a love note

This is strictly an homage to A Softer World, but was fun to try. Word + photo by me, all technical skills and impetus behind my trying this, compliments of the inimitable Dave Wood.

not a pretty bird

She was not a nightingale
as the Greek said.
Philomela was a woman.
The sister of the new wife.
Raped, tongue cut out by the husband.
Locked away.
Not a swallow, not the bird of morning
and late evenings that end so swiftly.
Not a myth. She was a girl.
That is the story: the empty mouth,
the bloody breasts. The outrage.
Not the transformation.

~Linda Gregg, from Things and Flesh

mos-smith?

I am newly in love with Reed Wallsmith. And Chris Mosley. And the way Reed's saxophone plays against Mosley's butterfly-like hands across his guitar. So much tension and control. Like flying. Like poetry.

traveling spirit

I am still fresh from the high off a weekend spent a mere three hours north imbued with the traveling spirit one usually reserves for the foreign and exotic. It was a successful experiment.

I am collecting empirical data, irrefutable proof, that we possess the ability to manifest all we desire and the key is right inside our very minds. The brain is a marvelous thing. The trouble is the brain is a powerful thing as well and we manifest all manner of things every day, much of which is neither desirable nor particularly helpful. Brain: I am waking up to you, you sly thing, and aim to work with, not against, you more often.

Aside from this incredible realization--I can change how the world interacts with me by a subtle shift in energy? yes!-- I also came away from the weekend feeling, as I often do but in a more pronounced fashion, so incredibly fortunate a girl. I have the most marvelous friends in the world. My chosen family.

Lastly, today marks the first day of the Poem-A-Day Challenge for 2009. One down, 29 more to go. I'm feeling fucking fantastic.

thyme cookies. aya!

This morning I stood on my porch watering my sad little herb garden, which has mostly recovered from all the snow and frost, wishing, perhaps a bit too desperately, for spring to arrive. This morning, coupled with the cookie craving I've been gripped by this weekend, led me to want to share something with you. Yes, YOU.

I found this recipe on a window sill left by my former neighbors/former occupants of my then new apartment. They also left me a recipe in a drawer, written on a scrap of paper scribbled with red ink. In fact, I think I'll share both.

Thyme Cookies

½ cup shortening/butter
2 t dry thyme (adjust for fresh)
¼ t salt
1 C sugar
1 ½ C flour
¼ t ground cloves
1 beaten egg
1 t baking soda
½ t ground ginger
4 T molasses

Mix in order given. Drop by teaspoonful onto greased cookie sheets. Bake 10-12 minutes at 325°F. Dough freezes well, so double the recipe and freeze some.

Now for the other recipe:

a beginning

'I'

It's the vertical plane: it connects the earth to the sky. In physical terms it represents the spine, with the anus at one end and the brain at the other. The 'I' explores this vital contradiction, our life is the conflict and resolution between these zones. One so exalted, seemingly unattainable; the other so base and basic, a world of bums, of earth, of dung and weight. The result of this conflict--that is 'I'. The world of idea, pure, and the world of pure shit.

~from Andrew Lindsay's "The Breadmaker's Carnival"

citadel of the spirit

Well, folks, here it is:



Citadel of the Spirit is a valentine for Oregon just out from Matt Love's Nestucca Spit Press in time for Oregon's sesquicentennial, which is today, Valentine's Day.

This is a literary mix tape collection of essays and excepts featuring authors such as Monica Drake, Walt Curtis, Kaia Sand, Cheryl Strayed, Gina Oschner, Michael Strelow, David Horowitz, Erin Ergenbright, Bart King, and others, including yours truly. Much better than some corporate I-love-you.

man pants

I just want to take a moment to say:
NO MORE BOYS IN MAN PANTS.

I really mean it this time. I'm swearing them off. I shall not succumb again. I repeat, no more boys in man pants for me.

love at first sight

This is just a quick note to say that I love love love my new computer! Oh, the clarity! The quiet! The ability to become portable!

resolve without resolution

Already we are midway through the month and I've not had any particular urge to write about the new year. It should be well enough established by now that I don't believe in New Year's Resolutions (TM pending).

There is only this: the sun in the sky, high above my bedroom window; a gradually diminishing set of boxes and objects for me to purge or deal with; a growing desire to write more, again, about something new, but with the clear, rested eyes I'd needed to return to the older work and whip it into the shape I'd meant it to be.

My heart is open and I'm managing to keep my head up and remembering to look around, look up, to breathe. I take my cues from the birds in the trees. I'm knitting again. I still don't know how to make hats, or gloves, or socks, but I'll get there. I'm picking up my guitar again. I'm finding my voice again. I'm making art.

I am still uncertain of many things, but grow more comfortable with the uncertainty. I am ruled more and more by simple joys and my own will and less frequently by fear. There is only this. This moment. This curiosity. This opportunity.

I laugh more often than I cry and when I cry, sometimes it is because something beautiful has welled up in me and I have no means of containing it. This is progress.

the late unburdening of 2008

Yesterday morning I felt as though a fog had lifted from my mind. The day began with hoarfrost covering the ground and ended with fire in the sky. I discovered a song within me, which, though I can't recall it this moment, I know is immanent and my voice will rise up to meet it once again. This clearing is incomplete, but progress is being made.

