...

My mannerist hands,
gesticulating wildly:
articulate moths.

i love you.

with ravenous mouth
with wildest hyperbole
with hummingbird heart

To the Various Distractions Keeping Me From Writing Daily Haiku, With Affection.

under cool bedsheets
we hide, breathless; as children,
plotting new mischief

Sounding the safety on a sharp tongue.

It is so easy, when I write, to dwell on “The Things Which People Have Done to Me”.

I realized this when I was writing in my journal on Father’s Day.

After eight pages of “Things Which I Have Endured”, I set down my pen and massaged my cramped hand and thought: “That’ll show ‘em.” Addressing each father and finally the mother who chose them, I ecstatically scrawled eight pages of pure pain. I tried to approach Father’s Day with love, and I tried to be grateful.

I did. I swear.

But with the passing of each sentence, I felt my grip tighten and curl more painfully into a fist. I felt my mouth harden and fill with bitter saliva. You know the kind? The mouth’s reflexive preparation for vomit. And through every word, I was smiling.

What started as tribute and as most sincere thanks turned into a yet another installation in the Bonnie Jean Cherry Museum of Gracefully Endured Painful Experiences. (Kissing the sculptures is permitted here. So is roller skating. Admission is free, but I will make you feel guilty that I can't afford to keep the water on.)

I tidied up the writing and transcribed it into an electronic file, ready to post. Publicly. On my blog. Oh, yes. I’m not going to lie: it was well written. Musical. Sardonic. Bold. (And yes. I do say so myself.)

I left the document open on my laptop (I like to decant and breathe words before serving) and I went out for the evening to ride bikes and drink and throw rocks with my best friend.

And somewhere in the evening the hard smile softened; maybe it had something to do with free drinks. Maybe I just needed to catch a few mosquitoes in my teeth as we jumped curbs and buzzed past hipsters. And maybe I just needed to write it out. Because it was gone.

I’m not bitter. I’m not unhappy. I’m not even sardonic, really. I am happy, healthy, and whole. No part of my life should ever be thought of as a moment/person survived. I wouldn’t be who I am without all of my parents. I love every part of every single one of them. I love them Whole.

And you know what? That’s all I’m going to say.

About that.

On Thursday night, I dumped out onto the checkout counter at the Raven the contents of my purse. I spent every last dime I had on the book “Killarnoe” by Sonnet l’Abbe, who is visiting town for research and who gave a reading at the Raven of her work. It is a testament to the badassery of the folks at the Raven that they considered taking one of my stray plastic googly eyes as currency, and to the power of l’Abbe’s words and her delivery that I am willing to starve the week out in order to hold her book in my hands.

I usually hate hearing people read their work: reading aloud is a performance, and it is a performance of something which is usually intimate or deeply felt. Many people aren’t capable enough performers to convey aloud what they were able to write down. It comes across, sometimes, as guarded. Insincere.

Maybe I was in the right place that night, and maybe I needed to hear someone say the things she did. And maybe I needed to see her mouth say them. She plays with and wonders at sounds, and I found myself parroting her hard consonants and diphthongs while watching her face: like a girl watching her mother to learn how to speak.

The trick of it
is on the tongue tip.
Cup of glottal stop.
Oral lock and pop.

I am not a critic, so I don’t know how best to articulate my feelings about the words themselves. But it seemed that she is/was fearless, loves/d herself fearlessly, and felt astonished affection for her own body. Even the anomalies.

Oh, but my love
for myself
made me sick. Love
enveloped all of my soft folds,
love made room
for the ugliness.

We are social creatures, and as such are programmed to feel that we should be lonely when we are alone. But I don’t. It is when I am alone with myself that I think most clearly, that I make order of myself, and that I am able to examine my relationships with people objectively. I feel relief. It is like wearing my hearing aids, I suppose, and then taking them off. Maybe I missed the point entirely. Maybe I am projecting. But her poems feel like this. Like a celebration of her fishbowl. They feel like the struggle between “Don’t Back Down” and “Let It Go”.

I am excited to finally be captivated and inspired by the words of a strong woman who finds comfort and security in, but does not disappear into, her own mind. A woman who is not only living (and nearby, for now!) but who is close to my own age.

I’ve read the small book six times since Thursday. It feels like a drug. Like a new lover. Like the joyful realization that I really do exist.

Joy, doubling me over
joy reaching through me
for a body to prop itself up.

I’m remembering how much I love the act of sneezing, of stretching, of eating, pooping, and yawning. I am scratching itches. I am sating hungers. I am not speaking in metaphors. I’m leaving my hearing aids off so that I need to watch your lips to understand you: I'm pulling the words from your throat with my eyes. I am walking and sweating and pushing sounds out of my mouth with my tongue.

Ba. Tha. Nye. Po. Ruh. Um.

It’s funny: I started physical therapy a few weeks ago in order to heal, finally, the structural damage inflicted by brain surgery and the residual side effects of the tumor. I am making a conscious effort to renovate and reinforce my battlestation, and calling truce with a body I’ve regarded heretofore as my worthiest adversary.

