the bardic function

Hello, 2010.

2010-01-31T09:54:00.000-08:00

Oh 2009! 2010 shall be the year of tough decisions, I can feel it. Moving to New York was relatively easy and a nice attempt to procrastinate the impending decisions of my "real" adult life. Oh sweet Charlottesville, city of youth and beauty! City of familiar smiles and inside jokes known by all...farewell.

2010, I hope, shall also be a year of renewing the traveling spirit! Here are some tangible destinations that I hope to visit before my contacts there move on and away.
1. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada = before June 2010!
2. Buenos Aires, Argentina = Easter week 2010!
3. London, England, and Brussels, Belgium = before my NZ friends move away!
4. Maritimes Roadtrip! = summer 2010
5. Spanish language immersion course in Mexico = summer 2010
6. Providence, Rhode Island = spring 2010 for a weekend!

Resolutions, 2009.

2009-01-06T14:19:00.000-08:00

1. Be nicer.
2. Smile and laugh more.
3. Stop and converse rather than wave.
4. Learn to knit.
5. Cook a meal at least once a month.
6. Read philosophy.
7. Relearn French.
8. Write a significant paper on Inuit linguistics and submit it.
9. Dress up more.
10. Appreciate others.

remembering.

2008-06-20T12:51:00.000-07:00

And as I lay me down to sleep, I felt her spirit rise up through me.
She said, "I got to live a long eighty-six years, dry your tears.
I know it's hard but please let go so I can meet your Grandpa in the undertow.
Chin up girl, you've got to be strong. Know that when you're singing, I'm singing along."

When we're not together, now or ever,
always remember I love you.

2008-06-09T07:17:00.001-07:00

Our life is the spelling of an answer.

Maybe if I shut my eyes the trouble will be split between us.

2008-05-15T12:12:00.000-07:00

Ease your feet into the sea
My darling it's the place to be
Take your shoes off curl your toes
And I will frame this moment in time
Troubles come and troubles go
The trouble that we've come to know
Will stay with us till we get old
Will stay with us till somebody decides to go
Decides to go
Soberly, without regret, 1 make another sandwich
And I fill my face, 1 know that things have got to you
But what can 1 do?
Suddenly, without a warning
On a pale blue morning
You decide your time is wearing thin
A conscious choice to let yourself go dangling
Hovering
It's an emergency
There's no more "wait and see"

Maybe if I shut my eyes
The trouble will be split between us
People come and people go
You're scouring everybody's face
For some small flicker of the truth
To what it is that you are going through, my boy
I left you dry
The signs were clear that you were not going anywhere
Anywhere
Save for a falling down
Everything's going wrong

Later on, as I walked home
The plough was showing, and orion
1 could see the house where you lived
I could see the house where you gave
All your time and sanity to people
Then you waited for the people to acknowledge you
They spoke in turn
But their eyes would pass over you
Over you
Who's seeing you at all?
Who's seeing You at all?

2008-05-02T09:32:00.000-07:00

The Shins' "Kissing the Lipless" always makes me feel as if I'm watching a montage of doorways I've glimpsed in all of the cities I've ever visited. It's like snapshots flickering one after another, sometimes layered, sometimes with the white edges framing the image as if marking the memory like a tombstone in a cemetery. What's surprising is that one of the dominant images is from my middle-school French class's trip to Quebec City. I hadn't even heard of the Shins in 1996! I don't even think they were a they in 1996! (Wikipedia tells me they formed in 1997, so close!)

Anyway, after the doorstep in Quebec City, I picture the many houseboats in the canals of Amsterdam, and then the infamous lampposts that guide one's way through the medieval alleyways of Prague. Even smaller streets abound in Sevilla: I should know as I spent many a drunken eve making my way through the maze of Barrio Santa Cruz trying to find my lodging. During the lifting parts of the songs, I remember racing through the streets of Krakow trying to make my midnight train to Budapest--only to realize that I misread my watch and had arrived with time to spare and was now alone on the platform of one of the more desolate areas of the train station. Speaking of Budapest, it might also be the feeling one gets when one realizes one has just climbed to see the view of the entire city with a complete stranger. And the sun is setting. But then you're riding atop a bus in Cambridge, England, and the wind is blowing and you are with your mother and you are twelve and you think things cannot get any better. And how cool the English teens must think you are, what with your style, which is not actually style in any sense of the word, it's simply the fact that you wear XL teeshirts even though you are stick-skinny and short.

You have to remember about poetry.

2008-04-08T17:29:00.000-07:00

You can't say that my soul has died away.

It sometimes escapes you and runs around you in circles, dashes out into the hallway, and screams its head off while you sit in front of, eyes always making contact, face contorted in appropriate facial responses. You must act tired, but not too tired, and not even too energetic, for your energy means you have not been working hard enough. There must be delicate violet circles shading the see-through skin underneath your rose-colored eyeballs. You might squint a bit, cock your head to the side, slowly nod, mouth a slow-motion clip of agreement, or shock, or wonder.

The dress is sloppy, but clean. You for one have just washed your only pair of jeans that fit after three months of consuming vending machines, but when you shift your position in the seat--your right bum cheek always falls asleep--you catch a faint whiff of dirty. Just-washed dirty. It might actually be the scent of your skin. A thousand showers and one hundred thousand steel-wool scrubbers could not remove the grime of stagnancy.

It seems your life is lived in a triangular sitting fashion; actually something reminiscent of Athapaskan classificatory verbs. You would be a grammatical oddity: an upright being that is described in terms of round container lying flat. You move from in front of a make-shift door, clobbered with texts and stray pen marks that stain your right hand when it embarks on the only movement possible in that position. You could transfer to the bed--the right side laden with scrap paper and highlighters and assignment sheets. You sleep next to this mound, wake up to it, kiss it and caress it, and think fondly of it in your dreams.

From Point A you make it somehow to Point B, where you sit in a crowded room ignoring voices. Sitting here you worry about Point C, curse the skies at forgotten periods and long-lost semi-colons, and wish you were at Point A (however it might be), possibly knocked out, or napping; that would be nice.

At Point C, in Point C, with Point C, out of Point C; all prepositions fit with this head. Here you make your way to underground caverns encasing beings living still. You make your way to the spot near the heater--you like to challenge your backpack to ignite, burst into orange glory. Maybe you'll catch fire too.

suggestion

2008-01-30T10:20:00.000-08:00

Why can't I walk down a street free of suggestion?
Is my body the only trait in the eyes of men?
I've got some skin
You want to look in
There lays no reward in what you discover
You spent yourself watching me suffer
Suffer your words, suffer your eyes, suffer your hands
Suffer your interpretation of what it is to be a man
I've got some skin
You want to look in
She does nothing to deserve it
He only wants to observe it
We sit back like they taught us
We keep quiet like they taught us
He just wants to prove it
She does nothing to remove it
We don't want anyone to mind us
So we play the roles that they assigned us
She does nothing to conceal it
He touches her 'cause he wants to feel it
We blame her for being there
But we are all guilty

it's the simple things.

2008-01-22T07:17:00.001-08:00

mmmm blackberries and strawberry yogurt. yum.

2007-12-17T16:57:00.000-08:00

Things are looking up.

Perhaps the earth is floating.

2007-12-09T10:08:00.000-08:00

I like living near the corner store. I've lived near about four different corner stores during my stints in various neighborhoods in this town. I dig it. I like going to the store just to get a can of soda. It's right there. You can wear your slippers there. You don't have to get in your bloody car. You only buy what you set out to buy. There's always a friendly face in the store buying cigarettes. There is rhythm.

2007-11-18T16:59:00.000-08:00

achey, old, and defiant

Now I question nobody. But I know less every day.

2007-11-13T10:02:00.000-08:00

A ferocious morning has turned into quite the delightful afternoon. This morning I was ready to smash glass, crush cans in the parking lot against the hood of cars, and scribble obscenities on the freedom wall. (There's a chalkboard wall dedicated to the first amendment in my town.)

But then, solace in the used bookstore. Solace in radiohead.tv. Solace in an amazing butternut squash/apple cider soup. Solace in fizzy grapefruit juice. Solace in the perfect songs at just the right time.

