It's a simple task, really. A friend of mine made glass tumblers out of Rolling Rock beer bottles for Britt. I've got the tumblers, she's got the check. We have to meet in town to swap, and then I'm on my way to BigCity, NC for the weekend.
Simple - Really?
Three kids, two just walking on their own, the oldest in preschool and clever as can be. One mom. Make that supermom, Britt. Add a minivan, and they are on the road, ready to meet up.
Except that every time Vaugh sees me he is terrified.
"Mama," he is screaming, a mat of blonde curls pressed against his forehead. "Help me!" His face glows, red as a radish, tears race down his cheeks.
"Hi Vaugh," I say.
Screams of terror. Screams of uncharted decibles. Screams of unforgiveness and irrational human tendencies. Sceams to top all screams. Screams for mothers and fathers and all the happy people of the earth or whatever it will take to make this scary, tall, strange person go far away RIGHT NOW.
"Nice to see you again." I smile at Vaughn. He seems unswayed, relatively speaking. I look at Britt. "I didn't even wear a baseball cap this time. And my hair isn't in braids. But it is tied up, hmmm, maybe that's it. Gosh, I don't know."
"Oh Vaughn," Britt says, turning to the backseat and trying to calm him.
"Help!" he screams again, then begins clawing at the window. His mannerisms at this point are unprecedented. I check the side view mirror. Am I wearing a mask? Devil horns? Dracula fangs? Smeared mascara? What? What?
Maxwell, on the other hand, is enamored with me because I am new and I am adult and I can give him attention. He loves attention.
"Knock, knock," he says, then shoves his fist into his mouth. Drools. Smiles a toothless smile.
"Who's there?" I say, loud enough for him to hear me over Vaughn's helplessness.
"Katey!" he says, then laughs to himself.
Britt and I get down to business and swap the check for the glass, but oh, I want more! We hardly see each other and there is so much to catch up on. But really, in this instance, our two worlds couldn't crash more. She with kids screaming and I on my way for a weekend retreat. She asks about my father, who's laid up with the flu: "Is he taking taraflu, though? That can help."
I shake my head, no. "He's taking a tincture and seeing the acupuncturist tomorrow."
We nod at each other. Her husband is a doctor, as in MD, as in western, as in years of school and bigtime education costs. We could laugh, really, at our different philosophies - respecting each other's but also fully sticking to our own. But there is no time...Vaugh's screaming heightens. The child seems desperate to escape the very air we breathe.
"Ahh! No, no, no, no." This time, it's Drew. She is covering her ears, rocking side to side in her car seat. Vaughn's screaming has gotten to her. "No, no, no, STOP!" Her sweetness fades with her patience, and I can't blame her. The sound billows from the car. I wonder if passers by will be alarmed, wonder what I've done to these small children in this hard, sad world.
"Look. Sorry. I gotta go. I gotta save you from this. Sorry! I'll see you soon!" I say to Britt, then close the door and dash back to my car.
Whew. On the road again.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
The Pearl
As if I could just let it lie.
The further irony is that nothing feels exactly over. Just less hyper. Settled. Capable of accepting the natural flow. For Chrissake, he hasn’t even decided where he’s moving yet.
But it’s funny, see, because as I was cleaning up the house today I picked up the book that Parker took off the shelf last night. It went something like this: He knocked on the door, I was on the phone and waved him in, he saw that I couldn’t get off the phone immediately and went straight for the bookshelf, and from the bookshelf he pulled the book that I now need to put back in it’s place: The Pearl by John Steinbeck. My house is like a Montessori classroom – everything has it’s place. But wait a sec…
The Pearl?.
I immediately get online and search my Gmail archives, using the search terms “The Pearl.” Since Gmail is, as we all know, a godsend, it finds precisely the email I am looking for, in which a friend advised me thus:
“Are you familiar with The Pearl by John Steinbeck? Most kids have to read it in high school. Anyway, your posts are telling me that your lungs are burning, your ears are popping, and your fingers are getting all wrinkly. You're fixated on the Parker Pearl. You've got to have it. It'll be perfect - or at least it'll be enough to save you. You know that you can't get something for nothing and so you're pushing yourself (and him) deeper and deeper - just a little further and you'll get it. You'll obtain the Pearl and your troubles will be over…Trouble is, once you've obtained the Parker Pearl, the troubles are just beginning. Then you've got to keep the Pearl, or sell the Pearl, do something with the Pearl... Before it was all simple and direct - obtain the Pearl. Now, with the Pearl in hand, it's not so clear…”
[Thanks, SB]
Most kids have to read it in high school. Including me – except that I, the AP English student, 4.0, accepted into a good college, hating public high school, in a rebellious phase and heck, I already did a term paper on Steinbeck this year anyway – DIDN’T. That’s right, I lied. I lied on the essay tests, making up answers based on class discussions. I lied during class discussions. I lied to myself, really, and by default lied to the teacher. Skipping out on The Pearl was pretty much the exception to the rule for me – I never cheated.
Guess I know what book I’m reading next. And no, I didn’t put it back on the shelf.
The further irony is that nothing feels exactly over. Just less hyper. Settled. Capable of accepting the natural flow. For Chrissake, he hasn’t even decided where he’s moving yet.
But it’s funny, see, because as I was cleaning up the house today I picked up the book that Parker took off the shelf last night. It went something like this: He knocked on the door, I was on the phone and waved him in, he saw that I couldn’t get off the phone immediately and went straight for the bookshelf, and from the bookshelf he pulled the book that I now need to put back in it’s place: The Pearl by John Steinbeck. My house is like a Montessori classroom – everything has it’s place. But wait a sec…
The Pearl?.
I immediately get online and search my Gmail archives, using the search terms “The Pearl.” Since Gmail is, as we all know, a godsend, it finds precisely the email I am looking for, in which a friend advised me thus:
“Are you familiar with The Pearl by John Steinbeck? Most kids have to read it in high school. Anyway, your posts are telling me that your lungs are burning, your ears are popping, and your fingers are getting all wrinkly. You're fixated on the Parker Pearl. You've got to have it. It'll be perfect - or at least it'll be enough to save you. You know that you can't get something for nothing and so you're pushing yourself (and him) deeper and deeper - just a little further and you'll get it. You'll obtain the Pearl and your troubles will be over…Trouble is, once you've obtained the Parker Pearl, the troubles are just beginning. Then you've got to keep the Pearl, or sell the Pearl, do something with the Pearl... Before it was all simple and direct - obtain the Pearl. Now, with the Pearl in hand, it's not so clear…”
[Thanks, SB]
Most kids have to read it in high school. Including me – except that I, the AP English student, 4.0, accepted into a good college, hating public high school, in a rebellious phase and heck, I already did a term paper on Steinbeck this year anyway – DIDN’T. That’s right, I lied. I lied on the essay tests, making up answers based on class discussions. I lied during class discussions. I lied to myself, really, and by default lied to the teacher. Skipping out on The Pearl was pretty much the exception to the rule for me – I never cheated.
Guess I know what book I’m reading next. And no, I didn’t put it back on the shelf.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Who Knows What Now, What Next, What Ever
It’s ironic, really, because I am slicing the tofu that I bought for Parker over a week ago, and plopping the cubes one at a time into homemade miso soup when I hear a slight knock at the door. It is, of course, Parker – in his trademark crocheted wool cap and tightly zipped Columbia parka.
Hi. You surprised me! Come in. How did you know I was just thinking about you?
I say this without saying it, step aside to wave him in, and return to the hotplate where the soup is sizzling. I add wakame and hand Parker the basket of tea bags from the counter.
“Pick one,” I say.
His fingers sift through the paper wrappers carefully. He coughs, then smiles, and hands me his selection: Throat Coat tea made by Traditional Medicinals. “Mmmm, good stuff,” he says, sniffing the wrapper. He coughs again and I hand him a cough drop.
“When did that happen, anyway?” I say, continuing to stir the soup. I didn’t remember him being sick a week ago and I certainly didn’t pick it up from him if he was.
We talk. Sip miso soup while sitting on the futon. I drink soy hot cocoa for dessert. He eats Hershey’s dark chocolate nuggets. I’m glad to see him but still, we’re warming up to each other in a careful way. It takes a while but then I see it again – that twinkle in his wide, green eyes that I like. The splashes of rose across each cheek, as if he has always just come in from the cold. He is calm, sleepy almost, and talking softly, which I prefer. He catches himself interrupting me, smiles and says, “Sorry, continue….” He asks me about my week, helps me when I lose track of what I am saying, then tells me about his upcoming exams.
“Look, I’m going to be gone for the next eight days or so taking finals up in UniversityTown, NC. These are the big ones.”
I ask him about the yurt, the temperature (he called last week, reported that his exhaled breath was freezing across the top of his sleeping bag at night). Then I say, “And what about the winter rental lead I gave you? Any luck?” The house I’m talking about ten minutes away from my cabin – as opposed to the forty-five minutes it now takes me to drive to his yurt in TinyTown, NC.
“Yeah, I saw it. I like it. It’s affordable, too. But there’s this offer in UniversityTown. You know, that one I told you about.”
I do know. I remember it distinctly because when he told me the cost, and the location, it made more sense for him to move up there. All along I’d been wondering why he hadn’t moved up there before our first frost and snow.
“I’d be nice to have, you know, heat and insulated walls this winter,” he says.
“I know. The deal up there sounds better. Even better than the one I found for you.”
“I know,” he says.
We do not look at each other. UniversityTown, NC is ninety minutes away from here.
Everything feels slow, steady, and oddly even-keel. Finally, it seems like we’ve both reached a level of relative emotional calm in each other’s presence. Even now, after a whole week, we’re careful not to touch. Somehow this feels normal. Low key. Low maintenance. Easy. Is this what natural dissipation feels like? Or is this self-preservation?
“I’ve got more food in my car,” Parker says, smacking his lips. “Can I use your hotplate to heat up some leftover stew?” I nod yes. He’s been cooking over a woodstove for two weeks, unwilling to refill the propane tank since he’s not sure he’s staying in yurt all season.
When he is done with seconds, his cough seems worse and I offer more tea. It’s nice to sit and talk and not be distracted bodily. But right before he leaves I feel myself reach out in gesture and instead, say, “I have some Vic’s Vapo-Rub. Do you want me to send you with some along your way?”
He smiles. Nods yes. Stands in wait with his hands at his sides. I get the jar out, put a little on my fingers, and gently massage it below his nose and onto his chest.
That’s it.
“Goodnight, Katey,” he says.
“Goodnight Parker, drive safe.”
Hi. You surprised me! Come in. How did you know I was just thinking about you?
I say this without saying it, step aside to wave him in, and return to the hotplate where the soup is sizzling. I add wakame and hand Parker the basket of tea bags from the counter.
“Pick one,” I say.
His fingers sift through the paper wrappers carefully. He coughs, then smiles, and hands me his selection: Throat Coat tea made by Traditional Medicinals. “Mmmm, good stuff,” he says, sniffing the wrapper. He coughs again and I hand him a cough drop.
