song/poem/lyrics for the week

this is an attempt to define my stance on religion as per a recent post and comment earlier today (please see below) that lead me to listen to some xtc. here's the lyrics to "dear god"; very apt words in today's world...

Dear god,
Hope you got the letter,
And I pray you can make it better down here.
I dont mean a big reduction in the price of beer,
But all the people that you made in your image,
See them starving on their feet,
cause they dont get enough to eat

From god,
I cant believe in you.

Dear god,
Sorry to disturb you,
But I feel that I should be heard loud and clear.
We all need a big reduction in amount of tears,
And all the people that you made in your image,
See them fighting in the street,
cause they cant make opinions meet,
About god,
I cant believe in you.

Did you make disease, and the diamond blue?
Did you make mankind after we made you?
And the devil too!

Dear god,
Dont know if you noticed,
But your name is on a lot of quotes in this book.
Us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look,
And all the people that you made in your image,
Still believing that junk is true.
Well I know it aint and so do you,
Dear god,
I cant believe in,
I dont believe in,

I wont believe in heaven and hell.
No saints, no sinners,
No devil as well.
No pearly gates, no thorny crown.
Youre always letting us humans down.
The wars you bring, the babes you drown.
Those lost at sea and never found,
And its the same the whole world round.
The hurt I see helps to compound,
That the father, son and holy ghost,
Is just somebodys unholy hoax,
And if youre up there youll perceive,
That my hearts here upon my sleeve.
If theres one thing I dont believe in...

Its you,
Dear god.




now, what are we critiquing here? the notion of god that we have constructed in language and deployed through ideology or something else, beyond language. my guess is that it's the first and not the second.

how does one write one's life?

"Every three years I discover again
that No I knew nothing before.
Everthing must be dragged out,
looked over again, The unexamined life
is the lie, but still
must I every time deny
everything I knew before?"

Dorothy Allison, "The Women Who Hate Me."





i have been proofing a narrative project for dev and it's really stunning. she does a really good job in attempting to capture the essence or shall i say essences of her life. how we come to know ourselves as subjects is an enigma to me. as i was reading dev's narrative i was putting myself in the place of the author. how would i write my life...to me it seems like a psychic version of cleaning my apartment...overwhelming. hopefully one day, i will have the chance to try but right now i wouldn't know where to begin.
i know from experience that many gay/lesbian/queer/transgender/transsexual persons start with coming to terms with identity. to be sure, coming out stories are a really good place to begin because it seems that seeing at least through what appears to be dissonance is key to rooting oneself in "place" even if this "place" is extremely mobile or transient.
i thought to myself, where would i begin. would i begin at the coming out intersection. by comparison, my coming out was not so much surrounded by dissonance than by complicity. i never felt compelled to jump out of the closet...i just opened the door and sat down in the open. my mother pats me on the shoulder and kisses my cheek while my father tells me that there were a lot of "gay" guys in the marines and it is no big deal. i guess i feel fortunate...can one begin a story from a point of consonance? i don't know...so i look, i look for dissonance to begin a story.
i do remember when i knew that i was "different" from the other kids in my school. 7th grade for me was the kicker. i had a crush on john miller...i was also attending a very strict, fundamentalist, bob jones university supporting "christian" school. my social science teacher, mr. laws (i'm not joking that is/was his name) brought out an article where two men were "gay bashed" in our town by a group of sexually repressed skin heads. mr. laws told us that god didn't like violence per se, but he could understand why someone would want to bash in a gay person's head...and he balled up his fist as he said this and i felt as if i were a sheet of paper being crumbled up in a hand. as he went on about the job of rationalizing his feelings to make it fit with his christianity, i thought to myself, "wow, i better keep my mouth shut or else i will either get seriously hurt or killed." i can remember that moment as truly feeling what it meant to be afraid.
i never told my mom or dad. i graduated from this school, so it wasn't like this was the first time i would have to endure homophobic tirades or calls for violence upon difference. but i remained silent.
i grew up methodist and my parents were not religious fanatics. they put me in this school because they somehow knew that i probably wouldn't make it in public school...not intellectually but physically. this christian school was also known for its academics...and to be fair, i did receive a good education. by the time i graduated i had the equivalent of an a.a. degree from a community college. academically, my education helped me advance in the university setting. but the silence that i learned was and is most profound. the most valuable lesson that i learned in life was invisibility and silence...to walk into a room and not be noticed, to be gentle, to be kind but most of all be ready to run if i needed to. which, come to think about it, was why i probably liked track in high school...especially cross country...i could out distance most if not all of the jocks, i knew i could run for a long way and not stop...sometimes i feel as if i haven't stopped yet.
so maybe if i am to write about my life i need to write from a location of silence... or, perhaps, maybe that is why i can't.

