my fossil on the side of a mountain somewhere

 

She is the most amazing twelve year old on the whole planet and I had the best time camping. 

 

There are so many things we want to make beautiful, so many things we justify b/c we had no other way to go. Yesterday we went the wrong way; two other chaperones and myself; two other moms who left the campsite of 28 kids, who went looking for the fork in the road where the park ranger said we’d find fossils. Stay on the road and we didn’t, we tucked under the no trespassing sign, under the barb wire and the quarry was like something out of Tolkien so we kept going and b/c honestly, every mother gets tired of holding the line, there are days when we need to remember ourselves. Our young selves; our selves who can sneak and hide and meet after dark. I am a leader at this. I am a leader of sometimes teaching people how to do “the wrong thing” Because my friend, it sometimes tastes so good in the mouth, it is exactly what is needed.

I went camping with 28 kids this weekend. I slept in a puddle, I went thirteen miles underground in a cave. I hid in a bathroom and scared boys. I laughed more than I have in a year. I had a twelve year old put his arm around me and say, you are a horrible example and I like you soooooo much.

Turtle fornication makes me happy. It makes sense to me to swim around in a big blue world looking for love. It makes sense to have a shell to hide in on a bad day.

Saturn is still on my ass. All notes here will be laced with slight bitterness.

I enjoyed the children very much tonight until I tried to put them to bed, then they became horrid beasts.

My sink right now at the new/old house is on the front lawn. It is right next to the butterfly bush I planted for Dr. Peter. I wish there were butter sink flies.
A sink on front lawn does not bother the contractor, he seems happy to smoke in my house and throw sinks out the window. Tonight I saw him light a cigarette with a blow torch---I am taking up smoking for this reason alone.

Tonight I want to be Mina Loy, with long black gloves and an air of confidence. I want to have all my books written and not be at the mercy of printer who does not want to work for me. I want black gloves and a cigarette lit by a blow torch.
Or I want to be here, watching the turtles find their way. 

I planted heliotrope in the front yard b/c it smells beautiful and mixed with my moon flowers one can sit on the porch and believe the whole world is contained within one night.

I use to plant hard to grow plants b/c I was proving myself to myself when I was younger, now I am older and I want nothing but color. And smell; flowers as big as dinner plates and night flowers with blooms like moons.

Do you understand there are a hundred different ways to die in a garden?

I am quoting myself. If you want to read the poem, it is my pretend book which is in my pretend room, held by my pretend house. Jack did not build it. If Jack built it everything would be done by now, I would be moved and the boxes would be gone. You would say what a wonderful house Jack, what a wonderful life. 

 

Yesterday was a hard day; all day long it has felt like someone has drained my blood. Friday was full crying parents, sad kids and me, trying to be professional, trying not to be one of THOSE teachers who cries on her children’s heads while saying goodbye.

Tonight I am quiet. I am reading cummings and being quiet. I am hearing Walter Benton in my head—there is no music, there should be music. As a departing gift my students painted to Loudon’s beautiful sounds, it was amazing. She is amazing. Thank you my dear for such a gift.

I hope Sunday is a good day.

god I love this man

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
e.e. cummings

So Long.....

 

 

 

 

After reading several horoscopes about how June is going to be a bad month for me (and it is only the first) I’ve decided to fall off the face of the earth until after July.

One thing to say: Saturn get off my ass.

Tomorrow is a day I am dreading—I will turn in my keys at a school I’ve taught at for the last eight years. I will say goodbye to children I have known since they were three. I will close a part of my life that has known me married, separated, living with a partner, alone, single. It has known me. Certain days it has saved me. It is the longest job I have ever held.

I have said goodbye to so much, it cannot be named. This week when I transplanted some plants from the side garden I remembered “the trick.” When transplanting one must always take some of the old soil and sprinkle it in with the new. The plant will have less shock, it will remember the land from before and it will grow.

What do I bring with me? If I were to sprinkle you on the land, would you bloom there?
I don’t know how to transplant myself. I have given myself a new house, job, focus but I don’t know how to do with it less “shock”, less weeping.

rhyming poets and republicans

My dream today is that I am going to sell the children and go live in art communities all over the world. Great link here http://www.artistcommunities.org/writing.html

Today in my class we built a working city out of cardboard, we then painted art to go inside our cardboard houses. It was a blast. There’s a housing development outside of Porta Prince, Haiti made entirely of cardboard. I’ve been there and I have had dinner with grown people inside. It was not a blast. It was sad and not b/c they were poor people but b/c in this country, we view them as disposable people.

