intention // action

Have a lists of shoulds that I refuse to let dictate my evening. At least wipe the coffee spots from the floor. At least do the dishes. At least clean the toilet…

At least write poems, work on my thesis. This is where I am, though. Cold, hands dirty with dinner than I couldn’t help but pick at with my fingers. Compelled to chronicle, especially the horrifying article I read in the New Yorker today…

how could I not know that this country sends robots to assassinate people? Our president considers daughters collateral damage. Reading about the rate at which we detonate drones makes me feel disgusted. I drooled all over my issue today, had to sleep to escape it, or fully process that we have so adequately stripped entire countries of their humanity. Assassinating people in countries with whom we are not at war.

I don’t care about the reasons, for me this is never okay. That other layer of protection, that it doesn’t have to be a human that fires the weapon. It’s like eating meat, in a way– okay cuz you don’t have to kill the cow yrself. The cow or the terrorist, the father & his wife & children.

How are we not considered terrorists? Can we make this connection?

While I believe it is good to live with intention, intention cannot be everything. Good intentions can lead the CIA to knock-off someone who acts, according their code, with bad intentions. Still, intention seems much less concrete than the sum of action– why are we not held accountable when a drone bombs a funeral at which the target was not in attendance…

target? Man. Human man.

***

Or in my own life. Little to do with violence, but with that balance between intention & action. & awareness & action. I hesitate to write about what I would like in here because it does not seem like the right space. Yet.

***

My apartment is going to be so messy by the time Devin gets here because I can’t imagine myself doing the dishes tonight, even if I listen to Ladies of the Canyon then The Life of the World to Come then Harvest.

Self, be open to rewrites. What were you too afraid to say the first time you wrote the poem? Who were you trying to protect? (typo: protext.)

How has something whole not come out of my grandfather dying? Out of driving an SUV? Out of the stars over the nuclear power plant, over deer crossing my headlights at the precise moment I needed deer to pass through my headlights? Out of all possible confessions, out of all lists of food?

When in Waziristan, an unmanned drone kills the tribal leader’s entire family, “including three children, one of them five years old,” & I fall asleep on my issue of the New Yorker,  dream about falling asleep while fucking my boyfriend.

***

Maybe I will do the dishes. Maybe another listen through Ladies of the Canyon is worth it.

i will do what you ask me to do / because of how i feel about you

Can’t convince myself to sleep quite yet. Need to be writing more. Exhausted. Hands smell like cinnamon, fingers like fig jam. Drinking Gingerbread Cookie tea. Wanted to eat the apple bits from the pot.

Devin arrives on Sunday. I’ve been craving intimacy in inconvenient ways. Checked my email & facebook over a hundred times today, easy. Cheap connection.

Don’t know what I feel. Stunted but my heart rate a happy metronome. I know my body is anxious, but my mind is strangely calm. Perhaps I’ve fallen out of awareness. Perhaps I’ll meditate rather than force a poem out of me.

I don’t give “my book” enough time. I need to give her more time, sleep with her under my pillow.

Can’t remember the word I learned last night.

Pair of 8-hr work days at the start of next week– all about writing. Rewriting. Confronting the dread.

On the phone, Devin reminded me that awareness of “reality” (in this case, my anxious heart rate) is not the ends in itself– it only precedes awareness of what to do.

More acceptance, more waiting, than I could previously conceive…

sleep.

& I won’t get better / but someday I’ll be free…

Stars are visible in Pottstown tonight (!!) A doe & two fawn crossed through my headlights only to collide with the swing set near the entrance of my neighborhood. Now, I’m at home, waiting for my herbal tea to steep, hoping that I can get some sleep before going to breakfast with Jamie & Kristen in the morning.

I feel fake grown up today. I have a horizontal drivers license on which I am wearing pearl earrings. I’ve had the Louise Gluck poem– “Here are My Black Clothes”– beating through my head all day (nothing relevant), as I paid too much for new black shoes, a black wool sweater. I own my first purse that shines, that doesn’t brag a skull or polka dots. Luckily it is filled with my knit kid gloves

to warm the naked lady ring, which is suddenly missing. I can’t remember which bathroom I left it in. I don’t want suburbia, you can have that, but the stars are nice, as are the deer & the friends who have help me through hundreds of wine bottles of winter depressions

who have watched me pretend to dislike baseball, even as I watch it. Devised a way to deal with my overanalysis when I can’t stop myself.

