12/20/10 Psychic Information
Talking with a man I had just met, I got flashes--teeny almost indiscernible thoughts like ghost-movies in the poetry part of my brain--of houses, stone-built houses, and how crushing they would be if they fell on you. Heavy weights and dull ones, piles of rubble and structural beams. I wanted to avoid being buried alive. Then I started looking in the mirror, and saw myself as boxy, robust, armored in my stance against the world. Like him. I believe the cosmos is always giving us information, always telling us things that will help us. We need to pay attention to these tiny, faint, ghost-movies, these unflattering images of ourselves in the mirror, and see what the faint, ghost-like message is that the world is trying to give us. I canceled our coffee date.
Friday, December 31, 2010
12/20/10 The company of babies
Babies still have that fresh out newness, that smell of bubbles and teeny roses, that reminds us of why we chose to be human in the first place. I'm thinking now of how my year-old niece reaches toward what she wants. She's not shy. She wants it and she reaches, with chubby little fingers. Or shuns things she wants to avoid. She doesn't want to be picked up. She turns away, reaches the opposite direction. Cries when she's upset...by gas, noise, people, temperature, hunger, scratchiness, what-have-you. She cries. So simple. I'd like to do that. A hundred times a day at my job. Twenty times a day at home. When you're a baby, you get to do it any time. And smile. You get to smile and change the world when you do it. A baby's smile is, well, it's one of the seventeen wonders of the world, no--there have been so many babies...it is one of the seven and a half billion wonders of the world.
Babies still have that fresh out newness, that smell of bubbles and teeny roses, that reminds us of why we chose to be human in the first place. I'm thinking now of how my year-old niece reaches toward what she wants. She's not shy. She wants it and she reaches, with chubby little fingers. Or shuns things she wants to avoid. She doesn't want to be picked up. She turns away, reaches the opposite direction. Cries when she's upset...by gas, noise, people, temperature, hunger, scratchiness, what-have-you. She cries. So simple. I'd like to do that. A hundred times a day at my job. Twenty times a day at home. When you're a baby, you get to do it any time. And smile. You get to smile and change the world when you do it. A baby's smile is, well, it's one of the seventeen wonders of the world, no--there have been so many babies...it is one of the seven and a half billion wonders of the world.
12/19/10 Figs (writing on 12/31)
My co-worker Ernesto offered me some the other day. The spanish word for figs is Higos, so close to the word for sons, Hijos, that you're going to feel like you're related to these little babies. Family already, they are so small and they have such tiny seeds. They are chewy and crunchy at the same time. And sweet and mild at the same time so that you don't feel like you're indulging. And chewy. My mom served them recently simply soaked/marinated in Kahlua. Dark brown and weird looking--dried of course, how could they possibly be delicious??? Then I made this figgy cake--I was looking for a Christmas figgy pudding, like in the song, but this is what I found: . Of course I had to substitute the nuts and the liqueur, because it was Christmas day and the stores were closed. But it came out fantastic, and one can't say enough about fennel seed in baking. Or figs, those unassuming little fruits, usually dried, with so many tender and surprising qualities.
My co-worker Ernesto offered me some the other day. The spanish word for figs is Higos, so close to the word for sons, Hijos, that you're going to feel like you're related to these little babies. Family already, they are so small and they have such tiny seeds. They are chewy and crunchy at the same time. And sweet and mild at the same time so that you don't feel like you're indulging. And chewy. My mom served them recently simply soaked/marinated in Kahlua. Dark brown and weird looking--dried of course, how could they possibly be delicious??? Then I made this figgy cake--I was looking for a Christmas figgy pudding, like in the song, but this is what I found: . Of course I had to substitute the nuts and the liqueur, because it was Christmas day and the stores were closed. But it came out fantastic, and one can't say enough about fennel seed in baking. Or figs, those unassuming little fruits, usually dried, with so many tender and surprising qualities.
Monday, December 27, 2010
12/18/10 a scratchy sweater
Much like the scratchy towel mentioned at the beginning of this series, the scratchy sweater is heavenly if done in the right way. If you're going for the scratchiness, it just has to be plain wool, not virgin or merino, and if you want to enjoy itchy arms later, best to wear only a tank top underneath. Then it's glorious scratchy arms and scratchy belly and scratchy shoulders and neck. It's a sweater of a bunch of prickly-legged bugs crawling on you, and you want to run your own smooth fingers over yourself, and just cool yourself off with scritching.
Much like the scratchy towel mentioned at the beginning of this series, the scratchy sweater is heavenly if done in the right way. If you're going for the scratchiness, it just has to be plain wool, not virgin or merino, and if you want to enjoy itchy arms later, best to wear only a tank top underneath. Then it's glorious scratchy arms and scratchy belly and scratchy shoulders and neck. It's a sweater of a bunch of prickly-legged bugs crawling on you, and you want to run your own smooth fingers over yourself, and just cool yourself off with scritching.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
12/16/10 a boring person
Well, you meet her and she usually wears a stained, faded shirt and has a cough from chainsmoking and all in the household--man, woman, dog--all are overweight, and her house across the street is in disrepair, the yard overgrown with weeds and scrub trees, and when she starts talking you just better clear your schedule because she has a lot to say and you are going to be there for a while. I have lived across the street from her for eleven years, and slowly over time, her amazing spirit has shown itself to me.
