Lindsey, my dear sweet friend from way back then, confirmed that meeting in San Diego for the night wouldn't be feasible because her work load was so intense--she's been in town for five days but we couldn't make anything happen. After she texted I left the 99 cent store, where I seem to visit once weekly for creative accouterments to aid in teaching, and cruised home. The sun was burning the wildest poetic orange. The palm trees looked black against the nightening sky. I hit a left on Ellis from Brookhurst and whadya know, Ellis is the street that turns to Main which is where I live. This I did instinctively, body knowledge, and when I realized it sitting at the light I had the most satisfied ease. I have lived here going on four weeks. I have slowed down, given over unto myself, allowed for the creation of my own rounds. And so I begin to feel lovingly contented with my self, with this sweet little hand-crafted life I am whittling out piece by piece.
Laura and Clay eat dinner together every night, they were just finishing the ritual with their customary evening commentary on current events when I walked in the door. He was a dj on college radio in the late sixties and again in the mid-seventies so his musical sensibility when it comes to soul and in general roots music is unstoppable. Makes me wish my love Brooks was here because him and Clay would stay up musicing til well past the palms went black til well past them going blue in the moonlight all the way past, for sure, when they turn orange pink again in the earliest morning sun. That's what happened, unexpected, with us tonight, we got talking music and the conversation had me so lit up I was on spotify with the finest Ray Charles play list I believe I have ever heard, back and forth back and forth to the rocking boat rhythm of some of the sexiest music alive. Music that made my veins sweat on the inside, music that made me want to squat low on my haunches and let the very earth itself sway me side to side. Music that made me think of Brooks, of dancing like no one on the planet dances because that planet made of soul is invisible it's one you can only feel through your feet someplace cosmic where they brush on the floor of your shoes it's a planet you inhabit from within, this the planet where Brooks and I live, and so Clay brought him near and Laura too, who brought Erika near by telling me she channeled Fitzgerald while writing this afternoon.
All is right with the world when your housemates, decades ahead of you, bring to you your husband and wife of the creative element, your soulspeak companions three thousand miles away. When things are so aligned they meld that well to your inner atmosphere. I love my life. I love putting my energy in to exactly what I care about, exactly what turns me on. I do so and it feeds me back at me, in this power surge of soul music over dinner and Fitzgerald wander lust fettering in and out. I want to yell to Erika, yell to her a quarter-stretch across the globe The Duende The Duende it's alive it's well, but I don't need to because she is my sister my wife in this soul land so she already knows. Tomorrow I meet Derynne for the Huntington Beach Street Fair then we are going to an Equinox Bonfire also here in HB. She too one of this tribe... I danced the best fun dancing with sweet Wallace and his friends this weekend they actually helped themselves to taking over the dj stand, I wrote poems all day on Friday and read in bed most the day long yesterday. To feed the soul, any who would ever label this selfish how sad! How much they miss out, how this life by very design sees to it that we serve others just by serving our own true self, that we empower others from the genuine source power when this is what we do.
Ah and for me? This time, this quiet gentle precious time. It's been a long time coming. Life is good.
Showing posts with label duende. Show all posts
Showing posts with label duende. Show all posts
March 19, 2012
February 16, 2011
Dogwood Motel, Idleyld Park, OR. North Umpqua River, June 3, 2010.
I am alive in the night, the night is nothing but rain.
The rain takes its time coming alive, it is a steady motion
and soon as it is living it comes apart. It quarters itself,
and I dive back again, driving along side the river, I jump in.
Umpqua Valley distraction, land without dust. The river runs high,
the rain runs the roof line it drips in the gutter and out back still
the coy fish silently swim. I swim, I swim silently, I imagine the body
of our bodies, I imagine
traction, I imagine depth, I imagine bodyless motion inside the waterless
sea. I imagine what must already be a dream, what must already be night
what must already be nothing. But rain. I imagine a hand, the hand of your arm,
it takes my chin, adjusts me. I imagine being pulled in.
I planned a trip back to where I was from.
I planned a trip back to where I was animated.
I planned a trip back to where I was drawn to life.
Land of moss on trees. The moss laces deep things out of me
I will never know. The moss drapes from trees and curls itself
into my toes. The moss dances down the stream. Dancing stream comes
from high tops of mountains where alder trees and first growth haven’t been born.
Sunlight stays there in the grass at the tops of mountains. Peregrines and hawks live
and shriek in circles imagining the sky. In the middle of the forest deep the air stays
under canopy, has a dream of sunshine and a meadow it never sees, it does not realize
it is dreaming itself. It does not realize it is dreaming nothing. The night is not animated
with anything but the night, the reflection of itself on itself. Voidless. The void with void
makes it without nothing, makes it without itself. Makes it eat itself, devour itself whole.
The night eats itself, because it is nothing, so too the dream dreams itself and makes it go away.
The meadow eats itself, eats elk, eats mice, eats snake and small beetles that burrow in dry dirt,
they never see the sun. The water makes its way all back to the yellow flowers of sawtooth.
Bath of river, bath of moss, bath of lichen and green algae so dark it looks like blood attached to,
dancing from the stone.
The same nite as our friend M’s death
I set the map about me on the counter. It was a map with lots of green.
It was a map I had little trouble trying to read. It was laid out before me
like a broad highway with easy lights and no traffic and the places to stop
already computed in to my autopilot vegetable mind. The mind part that knows,
knows how to drive, knows how to switch gears in rain coming down no matter
the foreign town, the mind part that knows how to ease up on the gas, slow down
with out brakes, how to make room for other drivers on the road. Molly died.
She was a sailor, a sailor, alone on the east coast, on an eastern shore of an east coast town,
a poet, a poet alone on a wordless continent in a voiceless town, she was a sailor poet magi,
a sailor poet magi god who died alone because she didn’t think she could die alone.
Is she dead? The bird outside the harbor asked the sea. Is she dead? The yellow sawtooth
from the high desert somewhere above Willamette poured out the side of a flat mountain wall
and asked me.
I went down to the bay, Winchester, to see for myself.
Molly, are you dead?
I lay down, see, your heart floats out on to the top of the sea.
I imagine being pulled in. I followed the Umpqua up from the sea, I followed the river up from the bay,
I followed the bird down to the harbor the harbor followed my longing out to the sea. I imagined you,
I imagined us, I imagined us naked as one string of water endlessly running inside the stream our bodies twirled together like sound, like invisible light that only water can see. I imagined you glowing, I imagined you naked, streaming and twirling alone inside of me. I imagined you hard, hard like mountain, hard like stone, hard like the hole the water pours out from on the side of the road. We were invisible to the other because only invisibility can see itself, can see the nothing in itself. We were invisible to the other. I came here came back from here back to where I was drawn to life. Water poured out from me, water poured out from the sky. I poured out from me, you were there. You were not there. I asked myself where you were, where you went. You said where I do not know. I came alive then, to the nothing, I came alive in the nothing in you.
The rain takes its time coming alive, it is a steady motion
and soon as it is living it comes apart. It quarters itself,
and I dive back again, driving along side the river, I jump in.
