From Ballroom to Modern...

Had to watch the beautiful Russian Max Kapitannikov get cut from So You Think You Can Dance tonight. A most amazing ballroom dancer (and apparently a lot more...though he didn't show his colors enough on the show...here's a clip of him doing some funky hip-hop Latin fusion...).

Last night, I swooned over Jonathan Platero and Karla Garcia's duet. Jonathan is also a ballroom dancer (Latin) but this is a contemporary piece. What makes it so amazing is that he's never done modern dance in his life. Some gymnastics. But no modern. It's a subtle, quiet performance, but the lifts are gorgeous! Just wade through the first few minutes where they do this silly "get to know" segment, and I'd recommend stopping the video after the routine ends so you don't have to endure the obnoxiousness of the judges...they loved it, but still...the gushing almost ruins the performance:



Needless to say, they made it into the top 3 couples so were safe from elimination.

The Ultimate Goal

Someone asked me about my blog today. They asked: “What’s your ultimate goal with it?” And it’s a good question. Because I’m a word person and a totally shameless Gogol Bordello fan, the world “ultimate” is what stuck out to me (the title of one of their most, well, ultimate songs). I gave the person a very short, admittedly insincere reply. Not a lie, just an I-can’t-explain-it-really answer. Half-embarrassed that I didn’t really know. And half-resistant to saying what was true since what is true isn’t really a goal so much as a whole bunch of stuff I don't know yet and can't explain.

The real answer would have been to blast this:



Or play this:



Or read the last several lines of Maurice Manning’s poem “Three Truths and One Story”: "There are words and there are deeds, and both/are dying out, dying away/from where they were and what they meant./God save the man who has the heart/to think of anything more sad."

Once, when I was very young, I had to walk the final bottom stretch of El Caminito Road to get to school. Something had happened with a ride, and to wait would have meant being late. So someone’s mother directed me down the road. “Just walk. And watch for cars.” It was a short stretch. But I was small and there was no sidewalk, just a big intimidating fence to my left that lined our town’s private airstrip. On that walk, I became very aware of the sound of my feet in the dirt. The crunching of my sneakers. And then I became very aware that I was aware. And I began to think about death, as I often did, and about infinite which usually scared me, but didn’t on this particular morning, and I thought about what I would be like when I was old, very very old, and I saw myself there. Old me. And young, small me was filled with a certainty that my life was going to be somehow extraordinary. I didn’t have those words then, but I knew.

In other words, the ultimate goal is, y’know, that.

All of it.

Making the Decision

When I'm not doing what I know I need to do to get and feel better, I totally suck. As a former athlete, I am just not wholly Laura when I am not physically involved in Life. To not suck, I need to be Healthy, or at least need to be heading in the direction of the Top of My Game. I am a crazier lady without strength and prowess. Without them I suffer from a kind of spiritual anemia; it's subtle and chronic so it's easy to get used to.

Making these kinds of changes, getting off the couch and "moving around," are hard. But when I consider the alternative (ahem, not getting off the couch), then easy or hard just can't be part of the equation. The pushing myself up from the cushions just becomes Law. The same way that not drinking is a Law for me. It's powerful to act on your own behalf. Powerful for me to make my bed every morning. Wash my dishes. Get my oil changed. Keep my life going in a way I wasn't able to years ago. And it's been powerful, very recently, to have enacted into legislation the following:

1. Exercise: vigorous yoga classes and a personal trainer.
2. Quitting caffeine and surviving.
3. Cutting out gluten. And sugar. And dairy.
4. Throwing myself into cooking and shopping and cooking some more (and oh, the dishes!!).
5. A new and exciting creative project with a Dear Friend and excellent collaborator.

Even so, yesterday morning, I had a mini-meltdown on my bed before work when I couldn't decide what to wear. Which wasn't really about what I was going to wear or not wear, but about how I'd been exercising, and giving up stuff, and spending all my time washing and chopping vegetables and cooking grains and pretending I like soy milk, and YET, my pants felt no looser.

But I threw on jeans and heels and a pretty top and got in my wagon and drove to work anyway, because I gotta make the bacon.

I went back and forth all day about whether or not I should go to my regular Monday yoga class. I wasn't losing weight after all. Why bother? Until Dear Friend reminded me via an e-mail that bore the subject "pep talk," that weight loss or no, I was getting healthier, and spending more time writing and creating (even when what I'm creating are amazing, healthy meals and not always amazing, healthy essays or stories or poems). Would I rather eat badly, have no energy, and not be creatively inspired? Or be the same weight (especially when the weight I am is really just perfectly fine) and be healthy and more comfortable in my body?

Thankfully, my yoga feet carried me to class. Thank GOD they carried me to class. I broke through the seventh-chakra wall, or something like that. I don't know chakras. Or what #7 is. But I know now that my body is changing. After the class, my body looked different to me. Felt different. Is different.

Here's the deal: I'd been wanting to do yoga for more than 6 months before I actually went to a class. And I'd been wanting to turn my diet around about 1 year before I actually started doing it a few weeks ago. There's power in the suffering it takes to get to the jumping off place. And there's even more power in jumping into a better spot. In making a decision to do it. Like, really do it.

My next decision: Bed. This chick is toast. Actually, she can't be toast...she can be...a sprouted corn tortilla, which sounds ridiculous, so this chick will just simply head to bed. Or be that acorn sprout up there, heading to bed. An acorn sprout in her pjs and socks heading for the covers.

Confession

Not only have I been watching So You Think You Can Dance but, yes, my please-be-non-judgmental friends and readers, The Bachelorette. I can't help it. I like to watch it. Like driving by an accident. You can't help but look.

I know it's a shallow thang. And I know that there's no way Jillian (or any woman) could know if someone is "the one" in two dates, or in one date on top of a glacier, or on a couch in two minutes at a cocktail party. And I know that it's sort of weird when you think through the whole thing: like how could your soulmate be in a group of dudes that a network has chosen for you? And where's the racial and ethnic diversity? Obama did just get elected right?

There's something about watching the show that feels like a weird kind of practice...What would I do? What would I think about that dude? The wine guy from my hometown in California? Or the bartender from Texas? And why is no one asking her about her? And why doesn't she notice that? My favorite guy decided to leave tonight because he was going to lose his job. Sad. Ed. I'll miss him. (Yes, I have gone as far as thinking about what it would be like to be on such a show. Laura's version. The Thinking-Outloud version. The I'm-37-and-fun-and-single-and-a-whole-bunch-of-other-things version)

Thankfully, I don't really need my own show (tho I'm not completely against it). I go on dates. I have sushi. I go to coffee (well, I go to decaf). I make tentative plans to go bumper boating. I just say yes when I want to, and I go, and I see how I feel. And if I'm not feeling it, I say so. Which has been the hardest part but the best thing to learn how to do in a kind, clear, unapologetic way.

