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Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Tangled

I hate how sometimes, what is right and what feels right are different things. How sometimes I get mad when I should be compassionate, or forgive when I shouldn't forget. I hate how sometimes I am tangled up in relationships I don't know how to sort out, and that even when you try really hard to reach out for new beginnings, sometimes the things you love most are part of your past. Lately, I'm really struggling to remind myself to stay centered and honest about what I need in my life. There seems to be so many possible distractions and obstacles in my path...and I don't even know where I'm ultimately headed yet.

I've had a long and exhausting month...but finally Spring Quarter has arrived! Last week's break was a blur of little boys and soccer practice topped off with a few parties and a wicked cold (that I am still struggling to get over). Luckily both my classes today were cancelled, so I was able to sleep in a little bit. I've probably spent more money on tissues and cold medicine than food this week...so that's pretty lame. But I'm excited to get started with my classes this quarter and see how enormous my work load is going to be. My reading list is pretty intense (Kafka and all kinds of surrealist literature...ohhhh brother!).

Anyway, here's revised version of a poem I wrote for class last quarter. It was supposed to mimc an Andre Breton poem where "listing" was the main form. Not sure if it's finished or not, but here it is.

My House

My house whose center is a rocking chair
That sits on a foundation made
of knock-knock jokes and go-fish games.
With screen doors that slam on summer nights,
sweet with the smell of fresh-shucked corn.

My house with rafters that are spiders’ sand dunes.
And crooked, wooden stairs;
thirteen gnarled steps, and walls
that saw my shorter shadows play.

My house that is always a project.
With drywall tape
that’s peeling up like pursed lips
and overflowing planter boxes,
that are not boxes but acres.

My house where waxy succulents devour window space
and the floors wear Persian rugs.
Where the shelves are always packed
with jams and honey, but mostly books.

My house whose backyard is where bicycles go to die.
With walls that are painted colors and not shades;
whose layout is a maze of small rooms,
each overflowing with garage sale finds
and grand ideas about selling things online.

My house that talks at night;
murmuring muddled vowels from the faucets,
groaning in the weight of wind,
telling stories.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

If you find me dead...

...It's because I've OD'd on Spongebob and apple juice.

Currently playing pretend-parent for 3 boys...on day 1 of 6.... I never want kids. Ever.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Going for it

My dear friend M. has just returned from a long trip to El Salvador & Nicaragua, where she spent her time traveling (mostly by herself!) and working on a reforestation project with Nicaraguan women who had been injured during wartimes there. At least I think thats what she was doing...now that I'm trying to write about it I'm realizing we have seen each other twice since her return and we really haven't talked much about her trip. (I know, now you're all thinking what a lame friend I am to have not asked more questions.) Anyway, my point is that M. is one of those really incredible people who just seem to have a natural knack for living adventurous lives full of awesome experiences...trekking around South America by herself really just barely begins to touch on all the cool stuff she's done.

And I bring this up because I have been kind of obsessed lately with discovering really cool people who seem to just go for it, in life. I am not one of those people, though I often lust for that kind of confidence and motivation. I think the closest I've ever come to that kind of behavior is applying for art school, but in the end I didn't go for it...so that's too bad, but at least my grandchildren won't have to be paying off my student loans.

Back to the point: meet Anis Mojgani, my latest poetry obsession since Elizabeth Bishop, and this guy is actually still alive so that's a definite plus. But he's getting married in May. Shoot.


He is pretty much my definition of what going for it means; the kind of person who jumps into things with everything they've got and just makes success out of what they have.

Mojgani grew up in New Orleans, went to art school in Georgia and then moved to New York where he started participating in the city's "notoriously competitive" slam scene. After a few years competeing with NYC-Urbana, he moved out to the west coast (Portland) and eventually started touring with the Poetry Revival guys (Derrick C. Brown & Buddy Wakefield). He's won tons of slam awards, nationally and internationally, and I was lucky enough to be convinced by L. to go see the last tour he participated in, "The Night Kite Revival" at Western this fall. It was honestly one of the most intense and moving performances I've ever seen, and if you ever stumble onto the chance to get to see one of them live, take it. Buddy Wakefield is from Seattle and performs around the area a lot.

If only I had the metaphorical balls to get up on stage and perform. There are plenty of opportunities in Bellingham for me to do so, but usually I just sit in the crowd and am in awe of the guts some people have. It's one thing to share your work in a workshop-class, but quite another to do it in front of a huge room of people. Who vote on your prose & delivery, I might add.

Needless to say, Mojgani has some balls...er, guts. But his poetry is also sentimental and funny and exquisitely weird in the most satisfying sort of way. There's a reason he's a back-to-back national Grand Slam winner, and if I wrote like him then maybe I wouldn't think twice before getting up on stage. Slam is the freshest kind of poetry, I think, and so much more about the experience than it is about the finite details. If you have the nine minutes to listen to this slam from '06, I don't think you'll be sorry.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Favorite Things


1. The New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle:
Which I have come to associate with being at home on the weekends, in my pajamas, in my parents' cozy kitchen. Even if the only solutions I can contribute are to the pop culture questions, nothing boosts your ego like answering the Sunday puzzle's answers. Also, the only part of the newspaper that is bearable to look at currently.

2. Sabrina Ward Harrison:
By far one of the coolest journaling-artists ever. Her books, art & etc. are inspiring and beautiful. Get her journals out of the library, get a cup of coffee, and read them over and over. I find myself writing down things she says all the time (as well as quotes she has taken from others.) Harrison has a soul-feeding quality about her writing that I think every woman can really, deeply relate to; she has probably inspired me to do art more than any other artist ever has. Truly.


