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.

Before I love, I fear the dark
with its gradual strangeness, familiar burden.
How sly the light with her shadow.
How quick the eye to forget.

Yet in my own night I’m forgiven.
If I close my eyes, follow the map
on the underside of my lids, my body
will remember which way to walk.

Until a chair bites me in the hip. 

Robert Creamer 

I’m still ill. I work, I come home, I do laundry and I run the three flights of stairs but I still feel like crap.

When we were D.C. we went to this great exhibit where the artist, Robert Creamer had built a box with this huge flat bed scanner, he then hung flowers as if they were in space and created amazing images. He also collected petals for years, meticulously arranged them for months and then set them on fire for a single photograph.

He talked about how he adapted as an artist. How he changed because of the digital world, how his art became something totally different then what he believed it would be when he first started taking photos. He was not born in the digital age but it was what he was given.

So these are my questions for myself today and thus for you in some way:

How are you willing to adapt as an artist, how willing are you to let your art change from what you once believed it to be?

And what are going to set on fire?

t. ballard 

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.

  

Bella and her skateboard. Dont you wish you went to my school?

Tonight I went to buy a nativity set from this wonderful store which sells original art work from all around world. The woman who owns the store says she stopped carrying them b/c ppl kept stealing the baby Jesus!!! For some reason this makes me incredibly happy.

I am going to share that information at my art school tomorrow with my kids. I think it will also make my students happy. Maybe we will make her hundreds of little baby jesuses to fill her shelves. Tis the season.

And b/c it is the season I am posting some photos of all the glorious art I’ve making with my kids while I haven’t been blogging. It is a good life and a good job. 

E and T's first tree

It may be a little crooked but it's ours!!!! 

E and I have been playing the title game for the last two days. You get extra points if you use a unique image from the book corresponding with that famous poet’s name. For example:

“I Wish I Had a Crimson Snatch Like Yours Jean Nordhaus.”

Jean gets fifty points for actually using SNATCH in a poem and making it work. You may doubt me now but READ her new book—it is brilliant.

I wonder if we could market it as a board game????

In other news, we are off to D.C. in nine days. I am insanely busy and giving up showering just to write this. But I’m an artist so no one notices. The great thing about being an artist is that truly lazy behavior can be chalked up to creativity.

Mid American is having their annual James Wright Contest. Go enter.

I love that journal. It is one of the few small journals that prints amazing poems each and every issue, almost cover to cover. It is my standard wine—the one I can pick up and read each time and it doesn’t leave a funny taste in my mouth. I’m not even in it and they are not paying me.

Happy 11 days into advent!!!! It is my magic number and I have chocolate.

this is the dog I want for christmas 

I have become boring. I have become boring and old and I think it has something to do with Olivia almost surpassing me in height but I’m not sure.

Next week I am on a panel to decide grant money for writers, which is always fun; it is Santa like, and hell there’s a catered lunch. Problem is I have read all the proposals and there are some poetry book titles I know I won’t be able to keep a straight face through.

(Em says I CANT post them here.)

But for example:
I Wish I Had Eyes Like Yours Van Gogh

Would you keep a straight face?

I’m not being vain or mean but I dont think the general public understands what horrible things you can call both children and books. I once had a kid in my class named Mister. Imagine that poor boy’s life.

Side note: I thought “Asleep Inside an Old Guitar” was a brilliant title and if Eduardo doesn’t take it back I might be tempted to give it to the Van Gogh dude.

Well at least in my head I’ve been blogging ;)

Today Jean Nordhaus’s new book Innocence came and I’m very excited!!! Last week I found her title poem in the pushcart award anthology while listening to an incredibly annoying woman train people at Starbucks. I was at the mall. I was a chain book store at the mall. I was trapped—the only wonderful thing was the poem.

Side note: don’t take me to the mall.

Another side note: If you do I will hide in the nearest book store.

I am wondering about the order of progression, if it is better to go with a smaller press that treats you well, to build up your audience. Is there ideal growth as a poet? An ideal place?

Or do we spend too much time talking about this crap when we should be writing?

The Innocent

Alone and together, we stand on the platform
a mob of strangers awaiting the train. There may be
among us a wife-beater; surely, a thief. That man
in the blue dolphin tie; that frazzled woman,
gathering in her scattered girls; each of us caught
in the swill of our being; none of us blameless,
not one of us pure. Greedy, covetous,
selfish, vain, we have trafficked in lies; we
have practiced small cruelties. Even the baby
asleep in a sling on his mother’s breast,
has been willful, has shaken with rage.

Yet, if fate arrives, as a wind, in a bullet,
a bomb, at the instant of shock, in the silent
heart of conflagration, we will all
be transformed into innocents, cleansed
in the fires of violence, punished not for any sins
committed—but for standing where we stand,
together in the soft, vulnerable flesh.

Jean Nordhaus