Just Rambling

Okay, so it has been well over a month since I have blogged.  Why?  I am not sure.  My husband likes to fall back on his military training and say that when asked a non-generative question, there are only a few appropriate responses: Yes, sir!  No, sir!  No excuse, sir!  So let’s just go with response number three.

It is funny the things that get caught in one’s brain.  Just now as I typed the word “just,” I was reminded of a former professor who once did a study on women praying aloud in Southern churches.  Basically her study consisted of her counting the number of times these ladies inserted the word “just” into their prayers.  Such a strange, self-effacing habit, repeatedly prefacing one’s petitions to a higher power with this mere recursive monosyllabic diminutive hint of doubt…

A couple of years ago I was sprawled on the sofa on a summer day, almost mindlessly watching a cooking show, “Semi-Homemade” starring Sandra Lee, and I noticed that she used the word “just” in just about every third sentence.  When something like that catches your attention, it becomes hard to rid yourself of it.  It is like putting on a black velvet shirt and finding it covered with fuzz because you accidently tossed it in the dryer with the white towels you used to mop up spilled Tequila...  (But that is a story best left for another blog.)  So anyway, Sandra used the word “just” 36 times in an episode lasting just under 30 minutes.  My daughter pointed out to me that this would just not be good as the basis for a drinking game (you know, where you would down your drink every time you hear the word “just”) because the players would be incapacitated within minutes, and possibly exhausted from jumping up to go get another drink… Now, the last thing I need in my life is something else on which to fixate… And so I will diverge here with some degree of deliberation.  (Note the alliteration.  And see what I mean about fixating?)

Needing a break this afternoon, David and I decided to go to Jalapeno Tree for nachos and drinks (between that last paragraph and this one.)  While eating and drinking, I noticed a familiar song in the mix of background noise, music and conversation.  “Good Morning Starshine, the earth says hello…”  And I was reminded that when I was in sixth grade, I sang a solo during a choral production of this number.  I have always said that the one thing I would change about myself is that I would be a singer, but alas, I am too timid.  I will, however, never forget the lyrics of that song.  “All the way from “Gliddy glup gloopy” to “tooby ooby walla nooby abba naba,” those nonsense syllables have remained firmly fixed in my mind for over three decades.  I don’t have a bad voice, but I have always known that the only reason I was chosen to sing that solo was because I was the only one in the class who could remember the words; and I use the word “words” loosely here.

Sometimes I fixate on the origins of language, on the whole driving force of words.  So strong was the human’s need to communicate, we developed language so we could connect to each other on a level somewhat elevated above the physical.  Just think about it!  How did that one grunt become the first understood and repeated word?  What series of misinterpretations must surely have followed closely behind.  How much are these memes that jump from mind to mouth a function of our consciousness and how fast must they pass across synapses that I can translate them from my thoughts to this page, which does not even exist as real paper, at a rate exceeding 90 words per minute free of errors where they will be read at a rate far exceeding that by who knows how much by who knows how many…

And I am reminded of how I learned to speed read.  When I was in sixth grade (yes, this was the same year I made my solo singing debut) it was discovered by a savvy reading instructor that I was having difficulty making my way from the end of one line of text to the start of the next.  So, it was arranged that I would be hooked to a computer that would trace with a virtual highlighter each word as I visually made my way across the line, and then it would guide my eye from the end of the line at the right to the start of the next line back at the far left.  And since this was a progressive school and they had an abundance of unused electrodes, they hooked a few up to my head and a few to my chest just to see what my reaction to these electronic nudges would be.

Because my eyes naturally followed the yellow cursor, I was soon cured of my tendency to get lost on the way back to home base.   Of course, it only made sense to speed up the cursor at that point, to see just how fast it could drag my eye across the page.  What we discovered is that I could follow as fast as the yellow light pulsed.  I don’t know if I finally hit some kind of reading wall or if the teacher was afraid my mind would eventually explode, but they unplugged me at some point.  And somewhere along the way, my reading eyes learned to gracefully make U turns and to skate with controlled abandon across the page between the turns.  Even now when I read, I sometimes imagine the blinking yellow highlight and I deliberately read faster and faster and faster, bouncing relentlessly from margin to margin to margin, just to see how long I can sustain the pace before the race from whitespace to whitespace blurs the logic in the middle…

My daughter visited this weekend.  She had told me that she has a job reading books into a recording device for a woman who is blind.  She told me that the woman then speeds up the tapes when she listens to them.  What she didn’t tell me, however, is that she reads the books at a sprint to begin with.  I don’t think I would have really understood until I heard her reading.  Speed reading orally.  And I was reminded that we seldom push our minds to accomplish even a fraction of what we might be capable of doing.

