I am writing this week with loud music for part of it which I'm not used to being able to do. So far, so good. My Wednesday morning regular cancelled this morning and I had slept on the sofa because it would be easier to get up early. I like mornings that start like this, right off the couch like it's still yesterday and all I have to do is go change and fold blankets. Coffee will be ready by the time the screen is already open and gaping and that is a huge, weird turn-on. And then I am sitting and then I am finger tapping and time is disappearing behind me like road under tires. I don't get any of this. And writing feels like I am almost to my shoulders in the hot spring muscle soft waters. Every word I write I also see a dream splice, and it has been like this the last several days where I am walking in the middle of last night's dreamscape. It is funky to weave my thesis in with all this. My therapist's direction: follow the soul of the work.
What in the good love of fuck? I don't even know what that means either. I have never been so frustrated and so at peace in my life. I think of October 2011 living up north at the top of the state dirt redwood backroads and doing yoga under the green canopies. And in a forward bend and stopping on a choke feeling of glee because, ohhh my god, this space here on my back deck I could see this. Deep inside in places that always just felt like discontent, because that's yearning, I saw this land and this yoga here, that fog and that sun, the pine needle earth, these trees! Holy god. And that's what this is, yes. This little hobbit house window looking out the canyon, the heater on the floor the music and the sun deck for reading in the late sun hours. My god those moments in my past I remember now, misery so stuck inside cuz that I could see all this, too.
There's nothing worse, more whiney--than that. When?
I was writing a long spondown of poetic compulsion bc damn it there is a man on the east coast who still has me a little stunned. And what I was writing was sounding exactly like the song singing. Which I'd never heard, it was Po'girl. Mercy. I saw them in Easton at the Night Cat two different times back when there was still a scene there. I lived in the best ever apartment in Easton, with a wall length eight foot high book shelf and a bedroom I'd made my study for writing and meditation. My bed was in the living room which made it fun when guests stayed on the couch. I could sit on the roof at night there and look out over Goldsborough. And smoke cigarettes bc that's what I do.
There is the deepest hollowed out space beneath me that says only one thing, oh my god how am I 37 already? How?
It is the first time in a long time that I don't know how that's supposed to make me feel.
Showing posts with label the writing nuts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the writing nuts. Show all posts
January 14, 2015
January 9, 2015
Upon the screen.
I want to speak with authority but maybe I'm wrong--though this is my third winter being here so I ought to, if it feels right, be able to believe my ability to judge the seasons of this place & speak the earth speak like I so often do.
This said, it is like springtime here, or how we learn spring by the tide of April back east. I love it, the earth awakes, it rises my heart like a flock of doves sit beneath which maybe that's because it's true. The buoyancy, the fat bird-singing songs infused in the ascending green. I am not more than this: the live song.
It is, and I hope that readers who read me one time before for the poetry, get this--a time of waking myths. Activating our mythology is the charge of the day--and I mean this as base and re-rythmic as allowing your thoughts to settle in to your conscious choice of brand new words. New stories. I am writing, clearly, precisely, my own. By being the words. It has been so long. I think, I see my Self, honor, bare witness seem to choke just a tidbit, and say Could it really? Have been this long? And more, Is it true I actually came out here--here California--on a hunt for them? And yes, just there, the echo--yes that is true. I did.
It HAS been that long. And there the perplexity, Could it really be sure, true and simple as THIS? And that is what's most devastating to say. That when it's been since July of 2012 that you've had word activation you actually forget what it means. You forgot what it is like--no, you forget that it's possible to cowrite song. Aghast, even as I write this I stare at the screen--how is it possible to so unwittingly forget what it means to come back to my self?
I have no questions though…the years that ask, the years that answer…And so it is. All answers.(Even though questions are how they seem, you forgot this though the double vision cross-eyed grace.)
Even sure as I see it finally, visited by my hands that place it up upon the screen.