poem for the week: contemplation

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why (Sonnet XLIII)
by Edna St. Vincent Millay


What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

poem for the week

When a friend dies
by Marge Piercy

When a friend dies
the salmon run no fatter.
The wheat harvest will feed no more bellies.
Nothing is won by endurance
but endurance.
A hunger sucks at the mind
for gone color after the last bronze
chrysanthemum is withered by frost.
A hunger drains the day,
a homely sore gap
after a tooth is pulled,
a red giant gone nova,
an empty place in the sky
sliding down the arch
after Orion in night as wide
as a sleepless eye.
When pain and fatigue wrestle
fatigue wins. The eye shuts.
Then the pain rises again at dawn.
At first you can stare at it.
Then it blinds you.

to be or not to be...that IS the question

on my friend will's blog (http://www.rhetboi.net/sordid/)he wrote:

But the way I see it is this: I can go to Target at 10:00 a.m. when there are no lines, and that, to me, is a great thing. I can choose to work at 8:00 a.m. or 11:00 p.m., and I can choose to teach summer school or not (well, not really, since I need the money, but it's still technically a choice); I can do much of my work in this hotel room or at the local coffee shop and am not bound to my window-less office. I ain't got it bad, and that's good. But it could alway be better . . .

i don't think that i need to be reminded of this at a better time. it's near the end of the summer and it's that time where you're in between student loans and starting the teaching work load. i hate the concept of money. i quess i could fool myself by saying that it's a "marxist" thing but really its a "i don't like to so i won't manage my money" kind of thing. very frustrating, not only for me but for my family cuz the no money thing prohibits me from going home very often...which, to be quite honest, i don't loose too much sleep over cuz the family really stresses me out anyway.
but, back to the topic at hand. i have often found myself wondering "what in the hell am i doing?" i quit a really good job (that i was getting burned out on but that's neither here nor there) to pursue a career in the academy. upon further reflection, i don't even think it's that. i think this was a way for me to get back to chicago. i mean, when the opportunity presented itself i thought "wow, this is great." what i didn't consider was the drastic change in life style. i'm entering my third year in this program and i still haven't gotten used to the life of a fulltime grad student (money issues aside). i mean, i can't even seem to manage my time. writing, for the most part, is excruciatingly difficult...not in the sense of a writer's block but in that i have all of these ideas swimming around in my head like little fishes and when i go to grap them they just slip out of my grasp...schooling in some dark corner of my mind. i'm also completely astounded at the amount of knowledge that i do not know that i probably, when all is said and done, cannot know and i become overwhelmed. i read texts and i think to myself what can i possibly contribute to any conversation.
i don't know what kind of ideal i had coming into this but, at this point, i can't see myself in the academic field....i can't see myself in anything at the moment. my therapist told me the other day..."it's ok to run away from something just as long as you have another something to run to." i think that's my problem, i don't think i have had anything in my life that i honestly wanted to run to.
but will's post did help me see that i could, at least if not temporarily, see the incredible amount of freedom that i will have in sculpting a niche in the academy that i would not otherwise have. perhaps, i need to create something to run to instead of looking for something to run to. i just hope that i will be able to do it.

poem of the week...the work of nostalgia

Michael Lassell's (circa 1985)

How to Watch Your Brother Die

When the call comes, be calm
Say to your wife, "My brother is dying. I have to fly
to California."
Try not to be shocked that he already looks like
a cadaver.
Say to the young man sitting by your brother's side,
"I'm his brother."
Try not to be shocked when the young man says,
"I'm his lover. Thanks for coming."

Listen to the doctor with a steel face on.
Sign the necessary forms.
Tell the doctor you will take care of everything.
Wonder why doctors are so remote.

Watch the lover's eyes as they stare into
your brother's eyes as they stare into
space.
Wonder what they see there.
Remember the time he was jealous and
opended your eyebrow with a sharp stick.
Forgive him out loud
even if he can't understand you.
Realize the scar will be
all that's left of him.

Over coffee in the hopsital cafeteria
say to the lover, "You're an extremely good-looking
young man."
Hear him say,
"I never thought I was good enough looking to
deserve your brother."
Watch the tears well up in his eyes. Say,
"I'm sorry. I don't know what it means to be
the lover of another man."
Hear him say,
"It's just like a wife, only the commitment is
deeper because the odds against you are so much
greater."
Say nothing, but
take his hand like a brother's.

