Roof. The neighbor’s roof. The sad roof up the hill, its wonderful colors, its sagging on its frame, its mosses. Its sheltering aspect. The roof hanging from trees. The defenseless roof. The roof of disability, frightening in its height. Standing on the roof, under the roof. Falling through your vocabulary. Roof owns its pattern and its colors, we own its repair and its protection.
Author Archives
april 25, 2007
Been a long time. The project is red, as red as the buds. The questionnaire is purple. Disability and rescue. Caught between the acts. You could say caught but there is never any stasis. Rest in flux. The boredom of hostages. Involve your body, musculature, mind, and investigate. Investigate the virtues.
Nothing simple here. No lily.
The frog lily, the toad flax.
Animals have not been aroused.
I can’t write untruths.
And speech becoming cleansed to silence.
Dishes—plates. Cups, forks, spoons. Bowls.
Let us go to the peasant capitals of Europe. Let us capture your imaginations. Let us harness all these capabilities.
Shocking in the office. Four seasons.
Using the word “imagination” like there was no alternative.
And then the showers. Raindrops are individuals tonight. Raindrops, say hello. I can’t make this up.
How are we to have a moment where I contact you? Evening.
I let you alone. Left.
How is this to be done? Radical.
Fingerly grasping.
Fingerly typing.
Finger lily.
The pale yellow amaryllis photo.
The thin maroon line around the outside of each petal. The curved forms. Not done. Crisp. Pale. Curved.
The body.
Isolated.
april 18, 2007
When I read the teachings, I want to write like a teacher.
There is no teacher. Water lily.
There is no teacher. Amaryllis.
So there.
Punctuation. A miserable experience. A chant, a chop, a chore. A child.
Trying to make castle, trying to make castle out of foam. Trying to lurk, trying to get home. Trying to write, trying to make room. Trying to elope, can’t elope alone.
Some of these explanations, some of this story-story- story-story. Trying to maintain some equilibrium as far as project goes.
Aftermath.
Animals. Rabbits. Wild turkeys dead at roadside. Flooding. Mouse in the kitchen, a dark brown mouse. Max was outside on the porch. Bill at home under the table.
No luck.
I need my myths. Myths and symbols. You know I am an arbiter of objects, time for splotch art, hey I am a splotch art.
People going on vacation—she’s close enough to practicing sympathetic joy. And—generosity.
Too much news, too much nonsense approaching the big topics, too much story leis around our necks.
Hunting for something, hunting hard. Sometimes you just come up short, just dust and particles.
Waves of crisp asparagus and spicy tofu.
But you see, food doesn’t belong.
New moon. New moon draws out subtle energies. New moon. This is the new moon night. I am supposed to tune in to that energy. oh your energy. Instead I’m resting in the flawed field, the field of fallow/fallen, the failed field, the coordinates are my face. I can’t describe this. I am alleluia.
I am eclipse. I am an-atta. I am not even approaching Sati. You have to watch out for me in my current state.
Seeking something physical, something like sweat. Sweating earlier.
War—there—you might lose your arms.
Arms are impermanent.
Happily, no arms. Her bruise is permanent, now permanent. Operations that abuse the body.
Particles, particulate. I sound funny at work. Disturbing. At all disturbing.
april 17, 2007
The coldness of this spring to go out with the trash and breathe a moment in the cold air. To know yourself. I can’t really tell what’s going on. I feel an awful lot like a narrator. I have no story, just to let go of that tail.
The long tail, prehensile.
Happy tail, silly tail. Tail of my dreams.
And also—toil. And toile.
Old fashioned fabrics, what has happened to you? In Girl Scouts, I made a book of fabric swatches trying to learn their names like “Dotted Swiss.”
Not a damn thing prepares you for the Albrecht Dürer rabbit made of bronze.
Or the sadness of chipped paint on windowsills.
There’s all this lifting eyes up, all this lifting eyes up necessary.
And this from someone not a particle religious.
I wish this could be warmer. Or more expressive somehow. I wish I wasn’t tempted by shit, and tales, and mentally ill. I wish I wasn’t haunted. And am I haunted after all? I feel like yes. I feel some burdens, but you know what—it’s no longer all that interesting.
I’m interested in the magical indigenous under the sound of rain.
I don’t know where I want to go.
She is sad and lonely, after all.
She lives without a purpose, fed on grandiosity; it’s not nutritious.
So behind the scenes.
My boyfriend doesn’t sleep with me.
I am unwilling at this point.