This said, it is like springtime here, or how we learn spring by the tide of April back east. I love it, the earth awakes, it rises my heart like a flock of doves sit beneath which maybe that's because it's true. The buoyancy, the fat bird-singing songs infused in the ascending green. I am not more than this: the live song.
It is, and I hope that readers who read me one time before for the poetry, get this--a time of waking myths. Activating our mythology is the charge of the day--and I mean this as base and re-rythmic as allowing your thoughts to settle in to your conscious choice of brand new words. New stories. I am writing, clearly, precisely, my own. By being the words. It has been so long. I think, I see my Self, honor, bare witness seem to choke just a tidbit, and say Could it really? Have been this long? And more, Is it true I actually came out here--here California--on a hunt for them? And yes, just there, the echo--yes that is true. I did.
It HAS been that long. And there the perplexity, Could it really be sure, true and simple as THIS? And that is what's most devastating to say. That when it's been since July of 2012 that you've had word activation you actually forget what it means. You forgot what it is like--no, you forget that it's possible to cowrite song. Aghast, even as I write this I stare at the screen--how is it possible to so unwittingly forget what it means to come back to my self?
I have no questions though…the years that ask, the years that answer…And so it is. All answers.(Even though questions are how they seem, you forgot this though the double vision cross-eyed grace.)
Even sure as I see it finally, visited by my hands that place it up upon the screen.
November 13, 2014
Love letters, from Laguna.
The coffee shop I like to go to is on PCH. When I first moved here from HB coffee shop was the very first thing I looked up. You can sit in the alley and see and speak with the sea. A corner away is the beach where at the top of the street an oak tree stands so great-big and enchanted I am certain you can get to Avalon through there. Seriously, there's even a random statue of Pan on that corner which always makes me think about the artists then hippies that mapped this town. Supposedly, Ken Kesey lived on my street decades ago when it was a commune. There is an unfinished, always under construction straw-bale sprawling mansion which is the first house on the right and most times when the man is up there under the tarp with the yellow light on slapping on some earthen adobe I think of that. The free love vibes that built all the funky houses, tucked away back in the canyon where I live. The folks in and around town comfy-clothed with the little lippy smiles that embody that, still.
Sometimes people in their frenzy get under my skin which is what happened yesterday. I was in the alley fusing creative writing with thesis research and had really dropped in to the flow. This hetero couple shows up, he was loud, she louder and that's one of the first things I learned to hate about Southern California. The obnoxious warm-up suit men with too white teeth, yoga pants women with fake tits fake face or at the least fake blonde hair. These people always talk too loud and are purposefully drawing attention to themselves. Often they have a little annoying fuckn dog.
Our coffee shop almost never gets these types, who in my experience don't take the time to meander and sip and stare at the sea. Anyhow I got up from the alley as soon as they sat down and went inside to the high top in the window. It had just cleared out and the man was there, beginning the afternoon ritual of roasting the beans. It's the only coffee shop I've ever been a regular at that roasts their own. The whir noise and knee-deep smell has become part of the atmosphere for me of love.
It was a little after four so the sun was muted by the horizon clouds. Hazy orange light came through the front window in a slant from the blind pulled half down. I was writing and thought I saw a guy I knew. It started me thinking about how many men I've dated since I've been here. A lot. Real, adult dating. I don't drink so not talking hook-up or first night sex followed by oh shit what next. But like, I meet men on the beach or out and about or for a while on the dating site and then the customary phone calls and get to know you dates.
A face from the past was on my radar yesterday, we talked for a few minutes about how much we have in common because of our beach lifestyle. He made me think about this. Specifically: I have dated a lot of good, just not right for me men. Since right around when I moved to Laguna two years ago it started with a lifeguard in Newport and pretty much since has not stopped except for last year when I took three months off. When a funny outspoken Brazilian guy who drank too much got me playing the bullshit hang-out games I was so good at in Ocean City before I came west.