Drive to Mexico for unproven drugs that might
help him live longer.
Explain what they are to the border guard.
Fill with rage when he informs you,
"You can't bring those across."
Begin to grow loud.
Feel the lover's hand on your arm,
restraining you. See in the guard's eye
how much a man can hate another man.
Say to the lover, "How can you stand it?"
Hear him say, "You get used to it."
Think of one of your children getting used to
another man's hatred.

Call your wife on the telephone. Tell her,
"He hasn't much time.
I'll be home soon." Before you hang up say,
"How can anyone's commitment be deeper than
a husband and wife?" Hear her say,
"Please, I don't want to know all the details."

When he slips into an irrevocable coma,
hold his lover in your arms while he sobs,
no longer strong. Wonder how much longer
you will be able to be strong.
Feel how it feels to hold a man in your arms.
Offer God anything to bring your brother back.
Know you have nothing God could possibly want.
Curse God, but do not
abandon Him.

Stare at the face of the funeral director
when he tells you he will not
embalm the body for fear of
contamination. Let him see in your eyes
how much a man can hate another man.
Stand beside a casket covered in flowers,
white flowers. Say,
"Thank you for coming" to each of several hundred men
who file past in tears. Some of them
holding hands. Know that your borther's life
was not what you imagined. Overhear two mourners say
"I wonder who will be next."

Arrange to take an early flight home.
His lover will drive you to the airport.
When your flight is announced say,
awkwardly, "If I can do anything, please
let me know." Do not flinch when he says,
"Forgive yourself for not wanting to know him
after he told you. He did."
Stop and let it soak in. Say,
"He forgave me, or he knew himself?"
"Both," the lover will say, not knowing what else
to do. Hold him like a brother while he
kisses you on the cheek. Think that
you haven't been kissed by a man since
your father died. Think,

"This is no moment not to be strong." Fly
first class and drink scotch. Stroke
your split eyebrow with a finger
and think of your brother alive. Smile
at the memory and think
how your children will feel in your arms,
warm and friendly and without challenge.

metal meets cello

so this morning i go to "crooks and liars" http://www.crooksandliars.com/ political blog to catch up on the news and i noticed that for the music selection they have posted videos of Apocalypitca: a quartet of men playing metalica songs on their cellos. the first one is slow and kind of pretty

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSMXMv0noY4&eurl=


but the second one is where they let it all hang out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rej7o4x7BUg&search=Apocalypitca

i especially like the crowd surfing and the head banging from the audience members. those european kids are soooo POSTMODERN!
wow, i wasn't into metal when i was young...i find it quite interesting that metalica has given themselves a make over...cutting their hair, dressing up all gq style but still playing the same brash and edgy music that they always have. but these cellists seem to complicate this a bit...their hair is long (except for the one guy) and they look like what metal is supposed to look like (culturally speaking of course) while they play metal music in a refined, classical style. it's odd, these guys look the way metalica sounds like but play metal music the way that the metalica group members look like (aesthetically, that is). i think this is what we would call mixing up the signifier and the signified...now if only the twain should meet...or should they?

(long) poem of the week...or past weeks ;-)

Dorothy Allison


The Women Who Hate Me
Dorothy Allison

1

The women who do not know me.

The women who, not knowing me, hate me
mark my life, rise in my dreams and shake their loose hair
throw out their thin wrists, narrow their already sharp eyes
say "Who do you think you are?"

"Lazy, useless, cuntsucking, scared, stupid
What you scared of anyway?"
Their eyes, their hands, their voices
Terrifying.

The women who hate me cut me
as men can't. Men don't count.
I can handle men. Never expected better
of any man anyway.
But the women,
shallow-cheeked young girls the world was made for
safe little girls who think nothing of bravado
who never got over by playing it tough.

What do they know of my fear?

What do they know of the women in my body?
My weakening hips, sharp good teeth
angry nightmares, scarred cheeks
fat thighs, fat everything.

"Don't smile too wide, You look like a fool."
"Don't want too much You an't gonna get it."
An't gonna get it.
Goddamn.

Say Goddamn and kick somebody's ass
that I am not even half what I should be,
full of terrified angry bravado
BRAVADO.

The women who hate me
don't know
can't imagine
life-saving, precious bravado.

