Stevie Didn't Want This

A well-earned, mostly open Wednesday wherein all I did was revise one nine-page story for submission to a place Lara recommended.

It's all I did, when I started the day with a list of four things. At least.

Why do I forget these things should go faster than they do?

How much does it suck that I have only one really good day in the week to do this, and that I ended up at a PTA-related event tonight.

I was just reading about Stevie Nicks, how she never wanted to be a parent because she wanted to be an artist and being a parent means a lack of focus and PTA meetings. And Stevie didn't want that.

I actually find myself volunteering at PTA.

I write this on the eve of my oldest's 16th birthday. Here we are together, age 34 and one month:

everything new

Mother Christmas

Not much to say.

My day was filled with my last day at work for the semester, and then, immediately, child care.

Not that I'm not grateful to be able to do those things, especially the child care.  Especially in light of Newtown.

But I was pulled from a warm coffee shop where I was about to order a cafe latte and then sit down with it and write with it, only to then stand alone in a cold park, shivering and waiting, for 45 minutes.
Going out to dinner and holiday window watching was also canceled.  Which is JUST FINE!  See how mature I am?

So I had to cobble together an eat-at-home dinner.  I diced one onion and two sad looking sweet potatoes and made home fries, threw in some kale.  Fried some eggs.  That was dinner.

Then I took everything off the cluttered table and scrubbed the table, and only put about half of the stuff back on.  Threw out some cards from Xmas '10 and '11.  Maybe even '09.

During this, the child who had needed care earlier fell asleep--a rare spontaneous nap.  When she woke, she thought it was the next day, 7:00 am.  "I need breakfast," she said.  She got it.

ExistentialLIST

1.  Started the day at The Secret City.  The theme of "Ancestors."  Katherine Gleason presented her work on Alexander McQueen; Susan Birnson had everyone taste her canned cherries and apricots (lemongrass, etc--turns canning on its head); we saw Toshinori Hamada present traditional Japanese dance; we listed to Andru Bemis and his banjo, and The Secret City Singers sang Sweet Honey in the Rock.  

2.  Went from there to the dramatic conclusion of the marathon Moby Dick reading.

3.  Headed to the New Museum for the vintage Bowery artists exhibit and Rosemary Trokel exhibit.  Have you heard of her?  I hadn't.  And I have a hard time finding a good link to her online.   There was also a tattoo artist tattooing humans in the New Museum's window.  

4.  The conclusion of our year-long GITP blog experiment looms.  I'm still not sure what all these posts have added up to, if the daily blog practice has helped me in any way.   Still feel in so many tight places.  I still haven't accomplished many of the goals I set on 12/31/11 with Lara.  In fact, I feel like I've barely made a dent.  

Getting Through Sandy: A List--OR--Tights in Tight Places

This Radio Shack radio was our adorable best friend.

What you will need:

1.  A battery-powered radio
And preferably one you can charge with a crank.  We borrowed the above radio from a friend who had decamped to Brooklyn.  Other than food, it became the most important thing in our apt.  We listened to it almost non-stop, had it tuned to our local NPR affiliate, WNYC--the only station providing commercial free coverage of the area in the aftermath of the storm.  WNYC broadcast all local politician's press conferences and took calls from affected New Yorkers.  On Thursday night,  Soundcheck's John Schaefer hosted a call-in show, where he had people share the music that was "getting them through."   The editor of Billboard called from the East Village on an old-fashioned land line and reported that our neighborhood felt like a more populated I Am Legend.

Without the radio, we would have felt lost and a little bit insane.

2.  Sexy food.
I grew up with parents who kept the most unsexy food in their food storage:  powered milk and eggs, big metal canisters of wheat (I used to snack on the whole kernels like a mouse, crushing them between my molars).  Basically, they kept food that no one wants to eat in the best of times--just saying.  The days we were without power after the storm, I longed most of all for "deliciousness" when it came to food.  I dreamt of poached eggs on buttered toast, home made chocolate chip cookies, and saag paneer.  Since I had access to none of those things, we should have had canisters of chocolate chips on hand, small tins of salmon (food you can eat in one sitting and don't have to refrigerate, which wasn't possible).  I had purchased a tin of stuffed grape leaves before the storm, but it felt too cold to eat them. What I did not want--peanut butter sandwiches--anything that felt like deprivation, anything that symbolized tightness--which is why I felt very depressed for the folks out in the severely affected areas:  the newly homeless were being handed cold sandwiches.  However, had I been desperately starving, I wouldn't have turned one down.

