The house is asleep. The sun is shining and it is late morning and everyone is so tired from all the holiday hooplaa no one will wake which is fine by me—it is the first time I’ve been alone in four days.

Facts:
1. I have enough leftovers to feed a small village
2. I don’t want to cook but live off saltines and tea
3. I like Katherine Mansfield’s writing far better than Virginia Woolfe
4. I am leaving for Boston in four days
5. I am going to be staying at the Ronald McDonald House (which though tragic seems oddly funny to me)
6. I am horrible with sick people
7. I am a good teacher, friend, mother but no so good with illness
8. I am scared
9. I hate flying
10. The only good parts are fried clams and seeing my sister
11. I want to use the top graphic as the cover of my new book
12. I find out about the big grant on Thursday
13. I will be out of town
14. I miss writing
15. I think we can be a cruel nation that doesn't take care of sick people

I am reading. I am reading Ginsberg and Mansfield. Last night I dreamt there was a box of light in my bathroom and I could make plants grow from it. I had a small cardboard field of tomatoes and rosemary---this is what I get for reading the Garden Supply Catalog before bed.

Tonight my sister is sitting by a hospital bed in Boston and wondering if my niece is going to live. My niece is six months old and beautiful. She is six month old and beautiful and has three tumors on her facial bone. Why did I ever read Lucy Grealy?

Once in a writing conference a famous writer said to me, national disasters happen all around me I thought it was an arrogant way to look at the world---to believe you were are the center of everything.

Truth: I believe if I thought about it happening and then it happens I caused it to happen. I believed b/c I read the book and feared for my own children I cause somehow the baby to be sick or b/c after the death of my nephew my mind has never felt safe, our children are never safe. It is a weird disease to be the center---to cause the world to fall off balance.

Jane Mead

The Specter and His World are One



Some say a jar can tell you
where you are, some say
a satellite. Others—

the postman, the stars,
the sea. It is possible
for the world to mislead you.

You cannot look too much
over your shoulder.
The symbol for moss

is a symbol for destiny:
The shut blaze darkens.
The world misleads you.

You cannot look too much
over your shoulder, I
cannot but say now

follow me,—onto the road
my own heart made,—
the red disc—

the real clay—
pile of yellow thistle
where I’m weeding.

This is the red earth you loved
—my way into.

Stranger than Fiction

My life is starting to resemble the movie “Stranger than Fiction” lately. I keep thinking I am going to hear Emma Thompson’s voice saying....”Harold had a very boring existence until....

1. her father ran off to Vegas with a 24 year old girl
2. her mother was put on a suicide watch
3. her six month old niece, who she has never seen was diagnosed with three cranial tumors
4. her father came back from Vegas and claimed he had been hunting
5. her mother TOOK HIM BACK
6. her father saw Jay Leno
7. her mother went on Valium
8. the tumors seem to be genetic
9. Harold put on a huge art show and raised 10,000 dollars for charity
10. Harold learns she is not adopted


There are days when it is far easier to be a character in a book---

 
Stupid things people said at the Frida Kahlo exhibit

1. Is that really a PET monkey?
2. Wasn’t her husband a painter
3. Wow, she looked much prettier then
4. How did she get her face to stay so still
5. I bet the monkey shit on her shoulder
6. I really don’t know what the big deal is...
7. I am supposed to write a paper on this and I hate it—
8. How I am suppose to write a paper on something I hate!!!!
9. Who’s Dorothy Parker?
10. Dear God, Frida was a communist
11. Do you think she had a cage for that monkey
12. My poster is MUCH bigger than the painting
13. Really, what is the big deal?


I am planning to break into the museum and go back when no one is there. Truly.
It is the largest collection of her paintings ever and I think it might be worth a felony just to see them without everyone yacking.

Yes, I’m an art bitch. I want quiet and color and maybe a good glass of wine.

The first thing I thought when I walked in was---I’d rather be happy. There’s such a sadness to her work, it’s as if pain is suddenly crawling under your skin when you enter the room. Maybe that’s why it is hard to be quiet.

I use to believe great art was worth anything.

And honestly I would feel sad for those people who didn’t seem to get it. That it came first, this need to create and if you didn’t feed it—it became only a shimmer, never great art. Great art came with sacrifice.

I still might believe it but I’d rather be happy. I have watched great artists come and go and I made pure shit and I’ve come close to beauty and if at the end of my life my children know I have loved them well. If I have loved E well then I’ve accomplished greatness—a life, a love which was art.

Yes I know I haven’t been here.

I have a big art show coming up on November 17th at the Northrup King Gallery and I have been driving myself crazy with it. I can’t wait till it is over. I miss writing. I am a far more solitary creature then I once believed.

I’m old now and I need my time.