I used to go into this one used bookstore whenever I felt like my head would explode at my neck and roll off my body into the street, biting as many ankles as possible before its inevitable demise into the sewer drain. This remedy has led to hundreds of dollars spent on volumes that mostly cost something under ten dollars. It adds up, it does. Lately money has been tight and so I just went in because I can't stand eating lunch fuming mad. Food should remain a delight, rather than something that suffers the effects of stewing. This old man with a long, grey ponytail and glasses pressed against his face runs the store. He keeps all of the coin-change in the fifth pocket of his five-pocket black jeans. He knows the poetry I read. Recently he has begun to point out his favorite new volumes to me when I walk in. Once I bought an Ayn Rand novel just to try it out, and he expressed shock and surprise. He knows me well, if only through my literary taste.

Today I bought a collection of poems by Pablo Neruda. And it was meant to be. Maktub. I needed this book. I've been starving for nourishment; I've been wandering; I am lost. I hope that I will soon find my way.

Return to a city

What have I come to? I ask them.

Who am I in this dead city?

I can't find either the street or the roof
of the crazy girl who once loved me.

There's no doubting the crows in the branches,
the monsoon green and boiling,
the scarlet spittle
in the eroded streets,
the air heavy--but where,
where was I, who was I?
I understand only the ashes.

The betel-seller looks at me,
recognizing neither my shoes
nor my recently resurrected face.
Perhaps his grandfather would grant me
a salaam, but it so happens
that he succumbed while I was travelling,
dropped deep into the well of death.

I slept in such a building
fourteen months and the corresponding years;
I wrote out my misery.
I bit
innocently into bitterness.
I pass now and the door is not there.
The rain has been working overtime.

Now it dawns on me that I have been
not just one man but several,
and that I have died so many times
with no notion of how I was reborn,
as if the act of changing clothes
were to force me to live another life,
and here I am without the least idea
of why I cannot recognize a soul,
of why no one recognizes me,
as if everyone here were dead
and I alive in the midst of such forgetting,
a bird that still survives--
or, the reverse, the city watching me,
and realizing I am the one who is dead.

I walk through the silk bazaars,
and the markets of misery.
It is hard to believe the streets
are the selfsame streets; the black eyes,
hard as nailpoints,
glare back against my glances,
and the pale Gold Pagoda
with all its frozen idolatry
has no eyes now, no hands,
no longer any fire.
Goodbye, streets soiled by time,
goodbye, goodbye, lost love.
I return to the wine of my house,
I return to the love of my loved one,
to what I was and to what I am,
water and sun, earth ripe with apples,
months with lips and with names.
I come back not to return;
no more do I wish to mislead myself.
It is dangerous to wander
backward, for all of a sudden
the past turns into a prison.

pictures of success

2007-10-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

build your own television receiver
staying home can't be that bad for me
cause i'm not scared
but i'd like some extra spare time
easily earn me big money

i'm a modern girl but i fold in half so easily
when i put myself in the picture of success
i could learn world trade
or try to map the ocean

when you're dead
in hospitals and freeways
when you're dead
in resting homes and clinics
when you're dead
it must be nice to finish
when you're dead

i've had it with you
and mexico can fucking wait
and all of those french films about trains
cause i'm not scared
but i'd like some extra spare time
i'm not scared
but the bills keep changing colors

when you're dead
in hospitals and freeways
when you're dead
in dress shirts and neckties
when you're dead
in apartments and on beaches
when you're dead

they say california is a recipe for a black hole
and i say i've got my best shoes on
i'm ready to go

these are times that can't be weathered and
we have never been back there since then

courage

2007-10-23T17:28:00.000-07:00

It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid and concealed it.

Later,
if you faced the deaths of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.

Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.

Gypsy

2007-10-21T18:22:00.000-07:00

You come from far away
With pictures in your eyes
Of coffeeshops and morning streets
In the blue and silent sunrise
But night is the cathedral
Where we recognized the sign
We strangers know each other now
As part of the whole design

Oh, hold me like a baby
That will not fall asleep
Curl me up inside you
And let me hear you through the heat

You are the jester of this courtyard
With a smile like a girl's
Distracted by the women
With the dimples and the curls
By the pretty and the mischievous
By the timid and the blessed
By the blowing skirts of ladies
Who promise to gather you to their breast

Oh, hold me like a baby
That will not fall asleep
Curl me up inside you
And let me hear you through the heat

You have hands of raining water
And that earring in your ear
The wisdom on your face
Denies the number of your years
With the fingers of the potter
And the laughing tale of the fool
The arranger of disorder
With your strange and simple rules
Yes now Ive met me another spinner
Of strange and gauzy threads
With a long and slender body
And a bump upon the head

Oh, hold me like a baby
That will not fall asleep
Curl me up inside you
And let me hear you through the heat

With a long and slender body
And the sweetest softest hands
And well blow away forever soon
And go on to different lands
And please do not ever look for me
But with me you will stay
And you will hear yourself in song
Blowing by one day

But now, hold me like a baby
That will not fall asleep
Curl me up inside you
And let me hear you through the heat

those anarcho punks are mysterious...

2007-10-16T08:06:00.000-07:00

we're all presidents, we're all congressmen, we're all cops in waiting, we are the workers of the world, there is the elite and the dispossessed, it's only about survival--who has the skill to play the game for what it's worth, and reach an obscure kind of perfection. let's try and keep as much emotion out of this as possible. let's try not to remember any names. we'll do it for a country, for a people, for a moral vision. united we'll make them remember our history. or how we'd like to be told. how we like to be told. we rock (as in the act of, not the state of being) because it's us against them we found our own reasons to sing, and it's so much less confusing when lines are drawn like that. when people are either consumers or revolutionaries, enemies or friends. hanging onto the fringes of the cogs in the system. it's just about knowing where everyone stands. all of the sudden people start talking about guns, talking like they're going to war. cause they found something to die for. start taking back what they stole, sure beats every other option. but does it make a difference how we get it? well do you really fucking get it?

a rasp in my throat

2007-10-05T10:32:00.000-07:00

I posit that raspberries are the best fruit to put in yogurt, as they seem to mostly come stem-free. And they are so soft and other-worldly-looking, especially with those random little hairs.

remember soul asylum? yeah.

2007-09-25T18:43:00.000-07:00

I'm waiting by the phone, waiting for someone to call me up and tell me I'm not alone.

2007-09-12T11:53:00.001-07:00

I'm having trouble breathing.

poetry

2007-09-04T09:39:00.000-07:00

THE ALCHEMIST Louise Bogan
I burned my life, that I might find A passion wholly of the mind, Thought divorced from eye and bone, Ecstasy come to breath alone. I broke my life, to seek relief From the flawed light of love and grief.	With mounting beat the utter fire Charred existence and desire. It died low, ceased its sudden thresh. I had found unmysterious flesh -- Not the mind's avid substance -- still Passionate beyond the will.

iris

2007-08-27T10:06:00.001-07:00

How do we know when we are going crazy--those of us who live in our minds?

2007-08-20T14:14:00.001-07:00

You have a right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted and then used against you.

mustard gas and roses

2007-08-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

So the rent became whiskey, and my life became risky.

to the max

2007-08-14T16:14:00.000-07:00

Today was an abnormally bad day. The kind of bad day where you go through every type of negative emotion there is, until you feel so completely exhausted that you just say dash it all and go to the grocery store and buy Boddington's and a six-pack. Options are nice, after all. I'm leaving the grocery store, standing in front of the trunk of my car in that awkward, semi-vulnerable place between unlocked car and locked car, when this skinny twenty-something-maybe kid comes up to me. Kid tells me he is doing a project for class and I look friendly. This admission throws me for a loop. I have been feeling anything but friendly today. So, sucker that I am, I listen. Soon I realize this is one of those order-three-magazines-and-send-Kid-to-Hawaii scams. I stop listening. Tell Kid no. Kid persists. I keep thinking what an idiot I am for having complied in the first place. I tell Kid I'm a student and don't have time to read magazines. I don't want them. I hate them. I'm in a hurry. I've had a bad day. Finally, I tell Kid to try some other people--lots of suckers go to Harris Teeter. Kid transforms into mean-looking scoundrel. Kid tells me yesterday he had 33 people order magazine and 22 so far today.

Then, the clincher.

