May 2 Celebrating Beltane

Beltane ritual at the UU Church today. I dressed up. A green skirt with a pattern of leaves, a dusky blue knit silk sweater, my favorite lavender panne velvet short jacket, plenty of mismatched beads, and the cream colored hat covered with a print of flowers in dark rose, olive, and just a touch of purple. I put on gray tights, with little short blue striped socks, and stretchy blue flats. I had tremendous fun with my outfit. My spirits were just a little dampened by the many folks in their black and white and gray and brown ordinary wear. At least they came. There was a good crowd. And when Claire announced the last chance to leave if you were uncomfortable before she cast the circle, no one left. Claire did a great job. The energy in the room was very diffuse. She didn't get flustered by that, or by her mistakes in protocol. She stomped around the sanctuary vigorously. She called out her invocations in a great huge voice for such a slight person. At one point, I was so moved by her powerful aspect that tears came to my eyes. Younger One, on the other hand, was alarmed by her. And when it came time for the Spiral Dance, he stayed in his seat and put on my raincoat and buttoned it over his head. Just a small signal that he needed to retreat. He doesn't like anything with the word "dance" in it, but he wants to wear his pants so his boxers show. What can I say. The dance was very very very staid. I was starting to get wiggly and electrostatic from boredom. I wanted to really dance. But I just tried to focus on the smiles of the people as they were passing in front of me having some pale form of fun. I love ritual. I love all the objects, and the actions. Raising your arms in church is a marvelous gesture. I love the four directions. I love the equality of the goddess and the god. I love the taste of bread and non-alcoholic Maywine punch, sight of smiles and candles and ritual objects, smell of incense and flowers, sound of drums and chanting, touch of others' hands, lots of hugs... That much I can do. What I can't do is the coven. I won't even let myself be envious of the deep relationship the coven members displayed amongst themselves. I put the thought of asking Claire about the coven right out of my head, buttoned my raincoat right over my face. Maybe someday, when the time is right.

May 3 The energetic phoenix

A new friend drew some illustrations for the poetry journal. A warm and round cat faced woman cuddling a cat, two birds on a branch, and a fantastic energetic phoenix rising from a pile of smokey ashes. My instructor scanned the phoenix for me, since we haven't gotten to that part of the course yet. I was so nervous asking him for help, since it felt like a personal personal favor. But he was happy to do it, and then he scanned a much more complex set of photos for this other guy in class. And then, whenever we had downtime today in class, I could pull up the phoenix graphic and play with it in Quark XPress. I made a huge one to span the front and back cover. It looks OUTRAGEOUS. Then I cropped out some details. Tailfeathers, wings, head, foot, and ashey smoke. I made some little motifs with them using black on gray. The tailfeathers and the smoke look just right. So then tonight I spent another couple of hours on the poetry journal, lining up text, applying consistent headings, fixing punctuation, deciding how to use the batch of graphics. This stuff makes me happy. Sooner or later I will get the technology to put graphics on the web page. I'm not one for immediate gratification. PATIENCE is required. The poetry journal took much less time this month. The heaviest part was done in just two days. I've still been obsessing about the details though. I woke up this morning in a full-fledged fret about the illustrations. Getting the scan made was a huge step. I want to wrap up the master copy tomorrow night and get it to the copier by Wednesday. Don't know how long I want to do the poetry journal ... It's not my primary spiritual path. I ate some of my homegrown silly phallic asparagus tonight. I get maybe 12 stalks a year out of the backyard.

May 4 No news from the aviary

Dipping ginger snaps in milky tea and trying not to drip on the desk or into the keyboard. I'm joyfully messy during the time when I'm moulting. (No -- I'm joyfully messy all the time.) Did you ever notice how talk of money is forbidden in the online journal? (A cool money thing happened today.) As well as talk of intimacy, past, present, or future, any indiscretion or discretion. (An invitation to lunch thing happened today.) My vain tailfeathers of discretion can outclass any peacock's. And I keep my money secrets tucked up under my wing where the down thins out against the roots of plumes. So who cares if I'm a flightless bird, dragging my tail in the dust, wings held tight to my breast, pacing lonely in this messy aviary. At least I have the luxury of believing I'm safe from all those prowling predators who eat only your privacy and leave the rest of you to rot.

May 5 "The Complete Perfectionist"