Umpqua Valley distraction, land without dust. The river runs high,
the rain runs the roof line it drips in the gutter and out back still
the coy fish silently swim. I swim, I swim silently, I imagine the body
of our bodies, I imagine
traction, I imagine depth, I imagine bodyless motion inside the waterless
sea. I imagine what must already be a dream, what must already be night
what must already be nothing. But rain. I imagine a hand, the hand of your arm,
it takes my chin, adjusts me. I imagine being pulled in.
I planned a trip back to where I was from.
I planned a trip back to where I was animated.
I planned a trip back to where I was drawn to life.
Land of moss on trees. The moss laces deep things out of me
I will never know. The moss drapes from trees and curls itself
into my toes. The moss dances down the stream. Dancing stream comes
from high tops of mountains where alder trees and first growth haven’t been born.
Sunlight stays there in the grass at the tops of mountains. Peregrines and hawks live
and shriek in circles imagining the sky. In the middle of the forest deep the air stays
under canopy, has a dream of sunshine and a meadow it never sees, it does not realize
it is dreaming itself. It does not realize it is dreaming nothing. The night is not animated
with anything but the night, the reflection of itself on itself. Voidless. The void with void
makes it without nothing, makes it without itself. Makes it eat itself, devour itself whole.
The night eats itself, because it is nothing, so too the dream dreams itself and makes it go away.
The meadow eats itself, eats elk, eats mice, eats snake and small beetles that burrow in dry dirt,
they never see the sun. The water makes its way all back to the yellow flowers of sawtooth.
Bath of river, bath of moss, bath of lichen and green algae so dark it looks like blood attached to,
dancing from the stone.
The same nite as our friend M’s death
I set the map about me on the counter. It was a map with lots of green.
It was a map I had little trouble trying to read. It was laid out before me
like a broad highway with easy lights and no traffic and the places to stop
already computed in to my autopilot vegetable mind. The mind part that knows,
knows how to drive, knows how to switch gears in rain coming down no matter
the foreign town, the mind part that knows how to ease up on the gas, slow down
with out brakes, how to make room for other drivers on the road. Molly died.
She was a sailor, a sailor, alone on the east coast, on an eastern shore of an east coast town,
a poet, a poet alone on a wordless continent in a voiceless town, she was a sailor poet magi,
a sailor poet magi god who died alone because she didn’t think she could die alone.
Is she dead? The bird outside the harbor asked the sea. Is she dead? The yellow sawtooth
from the high desert somewhere above Willamette poured out the side of a flat mountain wall
and asked me.
I went down to the bay, Winchester, to see for myself.
Molly, are you dead?
I lay down, see, your heart floats out on to the top of the sea.
I imagine being pulled in. I followed the Umpqua up from the sea, I followed the river up from the bay,
I followed the bird down to the harbor the harbor followed my longing out to the sea. I imagined you,
I imagined us, I imagined us naked as one string of water endlessly running inside the stream our bodies twirled together like sound, like invisible light that only water can see. I imagined you glowing, I imagined you naked, streaming and twirling alone inside of me. I imagined you hard, hard like mountain, hard like stone, hard like the hole the water pours out from on the side of the road. We were invisible to the other because only invisibility can see itself, can see the nothing in itself. We were invisible to the other. I came here came back from here back to where I was drawn to life. Water poured out from me, water poured out from the sky. I poured out from me, you were there. You were not there. I asked myself where you were, where you went. You said where I do not know. I came alive then, to the nothing, I came alive in the nothing in you.
January 7, 2011
Or the one you said you'd hold on to for dear life.
It's early--not early as it could be.
It's early like 7:30 early, I've been up since 4:45 Sam texted at 5:15 to bring my laptop in so she could play me new music. There is weather coming no doubt, the water told me so. It wont be much though the birds are still crying and yesterday there were squirrels running through the dead woods. Tyler is here, Sam, me. He hasn't slept since last night, fresh home from Bmore as of a half hour ago he rolls hard like I like to, we're talking TV series she's defending Lost, he The Wire and there is music on my laptop which I am taking in like gulps of air. I had no comprehension of how cut-off I'd be from the Muse when she went down--my laptop that is. No music that I love, no poetry no links no blogrolling and most of all, no room for Kel fast as I can to spondown and get it all out. The journals, they're full, but nothing to fill me back up with no music. It's a process. Reciprocation. I HAD No IDEA. I sat on the bed for three hours just listening to Pandora and my ITunes, feeling the life come back on deep inside me. The poems finally emerged then, I spondown'd on here then pulled out the leather back journal Erika overnighted (with her most recent adv copy Hem's Girl which I can't put down--word!!!!) that was waiting on my doorstep yesterday afternoon and I wrote a full, whole poem in that. I am re-setting my ways as result of not having this my core sustenance. I have learned something yet again the necessity of filling up, and the absolute non-negotiable: having a place to fill with the words, a place that remains the same.
Sam played me her man's music he is Philly local soon enough I played her Josh just one song an old one it's the first time I'd done that in a very very long time and that was enough. We work together Sam and me long hours ten hours at a time and so she is on to me as me to her: we hold the other's stories already, having known each other less than a month. Some of them anyway, a single bone or two but skeletal-enough. So that with sparing details or so many that they come out in mouthfuls a few bursts at a time we know what flesh were giving the other, which bone on which to hang this part. This was a new twist. This had new gold. Little light flecks on the skin. Long shadows from underfoot aura big as the aururaborelias in the western sky.
I'm seeing my friend Laura Walsh tonight I told her, I play her Walsh's music.
And soon enough there is the response, I feel the throes of the words from somewhere inside my chest and had to get on here it was a matter of health. Sam and Ty humor me, roll silver and we small talk and cut sidemouth cracks on one another especially about me on the clock. Here it is the skeleton I am yearning for the one o holy loss the lac of which leaves me with out structure or faith, and happy enough to deny that even a boneyard exists. How Charles Simic said. Who can not howl will not find his pack.
I am sick. Being packless sucks.
It's early like 7:30 early, I've been up since 4:45 Sam texted at 5:15 to bring my laptop in so she could play me new music. There is weather coming no doubt, the water told me so. It wont be much though the birds are still crying and yesterday there were squirrels running through the dead woods. Tyler is here, Sam, me. He hasn't slept since last night, fresh home from Bmore as of a half hour ago he rolls hard like I like to, we're talking TV series she's defending Lost, he The Wire and there is music on my laptop which I am taking in like gulps of air. I had no comprehension of how cut-off I'd be from the Muse when she went down--my laptop that is. No music that I love, no poetry no links no blogrolling and most of all, no room for Kel fast as I can to spondown and get it all out. The journals, they're full, but nothing to fill me back up with no music. It's a process. Reciprocation. I HAD No IDEA. I sat on the bed for three hours just listening to Pandora and my ITunes, feeling the life come back on deep inside me. The poems finally emerged then, I spondown'd on here then pulled out the leather back journal Erika overnighted (with her most recent adv copy Hem's Girl which I can't put down--word!!!!) that was waiting on my doorstep yesterday afternoon and I wrote a full, whole poem in that. I am re-setting my ways as result of not having this my core sustenance. I have learned something yet again the necessity of filling up, and the absolute non-negotiable: having a place to fill with the words, a place that remains the same.