In one of my incarnations I would have found this woman boring. I would have been judgmental about her clothing, or her health, or how she talks about her husband the fabulous bus driver, or her sister, the institutionalized Down's Syndrome patient. I would have been dismissive and gone looking for someone who would thrill me with positive feedback and beautiful details. I would have been judgmental and mean-spirited, and I would have written something poetically disparaging about her. But here is what I have learned: Stir the pot long enough, and the soup is delicious. Shake the tree long enough, and a perfect golden pear will fall to the earth. Listen with interest to the heart of another person, and what you hear will be as holy as if it were the prophet Jesus himself speaking it. Here is what I learned about my unhealthy, long-talking neighbor, over eleven years of occasional listening:
She has given asylum to a ghost. The ghost wears a red shirt, which on her first description reminded me of the Italian revolutionary, Garibaldi. But no, my friend thinks of the ghost as Native American. She calls him the Chief, which might lead me to think she's racist, but given my friend's dark eyes and long dark hair, her vague, northern Minnesota lineage, which I think she's called part French, part Slavic, she could herself be native American. The ghost now stays in her house with her and wanders around her property, occasionally making ghostly comments on her relationships and life by knocking things off shelves or moving the laundry around. Prior to their current arrangement, the "Chief" used to wander around the neighborhood, playing pranks on people, like messing up their car or their trash cans, or driving all kinds of animals into a certain yard. The Chief doesn't do that anymore, now that he is cozy with my neighbor. In fact, he follows her instructions to the T, creating happy coincidences and beneficial meetings for various neighbors.
My friend has another magic power. Either that or she can summon angels at will. Here's how I know: She told me that her abusive first husband pushed her off the top of a 90-foot grain silo, onto a concrete slab on the ground. My friend describes grasping desperately at the external steel ladder as she plummeted, and breaking one or both of her arms to bits, and ruining her back, which has her disabled to this day. But she lived. She lived to tell about it. I think she has the magic power of flight, since she clearly was able to slow the speed of her drop to a fair hover by sheer mental effort (either that, or she called angels to her, who held her aloft as best they could during her fall). Part of why she lived was so that I could tell you her story, because she would be too modest to relate it herself.
My friend has a special relationship with babies and children. I have no idea what in her early life helped her form such beautiful and protective attachment to children. But she lost a baby once during a pregnancy, because of some other action by that first husband. And she is from a family of 10 children, and is herself, I think at least number seven if not higher in birth order. One thing she does to make something positive of her life, I think related to that loss of her baby, is that she volunteers to crochet clothing and burial gowns for poor and abandoned newborns in area hospitals. Also, she is a neighborhood mother hen, watching some kids after school and at the morning bus stop.
My friend has a special relationship with the disabled, or at least with her Down's Syndrome youngest sister, who is now close to 50 years old (my friend is a few years older). My friend finally obtained legal guardianship of her sister, after waiting for 30 years for her father, then her mother, to grow too old and/or ill to keep track of the sis. My friend has now systematically set about improving her sister's life, including getting the staff at her institution to teach her to read. That's right, my friend provided the right reading materials, incentive, medication change and devoted attention to allow a 50-year-old Down's syndrome illiterate to begin to read. To READ.
I truly think my neighbor is gifted and magical. But no more so than anyone else, than the people I ride the bus with and judge as boring, than my distant relatives who rarely communicate with me, than any person of any ilk who might read these words. We all have magic in our lives, in our stories, and it just takes patience--or eleven years of being neighbors, to bring it out.
Well, you meet her and she usually wears a stained, faded shirt and has a cough from chainsmoking and all in the household--man, woman, dog--all are overweight, and her house across the street is in disrepair, the yard overgrown with weeds and scrub trees, and when she starts talking you just better clear your schedule because she has a lot to say and you are going to be there for a while. I have lived across the street from her for eleven years, and slowly over time, her amazing spirit has shown itself to me.
