1/26/11 Finishing the poem
Even if it's going to be torn apart and re-written a half-dozen more times, even if it's ridiculous and makes no sense and is so terrible--or not. Even if the other people in class obviously have more experience and wisdom and insight and everything than you do, even if you can't yet turn a phrase....you finished the poem. You wrote it. It's done and on the page. You can use it and re-use it, you can do anything you like with it. Be satisfied. Be ecstatic. You have finished writing a poem.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
1/25/11 A blind man, running
...across the Government Center Plaza to catch a train. His white cane, not the tapping kind, but the kind with a dog-leg and a crook, but colored white with a red tip, still, the cane waving in front of him like the nose of a swordfish. I love reckless aplomb. I love when people make a way to do something difficult. I love when people surprise you by jumping out of typecasting. I love that this guy ran and caught his train!
...across the Government Center Plaza to catch a train. His white cane, not the tapping kind, but the kind with a dog-leg and a crook, but colored white with a red tip, still, the cane waving in front of him like the nose of a swordfish. I love reckless aplomb. I love when people make a way to do something difficult. I love when people surprise you by jumping out of typecasting. I love that this guy ran and caught his train!
Saturday, January 22, 2011
1/24/11 Time
What does it feel like--how do we spread things out in this line of divisions and counting? Is time like the field of snow outside my sliding glass door--vast, grey-white-yellow-blue and sparkling in the sun, surrounding with a soft but severe presence everything that exists? Is it a grid that we could draw on the field of snow? Is it the individual snowflakes, each a unique, feathered, crystalline moment? Is time this field, with buckles and wrinkles and furrows that we flop around in, making of our life a messy, tangled dent in the fabric, like a fly caught in a web?
What does it feel like--how do we spread things out in this line of divisions and counting? Is time like the field of snow outside my sliding glass door--vast, grey-white-yellow-blue and sparkling in the sun, surrounding with a soft but severe presence everything that exists? Is it a grid that we could draw on the field of snow? Is it the individual snowflakes, each a unique, feathered, crystalline moment? Is time this field, with buckles and wrinkles and furrows that we flop around in, making of our life a messy, tangled dent in the fabric, like a fly caught in a web?
1/23/11 Canyon of light, city morning
Beauty is something that has to be known, felt, honored, to be perceived. I don't often walk through the streets near my job thinking, oh this is beautiful, this is ecstatic (but maybe I should start to).
Yesterday, the sun was at the right angle to shine nearly horizontal through the clouds of exhaust on 4th street. Traffic backed up--trucks, cars, minivans with their taillights winking red in the dark hulks of their silhouettes. The buildings four and eight stories tall along the street, a skyway (walkway on the second floor) bisecting the rays down at Second Avenue. Figures in overcoats hurrying one way and another on the sidewalks--edges of this canyon of light. Grey-white street, part snow, part asphalt was the canyon's floor. And the curls and wisps and limbs of vapor rising from the cars idling at the traffic light--dreamsicle pink and peach in the sunlight, white-blue sky behind.
Beauty is something that has to be known, felt, honored, to be perceived. I don't often walk through the streets near my job thinking, oh this is beautiful, this is ecstatic (but maybe I should start to).
Yesterday, the sun was at the right angle to shine nearly horizontal through the clouds of exhaust on 4th street. Traffic backed up--trucks, cars, minivans with their taillights winking red in the dark hulks of their silhouettes. The buildings four and eight stories tall along the street, a skyway (walkway on the second floor) bisecting the rays down at Second Avenue. Figures in overcoats hurrying one way and another on the sidewalks--edges of this canyon of light. Grey-white street, part snow, part asphalt was the canyon's floor. And the curls and wisps and limbs of vapor rising from the cars idling at the traffic light--dreamsicle pink and peach in the sunlight, white-blue sky behind.
1/22/11 More snow
It's consistent anyway. More snow. Here, there and everywhere it seems. It's what it's supposed to do in winter. Relentless, comical, beautiful, pure. It comes down, and it comes down more. It's winter snow, and you know you love the way a winter is supposed to be. Daily dustings. Fluffy froth on everything. A cheery, light lacework on the front steps and the windshield.
It's consistent anyway. More snow. Here, there and everywhere it seems. It's what it's supposed to do in winter. Relentless, comical, beautiful, pure. It comes down, and it comes down more. It's winter snow, and you know you love the way a winter is supposed to be. Daily dustings. Fluffy froth on everything. A cheery, light lacework on the front steps and the windshield.
1/21/11 A passionate friend
Don't you just love people who throw everything, every ounce of themselves into everything they do? I was reminded of this tonight by a friend who, well, who overwhelms me sometimes. Where some of us would have aches and pains, she has life-threatening illnesses, family members are in crisis everywhere, and this person is feeling it all in her marrow, drubbed by it, acutely committed, dedicated to her people, her groups. It's like she's lit on fire by the world, grabbing and swinging it by the tail at every moment, and it's swinging her at the same time, and the blood rushing to her head, and her not able to stop it. Feeding her family--cookies, roasts, salads. Volunteering in her community, with local board meetings and seminars organized halfway around the country, cleaning the cupboards before breakfast and seeing her kids to and from school. I admire her, she exhausts me. She's passionate about everything.