3.  Tapered candles--a deep supply for our candelabra.
Tall candles in a tall holder throw out more light.  When everything is dark, you want as much light as you get.  S and I played the game of Life (by the way I hate Life's version of life) by candlelight that week.  I miss that.

4.  Strong flashlights
The ones we had on hand were cheap and weak and didn't pierce the Biblical darkness outside.  

5.  Bike powered generator
I saw two of these used outside by awesome anarchist-leaning peeps in the neighborhood to power the cell phones of fellow East Villagers.  What I learned about traditional generators:  they're more complicated than most New Yorkers think--they need gas and oil, like a lawn mower.  They can blow up.  And because they emit toxic fumes, they have to be kept outside, which means they are only useful if you are in a ground floor apartment.  As someone on the radio said, "Running a gas-powered generator is not like plugging in an Ipad or putting batteries in a flashlight."  Seriously?  I really had had no idea.

6.  An ice-chest.  
Most New Yorkers don't have cars, so don't invest in an ice chest.  It would have been a handy way to keep our food colder as our refrigerator got warmer each day.  Another thing I would have done is freeze small baggies of water and plastic water bottles while the storm approached.  Someone--I forget who--was at Union Square giving away dry ice, but they kept running out it-according to my radio.

7.  A go-to outfit + tights.
One that makes you feel good about yourself, since you probably won't be showering.  I wore tights every single day.

Did you lose power?  What else should I add to this list?

P.S.  Wishing Lara and her mom my best healing vibes.

eleven eleven

the poet etheridge knight

a poem in honor of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, for those who endured and continue to endure the tightest of places--the tightness of combat, war and strife.

At a VA Hospital in the Middle of the United States of America:  an Act in a Play

by Etheridge Knight

Stars from five wars, scars,

Words filled with ice and fear,

Nightflares and fogginess,

and a studied regularity.

      Gon’ lay down my sword ’n’ shield—

      Down by the river side, down by the river side—

      Down by the river side...

Former Sergeant Crothers, among the worst,

Fought the first. He hears well, tho

He mumbles in his oatmeal. He

Was gassed outside Nice. We

Tease him about “le pom-pom,” and chant:

“There’s a place in France where the women wear no pants.”

Former Sergeant Crothers has gray whiskers

And a gracious grin,

But his eyes do not belie

His chemical high.

      Gon’ lay down my sword ’n’ shield—

      Down by the river side, down by the river side—

      Down by the river side...

A.C. Williams drove a half-track

“Half da goddamn way ’cross Africa

In da second war,” his black

Face proclaims, and exclaims—

Along with other rosy exaggerations.

Each week he sneaks through the iron-wrought fence

To the Blinking Bar down the street.

Midnight reeks the red-eyes, the tired

Temper, the pains in the head.

A phone call summons an aide to bring A. C. to bed.

      Ain’t gon’ study the war no more... Well,

      I ain’t gonna study the war no more—

      Ain’t gonna study the war no more—

      O I ain’t gonna study the war no more.

“Doc” Kramer, ex-medic in Korea

Is armless. And legless,

is an amazement of machines

And bubbling bottles. His nurse,

White starched and erect, beams

A calloused cheerfulness:

“How are we today?” Kramer’s wife leans

Forward, sparkling fingers caressing his stump

Of arm. She is pink, fifty-six, and plump.

“Doc” Kramer desires sleep.

      Gon’ lay down my sword ’n’ shield—

      Down by the river side, down by the river side—

      Down by the river side...

Ex PFC Leonard Davenport goes to court

Tomorrow. He is accused of “possession and sale”

Of narcotics; his conditional bail

Was that he stay at the VA, for the cure.

For an end to sin,

For a surcease of sorrow.

He spends his pension for ten grams of “pure.”

He nods the days away,

And curses his Ranger Colonel in fluent Vietnamese.

His tour in “Nam” is his golden prize.

      Gon’ lay down my sword ’n’ shield—

      Down by the river side, down by the river side—

      Down by the river side...