There are always the guys I wish would ask me out, and they are probably the ones that won't ask me out, ever. (And they are the ones that probably shouldn't, for my own good, because they are too busy with their careers or just plain not fit for the phenomenon that is moi. So says a woman who made herself the most amazing Salmon, asparagus, sweet potato, lemon and rosemary dish and wanted to cry for two reasons: 1] because it was so damn good, and 2] because there wasn't anyone to share it with.)

3 lists and 2 recipes

Today:

1. UltraShake* (thanks Dr. Hyman)
2. Decaf Americano at Haven with K.
3. Lunch with K.O. at the GB Co-op (the company was awesome, the food, so-so...when you're not eating gluten, sugar, or dairy...there's surprisingly little left to eat, even on the Co-op buffet)
4. Took my turn cleaning the apt.
5. Made some Detox Broth** (#2 thanks to Dr. H)
6. Dinner: leftover cashew coconut chicken (with lime and cilantro), baked kale, and a spinach and avocado salad with lemon vinaigrette made from scratch.
7. Digested on the couch and watched Mean Girls and contemplated the redesign of the NY Times Magazine (here's one reader's take)
8. Knew one answer for certain in the Sunday Times crossword: Eno.
9. Posted to my blog.
10. Now going to see what else I can cram in before bed. Choices: a) balance checkbook (which will free up some space in my brain's 'must-do' center), b) nail down my dates for my August Arizona trip (more space freed up), or c) dishes (which actually isn't a choice...now that I have a roommate it's a must-do-now).

Things I didn't do this weekend that I wish I had:

1. Worked on a story I'm in the middle of.
2. Got ahead on my grad student's evals for this semester.
3. Done another yoga session.

What I did do (and am glad I did):

1. All of the above 10 things.
2. Grocery-shopped my ass off and cooked a lot, which is actually a lot for one weekend.
3. Continued to not drink caffeine (at least not the full-powered stuff) or eat sugar.
4. Realized once again that the number of things I think I can get done in a day is usually pretty unrealistic.


*How to make an UltraShake

• 2 scoops rice protein powder
• 1-tbsp organic combination flax and borage oil
• 2-tbsp ground flaxseeds
• 1/2-cup frozen or fresh non-citrus fruit, such as cherries or bananas
• 6-8 oz. filtered water
• Ice
• 1-tbsp nut butter, such as almond or pecan butter (optional)

Blend all ingredients together to desired thickness.

**How to make UltraBroth

Chop up 6 cups of vegetables including sweet potato, dark leafy greens (I used kale), onion, turnips or parsnips, carrots, and add spices (I added: oregano, lemongrass, a couple bay leaves, and a bunch of fresh ginger).

Bring to a boil and then simmer for a few hours. Drain into a container. 2-3 cups a day. Keeps for about a week.

Miranda July outtakes

After a little viniyoga with Jason Brown in my bedroom (seriously...yoga, with JBrown on my Ipod dock, on my yoga mat next to the bed with just enough room to do a sufficient vinyasa series). Mucho sweat. Ocean breathing. Crazy crazy tight right hip. Like, it's-never-been-this-tight-ever-before tight. I'm sure one or two manifestation psychologists would tell me this means something intense...I'm up for that. I'm always up for that.

Instead tho, I'm going to follow yesterday's thread (read: creativity, inspiration, getting off the couch and just doing it) and offer some of my favorite words from No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July, the ultra-creative, you-almost-want-light-but-clunky-things-to-rain-down-on-her-and-cause-her-just-a-little-discomfort-because-she's-so-damn-original-and-brave-and-talented-and-relatively-young-but-she-inspires-you-so-much-in-her-creative-experiments-that-you-have-to-thank-her-instead-for-leading-the-way writer, performer, and filmmaker. Even when she has what the NY Times called "the cringe factor," I still love her because no matter what, she is sincere. To who she is. To what she does. To her imagination. Her weirdness. And that's what I want. To break through that 75th wall into a place where I just try stuff and never give up. Reading Miranda J, watching her films, etc, helps me remember that if I don't experiment, I really will end up on the couch watching TV and eating one baby ice cream sandwich after another.

So here's some MJ:

From "This Person"

Somebody somewhere is shaking with excitement because something tremendous is about to happen to this person....Possibly there is some kneeling, such as when one is knighted....Math teachers are saying that math was just a funny way of saying "I love you"...and the chemistry and PE teachers are also saying it....This person feels the sudden need to check her post office box. It is an old habit, but if everything is going to be terrific from now on, this person still wants mail.

From "Something That Needs Nothing"

We were anxious to begin our life as people who had no people.

Everything we had thought of as The World was actually the result of someone's job. Each line on the sidewalk, each saltine.

[re: a bad cockroach situation]
He said he would send someone over but that we shouldn't get our hopes up.
Why not?
Well, It's not just your apartment; the whole building's infested.
Maybe you should have them do the whole building, then.
It wouldn't do any good; they'd just come over from other buildings.
It's the whole block?
It's the whole world.

From "Making Love in 2003"

[re: an older woman with a younger man]
We learned to be discreet. It helped that nobody really cares about anyone but themselves anyway. They check to make sure you aren't killing anyone, anyone they know, and then they go back to what they were saying about how they think they might be having a real breakthrough in their relationship with themselves.

...I felt hunger. The body's expression of hope.

From "Ten True Things"

She seemed to have room for me; she never turned away in the pauses that allow for turning away....she never recoiled...This is a quality I look for in a person, not recoiling. Some people need a red carpet rolled out in front of them in order to walk forward into a friendship. They can't see the tiny outstretched hands all around them....

From "How to Tell Stories to Children"

It may have been in self-defense that Lyon's aggravated preteen body replaced itself with an unaggravated, rather amazing woman's body in the summer after her freshman year of high school. I thought this elegantly bubble-bottomed response was brilliant; I could not have said it better myself.

Nor could I. So I will stop blogging and go make some food courtesy of a Mark Hyman recipe and see what else the night has in store.

Namaste...and shit.