"And Happy Hanukkah. I'm a Christian."

Me: stunned. Bewildered. wtf mate? What does that have to do with anything, especially your stupid magazine scam.

Driving in my car, contemplating the insanity that just occurred, I realize I am wearing my beloved green Silver Jews tee-shirt. Silver Jews as in the band. As in music. As in poetry.

As in if I ever seen that damn Kid again, I'll make him listen to "Punks in the Beerlight" on repeat. What an asshole.

As I lay with Head in your Lap, Camerado

2007-07-11T12:15:00.001-07:00

As I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado,
The confession I made I resume--what I said to you in the open air I resume:
I know I am restless, and make others so;
I know my words are weapons, full of danger, full of death;
(Indeed I am myself the real soldier;
It is not he, there, with bayonet, and not the red-striped artilleryman;)
For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them;
I am more resolute because all have denied me, than I could ever have been had all
accepted me;
I heed not, and have never heeded, either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule;
And the threat of what is call'd hell is little or nothing to me;
And the lure of what is call'd heaven is little or nothing to me;
...Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge you,
without the least idea what is our destination,
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and defeated.

by Walt Whitman

Point A Bulletin

2007-07-04T11:18:00.000-07:00

The trees look lovely in the sunlight
but I'm staring at the ground
the kids are coming back to college
but I live here all year round
without a full education
do I have anything to say
all this talk about destination
but I forgot about Point A
a point I thought I made
but I made it a point to try
and nothing anybody has to say
is gonna make me ever bat an eye
I used to keep my eyes closed
at these fireworks displays
and know where I've pictured in my mind
to throw the truth away
and what's so proudly that I am
at Point A
a point I thought I made
but I made it a point to say
that nothing in the world
has ever made certain that
rocknroll is ever gonna get in the way
so I pick up the pace
to find a road to take
to get home before
the streetlights
go out again
the trees look lovely in the moonlight
and the shadows that they cast
are just as lovely as the feeling
of talking about the past
and knowing everything is on track
because there is a beginning
and there is an end
there is a line and
I am drawing it again
it's like I never missed it
and it never missed me
and it doesn't matter
if there ever will be
a Point B.

seashell curls

2007-06-14T20:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I am struck by the beauty of things I take for granted. Like, the Smiths. They make me want to scrawl their lyrics all over the walls, my body, the ceiling, every single sheet of paper I can find. I want to drip candle wax onto the desk and carve their words into the cooling mass. What I love about this band is that their songs are very separate from themselves--I never think about them performing or singing or what it would be like to see them play. I've seen a lot of bands in my time, and I can't think of a more perfect band to never see. Something about the shadows my ceiling fan casts against the walls is more of an experience I'll ever need. The oddest thing about connecting so much and so dreadfully and for so many years with these songs is that if I ever go too deep into it, people question. Their lyrics are sad. Their sadness fills me up and takes away the self-importance of my own dull, selfish, everywoman sadness. But this sadness has been my closest companion since age fifteen. That's eight years of never letting me down. My oldest, dearest, most loyal friend. The friend who will never forget you.

I close my eyes, feel the weight of my being, the weight of my mind sinking me into the ground, and let the sound waves float me elsewhere.

I thought that if you had an acoustic guitar that it meant that you were a protest singer.

2007-06-11T12:55:00.001-07:00

I want the American people to understand that it is completely understandable that the American people cannot possibly understand.

Can I have some olives with that beer?

2007-06-05T17:35:00.000-07:00

I've been having a hard streak of food addictions lately. Most of the times, my food cravings run along the lines of nachos and quesadillas at every hour of the day or night. However, I am pleased/embarrassed to report that manzanilla olives are the new/old best thing I have ever tasted.

Why?

-Always present at bars and free for the most part!
-Found in Bloody Marys.
-Cheap-ish at the grocery store.
-Can be eaten with a fork, spoon, knife, or hands!
-Semi-good for you and semi-bad for you. (hey, at least they don't bind like cheese)
-Small enough where you can have twenty and feel fine and small enough where you can have three and feel even better.
-Just soo good. Try one today.

As long as you don't mind being that weird chick asking for a stab of olives along with your beer, this is such a fool-proof food that I cannot believe I did not appreciate it in all of its immediately gratifying glory sooner.

and if you're so clever...

2007-05-22T10:20:00.000-07:00

I've been listening to the "25 most exquisitely sad songs in the whole world" all day at work. It's not as morose as you think--most of them are too dramatic to really trigger any depressive episodes. This song, "I Know It's Over", by the Smiths, is one of the most beautiful songs ever written, and so I've included the lyrics below and hope you will find a copy of it and listen to it. I know you'll love it very much. I especially love Smiths lyrics because they read like poetry--Morrissey is always very careful to include parentheses for the really biting lines. It brings tears to my eyes just reading the words, let alone hearing the song.

I Know It's Over

Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head
And as I climb into an empty bed
Oh well. Enough said.
I know it's over - still I cling
I don't know where else I can go
Oh ...
Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head
See, the sea wants to take me
The knife wants to slit me
Do you think you can help me ?
Sad veiled bride, please be happy
Handsome groom, give her room
Loud, loutish lover, treat her kindly
(Though she needs you
More than she loves you)
And I know it's over - still I cling
I don't know where else I can go
Over and over and over and over
Over and over, la ...
I know it's over
And it never really began
But in my heart it was so real
And you even spoke to me, and said :
"If you're so funny
Then why are you on your own tonight ?
And if you're so clever
Then why are you on your own tonight ?
If you're so very entertaining
Then why are you on your own tonight ?
If you're so very good-looking
Why do you sleep alone tonight ?
I know ...
'Cause tonight is just like any other night
That's why you're on your own tonight
With your triumphs and your charms
While they're in each other's arms..."
It's so easy to laugh
It's so easy to hate
It takes strength to be gentle and kind
Over, over, over, over
It's so easy to laugh
It's so easy to hate
It takes guts to be gentle and kind
Over, over
Love is Natural and Real
But not for you, my love
Not tonight, my love
Love is Natural and Real
But not for such as you and I, my love
Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head
Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head
Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head
Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my ...
Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head
Oh Mother, I can even feel the soil falling over my head
Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head
Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my ...

speechless

2007-05-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

I've been without voice for two days now. I spent the whole day yesterday screaming in whispers, literally, because my vocal cords or larynx or whatever it is (which I bet I should know, since I'm into sound productions of the vocal tract, just not really the actual vocal tract...new project perhaps?) have decided to throw in the towel, at least until I start having something worthwhile to say. Imagine your body protesting your mind. That's kind of what I think is going on with my insides at the moment. I was sick as a dog last week, and finally started to feel better over the weekend, but I suppose waitressing isn't really the best way to recover from illness.

Not speaking has sort of thrown me into an odd period of suspension. Last night, unable to sing, unable to talk to myself over matters of the everyday, I laid in bed staring at the shadows cast on my walls. I tried to read, but found that with one of my four elements on hiatus the others sat out in protest. Even solitary, I need to know that exchange can occur. I've spent the whole day silent at work, suffering several awkward encounters where I must motion that I have lost my voice, and the other person either apologizes or whispers their request to me. I'm really good at facial expressions. My hand gestures are superb. Body language is the new rhetoric.

So why am I questioning my entire being today? I've been scouring the internet for masters' programs in Amsterdam (dare I afford?) and research positions in big American cities. What does linguistics mean to someone who cannot speak? Is it time to put life's ambitions on the line? Does it count if I draw the line myself?

I'm all ears.

skin-deep

2007-05-05T17:28:00.001-07:00

I don't take good pictures because I have the kind of beauty that moves.

Who am I--the mouth that ate itself?

2007-05-04T17:51:00.000-07:00

"Often when I'm alone and it is raining and the wind is blowing, or when I'm on my own at night and the moon is shining down on the land, I can hear the many voices gone, the many voices now living, the many voices to come, all singing to me in whispers. At times like those I feel I am just about to catch the tune, the rhythm, and the theme of the music I have always longed to write. But it drifts away, carried on the waves of the wind. I seize pen and paper to write down the messages of the voices before they are carried away by the wind."

Do I delight in shocking my elders?