And as I work and eat and stretch and sweat, as the sharpest claws of pain and pills which pierced me to marrow finally loosen up and leave, I notice myself…noticing things. Like sneezing and stretching and eating and pooping and yawning. Like “Ba” and “Tha” and “Nye” and “Po” and “Ruh” and “Um”. Like joy, doubling me over. Like loving people Whole.

Our bodies -and our minds- are capable of beautiful and powerful things when they decide not to be ruled, anymore, by pain.

***

Ow
by Sonnet l'Abbe

No, by now
I know
your blows
wanted sound.

Now I won't
moan or shout.
I give up
no more ground.

I don't disclose
or avow
what fouls at five years old

I had to
allow.
On I go. Older.
Controlled. Proud.

And if these sound
poems
expose a noise
I still can't keep down,

so?
You don't follow
poems. And you won't
ever own how

my sorrow
learned to love itself
in the hollow
of vowels.

Mlle. Cherry and the Machineries of Joy

I thought of something today as I was running in North Lawrence.

The tar they use to seal the cracks in the streets looked like Hebraic writing. I thought about my feet pounding across the Hebrew alphabet. I thought of cracks and weathering and the silent stories my own scars tell about my history.

As I ran across the bridge I felt that the banana and almonds I had for breakfast give my body life: I actually felt it through the energy I was burning. It felt absurd, this revelation: I know (because I have read this) that the vitamins in your food fuel your body. I know (because I have read this) that you need water to survive. I know these things intellectually, because I have been taught them. They are tangible, visible, scientifically proven facts. They are in books. But I have not come to believe them through feeling or personal experience.

I believe that they are true because other people feel and them, so I know that most normal people are supposed to know them. Like love, maybe, or faith in a higher power, or the existence of the atom.

So I thought about that dichotomy of body and soul, or man and nature, or even body and/as river; and so I thought of Cleopatra VII Philopator, last pharaoh of Egypt, Isis made manifest, who was the personification of Nilus. Nilus who fed the people of Egypt, and who would not inundate without a fruitful (read as: pregnant) pharaoh.

Then something hit me like a thunderbolt: I think way too much. And I need to lighten the fuck up. Seriously.

Sometimes the river is just a river. Sometimes tar on the street is just the precursor to road repair. Sometimes there are not sun gods in my morning yogurt or grieving dryads in my front yard. Not everything is an allegory, and not everything is a metaphor.

It occurs to me that although I am a great fan of "fun" and "joy" and "play", I have never gone out "dancing". And I don't mean barn or ballroom or ballet: I mean dancing as young people do, with other young people. Letting go of one's Self and dancing without steps or positions or even necessarily partners.

My only question is this: how do I attempt this without turning it into an allegory or a sociological experiment? How do people let go and have... "fun"? I feel as if there should be an algorithm for it. A provable theory. A Venn diagram on my bedroom window.

I am beginning to think that I am a robot. Every summer, I choose a theme for the literature I will read: last summer it was sexy South American dudes, the summer before it was poetry circa World War I. I had thought that 2011 might be the summer of tortured Russian novels.

But I think that instead of finding the "Why", this should be the summer of embracing the "Why Not?". Of drinking too much and dancing with strangers and getting sunburned and sweaty. Who's with me!? This isn't a hypothetical, by the way.

*crickets*

Bedtime Stories and Christ's Jazz Ensemble

When I was young and living alone with my father, we didn’t have beds. I was in the fifth grade, and we’d share a palette on the floor while he told stories from Revelation; I would fall to sleep to stories of retribution and rapture.

You see, Daddy had found the Church. I mean, really found it: found it three and four times a week. Drove me there in longest skirts and turtlenecks on the Harley he’d built from scratch, drove me there to stuff me full of fellowship and the living Word of God. Braided it into my long hair and buttoned it up to my chin and down to my ankles. He found it and he covered me in it.

I won’t claim that subjecting a child to the holiness church is tantamount to child abuse. My father loved my sister and I very much; I can only see his obsession with our salvation as an extension of that love.

That year, we were so broke: the Church gave us long dresses and turtlenecks and deodorant. We were hungry: there were always casseroles and care packages from the Church. In a childhood populated with temporary family members and father figures, who guest starred for a season and moved on to feature films, Church felt to me as if it WAS. It was unchanging. It was family, forever. It was a new set of brothers and sisters and classmates with whom I did not grow up (and who were somehow more pointedly cruel). It was, like everything else in my childhood, a surreal shared experience with my little sister. I will never forget the time she stood up at revival and pretended to speak in tongues. I still stand in awe of my little sister for this. She was eight years old, and a total bad ass.

But security and warmth don’t come without a price, and I knew this even when I was small. It is in this way that the Church taught me how much I owed; it taught me guilt. It came dangerously close, also, to teaching me fear.

A Sunday school teacher told me that God’s Holy Judgment was all encompassing and unavoidable: at that very second, he was tallying my sins and examining my every choice. My every shame. I imagined God sitting with half-moon reading glasses, with an old adding machine, in front of a library's card catalog. The card catalog of my thoughts and feelings and actions filled a warehouse. You see, my thoughts had always been numerous, unrestrained, and impure. I was a strange and lonely child. The Church taught me that this was shameful.