I am actually single right now, not dating anyone. Enjoying the golden silence, considering the momentum of my life. My life, built by me, measured out in breaths I take in and out and choices I've made. Clear seeing, looking out on a life made by my own two hands! I have only four months left of school, including this month. I am not ready to talk about that yet, but it is there like a new part of my breath and I am tending it everyday. As a rule, since a gnarly gnarly break-up in 2008, I keep my love life tight and quiet on the internet. We broke up the same month I got on Facebook, so it's sorta been how I reinvented. Figured out who I was, separate from a man. That's six years behind me now though--and in the orange haze light, that sun that spilled over my hands like it was meant to feed the ink from finger tap to screen, this all amounted in my head yesterday. Thinking on the men that have showed up as I've walked this whole, wild way made me pause and see this whole, wild way:
My god, I have been in Laguna over two years now. That is longer than I have ever lived anywhere, ever! Since I first left my mom's when I was 18. I have stayed in one place. I stayed! Even at Philosopher's Terrace, where I had my name on the lease from 98 to spring in 02, I still left to go live twice with mom. Alcohol and drugs. They'll do that shit to you.
I almost left, last summer. I almost fell back, like a wise woman can slide a minute
into dumb girl hang out games, to my old style of cut and run.
Last week I was picking out furniture for my sun deck, this little wooden alter built up out of the side of a Laguna Canyon wall. Underneath, my compost bin. Attached to post, my hammock swings. I just bought fins, snorkel gear, got my wetsuit out to live in my trunk for easy access. It would seem rather than making cut and run plans, my intent is to snuggle even further down and in.
What contentment, to nod at the coffee roaster, glance up from the orange-gold on my hands. It doesn't feel melodramatic anymore, like something I need to figure out. It just is, easy as how the same sun that rises will eventually go down. Love letters, from Laguna. From and to my heart, my soul. They are my own :)
Sometimes people in their frenzy get under my skin which is what happened yesterday. I was in the alley fusing creative writing with thesis research and had really dropped in to the flow. This hetero couple shows up, he was loud, she louder and that's one of the first things I learned to hate about Southern California. The obnoxious warm-up suit men with too white teeth, yoga pants women with fake tits fake face or at the least fake blonde hair. These people always talk too loud and are purposefully drawing attention to themselves. Often they have a little annoying fuckn dog.
Our coffee shop almost never gets these types, who in my experience don't take the time to meander and sip and stare at the sea. Anyhow I got up from the alley as soon as they sat down and went inside to the high top in the window. It had just cleared out and the man was there, beginning the afternoon ritual of roasting the beans. It's the only coffee shop I've ever been a regular at that roasts their own. The whir noise and knee-deep smell has become part of the atmosphere for me of love.
It was a little after four so the sun was muted by the horizon clouds. Hazy orange light came through the front window in a slant from the blind pulled half down. I was writing and thought I saw a guy I knew. It started me thinking about how many men I've dated since I've been here. A lot. Real, adult dating. I don't drink so not talking hook-up or first night sex followed by oh shit what next. But like, I meet men on the beach or out and about or for a while on the dating site and then the customary phone calls and get to know you dates.
A face from the past was on my radar yesterday, we talked for a few minutes about how much we have in common because of our beach lifestyle. He made me think about this. Specifically: I have dated a lot of good, just not right for me men. Since right around when I moved to Laguna two years ago it started with a lifeguard in Newport and pretty much since has not stopped except for last year when I took three months off. When a funny outspoken Brazilian guy who drank too much got me playing the bullshit hang-out games I was so good at in Ocean City before I came west.