Did you know yellow jackets bury themselves in the dirt and hibernate for winter?

I found their striped, curled bodies in the flower bed by the north wall and in my brush bag they began to wake and buzz. It was an amazing thing. I held them on my palm, sleepy with cold and they seemed so harmless, so beautiful.

I have a headache. I’m not sure if lead paint gives you a headache but considering the painters left without cleaning up any of the 5000 pounds of trash they left it might be a possibility.

My five foot four self driving a monster truck to the dump three times is a blog post but without video, one really misses the true humor in it. Fact: I dress like an elf most of the time and left on my own I'd wear bright colors, crop pants and shoes with no socks seven days a week.

On Thursday night E and I had front row seats to Annie Lennox which was an amazing show. She rocked. I mean if I’m sixty years old and able to still look sexy and sing well, then being old doesn’t suck.

But I think with the elf thing I’m doomed.

dog cart in hell

 

hell and poetry prizes

I received a phone call today to say I’m a finalist in a fellowship which involves a fairly large sum of money. I’m sure I am jinxing it by writing it here but what the heck---it’s the first writing news I’ve had in ages so I’m marking it down.

I don’t know how I feel about being notified before the judges have made their decision. This has happened once before and I ended up taking second place, which instead of causing me great joy, made me crawl under my blankets and eat crackers in the dark for two days. It also made me sort of a stalker of the first place winner for like two weeks.

Truth: if I really want to punish myself I call up her bio and read her recent awards. She is single with a writing studio. I am pitiful and it took me a half hour to find a pen this morning.

Side note: E once asked me while we were semi quasi dating what kind of writer I wanted to be and I answered simply I want to be the greatest writer in my generation. I assumed it was my calling. I don’t feel like that anymore. I would be happy with a short story collection and a poetry book that isn’t featured in the used books table.

Sometimes I miss the arrogance of that woman before though I am sure E does not.

Another side note: I was thinking yesterday about heaven and hell existing on a linear plane. What if the philosophers and theologians had it all wrong? What if instead of evolving into a greater enlightenment we are actually digressing?

Children believe they can be anything, hell they can be six things at the same time: a firefighter, a doctor, a rock star. But as we grow old we are constantly surrounded by our limitations. We are the same person we are as children and yet we are less.

What if heaven is our beginning and hell is our end. Hell is the basic fact that the clock stops and we no longer exist. Forget demons and fire, would that not be the greatest punishment?

35W

I’ve been blogging in my head a lot lately, which means unless someone builds a skylight it’s very hard to know what I’m thinking.

I use to consider myself lucky to cross the Mississippi River every morning. I liked to pretend (and I do this a lot) that I am a wise holy woman in her red jetta making a treck across the water three times before the sun sets.

I believed it made me blest. I believed I was above all people, most lucky.

Until the bridge fell--and now every morning it is an interesting journey into my psyche.

Will my stomach tighten if I'm in stop dead traffic on the Tenth Avenue Bridge while hearing the jack hammer to my left?

Can I avoid looking at the rubble?

Will I picture the body bags in my mind’s eye?

And sometimes I am just angry. I am angry that this is the only way to get to school and I don’t understand the crowds of people who come every morning to look at the wreck of 35w.

I counted three people with easels last week PAINTING. I want to roll down my window and yell what the fluck are you seeing or simply walk around with a video camera recording the reasons of why they have come, why they have made this journey so I can understand or relate to their journey.

I want to stop every car in front of me and ask them if their stomach also tightens, if they breathe in deeply when they have crossed to the other side.

I am a poet. I understand we are in a constant journey to death. I've never avoided it and sometimes I've even embraced it. I think I understood this frail line even before I understood parts of my own language.

I’ve known everything could change in an instant. It is not this fragility which frightens me but I’m bothered by the constant alienation from the human race—this visual reminder that I’m never or I do ever want to be, that person in the crowd. I can’t fit there and I’m not sure why.

I will be reminded three times today.

Tonight Ani Difranco and why it is good to be a poet living in Minneapolis

I sat three feet from Ani Difranco while she gave her first poetry reading EVER!!!

It was amazing.


More when my head is not full of buzzing

In the World of Art

Yesterday I needed to interview 7 people (one right after another) for an early childhood teaching position. Interviewing people is like going to the dentist—it is not fun but every so often it needs to be done.

Person number one: A really cool woman, who just moved from Seattle. We spent more time talking about Rebecca’s motel exhibit and why Seattle’s art scene might be edgier than Minneapolis than actually talking ABOUT THE JOB.