I decided to tether and bind and retrain (restrain?) my thoughts. I began to live as if every thought were written on my back for my classmates to see: I imagined that I was wearing a digital news ticker marquee on my back, broadcasting every lustful, covetous, deceitful thought. My imagination didn’t slow: it became darker. Halloween costumes would send me to hell. “Gosh” was as good as “goddammit” in the Lord’s eyes, and would send me to hell. Pants would send me to hell. I was bad. I was to spend every second of my existence apologizing for it.

At night, in bed, I still would think about sex. But before allowing myself this sin, I would hastily force a marriage fantasy through my head: a perfunctory sanctification of my dirty thoughts.

At the end of that year, my father abruptly moved away again and I returned to my mother. And just like that, Church was gone too. The fetters I’d placed on my my mind in order to please It- the gag and blindfold I wore in order to earn It- were still knotted and bound. But the comfort, the security, the ultimate payback -"this is forever, this will last your whole life, this is always and it is family, this is how you can be loved"- this was gone.

I don’t find myself joining in the Rapture jokes today or making light of what is, to some, a culmination of all things, all efforts, all sacrifices. This is their great Why. And it is sanctimonious and smug and ninety percent insane, but it is still their great purpose.

I feel, today, as if I am hearing secondhand gossip about the ex-husband from three lifetimes ago. I am hearing the news that he is unemployed, has a baby, is living with his parents. I am hearing this news from a mutual “friend” who watches my reaction, my face, for traces of bitterness and resentment. For the self satisfied smirk. The “thank God it wasn’t me” smirk. We abuse his character. She tells me that I am better off without him. She leaves, and I feel hollow. I am better off. I am better. But I loved Him once. I can’t tear down the doomsday criers any more than I can really and truly hate my ex-husband: they damaged me when I was young. But they are a part of my youth. I Am, in part, because They Were. I feel tender, affectionate, and melancholy.

I remember so clearly lying on the living room floor with my father, who was as young then as I am now. I’d spent so little time with him over the years that to suddenly spend every day with him was like a special occasion. A slumber party. I listened, breathlessly, fighting sleep, while he told of horsemen and broken seals and vials and a glorious and wrathful God. He said that the sound of car horns, of traffic jams, made him think of the Rapture. That God’s lieutenants would sound their trumpets at the moment of our ascension, and we would join Christ and be wrapped in his love forever.

I do not believe in a judgment outside of myself. I believe that I am good. I am my security, my family, and my conscience. I still live every moment as if a million eyes are on me, but they no longer judge and find me wanting. I am glorious. I am good. I Am. My mind can romp again, and I feel that now it has permission to romp where it will. It has my permission. Perhaps it even romps with God. I don't even draw my shades. I am not sorry.

To this day, however, I hear the sound of car horns blasting and can’t help but flinch, trembling. Holding my breath, I turn my face skyward.

WTF, Nabokov? Srsly.

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.
Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms, she was always Lolita.

[…] Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.”-Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita"

I finished “Lolita” this weekend, sitting on the floor of my hallway. I leaned my forehead against the wall and cried, and cried, and whimpered, and cried.

I promptly left my apartment to get roaringly drunk downtown: my mind couldn’t process what my guts were feeling. The book was done, I felt that I’d lost a lover (father?), and I needed immediate distraction.

“Solitude was corrupting me. I needed company and care. My heart was a hysterical, unreliable organ.” -vn

I tried to talk about Lo all weekend long: I wanted to know why the experience felt so personal. Why I felt so empty but so overwhelmed. Between rolling their eyes and discreetly texting under cupped hands and café tables, I don’t think my audiences had much sympathy or patience for my troubles.

Even now, I feel as if I can’t make my words work for me. I feel as if all of my clothes have stopped fitting. I feel bored by food. I feel melancholy and impatient when other people speak. “Yes, that is very nice, but you see I am desolate.” I just want to sleep. I can’t read anything new: how can I? Everything else feels like a rebound. It’s being knocked back down to the minors after playing for the Yankees. A consolation prize. A day old bagel. The younger dudes you use and discard after the dissolution of your marriage.

(My deepest, most heartfelt apologies to you younger dudes who were used and discarded after the dissolution of my marriage.)

I proceeded to spend the better part of a weekend doing what one might do when a particularly passionate, complicated love affair has ended abruptly: I wrapped myself in blankets on the couch and watched romantic comedies. I ate entire cans of Pillsbury Orange Sweet Rolls. I found Lolita in themes she shared with the hit Ashton Kutcher film “No Strings Attached” (no, really), and “King Kong”, both of which caused me to lean my forehead against the wall and cry with all of my body. Isn’t it ridiculous?

For whom was I weeping, here?

