raw

I thought, perhaps my heart is so huge it has taken me nearly 37 years to notice I don't know my way around it... well, I am plunged into it now. There are no words to describe this rawness, this wounded bird. All my thoughts turn to ofic oqiruoylf qocinfdfn ;owcemr'utiqut when I try to articulate anything past this guttural howl.

petty griping

I'm in love and I'm scared. To say I have trust issues is an understatement, but then, surprisingly I manage to be rather trusting most of the time. My worst defense (offense?), it seems, is to pull away and become distant. That, or I push those I want closest to me further and further out of reach. This compulsion is maddening.

My sense is that I can let go of that fear, that need for distance, if I can relax, which is made easier if my beloved assists me in that regard, but that seems like a recipe for failure (not because he can't or won't or hasn't, but because it calls on the external to accomplish work I need to do internally). The trouble, of course, is that I am profoundly sad and often hurting most of the time, which means I find it very difficult to truly relax.

I know how to lounge comfortably, or blow off some steam, but relaxation-- truly letting go and dissolving all my tensions --feels damn near impossible. And because of this I am afraid I am driving away the man I love. I see it happening and yet I don't really know how to stop it.

we did it again.

My sister and I, once again, decided to do the open mic thing this past Monday at Three Friends. My lovely friend Matt Love was one of the featured readers for the Caffeinated Art Series. You can listen to me and Kiana here. I come in at 11:49 and Kiana comes in at 15:38. I love us! Hope you enjoy something of it too.

ch-ch-changes

I have been moving through the world in a bizarre state of sweet sadness lately. I don't know if it is the changing of the seasons that is getting to me, or the fact that, once again, I've had to accept that love and awesomeness aren't always enough, or if it's just another mood cycle for me. Whatever it is, it has been affecting me deeply. I am ready for this term to be over, to be done with grading papers and evaluating students. I am ready for the world to burst into blossom, to feel the sun on my back, to have more time to write...

I have been thinking a lot about a new friend. Well, a friend I made and then pretty much lost almost immediately. His name is Chris, a.k.a Cat, and he is a member of the USMC. I will admit that I didn't know much about what it is to be a Marine when I met him, but my conversation with him made me realize how, despite having strong opinions about war and government, I had managed to grow up woefully ignorant of how the military functions and what life must be like for those who see combat. Meeting Chris made me radically rethink a lot of things. I've been watching documentaries and other films, I've been reading various news reports, and researching USMC training. I have been thinking a lot about how smart and funny and sweet Chris is and feeling rather stupid about how irrationally heartbroken I've been to think of him being shipped off to Afghanistan and what he will likely encounter there. I've been thinking of how little the media shares of what these men are doing there (laying roads and building the necessary infrastructure, in addition to taking out military targets, like high ranking members of the Taliban) and how little we hear of just how horrifying Al Qaeda and the Taliban really are... it's not just sensationalism. There are some messed up things going on over there and reading about it makes me grateful to have been born a western woman in the era I was born.

I can only imagine the sorts of things he is likely to face, the things he has already seen and survived. I had no special fondness for men in uniform; I have not developed any sort of military fetish. I had the good fortune to meet one amazing human being and to get to talk with him, to learn something about him, and to have my eyes opened to things I had not looked at directly before. I gave him my address, if he wanted to exchange letters while he was gone, but in the end he made it clear he was not comfortable investing in a new friendship when he would be leaving so soon.I think I understand this now, though I didn't at first. Who am I to him? Apart from family, it seems there are few who would really be willing to support a soldier deployed overseas and who, sadly, may not return. Why would he believe a new friend be willing to endure the emotional strain or loss, or maybe more to the point, why would he believe that such a new friend would actually be invested enough in that friendship to care at all?

I have had only one friend ever who I corresponded with while he was in the military. I went to high school with him and we'd been close friends before he joined the Navy. We exchanged letters while he was at sea. He is now married with children and we are not close now, but I remember that friendship fondly and I remember how important those letters were at the time. Chris and I didn't have time to develop a proper friendship, and yet he's already had a big influence on my life. Perhaps the fact that I am at a crossroads in my life made the conversation I had with him more significant than it might have been, but I like to think that we connected in a genuinely human way, and I hope that he is not anxious about leaving and that he is safe while he is there. I hope the Pashto he has learned will spare him from having to ever fire his weapon and that he will eventually return home and will be able to live his life in whatever fashion he chooses. Again, I feel stupid for being so sentimental, so moved by such a brief exchange with someone I hardly even got to know. I'm almost certain I'll never hear from him again, and just as certain I won't ever forget him. Weird.

