Happy 12th Birthday Miss Olivia Grace---you are amazing. 

Bzzzzzzzzzzzz

Isabel’s teacher told the class that they weren’t to come to school if they were sick thus keeping the germs at a minimum, as a teacher I understand this but as a mother of a drama queen it has been two weeks of various illnesses. Tonight in the bath tub was the best--- Mama, I can’t go to school tomorrow because I was stung by a bee.

Please note the four feet of snow.

When my I was in Maine this last visit my grandfather gave me a photo of my grandmother, it was faded and yellow from sitting in their window for over thirty years. In the picture my grandmother is in Egypt riding a camel. As a child I would carry this photo with me to bed, b/c it was a CAMEL and my grandmother. We had no zoos in Maine just cows ;) I believed my grandmother was the bravest person alive for this one act and I remember telling her so. I also remember her telling me, how frighten she was, how high up it was, the man dropping the rope, hitting the camel’s ass and leaving her on her own. She didn’t get anywhere fast, she didn’t know what she was doing.

My grandmother was my age when her 8 year old was hit by a car and killed. She was also pregnant at the time and trauma caused her to loose her other baby daughter. When I grew, I always wanted to talk to her about these events b/c they were tragic, somehow a part of my history and I loved stories. I remember asking her about how she could live, why she just didn’t wither and die; she told me air continued to go into her lungs, air continued to leave---you breathe.

I understand. Truth: I love well and I don’t. I am a woman with things I can’t change and things I can. I was/am broken, I jumped, I shattered. I made different choices and I tried to start again. Another fact: I am a thirty-eight year old woman with two children and I’m a gay writer. I haven’t turned into anything anyone expected me to be—I am continuing to change. I don’t fit in a box but I can be labeled. But it is not all of who I am.

When I left my husband, told my family everything; my grandfather said, but you were her favorite. I understand. I have come too far to be afraid, too stay little. I have come too far to be defined. I have a nest of my own making. I am done hiding. I am done letting others determine my own truth.

Now I can begin.

 
I understand that when you move you should not buy things. I also understand, a photo taken by M does not show off the total possibility of the boots, that the boots themselves are a much, much deeper purple. Plus they are suede so they feel good. I also understand at 38, I should not, maybe be buying boots my children covet, then tell me NOT to wear to school to pick them up.

But one should note, at my book signing I’m wearing the damn boots. 

my beautiful new/old house

  

There are some people you cannot put in boxes: Celan, Rukeyser, Sexton; if I put them in boxes I might not hear them. If I put them in boxes they might say something I've missed so I am left packing the people I do not know, people I have not listened to, people I feel guilty about owning but not opening---these are the writers I move.

It is possible I can spend the next ten months inside my new/old house and barely catch up with everything. It’s possible I could take the money I have, move to Costa Rica with my daughters and never be heard from again. Anything is possible.

My best friend told me this week you are finding yourself, you are not suppose to know anything. No darling, I’ve been here all along—this is exactly what I know. I am the same person, my shell has extended but I am the same. Why is it, when you are open to the best and worst of who you are, people claim you are finding yourself? I was never lost.

This is your worst fear and I don’t know how to stop questioning, I can’t stop questioning and I don’t know how to be satisfied but I do think that is different from not knowing how to be loved. I was never lost. I am a lifter of stones---you hold them in them your mouth.

I am her.

Whichever stone you lift--
you lay bare those who need the protection of stones.
It’s not a matter of light but vulnerability.

Whenever you take into your hand
the half formed, the amphibian fish; fin legs, pin heart.
You must understand the drive to scatter.

A stone with its own moon does not remember
nor does it need to control the tide.
Darkness by her very nature is lax.

Do not expect more— yet within your own nature
is the exact opposite wonder, to uncover
what has no desire for light.

Isabel for President…

Teresa's battle with the molded C-Cup

I am buying a new swimsuit. I’m a Speedo lap girl and it should be noted here, I don’t mean that at all sexually. I have spent days looking for a swimsuit, my old one has holes in the belly from where I slid down the water slide illegally.

The reason it has taken so long to buy this one item, b/c now they are putting things in my perfect swimsuit, like aquatic molded bras, soft cups and seamless entries. What the hell. I have spent three days on line at every swim store on the internet (besides we all know, there are no seamless entries;)

First of all, I like my unmolded breasts, thank you very much! And please tell me why they don’t build little plastic penis holders into male bathing suits??? Because there would be A REVOLT, that’s why. All the speedo men would stand up (I mean that literally) and say, how the fluck are we suppose to swim in this? Ever try doing laps in a molded cup? Think floatation, think physics.