I am actually single right now, not dating anyone. Enjoying the golden silence, considering the momentum of my life. My life, built by me, measured out in breaths I take in and out and choices I've made. Clear seeing, looking out on a life made by my own two hands! I have only four months left of school, including this month. I am not ready to talk about that yet, but it is there like a new part of my breath and I am tending it everyday. As a rule, since a gnarly gnarly break-up in 2008, I keep my love life tight and quiet on the internet. We broke up the same month I got on Facebook, so it's sorta been how I reinvented. Figured out who I was, separate from a man. That's six years behind me now though--and in the orange haze light, that sun that spilled over my hands like it was meant to feed the ink from finger tap to screen, this all amounted in my head yesterday. Thinking on the men that have showed up as I've walked this whole, wild way made me pause and see this whole, wild way:
My god, I have been in Laguna over two years now. That is longer than I have ever lived anywhere, ever! Since I first left my mom's when I was 18. I have stayed in one place. I stayed! Even at Philosopher's Terrace, where I had my name on the lease from 98 to spring in 02, I still left to go live twice with mom. Alcohol and drugs. They'll do that shit to you.
I almost left, last summer. I almost fell back, like a wise woman can slide a minute
Last week I was picking out furniture for my sun deck, this little wooden alter built up out of the side of a Laguna Canyon wall. Underneath, my compost bin. Attached to post, my hammock swings. I just bought fins, snorkel gear, got my wetsuit out to live in my trunk for easy access. It would seem rather than making cut and run plans, my intent is to snuggle even further down and in.
What contentment, to nod at the coffee roaster, glance up from the orange-gold on my hands. It doesn't feel melodramatic anymore, like something I need to figure out. It just is, easy as how the same sun that rises will eventually go down. Love letters, from Laguna. From and to my heart, my soul. They are my own :)
On their Facebook page! Me in the alley.
I put their sticker over the Starbucks logo on the plastic cup I reuse.
Which cracks people up. It goes everywhere I go.
January 29, 2013
I would give all my time
This dreary exhaustion is like a dream. Maybe I will open the journal I have started for my Carl Jung class as school. I will look on the pages where I track my nighttime dreams and the cycles of my month and the moon. I will see my day written out in funny scrawl. It will be illustrated here and there in colored pencils and on the side in magnetic yellow: highlights of the theme. I will think this is my day? My day to day living or this was last night's image on my mindscreen?
Maybe I will not know the difference.
This is numinousness. The seeds of the new life the momentum of their growth to come vibrating around them in a visceral humm. You can feel it but not see it yet, the pulse of energy stronger than anything yet seen. On the sundeck eating a ridiculous burrito reading about Jack Kerouac. He skipped classes in school to read forbidden plays and books bc college in NY brought him closer to such contraband. I feel better about myself. Clear my phlegmy throat pull my sunglasses down. Put off the four papers that I put off until today. Dyad in the morning go introduce yourself to the director at the site where you hope to get your supervised internship before noon. I work for myself get that in, too. Grateful that the need for money is met by something that stimulates my mind and spirit in the way Kerouac and burritos do, and the sun. Off to Starbucks to write for my submission to Erika also due. Nicci writes the girl from GRO lets start a girl's surf reskill. I would give all my time to that and the words and sacred dreams...O wait, that's just what I'm learning to do: Climb the rock stairs up to Serena's in the canyon chill and dark. Snuggle on her couch in our pj's discuss business plans. The lady in Corona about the writing critique-group emails. They are giving me the last spot, spot number 9. I'm in. It's all happening. Funny dream.
Write a blog not to procrastinate more but to download it all out. Make room by getting it all down. This time last year I slept on a couch in Sonoma. My belongings all in my car. Red woods trees in the fog dripped through offerings. I sat stunned over what next in life at Goats Rock. Never imagined the sea could pound waking out of a life partly asleep. Watched the full moon rise flat disc, white. Lived on homemade toffee, eggs and Indian food. Chopped wood and built fires in a woodstove it took an hour to light.
Go write your papers Kelly. I'm trying, I want to get it all down.
Maybe I will not know the difference.
