Madeline L'Engle

“Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith—faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.” Madeline L’Engle

She was the first person who told me I could write or maybe she wasn’t the first, maybe she was the only writer I had ever met and at seventeen she looked me straight in the eye, and said you will be a writer.

And I believed. Simply and foolishly that I could always DO THAT—it would never be something I had to work on. It was like speaking French, another tongue and it was always a trade I could fall back on.

I was right and I was wrong and so was she, now she has died which I knew she would soon b/c I had gotten an email saying she had Alzheimer. I knew that she would never sell her movie rights to Disney unless someone was making those decisions for her.

I had lunch with her two weeks after her husband died. I will never forget the way her voice tilted when she talked about how she missed him, how he was not there to call, to say she had made it to Maine safely. I blame her and my grandparents, my parents never had it, the need for that love, one which is everything, ties into your DNA and becomes part of your very existence.

I have hungered for it my whole life.

Somewhere in the sunroom I have a journal with a piece of paper taped to the cover---you are writer. Madeline wrote it down for me b/c she thought I might forget. I also have my writing from that day, how it felt meeting her and how I thought her voice should sound like mine. I need to dig it out. I think I might need to remember my young arrogant self.

These Are The Last Blue Days

These are the last blue days of summer
and I want more.


Saturday we went to the used bookstore.
We have wonderful dates.

Below are the books I bought for a dollar. I am not sure where to begin.

Misgivings by C.K Williams

Surfacing and Life Before Man by Atwood

Things They Carried by Tim O'brien (already read it but it was a buck)

The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak

Don't Tell Anyone by Fredrick Busch

At the Own Woman Saloon by Tess Gallagher

One more day...

One more day of doing art then a ten day vacation!

I spent the morning with ten elementary students designing our perfect world, each student was given a blank map and was asked to create their own countries, oceans, continents and then we had to make a government, decide in what ways we wanted our country to grow, what things we exported, how we lived.

Three boys got in a yelling match over the Atlantic Ocean.

We talked about why countries go to war, why Switzerland has so much money in their banks and why weapons aren’t the best export to have if you down own any fuel.

It was an amazing class. I taught half way through my lunch break.

Okay it should be noted here that I read this long after I named my blog.
From Mariana Marin’s Paper Children---I am on my third time through the book.

The Early Hours of the Morning

They had been given just enough power
to understand they would never have any
(but that was much later.)
They had been bought cheap:
Clusters of briars around their neck
and the road sprinkled with rice.
Upon their return
(but that too was later, much too late)
Some had their eyes put out
while other wore stones shackled to their ankles.

“This world in which we repeat ourselves stuttering”
“This world in which we repeat….”

They had been given just a long enough a chain
to wish for a real guillotine.
In the morning,
the early hours of morning.

What would you create if you could make a city out of cardboard?

I am at last count on my 64th straight day of making art with kids. I have four more to go.
It has been an amazing summer and I have 122 mosaic mirrors under my belt, 15 mummies, 30 metal cities, 22 deranged toys, a mess of cardboard, a 20 foot mural, three public art sculptures, 18 girls with power tools and a lot of other things I am not counting.

I know I am above all teachers most bless….

But I am tired, down to the marrow tired!!!!

part of a new poem by ballard

I’ve come to claim everything
is beautiful and if you wake to this
in the morning, as if someone has turned
the knob or allowed your retina to receive
more light, just a small millimeter
so that all the world is brighter somehow,
it seems, this could be the definition
of joy. Nothing has changed;
paint falls away from the yellow door,
weeds grow between the uneven slabs
of concrete and it breaks open
the place which once believed
in goodness or the clean face of god.

Four Poems by Vera Pavlova

I think it will be winter when he comes.
From the unbearable whiteness of the road
a dot will emerge, so black that eyes will blur,
and it will be approaching for a long, long time,
making his absence commensurate with his coming,
and for a long, long time it will remain a dot.
A speck of dust? A burning in the eye? And snow,
there will be nothing else but snow,
and for a long, long while there will be nothing,
and he will pull away the snowy curtain,
he will acquire size and three dimensions,
he will keep coming closer, closer . . .
This is the limit, he cannot get closer. But he keeps approaching,
now too vast to measure . . .

——

If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.
If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret,
there was nothing to desire.

——

Let us touch each other
while we still have hands,
palms, forearms, elbows . . .
Let us love each other for misery,
torture each other, torment,
disfigure, maim,
to remember better,
to part with less pain.