So all afternoon, I have been pondering speed reading, speed listening, speed typing, speed thinking… allowing myself to just change the pace of my Sunday afternoon, slowing it down to make it last longer.  I am reminded that time itself is a manmade construct.  And it is just like the words to the song, “Just,” by Radiohead, “You do it to yourself, yourself, yourself…”

 

 

 

 

The Art of Connecting

Several years ago I read about a woman who solved her writer’s block by directing all of her journal entries to Vincent Van Gogh.  This strategy worked so well for her that she eventually published a book based on the journal and titled it Dear Vincent.    About that same time I also read Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh, and Lust for Life by Irving Stone, each in their own way an insightful biography of Van Gogh.  I have always been drawn to the work of this particular artist, perhaps because of the depth of his mental suffering and the way it was evident in his work.  For example, when the Barnes Exhibit was at the Kimball Museum a decade or so ago, I went to view this amazing collection of paintings with the primary purpose of seeing the Van Goghs.  It was the last day of the exhibit and the crowd was lined up around the building and up the sidewalk all the way to the street, hours before the doors opened.  When my daughter and I finally made our way inside, it was shoulder to shoulder and we pretty much just had to go where the other art viewers carried us.  About an hour into the tour, I found myself directly in front of Van Gogh’s Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin and I refused to be budged from the spot. 

I was drawn to this painting in a way I had never been drawn to a work of art before or since.  It was as though the painterly strokes of the portrait had come not from the hands of the tormented artist, but from his soul.  I know, this sounds corny.  But I will never forget standing there, a little more than arm’s distance from the small portrait with tears streaming down my face.  This had nothing to do with fanaticism.  It was simply my reaction to the gut wrenching emotion that came from the art.  And the best part is that I looked over at my daughter beside me only to find her in the same state of rapt appreciation. I am reminded every time I think of the experience that it is the connection between artist and audience that allows a work to live forever.

I guess it is because I am a writer and an artist that I am drawn repeatedly to the similarities between the two crafts.  Today I have been thinking about the art of blogging.  It is a strange thing, electronically putting one’s thoughts out there for the world to read, never knowing who is in the audience.  A few people follow, but you don’t know if they are really readers or have merely agreed to post their support because you have threatened to write about them if they don’t…

Unlike a poem, a story, or an essay, which may go through substantial revision before being published, a blog, while not entirely without focus, is usually not edited much before it is posted.  This seems to be the way with our society now.  Because permanence is not a priority, there seems to be a certain lack of regard for audience and therefore for the historical impact, no matter how small or how fleeting one’s contribution may be.

Maybe I am uptight, but I prefer to think of the material that emanates from writers and artists as having a lasting impact.  For example, when I was trying to find the name of the author of the "Dear Vincent" book, I came across this website: http://www.vangoghsblog.com/  Initiated by the Van Gogh Museum, this blog is a celebration of the completion of the Van Gogh Letters Project.   As one of the accompanying comments said, “Even the dead can blog!”

Of course, I would definitely hesitate to compare myself to Van Gogh as either an artist, a writer, or a blogger, except in one way, and that is the compulsion that drives me to connect with others by way of words and images.  I once wrote a poem about my Van Gogh viewing experience (my one attempt at ekphrasis), and I would post it here, but I couldn’t find it.  It isn’t like me to lose poems, and I think I didn’t bother to keep up with this one because it was a failed attempt to relate my reaction to that particular artist’s work.  I guess that is why I sometimes turn to art instead of writing.  As Van Gogh said, “One can speak poetry just by arranging colours well.”

Perhaps today’s attempt at blogging is a failure, too.  But it doesn’t really matter, because I have learned to appreciate and nurture that thing inside me that drives me to share myself with others. 

Check out the website of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.  http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/index.jsp?page=98&lang=nl&section=sectie_vincent  There are several slideshows featuring the work of this amazing artist.  Admittedly it is not as satisfying as standing a few feet from the real thing, but you won’t have to wait in line for hours.  The descriptions are all in Dutch, but words are not necessary as the paintings speak for themselves.  And you probably won’t bust out in tears, but whether the recipient/viewer/reader of a work of art or writing experiences it electronically or in close physical proximity, I like to think he or she experiences it personally, and that there remains at the core of the process that spark of creativity that when successfully executed, can live forever.