2007-05-01T13:04:00.000-07:00

Did you know that 11,000 faces identical with Christ's are growing thinner in the federal prison? They had no money and no guns, and their trousers were not creased. The policeman grows fatter each day and rivals the new tanks. He blots out the doorway of the little cafe. A couple seeing him spills the milk at the counter, remembering what they did under the bridge last night.

There will be snacks!

2007-04-23T08:14:00.000-07:00

Moon, moon, rise in the sky to be a reminder of comfort and the hour when I was brave

2007-04-18T11:21:00.000-07:00

"Then days go by without even this much exchange of metaphor, and my tongue seems to wither in my throat from the unhappy silence, and the moons that rise and set unused, and the suns that melt the Pacific uselessly, drive me to tears and my cliff of vigil at the end of the peninsula. I do not beckon to the Beginning, whose advent will surely strew our world with blood, but I weep for such a waste of life lying under my thumb."

It's funny the times I lose my voice

2007-04-12T15:03:00.000-07:00

In talking to a co-worker this afternoon about all things, I'm hit by a helpful comment: "You're normally so outspoken. I wouldn't think you'd act like that."

I am reminded by a quote that has haunted me for years: "She was not silent; she was unheard."

But there are times when I am silent. I'd like to think that I at least always speak up for my opinion, for the downtrodden, for the unconsidered perspective, for at the very least myself. Which leads me to ask:

Why don't we stick up for ourselves?

Why is agreement polite? Why is smiling and nodding top-notch? Is it residue from the olden days of quiet, supportive women? From silent children? From grinning and bearing it?

Or is it from fatigue? Anything in order to keep things peachy and sunny?

"You'd be so pretty if you would just smile."

'tis better to receive in the morning and to give in the evening

2007-04-11T08:16:00.000-07:00

Today has turned out to be a very different day than I first envisioned upon waking this morning. When my alarm went off around 6:15 this morning, my first thought was, "E! You idiot! Why don't you ever go to bed earlier? Now today will be a wash!" I had a review session bright and early, about an hour before my class, and I was surprisingly awake (although not as much as I should be). Since I was tired and grumpy, I parked in the permit lot. After class I was so impressed at my alertness that I happily drove away, thinking, "Wow! I should park in this lot more often! This is twice with no ticket!"

Then I found my first gift of the day: a warning ticket blowing in the wind, held to my windshield by a sliver of wiper blade.

But no worries! Warning is the key. This means zero dollars owed. It's the zero allomorph to the more frequently occurring forty dollar ticket! What luck! Maybe because I am wearing an Ireland sweatshirt. You can't mess with roots, you know.

My second gift of the day: the previously empty chocolate tin in the other office is packed to the brim with half-priced Easter candy! And it's the good stuff too! After I write this blog, I'm heading back in there to help myself to another round of pastel-wrappers.

My third gift of the day: a silverly gel metallic rose-colored pen! For free! My co-worker bought a pack and gave us each one--and we could pick! and trade! This is providence since my ultra-fine point sharpies of every color have been lent and lost and left to the point of no return.

Glorious! And it's not even noon!

I suppose tonight I should give something so this luck will come to me another time.

no parts necessary

2007-04-06T09:29:00.000-07:00

My desk at work is stashed with goodies to keep me going throughout the day. (You try sitting at a desk for eight hours a day without snacking--it's impossible.) The snacks that last the longest are little applesauces (just like the ones your mom packed for you when you were a kid), unsalted peanuts, and my newest addition--raisins! Goldfish, pudding, and apples go too fast to be economical or very healthy. Of course, the little chocolates I buy for my co-workers I strategically leave in the other office space so that it is a 'treat' and worthy of a visit.

All of these are traditionally finger foods, except for the applesauces. I am quite the pro at eating applesauce in those little cups without a spoon. Unnecessary! Use your tongue! Why the tongue has become such a faux-pas is beyond me. Why is it inappropriate to create less trash, less water waste, less stuff?! I call for a reinstitution of eating without utensils. So many other cultures do it, and they do it with style, flare, and grace. Whenever I spill some applesauce, I remind myself that in bucking my culture, there is a transition period. It is not always smooth and clean and streamlined eating without utensils, but this is only at first! And heck, at least I'm trying.

2007-04-05T11:04:00.000-07:00

I'm just thinking of that weight right now.

I'll tell you why

2007-04-03T16:56:00.001-07:00

You just haven't earned it yet, baby.

creeping alternatives

2007-03-28T20:02:00.000-07:00

I hate cat-calls. I hate being yelled at from moving vehicles, I hate whistling, sexual comments from strangers that are actually harassment and never compliments, I hate it, hate it, hate it. Never have I gone from, "wow, it's a beautiful day and I am in love with the world" to "what did I do? who the hell? get me inside now" in one instant flat.

Today, a co-worker had this terrible experience, came in to my office space to relay, and told me of her retaliation: whenever someone yells suggestive comments from a car window, especially if she's in a car sitting in traffic (but she assures me this could be equally handy for pedesterians), she sticks her finger all the way up her nose. I mean, the girl really digs that finger as far up as it can go. I'm wondering if I could really overcome my fear of the upper nostril just to stick it to the creeps.

I bet and firmly believe this is totally possible.

She also mentioned that she did an experiment once (for a class) where she cat-called out car windows, whistled, sent verbal "you-are-nothing-more-than-an-object-to-me" cues to unsuspecting men. She reports that they ate it up.

I contend that these men would not continue to eat it up if this shit happened to them throughout their entire adult lives and, most wretchedly, throughout a good part of their upper childhood.

When you yell "oooh sexy!" at me from your car while I wait for the walk signal, you are not making me feel better about myself. Instead, you make me feel angry. Rage steams in my ears and boiling blood rushes through every vein. You make it hard for me to refrain from blaming all of the world's problems on men and projecting this hate onto the men in my life (minus my brothers, of course, they can do no harm, and if I hear you criticizing one of them I will come after you without hesitating).

You make it hard for me to live my life.

But we all do, anyway. Maybe I turn down a sidestreet to avoid confrontation. Maybe I wear sunglasses when I don't have to. Maybe I always have my cellphone attached to my ear even when I'm not on a call. Maybe I took 12 hours of a self-defense class. Maybe when I travel solo (one of my favorite things) I plan my plane and trains around daylight, so that I won't arrive in a new city in the dark. Maybe I repeatedly lie to strangers when casually asked what I do for a living, where I went to school. Maybe I'm afraid to drink more than four beers at a bar. Maybe being friendly becomes a bad idea after ten minutes of conversation. Maybe I should smile less. Maybe I should laugh less. Maybe.

Maybe I smile anyway. Maybe I laugh anyway. Maybe I wear make-up anyway. Maybe I travel solo anyway. Maybe I don't always hate half of the population. Maybe I love some of those men.

I just hope the ones I love think of me next time they are tempted to whistle.

worst lunch in town

2007-03-26T09:03:00.000-07:00

Why did I go back?

Last Wednesday, I had a pretty bad lunch that cost a goodly amount. But, I was with a friend, and so the company outweighed the negatives.

Today, I went back to that same place. Call me a masochist. Call me afraid of seeing my bagel lady twice before noon. I just wanted a damn cup of coffee and lunch in one foul swoop.

It was foul, all right.

I ordered a cookie, an americano, and veggie mac'n'cheese. My coffee cup is leaking, they forgot to give me the cookie, and the mac'n'cheese is so incredibly greasy I feel like I need to eat ANYTHING to sop it up. (You're probably thinking, why did you order anything with cheese if you are afraid of grease?! If you could try this, you'd wonder if they dumped a quart of oil in the mix. I don't expect oil in the cheese.)

Gross, gross, gross.

I guess I'll drink the dripping coffee and go get a candy bar from the gas station down the street instead. I know, I know, I'm the picture of health in your mind right now.

addendum

2007-03-23T07:44:00.000-07:00

"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day.
If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime."

WHY AREN'T THERE ANY FISH IN THE RIVER?!?!

submerged

2007-03-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

Balancing has never been my best act. As my job indulges my intellectual interests more and more (thank goodness for superiors who actually listen!) and steers clear of the mundane as much as publishing three grades in two years will allow, I find myself in continuous awe of academics. Basically, every hour of my day minus sleeping and eating should be devoted to reading and studying if I want to accomplish everything I've successfully started. Starting is always successful, in my view. Finishing, sometimes can be, but that is never expected. There's always that possibility of failure, but you can at least start, right?