Shut up and dance

Last night was a Bhangra class that Albany-J and I went to. Unfortunately, we didn't get to wear the awesome outfits [I picked the following video off YT for its homespun flavor.]:



Tonight? Salsa on2 [I will not be rocking the back-strapped shirt...and nor will Frankie Martinez, a sizzly figure in the mambo world whose upper body looks like he could be checking his mail while he's dancing but his lower body is like a whole other story, be teaching; I think it's a 60-year-old guy with longish hair and a penchant for multiple turns...if it's the teacher I'm thinking of. Laura will be taking half a Dramamine before class]:

Attack of Movement

Real, unadulterated, unmanufactured inspiration comes when I least expect it--the cliche of all cliches. But, contrary to what the heart says, inspiration heats up the more one follows the ache--the exact thing we [read: I] want to avoid.

For example, I have a difficult time watching gymnastics on TV. When I watch the little ones flipping and spinning and balancing, my entire body remembers and longs for that kind of strength and control again. It makes me wish I were 15, not 37. (Here's young me in my golden years of competition.)


My body--and I suppose I'm talking about the creative impulse within the body--doesn't know that it's been 22 years since I've been able to move like that.

I've been watching So You Think You Can Dance. It's a two-hour ache fest. I don't want to watch it. Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way lady, she says that particular type of ache means something--creative envy most of all. Not watching the show would be avoiding what I know is in me. And it happened, by the way, the inspiration, the white horse, whatever you want to call it, when I watched 17-year-old Nathan Trasoras' audition. I was completely caught off guard and found myself half-weeping on my couch:



So I looked him up on YouTube and found more. And watched more. And cried more. Just like how Gogol Bordello has lit a fire in me--in a way that can't really be accounted for--Nathan's dancing has had me crying, and writing e-mails to friends, one to Nathan on Facebook, and another to my college dance teacher (now friend) who, dancing strong at the age of 49, reminds me that it's never too late and, bless her, pointed out, from having choreographed for me and danced with me and seen me move, that she could see me in Nathan's dance, his "attack of movement, clean lines, the feeling behind what he does." So Laura's going to make a dance. Even if the dance turns out to be some big creative mess. Face everything, avoid nothing. Isn't that the spiritual warrior's credo? Something like that...

Here's Nathan again. I'm fine if it doesn't move you like it moves me. Every time I watch this, I'm inexplicably filled. And, as we know with creative fire, it can't be explained or manufactured, which is what makes my reaction so awesome:




We have bodies.
Damn.

Key Lime Kream Bars

Yes, "K" as in AmeriKa, as in Kosmic, as in some facsimile of "Kream." I've caught the "I-want-to-revolutionize-my-diet" bug. Sometimes (like now), it's when my vertigo starts being a more regular visitor that does it, or even more motivating: when I can't get the entirety of myself into my summer pants.

Step 1: put down caffeine. CHECK. (I could just stop here and call it revolution won. Coffee is mi amor. I judge people who take their coffee weak. And if I find myself without it--and accompanying half-and-half--I can find myself in the midst of a morning cry.)

Step 2: put down sugar (and simultaneously find sweet things that satisfy); the former I am working on, the latter: CHECK!

I found a recipe that I now know is going to serve as the doorway into my continuing diet revolution:

Ani Phyo's Frozen Key Lime Kream Bars

4 cups cashews (I used roasted because I couldn't find raw in bulk)
1/2 cup liquid coconut oil (I got the solid stuff, y'know cuz that's really the only kind you can buy in the store, and I warmed it at the lowest possible temperature--it melts at 76 degrees)
1/2 cup agave syrup
1 cup lime juice
1 cup water (as needed)

Blend. And put into a pie dish and freeze (approx 3 hours). If you have a regular blender like I do, I'd do it in two batches.

Note Ingredients en total are a tad on the pricey side. But they do keep for weeks in the freezer.

And I think of what Thich Nhat Hanh says to people who complain that eating "healthy" and organic is too expensive: Simple. Chew slower. Eat less.

I tried a small square this morning and I'm now going to put more trust into Ani Phyo (she's got a YouTube cooking show, too!). That tart lime taste. The consistency. The cold.

YUM!!!

Breathing

So, I've started going to a personal trainer (piggy-backing on a workmate's sessions). Ah, to be so sore between your shoulder blades that you can't take a true deep breath--now that's working out.

Seriously, I didn't even make it half-way through the weighted jump roping before I had to go stand over the sink in the bathroom because I was sure something was going to come out of me. Even thinking of the Biggest Loser finale didn't help this time. My tough-chick workmate told me "just work through the nausea, Chas [trainer] will clean it up." If I hadn't felt so bad, I would have laughed.

Now it's Saturday and the breeze is coming in through the window and I'm trying to get my mind around creating a website for myself, which I'm noticing is the perfect distraction for sore upper back muscles and for actually writing the book that I hope to eventually publish and put on the website.

So I better go do some actual writing...but I'm stuck with the thing, and not feeling a lot of faith, which is usually when I start getting other ideas, for whole other books I should write TODAY. But I digress, and I procrastinate; off I go.

Recession 101

So I'm driving East on I-90 on Friday night to pick a friend up from the airport and glance up at the swanky digital billboard that's right after the State Buildings Exit. Here's what I see:



Then when I'm driving West on Sunday after dropping my friend off at the airport, there's another version:



So I did some research. I googled "Recession 101" and nothing. I added "digital billboards" to that search, nothing, then "Albany, NY"...nothing. Finally I google the whole "stop obsessing about the economy" phrase and wa-la, a link to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America. Here's a link to the full slideshow.

This blogger says: AWESOME.

drink up

This is in the Price Chopper in Great Barrington, MA, where I shop. I always find myself drawn to this sign, to the colorful drinks on the shelves beneath it, even though I'd never buy one. I'm sort of in awe of the sign I think. I keep being surprised it's still there. That no Price Chopper manager has walked by the aisle, glanced up and thought "hey...what the hell? Who put that sign up there?"

(A guy, not a manager, walked by right after I took this picture. He was wearing a black t-shirt. On the back was a picture of Osama Bin Laden. The headline above the pic said "Dying Fetus" and underneath the pic in smaller writing it said, "one shot, one kill." That guy could use a keg or two of the New Age beverage is what I say.)

Bag Head

As long as we're on the theme of animals. F(*k. This made me laugh.

Quimby the Mouse and Andrew Bird

From the This American Life: Live! stream they broadcasted this and last month in movie theaters throughout the land.

Inarguably dark, but it's a beautiful song, and Chris Ware's work is something.

Quimby The Mouse from This American Life on Vimeo.

Sunday Sunday...da..da..da..da...

Have not successfully fought off cold. Am surrendering to bed. With my laptop. Started reading Proust Friday night. Remembrance of Things Past.

But my grandmother, in all weathers, even when the rain was coming down in torrents and Francoise had rushed indoors with the precious wicker armchairs, so that they should not get soaked, you would see my grandmother pacing the deserted garden, lashed by the storm, pushing back her grey hair in disorder so that her brows might be more free to imbibe the life-giving draughts of wind and rain. She would say, "At last one can breathe!"