In one of my incarnations I would have found this woman boring. I would have been judgmental about her clothing, or her health, or how she talks about her husband the fabulous bus driver, or her sister, the institutionalized Down's Syndrome patient. I would have been dismissive and gone looking for someone who would thrill me with positive feedback and beautiful details. I would have been judgmental and mean-spirited, and I would have written something poetically disparaging about her. But here is what I have learned: Stir the pot long enough, and the soup is delicious. Shake the tree long enough, and a perfect golden pear will fall to the earth. Listen with interest to the heart of another person, and what you hear will be as holy as if it were the prophet Jesus himself speaking it. Here is what I learned about my unhealthy, long-talking neighbor, over eleven years of occasional listening:
She has given asylum to a ghost. The ghost wears a red shirt, which on her first description reminded me of the Italian revolutionary, Garibaldi. But no, my friend thinks of the ghost as Native American. She calls him the Chief, which might lead me to think she's racist, but given my friend's dark eyes and long dark hair, her vague, northern Minnesota lineage, which I think she's called part French, part Slavic, she could herself be native American. The ghost now stays in her house with her and wanders around her property, occasionally making ghostly comments on her relationships and life by knocking things off shelves or moving the laundry around. Prior to their current arrangement, the "Chief" used to wander around the neighborhood, playing pranks on people, like messing up their car or their trash cans, or driving all kinds of animals into a certain yard. The Chief doesn't do that anymore, now that he is cozy with my neighbor. In fact, he follows her instructions to the T, creating happy coincidences and beneficial meetings for various neighbors.
My friend has another magic power. Either that or she can summon angels at will. Here's how I know: She told me that her abusive first husband pushed her off the top of a 90-foot grain silo, onto a concrete slab on the ground. My friend describes grasping desperately at the external steel ladder as she plummeted, and breaking one or both of her arms to bits, and ruining her back, which has her disabled to this day. But she lived. She lived to tell about it. I think she has the magic power of flight, since she clearly was able to slow the speed of her drop to a fair hover by sheer mental effort (either that, or she called angels to her, who held her aloft as best they could during her fall). Part of why she lived was so that I could tell you her story, because she would be too modest to relate it herself.
My friend has a special relationship with babies and children. I have no idea what in her early life helped her form such beautiful and protective attachment to children. But she lost a baby once during a pregnancy, because of some other action by that first husband. And she is from a family of 10 children, and is herself, I think at least number seven if not higher in birth order. One thing she does to make something positive of her life, I think related to that loss of her baby, is that she volunteers to crochet clothing and burial gowns for poor and abandoned newborns in area hospitals. Also, she is a neighborhood mother hen, watching some kids after school and at the morning bus stop.
My friend has a special relationship with the disabled, or at least with her Down's Syndrome youngest sister, who is now close to 50 years old (my friend is a few years older). My friend finally obtained legal guardianship of her sister, after waiting for 30 years for her father, then her mother, to grow too old and/or ill to keep track of the sis. My friend has now systematically set about improving her sister's life, including getting the staff at her institution to teach her to read. That's right, my friend provided the right reading materials, incentive, medication change and devoted attention to allow a 50-year-old Down's syndrome illiterate to begin to read. To READ.
I truly think my neighbor is gifted and magical. But no more so than anyone else, than the people I ride the bus with and judge as boring, than my distant relatives who rarely communicate with me, than any person of any ilk who might read these words. We all have magic in our lives, in our stories, and it just takes patience--or eleven years of being neighbors, to bring it out.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
12/15/10 Sweet Blue dreams
Such sweetness, a store with winter goods for sale. Going in to the old general, with calicoes and dry goods and drop-forged iron tools hanging on the wall. Sticks of licorice root and well-swept floor boards with that worn, soap-scrubbed look and feel. A set of stairs down the back leads to a cellar full of cool blue winter light. You find everything there that you remember from every winter you ever had. The peach crate sitting on the ice, fishing with grandpa with that old styrofoam bucket, a metal saucer for sledding, the dangerous kind that could take out teeth, a game of crack the whip on the old ice rink near the school. A barrel stove in the warming house that you hold your cold, skate-clad feet up to. The dull blue of daytime forts you dug and huddled in, the dog that stays warm under the house. miles and miles of paths through the woods, footfalls each blue in the white drifts. The glacier in Alaska, the cool ocean and the brunt of sea ice that churns up. The ideas you have in clarity, the mittens and socks of friends. Some warm up to a peachy pink, but most are blue and clear and blue.
Such sweetness, a store with winter goods for sale. Going in to the old general, with calicoes and dry goods and drop-forged iron tools hanging on the wall. Sticks of licorice root and well-swept floor boards with that worn, soap-scrubbed look and feel. A set of stairs down the back leads to a cellar full of cool blue winter light. You find everything there that you remember from every winter you ever had. The peach crate sitting on the ice, fishing with grandpa with that old styrofoam bucket, a metal saucer for sledding, the dangerous kind that could take out teeth, a game of crack the whip on the old ice rink near the school. A barrel stove in the warming house that you hold your cold, skate-clad feet up to. The dull blue of daytime forts you dug and huddled in, the dog that stays warm under the house. miles and miles of paths through the woods, footfalls each blue in the white drifts. The glacier in Alaska, the cool ocean and the brunt of sea ice that churns up. The ideas you have in clarity, the mittens and socks of friends. Some warm up to a peachy pink, but most are blue and clear and blue.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
12/14/10 Personal illumination
Those moments when the gold light begins to radiate out of you like in those old 12th century gold-leaf paintings. The illumination was the dimensionality. Last night, my head popped open again, in a good way, and I listed to the air for news as some used to put their ear to the rails. Morning found me with an open heart--another pop in the night. How beautiful this world is. How fulsome, excellent.