Person number two: came and introduced herself and....

me: Tell me about your history with teaching art?

her: The most important thing you need to know about me is that I BELIEVE IN JESUS!

me: Ummmmm well okay, can you tell me a little about your teaching?

her: I brought photos.... (I resisted asking her if they were of her and Jesus)

She then produced 200 photos of her and the same Three children, she was always in the center. They were doing a variety of art projects: draw your own creation story, trace your foot and color it in, this my friend an autumn leaf and so on.

her: (Because I’ve gone ABSOLUTELY numb at this point) What is the benefits package?

me: We have none. (trying to make it easy on both of us.)

her: What does it pay?

me: (I said the lowest number I could think of....like three dollars an hour or something)

her: Well....oh..... I think I am going to have to go out in the hall and talk to Jesus about this because I'm not sure if I can take the job.

me: You haven’t actually been offered the job yet so you might want to wait.

3-6 were a series of blond women, for some reason the teaching profession attracts blond women with long hair in droves and they blurred together in my mind, forming a creature with seven eyes.

number seven called a half hour before his interview.

him: Hi, this is Rob. I have an interview in a half hour and I need to know if you are GLBT friendly.

me: Yes, it is on our mission statement on our web page but yes we are.

him: Are you sure?

me: Well, I’m queer how FRIENDLY do you need me to be????


and that my friends was a day in the art world in Minnesota.

I keep checking my own blog to see if I’ve posted anything new. I don’t know what form of mental illness that is but I have it.

Tomorrow painters will come to change the color of the house. People keep telling me I will feel good once it is done but I keep thinking E, the girls and I could travel the whole world TWICE with what I’m paying painters.

And I know I have the skill but something about being three stories off the ground, hanging from the tower makes E’s face turn all red, when I suggest that I paint it by myself.

Our house is huge. It is on steroids and it was this teal blue color before I was married, before babies, before I believe I ever doubted myself. Now it is peeling blue, the magenta looks pink and I’m not quite sure I can see it any other color inside my head.

But I want to.....

Things I would NOT allow if I was the editor of The Best American Poetry

dead people
fuck as a noun
real famous poets who could write ANYTHING, even on toilet paper and have it published
titles that are longer than the poem
any poem with the word Sappho in it
Greek heroes
Trojan Wars
Dionysus poems
All God poems with total denial of god as the ending line
Poems about a poem
in the style of or after so and so who is a far better poet than the poet writing the poem
poems about why it is hard to be a writer
literary theory in the actual poem
poems for a cat, even a dead cat
poems that are trying to be political by using the words bush and war in a couplet
Guantanamo Bay as a location poem
poems which begin with the word ZOOKS!

I have been cooking all day. I’ve made two chocolate cakes, one with coffee and Mexican coco and the other with dark, dark chocolate. I made Ratatouille with eggplant from the garden. I picked three others and left them on the counter b/c they are more beautiful than flowers and then I made butternut squash leek soup for lunch with sourdough bread.

E is fat and happy. The girls are fat and happy. And I am going to crawl into my bed and read.

Today when I was walking with Isabel I thought how wonderful the beginnings of seasons are, how you feel like you can do anything. Learn a new habit, bake a chocolate cake.

I’ve grown too old for Spring, now all I believe in is Fall.

I read this new poem by Sinan Antoon in World Literature Today and thought it was brilliant. Actually I said out loud in the bookstore—I’d give my left boob to write this...

A Letter

Silently
I address them
The dead Iraqis
Where do we stand now?
Give or take a few hundred thousand?

….
Had you been birds,
Your disappearance might have caused some outrage
you could have flown en masse
over the metropolis,
clouded its skies for a few hours
in protest.
Meteorologists and bird-watchers
surely would have noticed
Had you been trees,
you would have made a beautiful forest
whose destruction would have been deemed a crime
against the planet.
Had you been words,
you would have formed a precious book
or manuscript whose loss
would be mourned across the world
But you are none of these
And you had to pass quietly and uneventfully
No one will campaign for you
No one cares to represent you
No absentee ballots have been issued or sent
You will have to wait decades
for a monument,
or a tiny museum.
If you are lucky
in provoking retroactive guilt
your names will be inscribed on a wall somewhere
But until then, you may welcome more to your midst
and form a vast silent chorus
of ghosts,
condemning the spectators and the actors
Exeunt Omens!

There was interview once with the woman (I don’t remember who) and she was talking about her husband who was a famous chef and she said, there are times when it seems easier to move out than to clean our kitchen.

I feel exactly like that today. I made a list of all I need to do today while E is at a writing workshop and I decided just to leave---go to the farmers market, eat fresh cheese with tomatoes on the porch and read while the house, literally falls down around us. (there’s a pile of old siding on front lawn the size of my car and the house smell more like the cats than the people who live inside the house.)

But I won’t see it and I wont care.

It would BE easier to move!

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