Grant Trotter’s war was the south side

Of San Diego. Storming the pastel sheets

Of Mama Maria’s, he got hit with a fifty

Dollar dose of syphilis. His feats

Are legends of masturbation, the constant coming

As he wanders the back streets of his mind.

The doctors whisper and huddle in fours

When Trotter’s howls roam the corridors.

We listen. We are patient patients.

      Ain’t gon’ study the war no more... Well,

      I ain’t gonna study the war no more—

      Ain’t gonna study the war no more—

      O I ain’t gonna study the war no more.

stripping away

i was feeling so overwhelmed on wednesday that i made a (nother) resolution: to strip something off of my life every day for a week.  i felt so trapped, and it seemed like the only way to free up some mental, emotional, physical, and financial space.  here are the things i let go of, and the things i plan to let go of:

wednesday:  i asked to be relieved of a regular commitment that took about six hours a month.  i didn't want to do it, and it was a worthy commitment, but i had to.  i'd been fretting over whether or not i should do this for months, and i finally did it.  it was the right decision.

thursday:  cancelled my subscription to the sunday new york times.  less paper to recycle, less monthly expense, less guilt if i don't read the whole thing.

friday: asked c. to do two things i normally do so i could have more time on friday and saturday.

saturday: got a manicure from lula rather than the salon.  gonna forsake the salon for a while so as to save money and time.

sunday: i plan to ask god to take some of my burdens.

monday: work on poetry instead of grading.

tuesday: kick my afternoon diet coke habit (again) and replace with herbal tea. cheaper and healthier.

wednesday: ?????? i don't know yet.  what should i do?

***

legwear: black pleather.

inspiration: betty davis in dark victory--i forgot how much i adore her.

looking forward: to sunday dinner at bam's and letting go of more stuff next week.

a flower so crooked & obscure?

i was gonna write something about last week, a list or movie review, but everything seems so trivial compared to what julie turley has been through.

i'm so glad she's okay & blogging again.  i hope she'll share some of the journal she kept during that epic time.

one thing that didn't feel trivial to me this week was "the yellow flower" by william carlos williams.  more and more i realize he's my poetic ancestor, and i owe a lot to his influence.  this is a later poem, and sounds broken--it is broken, actually--look at the lines.  he was a little bit broken

as we all are.

so, in honor of the broken

but still breathing,

a poem:


The Yellow Flower

by William Carlos Williams

What shall I say, because talk I must?

                        That I have found a cure

                                                for the sick?

I have found no cure

                        for the sick       .

                                                but this crooked flower

which only to look upon

                        all men

                                                are cured.  This

is that flower

                        for which all men

                                                sing secretly their hymns

of praise.  This

                        is that sacred

                                                flower!

Can this be so?

                        A flower so crooked

                                                and obscure?  It is

a mustard flower

                        and not a mustard flower,

                                                a single spray

topping the deformed stem

                        of fleshy leaves

                                                in this freezing weather

under glass.

An ungainly flower and

                        an unnatural one,

                                                in this climate;  what

can be the reason

                        that it has picked me out

                                                to hold me, openmouthed,

rooted before this window

                        in the cold,

                                                my will

drained from me

                        so that I have only eyes

                                                for these yellow,

twisted petals   .           ?

That the sight,

                        though strange to me,

                                                must be a common one,

is clear:  there are such flowers

                        with such leaves

                                                native to some climate

which they can call

                        their own.

But why the torture

                        and the escape through

                                                the flower?  It is

as if Michelangelo

                        had conceived the subject

                                                of his Slaves from this

-- or might have done so.

                        And did he not make

                                                the marble bloom?  I

am sad

                        as he was sad

                                                in his heroic mood.

But also

                        I have eyes

                                                that are made to see and if

they see ruin for myself

                        and all that I hold

                                                dear, they see

also

                        through the eyes

                                                and through the lips

and tongue the power

                        to free myself

                                                and speak of it, as

Michelangelo through his hands

            `           had the same, if greater,

                                                power.

Which leaves, to account for,

                        the tortured bodies

                                                of

the slaves themselves

                        and

                                                the tortured body of my flower

which is not a mustard flower at all

                        but some unrecognized

                                                and unearthly flower

for me to naturalize

                        and acclimate

                                                and choose it for my own.

How Far Would You Walk for a Hot Meal?

My first post-Sandy post. 

I'm very tired.