 

 

Okay! So I'm a Control Freak and I Will Gladly Tell You Where to Go!

I can’t stop thinking today about how many forms of control impact our lives every second of every day.  Bladder control, mind control, weight control, impulsivity control… just think about it; even when we are asleep at night, we control things like the temperature and the light and the firmness of our mattresses.

This train of thought began heading down my mental set of tracks this morning when I was straightening up the living room.  As usual, when I picked up the remote control to fluff the sofa cushions, I placed it beside the TV so it would be easy for anyone to find later in the day.  My husband once pointed out to me that this is a rather ridiculous place to leave the remote control because the whole purpose of the device is to be able to use it at a distance from the TV…  The next time he says this, I may have to give him a brief history of the device.  The first remote intended to control the TV was developed over 50 years ago.  It was connected to the set by a wire and was called “Lazy Bones.”  (The invention and development of the remote control actually changed television programming since viewers no longer stayed tuned in to programs simply because they didn’t want to get up to change the channel.) 

It drives me crazy when David changes the channel right in the middle of a sentence!  And I find it gratifying to discover that I am not alone in finding this to be an irritant.  The Center for Media Literacy recently published an article titled “Home, Home on the Remote: Why Do Men Control the Clicker?” which thoroughly discusses sexual positioning and dominance within the typical American household.  While this sounds admittedly tittilating, it actually deals with who decides which channel is watched and when.  Anyway, it seems that the viewing dynamics of our family are pretty typical.  David usually controls the remote because I watch TV while doing other things such as reading, blogging, cleaning… while he usually gives it his full attention and has little tolerance for things like commercials or down time of any sort.  If the person speaking onscreen even looks like he or she is about to so much as take a breath, we are off to another channel, usually one that has been chosen for its value as a backup program.  And though I may feel something akin to an infinitesimal cosmic shift each time I am unexpectedly carried along, I don’t care enough to do anything about it.  For me TV is background noise.

This made me think about the degree of willingness with which I relinquish control in other areas of my life.  In other words, am I a control freak?  And I could honestly not find a definitive pattern. For example, I like to make my toast in the oven using the broiler setting instead of blindly trusting it to the electric toaster because it allows me to see what is going on during the cooking process and lets me jerk the perfectly browned bread out at just the right moment  On the other hand, I don’t mind letting someone else scramble my eggs.  (Again, this is not a euphemism for anything sexual…) I simply find it much more enjoyable to eat eggs when I don’t have to first examine them in their partly clear and partly yellow and totally slimy state.  I also admit that I have an aversion to pain medication, preferring to think that I have the ability to mentally control my own level of discomfort.  A little research in this direction lead me to a whole arena of gaming of which I was entirely unaware—brainwave toys.  If you are curious, just go to:  http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/30/brainwave-toys-are-b.html  and you will surely be astounded that there exists a game in which the player trains his or her thoughts to increase power to a fan which blows a ball through a course of hoops.  (And see, I know I can’t trust you to go to this site on your own, so I have to go ahead and tell you about it.!)

About now you are probably starting to examine your own controlling tendencies.  Do you use moisturizer each day to control dryness and wrinkles?  Do you regularly try to control the curliness or straightness of your hair?  Do you use eye drops to control redness?  Or  do you similarly try to control red eye in an electronic manner when taking photos?

If you, like I, are not certain where your own locus of control resides, there is a quiz online that will guide you toward the answer.  Just go to:  http://stress.about.com/od/selfknowledgeselftests/a/locus.htm  and click on “Take this quiz.”  I did.  And discovered that I am a 90% control freak.  (For those of you who already know you must always be in control, you will be delighted to find that you can even control the number of questions you are asked!)

Of course I was not really convinced that someone else could tell me I was controlling, and having to decide this on my own, I considered some of the other things we control on a daily basis.

