Find her fortunes where I always have found them - in story - in poetry - in art.
From the bookcase, I gather the texts, Recipes from the Wizard of Oz, Naomi Wolfe's Fire with Fire, The Little Prince, The Dogs of Babel, Daddy Long-legs. Here is Sara's fortune. I add a few grants of my own design, reminders. I flip through the books, I let my eyes fall on the pages and the words reveal themselves, as they always have. "Have a little courage. That's all." "It is only with the heart that one sees truly."
I print them out, fortune cookie dimensions and glue them in her book. I paste in the final one and open and close the edition several times, testing the fold, the weaving of the flags, the binding.
I allow myself a reward - a fortune pulled without agenda, without necessity, without without, and I feel as if it is a ballet - with out, the seeming effortless piorrete, that does not know friction, that turns without resistance. This is how I reach into the bag.
"Your love life will be happy and harmonious."
I set it on the table. This was obviously a mistake. I've been lost and blind and quincunx in matters of the heart; which is hardly a happy and harmonious state.
Oh, sweet denial, rains over me. I pull Sara's book into proper form, wrap a purple rubber band around it to hold it through the night. And shake my head in waves of no ~ no ~ no ~ no. Obviously the cosmic gods are not done having their fun with me. Practice makes perfect. and Your love life will be happy and harmonious.
I lean on my elbows, prop my chin in my hands, and sigh, the long breathe of oh no and oh please and okay. Okay. Well, this has not been my experience. And I have to wonder if it is even what I would want. What would I want? Who would not want that - harmonious and happy? Yes. I want that. I do.
But that doesn't happen. Does it? Not if my experiences are any indication. Well I took the end of the summer and threw a lot of the bundled memories away or buried them with the accompanying redoubtable ghosts.
I decide the Chinese fortune cookie gods are just having fun with me. I plunge in once more, hopeless optimist, seeking the authentic truth in my brown paper bag of fortune cookies. I pull one off the bottom. Weigh it in my hand, it is almost nothing, the weight of three feathers, three wishes. I snap it with practiced efficiency, and slip the paper out. I won't give up.
"Your love life will be happy and harmonious."
I start to hope. After all, this is about the future. This is what "will be" and why can it not. If I seek that, surely I can discover it. Happy and harmonious. Guess it is time to look up the definitions of those terms!
Friday, September 28, 2007
When an old lover I happened to see. . .
I was sitting having dinner with my brother at one of my favorite haunts in Annapolis, when an old lover I happened to see. He came through the door, a lady trailing shyly. We said hello and hey, how'd you do? and stammered goodbye. With no regrets or longing. Simple.
I tried to write about something a few days ago here, but the words were insufficient. I've been reading "If on a winter's night a traveler" by Italo Calvino and writing as narrator and author, he writes:
"This is what I mean when I say I would like to swim against the stream of time: I would like to erase the consequences of certain events and restore an initial condition. But every moment of my life brings with it an accumulation of new facts, and each of these new facts brings with it its consequences; so the more I seek to return to the zero moment from which I set out, the further I move away from it: though all my actions are bent on erasing the consequences of previous actions and though I manage to achieve appreciable results in this erasure, enough to open my heart to hopes of immediate relief, I must, however, bear in mind that my every move to erase previous events provokes a rain of new events, which complicate the situation worse than before and which I will then, in their turn, have to try to erase. Therefore I must calculate carefully every move so as to achieve the maximum of erasure with the minimum of recomplication."
This is how our lives play out.Wanting to make it over and not wanting to lose what we had, not wasting. Once upon a time, in a land far away, was a true and innocent maiden and a strong and honest man...
Then things got complicated.
I tried to write about something a few days ago here, but the words were insufficient. I've been reading "If on a winter's night a traveler" by Italo Calvino and writing as narrator and author, he writes:
"This is what I mean when I say I would like to swim against the stream of time: I would like to erase the consequences of certain events and restore an initial condition. But every moment of my life brings with it an accumulation of new facts, and each of these new facts brings with it its consequences; so the more I seek to return to the zero moment from which I set out, the further I move away from it: though all my actions are bent on erasing the consequences of previous actions and though I manage to achieve appreciable results in this erasure, enough to open my heart to hopes of immediate relief, I must, however, bear in mind that my every move to erase previous events provokes a rain of new events, which complicate the situation worse than before and which I will then, in their turn, have to try to erase. Therefore I must calculate carefully every move so as to achieve the maximum of erasure with the minimum of recomplication."
