before summer ends to-do list

provo experimental music night.  

i just started planning classes for fall, which made me realize i have only about a month of summer break left.  we've done some fun things this year.  nothing major, but lots of little things and lots of festivities with family and friends.

lalage at an experimental music night in slc last saturday.  ingrid called my outfit "miss vampisham."  i said yes to this gig though i really wanted to stay home.  i'm practicing "yes" more.

because of doing the artist's way, i've been trying to live more. . . festively.  to not limit what i do so much, so i've been saying yes to a lot of things, and trying to get out of my natural introverted state and out of the house more.

anna's new shoes right after a summer rain storm at provo bicycle collective.

here's what i want to do before summer ends and ingrid returns to college:

1.  hike mt. timpanogas.

2. go tubing on the provo river.

3.  road trip to southern utah.

4. fancy back yard italian dinner with candles.

5.  grill more corn and peaches.

6. buy a new pioneer bonnet.

that greeny flower

i spent a couple of hours with william carlos williams' poem "asphodel, that greeny flower" this morning (one hour of this study time was during church this morning, testimony meeting, which my hilarious daughter lovingly calls 'open mic night.')

it's a beautiful confessional love poem, about gardens, love, forgiveness, death, the sea, hell, and the way in which the atom bomb changed love, forgiveness, and the poetic line forever.

"I bring you/ a last flower. Don't think// that because I say this/ in a poem/ it can be treated lightly// or that the facts will not uphold it./ Are not facts flowers/ and flowers facts// or poems flowers/ or all works of the imagination,/ interchangeable?"

williams asks his wife's forgiveness for his infidelity and his inattention to her because of the time he spent living two lives crammed into one. you want to think he's a d-bag (he's always asking forgiveness--remember the plums? i always thought the speaker in that poem was a little d-baggy), but he manages to come across as so honest and vulnerable and broken that we forgive him, and in the end, she forgives him, too. he writes from the winter time, but imagines spring, and her forgiveness enables a sort of new flowering, albeit by a pale and odorless flower, for williams at the end of his life.

"after a lifetime,/ it is as if// a sweet-scented flower/ were poised/ and for me did open."

this took me to new years, the snow outside, a very faint glimmer of spring at the edges of my imagination. i always go through the same process at new year's time:

1) i vow to not make any resolutions
2) then i vow to only make one resolution
3) then i vow to make only three resolutions
4) then i make a whole complicated list
5) the next year i realize that i sort of did one or two things on the list
6) i repeat the process, often including some of the resolutions that i've made year after year and not even been moderately successful in keeping

so.

here's my long and unwieldy list, which i probably won't keep, but is at least an expression of intent:

MUSIC

this year i did less music than in almost any year of my life. sad. maybe that's why i feel empty? thus i want to:

*take voice lessons
*sing in church choir
*rehearse once a week with lalage
*start a youtube channel for lalage

POETRY

i have a chapbook and two complete manuscripts of poems pretty much ready to go, but lacked the wherewithal to send to publishers, etc. last year. am toying with the idea of publishing them under christian's record label, and circumventing the vast amount of time and money it takes to get a "real" publisher to put them out (i spent two years and probably 1500 bucks on submission fees and mailing fees getting Alburnum published). would love to hear other poets' thoughts. i know it totally de-legitimizes your work to self-publish in the eyes of certain people, but if you look carefully, it's pretty much a racket. and hey, william blake did it.

but, as i've said before on my other blog, one of my rules is no work on publication unless i'm spending a certain amount of time writing.

*continue daily poetic practice
*publish a physic at the table--chapbook
*publish gentian weaves her fringes--full length book
*revise and send out four windows with flamboyant tracery--full length book

HEALTH

*get outside more (this is one i make every year and NEVER do. i can't explain my aversion to the outdoors. could it be agoraphobia?)
*continue yoga practice
*drink more water
*limit screen time

SCREENWRITING

two screenplays i want to write, and i'll just give their code names below in case someone decides to steal my amazing ideas and make millions off of them.

*alice
*francesca

SPIRITUAL/EMOTIONAL

*judge less (another every year res--i think i got a little better on this one this year, even if only i can tell)
*pay attention more

i really, really love new year's resolutions, i have to say. i have a penchant for starting over. my therapist once told me, "you're good at beginnings. we have to figure out how to make the middles more fun for you."

a good thought. i'm working on it.

but i figure it's totally legit to start over again in january, so here i am.

where are you?

p.s. legwear: leopard tights. and i wore my new pearl colored h&m dress. i spotted women at church wearing: black tights, grey woolen tights, blue striped tights, houndstooth tights. it's tights season here in utah. i spotted younger girls in red tights, mustard tights, sparkly tights, black tights and white tights. it's a festival of legwear.

o'hara-rivers-pepin

last night my children did an imitation of me, saying, "i've never been so tired in my entire life." they claim i say it almost every day. and they might be right, and it might be true. i'm tired a lot. isn't everyone? then, this morning, they asked me which 30 Rock character i thought i most resembled.

me: "ummm--jenna maroney?"
lula: "yeah, that's what i was thinking, too."
me: "i was kind of kidding."

but then i realized i am at least a bit like jenna maroney. a sobering thought to have on your way to work.

when i arrived at work, i started in on making omlettes and teaching frank o'hara, two things i love, and two things that are hard to do. making an omlette is hard to do. teaching frank o'hara is hard to do.



the meaningful thing today is a realization that the kids in my life are keeping me honest right now. and a question: have i wanted to be in academia because there is more of a glossy sheen over the whole thing, that it carries with it more social status, and a kind of meaning that i want to ascribe to my life whether or not it is authentically there? that perhaps the more direct, hands-on work required of me in raising children and teaching in a public school is a little more, shall we say, vocational and practical, and therefore it is a little harder to scam myself into thinking that i'm important and essential (this is where jenna m. comes in--ever the delusional narcissist)???? and this is all forcing me to do what we call in both yoga and therapy ego work. i think this is the main work i'll be doing over the coming years.

this is a small sample of ego work: do i need to do this pose because it's good for me? do i want to do it so my yogi/other yogis think i'm cool and strong, even though it might hurt me? do i know i shouldn't do it, and i'm gonna do it anyway?

that probably came out sounding like woozy bullshit. but i really mean it. i might be able to articulate it better on another day when i'm not feeling more tired than i ever have felt before in my entire life.

anyway, i'm teaching ekphrasis right now, and this frank o'hara/larry rivers intersection inspires me.

(the rivers painting washington crossing the delaware is posted above, with a stanza from o'hara's poem on seeing larry rivers' washington crossing the delaware at the museum of modern art is posted below)

To be more revolutionary than a nun
is our desire, to be secular and intimate
as, when sighting a redcoat, you smile
and pull the trigger. Anxieties
and animosities, flaming and feeding

on theoretical considerations and
the jealous spiritualities of the abstract
the robot? they're smoke, billows above
the physical event. They have burned up.
See how free we are! as a nation of persons.

hope it inspires you.

hope you like it.

hope you write an ekphrasis today.

hope you click on this link and watch jacques making an omlette, and then make your own for dinner. i promise you it's beautiful and delicious. (and also check out my students making omlettes today. they were so pro.)

tights: charcoal/black leopoard with a small hole forming on the big toe after only two wearings.