This is numinousness. The seeds of the new life the momentum of their growth to come vibrating around them in a visceral humm. You can feel it but not see it yet, the pulse of energy stronger than anything yet seen. On the sundeck eating a ridiculous burrito reading about Jack Kerouac. He skipped classes in school to read forbidden plays and books bc college in NY brought him closer to such contraband. I feel better about myself. Clear my phlegmy throat pull my sunglasses down. Put off the four papers that I put off until today. Dyad in the morning go introduce yourself to the director at the site where you hope to get your supervised internship before noon. I work for myself get that in, too. Grateful that the need for money is met by something that stimulates my mind and spirit in the way Kerouac and burritos do, and the sun. Off to Starbucks to write for my submission to Erika also due. Nicci writes the girl from GRO lets start a girl's surf reskill. I would give all my time to that and the words and sacred dreams...O wait, that's just what I'm learning to do: Climb the rock stairs up to Serena's in the canyon chill and dark. Snuggle on her couch in our pj's discuss business plans. The lady in Corona about the writing critique-group emails. They are giving me the last spot, spot number 9. I'm in. It's all happening. Funny dream.
Write a blog not to procrastinate more but to download it all out. Make room by getting it all down. This time last year I slept on a couch in Sonoma. My belongings all in my car. Red woods trees in the fog dripped through offerings. I sat stunned over what next in life at Goats Rock. Never imagined the sea could pound waking out of a life partly asleep. Watched the full moon rise flat disc, white. Lived on homemade toffee, eggs and Indian food. Chopped wood and built fires in a woodstove it took an hour to light.
Go write your papers Kelly. I'm trying, I want to get it all down.
July 7, 2011
Note to self, reminder. Today's the day.
There will be a story you want to tell for no better reason than because it matters to you more than any other. You'll stop looking over your shoulder to make sure you're keeping everyone happy, and you'll simply write what's real and true...one day a long time from now you'll cease to care anymore whom you please or what anybody has to say to about you. That's when you'll finally produce the work you're capable of.
J.D. Salinger
In my dream I was too long in the ocean~heaven-sent blanket soft silken luxuriant thread on threads of blue. There was a box it was metal I was on top and had to get through, not made of wood tho it was the kind with umbrellas inside and also, evidently, Narnia out the other end.
Ed was there, so endlessly thankful for him.
I dont like boxes, never have. Dont like ever to have to figure out how to fit it all so cleanly in. Lovely, love this life, how focus actually is not about boxes, is circular, circles like water can pile all the beautiful while in on themself, circular is the process and the informing of the process all at once, arises it is organic is ever vitaliz-ing is like the difference between floating and having to swim. Also I dont like fear. That doesn't mean it doesn't come. I get it I'm afraid I'll miss my shot I get it I hear you crying sacred Call. Opportunity isn't about luck at all but showing up on time. That's not a box silly~umbrellas make sense with all that water, and also opened wide they can catch the wind.
I almost fell asleep out there, it's true!! But I have the tools I have the tools. Most important among them. The truth, and discretion. Self-discretion enough to no longer care.
J.D. Salinger
In my dream I was too long in the ocean~heaven-sent blanket soft silken luxuriant thread on threads of blue. There was a box it was metal I was on top and had to get through, not made of wood tho it was the kind with umbrellas inside and also, evidently, Narnia out the other end.
Ed was there, so endlessly thankful for him.
I dont like boxes, never have. Dont like ever to have to figure out how to fit it all so cleanly in. Lovely, love this life, how focus actually is not about boxes, is circular, circles like water can pile all the beautiful while in on themself, circular is the process and the informing of the process all at once, arises it is organic is ever vitaliz-ing is like the difference between floating and having to swim. Also I dont like fear. That doesn't mean it doesn't come. I get it I'm afraid I'll miss my shot I get it I hear you crying sacred Call. Opportunity isn't about luck at all but showing up on time. That's not a box silly~umbrellas make sense with all that water, and also opened wide they can catch the wind.
I almost fell asleep out there, it's true!! But I have the tools I have the tools. Most important among them. The truth, and discretion. Self-discretion enough to no longer care.