Besides I’ve been a woman for 38 years and I have NO idea what aquatic molding is or even a shelf bra. Now, if they would just simply say, this suit will cover your ass and occasionally show your nipples—I’d be all over it.

Till then people I’m swimmin’ naked! You've been warned.

What's really good about the word 'art' is that 'art' is a word
like 'love,' or 'god,' or whatever. It transcends so many things.
::: Tracey Emin :::

I miss myself. I miss the self I am, when I’m with you.

I am re-reading Charles Simic’s “The World Doesn’t End.” I have about fifty books on my bookshelf I haven’t read. I have some books, people would pay me to read, and write a review about but no, I’m reading Simic b/c he is calm and beautiful. I bet he is not in the process of moving. I bet he doesn’t wear purple suede boots, though one never knows. I want to think of him, washing vegetables in his sink, writing a poem by an open window. Charles makes me calm. I’m taking him to bed.

I have a couple readings coming up. I have a couple of grants due. I think Carolyn is getting back to me about the book this week but it’s feeling almost done again. I am half way done the manuscript I am working on of short stories. I am a third of the way done the prose poem manuscript. I need more life or less life and more windows and vegetables. I need you.

Last night I dreamt I was on the TV show 7th Heaven (it is like a modern day Walton’s) and Lucy sat me down in her Minster chair and told me everything was going to be alright, I didn’t need to worry about anything. I never dream I’m on TV shows—this definitely means I am not reading enough.

I want everything to be alright. I’m not sure I know exactly what that means. When I was a grief counselor I told people all the time they got to feel what they felt, not to rush themselves. When Evan’s dad was killed in a car crash, years later after I stopped grief counseling, when he came to my art class and told me all the ants in my room didn’t have daddies, I spent hours finding each one, building them a city out of plexiglass. I told him they were safe and each class we would watch them grow and build, make tunnels in the sand.

I know where all the ants live.

The writing gods are taking care of me. Maybe because I say every day, I miss you—I miss who I am with you and I do. Yesterday, I received this email about being part of a writing project about feminism. Each writer gets to pick a photo and write about what feminism means to them, which is basically a fancy way to say what does it mean to be a woman? It is goes into this really cool anthology and website.

I realized after I said yes, that I have absolutely NO idea what it means to be a feminist-- then I started writing about 15 different things in my head. Isn’t it exciting Liz said, at the absolute scariest time of your life, when you are learning to do everything on your own, someone asks you this question?

Sometimes I want to kick Liz very hard.

  

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): What's the best way to defeat a dragon? Some fairy tales propose the use of brute force, while others suggest that the protection of a magical amulet is preferable. Still other myths say the optimum strategy is to use stealth to avoid the dragon completely, though that usually means living in constant fear of the beast. From what I can tell, Leo, your future happiness will be best served if you use none of the above, but instead employ one of the two little-known methods of dragon-taming: either ask it sly riddles to confuse it or else pacify it through the entertaining power of your songs and dances.

First you begin with the body, the memory of the body,
you unfold it like paper, the crease
between thumb and finger, you say
here is her arm, leg. You open your mouth,
the nest where you have placed your tongue.
Remember, it is impossible to remember
without reflection so you go to the water.
Here is the water. You take her
eyes beneath glass, beneath mirrors—
chrysanthemums under sky, underwater.

our wonderful spring morning

  

I haven't even hit "Ballard's secret stash"

Okay here are words you never thought you’d hear me say but I am selling my books and considering I have a bigger selection of poetry than both Twin Cities Barnes and Noble combined---good news for you, bad news for me. It has taken me a bit but I have figured out there are things I want more than books. I know, you never thought you’d hear me say that either.

Anyway I have a collection of New Yorkers that are the same weight as a three year old child—anyone who wants some of these or the whole baby can email me and then they only have to pay media rate. I only read the three poems most of the time then I moved on, so the fiction and cartoon sections are virginal.

Books are five dollar each and this includes postage: I have one collection of Leaves of Grass. I have all Anis Nin, Behind the Mountain by Edwidge Danticat, and Stop Walking on Eggshells by Mason (it is a therapy book about dealing with people with personality disorders.) Introduction to the Cabala, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, several issues of the Comstock Review, Poetry, Frommers Guide to Jamaica, Dream Me Home Safely a collection about writers growing up in America and Girl Saints by some guy I cant find right now, who should not have been writing about girl saints. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, South of Reason by Cindy Epper. Hardcover, That Old Ace in The Hole by Annie Proulx.

This list will grow. Check back. I have eight boxes packed. I am making my way home.