Go grandma. And, of course, there is the genius of controlling a sentence that long (and this is a short one for Proust); look at everything that comes across in that short space: image, character, weather. It seems so natural it's easy to miss. I know I'll miss a lot of what's referenced throughout this book--I'm guessing...wars, historical leaders, cultural dog-ears--given my spotty study of literature, especially non-American, and especially because most of what I've studied has been out of context of historical narrative. Here's a book. Here's another book. And another. Disconnected dots. But I'll forge ahead with Proust's story. I've stayed away from some tomes long enough thinking I won't get all there is to be gotten. Here I go. Proust on a late Sunday morning, with a cold. Then I'm going to watch me a really bad Michelle Pfeiffer movie. Cuz that's the way I roll.

Saturday list

The roommate made delicious banana pancakes this morning for breakfast. I can't remember the last time I had pancakes.

Clothes are in washer (a washing machine in the next room!).

More coffee to come.

A cold to fight off (the coffee ought to help).

A decision to make about whether or not to go to New York City tomorrow (considering cold and late-night return and big week ahead).

An essay to work on (where is it going? and how long will I go on? and how will it end?)

Dreams last night of unlikely friends pairing up in strange cities and getting married ("But you guys don't even really know each other!" I'm saying, in a cafe somewhere in the Middle East. I'm thinking: he is already married and reads philosophy and can't stand the New Age and she likes to burn sage and says things like the "four directions" and "Earth Mother." "You should at least live together first!" I'm shouting. But I'm like the person who returns from the afterlife...no one can hear or see me.). In the dream, I become more interested in life outside the cafe, all the browns and bustle and dust. Rickshaws. There were definitely rickshaws.

More boxes to sort through.

An ailing orchid to save.

But first, more coffee for that cold.

National Poetry Month, Day 30: W. S. Merwin

And this, the loveliest poems, on the last day of National Poetry Month. Adieu to the serial poem posting... ah, but this:

Thanks
by W. S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow for the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions.

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
looking up from tables we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

National Poetry Month, Day 29: Tim Earley

POEM
by Tim Earley

Given the preponderance
of grass and sun

how could I be
anything more

than what
I am

which is a people
and I agree to agree that this

is lovely that day
is blue

and curving and better than
yesterday and walking through

the widowed light of a strange
hallway your shoulders

say things lots of things the most
things I’ve heard

so far yet to this point but there’s
always the next moment and

we’ll be people then too
and possibly walking but not forever

therefore the entire arrangement
is actually quite nice your shoulders

going on and on that way

National Poetry Month, Day 28: "She"

A different kind of poetry, of the "found" variety. I couldn't resist.

"They don't want to do nothing. They want me to keep the box of rocks. I'm not buying a box of rocks for $138."
--Jodi Wykle, mother of boy who opened a new Nintendo DS to find...well, rocks (and a Chinese newspaper).

National Poetry Month, Day 27: Matthew Rohrer

This comes from a blog called Starting Today: Poems for the First 100 Days, that has been posting poems written especially for and during the first 100 days of Obama's administration. You can visit the site and read like 99 other poems. I liked this one a lot:

Poem
by Matthew Rohrer

On Tuesday at noon the
sun suddenly came out I
swear I said to my
daughter something was happening but
what and the stars don't
care about us who we
elect or when we listen to
the radio and hear it
say President Obama is going
to shut down the prison
the stars don't care they
are forever exploding hydrogen atoms
slowly depleting dying like us
to them if they thought
at all they'd think everything
we do is in prison
the president said we could
write poems again saying "president"
that people would have to
think about not just understand
like he said "science is
coming, people" to which my
son said "did he say
science?" I said "I know
it's hard to believe but
the new president said science"


Matthew Rohrer (Brooklyn, NY) is the author of five books, most recently Rise Up, by Wave Books. A chapbook They All Seemed Asleep was just published by Octopus Books. Forthcoming is A Plate of Chicken by Ugly Duckling.

National Poetry Month, Day 25: Emily Dickinson

[my life closed twice before its close]
by Emily Dickinson

My life closed twice before its close;

It yet remains to see

If Immortality unveil

A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,

As these that twice befell.

Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell.

National Poetry Month, Day 24: Jane Kenyon

Happiness
by Jane Kenyon

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

National Poetry Month, Day 23: Robert Frost

I memorized this poem for a class in grad school and had the experience with memorization that I'd heard other poets talk about. I came to understand the poem in a way I never would have otherwise. I think when I first read it, I had no idea what was going on, but I loved the title and the way it turns the poem at the end.

For Once, Then, Something
by Robert Frost

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths--and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

National Poetry Month, Day 22: Robert Pinsky

I was just looking at National Poetry Month from my blog last year and man, I was ambitious! I posted bios and links and a lot of fun commentary. This year, with the NPM posts, I am more reliable but less fun. Shall we call it age? I think in life I have become less reliable and more fun, so maybe that makes up for it. . . .

I was going to first post "Nude Swim," by Anne Sexton, but saw that I posted it last year, and then I was going to post "Ask Me," by William Stafford, but saw that I posted that last year, too. I used up all my favorites! They are timeless, the good ones, but still...a gal ought to stretch herself a little...so... with that in mind, I present this poem, not new to many, but I discovered it only last fall and it flattened me. It has one of the best compound-adjective endings I've ever read. It looks long and dense, but it's worth it. Just read it slow and enjoy:

The Figured Wheel
by Robert Pinsky

The figured wheel rolls through shopping malls and prisons
Over farms, small and immense, and the rotten little downtowns.
Covered with symbols, it mills everything alive and grinds
The remains of the dead in the cemeteries, in unmarked graves and oceans.

Sluiced by salt water and fresh, by pure and contaminated rivers,
By snow and sand, it separates and recombines all droplets and grains,
Even the infinite sub-atomic particles crushed under the illustrated,
Varying treads of its wide circumferential track.

Spraying flecks of tar and molten rock it rumbles
Through the Antarctic station of American sailors and technicians,
And shakes the floors and windows of whorehouses for diggers and smelters
From Bethany, Pennsylvania to a practically nameless, semi-penal New Town

In the mineral-rich tundra of the Soviet northernmost settlements.
Artists illuminate it with pictures and incised mottoes
Taken from the Ten Thousand Stories and the Register of True Dramas.
They hang it with colored ribbons and with bells of many pitches.