Our path to civilization

I kept a journal every day.

A flashlight was a necessity.  I didn't leave the apt without it.

What I'll remember is the cold.  Cold apartment, cold water, cold electric stove.

Warm refrigerator.

How far would you walk for a hot meal?  Yesterday, I walked about a mile-and-a-half over a bridge into Brooklyn, bringing my daughter with me.  We brought our dead phones and chargers with us.  I couldn't find my other daughter until I charged my phone. 

Communication in our neighborhood was reduced to notes taped up on doors, dropping by apartment buildings and yelling up at windows, hoping to catch someone home.

In the Brooklyn restaurant we eventually ended up at, my kid asked if she could order steak and eggs.  "Of course!" I said.  And then I jubilantly ordered hot tea AND hot coffee and a kale Ceasar salad with homemade croutans, an egg sandwich with homefries.  We gave our phones and charger to our very sweet waiter who ran out and bought a power strip.

Every day without power I thought about food.  How I could get it and where.  How I would bring it back before sundown, before my neighborhood would go epically, Biblically dark. 

Tight place update:

To add insult to injury, someone got a hold of our banking info and swiped some money from our account last night.  Sigh.

failing, falling, finding

julie turley sent me these grey chevron with silver metallic fleck tights.  i busted them out yesterday. the dress is from julie turley, too.  one of my favorite dresses.

i had a lot of time to think today on my commute to the university of utah.  on the way up, traffic was so bad that it took two hours, door to door, and on the way down, a five-car accident made the commute at least ninety minutes.

so, while deeply breathing and trying not to feel too trapped or resentful at the universe, i pondered some of the gems i gleaned from michael lee, some of which i've been working on for a while now, and some that were new to me, and made me laugh at their delightfully absurd truths.

1) do today today.  why is it so hard not to live for tomorrow, or not to constantly hike back to yesterday?

2) look for excellence in bad things.  professor lee spoke of a really bad movie that he once saw, and of his decision to look for the excellence in it.  he found it.

3) embrace failure.  i even thought, hey, what about actually seeking failure?  what would that look like?  it could look like taking big risks, or maybe it would involve letting things go--enjoying and being rather than striving?  i can't totally imagine this, but it's something to think about.

it's blessed thursday night!  i'm so happy!

legwear: black pleather jeans.  wow.  so comfortable and warm.  who knew?

inspiration: stuck in traffic

looking forward: to yoga tomorrow

coaching

houndstooth check shift from julie; i wore it for two consecutive days because i miss julie soooo much!

at the end of the artist's way, you commit to continuing morning pages, artist dates, and to checking in weekly with an artist's coach.  (i love morning pages; i hate artist dates and just can't make myself do them.)

i'm super glad i have a coach to check in with, because the past few days have been some of the hardest, the tightest, of 2012.  and yesterday i thought i might fall apart completely.  it was one of those days where i had to talk myself through every breath, every step, of the day.

anyone else ever have those days?

i talked to my coach last night and she told me a bunch of stuff i kind of already know (except for number 3--that's new and i'm gonna try it), but it's different to hear another voice telling you besides your own inner voice, which under difficult circumstances can get muddled and confused.

my coach told me:

1) you already know what to do.

2) ride the wave.  hard times and good times both are fleeting.

3) draw your story on a whiteboard. (i need to do more investigating on this.  it seems like something my whole family could use!)

so,

do you have a coach?

if not, you should.

my coach is one of my dearest friends, a relative, and a person who has unofficially helped me through more difficulties than i can possibly count--including being a labor coach at two of my births.  she's just super talented at coaching.

i also have a few people i think about when specific problems arise--i try to imagine what that person would do when faced with a challenge i know that person is good at handling.  i think about my very organized and practical sister when i'm getting too complicated.  i think about julie when i'm getting dressed and i know my outfit isn't quite right.  i think about ingrid when i want my life to be more magical.  i think of c. when i'm trying to find a workaround for a seemingly intractable problem--he's a genius at that.  i think of eva when i feel like i'm not entitled to ask for what i want or need.  i think of bam when i'm trying to infuse my day with structure, fun, and meaning.

i could go on and on with this list.

the point is, i guess i've used self-coaching for a long time, unconsciously, but it's really interesting to do it more deliberately and with more awareness.

