I have been teaching girl empowerment workshops all day. Sometimes I really think I should be paying them and not the other way around. I mean, I get to sit in a room with twelve girls and discuss all the great things about being a girl, about personal truth, private space and every topic is a big post it note in my head: Trust yourself Teresa
Today I played the girls a Dar Williams Song, I was a boy and the song Popularfrom the Wicked C.D. Both are brilliant songs. We discussed what the word strength means, how some people call girl strength “boyish.” When truly each being has their own inner power and it has absolutely nothing to with gender.
Did you know the highest point of self esteem in a woman is statistically nine years old? How incredibly sad? So I am marking these girls in the desert. I am saying wow, you are right you are amazing. Set the stone here. Paint here. Learn to write so you can remember and don’t give away your little post it note so easily.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Random Excuses from Ballard
To the clerk at Barnes and Noble: I’m sorry I snorted when you did not know who Anton Chekhov was and gulped sweet jesus when you asked me, what orchard?
I was not trying to be rude but I kept waiting for the big hand with the hook to come down from the ceiling and pull you off the stage.
And to my poor dear X-sister-in-law who keeps making oily crosses on my nephew’s door b/c he is a wonderful gay man who sometimes forgets, to shut the window of porn on his laptop while home on winter break.
I’m sorry that I tried to explain this to you. I am sorry I said “sex” out loud seventeen times. I am sorry I used boy and sex in combination with other verbs. You may make a cross on my head.
I was not trying to be rude but I kept waiting for the big hand with the hook to come down from the ceiling and pull you off the stage.
And to my poor dear X-sister-in-law who keeps making oily crosses on my nephew’s door b/c he is a wonderful gay man who sometimes forgets, to shut the window of porn on his laptop while home on winter break.
I’m sorry that I tried to explain this to you. I am sorry I said “sex” out loud seventeen times. I am sorry I used boy and sex in combination with other verbs. You may make a cross on my head.
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Happy New Year
On my 25th New Year I was in Bergun Switzerland with five friends in a bar. I was the only girl. I didn’t love any of them and they didn’t love me. We decided after a few pints of beer to take a train higher up into the Alps and ride a toboggan down the trail. Ben had read earlier in the day, in some flyer by the museum, that the trail was lit at night. We thought it would be a wonderful way to start the New Year.
I don’t remember being afraid, I don’t remember thinking that I should be. I know that Henry told me the sled could reach speeds of forty to fifty miles per hour and I thought that was slow…IN A CAR.
I wanted to go alone. I knew I wanted to drive myself, my two feet on the runners. I wanted to beat the boys. The first light, the big lamp over my head was a moon, the mountains felt like water. The first light was my only light. Once you begin there’s no way to stop, once you begin the only way down is to continue.
To the Swiss lit meant one light at the top of the trail and one light at the bottom. It was three miles of flying, of trying to see the curves ahead, of bending your body low, anticipating the path, leaning in the direction opposite of the one you needed to go. You forget after the fear stays in your throat, that you want to live. There’s no way to stop, no path to walk down.
Henry said he wet his pants before the first hundred yards. I ran over Ben after the second mile. I lifted into the air, held on. I know my body. I know water even when it is cold. I have strong legs and a great need to survive.
I wish I could explain the way it felt flying over the small bridges, of looking up and seeing the stars, how the trees huddled together and how sometimes when the incline straighten, when I looked below it was as if I was looking into a dark mirror, the nothing and endless miles of falling.
I remember thinking of my parents in Maine, asleep in their beds, safe and not dreaming. I remember missing the ocean, of feeling so strange in the Alps--the world didn’t go on, it somehow stopped here, with me. One girl, no one could imagine. No one could say I know Teresa Ballard, and this is what she is doing. This is how I think she will die.
When I reached the last curve I saw the light. I saw the small houses in the village, unlike the mountians from where I had been, so in need of order. I saw shadows walked across the orange light. I began to see other people. My body stretched out, relaxed. The land widen, the trees separated. I didn’t want to stop. I bent myself in half so I could keep going so I could find another place to take off.
I don’t remember being afraid, I don’t remember thinking that I should be. I know that Henry told me the sled could reach speeds of forty to fifty miles per hour and I thought that was slow…IN A CAR.
