Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Yesterday Morning: Starring me as the Mom and Olivia as the Daughter
Me: Did you tell your teacher I am not coming in today.
Olivia: Yes.
Me: Did you tell her I was busy.
Olivia: No.
(these one word conversations can go on for hours)
Me: What did you tell her?
Olivia: I told you were writing?
Me: Ohhhh (surprised and delighted)
Olivia: I told her lost a big contest last week and if you didn’t write now, you’d never write again, and then there would never be books, you’d cry….
Me: YOU TOLD HER THAT!!!!!
Olivia: Yes.
Me: Well that's a bit dramatic. (thinking of reasons not to kill my child.)
Olivia: Well it is YOU, mom.
and this ends the never ending tale, proving once more that no one can NAIL YOU like your own child.
Olivia: Yes.
Me: Did you tell her I was busy.
Olivia: No.
(these one word conversations can go on for hours)
Me: What did you tell her?
Olivia: I told you were writing?
Me: Ohhhh (surprised and delighted)
Olivia: I told her lost a big contest last week and if you didn’t write now, you’d never write again, and then there would never be books, you’d cry….
Me: YOU TOLD HER THAT!!!!!
Olivia: Yes.
Me: Well that's a bit dramatic. (thinking of reasons not to kill my child.)
Olivia: Well it is YOU, mom.
and this ends the never ending tale, proving once more that no one can NAIL YOU like your own child.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
The things about NOT being a deletor is that you get to go back and read pervious entries and see that you were a hell of a lot interesting a year ago, not only that but “the other me” had mailed gifts to her parents, baked cookies and had a few new poems. It is absolutely depressing. I’m so going to start erasing things.
Today I built luminaries with about forty people. We drilled into soup cans, cut paper lanterns, and my favorite “ice luminaries”. Peter and Rebecca may give you all wonderful recipes but here is how you do art:
Take a plastic container, fill the base with about four inches of water and leave overnight outside (unless you live near Charlie then stick in your freezer.) Collect shells, pine cones, branches and the next day add to the container. You can also add food coloring to the water fill to the top. You may also want to add a small plastic container to the top to leave an indention for the candle. (I use cool whip containers.) Let freeze over night or two, depending on the weather then pop out like a big ice cube. The results are amazing. We do a whole line of them and light them on Christmas Eve.
Hell I could be Martha Stewart. Now go forth and make some Art!!!!!
Today I built luminaries with about forty people. We drilled into soup cans, cut paper lanterns, and my favorite “ice luminaries”. Peter and Rebecca may give you all wonderful recipes but here is how you do art:
Take a plastic container, fill the base with about four inches of water and leave overnight outside (unless you live near Charlie then stick in your freezer.) Collect shells, pine cones, branches and the next day add to the container. You can also add food coloring to the water fill to the top. You may also want to add a small plastic container to the top to leave an indention for the candle. (I use cool whip containers.) Let freeze over night or two, depending on the weather then pop out like a big ice cube. The results are amazing. We do a whole line of them and light them on Christmas Eve.
Hell I could be Martha Stewart. Now go forth and make some Art!!!!!
Friday, December 09, 2005
I painted with my students today. I talked to them about Impressionist Painters. I talked to them about Van Gogh. What do you feel when you look at this? I told my students to find the thing they loved in life, the place where time stops, that is what they should be, that is what they should do.
I told my most talented pupil, “this is beautiful, it is a safe and beautiful and someday the paint with tell you to do more, to risk AND it may not be as beautiful and when you’re ready, you will listen to it. I could tell you to put leaves, here and here. I could tell you to take risks but you must decide. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”
R. has told me all session she cannot paint. I told her, she needed to give me three classes without saying this to me. Three classes, without negative self speak. Three classes and I will give you the jewel that is in my pocket.
Today she painted Monet’s haystacks. Today she did the best painting in the class. She took chances, she trusted the paint. R. held her dry brush, her wet brush, she said, Teresa I think my other art teacher is an ass (at school) he always told me I couldn’t do this. We do not say ass in my classroom but there are some exceptions.