Those moments when the gold light begins to radiate out of you like in those old 12th century gold-leaf paintings. The illumination was the dimensionality. Last night, my head popped open again, in a good way, and I listed to the air for news as some used to put their ear to the rails. Morning found me with an open heart--another pop in the night. How beautiful this world is. How fulsome, excellent.
12/13/10 storybook man, running the blizzard
wide-brimmed black hat, black coat, trailing muffler lit by street lamp that becomes a prayer flag. He carries the evening news in a bundle, with a carton of milk. The snow is shin-deep, the wind fierce. His strides unusually fluid, his hat piercing the blizzard like a beak.
wide-brimmed black hat, black coat, trailing muffler lit by street lamp that becomes a prayer flag. He carries the evening news in a bundle, with a carton of milk. The snow is shin-deep, the wind fierce. His strides unusually fluid, his hat piercing the blizzard like a beak.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
12/12/10 dark birds in a bright sky
On the bus--those dark fluttering, twitching starlings over Broadway in the periwinkle, rose-bright morning city sky.
It reminds me of the series I am writing on blackbirds.
It reminds me of sessions with the healer I visited twice in Paris. Her name was Michelle Cremisi, which I only remember because of how awkward it was to master the accent in my still-loutish French. I had seen her flyer on the bulletin board of the Maison des Femmes--the House of Women, where I was attending endless discussions on what to entitle a public survey on sexism that they had conducted two years earlier. Michelle offered "massage Californique," but didn't mention that her practice had turned to mainly "guerissement energetique"--energy healing--which I learned over the phone. She had a first floor apartment in one of those compact, European complexes that resemble military housing--uniform, concrete bunkers--a little forbidding on the outside.
It pays to get used visiting healers. Their offices and healing spaces mostly resonate with calm, open acceptance, soothing colors and fragrances. Michelle was no exception. I remember sitting with her in a small office space, and explaining in my halting command of the French, my wish to continue healing. And lying on the bodywork table in the teeny healing room, trying to describe the sensations I was having, as she moved her hands gracefully above me. The only thing I remember clearly was that "black birds flew out of my heart, dark birds like crows flew out of my heart." And in my mind's eye, while Michelle's hands and heart worked their magic, I saw the flocks of black birds leave like a dense river and ramble and flow over the roofs of Paris with their red clay tiles, a dark river that eventually passed out of reckoning.
And what were these dark birds that had fled my heart? The troubles and secrets of my life, my childhood perhaps, sad dreams that had roosted with their weary shoulders on the phone wires and in the elm trees of my life, my heart, like bedraggled migrants, waiting their hour of awakening to motion and evanscence. The dark birds of the heart, may they remember how to take wing. May they find the practiced hands of the proper healer, the clear skies of their proper capital. May even the darkest dreams hear the songs of even the most loutish tongues. May we all find our flight.
On the bus--those dark fluttering, twitching starlings over Broadway in the periwinkle, rose-bright morning city sky.
It reminds me of the series I am writing on blackbirds.
It reminds me of sessions with the healer I visited twice in Paris. Her name was Michelle Cremisi, which I only remember because of how awkward it was to master the accent in my still-loutish French. I had seen her flyer on the bulletin board of the Maison des Femmes--the House of Women, where I was attending endless discussions on what to entitle a public survey on sexism that they had conducted two years earlier. Michelle offered "massage Californique," but didn't mention that her practice had turned to mainly "guerissement energetique"--energy healing--which I learned over the phone. She had a first floor apartment in one of those compact, European complexes that resemble military housing--uniform, concrete bunkers--a little forbidding on the outside.
It pays to get used visiting healers. Their offices and healing spaces mostly resonate with calm, open acceptance, soothing colors and fragrances. Michelle was no exception. I remember sitting with her in a small office space, and explaining in my halting command of the French, my wish to continue healing. And lying on the bodywork table in the teeny healing room, trying to describe the sensations I was having, as she moved her hands gracefully above me. The only thing I remember clearly was that "black birds flew out of my heart, dark birds like crows flew out of my heart." And in my mind's eye, while Michelle's hands and heart worked their magic, I saw the flocks of black birds leave like a dense river and ramble and flow over the roofs of Paris with their red clay tiles, a dark river that eventually passed out of reckoning.
And what were these dark birds that had fled my heart? The troubles and secrets of my life, my childhood perhaps, sad dreams that had roosted with their weary shoulders on the phone wires and in the elm trees of my life, my heart, like bedraggled migrants, waiting their hour of awakening to motion and evanscence. The dark birds of the heart, may they remember how to take wing. May they find the practiced hands of the proper healer, the clear skies of their proper capital. May even the darkest dreams hear the songs of even the most loutish tongues. May we all find our flight.
12/11/10 Home is where the heart...