Who am I to talk---I am selling my children. Livi got a poem from a boy today in six colors: red, pink, yellow, green, blue and orange. “Your body is hot” is written in yellow. I am glad he avoided the obvious red. Thank god it didn’t rhyme. She is forbidden to date rhyming poets and republicans.

I know you are out there, you might be good people but my kid can’t date you.

there ya go honey

here

Random thoughts from Ballard

I am afraid I am missing Spring. I think it is possible to blink and wake up in August.

I have three more weeks of preschool classes and then I will no longer work at the center where I have taught for the last 8 years. I've had some of my students that long. I am sad.

I’ve spent so much time with grief the last year I feel like she owes me dinner. Happiness and peace are like new shoes which hurt my feet when I walk but I know they will get me there.

The book and I are almost done. I think after four years we understand each other. What have you done in four years? I have 50 pieces of myself that are as close to perfect as I can master. I am close.

Ancient mystics believe that to communicate with god one must begin with a sound. There are no silent religions. Chanting is merely breaking up the pattern of words. I sound far more mystical then I am---this morning I am going to Walmart to pick up flowers so that my new therapy groups can plant Spring in the clay pots they have made.

If we, as people stopped for one moment pretending to know what we wanted and were still, what would the universe look like?

I want cake for breakfast or chocolate croissants.

Billy says that we must create our “identity” as writers, our illusion as an author; that one sentence has fucked me up for a long time. I do not want an illusion. I don’t write to talk to you. I am speaking to the gods…not the pale boy kind but the gods who have six heads, the gods with breasts and puppies hanging from their teats. I am talking to their anger, fury, grief, joy. I am speaking into their sex and they are listening. I hear them.

But I still want cake.

why I love my nephews more than any other men in the world

here

sidenote: it takes forever to load but I almost peed my pants

vanity sidenote: they were nine and ten when I married their uncle and I am NOT that old.

Moon day

Truth: I find my self incredibly boring lately so I am not posting.

Today when we were ripping up the carpet at the new/old house Lisa said that every day of the week has a planet. You come on Neptune and leave on Moon day.

Tonight I am thinking how different light travels in the country, how so much of my childhood was spent watching headlights move through the night air. And how when I was five, standing on the side of the road holding my sister’s hand as my father crawled through the trunk for a jack, it seemed like the world wore two moons always moving towards me.

Another truth: my father had to crawl into the trunk b/c I had filled the locks with toothpicks so when the flat tire came, the locks were wooden jagged edges blooming under his flash light.

I was that kind of girl.

I am that kind of woman. What ever is the direct path I fill with something I which is hard to move—something I find beautiful.

I don’t want you to think you are the toothpick or the lock or the moon. You are there.
It is the traveling that’s important. And I don’t mean you, or you, I mean me. You may define who my people are, but you do not know who I mean, who I am talking to.

There is a girl waiting on the side of the road, she is holding on to her sister, she is holding on tightly b/c her father is angry, he is taking everything out of the car laying it down in patterns so when the light shines, the objects become planets on asphalt.

A mother is crying in the front seat b/c this is what she does when there is a flat tire or an angry man. This is how she travels. One girl is holding on, one girl is being held.

Sometimes I don’t know which one I am.

It was great sharing a birthday with you...

The great poet, Stanley Kunitz, died this Sunday morning in just spring surrounded by the love of friends and family. His particular light will continue to burn as long as poets wander the earth. He was 101 years old. 1905-2006

Joseph Stroud- Country of Light

I put the shell down and wait for the snail
to emerge. I have much to learn of patience.
I no longer wonder where did love go,
or why the nights are so long, Issa says
the words will find a way across the page,
they will make a path into morning.

 

I am alone in the house and it is completely quiet, can you hear it?

stars around the beautiful moon
hide back their luminous form
whenever all full she shines
on earth

silvery.

Sappho

I would write in Greek if my computer knew how. Parts of me are in grief and I rather be in Greek. As you age there is so much more to regret. I hate the bumper sticker that says “regret nothing”-- it is such bullshit.

Yesterday my x-husband called to tell me there was a raccoon INSIDE the new old house; I think I heard it the day before and thought it was a spirit.

I need to read more Sappho and less Celan. I need to stay away from Russian poets for at least one summer. I need to go camping and climb trees, wake up to the cold, write poems by the fire. I want to spend my Fridays at Al’s and Bookhouse.