“She groped for words. I supplied them mentally: “He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.” –vn

Was I so thoroughly seduced by his words that I was able to forget what a monster Humbert Humbert really was? Was I weeping for Lolita’s destroyed childhood? Mine? For huge, tender, anguished longing? Did I want to be loved like that? Had I been loved like that? Was that love? What is love, anyway? And is love always “good”? Is love always “right”? Will I ever feel it for someone? The kind of love I would follow into exile?

“It was love at first sight, and last sight, at ever and ever sight.” -vn

Sometimes we are so desperate for love that we are willing to abuse or take abuse in order to feel loved. Sometimes we need so badly that the abuse starts to feel like love. Sometimes we need so badly that we forget why we love in the first place. Have you ever looked across the table at the object of your frustrated, obsessive longings and realized you had no idea who they were? Who they voted for? Whether they want babies, or enjoy the taste of cilantro, or fear death? Have you kept on longing, anyway? So selfish. We (I) are (am) so selfish. “I don’t care if it hurts you: I need.”

We don’t choose who we fall in love with. It feels so silly to have just realized this: when I did, I laughed and cried and was nauseous. You don’t decide who to love: how terrifying. This realization feels like a threat. It feels ominous. But it is ominous like an asteroid, or 2012, or a brain tumor: so why worry? I can’t help it. If it happens, it happens. If it destroys me, I will be destroyed.

“I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.” –vn

When it comes down to it, I think that I am overwhelmed and aroused and frightened by the beauty and power of words. I have read, aloud, the opening paragraphs to this book over eighty times this week. And I give myself goosebumps every time. It feels like obsessive lust. I can’t think of anything else now but the words words words I want to wallow in. I want to devour every part of them until they become a part of me. I want to cancel obligations and forsake other lovers in order to indulge this one. I’m so grateful for this feeling: it is a feeling I’ve had once, maybe twice ever. And there’s so much to read.

“While the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much a part of blessed matter as I am, and I can still talk to you…”-vn

I may be taking one step back into the fishbowl, and it may be my own mind spinning a cocoon around itself again. I haven’t decided yet whether carrying on passionate love affairs with the turgid words of very dead dudes is healthy. But it is dark and exciting. Life is so rich, mysterious, and complicated. (“At this or that twist of it I feel my slippery self eluding me, gliding into deeper and darker waters than I care to probe.”-vn)

I look forward to avoiding its realities by wrapping myself in beautiful, beautiful false ones: stuffing them in my ears and eyes and nose and mouth like cotton balls.

Coffee with Moloch

This morning, I drank coffee at Z's and stared at the six story cranes as they built...something...across the street. The cranes looked like crab claws, then they looked like self aware robots, and then they looked like the Cloverfield monster, and finally they looked like Moloch.

It was warm, and I was wearing practically nothing while I drew the construction workers ogling me while being, themselves, devoured by Moloch.

"Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!" -AG

I was ravenous this morning, and mean, and angry, and enjoyed watching the building going up. I enjoyed the idea of Moloch devouring us. We built him, didn't we? And even that is amazing. What we can build is worthy of awe: the good and the bad kind. I won't ever stop feeling this awe.

"Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!"-AG

I drew stick figures and wrote a poem. They are posted below. It takes sand to quote Allen Ginsberg next to my own words. I don't care. I feel like I'm standing in shadows of bigger things today. It's good.

---------------------------------------

clad in practically nothing
a ribbon, and an afterthought

I draw Moloch in the rising sun
devouring his construction workers

as they devour my bared breasts
and legs and flashing eyes

as I, staring, devour a firm and pink apple
and salute them with the naked core

as with smirk and a raised eyebrow I toss it over my shoulder at their hoots and hollers
and round the corner to devour this day

In my pillow fort, with God.

I wrote this poem in my head while modeling for life drawing the other night. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about church, and what one feels in church, and why I never seem to feel it there. I’ve been taking more time to think about what is sacred, and what is divine. I’ve been trying to talk to God, and talking to God for me has always meant talking to myself.

My body and I have always been adversaries. And it is one of the wars which has shaken my faith in gods, and it sometimes makes me feel like a god myself. I thought that life drawing would make me feel Olympian: baring myself and all of my battle scars to be immortalized by people learning to draw. Towering over them, drawing their attention to my hips and ears and eyes. “Look at me. I AM.” I liked the idea.

It has turned into something different, though. My mind works better during life drawing class: I write letters of apology in my head to ex-lovers, I remember how much I do really love my mother, and I think of a daughter I never really thought I wanted until I found I couldn’t have her. I name her Olive.

I feel fragile again, and human. And it sounds crazy, but it feels so good to let go and remember this. I’ve eluded death so many times I’m starting to feel sassy about it. I am starting to feel indestructible. Larger than human life. A battle station.

I wouldn’t say that life drawing humbles me. I’m not sure how to explain. I don’t know why this is, but feeling a strong pulse under my bared clavicle makes me feel like I’m having conversations with God, and for once God isn’t me. Maybe it’s about relinquishing control. I feel like a child.