Yesterday, the illumination of my heart chakra at work. So many things to think about, such a busy day. And there I am in the middle of the chaos and trying to both feel and be better than my anger, and then my heart chakra opens up like the collar of a frill-necked lizard, and there on the inside of the cone and by then the cone is like one of those science museum exhibits where you toss a coin in and it spirals into the center of the cone on its edge and then circles the central drain. So my heart chakra is smooth inside, not frilled or reptilian, and I can feel all the houses I’ve ever lived in, and they are like little Monopoly game pieces, only their proper color and proportion, and warm-feeling, and I can feel all the little pieces of real estate that I’ve lived on, for this and a few lifetimes before and after this one. At least a half-dozen rickety college apartments, plus that 6th floor walk-up in Paris, and the tent that summer in Alaska, and the great outdoors another summer. And they are drawn out I guess maybe in order of importance on the inside of my heart chakra cone. And since the heart chakra is about relationships, I just instantly think, home is where the heart is, home is where the heart is. Places we have lived are written permanently in our lives, our hearts, how we relate to the world. Heart is where home is.
Yesterday, the illumination of my heart chakra at work. So many things to think about, such a busy day. And there I am in the middle of the chaos and trying to both feel and be better than my anger, and then my heart chakra opens up like the collar of a frill-necked lizard, and there on the inside of the cone and by then the cone is like one of those science museum exhibits where you toss a coin in and it spirals into the center of the cone on its edge and then circles the central drain. So my heart chakra is smooth inside, not frilled or reptilian, and I can feel all the houses I’ve ever lived in, and they are like little Monopoly game pieces, only their proper color and proportion, and warm-feeling, and I can feel all the little pieces of real estate that I’ve lived on, for this and a few lifetimes before and after this one. At least a half-dozen rickety college apartments, plus that 6th floor walk-up in Paris, and the tent that summer in Alaska, and the great outdoors another summer. And they are drawn out I guess maybe in order of importance on the inside of my heart chakra cone. And since the heart chakra is about relationships, I just instantly think, home is where the heart is, home is where the heart is. Places we have lived are written permanently in our lives, our hearts, how we relate to the world. Heart is where home is.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
12/9/10 piebald humans
A guy in the home-commute rush tonight with half an eyebrow white, half black. A gal I knew in grad school who had a patch of white exactly the size and shape of a yarmulke sideslipping its bobby-pin. A gal I knew growing up who had one brown eye with black eyebrow, one blue eye with white lashes & brow. We are such fine and beautiful specimens of animals, we humans. We come in various colors, shapes, sizes, and even in spotted, patterns. Actually, speaking of spots, I have seen differently-pigmented spots on the skin of some of my brown-skinned friends. And freckles. And my son, who has a teeny bit of brown-skinned heritage, has a few light-pigmented spots on his leg. Skin, hair, acoutrements. We are not solids, all. We are bright and various and rangey: appaloosas, calicoes, tortoise-shells, pintos, tabby-stripes, paints.
A guy in the home-commute rush tonight with half an eyebrow white, half black. A gal I knew in grad school who had a patch of white exactly the size and shape of a yarmulke sideslipping its bobby-pin. A gal I knew growing up who had one brown eye with black eyebrow, one blue eye with white lashes & brow. We are such fine and beautiful specimens of animals, we humans. We come in various colors, shapes, sizes, and even in spotted, patterns. Actually, speaking of spots, I have seen differently-pigmented spots on the skin of some of my brown-skinned friends. And freckles. And my son, who has a teeny bit of brown-skinned heritage, has a few light-pigmented spots on his leg. Skin, hair, acoutrements. We are not solids, all. We are bright and various and rangey: appaloosas, calicoes, tortoise-shells, pintos, tabby-stripes, paints.
12/8/10 positive, peaceful engagement, artful interaction
Received info and a plea the other day from a friend involved in the group, the Forgiveness Project. Looking for someone to run their U.S. presence. And I actually knew a person and a group to network with, to pass the lead along to. Mediation and peaceful conflict resolution. That is, if your universe is one that has "conflict" that needs "resolution." It has been suggested to others and me to use words positively, to imagine positive language. How about instead of "conflict resolution," we take out the conflict, and have it be "peace resolution?" or instead of mediation, it could be artful interaction. Instead of creating a polar opposite for everything that is, we could dwell as much in the gooey good stuff as possible, the viney, ropey, gushy, crunchy, lovely, aromatic, stupendous creative landslide of interactions.
Received info and a plea the other day from a friend involved in the group, the Forgiveness Project. Looking for someone to run their U.S. presence. And I actually knew a person and a group to network with, to pass the lead along to. Mediation and peaceful conflict resolution. That is, if your universe is one that has "conflict" that needs "resolution." It has been suggested to others and me to use words positively, to imagine positive language. How about instead of "conflict resolution," we take out the conflict, and have it be "peace resolution?" or instead of mediation, it could be artful interaction. Instead of creating a polar opposite for everything that is, we could dwell as much in the gooey good stuff as possible, the viney, ropey, gushy, crunchy, lovely, aromatic, stupendous creative landslide of interactions.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
12/6/10 guidance
whether it's an intuition of something you want to do, or an almost audible voice in your head reminding you of your soul, your spirit, that evanescent something that leads you on in search of fulfillment, guidance is fantastic. The rustle of feathers, a voice that's like a melody from the cosmos, the feeling of doors opening before your feet, leading you in the new direction you were meant to go. Guidance points the way.
whether it's an intuition of something you want to do, or an almost audible voice in your head reminding you of your soul, your spirit, that evanescent something that leads you on in search of fulfillment, guidance is fantastic. The rustle of feathers, a voice that's like a melody from the cosmos, the feeling of doors opening before your feet, leading you in the new direction you were meant to go. Guidance points the way.