Don't you just love people who throw everything, every ounce of themselves into everything they do? I was reminded of this tonight by a friend who, well, who overwhelms me sometimes. Where some of us would have aches and pains, she has life-threatening illnesses, family members are in crisis everywhere, and this person is feeling it all in her marrow, drubbed by it, acutely committed, dedicated to her people, her groups. It's like she's lit on fire by the world, grabbing and swinging it by the tail at every moment, and it's swinging her at the same time, and the blood rushing to her head, and her not able to stop it. Feeding her family--cookies, roasts, salads. Volunteering in her community, with local board meetings and seminars organized halfway around the country, cleaning the cupboards before breakfast and seeing her kids to and from school. I admire her, she exhausts me. She's passionate about everything.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
12/23/10 Drama
Nothing like a fair piece of drama in one's life for grabbing one's attention. My car was towed. It was fine I was looking for it and remaining calm at home, but didn't realize the extent to which my feelings were jangled. And in the middle of it, realized, I don't do drama. Life doesn't really have to grab me by the throat and shake me to get me to change my mind. So I had to look at a situation where I was more conciliatory to a potential friend than I wanted to be, and I ended up compromising my feelings and my time. And parking in the lot of a hostile business. And getting towed. And losing a lot more time than I should have. Drama. It's far-out, weird, creepy, interesting, helpful, and you gotta pay attention to it and set boundaries. I decided not to talk with the person any more.
Nothing like a fair piece of drama in one's life for grabbing one's attention. My car was towed. It was fine I was looking for it and remaining calm at home, but didn't realize the extent to which my feelings were jangled. And in the middle of it, realized, I don't do drama. Life doesn't really have to grab me by the throat and shake me to get me to change my mind. So I had to look at a situation where I was more conciliatory to a potential friend than I wanted to be, and I ended up compromising my feelings and my time. And parking in the lot of a hostile business. And getting towed. And losing a lot more time than I should have. Drama. It's far-out, weird, creepy, interesting, helpful, and you gotta pay attention to it and set boundaries. I decided not to talk with the person any more.
12/22/10 the inspiration of birds
They are so delicate, their parts and features so light, airy like the element they (flighty ones) live in. Feathers. What other invention is so ingenious--little vanes and vanelets and hooklets and strands and they can be messy but then be preened into order. The feathers can hold you swimming or flying, or I should say also dreaming. And the bones the superlight bones with little structural lines all in them. Airy, cavenous bones, bones to fly. And my little belly bits, if I were a bird. A crop, short stomach, small organs. All to make me more compact and fling-able. I can fling myself up,over, around and down. I can fly, so compact and then stretchy. I love to stretch.
They are so delicate, their parts and features so light, airy like the element they (flighty ones) live in. Feathers. What other invention is so ingenious--little vanes and vanelets and hooklets and strands and they can be messy but then be preened into order. The feathers can hold you swimming or flying, or I should say also dreaming. And the bones the superlight bones with little structural lines all in them. Airy, cavenous bones, bones to fly. And my little belly bits, if I were a bird. A crop, short stomach, small organs. All to make me more compact and fling-able. I can fling myself up,over, around and down. I can fly, so compact and then stretchy. I love to stretch.
12/21/10 Re-reading a classic
My choice is Don Quixote. Only because there was a phrase I heard someone say once about Quixote's horse, and I wanted to check it out for possible inclusion in a poem I'm writing. I have a vague memory of reading this novel in high school, the black and white paperback cover with the inky smear of a pair of riders with a blotchy windmill in the background. I know I didn't understand it well, and probably didn't finish it back then.
But it's so nice to come to a piece of literature after so many years, and to understand the feelings in it, the odd satire, the comfort with a life lived fully, the understanding of the complexity of human emotions and morality and actions. So nice to come to the work having endured so much of the stuff of life, to have survived such complexity oneself, to be on one's own quest. Re-reads are easy. Literature is easy. And complex.
My choice is Don Quixote. Only because there was a phrase I heard someone say once about Quixote's horse, and I wanted to check it out for possible inclusion in a poem I'm writing. I have a vague memory of reading this novel in high school, the black and white paperback cover with the inky smear of a pair of riders with a blotchy windmill in the background. I know I didn't understand it well, and probably didn't finish it back then.
But it's so nice to come to a piece of literature after so many years, and to understand the feelings in it, the odd satire, the comfort with a life lived fully, the understanding of the complexity of human emotions and morality and actions. So nice to come to the work having endured so much of the stuff of life, to have survived such complexity oneself, to be on one's own quest. Re-reads are easy. Literature is easy. And complex.
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