I wanted to go alone. I knew I wanted to drive myself, my two feet on the runners. I wanted to beat the boys. The first light, the big lamp over my head was a moon, the mountains felt like water. The first light was my only light. Once you begin there’s no way to stop, once you begin the only way down is to continue.
To the Swiss lit meant one light at the top of the trail and one light at the bottom. It was three miles of flying, of trying to see the curves ahead, of bending your body low, anticipating the path, leaning in the direction opposite of the one you needed to go. You forget after the fear stays in your throat, that you want to live. There’s no way to stop, no path to walk down.
Henry said he wet his pants before the first hundred yards. I ran over Ben after the second mile. I lifted into the air, held on. I know my body. I know water even when it is cold. I have strong legs and a great need to survive.
I wish I could explain the way it felt flying over the small bridges, of looking up and seeing the stars, how the trees huddled together and how sometimes when the incline straighten, when I looked below it was as if I was looking into a dark mirror, the nothing and endless miles of falling.
I remember thinking of my parents in Maine, asleep in their beds, safe and not dreaming. I remember missing the ocean, of feeling so strange in the Alps--the world didn’t go on, it somehow stopped here, with me. One girl, no one could imagine. No one could say I know Teresa Ballard, and this is what she is doing. This is how I think she will die.
When I reached the last curve I saw the light. I saw the small houses in the village, unlike the mountians from where I had been, so in need of order. I saw shadows walked across the orange light. I began to see other people. My body stretched out, relaxed. The land widen, the trees separated. I didn’t want to stop. I bent myself in half so I could keep going so I could find another place to take off.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Olivia says I cannot call us, THE GIRLS OF WONDER AND LIGHT anymore in public places like: hotel lobbies, elevators and on top of the water slide. She rolls her eyes and says, you’re a weird mom.
I tell my girls to look for what they love, mark it, remember. Today I took Bella to her first indoor ice rink. It was horribly romantic with its glass ceiling, piped in music. Bella tried to skate backwards first, I told her we might want to focus on straight ahead. No, she said, I want to go this way, I want to twirl.
Every time a girl would spin around us, she would be disgusted. I tried to explain lessons. I tried to explain practice. Bella would have none of it. She fell A LOT. She told me if you fall on your hands and lick your fingers, it feels better. Today Bella twirled and when I put her in the car tired and wet she said, I found it mom, the thing I love.
I talked to Liz about nomadic culture today. I told her in the desert the women carry the stones. They do these patterns with rocks so they know where they are, because in the desert everything looks the same, it’s easy to become lost. Sometimes, it even feels like you are in the same place where you began—it’s important to mark your way.
I am carrying the rocks in my pocket. Truth is, I always carry things in my pocket but I will not be like Virginia and walk into the river. I will put them down. I will mark my way.
I tell my girls to look for what they love, mark it, remember. Today I took Bella to her first indoor ice rink. It was horribly romantic with its glass ceiling, piped in music. Bella tried to skate backwards first, I told her we might want to focus on straight ahead. No, she said, I want to go this way, I want to twirl.
Every time a girl would spin around us, she would be disgusted. I tried to explain lessons. I tried to explain practice. Bella would have none of it. She fell A LOT. She told me if you fall on your hands and lick your fingers, it feels better. Today Bella twirled and when I put her in the car tired and wet she said, I found it mom, the thing I love.
I talked to Liz about nomadic culture today. I told her in the desert the women carry the stones. They do these patterns with rocks so they know where they are, because in the desert everything looks the same, it’s easy to become lost. Sometimes, it even feels like you are in the same place where you began—it’s important to mark your way.
I am carrying the rocks in my pocket. Truth is, I always carry things in my pocket but I will not be like Virginia and walk into the river. I will put them down. I will mark my way.
I am contemplating running away with the moose, he is solid. He doesn’t talk much. I have been on vacation with the girls. If I owe you proofs, recordings, emails, new poems I’m sorry. I am coming but the moose and I are taking our time. We need to catch our breath.
When I was a child my father would take us camping in the Maine woods. My dad and three children under the age of ten, in a leaky boat watching moose come down to the water, on their small spindle legs, their heavy heads. They’re not smart. They’re not beautiful but they are lovely in the way things are strong, not light, not water, nor wind just solid.