——

We are rich: we have nothing to lose.
We are old: we have nowhere to rush.
We shall fluff the pillows of the past,
poke the embers of the days to come,
talk about what means the most,
as the indolent daylight fades.
We shall lay to rest our undying dead:
I shall bury you, you will bury me.
(Translated, from the Russian, by Steven Seymour.)

Okay so in less than 48 hours amy bloom's
new book will be in my hot little hands.
Who says money can't buy you love?

Carolyn Forche and myself.....yes I know she is cuter;)

When I look at this photo, it feels so very long ago even though it has only been a few weeks. It was an amazing thing to have 15 strangers read your book from front to back. Yes, people have read my manuscript before and I am sure even a few judges set their coffee mugs on it but this was like getting naked and having a group of people look up and rest their eyes on you.

I learned so much. I did good things in the book I didn’t even know I did. I told lies I didn’t mean to tell and now I trust it more. I understand it more. I feel more ready as a writer to have it go off into the world, yes now I have to get into some serious work but it has never felt right before. Now it feels right. I don’t know if this will last but this is what I wanted, not just to produce work or even be widely published but to know without a doubt it was the best the art at the time I could create.

Beautiful reading in The Sun this month and I really respect Sy Safransky, the editor—everything flows smoothly, yet diverse enough to still be interesting. He wrote me a note once when I first started writing and all I sent him was crap, he didn’t like it but he was very kind. He was human.

I love the idea of this journal, little bits of everything and I read it front to back and now I am reading it again. My favorite by Harriet Brown:

At 43

Awake in the dark, again,
I want each looming thing—

night table, dresser, chair—
to set its demons free,

settle for being ordinary.
Beside me, my husband

grinds his teeth,
damned like the rest of us

with the curse of breathing.
What I didn’t understand

On the other side of 40:
Despair, too, is something

to hold on to. I’ve got
my dead: a ribbon’s worth

of rabbit-soft gray fur
from the cat who was

my best friend through my 20’s
her name the first word

both my daughters said.
We buried her last winter,

Boiling pot after pot of water
from the frozen ground,

trying to dig deep enough.
We did.

Water

I am deeply in need of water tonight. An evening when you hear waves calling from your kitchen window and you wipe your hands on the towel by the sink and go down by the lake. No one knows you are gone and everything seems clear or unclear-- it really doesn’t matter because it is night and you’re alone and peace is following you.

I grew up in a place like that.

I grew up in place where the night was never frightening, where you baited your hook before you slept and believed that everything which was beautiful came alive with the moon.

Weird things happen when you grow old. People tell you about your body changing, that you may marry, have children, even the possibly that you may grow fat or unsatisfied but people never mention the size of the world, how it shrinks with age. All the colors fade, their intensity grows mute.

I find my self less and less looking at blades of grass or actually even really seeing anyone’s eyes when they are speaking. I am like the little prince who can no longer find the boa constrictor in a box.

My grandmother once said the most painful thing about being an old woman was that there was no one alive who remembered her as a child. How her hair looked in the sun or how she ran when she was ten and I never believed I would grow old, even as a child, even as a mother, I felt somehow immune to this shrinking world.

But the world does grows small and it does not need you to notice; things seem unimportant, like all the books you wanted to write or the places you wanted to see and all that matters is the people you have loved and loved well and even then you realize it is such a small thing---your love. It is such a small imperfect thing indeed.

I do not know what you do now.

It is possible you find god. Or maybe you go to the place in your childhood where you wiped your hand on the yellow dish towel and walked out the door.

Sorry I've been away but I've been building mosaic benches
around the city with children.

Writing News

Hey a grant for Minnesota writers....travel the world, drink beer, take your beautiful girl to Costa Rica (that was a hint for Em)

here

Oh and doesnt this look like a beautiful place to stay?

It's A New Day

It's A New Dawn

It is time to begin again....

As most of you know I have been working with Carolyn for 4 years and two weeks ago I was able to take a class with her at the University of Minnesota. It was amazing. She is amazing. I am posting below some of her tips for revision b/c I know so many people who are working on books right now and reading this blog, or slightly skimming it and seeing if I will ever say anything interesting;) and then going back to writing their wonderful manuscripts.

Key points: please remember that syntax is god and there’s no right way to do anything. Also submit to judges you respect and presses you adore…..