2

God on their right shoulder
righteousness on their left,
the women who hate me never use words
like hate, speak instead of nature
of the spirit not housed in the flesh
as if my body, a temple of sin,
didn't mirror their own.

Their measured careful words echo
earlier courser stuff, say

"What do you think you're doing?"
Who do you think you are?"

"Whitetrash
no-count
bastard
mean-eyed
garbage-mouth
cuntsucker
cuntsucker
no good to anybody, never did diddlyshit anyway."

"You figure out yet who you an't gonna be?"

The women who hate me hate
their insistent desires, their fat lusts
swallowed and hidden, disciplined to nothing
narrowed to bone and dry hot dreams.
The women who hate me deny
hunger and apppetite,
the cream delight
of a scream
that arches the thighs and fills
the mouth with singing.

3

Something hides here
a secret thing shameful and complicated.
Something hides in a tight mouth a life too easily rendered
a childhood of inappropriate longing
a girl's desire to grow into a man
a boyish desire to stretch and sweat.

Every three years I discover again
that No I knew nothing before.
Everthing must be dragged out,
looked over again, The unexamined life
is the lie, but still
must I every time deny
everything I knew before?

4

My older sister tells me flatly
she don't care who I take to my bed
what I do there. Tells me finally
she sees no difference between
her husbands, my lovers. Behind it all
we are too much the same to deny.

My little sister thinks my older crazy
thinks me sick
more shameful to be queer than crazy
as if her years hustling ass,
her pitful junky whiteboy
saved through methadone and marriage, all that
asslicking interspersed with asskicking
all those pragmatic family skills we share mean nothing
measured against the little difference
of who and what I am.

My little sister too
is one of the women who hate me.

5

I measure it differently, what's shared,
what's denied, what no one wants recognized.
my first lover's skill at mystery,
how one day she was there, the next gone;
the woman with whom I lived for eight years
but slept with less than one;
the lover who tied me to the foot of her bed
when I didn't really want that
but didn't really know
what else I could get.

What else can I get?
Must I rewrite my life
edit it down to a parable where everything
turns out for the best?

But then what would I do with the lovers
too powerful to disappear, the women
too hard to melt to soft stuff?
Now that I know that soft stuff
was never where I wanted to put my hand.

6

The women who hate me
hate too my older sister
with her many children, her weakness for
good whiskey, country music, bad men.
She says the thing "women's lib" has given her
is a sense she don't have to stay too long
though she does
still she does
much too long.

7

I am not sure anymore of the difference.
I do not believe anymore in the natural superiority
of the lesbian, the difference between my sisters and me.

Fact is, for all I tell my sisters
I turned out terrific at it myself:
sucking cunt, stroking ego, provoking
manipulating, comforting and keeping.
Plotting my life around mothering
other women's desperation
the way my sisters
build their lives
around their men.
Til I found myself sitting at the kitchen table
shattered glass, blood in my lap and her
the good one with her stern insistence
just stanidng there wanting me
to explain it to her, save her from being
alone with herself.

Or the other one
another baby-butch wounded girl
How can any of us forget how wounded
any of us have to be to get that hard?
Never to forget that working class says nothing
does not say who she was how she was
fucking me helpless. Her hand on my arm
raising lust to my throat, that lust
everyone says does not happen
through it goes on happening
all the time.

How can I speak of her, us together?
Her touch drawing heat from my crotch to my face
her face, terrifying, wonderful.
My saying, "Yeah, goddamn it, yeah,
put it to me, ease me, fuck me, anything..."
til the one thinkg I refused
then back up against a wall
her rage ugly in the muscles of her neck
her fist swinging up to make a wind,
a wind blowing back to my mama's cheek
past my stepfather's arm

I ask myself over and over how I
came to be standing in such a wind?
How I came to be held up like my mama
with my jeans, my shoes locked in a drawer
and the woman I loved breathing on me
"You bitch. You damned fool."

"You want to try it?"
"You want to walk to Brooklyn
barefooted?"
"You want to try it
mothernaked?"

Which meant, of course, I had to decide
how naked I was willing to go where.

Do I forget all that?
Deny all that?
Pretend I am not
my mama's daughter
my sisters' mirror.
Pretend I have not
at least as much lust
in my life as pain?