Sam played me her man's music he is Philly local soon enough I played her Josh just one song an old one it's the first time I'd done that in a very very long time and that was enough. We work together Sam and me long hours ten hours at a time and so she is on to me as me to her: we hold the other's stories already, having known each other less than a month. Some of them anyway, a single bone or two but skeletal-enough. So that with sparing details or so many that they come out in mouthfuls a few bursts at a time we know what flesh were giving the other, which bone on which to hang this part. This was a new twist. This had new gold. Little light flecks on the skin. Long shadows from underfoot aura big as the aururaborelias in the western sky.
I'm seeing my friend Laura Walsh tonight I told her, I play her Walsh's music.
And soon enough there is the response, I feel the throes of the words from somewhere inside my chest and had to get on here it was a matter of health. Sam and Ty humor me, roll silver and we small talk and cut sidemouth cracks on one another especially about me on the clock. Here it is the skeleton I am yearning for the one o holy loss the lac of which leaves me with out structure or faith, and happy enough to deny that even a boneyard exists. How Charles Simic said. Who can not howl will not find his pack.
I am sick. Being packless sucks.
December 9, 2010
It's Been A Good Year (but dont make her lift her skirts or I'll be pissed!)
It's been a good year. I am sitting in conversation with this guy at the door of a coffee shop in this place called Severna Park and I have not seen him since no shit 1995 (oh my god, how funny I just remembered we were Class Partiers together in the year book, that's why he was explaining so bummedly and borderline apologetically about having to quit smoking! Holmes my dad's got lung disease c'mon! We're grown up now it's alright...) and all I can think is it's been a good year.
I am kind, and ground myself and remind myself to be present. It is genuinely good to see him: he is one of the only people from my high school, or the one near where I worked as a teen, that via facebook or some other networking means hadn't been found and labeled: Married, Divorced, Parent, etc and I tell him as much. I admit I do, now I can check him off in my head. Our funny little ways of keeping track of one another that get complained about but that at the end of the day matter, afterall. Me, I have a Mama-Soul as part of my spirit, and a tight-knit tribe of Family which marked me deep in the place that gets marked by how we are nurtured, so knowing where and how people are adds to my security. I grounded in this, and was happy to connect again to this guy.
But It's been a good year, and that is the line that has the little wick attached. It's the line that when gionng through my head while walking out of Brian's house this morning in desperate strides towards the nearest wifi-having local coffee shop, triggered the light inside to tell me the Muses are near. There is no other way to explain this to you if it is not your experience--the best I can do is what I always do when I sit down and write. Just tell the truth tell the truth tell the truth and follow that little feeling of light. I do not know when it started but I do know that it is real, it is the most real thing I know. It is a feeling that comes on inside that alerts me to the inner creativity the boundless place and my duty, my calling here on this earth no matter what else is to bring it to the surface, to midwife it and breathe in to it the life it needs to fly. And when I disregard it I get short and turn in to an asshole and so help me if you cross my way when I am in the middle of my dance with the Muse. So help me, that is, should you make her lift her skirts and high-heeled or bare-footed run away.
But what a superstition that is, too? Writing involves discipline and the most clear lesson I learned in the past two years is to not underestimate what happens by simple alchemy of action. Showing up, not bitching, and doing what the hell's got to get done, which almost always is what's right in front of me. It's more than just saying ahhh yea I will start with It's been a good year because that is where the little light is attached. It's also bringing in to the coffe shop two books that really turn me on and reading a while this morning, and even more it's about sitting down especially when the light hasn't or doesn't feel like it's going to come.
It's been a good year. In November it was the Harvest New Year and starting out--the first week of the new year!--my bank account was in the red. So what was in front of me was get a better job and get your finances re-ordered, no matter what. So I did because after the last two years of my life dont ever underestimate my hustle. Turns out now I get to manage this way hip, way mellow local coffee shop in the Pines where I live. It's brand new and the boss needed someone with experience in community building and coffee-shop culture, which has nothing to do with caffeine and everything to do with supporting and growing your local tribe. Even the business model functions that way and I brought to this my barista-ing for Peggy those years back at Play It Again in Chestertown, as well as the local art, food and music movement we grew around The Oregon Dialogue. So far sooo good. It overlooks the Bay and River on the west side of the inlet of Ocean City. I watch the sun come up every morning and breathe and exhilarate in how fucking rad it is to be alive.
And I am writing, and chilling a lot outside, and that is that. It's been a good year. In November 2008 I left my relationship of 6 years. Right after that Josh and I tried to be lovers after a decade of being Muse to one another. I still believe he was a true love, but we ended too because just because something's true doesn't mean it's meant to be. Losing him, and leaving Brandon and Chestertown and Anngar Farm all at the same time was the single most painful part of my life and from start to finish it lasted until around the middle of this summer.
It's been a good year.
I worked for Chesapeake College when I left Bran, I was one of four people who started the GED and community English program that now serves all five counties on the upper and mid Eastern Shore. I worked my fucking ass off while I was there, and stepped down in May after living in isolation for a year out on the Choptank River and licking my wounds. I was lonely and needed family and friends. I went on a month long sabbatical in the Pac NW in May and June and while there had more than one other-world experience of being Called again. I moved back to mom's at the beach after that and partied like a rock star all summer long and still found that I had one more hall to cross to transition my life from Brandon-Josh-Chesapeake to the one that lay beyond. This stuff cant be made up, you know? The light within is real, what if that is our only choice, to surrender to the myth of what could be and give it our all to bring it to life? How about learning that the only way to do this is to do it!? And what about the struggle of being a woman and feeling this is the work you're meant to do? This is subject matter for another post (or a whole damn book, ehem...) but what about that? I know plenty of artist men whose art is their main and only priority. What about when you're a woman with the same compulsion, what happens then? When the pain is that bad I know now that actually it's my only choice, to believe in this mid-wifing and keep breathing and trusting in the birth about to come. The pain is my spirit--not a religious thing I am talking about the place inside of I AM--calling out a red alert to listen the hell up.
It's been a good year. Tuesday night I watched Candace, Jessica, Shanika and LaShae walk in their caps and gowns and receive their Maryland State High School Diplomas. They were four of 43 graduates from Chesapeake in just the last six months! And at one time I held each of those girls hand in hand. I hooped and hollered from the audience because I dont work there anymore so now it's okay for me to be wild and exuberant and un-professional even if it seems I'm acting a fool.
It's been a good year. I dont live in fantasy anymore about a man who's love will finally change or set me free. I dont dream of someday when I get to do.....all these millions of different passion-fueled things. For the first time in my life I wake up now and just live today. Seriously. It's the first time in my life I've ever done that, you dig how crazy that sounds? The passing from then to now was long and great and so dark at times that I often forgot what path I was on. But I am me today and at peace with who I am. All I need to do now is trust in her day to day.
And pay attention to when the wick-light comes on, by listening and more, taking action on what's right in front of me. By practicing what I learned in those two years which is easy to say but takes a while to get the footwork right. It sounds silly maybe but what the hell is there other than saying yes ok, the next step is just be present that's how right now that I can Show up, and the peace is inside knowing that the rest will be what it will be.
