I am on, and on and on right now, in defense of or maybe more in definition, of Poetics.
Of my poetics.
O damn craving for self-education!
Scratch that. I am neither defending, nor defining. Nor even educating. I am discovering. giving words to...I am becoming. Battling. Staking claim.
But the idea of defense, and thus definition that I myself may know and claim just what it is I am striking out on behalf of--is pertinent. Because, as I've said and said again. Poetry is a lifestyle. It is not even a choice. It's, well like W.D. Snodgrass says in this interview, a lifelong thing:
If you can be happy doing anything else, do it. George P. Elliott once told me that. This is what he always told people. Everything pays better. Everything is more honestly rewarded.
But if you’ve got to do it, then you’re a life-termer.
I’ve had a lot to do with pacifist organizations. In one of their publications there is a story about a young pacifist who is thrown in prison. He is in on the main floor with all the new guys, and he’s cracking up. Some of the prisoners go to the warden and ask him to do something. They put the new guy up on the top floor with the life-termers, because they had nothing to win. They didn’t have to put anybody down. They were just there. And that’s how it was going to be, and they had to get along. In a few days he settled back down again and he was all right.
Yes. So what do you with a condition that Snodgrass, the "first" confessional, actually compares to being on the ward, cracking up?
You just, you know. Do it. Because it's the fighting it that causes the dismantling, the shaking break down, or worse, as you all artists know: the numb dumb condition. The struck thin and dusty on the inside because no how, no matter what, no matter what else you're doing, if you're not engaged in the work at your baseline You Are Unhappy.
So that it's not how and who you choose to be, as I've claimed in the past, but rather how and who you accept yourself as?
Making choice merely a matter of responsibility to this inherent condition...
Bringing me back round again to The Real Work. Gary Snyder's Zen of being in the moment in all that you do--an idea transferred from the act of meditating, and poem as means of meditation. Perfect in-moment form. Wat Joe Campbell calls peak experience. And to approach it with this placement of commitment, then Poetry becomes the political, too. The experience of being fully engaged.
Adrienne Rich so adeptly seizes us with this idea in her pocketsize pink-jacketed copy of the lecture Poetry and Commitment:
Antonio Gramsci wrote of the culture of the future that "new" individual artists can't be manufactured: art is a part of society--but that to imagine a new socialist society is to imagine a new kind of art that we can't foresee from where we now stand. "One must speak," Gramsci wrote, "of a struggle for a new culture, that is, for a new moral life that cannot but be intimately connected to a new intuition of life, until it becomes a new way of feeling and seeing reality..."
In any present society, a distinction needs to be made between the "the poetry of false problems"--and a poetics searching for transformative meaning on the shoreline of what can be thought or said. For now, poetry has the capacity--in its own ways and by its own means--to remind us of something we are forbidden to see. A forgotten future: a still-uncreated site whose moral architecture is founded not on ownership and dispossesion, the subjection of women, torture and bribes, outcast and tribe, but on the continuous redefining of freedom (italics mine)--that word now held under arrest by the rhetoric of the "free" market. This ongoing future, written off over and over, is still within view. Its elementary condition is the recovery and redistribution of the world's resources that have been extracted from the many by the few.
Making Poetry, aside from a dedicated act of pen and paper, too an ethic.
Which brings me just a few steps closer on the path of my search to the necessity of, as I used to teach my ESL students in order to understand and assimilate, la lengua del gente. The folk lore. Tho in this case not meant literally, but meant as the on the side in the countrysides scribes and tatters of paint and pen. The language of the people. Not anti old white authoritarian, (o fuck dont even get me started on the Cannon, Bloom...) but at least Other than...
(It's not revisionist, afterall, if it's reality?)
And so then, of course, there's the Duende. (Jesus, for pure tru lifeblood O Mighty Poets get your hands on Lorca's essay The Deep Song paragraphs 17-19.) Duende originally what Federico Garcia Lorca is speaking of when he lectures on the value of preserving the cante jando, or deep song, a style specific to flamenco Andalusian music of Spain. After time spent in the juke joints and jazz stops on the east coast of the States in the early 30's, however, Lorca, (like that other tipping pointer of note who found his voice in the same haunts and so influenced whole generations as result--Keroac) assimilated his idea od Duende to include it as a quality: The great artists of the south of Spain, whether Gypsy or flamenco, whether they sing, dance, or play, kow that no emotion is possible unless the duende comes. They may be able to fool people into thinking they have duende--authors and painters and literary fashionmongers do so evry day--but we have only to pay a little attentio and not surrender to indifference in order to discover the fraud and chase away their clumsy artifice.
And I hate to be exclusive, folks. But I gotta say. I know about that. About the duende. And it is this, this quality, I care most about.
Few. FEW have it. But you know, you know when you come across those that do.
Icould go on and on. But will end with this~
My own belief--experiential which you all know is what matters most to me--that on the short end of Dunede lay the distinct and personal in-road to serendipity, to the fine fire of consciousness where in Poetry, as motion, as pure force energy, as nebuli waiting for form, quakes and breathes. And this archetypal draw brings in to cohesion all levels of serendipity, of synchronicity, to see to it that the inroad not only be cultivated, but remained as pure power force, and utilized. Entelechy. Humanism=Source Spirit, in motion. For example:
I am writing right now at the CoffeeCat in Easton. Midway thru this post, a guy who I met weeks ago at a show sat down with me. We met through KJ, who's one of those tipping point people. Tom, the guy, made me promise aloud as he pulled out a chair that I wasn't working. I told him I was, but that I was working on the only work I really cared about. And of course! this guy turns out to be a writer, too. He was published in this e-zine and is currently working on his first full selection of short stories.
I want the tribe I want the tribe I want the tribe. Cuz I need the ones who know. Who get what it means to be on the verge of crack-up anytime you go too long denying who you are...