Unwilling on campus. Irrational fears. There is no healing balm for everything. So just get used to it. The most unpleasant thing of all is—heart dropping from fear. If I could avoid that automatic heart-drop from now on, I would. Do egrets have it? Flamingos, herons, other long birds? Birds with hearts that beat so fast and so unknown. Birds with eyelashes and bird dogs, slim.
This morning I listened to stories about the golden carp. And stories about stories. And resistance to the fact of stories. And the sources of stories. Beyond. All I can tell you.
You enters shyly. You has been driven away, off the mountain path. You has flown over the cliff in a blaze of herbal fire and lifting smoke. I feel your cloud on my arms. I feel cold leaching down my arms. I feel devils on my arms, in my hands. I feel dust coming up, dust and ash, clouds of smoke from the charnel grounds.
Her laughter—can’t kill herself because her son would then have to kill himself. I listen and might be tempted to be afraid, temptation to be afraid, mentally ill like everyone one. Everyone one.
So here we go—
Traveling moon, traveling rainbow. Traveling before and beyond the shield of cloud. I am shielded by cloud. Embrace cloud. Toy cloud, come to me. Toy cloud, swimming in the bathtub.
Did you have to swim?
Braver tonight about the cold in my arms. The scratching sound the pen makes. Smoothness here, no buttons. Smoothness, softness and smoothness.
april 16, 2007
Some sound of rain remains. Tremendous rain, hard going. No crickets yet. Peepers faint. Sky sound with plane. Birds are more fascinating than dogs.
Are sounds more interesting than devastations? Where does feeling lie, where’s the trapdoor? Wily, wily, wily, Mr. Coyote, let me in. Mr. Desert, let me bring my withered limbs. Just bleach my bones after you nibble on my skin. Irradiated or non-irradiated, genetically engineered in a most horrendous tribal fashion, I am here now, yet a remnant, a recessive gene, a regression sans vitality, a lack of luck, a loss. And here I am considering the withering of my death. Listening to this particular rain in its accumulation, the sump pump hums and gurgles, the train whistles, New York-bound.
And yesterday or last week I heard about a service, body washing. Washing the body. I want my body tenderly washed by my faith community. Nothing more beautiful than that. And here I chatted about inconsequences with co-workers and Margaret’s family, while her mother lay in state. I thought—at least there should be silence. We are so bereft. And Poland—what happens when you lose 3 million Jews?
No one’s here. Loud sound far away, a fog horn, some emergency of rain. Sam went out on a call about a flooded basement. Last night we ate at Pepe’s, the original tomato pie, no cheese. And hear the cheeping, the continuous chirping of suburban birds, and what is their mental capacity, and how do they stay warm? I want the angel of bird feathers and down to clothe me. I want the tendency to sing and fly. Their lives pass cheaply, no funerals at their deaths. No funerals, no funerals.
I want to be enlightened. I want to be enlightened. My aspirations are tender, have a tendency to wither in this sandy soil, drown in this rain. I want I won’t, I want I won’t. My tendencies plum blossoms, Blossom like the plum. Year of no blossoms. Blair ate plums and broccoli, his first nutritious meal in a long time.
Just to catalogue your options: details, details, sensory details, grace, the yen for grace, the absence, flaws or beauty or perfection, memories or dreams. Objects or abstractions. Happiest with objects, but they’re few and far between. And most are shabby. Mug of oolong tea—swampy, with no sweetener. The little aloe, fading in its shallow pot. The sensation of flaring from beside my eyes, a tiredness. There’s a mouse living in the kitchen.
And speaking from a higher place, the upper yard needs mowing, shaggy grass. And speaking from a higher place, the ridgelines in my neighborhood are now obscured by mist, there are no mountains, just the thinnest veil of red.
I like the redness of the buds, I like to climb. I hear a new accumulation of rain, some vigorous hissing in the street. The phone rings. The cell phone rings. I turned off the TV. And now the last bit left, the buzzing, stops.
The vast sensation of quietude, not caring. The exhaustion comes from difference of opinions. Some humor on the side, but mostly black. There are no breakthroughs, only cash. Trying to compare my work with yours, the mental striving taking me away, destructive. Well is it destructive. Listening to you better angels, are you out there after all? Lifting up my hands for rescue. Lift me to a higher place.
april 15, 2007
A day of steel-blue rain. A day of falling steel in pellets, grinding up your street, your car, your sight. Falling off the doors and windows, falling under gutters and sewers, falling through your clothes and eyeglasses. Broken umbrellas hum with guilt. Aversion drives us down the street to Kinko’s where I run copies of my tax forms. Out in the steel light of spring. Out to the mailbox, out the splashy windows, down the street. Pain scrawling in my head and neck and shoulders, an accompaniment of cello.
