Category Archives: self

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At least there will be no babies, then there was.
At least there will be no episodes, then there was.
At least there will be no heart attacks, and then there was.
At least there will be no ripple effects, and then there was.
At least there will be no conversations.
At least there will be no love, or no love lost.
Yes, no love will be lost and none to find in heaven’s first place,
seat at heaven’s gate,
dessert on trays and
inaccessible.

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this one wants to write through everything
this one wants pigtails
this one wants to be the age I am
this one wants disabilities and aches and pains
this one believes in happiness
the floral happiness
the petalled extras
the extravagance
the vagaries
the vacuum vengeance
the cosmic curiosities
the wretched
there are unawakened
there are emotional storms

Ralph’s sadness and his brave front
how do you like your brave front now

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in Al-Anon I hear a lot of hatred, greed, delusion

for me it was a help to label that

for me it was a help to lose belief in “me” as a stable concept

there goes self acceptance, ego, ambition

getting better, doing more, perfectionism, anything like that—

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This is my life what has it come to what I am learning is something different I must say it is draining it is lanced I am lanced and oozing after Canyonlands and  Arches Park. I am teetering on the edge and struggle to make something when there’s the skyline halfway clothed with leaves and a suburban brightness in the air with sounds of water gurgling and a morning goldness in the air and a suburban cheeping with a hum of traffic while the dog rests and the flying bee whirrs by.

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Here I go and there I go,

I’ll try to rise,

I’ll try to rise,

I’ll raise my eyes,

I’ll all surprise,

I’ll stall the lies,

I’ll steal the whys . . .

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may 26, 2007

This is for me. I am you. I know you. Inherit you, absorb you, bless you, blow you, notice you, bill you, make you, shake you, take you. Take two, textures. Take two, territories. Take two, talk to, talk to you, yes I am having a nightmare I am having a disability.

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We have a get-together. There is a relationship with the page. We have not shown that to you yet. More to be revealed. Discovery is suspect. Discovery process is pigheaded. Nerves are jazz. Music is the instrument. Tuning is resisted, this is discordance. This is the dance of discord. This is a sort of hyperbolic naming. This is a frustrated desire to name in an overnamed environment. This is afterwords. This is the wretchedness of the beach. This is me being me, and I won’t apologize. She says “Excuse me, everybody.” She says “Sorry.” She apologizes. Her voice is a snake and hers is a frayed carpet. A stalled carpet, crumpled in the infrastructure. A plan, a cornucopia. This is disaggregated. This is a collection. This is a hard time. This is opportunity management. This is a to-do list, a task list, a watch list. This is a water path. This is a box. This is a box of books. This is enjoying my handwriting. This is an addiction to form. This is a crusty rind of moldy sentences. This is an appearance. This is a disappearance. This is an over.

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She doesn’t want to do the “right” thing, just create a crisis. “Ask the hard questions.” And who was so careful here? And who gave such good advice? And who worked through tears watering the pity plants the plants of plot the plot of price the price of play. And who uses paints? And what’s the picture?

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A flicker in my toe. The obnoxiousness of writing the seethrough sheer. The obnoxiousness of writing, the impulsiveness. The retardedness. Someone has to be you and you are IT. Someone has to name the fashionable names. Someone has to translate. Someone has to have the skills. Someone has to be unresponsive. Someone has to serve the lunch, someone has to struggle in the office with a flicker in their left third toe and a stabbing pricker in their pinky and that one is me.

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Yes, the lies of training, the absolute corruption of conspiracy, my sons—they stabbed me in the heart and left, reverse Samaritans, walking on their own and I am alone and without sustenance. I miss my drive. I bought some pants and patience.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Any occasion to be critical—judgment as an outline, barrier, a boundary, a border. Feelers—putting them out—feelers—putting them out—for something special, something so impulsive with intelligence or generosity, that HEY, I leap in that direction.

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Ovoid aftermath
smug somethings of her afterbirth
no stories please
especially no photos
I can’t bear it
thinking of her
trying to breastfeed
little ones failing to thrive
on the diet of America
perpetuated
how could she rise above
how could she contemplate
the fingertips of
Else Lasker-Schüler

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Dear Alex,
I am getting very interested in meditation.
Although I am shy.
I want a Zen teacher. Buddhist teacher.
I want to speak freely. I mean really.
I hope I can live with some humility.
I hope I can exhibit. Color.
I hope to make frail notes at my mother’s bedside.
Step 9 says: whenever possible.
I think that is funny
This smart-aleck
always ready to move on
The dharma makes it hard
to say anything you see
I am getting
Back
on
Track

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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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I am strained at work, straining to get enough time to concentrate on Next Gen work which is much improved with concentration. But now I’m in charge of training K and—hell, I don’t know—it’s for the best—but it hasn’t been that easy. I’m going to give her my work in duplicate and see if she does the same things as I do with it. Case studies.

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This is not worthwhile, is it?

Meanwhile, it’s always someone’s birthday, I would like to race away so far and demand a year in cloister only one outfit, one bowl, one word—sometimes the complexity of extroversion slays me—this is a tired story, isn’t it? Am I busy self-making? Did I have a moment when the rug was pulled out from under someone who I thought was so familiar? Ski jacket, ski jacket, ski jacket, sunglasses—how it is in here. I am not in Sunnyside. And Poetry is Impossible to Learn. (So I Say so I say so say so say) Oh say so, so you say.

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Why struggle with this at all? I am insecure with anything that requires any level of resolve.

I can work a Program, show up, practice feebly on and off—I can read and write and work on software engineering. Fitness is not part of my routine. I’d let Sam work on his truck, the house, the computer, I’d let anyone do anything. There is very little I can figure out.

Holding Separate—here is where we are reckless holding ourself Separate—because there is a lack of dharma friends.

K—Starbucks and her husband—Burger King.

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Reading today about a Stone Coast MFA and a Prose Poetry Conference #2 in Walpole, but it’s August 3-5 and that’s Sam’s birthday, plus $650. Still—I want to go. But really I am flailing, floundering, utterly without direction—just feel a hole inside.

Hello hole who are you I mean how are you? Drastic, raggedy, misused? Absolutely.

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I am really struggling with a lot of questions—

  • WRITING (I crave my eerie freedom)
  • Relationship—how much is too much
  • Dharma friendships (Batchelor)
  • The coffee doesn’t taste like coffee
  • America
    • and where to go from here

Maybe this is the tail end of my tenure working I am certainly chafing under all the structure I felt Linda closing the lid down on my dear chaos Friday and I wanted to cry especially since there was no way to explain EXPLAIN—

pressures pressures decompression after Eli’s birthday party yesterday my eyes my eyes my moon

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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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Traveling back and back, remembering oh yes, failing to see the point. What is this? The pale awareness leaks, someone who really wants to make it work, solve it through all sick thoughts, solve for x, for him, for her, solve through all, something to be made right.

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50 x 365—unique work. I don’t know. I’m exhausted by it. I want it to be over. It is a huge meditation on interpersonal relations. I tried to exercise lovingkindness—could not succeed at times. I don’t know how much to reveal. I’d like to WOW people with it. That’s not such great motivation. I’d like to let people know they have touched my life. I’d like to open the door to an intimacy—but this is not very mutual. I grabbed all the power and authority by writing these things.

I found a source of motivation. I was not going to let D see me stop. Ha.

It’s not that big a thing really.

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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 ? ? ?