Again again again again

It's interesting how we remember our younger selves. I recall myself being carefree, relaxed, easygoing, and patient. These are the traits that I associate with my childhood, and characteristics that people who knew me then corroborate, for the most part. I look at myself now and I have to wonder what happened. I've become a worrier.

It's the character flaw that I am puzzled and repulsed by the most in myself. It's like existential hypochondria. I look at a complex situation and immediately spin off into panicked imaginings of scenarios, each more worst-case than the last. Uncertainty - I don't take it in stride anymore; instead, I let it take hold of me. And I can't figure out where this came from. Is it because I'm facing more and more complex choices in my adult life? Is it because I was simply naive when I was young and faced the world that way, eager to be ignorant? Is it simply my nature, as I am indecisive and unfocused? Am I overly analytical? Was it the pot? Where did I lose my laid back nature and pick up the torch of worrywartdom?

I do remember specific instances of anxiety when I was young. I went through a period of time when I couldn't spend the night at friends' houses because I would have severe, red-eye panic attacks and have to call my mom to come pick me up. I remember the first one, the feeling of constriction, nearing a point of out-of-control, feeling the world and its horrible possibilities closing in on my, suddenly and stridently certain that my parents were being axe-murdered in my absence. I burst into tears and called home for the first time at 3 a.m. My mom was confused and sleepy, but sympathetic (and most importantly, alive!). I still remember pressing my forehead to the glass of the passenger window, relief seeping in with the cold. Slow breathing out of the panic.

I eventually outgrew this and began attending slumber parties again, but it seemed to have triggered something. I remember having the same feeling when I was applying to college. I desperately, compulsively waited for something to fall into my lap. The planning, the overwhelming choices and information out there, the ringing finality of "choosing a college" weighed heavily on me. I choked up every time someone suggested an Ivy League school. I chose Truman because the admissions counselor looked me in the eye and told me I would go to school for free there. And, there was a feeling as I was walking along campus. I thought of it as a premonition, but sometimes I still wonder if it really was anything - if Truman was right for me.

I think this is why things like yoga, meditation, and spirituality (and even tattooing!) appeal to me. I really believe that if I can tap into my inner self, my subconscious, I will feel more guided and secure. I think there's something there, something overarching and, if not meaningful then at least significant, something I haven't allowed myself to be submerged in yet because of this paralyzing hesitation. I have a good life, an easy life, one filled with love and support which is why I feel like this sense of panic is incongruous. I return again and again to it, almost obsessively, and each time I only feel guiltier and angrier for the weakness I demonstrate. I don't think fighting it is the answer - I think it's something to be dissolved, to work out like a knot in a muscle instead of amputating it or breaking through it. It's like I'm fighting to keep my head above water when I should just let myself slip into it. (It also frightens me that that most of the metaphors I come up with for the "solution" to the problem have to do with death!) I feel like discovering myself, discovering my connection and link to others and the world as a whole is key - it's at these times of epiphany and union that I feel most like myself, easy and free.

And here again I'm having the same feelings of stubborn anxiety as I go out into the world, loose and winging it. I'm waiting for signs. I'm breathing. I'm trying to slowly analyze and release the feelings of isolation, of insignificance, of insecurity. Zen. Ohm. Let it be. Breathe.

It sounds so childish out of my head, but I think (hope) that's part of the process. I hope I'm moving closer to the significant/confident and away from the frivolous/frightened. Progress is slow, and doesn't feel linear, but I try to have my goal in mind as often as possible.

Purging

I'm hoping the following won't be a rant post, but I'm not promising it won't turn into one. I'm just going to let it be what it comes out as.

Today has been one of bitterness, which is a shame because it was beautiful; bright, warm in the sun but chill in the shade. Not that being bitter on a cloudy day is any better, but it was just hard to have a tightness all over that not even a blue sky could waft away. Usually it doesn't take much for me to shrug off a mood and I've become pretty adept at building up an arsenal of anti-crankiness, but it wasn't just a mood today. It was a culmination. (Now, I admit that there were definitely bright spots, when I let myself feel looser in my skin, but I couldn't shake it forever, I think because of its source and this space, this studio.)

Part of it was dreading his return. When I heard that key hit the lock, that familiar shucking of the bolt, I was back to "dealing," "coping," "getting through it" again, a state that I feel I've been in for so long and am anxious to leave. So I did leave, but called my mom, who only lectured (well-intentioned) and made it worse. To not do this. To do that. To not forget this. To be a grown up. To grow up. I'm working on it, believe me. It's hard to have her tell me what is already on a relentless reel in my head. I've tried hard not to be cruel to myself through this, to understand that it is a big transition that will take time to feel natural, but she was saying things ... and I caught myself being mean. What are you doing? Are you crazy? From my point of view, this looks like a disaster. You haven't had a job for a month. And what, my friend, have you done to pursue one? You're not so different from him, after all. How dare you judge, how dare you point fingers? What the hell do you think you're doing, anyway? I don't have it figured out. I won't have it figured out. It's hard on me. I'm not a saint. I'm a sinner. I'm still bitter.