“When did that happen, anyway?” I say, continuing to stir the soup. I didn’t remember him being sick a week ago and I certainly didn’t pick it up from him if he was.
We talk. Sip miso soup while sitting on the futon. I drink soy hot cocoa for dessert. He eats Hershey’s dark chocolate nuggets. I’m glad to see him but still, we’re warming up to each other in a careful way. It takes a while but then I see it again – that twinkle in his wide, green eyes that I like. The splashes of rose across each cheek, as if he has always just come in from the cold. He is calm, sleepy almost, and talking softly, which I prefer. He catches himself interrupting me, smiles and says, “Sorry, continue….” He asks me about my week, helps me when I lose track of what I am saying, then tells me about his upcoming exams.
“Look, I’m going to be gone for the next eight days or so taking finals up in UniversityTown, NC. These are the big ones.”
I ask him about the yurt, the temperature (he called last week, reported that his exhaled breath was freezing across the top of his sleeping bag at night). Then I say, “And what about the winter rental lead I gave you? Any luck?” The house I’m talking about ten minutes away from my cabin – as opposed to the forty-five minutes it now takes me to drive to his yurt in TinyTown, NC.
“Yeah, I saw it. I like it. It’s affordable, too. But there’s this offer in UniversityTown. You know, that one I told you about.”
I do know. I remember it distinctly because when he told me the cost, and the location, it made more sense for him to move up there. All along I’d been wondering why he hadn’t moved up there before our first frost and snow.
“I’d be nice to have, you know, heat and insulated walls this winter,” he says.
“I know. The deal up there sounds better. Even better than the one I found for you.”
“I know,” he says.
We do not look at each other. UniversityTown, NC is ninety minutes away from here.
Everything feels slow, steady, and oddly even-keel. Finally, it seems like we’ve both reached a level of relative emotional calm in each other’s presence. Even now, after a whole week, we’re careful not to touch. Somehow this feels normal. Low key. Low maintenance. Easy. Is this what natural dissipation feels like? Or is this self-preservation?
“I’ve got more food in my car,” Parker says, smacking his lips. “Can I use your hotplate to heat up some leftover stew?” I nod yes. He’s been cooking over a woodstove for two weeks, unwilling to refill the propane tank since he’s not sure he’s staying in yurt all season.
When he is done with seconds, his cough seems worse and I offer more tea. It’s nice to sit and talk and not be distracted bodily. But right before he leaves I feel myself reach out in gesture and instead, say, “I have some Vic’s Vapo-Rub. Do you want me to send you with some along your way?”
He smiles. Nods yes. Stands in wait with his hands at his sides. I get the jar out, put a little on my fingers, and gently massage it below his nose and onto his chest.
That’s it.
“Goodnight, Katey,” he says.
“Goodnight Parker, drive safe.”
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This
Parker fades in my mind and heart, and I watch the emotion recoil from a distance, unsure of what compels this force within me. It’s true that he needs a friend more than a lover right now, and it was that realization which struck me Tuesday night, curled beneath the sheets, his sleeping body next to mine. A fact like that strikes between the eyes and has a way of undoing time, making past events seem as small as a pinhead and then coaching the heart along a new path.
It’s easy to think and feel this way in his absence, especially with the holidays and family filling up four days with feasting and fun. I haven’t called him and we have no plans for this week. A study date could be nice, or some meditation, but for now the world pulls me elsewhere.
Am I the same, needy person from two months ago? Has Parker provided a reality check on relationships – the work, the time, the sacrifice? Perhaps – or maybe the match is not a match at all, and the way my heart leapt when I first met him was premature. It wouldn’t be the first time.
It’s days like this when I can sit back and laugh a little at my own struggle to find companionship. I have been given so much and cannot think of any other basic tools that I need other than what I already have going for me in this writing life. The first born will be the book, and until publication, it might just be a monogamous relationship.
It’s easy to think and feel this way in his absence, especially with the holidays and family filling up four days with feasting and fun. I haven’t called him and we have no plans for this week. A study date could be nice, or some meditation, but for now the world pulls me elsewhere.
Am I the same, needy person from two months ago? Has Parker provided a reality check on relationships – the work, the time, the sacrifice? Perhaps – or maybe the match is not a match at all, and the way my heart leapt when I first met him was premature. It wouldn’t be the first time.
It’s days like this when I can sit back and laugh a little at my own struggle to find companionship. I have been given so much and cannot think of any other basic tools that I need other than what I already have going for me in this writing life. The first born will be the book, and until publication, it might just be a monogamous relationship.
Adventures in TinyTown
I write all day to meet the twenty-page deadline for Monday and treat myself to a night with friends in TinyTown, NC. Wes and I carpool from the craft school to TinyTown, then we make a hard right turn and climb into the foothills of Roan Mountain. The road is steep and winding, pavement giving way to gravel and ditches as wide as a car but still, Wesley knows the way and we press on. Halfway up a mountain, we pull over and she calls DT on her cell phone.
“Ok, we’re here!” she says to DT over the phone. Then to me, “He’ll be down to pick us up in a minute.” She points to a tiny set of lights high up on the mountain. “That’s his house, and I’m not about to take my car up there.” We turn all the lights out and stand in the middle of the road, eyes and mouths agape, taking in the stars like sustenance.
The road is steep enough so that when I lean my head back into the seat, my wool hat falls off and lands in the backseat. I can see more sky than land and DT revs the motor to pick up speed. It’s an easy drive in his Subaru, but still, it feels like we’re on a midnight adventure with a starlit audience, an azure-sky stage rolled out before us like an invitation.
Inside, there are other friends and the woodstove is hot. The sake is warm and the lights are dim and DT gives me the tour of each room with pride. It takes only half a glimpse to see that his work as a gallery owner is more than just a day job, as every wall, shelf, nook, and cranny has been intentionally arranged and is worthy of comment.
Later, Wes and I read poetry out loud to all the evening guests and little Tina who is visiting from BigCity slips from her seat onto the floor, nuzzling with the dogs and curling into a shallow sleep, nursed along from one breath to the next by Sappho, Joseph Millar, Bernadette Mayer, and others. The dogs twitch and flinch through their puppy-dreams and Wes and I say our goodbye’s with hugs and kisses all around.
We brave the driveway on foot, arms linked at the elbows as we totter downhill like beginning walkers. On the drive home, I sing loud and feel warm inside. A hard day’s work earned a fruitful evening’s adventures, and already I am eager to greet the next day with gratitude.
“Ok, we’re here!” she says to DT over the phone. Then to me, “He’ll be down to pick us up in a minute.” She points to a tiny set of lights high up on the mountain. “That’s his house, and I’m not about to take my car up there.” We turn all the lights out and stand in the middle of the road, eyes and mouths agape, taking in the stars like sustenance.
The road is steep enough so that when I lean my head back into the seat, my wool hat falls off and lands in the backseat. I can see more sky than land and DT revs the motor to pick up speed. It’s an easy drive in his Subaru, but still, it feels like we’re on a midnight adventure with a starlit audience, an azure-sky stage rolled out before us like an invitation.
Inside, there are other friends and the woodstove is hot. The sake is warm and the lights are dim and DT gives me the tour of each room with pride. It takes only half a glimpse to see that his work as a gallery owner is more than just a day job, as every wall, shelf, nook, and cranny has been intentionally arranged and is worthy of comment.
Later, Wes and I read poetry out loud to all the evening guests and little Tina who is visiting from BigCity slips from her seat onto the floor, nuzzling with the dogs and curling into a shallow sleep, nursed along from one breath to the next by Sappho, Joseph Millar, Bernadette Mayer, and others. The dogs twitch and flinch through their puppy-dreams and Wes and I say our goodbye’s with hugs and kisses all around.
We brave the driveway on foot, arms linked at the elbows as we totter downhill like beginning walkers. On the drive home, I sing loud and feel warm inside. A hard day’s work earned a fruitful evening’s adventures, and already I am eager to greet the next day with gratitude.
Friday, November 24, 2006
Early Christmas Run-On
We go to the Christmas tree lighting in TinyTown, NC. There are about forty people positioned in a half moon around the courthouse. There is one stop light in TinyTown, and the Sheriff is parked to block the intersection, redirecting passing cars to park and join the festivities. The mayor is the emcee for the evening and announces that the Christmas Carol Choir will not be performing because the director has the flu. He has large hands and a stalky stature, though the microphone does not look out of place in his hands. His tone is kind and calm, and after the announcement, he tells the town the news they’ve been eager to hear more about all day: the fire at Buck Stove headquarters.
See, the mayor of TinyTown also helps run the Buck Stove headquarters as a day job and around 2am a fire was called in. It took over seven hours to put it out, the mayor reports, so he is a bit out of sorts for tonight’s much anticipated tree lighting.
But the lights go up indeed, and the twelve-foot tall tree is small-town-perfect and there are fake reindeer that move their fake necks to eat grass that isn’t growing and a small boy in a Christmas sweatshirt has taken the microphone from the mayor in order to sing a spontaneous hymn about Jesus and before we know it, the crowd is cheering and three adults move to the mic to sing Silent Night in harmony and then the festival moves indoors. In the antique shop there are carrots and shrimp and hot cider and cocoa and good prices and local artists and Christmas CD’s and someone recognizes my name and announces very loudly that “SHE’S THE WRITER WHO JUST PUBLISHED THAT ARTICLE IN ----MAGAZINE” which is a very exciting moment for me indeed, especially since I have not even seen a copy of the article yet.
And just when I cannot get enough of this small-town-fame Wesley parades across the shop and serves me fresh hot apple cider with a smile and a hug and suddenly it feels like home, with warmth and love and recognition and community and geez, while I’m here I might was well buy a gift for my mother while she’s not looking then quick, kiss Wes goodbye, hope in the car for the forty minute ride across the dark valley floor, then up, up, and away – tucked into the mountains under a blanket of starts for sleep, sleep, sleep.
See, the mayor of TinyTown also helps run the Buck Stove headquarters as a day job and around 2am a fire was called in. It took over seven hours to put it out, the mayor reports, so he is a bit out of sorts for tonight’s much anticipated tree lighting.
But the lights go up indeed, and the twelve-foot tall tree is small-town-perfect and there are fake reindeer that move their fake necks to eat grass that isn’t growing and a small boy in a Christmas sweatshirt has taken the microphone from the mayor in order to sing a spontaneous hymn about Jesus and before we know it, the crowd is cheering and three adults move to the mic to sing Silent Night in harmony and then the festival moves indoors. In the antique shop there are carrots and shrimp and hot cider and cocoa and good prices and local artists and Christmas CD’s and someone recognizes my name and announces very loudly that “SHE’S THE WRITER WHO JUST PUBLISHED THAT ARTICLE IN ----MAGAZINE” which is a very exciting moment for me indeed, especially since I have not even seen a copy of the article yet.