Revision suggestions: ( all credit below goes to Carolyn Forche who you should buy a glass of wine if you ever meet her in person b/c she is a wonderful teacher and brilliant being)

1. Read each line of the poem separately, to be sure that it is interesting by itself. Cut words from the end of the line or add words from the beginning of the next line if you think it would improve the inherent meaning of the line.

2. Look at each word in the poem, and see if you can substitute a more interesting, specific word. Tree might become sycamore. River might become the Shenandoah. Bird might become gull, cardinal, finch, vulture.

3. Eliminate unnecessary commentary and description. If you have the word “snow,” then you already imply (and can eliminate sometimes) “winter,” “cold,” “icy” etc.

4. Be careful not to eliminate important articles (a, the, an) or conjunctions (and, but).Or you your poem will read like a newspaper headline.

5. Check to see if the opening lines and closing lines are necessary. Sometimes the true poem begins most interestingly with the third line, and ends with the third from the last.

6. Check to see if all the stanzas or strophes are necessary. Sometimes you can cut the whole stanza, and strengthen the poem.

7. If the poem is in stanzas, sections, or parts, cut them into individual pieces and play with their arrangement. Sometimes the poem is better if arranged a different way (while keeping all the sections). Sometimes this is how you discover whether any can be cut.

8. Subject all adverbs to intense scrutiny (as to whether they are necessary) “ran quickly” might be better expressed as “hurried.”

9. Subject all adjectives to strong scrutiny (as to whether they are necessary) “white snow” is redundant. “Snow” would suffice all by itself. (“Black wind” , however, is interesting, because unusual, unexpected...)

10. Read the poem aloud several times, and mark with a highlighter pen those places which were more difficult to read (tongue-twisters). Examine them and see if you can improve them.

11. If you are not certain whether your poem is in proper syntax and is grammatical, type the poem out as prose and check the sentences for completion and proper usage, then re-line.

12. Check to see that the sentences within the poem (which might go on for several lines), are, in fact, complete sentences (or have a good reason why not).

13. Try writing the poem in a different “person”— switch from “he” to “I” or vice versa.

14. Check the verb tenses to see whether they are consistent and/or correct.

15. See if compound verbs can become simple verbs (for compression) “I would run” might be able to become “I ran”, etc.

16. Check for spelling errors.

17. Check for consistency in spacing between lines.

18. Check to see whether the poem is well placed on the page.

19. In sending poems out to be published, always send clean, correct versions.

20. Break any of the above rules except #19 if you think it is necessary to the poem.

My body is fine and E and the girls are safe. I am having a hard time figuring out what to write. This bridge is less than a mile from my house. I crossed it seven times yesterday. I am taking a manuscript class at the U with Carolyn Forche’ this week so I even traveled it more than usual.

I hate the bridge. It is almost like we have had this long standing disagreement for years and now the bridge won. I always saw myself falling when I crossed it and I couldn’t shut it out of my head. But when you have to get somewhere every day and that’s the main route, and you’re kind of an odd person anyway, you shut it out.

Now the sound is screaming in my head.

I didn’t go to class with Carolyn today and a huge part of me just wants to hide in the bed and pretend I don’t know anything, feel anything, or have the possibility to loose anyone. I want to stop people on the street, wrap my arms around them and thank them for not dying in front of me.

I know I am going to know someone else. You can’t do the work I do in this city and not know someone who has died. Who the bridge didnt let go. Yesterday when they were showing the kids on the bus, which fell ninety feet, I recognized faces. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to be the person I am, who see the possibility of everything and I don’t want the noise.

And I want to be happy. I am happy, the girls and Emily are safe. My family, close friends, the first string of those I love but someone is not and I hear that. I hear the seven other times I crossed the bridge yesterday and how it just let me pretend.

from the new book of poems

What one requires
changes with age
not the container nor the contents but joy
sprouts wild, though true
happiness may be forgotten, trampled
by carelessness, but here lies the trick love forgets:
happiness when pressed,
when ground to the flesh,
leaves a scent.

Let us whisper in the dark, directions in which one assembles a life:
start with the beams marked A and B, continue on
with C and D until nothing is left.

What one requires: _____________

Fill in the blank, because if love has done her job,
if she has gone mad with expectations,
leeched the body of desire, nothing is needed.

Directions to disassemble a life

1) start with the heart; do not believe it is a muscle.
2) cut
3) eat

women in art

Why is it we all have the same eyes?????(here)

Chaotic Quantrum Falling

this is what a quantrum looks like when it falls....