This attitude has brought me to the realization I came to rather calmly this morning, when I rose at six to study at seven, class at eight, work by ten. My current schedule will not produce satisfactory academic success. The two hours of exercise and one to two hours of "nap time" that I've recently incorporated into my day (making me a nicer and healthier person) must go if I am to read an hour of French phonetics each week, finish the linguist's take on beginning spelling, take notes on four chapters of syntax, rewrite and reorganize my last assignment, compose seven decodable stories from a limited word list (this is the one of the hardest things one can ever do), coordinate worksheets and art manifests and readers and lesson plans, contract freelancers to begin work on grade 1, brainstorm and create ways for children to practice writing numbers that are not goofy; this is not to mention things I want to do.

Yes, this is me expelling.

My biggest problem is that I am young. Shouldn't I be out drinking and socializing, traveling and conversing, diving in dumpsters and jumping onto trains? Where's the balance? Can I live my life and still prerequisite my life?

I'm wondering where my revolution fits in all of this. Instead I'll end up publishing theories on revolution, criticizing the man while profiting from the elitist status provided to me by the man.

And I'm not a man. I'm a woman. So basically anything I do in this patriarchal society is betraying my hard-fought sense of self.

But I remain calm and continue to create a list of linguists whose work I'd like to peruse.

Am I defeated already?

the slant

2007-03-20T07:37:00.000-07:00

a building settling around me
my figure female framed crookedly
in the threshold
of the room
door scraping floorboards
with every opening
carving a rough history
of bedroom scenes
the plot hard to follow
the text obscured
in the folds of sheets
slowly gathering the stains
of seasons spent lying there
red and brown
like leaves fallen
the colors of an eternal cycle
fading with the
wash cycle
and the rinse cycle
again an unfamiliar smell
like my name misspelled
or misspoken
a cycle broken
the sound of them strong
stalking talking about their prey
like the way hammer meets nail
pounding, they say
pounding out the rhythms of attraction
like a woman was a drum like a body was a weapon
like there was something more they wanted
than the journey
like it was owed to them
steel toed they walk
and i'm wondering why this fear of men
maybe it's because i'm hungry
and like a baby i'm dependent on them
to feed me
i am a work in progress
dressed in the fabric of a world unfolding
offering me intricate patterns of questions
rhythms that never come clean
and strengths that you still haven't seen

a song to my nose

2007-03-14T17:58:00.001-07:00

I'm quite the baby when it comes to being sick. You'd think getting a severe cold/sinus infection twice a year would not be the end of the world. Hell, I never breathed through my nose during my entire middle school career!! Now that I've grown out of the nasal affliction, whenever it comes back I fall apart.

I hate taking sick days. I'd rather somehow accumulate these days and try for extra vacation time somehow. This is why I have gone home sick two afternoons in a row. Which equates to one day. One day spread over 48 hours where I do nothing but sleep and moan and blow my nose and manically clean the back porch (which was formerly serving as our catch-all for trash and recycling), manically light tiny candles along the perimeter of said back porch and sit on the couch in my pajamas, hoodie up, orange juice and tissues in hand, and think, "Wouldn't this be great if I were well?" And then I work from home on my laptop. Ha! Take that sick day! I'm logging in at least 3 hours today! Which means I've only taken 3 sick hours today and 3.5 yesterday! The workaholic persists again!

I think I'm delirious.

je sais cette langue!

2007-03-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a Linguistics graduate class each semester while I work full-time in town. (Gotta keep that mind active.) This semester I bravely decided to take Applied Linguistics for Teachers of Foreign Languages, even though I am neither a teacher nor fluent in another language. The professor assured me my minimal knowledge of French combined with my growing knowledge of linguistic theory would see me through the course. And now it's time to turn in the first assignment, and I am afraid. I know the material. I know the terminology. I am comfortable with discussing theoretical principles of teaching languages. But my French? Ghastly.

I picked up a textbook on introductory French phonology and morphology from 1975, and I tell ya, I feel like I am understanding French for the first time. All my 12-year-old mind wanted in my first French class was confirmation that I was not going crazy. I knew something was up with the way I learned this language. My darling teachers, Mmes. Maruca and Romano could not help their Jersey accents. The overlay with French was fantastically catchy to the ears, but it left me to learn French in much the same way (I think) I learned to process English. Both languages are infamous for having many spelling alternatives that do not easily map to the sounds of the language. Developing an English reading program (my current day job) has revealed that as a child I somehow memorized all of the spellings for a sound. In this way, I can look a word and count the number of sounds in that word without saying the word out loud. Basically, I know that 'th' is one sound, 'ough' is a sound, and 't' is a sound. I think I learned by reading way too many books under my desk in elementary school. This is apparently not ideal. One should learn the sounds and then learn spelling alternatives for that sound. However, as I have proved that I can read, I have never worried about this until basically relearning my French as I read this amazing textbook by Albert Valdman.

My point: phonetics are absolutely necessary to teaching a Foreign Language. I think all students from middle school on up would benefit enormously from a quick class on phonology taught in the first 3 or 4 weeks of the school year. Use English, for sure, in teaching the principles, but be sure to point out all of the fun differences, and I assure you, the class will be brimming over with potential future linguists. This is the most consistently interesting stuff I've encountered in many years of schooling, and I think everyone gets a kick out of learning language tidbits, because we all use language and we can all relate. This is not chemistry, which seems veiled and hidden to the average person. This is everyday, everywhere, everyone.

I contend that

2007-03-12T19:02:00.000-07:00

we generate our own light to compensate for the lack of light from above.

(this does not mean I am giving a nod to agnosticism, ahem.)

query

2007-03-08T18:48:00.000-08:00

What if one day everything you used to think you knew turned around and turned the doorknob and just walked right out without you? Could you stand to just start over? Would it really be so bad? I asked my mom; she told me, "Go and ask your dad."

Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair

2007-03-07T07:11:00.000-08:00

Last night I saw the Blue Man Group: How to Be a Megastar show. I can't remember the last time I saw music in a large venue--maybe Weezer in North Carolina in 2001? Regardless, it was hard for me to fuse the music, the lights, the excitement with the fact that I was sitting. I can't even sit still at small club/pub shows. My leg, I just can't control it, it needs to tap out the off-beat. Sometimes the music grabs me so much that I start to shake. My fists air-drum on my tummy and hip bones. I've been known to bruise myself in the moment. Even on long drives alone, I smack the steering wheel in solidarity with faceless gods. I sing along dramatically, enunciating each syllable as if it is my last breath, and dare my traffic jam compatriots to stop staring and join me in my quest to drive out the ho-hum-ness and alienation of being so close to so many people while siphoned off in a small metal box.

This is why it was so interesting to me to sit in the stadium alongside thousands of other human beings and still feel so isolated. Did the crowd need a ringleader? Someone to attract the stares, the hateful daggers that attempt to thwart any rip in the social fabric? Would I have thrust my fist into the air with more gusto if someone two rows ahead enthusiastically cursed the sky and roared into the black, mechanical dawn?

Perhaps.

But, probably not.

The band, the songs, the words, the percussion all combined to make me uneasy; the images on the screens suggested that I was ever more in the cubicle in the stadium seating than in dull, grey office existence. The lights and sound mocked me, and I kept looking around anxiously to gauge the reaction of the crowd. The screens literally told us to stand up, shake our fists, twist our pelvises, scream from our bowels, bang our heads---and I complied. It's part of the experience after all, yes?

I still couldn't shake the awful feeling that everything we do is a lie.

This isolationist thinking will only leave me lying curled on a dirty bed-roll under a train bridge somewhere, huddling around a barrel fire, staring at my hands, the ground, the flames, anything to avoid eye contact.

Or can this be our only freedom?

What if complying leaves me twenty years from now, plastic-surgeried, manicured, bone-skinny, standing on high heels to emphasize my toned but not too muscular calves that have developed from the strain of white picket fences and corporate jobs and elevators to the fifty-second floor?