November 24, 2009
Rush hour on the Eastern Shore
Dad called at 7:15. Who in the hell is calling me this early I thought which proves I was still mostly asleep since dad's the only one on the road at that time that would think to call while he's sitting in rush hour and he does this periodically so of course, really I knew it was him.
I had been laying here there since 6 anyway, partly awake, partly asleep, mostly listening to traffic. I am not used to so much noise in the morning and it wakes me up everyday the workers going to work in this large small country town, this busy little town road on which I live. Gives me body memories of Seattle and Larry's old place four blocks from the Pike Market, the shrill mechanics of the idling trucks and the air plunging gear shifts that woke me up every morning, and the smell of deisel fumes and the immediate waking craving ahhh sacred hunger for carbohydrates from the market and the fresh seagull air of the Sound.
I worked 12 hours yesterday enrolled close to 20 new students that's a half hour an ESL learner and three each for GED. I make it so the hours overlap but even so, when you have a day like yesterday where four of my six GED learners were disabled, two undiagnosed and two with IEPs, it's all that additional time on the phone and tracking down records and knowing, and hoping you know, who to call. I got home late and for the first time my apartment is whole, unpacked, and clean.
It was so quiet, and so empty of "stuff", so void of projects I didn't know what to do.
I thought about all the spinach in the fridge and how good it would be wilted with garlic and olive oil and sea salt over noodles and some mozzarella cheese. But it was near 9:30 already and so I wound up with some trisquits and soon before I knew it I was out, asleep and snuggled on my own soft couch. I awoke with the most tender feeling of love and awe for me, and my life. So aware sometimes and with the wonder because of the awareness at how precious, how frail, how soft this sweet little flash of a human life.
How grateful I am how grateful I am. I've never ever lived in a place so quiet, uncluttered, so mine--so noisy with the traffic and life and at once, so still. Mama's in the trees and moon right outside my window and thank goodness there's no screens cuz at Chop I got so used to stepping out to the earth barefeet and sweet green, breathing, and saying hello.
Hello, hello, hello.
I had been laying here there since 6 anyway, partly awake, partly asleep, mostly listening to traffic. I am not used to so much noise in the morning and it wakes me up everyday the workers going to work in this large small country town, this busy little town road on which I live. Gives me body memories of Seattle and Larry's old place four blocks from the Pike Market, the shrill mechanics of the idling trucks and the air plunging gear shifts that woke me up every morning, and the smell of deisel fumes and the immediate waking craving ahhh sacred hunger for carbohydrates from the market and the fresh seagull air of the Sound.
I worked 12 hours yesterday enrolled close to 20 new students that's a half hour an ESL learner and three each for GED. I make it so the hours overlap but even so, when you have a day like yesterday where four of my six GED learners were disabled, two undiagnosed and two with IEPs, it's all that additional time on the phone and tracking down records and knowing, and hoping you know, who to call. I got home late and for the first time my apartment is whole, unpacked, and clean.
It was so quiet, and so empty of "stuff", so void of projects I didn't know what to do.
I thought about all the spinach in the fridge and how good it would be wilted with garlic and olive oil and sea salt over noodles and some mozzarella cheese. But it was near 9:30 already and so I wound up with some trisquits and soon before I knew it I was out, asleep and snuggled on my own soft couch. I awoke with the most tender feeling of love and awe for me, and my life. So aware sometimes and with the wonder because of the awareness at how precious, how frail, how soft this sweet little flash of a human life.
How grateful I am how grateful I am. I've never ever lived in a place so quiet, uncluttered, so mine--so noisy with the traffic and life and at once, so still. Mama's in the trees and moon right outside my window and thank goodness there's no screens cuz at Chop I got so used to stepping out to the earth barefeet and sweet green, breathing, and saying hello.
Hello, hello, hello.
November 22, 2009
Morning
The funny thing about wearing glasses? What do you do in the morning when you cant see to find them?
After three weeks at Easton today I am unpacked FINALLY and instead of the place looking like a confused whirl of clusterfludge it just looks like I need to clean up.
I've gotten up blogging two mornings in a row and wanted to again today in my window in front of the sun and grand magnolia tree.
Thought I'd put on my Itunes and when I turned the computer on Fisherman's Blues started
in my head. I hit scramble and guess what was the first song?Aaaa, fabulous. So it shall be that kind of day...
November 21, 2009
RANT2
This little girl named Nas and me got so high one night in Caroline County doing her intake to get her registered for classes to prepare for the GED.
It was during the part where the interview happens and I asked her what she loved and if she could have any job in the world what would it be and she said, Poetry.
Then I asked her, do you read? Do you have a library card cuz most of these country kids dont.
No, no she did not, I told her you need to get one and here's why I need for you to read Song Yet Sung by James McBride. Told her you know it's written here, grl, on the shore, Caroline and Dorchester Counties are like characters you dig? It's all about the Underground Railroad and those important parts of our history around here that we dont otherwise get to see, and then she was on and I was on and I had the scrap paper out and she was writing it all down.
Zora Neale? You dont know about Zora Neale? O god ok, so she was a writer in the Harlem Rennasaince and her gift to us was introducing vernacular, which means how people, common people, talk. She changed the voice of literature, pushed the edge the what's accepted she pushed it out she changed and impacted it what it is today. In its most recent changed and being made amd impacted form. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Write it down.
Naz is in jail now or last I heard. But after I told her about Zora Neale that night we grabbed arms cuz both ours each were covered in chills. And she said, See that, that's called Confirmation. Owww, yikes, yea. Wow and the tears were in my eyes and hers were wet, too.
Mike wrote me last night or some time about wishing he didn't throw his first years of schooling and college away. I feel you friend I was red wine dumbed or through the smoke fog and worse with the chemical highs most my way through, what a waste of precious heart and soul and cahs! What a fucking waste of my precious ass resources and time and space now all that money it was that I am signed to that I am put down for all that time under the thumb now for me to "chill?" It was just that final one, my senior year that I was clean and so all of this, the diPrima piece Snyder O'Hara the other night Octavio Paz, that all came later, after college. Upon making that decision you know. To be a writer and follow that line wherever it go.