I took the poetry journal to the copy store tonight. Now I feel like taking a total rest. But tomorrow I have to pick up with the last interminable graphic design project and finish it before Saturday morning. I'm feeling burdened with all this extracurricular work. And I'm neglecting the housework, as usual. I don't want to work for a living. I mean, I don't want to work full time for somebody else. Really I don't. I like working on the website most of all. I wonder where this would go if I spent more time on it. I have no ideas right now. I've been reading a little book called The Complete Perfectionist, A Poetics of Work. It's aphorisms and thoughts by Juan Ramón Jiménez, edited and translated by Christopher Maurer. There is a big problem with the book design, in that you can't always distinguish between the chapter introductions by Maurer and the meat of the chapter by Jiménez. And the introductions are very repetitive, besides being undistinguished. Maurer quotes extensively from the Jiménez material to follow. What's the point of these introductions if they say nothing substantially new. It's not a very exciting book. I think it's a bad little book, although Robert Bly says on the back cover "This is a gorgeous little book." Juan Ramón was excessive in his courting of perfection. And yet he couldn't see the huge glaring error of the objectification of women in his poems. And it seems he was a spoiled character, unable to tolerate noise, hypochondriacal, and very eccentric and fussy: Like any perfectionist, Juan Ramón was unimaginably difficult to live with, and the tangle of his eccentricities-- his cosas -- sometimes exasperated even his wife, Zenobia Camprubí Aymar, whose cheer, strength, and devotion were legendary. (That is bullshit.) (I want a wife of legendary cheer, strength and devotion.) (If I had one, I could develop my eccentricities and fussiness to a peak of perfection.) Now that I'm thinking about it, there's only one reason I'm reading this book: for the spectacle of the perfectionist seeking perfection while doomed by huge flaws. PS: Last night I had a nightmare about a girl with no face.

May 6 ReDjunaVated

I always feel better after associating with Djuna Barnes. Here's how she writes: "He walks like a cat. I do not like it. ... A little dusty cat, with a gray nose from prowling in among what people call great facts. Why, will you tell me, have all great things to be dusted? Cathedrals and books and windmills?" Douglas Messerli of Sun & Moon Press wrote a wonderful introduction to Djuna's Smoke and Other Early Stories. Her early stories were published in the newspapers! Messerli writes: "In 1916, the American newspaper was a remarkably eclectic forum, and fiction and drama were standard features....Hence Barnes' audience may have been more prepared for the sensationalized metaphors, authorial intrusions, and theatrical dialogue of her stories than we are, encountering them now in our narrower and often more academic literary context." This started me thinking about web content. In a "new" medium, is it possible to be flexible again? Surprising? Are there any e-commerce websites with fiction in sidebars? Serials à la Dickens? Keep people coming back? An OLJ can keep people coming back. How? Why? Print media have become boring. I'm never surprised reading the newspaper and seldom by a magazine. There is no variation in tone, columnists have to write the same stuff about the same incidents, and there are no cranky incorrect statements allowed. It's B-O-R-I-N-G. I've been so bored that I don't give any writing a chance anymore, especially if it's long. Sometimes I'm surprised by a poem, but usually I'm Bored by poems. I've gotten so that I'm bored by almost all contemporary fiction. It seems so fruitless to hunt and hunt and hunt for some indefinable kind of Djunian, Uzumian writing. My mother-in-law wrote a poem about the usefulness of boredom and that idea has stuck with me since I read it. Once you can identify when you are bored and when you are not bored, and then convince yourself you don't have to be bored, finding the way becomes much more possible. I'm really being wickedly insufferable about writing these days. Fighting with Nobel Prize winners and making sweeping statements about media I know nothing about. It's terribly terribly unacademic of me. Don't believe anything I say. I'm just irritably groping for a way in my own writing and I have no trustworthy guidelines, so I'm making them up out of boredom and vinegar (oh hell, and piss too, why not).

May 9 A weekend

I had a very busy weekend. I have no creativity in me at all tonight. I'm obsessed with getting everything in order. It's very unpleasant. Friday, wrote and typed an "artist's statement" for B, worked on the graphic design project, uneventful lunch with Mr. Silvercurls, library, picked up Younger One at the after school program, went to the copy store and picked up the poetry journal, made a huge cucumber salad which I took to the church potluck. Convinced Younger One to sell copies there, on commission. Back home worked for two more hours on the graphic design project. (I've learned I absolutely detest "corporate identity" projects in every way.) Saturday, class, burned out, tweaks still needed to the project, next week is the last week of this Saturday class, I can't wait. Napped in the afternoon, then went to New York City with the librarian and her nephew, who lives there. I had a really good time, once I let go of my nerves and my fear of being hungry. We brought an air conditioner into the city from the suburbs, balanced on a rickety luggage cart. It was an interesting little caravan. The police man and train station people seemed to think it was funny. I helped carry it up two flights to the nephew's apartment. It seemed like a normal thing to do. We finally ate at an interesting Caribbean place. I had goat and rice with black peas. I loved it. Then we wandered around on the streets, stopped by the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe and talked to Julio the doorman, but didn't go in. Listened to loud rock music at Arlene's Grocery. Checked out Lucky Cheng's (did I remember the name correctly?), a drag karaoke joint, and KGB, a place for poetry with walls painted deep red. Looked dreamily at a lot of vacant lots with gardens and sculpture and junk, looked dreamily at the orangey mist in the sky between the buildings. Went to St. Mark's bookstore and browsed in some books about 'zines. Went home on the train at midnight. I haven't been out like that in -- two years? Sunday, got up early and went to pick up Younger One at his dad's so he wouldn't miss some sort of planning going on in Religious Education. Picked up my friend who needed a ride to church. Went to a sappy Mother's Day service at the church. I was OUT OF IT. There was some good music. Went grocery shopping. Younger One navigated the cart, twirling it all over the place, popping wheelies with it, making me very nervous. Slammed the hatchback door accidentally on Younger One's arm, giving him a huge bruise. Came home, put away groceries, and napped a little. Went out to mom's for dinner. Antsy in the extreme. I tried to tell stories about New York, but I was not successful. I listened to some stories about the bugs in Ireland. My aunt was visiting. She still says "Horrors!" and "Heavens!" just like she always has. Back home. Walked the dog a little. Did more insurance paperwork. Started a wicked obsession about housecleaning which won't let go of me. The only way to get rid of it is to replace it with a stronger obsession about Older One and his ways. Rumbling in the background all weekend: Fernando Pessoa. I took two of his books out of the library on Friday and barely had time to look at them. Just reading the first few paragraphs of The Book of Disquiet gave me an idea about the Stirling stories. I have numbed myself to the horrors of being so busy all weekend that I had no time to read, write, or contemplate. Not only that but a sleep deficit which will take time away from me next week, and an obsession with housekeeping which could eat up hours and hours of time. I really don't want to get into this frame of mind. ~~~~~~~~~ Older One just brought up the Mother's Day gifts and cards: The End of Print: The Graphic Design of David Carson The Journey is the Destination, The Journals of Dan Eldon two African looking panels made of lacquered bark on black fabric. One of the cards says: "Somehow, you always knew what I was up to." I told him, no, that's not true, I don't think I've ever known what he was up to. Anyway, I'm feeling better about things now.