April 7, 2011
38.
What should I write about Nancy I ask her, it is a little past seven at the Java shop at the beach it is just her and I, the early morning calm the jazz music her chicken salad my coffee her capasheeeeno. Awww mylormybakhurss she says in her accent that I adore. Write I am a sweeet woomun...she says. This is what I always write about I think, myself, me me me my feelings my complaints my outlooks my own amping of my self into the day, into life my life my means of downloading my funny frenzy of delightful and nutty brain. Web-log, origin of the invisible hand voyeur, sacred blog. Aww my lord, her back hurts, her kid kicked it all night long and her man took up most the bed meant otherwise for the three of them. Soon she will leave to take her kid Picapoca Little Spicy to daycare and it will be just me. Just me, the outside hush of water and expanse of grey blue sky that says in the words that are not words Be quiet, I will tell you of the sea.
Officially, I am counting days. One month exactly from today is my dinner with my cousins followed by a last night out in Baltimore with friends from home. 37 days from today is the Fleet Foxes show at Constitution Hall in DC with the tickets that cost so much I could fuel my car three times get to Memphis and past there and that's even with inflated gas prices or maybe live for a full month in campgrounds and National Forests across the States. I think I will skip that show which sucks. 38 days from now I leave, to be a bohemian, to be me, to be wild woman, to be freeee.
How much is that the woman says, then again before I can even respond howmuchdoIoweyou? I haven't even stuck her bagel in the toaster much less gotten close to the register. Perhaps she thinks that my glasses equate a calculator in my head and the knife that I cut the bagel with the buttons to do the equations. What I want to answer: I CAN NOT WAIT TO NOT EVER HAVE TO DEAL AGAIN WITH PUSHY RUDE PEOPLE LIKE YOU.
I break to take the muffins and cookies out of the oven. Coffee is too acidy for me this morning all that meat at the cookout over the weekend in my muscles foamy protein, I switch to Americano. The cookies, a peanut butter one, falls apart on the tray so now it is me, my americano jazz music the big sky and a cookie. And the keys of my computer and its wide-eye fairytale screen. Nancy's gone, big sky and the air song unsung of the hollering insistent sea.
She was not insistent yesterday she was mostly giggling. The ocean I mean. I needed a day off, a nothing day, yesterday was it. I took my books and blankets to the ocean. I traded the day, a day off with nothing, sacrificed writing for the quiet time and rejuvenation: And This is it, Life gives to you when you give to it and don't make habit so much out of lying about what you really need. Don't martyr yourself the thoughts of your own needs aren't selfish they're really the only true truth you'll ever know. Everything else is extension of yourself lying, or begging you to please be honest: reflection. I needed a break yesterday I took it like I would a cup of coffee or used to a cigarette, drinking in and reflective with the sea. The wind blew, it always does in the spring. It blew sand in my ear I laughed and let it sweep in. Today I come to work and here it is, just me no one else this morning now that PicaPoca's on her way to school: me, and the time to write. Me and the blank screen. Life took care of me usually when I stop whining and surrender it does, it usually does.
Later, now that it is later, the guys came in the head of Public Works and the one who is in charge of all the renovations around here, the actual follow through the design and getting it down. Thank god for them they keep me sane, it's almost over this phase. 38 days.
Officially, I am counting days. One month exactly from today is my dinner with my cousins followed by a last night out in Baltimore with friends from home. 37 days from today is the Fleet Foxes show at Constitution Hall in DC with the tickets that cost so much I could fuel my car three times get to Memphis and past there and that's even with inflated gas prices or maybe live for a full month in campgrounds and National Forests across the States. I think I will skip that show which sucks. 38 days from now I leave, to be a bohemian, to be me, to be wild woman, to be freeee.