Addendum: I sold the first edition Leaves of Grass. Currently, I am selling an eight yr old who will not take a bath or brush her teeth. Photo posted above—she does not actually shovel snow, she moves it around then wants money.

I am up early. Last night there was 6 inches of snow, lightening then fog. It was one of those nights where you thought the end of the world may be coming but it was just a storm. Now everything is white, everything is covered.

The girls are knit together in the same bed---they look like a Renoir painting with their hair falling over the pillow, the flowers on their pajamas blooming on their fair skin. It is simple really, when you look at your children sleeping, the whole world is simple.

Olivia has a new boyfriend who gives her rocks. She had another boyfriend two weeks ago, her first. She asked me what it meant, to be someone’s girlfriend, nothing felt different inside her, she said. The only difference seemed to be on the outside, she would walk down the hall and people would say, “there’s Brett’s girl.”

I resisted the feminist urge to claim she belonged to no one but herself. I resisted the urge to rise up b/c sometimes when you do that, with your children there is no room for them to stand. Pay attention to how it feels, know yourself when are with each person and note the difference These are things I tell her, be aware of who you are.

I love to watch her practice. I love to watch my daughters practice the art of living. I tell my child empowerment groups all the time, everyone teaches you how to tie your shoe but few people let you learn how to love. We are all learning. It is the art of practice.

By the waters of Buda
Uncomb and unlock then,
Abandon and nevermore cherish
Queer lips, queer heart, hands.
There to futurity leave
The luckier lover who’s waiting,
As, like a spring coiled up,
In the bones of Adam, lay Eve.

~Lawerence Durrel: Cities, Plains and People

Lisa said tonight that the most dangerous thing is to ask the universe how to love, to open yourself up to that teaching: Teresa find the moment that is most solid in your day, find the least, embrace one, let go of the other. It is like the game I play with the girls, best and worst.

In my religion (that I am making up b/c of my horoscope) people question openly, each other, themselves. They find the strangest things holy: rocks, shells, the way light moves over a wall and how the people in the car traveling down the street, have no idea, no awareness that they are causing the light to move—for you to catch your breath; for you to claim this, the most solid moment of your day.

In my religion you can lay down the people you have carried, the things you believed you deserved, and your expectations for what is to come, because you don’t have to always be prepared, stretch your neck to see around the corner.

Here you understand sometimes what is needed comes like light. It exists whether you are in the room or not. Your only job is to be still, to open your eyes.

In the bones of Adam, lay Eve not b/c of gender, god or any of that mixed up crap people have fed each other for so long, but because simply, sometimes there are two who begin.

Favorite part of a cover letter that I've read tonight (yes I am actually doing submissions)

I am a mother of three and wife of one.

The poems would have been far more interesting if she was wife of six;)

what makes me a poetry god

I just bought 13 brand new books for under $30.00.

  

by ballard

  

Lucky

Yesterday I felt incredibly lucky that the model in figure class was male—I didn’t have to think. There is something about entering the body of the unfamiliar, of finding yourself there and putting it on paper. He also kept his eyes closed, he wasn’t comfortable. He wasn’t like the woman who sat for me last week who knew exactly who she was, who stared at me unflinching. Granted that type of model is easy, produces stronger work but yesterday I needed someone else. I needed to write in my head while I painted. It is not always like that.

My manuscript is off to Ireland this week. Carolyn Forche is taking it with her on a trip, the newest version. I expect ten pages of syntax. Somehow I see this as lucky, a part of me is going off to Ireland. List the places the book has been, the book that really isn’t a book: Russia, California, Arizona, Washington D.C., Delaware, and now Ireland. Not to mention the drafts which have hidden in my car, piano and under Bella’s bed b/c she needed drawing paper. It seems the book, which doesn’t have a home (publisher) seems to be a lot like me---she travels. She makes her home in the space allotted, continues on.

I know I should find this lucky. I do not yet, though I acknowledge that there may be a strength in it I don’t understand.

I am lucky to be up before the children, to have that feeling I may write again. After all the craziest has settled, the house, these things I have not dealt with, I will still be a writer. Liz says there’s wisdom in knowing your self as an artist, to know the strength of your work isn’t about timing or windows, winning awards. It is a foundation, you return to, a place to always build upon but I still believe-- there’s a bit of luck is involved.

house closing

I thought I would be in the circle drinking pink champagne but instead I was downstairs in the turret weeping for things I could not name.

Have you ever done the same thing twice? I mean not driven down the same street or kissed the same guy but something much larger. Tomorrow I am buying the same house twice. The first time I was 23, newly engaged. I remember not wanting my name on the mortgage because I had traveled the world, lived in Haiti. I remember not wanting to be tied down, to own anything.