I guess knowing he is leaving (maybe even this week?) has brought him to the forefront of my mind again. Thinking of his circumstances sort of puts my life more in perspective. I'm listening to David Bowie's lyrics "Every time I thought I'd got it made / It seemed the taste was not so sweet / So I turned myself to face me..." and I'm thinking of what it must be like to carry your life in a bag, to know that any day might be your last, and to move through your day unencumbered by fear. I am actually fairly self aware, as much as any monkey can be anyway, but I realize that I am not always as honest with myself as I'd like to be. I sometime listen to my fears and accept less than I want or deserve. I sometimes don't reveal what is my heart, or hide behind a wall of armor for fear of what might happen if I stood as naked and vulnerable as I actually am. I am at my best when my fear is least. So, in the service of this feeling, I have taken to running, to focusing on getting stronger, to making some important changes in my life. I have renewed my desire to rid myself of all unnecessary objects and unproductive habits. I want to distill my life down to its essentials. I want clarity of purpose.

I'm not there. I am as confused as ever. I am on the precipice of letting go of a very significant relationship in my life; I honestly don't know whether to hang on or let go, or what that will look like either way. I only know that I need something to change and that I must clear out what is unnecessary in order to create the space in which I can see what I truly need and what I want my next move to be. I also know that meeting Chris has somehow set the wheels turning in my mind and I have been reevaluating what is important to me as a result. Whatever my politics are, most of the gripes in my life pale in comparison to what he is going to face, what he has already seen during his last tour. I will, thankfully, never see combat myself, nor will those I hold most dear, but I don't want my gripes to be petty.

I want to have the courage to honor my heart in all facets of my life and to commit to what my heart directs me toward, no matter the obstacles. I have always had a fierce determination to live my life with authenticity and integrity. I guess I am feeling like I must take it to the next level. I want to move forward without fear. I want to know what it is like to live my life without fear. And, as I said before, I want clarity of purpose. Winter is transitioning to spring, old ways are passing and new possibilities are unfolding. The world is awakening; its riches are stirring. I am stirring too. I am not content to be less than what I am. Big changes are afoot and I have no idea where I will land.

design or dumb luck

I recently had a student tell me that she knew she couldn't get away with bullshitting in my class. I took this as a compliment. She then wrote her final paper using the Harry Potter story as her guiding metaphor and comparing me to Albus Dumbledore. Despite what that may sound like, she was well within the parameters of the assignment and did a really great job on first draft (all I've seen so far), so I took this as an even greater compliment. Then, last night I was told by my lovely friend, who also happens to be a poetry editor, that she'd recently received a note from a writer submitting poems for consideration and in it this writer said that she really loved the magazine and especially the poem "How To Live With It" written by yours truly. That was a pretty sweet compliment to receive. Small moments such as these make me think that perhaps, whether by design or dumb luck, I am on the right track.

a good day

Today was a good day. There were bicycles and didgeridoos and blossoming cherry trees. There was sunshine and loud tailless kitties and fat little dogs and dogs that looked like you could strap a saddle to them and be taken for a ride (Great Pyrenees). The afternoon reflected off the water as the trains slid slowly by... It was a good day.

I should have been grading papers, but I wasn't. I was trying to feel light. I was trying to keep moving. I was also (again) looking into the tall arched windows of an old abandoned brick building. (The Yale Union Laundry Building-- don't suppose anyone knows who owns it and what their plans are for it?) And then the sun slipped down the sky and the air cooled and I closed all the windows and doors. It was a good day and now I am sitting here in the quiet, sad, and too much in my head.

I have recently asked for something that I really want, something I am afraid I had no right to ask for, something I am afraid I will never know in the manner I wish to. I am trying to be patient, but every minute that passes makes me feel a little sick, makes me feel a little closer to receiving words I don't want to hear. I spent the day running into the wind, trying to escape what I fear is inevitable, trying to be absorbed in the small wonders of my life. Today was a good day, but it hasn't distracted me from this looming question. I am, it would seem, very adept at torturing myself this way.