-------------------

Life Drawing

It is surprising how clean
how righteous
how –good- I feel
sanctified
as if confession has been made
as if communion granted
as if warm, weathered hands are bathing me in the sink
hands by whom I am tenderly loved

I am nine years old now
and I am wrapped in God again
as in a sleeping bag

through my favorite poses
“hitchcock’s birds”
“sprite’s slingshot”
“la frileuse”
“lewis and clark”
“primal grief”
I sing, muse, the epic poem of my own body:

withered shoulder, wasted leg
red slash of throat and belly and skull
worthless womb
hollowed ears
brambles, brambles
ripe swell of Woman’s hip-
arch of instep, poised and ready
my as yet perfect breasts

pears
but his pears, only

and every artist’s eye has rolled over all the inches of my skin,
so I stretch: feline, replete
military marches ring through my mind
perfect absolution dissolves on my tongue

exit strategy!

and I will storm the downtown naked
smeared with blood and honey
armed with wire cutters
ecstatically cutting power to every outdoor loudspeaker
toppling totem poles and red spiked vaginas
swallowing white blossoms which smell of semen
spitting them back into the sky like a cannon
breaking joyous and staccato wind across the cages of lounging hipsters
and flapping tongues and swaying lips
wiping my fine and beautiful ass on your fancy flags
your smug and meaningless wheatpastes
leap frogging down the runway of your five hundredth fucking fashion show
down the street
out of town
luminous and filthy and choking
on my own spit
and laughter

pills and pain

piercing through my skin
to muscle, bone, and marrow,
her claws twitch; I dance.

sol invictus

he kisses my eyes
and steals across my bedsheets;
this unconquered sun

To the blooming trees on Massachussetts street, with affection.

a taste on my teeth

breaking bottles, biting lips

my blood fills with bees

Of Lethe, entire.

Ah, drink again
This river that is the taker-away of pain,
And the giver-back of beauty!

In these cool waves
What can be lost?—
Only the sorry cost
Of the lovely thing, ah, never the thing itself!

The level flood that laves
The hot brow
And the stiff shoulder
Is at our temples now.

Gone is the fever,
But not into the river;
Melted the frozen pride,
But the tranquil tide
Runs never the warmer for this,
Never the colder.

Immerse the dream.
Drench the kiss.
Dip the song in the stream.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Lethe"

On days when the wind is blowing like mad, when I cross the bridge afoot and that wind tries to push me backwards, back to North Lawrence, back where I started, when that god damned windy wind is blowing dust into my eyes and tree blossoms into my coffee (and yes: I did drink them. It felt like a dare. That wind was daring me.) I feel as if big change is coming. I feel as if I'm pushing against it. I feel volatile. I desire to be, at once, both tenderly kissed and brutally bitten. I feel as if Spring is my adversary, and our daily battles assault every one of my senses. I'm rarely the victor (victrix?) in these encounters: but to be pummeled into submission by such a formidable opponent is actually pretty delicious.

I walked across the bridge on April 3rd with a furrowed brow. That morning, I had awoken with these words leaping from my lips:

...though I swallow the flow of Lethe, entire...

And it was troubling. You see, Lethe is a mythical Greek river, one of the five in Hades, and her name means oblivion. To drink from Lethe means to erase your memory and to succumb to perfect forgetfulness. You are numbed, then, to your Past and to your Self.

I threw my arms in front of me and pushed against the wind and kept turning that phrase over in my mouth: "...though I swallow the flow of Lethe, entire......though I swallow the flow of Lethe, entire......though I swallow the flow of Lethe, entire..."

I stopped midway to face the river, as I do. With furrowed brow and this phrase ringing in my head almost loud enough to hear, I leaned over the rail to stare at the flow (of Lethe, entire...of Lethe, entire) and to think about what a heavy idea that was: to drink forgetfulness. To erase your memory. To take oblivion into your body. Virgil wrote in the Aeneid that only when the dead drink from Lethe and erase their memory can they move on to their next life. Is it because losing memory is the only way to gain the courage to move on from our past? I breathed deeply the smell of dirty Kansas river and was lambasted by the wind.

I wore pearls on my ears. They were heavy, and loose. They were drop earrings.

The wind gusted, then, and blew one pearl from my right ear. As I scrambled further over the railing to watch its descent to the current, I felt the pearl slip from my left ear too. It was in this way that the Kaw totally swallowed my pearls.

"Touché, Spring."

It was magical. I couldn't even be angry that I'd lost pearls: it felt almost as if they were only being reclaimed. I forgot my phrase and my walk and my furrowed brow. I forgot my troubled sleep. I felt as if it had all been just swallowed. Entirely.

I was stunned, and scared. I crossed the bridge into town, laughing and gasping. I felt terrified. And ecstatic. I felt like I was being marched, naked, down Massachusetts street. Like a complete stranger had given me a tongue-y kiss. I smelled the intimate smell of blooming trees that I love, but that sometimes embarrasses people.

I couldn't read Spring that day: I couldn't tell if it was a gesture of benevolence or malevolence.

It felt like another great and grand reminder of that really big YES/NO that only seems to occur when you experience something that no one else could possibly believe.