Van Gogh was a great painter b/c he understood loneliness, he understood it to such a depth that we can feel it on canvas. He is the most mass produced artist that has ever lived and even in that, there is loss. It is not the truth. Look at his paintings. Look.
What is the one thing you can do without question? I will give you the rock in my pocket. I will give you the jewel.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
THE GLOURIOUS THINGS ABOUT IT BEING TWENTY BELOW ZERO OUTSIDE
1. You hear colder than a witch’s tit in public conversations.
2. You leave your groceries on the kitchen table, come back twenty minutes later and the milk is still cold.
3. You face tingles and then goes absolutely numb.
4. Your teeth get cold with your mouth closed.
5. Ice forms on the inside of your windows.
6. Everything outside look shiny and LICKABLE.
7. You tell children not to stand under icicles b/c they could die.
8. You sit in your warm car and watch people run for things.
9. You get ice coffee every morning.
10. And at the end of every day, you thump your hands to your chest and say I AM ARTIC GIRL... I can do anything
2. You leave your groceries on the kitchen table, come back twenty minutes later and the milk is still cold.
3. You face tingles and then goes absolutely numb.
4. Your teeth get cold with your mouth closed.
5. Ice forms on the inside of your windows.
6. Everything outside look shiny and LICKABLE.
7. You tell children not to stand under icicles b/c they could die.
8. You sit in your warm car and watch people run for things.
9. You get ice coffee every morning.
10. And at the end of every day, you thump your hands to your chest and say I AM ARTIC GIRL... I can do anything
WHAT WERE YOU DOING TEN YEARS AGO? FIVE YEARS AGO? ONE YEAR AGO? YESTERDAY?
twenty years ago- (because I'm that old;)
I am eighteen. I have left home. I have left the United States. I live in Belgium. The first place where I feel like I have fallen into my skin. I tell people that I have lived here in another life. I know where to go, I never get lost. I eat in my favorite place with a cat on the table and a dog at my feet. I drink dark coffee; I sit on a bench in the town square while young American men with backpacks and bad accents try to pick me up in French.
In a few hours, I meet my best friend, we ride the trains. We pretend to be someone we're not. We carry an empty cardboard box on to the train and pretend there’s a cat inside. We make weird noises. We cause a whole car load of people to move to another part of the train. We are full of our power and laugh at the joy of it.
Ten years ago:
I have an almost two year old, who could walk at 9 months and run at 10. I work as a nanny 50 hours a week for this very wealthy woman whose main job is to think of new ways to charge people for solar power, once it becomes assessable to everyone. She is very corporate. She uses the phrase “the correct way to do things” daily. I am in the beginning years of my marriage with a man that I love. I live in a 200 year old turret house which has horse hair in the walls and an English garden with my great-grandmother roses.
I am very far away from myself though I believe I have everything I want.
I am not writing at all.
Five years ago-
My daughters are 6 and 2. I am working part time as an art therapist at the local community center. I love my job. I adore my students. We throw paint on the walls, clay on the tables. For a whole afternoon we make a space ship out of boxes. We pretend we can not breathe the air in the room, we wear space helmets and walk with our feet heavy around the moon, tie ourselves with a rope so we don’t float away.
I dread going home. I miss my oldest daughter terribly when she is at school. I drive Bella to a Waldorf preschool so she can sort wool and bake bread. I feel frozen. My husband goes days without talking to me and I don’t understand why, he has told me that he does not love me or the children. He says he is not made for this life but he does not leave.
I sleep in a cot in the baby’s room. I rub Olivia’s back till she falls asleep. I look at the clouds in my daughter’s room and I wonder where I am. I am seeing a therapist because I believe I need to get a divorce b/c if he does not love me, how can I possibly stay? I do not want to be that woman. I walk around it, under it but not through it. It almost kills me.
A stranger kisses me on the couch while my family is sleeping. I go to a therapist to see what this means. I ask all the wrong questions.
I begin writing my way out. I have not written in five years. I begin publishing poems. One of my first ends up in a gumball machine, for a quarter you can have a piece of paper with my words and a gum ball. The first line reads, if you wish to die, do not drown yourself in shallow water. I am drowning and I have no idea how to save myself or my girls. But I will soon.