This is how our lives play out.Wanting to make it over and not wanting to lose what we had, not wasting. Once upon a time, in a land far away, was a true and innocent maiden and a strong and honest man...
Then things got complicated.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
The Power
Zelda Fitzgerald and I are not so different - given space and resource, a ballet floor, a barre, a mirror would be at my disposal and the time to move like a willow and step on the tip of my toe like a dagger and spin would be mine.
I've returned to taking ballet. Last week, balanced on demi-pointe, Shirley came and stood behind me. "Look at you. You are perfect. Beautiful." And whatever the reality may be, in that nano-second of dance and frozen stillness of dance where alignment and grace pause to portray the control of head tilt, arch of arms, unwavering ankle; there I was beautiful and joy full.
Since I've returned to dance, my pants have begun to hang lower on my hips and if I add the weight of my cell phone to my pocket, they nudge down to the hip level where the teens wear their jeans, and suddenly I understand. The caress of the yoke of the pant across the anvil of my hips is seductive; my step is more precise, my years leave me, a swarm of bees honeys between my hips, and under my toes, the earth is influenced. Heady stuff. Now wonder the boys and girls are wearing their pants low.
Is it any wonder that once a woman has ballet in her frame, she cannot let it go?
I've returned to taking ballet. Last week, balanced on demi-pointe, Shirley came and stood behind me. "Look at you. You are perfect. Beautiful." And whatever the reality may be, in that nano-second of dance and frozen stillness of dance where alignment and grace pause to portray the control of head tilt, arch of arms, unwavering ankle; there I was beautiful and joy full.
Since I've returned to dance, my pants have begun to hang lower on my hips and if I add the weight of my cell phone to my pocket, they nudge down to the hip level where the teens wear their jeans, and suddenly I understand. The caress of the yoke of the pant across the anvil of my hips is seductive; my step is more precise, my years leave me, a swarm of bees honeys between my hips, and under my toes, the earth is influenced. Heady stuff. Now wonder the boys and girls are wearing their pants low.
Is it any wonder that once a woman has ballet in her frame, she cannot let it go?
Monday, September 24, 2007
Approfondement
this is the nature of this man,
I like to watch him reach,
his arm extended, lean and
purposeful, the apex exposed, the fingers
already curving for the object
he will lift, carry, cover; rare
flesh, railroad vein lattice, care
in smooth skin,
the moment just before, the
breadth of circumstance. I like to
watch him reach.
I like to see him stoop,
coming to the place of
eye sight with the flower, the
willow stem, the child, the
pup, the woman,
the lips and eyes that are
up reaching toward his, toward that
scent, visage, voice.
this is the nature of this man.
I like to watch him reach,
his arm extended, lean and
purposeful, the apex exposed, the fingers
already curving for the object
he will lift, carry, cover; rare
flesh, railroad vein lattice, care
in smooth skin,
the moment just before, the
breadth of circumstance. I like to
watch him reach.
I like to see him stoop,
coming to the place of
eye sight with the flower, the
willow stem, the child, the
pup, the woman,
the lips and eyes that are
up reaching toward his, toward that
scent, visage, voice.
this is the nature of this man.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Ruler of my Heart
Plenipotentiary ruler of my
heart, seeking the benison
of the waxing moon,
the salubrious climate
of understanding.
Inconstant moon
camouflaged in the
afternoon sky
too late rising to
grace the night.
Fear is not the ambassador
of my heart.
Watchful aorta skittering
the hairpin turn,
leaning toward the fall,
spin of earth, fearless;
trusting the moon,
plenipotentiary ruler of my
heart.
heart, seeking the benison
of the waxing moon,
the salubrious climate
of understanding.
Inconstant moon
camouflaged in the
afternoon sky
too late rising to
grace the night.
Fear is not the ambassador
of my heart.
Watchful aorta skittering
the hairpin turn,
leaning toward the fall,
spin of earth, fearless;
trusting the moon,
plenipotentiary ruler of my
heart.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
It took a while to figure out . . .
Today's word of the day:
fissiparous \fih-SIP-uh-rus\ adjective
: tending to break up into parts : divisive
Last night I had dinner with some of the most amazing women I know: my daughter, my sister, my sister-in-law. After dinner, my sister and I remained behind, to catch up, to tell the things that sisters tell. Epiphanies sometimes come when we finally say some things out loud; they become more real, undeniable. First you need the safe haven to put those stories so that the courage comes to say what needs to be said.