When I was a child my father would take us camping in the Maine woods. My dad and three children under the age of ten, in a leaky boat watching moose come down to the water, on their small spindle legs, their heavy heads. They’re not smart. They’re not beautiful but they are lovely in the way things are strong, not light, not water, nor wind just solid.
Monday, December 26, 2005
Ballard's morning notes.
I woke up this morning to quiet. My thing for the New Year is to find my silence, the room inside myself and try to begin with it, before I start the day. I am returning to the first writing teacher I ever had, Madeline L’Engle. I blame her for ruining me for all other workshops and teachers, b/c she always told me no one could ever teach me how to write. No one could teach me how to listen to myself. That’s pretty powerful knowledge at 17.
Sometimes I loose my way. Okay, I loose my self a lot. A few years ago I met a teacher who told me Teresa, you need to invent your self as a writer, create your image as a poet--market, connect. He, honestly is probably the most financially successful writer I will ever meet and he’s damn good at this. I am not. Or maybe I am, sometimes I get lost in my own stories, which I’m sure is how Hansel felt when he tried to return home following a trail of bread. No one expects the birds.
Chekhov : you must once and for all give up being worried about successes and failures. Don’t let that concern you. It is your duty to go on working steadily day by day, quite quietly, to be prepared for mistakes, which are inevitable, and for failures.
Dialectic Number One: I spend a great deal more time thinking about what kind of writer I want to be verses actually writing.
Dialectic Number Two: Writing and thinking is key to my survival as a being. It frees me and entraps me, sometimes simultaneously.
When my sister’s son died four years ago I was there, when other people were throwing up in the bathroom or crying in the waiting room, I was rubbing her back, telling her stories b/c even though he was dead she had to give birth to him. When the nurse, took me aside and told me the baby might be born in pieces, that I should be prepared. I wrote myself a story. I said, here I am, I will write my way out of this someday, I will forget. I have never forgotten.
The stories (poems) we keep writing are the things we may never be free of. I know every detail of that room, his foot print on paper. I know you can enter a place, thinking you can be respectful of someone’s grief, enter into their pain b/c you love them and yet it’s a goal you can never attain. I also understand sometimes you can become trapped. There are rooms in love you cannot enter. Places you cannot be.
Pay attention to the dialectics. Be mindful of the birds.
Sometimes I loose my way. Okay, I loose my self a lot. A few years ago I met a teacher who told me Teresa, you need to invent your self as a writer, create your image as a poet--market, connect. He, honestly is probably the most financially successful writer I will ever meet and he’s damn good at this. I am not. Or maybe I am, sometimes I get lost in my own stories, which I’m sure is how Hansel felt when he tried to return home following a trail of bread. No one expects the birds.
Chekhov : you must once and for all give up being worried about successes and failures. Don’t let that concern you. It is your duty to go on working steadily day by day, quite quietly, to be prepared for mistakes, which are inevitable, and for failures.
Dialectic Number One: I spend a great deal more time thinking about what kind of writer I want to be verses actually writing.
Dialectic Number Two: Writing and thinking is key to my survival as a being. It frees me and entraps me, sometimes simultaneously.
When my sister’s son died four years ago I was there, when other people were throwing up in the bathroom or crying in the waiting room, I was rubbing her back, telling her stories b/c even though he was dead she had to give birth to him. When the nurse, took me aside and told me the baby might be born in pieces, that I should be prepared. I wrote myself a story. I said, here I am, I will write my way out of this someday, I will forget. I have never forgotten.
The stories (poems) we keep writing are the things we may never be free of. I know every detail of that room, his foot print on paper. I know you can enter a place, thinking you can be respectful of someone’s grief, enter into their pain b/c you love them and yet it’s a goal you can never attain. I also understand sometimes you can become trapped. There are rooms in love you cannot enter. Places you cannot be.
Pay attention to the dialectics. Be mindful of the birds.
Sunday, December 25, 2005
They were up at 7 am, my little wonders. This is a year of first: Olivia shoveled for two weeks to get enough money to buy everyone their own gifts. It was very cool. I now have lotion that makes me smell like cinnamon cookies. Oddly, it’s incredibly sexy.