i also did s.o.l.e. on monday and tuesday to try to get through those days.  i'm sure it made me feel better, like, merely horrible rather than completely hideous.  & i wore the houndstooth shift julie sent back from nyc with c. BOTH days.  it just made me feel good to wear something from julie, since we're so far apart geographically.

on monday i wore it with burgandy tights from h&m, the only tights purchase i've made this year, and on tuesday the charcoal tights from last winter, my go-to tights.  with a putty colored crocheted scarf/shawl because it was chilly and overcast yesterday.  i think i liked yesterday's look a little better than monday's.

it's time to fire up every last coping strategy in my tool bag to get through the next super tough eight weeks.

i'm open to ideas, ladies.  or gentleman.

already magical: introducing rad poet and dedicated advocate brenda scieczkowski

totally rad poet & human being brenda s.

i met brenda a while back in donald revell's poetry workshop.  i never got to know her as well as i wanted to due to our respective circumstances, but from a distance, i could tell she was rad, for real, and had some serious poet-soul.  i'm very pleased to introduce her to our readers, and to recommend her wonderful poetry.  one of the cool things about her work is the eclectic array of sources she draws on.  she's included some of those "magical and bleak" sources for us here.

here's a bit about brenda, from her bio, and some writing she generously agreed to share with us:

Brenda Sieczkowski was born in a Year of the Hare but currently swerves through a Year of the Possum. Her poems and lyric essays have appeared in a wide variety of journals, and her chapbook, Wonder Girl in Monster Land, is available from dancing girl press. A full-length collection, Like Oysters Observing the Sun, will be published by Black Lawrence Press in 2013. Favorite Deformation Events recorded by the Carnegie Mellon Auditory Lab: “Crush cabbage on board,” “Sawing 2-Liter (Japanese saw),” and “Breaking matzo.”  

With the small scraps of writing I’m able to piece out of this fall, I’m stitching together a fable about small-town manufacturing plants and the peculiar (and potentially damaging) crops that sometimes bloom from them. Here’s an excerpt from the rough draft:

The most extravagant flowers fringed the retention pond at the chemical plant—as vividly and intricately colored as the wallpaper blooming behind dreams—though, if the townspeople had paused to examine this conjunction, they would have concluded that their dreams had only been of such a vivid and intricate coloration since the chemical plant, assembled on the six acres of plowed-under soybean field west of town, started synthesizing flavors.

The flowers smelled of roast beef and juniper and nutmeg and kumquat and hot butter and banana cotton candy.

§

That fall, the clouds dissipated into invisible hibernation far beyond the horizon, and the sun burned steadily from raw yolk to cigarette cherry. Crops on the residual farms shriveled. A stiff edge of metal tainted all the soft drinks.  

But the chemical flowers thrived. Well into October, new buds sizzled to life on the hillside. The wives of the junior flavorists continued to congregate in lacquered clumps on the patio of the Wayside Tavern for watermelon mojitos, relishing the quaint smell of fresh-crushed mint, the novelty of a truly natural versus nature-identical scent. October spilled teenagers onto the factory grounds, filling apple baskets and wheelbarrows and burlap feed sacks with the late, radiant blooms. 

Pouring from that long and syrupy fall, the Homecoming Parade smelled of roast beef molasses and peppermint and melted butter and orange peel and unwrapped bubblegum. Miss Beef Skirt and her pageant court swiveled down Main Street on a creamy carpet of butter carnations, waving in circumscribed figures of infinity. The Wilson tractor hauled behind it a swath of bergamot, unfurling from the 782 shasta daisies wired to Doc Murphy’s 8-foot tooth. The backseat of the Mayor’s Mustang convertible was heaped with a mound of purple-throated tulips from which his head and torso emerged in the manner of a bleached and abstemious jack-in-the-box. The cellophane wrappers on the sour apple and cherry and grape candies glittered and crackled as they showered onto the sidewalks.    

(Since my “fable” is still in a very raw state, any editorial suggestions readers would like to offer in the Comments Section to this post would be welcome!)

Fable, however, is not quite the right word.