I am kind, and ground myself and remind myself to be present. It is genuinely good to see him: he is one of the only people from my high school, or the one near where I worked as a teen, that via facebook or some other networking means hadn't been found and labeled: Married, Divorced, Parent, etc and I tell him as much. I admit I do, now I can check him off in my head. Our funny little ways of keeping track of one another that get complained about but that at the end of the day matter, afterall. Me, I have a Mama-Soul as part of my spirit, and a tight-knit tribe of Family which marked me deep in the place that gets marked by how we are nurtured, so knowing where and how people are adds to my security. I grounded in this, and was happy to connect again to this guy.
But It's been a good year, and that is the line that has the little wick attached. It's the line that when gionng through my head while walking out of Brian's house this morning in desperate strides towards the nearest wifi-having local coffee shop, triggered the light inside to tell me the Muses are near. There is no other way to explain this to you if it is not your experience--the best I can do is what I always do when I sit down and write. Just tell the truth tell the truth tell the truth and follow that little feeling of light. I do not know when it started but I do know that it is real, it is the most real thing I know. It is a feeling that comes on inside that alerts me to the inner creativity the boundless place and my duty, my calling here on this earth no matter what else is to bring it to the surface, to midwife it and breathe in to it the life it needs to fly. And when I disregard it I get short and turn in to an asshole and so help me if you cross my way when I am in the middle of my dance with the Muse. So help me, that is, should you make her lift her skirts and high-heeled or bare-footed run away.
But what a superstition that is, too? Writing involves discipline and the most clear lesson I learned in the past two years is to not underestimate what happens by simple alchemy of action. Showing up, not bitching, and doing what the hell's got to get done, which almost always is what's right in front of me. It's more than just saying ahhh yea I will start with It's been a good year because that is where the little light is attached. It's also bringing in to the coffe shop two books that really turn me on and reading a while this morning, and even more it's about sitting down especially when the light hasn't or doesn't feel like it's going to come.
It's been a good year. In November it was the Harvest New Year and starting out--the first week of the new year!--my bank account was in the red. So what was in front of me was get a better job and get your finances re-ordered, no matter what. So I did because after the last two years of my life dont ever underestimate my hustle. Turns out now I get to manage this way hip, way mellow local coffee shop in the Pines where I live. It's brand new and the boss needed someone with experience in community building and coffee-shop culture, which has nothing to do with caffeine and everything to do with supporting and growing your local tribe. Even the business model functions that way and I brought to this my barista-ing for Peggy those years back at Play It Again in Chestertown, as well as the local art, food and music movement we grew around The Oregon Dialogue. So far sooo good. It overlooks the Bay and River on the west side of the inlet of Ocean City. I watch the sun come up every morning and breathe and exhilarate in how fucking rad it is to be alive.
And I am writing, and chilling a lot outside, and that is that. It's been a good year. In November 2008 I left my relationship of 6 years. Right after that Josh and I tried to be lovers after a decade of being Muse to one another. I still believe he was a true love, but we ended too because just because something's true doesn't mean it's meant to be. Losing him, and leaving Brandon and Chestertown and Anngar Farm all at the same time was the single most painful part of my life and from start to finish it lasted until around the middle of this summer.
It's been a good year.
I worked for Chesapeake College when I left Bran, I was one of four people who started the GED and community English program that now serves all five counties on the upper and mid Eastern Shore. I worked my fucking ass off while I was there, and stepped down in May after living in isolation for a year out on the Choptank River and licking my wounds. I was lonely and needed family and friends. I went on a month long sabbatical in the Pac NW in May and June and while there had more than one other-world experience of being Called again. I moved back to mom's at the beach after that and partied like a rock star all summer long and still found that I had one more hall to cross to transition my life from Brandon-Josh-Chesapeake to the one that lay beyond. This stuff cant be made up, you know? The light within is real, what if that is our only choice, to surrender to the myth of what could be and give it our all to bring it to life? How about learning that the only way to do this is to do it!? And what about the struggle of being a woman and feeling this is the work you're meant to do? This is subject matter for another post (or a whole damn book, ehem...) but what about that? I know plenty of artist men whose art is their main and only priority. What about when you're a woman with the same compulsion, what happens then? When the pain is that bad I know now that actually it's my only choice, to believe in this mid-wifing and keep breathing and trusting in the birth about to come. The pain is my spirit--not a religious thing I am talking about the place inside of I AM--calling out a red alert to listen the hell up.
It's been a good year. Tuesday night I watched Candace, Jessica, Shanika and LaShae walk in their caps and gowns and receive their Maryland State High School Diplomas. They were four of 43 graduates from Chesapeake in just the last six months! And at one time I held each of those girls hand in hand. I hooped and hollered from the audience because I dont work there anymore so now it's okay for me to be wild and exuberant and un-professional even if it seems I'm acting a fool.
It's been a good year. I dont live in fantasy anymore about a man who's love will finally change or set me free. I dont dream of someday when I get to do.....all these millions of different passion-fueled things. For the first time in my life I wake up now and just live today. Seriously. It's the first time in my life I've ever done that, you dig how crazy that sounds? The passing from then to now was long and great and so dark at times that I often forgot what path I was on. But I am me today and at peace with who I am. All I need to do now is trust in her day to day.
And pay attention to when the wick-light comes on, by listening and more, taking action on what's right in front of me. By practicing what I learned in those two years which is easy to say but takes a while to get the footwork right. It sounds silly maybe but what the hell is there other than saying yes ok, the next step is just be present that's how right now that I can Show up, and the peace is inside knowing that the rest will be what it will be.
December 2, 2010
I loved him. And he still helps me love me.
I've had three long, or longish term relationships as an adult woman. Each helped define me, term, label and mark the consistency of otherwise un-named or recognized parts of me. I otherwise took for granted: Oh, this reminds me of camping with Brandon, wow he really, really brought out the nature-lover in me....or Oh, there I go again setting aside my decision making power just like I always did with Grimaldi, how I wanted him to be my dad....etc etc... Dynamics of ourselves are deeply rooted, so much so that it's easy for them to remain just part of our natural landscape and not even notice. Even more interesting is how I will learn something about myself, inspect that newly recognized aspect, then watch as it gets reintegrated back in to the whole of who I am anyway... Life is funny--changing but subtle in its evolution most of the time and most often how it all circles back around--which is why I guess that it means so much when someone comes along and really helps me flesh some new understanding or experience of me out.
Last week I was on a roll writing, literally delving bravely forward into subject matter that once evoked usually puts me in a testy place. It was Tuesday, I was on the back porch of the Pines just me and my laptop and the forest breathing. Late hanging red and brown leaves still leaf-talking their funny crinkly leaf-talk ways. The ground all rich and moist and aerobic in how it expands on the air. One of those amazing fall days warm and full that backsteps all fast to the summer again, so that it's full life and full death all at once. I stood to take a coffee break and then a message come through from facebook on my phone: my first real love and first real relationship, the guy I was with after highschool died. I met Joe right around age 20 and was with him for a year and a half and got my heart broken by him in the end, which was the reason I decided to apply to college on the Eastern Shore to just get away...