I have vowed to resume the work of unburdening myself of things closed up in boxes. I looked around my room, too cluttered for my taste, at the accumulation of things that possess more of me than I'd like. I began the work before my recent move and then, with three jobs keeping me distracted, I didn't continue.

Why do I still own my high school yearbooks? They mean nothing to me, but I've carried them from place to place. I have a box of ceramic supplies I haven't used in the nearly eight years I've been here. Sure, maybe one day I'll have access to a kiln again, but until then, do I really need a bag of mystery glaze? I want to get rid of it all. Rip the cds and sell the discs. Finish the assortment of art projects in various stages of completion and leave them in parks or gift them to friends. The books, I'm afraid, are as culled as they are likely to be for a while.

I have a number of cool objects, but most of them don't bring me pleasure. They accrue dust and I am weighed down by the space they occupy in my life. Already, I've disowned the majority of the dishes I had that were not made by hand by people I've known, or otherwise exceptionally visually or tactilely satisfying. I want to rip, to shred, to recycle, to gift, until I feel I can breathe again.

I know there are things I will inevitably own or acquire. I make things. Things accumulate. But I genuinely want to sip tea out of the same hand made mug every day. I want my books to have dog-eared pages and coffee stains and signs of love and wear. I want my life to be a palimpsest of my experiences, not measured by the objects I've acquired or the (lack of) security provided by my bank account. (Which is marked by a negative trust fund for the foreseeable future. Ah, higher education!)

I want to stand breath sucked away and stunned by the fire in the sky more often. I am fortunate enough to live and breathe and to have a body and a mind to take in the world in all its horror and sublime beauty. I have a mind and a language with which to remain conversant with the universe and with others. I have a lot to do before I am taken back to merge with dust and minerals and light. It's time to wake up. The fog has lifted.

a little blake...

A Memorable Fancy.

As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity. I collected some of their Proverbs: thinking that as the sayings used in a nation, mark its character, so the Proverbs of Hell, shew the nature of Infernal wisdom better than any description of buildings or garments.

When I came home; on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock, with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth.

How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?

the lady of lone fir cemetery

surely you've seen her haunting the graves and gliding through the neighborhood...?

for all the english majors...

I don't know whether I should laugh or cry over Lifestyles of the Nouveau Pauvre.

sigh.

And then I went off and got a master's in writing... poetry of all things. Is there something wrong with wanting to exist in a mytho-poetic state ALL the time?

my poor little cancerous one-eyed pirate

After treating cancerous tumor #1 and finally removing Buster's surgical neck wear, I was thinking he was on the mend. His right eye is improving, though hasn't yet healed entirely, and the gaping wounds on the left side of his neck are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing...

But this morning I found another lump on the other side of his neck and the vet hasn't returned my call. Are these lumps appearing as a result of the blood draws he's needed to make his eye serum? Is the new one a result of the shot to sedate him for treatment of the other? Are my efforts to heal my cat resulting in greater ill health?

This morning I told Buster he was being stupid. If he was planning on getting sick and dying, I said, he should have gotten well first so that he could be running around outside chasing things before he kicks it. Sitting around growing tumors is about the least fun thing a cat can do, second only to sitting around growing tumors while trapped indoors, and he should really reconsider.

He didn't want to talk about it. He turned his back to me and resumed playing with the thin stream of water in the bathroom sink.

indulgences

watching episodes of terminator: the sarah conner chronicles, mostly to see summer glau kicking post-firefly butt.

wine and cheese for dinner.

watching my roommate eat steak and cupcake for breakfast, followed by a molasses chip "for dessert" and secretly envying him.

anything one might do with a fancy cashmere blanket. fantasizing about such things and said blanket.

buying a new pair of boots I really can't afford because they were on sale and it's been raining and my cat's tumor site is sloughing off in a really unappealing fashion.

candles and bathtubs and incense. oh my!

staring at the sky until the clouds blur and dimensions cease to exist and I am almost certain I will blow away in the wind.

the poems of pablo neruda. all of them.

narcissistic blog entries even I don't feel much like reading.

mind prey

It's astounding what one's own mind can do to one's self... It knows our greatest weaknesses and thus knows where and how to strike most deeply and effectively to prey on those anxieties. The mind lies in wait for those terrible opportunities to arise.

What would our experience of the world be like if we could harness that power to our own ends? Utilize such specific strength to target our goals, rather than our fears? This, I think, is a project worth pursuing.

I am feeling better today. My mind has cleared. I've had some important communication unfold, necessary conversations exchanged. All that's left is letting go of a particular thought form to make room for a better, more productive one. Slowly, I am making progress.

two from Neruda

Tonight I Can Write

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.


A Song of Despair

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot's dread, fury of blind diver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness,
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief was my desire of you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still broke in currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one.

in which I think

I keep making posts to obscure my heart-broken rantings. I am questioning whether to delete my posts. (Perhaps this whole blog?) I'm no longer sure what purpose it is serving... Clearly, the work I need to be doing is internal now. Everything else needs to fall away.

surely

that last post will live to haunt me.