May 10 A memory

I'm troubled by memories. I have a lot of memories that come to me over and over again. I put them away. What if I wrote about them here? I don't like dwelling on the past. And the real story is probably that I have some sort of axe to grind, some sort of resentment, some sort of pride. I don't trust the motivations of memory. I always think of writing as starting here -->| and going forward --> --> --> But I will try anything. The memory that's bothering me a lot lately is of giving plasma. I think about it once or twice a day, at least. I can feel the coolness of the recycled red blood cells re-entering my veins. The scars on my inner elbows are still very faintly visible. We got ten dollars for the plasma, the dad and I. We used it for gas money for that huge bronze Ford gas guzzler. Older One was a baby, just over one year. One of us would watch him while the other rested on the tall cots and gave plasma, then we'd switch. That was $20, as long as the dad wasn't rejected for being too anemic. To keep the baby happy, I'd stroll him around downtown and buy him his favorite ice cream, a Push-Up. I can clearly see him in his red-and-white umbrella stroller, eating a Push-Up, a creamy Dreamsicle orange ice cream, which was pushed up through a cardboard tube with a white plastic stick. The ice cream was all over his face and jacket. It's an economic memory. I'm having flashbacks to being unemployed and broke. Maybe I'm using the memory to strengthen myself. I'm certainly using it to set myself apart from all the people I know now. I would be very surprised if anyone in my former office had given plasma. I never told anyone that I had. It was temporary. Maybe that's why I never asked my parents for money. I'm sure they would have given me some. I was very motivated to get a job. My husband was not. He loved giving plasma. He thought it was the greatest deal. He met a lot of people at the plasma center. Is it shocking, giving plasma? Is there a stigma? I don't even know. I'm embarassed to write that I gave plasma. I thought it was beneath me. I still think it was beneath me. There's not much I can do with that memory. If I had the right attitude, I could use the experience to brag about my extreme poverty at that point. Like Henry Miller or somebody. But I can never get the right attitude. The whole experience was just all wrong. What's the right attitude for a woman, a mother, a Catholic, born in the USA, with a BA from a top school, totally drug free, out there giving plasma? I had no propriety. Plus I "made that bed" by quitting my job in California to trek up to Oregon to study accounting. It doesn't make any sense. I quit giving plasma as soon as I could. But I can still feel the coldness of the blood cells coming back into my arms.

May 11 An interview

Tonight I talked to a reporter from the local paper. She's doing a story about the poetry journal. HA! My co-editor was interviewed as well. She called me afterwards, absolutely horizontal with despair that the interview didn't go well. I had the opposite experience. I felt refreshed and upbeat afterwards. I don't think my interview went any better than hers, really. Maybe it's because I don't have a job, so I feel I can say anything. I enjoyed talking to the newspaper about poetry. I've thought a lot about it. I had something to say. I could even say I was articulate, me who is the queen of duh-duh-duh and um-um-um and tongue-tied stagefright dry mouth. I even finished most of my sentences. And I've done enough 12-step recovery to know that nothing is all that important. I have little or no expectations regarding the article or any response to the article. Poetry is a total dead end in this town and nothing will convince me otherwise. Plus I have this secret website where all the interesting action is taking place. So I don't care! It's so much fun not to care. I do have one little eentsy concern -- she was asking about this poem of mine that I put in the journal 'cause I didn't have anything else suitable. I didn't tell her I wrote it 28 years ago. I've kept that under my hat. It's an ancient poem, a childish poem, a lightweight poem. She wanted to know about the experience that prompted writing it. I lied through my teeth and described the experience just like it was yesterday. Well, the magic of poetry can do that -- it is just like it was yesterday when I reread that poem. I just feel rather a fraud running around town in the guise of a teenage poet. I wish I could write something that had some kind of integrity, that I could try to publish legitimately. I have no idea how to do it. Today at lunch time I wrote a long list of words in my journal. I challenged myself to fill the page with words, without stopping to think, to allow words to flow into my head. I looked at it as exercise. Hygiene. I also discounted it, saying this is a very lame exercise and who cares. I spent hours today drawing curves in Adobe Illustrator. It's incredibly odd how this is done, and that I'm doing it. I feel like I'm breaking new ground in my synaptic asphalt with a jackhammer.