Yet I loved this house. I found it one night driving alone, an old Victorian with a turret, three stories—too much house my mother would say. When I was a child, I pointed to old spooky mansions, told my friends, I lived there. I finally found my home. I never thought I would love anywhere so much. I never have.

My babies were born there. I have one crab apple, 5 rose bushes, three lilacs and a cherry tree. I had a Japanese maple but she didn’t survive my absence. I hid Easter eggs in her corners and found horse hair in her towers. My daughters played Rapunsel and I played Jane Eyre. It was the place where I found my greatest hurt, where I was the closest to giving up. It is also the place where I brought my greatest love, where I stood in the circle and felt whole.

It is the home I left with my girls, four year ago. I left to be free of something that I couldn't understand--it followed me. I have watched the house fall apart and be neglected. I have mourned her, my house. I have let go.

And like some things do, sometimes if they are great loves, when you let go—they return. They return stronger, deeper and in some ways more entact. I have had this happen. I have loved twice. Now I need to mark it---I need you to understand. It is not the same but now finally, I am ready to sign my name.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): This would be an excellent time for you to create your own personal religion, complete with rituals, prayers, and divinities that fit your precise needs. Feel free to borrow extensively from various spiritual traditions, of course, but make sure you give each belief or practice your own unique twist. And please include a few idiosyncratic touches that have never before been a part of any organized faith, like a holy day commemorating your first sexual experience or a sacred object obtained from a toy store or pawn shop or a rousing hymn adopted from an old Nirvana song.

now I want to be Bella

  

My blogging days are numbered. I close on the house this Friday and then begin the process of moving the girls and I in there before March 5th. Hold your breathe that everything goes well. I decided today I am tired of emotional growth. I just want to be babied and fed. Grown up life sucks!!!

58 days till May Day

  

The wonderful thing about teaching at the invention studio is that, the other teachers (all boys) think I’m actually doing them a favor by going to Ikea to pick up clocks for supplies. Oh those fools!!!

In the mail yesterday DIGERATI which was beautiful and so well made I want more. So far Peter Pereira’s poem Butterfly Bush was worth the price of admission but I have a weak spot for the word buddleia—I may have a slight bias. Look for work by Corral, Guest, Roripaugh, Robinson, Abramson and that Ballard girl.

It might even get me back into reading anthologies b/c it is set up in a way that the voices flow nicely together which is my main beef with most of them. It’s almost like hearing finger nails on the chalkboard---the new contemporize Russian poet collection was like that—I almost cried.

I am a girl who is bothered by font and order. Odd, I know.
So I am off to Ikea, where there is order and no books to confuse me.

good morning and look mom I'm getting published...

and here I am.

and herewith a seriously big head;)

aren't you glad they dont put photos in print journals

In 1958, when Publisher Rene Julliard saw the first verses in Minou's childish scrawl, he thought he had found a literary prodigy even greater than his last discovery. Minou Drouet appeared in Time as one of the greatest literary finds of our century. In the years that followed she was considered a fraud, because the person who wrote this amazing book of poetry (that I found in my used bookstore) was only eight years old.

I could write hundreds of paragraphs about how we view children in our society. How it is impossible now, for people like Beethoven to exist because we tell kids all time, the definition of art. We expose them to limitations. The highest point of creativity is five years old—when we return to that place, without judgment, we are truly free to explore.

Tree that I Love by Minou Drouet

Tree that I love,
tree in my likeness,
so heavy with music
under the wind’s fingers
that turn your pages
like a fairy tale,
tree
knowing like me
the voices of silence
that sways
the depth of your green locks
the quiver of your living hands
tree
that I love
my all alone
lost like me
lost in the sky
lost in the mud
lacquered in the dancing light
by the rain
tree
echo of wind’s grief
and birds’ joy
tree undressed by winter
for the first time I watch you.

Saturday was my magic day. I went into Bookhouse in Dinkytown which honestly is the GREATEST USED BOOKSTORE IN THE WHOLE WORLD and I found two of the best books of poetry I have bought it maybe six years (and I buy a hell of a lot of poetry.) And I am not just saying this b/c one is French and out of print but b/c honestly, the books are beautiful. Tomorrow if I can pull myself away I will post something from Drouet but for now I leave you with Adam by Lawrence Durrell.

I have nibbled the mystical fruit. Cover me.
Lest the prophetic fish follow and swallow me.
I dare not treat among the lilies
Though lambswool cover my footfall,
Though the adder call, the Word walk,
In the orchard voice follow, hands hallow me.