A year ago-
I have a new boss from hell, who calls me “the craft lady”. She has never worked with children before; she sits in on one of my classes. This will be the one and only time, she tells me I am too involved with students, she tells I am too involved with my families. I keep doing what I do and we avoid each other.
My daughter Olivia writes her first opera. She is filling her book with stories. She joins the swim team. Bella can walk on stilts. She somersaults through the house. She rolls her eyes continually and tells me I am EMBARASSING HER.
I live in a house with puppets in the basement. I am in a relationship, that I’m not sure is good for me. I am writing all the time. I have sent my manuscript off for the first time. I am having strange peace. I believe my kids are happy even though their parents do not live in the same house. I get my first acceptances from major journals. I get my first fellowship. I begin the slow decent out of grieving for what I cannot change. I forgive myself.
Yesterday:
I sleep late. I make breakfast for Bella and her best friend. I take Bella to her dad’s. I do a birthday party for a family at my new work place. It is a school where the walls are clear, where saws are hooked up to bicycles, where you can climb, build anything you want. I take them there, instead of the other school where I teach because my client just lost her sister to breast cancer a few weeks ago. She has told me she needs the kids to be happy, to have all three of their birthdays at the same time, she needs it to be easy, to be magic. So I build robots with 23 kids, do cat sculptures, we hide under blankets and say our secret names.
In the afternoon I read Charles Simic’s The World Doesn’t End. I finish the book. I make hot coco for the girls and their dad when they come home. We talk about Christmas. He and I are friends. I can forgive him for things, as my friend that I could not forgive him for, as my husband. We are incredibly lucky.
I watch a movie with my girls. We spend the evening talking in English accents. We say, pardon me, and yes mum. They’re incredibly polite and pliable till they figure out I am trying to get them to bed.
I do laundry. I work on the new poem. I realize again, that for the first time in my life I am making money as a writer. I feel the heaviness of it and the lightness. I drink hot tea. I dream.
twenty years ago- (because I'm that old;)
I am eighteen. I have left home. I have left the United States. I live in Belgium. The first place where I feel like I have fallen into my skin. I tell people that I have lived here in another life. I know where to go, I never get lost. I eat in my favorite place with a cat on the table and a dog at my feet. I drink dark coffee; I sit on a bench in the town square while young American men with backpacks and bad accents try to pick me up in French.
In a few hours, I meet my best friend, we ride the trains. We pretend to be someone we're not. We carry an empty cardboard box on to the train and pretend there’s a cat inside. We make weird noises. We cause a whole car load of people to move to another part of the train. We are full of our power and laugh at the joy of it.
Ten years ago:
I have an almost two year old, who could walk at 9 months and run at 10. I work as a nanny 50 hours a week for this very wealthy woman whose main job is to think of new ways to charge people for solar power, once it becomes assessable to everyone. She is very corporate. She uses the phrase “the correct way to do things” daily. I am in the beginning years of my marriage with a man that I love. I live in a 200 year old turret house which has horse hair in the walls and an English garden with my great-grandmother roses.
I am very far away from myself though I believe I have everything I want.
I am not writing at all.
Five years ago-
My daughters are 6 and 2. I am working part time as an art therapist at the local community center. I love my job. I adore my students. We throw paint on the walls, clay on the tables. For a whole afternoon we make a space ship out of boxes. We pretend we can not breathe the air in the room, we wear space helmets and walk with our feet heavy around the moon, tie ourselves with a rope so we don’t float away.
I dread going home. I miss my oldest daughter terribly when she is at school. I drive Bella to a Waldorf preschool so she can sort wool and bake bread. I feel frozen. My husband goes days without talking to me and I don’t understand why, he has told me that he does not love me or the children. He says he is not made for this life but he does not leave.
I sleep in a cot in the baby’s room. I rub Olivia’s back till she falls asleep. I look at the clouds in my daughter’s room and I wonder where I am. I am seeing a therapist because I believe I need to get a divorce b/c if he does not love me, how can I possibly stay? I do not want to be that woman. I walk around it, under it but not through it. It almost kills me.