May 12 Smoking

I made an image in Illustrator. It's supposed to be a self-portrait. It looks like Joan Crawford. As soon as he teaches us to make images for the Internet, I'll post it here. I want to ROTFL whenever I look at it. I'm really too tired to be writing. I made S'mores tonight. I toasted the marshmallows over the gas flame on the stove. The marshmallows didn't toast very well because the flame was too hot. I was using a wooden kebab skewer and I accidentally burned through it. The house smells funny, like burned wood, with overtones of marshmallow. I'm starting to think about this summer's camping possibilities. And before the S'mores, I made a real dinner of baked pork chops with onions and a big potful of that very bitter broccoli rabe that I crave. It was delicious. I really wanted a beer with dinner. I've never had beer or anything alcoholic in the house. Maybe that's what I need. My kids would freak if I started to drink alcohol in the house. The "self-portrait" has a cigarette in her mouth. I don't smoke. But I crave smoking. I want to start smoking. I've started smoking many times, but it just doesn't take. Probably because it makes my lungs hurt immediately. For awhile, I was smoking one cigarette a day. When Older One was being a teenager from hell, I really needed my own outlet of rebellion. I want to smoke half a Sherman cigarette out in the backyard right now. They are thin and wrapped in brown paper and "all-natural." They taste faintly of honey. The smoke is thick and you can really play with it. If I only smoke half, they don't make me too dizzy. I tried snoose once. I couldn't control the wad of tobacco and it floated all over my mouth and I was picking it out of my teeth for days. On the Indian reservation even the littlest kids tried to chew. There were spit cans in all the dorms. You got used to it. I'll never forget Mickey describing a perfect weekend with her relatives, a work party, painting I think, and they all had "big old chews" in their mouths. Sister Margaret used to bring back big plastic bags of loose cigarettes from the Indian funerals and store them in the freezer of the chicken house. I adored the thought of those ice cold menthol cigarettes in that freezer. I tried kinnickkinnick once. I think that's how you spell it. Indian tobacco. It came in little squares like an incense or something. The smoke was really dense and thick. It was like eating bitter food. Pot never caught on with me. I don't like the extra unfamiliar sensations in my mind and body. Instrusions. I got very nauseous smoking hash many years ago. I was trying to chop apples to make applesauce. The feel and smell of the apples was making me sick. I never got high smoking again because I'd rather be able to chop apples. This is the second time I've written a journal entry almost exactly like this one; the first time was in the paper journal. I think it was better. I like this topic. I want to write about it over and over. The striking spark, the little controlled flame in colors, the breath, the sensations on the lips, the smoke rising in dissipating patterns, the night sky. Maybe I need to figure out how to use tobacco ritually. Someday I'll write here about burning sage in my bedroom.

May 13 "Self-portrait"
Well, I could use some more training. I didn't capture the original gradients correctly. But as a so-called self-portrait, it is pretty funny. She has much better hair than I do. And a nicer complexion, although she's ruining it with that smoking. The only remote resemblance between us is in the shape of the face and the grim look of the lips. I still can't believe I'm doing this. I am like a two-year-old gaining a visual vocabulary. I am learning this software but I can't believe I will ever get any ideas for using it. That's the challenge, even more than learning the tool.
Quote of the day: "Anyone who doesn't understand semi-colons, no matter how gifted she/he is, isn't going to be able to get divine energy out there to others." ~Dianne
Everyone in class talks a lot about getting a job. It's distracting me from thinking about "images of divinity." Are graphics distracting me from words? I want to do both. In eighth grade, we had to do a "term paper." My mother was surprised that we were assigned a term paper at such a young age. What she was assuming was a lot more of a term paper than I think the teacher had in mind. I did mine on -- I forget the topic exactly. I think it was the Yankee pedlar. I made comparisons between the Yankee pedlar and the Avon Lady. I distinctly remember pasting an advertisement from the Avon catalog into the term paper and contrasting its luscious color and form with the stiff black and white drawings of the pedlar's ads. Interesting to trace obsessions back in time. What else was I obsessed with in eighth grade? Getting A's, Ned Popkins (whose name spelled backwards was Den Snikpop), roaming, the old dump in the woods, picking blackberries, dogs, writing poetry, writing in my diary, rivalry with my sister (the artistic one), finding enough time alone to space out. Yep, it's still me, except for Den Snikpop, with whom it never would have worked out I'm sure.