Self-education, self-education and in depth study of the hungers of self. This is that everlasting source this is that Confirmation this is the information and education that counts.
I found a new blog this morning and was reading his old longings for Poetry and he quotes off another blog and these are Portland people and all that magyc out there and this morning I am missing the left coast and my heart hungers and so it hurts. But read what he quoted this grl saying about Poetry aaaaaaaah Confirmation, and the wet eyes and so good is life with this good kind of hurt...
It was during the part where the interview happens and I asked her what she loved and if she could have any job in the world what would it be and she said, Poetry.
Then I asked her, do you read? Do you have a library card cuz most of these country kids dont.
No, no she did not, I told her you need to get one and here's why I need for you to read Song Yet Sung by James McBride. Told her you know it's written here, grl, on the shore, Caroline and Dorchester Counties are like characters you dig? It's all about the Underground Railroad and those important parts of our history around here that we dont otherwise get to see, and then she was on and I was on and I had the scrap paper out and she was writing it all down.
Zora Neale? You dont know about Zora Neale? O god ok, so she was a writer in the Harlem Rennasaince and her gift to us was introducing vernacular, which means how people, common people, talk. She changed the voice of literature, pushed the edge the what's accepted she pushed it out she changed and impacted it what it is today. In its most recent changed and being made amd impacted form. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Write it down.
Naz is in jail now or last I heard. But after I told her about Zora Neale that night we grabbed arms cuz both ours each were covered in chills. And she said, See that, that's called Confirmation. Owww, yikes, yea. Wow and the tears were in my eyes and hers were wet, too.
Mike wrote me last night or some time about wishing he didn't throw his first years of schooling and college away. I feel you friend I was red wine dumbed or through the smoke fog and worse with the chemical highs most my way through, what a waste of precious heart and soul and cahs! What a fucking waste of my precious ass resources and time and space now all that money it was that I am signed to that I am put down for all that time under the thumb now for me to "chill?" It was just that final one, my senior year that I was clean and so all of this, the diPrima piece Snyder O'Hara the other night Octavio Paz, that all came later, after college. Upon making that decision you know. To be a writer and follow that line wherever it go.
Self-education, self-education and in depth study of the hungers of self. This is that everlasting source this is that Confirmation this is the information and education that counts.
I found a new blog this morning and was reading his old longings for Poetry and he quotes off another blog and these are Portland people and all that magyc out there and this morning I am missing the left coast and my heart hungers and so it hurts. But read what he quoted this grl saying about Poetry aaaaaaaah Confirmation, and the wet eyes and so good is life with this good kind of hurt...
November 20, 2009
RANT
We had a thunderstorm last night, a thunderstorm. I was walking home from this writer's gathering at a restaurant 2 blocks from here and the haze on the air was balmy--It's like Miami out here I shouted to the lady beneath the yellow street light walking towards the corner and her car, her name is Marty and she came the latest and was also a first-timer like me but showed up with a definite sweetness of self that settled right in. I was up late with the books and my own catalogs of catalogs of writing and then standing in the bathroom with the one low light on dim and the lace curtain started blowing then I heard the cackle of leaf-wind, and thunder, and rain.
Now it is gorgeous out the yellow morning sun on my back and it is Friday and the last place I want to go is to work which is where I soon have to be.
It was lovely to see Mike who organizes these meetings and how he gently directed the flow of information--the steering or trying to back to the topic of writing and writers rather than just an information exchange between charged and similar minds. He left though and then it was just us the women and we were off and soon it was my favorite topic of race on the shore and I posited mildly tho it's not mild when I talk about it and this is because as my cousin Collin says I care so inherent about it that I dont have to think, it just comes out and if you know me you know then it comes out all gold and fire--that racism is blurred with classism on the shore and that until the subject of race is addressed in this place that desegregated in 1969 the topic of class will always be underscored and so the divides will grow and community value, whole inclusive community value, to allude us and then next we were talking Ruby Payne and the light was on in me and I was pumped and ordered again from within and there it was...
And which is the Work that counts the most?
O, exhausting exhausting world of education and ethics and reform. O stumble stumble path as we turn again and again towards some kind of dirty version of walking heaven. O trying day in out this worrisome worrisome being the change? And this is Poetry? Inherant of living?
The Real Work.
I got home and the emails between these folks were already going and Mike wrote about Hem's Moveable Feast and the circulation of ideas and essentially the tribe that existed between them. And then, of course, I was off and it was all about diPrima and sacrificing everything to the clean line. Which brings me dear reader to the third time in a week that Rant, and the ethics, indisposable to which she and her peers held themselves and those hardline scrappy virtues indelible in this poem. Two weeks ago I read it aloud all firey jazz and crazy at 2am to Brooks we went to sleep with stars in our eyes and here it comes back again, a good morning surprise.
Sacrifice everything to the clean line. This was my twenties. Now I, in my little perch on the corner of life and Poetry and fabulous and outrageous and refusing to back down in my thirties, yet again challenge myself to Learn to Negotiate with the Vegetable body of the Poetic Mind.
click here
Happy Friday.
Now it is gorgeous out the yellow morning sun on my back and it is Friday and the last place I want to go is to work which is where I soon have to be.
It was lovely to see Mike who organizes these meetings and how he gently directed the flow of information--the steering or trying to back to the topic of writing and writers rather than just an information exchange between charged and similar minds. He left though and then it was just us the women and we were off and soon it was my favorite topic of race on the shore and I posited mildly tho it's not mild when I talk about it and this is because as my cousin Collin says I care so inherent about it that I dont have to think, it just comes out and if you know me you know then it comes out all gold and fire--that racism is blurred with classism on the shore and that until the subject of race is addressed in this place that desegregated in 1969 the topic of class will always be underscored and so the divides will grow and community value, whole inclusive community value, to allude us and then next we were talking Ruby Payne and the light was on in me and I was pumped and ordered again from within and there it was...