So I thank my sister in particular and to all the other sisters (or those that fill the role) that are on your side, that can see all the darker parts of you and still see the beauty and potential and strength; who tell you that you can....
fissiparous \fih-SIP-uh-rus\ adjective
: tending to break up into parts : divisive
Last night I had dinner with some of the most amazing women I know: my daughter, my sister, my sister-in-law. After dinner, my sister and I remained behind, to catch up, to tell the things that sisters tell. Epiphanies sometimes come when we finally say some things out loud; they become more real, undeniable. First you need the safe haven to put those stories so that the courage comes to say what needs to be said.
So I thank my sister in particular and to all the other sisters (or those that fill the role) that are on your side, that can see all the darker parts of you and still see the beauty and potential and strength; who tell you that you can....
Thursday, September 13, 2007
The Book of Days
I was wrong. What I wrote about Rosh Hashanah services at temple was proven to be incorrect. For just a few moments this morning, I was moved, I was shaken and reaffirmed; not in any Jewish faith (or any other organized faith) but in the faith that is the resolve within any one of us.
One portion of the service reads: "Every word, every act inscribes itself in the book of life. Freely we choose, and what we have chosen to become stands in judgment over what we may yet hope to be."
That is a theology which I firmly endorse. My thoughts will become my words. My words will lead to my actions. My actions define who I am and are the steps to who I still choose to become. My actions are my signature in the book of days.
So although most of my words from last night's post remain true, the idea that I would not find faith in the temple is mistaken. Wherever I may be, if I am introspective, thoughtful and deliberate, then it is a choice I make to have faith in myself, in the person beside me, in the people with out me. I decide.
Not really Jewish, not really Christian, no really done, Mary
One portion of the service reads: "Every word, every act inscribes itself in the book of life. Freely we choose, and what we have chosen to become stands in judgment over what we may yet hope to be."
That is a theology which I firmly endorse. My thoughts will become my words. My words will lead to my actions. My actions define who I am and are the steps to who I still choose to become. My actions are my signature in the book of days.
So although most of my words from last night's post remain true, the idea that I would not find faith in the temple is mistaken. Wherever I may be, if I am introspective, thoughtful and deliberate, then it is a choice I make to have faith in myself, in the person beside me, in the people with out me. I decide.Not really Jewish, not really Christian, no really done, Mary
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Not g-d, but rather love
Erev Rosh Hashanah will not find me in a synagogue. There is no happy new year there for me. And being the workhorse for the congregation, it is not a place of celebration. I celebrate that it is so for them. But I prefer the quiet times, the empty days alone in front of the eternal light, alone before the yarhzeit plaques. No audience except my own thoughts, unbiased by observation or influence.
So it is the Jewish New Year – and although raised as a Catholic, I’ve always felt that September was the time of the new start: the fading of the flower, the return to education, freshly shaved pencils, the smell of shoe polish on saddle shoes, crisp white cotton blouses, plaid skirts, the chill air sweeping stagnant summer. So September was always the opportunity for a new start, a chameleon leaving skin in the parched August earth and discovering new colors.
Last fall, I was disheartened in matters of the heart and casting off the idea of romance and oddly, I find the same sentiment strong within me now. Last year, it resulted in making plans to travel to Truth or Consequences with another woman of similar mind. And of all the things that have transpired this year, that is one for which I’ve no regrets. It is disturbing to discover that 10 months ago I was as I am right now. So obviously something is needed.
What? I am a woman of strong passions: my children, my writing, other writing, my brothers and sister, all the sensual pleasures that life offers, my loves. So where is the dissatisfaction? My loves. My love of men has not proved successful. Please do not misunderstand. I place no blame on one party any more than the other. Is it because I do not choose well? Or perhaps it is my nature in the relationship? Or even in the way it begins?
Since my romantic life began, I do not think there was ever a time I was not either engaged whole-heartedly with a love or pursuing one. I love men; their furry arms and legs, the Adam’s apple, the strength of their stride, the width of their wrist, the boy still living within. I do not think that is a mistake. But I wonder if I should pull up the bridge, fill the moat with an alligator or two, and spend some time denying the pursuit, the pleasure, the idea that someday I will meet my man, counterpart, true heart.