I have been researching cities I am toying with starting a love affair with. Seattle and Chicago, so far, top the list. I think about the mountains of Colorado, or the desert blooms and lightning storms of the southwest. I dream of the tropics and the light in San Miguel. They might all become a home to me. They might all prove to be welcoming. But in all of them, I'd still carry this weary heart, and while I might be taken by a sunny afternoon, I never forget what beats behind these ribs. I'd like to comfort myself by stating that it's a good thing to never forget one's heart; that even when it has been blown apart, it resonates with all that is worthwhile and still has something to teach, some important wisdom to bestow, if one can quiet the mind and simply listen.

When I listen to my heart, I hear your blood moving beneath your skin. I hear the breath beat of your living heart against my cheek, under my hands. When I turn to meet it, I see your face looking back at mine and for a moment I know, with certainty, that I am not alone in this world. It is hard to be quiet and patient now. I want to punch you and run away. I want to tell you that you never mattered. I want to do anything to prolong the time between this moment and the one in which my question is answered, finally. I am afraid. This missive is my effort to acknowledge that fear and to set it adrift, to help it along its way, to break its hold on me.

I want to say I will miss you, my beautiful friend, but I said I wasn't going to succumb to preemptive heartbreak. I have, however, succumbed to some sort of illness and it is at the feet of this illness that I lay all the responsibility for this nonsense. I will miss you, though, should things resolve that way. More than you will likely ever know. Certainly more than I will ever tell you.

another open mic

Here is another podcast from the Show and Tell Gallery Open Mic night at Three Friends.

how to live with it

I have a poem up here at Dark Sky Magazine! It's always exciting to see my words out in the world. There are some italics and stanza breaks in the original that don't seem to be appearing online, but that doesn't make it any less cool to see. I don't want to use a birthing metaphor, but, well, let's just say it's nice to see my poems take on a life of their own. They's all growns up now! (If there were any question remaining, yes, I am a total dork.)

sorrows

who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be

beautiful           who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals

that they would attach themselves
as scars attach and ride the skin

sometimes we hear them in our dreams
rattling their skulls         clicking their bony fingers

envying our crackling hair
our spice filled flesh

they have heard me beseeching
as I whispered into my own

cupped hands         enough not me again
enough          but who can distinguish

one human voice
amid such choruses of     desire

~Lucille Clifton

puppets!

So, a short while ago I was able to put my degree in poetry to good use, trading poems for a painting by Mr. Dax Tran-Caffee of the San Francisco Bay Area. This exchange was, I think we'd both agree, a fabulous exercise in creative economics and, perhaps, a sign of things to come. He is currently embarking on a project called The Museum Proper, which will require funding from people just like you to get work underway in time for the SubZero Festival. Dax has made a video describing the project and what he needs right here. Please check it out. Please forward the link to your friends. Please contribute in whatever way you can. Public art deserves to be supported and Dax is an artist worthy of your appreciation, financial or otherwise.

onward

So, it's 2010 and we don't have jet packs. I can't say I feel I'm missing something there. January has come and gone. The new year is underway. I've spent the past couple of months in a strange state overt sociability and also rather, well, I want to say hibernatic (Is that a word? Interweb check inconclusive. It should be) behavior. I have just entered my tenth year in Portland.

In this past year I have managed, against all odds, to keep my heart open. Moreover, I have deepened that openness and can see into it with savage clarity. And I have discovered that my love is infinite. It is positively incorruptible. I'm not exactly sure what to do with that, but I think it is a good thing. It's progress.

A year ago I wrote that being moved by simple joys and laughing more than I cried was progress. With that as my measure, then I am successfully progressing still. There has been plenty of chaos. There will be stories and poems to come from the carnival of my life, for sure. Perhaps there will even be some peace. I don't have an agenda.

I only know that I love and love fiercely. I am taking care of myself and taking care to mind my creative impulses. I may feel alien, but there are moments I can breathe and moments in which I feel whole. I feel humble, devoted, unassailable. I suppose that's not a bad start.

archaic torso

I cannot get this poem out of my head, particularly the last sentence. So, instead of trying to rid my head of it, I thought, perhaps, I'd try to get it to crawl on up inside of yours:

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

~Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Stephen Mitchell

dark sky

I have just been informed that my poem "How to Live With It" has been accepted for an upcoming issue of Dark Sky Magazine. Show them some love and check them out!

open mic - listen!