And which is the Work that counts the most?
O, exhausting exhausting world of education and ethics and reform. O stumble stumble path as we turn again and again towards some kind of dirty version of walking heaven. O trying day in out this worrisome worrisome being the change? And this is Poetry? Inherant of living?
The Real Work.
I got home and the emails between these folks were already going and Mike wrote about Hem's Moveable Feast and the circulation of ideas and essentially the tribe that existed between them. And then, of course, I was off and it was all about diPrima and sacrificing everything to the clean line. Which brings me dear reader to the third time in a week that Rant, and the ethics, indisposable to which she and her peers held themselves and those hardline scrappy virtues indelible in this poem. Two weeks ago I read it aloud all firey jazz and crazy at 2am to Brooks we went to sleep with stars in our eyes and here it comes back again, a good morning surprise.
Sacrifice everything to the clean line. This was my twenties. Now I, in my little perch on the corner of life and Poetry and fabulous and outrageous and refusing to back down in my thirties, yet again challenge myself to Learn to Negotiate with the Vegetable body of the Poetic Mind.
click here
Happy Friday.
November 17, 2009
We have always been beautiful
We have always been beautiful.We have always been beautiful, fabulous. Even when those weren't the words we were using.
We are timeless, yelling, awful, loud, excitable, on fire. Flaunting. Laughing. Long shadows against the night sky, neon of the flashing traffic lights and yellow and then red. The only sound the swish of air that cuts as you twirl your bag around and around. We are hip-py, how we move at the waist, and talk with our eyes. The noises the men make from the taxis that drive by. The sound of horns, and the click of the heels of our boots, the dampness left late in the night on the city streets and the mist that only sits on the air of this specific city, this specific way.
I come home to a lone dwelling it is the first time I have truly lived alone, in my life. Why are there ones who would ever give me the idea that this is wrong, bad. Why, for one minute, would we ever question this: our beauty, our lives. Why would anyone, anyone be worth giving over this loveliness, why would anyone ever convince us, mildly, wordlessly, specifically, jokingly--to lay this beauty down, or to give it away.
The best thing we can do is gather, be there, tell our stories in our words with our laughs in our eyes our hips or silly games, our flying hands or fists. The way we scream, and shout, and sleep against the glass on the door on the long drive home. The way we remind each other there's more to it...and also, there's only ever this...
We are beautiful, and we always have been. We always will.
November 14, 2009
Download, on a Saturday, with lots of Coffee and my sweet sweet Ipod
God, you know what? I dont even know. Who used to say that all the time Duuude you dont even KNooow? Kevin James. My old homeboy from the beach and second starlight lover which is to say second man or boy back then who I loved and who loved me cuz of the myth we made in each other. God did we love each other crazy. He's dead now. It was years since we'd talked when he died, too. He came to me in my bathroom at Anngar the week I found out about his OD. Stood there sad and silent in front of me just like I could see him Typical Kevin come to me when I'm naked I thought then cried a terrible cry from somewhere tucked deep and wild and hidden in my gut. It was the same energy him standing there that I used to feel when he'd be so flyed out of his skull wacked on dust or just hella drunk that his eyes would be zombied, this weird wall of grey and hurt in the heart.
Wow I am limbo right now, limbo for sure. Today is the first Saturday I got to wake up in my own little bed in my own little pad and had nothing to do. See the thing is with me I am such a damn perfectionist and especially one of those action-doer people, but also I am very go with the flow like to chill accept the moment and so be deep in peace or joy. And I've found over the years that the two attitudes aren't neccesarily conducive, so I've had to be willilng to be fleixble with my self to learn to maximize and integrate these two great and fine apsects and gifts of self. Which means that while I was up unpacking my office/writing room/sacred space til past midnight last night and dead ready to jump out of bed this morn and finish the project, all I really could do was get some coffee in me when I finally groggied my ass out of bed and then sit down in front of facebook and blogger and so far haven't got off the couch. It's like 11 something now. Sam and the boys are coming down Easton way for a matinee show so eventually I will get up and go do that. I want some pancakes but will settle for chocolate dognuts. By the time the shows over it will be late afternoon I'll need to get fancy to go over the bridge to see my ol grrrls and pay a visit to an old friend of ours from back in the back in the day who opened a downtown premier spot in Baltimore City. I hope he's there tonight it's literally been years, and I've known this cat since 3rd grade.
Really, I just want to chill. I am so fucking tired of packing and moving and moving and packing and unmoving and unpacking and so much tiredness in my bod. This teacher I work with, three weeks ago when our second term was starting and I had to not only pack and move but also place over a hundred new students and meet with all thier teachers and call all of them on the phone Hola hola buscando para Antonio, ooo ooo Antonio soy Kelly de programma de ingles, recueda? O si si hola hola que pasa como estas?? Ahhhh bien bien gracias bien...This teacher during our meeting in her sweet little Minny Mouse voice was like Whaaa? You're moving, again? That's the third time this year!
Right, right. I know.
Mom and dad came down last Sunday after we were up to Grandma's and Pap's on Saturday for this great fundraiser thing put on in the Jefferson hills where you eat plates and plates of Pennsylvania Dutch-Style homecooked food that literally a hundred volunteers have helped to prepare for you and if you dont know what eating like this, this kind of food, is than I certainly cant tell you but please someday be sure to go to Lancaster County and check out for yourself the Amish markets and country stores. Anyhow folks came down and within ten minutes of them being here mom doing my dishes and cleaing my kitchen and trying to be helpful and me stressed and feeling compacted and tight and like an ingrate at the same time, dont you know the fucking closet shelving which means ALL MY CLOTHES all fell down AND the tv stopped working. Within 10 minutes of them being here how funny is that? Thanks to them in fact because within the hour it was all fixed and put back together, and if it'd happened when I was here alone that shit would've been the final factor and I would've melted down and guess what, no it still wouldn't be fixed...