Today I've been contemplated how much happiness is like the act of falling

but maybe not this beautiful....

See I told you

those poetry manuscripts were dangerous

RANT

You know it is going to be a hard day when someone shows up for a site visit at your non profit with the word “philanthropist” on their business card. When she found out I was an art therapist she wanted to know if I “get a lot of sexual abuse cases” working with low income and children of color. No, was my answer ---most of those kids live in the suburbs.

If you want to make a huge generalization and back that up with statistics, white people fuck up their children far better than anyone else and white people with money tend to do it the best.

So why do I buss my ass to have free after school art programming for kids who can’t afford to do it anywhere else? Because honestly most programs in the United States that work with low income people are demeaning. Contractors build houses they wouldn’t live in and they create schools where the teachers wouldn’t send their children.

And they do this somehow believing that they are kind and good because of it. Or better. There is so much absolute shit in this world b/c someone believes they are “better.” When you put yourself on a different plane than someone else you make yourself less. It is a basic principle really.

I teach because I am selfish. I love children and they love me. And when I am with them, when I am in my space, and we are creating, it is the most amazing thing in the whole world. You can write that on my card: I am a selfish teacher!

This note was on my desk this morning and made my day.

And for Suzanne:
Five poetry collections you may not have read but certainly must:

1. Paul Celan’s Collected if you haven’t read it you need to get off my blog
RIGHT NOW!
2. Dancing In Odessa by Illya Kaminsky
3. Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced by Catherine Barnett
4. The Book of Fables by W.S. Merwin (I got an advance copy)

5. And Her Soul Out of Nothing by Olena Kalytiak Davis

I HATE NATIONAL POETRY MONTH!!! There I’ve said it, it’s politically incorrect to say out loud and yet I have to tell you as much I love the written word I hate it when things are forced upon me. I dislike being at an education conference and having someone do a very bad reading of Langston Hughes or worse some rhyming flower poem about tulips.

But it’s to be expected—it’s April after all and no where is safe. One can’t open the mailbox; go to the coffee shop, a school building without some other person, who by the way doesn’t really seem to read poetry any other month of the year, shoving a poem down your throat.

What if we did this with other things? What if it was National Baton Month in April and any idiot could walk down the street showing you tricks on his baton? What if there were hundreds of idiots and you couldn’t shut your door?

Today I went to my favorite restaurant for take out which by the way I figured was a fairly safe place and I looked down at the menu and someone has started “Take-Out Poetry—write a few lines on our menu and display it all month long” The first poem was a haiku about apple juice and I had to leave without ordering ANTHING.

Ballard truth: this is the thing that I think bugs me, it waters down poetry for me. Makes it seem like it's this thing anybody could do if only…..and I guess on some levels that’s true but most of me says NO!!!!

I work my ass off to put a manuscript together. I think poetry is harder than writing fiction, short stories, or comic books. Poetry is work. What I do as a poet is work. It takes time, patience and discipline…

But maybe the baton twirlers would feel the same.

Today was fairly close to a perfect day, after the three inches of snow last week it’s finally spring in Minnesota. Of course saying that out loud just makes me fearful—it has snowed for Mayday before…
I weeded the garden, cleaned out the side yard and painted the front steps. All the while stopping to read Tim O’Brien’s “The Things We Carried” every ten minutes b/c E brought home this book I would never pick up called “The Top Ten—Writers Pick Their Favorite Books.” And it was all like crack cocaine reference book style b/c I could see at a glance Annie Dillard’s favorite books then cross-reference it with Proulx, while glancing at Sherman Alexie and Pinsky.

It went on for hours.

Anyway this is why I am reading O’Brien’s book even though it is about Vietnam b/c it is beautiful and b/c I have never read it. My summer list which use to consist of all the Great Russian writers is now titled:

“Books Ballard Has Not Read and Should Read Before She Dies.”

It has been one of those days when I’ve had the sad realization that I have too much life to live to fit into one lifetime.

All the books I want to read is at least 1 ½ lives and the books I want to write, maybe two. I want to be a traveler…I mean a real traveler. I just read this article yesterday about a tribe in the Amazon, they have no words in their language for left or right—there’s no need for direction. They have resisted over the years all forms of Christianity and social change. They still eat monkey. I want a life to eat monkey. No left. No right.