Even as I write those words, I doubt my ability to stay absent. The ache in my chest and the impulse for my arms to reach and the tilt of my head and exposed throat and the tears that burn at the back of my eyes lead me to believe it may be a foolish thing to think I am capable. But I can try.
So here is to the new year, the year of giving my best to my art, my children, my career, my home, and to my fitness. Here is to seeing how it is to be invisible, to fly under the radar, to walk the land where “beyond this point be dragons.
But it takes more than words to make us whole. And not god, but rather love, love is my witness.
So it is the Jewish New Year – and although raised as a Catholic, I’ve always felt that September was the time of the new start: the fading of the flower, the return to education, freshly shaved pencils, the smell of shoe polish on saddle shoes, crisp white cotton blouses, plaid skirts, the chill air sweeping stagnant summer. So September was always the opportunity for a new start, a chameleon leaving skin in the parched August earth and discovering new colors.
Last fall, I was disheartened in matters of the heart and casting off the idea of romance and oddly, I find the same sentiment strong within me now. Last year, it resulted in making plans to travel to Truth or Consequences with another woman of similar mind. And of all the things that have transpired this year, that is one for which I’ve no regrets. It is disturbing to discover that 10 months ago I was as I am right now. So obviously something is needed.
What? I am a woman of strong passions: my children, my writing, other writing, my brothers and sister, all the sensual pleasures that life offers, my loves. So where is the dissatisfaction? My loves. My love of men has not proved successful. Please do not misunderstand. I place no blame on one party any more than the other. Is it because I do not choose well? Or perhaps it is my nature in the relationship? Or even in the way it begins?
Since my romantic life began, I do not think there was ever a time I was not either engaged whole-heartedly with a love or pursuing one. I love men; their furry arms and legs, the Adam’s apple, the strength of their stride, the width of their wrist, the boy still living within. I do not think that is a mistake. But I wonder if I should pull up the bridge, fill the moat with an alligator or two, and spend some time denying the pursuit, the pleasure, the idea that someday I will meet my man, counterpart, true heart.
Even as I write those words, I doubt my ability to stay absent. The ache in my chest and the impulse for my arms to reach and the tilt of my head and exposed throat and the tears that burn at the back of my eyes lead me to believe it may be a foolish thing to think I am capable. But I can try. So here is to the new year, the year of giving my best to my art, my children, my career, my home, and to my fitness. Here is to seeing how it is to be invisible, to fly under the radar, to walk the land where “beyond this point be dragons.
But it takes more than words to make us whole. And not god, but rather love, love is my witness.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Life Goes On
Today's word:
fungible \FUHN-juh-buhl\, adjective:
1. (Law) Freely exchangeable for or replaceable by another of like nature or kind in the satisfaction of an obligation.
2. Interchangeable.
3. Something that is exchangeable or substitutable. Usually used in the plural.
"Genuine eros makes us desire a particular person; crude desire is satisfiable by fungible bodies."
-- Edward Craig (general editor), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
fungible \FUHN-juh-buhl\, adjective:
1. (Law) Freely exchangeable for or replaceable by another of like nature or kind in the satisfaction of an obligation.
2. Interchangeable.
3. Something that is exchangeable or substitutable. Usually used in the plural.
"Genuine eros makes us desire a particular person; crude desire is satisfiable by fungible bodies."
-- Edward Craig (general editor), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Friday, September 07, 2007
Said too much
Every whisper
Of every waking hour I'm
Choosing my confessions
I think I thought I saw you try.
Oh no, I've said too much.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The witness tree roots knit
the shale, snaking and drinking
all but rock, the dirt dense, layered,
emeralds clotted in the mud.
The grave digger's
axe cleaves
stem, root; finds
the fault, fills the
shovel and lifts, heaves the
fill to the side.
He will put her here; back her up
so she never sees, the turned earth. His fingers
pressing into her shoulders,
her gaze on the
lark, his voice slow,
stepping her back, like
a skittish mare into a stall.
He will not aim, will not attend.
He circles her waist, takes his left hand
and strokes her hair back, pulls his palm along her
skull until his index finger rests behind her
ear lobe and he replaces it with the muzzle,
no hesitation allowed.
She does not fall back
as expected, but rather her
legs collapse, as if this were
the moment she could stand
no more.
The grave digger lifts his
shovel and fills the dirt until all
that remains is the mistaken impression
of the earth rising and falling with her breathing
in the waning
moonlight.