As a teacher my life and my bladder are dependably guided by a schedule and a bell.  Sometimes on the weekend I find myself forgetting that I can go to the bathroom any time I want to!  If you, too, find yourself considering such matters, just go to: http://www.fairview.org/staywell/quiz_load.aspx?ContentTypeId=40&ContentId=UrinaryIncontinenceQuiz where you can take the urinary incontinence quiz.  And don’t be deceived, the questions look easy, but I missed three!  And if your New Years resolutions include a desire to lose weight, you will probably want to go to: http://www.afunzone.com/ATopic/Take_The_Weight_Loss_Quiz.htm so you can accurately determine how prepared you are to be successful.   My female followers should also check out: http://www.blisstree.com/healthbolt/a-short-history-of-the-ideal-female-body/   In fact, if it doesn’t seem too controlling, I would like to suggest that my male readers also proceed to this website…  And just so you won’t be disappointed that there is not a quiz associated with this page, go to: http://www.channelone.com/news/body_image/ to find out if you have a skewed view of yourself.

If you have made another common resolution, to control spending, you should go to: http://moneycentral.msn.com/quiz/savvy-spending-quiz/home.aspx , and if you are concerned about other forms of impulsivity control, go to: http://www.psych-net.com/test/impulse-test.html . 

 

I will conclude my blog today with a poem, an apology, and one final link.  The poem is titled “Manipulation Theory.”  It was inspired by a toy I had as a young child that consisted of a plastic figure on a plastic base that could be controlled by pressing your thumb on the underside of the plastic pedestal.  (It is admittedly filled with euphemism and innuendo…)

 

MANIPULATION THEORY

 

it would be easier

to induce hunkering if

just once, I were the giant, knowing

from having been shown

that magic thumb-button

and the most effective

syringe-like motion

 

if just once, I were

able to understand the relationship

between easy to operate elastic bands

and a breakable plastic housing

 

no prior knowledge of physics needed

perhaps a little field work

on falling bodies, because

buckling knees I know

and that automatic loss

of tension in the neck

 

that almost thrill

almost recovery

inevitable shift of weight

and loss of solids

as the oval earth beneath my feet

rocks without reason

 

The apology is for allowing this blog to go on so long today.  Once I got started on this topic I just couldn’t control myself.

And finally, I want to share with you a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lutUDZ7Dq0s   Don’t ask, just go there!

The Charm of the Unfamiliar

I was recently on a thrifting adventure and found myself at the local Goodwill store.  And since it was cold outside, I was vaguely shopping for something warm.  (A quick aside here—it is surely a known law of thrifting that you can’t actually go in search of a specific item when thrift shopping; you must merely scan the day’s offerings and be open to a serendipitous discovery.)  Anyway, I happened upon a pair of leggings that were black and covered in a polka dot pattern of gray skulls.  Since I am around young people daily, I am aware of the fashion industry’s recent trend toward “death fashion.”  And as I am not totally out of touch with my own generation, I had a moment of self-questioning, about whether it would be appropriate to wear the skull pants.  And then I bought them.  And, yes, I do wear them.  They are warm.  And they do have a dot pattern, of sorts.  And I don’t generally base my decisions, fashion or otherwise, on what is or isn’t appropriate.

So I started thinking about why the fashion industry would choose to decorate clothing with skulls.  I discovered that some people take the skull motif very seriously.  One blog I came across said in very plain language that any article of clothing that sports death imagery is straight from the devil and is cursed.  I was not sure if this meant I was going to hell or if my ass was going to grow astronomically, you know, because of its proximity to such evil.  Either way, the situation contains just enough ambiguity to allow me to continue to wear the leggings. 

One of the articles I read claimed that our culture’s attraction to the skull bones, as opposed to other human bones, is based partially on the idea of neoteny, or juvenilization, the notion that the large eye sockets give it a kind of puppy-like visual appeal.  In other words, on some level, we somehow find skulls to be cute!  Ironically, this idea of cuteness was almost enough to make me stop wearing the pants.  Anyone who knows me well at all knows I can’t stand to be called cute and have always dreamt of being thought of as… well, I admit it, exotic.  Of course, I made the mistake of sharing this with my friend Lisa a few years ago.  She taught in the room next to me at the time and seemed to delight in trying to brighten up my day with small surprises.  She thought it would be fun to have one of our mutual students comment on my appearance one day and tell me how absolutely exotic I looked.  Unfortunately, the young man she chose to recruit for this task was either somewhat hard of hearing or possessed a limited vocabulary, because later that day, he saw me walking down the crowded hall during the passing period between classes and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Mrs. Hicks!  You look so… erotic today!”  Oh well, at least he didn’t call me cute…

