Category Archives: household

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Happiness. Counting the days, the lines the minutes and the hours. Yes, yes I can see the Buddha in your mind is angry. The smells. You can’t deny requirements for meditation, you can’t deny the leftovers, the bowls, the cups, the glasses, the hard litter of the kitchen. You can’t deny your stomachache, you silly westerner, when are you leaving? yesterday? Someone made a study of her punctuation. And so long arriverderci after all amen.

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Play with the baby. The gratitude, the relaxation of no baby. The brutality of babies here at home. And how will they travel? And how do they know when to come home? And when to fold their little wings and settle down and when to roam? And what day must it be for questions to make arbitrary sense? And what day must it be to clear the question buildup, do some dusting, and serve sandwiches?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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march 11, 2007

Genres of note. Choking out syllables of gemshit. Murderous eyes on the sly. Poetry magazine induces epilepsy. I am relaxing into awful afterday of Security BRD—how unpleasant is your name Alleluia who is Shakespeare after all and what did he enable
Hark hearken harken herald
The back door of relief
the deck of equanimity
the roof of aloof
the sink of basin
the rug of rolling over
the kitchen of wishes
do not underestimate the pluses of poverty—I am seeking poverty, so wretched without you and what can I do about it—
yoginis in spiffy outfits
yoginis in stretch suits
yoginis dancing in rags
pale as rags pale as dust
Gayatri

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No I am not under stress, not menopause or lupus, not gall bladder or any other pain—

I am livid with the unsatisfactoriness of it all. I wish

I have desires—well I would like to find out—before I die—
if liberation is really possible and in order to do that it appears that I have no choice except to sit and sit and sit and you see, I really don’t have time to sit especially because I can’t negotiate that with my boyfriend and I find it very embarrassing to be “sitting” in the house when someone wants me and before the house is clean and meals and water and the computer/sewing machines—
but—

why shouldn’t I SIT and
here is the alternative

forget about any liberation
until the next life and
there is no next life
and

I don’t believe in God either so I can’t pray for the resolve to make my “growth” possible.

I really don’t care to know about any purpose or meaning to life I believe in nothing I can point to that is self (right now I sit here writing what is that)

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Someone needs to go out and buy thread. I feel the coils of my brain relaxing sometimes Sam’s presence just fosters such reaction, such aversion—I am not coping with it very well, or Stephen Batchelor’s pompous question How would I live my life if I acknowledged I was going to die and Dudley did die February 6. Let’s have some rice and stir-fried vegetables for dinner, except there is no rice, no tofu, and a minimum of greens. Ginger, Yes. Food is still a friend of mine. Last night, at pompous vegetarian Ahimsa fuck I can’t get over Eli’s bicycle and how impossible it is to fix this—how little I really want to talk to anybody

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march 14, 2007

Unashamed evaluation. Here in Starbucks, tears behind my eyes unreasonable. Feel pressure to make phone calls—Kristin, Lorna, Margaret, and I don’t want to do it. Feel the competition of Stamford, everyone is out. Feel a freaky drama starting in the house, so tied down, so unhappy, so oppressed, so much by what who knows the lack of private time, the restriction on my inner life my meditation my suffering over inability to recharge? Yes, I am an aging Ipod mini battery so

Thirsty and so suffering—it’s been coming up for hours, weeks, and months—I put it down (PUT IT DOWN) you see and there it is again this vagueness this unease the only solution that I want

Luckily no tears—K stopped by to say hi—my friend—oh well.

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Visualize. Visualizing. Visualizing Kilimanjaro. Visualizing the bright shreds of sun carved off Vivasat. Visualizing nails in the floor. I took a washcloth, wiped the dirt fingerprints off the bedroom door. I arrested qarrtsiluni. Exacerbated. You can tell there is no channel carving here. You can tell the bird is disturbed and fluttering on the nest. Puffed up down against the cold. Chilly nest, someone might have to fly again. Taking care, how dare, not fair. She puzzles, then allows. A dream of behaving differently. Nice things for others, not to get found out.

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A need to relax the mind, heal the interaction. She is a poet. He is dressed in second-hand clothes. She resists friendship, the contaminant of it. He is studying in the hot, in the cold. She is working on images not words. He is dreaming of the garden. She is assembling her questions into a marble monument, he is handling rotten fruit and leaves.

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9 of swords (rev)

I am not raising kids anymore.

I can use Linda’s logistical skills and networking to make things easier.