Thy will be done as it was in Eden.
We were a long time—I am afaird—
Naked among the silver fish and shadows,
A long time and in silence naked. Only
the foundations falling, the hornet’s drum
Calling, sunny and drunk with dew.

I am Adam, of singular manufacture,
A little clay, water, and prophetic breath;
On the waters of chaos a lamp of red clay.
The Word owns me. I have no armament
Only my fear of the walking Thing.

The rib follows me everywhere: and everywhere
A shadow follows the rib. Eve,
I am afaird. The Host walks and talks
In the baobab shade: the unknowable Thing
Is crossing the paths: the breath, woman,
Is on us: a white light: O cover me
From the unthinkable razor of thought
Whose whisper hangs over me.

Eve, we are in this thing to the very end,
You, your shadow, and shadowless Adam, I.
O rib and morsel of anguish, bone of contention,
After the thing has shone and gone,
After it enters the terrible wood,
We will win through, perhaps: cover us deep
Beyond clue with the leaves of the wood:
Be silent until in passes: and kiss me, kiss me.
Ah! but the apple, the apple was good!

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): "Human beings are often unable to receive because we do not know what to ask for," writes Malidoma Some in his book Of Water and the Spirit. "We sometimes can't get what we need because we do not know what we want." Your task in the coming week, Leo, is to make sure you don't fit his description. How? Devote yourself to the glorious quest of decoding your most fundamental riddle: What is it you want more than anything else? Once you know, take a pledge to put that desire at the center of your life.

I want my girls to grow up to be strong women. I would like to fall in love with someone who is amazing and stays amazing the whole time I love them. I want a house full of books. I want to write a house full of books. I want my garden back. I want lilacs. I want kindness. Laughter. I want my girls to trust easily, not enable anyone. I want less anger, rage. I want walks, rain and sometimes I want another child. I want art. I want to keep teaching children to be creative, receptive to this power. I want to be paid more for it. I want big grants. More holiness. I want an editor. I want a life of mango pancakes. I want to turn forty in Italy. Always have this love with my eyes open. I want to sleep under the stars more this summer than I ever have before. I want my daughters to see a whale. I want to return to Seal Island. I want to fly more. I want to keep painting. I want this move to go easily. I want a flat place to build. I want to find shells. Sit by the water till I understand. I want to meet Lucille Clifton. I want to write one poem as well as Paul Celan. I want to write one book I am completely happy with. I want you in the back yard. I want some of my innocence back. I want to be okay with this want I wear around my neck.

... 

My great Aunt Ethel is a 102 this month. She lives at home, she still remembers me. When I was little and my other great aunt was checking behind my ears, she was always asking me what was on my mind. She married once when she was twenty and he died a few years later. I don't how or why, I don’t even know his name. All my life she lived alone, traveled the world alone, brought me back crumpled money in an envelope.

I thought she was the bravest woman alive—not only could she put my grandfather in his place but she could ride a camel in Egypt. I come from strong stock, my father would tell me. You come from ocean women, you could live forever. Sometimes this is not a comfort. Sometimes I feel, I need a longer time to hear the lesson.

The human brain is an interesting landscape. My aunt can read anything; she will not know who you are, then if you give her a slip of paper, she will ask about your children, your divorce. She will asked about the weather in Minnesota, b/c that little slip of paper with your name, clicks something on which can not be turned on any other way.

Today I want to write TERESA---only my first name b/c my last name always confuses me. I have been given a few and I have chosen one--maybe I will write down all my names.

I want to sit in that space, next to someone who has lived, survived alone. I want to write it all down on piece of paper, all the questions I have. I want to listen, hold her hand—wait for her to speak.

I have not been writing. I feel incredibly open and vulnerable lately, almost as if have grown new skin. I am thinking of the birds again. How my teacher would show us to be still, with the seed out stretched in our hand, and if you could do this, hold yourself, they would come, their feathers brushing against your palm.

I always thought I was at good at it, even in the moment when they land, when you are filled with so much joy; you need to be quiet and not let that reaction of pulling back over take you.

Somehow I have become a flincher. I have grown from that girl to a woman who is scared at times when she is still, even when she knows what is offered to her is beautiful, expects nothing more than a place to land, in that initial landing I have no room to put my fear.

And maybe if I had always been a flincher this would not hurt so deeply, to be left with the seeds and the open hand. Yet I remember who I am. I know how to be quiet, to let myself be safe for another.