And just when I cannot get enough of this small-town-fame Wesley parades across the shop and serves me fresh hot apple cider with a smile and a hug and suddenly it feels like home, with warmth and love and recognition and community and geez, while I’m here I might was well buy a gift for my mother while she’s not looking then quick, kiss Wes goodbye, hope in the car for the forty minute ride across the dark valley floor, then up, up, and away – tucked into the mountains under a blanket of starts for sleep, sleep, sleep.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Searching for Ground
[re: last night’s post – “dreamed?” uhh….DREAMT…shame, shame, shame]
It is the duty of any artist to ask where the resistance comes from, and then to go there.
For a week I have posed the question to myself, charted it across my mind’s eye like a cartographer in search of the Fountain of Youth. Like the pinnacle of high mountains peering through the clouds, an answer surfaced: My resistance to new writing is coming from over-stimulation. My heart has unwound too much of itself, setting patterns in a complex weave that threatens to fray under pressure.
The pattern for Parker has grown increasingly thin. I saw Wesley today and she read my facial expression like a Tarot card. “You’re exhausted, it’s too much, isn’t it?” she said. I confessed: “He’s a shit-ton of work Wes, I just don’t know if I can do it.”
The pattern for friends has grown heartsick, as many move away each winter when the craft school closes. November has been a month of goodbyes made tangible by handmade silver earrings, a salt-fired mug, an earthenware container, and a hand woven scarf – all items I have traded with departing friends for my framed black and white photos. Tokens in time.
The pattern for the MFA has exhausted itself for the semester, but the deadlines keep coming in even though my last packet was done two weeks ago. One such deadline pushes me to write twenty more pages this week alone. My perfectionist-self ordinarily eats these opportunities up, but I need break before going to Oregon in six weeks for the next residency.
Too many things happening at once. A lot of heart-investment and not enough filling my own well back up. However, naming the source of the resistance is only half the battle.
Tomorrow I will give thanks for what I do have, which is really so much more than I’ll ever be able to measure or weight against the stampede of time. I will peer into that well and offer my eyes and heart in exchange for redemption. Redeem the words. Redeem the poetic. Redeem rhythm. Redeem the fruition of steeping stories, fetal ideas, first thoughts. Redeem, redeem, redeem.
It is the duty of any artist to ask where the resistance comes from, and then to go there.
For a week I have posed the question to myself, charted it across my mind’s eye like a cartographer in search of the Fountain of Youth. Like the pinnacle of high mountains peering through the clouds, an answer surfaced: My resistance to new writing is coming from over-stimulation. My heart has unwound too much of itself, setting patterns in a complex weave that threatens to fray under pressure.
The pattern for Parker has grown increasingly thin. I saw Wesley today and she read my facial expression like a Tarot card. “You’re exhausted, it’s too much, isn’t it?” she said. I confessed: “He’s a shit-ton of work Wes, I just don’t know if I can do it.”
The pattern for friends has grown heartsick, as many move away each winter when the craft school closes. November has been a month of goodbyes made tangible by handmade silver earrings, a salt-fired mug, an earthenware container, and a hand woven scarf – all items I have traded with departing friends for my framed black and white photos. Tokens in time.
The pattern for the MFA has exhausted itself for the semester, but the deadlines keep coming in even though my last packet was done two weeks ago. One such deadline pushes me to write twenty more pages this week alone. My perfectionist-self ordinarily eats these opportunities up, but I need break before going to Oregon in six weeks for the next residency.
Too many things happening at once. A lot of heart-investment and not enough filling my own well back up. However, naming the source of the resistance is only half the battle.
Tomorrow I will give thanks for what I do have, which is really so much more than I’ll ever be able to measure or weight against the stampede of time. I will peer into that well and offer my eyes and heart in exchange for redemption. Redeem the words. Redeem the poetic. Redeem rhythm. Redeem the fruition of steeping stories, fetal ideas, first thoughts. Redeem, redeem, redeem.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Poem Challenge
Nature poem. Short and sweet. Five minutes. Ready, set, go!
ODE TO SUN
And today the sun at every turn.
The sun over Seven-Mile Ridge at early dawn,
the sun defrosting the higher peaks with yellow light,
its warmth demystifying snow-white crevasses
across the face of the Black Mountains.
And oh the sun setting,
the sky folding into itself,
an afterbirth of pure azure;
the silhouette of rock-solid time.
I dreamed of powdered snow,
I dreamed of evergreens,
I dreamed of rum-kissed nights
and goose-down mornings,
I dreamed and dreamed
and when I woke
I was asleep.
ODE TO SUN
And today the sun at every turn.
The sun over Seven-Mile Ridge at early dawn,
the sun defrosting the higher peaks with yellow light,
its warmth demystifying snow-white crevasses
across the face of the Black Mountains.
And oh the sun setting,
the sky folding into itself,
an afterbirth of pure azure;
the silhouette of rock-solid time.
I dreamed of powdered snow,
I dreamed of evergreens,
I dreamed of rum-kissed nights
and goose-down mornings,
I dreamed and dreamed
and when I woke
I was asleep.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Visions of Sugar Plum Fairies?
In the morning, snow like a lace table throw across the mountains. Four deer just twenty feet from the window in my study, two adults and two first-years, feet padding the ground as gently as the flakes that fall from the sky. There is beauty in this motion that carries no sound. I lay awake and listened to the silence from bed.
Visions of Sunday night’s party at the old boarding school make silent motion too, though only in my mind’s eye:
The ridiculous, drunken look of victory at the card table when SO took the final hand and won poker. She thrust her tiny fists into the air, tossed her head back in foolish laughter, her torso rattling with each breath, hair cascading across her shoulders like a waterfall, and proclaimed her kingdom of cards and pennies and everlasting luck of the draw.
Or when sweet Eve, as we’ll call her, streaked through the living room, pausing underneath the threshold into the kitchen to hoist a jug of tonic in one hand and a jug of gin in the other high above her head. “The hot tub beckons you!” she said, wiggling her belly, sending fleshy waves across her bare breasts, down the length of her thighs. She wore a woven crown of lavender and nothing else, and as she turned to make her leave, with a gentle swivel of her pink toosh aimed in our direction, a few slivers of lavender fell to the ground and planted themselves into the hardwood floor, as if they sprung from her very footsteps.
To each her own, I think to myself as my vision fades into the saner aspects of alertness. They are but snowflakes in a windfall of love. And with this, I greet my day.
Visions of Sunday night’s party at the old boarding school make silent motion too, though only in my mind’s eye:
The ridiculous, drunken look of victory at the card table when SO took the final hand and won poker. She thrust her tiny fists into the air, tossed her head back in foolish laughter, her torso rattling with each breath, hair cascading across her shoulders like a waterfall, and proclaimed her kingdom of cards and pennies and everlasting luck of the draw.
Or when sweet Eve, as we’ll call her, streaked through the living room, pausing underneath the threshold into the kitchen to hoist a jug of tonic in one hand and a jug of gin in the other high above her head. “The hot tub beckons you!” she said, wiggling her belly, sending fleshy waves across her bare breasts, down the length of her thighs. She wore a woven crown of lavender and nothing else, and as she turned to make her leave, with a gentle swivel of her pink toosh aimed in our direction, a few slivers of lavender fell to the ground and planted themselves into the hardwood floor, as if they sprung from her very footsteps.
To each her own, I think to myself as my vision fades into the saner aspects of alertness. They are but snowflakes in a windfall of love. And with this, I greet my day.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Till Turning, Turning, We Come Round Right
It has been a nearly cloudless day and by 6pm it is already thirty-eight degrees, a light wind whirring across the town square where I park my car. I am going to the gallery opening in SmallTown, NC featuring “Ornamental Indulgence” by thirteen area jewelers, eight of whom I know. It is just three blocks from the square to the gallery, but even with my down jacket I am cold by the time I enter.
At the last minute, Parker had decided to come with me, leaving from the Coffeehosue and caravanning to a local gas station. But as we parked at the gas station to carpool the rest of the way in one car, he changed his mind. We said a non-particular goodbye and I moved happily on my way. This, it turns out, felts quite healthy and I noticed my non-disappointment with a smile and a boost of confidence.
It was this boost of confidence that carried me swiftly through the gallery doors and as if the gifts of the day had not been enough, the first person I see is DT. His eyes are round and distinctive, trimmed by long, black-as-night eyelashes that I envy. His goatee matches his hair color, mostly black with a few flecks of premature grey. His lips are full and pink, in need of chapstick and when he smiles, I notice for the first time that one of his front teeth is slightly crooked. I find this completely endearing. His entire welcoming face bears an expression of warmth and affection, and we grab hands and hug closely.
From a certain perspective, this greeting deeply affectionate, though for no known reason at all. After all, DT is just a friend of a friend. We have only spent time together once, at our mutual friend’s birthday party. Taking in the depth of his hug, the sincerity of his acceptance the moment I walked in the door, all of this occurs to me in a flash: We love and care deeply for the same person, and trust that person so wholly that already we know that we care about one another as well.
And so it is that I find myself, arm in arm with this handsome artist, strolling regal around the gallery where he wants to show me his work in a particular display case at the center of the room. He speaks slowly and clearly, pausing to look me in the eyes and touch my elbow, my waist. I return the gestures, and in order to cope with all the chatter, I make his speech and warmth the center of my attention in the loud room. This further enhances DT’s own beauty, and I feel his openness spread over me like a blanket. It has been a long week, a long day, and even still there are many hours to go and yet the unfettered affection of this man reassures me that there is an abundance of love in this world. His gift of presence is a gentle teaching, something to hold against my heart and behind my eyes so that it may filter my perspective of the world. Endearing, wide-eyed and accepting, full of love.
At the last minute, Parker had decided to come with me, leaving from the Coffeehosue and caravanning to a local gas station. But as we parked at the gas station to carpool the rest of the way in one car, he changed his mind. We said a non-particular goodbye and I moved happily on my way. This, it turns out, felts quite healthy and I noticed my non-disappointment with a smile and a boost of confidence.
It was this boost of confidence that carried me swiftly through the gallery doors and as if the gifts of the day had not been enough, the first person I see is DT. His eyes are round and distinctive, trimmed by long, black-as-night eyelashes that I envy. His goatee matches his hair color, mostly black with a few flecks of premature grey. His lips are full and pink, in need of chapstick and when he smiles, I notice for the first time that one of his front teeth is slightly crooked. I find this completely endearing. His entire welcoming face bears an expression of warmth and affection, and we grab hands and hug closely.
From a certain perspective, this greeting deeply affectionate, though for no known reason at all. After all, DT is just a friend of a friend. We have only spent time together once, at our mutual friend’s birthday party. Taking in the depth of his hug, the sincerity of his acceptance the moment I walked in the door, all of this occurs to me in a flash: We love and care deeply for the same person, and trust that person so wholly that already we know that we care about one another as well.