Yesterday, I was reading about French beekeepers and their puzzlement at the mysterious shades of blue and green honey their bees had begun producing. You can read about it too here.

peculiar

Fable implies whole wheelbarrows and burlap feed sacks stuffed with anthropomorphism. Pithy maxims, mythological wonders, supernatural phenomena. As a teenager, I devoured magical realism—Borges’ “Funes the Memorious” and Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude are enduring favorites. But increasingly, I’m drawn to what I will sloppily call “hyper-realistic magicalism,” the astonishing and haunting realities everywhere apparent in natural history and the contemporary sciences. Several years ago, I was captivated by the story of a Russian surgeon who cut open a patient to find a miniature fir tree growing in his lung.

Reality is already magical.

1) Tell us about yourself.

Right now, I’m the opposite of a tightrope walker. This is not precisely true; I’m more like a tightrope walker performing on parallel wires, constantly hopping back and forth. Though my educational efforts have all been directed towards literature and creative writing, I’m now working full-time providing support and services for homeless individuals (more about this below). And scrambling to find time to write. And scrambling to find time to read for my PhD exams. Scrambling for balance.  

If you would like to read some of my work in slightly more cooked state, you can access a poem sequence, “Quantum Phantomology,” at Sidebrow— 

Here’s a link to Dusie, Issue 13, where you can find more poems—as well as incandescent work by former Guest Blogger, gentleman poet Nathan Hauke— 

I have a chapbook, Wonder Girl in Monster Land, here.

One of the chapbook’s best features is the amazing illustrations provided by Chad Woody—an extremely (almost annoyingly) multi-talented writer, artist-of-all-genres, and potato crusader. You can view some illustrations-in-progress on his website. You’ll want to bookmark his main page and return to it often. 

2) Are you in a tight place right now? If so, what are you doing to get out of it?

I’m in and out of tight places every day. That’s my job description; I work with a population (the chronically homeless) who have fallen, spectacularly in many cases, through the cracks.

In 2008, at the start of the financial crisis (are we still calling it that?), I abruptly and unexpectedly lost university funding, a circumstance I should likely have been prepared for, but certainly wasn’t. Suddenly, I was reeling with the realization that not only would I not be able to complete my degree in anything like a foreseeable future, the teaching I had relied on for (a meager) income had also evaporated. I needed to find a full-time job fast, and 2008 was not a prime time to find full-time jobs. I became intimate with neighborhood pawnshops. I ate spoonfuls of peanut butter out of the jar so I would have enough protein in my system to pass at the plasma donation centers. I could no longer afford my apartment. However, I was still keenly aware that as tight as the place I was in felt, there were thousands and thousands of people rattling around the same city in much tighter spots. I, after all, was donating plasma to buy Christmas gifts, not to eat. (I had peanut butter). I wasn’t battling addiction or severe mental illness. And I had friends who made sure I had a roof over my head. Late in the year I got hired full-time to work in homeless support services.

Four years later, I’m still working in the same field, as a case manager for chronically homeless individuals here in Omaha. It is out of both choice and necessity.

One of my clients jokes that if his EBT card gets stolen one more time, he will have to become a cannibal. One needs an organ transplant, but has no income and no medical coverage. One catches fish out of the pond at a city park.

I said early on in this ramble that I’m drawn to the fantastical and magical phenomena illuminating reality. To me this feels like a compulsion, but I realize it is also an indulgence, a privilege—it is necessary to look, as compulsively, as unblinkingly, at the stark and burnt-out desperation into which we have allowed our fellow humans to fall—poverty, addiction, violence. This is a price I’m willing to (I must) pay for indulging my other aesthetic compulsions. This is the only way, ultimately, I can achieve balance.  

Reality is magical and bleak.     

3) What do you hope to accomplish before the end of the year?

Improve the quality of life for as many clients as I am able.

I would love to make a sizeable dent in my long-suffering PhD-exam reading list, but I’ll settle for making it through Marx’s Das Kapitol, Volume I.

I also hope to finish a three-part chapbook I’m currently working on; the excerpt above is part of one section. Make progress on a longer-range nonfiction project about violence in the Mid-West.

Mail one letter (or collage) a week to a friend/loved one.

Learn more about the brain.

Love more.     

4) What inspires you?

Generosity.     

5) What is your favorite leg wear?

It is with great sadness that I confess I am unable to post a picture here of my favorite sky-blue knee socks populated with pink robots. They were lost during the period of time I didn’t have a stable place to live. This will have to do:

a substitute for the rad sky-blue knee socks.