Tonight Kristen said this Christmas will have to be different, that we have to find a way to keep me happy– perhaps its premature to be concerned (of course it is!) & this is a year for breaking patterns

for all of my siblings. So adult, so fatherless, finding similar paths to sustainable happiness. At the mall today, my brother suggested he might want to meditate for the next few years, become some kind of non-Christian minister or life coach– he has grown into someone so admirable, & I love when we’re at home at the same time & can hear him play the guitar from upstairs.

& I have also been listening to the Mountain Goats The Life of the World to Come (by Grace’s recommendation !) & I can’t stop thinking about that phrase out of the context of prayer: & the life of the world to come. Amen. Fresh beauty to it when it stands alone. & mystery, mystery as faith intended (maybe?)

Also, videos of Flemish giant rabbits. & the Phillies…

…my hair smells delicious right now. I love haircuts, scalp massages when my sinuses are throbbing.

This tea is good for sleeping. I miss Devin this evening–  it’s specifically him I want to cuddle with, his ribs I want to tap like a xylophone…

I love this poem…I’m not sure if I ever want to feel this way again:

HERE ARE MY BLACK CLOTHES (Louise Gluck)

I think now it is better to love no one

than to love you.

Here are my black clothes,

and tired night gowns and robes fraying

in many places. Why should they hang useless

as though I were going naked? You like me well enough

in black; I will make you a gift of these objects.

You will want to touch them with your mouth, run

your fingers through the thin

tender underthings and I

will not need them in my new life.

…

not sure why I even wrote this, just felt moved, felt like writing. Perhaps I should have edited my baby poem… maybe this will grow into something…

looking forward to walking down South Street with Kristen tomorrow, pretending we can be 18 again, buy ourselves flowers– everything we need from each other or ourselves.

***

“Isaiah 45:23″ by the Mountain Goats uses a chord progression similar to Neil Young’s “Unknown Legend” & sometimes they mingle in my head. Strange, appropriate.

Quasi-Eulogy & Pigs Flew

I was at the Enterprise Rental Car Counter renting a planet-killing SUV when I found out my grandfather died. & likely as he died, too. My mom told me when I called to find out whether Allstate covered rental cars. She though this meant I got in an accident, but really it just meant I wanted to save $12.95 in insurance fees(two days later, it cost me $300 to change my flight, $97 for a late-night cab ride from JFK to my apartment (in a green, hybrid car, though!), $45 for an Amtrak ticket from Penn Station to Paoli, & god knows how much in emergency room fees).

Started eulogizing in my head on my way back to the Delt house. I wrote the line “body thick with melody & prayer” about Clara Schumann, but really it better describes my grandfather, his approach to life. Even in his last days he could still recite entire poems & attempted to sing “Sweet Lorraine” to my mother. When he was bored at the nursing home, he’d stand in the hall & sing to whoever passed by. He didn’t care whether he had an audience, he did it because it was how he knew how to make himself happy. That & to share love with everyone. My grandfather loved life not only because he spent it actively engaged with art, but because he believed in showing love to others. I don’t think I appreciated this for a long time. For years, I believed this was out of my reach, that I was somehow naturally distant, like I felt as though my father was, & I was okay with that coolness. Perhaps it protected me, I don’t know. What I do know is that now I can look at the totality of my grandfather’s existence as an exceptional example of loving each instant, of finding joy in discovering the “best” way to live. I want to know as many poems, to sing as many songs, to be as generous with my children, with my friends, with my nurses…

It’s my grandfather from whom I gained my love of music. Playing the keyboard in the rec room with its ugly green carpet. Singing hymns. Apparently he did not make plans for an order of service, but picked out over a half a dozen hymns he wanted us all to sing together. I struggled with whether I wanted to sing at the funeral. I decided on yes the morning before this virus made me sound like a man with a serious affinity for cigarettes. Writing this, I’m devastated that  I can’t sing, that I can’t share this love that he gave me, that I want to keep giving.

***

Last night I was convinced that I could not breathe. When I did not take big, super-conscious breaths, my hands, face, & neck would go tingly & numb. Devin & Brian took me to the E.R. They told me what I had already suspected: I have the swine flu. They told me what I refuse to believe: that I was having a panic attack, that I should have been breathing fine. That I shouldn’t have been there.