That night I finally got a bed. The next night I was getting ready to leave work and come home and just chillllll and by the time I got to Easton it was dark, which it already was when I left the college and God do I have a hell of a time with the no light thing in the winter and IT's ONLY been two weeks...blaahhhh...and there's Brooks waiting unexpected for me and only last night did I finally get around to taking the sheets off the couch. We were up until almost 3 listening to tapes! Which seriously you would not figure on how fun that can be--it actually makes you really engaged in the process of music listening when you have to search for it like that, finger on the rewind button and all. I have this dub I made off the radio 92Q and oldskool V103! the day Biggie died and I hadn't listened to that in years and years and we listened to it late night well past witching-hour in its almost entirety not talking much just smiling low and rapping along here and there and eyes closed and nodding our heads.
He's the shit.
Next day he had to go to Wal-Mart to buy a new dress shirt and tie so the people in our office couldn't tell he slept in his clothes. I haven't been right since that night and now it's caught up with me: the fact that the winter's here, it is dark, I am alone. Alone in a new place and no one, no love by my side. Most times I am thrilled by that but other times too it's just dark, and quiet, and scary, and alone. Blguguhghg. I am writing and making my space but mostly, for real, I am just looking forward to rest and sleep and back to nothing to nothing to nothing to do. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
There is this house full of youngish thuggish boys across the street from me who remind sorta of Kevin James and the ol beach crew in that they're more punk-hard than thug-hard and sometimes I sit on the roof half out my window and look over at them and sometimes, like right now, they sit on their front porch and look up at the window like they're looking in at me. Every time I look over my shoulder they're down there, smoking cigarettes, looking up. O, Easton, and all this rain and grey. O tired heart and bones and boxes still left to unpack. O everything, that passes away. Ahhh sacred ipod and new songs cuz I just got paid.
La la la de da.
Wow I am limbo right now, limbo for sure. Today is the first Saturday I got to wake up in my own little bed in my own little pad and had nothing to do. See the thing is with me I am such a damn perfectionist and especially one of those action-doer people, but also I am very go with the flow like to chill accept the moment and so be deep in peace or joy. And I've found over the years that the two attitudes aren't neccesarily conducive, so I've had to be willilng to be fleixble with my self to learn to maximize and integrate these two great and fine apsects and gifts of self. Which means that while I was up unpacking my office/writing room/sacred space til past midnight last night and dead ready to jump out of bed this morn and finish the project, all I really could do was get some coffee in me when I finally groggied my ass out of bed and then sit down in front of facebook and blogger and so far haven't got off the couch. It's like 11 something now. Sam and the boys are coming down Easton way for a matinee show so eventually I will get up and go do that. I want some pancakes but will settle for chocolate dognuts. By the time the shows over it will be late afternoon I'll need to get fancy to go over the bridge to see my ol grrrls and pay a visit to an old friend of ours from back in the back in the day who opened a downtown premier spot in Baltimore City. I hope he's there tonight it's literally been years, and I've known this cat since 3rd grade.
Really, I just want to chill. I am so fucking tired of packing and moving and moving and packing and unmoving and unpacking and so much tiredness in my bod. This teacher I work with, three weeks ago when our second term was starting and I had to not only pack and move but also place over a hundred new students and meet with all thier teachers and call all of them on the phone Hola hola buscando para Antonio, ooo ooo Antonio soy Kelly de programma de ingles, recueda? O si si hola hola que pasa como estas?? Ahhhh bien bien gracias bien...This teacher during our meeting in her sweet little Minny Mouse voice was like Whaaa? You're moving, again? That's the third time this year!
Right, right. I know.
Mom and dad came down last Sunday after we were up to Grandma's and Pap's on Saturday for this great fundraiser thing put on in the Jefferson hills where you eat plates and plates of Pennsylvania Dutch-Style homecooked food that literally a hundred volunteers have helped to prepare for you and if you dont know what eating like this, this kind of food, is than I certainly cant tell you but please someday be sure to go to Lancaster County and check out for yourself the Amish markets and country stores. Anyhow folks came down and within ten minutes of them being here mom doing my dishes and cleaing my kitchen and trying to be helpful and me stressed and feeling compacted and tight and like an ingrate at the same time, dont you know the fucking closet shelving which means ALL MY CLOTHES all fell down AND the tv stopped working. Within 10 minutes of them being here how funny is that? Thanks to them in fact because within the hour it was all fixed and put back together, and if it'd happened when I was here alone that shit would've been the final factor and I would've melted down and guess what, no it still wouldn't be fixed...
That night I finally got a bed. The next night I was getting ready to leave work and come home and just chillllll and by the time I got to Easton it was dark, which it already was when I left the college and God do I have a hell of a time with the no light thing in the winter and IT's ONLY been two weeks...blaahhhh...and there's Brooks waiting unexpected for me and only last night did I finally get around to taking the sheets off the couch. We were up until almost 3 listening to tapes! Which seriously you would not figure on how fun that can be--it actually makes you really engaged in the process of music listening when you have to search for it like that, finger on the rewind button and all. I have this dub I made off the radio 92Q and oldskool V103! the day Biggie died and I hadn't listened to that in years and years and we listened to it late night well past witching-hour in its almost entirety not talking much just smiling low and rapping along here and there and eyes closed and nodding our heads.
He's the shit.
