I’ve been running a fever for the last two days.

I woke up several times last night believing I could speak every language in the world. I have an intense memory of being 17 in a little boat in Germany crossing a river. I was trying to concentrate hard enough to understand. I don’t speak German but I believed I could, if I taught my self to truly listen before the boat landed on the other side.

Just listen. These are words I tell myself all the time.

Other words I tell myself: Stop. Breathe. It’s a wave, only a wave. If you get up right now you can have _______ for supper. Five more minutes, I can sleep five more minutes. I will be a better mother, writer, teacher, lover in my next life. In my next life I will be more organized, creative, attentive, BETTER, able to leap small buildings…..

I understand slowly and then it seems I don’t understand at all. Listen.

Noises in the last five minutes: phone, car, a bus. A very loud garbage truck with one tire flater than the other. A chain saw. Barb next door yelling at the dog. A tree falling. Phone. "Keta come here, please come here" The door opening. Footsteps and one red beep.

Note to Carole Maso: If you write like a god, could you at least be kind?

 

I did it again!!!! I spent all my time last weekend (okay maybe four hours) working on a submission, finished it and then left it in my box to be mailed further in the week on my way to work. Now of course I’ve missed the deadline even though it seems I went to work a zillion times.

I don’t know how I keep doing this. Why is it impossible to raise two children, work a full time job and write a book----this is actually a question in my head.

On a happy note that involves no stamps. I finished a great first novel today called “Caucasia” by Senna Denzy about two children born in the sixties, in an interracial home, who were split up b/c one looked like one parent and one looked like the other. Read the book. It's written well and talks about things people never talk about in a way that’s incredibly interesting.

Another note: I am in love. His name is Robert and I met him on Tuesday while he was hiding under the art table from one of his teachers, who was trying to lure him out by asking him what the word “luminaries” meant. I then had him the next day in my mosaic class breaking dishes with hammers. “This is cool shit” he said and hugged my knee cap.

I agree.

photo- Les Krimns

Salt on the roads melts
the ice. Salt on the heart
hardens it.
That's not
How the Book
Preserves the body.

The bitten tongue
Tastes blood. The tongue
Uttering, utters love.

gregory orr

Calm down, calm down.
But why calm down?
When I'm dead and only
A poem in the Book
Read by someone
Not yet born,
Then I will be calm.
Then I will tell them
In a quiet voice
What a miracle it is
To be alive. I won't
Shout and jump around.
I'll whisper it in her ear.

gregory orr 

Sadness is there, too.
All the sadness in the world.
Because the tide ebbs,
Because the wild waves
Punish the shore
And the small lives live there.
Because the body is scattered.
Because death is real
And sometimes death is not
Even the worst of it.

If sadness did not run
Like a river through the Book,
Why would we go there?
What would we drink?

-gregory orr

(photo by jerry uelsmann)

 

I am the rat's star today

My friend, my friend, I was born
doing reference work in sin, and born
confessing it. This is what poems are:
with mercy
for the greedy,
they are the tongue’s wrangle,
the world’s pottage, the rat’s star.


-anne sexton

I have been reading “Autobiography of a Face” by Lucy Grealy for the last few days. I found it in a used bookstore on Sunday along with the collected works of H.D which I had been looking for, for years. I scared the crap out of the person down the stacks when I saw her collected (made physical noises) and strapped it to my breast like a small child then like a BAD mother brought it to my house and lost it in my own stacks.

Read Grealy’s book if you have not already. She was a poet and then wrote a memoir before it was cool to do such things. She had cancer as a child which left her face disfigured and there’s no happy ending. No Oprah saying it made her better or stronger, nothing more than a brilliant book.

After I finished the book Em came in and said, “did you know she is dead?” Which really sucked b/c I didn’t KNOW and I wrote my own happy ending even if Grealy could not. I didn’t give her a drug overdose at 39. I gave her hair and better surgeries and maybe a few more lovers.

I don’t think I’m a poet. I might be a fairy tale writer.

Now I’m sad and want to go have tea.