With paints and chisels and moving lights they record
On its rotating surface the elegant and terrifying doings
Of the inhabitants of the Hundred Pantheons of major Gods
Disposed in iconographic stations at hub, spoke and concentric bands,

And also the grotesque demi-Gods, Hopi gargoyles and Ibo dryads.
They cover it with wind-chimes and electronic instruments
That vibrate as it rolls to make an all-but-unthinkable music,
So that the wheel hums and rings as it turns through the births of stars

And through the dead-world of bomb, fireblast and fallout
Where only a few doomed races of insects fumble in the smoking grasses.
It is Jesus oblivious to hurt turning to give words to the unrighteous,
And is also Gogol's feeding pig that without knowing it eats a baby chick

And goes on feeding. It is the empty armor of My Cid, clattering
Into the arrows of the credulous unbelievers, a metal suit
Like the lost astronaut revolving with his useless umbilicus
Through the cold streams, neither energy nor matter, that agitate

The cold, cyclical dark, turning and returning.
Even in the scorched and frozen world of the dead after the holocaust
The wheel as it turns goes on accreting ornaments.
Scientists and artists festoon it from the grave with brilliant

Toys and messages, jokes and zodiacs, tragedies conceived
From among the dreams of the unemployed and the pampered,
The listless and the tortured. It is hung with devices
By dead masters who have survived by reducing themselves magically

To tiny organisms, to wisps of matter, crumbs of soil,
Bits of dry skin, microscopic flakes, which is why they are called "great,"
In their humility that goes on celebrating the turning
Of the wheel as it rolls unrelentingly over

A cow plodding through car-traffic on a street in Iasi,
And over the haunts of Robert Pinsky's mother and father
And wife and children and his sweet self
Which he hereby unwillingly and inexpertly gives up, because it is

There, figured and pre-figured in the nothing-transfiguring wheel.


(From The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966-1996, pp. 105--106. First published in Plougshares, 1983)

National Poetry Month, Day 21: Mark Strand

Hopefully these will be the last...(for winter, I mean).

Lines For Winter
by Mark Strand

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself --
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

National Poetry Month, Day 20: Naomi Shihab Nye

Two Countries
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.

National Poetry Month, Day 19: Joe Brainard

Here's an excerpt from Joe Brainard's moving collaged memoir, I Remember, from 1975.

I remember the first time i got a letter that said "After Five Days Return To" on the envelope, and I thought that after I had kept the letter for five days I was supposed to return it to the sender.

I remember the kick I used to get going through my parents' drawers looking for rubbers. (Peacock.)

I remember when polio was the worst thing in the world.

I remember pink dress shirts. And bola ties.

I remember when a kid told me that those sour clover-like leaves we used to eat (with little yellow flowers) tasted so sour because dogs peed on them. I remember that didn't stop me from eating them.

I remember the first drawing I remember doing. It was of a bride with a very long train.

I remember my first cigarette. It was a Kent. Up on a hill. In Tulsa, Oklahoma. With Ron Padgett.

...

I remember how good a glass of water can taste after a dish of ice cream.

I remember when I got a five-year pin for not missing a single morning of Sunday School for five years (Methodist.)

I remember when I went to a "come as your favorite person" party as Marilyn Monroe.

National Poetry Month, Day 18: Robin Behn

Gray Bird
by Robin Behn

Fathoms down, the whale
makes its song for the Other,
fathoms down and fathoms

upon fathoms far away.
The sound ranges out
like underwater mountains,

summits smoothed
by rain falling through
rain through deeper rain.

In the nearness small fish
flash and turn turn
and flash flash and turn.

But the mountains
in the background are still
in the background,

and something moves
along the dip and dome of ridge.
It is like the moon,

no, Neptune lapping
earth one and a half
times in this our life.

It takes the deep keen ear
and the gray heart
of the Other to hear it,

the way you have to turn
into earth
to feel earth turn.
Faith has a slow pulse.
Monks may know,
or those in steady pain.

We met every two years.
But now the undulation of our joy
lengthens to ten.

Around us,
our own lives
flash. Flash, and turn

away from this Other thing
whose crest and depth
undoes us.

Barnacled, sea-strewn pulse
confirming an
existence.

National Poetry Month, Day 16: Edna St. Vincent Millay

I'm skipping right over the fact that I've skipped a day here and a day there this month....and present you with a favorite.


There are no words for Ms. Millay. Except hers.








Only until this cigarette is ended
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu,--farewell!--the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The colour and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun has set.

National Poetry Month, Day 14: C.D. Wright

Personals
by C.D. Wright

Some nights I sleep with my dress on. My teeth
are small and even. I don't get headaches.
Since 1971 or before, I have hunted a bench
where I could eat my pimento cheese in peace.
If this were Tennessee and across that river, Arkansas,
I'd meet you in West Memphis tonight. We could
have a big time. Danger, shoulder soft.
Do not lie or lean on me. I'm still trying to find a job
for which a simple machine isn't better suited.
I've seen people die of money. Look at Admiral Benbow. I wish
like certain fishes, we came equipped with light organs.
Which reminds me of a little known fact:
if we were going the speed of light, this dome
would be shrinking while we were gaining weight.
Isn't the road crooked and steep.
In this humidity, I make repairs by night. I'm not one
among millions who saw Monroe's face
in the moon. I go blank looking at that face.
If I could afford it I'd live in hotels. I won awards
in spelling and the Australian crawl. Long long ago.
Grandmother married a man named Ivan. The men called him
Eve. Stranger, to tell the truth, in dog years I am up there.

National Poetry Month, Day 13: Paul Celan

O Little Root of a Dream
by Paul Celan
Translated by Heather McHugh and Nikolai Popov

O little root of a dream
you hold me here
undermined by blood,
no longer visible to anyone,
property of death.

Curve a face
that there may be speech, of earth,
of ardor, of
things with eyes, even
here, where you read me blind,

even
here,
where you
refute me,
to the letter.

National Poetry Month, Day 12: Michael Dickman

If you have been following my blog this month, you might remember Day 1's poem, "Slow Dance," by Matthew Dickman. The poem below is written by his identical twin brother Michael. There was an article about these two in a recent NYer. And I remembered that the poem below is one I'd saved last year, to return to. I even sent it to a few folks, but I didn't make the Matthew to Michael connection until I read the article. In any case, here it is. A poem I covet.