#####

The first person with whom I shared this story has written a story of his own. His name is Mickey Cesar (yes, that is his name!) and he writes and writes and writes beautiful poetry. And here is some for you. Watch that Lethe doesn't steal it, Mickey Cesar, and don't say that I didn't warn you.

You were alone and staring, and I
unboylike coalesced within
your gaze. The river, you said, had
stolen your earrings (pearl, of course);
the wind had really taken them
but only at the river’s bidding. These days
seem so far removed from winter already,
and you have always slipped lightly
on the outskirts, on bodies
of still larcenous waters, unsurprised
that I dissipate
the moment you look away.
-Mickey Cesar, "she only turned back after the second snake"

For my ladies, with affection: a pearl, a plume, some old bones.

"The last of the Egyptian queens (Cleopatra) owned the two largest pearls of all time, left to her by oriental kings. When Antony was stuffing himself daily with rare foods, she proudly and impertinently, like the royal harlot that she was, sneered at his attempts at luxury and extravagance. When he asked her what could be added in the way of sumptuousness, she replied that she would use up 10,000,000 sesterces at one dinner. So they made a bet, and one day she set before Antony a dinner that under other circumstances would have been a magnificent one but was an everyday affair for Antony. But she said that this was merely a preliminary and assured him that the real banquet would use up the estimated sum and that she would consume the half-million dollar dinner all by herself. Then she ordered the dessert to be served. The servants placed in front of her only a single vessel containing vinegar, the strong rough quality of which can melt pearls. She was at the moment wearing in her ears that remarkable and truly unique work of nature. Antony was full of curiosity to see what in the world she was going to do. She took one earring off and dropped the pearl in the vinegar, and when it was melted swallowed it."

-Pliny, Natural History (IX.59.119-121; also Macrobius, Saturnalia, III.17.14-17)



I have been dwelling, this winter, on queens, biblical ladies, and other women in ancient myth. Unfortunately, most of these women exist only in the cautionary tales of men: they are weakness and lust and treachery, they are excuses for weakness and lust and treachery, and they are punished, accordingly, for the weakness and lust and treachery they've inspired in the poor saps who happen to be foolish enough to not realize that Love does nothing more than make us ridiculous.

As for the ladies who actually existed, we mostly know them through the words of the men who hated and feared them. Or at least the idea of them, which is all we're sure really existed.

And the idea is, as always, more than enough for me.

My favorite queen (who may or may not have existed) is Jezebel, Phoenician queen of Israel whose story is told (of all places) in the Books of Kings.

The story of Jezebel has been with me since childhood: Jezebel in a strange and xenophobic land, refusing to renounce her gods; Jezebel marshaling the troops of her pouting, vacillating, timorous husband. Jezebel who says to her nemesis, the prophet Elijah: "Oh, are you Elijah then? Well, f- you. I am Jezebel. And may the gods punish me severely if I fail to humiliate you, coward, and flay you like a hare." (I'm paraphrasing, of course.)

Through my most difficult days and bouts with mean reds I see, in my mind's eye, Jezebel arming herself against enemies and armies and dogs... and arming herself with eyeliner.

This is the part that always captivated me: that Jezebel confronted death with dignity and chutzpah. With courage and panache.

It's walking into the operating room rather than allowing yourself to be wheeled; it's cutting your losses but keeping your ex-husband's book collection. It's wearing your finest and most expensive perfume, but only to bed: alone. It's having nothing to wear, but making a dress out of the draperies and borrowed plumes.

It's being defiant and radiant and fabulous. To your very last breath.

Jezebel's story and the manner of her death can be interpreted in many different ways. And Cleopatra more than likely never drank an earring. It's hard to tell what is true, and what is real, and what is really only my idea of reality.

I like the idea of reclaiming my Ladies, though, and drawing courage from their own. I don't see stockings and pearls and eyeliner as feminine coquetry. We all wear war paint of different hues.

The Perfect Pitch of Passing Trains

The advent of spring is painful and frustrating for me. Every year I feel as an awkward teenager might; a teenager who doesn't understand her body's changes, who doesn't know how to control her anger (and from where did this anger come? I wasn't angry yesterday.) and who feels new and inexplicable passions, always furtive and always a bit guilty. I feel bound and wound tightly. Like a brussels sprout.

Change and challenge comes every day, but the smells of spring remind me always to be engaged, to notice and to feel things, to be less rough, less fearful, and to let myself get roughed up a bit.

I have heard from no fewer than three ex/current manfriends in the past year that I am (to paraphrase) "less a girlfriend and more a fully armed battle station".

I was sitting in my car last night, parked in the driveway with my windows open. I was listening to The Marriage of Figaro (again, and loudly) and preparing myself for the four grants I have due this week.

Four. Four grants. Four grants which I should have been writing in the evenings and over the weekend (when I, instead, walked in the rain, read a novel, indulged in some Indian food, submitted to the application of affection and kisses, wrecked my bike, drank too much, and caught up on two years of insomnia in one day: it was Sunday, and I napped everywhere, like a cat.) Other people's projects. Other people's passion, well being. I am writing so that other people can play. And I am beginning to resent it.