So, last Monday night my sister and I decided to head on over to Three Friends Coffeehouse for the Show and Tell Gallery Open Mic night. Not only did we both perform, but the evening was also podcast. You can listen to the whole night by going to the Show and Tell Gallery website, or, if you are curious what my sister and I did, you can listen to us here. My reading begins at about 11:24, then Kiana comes in at about 17:20, and we sing a song together beginning at about 24:44 of part two. So, we made public mistakes and it didn't kill us. Yay! Also, a big thanks to Laura Veirs, Frente, and Anya Marina, whose songs Kiana played.

waking

Yesterday I woke from a dream in which I wrote and publicly declared my vows. Today I awoke from a dream of betrayal, gripped with fear and with the ache of a broken heart. I admit I'm rather curious about tomorrow.

love and fear

The other night I was listening to a song and misheard the lyrics, but in doing so, struck upon a line I may have to use in a poem.

More importantly, it got me thinking about this thing called love. It seems that many people don't have the slightest idea of what love is... clarity on this issue seems about as rare as a truly blue colored flower. And, to be sure, I don't pretend I have it all figured out. My life is a testament to the fact of my trying and failing and sometimes succeeding, and, while I do tend to learn from my mistakes and am willing to assimilate new information, I certainly don't have any answers.

What I've observed, however, is compulsive pairing. It seems the phenomenon is two-fold. To begin with, it seems that many people are absolutely terrified of being alone. So much so that they hardly seem to know what to do with themselves if they do not have a partner. It's how they identify themselves. It's what they do with their time. It's where all their interests seem to lie...

Related to this, is what also appears to be a deep and abiding fear of desire. I think this bears further explanation. Most people have likes and dislikes and are pretty comfortable saying, hey, I really like this thing, but often it seems to exist on a very surface level. When one digs deeper into one's desires, sometimes what one turns up is not always what one expects or wants to talk about in polite company. Acknowledging one's deepest desires takes courage and strength, especially if one hopes to not pervert and distort one's desires. True honesty is difficult, even if you are only dealing with the self.

Bodily desires open up a whole bunch of anxieties. Lots of shoulds and shouldn'ts and shame and, of course, lots of fear. What I have observed seems to indicate that the response for many to this kind of fear is this compulsive coupling, which then gets slapped with the label "love" and everybody just sort of accepts it. But (and here's the line I aim to use in a poem) love is more than just a fear of desire.

If one cannot accept and integrate the various aspects of the self, including those desires, if one cannot reach past fear, work through it, and be at peace with the experience, I'm not sure one can find love either. To love one's self is challenging. It requires work and sacrifice. It requires removing the veneers and the blind spots we put in place to comfort us from the truth of ourselves, which is often more unruly than we'd like to admit. It requires that one develops, as Gurdjieff put it, a controlling "I" so that there is, in the self, some consistency, some measure of reliability. One has to have a self in order to share it with another.

And what is love, truly, if not union, communion, partnership among equals? What gift can one give one's lover more fine and true than the gift of one's highest and greatest self, a surrender of that self, a flame ignited within that is so fierce and pure that the beloved cannot help but ignite his own fire within to offer up? When two are not completing the other, but whole in and of themselves and coming together to burn even more brightly together, is that not love? Is that not beyond fear? It most certainly is not compulsive.

This is the love I aim to cultivate in myself. This is the love I aim to share. This is the work I am undertaking and I can't imagine settling for anything less.

how little I know

An excerpt from How Little I Know by R. Buckminster Fuller

It is understood
That if you know that I know
How to say it "correctly"
The exact meaning of which
I have not yet learned)
Then I am entitled to say it
All incorrectly
Which once in a rare while
Will make you laugh.
And I love you so much
Whenever you laugh.
But I haven't learned yet
What love may be
But I love to love
And love being loved
And that is a whole lot
Of unlearnedness.

I haven't learned yet
What laughter is
But a mother told me
How surprised was she
When an undergraduate first
Belly laughed in her
Alma mater
Dormitory.