May 15 Toxins, antidotes

I am so relieved. Today was the last day of my Saturday graphics design class at the community college. This class turned difficult on me. The teacher bothered me; she's in a master's program, so I questioned her priorities anyway. She did lots of critiquing, which came easily to her, requiring no preparation. But she didn't do much actual instruction, IMHO. Her husband is a famous graphic designer. I missed the day he came in with his slides. He did NASA's logo. This class never seemed as cohesive as the first semester's group did. I didn't develop a rapport with my table mates. There was a lot of sniping behind people's backs. There were those that had it and those that didn't. I never was comfortable with the vague child care arrangements on Saturdays. And the class took a huge chunk out of my personal time. We spent weeks and weeks on a corporate identity project. Refine, refine, refine. I have to admit the process worked, and everyone's final product was much better than the original roughs. But the whole process started to seem very anal and pointless to me. Especially when I found out there's supposed to be a whole "rule book" about how the corporate identity works and when and how you can use the elements, and what you are not allowed to do with the "system." Give me a break. It's over! Now it's over, I'm overjoyed. The final exam reminded me of the part I enjoy. We had to use the word "nest" and come up with a symbol/icon and a typographic treatment. I made maybe 50 thumbnail sketches, just letting my mind wander. She kept saying it was important to be "conceptual." Conceptual I can do. I came up with a little sketch of an egg in a bed for the symbol. It was more of a picture than a symbol (she kept saying don't do a picture). It could have become a symbol, but I left it as a picture. I magnified it about five times using the copy machine and it looked very coarse, which I liked. Then the typographic treatment: the rounded tops of "n", "e," and "s" became sofa cushions, and the "t" became a floor lamp. You'd have to see it. I had more fun than I have ever had before in a final exam. It seemed like play. We got to wander around the room and eat during the exam. Then I came home, ignored my friends' messages, and treated myself to looking at the book of Dan Eldon's journals. This is the most exciting book I have looked at in a long, long time. I was gasping. I got a tender little feeling that I'd like to do a visual journal. Personal symbolic language. Colors, colors, colors, colors. Photographs. Collage. Words are used but de-emphasized, sometimes illegible or hidden. Defaced logos. Repetition -- I am so moved by repetition. I feel personal freedom flowing back into my body. A miraculous antidote to the suffocating corporate identity project and the whole toxic graphic design class. And an antidote to the poetry group meeting last night, which turned ugly on me (within my own head only). I was raving with boredom and the politeness of strangers. I was hyperaware of that little sound people make after a boring poem is read: ...the poetry sound, which is a little throat clearing or exhalation after a poem, the minimalest sigh you could manage, or just an eh, or the shadow of a hmph. I think it means Thank God that poem is done. I managed to deflect my difficulties onto myself, telling myself I had no creative instincts, no appreciation, no poetry within me, and no feelings. Well, I pretty much believed it by the end of the night. I had to give myself intensive journal therapy, as well as Dan Eldon therapy this afternoon. I snapped out of it, but I'm not entirely back to myself. With Saturdays back now, there's HOPE!

May 16 Short, mysterious, extraordinary

Storytelling at church today. I enjoyed it. Mysterious, supernatural short tales of the sky people and boys bringing their dead father back to life. "The things of the spirit can't be seen." "Where is my father?" (the importance of the Question) Six Memos for the Next Millennium, by Italo Calvino, a random pick from the library shelf, refers me to more books that sound fascinating. First, Kafka's short stories. "The Knight of the Bucket," a very short story written in the first person -- ...the idea of an empty bucket raising you above the level where one finds both the help and the egoism of others; the empty bucket, symbol of privation and desire and seeking, raising you to the point at which a humble request can no longer be satisfied -- all this opens the road to endless reflection. And a discussion of short literary forms in the chapter on Quickness: ... the rigid distinction made by publishers -- either short story or novel -- excludes other possible short forms (which still may be found in the prose works of the great American poets, from Walt Whitman's Specimen Days to many pages of William Carlos Williams). ... I am thinking of the Paul Valéry of Monsieur Teste and many of his essays, of the prose poems that Francis Ponge wrote about objects, of Michel Leiris' explorations of himself and his own language, of Henri Michaux's mysterious and hallucinatory humor in the very brief stories in Plume. And more: Borges and Bioy Casares put together an anothology of short extraordinary tales (Cuentos breves y extraordinarios, 1955). I would like to edit a collection of tales consisting of one sentence only, or even a single line. But so far I haven't found any to match the one by the Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso: "Cuando despertó, el dinosauro todavía estaba allí" (When I woke up, the dinosaur was still there). What are the chances that I'll find these books in the library? I feel strange. There's a chance that I might get a real paying publishing project, a spinoff of the poetry journal. I'm not counting on it, but the opportunity got me thinking about what I really want to do. And how rankly amateur I would be at this point. I enjoy following these trails from one book to another more than anything. But I don't take it very seriously. If the library doesn't have a key book, I just forget about it. I'm playing. I love the short form. I need to read some surveys of the Prose Poem. Of course, I'm not going to go study literature at school. I want to be an "independent scholar." I was still fighting discouragement today. But I managed to go to church, talk to some people (minimally), wash the car, do laundry, grocery shop, vacuum and dust my bedroom, sew on a button, write a letter, cook a good dinner, take care of some insurance forms with my ex, take my dog for a walk at the beach, and actually watch most of the X Files. There's got to be some "empty bucket" type material in all that activity.

