Wednesday, March 30, 2011
lick my wounds and remove / 9:47 pm
Thank you to Adam for showing me this video. The album release on May 3rd will be a glorious and long awaited day. I need this song right now.
"Grown Ocean" (Fleet Foxes)
In that dream I'm as old as the mountains
Still is starlight reflected in fountains
Children grown on the edge of the ocean
Kept like jewelry, kept with devotion
In that dream moving slow through the morning
You would come to me then without answers
Lick my wounds and remove my demands for now
Eucalyptus and orange trees are blooming
In that dream there's no darkness alluded
In that dream moving slow through the morning time
In that dream, I could hardly contain it
All my life I will wait to attain it
There, there, there
I know someday the smoke will all burn off
All these voices I'll someday have turned off
I will see you someday when I've woken
I'll be so happy just to have spoken
I'll have so much to tell you about it
In that dream I could hardly contain it
All my life I will wait to attain it
There, there, there
Wide-eyed walker, don't betray me
I will wake one day, don't delay me
Wide-eyed leaver, always going
Saturday, March 19, 2011
oh, my ears!
which is a louder, more distracting noise as you try to fall asleep---the sound of a S.W.A.T. team a couple streets away or the sound of amorous caterwauling kitties making love in your own backyard?
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
diving, diving, diving
It is raining outside and the sound of it is very pleasant to me right now. Rain doesn't always put me in the best of moods, but there are certain times that it's just what I need and this is one of those times. Now that I've moved my bed, I can hear it better. There's something about my position in the room that lets me hear the pitter pat on the roof clearly. It's gentle, calm, light. I don't like the sound of cars in the rain, so if only I could transport my house to some more isolated spot...
I want to write and I don't know what to write about. I don't feel creative so much as observant. Looking down, I see my hands and a couple of scars (clumsy burns) leading me to think about other scars. I realize that I used to be more aware of these things... for instance, I haven't thought about my first scar in a long time and now I look at it remembering where it came from. I was in the grassy area next to my Grandma Hackbarth's apartment and I fell down near the light pole and the air conditioning generator (?) on top of a short rusty metal pole (more of a stick) hidden in the grass. It cut the skin directly where the front of my ankle becomes my right foot--a tiny little vertical sliver which has faded with the years. I don't know why it means something to me, but it does and I hope it never really goes away. I see my knees too, always pink for some reason while the rest of me is so pale. For so long, I've loathed my pink knees. Why are they pink, anyway? Only now am I beginning to not care about their strange pigmentation. Why shouldn't they be pink, after all? The birthmark on my thigh, the moles sprinkled out here and there like constellations (my favorites hovering above my left wrist and on my right cheek bone), a writer's callus on my right middle finger, the tattoo celebrating emergence into the known/unknown. So often I criticize my body rather than appreciate it and it feels so much better to appreciate it--what it does, where it takes me, how it houses and encourages five of my senses, how strong it is to sustain me despite its simultaneous fragility. I am left with a feeling of gratefulness for the rain and the body.
I want to write and I don't know what to write about. I don't feel creative so much as observant. Looking down, I see my hands and a couple of scars (clumsy burns) leading me to think about other scars. I realize that I used to be more aware of these things... for instance, I haven't thought about my first scar in a long time and now I look at it remembering where it came from. I was in the grassy area next to my Grandma Hackbarth's apartment and I fell down near the light pole and the air conditioning generator (?) on top of a short rusty metal pole (more of a stick) hidden in the grass. It cut the skin directly where the front of my ankle becomes my right foot--a tiny little vertical sliver which has faded with the years. I don't know why it means something to me, but it does and I hope it never really goes away. I see my knees too, always pink for some reason while the rest of me is so pale. For so long, I've loathed my pink knees. Why are they pink, anyway? Only now am I beginning to not care about their strange pigmentation. Why shouldn't they be pink, after all? The birthmark on my thigh, the moles sprinkled out here and there like constellations (my favorites hovering above my left wrist and on my right cheek bone), a writer's callus on my right middle finger, the tattoo celebrating emergence into the known/unknown. So often I criticize my body rather than appreciate it and it feels so much better to appreciate it--what it does, where it takes me, how it houses and encourages five of my senses, how strong it is to sustain me despite its simultaneous fragility. I am left with a feeling of gratefulness for the rain and the body.
Monday, February 21, 2011
thoughts for today (and tomorrow and the next)
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Countless lives inhabit us.
I don't know, when I think or feel,
Who it is that thinks or feels.
I am merely the place
Where things are thought or felt.
I have more than just one soul.
There are more I's than I myself.
I exist, nevertheless,
Indifferent to them all.
I silence them: I speak.
The crossing urges of what
I feel or do not feel
Struggle in who I am, but I
Ignore them. They dictate nothing
To the I I am: I write."
- Fernando Pessoa, translated by Richard Zenith
(Although, personally speaking, I am certainly not indifferent to them all.)
"If I know only one thing
It's that every thing that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable
Often I barely can speak..."
- Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes), Helplessness Blues
"Countless lives inhabit us.
I don't know, when I think or feel,
Who it is that thinks or feels.
I am merely the place
Where things are thought or felt.
I have more than just one soul.
There are more I's than I myself.
I exist, nevertheless,
Indifferent to them all.
I silence them: I speak.
The crossing urges of what
I feel or do not feel
Struggle in who I am, but I
Ignore them. They dictate nothing
To the I I am: I write."
- Fernando Pessoa, translated by Richard Zenith
(Although, personally speaking, I am certainly not indifferent to them all.)
"If I know only one thing
It's that every thing that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable
Often I barely can speak..."
- Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes), Helplessness Blues
Friday, February 18, 2011
sing with me somehow / 8:20 pm
There is a town in north Ontario
with dream comfort memory to spare
and, in my mind, I still need a place to go
all my changes were there
Blue, blue windows behind the stars
yellow moon on the rise
big birds flying across the sky
throwing shadows on our eyes
Leave us helpless, helpless, helpless
baby, can you hear me now?
the chains are locked and tied across the door
baby, sing with me somehow
Blue, blue windows behind the stars
yellow moon on the rise
big birds flying across the sky
throwing shadows on our eyes
Leave us helpless, helpless, helpless
helpless, helpless, helpless, helpless
helpless, helpless, helpless
helpless, helpless, helpless, helpless
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
space between
things I noticed this evening on my first run (in a long time):
lots of chittering, scampering squirrels
that it feels nice to say hello to the people I pass on the sidewalk
that it feels nice when they say hello back
my shadow--and how it misses Adam's shadow
my elementary/middle school and how distant those years seem
the houses of old classmates that I'll probably never see again
the space between my feet and the ground
the connection between my feet and the ground
the moon always ahead of me--chasing it
the sky as it changes what must be a million shades of blue
(and one shade precisely the color contained in 1/3 of Adam's irises)
branches against the almost-night sky
how nice it feels to use my muscles
an elevated mood
my heartbeat pulsing in my head and chest
a black cat sprinting across the street
a dog sniffing in a yard (doberman)
the wonderful kind of fatigue I only get when using my body
silence with an excess of free thoughts that I can't remember now
lots of chittering, scampering squirrels
that it feels nice to say hello to the people I pass on the sidewalk
that it feels nice when they say hello back
my shadow--and how it misses Adam's shadow
my elementary/middle school and how distant those years seem
the houses of old classmates that I'll probably never see again
the space between my feet and the ground
the connection between my feet and the ground
the moon always ahead of me--chasing it
the sky as it changes what must be a million shades of blue
(and one shade precisely the color contained in 1/3 of Adam's irises)
branches against the almost-night sky
how nice it feels to use my muscles
an elevated mood
my heartbeat pulsing in my head and chest
a black cat sprinting across the street
a dog sniffing in a yard (doberman)
the wonderful kind of fatigue I only get when using my body
silence with an excess of free thoughts that I can't remember now
Saturday, February 5, 2011
by the spoonful / 1:17 pm
The Moon
You can take the moon by the spoonful
or in capsules every two hours.
It's useful as a hypnotic and sedative
and besides it relieves
those who have had too much philosophy.
A piece of moon in your purse
works better than a rabbit's foot.
Helps you find a lover
or get rich without anyone knowing,
and it staves off doctors and clinics.
You can give it to children like candy
when they've not gone to sleep,
and a few drops of moon in the eyes of the old
helps them to die in peace.
Put a new leaf of moon
under your pillow
and you'll see what you want to.
Always carry a little bottle of air of the moon
to keep you from drowning.
Give the key to the moon
to prisoners and the disappointed.
For those who are sentenced to death
and for those who are sentenced to life
there is no better tonic than the moon
in precise and regular doses.
Jaime Sabines
-- Poemas sueltos, 1981
translated by W. S. Merwin
You can take the moon by the spoonful
or in capsules every two hours.
It's useful as a hypnotic and sedative
and besides it relieves
those who have had too much philosophy.
A piece of moon in your purse
works better than a rabbit's foot.
Helps you find a lover
or get rich without anyone knowing,
and it staves off doctors and clinics.
You can give it to children like candy
when they've not gone to sleep,
and a few drops of moon in the eyes of the old
helps them to die in peace.
Put a new leaf of moon
under your pillow
and you'll see what you want to.
Always carry a little bottle of air of the moon
to keep you from drowning.
Give the key to the moon
to prisoners and the disappointed.
For those who are sentenced to death
and for those who are sentenced to life
there is no better tonic than the moon
in precise and regular doses.
Jaime Sabines
-- Poemas sueltos, 1981
translated by W. S. Merwin
Sunday, January 30, 2011
deep inside the ever-spinning / 11:30 am
things I could use less of:
laziness
makeup
distraction
clutter
loudness
television
gray (grey?) skies
congestion
facebook
self-doubt
things
lists
laziness
makeup
distraction
clutter
loudness
television
gray (grey?) skies
congestion
self-doubt
things
lists
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