We Did Not Make Ourselves
by Michael Dickman

We did not make ourselves is one thing
I keep singing into my hands
while falling
asleep

for just a second

before I have to get up and turn on all the lights in the house, one after the other, like opening an Advent calendar

My brain opening
the chemical miracles in my brain
switching on

I can hear

dogs barking
some trees
last stars

You think you’ll be missed
it won’t last long
I promise

--

I’m not dead but I am
standing very still
in the back yard
staring up at the maple
thirty years ago
a tiny kid waiting on the ground
alone in heaven
in the world
in white sneakers

I’m having a good time humming along to everything I can still remember
back there

How we’re born

Made to look up at everything we didn’t make

We didn’t
make grass, mosquitoes
or breast cancer

We didn’t make yellow jackets

or sunlight

either

--

I didn’t make my brain
but I’m helping
to finish it

Carefully stacking up everything I made next to everything I ruined in broad

daylight in bright
brainlight

This morning I killed a fly
and didn’t lie down
next to the body
like we’re supposed to

We’re supposed to

Soon I’m going to wake up

Dogs
Trees
Stars

There is only this world and this world

What a relief
created

over and over

National Poetry Month, Day 11: William Carlos Williams

Not one of his famous. But one I love nonetheless.

Tract
by William Carlos Williams

I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral
for you have it over a troop
of artists—
unless one should scour the world—
you have the ground sense necessary.

See! the hearse leads.
I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ's sake not black—
nor white either — and not polished!
Let it be whethered—like a farm wagon—
with gilt wheels (this could be
applied fresh at small expense)
or no wheels at all:
a rough dray to drag over the ground.

Knock the glass out!
My God—glass, my townspeople!
For what purpose? Is it for the dead
to look out or for us to see
the flowers or the lack of them—
or what?
To keep the rain and snow from him?
He will have a heavier rain soon:
pebbles and dirt and what not.
Let there be no glass—
and no upholstery, phew!
and no little brass rollers
and small easy wheels on the bottom—
my townspeople, what are you thinking of?
A rough plain hearse then
with gilt wheels and no top at all.
On this the coffin lies
by its own weight.

No wreathes please—
especially no hot house flowers.
Some common memento is better,
something he prized and is known by:
his old clothes—a few books perhaps—
God knows what! You realize
how we are about these things
my townspeople—
something will be found—anything
even flowers if he had come to that.
So much for the hearse.

For heaven's sake though see to the driver!
Take off the silk hat! In fact
that's no place at all for him—
up there unceremoniously
dragging our friend out to his own dignity!
Bring him down—bring him down!
Low and inconspicuous! I'd not have him ride
on the wagon at all—damn him!—
the undertaker's understrapper!
Let him hold the reins
and walk at the side
and inconspicuously too!

Then briefly as to yourselves:
Walk behind—as they do in France,
seventh class, or if you ride
Hell take curtains! Go with some show
of inconvenience; sit openly—
to the weather as to grief.
Or do you think you can shut grief in?
What—from us? We who have perhaps
nothing to lose? Share with us
share with us—it will be money
in your pockets.
Go now
I think you are ready.

National Poetry Month, Day 9: Eugene Hutz

I've been revisiting Gogol Bordello the way I used to...and decided to stretch the definition of poetry for yesterday's post. This short video makes me feel the same way that a perfect poem does...

National Poetry Month, Day 8: Marie Howe

One of my all-time favorite living poets. So I'm offering two short ones by Ms. Howe.

Part of Eve's Discussion

It was like the moment when a bird decides not to eat from your hand, and flies, just before it flies, the moment the rivers seem to still and stop because a storm is coming, but there is no storm, as when a hundred starlings lift and bank together before they wheel and drop, very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin, like the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say, it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only all the time.

From The Good Thief, Persea Books 1988


The Gate

I had no idea that the gate I would step through
to finally enter this world

would be the space my brother's body made. He was
a little taller than me: a young man

but grown, himself by then,
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold
and running water.

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I'd say, What?

And he'd say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I'd say, What?

And he'd say, This, sort of looking around.


From What the Living Do by Marie Howe. © 1997

National Poetry Month, Day 7: Walt Whitman

Can't go too long into April without dishing out some Whitman...these classic stanzas at that:



Song of Myself I
by Walt Whitman

I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil,
this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and
their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never
forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

National Poetry Month, Day 6: Mary Oliver

So, here's the thing. Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, David Whyte...these were the poets who pulled me into language very young, who said things, specifically about the natural world, that I didn't know you could. They wrote things that at the time made sense to me, and make sense to me still. I don't go to them anymore to inspire me toward the brilliant stanza or the line or even toward poetry in general. BUT they still inspire me toward thoughtfulness and attention and a general kind of spiritual looking-around, a kindness, if you will, toward the world.

I recently participated in a reading in upstate NY. One of the other readers read a poem he'd written that essentially made fun--and fun is an understated adjective in this case--of this kind of poetry, and at Mary Oliver's expense. By "this kind of poetry" I suppose I mean accessible poetry, poetry about the natural world (?), inspirational poetry, poetry that has made its poets successful and well-known, put them on NPR and allowed them to make a living at what they do, poetry that isn't tinged with the kind of snarky cynicism that makes me want to crawl under a rock. As my favorite rocker Eugene Hutz said in an interview last year, "It's too easy to be a cynic. It's too easy to be ironic. It's too easy to be negative...I think that being here on Earth is a gift to make a full use of before whatever the next stage is."

So, with that, I honor Mary Oliver, and all the other poets that don't have to be clever, cryptic, cynical, and ICKY in order to be brilliant:

Cold Poem
by Mary Oliver

Cold now.
Close to the edge. Almost
unbearable. Clouds
bunch up and boil down
from the north of the white bear.
This tree-splitting morning
I dream of his fat tracks,
the lifesaving suet.

I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handfuls of grain.

Maybe what cold is, is the time
we measure the love we have always had, secretly,
for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love
for the warm river of the I, beyond all else; maybe

that is what it means the beauty
of the blue shark cruising toward the tumbling seals.

In the season of snow,
in the immeasurable cold,
we grow cruel but honest; we keep
ourselves alive,
if we can, taking one after another
the necessary bodies of others, the many
crushed red flowers.

National Poetry Month, Day 5: Jane Mead

This woman runs a ranch in Northern California, and I love her poetry. It's often dense, but I like the puzzle of it...the way I have to work to get in there.

The Origin
by Jane Mead

of what happened is not in language—
of this much I am certain.
Six degrees south, six east—

and you have it: the bird
with the blue feathers, the brown bird—
same white breasts, same scaly

ankles. The waves between us—
house light and transform motion
into the harboring of sounds in language.—

Where there is newsprint
the fact of desire is turned from again—
and again. Just the sense

that what remains might well be held up—
later, as an ending.
Twice I have walked through this life—

once for nothing, once
for facts: fairy-shrimp in the vernal pool—
glassy-winged sharp-shooter

on the failing vines. Count me—
among the animals, their small
committed calls.—

Count me among
the living. My greatest desire—
to exist in a physical world.