Birds remember, so if they are afraid, they land differently, waiting to escape. I keep telling myself, it is my new skin. A woman holds a bird differently than a child. She has more to loose if they do not want her, prepares for emptiness when they fly away. Fear is a reaction, it is not solid like love which requires no movement.

It is a slow task; I am teaching the woman the art of stillness---please do not fly away.

Time and Again

TIme and again, however well we know the landscape of love,
and the little church-yard with lamenting names,
and the frightfully silent ravine wherein all the others
end: time and again we go out two together,
under the old trees, lie down again and again
between the flowers, face to face with the sky.


Rainer Maria Rilke

luck

Sometimes a crumb falls
From the tables of joy,
Sometimes a bone
Is flung.
To some people
Love is given,
To others
Only heaven.


Langston Hughes

when pigs fly

Without an MFA or a published collection of poetry can I just pray that who ever is reading my National Endowment application has been drinking heavily?????

  

  

I’m in my second week of my figure drawing class, unfortunately I have misplaced the cord to my camera or I would show the results—sad as they are. I am not teaching the class, and being in an art class I’m not teaching is an odd experience for me, a good one but an odd one.

Question of the day: yesterday during preschool art, one I do indeed teach and do not just attend; Elliott said, I have a question for you Teresa, and then proceeded to ask, “Do you wear boxers or briefs?” It was one of the most delightful things anyone has asked me in ages.

Yesterday I got an email from Illya saying he has finished my book and he was either wonderfully kind or lied a lot. It made my day, week, month, year. He is such a brilliant writer…..now I must dutifully and once again go through the notes he has given me, Carolyn’s notes, Ballard’s notes.

Today when I drew this woman’s foot for forty minutes, I thought—this is useless, trying to make the perfect arch, to draw the light of the ankle, it is useless to begin again and again on blank sheet of paper. It is essential.

It is essential to understand something that needs no explanation---the manuscript is essential to me. It is my ankle on the page.

by any other name I would still know you....

 
 

Valentine Rehabilitation

I’m in a Valentine rehabilitation program. I have in the past hated this holiday, even when I was married, even when I was in love, my body spurns the traditional. I want to wear black and empty all the glitter shoe boxes –I know I need help.

Today I want to tell you that rose water is an antiseptic, it will cleanse the body of infection and if poured on an open wound it will hurt like hell. It other cultures, the bride is bathed in rose water for purity before her wedding night and rose quartz is one of the rarest of all stones. It is something I carry in my pocket until the day I am ready to give it away. Someday I think I might be; we will see how the rehabilitation goes.

Rose hip tea is good for blood sugar, and if you want your roses to bloom again you must cut them right below the bud line—at a slant. I have roses from my grandmother. I have roses that only grow by the sea but somehow they have forgiven me for planting them here.

I am putting rose water on my wrists today. I am forgiving myself for what I cannot control and letting go of what I need to. I hope you are doing the same.

Antilamentation by Dorianne Laux

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don't bother remembering
any of it. Let's stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

Reading Laux’s poem this morning in my email box, I thought of the questions I asked Dorianne and Joe when they were here two summers ago, question which seemed all wrong at the time: Tell me how you live with a poet? Tell me how you live with yourself as a poet?

I need to get on the bandwagon and start asking writers about rhythm and rhyme. I need to stop asking the universal questions on how to live. Somehow I'm sure that's not going to happen.

And for those of you who have a good narrative poem to send out—click here.

Happy 8th Birthday Bella

 
 

Bishop

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There’s a time when I step away from poetry b/c the world is so busy and then something brings me in, and it’s like being away from home for a very long time, then opening the door.

It was an amazing thing watching kids invent things today with pieces of string, some tin foil and building blocks. What is it? It is a water tower. It is a solar powered lawn mower.

Quin made me a watch. He said I should wear it when I want to look like one of those fancy people; put it on now he said, I think you need to be fancy. I do. I so need to be fancy and have a magic watch that runs by tin foil power.

Tomorrow, my friends and x-relatives are coming over to the house I use to live in when I was married. The two-hundred and forty year old Victorian Turret house that I love and have watched decay over the last three years; they are coming over b/c I am trying to get a loan to buy the other half of house that isn’t mine so the girls and I can move in. When I left I wanted my mental health and my children. Now I want more. I want my cherry tree, flowers, my grandmother’s roses and the lake across the street.

I am no longer a jumper…or I am now in truth, a recovering jumper. I want to be the kind of girl who looks where she is going. This time I will mark my way and make sure my steps are clear so where I am headed is really the place I want to go.

I have a watch---there is no way to be late.

come build with me

 
 

Sound of a thousand hammers....