It’s funny, really, how caught up in ourselves we can be with regard to self-image and the ways other perceive us.  When I was on vacation last week, a cocktail waitress gave me a hearty compliment on my patchouli scent.  A few days later, however, a woman walked into the library where I was searching for the perfect beach novel, flopped down in a chair, and said dramatically, and quite loudly, to her nearby friend, “Oh, someone is wearing that nasty ass patchouli!  I hate that smell!”  And, okay, if I were quicker on the uptake, I could have pointed out to her that patchouli has been used for centuries as an insect repellent.  You know, subtly implying that she was being a pest of sorts…  But I am neither quick nor the type to say such a thing to a stranger.  Instead, I spent the remainder of the morning pondering my reaction to both the compliment and the perceived insult.  Why was it okay to revel in the warmth of one and not to become prickly in the wake of the other?  And what is it about some scents, such as patchouli, that is so polarizing, appealing to some people and repulsing others?

This member of the mint family has long been simultaneously prized and despised.  Evidently it was once used to let buyers of India ink know that their purchase genuinely came from India.  It has been used to treat ailments ranging from bad breath to snake bites, and is usually described as sweet, woodsy, pungent, rich, herbaceous, and yes, exotic.  It is also considered to be an aphrodisiac and known to get better with age, with its scent becoming deeper and fuller over time, its harshness mellowing with age.  On a darker note, patchouli is associated with death and is commonly nicknamed “graveyard dirt."  So what does it really say about my personality that I go about sporting my skull patterned pants while smelling of sex and cemeteries?  Maybe my own personal curse is my inability to reconcile all of the various aspects of my self, ranging from childlike, to seductive, to downright dark.  And maybe I just think too much and need to take a break, maybe do a little thrift shopping… and perhaps it is appropriate to end with a poem about the strange places a mind can drift.

TOO FAR GONE BY TUESDAY

colors can push over the 

edge, but I really like the sketchiness

of pencil sound, the way the round

undefined housing shelters me 

from the lead

I prefer the promise

of erasability, so ironically decisive

yet I cross things out

out of habit

even this writing

is not without some danger

the friction can become tiresome,

can become needy,

can become devisive,

and I might get caught up

in the reflection

of that shiny metal piece

that ties eraser to wood,

that little connector

so needless intricate 

and cold.

 

 

 

Soup of the Day: Comparing Apples to Onions

I intended for my writing today to be fueled by the idea of omnicentricity and one of my favorite poems by Wallace Stevens titled “Anecdote of the Jar.”

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

 

The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air.

 

It took dominion everywhere.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

 

But I kept getting sidetracked by random thoughts.  For example, I can’t stop thinking about a phenomenon called “street light blindness.”  It seems there are two optical events that need to be recognized in street light installations.  The loss of night vision because of the accommodation reflex of drivers’ eyes is the greatest danger.  As drivers emerge from an unlighted area into a pool of light from a street light, their pupils quickly constrict to adjust to the brighter light, but as they leave the pool of light, the dilation of their pupils adjusts to the dimmer light much more slowly, so they are in effect driving momentarily with impaired vision.  The other thing that should be considered when placing a light on a street is that oncoming headlights are more visible against a black background than a grey one.  Less threatening, but also interesting, is the notion of light pollution, which results in urban areas when artificial light hides the stars and interferes with astronomy.  A bit more menacing is the fact that light pollution can disrupt the natural growing cycle of plants.

This idea of blindness (or other related detrimental effects) caused by light came to me today because yesterday I was considering the idea of living one’s life with the goal of doing no harm.  (I was struck by the irony that ineffectually placing lights could do more harm than good.)  “Doing no harm” is a term often associated with the field of medicine, as in the theory of nonmaleficence that is taught to medical students: given an existing problem, it may be better to do nothing than to do something that risks causing more harm than good.  In other words, the cure can be worse than the illness.  (Consider the process of searching for enlightenment and the problems one can encounter along that path…)

But I am sidetracked again when I recall that a friend of mine once said that her armpits smell like hamburgers when she sweats.  (I know this is quite a leap, and sometimes I don’t understand the workings of my synapses and why I store such information, and how it is connected.  But not to worry.   Wallace Stevens says, “What our eyes behold may well be the text of life, but one’s meditations on the text and disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality.”  He also says, “It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.”)