How much is that the woman says, then again before I can even respond howmuchdoIoweyou? I haven't even stuck her bagel in the toaster much less gotten close to the register. Perhaps she thinks that my glasses equate a calculator in my head and the knife that I cut the bagel with the buttons to do the equations. What I want to answer: I CAN NOT WAIT TO NOT EVER HAVE TO DEAL AGAIN WITH PUSHY RUDE PEOPLE LIKE YOU.
I break to take the muffins and cookies out of the oven. Coffee is too acidy for me this morning all that meat at the cookout over the weekend in my muscles foamy protein, I switch to Americano. The cookies, a peanut butter one, falls apart on the tray so now it is me, my americano jazz music the big sky and a cookie. And the keys of my computer and its wide-eye fairytale screen. Nancy's gone, big sky and the air song unsung of the hollering insistent sea.
She was not insistent yesterday she was mostly giggling. The ocean I mean. I needed a day off, a nothing day, yesterday was it. I took my books and blankets to the ocean. I traded the day, a day off with nothing, sacrificed writing for the quiet time and rejuvenation: And This is it, Life gives to you when you give to it and don't make habit so much out of lying about what you really need. Don't martyr yourself the thoughts of your own needs aren't selfish they're really the only true truth you'll ever know. Everything else is extension of yourself lying, or begging you to please be honest: reflection. I needed a break yesterday I took it like I would a cup of coffee or used to a cigarette, drinking in and reflective with the sea. The wind blew, it always does in the spring. It blew sand in my ear I laughed and let it sweep in. Today I come to work and here it is, just me no one else this morning now that PicaPoca's on her way to school: me, and the time to write. Me and the blank screen. Life took care of me usually when I stop whining and surrender it does, it usually does.
Later, now that it is later, the guys came in the head of Public Works and the one who is in charge of all the renovations around here, the actual follow through the design and getting it down. Thank god for them they keep me sane, it's almost over this phase. 38 days.
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
July 31, 2010
the impulse, itself
dear kel,
you can do this.
said eddie when he picked up on the road.
said joni when she handed you stevie instead.
said grace, and lc, when they said the same on fb.
said you to erika, when you gave her permission
to hold your letters.
said grammy that one night on mt. vernon
& grandma later that cycle in arizona.
and for christ's sake, said uncle tim last week--
said uncle fricken tim.
you can do this,
you are meant to
& this is love, from me to you.
love,
gypsy goddess. gypsy goddess you know so well.
Fleetwood Mac - Stevie Nicks - Gypsy
Uploaded by newcanadian. - Watch more music videos, in HD!
you can do this.
said eddie when he picked up on the road.
said joni when she handed you stevie instead.
said grace, and lc, when they said the same on fb.
said you to erika, when you gave her permission
to hold your letters.
said grammy that one night on mt. vernon
& grandma later that cycle in arizona.
and for christ's sake, said uncle tim last week--
said uncle fricken tim.
you can do this,
you are meant to
& this is love, from me to you.
love,
gypsy goddess. gypsy goddess you know so well.
Fleetwood Mac - Stevie Nicks - Gypsy
Uploaded by newcanadian. - Watch more music videos, in HD!
February 5, 2010
Continued Comments, on What Makes a Poet Last
This is copied and pasted from a breif convo via comments over at Stoning the Devil.
Kelly said...
alright. the more i think about specifically what you were getting at here(in that i applied my own more loose context of doubling, as in having layered meaning rather than a secondary character-as-theme) and particular to the idea of impoverished contemporary poetry, and in thinking about my responses to the five questions of the most recent post: what consitutes good poetry?
1:28 PM
P.F.S. Post said...
Good question. There is no definitive answer.
How about answering the question with another question: why have the Romantic "Big Six" lasted?
What traces are in their poems that cannot be effaced?