I spent the day in denial. My chest was a tiny bit congested, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me from going on a fantastic adventure with Ryan that involved drinking a bottle of Layer Cake syrah & a cocktail called the Dorothy Parker made with lavender-infused gin. All of it, worth it. Going to dinner with Devin, Nick& Andy: worth it, too, even though I could barely walk to the car. By the end of dinner, I was going downhill fast. I had a fever, I was pale, my body ached, my legs were swollen, I was shaking. Fuck. I was supposed to fly out at 6:30 this morning. Instead, I took some NyQuil & had a terrifying reaction.

I’m not one to abuse the E.R., not that many people are… I guess what I mean to say by this is that I am not a hypochondriac. At all. I tend to believe that issues with my health can be balanced by better eating, meditation, long walks, patience. I like to believe that I’m healthy. This led me getting very defensive with doctors who made me feel like I was wasting their time. The flu does not require a doctor’s visit, I know this.

Today I’m feeling significantly better than yesterday, in large part to the fact that I haven’t really moved out of Devin’s bed & I’m on an every-three-hours rotation of painkillers. Still coughing, which is better than not breathing as a result of NyQuil. I’m flying back to NY tomorrow late afternoon, painkillers in my pocket, sleep mask in my bag…

wash yr hands. I can tell you first hand, you want to avoid this flu.

***

I wanted to say something else about the SUV. That it was awesome, the moment they told me I had a free upgrade & I decided that I needed to have the life experience of driving a huge, rude car. It was fun– I was surprised. Devin & I took it up to Lucky Peak after I got back from Kate’s wedding (which was beautiful!!), & it handled curves so well, drove so smoothly. My penis felt so large. I can almost understand the addiction to evil automobiles.

I will never buy one (an SUV, that is).

***

What else? I am obsessed with Away We Go. I still have complicated feelings about the Nobel Peace Prize, but decidedly less complicated after experiencing Rachel Maddow’s take on the award. Devin wants to cuddle, so I’m happy to report that it’s time for that. Hopefully I will feel a little better for my flight tomorrow, that I can be radiant at the funeral on Saturday so I can celebrate life.

two truths & a truth.

Yes, I currently have swine flu.

Yes, I went to the emergency room for the first time for something besides a bodily injury for the first time since I was eight or nine.

Yes, my grandfather died on Saturday morning.

Yes, yes, yes.

All I can seem to do is bask in the absurdity& spend lots of money trying to fix the terrible time situation that accompanies these events. Right now, I’m still in Idaho & pensive. Can’t predict the future, kids, just got to roll on (with the punches?)

***

The reality I’m pondering is hard sometimes, & I deal better with it in the abstract. Lately, the fact that Devin wants to sleep with women with “different body types” than me has been haunting me. We’re not doing that right now but the possibility tests the core of my self-worth in ways that I’m not comfortable with… for a list of reasons:

1. Women are frequently given value in society by how well their bodies match up to some fascist beauty standard. Therefore, when a woman isn’t delivering to this imaginary-but-oh-so-real bullshit in a relationship, it’s often not talked about. Devin& I talk about everything, so we talk about this. He’s attracted to skinny chicks, but somehow he was attracted to me, too. Or is, as the case may be.

2. I’m not fat, but I don’t feel that fatness disqualifies one from being considered beautiful. Fat can be beautiful. Acting healthfully is even more beautiful, in my opinion, & one can eat healthfully (in a balanced way– DQ Blizzards are there to be enjoyed!) & remain fat. I am healthy, & according to my doctor, an ideal weight for my height….

3. Devin has never slept with anyone besides me, & I am fully supportive of him having more, different sexual experiences. I’ve had them. They were integral to my development.

4. I, too, am attracted, or possibly more attracted, to body types different than Devin’s. Primary female-type bodies. This is much more acceptable than Devin’s version of being more attracted to other body types.

Through this, I feel like my own hypocrisy is clear: I can desire whoever I like because I’m (fairly) certain I can control my impulses. I prefer Devin not to because I can’t control his impulses & want to. I have gotten better about this, honestly, but the issue at hand is how these issues are interpreted through the lens of culture. Women being attracted to other women? Awesome, hot, unthreatening. Men being attracted to other types of women? That dog.