Well if you hear the sound of a thousand hammers I will be the director today of “Kids Invent” sponsored by National Association of Women Builders. This means of course, there will be at least two hundred kids in a room, saws swinging, minds buzzing and to me, my friends this is heaven.

I love how they give them a bag of wood and a piece of tin foil and tell them invent an underwater breathing tank. This gets me more buzzed in creativity than any writing workshop—it is good Mojoe and I could use some. So you all go back to snuggling with your books and I’m going to go ride a bike with a saw attached…

yep that means I should move

Leo: You may not realize how significant a role that architecture plays in shaping your moods, ideas, and decisions. I'm here to remind you that it does. The quality of the indoor space you regularly inhabit deeply influences what goes on inside your mind and body. It's not just the structure of the buildings I'm talking about, of course, but also the decor, the furniture, the carpets, and the colors. In 2006, it will be important for you to become more aware of this fact, and to be aggressive about putting yourself into environments that bring out the best in you. As a gift to yourself, spend some time inside the most uplifting building you know.

Miss Olivia will be starring in an Opera tomorrow night that she and her friends wrote. She will be the chick with the drums!!! Come one, come all.  
 

why vincent didn't have children...

 
 

It's a beautiful morning here which considering it's almost February in Minnesota, is something of a miracle. Global warming seems to be working well for us.

My daughters were debating this morning over cheerios, my life goods—

Olivia: I get the piano when she dies.
Bella: Why do you get the piano?
Olivia: Because I PRACTICE!
Bella: Well, what do I get?
Olivia: What do you want?
(as if I am dead already and not sitting next to them, drinking coffee.)
Bella: I think I want ALL of mom’s wedding rings!!!

It should be noted here, that she said this in the plural form, and with great enthusiasm. With the belief that I somehow have the dating life of Elizabeth Taylor—as if, there’s a truck loaded with diamonds waiting to be distributed. And when I brought this up to them, they just rolled their eyes at me, continued on with their conversation.

Olivia: You could sell the rings and buy your own piano.
Bella: Maybe I could buy two.
Olivia: Don't sell them at a yard sale, that would hurt mom's feelings.
Bella: Or I could WEAR them all at the same time.
Olivia: Too heavy.
Bella: But it would be beautiful.

Lord, help me!!!!!!
Why doesn’t anyone want my books?

for Rebecca

The knife is an odd tool
so unlike the needle, sutured shut.
When my father opens the animal
there is no blood, the body is a war--
invaded it holds on to what it owns.
Now there's a river. If I stand on one foot
my shoe will be a map, if I close my eyes
I will not understand. My father claims
you must count as you go, the heart,
the liver, even the tongue
because the body lies quietly.
And if I tell you now
I am the girl and somehow
the animal, will you let me find my way?
Prints are easy to decipher.
It's the sum of what's been taken
which remains unclear.

 
 

The Little Prince

“What must I do, to tame you?” asked the little prince.

“You must be very patient,” replied the fox. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me—like that—in the grass, I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstanding. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day….”

 

Sentinel

I woke up today with this word. A Teresa word—there are words that I recognize as being part of my map. I understand I see sentinels everywhere, places I must past that are guarded, if I know the right word I may enter. How much of my life is based on knowing what to say?

Today b/c of google I learnt there’s an ancient sentinel in Iraq which American soldiers are guarding so it is not destroyed—men dressed in guns, standing around a stone when so many people are dying. What is the right word?

Today I know that sentinel mapping is a way of entering a woman’s breast so that a doctor may clear cancer from the lymph nodes, that a map may be drawn so something which seems so intimate, so connected can be an island.

I am going to stop looking for the right way. I do not want to believe in paths anymore, or houses, or gateways. Things I can do to make my life, journey, love, book better. I do not want believe that the world is guarded, if I miss chance I will never be allowed in. I am taking away the guns---there are tulips in his hands. 

Short fiction anyone???

click here...

Today I want to be a white violet or if I can’t be a violet, a glass of water and if I can’t be water, I’d rather be sleeping.

If one is talking about images, lasting images in art there has to be contrast. I was reading an article today about painting where the artist was stating that great art comes from composition. If you paint an orange on top of the bottle verses to the side, you get a very different feeling.

How do you enter the poem? In what angle do you see? If you're apply everything to painting, (and why the hell not) it matters where you put your orange. To me, a good poem can be read at any point and come back to its self. I can start in the middle, make the end the first verse and it still works.

I am queen at playing round robin with my book, which may be why I de bowel the damn manuscript more times then one would think possible. Because if you keep turning the painting or the mind’s eye, you are going to find the one place to enter no one has ever thought of before, and that my friends is art.
 
