mellow'd my harsh

anne hutchinson.  foremother.

rough day yesterday.  luckily some cool collaborators helped me mellow my harsh when i had a little melt-down during moby dick puppet opera rehearsal.  i remember now why doing guerilla experimental opera is for the young.

queequeg and ishmael are married.  photo from hannah johnson, aka the coloratura.

tonight, the deseret experimental opera collective (DEXO) is performing part two of the god fugitive, "a bosom friend", my moby dick puppet opera.  

late night rehearsal last night, up early to get kids to school, took a morning nap.

not super productive today except:

1) break-through on essay for this journal that i've been trying to figure out for weeks.

2) reading about anne hutchinson via susan howe.

3) off to practice and get some last minute stuff ready for avant-garawge tonight.  have to come up with an outfit!

xo

CHARGES AGAINST HUTCHINSON:  "the Flewentess of her Tonge and her Willingness to open herselfe and to divulge her opinions and to sowe her seed in us that are but highway side and Strayngers to her"

a bit like kate kelly, right?

woodshed

it's cold and rainy so i can bring back my tweed dress.  i know my head is obscured.  i like it that way.

today read susan howe again.

slowly devouring her.

i now feel sufficiently prepared to begin a ph.d program.

made dinner already, because i had food that needed cooking.

no writing as of yet.

taught online courses, comforting and encouraging students about their topic choices.  one wants to write about the tiny house movement!  hurray, because that means i don't have to read about video games and violence, how evil the federal government is, or the nfl.

sidebar:  i mentioned to my tiny house betopic'd student that no one seems to be examining this so-called tiny house movement. don't most people in the world already live in tiny spaces?  i totally get the desire to keep things simple, believe me, but i just find the whole thing weird--mostly white, middle-class people fantasizing about living in darling little trailers and such.

okay.  i don't know if i'll get to write anything new today on account of the number of pieces of new music i have to woodshed between now and kid time and rehearsal time.  today felt like a battle in my head:  if i don't cook dinner, the food in my fridge will go to waste and we'll have to scrounge for dinner (we've been doing that a lot lately).  if i do cook dinner, i'll have to choose between writing and practicing.  if i don't practice i'll be humiliated tomorrow night.  if i do practice, i'll be putting my writing at lower status than everything else i do today.  if i don't make dinner, i'm a bad mother and citizen.

suddenly the entire world of possibilities is in flux.  is there any there there? etc., etc., etc.

oh, shoot.  that sounds really whiny and privileged.  i guess it is.

so i'll leave just leave you with these equally overwhelming notions from howe:

"the margin submerges phonic substance.  a mother's thread or line is ringed with silence so poems are"

&

susan howe/jakobson:

"why do certain works go on saying something else? . . . . jakobson says: 'one of the essential differences between spoken and written language can be seen clearly.  the former has a purely temporal character, while the latter connects time and space. while the sounds that we hear disappear, when we read we usually have immobile letters before us and the time of the written flow of words is reversible.'"

&

"a poem can prevent onrushing light going out."

habit schmabit

guilt trip

i got one thing done today.
actually at 3 a.m. during an episode of insomnia.
the rest of my day was taken with various obligations, some commitments i had made, some unforeseen little family crises.

at 3 a.m. i got ravished by an uninvited muse and wrote a new poem, and it was a sweet, sweet moment.

so i won't complain about the thwarting of my plans, because in sum, it was a difficult day and also a better day than i could have predicted.

a stanza from my muse:

i was young then,
and that was all.

more later, when time has passed and i can vet the whole thing with some distance from the newly birthed verses.

also, this pesky chart and analysis showing the relationship between the time an author arises and how productive that author is.  i still want more proof of a cause/effect relationship between early rising and excessive artistic prolificacy.

nonetheless, barring proof, i will continue to fret that i will never be as productive as the compulsive 4 am risers.

what i wore & a report

weird picture.  sorry.  i wanted to show you that i cast off my mom clogs in favor of h&m booties (see clogs in background), my proustian bed desk (i must work on making it more sumptuous), and that i'm still wearing tons of leopard.  also, i must get rid of that hideous red polka-dotted phone case. 

today, on thursday 28 august 2014:

• read most of section 2 from charles olson's call me ishmael
• read eula biss' essay "the pain scale" from the best creative nonfiction, vol. 1, edited by lee gutkind
• read chapter 17, "the ramadan," chapter 10 "a bosom friend," chapter 4 "the counterpane," and chapter 11, "nightgown," from moby dick.

here's what olson says about melville, and i find it highly applicable.  if you're a writer, you might also find resonance here:

he [melville] was a skald, and knew how to appropriate the work of others.  he read to write.  highborn stealth, edward dahlberg calls originality, the act of a cutpurse autolycus who makes thefts as invisible as possible.  melville's books batten other men's books.