National Poetry Month, Day 4: Catie Rosemurgy

I read this poem often, and repetitively, because I understand it more each time. It's gorgeous, and written by a woman who I overlapped with at the University of Alabama.











Love, with Trees and Lightning

by Catie Rosemurgy

I've been thinking about what love is for.
Not the dramatic part where he gathers
until he is as purposeful inside her
as an electric storm. Not when he breaks
into a thanks so bright it leaves her split
like a tree. (How we all jolt back, our picnic
ten shades lighter, our hands clapped over awe
that is too big for our mouths, our raw hearts
more tender now that they're a little burned.)

No, not the connecting and charring part.
(After all, nothing we like to call lightning
stays very long among the branches.)
But the two of them, afterwards, tasting
the electricity. Nibbling the charge
on the ions. When her soul has already
risked coming to meet him at the wide open
window of her skin. When what is left
of his body still feels huge, and he sits draped
in his fine, long coat of animal muscles
but uses all this strength to be human
and almost imperceptible. They curl up,
make their bodies the same size, draw promises
in one another's juices. "You," they say.
I love it when they say that.

Would that they could give a solid reason.
Sometimes they even refuse to try. They make jokes
while cinching their laces—"I'll call soon,"
"You are so sweet." The rank sugar of his breath
doesn't summarize the world for her. "Not you," they say.

And nothing bad has happened. They just turn
the doorknob that has been shining in their hands
the whole time, walk out, and continue to die.
Same as the rest of us. So maybe love
is a form of crying. Of finishing
what autumn leaves always start and turning
a brilliant color before we drift down.

Name one living thing that doesn't
somehow bloom. None of them get to choose
the right conditions. Think of fire, of orchids.
She's already up the street when he feels
his body pale, close, and become insufficient.
"If you go," he says out the door, "I go too."

There is no one like him, but she has no hope
of ever proving it. Instead she stays up
pressing old secrets into his skin and asking
if it hurts. He sets her on top of himself
so he can't leave without her and confesses
to feeling as if he almost matters,
as if he no longer disappears
as soon as he connects with something
receptive on the ground. She says she will
split in half for him a million times.
They bring flowers and carpet and children
into the act, stand by one another's side
for years. They refuse to move, ever. They act
as if they've found the only hospitable
spot on earth. I love it when they do that.


Copyright © 2003 Catie Rosemurgy All rights reserved
from River Styx

National Poetry Month, Day 3: Galway Kinnell

It's only the first week and I already missed a day! Oh, the keeping up...

This beautiful poem for Day 3 (yesterday) is a suggestion from my new friend Valerie R:



St. Francis and the Sow
by Galway Kinnell

The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of
the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

National Poetry Month, Day 2: Bruce Smith

This poem was written by a professor who helped guide me through my MFA and is from his book The Other Lover, which was a finalist years back for the National Book Award.

After St. Vincent Millay
by Bruce Smith

When I saw you again, distant, sparrow-boned
under the elegant clothes you wear in your life without me,
I thought, No, No, let her be the one
this time to look up at an oblivious me.
Let her find the edge of the cliff with her foot,
blindfolded. Let her be the one struck by the lightning
of the other so that the heart is jolted
from the ribs and the rest of the body is nothing
but ash. It’s a sad, familiar story
I wish you were telling me with this shabby excuse:
I never loved you anymore
than I hated myself for loving you.

And about that other guy by your side
you left me for. I hope he dies.

National Poetry Month, Day 1: Matthew Dickman

Happy National Poetry Month! I'm going to attempt this again this year, trying, more or less, to post a poem a day. I am in the midst of moving apartments so it maybe be inconsistent at best. But to start the very first day off, I give you this lovely poem, a new favorite (and you can read a great profile about him and identical twin brother in the most recent NYer):




Slow Dance

by Matthew Dickman

More than putting another man on the moon,
more than a New Year's resolution of yogurt and yoga,
we need the opportunity to dance
with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance
between the couch and dining room table, at the end
of the party, while the person we love has gone
to bring the car around
because it's begun to rain and would break their heart
if any part of us got wet. A slow dance
to bring the evening home. Two people
rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant.
A little music. An empty bottle of whiskey.
It's a little like cheating. Your head resting
on his shoulder, your breath moving up his neck.
Your hands along her spine. Her hips
unfolding like a cotton napkin
and you begin to think about
how all the stars in the sky are dead. The my body
is talking to your body slow dance. The Unchained Melody,
Stairway to Heaven, power-chord slow dance. All my life
I've made mistakes. Small
and cruel. I made my plans.
I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine.
The slow dance doesn't care. It's all kindness like children
before they turn three. Like being held in the arms
of my brother. The slow dance of siblings.
Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him,
one of my great loves, he is absolutely human,
and when he turns to dip me
or I step on his foot because we are both leading,
I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer.
The slow dance of what's to come
and the slow dance of insomnia
pouring across the floor like bath water.
When the woman I'm sleeping with
stands naked in the bathroom,
brushing her teeth, the slow dance of ritual is being spit
into the sink. There is no one to save us
because there is no need to be saved.
I've hurt you. I've loved you. I've mowed
the front yard. When the stranger wearing a sheer white dress
covered in a million beads
slinks toward me like an over-sexed chandelier suddenly come to life,
I take her hand in mine. I spin her out
and bring her in. This is the almond grove
in the dark slow dance.
It is what we should be doing right now. Scraping
for joy. The haiku and honey. The orange and orangutan slow dance.


from the book All American Poem published by APR press

apartment hunting

...is a little like internet dating. Sounds good, looks good, there might even be a nice e-mail correspondence beforehand, but then you show up, sit across the table from one another, and have a conversation. Reality. It's not for everyone.

Pretty soon they are telling you they don't believe in wireless technology, or sniffing your fleece coat and reporting that if you want to live in their house you'll have to change fabric softeners, and, "I just smoke in my office... I'm sure you can barely tell.." [cough, cough].

Onward...

It seemed beautiful to me

I read this lovely thing about laughter the other night, in Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead. The dying narrator, a minister, is walking by two local mechanics standing outside of their garage:

"There they were, propped against the garage wall in the sunshine, lighting up their cigarettes. They're always so black with grease and so strong with gasoline, I don't know why they don't catch fire themselves. They were passing remarks back and forth the way they do and laughing that wicked way they have. And it seemed beautiful to me. It's an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle with it. I see it in church often enough. So I wonder what it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you're done, like crying in a way I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spent."