 

Today everything was beautiful. I was trapped in a painting on 38th street while driving home. I looked in the window and watched a father comb his daughter’s hair, her hips swaying to some unknown beat. Her brother had on these giant green foam hulk hands, swaying them in the air. They were all speaking really fast in Spanish and I stood there forever, trapped in the beauty of it.

Sometimes the world hurts. Sometimes I watch people and they are so loving and kind to each other, I want to trap them in a jar---see this is what it looks like. To love, to be loved. It is so simple really.
 
 

 
 

power of image

I find myself this morning thinking about the power of image in poetry. The things which last long after the poem ends, even years later when you cannot remember how it begins but somehow that image is still with you.

The last time I was home, my aunt told me I wrote a horrible poem which by the way, is a horrendous way to begin any conversation. She said that the poem I wrote about being a little girl in my father’s meat market, holding the bucket while he butchered the animals, always was with her. She said, every time she sees a steak, she is horrified.

Though it should be noted here, my Aunt Jan is a little wacked the fact is, opposing images have power. Marie Howe does this beautifully with a poem about her brother, how all his life he is afraid of losing his sight, how he points all the silver ware in the opposite direction, and you can see a little boy doing this, in your mind’s eye, you understand. Then there is this brilliant line “how it find us, the one thing we fear” and you are left with the image of a man in a doctor’s chair, having a needle placed in his eye.

I may not remember my name at 83 but I know I will always remember this line because that’s how powerful internal word is. It has the ability to build us up and place us in another body, to weave in and out of own similarities.

What are your images? What lines in poetry do you carry and what are the steaks you will not buy?

 
 

ring, ring....

If you want something literary go to Eduardo’s blog. He’s been posting great links lately, great places to submit. I’ve been following him around. If you are looking for something that has nothing to do with literature, keep reading.

I have a new phone. My old phone and I had an understanding. I treated it like crap and it still loved me. I washed it three times, once I caught it spinning around in the gentle cycle and saved it; another time it made it to the dryer. Last week I drove into my driveway and heard ringing UNDER the car. It was my phone—it found me. And of course because it has been loved well it cannot actually hold a charge for more than a few hours and as any good lover, dealing with charge and uncharged—I moved on.

My new phone and I, also have an understanding---its way too good for me. It can take my picture and simultaneously call itself. It has a mini computer which can down load my email. (I have no idea how to do this) and it can recognize my voice in a crowd. I don’t know about you, but something that can actually hear me in a crowd that A) I haven’t given birth to or B) slept with---scares the shit of me. Come to think of it, I slept with my X-husband and he still can’t hear me in a crowd!

I have no idea how to answer it. If I hide the phone in my purse it shuts itself off. I’m actually avoiding intimacy by placing it as far away from me as possible. I don’t trust myself. I am the washer, dryer girl. I know I cant live up to its expectations .

What I am reading today

New and Collected by Wistawa Szymborska

Death? It comes in your sleep,
exactly as it should.

When it comes, you’ll be dreaming
that you don’t need to breathe;
that breathless silence is
the music of the dark
and it’s part of the rhythm
to vanish like a spark.

 
 

God did teaching feel good today. After two weeks of not teaching kids I was ready to hunt them down in the grocery store. Do you want to draw with me little boy? (said in my evil deranged cookie voice.)

My ten hour day felt like an hour and a half. The thing about teaching a wide age range of kids is that sometimes you get the whole family, which is an incredibly cool thing. My classes at the community center go from preschool to junior high. I have students that can’t wait to turn three just so they can come and paint with me. Sadly, I think I'm one of the major toilet training rewards in South Minneapolis;)

Yesterday Alice turned three, yesterday Alice ran at me full force, threw her body against my knees and said, Weeza I’m here. Her sister Sarah, who is six and also my student told me, She’s been waiting her WHOLE life to do this.

What have you been waiting your whole life for?

My kids teach me how to love. Everyday they teach me how to create. Everything in my life is changing lately. Things are beginning and ending. I’m trying to work through all the legalities of custody with my girls. I’m trying to get all the financial crap that I didn’t deal with when I left my husband, out of the way. I’m trying to buy/sell a house. I am not good at any of these things. Okay, so I’m horrible.

But today I could teach. I could be in a room full of children and paint---
It was glorious.

I Am The One In Whose Mouth Is A Nest

And if you open your hands,
place them together as a cup, pour
your word like water into the hollow
of my own hand, which resemble more of a bowl.
If the shape of our want, forms the curve
rounded edge then darling, logic
is the spoon. Desire, a handle.