Where then will I find the country
where women never wrong women
where we will sit knee to knee
finally listening
to the whole
naked truth
of our lives?

what does YOUR birthdate mean?

so i found this neat little website from a random blog that i visited...i thought it was kind of nifty. here is what my birthdate means:

Your Birthdate: January 22

You tend to be understated and under appreciated. You have a hidden force to do amazing things, doing them your own way. People may see you as strange and shy, but they know little. Your unconventional ways have more power than they (and even you) know. Your strength: Standing up for what you know is true Your weakness: You tend to be picky and rigid Your power color: Silver Your power symbol: Square Your power month: April

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

here's the link in case you're interested

http://www.blogthings.com/whatdoesyourbirthdatemeanquiz/

love is a dangerous angel

so, i am in this adolescent lit class this summer and i have to write a paper and, even more so than usual, i don't know what i'm going to write about and i have to decide quickly because it is a summer class after all so the paper is due really soon and, to put it very mildly, i'm at a loss.
luckily my instructor for this class is not only a brilliant children's lit scholar but an equally superb teacher. she recommended that i read some of the books in a series called the weetzie bat books by francesca lia block. the first one that i read was the first one in the series entitled weetzie bat
it's a fairy tale, its wonderful, its profound and i wish that i had something like this to read when i was an adolescent. anyway here is weetzie's take on love:

Weetzie's heart felt so full with love, so full, as if it could hardly fit in her chest. She knew they were all afraid. But love and disease are both like electricity, Weetzie thought. They are always there--you can't see or smell or hear, touch, or taste them, but you know they are there like a current in the air. We can choose, Weetzie thought, we can choose to plug into the love current instead. And she looked around the table at Dirk and Duck and My Secret Agent Lover Man and Cherokee and Witch Baby--all of them lit up and golden like a wreath of lights.
I don't know about happily ever after....but i know about happily, Weetzie Bat thought.


i was so overwhelmed when i read this. this short book is like one long sigh.
for anyone who is reading this and knows this book all i have to say is that buddy was my duck, i let him go and some part of me is always sad about that, always mourning. that's probably why i haven't found another duck.

oh, and dev---in the above quote that says "love and disease are both like electricity" i thought of your paper and of the work you are doing with shelley's Frankenstein

a recapitulation of father's day...

so here's how father's day sounded like. i called my parent's house on sunday to actually talk to my mom and inquire about how my father's "special day" unfolded as well as to make sure that my card arrived on time. you may be wondering why i would talk to my mother rather than my father. well, my father has hardly any hearing whatsoever and so he doesn't like to answer the phone. however, he does have hearing aids that work just fine only one of them is broken so he's waiting on the va benefit to repair it (hopefully that will take place before 2015) or get him new ones...i can't remember. anywho, i call and my father answers the phone and it goes something like this:

"HELLO? HELLO?"
"HEY DAD, IT'S ME!!"
"HELLO? HELLO"
"IT'S ME, DAD...DAD IT'S YOUR YOUNGEST CHILD"
"HELLO?" (indistinct mumbling away from the phone)"HELLO?" (mumbles away from the phone again saying something to the effect that he thinks someone's on the other end of the line but he can't find the volume control on his end)
"DAD, IT'S ME!!!!! DON'T HANG (click) up"

so i call back again (praying to whatever higher power there is to place my mother at the receiver)

"HELLO? HELLO?"
(damn, i say to myself) "DAD, IT'S ME!!"
"HEY, WHAT CHA DOING BOY?"
"I'M CALLING TO SEE HOW YOUR DAY IS GOING"
"RAINING...NO WE HAVEN'T GOT ANY RAIN YET"
"IS MOM AROUND?"
"YOUR MOTHER? YEAH, SHE'S RIGHT HERE...SHE'S BEEN SICK THOUGH...I'LL LET YOU TALK TO HER."

(thank you higher being)

"hey ma, you're sick?"
"yea, i don't know what i have but i feel terrible"
"can you tell me what's been going on?"
"well, my body hurts, i haven't been able to eat, and i just broke a fever"
"sounds like the flu to me"
"you think?, i haven't been around anybody with the flu"
"i don't think that you have to be around anybody mom, because you can pick up all sorts of stuff"
"well, i'm fixing myself some tea...i'm feeling a little bit better"
"good, you should probably try an eat some toast or something"
"well, i sent your father to walgreen's to get some pediasure to drink. i even wrote down the name for him but he came back with pepcid instead. i swear he's been bitchin about taking care of me" (i know my mother is sick because she doesn't really cuss)
"well tell him to suck it up"
"yeah, i think i will. listen honey, i better let you go, i am still really tired"
"ok ma, tell dad that i hope he had a nice father's day"
"oh, he did, he went over to your sister's house for lunch. he also got your card."