And so it is that I find myself, arm in arm with this handsome artist, strolling regal around the gallery where he wants to show me his work in a particular display case at the center of the room. He speaks slowly and clearly, pausing to look me in the eyes and touch my elbow, my waist. I return the gestures, and in order to cope with all the chatter, I make his speech and warmth the center of my attention in the loud room. This further enhances DT’s own beauty, and I feel his openness spread over me like a blanket. It has been a long week, a long day, and even still there are many hours to go and yet the unfettered affection of this man reassures me that there is an abundance of love in this world. His gift of presence is a gentle teaching, something to hold against my heart and behind my eyes so that it may filter my perspective of the world. Endearing, wide-eyed and accepting, full of love.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
A Day of Blessings
The day is full of blessings.
In downtown SmallTown, NC I am camped out in a tiny shop, copyediting a book for a Friday deadline. An obese, ungainly man cradles himself next to me and I notice that he is reading the Bible. Our eyes meet and his ask if I am willing to share the sofa. My eyes reply yes, though we exchange no words. For a while, we read together silently.
“Are you studying?” he asks, lifting his chin from the book. One eye wavers left of center, the other is focused on my face.
“Sort of. Actually, just doing work. I’m proofreading,” I say.
It’s a sliver of a moment but inside its narrowness I see my heart harden a bit and feel ashamed. I know that if this man were my age and handsome, that I might speak to him more. I would like to ask him which verse he is reading or see if he might offer a quote for the day – but I feel myself close to him because I see little kinship between us in physicality. I am not zapped by any common energy though I wish I were. Then again, maybe I am too hard on myself. I do have eighty more pages to read, after all, and I’m pushing deadline. I need to focus. My ego-driven interior monologue continues until it is interrupted by his weight shifting on the couch. He garumphs up from the cushions and motions for me to move my legs so that he may leave.
“Well, God loves you, you know. Have a good day,” he says, smiling at me.
I look up from the manuscript in my hands. “Thank you.” I smile back at him. “You have a nice day too.”
Later, in line for lunch at the craft school, a tall, black man who is visiting campus from the NC Arts Council is behind me in line. His eyes are soft and honey-glazed, and lure me in. He must be almost seven feet tall, as his lower rib cage only starts at about my eye level. I crane my neck up to hold his eyes in place and say, “Welcome to the Craft School.” My smile is as wide as the ocean because of the instant warmth in his demeanor.
“Thank you, I’m glad to be here.” His voice is sonorous, stretching like a bow across cello strings.
“How are you?” I ask as we scoot further down the lunch line together.
“I’m blessed,” he says. “I’m blessed.”
And so it is, that two angels make their love of humankind and the world known to me in one day’s time. And so it is that the little things in life slowly start to seep back in and I begin to feel clicks like the advance of camera film throughout my day. And so it is, that I feel blessed and loved, and then some.
In downtown SmallTown, NC I am camped out in a tiny shop, copyediting a book for a Friday deadline. An obese, ungainly man cradles himself next to me and I notice that he is reading the Bible. Our eyes meet and his ask if I am willing to share the sofa. My eyes reply yes, though we exchange no words. For a while, we read together silently.
“Are you studying?” he asks, lifting his chin from the book. One eye wavers left of center, the other is focused on my face.
“Sort of. Actually, just doing work. I’m proofreading,” I say.
It’s a sliver of a moment but inside its narrowness I see my heart harden a bit and feel ashamed. I know that if this man were my age and handsome, that I might speak to him more. I would like to ask him which verse he is reading or see if he might offer a quote for the day – but I feel myself close to him because I see little kinship between us in physicality. I am not zapped by any common energy though I wish I were. Then again, maybe I am too hard on myself. I do have eighty more pages to read, after all, and I’m pushing deadline. I need to focus. My ego-driven interior monologue continues until it is interrupted by his weight shifting on the couch. He garumphs up from the cushions and motions for me to move my legs so that he may leave.
“Well, God loves you, you know. Have a good day,” he says, smiling at me.
I look up from the manuscript in my hands. “Thank you.” I smile back at him. “You have a nice day too.”
Later, in line for lunch at the craft school, a tall, black man who is visiting campus from the NC Arts Council is behind me in line. His eyes are soft and honey-glazed, and lure me in. He must be almost seven feet tall, as his lower rib cage only starts at about my eye level. I crane my neck up to hold his eyes in place and say, “Welcome to the Craft School.” My smile is as wide as the ocean because of the instant warmth in his demeanor.
“Thank you, I’m glad to be here.” His voice is sonorous, stretching like a bow across cello strings.
“How are you?” I ask as we scoot further down the lunch line together.
“I’m blessed,” he says. “I’m blessed.”
And so it is, that two angels make their love of humankind and the world known to me in one day’s time. And so it is that the little things in life slowly start to seep back in and I begin to feel clicks like the advance of camera film throughout my day. And so it is, that I feel blessed and loved, and then some.
Contemplation
[For yesterday]
The rain brings with it a reprieve from the raking. Parker is with me on the drive home late at night, after a full shift, after women’s singing night, after, after, after. The fog is as thick as cream against the highway and the rain moves like hot wax across my windshield, never quite wiping clean. We wade through puddles in the darkness trying to walk from the car to the cabin. I build a fire and Parker heats water on the electric hot plate for a sponge bath. It’s ironic, really, the amenities each of us lacks or the other has: I without a toilet or hot water or oven/stove, Parker with a full kitchen, composting toilet, tub/shower combo, and an on-demand hot water heater; I with insulation, electricity on the grid, a phone line, Parker without insulation (3-season yurt walls), running on solar power by day and a lantern or two at night. No phone.
I’ve been watching my emotions curl in reverse. Like a train suddenly made aware of its own speed, at some point I looked out the window of my experience and wanted to slow down. This was made easier by the fact that Parker stopped coming to see me every other day – a healthy sort of backing away on his part as well. And yet, with the house finally warming up from the fire and Parker freshly clean, we climb into bed and already I want to crawl inside of him. It’s hard for him to understand, I think, the potency of this feeling when it comes over me; it is visceral.
I try not to name things, even though my daily prayer at the keyboard is an exercise in just that. I try not to imagine, even though making artful sentences of such imaginings is my practice in the page. I try not to evaluate, measure, weigh, or analyze, even though deciphering the essence of any given scene in daily life is where I find the see for new writing. The business of attraction or early love or even awkward, unnamed commitment begs for something entirely different than my day-to-day experiences. It requires a sense of adventure, of giving over and giving up, of surrender. When I am strong, I treat it like meditation in action.
The rain brings with it a reprieve from the raking. Parker is with me on the drive home late at night, after a full shift, after women’s singing night, after, after, after. The fog is as thick as cream against the highway and the rain moves like hot wax across my windshield, never quite wiping clean. We wade through puddles in the darkness trying to walk from the car to the cabin. I build a fire and Parker heats water on the electric hot plate for a sponge bath. It’s ironic, really, the amenities each of us lacks or the other has: I without a toilet or hot water or oven/stove, Parker with a full kitchen, composting toilet, tub/shower combo, and an on-demand hot water heater; I with insulation, electricity on the grid, a phone line, Parker without insulation (3-season yurt walls), running on solar power by day and a lantern or two at night. No phone.
I’ve been watching my emotions curl in reverse. Like a train suddenly made aware of its own speed, at some point I looked out the window of my experience and wanted to slow down. This was made easier by the fact that Parker stopped coming to see me every other day – a healthy sort of backing away on his part as well. And yet, with the house finally warming up from the fire and Parker freshly clean, we climb into bed and already I want to crawl inside of him. It’s hard for him to understand, I think, the potency of this feeling when it comes over me; it is visceral.
I try not to name things, even though my daily prayer at the keyboard is an exercise in just that. I try not to imagine, even though making artful sentences of such imaginings is my practice in the page. I try not to evaluate, measure, weigh, or analyze, even though deciphering the essence of any given scene in daily life is where I find the see for new writing. The business of attraction or early love or even awkward, unnamed commitment begs for something entirely different than my day-to-day experiences. It requires a sense of adventure, of giving over and giving up, of surrender. When I am strong, I treat it like meditation in action.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Ready Again (Just Gotta Get to T-day)
I rake.
I rake to Alexi Murdoch “underneath and orange sky.” I rake to Sun Volt and “let the wind take [my] troubles away.” I rake to Beth Orton where, “this isn’t a joke.” I rake until the cows come home, which is quite impressive, since we don’t have any cows.
I shower.
I scrub to get the dirt out from underneath my fingernails. It’s dark enough to pass for coffee grounds at work, but still, scrubbing ensues and for good reason. In my hair: leaves, a few twigs, the smell of something ancient. My clothes: milk chocolate brown smudged across the arms and sides of my long underwear from hauling the tarp into the woods. It’s strange trying to hide leaves in a leaf-filled forest. My back: taught as tarp line, worked but not in pain, built but not bulging. My forearms: coiled like snakes, rubbery and exhausted, with the façade of being able to strike. My mind: upbeat yet toned down. Already I daydream of sleep.
At work I look for moments all day. I see glimpses – Sarah’s sweet hug and whimper as she ordered her usual (“a purity” – two shots of espresso on ice), Simon at his workbench in the book studio (under the light, I could see how pale the hairs on his fingers were, how fine his stitching around each section of pages, how patient his work must have been over the last two months), Angela and Ryan teasing each other at dinner (trying to agree on names for their new dog – it’s practice for having a child). But nothing pulls me in. I am spinning in my own mind.
Dear readers, how long have I been like this?
Feels like months now. Perhaps it is all the scene-based work I’m doing for the MFA that makes me reel away from the everyday scenes in my present life.
The scenes I could capture in daily life have not evaded me, it’s that my perception has dulled on them because my focus is inward. The workings of others have become periphery in this balls-to-the-wall grad school mentality. It’s not selfishness, it’s survival mode.
But I take heart in the fact that now, albeit a bit late, I’m noticing it. Perhaps my mind is starting to uncoil, like my fists and forearms by the end of the day. With some rest over Thanksgiving, maybe my field of vision can widen again. I’ll empty myself of myself to let the grace of the world around me pour in. It’s that place that I adore the most. It’s that place which I call home. It’s from that place that I write most meaningfully. The world give gifts daily. There’s no sense in lamenting over what I’ve failed to capture. But oh, I anticipate swimming in the thick of it again. I invite you back, world, I invite you back.
I rake to Alexi Murdoch “underneath and orange sky.” I rake to Sun Volt and “let the wind take [my] troubles away.” I rake to Beth Orton where, “this isn’t a joke.” I rake until the cows come home, which is quite impressive, since we don’t have any cows.
I shower.