More Than Just a Name

Here's a short-list of what I get called at work:
Laura
Laura D
Laura Didyk (my theory about this one is that people like to say my first and last because each name is a perfect trochee, stressed syllable followed by an unstressed...so they go well one right after the other, and it would be the same if one were to add my middle name: Laura Esther Didyk, three trochees, you can say them in succession with no interruption. Try it. It's fun).
LD
Lauralu
L-Dawg
The Enforcer (alas, this is my job)

I like my new job. So far, no one has called me "babe" as almost every other person in my life, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

Brilliant commercial

Windows reply to Apple's commercials. Brilliant advertising--they've stolen the enemy's approach to say "How you like us now?" (Oh, and how can one not laugh and sort of respect Mr. C there at the end... hysterical).

Valentine's Day

I can't believe it's been since Thanksgiving.
I kind of lost my focus, and couldn't figure out what it was I was supposed to be rapping about on here.

I was afraid I'd write something too personal, and either over-expose myself, or offend somebody somewhere.

The whole ambiguous nature of a blog has been evading me.

I don't write about politics. Mostly because I don't know politics enough to write intelligently about it. I don't write about food. Or fashion. Or writing. Or music, per se. I write about what I know best--the complications of the heart--of mine in particular. I know that some of those complications, when examined under just the right circumstances, are incredibly, incredibly funny. I know that I avoided writing about love and romance, dating and desperation, breaking up and breaking down, relationsnhips and relationshits, because I thought people would think it was trivial, trite, not intellectual enough. But I can't run from it anymore.

Tonight, on my friend Kate's couch, she hit me on the arm and said "You never write on your blog anymore." She told me she checks it every week. Which made me feel kind of loved, and then guilty (in a loving way), and then we went and saw He's Just Not That Into You--yup, on this day, the 14th of February, and I had a crapload of popcorn and most of a divine brownie (made by aforementioned friend) and am now quite the wired creature. I'm also now a first-class passenger on the will-the-whole-marriage-thing-ever-happen-the-way-I've-always-imagined-it-happening-will-it-feel-how-I've-always-imagined-it-feeling-with-that-guy-(who-will-it-be?)I've-always-imagined-it-happening-with-or-is-it-all-just-broken-hearts-on-the-wind-and-should-I-even-focus-on-those-fantasies-at-all-and-instead-put-my-whole-self-into-my-job-and-writing-my-book-which-is-problematic-since-my-book-is-about-all-the-relationships-and-men-and-dating-and-absurdity-of-trying-to-have-relationships-with-people-who-are-incapable-of-relationships-(including-myself)-and being-single-for-years-and-internet-dating-and-regular-dating-and-falling-halfway-for-inappropriate-people-like-a-celibate-monk-an-only-recently-clean-crack-addict-the-ultra-promiscuous-bass-player-of-a-band-I-adore-and-because-my-book-is-about-this-journey-and-these-men-and-the-fantasy-of-finding-true-love-at-last-and-how-it's-driven-me-more-than-any-other-force-in-my-life-and-it-makes-it-difficult-to-shift-my-focus-to-anything-else-this-exploratory-surgery-of-my-past-for-true-love-and-true-connection-and-true-marriage-makes-it-almost-impossible-to-recalibrate-my-attention-elsewhere-in-order-for-it-to-happen-on-its-own-while-I'm-turned-in-an-entirely-other-direction-(happen-in-a-way-I-couldn't-have-predicted-and-won't-be-able-to-account-for-because-this-is-how-they-all-say-it-happens-when-you-don't-want-it-to-and-aren't-looking-for-it-or-thinking-about-it-or-hoping-for-it-to-be-so-it-happens-when-you-are-trying-to-decide-if-you-should-spend-an-extra-$1.25-for-an-organic-avocado-given-that-it-will-taste-better-based-solely-on-the-fact-that-you-know-it's-organic-or-it-happens-when-you-haven't-showered-and-are-in-your-sweats-shopping-for-screws-at-Home-Depot)-so-the-book-which-is-what-I-want-to-focus-on-because-it's-my-work-and-makes-me-feel-happy-and-purposeful-makes-it-simultaneously-challening-because-when-I-am-in-the-book-it-is-all-I-am-thinking-about-that-and-the-relationship-I-am-currently-in-which-is-a-good-relationship-(not-average-good-but-good-to-the-bone-good-at-its-heart)-a-decent-hot-chemistry-filled-thing-between-two-people-a-relationship-however-that-includes-a-hard-fact-that-cannot-be-overlooked-the-fact-that-between-those-two-people-also-lies-2,000-miles-two-time-zones-is-conducted-with-2-cell-phones-4-e-mail-accounts-two-of-which-include-video-chat-and-FaceBook-but-does-not-include-the-multitude-of-text-messages-pinged-back-and-forth-not-to-mention-that-it's-unclear-if-any-of-these-numeric-facts-will-change-ever-or-soon-or-even-later-when-or-if-the-2,000-miles-will-be-traversed-by-one-party-or-the-other-who-will-throw-in-the-bedspread-first-or-pack-up-their-car-and-just-decide-THIS-IS-GOING-TO-HAPPEN-if-either-of-us-will-do-any-of-it train.

It's a bumpy trainride, but on it I'm eating a box of exquisite chocolates the bf got me for valentine's day (and he's wished me many happy valentines), plus I had a good hair day, and a cup of really amazing coffee this morning at a basement-cafe and spent the whole day with a dear friend who likes to talk as much as I do and in that way satisfied me to my very soul and the sky was open and blue all day and the clouds were Laura-loves-these-kinds-of-clouds clouds--and all of this on my train, which is running through my life, on its way into my unknown future. I never had my own train before. And I kind of like it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Near and far, in cold weather and warm, meat-eating and no, may your inner pilgrim be transported, or at least enjoy a day off from pilgriming.



And for the realistic pilgrim in all of us, here's a beautiful poem of thanks by W. S. Merwin.

"Thanks"
W.S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are
saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

Rated G for "Gruesome" and "Gawd"

Oh
my
god.

This is almost beautiful, the comedic synchronization.

You can't make this stuff up.

Listen to the question the interviewer asks at about 1:15, and what's going on in the background.



And then there's the part where the turkey is fighting for its life and the dude holding it, chewing his cud, is apologizing. For what? Killing the turkey? Digging Sarah P. into an even deeper hole of mud?

Thank god that yes, we did.

Mis-Fortune

Oh my, it's been a long time since I've been here.

And I can't think of a better way to return than to share the following clip of Elna Baker, which I cannot get enough of. You can find her at her website--www.elnabaker.com. [For some reason, this clip can take awhile to load. I'd led it load first, then watch, otherwise it'll drive you crazy. It's worth the wait.]