(thank you again higher power)

"great, well get some rest and i will check up on you tomorrow"
"ok honey, love you"
"love you too, talk to you later"


TADA!!!!!
welcome to my crazy family
i love them so much

poem of the week because it has been one of those days

really crappy day today and i don't know why, exactly. however, this poem by thom gunn made me giggle...sometimes a giggle is all you need....







Thom Gunn

Courage, A Tale
by Thom Gunn

There was a Child
who heard from another Child
that if you masturbate 100 times
it kills you.

This gave him pause;
he certainly slowed down quite a bit
and also
kept count.

But, till number 80,
was relatively loose about it.
There did seem plenty of time left.

The next 18
were reserved for celebrations,
like the banquet room in a hotel.

The 99th time
was simply unavoidable.

Weeks passed.

And then he thought
Fuck it
it's worth dying for,

and half an hour later
the score rose from 99 to 105.

a pattern of this blog...very floral

a cool site you should check it out

http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/

poem for the week: the difference between poetry and rhetoric

Audre Lorde


Power
by Audre Lorde

The difference between poetry and rhetoric
is being
ready to kill
yourself
instead of your children.

I am trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds
and a dead child dragging his shattered black
face off the edge of my sleep
blood from his punctured cheeks and shoulders
is the only liquid for miles and my stomach
churns at the imagined taste while my mouth splits into dry lips
without loyalty or reason
thirsting for the wetness of his blood
as it sinks into the whiteness
of the desert where I am lost
without imagery of magic
trying to make power out of hatred and destruction
trying to heal my dying son with kisses
only the sun will bleach his bones quicker.

The policeman who shot down a 10-year-old in Queens
stood over the boy with his cop shoes in childish blood
and a voice said “Die you little motherfucker” and
there are tapes to prove that. At his trial
this policeman said in his own defense
“I didn't notice the size or nothing else
only the color.” and
there are tapes to prove that, too.

Today that 37-year-old white man with 13 years of police forcing
has been set free
by 11 white men who said they were satisfied
justice had been done
and one black woman who said
“They convinced me” meaning
they dragged her 4'10” black woman's frame
over the hot coals of four centuries of white male approval
until she let go the first real power she ever had
and line her own womb with cement
to make a graveyard for our children.

I have not been able to touch the destruction within me.
But unless I learn to use
the difference between poetry and rhetoric
my power too will run corrupt as poisonous mold
or lie limps and useless as an unconnected wire
and one day I will take my teenaged plug
and connect it to the nearest socket
raping an 85-year-old white woman
who is somebody's mother
and as I beat her senseless and set a torch to her bed
a greek chorus will be singing in ¾ time
“Poor thing. She never hurt a soul. What beasts they are.”

doors

"Always in the long corridors of the psyche
doors are opening and doors are slamming shut"

Marge Piercy from "Song of the Fucked Duck"



friday evening i was hungry and restless with worry. i was caught between my desire to leave because of hunger and my longing to stay where i was...because of this same hunger. i went out...the desire fueled by my hunger won...trumped, as it were, the excuses to stay put...to eat the words of the book that i was reading at that moment. actually, both desires drew a compromise that involved take-out.
waiting, waiting for my food i noticed a woman sitting in a dark corner of the restaurant. i know this woman, not by name but by recognition. she walks. she walks around town most of the time. i have only ever seen her walking so it took me a while to place her in the restaurant because she was sitting.
i heard her get up. i heard her ask the server about time: she wanted to know what time darkness settles in. i tried to answer the question in my mind...to myself and i didn't even know the answer. the server told her something...i think she said 8 but i'm not sure, i was still calculating. what time does it get dark?
my food came up...handed to me in styrofoam and plastic. i paid. i turned to leave and the unfamiliar-now-familiar woman was standing next to me. she knew me. she has seen me around with other people that she's noticed before. i was familiar to her. she wanted to know something so she asked me a question...a question that i could not answer for her...a question that required walking...perhaps even walking in circles. she thanked me for my time. she said goodbye. i went to my car, with very heavy feet and my plastic bag of food, cell phone, and cigs absurdly hanging off of my body--useless ornaments, swinging. she kept walking, the other way. i felt like saying goodbye and i also wanted to tell her that i understood. goodbye is easier but the other understanding is beyond words...it only recognizes.
some say that this woman is a poet...a remarkable poet, a tragic poet. i say that she is a walking poet. others say that she has a psychiatric condition...i say that that assumption is relative...it depends on who is doing the diagnosing and it's usually a doctor who is sitting down in their own dark corner of some dingy restaurant, and who has no idea...no idea at all.
i heard the other day that dreams about houses are pictures of the psyche...i believe that because i believe in basements. i also believe in basements under basements as well. you are in your house you walk downstairs and you realize that the stairs stop. the room under the house is dark, a little cool and there are no windows. most don't see the elevator that leads to a deeper room, cooler and darker. some do...i did (or, rather, still do) but even if they do get further than most and ride the elevator down...still most don't see the door in this basement's basement. it beckons anyway. in a certain kind of silence, you can hear it...like the gentle static sound of snow falling. not only have i seen it, i have had my hand on the doorknob a couple of times, i have even turned it. something tells me, however, that once it is opened and i walk through there is no coming back. the inside of that door has no knob.
so i know the temptation. i know what the walking means. i know this woman and she is brave, to walk between two worlds and yet be unable to distinguish between the two. to only be recognized by the vision of others who have either been at the door or have themselves trampled through. walking makes it better. it eases the pain of the door with no knob slamming shut.