I'd like to think the folks under the train bridge would accept me even if I showed up grey-suited and green-faced, nauseous from routine and disgusted with what I have done and what I have failed to do. We'd have a laugh; I'd look around nervously and sip the offered coffee cup for the vital elixir that it is. I would feel the lines on my face dissolve. I would feel the relief of taking off uncomfortable shoes after a long day without a moment's rest.

There must be community.

There must.

It has to exist.

But can it combat our nonexistence?

I shudder and wait patiently, as I have been told to do.

what will you do with your money there, honey?

2007-02-19T18:52:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow morning I'm taking an Amtrak to DC. I'm psyched. I love trains, but I rarely take them for long distances in this country. Consistently when I am in another country I choose the train over bus even if the travel time is longer (and if you want a cheap train, you better believe that train is creeping).

But here lies the real conundrum: going by train rather than car to DC, my luggage is limited.

Dare I leave my Sambas at home?!

Yes, dear readers, I am wondering if it is that time in my life. I don't think I've been apart from my trusty black-and-white sneakers for about (this is so embarrassing) six years. This does not count the years spent actually legitimately playing indoor soccer (I swear, it's true, though I wasn't very stellar at it. I was a much better runner. I was the go-to person to run for the first-aid kit.)

I won't actually need street sneakers while there. Work shoes will most likely be sufficient for non-working hours, which will most likely be spent reading linguistics books and my new guilty pleasure, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. I'm bringing running sneakers in hopes of realizing my dream of running in the hotel gym. There just isn't room.

But do I leave behind any hopes of actually living a life of resistance or just an absurd loyalty to a shoe style? I will look like everyone else in attendance, what with my heeled shoes and sharp lines. I had always prided myself before on never quite conforming to the dress code, but now I submit without struggle.

Maybe I should focus on packing my laptop instead of wasting precious sleep time typing by candlelight (and listening to the bandolin!)

now.

2007-02-12T09:37:00.001-08:00

I want to see it untame itself and break its owner.

dissection with a laser beam

2007-02-11T19:17:00.000-08:00

I saw a delightful band tonight and knew I had to buy their CD as soon as the first song was over. I haven't been seeing nearly as much music as I would like to lately, and despite being hungover and exhausted, I trudged over and I am ever glad that I did. (Linguistics HW be damned!...er, postponed.)

But this slice of freshness puts me in this spot that I come back to time and again. After I saw the Slackers for the first time back in the day, I huddled the entire night penning ska songs into the early morning hours. (Complete with horrific intersessions of toasting.) God knows the mountains of slam poetry written after the entrancement of Unspoken Heard and the fury of angry acoustic ditties after the first night Ani Difranco and I spent together speak to this habit. The closest I've ever come to actually following through with learning how to play music (besides my unsuccessful foray into the violin as an eight-year-old) was a stint scouring the internet for how-to information and taping chord diagrams to my walls, borrowed guitar in hand.

So now I'm stuck trying to figure out if I'll ever be able to learn anything new. It's all excuses of course, ones that I've wound and rewound until the circulation stops in my toes, but I declare that if and when I go teach english abroad (I'm thinking 2008 or 2009) I will make it a priority to learn piano or guitar, or really any musical instrument. Because, hell, just because I sing off-key doesn't mean that I can't make that sound good somehow. And even more importantly, I have a heck of a lot to say.

five-letter word for movie still

2007-02-08T19:34:00.000-08:00

I have this thing where everything happens in twos. Yes, I know, it's supposed to be threes, but I don't have time to sit and around and wait for that third thing, because once that second thing happens, I get all excited and start thinking about coincidences.

I read the Book section of the NYTimes fairly regularly, and there are sometimes pieces on author geography: either this week or last week there was a piece on visiting Flannery O'Connor's Georgia. I have never read any Flannery O'Connor; although, admittedly, I have twice checked out her works only to have to pay late fees for the unread. Many people I know love her and so I was ecstatic to see an article: maybe I could get a taste of her! and then go actually read her! fabulous! brilliant!

Three paragraphs in I realized something would be ruined if I read this article before reading the short story in question. I turned away from the article in semi-self-disgust and went back to what I should have been doing--checking design proofs, a task which sucks out my soul and dries up my eyes to boot.

Today at work, during the Q & A game, someone asked me what was one thing I regretted in my life so far.

Tonight at home, I finally read Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find".

The universe might implode.

I ducked around the question, because I like to save my darkness for my solitary moments, only to read the line, "'She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.'"

This is that stupid scenario, if you had one day to live what would you do?, sped up about 100 times and changed into, if you had five minutes to live what would you say?.

I guess the situations aren't exactly congruent, since you'd probably plead for your life, but what I'm interested in, I suppose, is the idea of regret versus its opposite. I cannot think of the antonym of regret for the life of me (coincidentally?) and hate to look it up.

Apparently, "contentment" works, after cheating and looking it up.

I think it's a harder question to ask of someone: what's one thing in your life so far with which you are content?

Isn't it a worse curse to satisfy easily?

acquainted with the night

2007-02-06T08:59:00.000-08:00

Ever read about those experiments where scientists in cloth masks and steel eyes try to press human beings to the very last shred of their sanity?

I'm currently living in one.

My torture mechanism?

Cold, sleepless nights.

I'm trying to get warm. I'm trying to sleep for more than four or five hours. I'm trying to persevere, but I lack the strength against the brutality of a bedroom that was 48 degrees Fahrenheit this morning. One just cannot properly exist in such an environment. I live in a converted attic in a drafty house that just will never warm up. There are no vents in my bedroom, poor if any insulation in the walls at all, and my $60 space heater is powerless against the terror that is 9 degrees Celsius. I used to love my room, and now I can't stand it. My quotations and pictures fall off the walls because the duct tape that before so perfectly adhered now freezes and loses functionality. I'm sick of long underwear, dry skin, dry eyes, the layer of perma-frost that permanently resides on the top layer of my skin---nay, just under the top layer of skin, so that I can't even reach it to melt it, to destroy it, to do away with it.

In the attempt to escape this tortuous cell---this sparkly ice-cavern that used to house incensed, candle-lit typewriter sessions in more relenting times---I have lost the glory of sleep.

If you ask me one word that has described the majority of my life, I might be inclined to say tired at this moment. Everything I do is just to get through the day in hopes of laying down and closing my eyes. This should not be. I should be raging against the dying light, angered that I must wait through the darkness for the opportunity the sun brings. Instead, it is all I can do to abide the daily routine of work, eat, socialize. My heart hurts with the strain of staying alert and caffeinated long enough to rack up the eight hours necessary for validation. My eyes have just about given up. They are permanently squinted and framed by the sickly violet bruise of those horrific bags that crouch underneath. I haven't eaten a nutritious meal in weeks---it's all diet soda, chocolate, and processed energy. The tiredness has made me bitter, hard, calloused, and quick to crank.

I'm going to go sleep on the couch in my living room on my lunch break in a last pitiful attempt to placate this demon.

hope was here.

2007-01-30T21:19:00.000-08:00

Ball & Chain Record Store

Someone came into the ball and chain
record store I work at
and said no bags
a waste of plastic.

I said yes.
You must be a granola-eating, left-wing,
dig-gothic, post-modernist, watch a lot
of Billy Jack movies, Arlo Guthrie type.

He said yes.
I smiled.
I dream of Tom Waits fingerpainting
lightbulbs on my holiday wreath
and I'm Jewish, pretty weird huh?
I celebrate Tiny Tim's birthday
with a parade of dancing deadheads
some who never sleep and some
who never go to the bathroom.

His T-shirt said have you hugged
a rainforest today?

I said I love the planet
but it's unrequited love.

He told me babe, you're bringing me down.
When I was born my first word was ohmmmm...

In kindergarten I organized the pacifists
to demand we didn't have to read
from Dick, Jane, and Spot books.
Too generic.
I demanded we get American Indians
to talk about what's real.
And I gave them my nap mat
cause it's their land and
I gave them my peanut butter
and jelly sandwich cause
the buffalo have been murdered
and they need protein.

He blushed with passion and said
tell me you.

Well, the first 15 years of my life
I thought Barry Manilow was a sex symbol.
Needless to say I got a sort of late start
at being at one with the cosmic heartbeat.

