Category Archives: writing

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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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I am interested in—

  • online poetries
  • blog as poem
  • applied poetry, particularly in the office
  • poet as one confronted with the unknowable, unspeakable meanings
  • primitive rhythms
  • experiments with art
  • how to make digital art look non-digital
  • splotches of watercolor (ink on top)
  • daily practice
  • gardening/writing intersection
  • spirituality/writing intersection
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I could write some Kerouac-like bluesy pieces, they would be about the past they would be about woman the wife the mother at home they would be the Al-Anon version of the blues, something tells me it would be awfully hard to write these blues honestly

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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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Here are my projects—

I write a series about rivers, it feels really forced, much less interior than I’m used to.

I’m doing book design, an anthology. I feel like curling up in shame for the uneven obstreperous (bluntly) badness of this poetry and get defensive at the awes of horror over awkward typographic dumbnesses in Duncan’s Selected oh yes it is a bad book and—well, mine probably is too.

I’m writing a gigantic Hallmark card to 365 of my closest friends, a project which I never once get brave enough to mention because it’s absolutely a faux pas in circles like this to write about real people in a dumb form like “50 words,” not to mention being 50 which is also a mistake too grave to mention, so I shut up even though I secretly admire myself, if only for the year-long discipline (its roots in stubbornness).

I have a blog. Lisa acknowledges my blog on hers, kind words; we mention it once in person, then this contact sinks again into the pool of anonymity, mutual lurking. I decide I want to put more energy into my blog, I have sort of a grip on it as an aesthetic project so I post something almost every day in November, although this is quite strenuous, and sometimes, it’s only photos/fragments.

Lisa’s interest in plants helps me acknowledge that I have a yard, a garden, even a sort of love for certain specimens. I bring two plants indoors for the winter—parsley, rosemary—and plant cilantro seeds. The sage survives outside. I think of bringing Lisa some sage bundled as a gift, maybe wrapped in some embroidery floss. No thyme at the moment.

Umm…can’t get there from here. Can’t go to Naropa, can’t spend lots of money on classes when I’m 50 and Blair’s in college, can’t generate a poetic community like the Beats or the New York School springing up from the wasted garden void around me, can’t make contact, can’t begin to get excited again about an online journal project, any opportunity to publish or be published, any sights set higher than retirement sooner hopefully rather than later after I finish paying for the college education of my favorite anarchist who would never rub elbows with an institution unless the term was paid for by a foolish parent (yup that’s me).

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End of October—I blurt out in an email that there’s a reading from In Pieces, an anthology of fragmentary literature by Impassio Press in the city on October 29th. I’ll be there (but not reading). Of course, no one from class shows up, it’s not that kind of group. I’m quite excited by this gathering—there’s Guy, and Jason, Audrey, Ellis, Mary, and lovely Roy, and afterwards, I collect signatures like a giddy child and drink wine and talk of fragments and connections. It’s a lovely gathering. Outside on the plaza, in a windstorm, I fall down and break my wrist.

I miss the next two classes. Halloween is just two days away, can’t really navigate, I stay home becalmed (uncalm) in an utter slump. Unable to celebrate in any way with Sam, a masked witch in a bad mood.

The next week, I’m in New York, but entertaining Geno and Michelle after the marathon. We’re eating at Pure Food and Wine, with Blair, and baby Harry. It’s a good time although I feel phenomenally stressed by the logistics of meeting people in the city and the baby and the driving and the wrist and the expense and the phone call saying I won’t be there at class and the what the hell of all of it. But I like Michelle. She tells Blair stories of the squats in London and Berlin. Geno wrangles Harry pretty well, and Sam takes him out for little walks into the rainy courtyard. We even stop for coffee (terrible) at a nondescript, nonrecommended deli (Greek joint). Returning to my car something like the sound of a loud gong, in the Gong Show, loud and deep and fatal—parking ticket, $65, I parked at 5:40 pm somewhere where I shouldn’t have parked until 6. Just suck it up.