Maybe I want a half a life of satisfaction, of doing everything right the first time. No ex-husband, no ex lovers. I will always find the things I love right away and not have to search so hard. The person I want to be will be the person I am. I will have a trust fund and an orchard. I will wake in the morning and pick peaches like the poem I love and they will all have eyes and the peaches and I will have a long conversations.

I will be crazy.

I will be wonderfully crazy and not have to hide that I like it when my socks don’t match or that I prefer shorts to pants even in the winter and that ALWAYS in my head there’s someone writing a story so much more beautiful than anything I will ever put down on paper.

I will dream more. Sleep outside on blankets even in the day time.

I will learn every star’s name.

I will have three lifetimes to be loved by the person who has loved me better than anyone ever has. Three lifetimes to walk, to explore all the places we have never seen—we could walk across the country with a sleeping bag and a flash light.

See who will let us sleep in their barn when it rains, plant seeds of some weird tree or find all the places where they still eat monkey, get lost, sit still, make love and not do any of those other things which seem to take away from the every day the ability to REALLY listen to each other.

A lifetime to sit by lakes with an easel and paint water.

A lifetime to use a camera.

I’d like to learn to sew in one of my lives. Bake more bread. If I had all eternity I’d try to speak every language. Or make those intricate paintings on eggs with wax.

I’d have more kids.

I start my own schools in Africa, India, and Costa Rica. We’d make a lot of art. I’d spread stilt walking and cardboard ships across the world.

I’d live alone one life to see if I could. I grow old in a cabin where I was born and I’d only understand the trees.

If I was in control, if I was a god and I could create my own world, my own lives I would still leave in loss, the possibility to loose.

And maybe I would do it just as it is now—leaving humanity with just a taste of everything it could be. Everything it could feel, see, taste.

Maybe god is the ultimate writer---leave them all wanting another book.

Stella's favorite place to sleep is on my books :(

It seems it might be my job to introduce our new family members
or at least give you visuals.

They are full of piss and vinegar
And they believe my leg is a climbing pole
And the laptop is a walking path

But they're ours and as with children that seems to be the part which counts.

Plus they’re cute as hell!!!!

Max & Stella (eight weeks old)

anyone want a new job

here

Language by W. S. Merwin

Certain words now in our knowledge we will not use again, and we will never forget them. We need them. Like the back of the picture. Like our marrow, and the color in our veins. We shine the lantern of our sleep on them, to make sure, and there they are, trembling already for the day of witness. They will beburied with us, and rise with the rest.

Isabel Myra in all of her glory!!!!

nothing left to paint

I should be up and about but I’m not. I’m a ball in the bed with a laptop. Last night I dreamt I could time travel. I could enter the body of who I was in the past but I had all the knowledge of my self in the present. I told my father, the ice was thin around the corner, he needed to go slower or he would crash. I told Michelle Merrithew she was beautiful, if she let herself grow up she would always be beautiful. I had twenty seconds—somehow I knew this was all I had to make people understand me. Believe me.

I’m sure the dream had something to do with the major rejection I received yesterday, where the editor actually said, “it breaks our heart to reject writers like you.” Well, I hope it actually KILLED them. I like the plain, simple letter which says they don’t like me in ten words or less.

I am not proud. Nor will I pretend here that as writer you will mature into someone who doesn’t care about this shit---rejection. Maybe you will, I won’t. I curl up in a bawl and cry if I care about it. If I believed the submission was close to perfect. If I believed the work fit perfectly. Sometimes of course it makes sense, this rejection and I put the writing in a drawer---hopefully to be heard from again.

But some days the damn spinning wheel gets to me.

books, books and more books!!!!!

When I’m overwhelmed I buy books, if you were take a look at my library you would see that I am overwhelmed quite a bit and today was no exception. Here is what I bought:

1.Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing by Helene Cixous (Rebecca put this on her blog so it is her fault!
2. "A Natural History of the Senses "by Diane Ackerman…this is an amazing book, read it three times and I want a copy I can write in.
3. “Deep Play” by Ackerman
4. “Burning the Empty Nests” by Gregory Orr…love him
5. “101 Life Skills Games for Children: Learning, Growing, Getting Along”…this is for work, this way they pay for my shipping;)
6. "104 Activities That Build: Self-Esteem, Teamwork, Communication, Anger Management, Self-Discovery, Coping Skills" b/c my kids at work are OUT OF CONTROL!
7. "Mosquito: Poems (A Tin House New Voice)" by Alex Lemon; he is a friend and an amazing poet. I will post his reading next week.
8. "Other Fugitives and Other Strangers" by Rigoberto Gonzalez. I loved the cover.
9. "Original White Animals" by Tracy Philpot. She is also wonderful.
10. 12 Best Foods Cookbook: Over 200 Recipes Featuring The 12 Healthiest Foods" by Dana Jacobi….b/c I eat terribly and I don’t want to die.