He gave me one of those looks
like I better get this girl
some Jack Kerouac books to read fast
before she suffers the confusion
of not knowing there's other existences
beside the banal.

I put my hands on my hips and squealed
I read On the Road
and the letters of Allen Ginsberg to Neal Cassady
and vice versa.

He said on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday
I'm a part time Marxist.

He took out a beanie
put it on his head
and began to chant.
This definitely turned me on.
All of a sudden he began to sing
the minimum wage workers' song
"the walls are full of faces
the mini-malls are full of neon
the bitter bite the hands that feed them
the food is a mixture of bone, blood
and snails
man is a cannibal."

I said wow! you are the sort of guy
who says right on and really means it.
You probably only drink the milk
of socially conscious cows
who voted Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
for president.

He screamed, oh chick, my life changed
in 1962 when I realized the Constitution
was written without women, blacks, indians,
and poor white men in mind,
That was not o.k.

I became the Jackson Pollack of feminism.
I threw paint of outrage everywhere.
I was a man who identified
with Billie Holiday and Ernest Hemingway.
I was a traveler.

So what brings you into this
San Fernando Valley air conditioned
intellectually malnourished record store
with the exactlys?
We open exactly at 10:00
Close exactly at 10:00
No matter what our karma
Damn it's so crass,
you can't even rent The Last Waltz here.

He said I'm in a competitive mantra makers
bowling league.
We have weavers, chess players,
avant-garde stamp collectors
and Hell's Angels
inventors all.
We bowl whenever the fuck
the spirit moves us.
With any luck we'll be playing the
New Age/lawyers/used car salesman league
again real soon.

Hippies and New Age people are like
the difference between Bob Dylan and Bob Hope.

He smiled and said do you want to bowl?
We are definitely into strikes
for the betterment of the worker.
We need someone who looks
like she could walk into the woods
and find incense without getting poison ivy.
You look like Van Morrison
when you pout your lips.
You could be a part of the father, son, and
the holy ghost meshuganeh athletic league.
Besides I love you.

I started to weep.
Tears of Bas Mitzvah cake
and tears of being the last kid picked
for field hockey in gym class.
Authentic tears.
Nobody ever said all that to me before.
I guess I kind of do have Van Morrison's mouth.
Why hadn't anybody ever noticed?

I said I love you.
But every free moment I moonlight at
Hairy Krishna Organic Coiffures
and Tea Salon.
We use
no chemicals
no dye
no sprays
no combs
no brushes
Hell, you look pretty much the same going out
as going in.

He said what's a nice girl like you doing
living in a Republican administration like this?

The manager of the record store comes over and says
You know the movie Farenheit 451?
Corporate has ordered us to burn it.
Get to it!
Don't give me your damn whimpering
Joan of Arc eyes.
Lots of people would love to have your job.
I screamed pig! PIG!
You are giving barnyard animals a bad name.
Cops are Pigs!
Intolerants are Pigs!
Bigots are Pigs!
Everybody who does it and says
they're just doing their job is a Pig!
Everybody who does it to somebody else
knows what they are.

This is my first day at the record store.
I guess if they want to have a quiet
complacent yes sir type of employee
they ought to ask different questions
on the application.

Like do you conform?
Like do you care that this is stolen land?
Like do you believe in playlists?
Like do you believe in yourself?
Do you mind waking up alone
rather than being beat up with fists?
Do you see the government is beating us up
as bad as a knife in our elbows
as bad as a slur in our ears
as bad as a rape
when we just wanted to be held

And all they ask is
can you work part-time?
and what days can't you work?
and they say whom do we contact
in an emergency?
I said
cause you need to ask that
constitutes an emergency.

The hippie said my name is Hell's Bells
but you can call me hope.
He said I dug you.
Now I dig your whole being.
It's strange,
No matter how many nights I wake up unhappy
there is still a possibility of rising
into a change so easily.
The outlaw lives in a world where
when he sees a mirror he sees a hero.
And all heroes put their bellbottoms on
one leg at a time.

Let's face it,
How can you trust money when
there are politicians' faces printed on it.
Money is sexist.
The only woman on so-called American currency
which is really Turtle Island to the Indians
is Susan B. Anthony and they stopped making those
real fast.

Is money worth killing for?
Is money worth killing for?

I ran through the store singing
about William Blake's eyebrows
and Walt Whitman's bellybutton
saying everything is alive
and everything is sort of adorable.
I took paperclips and gave them
to loving vegetarian families
who needed someone.

I took the bathroom sink and gave it a hug.
I freed all the rubberbands!
And I said to all the plastic bags
I will never burden you
with films weighing you down,
Perry Como cassettes,
or even a piece of Jerry Garcia's beard.
Well maybe.

But I will never staple a bag
for you brought love.

Most people tell me
it was all the pop tarts I ate.
Some people tell me
it was because I was a liar.
And I said I'm too honest
to be anybody's best friend
But at times nobody believes
this hippie ever even came by.

There are
no lingering peace signs
no incense
no tea bags
no fuck the fuckers pamphlets
Yet I still can't even believe
Abbie Hoffman is dead.
So my strengths and pains
are in my sense of wonder.
All I know is I don't believe in
wearing sandals and argyle socks together.
And when I needed it most, hope was here.
Change must not be too far behind.

-Ellyn Maybe

On the lexicon of lunch

2007-01-29T11:39:00.000-08:00

"Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry."

-Mark Strand

Mmmmm, this especially applies to the wondrous grilled cheese-and-tomato sandwich I had for lunch. Have I ever told you cheese is poetry?

This is what I want.

2007-01-23T14:14:00.001-08:00

"Going at ten to an office and coming home comfortably at half-past four to write a little poetry.”

Use the term "office" liberally, of course, with which I think Virginia Woolf would agree.

absence

2007-01-23T06:19:00.000-08:00

Let's talk about knowing too much.

"I could not speak, and my eyes failed,
I was neither living nor dead,
and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light,
the silence.
Od' und leer das Meer."

-TS

"I didn't know anything anymore,
I didn't care,
and it didn't matter,
and suddenly I felt really free."

-JK

I scrawled the second quote all over New Zealand public restrooms in 2004. It was my dissent. Towards/against what? (Does the preposition really matter as long as it still conveys the meaning of force? Being pushed and being pulled still suck.)

I'm waiting for an epiphany.

Maybe you need to write a poem about grace.

2007-01-17T12:27:00.000-08:00

Communion

In the subway I had the impulse to kill
and sat and stared straight ahead
to avoid the eyes of strangers
who might read my dread
and when finally I had the courage
to shift my gaze from the poster above
I saw to my dismay the eyes of others
turning away.

David Ignatow

-----
I came across this poem last night in a fit of word-hunger. It reminds me of some of my favorite lines from a book I can never remember: "I feel like such a fake. I've been spending all of this time putting my life back together, and no one has even noticed."

I've been thinking lately about cycles of self-doubt and the renewal of confidence that eventually comes. Even those of us at our most depressed can, hopefully, attest to bright spots among the shadowy spaces of existence. For myself, I seem to live my life in spurts of pause and action, pause and action. I'm mostly tired all of the time when I am alone. But with others added to the mix, SPRING!, JUMP!, CLANG!, BASH! (insert cool Batman action words here), I come alive and many have commented on the unprecedented level of energy I can carry. This is one of my constant conundrums--how can I take this energy that I so create in frenzies of sociality and apply it to myself? I'd like to bottle it up, put it in a boiler, melt the result, and put it in a liqui-gel capsule.

I don't know if I have a point (one of my many deficiencies, yes, I know), but I do know that this morning waking up before 7am to go to a class across town made me feel like my life is finally coming together. For really no reason at all. I took a class last semester on my lunch break. So what if this time around the class is in the morning before work? For some reason this makes me feel together, and at this intersection, that is enough. I feel like the poem: by the time I have composed myself, no one is watching anymore. Why can't others watch us in our times of composure? Why is anxiety attractive?