Tomorrow I will be silvery.

 

drink coffee like a girl

I began the day with the printer going off by my head b/c my daughter was printing out her paper on “International Workers Day” and socialism at 6 a.m. I really need to stop sending them to leftist schools;)

It is not yet 10 am and I have already done two loads of laundry, packed lunches and walked to the coffee shop—not the close coffee shop but the one by the lake where you can get chocolate croissants and good French coffee that I drink like a girl. On Sunday I drove there, had croissants pulled from the oven, drove back to my house and tip toed back to bed to offer my gifts to my amazing one so now all food is a disappointment.

My friends keep asking me what I am doing, what I am writing and I have no answer except that I am living. I am in between two houses, two kids, three jobs and three unfinished books. The sign on my door says I Am Growing Into A Woman and the sign on my fridge says I Am The Master of Doing Things I Don’t Know How To Do Well.

If I was in charge of the calendar May would be the New Year, why begin when everything is frozen? Why not now when the earth rips herself open with the possibility of it. I am happy. I am loved. I am happy and in love and today I want to celebrate that those things are happening on deeper level than I ever thought attainable.

Happy International Workers Day. Happy New Year. Now go out eat chocolate and drink coffee like a girl.

Okay I want to go to this just to hear Laura Sims read....

 

In less than 48 hours I will be a giant purple giraffe for the Mayday Parade. Olivia will be a elephant with a drum and Bella will be a star girl on stilts. Mayday is high holiday in our house. There is something magical about it, the process of beginning, of coming together as a community, creating art; not because it needs to be created or there is a certain project or grant but b/c it can, because living creatively, celebrating this time we are given is constantly a choice.

 

April Twilights

Tonight this small volume of poems is comforting me. This small book, published in 1923 I found for five dollars yesterday in my favorite used bookstore and because it was old, yellow, because on page fifty three there's a postcard from the Crosby Hotel in New Mexico, I brought the book home. I brought the book home because it was her.

What is comforting is it could have been anyone, one reads the first page where Willa Cather thanks the editors who have published her poems and you know it is her first book b/c she thanks them in a way that is new and childlike. It brings me peace, that voice; the voice before it is a master’s voice before it Willa Cather’s voice telling us stories, it was a new voice.

I struggle so much to be a master, in so many things. Tonight I am reading a book before it is a book. I am looking at the way the poems shuffled and re shuffled themselves, how a woman began and I know this beginning. I am a master of this beginning, laying the manuscript out, telling it what I believe. Tonight it answers. Begin.

All books before they are books say one simple word.

A crow sat by window all day and watched me teach, I knew it was a bad sign.

I have nothing left to say. I have been emptied. Someone once said, I would never be satisfied and I looked it up tonight “convinced beyond all doubt.” Six months ago I would have agreed with this person about my need to push at everything, but now honestly in so many things I have been convinced beyond doubt.

I am believer. Deep down I have always been. Jeff said on Sunday that living a deep life, loving deeply is about walking away from the demons. We will always have voices which tell us lies, old roads and patterns to follow but we have the power to walk away. We have the power to believe.

Send in the crows. I am here.

I am and you are.....always the one I choose.... 

swing

 

Master of my domain

Well the new part time job is a full time job which would be okay if I didn’t teach two other places. If you stop within three feet of me I might make you paint something. I am supposed to be all moved into the new/old house this weekend. I will NOT be moved---said in my best Gandhi voice.

Ideally in a parallel universe I am sending my manuscript off. I am finishing my short story collection. I’m producing new work. I am a writer b/c this is my time and I am not wasting any of it. I am not going to stop, I had a momentum going and I am not going to stop. Unfortunately my parallel universe does not own stamps nor does it take in account children FOLLOW you into the “other dimension” and bang down the door.

The great thing about NOT blogging is that people think you are out writing the next great thing. You are so busy being the next Gertrude Stein that you don’t have time to blog. I am here to tell you in my parallel universe you are right.

Side note: the girls want a kitten. I will only get a kitten if we can call it Gertrude Stein, Celan or Camille Claudel and my girls are holding out for Oreo or Graham. Why am I not the master of my domain????????????????????????????????????

drink up

I cashed my check from the Massachusetts Review this morning and I am happy to say that brings my yearly income of being a poet up to over 5,000 dollars and since writing money is magic, poet money is double magic I am buying drinks for all!!!! Or at least the ones who show up on my step in the next 48 hours....