See the margin where the lawngrass turns to weeds.
Deer in the weeds, robin on the lawn. Jill Chan. The extravagance of the mentally ill. An email—write to Ann. Some stillness in my face, my weary eyes. Persistent nagging from my taxes. Still, a stomachache. Desire for tea and toast. Bird shadow. Ear flick. Plastic bag.
There’s no commotion. I have a half-page left. I take whatever happens, but do I even have to say that? Stomachache. I want connection, with Chamunda, stomach-body. I want my ugly greedy demons that befriended me. I want to stop, I want to read a book. I feel saliva in my mouth. I hear the air conditioning alive in these tall ceilings. I hear the heater ticking. Robin out there looking at the Wetland sign.
A herd of movement in the gray-brown out the window. Deer move carefully in suburbia. I can count four of them, standing in their places, flicking the itches in their ears, shaking their heads, chewing. They look thin, their tails seem shaggy. One has settled down to rest, more relaxed in the wetland preserve than a human or a dog would be. I can see the tips of the other’s ears, flicking, shifting. White tails, brown tails lined with white fur, lined with black. Now two are lying down.
No, not working. The sense of distance, I am not there. I am paddling in the mud, pawing, clawing, mud between my toes. I have itching on my scalp, dry mouth, stomachache. I have to do my taxes. Vague sensation in the nipple of my left breast. Vague irritation in my rectum. Slight sensation of a single hair tickling my right cheek. Maybe there or maybe not. A welling up of anger that none of my co-workers are sitting in a library trying to clear their head with writing on a Saturday. A story. A gurgle in my guts. A restlessness in my legs—why am I sitting still? Sensation in my left buttock/hip, a sensation around the back of my left ear. Mother speaks sharply to her child. Ticking, periodic sound of wind—or is it air conditioning?
Some common words: fragile, frail. Some common vulnerabilities: fainting. Some common objects: robin, squirrel. Some common remnants, fragments. And some uncommon chipped up blue of robin’s egg.
Stomachache. Did I say searching? Searching for a rhythm? Current, swimming against or with. Wet, water wet. Wet river, muddy. Feeling alone with it, in it. The embarrassment of my rivers series. No, I can’t. I long for the dry bed of lost rivers, Sarasvati. I have no hope. My standard life, a life that’s bled of hope. The philosophy that kills dreams and with them, disappointments, and what’s left—stomach stomach stomachache.
The memoir giving a consistent shape. The desire to be anti-memoir. The desire to be anti-craft. The desire to be antimacassar.
Dirty wall in the ladies’ bathroom near the light switch. Childrens’ hands. Wondering if I should call my brother. Wondering too long is never good. Stomachache. The regular diary. The jotting. The tendency. Dependent origination. The chain. The wrangling. The striving and the letting go. The seeking a rhythm. Child’s voice behind me. Heater ticking. Draft consistent. Periodically there is a sound of wind.
april 14, 2007
Just three pages, all boiled down to just three pages. My granola stomachache, the dryness in my nose and mouth. Heater ticking next to me, cold air drafting from behind my shoulder. Grayness out the window, brownness out the window, sign saying “wetland preserve” names that small anonymous swampy spot. My relationship with suffering is changing, trying to change. Or is this all in my head anyway?
Get me outta here. No rhythms to be found in here. Nowhere to go.
Her lines are very limited.
She takes pleasure in her documentation.
Nothing left to say to you. This is how it feels—a ragged stomach-hole. Some kind of pressure. Some bit of proud that he’s so uncommon. Some bit of fear. Some bit of panic, that I just want all of this to go away and that (my friend), detachment. Hard-hearted. Fuck. Jesus Fuck.
Fucking iambics. Jesus Fuck—this comes to mind at work. And if I came down with Tourette’s, it would come out of my mouth. A human being cornered by complexity. And with my mind-doors blowing open, flapping in the wind… and with my sense doors numb, encased in these materials …
sudden urge to pay a visit to the Beinecke,
where the walls are alabaster
Women looking out from underneath raised eyebrows.
Dogen’s pearl—dissolved. You can land on a metaphor and live there. Metaphor is like a planet. Furnished with your furniture, your fauna and your flora.
Sad. Feeling tone—is pleasant. The feeling tone of sad is pleasant. Make it more.
Little girl lacking, lacking coffee, not that good for her anyway. I would have made an excellent divorced dad.
Fast talkers. At work, an impulse, so intense, to slow down all conversations. Slow slow slow slow down. Make you repeat each word in line so the thoughts can be absorbed. So what is this phenomenon, this riffing disrespect? Does it hide ignorance or escalate frustration? Where is the mountain, where are the waters?