Next day he had to go to Wal-Mart to buy a new dress shirt and tie so the people in our office couldn't tell he slept in his clothes. I haven't been right since that night and now it's caught up with me: the fact that the winter's here, it is dark, I am alone. Alone in a new place and no one, no love by my side. Most times I am thrilled by that but other times too it's just dark, and quiet, and scary, and alone. Blguguhghg. I am writing and making my space but mostly, for real, I am just looking forward to rest and sleep and back to nothing to nothing to nothing to do. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
There is this house full of youngish thuggish boys across the street from me who remind sorta of Kevin James and the ol beach crew in that they're more punk-hard than thug-hard and sometimes I sit on the roof half out my window and look over at them and sometimes, like right now, they sit on their front porch and look up at the window like they're looking in at me. Every time I look over my shoulder they're down there, smoking cigarettes, looking up. O, Easton, and all this rain and grey. O tired heart and bones and boxes still left to unpack. O everything, that passes away. Ahhh sacred ipod and new songs cuz I just got paid.
La la la de da.
November 12, 2009
Other Bloggers I Want You to Know
O jesus, this fucking day. Remember all that stuff I said this morning about fighting for it? Well, equally important is sometimes to just throw your hands up, ring the mercy bell, hail the dark heaven then let yourself crumble to pieces beneath, or with, the falling sky.
I LOVE GENIUS's and here are a few. The first saved my ass today because for real when I came in to the office I had this mean woman waiting for me she is bitter and hard-hearted and has yelled or gotten not just a bit bitchy but rude and challenging with me not once but twice on the phone while I'm here trying to do her son a favor by bending some rules to help this kid from the ruin that his life could be for the next several years. And she has me going, and hot as hell before we're even to my cubicle. And what the fuck why do I work in a cubicle in the first place for rude assholes like you!?!? And then it happens I drop hard as hell like how it happens to me sometimes straight flipswitch I will kill a bitch and I cant even see straight the adrenaline and blood is coursing so hard behind my eyes and I have to go Brookes' cubicle I am shaking so hard almost choking on my tongue and he sits me down and doesn't say anything because he doesnt have to because he knows there is nothing at all that can be said I just have to wait it out. And that is it the rest of the day just starts and goes on from there but of course I have students testing and interviewing and counseling with me--with me!? Crazy as hell as I am and they are counseling with me and I remember my job is to serve to lift them up to make at least this little bit of an hour or two of their time a bright spot in their day so at least I am laughing again and able to laugh at me and take it all in stride. But the day has been marked and by the time my last appoitment walks in at 5:45 I want nothing more to do with it so I blog roll, and I want you, dear reader, to stop by and get to know the life and times of Carrot Quinn she is one of the only mythmakers I've found out there on the blogospere crafting her life sure as she is crafting, a day at a time, her song. God she can write. They are long posts I only check in on when I have the time to give to them and attention for the soul craft she is sharing and so today, she saved my life. Or made it at least the triumph that I ache and crave for it to be.
There is this other grl blogger called Davka and today she claimed she cant write shit which is funny cuz this girl doesn't ride the pain of life but blends in as one with it and so transmutes it breath in to fire in to action on the page so it springs up in to and makes your heart leap then hurt then say, oooh, whoah~Which to be able to do that Shaman-style even just once is a gift and a grace but to be able to call that your gift. Well. Her even being out there in the world does my heart well.
Read them, please.
Finally. This guy emailed me today he's walking around Easton with a bag full of books and notebooks that all are also on my about me list on my profile. He is a writer here in Easton, evidently there are more of us than just me and him and the winter is here and this is when we take our power off to our sneaky haunts the funny creaks and lofts of our hearts where, if we are true to what lie there, the periphery the nebuli the slanted changing edge around things, changes. Changes, changes is changing, we the Artists, Who have that power.
So we subsume....
I LOVE GENIUS's and here are a few. The first saved my ass today because for real when I came in to the office I had this mean woman waiting for me she is bitter and hard-hearted and has yelled or gotten not just a bit bitchy but rude and challenging with me not once but twice on the phone while I'm here trying to do her son a favor by bending some rules to help this kid from the ruin that his life could be for the next several years. And she has me going, and hot as hell before we're even to my cubicle. And what the fuck why do I work in a cubicle in the first place for rude assholes like you!?!? And then it happens I drop hard as hell like how it happens to me sometimes straight flipswitch I will kill a bitch and I cant even see straight the adrenaline and blood is coursing so hard behind my eyes and I have to go Brookes' cubicle I am shaking so hard almost choking on my tongue and he sits me down and doesn't say anything because he doesnt have to because he knows there is nothing at all that can be said I just have to wait it out. And that is it the rest of the day just starts and goes on from there but of course I have students testing and interviewing and counseling with me--with me!? Crazy as hell as I am and they are counseling with me and I remember my job is to serve to lift them up to make at least this little bit of an hour or two of their time a bright spot in their day so at least I am laughing again and able to laugh at me and take it all in stride. But the day has been marked and by the time my last appoitment walks in at 5:45 I want nothing more to do with it so I blog roll, and I want you, dear reader, to stop by and get to know the life and times of Carrot Quinn she is one of the only mythmakers I've found out there on the blogospere crafting her life sure as she is crafting, a day at a time, her song. God she can write. They are long posts I only check in on when I have the time to give to them and attention for the soul craft she is sharing and so today, she saved my life. Or made it at least the triumph that I ache and crave for it to be.
There is this other grl blogger called Davka and today she claimed she cant write shit which is funny cuz this girl doesn't ride the pain of life but blends in as one with it and so transmutes it breath in to fire in to action on the page so it springs up in to and makes your heart leap then hurt then say, oooh, whoah~Which to be able to do that Shaman-style even just once is a gift and a grace but to be able to call that your gift. Well. Her even being out there in the world does my heart well.
Read them, please.
Finally. This guy emailed me today he's walking around Easton with a bag full of books and notebooks that all are also on my about me list on my profile. He is a writer here in Easton, evidently there are more of us than just me and him and the winter is here and this is when we take our power off to our sneaky haunts the funny creaks and lofts of our hearts where, if we are true to what lie there, the periphery the nebuli the slanted changing edge around things, changes. Changes, changes is changing, we the Artists, Who have that power.
So we subsume....
9 Songs: Mix Tape for a Rainy Ass Morning
Here's what I've learned.
