I've been searching for a name for this weblog - loudgirl is only temporary until I find something I really like.
I'm thinking of using "f." Just the letter F. I kind of love that. I was also considering mF but I think I like F better.
Can't think of any drawbacks, except the technical chore of changing the name.
I've got to go do some effing vacuuming.
Wandering around downtown Stamford this afternoon waiting for some kind of gift giving lightning to strike me...
I bought movie certificates for the kids. I don't know if they'll use them. Why wouldn't they?
I made it over to Café Tango. My habit lately - to order a macchiato, even though it isn't on the menu. It wasn't. I ordered it anyway. Sometimes I get it for the price of an expresso. A knowledgeable coffee man came over and made one for me. It was fantastic. The espresso was so strong - that first taste is almost unbelievable if it's made right. And the foamed milk floated ever so gently on top, barely swirled into the taste of espresso as I sipped. I'm crazy about them. I love the cunning tiny cup and the fact that it's such a minimal indulgence.
Satisfying simultaneous desires to treat myself and deprive myself.
After finishing the few swallows, I went back out into the sunset-colored air. Wandered past the Palace Theater and decided to go in. I picked up the brochure and browsed it. The clerk asked if she could help, then she mentioned there were a few unadvertised shows coming up. Gift giving synchronicity struck, aha! Stephen Wright is coming in June! Not advertised yet! My son's favorite comedian! So I bought two tickets, front row center. A little expensive, but it seemed so beautifully appropriate that I didn't even want to resist.
Had me wondering what will be going on in June. I'll take that as a small jolt of hope, fragrant and energizing.
It's a relief to be here at home alone in the dark. Colored lights strung haphazardly over the doors and windows in the living room. Blue "icicle" lights strung on the windows behind me, reflecting, still and innumerable, on every glass surface in front of me--computer screens, dining room windows, my glasses if I look out the corner of my eye. The surface of this desk retains cold. It seeps into my forearms as they rest on the surface, until I have to go put on a down jacket to continue typing.
I have a feeling of being on hold. A held breath before the coming week, the coming year.
I have a feeling of incapacity. I'm not equal to The Darkest. I'm a lighter shade of pale. I'm no more than mere. My reverence is skimpy and diminished. I didn't play my best for him, I can't. I don't know what that is. (Why do I imagine the Ideal demands so much of me?)
Isolation, in-soul-ation, depth perception. We're not friendly here. Generosity and hospitality are enshrined on distant mountains, a long trek. Here we sing alone beside the twinkling ice-blue crevasse, invisible in the neighborhood, here without a campfire.
Today I made a connection between the poetry manuscript I'm working on and Bridget Jones's Diary. I'm not kidding.
So I express myself a little differently. I mix up the man with the divine. I sprinkle a few Sanskrit words around, dabble in philosophy, babble incoherently at times.
It's still the same basic idea. Why shouldn't it appeal to the same audience?
Not that I think it should or it will. It's just interesting to wonder what it is that draws people toward conventional "lite" styles. There's a curse or a miasma of some kind settled around poetry. A poison mist. "I, too, dislike it."*
I don't want to blame this on anything or even to figure it out. I'd like to come up with some far fetched explanation. I'd like to trace some course of evolution toward a future of new forms. Disappearance of the diary, emergence of illustrated poetry, convergence of hysterical prose poems and romantic fiction, explosive mixtures of the sacred and profane in liturgy, who knows what else.
Part of what I like about prose poems is the removal of the barrier of line breaks. The poem becomes more accessible to the non-reader of poetry. WHY why why should line breaks be threatening. I don't know, but they are. I'm telling you, they are!
I think it was Lehman's introduction to Great American Prose Poems that discussed this, talking about the non-threatening quality of the innocuous paragraph. Unfortunately, I've brought that book back to the library, so I can't look it up to quote the exact statement.
I guess I really ought to own that book. But I'm not in love with it. Forget it!
______________________
*Marianne Moore, "Poetry"
Aquarius, I hope you'll decide to make the fungus your good luck charm in 2004. It will remind you to hold in high esteem the hidden forces and unsung people that will be constantly working behind the scenes in your behalf. This will be the Year of Secret Helpers.
from free will astrology
I just dug a hole in my upper backyard. It's about two feet deep. It's for the cat. Cremation costs $180 for an individual and $105 for a communal. Very very odd, the pet cremation business. The man that I spoke with at the pet crematory was stereotypically unctuous. He consoled me for my loss and asked if I wanted an urn. I didn't try to explain that I was feeling buoyant and relieved. I just said I was hoping to spend a lot less money and said goodbye.
There's a lot of trash buried in my upper backyard. Rusty flattened cans and broken glassware. I pulled out one small bottle in perfect shape except for the rusted screw top. The inside was coated with the dregs of a white powder suspension. There are letters on the bottle, but I'll let my son try to decipher them.
As far as the cat, I am tremendously thankful to her little spirit for leaving us so swiftly and sweetly. And with beautiful timing, just before the solstice.
Such a beautiful song! I am so glad to be in the choir. The performance itself is not the best part. I love best to listen to all the singing during rehearsals. I even like to hear myself sing while practicing at home. It feels good to breathe and support the voice with the breath.
Complex few days here. Complex patterns, events, shifts, insights. I drew the Sun card. That is rare for me. Enough love and light for everyone and a beautiful message close to the solstice.