I catch up with the next class. I think I’ve lost the thread of Duncan’s life completely. All I know is that I’m envious of his household, alive with art and poetry and avant friends, community with all its prices and its costs. I’m envious of his ego and his correspondents. Him. Levertov. How to come to terms with what is past. That was then, you see, and this is now.

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Well, dammit, I signed up for this, I want to say I rubbed elbows with the New York School, yes I did, and yes it was rewarding, yes I elevated my discourse and my craft.

Beating my head against the wall
And Sam at home alone on Tuesday nights
And disrupting placid waters of routine
my Al-Anon, my district meetings, and
the Yoga Book Club.

Poetry is the biggest irritant in my life right now.

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One of the first sessions, we are asked who writes as the “I” in their poems. No one says Yes but me. Should I defend this practice? Is it passé? Have I stepped in it?

Thenceforward continuously tainted by my I, which shows.

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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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december 5 1:45 pm

Uneasy, writing in bed on Tuesday.

First, take some conscious breaths. Expel on the exhalation. Expel the instructions. Intentions.

A monument of agendas inside.

Try to arrive. Get here.

Wanted to write my Godamifesto.

Discovering Anne Waldman, turning pages of her Vow with my long haggy-fingered hands and damaged wrist.

Not much can I do. Limited.

Au revoir.

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This is a woman who has to come up with her goals. This is a woman who has to update her will. This is a woman who has to complete her insurance elections for the coming year. This is a woman with a secret life.

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Stay away stay away the one that totally withdrew, the one that wouldn’t take no for an answer, this is not an unusual situation, this is not a catch-up, this is not catching up, this is not a spirit, this is not a des-spirit.

Desk.

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I wrote so much no one would want to pick up one of my notebooks and wade into that.

Writing—sort of below par—under the surface. Aimless.
Writing without the mountains.

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The surface is uneven. The cutting board is warped. The gentleman was proud to show me the use of passive voice in my writing sample. Fucking shit. Well live and learn. I am still expecting to show them, every one of them, show them—what?

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I am going to pull out “The Instruction Manual”—”as I sit looking out of a window of the building.” I want to write “The Questionnaire.” All of these ideas are depressing and messy, like litter. Like leaves. The dead brown leaves, everywhere, curled, curled. Every year, done, down, down.

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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 9 later

When the boughs breaks—practicing writing in traditional meter like Longfellow—trace of tobacco in the air—would like to regress, remembering Indian days—would like to expel         have my nails done

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I am also reading the latest BANR (Best American Nonrequired Reading). I read the introductory material. I like it. I am there, on the fringes. Essentially light and non-required. I didn’t grasp that it was high school students. I like their giddy sensibilities.

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I have been collecting thoughts on writing. Unfortunately, I haven’t been writing them down. Here they are from the vagueness of memory:

  • The new genre of fantasy. I forget what he called it. I am a fan.
  • That personal writing has its roots in Puritanism. The drive to perfect yourself through documentation (R.D. interviewee?)
  • Alembic: using Nanowrimo like binge eating
  • Writing without a plan
  • Geof Huth’s thoughts on blogging. His desire to focus, desire to focus on theory.

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I had to miss the poetry class on Halloween. This was disturbing. I should have tried to go. I could have made it. No use trying to reinvent the past. I had to miss out. I hate to miss out. I am easily disappointed.

Sad girls are responsible. They take on the tedious tasks no one else wants to do.

If I’m very busy writing, I won’t have time for tedious tasks.

But something’s wrong with my invention. My imagination is broken. I don’t get out much.

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Some envy. I enjoyed a short story that included a line about envy.

I enjoyed John Ashbery’s line “I write in the afternoon.” It hit
me with a great impact. Why? Because I don’t like afternoons. They are a negligible, hateful time, a chunk of time to get through. I am optimistic in the morning (usually) and pessimistic in the afternoon. There’s a wish that I could heal this. What would a good afternoon look like? Sunshine? Satisfaction? Rest?

I don’t like any hour of the day.

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There’s fantasy. I wish I could access fantasy. I mean real fantasy, not just the odd fantastic incidents of my past—drug addiction, murder, alienation of the corporate world, near-fatal blood disorders.

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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.