May 17 Begging

No fortune, no luck, no lifeline. Reeling, dizzy, quailing, disqualified, exhausted. He took a trip to Mars. He forgot to tell me where he was going and when he'd be home. He was grounded for five months after he got back. Am I in a coma? Dead? Deformed? Incompetent? Mentally ill? Dust in the wind? Diamonds or rust? Am I broke? In debt? Embarrassed? Humiliated? Exposed? Naked? Burned at the stake? I wouldn't like to be burned at the stake. Imprisoned? Banished, like Cassandra? Homeless? This morning I was thinking again about the wandering devotees of Shiva. The homeless need a theology. Without it, there's no response but pity. And here I am holding tightly onto my brown paper lunchbag and begging for grace and generosity.

May 18 More Fun

My rare and esteemed Mr. Edson has an interview in The Writer's Chronicle, May/Summer 1999. He speaks! I could quote miles and miles but I won't. I'll just say I enjoyed reading the interview. He lives in the next town over. I wish I could just kinda sit in a corner of his bathroom with my notebook for a couple of days. And dearest Italo -- You have so much to say to me. I think I better read these Six Memos for the Next Millennium over again, this time more slowly and with less of an attitude. Today I gobbled up "Exactitude" and hope to go on to "Visibility" tomorrow. I took your warning on exactitude to heart: that one must have "a well-defined and well-calculated plan for the work in question." It is a puzzle to me how this is to be done, but maybe with time I will figure it out. Outside on the so-called patio, sitting in drizzle with B, staring at my feet and breathing in her second hand smoke, telling stories of trash and mediocrity. I just found out I have a hole in my pants. That's the second pair in a month that has shown up with a big hole in the seat. I'm sitting on wet wood. I feel a sensation of happiness because I'm looking at my shoes, not making eye contact. B tells the little boys that we will send them to live with their fathers and we will go do our thing without them. Mine says, well, he and his dad will travel by car to Alaska and have more fun than I will, so there.

May 19 I need a vacation

Nothing can be done about it. Why won't she believe me? There's absolutely nothing that can be done about any of it. She just won't listen to me. The constant clicking of her critical mechanism deafens her. It's therapeutic for her to sit and draw boxes over and over, I'm grateful for that. Rectangle, rectangle, rectangle, scale, squash, shear, rotate. And then she has to teach her classmate how to draw boxes. And then she draws more boxes. It takes her brain out of her head and puts it in her fingers, a far better place to be. She thinks she'd rather draw curves. Curves are more meditative, but they are also a lot more finicky -- fertile ground for perfectionistic weeds to flourish. Keep her out of there. Then she thinks she'll never get anywhere in this field without four years of art school, perspective, color theory, drawing, thinking with the pencil. Nothing can be done for her. She's fallen into a stagnant puddle of new words; just let her splash around in there for awhile and eventually she'll crawl out and shake off on her own. I hope. If only she would respond to some gentle guidance, just some friendly advice here and there. Today at lunchtime she was careening out of control, chasing after another bad idea. It was certainly clear to me that it was bad. She was wondering why there is no writing she can think of that's completely, obsessively, and intelligently about babies. Calvino and his imagination, he writes of Dante and Becket and Balzac. Unfortunately he started her thinking about babies. Or something started her thinking about babies; maybe it was all those damn babies in the mall at lunchtime. "Why not write a whole novel about babies? Calvino wrote Invisible Cities; why not Invisible Babies? Babies are certainly rich sources for the imagination, aren't they? No one could say that a baby isn't an important subject," she tried to argue with me. She was starting to go off on a real tangent; it was not going to be easy to get her back to her boxes. "Maybe if we had a whole literature about babies, we wouldn't all be quite so bad at child-rearing," she ranted. "I can see why Shakespeare didn't go for them so much. They're notoriously unpredictable on the stage. But how 'bout some of these other imaginative writers and philosophers? What about De Rerum Infanta? The Unbearable Lightness of Babies? Babies Lost?" Babies are really problematic. I know it and you know it. I was just trying my best to get through to her. Maybe I had a bit of success. She seemed pretty contented most of the afternoon at the computer and she coped fairly well with the horrendous traffic, heavy rain, and hectic spring concert at the elementary school. There were some brief moments of concern at home after that -- she was starting in again on bad poetry, and what makes it bad. Nothing can be done about it! Absolutely nothing can be done about it! I nearly screamed with the stress of all this watchfulness. It takes constant vigilance. I need a vacation.

May 20 Riches of embarrassment

I'm taking a vacation. Long weekend at Rowe wonderland. I'll write about it when I get back. Unless I write about something else. The article in the paper about the poetry group and poetry journal came out today. It's a full page, color photos. There's a big photo of me in profile with a laugh on my face that looks like a grimace of pain. I am so embarrassed I want to crawl under the bed and stay there. Or run away for the weekend. So far I've had four phone calls and one email about it. The email was from someone at my old job. I am totally squirming. Normal mild-mannered systems analyst turned grimacing wacko publicity-seeking poet-type, who apparently says things like "A poem is a free thing."