Overwhelmed and angry (and from where did this anger come? I wasn't angry yesterday...) I sat in my car and listened to the finale of Mozart's opera. Again. And loudly.

It is one of the most moving and beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard. I can't tell you exactly what they are singing to each other; I know that it is at once both gentle and fiercely passionate. And that it is so lovely.

I sat with my eyes closed and my hearing aids on. I smelled North Lawrence, which is starting to smell again of North Lawrence: of river and of dog food and of fantastic dirt and honeysuckle and death. Fecundity. I felt it. Mozart's sounds filled my car and my head and my neighborhood: the sound of perfect absolution.

"God was singing through this little man: unstoppable, to all the world."

And then, as the Countess (perdono!) granted North Lawrence and its smelly river and its bad graffiti her love and her forgiveness, just as all was settled and the peasants and servants joined in to celebrate, the train rode by and its voice mingled and harmonized with their happy thanks.

If trains have a music, I would not think that the music would be of Mozart. I would think that it would be of banjos, or possibly Creedence Clearwater Revival. But last night the train and the opera and the smells of new growth and old leaves and the jasmine on my neck were not incongruous; it felt as if the universe were working as it should. And it really was, literally, perfect harmony.

My heron was honoring the Kaw, the train managed to sing with a surprising harmonic grace, and somehow I felt that they were all telling me- Countess, heron, peasants, Kaw, train, Mozart, and grants, that I should instead wander, and wonder, and wallow. So I did.


"Ah! all will now be happy.
This day of torments,
of caprice, of folly,
in content and happiness-
only love can end it."




*For reference, it all happened here, and the train came in at 1:35.

La Frileuse

I never can remember our reason for eloping to New York City. I’ve not had cause to regret the location, though the act itself was of questionable wisdom. I remember the dread I felt as our plane approached the island: it looked as if the buildings were crowding each other off the edge of the land, impatient to escape to the water.

Looking back, I remember being eager to visit the Greek and Roman collection at the Met. In my memory, it seems to be New York City’s most exciting prospect: to press my lips upon cold and ancient marble for the better part of a day seemed romantic. It seemed daring, and sensual. It seemed to fit in well with the nature of an elopement. We ended up spending most of our visit in the Met, and a woman I met there has had a more enduring impact on my consciousness than even the marriage which landed me in that city in the first place.

Not being an artist, or an art history person, or even particularly enamored of water lilies, I was devastated when the Greek and Roman collection was found to be closed for renovation. Left to face a museum full of naked John the Baptists and innumerable scarab beetles, I don’t remember what kept me in the building for so long when the rest of the city was teeming outside.

(Us. He was there, too. My new Husband.)

Wandering, exhausted, I found that I wasn’t responding to anything.

Was I a philistine? Did I have no taste, maybe? If being surrounded by the most beautiful and meaningful art in the world* had no effect on me, if no beauty moved me: I, who cried to see old couples holding hands at the breakfast buffet, whose lip trembled for Mozart of all ridiculous things, for penguin families and breastfeeding mothers and the graceful arabesque of the smallest ballerina, and who alternately wept and laughed for a perfect custard… did this mean that my Appreciator was broken?

Perhaps I wasn’t paying close enough attention. Perhaps the magnitude was something I could not grasp.

“This is very important. I must look closely and remember, forever, how I feel at this very moment. I must take pictures with my eyelids.”

I tried to look harder. What did I feel? I looked at my Husband.

I felt nothing. I appreciated nothing. I felt like a sociopath. I felt like breaking priceless vases for the pleasure of the sound. I felt like sticking my thumbnails in the thick, dried, oil paint.

I felt like beheading John the Baptist.

In a great open hall I (we?) came upon a bronze statue on a tall marble pedestal. She was a small but well curved lady, and nude. But she was cold, apparently. Or ashamed. Who would keep her nude like this, in the middle of winter? And why would she use the only covering given her to hide only her head?

Who would expose toes and knees, worthless womb, thighs, and hips to the elements just so she could cover her face? Which parts were important to her? Which parts were important to him?

I don’t know much about art. I don’t know if this is a classical pose, if it is the way men have sculpted women thousands of times. And let me take a break from this reverie to make it clear that I do not want to know.

I do not want to know that the way she is feeling right now is the way that thousands, millions of nude and bronze ladies feel and have felt throughout the ages. I do not want to know that this woman is one of countless. What she symbolizes to artists or art professors or to sculptors or painters of figure. So don’t enlighten me, friends. She is the only one.

I stood at her foot and my heart hurt. I didn’t feel like breaking things anymore. I simply felt broken.

It is not my habit to consult the placards at art museums, so I bade her farewell and I (we?) left. I (we?) flew home with my (our?) new Family, and I wondered what it meant to be married. If it was normal to feel more lonely with another person than I’d felt when I was alone. The cold, nude and bronze lady’s image floated in front of my eyes when I would blink.