My favorite thing though was Bella’s note cards in purple crayon…I hope you love your prosite. I read it about five times thinking she was trying to spell prostitute. Thus the whole present time was filled with Merry, Merry prostitute and if you need help with your Christmas prostitute. Please yell. I saved each and every note so when she grows old I can sell them back to her.
We the Girls Of Wonder and Light, wish you a very Merry Christmas.
My favorite thing though was Bella’s note cards in purple crayon…I hope you love your prosite. I read it about five times thinking she was trying to spell prostitute. Thus the whole present time was filled with Merry, Merry prostitute and if you need help with your Christmas prostitute. Please yell. I saved each and every note so when she grows old I can sell them back to her.
We the Girls Of Wonder and Light, wish you a very Merry Christmas.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Today was the last art class of ten boys. We built a snow dog to celebrate. I use to teach grownups b/c well, I thought it made me more important but those people annoyed me. They would stand around me chattering like chickens and tell me things like I can’t paint. Anyone can paint, my students and I know this.
The other reason was, adults give horrible Christmas/ teacher presents and well here’s what I got today: a chocolate cat, drawing of a chocolate cat, four candles, Georgia O’keefe Calendar, a dragon kissing me on the cheek; chocolate covered pretzels; gift card to Target; gift card to Barnes and Noble, orange slices, baked bread, a letter with the entire alphabet and a little boy flying a rocket to the moon.
Truly I am ruined for men over three feet tall. John gave me the rocket and said Teresa, I love you and I always want you to remember. John and I went to space together. I call him John John the Astrotron. He hugs me and does not bite my belly.
The other reason was, adults give horrible Christmas/ teacher presents and well here’s what I got today: a chocolate cat, drawing of a chocolate cat, four candles, Georgia O’keefe Calendar, a dragon kissing me on the cheek; chocolate covered pretzels; gift card to Target; gift card to Barnes and Noble, orange slices, baked bread, a letter with the entire alphabet and a little boy flying a rocket to the moon.
Truly I am ruined for men over three feet tall. John gave me the rocket and said Teresa, I love you and I always want you to remember. John and I went to space together. I call him John John the Astrotron. He hugs me and does not bite my belly.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Grocery Shopping with Ballard
To the woman who tried to seduce me in the grocery store with liver pate---it almost worked.
To the butcher who followed me around with a meat thermometer---well that was just creepy.
And for this conversation:
ringgggggggggggggggggggggg
Me: Hello
phone: Hi, it’s your good looking brother…
Me: I’m sorry you have the wrong number. I don’t have a good looking brother.
I swear to God I called him right back but I almost peed myself in the veggie isle.
To the butcher who followed me around with a meat thermometer---well that was just creepy.
And for this conversation:
ringgggggggggggggggggggggg
Me: Hello
phone: Hi, it’s your good looking brother…
Me: I’m sorry you have the wrong number. I don’t have a good looking brother.
I swear to God I called him right back but I almost peed myself in the veggie isle.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
I broke a pattern today. Deliberately, isn’t that how patterns are broken? I made a different choice. I said out loud, I am not the same person I was four year ago and I meant it.
Last night I went to see BrokeBack Mountain. It made me sad. Possibly b/c I was positioned between three people who were sobbing yet I did not. I don’t know why? I’m not a closet crier and yet sometimes silence is good.
In November I stood in a three block line to see Pride and Prejudice. I love that I live in a town where ppl read. Two girls were in front of us and they said, they couldn’t remember any lines memorable from the book, not like Romeo and Juliet. Blah, blah… we are all fools in love, I said. My date was not impressed. I thought it was pretty impressive. Okay, it could be I spent the rest of the evening moaning, “Where oh where is my Mr. Darcy?” That might be it.
Charles Wright has a damn fine poem in The New Yorker. Damn fine. Worth the whole price of the magazine. Also an interesting article about William Woodworth, how he was mocked so much during his writing career, how he has forty years of work no one has ever read, how he did his best writing in his thirties but even then he wasn’t really, ever respected in the literary community.
It is so interesting this whole career perspective. I always find it interesting when people say to me I'm the real thing. What does that mean? I mean, I get they are giving me a high compliment and I do try to take it as such, but the real thing? Does validation of work make it art? And if so, is it the artist’s own validation or the general community?