And it is, it's a tightness that comes in quick and pulls up sharply, catching me again and making it harder to breathe and to be. I'm just so tired; tired of inertia and stagnation, not only in a relationship but as my own acquired habit. I feel like I've lost some impulse towards productivity that I used to have. It makes me feel inadequate, when even going to the bank to make a deposit manages to intimidate me. It's more than just procrastination, now, it's residual anxiety, even fear. I've just felt trapped, tight, for a long time and it's hard to transition back into possibilities. I don't know how to do it or what I'm doing and I worry what I'm doing is wrong, that I'm a fool and shorting myself unintentionally, that there is something subtle to all of this that I'm just barging along ignoring. Shouldn't there be some sort of guide at some point? What if I'm taking others down with me? I feel so haphazard and clumsy all of the time.

Breathe.

But, life is complex, right? There's no one path for us to go down. Life is a series of decisions, some of them harder, some of them easier, but none of them absolutely right or wrong. Looking inwards, feeling it out, putting a foot down and then not forgetting to actually take a step is probably the best way to do it. Plan what you can (which I need to do more of, I think, but it's, again, intimidating) and roll with everything else. Baby steps. I still need to be nice or I'll back myself, frightened, into a corner.

This wasn't supposed to be about me, really, it was heading towards a rant initially (as mentioned). But here we are, again. I guess when it comes down to it, this is what I have. I need to deal with me, relearn how it is to be me with just me to carry and recapture my stride. It will take a while, no doubt, but I can do it. I'm well equipped and very lucky for so many reasons. Nothing is insurmountable, here. Enough with the goddam drama.

So, due to the unexpected direciton of this post, the poem I was going to post no longer fully applies; however, I quite like it (not my own!!) so I'm posting it anyway. Because it's a little bit how I want to look at things, for now, look and look until the bitterness subsides.

Failing and Flying
by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work.

That she was old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while

love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bedl
like a visitation, the gentleness in her

like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her

while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,

but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Mind wandering ... Second verse, nearly the same as the first (from what I remember)

So:


“I used to think truth was eternal, that once I knew, once I saw, it would be with me forever, a constant by which everything else could be measured. I know now that this isn’t so, that most truths are inherently unretainable, that we have to work hard all our lives to remember the most basic things.” – Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face


For some reason, this quote shook me a bit.


Setting aside for now the argument about the existence of truth(s) - for now we'll call them tenets, or even realizations, or personal, subjective conclusions - I never gave much thought to the fact that they are indeed slippery. I suppose, like Grealy, I had just assumed that once an epiphany is achieved it is embedded somewhere permanent in the heart or psyche, like a brick placed in a foundation for personal philosophies. In some ways, with some truths, I believe this happens. For instance, the old cliche: the first time that you realize that the hot stove will burn your hand, you're apt to build that truth - fire burns, burning is unpleasant - into your foundation. Even less tangible things, like the realization of sexual attraction experienced during puberty, or the welcoming of a baby brother or sister into a family unit, or finding out that Santa Claus isn't real, all these become part of the foundation, fundamentally and permanently altering our outlook on life. But still, even with these truths, conclusions - how present are they really in our day to day lives? Do they have to be lodged in our consciousness in order to be "a constant by which everything else is measured" or is it good enough to have them as a foundation? Even truths that are gigantic, imminent - the truth of our mortality, for one - can disappear into subconscious, into forgetting, however temporarily. We can, of course, be reminded again, be forced to inspect and perhaps reconfigure the foundation, but in general, that's what it is: subconscious, hidden, not forefronted. "Unretainable," then, should be interpreted not as "easily lost or forgotten" but perhaps as "unable to maintain constantly."