God damn did that news turn me on my head. I was kind of a ravaged wreck, but as I said I'd literally just finished writing about some painful subject matter involving my own battles with drugs and alcohol and loss and without meaning to I slipped on that slippery crevice, that place where, it's been said, we dance on the rim with the duende hand-to-hand in combat in hopes of not falling. Well, I. Fell. In. Thank god thank god thank god I am older now and have learned to reach out and scream HELP, to be honest, to pick up the phone and be a fucking hysterical mess, thank god I have good friends.
I went to the funeral and Mandy came too and it was awkward and also beautiful and we were in the back against the wall because as customary when someone dies too young there was only standing room. It was the day before Thanksgiving and the day after I had to be back in the Pines to start my new job. And I am here now, working which equals writing not Java-ing, on the most beautiful spot by the Bay on my day off. Happy to be alive and happy for Joe and sad as hell for his family and grateful as hell for awareness and just the little things that mean fuck yea, I am living and therefor going to enjoy this my precious precious miracle life.
Last week I was on a roll writing, literally delving bravely forward into subject matter that once evoked usually puts me in a testy place. It was Tuesday, I was on the back porch of the Pines just me and my laptop and the forest breathing. Late hanging red and brown leaves still leaf-talking their funny crinkly leaf-talk ways. The ground all rich and moist and aerobic in how it expands on the air. One of those amazing fall days warm and full that backsteps all fast to the summer again, so that it's full life and full death all at once. I stood to take a coffee break and then a message come through from facebook on my phone: my first real love and first real relationship, the guy I was with after highschool died. I met Joe right around age 20 and was with him for a year and a half and got my heart broken by him in the end, which was the reason I decided to apply to college on the Eastern Shore to just get away...
God damn did that news turn me on my head. I was kind of a ravaged wreck, but as I said I'd literally just finished writing about some painful subject matter involving my own battles with drugs and alcohol and loss and without meaning to I slipped on that slippery crevice, that place where, it's been said, we dance on the rim with the duende hand-to-hand in combat in hopes of not falling. Well, I. Fell. In. Thank god thank god thank god I am older now and have learned to reach out and scream HELP, to be honest, to pick up the phone and be a fucking hysterical mess, thank god I have good friends.
I went to the funeral and Mandy came too and it was awkward and also beautiful and we were in the back against the wall because as customary when someone dies too young there was only standing room. It was the day before Thanksgiving and the day after I had to be back in the Pines to start my new job. And I am here now, working which equals writing not Java-ing, on the most beautiful spot by the Bay on my day off. Happy to be alive and happy for Joe and sad as hell for his family and grateful as hell for awareness and just the little things that mean fuck yea, I am living and therefor going to enjoy this my precious precious miracle life.
October 1, 2010
On Craft: Ferlinghetti & The Real Work.
Glad for the discourse, the go between that happens in the mythic when I engage myself creatively. The serendipitous alignment that entrances Brooks and I...couldn't get five pages of my novel done the other night so I blog rolled for inspiration and discovered Mike's post about Icarus. Dead-on time for me, because so recently I was feeling so good about having the vision for my book locked-in, but not being able to write had me fighting myself in such a gnarly way my wings definitely felt burnt. I write a response back, and link to a post I wrote last year about the Duende, and that post eyeballs me with Liz Gilbert's whole piece about creativity being a dance.
My job, do the work. Write the words, period.
Not my job: to figure out why or why not, how or when the Presence, the great Muse or Duende or Genie or Impulse or whatever else I call it, will show up and visit and it will all feel right and with the flowwww...
My job, do the work. Continue to educate, to read. To read to read to read, and to cultivate fresh, open mind. This is The Real Work--remember that? Literally, show up. & too, the intriguing relationship between showing up and taking in new knowledge and doing so in a non- prejudiced way. Let's take apart that word: non-pre-judged...My application of Real Work, to show up to your own life in a active way, courageously taking yourself on. Finding where you are programmed to beliefs, ideas or behaviors that are not authentically your own. Unselecting them.
Cultivate dissidence and critical thinking. First thought may be worst thought. This is Lawrence Ferlinghetti in Poetry as Insurgent Art. I love this. It is saying just that to me: question everything, including the what-I-consider-sacred. First thought=Best thought? Well, this is extraordinary, yes. Spondown works for me because I believe in honesty, writing the truest sentence I know. Which means I just sit down and Gooooooo with the words to get it all out, come what may. BUT--what if the first ten thoughts are fear-riddled, are examples of me lying to myself because it happens that the subject matter arises insecurities, and insecurities for me taunt out old defenses I picked up as a kid or something. First thought=truth in that scenario, but only in so much as Herman Hesse would teach. Everything is true, including the opposite of the truth...
So for today's lesson, kiddies? I'll leave us with us this, also from Ferlinghetti:
Dont be so openminded that your brains fall out.
& yet (fine, subtle nuance, funny little dissident line where ever-present newness of this eternal creative moment lives....)
Become a new mind and make it newer.
My job, do the work. Write the words, period.
Not my job: to figure out why or why not, how or when the Presence, the great Muse or Duende or Genie or Impulse or whatever else I call it, will show up and visit and it will all feel right and with the flowwww...
My job, do the work. Continue to educate, to read. To read to read to read, and to cultivate fresh, open mind. This is The Real Work--remember that? Literally, show up. & too, the intriguing relationship between showing up and taking in new knowledge and doing so in a non- prejudiced way. Let's take apart that word: non-pre-judged...My application of Real Work, to show up to your own life in a active way, courageously taking yourself on. Finding where you are programmed to beliefs, ideas or behaviors that are not authentically your own. Unselecting them.
Cultivate dissidence and critical thinking. First thought may be worst thought. This is Lawrence Ferlinghetti in Poetry as Insurgent Art. I love this. It is saying just that to me: question everything, including the what-I-consider-sacred. First thought=Best thought? Well, this is extraordinary, yes. Spondown works for me because I believe in honesty, writing the truest sentence I know. Which means I just sit down and Gooooooo with the words to get it all out, come what may. BUT--what if the first ten thoughts are fear-riddled, are examples of me lying to myself because it happens that the subject matter arises insecurities, and insecurities for me taunt out old defenses I picked up as a kid or something. First thought=truth in that scenario, but only in so much as Herman Hesse would teach. Everything is true, including the opposite of the truth...
So for today's lesson, kiddies? I'll leave us with us this, also from Ferlinghetti:
Dont be so openminded that your brains fall out.
& yet (fine, subtle nuance, funny little dissident line where ever-present newness of this eternal creative moment lives....)
Become a new mind and make it newer.
September 28, 2010
The Fall...again
As I sit in turmoil over my novel, scratching out the words like my fingernail's etching on a rock, quieting my madness in hopes of grace each morning in the sacred space over the what nexts...
As I labor away whole entire days in the back room of Ocean Pines cataloguing poetry and editing and envisioning this chapbook of mine...
Ha ha ha the Duende. Ah god the sacred devil, o here we go again anyway, in this epic eternal artistic creation and battle of self vs self...as always the descent brings, in the fall...
Last year around this time me and this guy were all jazzed up about the Duende.