Adam Fieled
And here is my response, since I felt a little indulgent leaving all this on his blog:
you poor stranger apologies in advance i process and better understand my own thinking/opinions/thoughts by writing, so do pardon this long long rambling response.
isn’t that just it? they were the voice of the undercurrent of their time. in other words not necessarily anti-industry but pro-nature. what the common folk were still about. wordsworth was a pagan for christ’s sake. lyricism was valued not necessarily bc of the eloquence of the soft language but bc it was pro-romance (romance defined here as a style, thus romance the vehicle, used symbolically: style that is anti "mechanics", words on a page symbolic in form of being different then all that is devout/stringent and therefore leading to mechanism/industry.) which makes them no different then the ex-pats in paris that spoke words of the undercurrent after the war, hem and his posse. later allen g and the boys will be huge, too, and lasting. five years ago who the frick was o’hara? but here come more and more of allen g’s stuff to the modern stream and brighter and brighter his posthumous light, longer and longer the shadow of he, and his pals, allure. for real, the ones that stick around are the ones who voice the words of the ppl in the streets. but more importantly they’re the ones with background enough (i’m talking education here, higher-ed, which makes this not a complete convo without talk then of money/classism) to have the connects to get in to the mainstream where the establishment can pick them up and apply aristocratic virtue to them. (here's where i go off on the absent voice of ethnicity in the revered language of contemporary art. the xenophobia and misogyny inherent in this remains then our final frontier--which leads somewhat in to some of my thoughts on your 5 questions…) yea the recession will breed innovation as it always does. but, deconstructionalist as i am, it will be modernism that will deliver us: the internet. where finally the Voice, the voice of all ppl, not just by and large the lasting voice of academic whites (like you and I---eeeeek forgive me, there I said it!!) will have equal-opportunity to level the playing field.
Thanks Adam for allowing that splurge...
Kelly said...
alright. the more i think about specifically what you were getting at here(in that i applied my own more loose context of doubling, as in having layered meaning rather than a secondary character-as-theme) and particular to the idea of impoverished contemporary poetry, and in thinking about my responses to the five questions of the most recent post: what consitutes good poetry?
1:28 PM
P.F.S. Post said...
Good question. There is no definitive answer.
How about answering the question with another question: why have the Romantic "Big Six" lasted?
What traces are in their poems that cannot be effaced?
Adam Fieled
And here is my response, since I felt a little indulgent leaving all this on his blog:
you poor stranger apologies in advance i process and better understand my own thinking/opinions/thoughts by writing, so do pardon this long long rambling response.
isn’t that just it? they were the voice of the undercurrent of their time. in other words not necessarily anti-industry but pro-nature. what the common folk were still about. wordsworth was a pagan for christ’s sake. lyricism was valued not necessarily bc of the eloquence of the soft language but bc it was pro-romance (romance defined here as a style, thus romance the vehicle, used symbolically: style that is anti "mechanics", words on a page symbolic in form of being different then all that is devout/stringent and therefore leading to mechanism/industry.) which makes them no different then the ex-pats in paris that spoke words of the undercurrent after the war, hem and his posse. later allen g and the boys will be huge, too, and lasting. five years ago who the frick was o’hara? but here come more and more of allen g’s stuff to the modern stream and brighter and brighter his posthumous light, longer and longer the shadow of he, and his pals, allure. for real, the ones that stick around are the ones who voice the words of the ppl in the streets. but more importantly they’re the ones with background enough (i’m talking education here, higher-ed, which makes this not a complete convo without talk then of money/classism) to have the connects to get in to the mainstream where the establishment can pick them up and apply aristocratic virtue to them. (here's where i go off on the absent voice of ethnicity in the revered language of contemporary art. the xenophobia and misogyny inherent in this remains then our final frontier--which leads somewhat in to some of my thoughts on your 5 questions…) yea the recession will breed innovation as it always does. but, deconstructionalist as i am, it will be modernism that will deliver us: the internet. where finally the Voice, the voice of all ppl, not just by and large the lasting voice of academic whites (like you and I---eeeeek forgive me, there I said it!!) will have equal-opportunity to level the playing field.
Thanks Adam for allowing that splurge...
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