Monday, December 6, 2010
12/5/10 speaking in tongues
Other than one's own of course. Speaking in another tongue, letting another culture's thoughts spill out of your brain & slide off your tongue like trick skiers on a jump. Slorp around those words, feel them fill your mouth differently, like different food. And no, French does not sound all that romantic spoken. It's more like a long unintelligible slur until you can get the hang of it.
Other than one's own of course. Speaking in another tongue, letting another culture's thoughts spill out of your brain & slide off your tongue like trick skiers on a jump. Slorp around those words, feel them fill your mouth differently, like different food. And no, French does not sound all that romantic spoken. It's more like a long unintelligible slur until you can get the hang of it.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
12/4/10 a snow angel
It's a lawn ornament at a kitsch-y little house in the town where I grew up, near the apartment of a musician friend of mine. I've driven by her as often as I can lose my way over there, and really she always points me my way home. She's about life-size, I was going to say, but since no one knows if you can really dance a googolplex of them on the head of a pin, or if they are, as some of my New Age cronies used to say, as big as a mountain, I don't know. She's about the size of an average human, then. I think I've seen her, wingless and temporarily animated, a few times waiting serenely in the lobby of the DMV, as if she has drawn a number. And definitely I've seen her in the building where I work, the family justice center, waiting for her child support case to be called. She holds a little platter or basket with two hands--it's where you can put the geraniums or petunias in the summer, snowdrifts now in winter.
12/3/10 Freshly ground cloves
My hair would have been this color, if I had henna'ed it in college, like all my friends were doing--dark brown with an almost iridescent auburn layered on top. A bay horse in the sunshine. These cloves came from the co-op and I've never had them this moist before. It's like the difference between dry sand (most cloves you get at the store), that pours methodically like it's in an hourglass to measure time, and damp sand (this batch) that clumps together and wants to hold a shape, maybe the shape of a dark moist cake. And the smell, with a wood, almost sandalwood undertone, with fruity flecks in the middle, and a top note a little jasmine-y. Cloves like this you want to make something out of, add to henna to color your skin, you hair, you want to bathe in it, soak your bedsheets in it, dry them and toss around a bit in them. Cloves like this you want to dance to, to drop grains of it in peace talks between warring parties, and have the old soldiers suddenly remember the touch of their grandmothes. Cloves like this you want to cast in a subway tunnel so that the mindless commuters will think suddenly of a splinter they tried to suck out of their thumbs when they were eight and had been digging in the dirt. Cloves like this should be carried in a small pouch into banks, so that everyone there remembers the fragrant wooden blocks and carved cars of their youth, their own "Rosebud" beloved as they are worrying about the numbers on their pieces of paper. Cloves like this should be dropped by pinches into rivers to bless and consecrate them with the blood and sheen and fragrance of other places.
My hair would have been this color, if I had henna'ed it in college, like all my friends were doing--dark brown with an almost iridescent auburn layered on top. A bay horse in the sunshine. These cloves came from the co-op and I've never had them this moist before. It's like the difference between dry sand (most cloves you get at the store), that pours methodically like it's in an hourglass to measure time, and damp sand (this batch) that clumps together and wants to hold a shape, maybe the shape of a dark moist cake. And the smell, with a wood, almost sandalwood undertone, with fruity flecks in the middle, and a top note a little jasmine-y. Cloves like this you want to make something out of, add to henna to color your skin, you hair, you want to bathe in it, soak your bedsheets in it, dry them and toss around a bit in them. Cloves like this you want to dance to, to drop grains of it in peace talks between warring parties, and have the old soldiers suddenly remember the touch of their grandmothes. Cloves like this you want to cast in a subway tunnel so that the mindless commuters will think suddenly of a splinter they tried to suck out of their thumbs when they were eight and had been digging in the dirt. Cloves like this should be carried in a small pouch into banks, so that everyone there remembers the fragrant wooden blocks and carved cars of their youth, their own "Rosebud" beloved as they are worrying about the numbers on their pieces of paper. Cloves like this should be dropped by pinches into rivers to bless and consecrate them with the blood and sheen and fragrance of other places.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
12/2/10 Blessed by birds
This is a flashback post. I just saw a picture of St. Francis portrayed in a film with a little bird on his hand. And it reminded me of magic that I experienced with Fred, with birds. Here is what happened--I was making him leave one night, early in our courtship. Because my son was asleep and I didn't want Fred to stay over that night. So we were having that sweet goodbye conversation outside, where my driveway empties like a harsh apron into the street, no it was the wee hours and dark out and maybe he was showing me a constellation and maybe we were looking at star charts in the middle of the seldom-traveled street where it's easier to see the stars without houses and trees in the way. And we were saying sweet somethings I'm sure and looking at the charts and each other--it was the beginning of a few sweet something years. And all of a sudden something huge and weighty and dark and heavy and silent and looming rushed through the air near our heads and landed on the dead-end electric wire a few feet above. Swinging like a circus high wire act, quietly, heavily it sat--a plump, suburban great horned owl who had come out for conversation with us, I assume as well. We politely tried hard not to stare, but it was hard--this guest was so unexpected, or maybe we were to her, and so close.