I remember the exact moment it was concretized, too. It was the end of this past February, I was snowed-in at Choptank, my phone fell in a cup of tea and short-circuited so I was fully isolated, my heart was slithered and sliced which is a bitter and hideous thing worse than just being broken, and I was coming off five days of a terrible fever and ear/sinus infection that literally had me delirious on and off.
It was a dark, dark time. And then I had a moment, when I was literally laying on the floor in the living room thinking there was no lower I could go, when I realized. Well, I could just get up, and go pay bills.
And damn it if that's not what I did. I got out of my dragged down ludicrously depressed hopeless and numbed out nebulous swirl of funk place and got my bills and all this paperwork that had stacked and felt gnarly consuming and slowly, one by one, centered myself on getting through each piece of it.
Then I got a shovel and started to dig my way out of the driveway, which is when Life met me halfway and the neighbor plowed me out.
So, that's me. how I'm wired, Shit piles up and I feel victimized and bitter about the whole damn mess. Till I remember: just get your miserable pathetic ass up. And go pay the bills. Or, as this morning: and go do your dishes, then go to work and finish your damn LWIS and get your new students registered. This attitude, to Just show up, and be willing for life to meet me half-way, is my interpretation of the old Irish axiom that, especially through the winter, is my motto:
IS THIS A CLOSED FIGHT< OR CAN ANYBODY JOIN?
I'm saying, so long as I'm breathing, I got a fighting shot for the joy and the beauty, the heartaches and the pain...
Which, more or less, is what this morning's special little mix fired-up in me...
1. Cygnet Committee, David Bowie
2. Complimentary Me, Elizabeth & The Catapult
3. The Cool, Cool River, Paul Simon
4. Sonic Teenager, The Took
5. Last Dance, The Cure
6. Slow Down Gandhi, Sage Francis
7. Ball & Bisquit, The White Stripes
8. The Story, Brandi Carlile
9. Take It In, The Waifs
Listen to those three links for some wailen, fighten theme music
I remember the exact moment it was concretized, too. It was the end of this past February, I was snowed-in at Choptank, my phone fell in a cup of tea and short-circuited so I was fully isolated, my heart was slithered and sliced which is a bitter and hideous thing worse than just being broken, and I was coming off five days of a terrible fever and ear/sinus infection that literally had me delirious on and off.
It was a dark, dark time. And then I had a moment, when I was literally laying on the floor in the living room thinking there was no lower I could go, when I realized. Well, I could just get up, and go pay bills.
And damn it if that's not what I did. I got out of my dragged down ludicrously depressed hopeless and numbed out nebulous swirl of funk place and got my bills and all this paperwork that had stacked and felt gnarly consuming and slowly, one by one, centered myself on getting through each piece of it.
Then I got a shovel and started to dig my way out of the driveway, which is when Life met me halfway and the neighbor plowed me out.
So, that's me. how I'm wired, Shit piles up and I feel victimized and bitter about the whole damn mess. Till I remember: just get your miserable pathetic ass up. And go pay the bills. Or, as this morning: and go do your dishes, then go to work and finish your damn LWIS and get your new students registered. This attitude, to Just show up, and be willing for life to meet me half-way, is my interpretation of the old Irish axiom that, especially through the winter, is my motto:
IS THIS A CLOSED FIGHT< OR CAN ANYBODY JOIN?
I'm saying, so long as I'm breathing, I got a fighting shot for the joy and the beauty, the heartaches and the pain...
Which, more or less, is what this morning's special little mix fired-up in me...
1. Cygnet Committee, David Bowie
2. Complimentary Me, Elizabeth & The Catapult
3. The Cool, Cool River, Paul Simon
4. Sonic Teenager, The Took
5. Last Dance, The Cure
6. Slow Down Gandhi, Sage Francis
7. Ball & Bisquit, The White Stripes
8. The Story, Brandi Carlile
9. Take It In, The Waifs
Listen to those three links for some wailen, fighten theme music
November 10, 2009
Things
Things that relax me:
~the fireplace at Panera, the way the heat feels like a warm gold ball rolling over me like in gym class when we were real young and gave each other massages with the red rubber dodge balls
~jazz, especially Miles and Coletrain; and Old-time, like Count Basie and Billie
~taking a long soak in my own hot bath
~the luxury of a whole hour of morning quiet time now that I am only minutes from work
~hot, homemade soup
~the warm feeling of anticipation that comes from thinking about toasty winter nights with close friends
~the quiet angles of my living room, how simple and appealing, and quiet and right it is
~laughing. a lot. til the muscles of my gut are all crunched up and I have smile wrinkles deep in my face. ("Stardust? Is that you?" "Yes, fair maiden. Lo, I have come from beyond to spread the goodliness of sissyhood...")
Things I forgot about:
~how quickly the grey seeps in to me, the real and dulling effect of how the sudden shrink time of sunlight impacts me
~my certainty of how closely we All are affected by that. I had over half my new students cancel or reschedule on me today. It was so grey today that the color actually seemed to hang on the air like rainforest mist or desert dust.
~what writing does for me. AND HOW HARD it is to force myself in to writing without stopping after I've gone ahead and stopped for a while
Things I'm so grateful for:
~my writing partner, who is all about NaNoWriMo and watching her forge forward and break through her own defenses has made me both so inspired and, at once, given rise to that friendly ol marauder Competition, thereby forcing me to get on my damn game. Which makes me just sooo, soo freakin thankful for Erika and so in awe of how life, after 20 years, circled us back around to each other again. Really, when I get quaked with this much warmth of emotion, I have no words.
~my little apartment. Have I mentioned this lately?
~the unforeseen
~my friends and family. It is November, I am soon to be 9 years clean and sober and the time of month to count thanks is almost here. Amen Amen Amen, there is just so much....