poem of the week

dev used a rilke poem on her blog a couple of weeks ago...mediocrity follows greatness so here's my rilke poem

"I Live My Life"

I live my life in growing orbits,
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years.
And I still don't know if I am a falcon,
Or a storm, or a great song.

--Rainer Maria Rilke
from _Book for the Hours of Prayer_
trans. Robert Bly

meme

i found this on dev's blog:


Pick a quote of one or more paragraphs from something you've read, in print, over the course of the past week. (It should be something you've actually read, and not something that you've read a page of just in order to be able to post your favorite quote.)
2. Avoid commentary beyond a couple sentences, create a context or caption for the text rather than a discussion.
3. Quoting a passage doesn't entail endorsement of what's said in it. You may agree or you may not. Whether you do isn't really the point of the exercise anyway.

i just reread toni morrison's Beloved this week for the umpteenth time and here is my selection. given number 2's directive this is beyond any context or commentary that i could give...it points to a place beyond language really. This passage is on pages 322-3 in the new edition of the text.


"There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up; holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind--wrapped tight like skin. Then there is a loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive, on its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.

Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don't know her name? Although she has claim, she is not claimed. In the place where long grass opens, the girl who waited to be loved and cry shame erupts into her separated parts, to make it easy for the chewing laughter to swallow her all away.

It was not a story to pass on.

They forgot her like a bad dream. After they made up their tales, shaped and decorated them, those that saw her that day on the porch quickly and diliberately forgot her. It took longer for those who had spoken to her, lived with her fallen in love with her, to forget, until they realized they couldn't remember or repeat a single thing she said, and began to believe that, other than what they themselves were thinking, she hadn't said anything at all. So, in the end they forgot her too. Remembering seemed unwise. They never knew where or why she crouched, or whose was the underwater face she needed like that. Where the memory of the smile under her chin might have been and was not, a latch latched and lichen attached its apple-green bloom to the metal. What made her think her fingernails could open locks the rain rained on?

It was not a story to pass on.

So they forgot her. Like an unpleasant dream during a troubling sleep. Occasionally, however, the rustle of a skirt hushes when they wake, and the knuckles brushing a cheek in sleep seem to belong to the sleeper. Sometimes the photograph of a close friend or relative--looked at too long--shifts, and something more familiar than the dear face itself moves there. They can touch it if they like, but don't, because they know things will never be the same if they do.

This is not a story to pass on.

Down by the stream in back of 124 her footprints come and go, come and go. They are so familiar. Should a child, an adult place his feet in them, they will fit. Take them out and they disappear again as though nobody ever walked there.
By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footprints but the water too and what it is down there. The rest is weather. Not the breath of the disremembered and unaccounted for, but wind in the eaves, or spring ice thawing too quickly. Just weather. Certainly no clamor for a kiss.