Encontre un hombre exquisito

El dulce sabor de una mujer exquisita

Una mujer exquisita no es aquella que más hombres tiene a sus pies,
sino aquella que tiene uno solo que la hace realmente feliz.

Una mujer hermosa no es la más joven, ni la más flaca, ni la que
tiene el cutis más terso o el cabello más llamativo, es aquella
que con tan solo una sonrisa y un buen consejo puede alegrarte la vida.


Una mujer valiosa no es aquella que tiene más títulos, ni más
cargos académicos es aquella que sacrifica su sueño por hacer felices a los demás.

Una mujer exquisita no es la más ardiente, sino la que vibra al
hacer al amor solamente con el hombre que ama.

Una mujer interesante no es aquella que se siente halagada por ser
admirada por su belleza y elegancia, es aquella mujer firme de carácter
que puede decir NO.

Y un hombre, un hombre exquisito es aquel que valora una mujer así…”

Gabriel García Márquez

you're lucky

I dreamed I met my rapist. We stood together in a dimly lit room. I took his face in my hand, squeezed his jaw, and said, "you're lucky."

"Why am I lucky?" he asked me.

"You're lucky I didn't kill you."

I woke up to a series of muscle spasms releasing tension in my pelvic floor.

strange zoo

It may have become apparent recently that I have been cataloging some of my dream imagery here. I've decided to just go with it. Welcome to the inside of my head.

Several nights ago I dreamed I was in an outdoor zoo, well, perhaps part zoo and part wildlife preserve. I was standing near a water feature and the nesting grounds of a strange hybrid bird: part bird of prey, part carrion eater. Imagine a crow with deep chocolate feathers flickering with variations of iridescent gold. Then imagine that bird with an additional crown of feathers that arches up, over the top of the head, and hangs long toward the back of the neck. These feathers are more spiny, with smallish feathery tufts at the end, so that it looks more like a sort of headdress, only it grows in this fashion. Actually, it seems like nature might have found a use for this type of bird by now, killing fresh when it's available, and dining on carrion when food sources are scarce. Resourceful.

I walked further through the water feature to a section with a glass wall, so that one could see both above and below the waterline. Here I encountered an octopus, but it was much more transparent and jellyfish-like than an ordinary octopus. Its long tentacles were clasped around a large stack of papers. Looking more closely it appeared that a teacher had dropped a stack of syllabi into or near the water and the octopus was cradling or devouring it intensely. Looking closer still, I observed another hybrid creature wrapped around the octopus's tentacles. This creature appeared to be part crab, part sea urchin. It was purplish red and bore rounded white protruding bumps, like spines that had been ground down. It's legs wrapped around two tentacles. From my vantage point the octopus almost appeared as some kind of sea maiden with a cockle shell or flower in her hair, though, presumably, this sea creature was gnawing at the octopus.

As I watched a large cat ventured into the scene: another hybrid creature, part leopard, part mountain lion. Its spots were faint and its teeth were large. It dipped its massive head into the water and came back up with the octopus, syllabi and all, in its great mouth. The cat stood there shaking the whole collection like a much smaller cat might do to a catnip pillow. At this point the scenery changes in the way scenery changes in dreams, with perfectly absurd logic that is perfectly acceptable and in the context of the dream. The out-of-doors seamlessly turns indoors and soon I am watching this scene unfold as though it's within a large enclosure and I am standing behind a pane of glass.

In the distance I see a rather large giraffe. I say rather large because, while giraffes are large to begin with, this particular giraffe was comparatively much larger. There was nothing at all delicate about its muscular neck. The giraffe approached and swooped its knobby head down, scooping the great cat up, octopus and all, and shaking it, too, back and forth. Two zookeepers appeared and shook their hands in distress, mouthing words to each other I couldn't entirely make out. There was evidently some concern about a hip injury in the large cat, but all I could think about was how much more awesome this entire scene would be if it were taking place on the back of an elephant. As no elephant seemed destined to appear, I stepped away from the glass and exited through the nearest door.

Outside again, I was approached by a young man.

"What's the word for... or what do you call it when there are two Christs?" he asked me.

"Deuce Ex Machina," I replied, but when he looked only confused, I said, "Ah... never mind" and continued to walk away.