Anyway, once armpits were on my mind, I had to do a little research.  And, of course, there was a website on the topic of why Girls Smell Like Onions.  (Close enough to hamburger for me.) Evidently women’s armpit sweat contains a relatively high level of a sulfurous compound which when mixed with naturally occurring bacteria turns into a thiol that smells malodorously something like onion.  (I also discovered that men tend to smell like cheese, but I will consider that later.  Maybe.)  Perhaps the onion stayed on my mind today the same way it stayed on my hands when I was cutting one up to go in a pot of soup this morning.  I tend to think we focus our attention where it needs to go, so I allowed my mind to follow the onion path.  I have been doing a lot of reading on symbolism lately.  So it seemed natural to consider the onion as a symbol.

I am constantly delighted by the way everything in the universe is connected, so I was not really surprised when I happened upon a blog titled The Universe As An Onion, which discusses the symbolism of this edible bulb.  The blog author notices that when one cuts an onion from top to bottom, the center is similar in appearance to that of an eye.  She also mentions the practice of placing onion over the eye sockets of the deceased so they could see.  This seems somehow ironic when one considers the eye irritation that can occur when cutting up onions.  Having never been a corpse, I can’t report on the effectiveness of the previously mentioned practice, but I have read that onion has been used medicinally since ancient times to prevent flatulence, anemia, and to cleanse the digestive system.  And back to the idea that a cure can contain negative side effects, it should be noted that the more phenols and flavonoids onions contain, the more antioxidant and anti-cancer activity they provide.  For example, the boldest flavored shallots seem to inhibit the growth of liver and colon cancer cells more than the milder tasting varieties of sweet onions such as the Vidalia.

Of course, my second grade teacher pointed out that onions owe much of their distinctive flavor to the olfactory sense.  She blindfolded us and had us hold our noses as we tasted bits of onion and apple.  The result was that we could not distinguish between the two. 

It seems appropriate at this point to mention that when cutting an apple crosswise, the seeds are each cut in half and form the shape of a star.  This small display of beauty also ruins the seeds in that they can no longer be planted to produce more apples. This was the inspiration for my poem, “Spin Art.”

 

“Inappropriate…” the ceiling fan whispers again, barely audible,

sounding softer than the skin on the wrist near the altar boy’s pulse,

meaning clearer than the whistle from a distant train.

“Follow the cycle of the crescent,” it would say.

 

Drawn to the blade by the promise of the blade,

pulled higher on the breeze like the loose end

of a half-freed gossamer scarf, woven to be twisted

and twisted, pulled, spiraling, whirling, and dancing on toe,

 

I mince around the center of that dark satisfaction,

until dangling by brainstem, I watch the others

spinning past and past and gone.  “Time to stretch now!”

Pulled like a weed with too much root, too much anchor,

too much need to just turn loose and spin free in the wind.

 

At a critical point, the spiral ceases to expand.  No reverse. 

So I travel the same territory over and around.

Not enough lift, not enough drag, not enough heart.  Not enough.

Sounds smooth, you say?  “Yes, but only till the sockets start to give.”

 

No fanfare, please, and no party colored banner printed out one night

in soft staccato stops and starts with all its tentatively connected parts

less meaningful than dandelion seeds lined up head to toe

along some specially selected crack of a dry July sidewalk.

 

“The only still point is the center.”  Invisible,

unless they cross-section to see if my seeds form a star.

But once you make that slice, you break forever

the silver-green membrane around each gentle potential.

And what kind of tree would a half-seed grow?

 

All the murals pick up speed until they move outside

the need to be specific.  One tree, one leaf, one green…

like a dry grass brush was dragged along the whole wet mess of eternity.

Clouds and shoulders.  Leaves and toes.  All together now!

One red dot, one last line, fine red stripe.  “One last time?”

 

Note:  I always reassure my creative writing students that most poets write about suicide at some point in their career.  It is just part of that bouncing back and forth that the brain can’t seem to keep from doing.  And while suicide can be thought of as the complete antithesis of doing no harm, it can also be a source of beauty when considered poetically, which leads me of course to one of my favorite poems, “in a middle of a room” by E.E. Cummings:

in a middle of a room

stands a suicide

sniffing a Paper rose

smiling to a self

"somewhere it is Spring and sometimes

people are in real:imagine

somewhere real flowers, but

I can't imagine real flowers for it I

could, they would somehow

not Be real"

(so he smiles

smiling) "but I will not

everywhere be real to

you in a moment"

The is blond

with small hands

"&and everything is easier

than I had guessed everything would

be;even remembering the way who

looked at whom first,anyhow dancing"

(a moon swims out of a cloud

a clock strikes midnight

a finger pulls a trigger

a bird flies into a mirror)

 

One last handful of things to consider today: 

1.     In the Middle Ages, onions were such an important food that people would pay for their rent with onions and even give them as gifts.