The other time was when we were having one of about half a dozen breakup conversations a couple of years later. These bird blessings bookended the relationship, and we were sitting unter a blossoming fruit tree on the St. Paul campus, just trying to summarize the good things before trailing off, and this bird, that I took to be a hummingbird at first because it was hovering. But no, it was a bluebird that flew up from eating bugs in the park, flew up under the lightly-speckled with blossoms boughs where we were sitting on the ground, and hovered there, staring at us a few feet away, as we talked about its presence, color, species, meaning. It hovered several infinite moments and then sped off, just as abruptly.
I think now I will have to write about crows in the city, since they are the key to life here.
This is a flashback post. I just saw a picture of St. Francis portrayed in a film with a little bird on his hand. And it reminded me of magic that I experienced with Fred, with birds. Here is what happened--I was making him leave one night, early in our courtship. Because my son was asleep and I didn't want Fred to stay over that night. So we were having that sweet goodbye conversation outside, where my driveway empties like a harsh apron into the street, no it was the wee hours and dark out and maybe he was showing me a constellation and maybe we were looking at star charts in the middle of the seldom-traveled street where it's easier to see the stars without houses and trees in the way. And we were saying sweet somethings I'm sure and looking at the charts and each other--it was the beginning of a few sweet something years. And all of a sudden something huge and weighty and dark and heavy and silent and looming rushed through the air near our heads and landed on the dead-end electric wire a few feet above. Swinging like a circus high wire act, quietly, heavily it sat--a plump, suburban great horned owl who had come out for conversation with us, I assume as well. We politely tried hard not to stare, but it was hard--this guest was so unexpected, or maybe we were to her, and so close.
The other time was when we were having one of about half a dozen breakup conversations a couple of years later. These bird blessings bookended the relationship, and we were sitting unter a blossoming fruit tree on the St. Paul campus, just trying to summarize the good things before trailing off, and this bird, that I took to be a hummingbird at first because it was hovering. But no, it was a bluebird that flew up from eating bugs in the park, flew up under the lightly-speckled with blossoms boughs where we were sitting on the ground, and hovered there, staring at us a few feet away, as we talked about its presence, color, species, meaning. It hovered several infinite moments and then sped off, just as abruptly.
I think now I will have to write about crows in the city, since they are the key to life here.
12/1/10 So many things to say
Yesterday at the book arts show, with all those books of poems and chapbooks of observations and pictures with legends and legends without pictures, I knew there was a lot to be seen, said and heard in this world, thoughts jumping off pages into the corracle of a cottonwood leaf drifting down the surface of the river, its infinitesimal weight sitting as a rounded meniscus, making of the water a pillow. The thoughts on the page, a thought drifting....huh? oh yes....So many thoughts to think and express. If I'm ever at a loss again, I'll just go wandering through the corridors and links of these blogs like I just did and find poets talking about the moon, garbage, homelessness and motorcycles all with commensurate passion. Passion, in all the words, feeling and expression and moonlight and shagbark and leaves that float even on the icy river and sometimes lights and hairdos and okay even family blogs but you have to skip a bunch of words and just make somthing of them. Surf the blogs and start to follow some. Find the words, the passion, the things about the universe that most people try hard not to notice, lest they become too poetical, too engaged in seeing the infinitesimal, in feeling the ghosts.
Yesterday at the book arts show, with all those books of poems and chapbooks of observations and pictures with legends and legends without pictures, I knew there was a lot to be seen, said and heard in this world, thoughts jumping off pages into the corracle of a cottonwood leaf drifting down the surface of the river, its infinitesimal weight sitting as a rounded meniscus, making of the water a pillow. The thoughts on the page, a thought drifting....huh? oh yes....So many thoughts to think and express. If I'm ever at a loss again, I'll just go wandering through the corridors and links of these blogs like I just did and find poets talking about the moon, garbage, homelessness and motorcycles all with commensurate passion. Passion, in all the words, feeling and expression and moonlight and shagbark and leaves that float even on the icy river and sometimes lights and hairdos and okay even family blogs but you have to skip a bunch of words and just make somthing of them. Surf the blogs and start to follow some. Find the words, the passion, the things about the universe that most people try hard not to notice, lest they become too poetical, too engaged in seeing the infinitesimal, in feeling the ghosts.