~the fireplace at Panera, the way the heat feels like a warm gold ball rolling over me like in gym class when we were real young and gave each other massages with the red rubber dodge balls
~jazz, especially Miles and Coletrain; and Old-time, like Count Basie and Billie
~taking a long soak in my own hot bath
~the luxury of a whole hour of morning quiet time now that I am only minutes from work
~hot, homemade soup
~the warm feeling of anticipation that comes from thinking about toasty winter nights with close friends
~the quiet angles of my living room, how simple and appealing, and quiet and right it is
~laughing. a lot. til the muscles of my gut are all crunched up and I have smile wrinkles deep in my face. ("Stardust? Is that you?" "Yes, fair maiden. Lo, I have come from beyond to spread the goodliness of sissyhood...")
Things I forgot about:
~how quickly the grey seeps in to me, the real and dulling effect of how the sudden shrink time of sunlight impacts me
~my certainty of how closely we All are affected by that. I had over half my new students cancel or reschedule on me today. It was so grey today that the color actually seemed to hang on the air like rainforest mist or desert dust.
~what writing does for me. AND HOW HARD it is to force myself in to writing without stopping after I've gone ahead and stopped for a while
Things I'm so grateful for:
~my writing partner, who is all about NaNoWriMo and watching her forge forward and break through her own defenses has made me both so inspired and, at once, given rise to that friendly ol marauder Competition, thereby forcing me to get on my damn game. Which makes me just sooo, soo freakin thankful for Erika and so in awe of how life, after 20 years, circled us back around to each other again. Really, when I get quaked with this much warmth of emotion, I have no words.
~my little apartment. Have I mentioned this lately?
~the unforeseen
~my friends and family. It is November, I am soon to be 9 years clean and sober and the time of month to count thanks is almost here. Amen Amen Amen, there is just so much....
November 5, 2009
Where it led
Wow if today wasn't one of those days so much back and forth at work how do we maintain and be mature adults again? I haven't written--other than this one project I am working on which is not my novel (and for that side-project I only wrote for 15 minutes, yesterday) since last week. For a person like me accustomed as I am to feeling the muscles loosen--as my old pal Lara says--after I write, well. Trust me when I tell you a week was faaar to long and so I needed to jump on here and doooooownlooooad.
I am here, in my new digs! And very little is unpacked which, everyone continues to assure me, is just how it goes. I dont have a bed yet and am sleeping on a thin magnet pad on the floor. The first night sucked, but each night since I've slept like a dream and am finding my back less and less tight as result. Today I walked to work, then walked home at lunch to put soup on in the crockpot, the gorgeous blue sky singing heaven and the leaves rustling and whispering and cheering along. I love it here, I love my half-open barely emptied boxes strewn all over every possible inch of floor space, I love my walk-in closet with the ridiculous Diva poster of me and KRuss that I've finally had the nerve to hang, I love the 12 foot high windows and morning sun, I love the window I can open all the way and sit half way out to talk to the moon. I love walking to my office or for my coffee or to have dinner with a friend downtown.
I love my cable tv.
Last night I got off work and was actually at the college when I left, so was quite near the outlets. The moon was high and except for some thin lines of grey clouds that seemed to curve against the north sky its cozy lover or sweet soft naptime sheet, the night was clear. It was silent out, and cold. The kind of cold that gets under your clothes. I was doing paperwork which is my least favorite job of all and my eyes were burnt and tired from staring at the data screen under fake light all night. But I got out, in the air, under the sky, and I was so, so happy. I drove to the outlets very nearby and pretended like I was so full of wealth I could buy whatever I wanted and my heart sang at the pretty silk dresses and stiletto shoes. All I really could afford was a hot-chocolate and so I treated my self just before my drive home.
When I got here it was after 9 and I sorted through my books, the hardest of all I own with which to part. I laughed at mindless TV and was so, so happy and full with peace.
When I'm done my soup and this blog I'm gonna stroll down the block to the Night Cat and catch the show that's getting so much hype.
Can this really, really be my life?
Such simple steps. A long walk, simple steps with no sight beyond each footfall of what came next. Simple, but not all easy.
I am loving where it's led...
I am here, in my new digs! And very little is unpacked which, everyone continues to assure me, is just how it goes. I dont have a bed yet and am sleeping on a thin magnet pad on the floor. The first night sucked, but each night since I've slept like a dream and am finding my back less and less tight as result. Today I walked to work, then walked home at lunch to put soup on in the crockpot, the gorgeous blue sky singing heaven and the leaves rustling and whispering and cheering along. I love it here, I love my half-open barely emptied boxes strewn all over every possible inch of floor space, I love my walk-in closet with the ridiculous Diva poster of me and KRuss that I've finally had the nerve to hang, I love the 12 foot high windows and morning sun, I love the window I can open all the way and sit half way out to talk to the moon. I love walking to my office or for my coffee or to have dinner with a friend downtown.
I love my cable tv.
Last night I got off work and was actually at the college when I left, so was quite near the outlets. The moon was high and except for some thin lines of grey clouds that seemed to curve against the north sky its cozy lover or sweet soft naptime sheet, the night was clear. It was silent out, and cold. The kind of cold that gets under your clothes. I was doing paperwork which is my least favorite job of all and my eyes were burnt and tired from staring at the data screen under fake light all night. But I got out, in the air, under the sky, and I was so, so happy. I drove to the outlets very nearby and pretended like I was so full of wealth I could buy whatever I wanted and my heart sang at the pretty silk dresses and stiletto shoes. All I really could afford was a hot-chocolate and so I treated my self just before my drive home.
When I got here it was after 9 and I sorted through my books, the hardest of all I own with which to part. I laughed at mindless TV and was so, so happy and full with peace.
When I'm done my soup and this blog I'm gonna stroll down the block to the Night Cat and catch the show that's getting so much hype.
Can this really, really be my life?
Such simple steps. A long walk, simple steps with no sight beyond each footfall of what came next. Simple, but not all easy.
I am loving where it's led...
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