• wrote the poems "we are all dreadfully cracked. . . ", "but what is worship?",  and "there you lie. . . ."
• wrote blog post
• re-submitted to rad journal who asked for more work
• submitted to new journal, work never before submitted

not done

• manuscript editing on the lapidary's nosegay.  the fourteenth day in a row this has been on my list and has not been touched.  

p.s. in addition to wearing this outfit to blog in, i'll be wearing it to a parent-teacher conference in which we discuss the issue of my child drawing a mustache and beard on his face with marker at school yesterday, to neylan mcbaine's women at church book release at zion's books, and to the opening of tamarack, a new provo restaurant, which i will review if all goes well.  and finally, to watch the dita von teese episode of project runway later on tonight. 

accountable to cyberplace

i wore my favorite betsey johnson nightgown for reading time, and my favorite target merona black dress for writing time.  i think a peignor set would be more inspiring, though.  like proust, i work best in bed.  i'm not going to be ashamed of that no more.  no more.

in an effort to be true to my new schedule of uber-productivity, here's today's report.  on wednesday 27 august 2014 i:

• wrote the poem "oh sweet friends. . . "
• wrote the poem "she was a thing of trophies. . . "
• wrote the poem "this world pays dividends. . . ."
• read part one of charles olson's call me ishmael
• read chapter 15, "chowder" from moby dick
• read chapter 16, "the ship" from moby dick
• read "unconscious came a beauty," "catbird in a redbud," and "gometrid" from may swenson's iconographs
• wrote this blog post

unfinished on today's list (i still might get there)

• re-submit to (great!) journal who rejected me last week but said to send them something else
• spend 45 minutes finalizing edits on lapidary's nosegay

restless & contented least

me & moses right before we both had blood transfusions in the same week.

this was the second poem i memorized, after "stopping by woods on a snowy evening," learned when i was ten years old because my mom offered me ten bucks.

Sonnet XXIX 

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

       For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

       That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

and although i have mostly fallen out of love with shakespeare's sonnets now, and sonnets in general (sorry sonnet enthusiasts!) sonnet 29 always resonates with my tendency towards depression, jealousy, envy, and low self-esteem.  and when i'm feeling sorry for myself (so much of the time!) since i've got this thing internalized, it rings in my ears.

so, though i now can't handle most of shakespeare because of his intense misogyny, because i hate elizabethan mistaken identity tropes, because i tired of the hermetic nature of the sonnet, and because i simply got burned out on the bard, the lines from this sonnet run through my mind unbidden. 

***


i knew the aftermath of finishing my doctorate was going to be rough, but i didn't know how rough.  i didn't know i'd be dealing with a herniated disk, extreme anemia requiring a blood transfusion, a kid's tonsillectomy gone so wrong he also required a transfusion, and a code team, restless legs syndrome (gone now--i think it was the anemia), percocet withdrawal (aftermath of the herniated disk), and the worst thing of all--

this deep restlessnes & casting & casting about.  no book or movie or music or television or writing can hold me still for longer than a few minutes.  

on account of the back problem, i haven't been practicing yoga for six months now, worsening my state of groundlessness. on account of my brain problem (which could also be anemia related), i haven't really been writing much. I haven't had anything i'm excited about going on for months.  i've missed a all the important deadlines for three months.  i've missed blogging. i've missed writing practice and yoga practice.  i've missed cooking, something that often engages and soothes me when i'm feeling contented least.  something i currently have no desire to do.  

i need my lark, my muse, my something back.  

poetry of breathing and bricklaying

after days of gloomy mood & gloomy skies, there was a lightening

the last seven days have been rough, both for reasons outlined in my last few blogposts and for some other unbloggable reasons.  today was so good, though.  just a plain day full of work, reading, & breathing it in.

i practiced my work(wo)manlike behavior and just did what i'm supposed to do--stacked some words together in a funky crooked wall, and it felt great.  good or bad, destined for an audience or the audience of one, doesn't matter. 

the work happened, and that's all.

i heart c.d. wright so much, and this poem looks as good as my day felt.  click on this link to hear the poet read the perfectly plain & beautiful piece below:

Flame

by C.D. Wright

the breath               the trees               the bridge

the road                  the rain                the sheen

the breath               the line                  the skin

the vineyard            the fences             the leg

the water                the breath             the shift

the hair                  the wheels             the shoulder

the breath               the lane                the streak

the lining                the hour                the reasons

the name                the distance          the breath

the scent                the dogs                the blear

the lungs                the breath             the glove

the signal               the turn                  the need

the steps                the lights               the door

the mouth               the tongue             the eyes

the burn                  the burned            the burning

seven hungers

eva tired from finals, lara tired from red-eye:

the colors of the ethiopian platter perked us up, though

more graduation pics:  dinner at awash on 107th and amsterdam--one of eva's now former haunts.

when i'm having a hard time organizing my unstructured work time it's usually because my poetic practice is not in play.  after a couple of months of letting the practice lapse, i realized today that it was making the rest of my life not--

good.

isn't it scary to come back after a period of absence? i always think this time i won't be able to.

this morning,

just as i was thinking

this time i won't be able to,

i came across this compelling prompt from brenda miller.

i thought: yeah,

but this time

is different--this time

i won't be able to. 

then poetry blessed me.

& i felt whole and good again,

and was even happy with what came from my hand today.

ususally i don't put my poems on the blog in case someone wants to publish it down the road.

today i feel like:

eff down the road.

right now is more important.

so:  here it is:

taken down for now whilst under consideration for publication. . . .

legwear: bare

inspiration: getting my practice back on

looking forward:  to watchng t.v. tonight