The less said about my short lived marriage, the better. His reasons for being unfaithful and ultimately for leaving were numerous: in hindsight I don’t really blame him. When it happened though, I was desolate. I would lay down and wail into the living room floor. Pressing my hips, knees, worthless womb and thighs to the cold, hard floorboards, the image of my nude and bronze lady flashed, unbidden, again before my eyes.

I did not want to know that this woman was one of countless. I did not care to hear that the way she was feeling right then was the way that thousands, millions of ladies feel and have felt throughout the ages. Lying at her feet, my heart hurt and I no longer felt like breaking things: I felt broken.

It has been several years, and the urge to find my nude and bronze lady (who must be very cold) comes and goes as often as my bouts of depression and fits of creativity do. And after all, why should I know more about her? It is not about her sculptor, after all. It is not about him, at all. And then there are other days when I try every Google combination of “bronze”, “statue”, “lady”, “nude”, “met”, “desolation” I can conjure. To no avail.

Coming from a fit and settling into a bout, I find myself feeling, this winter, very cold. I picked up the phone and I called the Met this morning. A man named Roberto knew who I was talking about, but he couldn’t remember her name. Giving me his cell phone number, we discussed my lady as he walked downstairs to find the statue. My heart raced. Part of me hoped that we were discussing completely different women.

“Why have you been thinking of this lady for all of these years?” he asked, “What has taken so long?”

I couldn’t answer. Perhaps because she wouldn’t look the same. Perhaps because she would look up and say only: “I told you so.”

“Are you on our website? Her number is 62.55. Is this her? Is this your lady?”

I typed in the numbers. And wouldn’t you know it: there she was. And her name was “La Frileuse”. She was, of course, French, and “frileuse”, of course, means “a cold woman”.

“Hopefully you’ll rest easy now,” Roberto said. I hung up the phone.

I am still processing all of this, and do not know yet what it means.

a loner, dottie: a rebel

I can't help but laugh
my eyes rolling audibly
you're too old for this

Contessa, perdono.

Everything I have written lately is brooding and pathetic and hardly worth posting. My apartment is a mess, I've not been sleeping, I've been canceling most obligations, and my garden has gone to seed in less than two weeks. I'll keep it in my notebook to look back on in years, thinking: "How could I have let myself feel so much over so little? How could I grieve for things that were bad to me? How could I have sacrificed beets?"

It's time to tear it all down. I have a fever every morning just thinking about it.

At any rate, no haiku for you today. Or yesterday. The only art in my head lately is this. It doesn't do much for the fever, but it does calm the nerves.

to the five dates who've stood me up this year, or: drinking alone on the levee is infinitely preferable to banal small talk anyway

thermos filled with wine
wrapped in gown, pearls, bravado
I drink to this Kaw

early on purpose

the pulse through my lips
ripples through cream and coffee
morning glorious

to lawrence utility billing, who shut off my water last night: "I'm not paying it tomorrow, either"

the dishes can wait
cat can drink from the toilet
i can pee outside

leslie's eggs

lovely ladies bring
eggs, sweet potatoes, carrots
i will never starve

reading his lips

petulant and weak
slack for want of decision
a disappointment

to my various cancers and defects at 5am, with affection.

mind wakes, then body
and they don't hate each other
then they remember

to the heron who greets me every morning as I cross the river, with affection

fishing in the dam
salutes with his coffee mug:
"good mornin' for it."

mean reds

donning my fishbowl
refuge within my own depths
stop texting me, please

grandma bonnie's hands

deceptively soft
they coax dormant flour to life
with eggs and chutzpah

insomnia.ouch.ouch.whatever.

I lie awake and
dream of breastfeeding children
I can never have.

To the Guy at Z's Divine Espresso Who Won't Stop Talking: From the Girl Who Can't Hear What You're Saying (or: Paean to Pie)

Said the man who couldn't stop talking
to the woman who barely could hear:
"My opinions!" (he said) "So important!" (he said)
"If only you'd lend me your ears!"

"I'm particularly well versed in history. I can program a robot with ease.
I invented the loom. And the oil spill boom.
I'm learning to make my own cheese."

"Rock music? Frankly, it bores me. And I prefer only Mannerist art.
Our mayor's a skeeze. I'm allergic to trees.
The buzzard's the one bird who farts."

"They tell you the white mugs are bigger,
which I know for a fact is untrue.
I conducted a test, and though white looks the best:
the largest Z's mug is the blue."

"Panhandling should be illegal.
Why don't we all have health care?
Are we Facebook friends? I'm blogging again.
And my Tweets! They are brutal, but fair."

"Philosophy, art, entertainment! Relationships, books, me, me, me!
You don't understand- such a deep complex man-
perhaps if you had your degree..."

"I've offended." (he said) "So sorry!" (he said)
"But you really should honor my views."
"So judgemental!" (he said) "Temperamental!" (he said)
"I wouldn't react thus to you."

And the little deaf girl, she fingered her pearls
while her head bobbed with nod and with smile.
She realized, dismayed, as his lips flapped and swayed:
she'd been thinking of pie all the while.

textku

ROTFL.
OMG, TTYL.
WTF?