I scrub to get the dirt out from underneath my fingernails. It’s dark enough to pass for coffee grounds at work, but still, scrubbing ensues and for good reason. In my hair: leaves, a few twigs, the smell of something ancient. My clothes: milk chocolate brown smudged across the arms and sides of my long underwear from hauling the tarp into the woods. It’s strange trying to hide leaves in a leaf-filled forest. My back: taught as tarp line, worked but not in pain, built but not bulging. My forearms: coiled like snakes, rubbery and exhausted, with the façade of being able to strike. My mind: upbeat yet toned down. Already I daydream of sleep.
At work I look for moments all day. I see glimpses – Sarah’s sweet hug and whimper as she ordered her usual (“a purity” – two shots of espresso on ice), Simon at his workbench in the book studio (under the light, I could see how pale the hairs on his fingers were, how fine his stitching around each section of pages, how patient his work must have been over the last two months), Angela and Ryan teasing each other at dinner (trying to agree on names for their new dog – it’s practice for having a child). But nothing pulls me in. I am spinning in my own mind.
Dear readers, how long have I been like this?
Feels like months now. Perhaps it is all the scene-based work I’m doing for the MFA that makes me reel away from the everyday scenes in my present life.
The scenes I could capture in daily life have not evaded me, it’s that my perception has dulled on them because my focus is inward. The workings of others have become periphery in this balls-to-the-wall grad school mentality. It’s not selfishness, it’s survival mode.
But I take heart in the fact that now, albeit a bit late, I’m noticing it. Perhaps my mind is starting to uncoil, like my fists and forearms by the end of the day. With some rest over Thanksgiving, maybe my field of vision can widen again. I’ll empty myself of myself to let the grace of the world around me pour in. It’s that place that I adore the most. It’s that place which I call home. It’s from that place that I write most meaningfully. The world give gifts daily. There’s no sense in lamenting over what I’ve failed to capture. But oh, I anticipate swimming in the thick of it again. I invite you back, world, I invite you back.
Monday, November 13, 2006
The Story of Now
I try to put a cap on things. To shake down all the shaking up and figure out what it is that’s tossing me to and fro for the past few weeks.
Story. It is story.
I tell myself a story as I’m raking, another seven hours put in this weekend. The story goes like this: I complain to myself that there’s no chance in hell a wildfire would come our way. I whimper that the neighbors are afraid of death and that I have to do this irrational task because of it. I count and recount the hours, calculate perimeter in my head, and get the tape measure out so I’m sure I’m actually clearing thirty feet – no more than required. But that’s all just story – the repeated cycle of habitual thought that’s rambling around in my brain with each stroke of the rake. It takes about four hours, but eventually I stop the story. I listen to music and salsa with Maria de Barros while I rake. I get sweet with Jehro and sing out loud to Manu Chao, bobbing my head up and down to the cadence of each song, and striking the rake across the ground like a metronome. The story dissipates; I am at ease. I smile at the sun, the rim of clouds rolling over the top of the Black Mountains like water. I am outside, jubilant, breathing. This is as close to being present as I get, and it takes a lot of work to get there.
Funny thing is, the present is there all along.
And so it is decided. I will rake until the cows come home, or at least by the looks of it, for about fifteen more hours this week. I will rake the heavens, the earth, and everything in between. I will follow the cadence of the rustling leaves with my breath, let myself be swept away in each present moment. I will accept this teaching and keep the habitual storyline at bay. I will, I will, I will.
This lesson carries me through Monday, where the boss is spewing negativity and unadulterated self-storyline and I use my vow to let it all roll off of me like water. When she gets going, I pray for her in my mind. I try to hear her, because she needs to be heard. And I try to wish her well, to help her separate from the repeated suffering that she can’t seem to walk away from. It’s an exercise in generosity, not ego-building. If I follow my breath when she’s being negative, I can pray for her and be strong at the same time. It’s another teaching, another chance to move away from the storyline of negativity. It’s another gift.
I try to apply this to friends, who test and push me not knowing that I am at my weakest (little sleep, just off my first semester, about to go 3 1/2 months without a steady paycheck, uncertainty about love and lust and like and everything inbetwee). It is their gift to me, too – their pushing. I try to stay with it, to lean in and gleam from them their teachings. This takes time. It’s fragile work.
And I try to apply this steadiness, this ability to be present, to my own heart. All afternoon I look for Parker’s car. I worry myself to and fro and no, no, no sign of him. By nightfall I remember that, I think, he said he was going to UniversityTown, NC for something today. My mind stops racing. I laugh at myself, my stories, my games. Even his absence is a teaching, another gift.
It is a time of transition from fall to winter, from part-time employment to full-time self-employment, from perhaps lust to something greater or at least something freer, from “just started grad school” to “in the thick of it.” The temptation is to tell stories of the past or project into the future. Time seems to beg for anything other than itself. And I say hold on, heart. Hold on, head. Hold on, mind. Hold on to nothing other than that which is before you. Stay present.
Story. It is story.
I tell myself a story as I’m raking, another seven hours put in this weekend. The story goes like this: I complain to myself that there’s no chance in hell a wildfire would come our way. I whimper that the neighbors are afraid of death and that I have to do this irrational task because of it. I count and recount the hours, calculate perimeter in my head, and get the tape measure out so I’m sure I’m actually clearing thirty feet – no more than required. But that’s all just story – the repeated cycle of habitual thought that’s rambling around in my brain with each stroke of the rake. It takes about four hours, but eventually I stop the story. I listen to music and salsa with Maria de Barros while I rake. I get sweet with Jehro and sing out loud to Manu Chao, bobbing my head up and down to the cadence of each song, and striking the rake across the ground like a metronome. The story dissipates; I am at ease. I smile at the sun, the rim of clouds rolling over the top of the Black Mountains like water. I am outside, jubilant, breathing. This is as close to being present as I get, and it takes a lot of work to get there.
Funny thing is, the present is there all along.
And so it is decided. I will rake until the cows come home, or at least by the looks of it, for about fifteen more hours this week. I will rake the heavens, the earth, and everything in between. I will follow the cadence of the rustling leaves with my breath, let myself be swept away in each present moment. I will accept this teaching and keep the habitual storyline at bay. I will, I will, I will.
This lesson carries me through Monday, where the boss is spewing negativity and unadulterated self-storyline and I use my vow to let it all roll off of me like water. When she gets going, I pray for her in my mind. I try to hear her, because she needs to be heard. And I try to wish her well, to help her separate from the repeated suffering that she can’t seem to walk away from. It’s an exercise in generosity, not ego-building. If I follow my breath when she’s being negative, I can pray for her and be strong at the same time. It’s another teaching, another chance to move away from the storyline of negativity. It’s another gift.
I try to apply this to friends, who test and push me not knowing that I am at my weakest (little sleep, just off my first semester, about to go 3 1/2 months without a steady paycheck, uncertainty about love and lust and like and everything inbetwee). It is their gift to me, too – their pushing. I try to stay with it, to lean in and gleam from them their teachings. This takes time. It’s fragile work.
And I try to apply this steadiness, this ability to be present, to my own heart. All afternoon I look for Parker’s car. I worry myself to and fro and no, no, no sign of him. By nightfall I remember that, I think, he said he was going to UniversityTown, NC for something today. My mind stops racing. I laugh at myself, my stories, my games. Even his absence is a teaching, another gift.
It is a time of transition from fall to winter, from part-time employment to full-time self-employment, from perhaps lust to something greater or at least something freer, from “just started grad school” to “in the thick of it.” The temptation is to tell stories of the past or project into the future. Time seems to beg for anything other than itself. And I say hold on, heart. Hold on, head. Hold on, mind. Hold on to nothing other than that which is before you. Stay present.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
No I Am Not Drunk, Just Weary
By 6p.m. I want to be drunk. I have been raking leaves for over three hours. If you count yesterday’s raking, that’s about six hours total and I kid you not – I am not even one third of the way done. But I stop because it is dark out and it’s raining. The neighbors are terrified of fires and according to them and the US Forest Service, a “defensible space” of no less than thirty feet should be cleared from all buildings. The idea is to avoid the chances of a spark from the stovepipe igniting a pile of dried leaves on the property. It’s a completely sane, safe, regulation and I trust USFS memorandums over the thin weight of my few years heating with wood.
But thirty feet? I ask the neighbors for clarification. “So if I’m raking in the thick rhododenrum brush, I need to get the piles of leaves way under the plants, too? The big piles jammed up against the mountain laurel roots, as well?” I try to sound open and willing. This is, after all, for my barter. I have no right to complain. I am the luckiest person, I tell myself. I have been given an immeasurable gift, I repeat again in my head. I will do whatever it takes to keep this barter arrangement because it is intrinsically tied to my time to give the writing life. I will do whatever it takes.
What it takes is crawling around belly-down on the forest floor, underneath the thickets (you know, where you see the squirrels mawing acorns and the rabbits licking their bellies). I scrape the leaves away from the base of the plants by hand, layer after layer after layer. I paw them backwards towards a clearing. Then I rake all around the plants, and my piles grown and grow. Then I rake that onto tarps and haul the tarps. All of this I don’t mind, except for the clawing at the ground aspect, which seems unnecessary to me.
I try to remember yesterday’s post – that there are lives in those leaves, that in order to do work I must stay present, that being a grump makes life no fun, that if I could only stay with my breath the length of this task would seem like merely a blip in time.
I try. But then again, I find myself wanting to be drunk at 6pm. This is a rare yet absolutely vivified feeling. I need away.
Cam calls and says he believes that it’s possible to fall in love with love, but that he no longer believes in the really hit-ya-in-the-face all-at-once sort love. “I just don’t buy it anymore, Schultzy.” We talk poems, which leads to more talk of love, and then we talk about the desperation of single-twenty-somethings-in-the-mountains-syndrome, which we both know well. The thing is we’re both seeing people now, and both mildy confused by that fact yet intrigued at the same time. And most of all, we both pay allegiance to words as if they were a parent on the death bed: Never leave my side.
Words like drugs like poetry is anyway, like wanting to be drunk at six-oh-clock-at-friggin-night, like kissing the stars through loft windows, like knowing what you need to do for yourself and not doing it, like eating too much chocolate before bedtime, like sad sappy slow folk songs (the only ones I like to play, unless it’s BobbyD, in which case I’ll play anything), like the pile of papers and letters and phone calls all yet unreturned on my desk, like how I haven’t talked to Huck in two months, or Vondy in one, or Vic in two weeks or how Richelle is so patient and keeps calling and always, I am busy, busy, busy (and she’s the one in law school, for god’s sake).
Like this and that and snares of poems rattling in my brain with no way out or like how I still hate Keroac’s On the Road or how I’m falling in love with a nineteenth century depressive poet (Thomas Hardy) or how maybe, someday, I’ll give up on the ups and downs of life and unfurl into some wiser horizon that lives unswayed by the tides of humanism.
But thirty feet? I ask the neighbors for clarification. “So if I’m raking in the thick rhododenrum brush, I need to get the piles of leaves way under the plants, too? The big piles jammed up against the mountain laurel roots, as well?” I try to sound open and willing. This is, after all, for my barter. I have no right to complain. I am the luckiest person, I tell myself. I have been given an immeasurable gift, I repeat again in my head. I will do whatever it takes to keep this barter arrangement because it is intrinsically tied to my time to give the writing life. I will do whatever it takes.