A stranger kisses me on the couch while my family is sleeping. I go to a therapist to see what this means. I ask all the wrong questions.
I begin writing my way out. I have not written in five years. I begin publishing poems. One of my first ends up in a gumball machine, for a quarter you can have a piece of paper with my words and a gum ball. The first line reads, if you wish to die, do not drown yourself in shallow water. I am drowning and I have no idea how to save myself or my girls. But I will soon.
A year ago-
I have a new boss from hell, who calls me “the craft lady”. She has never worked with children before; she sits in on one of my classes. This will be the one and only time, she tells me I am too involved with students, she tells I am too involved with my families. I keep doing what I do and we avoid each other.
My daughter Olivia writes her first opera. She is filling her book with stories. She joins the swim team. Bella can walk on stilts. She somersaults through the house. She rolls her eyes continually and tells me I am EMBARASSING HER.
I live in a house with puppets in the basement. I am in a relationship, that I’m not sure is good for me. I am writing all the time. I have sent my manuscript off for the first time. I am having strange peace. I believe my kids are happy even though their parents do not live in the same house. I get my first acceptances from major journals. I get my first fellowship. I begin the slow decent out of grieving for what I cannot change. I forgive myself.
Yesterday:
I sleep late. I make breakfast for Bella and her best friend. I take Bella to her dad’s. I do a birthday party for a family at my new work place. It is a school where the walls are clear, where saws are hooked up to bicycles, where you can climb, build anything you want. I take them there, instead of the other school where I teach because my client just lost her sister to breast cancer a few weeks ago. She has told me she needs the kids to be happy, to have all three of their birthdays at the same time, she needs it to be easy, to be magic. So I build robots with 23 kids, do cat sculptures, we hide under blankets and say our secret names.
In the afternoon I read Charles Simic’s The World Doesn’t End. I finish the book. I make hot coco for the girls and their dad when they come home. We talk about Christmas. He and I are friends. I can forgive him for things, as my friend that I could not forgive him for, as my husband. We are incredibly lucky.
I watch a movie with my girls. We spend the evening talking in English accents. We say, pardon me, and yes mum. They’re incredibly polite and pliable till they figure out I am trying to get them to bed.
I do laundry. I work on the new poem. I realize again, that for the first time in my life I am making money as a writer. I feel the heaviness of it and the lightness. I drink hot tea. I dream.
Monday, December 05, 2005
I am giving myself two presents for Christmas (not including the red suede boots I have hidden under my bed for the girls to wrap.) First is an open studio class on figure drawing starting in January. I see big windows; I see my tool box full of charcoal, snow falling and naked people standing still; permission to draw a whole Saturday morning away.
Secondly, I’m going to take a class on Chekhov and Munro because it’s snowing here and I cannot think of anything more delightful than curling up in a blanket, reading and rereading stories by Anton then getting in my red boots, stomping through the snow to talk about books.
I am giving myself these things in theory because I want to, because I don’t have to figure out childcare yet or feel guilty about the other things I'm not doing like laundry and being a good mother. I sometimes wonder what I’ll worry about when the girls are done baking, when the questions of my goodness do not appear so often.
But today these gifts have no other need, besides to sit in my head and bloom. I am watching the snow. I am in the studio. I am in Anton’s field. I am open to gifts.
Secondly, I’m going to take a class on Chekhov and Munro because it’s snowing here and I cannot think of anything more delightful than curling up in a blanket, reading and rereading stories by Anton then getting in my red boots, stomping through the snow to talk about books.
I am giving myself these things in theory because I want to, because I don’t have to figure out childcare yet or feel guilty about the other things I'm not doing like laundry and being a good mother. I sometimes wonder what I’ll worry about when the girls are done baking, when the questions of my goodness do not appear so often.