Beloved."

a ramble

well, i hardly write anything personal on this blog. many reasons and a lot of excuses keep the words muted like a degas chalk drawing. i guess that it all has to do with light and seeing. i remember when i was visiting the d'orsey (spelling?) in paris and the museum had the degas chalk drawings in a special room with special lighting because regular light faded the colors...would keep them quiet or silence them altogether. that's what i am tentative about with personal writing...the light will fade them after being extracted from the blunted or muted and darkly comfortable recesses of my mind....taking these long narratives from one type of silence and giving them voice. however in this process i am not only letting them become exposed to the open air and to song but also risking voice and word to a violent erosion...of being muted again with another type of silence that accentuates itself with shame.

yesterday, i received an e-mail from a former mentor of mine. this mentor has now retired, lives in seattle and is taking art lessons. i am extremely happy for this person but i am also somewhat distressed as well. how can one retire from what we do? i am plagued by my thoughts and now i feel a bit more lonely in the world because this was not only a mentor but an ally. maybe it has been all of the changes within my life that have occurred in this past semester that have exacerbated this "mood" (for lack of a better term)or maybe it's just change in general...mine and others. being left with my thoughts yesterday was extremely painful and not to mention discursive. i thought to myself "i'll go for a drive....maybe get something to eat even though i am not hungry." i drove not unlike one of my infamous run on sentences...thinking and driving...pulling out into the air the conversation that i had milling and coiling around in my brain. i drove for over twenty miles around bloomington and normal...wide circles, concentric and fluid...no sense of direction except the motion of inside to outside and back again blurring the boundary of that stupid binary until i couldn't tell the difference. "how does one retire?" "how does one say this is enough and i don't want to do it anymore?"

video + image + song=amazing

i found a link to a video of sia's song "breathe me" and it's quite amazing. check it out
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8KO18daM89I&search=Sia%20Breathe%20Me

end of the semester musings and reflections

well, since i have "all of this time on my hands" before summer classes start i have been left alone with my thoughts. as an aquarian, and dev can proabably attest to this, being alone with one's thoughts can either be a good thing or a discursively circular thing.
i have been thinking about loss lately...loss and potential loss...maybe because i watched a six feet under marathon...maybe because i am always thinking about change and waiting for the other shoe to drop (and not necessarily in an overly dramatic way either). regardless, i tend to read in order to get away from myself which i should know by now doesn't actually do that but the opposite...nevertheless i forge onward. i picked up the 5th harry potter book again and started reading...i came across an exchange between harry and luna lovegood that stimulated my analytical processes to start turning...not to mention a familiar sadness. now for those of you who are not familiar with the characters, luna is somewhat of a strange bird...queer if you will. however, in her exchange with harry she describes to him the meaning of loss and recovery that i thought was extremely profound...i know how luna feels and i think that she describes life from a queer perspective that confounds the borders of marginal and normative bodies to be insightful and, forgive the word, "true."

"[Harry] turned the corner toward the Fat Lady's corridor when he saw somebody up ahead fastening a note to a board on the wall. A second glance showed him it was Luna. There were no good hiding places nearby, she was bound to have heard his footsteps, and in any case, Harry could hardly muster the energy to avoid anyone at the moment.

'Hello,' said Luna vaguely, glancing around at him as she stepped back from the notice.
'How come you're not at the feast?' Harry asked.
'Well, I've lost most of my possessions,' said luna serenely. 'People take them and hide them, you know. But as it's the last night, I really do need them back, so I've been putting up signs.'
She gestured toward the notice board, upon which, sure enough, she had pinned a list of all her missing books and clothes, with a plea for their return.

[....]

'How come people hide your stuff?' he asked her, frowning.
'Oh...well...'She shrugged. 'I think they think I'm a bit odd, you know. Some people call me Loony Lovegood, actually.'

Harry looked at her and the new feeling of pity intensified rather painfully.

'That's no reason for them to take your things,' he said flatly.
'D'you want help finding them?'
'Oh no,' she said, smiling at him. 'They'll come back, they always do in the end. It was just that I wanted to pack tonight.'

[....]

'Are you sure you don't want me to help you look for your stuff?" he said.
'Oh no,' said Luna. 'No, I think I'll just go down and have some pudding and wait for it all to turn up...It always does in the end.
...Well have a nice holiday, Harry.'
Yeah...yeah, you too.'

She walked away from him, and as he watched her go, he found that the terrible weight in his stomach seemed to have lessened slightly." (862-4)

Loss and issues of queerness and it's implications to (hetero)normativity are really resonating with me right now. One could argue that this is a textual example of either melancholia or perhaps the work of grief and mourning. I tend to move toward the concept of "working through" (ala Kelly Oliver in her book _Witnessing_) that attaches itself to a processes of grief. Is it the lost object or something else that we are mourning? If the object actually comes back the mourning could start to begin its work. However, what if the object never comes back? Does it necessarily mean melancholia? Is melancholia always a negative thing?
Like i said before...i have too much time on my hands right now.