I still believe that part of Devin’s attraction comes from societal influence. I am only frustrated with myself when I consider changing myself to better fit this role, to try to make me be everything for him when I know there’s no way he could possibly be everything for me. & I sometimes pretend he can be, but that leads me to deny so much of the richness in my life, the tensions that keep me going. Important thing: to treat myself as I do, with love. To know that I cannot control Devin, that this would not bring me happiness. Happiness would come from not believing the thought that Devin has to be attracted to me & only me all the time– I would be free from that unrealistic expectation.

No matter what, I have my creativity. No matter what, I will have others.

***

(I think I’m going to break off into another entry now).

Peace, vaginas, etc.

I am in Idaho. Devin is in class. Nick has the swine flu. I could be doing something besides writing in the basement of the frat house, but the Obamania on Facebook has got me thinking about intentions / semantics, largely, & one of my classmates wrote a poem that had me considering the word “vagina” in ways I haven’t since I first read Cunt when I was sixteen or seventeen.

My initial reaction upon reading that Obama the Nobel Peace Prize was confusion& disgust. My initial reaction to the reactions was a mix of fury & surprise. It is foolish not to think/know that the Nobel Peace Prize is largely symbolic, political– just like Obama’s hope, it works to assign meaning to a relative, abstract concept. We do not have peace, nor will we ever, but peace is something that can be worked towards. Obama may have intentions towards peace, but I do not think he intends peace. Look at escalations in Afghanistan, in Pakistan…

of course I know these things are all complicated, & Obama is working in a complicated two-party system in which one of the parties acts like a toddler most of the time. Not saying all Repubs are toddlers– far from it. The reasons the GOP ideology makes sense to some people makes sense to me. It’s all about motivations& intention– what we believe about others. I don’t see myself ever aligning with a party that ignores the systematic oppressions it so clearly perpetuates, but I don’t know who I’ll be at fifty. Maybe I’ll be in love with my money& suddenly blame poor people for not taking the opportunities which they never had. Possible.

What disgusted me about people’s reactions are that so many of them– so many democrats, largely, were unquestioning. Dems attacking others for “attacking” Obama, for, essentially, questioning whether he “deserves” the prize. Blind faith is blind faith, whether in Obama or Bush. Tastes too much like people calling liberals traitors for questioning the last administration.

I have complicated feelings about Obama. I did not care for his campaign, but I voted for him. I have a feeling I would like him as an individual. His campaign bothered me because it spoke the language of Bush, of buzzwords, of the things cognitive psychology might suggest we respond to as people, but as a poet I’m bothered by all of this– it lacks imagination& is reductive. I understand the concept of “framing” issues. Words do have frames, connotations. As a writer, this concept is a tool that is close to me. Still, I want heft, & I want others to demand meat& logic& passion in support of “hope” & “change” as well. I didn’t think Obama offered that. He does, sometimes, now.

Obama is what an article I read in the New Yorker the other day referred to as a “serene” personality. He listens. He makes decisions based out of consensus, compromise, out of trying to find the “best” option, which is unfortunately sometimes simply what makes the greatest number of politicians happy without the threat of filibuster (or even in the shadow of that). This is to his benefit & to his detriment. See the concept of framing. If he were to frame “hope” & “change” in a concrete way with concrete plans he could stand behind, he might look a little bit less like, say, Jimmy Carter.

Okay, perhaps I should better organize my thoughts. I understand why one might be compelled to give Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. It is not a decision I would make, & I don’t think it’s deserved, or even premature. Honestly, I don’t think awarding this to Obama is any different than awarding it to many of the other past winners. A prize is a construct. Subjective, political. Say what you will about good intentions. I’m not sure if it’s going to be good for him, for the anti-GOP of all stripes, for the word “peace…”

Lately, I’ve been finding it desirable to define, or at least reflect on where I stand politically. It’s not just this morning’s debacle that has me here, but also that I’ve been learning a bit about the recent financial crisis. From the New Yorker. (Yes, I know.) There are few things I know for sure, because I believe so many situations are complicated. Delicate. I cannot say whether I believe people are inherently “good” because “good” is a construct. I believe that individuals react to their individual situations in the moment. Good intentions are good, but they are nothing without awareness, action, and change.

Anyway, politics. It’s become increasingly clear to me over the past few months that while I can strive towards a personal pacifism, it can only be a striving because peace is an absolute, & therefore can never be achieved in its pure form. The only way in which one cannot do violence to another is to be passive, & to me, that’s not living. That’s doing a violence to yr life, so not very peaceful then, is it? So maybe all we can have is peaceful intentions& strive towards peaceful action?