2.     There is an old tale of a shipwrecked man washed up on a beach covered with diamonds, which are worthless in that country.  All he has with him is a bag of onions, which are highly unknown, and therefore highly valuable, there.  He is rewarded for the onions with a shipload of diamonds.  When his brothers go back there with garlic, hoping for more diamonds, they are rewarded with the most valuable thing in the country, a bag of onions!

3.     When considering why precious stones are precious, Aldus Huxley deduces that it is because they are objects in the external world—along with fire, stained glass, fireworks, pageantry, theatrical spectacle, Christmas tree lights, rainbows, and sunlight—things which most nearly resemble the things that people see in the visionary world.  Poets and storytellers, by giving us a mystic vision of these objects with gemlike qualities, bring us into contact with the visionary world and potentially stimulate our own visions within us.

4.     Stevens says: How full of trifles everything is!  It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.

5.     If you have trouble quieting your mind today, you can always go to: www.mediheaven.com where you can be lead through a “rapid relaxation” session.  In only four minutes, “you’ll feel like you’re in paradise.”  It is free.  Of course, you can gain “unlimited access” to increased clarity, purpose, balance, optimism, and energy for only $79.00 US.  Onions not accepted.

Points for Jeffrey...

             “Look at me, Jeffrey.  Jeffrey, look at me.  Jeffrey, I need you to listen to me.  Leave your utensils alone, get your feet out of the chair, and put your hands in your lap.  Jeffrey, if you don’t look at me and listen, you are going to lose a point.  Jeffrey…”  This was typical of the one sided conversation I heard each night at the table next to ours. 

I have been gone for over a week.  On vacation.  My favorite kind of vacation.  One in which I have no plans and no obligations.  This is because I benefit sometimes from examining my life from a bit of a distance in order to recognize the patterns that surround me on a daily basis.  We went to the Caribbean where I spent a lot of time walking, reading, sunning and thinking.  And I must admit, it was a little strange being in a warm climate, beside the ocean at Christmas time.  I have always been one of those festive fiends who start celebrating Christmas the day after Thanksgiving.  Pulling out old Greenberg turkey boxes filled with years of handmade decorations.  Baking cookies, making candy, and tacking up strings of blinking lights while making as few nail holes as possible around the windows and across the roofline.  When all of my kids grew up and were in college and in the military, I still tried to make things special for them, even though they might be home for only a few days at a time.  But over the past few years, some of the yuletide enthusiasm has seemingly been drained out of me.  Even the introduction of the Dave to our family seven years ago didn’t entirely rekindle my Christmas spirit.  So I thought about this while I was away… David and I don’t usually give each other presents anymore--at least, not in the traditional sense.  A few years ago we deliberately turned away from the tendency to overspend and get ourselves in debt by buying a bunch of stuff that didn’t satisfy anything in either of us.  We realized that it was just adding stress to the season.  

So we don’t give each other things anymore.  Instead, we just spend the holidays together and take time to appreciate how lucky we are to have had each other for the past 32 years. We tend to use this time to make plans for the upcoming year, and we dare to dream about the many things we could do if we really wanted to change our lives.  My most memorable gift this year was the realization that I don’t really want to change very many things about my life.  I am such a lucky person.  I talked to a lot of people who work a lot harder than I do for a lot less money.  I heard stories of hardworking people who sacrifice their personal relationships by spending months at a time away from their families so they can send home their paychecks to make the lives of their loved ones more bearable.  I saw a lot of people who were old, in poor health, and a lot who were just unhappy.  I saw a lot of families like Jeffrey’s.  Physically together, but miles apart emotionally.  And I realized that my childhood had been much like that.  I wasn’t a bad kid (and I don't think Jeffrey is either) but I could not go to a restaurant, or a playground, or a theme park, without getting jerked up by the arm at some point during the outing and threatened with dire consequences if I did not behave.  I don’t have any pleasant childhood holiday memories involving my family.  And I think that’s why I was so determined to make Christmas special for my kids.  But decorations and cookies and presents aren’t the only things that make memories.  Being present, supportive, responsible, thoughtful, and doing no harm—these are the things that make life memorable and filled with hope and strength.  I sincerely hope to give and receive these gifts this year.  And I hope that someday Jeffrey will look back on this time in his life and have a holiday epiphany.