Now Icarus, who's been in and out of my head as of late, shows up today on Mike's blog and the conversation starts again... It is this, the Duende, the descent-ion of Presence that so enraptures, no? That avowes us of the devotion towards the act of soaring. That in-moment bliss thing. But to get there yes we first must meet every flaming sword at the gate, every masked form of burden and challenge our egos devise and create as our selves in demon form. Fear is the Devil, as Erika has said...if only it were that simple? Which fixture do we operate from, is the golden medicine injested today, in front of screen, that which will make me yeild to the riches or poison me in my steps? Right now writing five fucking pages feels like pushing boulders through a peehole...so you tell me. What if the demon of self is pride? What if it's pride that says the answer is to not be fearful--conviction of knowing the answer... Then of course I fall before the sun. What if the demon is our angel, too? As me: self-awareness=Self-obsession.
It's all the same. I don't know the answer, I know only that I am born of this, to this, obsession. I want the grace that comes with yielding as much as it delivers the bliss of catching an upwell of wind: floating on the air because hard work suddenly made me hit that right curve with such divine precision that it all, every bloody cut step and bruise was worth it. But maybe not? Last winter was so intense, the introspection, that my dear friend Beth actually likened me to Campbell Scott's cracked-up character on Singles after they trash his supertrain plan and he loses Kyra Sedgwick and locks himself in his place for like three weeks and doesn't shower and only eats pizza off cold greasy flat cardboard boxends. Maybe it was all that snow? The lack of light? I dont know. My wings got singed. For suuuure.
Ahh, to soulspeak and the writing nuts. Ah to the crazy mad tribe. Ahh, to the circles, to a new ethics of fearlessness...? As it goes...and here we go...
Go Here
As I labor away whole entire days in the back room of Ocean Pines cataloguing poetry and editing and envisioning this chapbook of mine...
Ha ha ha the Duende. Ah god the sacred devil, o here we go again anyway, in this epic eternal artistic creation and battle of self vs self...as always the descent brings, in the fall...
Last year around this time me and this guy were all jazzed up about the Duende.
Now Icarus, who's been in and out of my head as of late, shows up today on Mike's blog and the conversation starts again... It is this, the Duende, the descent-ion of Presence that so enraptures, no? That avowes us of the devotion towards the act of soaring. That in-moment bliss thing. But to get there yes we first must meet every flaming sword at the gate, every masked form of burden and challenge our egos devise and create as our selves in demon form. Fear is the Devil, as Erika has said...if only it were that simple? Which fixture do we operate from, is the golden medicine injested today, in front of screen, that which will make me yeild to the riches or poison me in my steps? Right now writing five fucking pages feels like pushing boulders through a peehole...so you tell me. What if the demon of self is pride? What if it's pride that says the answer is to not be fearful--conviction of knowing the answer... Then of course I fall before the sun. What if the demon is our angel, too? As me: self-awareness=Self-obsession.
It's all the same. I don't know the answer, I know only that I am born of this, to this, obsession. I want the grace that comes with yielding as much as it delivers the bliss of catching an upwell of wind: floating on the air because hard work suddenly made me hit that right curve with such divine precision that it all, every bloody cut step and bruise was worth it. But maybe not? Last winter was so intense, the introspection, that my dear friend Beth actually likened me to Campbell Scott's cracked-up character on Singles after they trash his supertrain plan and he loses Kyra Sedgwick and locks himself in his place for like three weeks and doesn't shower and only eats pizza off cold greasy flat cardboard boxends. Maybe it was all that snow? The lack of light? I dont know. My wings got singed. For suuuure.
Ahh, to soulspeak and the writing nuts. Ah to the crazy mad tribe. Ahh, to the circles, to a new ethics of fearlessness...? As it goes...and here we go...
Go Here
August 7, 2010
Island culture & the tribe of cool
Patrick my cousin was laughing this morning at breakfast. He's still a little drunk I think, and so it's that glowy slap happiness that is funniest of all.
When he laughs his voice distinctly reminds me of a ladder, this ascending quality that in my cousin Ryan sounds like ringing bells.
You know what Chris told me? Patrick laughs out, stepping up with each word and giggle breath.
Chris is Jackie's soon to be husband in the Carharts and rubber boots with the thick sandwich of New England mouthed around every word he says.
What?
That if you want to find someone here on the island the best thing to do is to just go sit in there house and wait for them to show up. Resounding steps of chortle and coffee gulps after this. It is true tho, Pat and Chris are right, and the B&B owner comes in and tells a story of coming home from errands this week to find the friend of her teenage son lounging around on the third floor of the house, waiting for her son to return. I didn't know this was island culture, she adds, til I got a teenage son.
Not being connected--no cell service and many without even a phone as over 70% of the residents here are just summer folk--is so, so nice. You forget what it means, how easy it is, to just be out and about. To not wait for life to happen, but to make for it yourself...
It reminds me of 1995, living at the beach, pre-cell phone and none of us had landlines. You went on a whim, and let shit happen. In The New York Years diPrima writes wistfully about this, about the tribe of cool to whom I've always sought after, the existence of which predates written history and is, indeed, the reason for expansion, poetry, artistry and all forms of adrenaline~those on the subversive edge of things~how in Manhattan in the 40's this tribe was so in tune with one another and the undercurrent of pure Life imbibing them each that they actually called it swinging, how they lived. Swinging meant get your work done: the clean white line of purity which so tapped in to this force, then allow for, submit to the natural movement of the day. Regular encounters with one another were natural and occurred by virtue of this discipline: wrestling the creative spirit to its hard line, then releasing its energy to throttle the crew back together somewhere on the lower streets say of the Bowery and beyond.
As if something magic, something big, something at times so shadowed and at others glowing in illustriousness so much so the whiteness may burn you apart, was webbing us all together no matter what. Wrestled in to its course, or hugely enormous and pushing us along...
What McClure meant by Writ in Eternity~and what I find most sacred among us mad genius'~the fine alchemy of grabbing for that eternity in a harnessed moment of transcendence and union, in which we get to write, at odds til it blends perfect in to the the mystery, fine, alluring, terrifying, of being written equally by the reverb of our own personal movement of the quill.... The conflicting dual, within the mass whole.
Island culture, no doubt, has been very very good for me....
When he laughs his voice distinctly reminds me of a ladder, this ascending quality that in my cousin Ryan sounds like ringing bells.
You know what Chris told me? Patrick laughs out, stepping up with each word and giggle breath.
Chris is Jackie's soon to be husband in the Carharts and rubber boots with the thick sandwich of New England mouthed around every word he says.
What?
That if you want to find someone here on the island the best thing to do is to just go sit in there house and wait for them to show up. Resounding steps of chortle and coffee gulps after this. It is true tho, Pat and Chris are right, and the B&B owner comes in and tells a story of coming home from errands this week to find the friend of her teenage son lounging around on the third floor of the house, waiting for her son to return. I didn't know this was island culture, she adds, til I got a teenage son.
Not being connected--no cell service and many without even a phone as over 70% of the residents here are just summer folk--is so, so nice. You forget what it means, how easy it is, to just be out and about. To not wait for life to happen, but to make for it yourself...