In the face of this, I’ve recently decided that I cannot, with good conscience, be for outlawing guns entirely because it does not fit with my views on abortion, actually…maybe…let me work this out. If we outlaw abortion, people are going to get them anyway, & women will be less safe. Totally, totally against this. A woman should have the right to elect what is done to her body.

If we outlaw guns, people will be able to obtain them, anyway. I do not personally like hunting, but understand how it might be desirable from an ecological standpoint. I think people carrying, in, say, the suburbs for self-protection is absolutely ridiculous. Maybe if you work with high-risk populations who already illegally obtain firearms& regularly use them against one another…

here, I am making a judgement about who should be able to choose, who should not. In my idea of a perfect world, we would not be so afraid in the suburbs. Until then, people should have the right to feel protected…

we cannot know whether stricter gun control laws would lessen domestic violence, school shootings, etc….

guns are different than abortion, I can see that. I just feel like the government should regulate guns more heavily…

safe, yet available. I still believe almost blindly that a certain amount of information can provide freedom. This is likely foolish.

Individuals given the resource to question why they’re feeling what they’re feeling, to admit what they’re feeling in the first place. Right now this is a privilege. Who doesn’t love a utopian vision?

My political standpoint: always Kristeva, revolutionary questioning of everything. Never getting anywhere, never arriving at a dogmatic solid ground. Perhaps looking at the situation as it is, which I’m not as good at.

Some things: clear, though. Doctors should determine whether an individual receives a medical procedure or not, not the government, especially not profit-drive corporations…

***

Beauty might have been the abstraction of the week last week, but I have a feeling my next word is peace. I’m remembering a conversation I had with Claudia last year, this text she read once called Pacifism is Pathetic or something more clever than that.

It all depends on how one defines her/his/hir concept of peace. What does it mean to do no harm? To strive to do no harm? Isn’t this largely up to individual interpretation? Should it not be?

***

Okay, a subject I know better than politics, opinions, & peace: vaginas. More specifically the word. I love vaginas. I love cunts even more– the whole package. As most cuntlovers know, the term “vagina” refers strictly to the vaginal canal, the happy black hole. So, for example, Georgia O’Keefe’s flowers represent not vaginas, but vulvae, or cunts, or twats, or… you get the picture.

As poets, I think it is important to be aware of the effect of the word “vagina,” in its three-syllable, ugly, latinate glory. Sheath for a sword. Using this word in a poem is not only a mouthful, but is often incorrect & carries a long history of gendered connotations.

I wonder if I can somehow sneak this discussion into Laure-Anne’s class… I wish I had vocabulary this week….

***

In the past hour or so, someone on my Facebook feed has taken the whole stones / glass houses approach to Nobel Peace Prize analysis. Yes, we may be comfortable, safe, & privileged, but that does not mean that we’re not trying to live in a more peaceful ways in the spheres we can influence. Obama has a lot more power to influence peace on a global levels than I do. Yes, I agree that maybe we all ought to take this as a call to action, for us to work on ourselves first. It does not mean that we should not be critical of this decision, or at least question it.

***

My head is itchy, Facebook keeps refusing to let me in. Feels weird, but good to be here. Devin is super fluffy. Want to bake sweet potatoes tonight& avoid the party that I made a huge ass of myself at 2? 3? years ago…

Perhaps just make dinner& cuddle to the chaos…

the caressing rev of martyrs (motors)

Less than three hours sleep. Naked, wrapped in only my comforter, adjacent to piles of folded laundry. Woke up with my socks piled on the floor.

I got ready for work in an impressive amount of time& I ought to be / want to be writing right now. This desire for sleep obscures everything. Can’t stop thinking about how I’ve become / have the tendency towards being this relentless connector, finding vague similarity between things, constructinga relationship, an excuse for safety. It’s easier than saying: we’re so different we could really learn from each other.

Or the weird thing, of bringing up Devin as this absent exception. One of these days I’m going to have to accept his masculinity as full fact, even if I don’t quite know how that reflects back on me…

saying things I wouldn’t have while I was a puritan. Like, she is queer. I am queer. Like it’s something I can wear, not an action.

I don’t eat meat but I bought leather boots. I wear them. Toe already scuffed.

Certain selves are harder to shed than others. I work towards being diaphonous. This is not the same as moulting.

It might be poem time. I’ll keep this open as compost.

***

Beauty necessitates a desire for the beautiful thing?