Egg looking for the riverbank. Eggplant seeking streamside.
I used to write to You, but the You has dissolved out of my life. Rinsed of starch, I’m limp, limp as a cuttle-fish, scuttling, color-shifting, many predators. Laying eggs and going off to die.
That’s strange.
Remembering…
isolated parks where I have retreated to do some writing. Not happening today. Today, no pleasure park, just chaos in the Starbucks. Busy. Holiday buzz. Bland songs, blunt. Cold feet. Fast talkers.
Sometimes here, sometimes not here.
april 6, 2007
Wool socks don’t help. Cold feet, cold hands, cold pen, cold pages.
Just like meditating in a noisy room, this writing concentration exercise. Is it a strain, an effort, discipline? Does it leave a trace of joy? We’ll have to see—
When something’s not that easy to continue. When I have left the field and gained the hermitage. When lunch is lost and chores still stare you in the face. It’s 2 o’clock and women wearing scarves.
Don’t raise kids with big heads. Make sure they know their place. No touching, thank God.
The desks of childhood, the pencils. The awesomeness of three-year-olds.
Soft—softness of her terms. The soundness of her structure. Building system like a structure of spun sugar, stained with drops of food coloring. Where do you want to work? On the page, on the screen? at some point, I let go of all that effort. That did fall away like husks. I envy Mister You, at his desk just prior to dawn, staring out the window at the frozen lawn, no meadow. Cardinals and bluebirds. Resistant to maternal comments, on the —Robins or the —Peepers. Like a metronome each spring drawing your attention. And yet I have to trace my way through boredom, I have to throw my mind a bone to chew on and make Money. It’s awfully hard to retain my concentration on this thin high music as though here I was up in the mountains in my hut.
Turn up the heat on all of your endeavours. Try to rest, relax. Do scar massage. How painful waking up, how painful email. How to do it. Not sure movies or a sleeping mate is something skillful. Sad. There is chocolate and dried fruit. It might be wisest at this point to clean.
Here is what you have to know.
Nek Chand Sculpture Garden.
The absolute arrogant daring of a teacher. The heartbreak of the curious student. The value of curiosity is discounted. Do not examine. Do not look in. I know what I think, I know what I feel. All is different, the lamb is a dog, the horse is a louse. House. The mercury, the mystery. Free write disjointed. What’s going to sell. Hyperaudience, overengineered society. Leading to exhaustion. Aspire to humility. What do you hear here? What do we hear here? In the giant auditorium filled with five poets. Oh my god. How much compassion do you need?
Questions overflow. Abounding, then melt away like fields of snow. Flocks moving wrestling through the heavens. Harbingers of arbeit. After all, it’s mesh, how much is mesh? I refuse at some point. Stop. Step.
Sometimes there is a certain wishing, to be feverish, isolated, and to die. Dogen used these words in positive ways. “‘Lost,”‘ ‘missed’ and ‘dead’ can mean complete experience of selflessness.” (p. 21)
There is no book. There is no book. This book of no book. The thought of non-thought. The mystery of transmission. Heartfelt. The girl’s sweatshirt says “Fianu.” I am reluctant to go home.
Tiresome. Tiresome culturally. Advice is grating sandpaper. Would rather taunt the shy mink. Or is that tempt? Would rather tempt the shy mink into my clutches, offering morsels. Would rather miss my family, friends, than see them. Illusions. Going to move.
Curse of chatting. A plague of chat. A plague of handwriting. Where is the generosity? Where is opening found? Where are those who claim wisdom and where is their wisdom? There is something that is Dukkha.
march 30, 2007
Reflecting on the ephemeral life. OR
Reflect on the ephemeral life. But
we all resist giving instructions.
Parsed words. A need to flee. A need to be in the clouds for awhile. Poetry driven from internal states. Not always wise to trust the mind, the impulses. Not always wine. Not always time. Never overdue. Never blank. And do you want my autograph?
What I want more than anything really is an awesome turn of phrase that surprises me when I look back at it.
Ride. Free ride—
How much of me wants to quit.
Wants to quit. Wants to quit.
Wants to quit socializing, the word is far too long and Latinate. I want someone in my home though, my treasure, treasured friend, I want a gleaming golden friend who’s fascinating.
I want to live in Oregon.
(Associations)
Tracing. Battles, bombs, blood. And how we carry on.
In the household—there is nothing happening. The garden cleared of sticks and stalks, but not turned over, soft and warm under a thin layer of rotten hay. Earthworms fat, inert with cold. Occasional grub, dug up, in half moon pose, not something I really want to lean in and observe.