What it takes is crawling around belly-down on the forest floor, underneath the thickets (you know, where you see the squirrels mawing acorns and the rabbits licking their bellies). I scrape the leaves away from the base of the plants by hand, layer after layer after layer. I paw them backwards towards a clearing. Then I rake all around the plants, and my piles grown and grow. Then I rake that onto tarps and haul the tarps. All of this I don’t mind, except for the clawing at the ground aspect, which seems unnecessary to me.
I try to remember yesterday’s post – that there are lives in those leaves, that in order to do work I must stay present, that being a grump makes life no fun, that if I could only stay with my breath the length of this task would seem like merely a blip in time.
I try. But then again, I find myself wanting to be drunk at 6pm. This is a rare yet absolutely vivified feeling. I need away.
Cam calls and says he believes that it’s possible to fall in love with love, but that he no longer believes in the really hit-ya-in-the-face all-at-once sort love. “I just don’t buy it anymore, Schultzy.” We talk poems, which leads to more talk of love, and then we talk about the desperation of single-twenty-somethings-in-the-mountains-syndrome, which we both know well. The thing is we’re both seeing people now, and both mildy confused by that fact yet intrigued at the same time. And most of all, we both pay allegiance to words as if they were a parent on the death bed: Never leave my side.
Words like drugs like poetry is anyway, like wanting to be drunk at six-oh-clock-at-friggin-night, like kissing the stars through loft windows, like knowing what you need to do for yourself and not doing it, like eating too much chocolate before bedtime, like sad sappy slow folk songs (the only ones I like to play, unless it’s BobbyD, in which case I’ll play anything), like the pile of papers and letters and phone calls all yet unreturned on my desk, like how I haven’t talked to Huck in two months, or Vondy in one, or Vic in two weeks or how Richelle is so patient and keeps calling and always, I am busy, busy, busy (and she’s the one in law school, for god’s sake).
Like this and that and snares of poems rattling in my brain with no way out or like how I still hate Keroac’s On the Road or how I’m falling in love with a nineteenth century depressive poet (Thomas Hardy) or how maybe, someday, I’ll give up on the ups and downs of life and unfurl into some wiser horizon that lives unswayed by the tides of humanism.
Friday, November 10, 2006
A Life in Leaves
Today I spent some time raking leaves up on the property to fulfill barter hours for housing. The leaves moved easily, like tissue paper, and crackled against one another with each stroke of the rake. Even at 8:30 in the morning the sun was hot enough for a cotton t-shirt, as most of North Carolina had record high temperatures today. I worked slowly but with focus. I know enough about raking to understand that a haphazard job can lead to over-raking and wasted time and labor (verb OH-VER-RAYK: unnecessary obsession with unnatural perfection, Ex. When five acres is raked end-to-end, for example, instead of just the perimeters of buildings and major trails.)
But beneath nature’s first gift-wrapping of crisp leaves, beneath the semi-damp older leaves, but before the dark chocolate brown soil, lay an elegant blend of natural stink, comprised of decayed leaves and sundry forest parts. It occurred to me this layer could be my life, or all our lives for that matter. We reside somewhere between the past (the soil, or matter that has already been decomposed) and the future (those tissue-paper leaves that await the sun as it spreads light across the valley). Our work is deep and dark and always alive, churning, becoming something other than it is from one moment to the next.
From one moment to the next we are not who we think we were, and neither are our neighbors and friends. This is not an ominous predicament, rather, it is the finest teaching daily life has to offer. I push and strive and stretch and bend and try to form a truth out of each day. But when all the water has boiled away, and only the salt of life remains, what I feel is in indefinable stream of the inbetween, the composting muck of our efforts continuously unfurling into new lives, new forms, new ways of being in the world.
But beneath nature’s first gift-wrapping of crisp leaves, beneath the semi-damp older leaves, but before the dark chocolate brown soil, lay an elegant blend of natural stink, comprised of decayed leaves and sundry forest parts. It occurred to me this layer could be my life, or all our lives for that matter. We reside somewhere between the past (the soil, or matter that has already been decomposed) and the future (those tissue-paper leaves that await the sun as it spreads light across the valley). Our work is deep and dark and always alive, churning, becoming something other than it is from one moment to the next.
From one moment to the next we are not who we think we were, and neither are our neighbors and friends. This is not an ominous predicament, rather, it is the finest teaching daily life has to offer. I push and strive and stretch and bend and try to form a truth out of each day. But when all the water has boiled away, and only the salt of life remains, what I feel is in indefinable stream of the inbetween, the composting muck of our efforts continuously unfurling into new lives, new forms, new ways of being in the world.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Trying to Stay Present
Parker and I have seen each other three times since holding Freddie’s quaking body in our hands in the middle of the road.
Once, I saw him at his workplace, though it was very brief. I managed to say something like, “I woke up this morning feeling more uplifted,” during which statement he managed to put pieces of masking tape in random places on my shirt. I told him that was flirtatious and distracting and he said he was trying to concentrate on what I was saying. Talk about paradigm.
Then, he left for a week and came straight to the coffeehouse on his way back, before even stopping at his own place to unpack. I felt electric around him, though slightly cautious. But his laugh, his smile, the ease of our conversation and our obvious interest in each other’s lives was reassuring. I didn’t know what we were, and I’ve given up on that idea since. But I do know that it felt good to be around him.
He came back again the next day, Tuesday, and we talked for a long hour after I closed the coffeehouse for the day. Still, no signs of romantic intensity but I remember some advice from a friend. “Sometimes, you’ve just gotta play chess,” by which the friend meant Hang in There, Be Patient, It Takes Time. I felt myself watching him as if from a distance, taking more of him in without such a goal-oriented perspective. His complexities began to reveal themselves and I could feel myself unlatch a little, remembering again how much work a relationship is.
And last night was our officially planned time together – a dinner date in BigCity, NC then on to a liver performance by Keller Williams.
We talked in the car all the way to the restaurant (at least an hour away) and again, I felt myself content and curious about his friendship. I did not feel myself hungry or needing the story of him like I had before. At the restaurant, Parker wants to talk about sex and we are trying to continue our conversation that went so wrong from before, but the tables are so close there is not a molecule of privacy. Parker begins to talk in code by telling me how he feels about “mixing paint” versus just “painting alone” and part of me wants to know about “painting other rooms” but we don’t go there and soon enough we are laughing and no one cares and nothing matters and Parker has his chopsticks on top of his head like antennae and mine are sticking out of my upper lip like overgrown fangs. This could be childish digression, it could be stress relief, it could be exhibiting total comfort with one another, or it could be a mix of all three but either way, I find myself laughing more and more as the evening rolls on and whatever it is, it feels great.
As we walk through the doors to the show, Keller Williams parts the curtains and makes his entrance onto the stage. Immediately the crowd is dancing and Parker and I make our way towards the front of the stage, pocketing ourselves in a small gap in the crowd.
“There are at least seventeen instruments on stage.” I put my arms around Parker’s waist and lean in so that he can hear me over the music. He has been dancing for a while now, too, and I am glad to know we are both comfortable and into the show. “I counted eleven stringed instruments alone! How many can you see? You’re taller than me.”
“I see one instrument,” Parker says, pulling me in. Then he places the tip of his pointer finger on the center of my forehead, indicating mock transmission of some great, spiritual teaching. Keller is a one-man show whose musical and technological genius allows him to build songs one instrument at a time right before your eyes. But what really matters is the simplicity of Parker’s statement. One instrument.
I have such a tendency to over-think issues; to dissect and analyze and name things. It is part of the work of a writer who is trying to constantly understand the world around her. I line things up in my brain in order to use them later as building blocks for stories. This works well on the page, but causes some stresses in the real world.
One instrument.
The night rolls on and Keller plays for three hours, a one-man show, with only a fifteen-minute break halfway through the set. We dance and dance and drink and dance some more. I could be just as happy without Parker there, which is a fine indicator of balance for me. But Parker is there. And we are together, at least in the moment. And for whatever it’s worth, the night goes on and on and by three in the morning we have finally made it back to the mountains, curled beneath blankets in my sleeping loft and begun to find each other again, whittling through the jargon and the code, past all the fretting and doubting, past all the pretend of knowing what this all means anyway, and falling quite simply and slowly into the arms of each other. One instrument.
Once, I saw him at his workplace, though it was very brief. I managed to say something like, “I woke up this morning feeling more uplifted,” during which statement he managed to put pieces of masking tape in random places on my shirt. I told him that was flirtatious and distracting and he said he was trying to concentrate on what I was saying. Talk about paradigm.
Then, he left for a week and came straight to the coffeehouse on his way back, before even stopping at his own place to unpack. I felt electric around him, though slightly cautious. But his laugh, his smile, the ease of our conversation and our obvious interest in each other’s lives was reassuring. I didn’t know what we were, and I’ve given up on that idea since. But I do know that it felt good to be around him.
He came back again the next day, Tuesday, and we talked for a long hour after I closed the coffeehouse for the day. Still, no signs of romantic intensity but I remember some advice from a friend. “Sometimes, you’ve just gotta play chess,” by which the friend meant Hang in There, Be Patient, It Takes Time. I felt myself watching him as if from a distance, taking more of him in without such a goal-oriented perspective. His complexities began to reveal themselves and I could feel myself unlatch a little, remembering again how much work a relationship is.
And last night was our officially planned time together – a dinner date in BigCity, NC then on to a liver performance by Keller Williams.
We talked in the car all the way to the restaurant (at least an hour away) and again, I felt myself content and curious about his friendship. I did not feel myself hungry or needing the story of him like I had before. At the restaurant, Parker wants to talk about sex and we are trying to continue our conversation that went so wrong from before, but the tables are so close there is not a molecule of privacy. Parker begins to talk in code by telling me how he feels about “mixing paint” versus just “painting alone” and part of me wants to know about “painting other rooms” but we don’t go there and soon enough we are laughing and no one cares and nothing matters and Parker has his chopsticks on top of his head like antennae and mine are sticking out of my upper lip like overgrown fangs. This could be childish digression, it could be stress relief, it could be exhibiting total comfort with one another, or it could be a mix of all three but either way, I find myself laughing more and more as the evening rolls on and whatever it is, it feels great.
As we walk through the doors to the show, Keller Williams parts the curtains and makes his entrance onto the stage. Immediately the crowd is dancing and Parker and I make our way towards the front of the stage, pocketing ourselves in a small gap in the crowd.
“There are at least seventeen instruments on stage.” I put my arms around Parker’s waist and lean in so that he can hear me over the music. He has been dancing for a while now, too, and I am glad to know we are both comfortable and into the show. “I counted eleven stringed instruments alone! How many can you see? You’re taller than me.”