Ballard truth: this is not my complete list but then you might think I am out of control, which of course I am.

Come one, come all

for anyone interested in a summer workshop here I promise you a wonderful martini and a fire in my backyard....

flowers on the table

I am starting to learn how to use my new camera. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to find the built in flash. It was really built in! Carolyn Forche’ is coming to Minneapolis for my birthday. Well, she is coming to teach this but I can say she is coming for me. I am in the class. The U is picking up the bill though I had to throw my teaching schedule to the wind. Now I am in a panic b/c she has already read my current manuscript of poems and maybe I should be working on another. Here is a goal, maybe I should just write ONE fricken, mothertucking poem. Or maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should stick with the flash.

Another thing I have applied for. I want to go to a ghost ranch in New Mexico and write. I want horses and dust and no way for my children to find me.

Vividly, I remember being 13 and knowing I was forgetting how to be a child. Lately I am feeling that way about poetry. I am forgetting…and maybe that is good. Maybe I will emerge something else I haven’t even considered and that would be okay. Wouldn’t it?

Why do I feel like I am trying to convince myself that growing old is pretty?

our snow day

my morning girl

Yes, they closed down the highway; yes there is more than three feet of snow on the ground; where to go in all this white--to the hills of course, the fast wonderful hills.

This morning while I was trying to dig out a small path to civilization, I looked up and right over my head was a hawk, she had a chickadee in her beak and she did not move. I did not move. Ever so slowly she began showering me with chickadee’s feathers and then we both did our jobs, I made my path and she devoured everything except the small beak which now rests by the climbing rose bush.

I sometimes wonder why we need to make things beautiful—because this wasn’t beautiful, yet I wanted to wake everyone up and make them see that she had chosen me somehow, she had chosen me this morning to see her and I wanted to choose them. But I didn’t. Okay, so I made the children look and Em but I didn’t wake the whole block which was my initial reaction. The hawk was there for three hours or more without flying away until I called my best friend and asked her if she thought it was a sign.

It was.

It is truly the size that matters

We are suppose to get 16 inches of snow today and I got to call my first “snow day” at work and all the children had to stay home, which made me feel a bit like a king you shall not venture out into the weather.

On my way to have breakfast with my love, I passed a house that had a ten foot snow sculpture penis in the front yard. I know it’s a frat house but I still wanted to pull over and sculpt a dog taking a leak on their snow balls... yet I had to get to breakfast. I have the talent but I just don’t have the time. I think THAT should be printed on a T-Shirt for me to wear everyday.

At breakfast the man behind me said, “My first wife was named Joy and when she left I didn’t have any” which almost threw me into a fit of giggles, causing me to blow french toast out my nose. True Ballard fact: I'm always listening to conversations around me and not to any I am actually HAVING which makes me a horrible love most of the time but I am trying to make up for it other ways.

Hey, maybe I’ll make a sculpture out on the front lawn!

O Happy Birthday You Beautiful Maine Girl

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay 

 

“The truth in life lies in the impulsiveness of matter. The mind of man has been poisoned by concepts. Do not ask him to be content, ask him only to be calm, to believe he has found his place. But only the madman is truly calm.” – Antonin Artaud


Reasons I might be CrAzY……

I woke up this morning and it was twenty degrees below zero and I still went OUTDOORS.
I have not fixed the crack in my windshield.
I did not go to work.
I did not go to work and yet I answered the phone when my boss called and spent all morning discussing work.
I drank moon tea for health and one giant ass chocolate bar for breakfast.
I ONCE AGAIN prepared a packet for submitting and then missed the posting date.
I believe you are actually listening harder b/c I am using CAPITIALS!!!!
I invited 12 nine years old girls to sleep over next weekend for Bella's Birthday.
I let her pick an American Idol theme.
I ordered the playstation game.
I bought a disco ball.
I peed today on a toilet with no seat.
I replaced a hundred year old pull chain toilet (that I loved) with a brand new, fancy-ass (pun) with no seat.
I paid $680.00 for this.
I tried to hit a squrriel with a broom.
I think the toilet actually looks better in Sepia.