I guess where this leads me to is an examination of what I consider to be truths in my life that I want to be conscious of on a day to day, even minute to minute basis. I consider myself a person with a lot of guiding truths, some more abstract than others (always pick up pennies versus stop and savoring the small things ... which could be a hierarchy of two truths, actually.). I have tenets that are held close to my heart, but that are, as Grealy says, unretainable in the sense that they cannot be at the forefront every moment, cannot be conscious and literal and stark at every juncture in life. Sometimes, that's good - some truths don't apply to certain situations (do unto others doesn't have much practical application when I'm grouting the tub) and it would be distracting to be beseiged with higher truths all of the time. However, it's also dangerous to forget them - the one that pains me most is when I forget to enjoy little things that break me out of the obliterating monotony that can so easily take over. (!!Warning, pretentious nerd alert.!!) Nietzsche claims that the impulse to eschew the mysterious and profound in favor of the superficial, trivial and apparent is innate and natural to humans. (Thanks, Daniel Pinchbeck. And thanks for the freaking laundry list of reading material). This seems to be the overriding mantra of our culture - materialism and consumerism obliterate any feelings of real acquisition, convenience trumps all, and, well, reality tv. Need I say more? However, I really refuse to believe that the natural and, by intimation, healthy and correct instinct of the human race is to veg out on an endless loop of Flavor of Love season 4. I think that it's definitely easier to digest the superficial but distractions from the messiness and complexity of life are just a coping mechanism. Complexity, multiplicity, the unknown and unknowable is scary. Having a million multiplying possibilities (...) is intimidating, but also so freeing. This isn't to say I'm against simplicity; in fact, I think it's a good thing, as long as it's a clearheaded distillation of the subtle, not a blind denial of all things complicated. The human mind can only consciously juggle so much and go along surviving in a world that is certainly (well ... damn you Daniel Pinchbeck) much less abstract and much more tangible and sensation-driven.

Which brings me rather inelegantly back around to the nature of the truths that I try to hold in my consciousness. Perhaps the answer is remembering tangible distillations of the abstract truths - thus, "do unto others" means "hold the door open for the person behind you" and "always smile at the cashier;" "appreciate the little things" becomes "look up at the clouds" and "always pick up pennies." That way, I'm more able to be consciously engaging the truths that make up my foundation (and I believe the foundation is crucial) while finding the little treasures that life presents me, and striving to live it well. Because what does "appreciate" mean, really, besides smiling when I hear the jingle of a penny in my pocket as I walk home under the gaze of a beautiful blue sky?

OMFG

I had a huge post and hit "publish" and google ate it. It's gone.

I'm sad.

Resolve weakening

So, I haven't been writing as much as I'd like to be. Ah well. I'm still trying to get in a little bit here and there - and 30 poems in as many days was a pretty gigantic goal in the first place. I am still making it in with 3-4 solid writing days a week, which is more than I was doing before this. Maybe I'll just extend the timeline out beyond April.

Part of the problem, I think, is that big things are happening and while I sort of want to write from that place of bewilderment that I'm in right now, I don't think it's right. I remember my creative writing teacher in 2001, immediately after the terrorist attacks, saying, I will NOT look at any poems about September 11. It is too early, he said - don't write for the drama in the drama - poems are about introspection and reflection and no one has reflected enough to digest what has happened here.

At the same time, there is something to be said for rawness, for the visceral edge that comes through when the subject is the excruciating now.

But again. What's going on is not so much moment to moment excruciating (not an acute symptom) but rather a drawn out, low lying buzz of emotion. That's hard to catch and sharpen and hone into something worthy of a poem. It's more of a stress, an anxiety, a greyness. Not necessarily bad, of course, because I feel I'm stepping in the right direction, I really believe that, but it's complex and rather undefineable, the emotional state I find myself living. If it were more immediate, more poignant, then maybe I would feel more comfortable writing it. It's hard to articulate something so ... shifting and variable?

Enough rambling. A little light poem to hopefully refresh a bit. It's an old one.

Saturday

And I'm still in bed,
awash in the words of each thin, backlit page.
The sun slides in slats through the blinds,
across the spread of my legs, my fingers
my hair and my face.

If I could trace it,
through time and intensity—

if I could still its erasure, keep each moment--

If it left its stain here,
laying its smooth, lazy, paint,
I would be lit and wet and glowing with swaths
of white-whittled light,
tempered only by the brush of quick clouds.

Something's in the water

Here's a rough second draft of a poem that began with a mimic of Naomi Shihab Nye's "What People Do" (great poem, incidentally). The one bad thing about this exercise is, if you use amazing poetry/poets as a base, everything kind of pales in comparison. But, without further scraping and excusing:

Outside/Inside

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday the days press together,
strange bundled passengers at a bus stop.
I am in the streets, one of those days’ evenings haven fallen upon me,

(How did I arrive here?
I ask myself this each day)

and I pick up the paper,
its damp wings and words fluttering outside the door.
I take it to my lover
who sits two stories up, impassive
in the bottom of the warm well of our bedroom.

(Today my face is glass.
I walk the streets reflecting all I can with it
as the rain pats the ground)

He is there waiting for the night to fall, the day to become the next.
I give him the paper. He puts it in the litterbox.
Its wings wilt under the spread of sand.



I would tell my lover
Today I understand.
I am a bird and you are a stone.

Instead I stand here next to him
handing dishes to be dried,
watching him wipe each one carelessly
with a damp towel,
the one which smells of the tissues in my mother’s pocket,
of cloudcover in March.

(My face is glass)

Day 2

So, unless I write a small one, it's going to be hard to put really unpolished, unfinished poems up here, I've realized. But that's ok. I can try to build some time in for editing and rewriting when I get a few more poems to play with, ones that I feel have a little life in them.