I will conclude with a poem.

 

THESE ARE THE THINGS

I WILL REMEMBER

WHEN I’M VERY OLD

 

the breath-shaking beauty of your body

leaning toward me, hips forward

in ways I never fully understood

 

the naked longing in your eyes

and the million ways you look at me

as though you know my secrets

 

you know my secrets

before I do

 

before I knew you

I was a hollow globe

seldom shaken

and I almost never saw it snow

 

before you spread into this space behind my eyes

I wore my inspiration like a dark red robe

thought that flying dreams were a gift

learned that lying in your arms

answered the questions

swelling in my chest

formed long before I knew the value

of swelling

or punctuation

 

you are the coat I wear on Monday

to remember Sunday’s warmth

 

when I am old

I will remember that spreading my fingers

left beautiful spaces

did not make flying more difficult

did not leave me vulnerable to cold

did not limit the number of times

I was able to touch you

My Funny Valentine

It’s a strange habit, writing daily, or at least semi-regularly.  (Of course, it has been a few days since I have written, so that puts me on the verge of writing sporadically…)  It doesn’t seem to matter whether the writing takes the form of a poem, a journal entry, a blog, or a more deliberate installment in a series of memoirs, just the practice of putting words on a page change the brain for the rest of the day.  It seems for me that writing forces me to respond to my life instead of merely letting it wash over me.  I wonder sometimes what makes people want to read my writing.  Is it a form of voyeurism?  Curiosity?  The need to connect to another human without making a commitment?  I follow a handful of blogs and the reason I do so is that I am always looking to be surprised.  I am seeking that little mental growth spurt that happens when I read something I was not expecting to read.

Some days my brain is so hungry!  Just now I was reading a book by David Sedaris.   Naked.  (Not me.  That’s the title of the book.)  And I was listening to Chet Baker and had the TV on beside me, too.  Sometimes it seems that only when I am on the brink of overload am I contented.  I know this must impact my students at times.  I am always throwing things at them in rapid-fire succession.  Not literally throwing things.  Ideas.  And it usually takes seeing a mild reaction of panic come across a few faces to remind me to slow down, give examples, elaboration, room to react.  After all it is my interaction with them that makes my day feel successful.  It is as mentally satisfying as reading, writing, listening to music, watching TV, and drinking coffee all at once!

The thing that has been recurring in my mind lately is a strange and sudden realization of humanity.  I am not sure how to explain what I mean here.  For example, the first time I watched the movie The English Patient, a bit player came on the screen at the very beginning, and something in my brain clicked.  This is a person with emotions, thoughts, fears. The actor didn’t even have a speaking role.  It had nothing to do with the movie.  It was just seeing the spark of electricity in his eye, a reminder that his body was a living organism.  Very difficult to explain satisfactorily.  And I am not sure why that particular actor impacted me so.  Perhaps I was just open to it at that moment.  Perhaps he was an exceptionally good actor, gifted in the subtle portrayal of what it means to be human.

I was reminded of this again when my dog died a few years ago.  I was with her at the vet’s office and she was having a heart attack.  She was quite old and the doctor explained that the most compassionate thing we could do for her was help her stop suffering.  I will never forget that second when her life ended and her eyes became cloudy and her body suddenly seemed heavier. 

I can’t really justify the emotion that wells up in me as I write this memory.  Of course, I miss her.  She was a spectacular friend.  I miss her quirkiness and her humor.  And I miss her even more for my husband.  They were so in love!  But even in the sadness of her being gone, I love the emotion of missing her, my ability to dwell in the melancholy moment, the somewhat selfish reassurance that my heart can be so filled with feeling that it overflows, and tears run down my cheeks.

Sometimes when I am writing, David comes in and reads over my shoulder.  I warned him today not to.   It’s okay if I cry, but I don’t want to make him sad.  He doesn’t seem to have my abstract appreciation for sadness.  It just hurts him.  He is the kindest person I have ever known.  And I know he will read this.   In his own way he is also curious about the emotions and motivations of those around him.  I know he will read this.  He won’t be able not to.  So I will close with this bittersweet but mostly sweet memory for him.  Remember how Dave used to come into our house when he was just a toddler and head straight for Lady and without even saying a word take off his shoes and socks and rub his little bare feet on her fluffy belly and how they were both so happy and satisfied and connected?

It’s a strange habit, this storing of emotions.