It reminds me of 1995, living at the beach, pre-cell phone and none of us had landlines. You went on a whim, and let shit happen. In The New York Years diPrima writes wistfully about this, about the tribe of cool to whom I've always sought after, the existence of which predates written history and is, indeed, the reason for expansion, poetry, artistry and all forms of adrenaline~those on the subversive edge of things~how in Manhattan in the 40's this tribe was so in tune with one another and the undercurrent of pure Life imbibing them each that they actually called it swinging, how they lived. Swinging meant get your work done: the clean white line of purity which so tapped in to this force, then allow for, submit to the natural movement of the day. Regular encounters with one another were natural and occurred by virtue of this discipline: wrestling the creative spirit to its hard line, then releasing its energy to throttle the crew back together somewhere on the lower streets say of the Bowery and beyond.
As if something magic, something big, something at times so shadowed and at others glowing in illustriousness so much so the whiteness may burn you apart, was webbing us all together no matter what. Wrestled in to its course, or hugely enormous and pushing us along...
What McClure meant by Writ in Eternity~and what I find most sacred among us mad genius'~the fine alchemy of grabbing for that eternity in a harnessed moment of transcendence and union, in which we get to write, at odds til it blends perfect in to the the mystery, fine, alluring, terrifying, of being written equally by the reverb of our own personal movement of the quill.... The conflicting dual, within the mass whole.
Island culture, no doubt, has been very very good for me....
January 31, 2010
Poetics and the political, Charlie Mars & learning as I go
We sit on different sides of the same table him and me and I forget it's because he writes fiction and I'm a poet but no that's not true, either--it's not that I forgot it's more that I never thought about it in those terms.
It is snowing, hard, when we walk down Goldsborough on our way to see Charlie Mars. He points this out, that he is not a poet and has never written poetry. There are still a few cars on the road downtown but for the most part the air is filled with wet white specs and everything is grey. The Coffee Cat, when we enter, is warm and my glasses mist over immediately with steam. They already had snow drops all over them.
Earlier, when he first got to my place, I was still in my frump clothes and only had time to brush baby powder through my hair and put on some musky oil. While he waited I showed him Carrot's Zine and so of course we immediately started talking Craft.
It's funny how he pisses me off--I defend stream of consciousness and first thought even as I'm thinking about me editing editing editing. Prose and poetry. The intersection between first thought, the consciousness it draws forth from there, and the sensibility to edit but still keep the Beautiful Vision in tact. I think about being pissed and realize there must be something new in this conversation for me to gain.
I think about other men who've pissed me off.
Charlie Mars is good. Really good. I fall in love a little. With him, his movement, his stories, his clear, kaleidoscope voice. I am glad he's not with his band. The poetry moves in me after a while, I want to call out and make him stop and make the snow outside stop coming down and make my skin stop tingling the way it does when the acid first kicks in. Remember that? A body trip we used to call it...but no, this is not acid it is the Duende, the Descention. When the song first hits and starts to ring through me. It makes me, sitting there, feel crazy a little like how it used to when I didn't know what it was.
It would be fun to hang out with Charlie Mars. I think he would be good at making out. Which is or isn't the same as hanging out. Depends on who you're with...Also, his songs are full with stories, like my Memoir, so by the time it is over all I want to do is write. Write until the snow goes away, write until it is night, and then the night is day.
Later, after Charlie Mars and after walking to the grocery store in the snow and no cars on the streets at all, he is sweet and makes a list of things he does when editing. An actual list. I smile a little and there's that inner eye-roll. Teacher Tom. I keep reminding myself to be open, to learn. To be teachable. We are both Aries only three days apart so that's a lot of fire.
Then today we are back at it again, He is very plan plan plan work work work and now I am decisive in putting my finger on his position and refuting it. I've got diPrima out, we've been reading poems to each other. Dinners and Nightmares. I point out who she was, who she is, I identify her myth. Nightmares: Her regular run-ins with violence in the name of authority and institution. I am redblooded and hot faced in defense of her alchemical free verse, impassioned, breathless about women in the fifties being locked in sanitariums and asylums if, for example, they didn't want to marry. Of course it's important to know the Cannon I am saying, I'm not refuting that at all, you need to know the rules in order so that your voice might break them as dictated and become strong and true on your own....
I open Pieces of a Song and run my finger over the bent pages. My eye stops on Poetics which I dont ever remember reading but I know this will be the one. I go there: If the New York School and the establishment were symbolic of the Patriarch then her voice, her Voice, was anti this. She was a scholar. She channeled Blake and Keats. She knew what she was doing. O'Hara and Ginsberg claimed the same things. But can you find a book of hers at Borders? Not often, most times no, no you can not.
I am defending my self. I know this. The white sun is reflecting the snow and my little living room is full of light. I plant my eyes on his, gain silence, and smile. Then read
Poetics (Diane diPrima)
I have deserted my post, I cldnt hold it
rearguard/to preserve the language/lucidity:
let the language fend for itself.
it turned over god knows enough carts in the city streets
its barricades are my nightmares
preserve the language!--there are
enough fascists &
enough socialists
on both sides
so that no one will lose this war
the language shall be my element, I plunge in
I suspect that I cannot drown
like a fat brat catfish, smug
a hoodlum fish
I move more & more gracefully
breathe it in,
success written on my mug till the fishpolice
corner me in the coral & I die
He leaves soon after, I walk him out and breathe deep the fresh air so sparkly it makes me feel like I have lung fulls of clean sharp sun. I go back inside and use all his suggestions, index cards, color-coding, all of it. All afternoon I work and come away with an organization plan for my memoir broken down by year: 1994 all the way through til now.
I am happy, satiated. I am passionate, yes. And learning to be wrong.
Or at least, still learning to learn.
It is snowing, hard, when we walk down Goldsborough on our way to see Charlie Mars. He points this out, that he is not a poet and has never written poetry. There are still a few cars on the road downtown but for the most part the air is filled with wet white specs and everything is grey. The Coffee Cat, when we enter, is warm and my glasses mist over immediately with steam. They already had snow drops all over them.
Earlier, when he first got to my place, I was still in my frump clothes and only had time to brush baby powder through my hair and put on some musky oil. While he waited I showed him Carrot's Zine and so of course we immediately started talking Craft.
It's funny how he pisses me off--I defend stream of consciousness and first thought even as I'm thinking about me editing editing editing. Prose and poetry. The intersection between first thought, the consciousness it draws forth from there, and the sensibility to edit but still keep the Beautiful Vision in tact. I think about being pissed and realize there must be something new in this conversation for me to gain.
I think about other men who've pissed me off.
Charlie Mars is good. Really good. I fall in love a little. With him, his movement, his stories, his clear, kaleidoscope voice. I am glad he's not with his band. The poetry moves in me after a while, I want to call out and make him stop and make the snow outside stop coming down and make my skin stop tingling the way it does when the acid first kicks in. Remember that? A body trip we used to call it...but no, this is not acid it is the Duende, the Descention. When the song first hits and starts to ring through me. It makes me, sitting there, feel crazy a little like how it used to when I didn't know what it was.
It would be fun to hang out with Charlie Mars. I think he would be good at making out. Which is or isn't the same as hanging out. Depends on who you're with...Also, his songs are full with stories, like my Memoir, so by the time it is over all I want to do is write. Write until the snow goes away, write until it is night, and then the night is day.