***

I don’t usually do this, but I need to process this, figure out why this poem became necessary to write. Maybe beauty is what started it but now I don’t think it’s about beauty at all. Necessarily. Much more about desire in an overly ornamented setting. My impulse is to cut all but the action, but I’m attached to the mildew flowers.

“The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.” –John Cage

Mildew flowers down my shower curtain liner like the hair 

buds on yr buzzed neck. I want to lick you there, pressed

up against this light switch, dim the trinity of lavender 

candles dampening on the toilet. I want to feel sweat 

purl on shoulders, for yr back to flow against my hands. Dark,

toothpaste will glow– dirt will star the mirror–

 

beautiful tension will star       my stomach

That is where I start poeming.

Maybe the issue isn’t that I turn beauty into sex, but that I want to absorb the beautiful… consume it. The only way I feel  I can understand beauty is to be inside of it. Beauty as the reaction to trying to comprehend something that resonates within us as “beautiful.” Beauty as cushioning.

Perhaps something about wanting to lick the curtain liner.

***

If I call you “beautiful,” I’m just trying to make the feeling easier. Comprehensible. Rational.

***

“Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all.”  (Andre Breton)

Kapha Time

Up with the final freezing flowers& early turning leaves. On my walk to work, showered by debris from a leaf blower. Two figs in my pocket, cheap wine in my flask– the only alcohol I have in my apartment, leftover from my mom’s wedding (&not for work– for later tonight).

You once said you never felt Boise in my poems, but now I feel her seeping through, attempting to neutralize the speed& the gray.

Autumn is my favorite season, yet I have a history of October/November depression. I think this has been confused with an excess of feeling. I feel more.

***

Wrote a poem I feel embarrassed about sending out last night. Beauty. I don’t think about it often. I think about sexy, about spiritual, but beauty always seemed like the superfluous abstract concept– the thing in the way of what is utilitarian, manageable. I tried to let the poem say this, but it turned to sex.

Or, when thinking about beauty, it’s always in John Cage terms– I know it when I see it. Maybe I need to reapproach the poem that way. The mildew on my shower curtain or the hair on the back of yr neck. Tea lights melting onto the counter. Yes.

Last night the poem became a container for my desire. Poorly.

***

I’m not sure if I’d like this poem if it didn’t resonate so thoroughly with how I feel right now:

Balance (Jane Hirschfield)

Balance is notices most when almost failed of–

 

in an elephant’s delicate wavering

on her circus stool, for instance,

or that moment

when a ladder starts to tip but steadies back.

 

There are, too, its mysterious departures.

 

Hours after the dishes are washed and stacked,

a metal bowl clangs to the floor,

the weight of drying water all that altered;

a painting vertical for years

one morning– why? — requires a restoring tap.

 

You have felt it disappearing

from your own capricious heart–

a restlessness enters, tje smallest leaning begins.

 

Already then inevitable,

the full collision,

the life you will describe afterward always as “after.”

***

According to Ayurvedic principles, the Kapha dosha is most predominate within me: the slow, sweet, large dosha. Lazy when out of balance. Overeats when out of balance. To achieve balance, I am supposed to wake up at Kapha time– between 6am & 8am.

I only bring this up because I notice, some mornings, that I feel flooded with gratefulness, feel my body/mind sort itself out as I walk to work.

***

I need to go back to actively cultivating gratefulness.

On Beauty

Writing Group prompt this week– essentially– writing about beauty. Only for twenty minutes.

Write a poem about beauty. Describe at least one beautiful thing in detail. Avoid conventional, stereotypical images—sunsets, laughing children, fields of flowers. Instead, describe something unexpected in a way that brings out its beauty. Express your idea(s) about beauty through imagery, but you can also make a statement or two.

“The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.” –John Cage

Beautiful:

• mildew flowering up the vinyl shower curtain liner
• close-cropped nape of a woman’s neck
• trinity of lavendar tea lights melting on my counter
• nipples
• skinny fingers
• Devin’s-eye green
• mentrual blood in the sink
• burnt kale, even the smell
• mason jars of tea
• mezzo-soprano heavy vibrato
• three-syllable words ending in -ic
• yogis midst Vinyasa flow…
• abandoned railroad tressles
• migraine auras before the headache kicks in

Blooded.  Feed menstrual blood to plants, paint with it.

Things to do with menses.  No.