But today these gifts have no other need, besides to sit in my head and bloom. I am watching the snow. I am in the studio. I am in Anton’s field. I am open to gifts.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
I woke up this morning speaking out loud a line Yusef Komunyakaa:
"We had moves we didn't know we had
our bodies spun on swivels of bone and faith,
through a lyric slipknot of joy
and we knew we were beautiful
and dangerous."
I want to beautiful and dangerous, slide through a lyric slipknot of joy.
It is the kind of day I desire.
Bella had a sleepover last night with her best friend “Steven”. They fell asleep singing Bob Dylan. It was nice to have boy energy in the house. He woke up this morning, telling me he heard an animal in the middle of the night, he made rhythmic grrrrr noises, over and over and it took me about ten minutes to realize he was describing me snoring;)
I’m beautiful and dangerous and I sound like a bear.
I am doing a birthday party this afternoon with four year olds at the invention studio. We are going to build sculptures of cats from metal containers. We are going to enter the slipnot.
"We had moves we didn't know we had
our bodies spun on swivels of bone and faith,
through a lyric slipknot of joy
and we knew we were beautiful
and dangerous."
I want to beautiful and dangerous, slide through a lyric slipknot of joy.
It is the kind of day I desire.
Bella had a sleepover last night with her best friend “Steven”. They fell asleep singing Bob Dylan. It was nice to have boy energy in the house. He woke up this morning, telling me he heard an animal in the middle of the night, he made rhythmic grrrrr noises, over and over and it took me about ten minutes to realize he was describing me snoring;)
I’m beautiful and dangerous and I sound like a bear.
I am doing a birthday party this afternoon with four year olds at the invention studio. We are going to build sculptures of cats from metal containers. We are going to enter the slipnot.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
We did not believe in anything, salt stayed away from our shoulders even our shadow did not follow. Wistfully we untied our fingers, spoke every prayer backward, waited for emptiness, the pure abandonment of it.
Our hearts became ponds, shallow inlets of water. Cold, the one word we said without guilt. We named each other. What covered our hunger was like a mirror but not smooth or clear, distorted by temperature, a lake we did not walk upon. Water we could not drink.
Our hearts became ponds, shallow inlets of water. Cold, the one word we said without guilt. We named each other. What covered our hunger was like a mirror but not smooth or clear, distorted by temperature, a lake we did not walk upon. Water we could not drink.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Okay this is hilarious. Going around blog sphere: type in your first name in google and then needs. This pretty much sums up my day.
Teresa needs help.
Teresa needs you.
Teresa needs to work on her math’s skill.
Teresa needs one more miracle to be a saint.
Teresa needs to back off and accept the consequence of her actions.
And this is even in order. God, some days I love google.
Teresa needs help.
Teresa needs you.
Teresa needs to work on her math’s skill.
Teresa needs one more miracle to be a saint.
Teresa needs to back off and accept the consequence of her actions.
And this is even in order. God, some days I love google.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Here’s a secret: when I’m sad I book flights to other places. I arrange hotels, tours. I plan my days, know what I will pack. Today I went to Norway. I went to look at beautiful sculptures, the world in white stone. I wanted to see gardens and castles. When I was 17, I went to Denmark. I was alone, and crossed the ocean on a boat. I loved the way the island came to the sea, as if it knew it would not be defeated.
Another secret: I took my class of boys out to play in the snow today. We all ran to the top of the hill, ran down and fell to the ground. We made angels. You cannot walk through them. You can stomp over them but these babies are solid.
After class A. ran up to me and hugged me I love you Teresa, I’ll see you next week then he BIT me.
I told his mother sometimes love is like that…..
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
The whole house smells like jasmine tea and I am contemplating the reasons I shouldn’t go Christmas shopping at the moment. I sent two more copies of the manuscript off yesterday. Funny how it gets easier, this being a poet. I feel that way about being a human sometimes, that the more comfortable I grow in my skin the easier it becomes.
This past weekend I had my cards read. I have this wonderful reader who isn’t the scary kind of reader with scarves and a crystal ball but more of the wise woman, tea kind of gal. I like that. A good reading feels like the focusing of a lens and though I don’t believe in hocus pocus I do believe that everything is energy, thought, action. We send out into the universe what we need and the universe as a good conductor sends it back.