When I feel in the grip of clutching fear or annoyance at work—I can take a walk. Take a breath.

I want to

  • Read Moby Dick
  • Ulysses
  • Gravity’s Rainbow

I want to

  • Sew again—some elegant drapey tops

I want to

  • Make meals in the crockpot

I want to

  • Be in the CSA

I want

  • a Buddhist teacher ? ? ?

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Demons into Allies—

money -> beauty -> clothes
home
  -> sharing -> Blair, Kiva?
  -> saving -> 401K, pay off debts
impatience
resentment		 -> my koan.
My obvious
opportunity
to yearn
for liberation		  

Buddhism really figures in here.

my passivity
at work		 -> don’t get involved in tempests, gossip. Step up to motivation. Spend time with the winners.
two days a week
at home		 -> Discipline. Housework? Chores calling me? Exercise? Errands? I don’t think I can work 8 hours at home. Maybe that’s not the point.
Creative time -> most rewarding projects have been in fragments.

Sam deserts me often in the evening, sleeping. I can do a lot with a short period of time every day. The daily effort is my ally. I fritter away time on Tues and Thurs, flounder.

I know I’m going to do this.

I am afraid.

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Lisa is subdued. The whole group is almost utterly subdued. They don’t write emails, they don’t open pdfs. We don’t bond or do I just mistake what bonds there are for something else?

Lisa provides a small spread of snacks each night. Sometimes hot cider, occasionally beer. Food is good.

The cats fight. Harry, Mina, and Bela. They frequent the poetry salon and get pet, as long as they’re relaxed and noses kept out of the food.

People have busy lives. They interfere. I try to gauge how diligent with my homework I should be. I produce some writing I guess each and every time. I’m eager to contribute also eager to unlock the secrets.

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Investing. She is investing time. She struggles to define the terms and conditions. The terms of daylight and nightlight. The conditions of breakfast, tea, noise, and satisfaction. She is not sufficiently passionate. Her passion is weak (again). I can learn from the past. I can make a move out of passion. I can dedicate.
I will dedicate my room to the poetries, my living museum of cloth and pixels. The pixels are little squares in the fabric. Her technique is appalling. Going back through the catch—fishes, shells, seaweed, and garbage. Fishes fish, dishes or dish. Hollywood Hollywood Hollywood (dactylic) Perilous Perilous (dactylic) In my room (anapestic). I could go through some poems, mark them. I could observe them in their carriages.

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november 4

I threw out the white gravelly cauliflower soup. I really needed to make tea this morning. I made it—chai teabag and some soymilk. I also had some orange juice with water and four ibuprofen tablets. My hands are ice-cold. I was resting my swollen arm on top of a fleece jacket on top of a flour canister, with a bag of frozen wild blueberries draped over it. I need the elevation and the cold to combat the swelling. It’s painful.

I also threw out three small dead or mostly dead houseplants. No green thumbs here unless they are green from bruising.

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I am sleepy. I am starting to dream more often, but I believe this is due to sleeping in a too-warm room.

This room does not feel like home, although many of my things are in here. I have my Tarot deck, and some candles. My place for meditation. Some favorite posters on the wall. Art supplies. A little rehabilitated lamp. It’s quiet in here. No speakers. Very little in the way of electronics. An iron and ironing board in the closet. The room is relatively neat. I have control over the neatness in here, which is not true of other rooms.

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Returning to the sadness, the persistent sadness. The sadness of short sentences. The sadness of employees. The sadness of elderly eyebrows. The sadness of muted achievements. Of not knowing your place. The bewilderment of multiple remotes.

The fear of not ever having a home. Not at home here.

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I have nothing else to do but put some effort into this. I am one-handed in the house. I can’t sleep. I have trouble with the network. My mind races regarding home repairs. I start to target my relationship and I want to tear things to pieces.

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Lisa wrote me. I am hanging onto emails from Lisa and Olivia like lifesavers. I’m wondering if I should transfer my efforts to my own writing. Signs point me in this direction, but I don’t want to go. Maybe I should give it a try. Might make me happier in the household.

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november 1 4am

It’s November 1st. Just barely. It’s 4:10 am. Light precipitation. I can’t sleep. I’m trying to adjust the power balance in my household. It’s been damaged because I broke my wrist. One little bone crack, everything changes.

I didn’t mean to write this. I’m not trying to write a story or anything. I’m trying to write a novel in fragments. Fragments of bone.