This energy: yr hands on my hips, my hands in the sink, squeeze the Pussy Power cloth,  blood from the cat’s head, tabby pouring on porcelain. & it’s like the red sea before Moses split it, you sit on the toilet- I love when you watch me on the opposite side, purifying…

this is difficult to write about without it sounding overtly new-agey or…

I love when you watch me from the other side / of the sink as I wring…

Back to this later.

Occur

In the scope of my personal history, the past two years will probably be labelled as the time I was reckless as a way to cope with my father’s death. Not his physical death as much as the lifting of the parameters of myself created partly in response to what I thought he expected. At this point, I suppose, that might be all we’re able to have of a person: what we assume & what they ask for. My father didn’t ask for much. In the absense of request, I assumed a lot.

I spent the summer mourning the passing of this period. Just as I was vaguely aware of my personal anarchy amidst the years of joblessness, sleep, luxuriating, & meditating while my peers were concerned about devising a way to put food on the table that didn’t make them want to spear the concept of “prestige” with a macheted trombone, I was vaguely aware that the degree to which I was being impulsive, short-sighted, & self-centered was diminishing.

I’m not saying that I’m less self-centered. I don’t think I know how not to be self-centered, & as long as this complicated construction I/we call “self” is built in such a way that caring & giving to others is paramount, I’m okay with directing my life in a way that addresses my own vision first. Maybe I won’t be later. Especially when I have kids.

The most important thing I’ve learned is that my life cannot be about the specific goals I make, but about constructing a working life philosophy from which goals emerge. I must be active& involved in a way that is generous to others, is artistically & expressively gratifying, is non-violent in a way that does as little harm to others (as I can see within my limited field of perception). Simultaneously, I must not give up reasonable amounts of sleep, or treating my body in a loving way.

I don’t feel bad that the past two years have not been like this– most of the time. I needed them, otherwise I wouldn’t be here right now. Giving myself that absolutely uninhibited freedom allowed me to become the builder of my life, allowed me to see that we all have that freedom (though I admit, my privilege allows me to see this& do something about it), & allowed me to experience& figure out what I want& don’t want.

Chances are, this is a larger cycle. I will be reckless. Sometimes I will make destructive choices. That’s living.

Sometimes I might make a choice out of safety, or perceived safety. Sometimes that is the more challenging choice, the more challenging lesson. Perceived safety, too, is an experience that does not have to be boring or negative, or at least I hope as long as don’t use language or justification to mute new feelings or dreams I’ve been having… see, it works. If I allow myself the co-experience of dwelling in emotion& feelings that rise from the denial of experience, it will also change the landscape of what has been perceived as safe, make it new, adventurous, unpredictable in its own right. The way we relate to others & respond to experience is definitely cumulative, it trickles down…

Dynamic equilibrium. This may be the only useful thing I took away from Chemistry in high school. Substances in containers…their particles want to reach a dynamic equilibrium that is shifting, adjusting to an equality that is constantly in motion, is never static. Our bodies are so like that.

Still words are form. Rationale. I can build this resting place, but ultimately my life will continute branch out in a way that is irrational & subverts my plans, & even my philosophy, in ways that by definition I cannot be prepared for.

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Sometimes I fear, or know, that words themselves mute experience. Words as cushioning. As apologizing for being less than what we feel. If I can conceive of it in words, it can become something– disruptive vocabularies can be the tool of a disruptive life, which isn’t simply a word game– it can incite emotion like words that fuck with the familiar because disruption of the ordinary, of what has become unsuitable for us, is a way of life.

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I don’t think removing the “I” from your poems is going to make you less self-centered. Sometimes it just makes the art safe.

I don’t want safety in my art, I want disruption. Disruption of safety.

This is also how my relationship with Devin works: everything is on the table. We know how we want to relate to one another. Things occur, throw the table off balance– disruption. The experience is in the attempt to balance things again, in discovering new ways to relate to one another.

I enjoy this, it’s like a body of words formed between us. We both live with it, agree to its terms& ultimately gain something larger than it…or at least I do. I assume Devin does, & he tells me that he does…

It would be destruction to annihilate this body, to set the table on fire. Destruction is not disruption, though in a severe way I suppose it is. Disruption.

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I want all of my relationships to be this challenging dynamic equilibrium– I want to be aware of it in my friendships, in my relationships with money & food & time. I know this now. Awareness is key. I need to know what I’m spending, what I’m consuming, to the best of my ability.

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