Later, he would believe he heard her breathe
and the leaves of the witness tree would
turn over, ready for rain.
Of every waking hour I'm
Choosing my confessions
I think I thought I saw you try.
Oh no, I've said too much.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The witness tree roots knit
the shale, snaking and drinking
all but rock, the dirt dense, layered,
emeralds clotted in the mud.
The grave digger's
axe cleaves
stem, root; finds
the fault, fills the
shovel and lifts, heaves the
fill to the side.
He will put her here; back her up
so she never sees, the turned earth. His fingers
pressing into her shoulders,
her gaze on the
lark, his voice slow,
stepping her back, like
a skittish mare into a stall.
He will not aim, will not attend.
He circles her waist, takes his left hand
and strokes her hair back, pulls his palm along her
skull until his index finger rests behind her
ear lobe and he replaces it with the muzzle,
no hesitation allowed.
She does not fall back
as expected, but rather her
legs collapse, as if this were
the moment she could stand
no more.
The grave digger lifts his
shovel and fills the dirt until all
that remains is the mistaken impression
of the earth rising and falling with her breathing
in the waning
moonlight.
Later, he would believe he heard her breathe
and the leaves of the witness tree would
turn over, ready for rain.
Shallow
At the northeast end of the orchard,
near a large brush pile waiting to be burned
she dug the hole, not only because the soil was
less rocky but also because the harvested field
was perfumed with fallen Fuji apples.
Two nights, in the moonlight,
forming blisters no one would see,
the pick axe clawing at tree roots.
Tonight the moon was waning, as she crossed
the threshold into a dusting of late autumn snow.
Fifty one years of first snows and she was stilled by it yet.
The air chilled her teeth, her throat, her nostrils,
deliciously racing down to her lungs. She walked
toward the northeast, the weight of the pistol in her
coat pocket thumping into her thigh. She approached the
hole roundabout so she would not have to look into it and
slowly backed up until the heel of her boot met the rim.
Reaching into her pocket, she gripped the pistol and positioned it
behind her right ear, the muzzle pocketed behind her ear lobe.
She did not want to see it, did not want to be the one to pull the trigger.
But she could not allow anyone else the job.
She thought the impact would cause her to tumble into the hole.
She thumbed the hammer back but it didn't catch and fell on the cartridge
and in that instant, she did not see her life spinning out before her,
her childhood, her loves, her children. No bright light, no choir of angels
or howl of heathens.
Instead she worried if she had needed a larger caliber for this final task.
Her legs crumpled and she went straight down
as if this was the very second in her fifty first year of life
that her skeleton collapsed under the weight of her own flesh. Into the
grave she went, in the freshly dug edge as if she were laying down to nap.
She'd made the hole shallow, hoping that when it was
filled, the rain would still reach her, and come spring
she might blossom.
near a large brush pile waiting to be burned
she dug the hole, not only because the soil was
less rocky but also because the harvested field
was perfumed with fallen Fuji apples.
Two nights, in the moonlight,
forming blisters no one would see,
the pick axe clawing at tree roots.
Tonight the moon was waning, as she crossed
the threshold into a dusting of late autumn snow.
Fifty one years of first snows and she was stilled by it yet.
The air chilled her teeth, her throat, her nostrils,
deliciously racing down to her lungs. She walked
toward the northeast, the weight of the pistol in her
coat pocket thumping into her thigh. She approached the
hole roundabout so she would not have to look into it and
slowly backed up until the heel of her boot met the rim.
Reaching into her pocket, she gripped the pistol and positioned it
behind her right ear, the muzzle pocketed behind her ear lobe.
She did not want to see it, did not want to be the one to pull the trigger.
But she could not allow anyone else the job.
She thought the impact would cause her to tumble into the hole.
She thumbed the hammer back but it didn't catch and fell on the cartridge
and in that instant, she did not see her life spinning out before her,
her childhood, her loves, her children. No bright light, no choir of angels
or howl of heathens.
Instead she worried if she had needed a larger caliber for this final task.
Her legs crumpled and she went straight down
as if this was the very second in her fifty first year of life
that her skeleton collapsed under the weight of her own flesh. Into the
grave she went, in the freshly dug edge as if she were laying down to nap.
She'd made the hole shallow, hoping that when it was
filled, the rain would still reach her, and come spring
she might blossom.
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