Anyway, she said the universe wanted to talk to me about my work which considering the last time I had my cards read four years ago, where the universe wanted to tell me to get the hell of out of my marriage, meant things were looking up. She said the book will do well. Hell that was worth the price of admission. She said, Teresa, deep down you know who you are, you will always know this. You know you have to write and that’s the job you’ve been given. The praise or criticism that ultimately comes from that has nothing to do with the act itself.
Strangely, that felt incredibly freeing. I will be read. I will be published. (Well unless she lied;) And I have the freedom to write, whatever and how ever I want and though, in my head that’s how I believe great art is made, sometimes as a writer, I pull into the room, in the act of creating, the reader. The reader’s expectations, desires. I’m beginning to see the reader does not belong in the birthing room, that’s not the place at all.
Monday, November 28, 2005
Today to keep my mind busy I went to my favorite store to buy octopus. I am teaching myself sushi making skills. Okay, I am making octopus cucumber salad but it’s kind of like sushi. I cut. I eat.
After I get over the horror that SOMEONE has piped Christmas music into my wonderful Asian market I find Jesus has brought me a new tea section. I’m not talking a white girl tea section but this: purple plum flowers, lavender, bitter melon. These are in little clear bags so if you push your little white girl nose to the plastic you can smell things. Oh and there are these huge barrels of beautiful things I can’t pronounce that my whole head fit into.
The thing about me you should know, when I find something exciting I call over perfect strangers to share the experience. Yes I AM that lady in the tea section. At one point today I had three people in a barrel. Not bad for a days work.
And yes Rebecca Loudon I did buy you bitter melon tea for Christmas. Doesn’t that just sound lovely?
After I get over the horror that SOMEONE has piped Christmas music into my wonderful Asian market I find Jesus has brought me a new tea section. I’m not talking a white girl tea section but this: purple plum flowers, lavender, bitter melon. These are in little clear bags so if you push your little white girl nose to the plastic you can smell things. Oh and there are these huge barrels of beautiful things I can’t pronounce that my whole head fit into.
The thing about me you should know, when I find something exciting I call over perfect strangers to share the experience. Yes I AM that lady in the tea section. At one point today I had three people in a barrel. Not bad for a days work.
And yes Rebecca Loudon I did buy you bitter melon tea for Christmas. Doesn’t that just sound lovely?
crossing fingers and all other body parts
Okay this sucks, I can’t tell you the really BIG news because the really BIG news is not final and it’s a possible that being one of the top four does not make me the top one. I am probably jinxing myself by typing all this out anyway but the only people I have to talk to about this tonight are 7 and 11 and all they said was does this mean we can buy a pony?
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Friday, November 25, 2005
The Bird’s Skeleton Is A Boat
Name the ship sparrow, dry spindle of wings--row, my son row.
October’s field of grass is a dry sea. Nailed to the tree
there’s a white card, a woman with a head full of snakes--
"to find God one must burn." My head is a fire, nothing is holy.
In Revelation it states: angels sit at the right side so full of love
they become flame, ash, ignite, begin again. Underneath the wing,
the sparrow is a church. All good crows disguise themselves as birds.
The holy are drowning themselves in ordinary days.
They are walking in fields. I’ve spent a lifetime with fire.
I cannot find prayer. My head is water. It’s time to launch the ship.
It's time to feed the sparrow--burn, my child burn.
Name the ship sparrow, dry spindle of wings--row, my son row.
October’s field of grass is a dry sea. Nailed to the tree
there’s a white card, a woman with a head full of snakes--
"to find God one must burn." My head is a fire, nothing is holy.
In Revelation it states: angels sit at the right side so full of love
they become flame, ash, ignite, begin again. Underneath the wing,
the sparrow is a church. All good crows disguise themselves as birds.
The holy are drowning themselves in ordinary days.
They are walking in fields. I’ve spent a lifetime with fire.
I cannot find prayer. My head is water. It’s time to launch the ship.
It's time to feed the sparrow--burn, my child burn.
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