“I see one instrument,” Parker says, pulling me in. Then he places the tip of his pointer finger on the center of my forehead, indicating mock transmission of some great, spiritual teaching. Keller is a one-man show whose musical and technological genius allows him to build songs one instrument at a time right before your eyes. But what really matters is the simplicity of Parker’s statement. One instrument.
I have such a tendency to over-think issues; to dissect and analyze and name things. It is part of the work of a writer who is trying to constantly understand the world around her. I line things up in my brain in order to use them later as building blocks for stories. This works well on the page, but causes some stresses in the real world.
One instrument.
The night rolls on and Keller plays for three hours, a one-man show, with only a fifteen-minute break halfway through the set. We dance and dance and drink and dance some more. I could be just as happy without Parker there, which is a fine indicator of balance for me. But Parker is there. And we are together, at least in the moment. And for whatever it’s worth, the night goes on and on and by three in the morning we have finally made it back to the mountains, curled beneath blankets in my sleeping loft and begun to find each other again, whittling through the jargon and the code, past all the fretting and doubting, past all the pretend of knowing what this all means anyway, and falling quite simply and slowly into the arms of each other. One instrument.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Rain Votes
You know you live near a small town when you walk into the polling room and you know more people in there than you don’t. Furthermore, you know you live near a small town when “the mountain counties are reporting some of their highest numbers yet for an election year” and you were voter number 264. Your friend, who voted two hours before you, was voter number 91, and it is this fact, among others both questionable and not, that you are discussing in a local coffee shop filled with even more people that you both know.
And so it is. The rain falls all day, drops like votes adding to the swell of the river. Where will today’s rain votes lead us? How far can one droplet cast itself, unfurling molecules towards the ocean of politics? How large is the ripple effect, anyway?
We hope for tidal waves of change.
And so it is. The rain falls all day, drops like votes adding to the swell of the river. Where will today’s rain votes lead us? How far can one droplet cast itself, unfurling molecules towards the ocean of politics? How large is the ripple effect, anyway?
We hope for tidal waves of change.
Monday, November 06, 2006
The Blind Man
Persona poem experiment.
Sensory detail, sensory deprivation.
100+ words.
Ready, set, go!
THE BLIND MAN
He lived by hands,
their calluses or chapped knuckles,
a tender hangnail,
lifelines,
the number of rings and rocks
and whether they were cold
(from being outdoors)
or slipped with sweat
(from being shoved shyly into a pocket).
The cashier at the QP?
Hands like stone, frigid as
overdry air,
calamity of counterspace,
muck of coinage.
The double shift waitress at the Waffle House?
Sticky, swollen fingers.
A touch of strawberry
syrup from arranging the condiments along the bar.
She routinely cupped his hand in hers
when counting his change,
Eleven that’s ten and one,
the sift of bills, musty smell,
And fifty seven, that’s 25, 25, and two,
clink clink.
Many hands later,
he’d raise his own to his nostrils,
smell her strawberry kisses,
invoking the rings of her voice,
That’s 25, 25, and two.
Sensory detail, sensory deprivation.
100+ words.
Ready, set, go!
THE BLIND MAN
He lived by hands,
their calluses or chapped knuckles,
a tender hangnail,
lifelines,
the number of rings and rocks
and whether they were cold
(from being outdoors)
or slipped with sweat
(from being shoved shyly into a pocket).
The cashier at the QP?
Hands like stone, frigid as
overdry air,
calamity of counterspace,
muck of coinage.
The double shift waitress at the Waffle House?
Sticky, swollen fingers.
A touch of strawberry
syrup from arranging the condiments along the bar.
She routinely cupped his hand in hers
when counting his change,
Eleven that’s ten and one,
the sift of bills, musty smell,
And fifty seven, that’s 25, 25, and two,
clink clink.
Many hands later,
he’d raise his own to his nostrils,
smell her strawberry kisses,
invoking the rings of her voice,
That’s 25, 25, and two.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Sadhana of Mahamudra
There are twelve of us signed up for the weekend retreat, including the instructor, who has traveled from Boulder, Colorado to provide instruction in the Sadhana of Mahamudra. This sadhana, or practice, is done on the new moon and the full moon and was discovered in 1968 by the founder of the Shambhala teachings, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
It is said that the practice contains profound elements of both the Nyingma and the Kagyu lineages, two of the four main Buddhist lineages coming out of Tibet. It is a devotional practice that evokes the awakened state through supplication to Dorje Trollo Karma Pakshi. DTKP is seamless blend of Nyingma and Kagyu concepts manifesting in the form of a deity.
(Ya’ with me, so far?)
A premise of this sadhana, and Buddhism in general, is that our suffering is due to the fact that we project the very world of which we are afraid. We are at once the creators of our own suffering and the seeds of our own enlightenment. The Sadhana of Mahamudra is done twice a month during times when energies are drastically shifting, and both craziness and wisdom manifest in the relative world in notable ways. By approaching this practice with devotion and a sense of fearless certainty, we agree to allow for the possibility that anything could happen while taking the vow, creating the visualization, supplicating the gurus, chanting the mantra, resting the mind in the mandala of mahamudra, or any other instance for that matter.
So we sit. And we study. And we chant and chant and chant for hours each day. At the end, we feast and toast and sing and offer amrita. Sake and roast beef and torma serve as specific symbols for our feasting. There is leftover food that has been blessed and so we send everyone on their way with this abundance, because blessed food cannot be thrown away. If it not going to be consumed, it must be offered (into the river, for example – something that flows, moves, etc.).
I wanted to tell you about the nuances of my experience. I wanted to tell you about eating the roast beef, which almost made me gag (I have excluded red meat from my diet for ten years). I wanted to tell you how I ate it anyway, because it symbolizes aggression. Consuming it is symbolic of relinquishing yourself from its power, among other things. I wanted to tell you about AS, a 26-year-old practitioner who is going to dive school (at a cost of $8,000) for four months so he can get an off-shore job with a company in Houston (the agreement has practically been made already) and earn up to $80,000 in one year. AD is going to do this because in 2009, the next round of three-year retreats starts (this one will be in Australia) and AD wants to go. But it costs $60,000 to go on the three year retreat, even though his head teacher has invited him to do it. AD’s got to get certified, pay to feed and house himself, pay for a bit of travel over the next few years, and he’s got to keep that job. You do the math. It could happen. Then again,
“You never know how things will turn out,” AD reminds me. His hands are soft and he fumbles with the toothpicks as we prepare the trays of food for the feast. All the students pick on him at the dive school because he is slower at things, though not by any lack of intelligence. “You never know. We’ll just see…”
This, from the same man who told me last night that getting yelled at is really no different than getting a hug. By which he meant that it’s all just energy. By which he meant, basically, that he has been liberated from passion, aggression, and prejudice. By which he meant, in a nutshell, that he was hard core on the path to enlightenment and living in the world was just par for the course, part of the deal, the birth he’d been given so might as well make the most of it. Of course, he’s too humble to admit any of that, but it’s not everyday that you meet a 26-year-old whose primary goal is the three-year retreat.
I wanted to tell you all of this and more. But when I go into retreat and come out, all my stories have unwound themselves through the course of meditating and sitting and chanting for so long. The details that ordinarily make a story unique are lost to me if I try to imagine writing them down. When I am on retreat, I am in retreat and therefore not an observer; not the fly on the wall I so often prefer to be. It’s good for me to dive in like this. And tonight, this week, being back out in the world – all of that is already starting to pull me back out of it.
And so it is. Details and stories will come back to me, soon enough. For now, I do not miss them, and that is a true sign of retreat.
It is said that the practice contains profound elements of both the Nyingma and the Kagyu lineages, two of the four main Buddhist lineages coming out of Tibet. It is a devotional practice that evokes the awakened state through supplication to Dorje Trollo Karma Pakshi. DTKP is seamless blend of Nyingma and Kagyu concepts manifesting in the form of a deity.
(Ya’ with me, so far?)
A premise of this sadhana, and Buddhism in general, is that our suffering is due to the fact that we project the very world of which we are afraid. We are at once the creators of our own suffering and the seeds of our own enlightenment. The Sadhana of Mahamudra is done twice a month during times when energies are drastically shifting, and both craziness and wisdom manifest in the relative world in notable ways. By approaching this practice with devotion and a sense of fearless certainty, we agree to allow for the possibility that anything could happen while taking the vow, creating the visualization, supplicating the gurus, chanting the mantra, resting the mind in the mandala of mahamudra, or any other instance for that matter.
So we sit. And we study. And we chant and chant and chant for hours each day. At the end, we feast and toast and sing and offer amrita. Sake and roast beef and torma serve as specific symbols for our feasting. There is leftover food that has been blessed and so we send everyone on their way with this abundance, because blessed food cannot be thrown away. If it not going to be consumed, it must be offered (into the river, for example – something that flows, moves, etc.).
I wanted to tell you about the nuances of my experience. I wanted to tell you about eating the roast beef, which almost made me gag (I have excluded red meat from my diet for ten years). I wanted to tell you how I ate it anyway, because it symbolizes aggression. Consuming it is symbolic of relinquishing yourself from its power, among other things. I wanted to tell you about AS, a 26-year-old practitioner who is going to dive school (at a cost of $8,000) for four months so he can get an off-shore job with a company in Houston (the agreement has practically been made already) and earn up to $80,000 in one year. AD is going to do this because in 2009, the next round of three-year retreats starts (this one will be in Australia) and AD wants to go. But it costs $60,000 to go on the three year retreat, even though his head teacher has invited him to do it. AD’s got to get certified, pay to feed and house himself, pay for a bit of travel over the next few years, and he’s got to keep that job. You do the math. It could happen. Then again,
“You never know how things will turn out,” AD reminds me. His hands are soft and he fumbles with the toothpicks as we prepare the trays of food for the feast. All the students pick on him at the dive school because he is slower at things, though not by any lack of intelligence. “You never know. We’ll just see…”
This, from the same man who told me last night that getting yelled at is really no different than getting a hug. By which he meant that it’s all just energy. By which he meant, basically, that he has been liberated from passion, aggression, and prejudice. By which he meant, in a nutshell, that he was hard core on the path to enlightenment and living in the world was just par for the course, part of the deal, the birth he’d been given so might as well make the most of it. Of course, he’s too humble to admit any of that, but it’s not everyday that you meet a 26-year-old whose primary goal is the three-year retreat.
I wanted to tell you all of this and more. But when I go into retreat and come out, all my stories have unwound themselves through the course of meditating and sitting and chanting for so long. The details that ordinarily make a story unique are lost to me if I try to imagine writing them down. When I am on retreat, I am in retreat and therefore not an observer; not the fly on the wall I so often prefer to be. It’s good for me to dive in like this. And tonight, this week, being back out in the world – all of that is already starting to pull me back out of it.