I remember writing my first sentence IAMTERESA I remember bringing it to the teacher’s desk, how she said the letters needed more space, how I found each of them their own page and how they stood, these big tall buildings claming their place. I remember the pride, the confusion at being told I was wrong and I didn’t believe her. Yes, I would do it another way b/c I had to. I wanted to succeed but I knew what was beautiful—I have always known what is beautiful.

I started teaching a new art class for advance students, ages 6 to 12; most of my students paint like they are in high school or early college. I am a big believer in letting children do “adult” art, use “adult” materials. One of my students is from Sudan; he has spent most of his life in war. He told me Friday that ”art is god.” Yes I said, yes.

Another parent dropped his son off and claimed, I wanted a football player and they gave me an artist. His dad dropped him off like he was some foreign object given to him without instruction. Here is my room, this is where you breathe this is where you paint.

 

I am very happy to be in the Massachusetts Review this month and really excited that you can read my poem online. Mr. Mueske is also in the same issue so I am in good company. Plus my girls want to bring it to school because it has a naked woman on the cover.

In other news, my new office is on the third floor so I will have really skinny legs by August, now if I can only learn to climb up stairs on my belly. Thus far I have booked a photographer, African drummer, stilt walker and silk dyer for our summer program. I still find it amazing that they PAY me to check my email at work.

I really want to write a poem. I miss being a writer….

 

My mind wears its own heartbeat. Place your thumb, finger on my left lobe wait for direction. My mind will not fail you. My heart however is not to be trusted. It is the size of a frog, a frog’s heart; a blood pearl. And if you believe that, if you consider the lie I’ve just told of my heart, then you do not listen. Granted I’m half girl, tadpole; my lungs withhold air and water, yet my mind has its own beat. My heart is not small. I can tell you what I have lost. Zen’s trick of placement: picture what you desire, close your eyes, look to the left. I am the blood pearl. What is misplaced waits in the corner. My heart and my mind are brothers or sisters, they switch genders at random, they cannot be defined by their genitalia.

We have covered the walls with mirrors to watch ourselves leave.
When we enter we are half fish, amphibian; our mouths loose with want. To love something you must consider its death, a full hand desires nothing. I will not leave you unless there is deep changement. Please become a frog. Or a prince. I offer my favor. Do me a favorite. When we enter the skin, under our arms is a flap, a flitter-- thank god for the mirrors. To love something you must consider its absence, the webbed hand is nothing more than a net. I will not marry unless you consider the order of ascension. Please attach your own oxygen mask before helping others. The first step begins with a leap, then you lose all conciseness and then you wake. Upon waking you must eat the apple and then the Adam. We wear masks so reflection does not remember.

 

Secret Garden

I woke up at 6:30 this morning and went over the new/old house to finish painting the downstairs so I can hopefully rent that part of the duplex this week. I found my garden, what is left of my garden, the lilies and the roses; the things abandoned four years ago which continued to grow. I felt not like the little girl but Colin’s mother who was dead and somehow returned to her place to undercover what she had left behind. I spent four hours being happy then came home and cried---grief is like that.

I spoke Creole twice today. I bought three boxes to Goodwill and saw a man and his two daughters coming out of the store and offered them Isabel’s plastic kitchen. The little girl said to me does it talk to you, does the water run? No but you can make it talk. You can use your own voice and it will say things.

I spoke in Creole about the sun and the little plastic kitchen. I longed for a country that is not my home but may always be. Some days I have to pretend there’s water, my plastic kitchen is happiness, some days I have to pretend it will all be okay even though I'm not sure it will.

Last weekend I was at the beach.

Today I was at a Mayday workshop with my daughters trying to figure out how to be a pole giraffe for the parade. If you send enough money I will post photos. Two years ago I was a giant flower and someone took a picture and turned it into a billboard—I’m not kidding.

I wonder what I can do as a giant giraffe? Today I learnt that elephants remember by vibrations; their bodies work as giant conductors for sound and they never forget what their bodies remember. I was almost an elephant but I wanted a long neck. I wanted to see around the corner.

I am that girl---it is not always a weakness. 