Train sounds.
Wind.
Entertaining writing requirements, forcing myself to sit down and put something on paper, I understand that urge to just fling up your hands and refuse to create, refuse to push a small pocket open in the fabric of unknowns. Quicker the better. Numbered paragraphs. Goose honking seems to be upset. And yes, I have a headache. The ache of loneliness and isolation—but is it really desire, the desire for recognition? here we go again. Maybe that goose is honking-honking for her mate.
I am craving recognition again. Once I find the keys to greed, I see it everywhere. Tears over greed, not getting what I want? that is appalling. What would I do if I were a child?
Sunlight. The train lumbers in the opposite direction. Commuters. My secret commutation.
Abhor might be too strong a word to use.
Eyes leak tiredness. New Canaan women walking, geese strolling cross the road, their bellies dripping lake water.
Chikeola sits there African and deep black and inhumanly strong and flexible. She touches my back, my hands, my feet, guides my elbows into microbends. Thoughts cross my mind—I’m 50, no I’m 51—and this is pretty good, right? Well no, she wouldn’t buy that, would she.
More reading, more writing. Right now my skin is salty with dried sweat, I’m jittery with coffee. There is no torpor. I am radiant in the fragility of March. The fleeting ice, the flavors in the atmosphere, the thin glittering legs of these lake birds, hunting, hunting. Fish? Wishing for a lot of frogs around the edges of my pond, wishing for a pond. My parents’ relationship with the spring peepers in their backyard swamp. Yes, I have boredom, ill will, yes, and guess what—it is mine. I saw and felt that here just now. How latent it remains, the tendency to blame. Here I am warm and contained, my teeth are singing off the fluid line of ink. The failbetter, the magazine. Lists of objects. A book, over-sized, with heavy plastic pages, inscribed (somehow) with freewrites. I feel breathless.
march 28, 2007
Here I am 5 pm—New Canaan coffee at Zumbach’s. Excellent. Civilized day—work at home, yoga, and quit at 4:30. Intense yoga one-on-one with Chikeola.
So foreign I can only follow
challenge to my understanding
wall, a see-through wall—a screen
No comparisons are possible
Learn to use my body in completely different ways
Part of me will not go back
Pussy willow (weeping) in fuzzy yellow bloom, this is a first—
Struggling with documents
The shop is closed
Eyes open extra wide. Ears frantic over noise inside, frantic tracking—see her trying to compose
And what about the Virgin Gemshit? What about a nightgown when circumstances dare you to wear one?
Bye—
Hemp Jump Flare Flask Task Trask Absolution. Honorable honorific.
My bloodroots, buried in a pile of leaves. Something exhausting.
Something ready to panic about Monday. Someone wondering if she should ditch this project, jump ship, don’t come back. Well hell.
This wouldn’t be the first time.
It still seems too high-falutin’, don’t it? There’s an etymology for you. Look it up when you get home.
If you get home. Too many layers. Can you layer in the ujjayi breath, she asks? She massages my feet lightly delicately at the end of class. What a slow reception.
Patchy clouds—I’m still awaiting rain.
Who are your friends?
Who are your relatives?
Why can’t there be original artwork on this Starbucks’ walls?
Why is suburban life so oriented toward the dead?
Her face made up like a cadaver.
Arriverderci. Italian man across from me talks into his cellphone. Yawning, with headset, newspaper.
Caravan of Dreams.
Caravan of Dreams.
It’s not all that much harder to relax.
Sense desire—in its place—I don’t like a cold shower, nor do you. I have my coffee. I like my kids, like ducklings, in a row. I dream of tsunami or thunderstorm, the fast typhoon, the accidental candles. I will reread that chapter, Melville, about the lightning strike.
I hate to break the news to anyone. I hate to let you know—anatta—after all, there is not-self. It was something that you felt so strongly.
It is a thicket. The conifer garden is ultimately soothing. After wandering down into the marshlands, following the rotting boardwalk, achieving the stability of brown and stagnant water, she wanted then to rise. Climbing hills, across the broad lawn, observing the perennial garden now completely dormant. It wasn’t hard for me to find the isolated snowdrop, crocus, just look down. At the gate, sign says No Pets and I feel a true relief at the restriction. No footsteps mark the snowfall on the secluded upper path. Dark conifer presences so silent in their various forms, some curly needles, others quite like fans, or dark green fuzz along the branch. Winding whiteness, the brief sensation of being lost again in that small place I know so well, trickling of liquid drainage through the mushy grasses out the drainpipe.
I am lost.
Lost. Description even becomes too much of a responsibility.