I wrote down all my recurring Fantasies in my journal last night. A few times I struggled to note the Realities associated with them as well. Bending towards the light of Reality. Someone today said that Frustration is a symptom of not accepting reality. Okay, I can accept that.
pastel ceases
secretive: my brainfolds sparkle with distrust
put on clothes and pet the hound of night
a bullshit machine
Soporphronia
Just a few more notes... apparently laying the burdens down improves volubility in the blog...
Besides the
poems about place
I want to write extremely truncated novels or screenplays. In lieu of writing a full length novel or screenplay of course, which is just never going to happen. Plus my favorite types of ideas are just too odd to be developed into a full length story, unless it's science fiction which is not French enough for moi.
Rough beginning from my journal:
Evie's father is trying to teach her to write poetry. He is compiling a Dictionary of Cliché and uses it to instruct her. When the lessons are over, he retreats into an unsavory trance. He has corrupted the muses. There is medication involved.
She has a job within a large institution like Save the Children. She does good works like a nun. He mines her for clichés when she comes home.
She meets Um. Somewhere liminal and foglike. In a dream. He is vivid, but she can't take much of him. The relationship in the home becomes strained.
Um is inarticulate. That's the joke.
I went to the library and checked out three slim novels by French writers. Why is it that French writing seems so appealing? There is no way a poem set in "Stamford" could appeal the way Michaux's prose poem about "Honfleur" appeals, is there?
I'm interested in this. I want to write poems about the US that exude a romantic exoticism, that evoke a mythology that doesn't exist. Or it's degraded by commerce and media. Isn't that true about every place though, and every time? I think it's just another excuse for failure of poetic imagination.
Or does it have something to do with tradition? The towns of Europe are steeped in it, and proud. Go far enough back here in the US and what do you find, massacre of natives and the ravages of imperialism. I don't think we in the New World realize the overwhelming deep effect of that transaction, what we lost and what we gained.
Just a brief sample of the Michaux:
I was then at Honfleur and was getting bored. So I resolutely brought in some camels there. That didn't seem to be called for. Never mind. It was my idea. Besides, I put it into execution with the greatest prudence. ...
A pity that I had to go away, but I doubt very much that calm will immediately reappear in that little city of shrimp and mussel fishers.
--Henri Michaux, tr. Richard Ellmann
Note to self: Look into Cabeza de Vaca and Haniel Long (via Dale Smith, Skanky Possum)
Sometimes you just have to throw that burden of responsible behavior down. I'm lucky I can do that. It's a luxury.
Not that I was irresponsible today. I did some holiday shopping. What works for me: to shop in stores that I love anyway. So I went to Penzey's Spices and Gilbertie's herb nursery. I wasn't too choosy and purchased a fair amount of gifts. I need to go to an outdoor store, a liquor store, and a paper store and that will wrap up the majority of it. Leaving those three people closest to me for the end, as usual, because I have so much I want to express (and maybe - fix?).
But I didn't focus on business or writing, not really.
An inhibited sadness extending like frost. Too many blocky paragraphs, small type. They seem impenetrable, igloos stuffed with cotton, no way to get a worm into the ear.
I read the essay on Jacob, Ponge, and Follain in Sentence. I liked how it delineated the differences between the poets' styles. I own a couple volumes of Ponge, including "Soap." I went crazy when I first read it, it's just SO obsessive. I wouldn't mind picking up some Jacob. Follain didn't grab me, too much this and that and everything else there.
Meanwhile, still editing.... I'm reading this manuscript over and over and over. Tweaking something every time. Sometimes taking out a period, sometimes putting in a comma. I made one rearrangment in sequence today, but in general, I think the sequencing is pretty good.
My temptation in changing words is to get too "literary." The kiss of death. In general, the work is made of plain words, some arranged unexpectedly. I resorted to one quite blatant cliché in the most sexual part of the poem. I couldn't help it. Any other simile would have evoked an "eeeuw" reaction. Maybe I'll come up with a better word tomorrow.
This work is not really like anything in the volumes I've been reading. I'm jittery about that. I'm trying to retain a very pure judgment about it. I mean, do I like it or not????
Not really - just a comment about this feature. I resist the "extended entry" because I want each entry to have a shape, to cohere, hang together. It's the poet's eye, foreign to the essayist or journalist.
I'm disturbed that I can't force one DAY's entry to appear on the index page. I mean, one date heading only. MT actually works by posting all the entries in the last twenty four hours. Thus, at times, two days' worth of entries appear on one page. Something to get used to, or figure out how to work around, or take advantage of.
Today I laid out the "poems" from the brown journal in two columns and printed them out on scrap paper, landscape. They leapt into life as a "book."
I saw more that needed to be changed--the form informed the content. I started to see how the poems can interact with each other. I think it could make a very wild reading experience.
I want to take the draft to Bev's meeting for feedback. I'd like to get someone to do some illustrations. Tricky. I have a vision and I'm not sure how to convey it. I see very loose, line drawings, not necessarily representational, not even necessarily portraying what the poems are about. Just an interesting counterpoint. I'd like the illustrator to bring another point of view to the work. I think the illustrator will have to have some understanding of what is happening poetically. Maybe not. I'd like to be surprised.
After that, I don't know. Self-publish it, I guess.
It does feel good to be doing my own work.
This is my favorite place. I want to come here often. It's very spare, isn't it. Not flashy at all. It's pretty simple.
Here's something I wrote in my journal today:
"There are many beautiful things out there and ways to be. I will keep faith. Okay? And the best thing is that there's no need to be overwhelmed. I need only appreciate a day's worth of things every day. Choices and small actions are beautiful. The overload of thought (and even of writing) is unnecessary."
Going to change the display to one entry per day.