The great thing about moving is that you unearth the strangest things. Yesterday I found “the big giant head”; the big giant head was made when I was twenty, it was part of a sculpture I made with this woman jumping out of a mirror and I also used it on some talk I gave about image and society. The giant head is mine, literally. It’s an image of my head at 20 and I remember at the time being incredibly proud of it. I also remember my roommates and I placing BH in various places like the hood of a car, or under a friend’s pillow. The big head has history and now b/c I’ve had it for this long I do not know if I can throw it away. When I am old my children will clean out my closets full of scraps of poems, paint and yes most likely, the big head. 

longing

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): I had a dream about my three closest Leo friends. In the dream, I was observing them as they wriggled out of cocoons that were hanging from a large tree that resembled a dinosaur skeleton. They were covered with feathers and their arms had turned into wings, though they still had human faces. Once they were free of the cocoons, they soared away. As I watched their ascent, my own arms began to transform into feathered wings. I felt that I, too, would soon be able to fly. Here's how I interpret my dream: You Leos are ready to take off, and your flights will serve as inspiring examples to other people.

I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately—Thoreau

I went to the ocean to live deliberately, same principle different texture. Yesterday I was offered the position of Art Director of the Urban Arts Center here in Minneapolis where I would create an art program for children. I’d book the artists, do community outreach and I get an office. The latter is incredibly exciting—I’ve never had an office. So far this morning I have hired a stilt walker, a writer, an urban photographer, and I am in talks with this woman who does giant fabric dying (like make your own tent.)

I’m incredibly excited. I will still get to teach. I can still do my other gigs. I can bring my children. I will get to work some at home. They pay me.

I am hoping the writing gods will understand my sacrifice and bless me with words. Please. I offer you beautiful art. And yes, I too am incredibly lucky.

I went into the world and now I am home

  

The blog will be quiet for the next few days. I’m off tomorrow morning at 6 am to ride an airplane; I’d be nervous but now I know Loudon checks them over for me.

Be well.

The new issue of Mid-American Review is up and it celebrates a number of firsts for me: I’ve never been in a journal consecutively, never more than twice and I’ve never been so happy with a poem. Besides now I get to say James Wright with my name and that’s always a good thing.

I am writing. I shouldn’t jinx it by saying it out loud but hell I’m surrounded by boxes, grief, two children who are not reacting well to change and I am writing. It is similar to how did the chicken cross the road; how did Teresa Ballard survive this time in her life? She made a book-- it is the only way I know to get to the other side.

Both girls are doing Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream this summer, it was the price of a writing trip but I figure when they are old, after mommy has written a number of bad books they can support me. Besides I get to see them as fairies.

The prose book is 5/8 of the way done. Fractions are a big thing in my house at the moment. Olivia considers them fun—I think she might have been switched at birth.

If the rib was a boat, a hollow curve unfilled, if emptiness
was a seat, a wooden plank; would you let me on board with my paddle, my compass without needles, say to me row, as if you understood direction, your voice lifting above lilies, tendrils of plankton till you were done, satisfied where we had drifted.

Darling in this place so far from land where we cannot see shadow, do you understand how voices carry? I have heard you in the ship of others, the small songs and dirges. I have watched you offer no direction. I have lied and you have listened. But here is the seat of emptiness; it has no nails or hinges, if in the hollow curve we curl together, nothing is lost—we become air to each other.

W.S. Merwin

 
Trees

I am looking at trees
they may be one of the things I will miss
most from the earth
though many of the ones I have seen
already I cannot remember
and though I seldom embrace the ones I see
and have never been able to speak
with one
I listen to them tenderly
their names have never touched them
they have stood round my sleep
and when it was forbidden to climb them
they have carried me in their branches 

Nothing but the facts….

Today is the celebration of Olivia’s birthday and I have a seven foot blow up monkey sitting in my living room. I love that she is still a kid with goodie bags, monkey tattoos and tie dye beach balls. I am happy she still wants a “kid’s birthday.” My days are numbered.

Olivia and I went to the theatre this week to see Espranza Rising. There’s a part of the play where she lays her body on the ground to hear the heart of the earth, to know where she is. Espranza is taken from her home and everything she knows to begin again; “remember this” I said to my daughter, “remember you can begin anywhere.”

Truth is an amazing creature. Sometimes it clings like a beast to our ankles and we fear people finding out the truth or we fear our own deepest need. Things we have known forever but refuse to admit, and sometimes it feels like light traveling through a window; if you did not look up, you would not notice, you would not see.

Remember you can begin anywhere. I have not been truthful with myself over the last year. I have not been truthful about who I love, and I have not loved myself well. I was trapped in my own fear, of changing, of putting down the people I felt responsible for, my need to carry. I am done--begin, begin anywhere.

And the wonderful, horrible thing is my truth does not need to be yours. It is free to travel.