I am reading a book about bats. A serious book about bats which explains how they hold their young, how one wing wraps around another when they are cold; the males and females switch roles at random and the bats have to be a certain temperature to reproduce.

To hunt, the bat listens to the rhythm of its prey; it hears the moth’s flutter, the grasshopper’s song and to adapt the prey changes it’s music to confuse the hunter.

I understand this.

Mating occurs by listening, to the one who bears the beats closest to your own and this is how they find each other when there is nothing else. But how do they know the difference, of what to eat or what to love?

This I’m not sure I understand. 

It is Christmas. Em is downstairs making Christmas noises and the girls are sleeping late b/c Santa already came once EARLY so there is just us human beings left to receive gifts from and we not all that exciting.

The holidays have come in pieces for us this year which is a wonderful way to digest them. All of Em’s family will be here in a few minutes. We all laugh readily and quickly and get along exceptionally well. We spent several hours playing “would you rather” which asks such questions as “would you rather eat a brain or lick a man’s sweaty armpit completely….”

The questions are gross but offer deep insight into the psyche.

Two days ago we went to a hanger which stores all the Boeing Airplanes through out history; some had teeth, some were bright yellow like bees. It was a Rebecca Loudon wet dream and unfortunately I said those words out loud when I first entered the building. Many heads turned!

Did you ever feel like you were seeing things others were meant to see? And if you gathered them up like stones they would truly understand your gift.

 

What more could you want??????

I bought this today in a little store out side of D.C. and I am tempted to go back and buy more for all my blogger friends. It is the snot of angels and it's suppose to protect you from all the world's evils--and there's a hell of a lot of evils out there.

Oh and it smells like jasmine. 

We are in D.C. for the holidays. Yesterday we went to the air and space museum and purchased enough astronaut ice cream to last us at least one trip around the moon.

I have seen beautiful art.

Bella’s quote for the day “I wish these places (the museum) would only tell me about things I don’t know—the rest is boring.”

We haven’t seen the president. I haven’t been alone for more than five minutes at a time but we are here and my girls are happy.

Wishing you all peace or at least help in the pursuit of it—happy holiday.

Yesterday I was on a board which awarded $20,000 to writers. It was the first time I’ve ever been in a place to make those decisions. I think I learnt more in those eight hours then I have in a long time.

First off, I will never ever write a query letter the same again and that $15.00 I begrudgingly send off with my manuscript I will now send off with a new attitude. It’s a fluck of a lot of work.

But OH MY GOD THERE WAS NO COFFEE!!!!

Okay this is a boring post but I don’t want it to be.

Today Olivia taped me (without my knowledge) lying in the bed with my new pink nano singing “Halleluiah” with Katie Lang. Saying I am singing is giving me more credit than I deserve ;) it’s more like Helllllllllaaaaaaaluuuuuuuyaaaaa and then I mumble, then for some reason say “BARGE” really, really loud.

Olivia is threatening to send it to home funniest videos or post it on my blog.

I own her world---none of those things are going to happen. This is one of the reasons I never taught her to download.

What do you think of this ????

 

I should be folding laundry---why doesn’t it come out of the dryer that way. We waste so much money on stupid inventions when that one would be useful. The laundry is in the middle of the bed right now and the cat is making tunnels. Hell if I could get away with sleeping on warm, crumpled clothes I would.

Tomorrow is a BIG day. We are having our family night at work where all the students showcase their art and perform. It is my favorite night of the semester but I will probably get to work at 8 am and leave at 8 p.m. which sucks. Yet I love it!!!!

Children will be stilting, playing African drums, putting on a show with puppets they have made, felting, painting chairs, doing Spoken Word and I will look over and it will be a good thing. A very good thing indeed.

I realized tonight, I teach and write for exactly the same reasons. I want something that is more than who I am to out live me. I want something to exist of me that doesn’t have flesh or bone.

Today Cody told me he was a great writer even though he didn’t spell every word correctly. “Because,” he said “I am excellent at content. I say interesting things.”

I hope I taught him that or at least encouraged it.

I tell them, artists are born out of deep listening. I can teach anyone to paint but only you can teach yourself how to listen. I believe that with all that I have. I believe in these kids.