Later, after Charlie Mars and after walking to the grocery store in the snow and no cars on the streets at all, he is sweet and makes a list of things he does when editing. An actual list. I smile a little and there's that inner eye-roll. Teacher Tom. I keep reminding myself to be open, to learn. To be teachable. We are both Aries only three days apart so that's a lot of fire.
Then today we are back at it again, He is very plan plan plan work work work and now I am decisive in putting my finger on his position and refuting it. I've got diPrima out, we've been reading poems to each other. Dinners and Nightmares. I point out who she was, who she is, I identify her myth. Nightmares: Her regular run-ins with violence in the name of authority and institution. I am redblooded and hot faced in defense of her alchemical free verse, impassioned, breathless about women in the fifties being locked in sanitariums and asylums if, for example, they didn't want to marry. Of course it's important to know the Cannon I am saying, I'm not refuting that at all, you need to know the rules in order so that your voice might break them as dictated and become strong and true on your own....
I open Pieces of a Song and run my finger over the bent pages. My eye stops on Poetics which I dont ever remember reading but I know this will be the one. I go there: If the New York School and the establishment were symbolic of the Patriarch then her voice, her Voice, was anti this. She was a scholar. She channeled Blake and Keats. She knew what she was doing. O'Hara and Ginsberg claimed the same things. But can you find a book of hers at Borders? Not often, most times no, no you can not.
I am defending my self. I know this. The white sun is reflecting the snow and my little living room is full of light. I plant my eyes on his, gain silence, and smile. Then read
Poetics (Diane diPrima)
I have deserted my post, I cldnt hold it
rearguard/to preserve the language/lucidity:
let the language fend for itself.
it turned over god knows enough carts in the city streets
its barricades are my nightmares
preserve the language!--there are
enough fascists &
enough socialists
on both sides
so that no one will lose this war
the language shall be my element, I plunge in
I suspect that I cannot drown
like a fat brat catfish, smug
a hoodlum fish
I move more & more gracefully
breathe it in,
success written on my mug till the fishpolice
corner me in the coral & I die
He leaves soon after, I walk him out and breathe deep the fresh air so sparkly it makes me feel like I have lung fulls of clean sharp sun. I go back inside and use all his suggestions, index cards, color-coding, all of it. All afternoon I work and come away with an organization plan for my memoir broken down by year: 1994 all the way through til now.
I am happy, satiated. I am passionate, yes. And learning to be wrong.
Or at least, still learning to learn.
December 11, 2009
Poetry vs poetry and First thought, best thought
Ever since the little river started or since I surrendered anyhow and agreed to jump in I haven't been sleeping well. As alluded to before, that can trip me out cuz for someone such as me who has psycho-mania in her catalogue not sleeping can be a dangerous thing. But it's not, not now, and that is the cool thing--I am awake at 4, or 2, or not sleeping at all--or only for two hours or so this week when I get home from what all week were 12 hour days and I'm like whatever, I'm going with it. It's like Bobby Ray the shaman said once years ago, it's only your fear that will keep you sick...
Anyhow since for me writing is Queen and blogging has become part of my practice, part of the discipline of my smithing away at this craft--in very much the first thought best thought style or what I've taken to calling spontaneous download--I thought I better jump on here and give some time to my practice. And then there's the act of writing poetry, different as I explained to a new writer friend just yesterday or no that was two days ago by now, than Poetry capital P which to me is an ethic, a tribe, or value--a state of not just being touched by the madness but alluring and living in it all the same: the saying of the Holy Amen. But as a wordsmith, as a practitioner of art actually writing poetry is different than say the practice of just first thought best thought, and also different than memoir writing. It includes it, but becomes too a strange cohesion of like, sitting in my boat on the river but keeping too a mild hand at all times on the oar. But not using it for paddling, more as like a rutter, that with the slightest touch does indeed effect the trajectory of surface gliding, but only in as much as a pebble might effect a ripple, and the water and the boat--the whole experience of the trip ultimately is of the same...
I wrote poems yesterday so that is why I am thinking so to speak aloud. No, that was two days ago--in the morning, five good poems that remind me a lot of that November in 03 when I was in my little room off my studio apartment on Mt.Royal. The poems and momentum that started my litmag Cantalma and also was the beginning of Fishing Rock.
Ahhh, hello little river. You fucking ho! Careful what you wish for sometimes? I wouldn't change it tho, wouldn't change it at all not even in exchange for the world...
Anyhow since for me writing is Queen and blogging has become part of my practice, part of the discipline of my smithing away at this craft--in very much the first thought best thought style or what I've taken to calling spontaneous download--I thought I better jump on here and give some time to my practice. And then there's the act of writing poetry, different as I explained to a new writer friend just yesterday or no that was two days ago by now, than Poetry capital P which to me is an ethic, a tribe, or value--a state of not just being touched by the madness but alluring and living in it all the same: the saying of the Holy Amen. But as a wordsmith, as a practitioner of art actually writing poetry is different than say the practice of just first thought best thought, and also different than memoir writing. It includes it, but becomes too a strange cohesion of like, sitting in my boat on the river but keeping too a mild hand at all times on the oar. But not using it for paddling, more as like a rutter, that with the slightest touch does indeed effect the trajectory of surface gliding, but only in as much as a pebble might effect a ripple, and the water and the boat--the whole experience of the trip ultimately is of the same...
I wrote poems yesterday so that is why I am thinking so to speak aloud. No, that was two days ago--in the morning, five good poems that remind me a lot of that November in 03 when I was in my little room off my studio apartment on Mt.Royal. The poems and momentum that started my litmag Cantalma and also was the beginning of Fishing Rock.
Ahhh, hello little river. You fucking ho! Careful what you wish for sometimes? I wouldn't change it tho, wouldn't change it at all not even in exchange for the world...
December 7, 2009
Shampoo My Planet & call me X
You know, it's late and I put in over 10 hours today and have to be back it at 8 tmrw. But I've been up blog rolling and living in the cyber dream of future days when I have my little shack & it's all tribe and art and self-education and off the books schooling of new generations of tribe and calling and new fearless ethics and Poetry as Real Work and so on and yea, it's late, and this little river, and, well you know...I could go on and on.
Anyway. Serendipity!? I got in to all this meat on Friday in my memoir, wrote for 5 and a half hours at the Panera, then took a break for dinner and convo for about an hour and a half, then got back to it, writing til well past midnite. I was writing a lot about the 90's, riot grl, coming up, tribes, death, the duende, imagnation and it's doomed demise.
Read this post! Yes! Not so much for the Pumpkins myself, but damned if Friday I didn't spend an hour in urging longing wistfullness over the first Lolla, & Janes Addiction, 1991....
Anyway. Serendipity!? I got in to all this meat on Friday in my memoir, wrote for 5 and a half hours at the Panera, then took a break for dinner and convo for about an hour and a half, then got back to it, writing til well past midnite. I was writing a lot about the 90's, riot grl, coming up, tribes, death, the duende, imagnation and it's doomed demise.
Read this post! Yes! Not so much for the Pumpkins myself, but damned if Friday I didn't spend an hour in urging longing wistfullness over the first Lolla, & Janes Addiction, 1991....
November 24, 2009
Hunger & Ethics: Poetics
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...
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...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)