It doesn't really matter, because by the time I had bought my textbook after class my life was in shambles again.

emblazoned zones and fiery poles

2007-01-10T08:01:00.000-08:00

I've been listening to the most recent Bouncing Souls' album far too much recently. It takes me back, back, back, to New Jersey sidewalks and fire drills during ceramics' class. One of the consistent themes is something that I, as an extremely solitary person, mull over quite a bit. Can the city comfort? I've lived in my city now for about six years, and I cannot pinpoint if the comfort comes from the city itself or from seeing someone I know or recognize every single day of my life. I think if anything the comfort of the city, any city, comes from the ability to nod to these individuals and not have to go through the formal facades of greeting. That is one of my favorite things about the downtown area here. I like anonymity. I like pausing randomly to appreciate the lines of buildings and streets intersecting at odd angles. I like zigzagging through sidestreets and back alleys.

A professor once told me that I reminded him of Wallace Stevens. I took this in two separate ways, depending on my mood that day: in one way, what a compliment! I love Wallace Stevens' poetry--in fact, I take lines from one of his poems as part of my personal creed: "Then we, as we beheld her striding there alone, knew that there never was a world for her except the one she sang, and singing, made." His poetry can bring tears to my eyes, there is such sadness and solitude and so much truth of the deficiences I see in myself.

But in the other way, that way where you want others to see yourself as you hope to see yourself, I felt like I had obviously not communicated myself eloquently enough. How could this professor that I respect and admire so much see me as similar to this old man who worked in corporate jobs in office buildings his entire life? The sheer genius and beauty of his words was hidden well beneath the fuddy-duddiness of suits and trenchcoats and attaché cases and concrete walls and grey, grey, grey, grey existence. In college I yearned for a pedestal. I would scowl in the corner, put my hood over my head, and scribble ferociously in notebooks. I would even stick out my tongue when I heard any comment void of kinship to my agenda. Would Wallace Stevens ever be so bold as to stick out his tongue on the 52nd floor in a meeting with the board?

I'd like to connect this with the city. Wallace Stevens was of the city. But he was not of the city in a way that I find comforting, cozy, protective, harsh in loving, but "so full of pain that it makes a kind of singing" (to quote Robert Hass). I want the cities I live in to sing with me. I want the steam rising from sewers to envelope me in all of its putrid, warming glory. But I am of Wallace Stevens. I am of his words, his isolationism, his mundaneness, his suits, his grey grey grey existence. I want the city to rip me from these clutches. Can comfort co-exist with the everyday?

"We are not alone in this city that is our home."

January things.

2007-01-04T09:36:00.000-08:00

January comes each year and makes me semi-bored. How can January feel like a new year when you have a year-round occupation? My class does not start for another two weeks, and so I am currently searching for purpose. I don't do well with spare time; I never have. Spare time is when I get my most introspective and dark, and/or when I get my most drunk.

Some solutions I have come up with:
1. Go to NY this weekend to visit grandparents and all of those people I've been meaning to see but haven't in a very long time.
2. Search PVCC for night classes in which I can channel this energy. There is so much energy that it becomes negative in the overload, and maybe if I take a drawing or painting or ceramics class I can transfer the energy to masterpieces that will surely arise within a few class meetings.
3. Visit the Daedalus free-book table daily; preferably as early as possible so as to snag all the good free books. Hey, it says, "With compliments," does it not?
4. Join a gym, so as to at least build some muscle (I currently have zilcho) and recondition my poor lungs that have suffered so much at the hands of smoky bars, before I inevitably get lazy and stop going because I get too busy with work and school. (This is another reason why choice #1 looks good--you can't smoke in NYC bars!!)
5. Cover the slanting ceilings of my room with paper and create a charcoal masterpiece. This idea has been floating around in my head for a while now; previously I was afraid of the charcoal dust falling on my head while I sleep, or even worse, the entire masterpiece falling on my head while I sleep.
6. Look to February, which proves to be a most exciting and jam-packed month. This is the least desirable option. Looking forward to things all the time only means you are unhappy in your present. Actually, I should check out flights to St. Croix and ask the boss if I can spirit away for a long weekend somehow pre-week-long-conference in another city.
7. I really need to go back to school full-time. If all one wants to do is read and drink coffee and feel cozy in woolen ponchos, I believe these are clear signs that one is meant to be a perpetual student. What does the debt matter if all it does is pile up? Then I'll never have to pay it back!

Since 7 is a number that frequently identifies me in my life, I shall stop there. Also because the sole New Year's resolution is to stop being a dead-beat and get work done at work and not during non-working hours, as I was wont to do in 2006.

maybe not.

2006-11-17T14:59:00.000-08:00

I'm listening to a Cat Power mix CD, and comtemplating freedom. I can pinpoint the exact moment I last had a major epiphany on freedom. I was sitting at the University bar in Dunedin, New Zealand, (yes, they have a campus pub in NZ) feeling sophisticated and self-important drinking beer and discussing political theory, but in that way where you know the political theory is closer to the people and farther from the philosophers. This moment may also have started my obsession with contrasts. Regardless, I think the reason it has been two years since my last real concentrated bout of thinking about such a highly touted subject is because I have slowly worn myself/been worn down (by whom? the media? the government? Can one really be worn down by such abstract concepts? I mean, how do I even know in my day-to-day life that these things really exist as large, overarching community-controllers?)

Anyway, so I'm sitting in this dark, smokey corner talking to an Australian-New Zealander about the origins of the USA and its heavy reliance on freedom in its self-image. How can you have freedom without slavery? Luckily (?) for the founding fathers, this was not a problem, because there most certainly was slavery, and continued slavery for nearly one hundred more years officially, but for more than two hundred years in reality, perhaps even still, some might argue. It's the same with what's going on now--terror vs. freedom. Switching labels. Communism vs. capitalism. Democrats vs. Republicans. It's completely arbitrary which label is assigned to which irrelevant team. I'm pretty sick of it, but even more sick of myself being sick of it. How can any one really be sick of it?! How long have I been living? Almost a quarter of a century. In twenty-some-odd years, have I really gone through that much that I can declare disgust? Can anyone really declare disgust and disinterest? Are we ever entitled to not caring--say, at age 85, if I am still relatively healthy and alert, even then, after (hopefully) living for so long, I think it is always the responsibility that comes with breathing to care.

This is why these lines from a Bill Knott poem scare me. They scare me because I am drawn to them--they remind me of how I sometimes feel sitting at my desk, staring at a computer, ensuring I sit for at least eight hours and accomplish something semi-measurable in that span.

"I don't use a pen-name anymore.
I don't use a pen anymore.
I don't write anymore.
I just sit looking at the wastebasket
With this alert, intelligent look on my face."

Am I numb to the mass production of this freedom and slavery dichotomy? I think that even in the blaring trumpeting of these "American qualities", I cling to my inner calypso. Because eventually your ears become deaf if you are subjected to constant beration.

We are fishermen in a flat scene.

2006-09-18T19:24:00.000-07:00

god, I love Anne Sexton. She is exquisite and brash and eloquent and crass and dotted.

"My friend, my friend, I was born
doing reference work in sin, and born
confessing it. This is what poems are:
with mercy
for the greedy,
they are the tongue's wrangle,
the world's pottage, the rat's star."

So matter-of-fact! So gentle in telling her truth! Anne Sexton, you are what poems should be: wrestling with perfection, coated in sin, scraping your elbows and knees until they are bloody and gritty with the collision between what should be and what is.

Reading Anne Sexton poetry out loud for two hours leaves one shaking, blood rushing throughout the entire surface of one's skin, cheeks rosy and alive with the icy heat of voyaging fingertips and baited breaths emerging from the muggy, dew-dripping lair of the spoken language:

"Oh starry starry night! This is how I want to die:
into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry."

Anne Sexton, you have come to pierce me at my hunger mark.

the contented calm of blustery days

2006-09-01T07:10:00.000-07:00

It's raining--the outskirts of a hurricane, actually--and I rode/walked my bike to work today. Unfortunately, I wore pants that are quite thick and take a long time to dry, and so now I have paper towels lining my legs in order to provide at least less than one-tenth of a centimeter of respite from cold, clinging cloth. There's something delightfully cozy and hilarious about wrapping up in layers, hats, and gloves and then putting on a raincoat. It doesn't make any sense aesthetically as to why the raincoat is the last layer--it's shiny and thin and flimsy. My hat is wool and thick and sturdy. Yet the hood of the raincoat covers the hat. I love the illogic of it.

2006-08-17T14:08:00.000-07:00

I had so much to say and now refuse.