For now, a poem I worked hard on in college. It's not really indicative of my usual style of poetry - it's harder, less optimistic, less transparent. Actually, this one is almost as difficult to post as an unpolished, as it brings back a lot of uncomfortable, unhappy memories - and, in my infinite worrying, I find it hard to share because I'm afraid it will make the reader uncomfortable, as well. But I guess I should be glad if it does. That means it must be working on some small level.

A Daily Calculation of Value

For 2,000

oh that number
carves me quick, swift from the outside in,
snitching with sleet-cold shears
snapping and slitting with sharp silver shears
until it steps back and whistles
at the wonders it’s done
whistles and wonders at the wonders it’s done
but I still need a nick with the edge of a nail,
now and then.

oh that number
makes me brittle, hard inside ready to be broken
riding on a breath of brokenness
edging into the eye sockets of brokenness
so my anger can splinter out into shrapnel
fired not cleanly into passersby
fired in fact messily into passersby
until their bodies scream silently with outrage,
like mine.

oh that number
snatches me into its clutch like a seducer
calavera in Spanish, brother word to sister skull.
ay dios, con un calavera en la calavera (oh god, with this seducer in my skull)
there is no pleasure, no quick breath of bliss
only all day my mind full of twisted rusted nails
only all day my mind full of nails
bitten down to the quick
red and raw.

oh number
what more will you snick off with your shears
what more will you have me kill with my brokenness
what more will you have me bite bitter into nothingness
I am numbed to your seductions and just let you
take me
and have me
and starve me
and rape me.

April 1!

So, it's not my poem. I'll say that upfront, no fooling around with April 1 hijinks. But I did write today. I feel rusty and out of practice but I always do after a hiatus. So instead of sharing my humble little scribbles, and in the interest of actually starting off this month with the presence of a poem, here's one that I've always loved.

Jazz, by Angela Ball

I'd like to know everything
A jazz artist knows, starting with the song
"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat."

Like to make some songs myself:
"Goodbye Rickshaw,"
"Goodbye Lemondrop."
"Goodbye Rendezvous."

Or maybe even blues:

If you fall in love with me I'll make you pancakes
All morning. If you fall in love with me
I'll make you pancakes all night.
If you don't like pancakes
We'll go to the creperie. If you don't like pancakes
We'll go to the creperie
If you don't like to eat, handsome boy,
Don't you hang around with me.

On second thought, I'd rather find
The fanciest music I can, and hear all of it.

I'd rather love somebody
And say his name to myself every day
Until I fall apart.

An end and a beginning

Hopefully, this will be among my last posts about the ridiculousness that is my job. One of our authors let us know that she had taken a publication elsewhere. It is an illustrated children's question and answer book about the Aurora colony, entitled IS ANYBODY BURIED IN THE CELLAR?

...

So, April is national poetry month. There's a challenge to poets to write a poem a day for the entire 30. I'm going to do it. I'll try to post a few here - not promising them all, I can't put myself up to that yet, but I'll try to get a good handful out on the web where everyone can feel free to not read them. Zing!

I will probably compose a lot of them based on an exercise I've used before - namely, imitating an already published poem's structure, diction and line breaks. I've picked up Billy Collins' "180 More" to use as inspiration, as it is a collection of poetry from many disparate authors using really different styles. I like the practice because it not only gets you to read and really absorb a bunch of verse, but it also forces you out of habitual patterns of ... well, everything - word choice, line break, even tone and rhythm. And right now, I'm really into breaking out of patterns. Stretching. Moving forward. Making progress. Broadening. It's definitely equatable with learning and growing, this process of inching away from comfort, challenging complacency.

So, here I go. Maybe I'll even sneak some non-poem writing up here. Life's an adventure, right?

If I hear "I have a cousin with a friend who knows a guy who works with someone who knows someone who is friends with Oprah" one more time ...

I may have to tear my eyeballs out.

From a submitted manuscript about what it takes to be a true Christian:Being a Christian "is not simply someone who goes to church. Going to church will not make you a Christian. By the same token, when you visit a dining franchise, you do not become the entrée that you ordered."

So ... so ... the really truly real point of going to McD's is not to eat my big Mac, but become it?

I just don't get these people.

Literary diamonds in the rough (yes, the hackneyed phrase is appropriate here)

We got this in a manuscript submitted to us on Friday. Names may have been changed to protect the illiterate.

"He picks her up takes her to New York she falls in love deep marring him spiritually"

This goes hand in hand with the one we got a few weeks ago (and I am pulling this one from my memory, so please excuse the decent grammar):

"they looked deep into each others' eyes and pronounced their marriage vowels."

Elsewhere, in a love poem:

"I still accept applications
even though there's no position currently available.
But honey, I don't know whether you wanna be a tempor retire with me."

My heart is breaking ...