3. Blood Bank, by Bon Iver:
The kind of song for a rainy day, when it's okay to stay inside and be a little sad. Just a little. I know it's not a new song, but it's one of my favorites and I'm just feeling a little alternative-angsty today. Listen here.

4. Leah Cole:
Who is in London, but doesn't seem all that far away after all. Because she is awake at 4:30 in the morning...er, make that 5:30 in the morning...when I need to talk and no one else is awake. And she's really the person I was wanting to talk to anyway. Also because we are going to spend a month in Europe together and see lots of incredible castles.

5. The Good, Old-fashioned Bomb Shelter:

I'm only half joking. It's probably a good idea to get one. And some canned water.



Saturday, March 12, 2011

Air & Kilometers


After years of trying to get in to her 21+ shows (so frustrating!) I finally got to see Kaki King at The Triple Door last night. It was easily one of the best shows I have ever been to. She was genuine and funny, not to mention one of the most badass guitar players I have ever seen. And the set list was awesome. All of her music videos are kind of strange, so be forewarned if you check them out. But if you just want to listen to more, her album ...Unil We Felt Red is probably one of my favorite ones.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds.

"...Revolving door. The garbage barge at the bridge. Earth science. Resemblance...
Write this down in a green notebook. Silverfish, potato bugs. A tenor sax is a weapon.
What I want is the gray-blue grain of western summer. Mention sex.
The nurse, by a subtle redistribution of weight, shift of gravity's center,
moves in front of the student of oriental porcelain in order to more rapidly board the bus.
Awake, but still in bed, I listen to cars pass, doors, birds, children are day's first voices.
A cardboard box of wool sweaters on top of the bookcase to indicate Home. Attention is all.
A day of rain in the middle of June."
-From
Ketjak, by Ron Silliman

Okay so, I know this blog is a little poetry heavy so far...but it's what I've been completely inundated with for the last couple of weeks. Please bear with me, because poetry makes me feel like every day I'm able to stumble onto some great new understanding of life, even if it's just for the tiniest moment. That's pretty cheesy, but try reading Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (Wallace Stevens), and then maybe you'll understand.

Today is really icky and rainy and I think everyone is just walking around praying for summer to get here...Bellingham can be such a tease, because when it gets nice here it is absolutely beautiful (as it was a couple of days this week, but now we have been plunged back into the gloomy disgusting winter). But at least I've gotten a substantial amount of my finals work out of the way and the meeting I had this morning with my Poetry Workshop professor went well (look for some new poems by me in the next weeks!). Now to write my 12-page paper on a dying language of South America......hooray....!

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

The dead are a cadmium blue...

Tonight at dinner, L. and I started talking about how strange it is that by the end of the next decade, we'll be thirty. It's been dawning on me lately how life starts moving so much faster once you don't want it to. The boys I babysit for are suddenly the age I was when I started nannying, but it seems like just a year or two ago they were two and I was twelve. Now its twelve and twenty. I know I'm supposed to be spending this time of my life being young and carefree....so why do I feel so old and useless?

At least last week I had a little personal breakthrough in my poetry class. I've been limping along all quarter, trying to keep up in a class where extremely articulate and intelligent lit majors had me feeling that I was in over my head. I'm not big on talking a lot in class anyway, but when you feel like what you have to contribute is considerably less cultured or insightful than most everyone else...well, I just turn into a turtle and pull my head inside my shell. Anyway, I had turned in my second short-response paper (which I admittedly had put barely any energy into writing) expecting to get it back with a C grade at best. Instead, he gave me an A (hooray!) and wrote lots of nice comments all over it. I finally felt like maybe I was starting to grasp what everyone else already understood. It was so validating.

On that same day, we were discussing Elizabeth Bishop's poetry, which I hadn't really read much of before. Maybe I was just in a great mood from getting a good grade on my paper, or maybe I was having an emotionally charged day, but either way I absolutely fell IN LOVE with Bishop. I've been reading and rereading her section of my anthology, trying to glean every bit of insight I can from her words. I'm particularly enamored with the poem "One Art," which is an eulogy for Bishop's lost lover Lota (who had committed suicide just before the poem was written).

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.


The irony of this poem is that Bishop is clearly grieving a great loss in her life. It is a disaster; one she cannot have prepared herself for...and it's made me consider, more than once, how I deal with loss myself. And also how the other people in my life deal with loss. I don't know what conclusions I've drawn or if I've had any kind of epiphany about dealing with grief, but the poem is completely beautiful and, well, that's something.

The Secret (Indoor) Garden

I stumbledupon this picture about a month ago and can't stop thinking about it. I've made it the desktop picture on my computer (that might be why I can't stop thinking about it) and spend at least five minutes of every day looking at it, wishing I had an indoor garden that was so cool. After starting my cactus/succulent collection in the fall of 2008 when I moved away to college, it has grown from just three little plants to over 1o. But I don't have the variety or lusciousness that this one's got going on, and it bothers me. I'm left wondering what plants are necessary to complete my house-plant menagerie, and where I can find a nice vintage apartment with big windows and a cool old heater.

Monday, March 7, 2011

10w30

Underneath this metal skeleton,
I am a Dalmatian.
The sun bleeds shapes across my torso
as I reach for the crescent wrench.

August smells like
the inside of an engine and
the open cuts of
a freshly mowed lawn.

With sunburned shins exposed,
I mimic motions of my father,
whose balding scalp is a graveyard
of undercarriage injuries.

I let the oil drain:
whispering past my ear
it is a steady serpent,
a bowl of black milk.

If I could let the darkness spill out of my ears,
and drink down the amber gloss
of new thoughts
I would.