May 24 True stories of the underworld

1. Building the underworld Manifesting intensity, darkness, confusion. Manifesting a gravestone taken into one's heart, or a constant drizzle of real-world wraiths, or one's parents hopping out of the woods in the guise of frogs. We didn't know how to do it. We had to do a group process. It was a difficult struggle. Finally we made a pathway of rocks on the deck, and lugged rotting logs from the woods to arrange on the benches, and brought long branches to prop against the central tree to form a peaked cave. Draped blankets hung raggedy, creating triangles of darkness. Slugs and spiders came in with the logs. I found two garter snakes nesting in an old tarp behind the garbage, but figured manifesting snakes would be going too far. I didn't want to give anyone a heart attack. 2. Entering the underworld The dark silent guides tore you away from the group, from the fullness of chant. Your voice dwindled to silence and your steps became uncertain. A mist of anxious wonder filled your eyes. You passed the green fairy, her perch lit with a single candle, and she gave you a blessing for travel. Then down, down, down -- you could still hear the chanting of the others, far away, far above and behind you. The white hands of the guides moved at your elbow, along your side, on your shoulders, with a touch both kind and painful. You were directed to the dark entrance. Inside, confusion. Which way to turn? You could move clockwise or counterclockwise. You could wander. Or would the dead twigs tangle in your hair? That path of rocks --was it a guide or a barrier to stumble on? And who was that standing there? Was she beckoning to you? You approached the small figure. She seemed human. As you paused before her, her whisper teased at your dark-sharpened ear. The fragrance of her anointing oil sparkled in your nose. She reached out to touch you, and traced an effervescent spiral on your forehead. Now made dizzy with the enticements of darkness, you tried to retrace your steps, and hurry out while you still could. 3. Dismantling the underworld It was very important to me to do this work. I got up early and made a quick breakfast so I could go up the hill and dismantle the underworld. All the rocks went through the hole in the deck, back to the dirt pile. I placed the rotten logs exactly back in their original beds of decay. I folded all the blankets neatly, took the dead branches back to the woods, and swept the deck clean of debris. No one helped me. I felt guilty for depriving others of the chance to dismantle the underworld. But I did it. It meant a lot to me. When I finished, there was daylight with light cloud cover, and a breeze.

May 25 Trouble in the middle world

I spent all day trying to come to terms with the middle world. My efforts were absolutely ineffective. In fact, I am worse off now than when I started. What does the middle world mean to me? Reality. Food. Physicality. The body. The senses. Gardening. Homemaking. Husbandry and wifery. Maintenance. Grocery shopping. Keeping clean. Caretaking. Taking care. Taking care of business. I feel the choking sensation rising up even as I write. Today I was grasping for straws of possible connection with the middle world. After all, I DO the middle world. I don't do it well, and I don't do it happily, but I do it. Hecate helps us traverse all three worlds. She is a trinity, a triple goddess, and embodies all three aspects, maiden, mother, and crone. She is the goddess of the crossroads, the Tri-via, the goddess of magic, the goddess of witches. I was feeling much closer to her after this weekend. I actually begged her for help tonight in the grocery store when I was starting to get overwhelmed and go nuts rehearsing the speech I was going to give my son about throwing away his school lunches. One metaphor that came to me Friday has been of some minimal help. It has to do with birds. "I identify with birds," I wrote my friend, "because they are nervous and flighty." But they are also determined nesters, and instinctively, stupidly dogged mothers and providers. So I am instinctively, stupidly dealing with this here nest and raising this crop of young. It doesn't mean I never sing or fly.

May 26 "Is this heaven?"

We climbed the stairs to the second floor deck. Passed through an archway formed by tall women waving fern fronds to the slow heartbeat of the drum. Turned the corner to see a blaze of illumination from the candle offerings. This was the upper world. It did seem like heaven. It was heaven. I'm holding on to the vision of the upper world especially hard. The online journal belongs to the upper world. I'm very irritable tonight. Everywhere I turn, another source of irritation. Is it me? I don't want to write about irritability. I only want there to be pearls and ferns and illumination. I'm getting really close to saying a massive No, the world's most mutinous multitudinous No, the biggest hailstorm of No there has ever been. I'm always having to say No. It is lonely and ugly to say No. It's an invitation to the void. It is not at all like saying Yes. Why do I always need to say No, why do I never get to say Yes? There must be an explanation for this. (That is a dull dull problem.) Since I wrote about the problem of babies on May 19th, I discovered that Annie Dillard's new book, For the Time Being, starts each chapter with a section on "Birth." I scanned through the chapters and read the sections on Birth. I was mildly interested in them, more than in the rest of the book. But mainly I experienced irritability. Annie seems to be trying and failing to recapture the luminous intensity of her earlier books. She asks far too many boring questions. Her awe has worn out. I think she has spent too many years in the university. And she has the wrong religion. But I am gratified that she has written something about newborns anyway. Okay -- how can I manage to live in the upper world all weekend? Or the underworld? I need to put myself into a trance and clean house. I set myself up like this every year on Memorial Day Weekend. It never works. Watch out.