I love the poem “Chicken Little.” I wrote it three years ago before chicken poetry became popular. Yes, there was a rush. I’ve never published it…maybe b/c there was a huge flood of poultry poetry. I don’t know? But it still took me awhile to figure out that I could still be proud of it. I could still like it, that it didn’t need outside validation.
I'm not the same woman I was four years ago.
Last night I went to see BrokeBack Mountain. It made me sad. Possibly b/c I was positioned between three people who were sobbing yet I did not. I don’t know why? I’m not a closet crier and yet sometimes silence is good.
In November I stood in a three block line to see Pride and Prejudice. I love that I live in a town where ppl read. Two girls were in front of us and they said, they couldn’t remember any lines memorable from the book, not like Romeo and Juliet. Blah, blah… we are all fools in love, I said. My date was not impressed. I thought it was pretty impressive. Okay, it could be I spent the rest of the evening moaning, “Where oh where is my Mr. Darcy?” That might be it.
Charles Wright has a damn fine poem in The New Yorker. Damn fine. Worth the whole price of the magazine. Also an interesting article about William Woodworth, how he was mocked so much during his writing career, how he has forty years of work no one has ever read, how he did his best writing in his thirties but even then he wasn’t really, ever respected in the literary community.
It is so interesting this whole career perspective. I always find it interesting when people say to me I'm the real thing. What does that mean? I mean, I get they are giving me a high compliment and I do try to take it as such, but the real thing? Does validation of work make it art? And if so, is it the artist’s own validation or the general community?
I love the poem “Chicken Little.” I wrote it three years ago before chicken poetry became popular. Yes, there was a rush. I’ve never published it…maybe b/c there was a huge flood of poultry poetry. I don’t know? But it still took me awhile to figure out that I could still be proud of it. I could still like it, that it didn’t need outside validation.
I'm not the same woman I was four years ago.
Oh exciting news. My friend Alex Lemon first book of poems Mosquito, is going to be published by Tin House Books in late 2006. I'm so happy--blessings on his head and blessings on the book. I can’t wait. This is going to be a wonderful read....
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Not Waving
When I tell my non writing friends that I have been solicited or that I am working on submissions they always think I’m talking dirty and even when I cure my friends of the smirks on their faces, I still can’t talk about it at coffee shops, or I get smirks from other tables.
Yesterday I was solicited and it made me wish, it really had something to do with sex, b/c I came face to face to the realization I am not producing like I use to. My new favorite word for the week is “viscous.” I taught it to my second graders yesterday while doing a unit on liquids, after reading “My Life As A Wave” by Octavio Paz.
My mind has grown viscous and though it sounds really beautiful, it is NOT a good thing. I realize I will not write all the books I want to write. I hunger to withdraw and just create and yet everything I know pulls me back into the world.
I feel like I attend more meetings then Jesus and though I pride myself on actually loving this holiday, I find my myself quoting Stevie Smith daily I was too far out all my life, not waving but drowning.
So my question for the day is how do we remain artists in a busy world, when our jobs, children, society constantly calls us to be external and our writing pull us under? And is great art created by a balance of some sort or must you choose one, to withdraw or to be present?
You all nibble on that a bit, while I go out grocery shopping in three feet of snow…not waving but….
Yesterday I was solicited and it made me wish, it really had something to do with sex, b/c I came face to face to the realization I am not producing like I use to. My new favorite word for the week is “viscous.” I taught it to my second graders yesterday while doing a unit on liquids, after reading “My Life As A Wave” by Octavio Paz.
My mind has grown viscous and though it sounds really beautiful, it is NOT a good thing. I realize I will not write all the books I want to write. I hunger to withdraw and just create and yet everything I know pulls me back into the world.
I feel like I attend more meetings then Jesus and though I pride myself on actually loving this holiday, I find my myself quoting Stevie Smith daily I was too far out all my life, not waving but drowning.
So my question for the day is how do we remain artists in a busy world, when our jobs, children, society constantly calls us to be external and our writing pull us under? And is great art created by a balance of some sort or must you choose one, to withdraw or to be present?
You all nibble on that a bit, while I go out grocery shopping in three feet of snow…not waving but….
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