12/1/10 a rapid recovery
Not sure what brought on the soreness, but it's always good to feel instantly, surprisingly better. When that happens, there is this huge glowing corona of energy around the joint that was sore, and you keep walking around with unexpected lightness where you're not sure you ought to be feeling it, like you are almost tripping over the empty space that used to hold an unbearably painful wound.
Not sure what brought on the soreness, but it's always good to feel instantly, surprisingly better. When that happens, there is this huge glowing corona of energy around the joint that was sore, and you keep walking around with unexpected lightness where you're not sure you ought to be feeling it, like you are almost tripping over the empty space that used to hold an unbearably painful wound.
11/29/10 a Brit-flavored pub
Dark and fusty, with coats-of-arms in frames on the ceiling above the bar. Fusty because we don't allow smoking indoors anywhere anymore in this state, and I don't think this place has been properly aired out since the law went into effect five years ago. Fusty because it was kind of dark and I didn't even notice the colors of the wall--they could have been made of wood planks, for all I remember. And don't ale and whiskey drinkers love their political posters? On all the walls, calls to dissent and speak one's mind. Lovely and enchanting. And most of all, and I want you to know it is a great effort for me to acknowledge this: Pub food. My friend had some kind of meat pie with handmade crisps, and I had a basket of fries. Both meals came with a glop of rust-colored goo in a portion dish. Waitress called it cajun aioli, but when I tried it, it didn't taste. I ate a few crisps before ordering my own chips. And the food, let me just say, tasted like it was made in a joint where the sweat of one's brow is appreciated, and good friends are as comfortable as old sweaters, and no one cares whether you've washed your face yet that day. But fabulously so, and to find it in the land of renovate everything was awesome.
Dark and fusty, with coats-of-arms in frames on the ceiling above the bar. Fusty because we don't allow smoking indoors anywhere anymore in this state, and I don't think this place has been properly aired out since the law went into effect five years ago. Fusty because it was kind of dark and I didn't even notice the colors of the wall--they could have been made of wood planks, for all I remember. And don't ale and whiskey drinkers love their political posters? On all the walls, calls to dissent and speak one's mind. Lovely and enchanting. And most of all, and I want you to know it is a great effort for me to acknowledge this: Pub food. My friend had some kind of meat pie with handmade crisps, and I had a basket of fries. Both meals came with a glop of rust-colored goo in a portion dish. Waitress called it cajun aioli, but when I tried it, it didn't taste. I ate a few crisps before ordering my own chips. And the food, let me just say, tasted like it was made in a joint where the sweat of one's brow is appreciated, and good friends are as comfortable as old sweaters, and no one cares whether you've washed your face yet that day. But fabulously so, and to find it in the land of renovate everything was awesome.
11/28/10 a collection of prints
Let's face it, going to see art anytime is fabulous. It's arty, it's topsy-turvy, it's giddy and florescent and fun--it's little pieces of metal and wood and paper and flecks and blobs of paint and other colors spread and strewn over their matrices so as to wake you up & draw your attention--first to itself, and then to the world around you that it is commenting on. Too abstract? Linoleum cut story prints, flat and black and heavy, I like how block prints are so dark, like heavy shadows, like shadow puppets. And the painted colors, not sure what process that was, the panoramic nature shots, and how did she decide which roots under the washed river bank to paint? And the polymer prints, chickens around a yard, chickens!!! I so want to do art around chickens (but for now, I'll have to focus on songbirds), and the poem on the weird metal cardboard wood shapies, like a disassebled letterpress with poetry in two languages, the warms of wood and paper, and the cool of sheetmetal and ink. Warm and cool, shredded and burnished, sanded and filed. One of a kind books. What if I made a book and it was only for a one-time reading, or only to be read at a certain place, a certain exhibit. Prints are great when they make you think about the world, about art, about yourself.
Let's face it, going to see art anytime is fabulous. It's arty, it's topsy-turvy, it's giddy and florescent and fun--it's little pieces of metal and wood and paper and flecks and blobs of paint and other colors spread and strewn over their matrices so as to wake you up & draw your attention--first to itself, and then to the world around you that it is commenting on. Too abstract? Linoleum cut story prints, flat and black and heavy, I like how block prints are so dark, like heavy shadows, like shadow puppets. And the painted colors, not sure what process that was, the panoramic nature shots, and how did she decide which roots under the washed river bank to paint? And the polymer prints, chickens around a yard, chickens!!! I so want to do art around chickens (but for now, I'll have to focus on songbirds), and the poem on the weird metal cardboard wood shapies, like a disassebled letterpress with poetry in two languages, the warms of wood and paper, and the cool of sheetmetal and ink. Warm and cool, shredded and burnished, sanded and filed. One of a kind books. What if I made a book and it was only for a one-time reading, or only to be read at a certain place, a certain exhibit. Prints are great when they make you think about the world, about art, about yourself.
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