May 27 What I didn't write about

What I have ruled out so far: ... more expressions of exhaustion... Listing of my strict rules for writing in the online journal Narrative of walking the dog to Black Swamp and finding my son and his childhood friends trying to catch a baby goose -- "because I've caught their parents and their parents' parents" Reasons why people I know are bothering me Discussion about the weekend, my lack of plans, how I still don't know what to do with myself after years of intense journaling; to be tied in with Fernando Pessoa's "I have been someone else." Mallarmé and his esthetics of Nothingness Discussion of Photoshop and whether one dares to find metaphor in software products More straightforward writing on the Wiccan weekend and the wisdom found there Expressions of frustration over the poetry journal Discourse on daily writing and what it causes Writing over a series of days on a subject (like the realms over the past three days) -- does it mess one up? (by removing one from the now) How my mind brings forth ideas like weeds in the lawn, only to have the great mower of drowsiness and incapacity chop off their heads over and over again...

May 28 Angela Carter & Christina Stead

Why haven't I ever glommed on to Angela Carter as a writer? In fact, I've delayed reading Shaking a Leg until the day it is due back at the library, and it cannot be renewed. So tonight, I find some great stuff in there: So there hasn't been a female Shakespeare. Three possible answers: (a) So what. (This is the simplest and best.) (b) There hasn't been a male Shakespeare since Shakespeare, dammit. (c) Somewhere, Franz Fanon opines that one cannot, in reason, ask a shoeless peasant in the Upper Volta to write songs like Schubert's; the opportunity to do so has never existed. The concept is meaningless. She says "it is so enormously important for women to write fiction as women -- it is part of the slow process of decolonialising our language and our basic habits of thought. I really do believe this. ... language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation." I really do believe this. AND she knows who Christina Stead is. AND she thinks Stead's work is extremely important and undervalued! I think if I had to choose a favorite book it would have to be Dark Places of the Heart (strangely, published as Cotter's England in England). I've read it many times. The appeal is obscure. I should try to figure it out. It has to do with the touch of the author on these flawed and struggling characters. It has to do with obsessiveness and hope in the middle of destruction. Maybe I fell under Nellie Cooke's spell; yes, I think that's it. I think about Stead's The Man Who Loved Children almost every day. It's because I walk my dog past a big house set back from the street that reminds me of the houses in that book. That book breaks my heart, while Dark Places leaves me optimistic for no good reason. Actually, they are both wretched books. Carter writes that Stead's families are "seedbeds of pathology." Years ago, I was walking down a hilly back road in my hometown. I passed a house, set way back from the road down the hill, a big huge square house painted yellow with white shutters. As I walked, I noticed a girl running from the house. She was screaming. She seemed to be pre-teen, maybe 11 or 12, thin and darkhaired. A man was running after her. I didn't watch very long. I didn't see him catch her. I never once considered intervening; I was young myself, in my mid-teens maybe; I had been taught that home life was a private matter, even when, regrettably, it spilled out into the yard. The house was far away from me; I wondered whether what I saw was real. All the rest of the way home, I tried to tell myself he was her dad and it was okay.

May 29 Custodian

I don't know. Summer always catches me by surprise. I wake up one day and it's too hot to work outside. I worked in garbage all day. Ten years of Older One's garbage. I'm cleaning out the empty upstairs bedroom, hoping to make it a home office if I dare to. I didn't feel completely comfortable touching his garbage. He's always been very protective of it. Something determined or maybe cruel came over me. It could be worse -- I wanted to just throw it all out. Instead I'm sorting it. I found some worthwhile stuff, but 95 percent of it is garbage. My back hurts. I feel feverish and itchy. I've been exposed to germs and dust and bugs. I've been exposed to memories of ten years of tough parenting. I found the poem he read at 5th grade graduation, "The Living Egg." I found his high school diploma. I found the program for his Coming of Age ceremony and the card I wrote him when I was furious, signed "Love, Mom." I took back a large stack of library books he had kidnapped without checking out. I think I preserved most of his collection of apples, and his collection of spoons. I sorted through ten years of old clothes, threw out all the old underwear and separated the rest for Goodwill or his younger brother (or me). I was wishing someone would bring me some food. I was wishing someone would bring me some iced tea. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I needed a backrub. I needed a shower. I was wishing someone would tell me to stop for today. I was sorting garbage all day and I couldn't stop. I guess an alternative would be to put his garbage in storage and let him pay for it. How do I ever know if I'm doing the right thing?

May 31 May's End

"You may tell your wife that her protégé is without talent. Consequently, I suppose one should concede him genius. One must never despair in a magic age when anything whatsoever can be disseminated and acquire a value." from "A Poet's Letter," by Paul Valéry Last night I had sort of a garbage-induced meltdown and had to sit and write privately for nine pages to convince myself I wasn't going insane, but only reacting to insane circumstances. Outwardly I behaved very mildly, which was good. My self-control has improved quite a lot. Inwardly, in the journal, I behaved very badly. This morning I had to apologize to myself. I wrote "I'm sorry for that slime-doggy writing of last night." Now where did that word come from? Has it seeped in from somewhere in popular culture? Well, whatever, it is perfectly apt. I did the right thing many times today. I figured it was my last chance to make the weekend worthwhile. I've come to the end of this entry. I can't think of anything else to say.