And so it is. Details and stories will come back to me, soon enough. For now, I do not miss them, and that is a true sign of retreat.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Row, Row, Row Your Boat
The question of sanity arises in the face of too many things to do. I have ten poems to edit for Cam. [Can I put this off ‘till next week? Yes, he says, of course.] An essay to edit for myself to submit to Oregon Quarterly. Another essay to submit to the critique group Britt and I started. 150 pages left of Didion to read before Monday. Our State wants the final draft of our contract for the essay coming out in December. Then there are eight nonfiction submissions to read and judge for the Silk Road literary magazine, of which I am one of the senior editors. More submissions are flowing in every week. Then there’s the craft letter to write to my advisor, no later than Monday, plus a final read on the thirty pages I’m sending him.
Oh, and I’ll be on retreat all weekend at the meditation center in BigCity, NC.
But tonight Mel (from Women’s Singing Night) and I went to see PD’s gallery opening in BigCity, NC and then treated ourselves to dinner out. It was such a rich evening, that I’ve got to get the story of our time together down on paper. So, a compromise is in the works. I’ll post one blog between Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. That blog will likely be about my time with Mel. Otherwise, I’m on retreat and off the computer. By Monday night I will have officially finished my first semester of grad school and will therefore be available to the world again. I might even run laps around the little cabin in the woods.
Fair enough? Hope so.
Oh, and I’ll be on retreat all weekend at the meditation center in BigCity, NC.
But tonight Mel (from Women’s Singing Night) and I went to see PD’s gallery opening in BigCity, NC and then treated ourselves to dinner out. It was such a rich evening, that I’ve got to get the story of our time together down on paper. So, a compromise is in the works. I’ll post one blog between Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. That blog will likely be about my time with Mel. Otherwise, I’m on retreat and off the computer. By Monday night I will have officially finished my first semester of grad school and will therefore be available to the world again. I might even run laps around the little cabin in the woods.
Fair enough? Hope so.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
A Rare Treat
Oh dear readers, I have been writing, writing, writing and revising and calling Vic and emailing Britt and drilling Wesley and emailing Cam all week about the craft. And so for tonight's blog I will offer the very beginning of a new story I started for the MFA this week. It's still a blog post, I guess, because this is all first draft. But it's a different tone and wtih different intention. And it's what I can offer this evening, therefore - so be it.
SOCCER MOM (all text copyrighted)
“Tara’s mom calls my dad ‘baby’ when they talk on the phone.” Erin leans across our marathon game of Monopoly in order to whisper in my ear, always mindful of her eaves-dropping younger brothers.
“Why do they talk on the phone?” I roll to make my next move, the dice bouncing in a familiar rhythm. Erin thinks I am lucky because I don’t have any brothers and sisters. I think Erin’s lucky because she has brothers to play Monopoly with all weekend if she wants.
“He says he has to call her because she’s our new team soccer mom,” Erin says. “He says next week at practice, she’s going to show us a special girls’ bag for our team with like, supplies, in it.” She moves the faux silver top hat game piece from Baltic Avenue to Jail, where thanks to her lucky roll, she is Just Visiting.
“You mean pads?”
“Pads.” Her lips are pursed as she hands me the dice.
“Oh God.”
“It’s so stupid. Like as if we don’t already know about all that anyway,” Erin says, rolling her eyes. I roll my eyes too, even though I don’t really know about all that anyway, even though this is fifth grade and therefore my first year and public school with mandatory sex education, even though Erin has her period already and I won’t get mine for another five years. The day all the girls in fifth grade left their homeroom classes at Stephenson Elementary to go learn about ovaries from Mrs. Snodgrass was the beginning of finally getting all that, though ovaries were just a dot on the map.
I pick up the dice and roll again. “What else goes in the special girls’ bag?”
“A change of shorts, some toilet paper, I don’t know.” Erin rolls half-heartedly. The corners of her mouth turn down slightly and the skin on her face settles into a mute pose. I’ve seen this face before, most often on the soccer field when she plays keeper and misses the ball. Erin is the second-best keeper on our team, but she’s the coach’s daughter so she’s always trying to get better. She even has a net set up in her backyard and sometimes she lets me take shots at her.
“Do you like Tara’s mom, anyway?”
“Shhhh.” Erin shoves the game board aside and scoots across the carpet to sit next to me. “I don’t get why she’s going to be our team mom. Why isn’t my mom going to be our team mom?” Erin and her brothers were adopted by our coach, Dennis, and his wife, Mary. Even though Erin calls Dennis and Mary “Dad and Mom,” my mom tells me this means Erin’s had to think about harder things in life than I have. She tells me not to ask about adoption unless it seems like Erin wants to talk about it.
“Yeah, it’s weird,” I say. “But how do you know Tara’s mom calls him ‘baby’?”
“Because when she calls for dad and I answer, I cover the receiver and stay on the line. He always talks to her in his bedroom – sometimes in the closet.”
“Well, does he call her anything like that?”
“Sweetie. He calls her sweetie. It makes me want to hurl.” Erin sticks her finger down her throat in a mock-gag, then lurches her torso up and down, writhing with disgust. She falls to the floor and starts twitching, knees knocking against the Monopoly board, sending an earthquake down Boardwalk and Park Place. Hotels and houses slide from their properties but Erin does not notice. Her movement is fluid and full body now, and her mute face has flipped into a Cheshire smile. She cannot stop laughing.
“Oh sweetie,” I say in mock affection, starting to laugh too.
“Oh baby,” She chokes on her laughter, which invokes more fake gagging. Her youngest brother Kevin peers around the corner of the bedroom door. His real mom used to do drugs. At least that’s what Erin told me one day when we were playing soccer with him and he went ape-shit, pounding her with his feisty, six-year-old fists and shrieking like a retard. Erin couldn’t get up then and she can’t seem to get up now, even though she usually pummels Kevin out of the room any time he makes an appearance. I get up to close the door and Kevin flinches, then shuffles down the hallway into the bathroom.
Erin was right about the special girls’ bag, except the change of shorts concerns me because they’re too small and have built-in nylon underwear. On Tuesday, Tara’s mom, Sue, comes to practice wearing shin guards and Nike shorts. She is carrying the special girls’ bag over her shoulder. Coach Dennis is giving us a pep talk while we sit picking grass blades and stuffing them down each other’s shirts when he’s not looking. Dennis likes to wear shorts that have built-in underwear too, and all the soccer girls know this because his balls flop left and right inside the bright red nylon liners dangling dangerously close to the open edges of his shorts. Now whenever he uses the word balls, the team bursts into laughter, though coach doesn’t seem to get it. He is talking about anticipating the next move when he catches a glimpse of Tara’s mom jogging down the steep hillside to our practice field..........
SOCCER MOM (all text copyrighted)
“Tara’s mom calls my dad ‘baby’ when they talk on the phone.” Erin leans across our marathon game of Monopoly in order to whisper in my ear, always mindful of her eaves-dropping younger brothers.
“Why do they talk on the phone?” I roll to make my next move, the dice bouncing in a familiar rhythm. Erin thinks I am lucky because I don’t have any brothers and sisters. I think Erin’s lucky because she has brothers to play Monopoly with all weekend if she wants.
“He says he has to call her because she’s our new team soccer mom,” Erin says. “He says next week at practice, she’s going to show us a special girls’ bag for our team with like, supplies, in it.” She moves the faux silver top hat game piece from Baltic Avenue to Jail, where thanks to her lucky roll, she is Just Visiting.
“You mean pads?”
“Pads.” Her lips are pursed as she hands me the dice.
“Oh God.”
“It’s so stupid. Like as if we don’t already know about all that anyway,” Erin says, rolling her eyes. I roll my eyes too, even though I don’t really know about all that anyway, even though this is fifth grade and therefore my first year and public school with mandatory sex education, even though Erin has her period already and I won’t get mine for another five years. The day all the girls in fifth grade left their homeroom classes at Stephenson Elementary to go learn about ovaries from Mrs. Snodgrass was the beginning of finally getting all that, though ovaries were just a dot on the map.
I pick up the dice and roll again. “What else goes in the special girls’ bag?”
“A change of shorts, some toilet paper, I don’t know.” Erin rolls half-heartedly. The corners of her mouth turn down slightly and the skin on her face settles into a mute pose. I’ve seen this face before, most often on the soccer field when she plays keeper and misses the ball. Erin is the second-best keeper on our team, but she’s the coach’s daughter so she’s always trying to get better. She even has a net set up in her backyard and sometimes she lets me take shots at her.
“Do you like Tara’s mom, anyway?”
“Shhhh.” Erin shoves the game board aside and scoots across the carpet to sit next to me. “I don’t get why she’s going to be our team mom. Why isn’t my mom going to be our team mom?” Erin and her brothers were adopted by our coach, Dennis, and his wife, Mary. Even though Erin calls Dennis and Mary “Dad and Mom,” my mom tells me this means Erin’s had to think about harder things in life than I have. She tells me not to ask about adoption unless it seems like Erin wants to talk about it.
“Yeah, it’s weird,” I say. “But how do you know Tara’s mom calls him ‘baby’?”
“Because when she calls for dad and I answer, I cover the receiver and stay on the line. He always talks to her in his bedroom – sometimes in the closet.”
“Well, does he call her anything like that?”
“Sweetie. He calls her sweetie. It makes me want to hurl.” Erin sticks her finger down her throat in a mock-gag, then lurches her torso up and down, writhing with disgust. She falls to the floor and starts twitching, knees knocking against the Monopoly board, sending an earthquake down Boardwalk and Park Place. Hotels and houses slide from their properties but Erin does not notice. Her movement is fluid and full body now, and her mute face has flipped into a Cheshire smile. She cannot stop laughing.
“Oh sweetie,” I say in mock affection, starting to laugh too.
“Oh baby,” She chokes on her laughter, which invokes more fake gagging. Her youngest brother Kevin peers around the corner of the bedroom door. His real mom used to do drugs. At least that’s what Erin told me one day when we were playing soccer with him and he went ape-shit, pounding her with his feisty, six-year-old fists and shrieking like a retard. Erin couldn’t get up then and she can’t seem to get up now, even though she usually pummels Kevin out of the room any time he makes an appearance. I get up to close the door and Kevin flinches, then shuffles down the hallway into the bathroom.
Erin was right about the special girls’ bag, except the change of shorts concerns me because they’re too small and have built-in nylon underwear. On Tuesday, Tara’s mom, Sue, comes to practice wearing shin guards and Nike shorts. She is carrying the special girls’ bag over her shoulder. Coach Dennis is giving us a pep talk while we sit picking grass blades and stuffing them down each other’s shirts when he’s not looking. Dennis likes to wear shorts that have built-in underwear too, and all the soccer girls know this because his balls flop left and right inside the bright red nylon liners dangling dangerously close to the open edges of his shorts. Now whenever he uses the word balls, the team bursts into laughter, though coach doesn’t seem to get it. He is talking about anticipating the next move when he catches a glimpse of Tara’s mom jogging down the steep hillside to our practice field..........
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