March 31st, 2014
Sean said something that I almost cannot remember now, something in his own defense or
at my expense, but either way it was clever, and his blue eyes rippled like a puddle of just-fallen rain. I woke up to snow, at least an inch, and this was the last thing I expected after my non-drug-induced-though-it-felt-drug-induced sleep. It was 10 or 11 hours, the sleep, and in my dreams I was falling in love with a man who belonged to another woman and I felt only disgust for the
man and compassion for the woman especially because she was no longer beautiful, although, I couldn't imagine ever finding her so, and in his bed waiting for him to take me I looked outside and saw her, crying in the backyard, and helped her climb through the window and we waited
to confront him together. He seemed unconcerned and didn't understand why we all three could not be lovers. She was upset, but not with me, and I didn't mind the idea but only because I had
decided I did not want to fall in love after all. I woke up to Brett coughing and Genna in Florida and enough snow to soak my shirt sleeve wiping off the windshield. You're not proud of me. You're proud of me like you're proud of a student who doesn't misspell the word 'cat'. Sean said, and then we smiled, both proud of such a simile.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
March 27th, 2014
Tonight David came over and we sat by the fire and talked
about hard things as the wood burned down to nothing. The
ash was soft between my fingers as I rubbed it on my swollen
ankle imagining some magical healing property to it, and David,
he continued to talk and wrestle and think as if he were not sitting
next to a person rubbing ashes on a bruise. He said very honest
things and I was astonished by his courage. Later I fell asleep
hoping that the hours between going to sleep and waking would
feel like more than they were. Before this though, I touched his
arm and prayed for his safety in all things and his continued healing
and he knew more of what I meant than I did. That's the nature of
prayer and friendship, and also, that's the nature of burning phone
books when the house is out of heat and you gather close
to the fire and each other to receive what warmth there is.
Tonight David came over and we sat by the fire and talked
about hard things as the wood burned down to nothing. The
ash was soft between my fingers as I rubbed it on my swollen
ankle imagining some magical healing property to it, and David,
he continued to talk and wrestle and think as if he were not sitting
next to a person rubbing ashes on a bruise. He said very honest
things and I was astonished by his courage. Later I fell asleep
hoping that the hours between going to sleep and waking would
feel like more than they were. Before this though, I touched his
arm and prayed for his safety in all things and his continued healing
and he knew more of what I meant than I did. That's the nature of
prayer and friendship, and also, that's the nature of burning phone
books when the house is out of heat and you gather close
to the fire and each other to receive what warmth there is.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
March 25th, 2014
my eyelashes scrape against my glasses and make the smallest
squeak this is heavy this feeling of floating I a m c o m i n g u
n d on e it isn't bad, everything is here, but as each part unhinges
it drifts apart and moves in the dark room. We, my parts and I, are
here together yet separate in this womb. By morning we will have
reconvened, but tonight my fingers bob against the ceiling reading
the brail of spackle and my legs twist like sea grass in the slow wind
of this spinning room. My hair grows and grows until it is like if
you turned a willow upsidedown and my lips, though they stay on my
face, are very large and press against the glass pane. The only parts
of me that seem not to be involved are on left toe and a knee cap.
Everything else has succumbed to this ride, this swim, this submersion.
The water is the temperature of the air and it sounds like very
slow music I heard when I was a girl in a land I no longer remember.
my eyelashes scrape against my glasses and make the smallest
squeak this is heavy this feeling of floating I a m c o m i n g u
n d on e it isn't bad, everything is here, but as each part unhinges
it drifts apart and moves in the dark room. We, my parts and I, are
here together yet separate in this womb. By morning we will have
reconvened, but tonight my fingers bob against the ceiling reading
the brail of spackle and my legs twist like sea grass in the slow wind
of this spinning room. My hair grows and grows until it is like if
you turned a willow upsidedown and my lips, though they stay on my
face, are very large and press against the glass pane. The only parts
of me that seem not to be involved are on left toe and a knee cap.
Everything else has succumbed to this ride, this swim, this submersion.
The water is the temperature of the air and it sounds like very
slow music I heard when I was a girl in a land I no longer remember.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
March 20th, 2014
The first three years of my twenties were spent living for someone else. The next two were spent in a negotiation between denial and indulgence.The next one was spent in a slow decline into depression.The next two were spent in self flagellation for succumbing to the depression. And the last one, the last one was spent breathing with my lungs alone, cut off from all other sources. The last one was spent shrouded in prayer and healing. Now a new thing is coming but I can't tell what it will be. This morning Frankie came into the classroom. She hasn't been to school for two weeks. I ran to greet her, realizing how much I really had missed her sweet spirit. He died she said. My father is dead. Her face was flat and calm and she deliberately worked her mouth to shape the words. I felt my own face melt into a shape that must have looked familiar to her because then her eyes spilled over with tears and I held her. She told me about his kidney failure, the dialysis, how his body hissed with machine life long after his brain had gone out. She spoke as a woman from far away, as if she had already graduated and moved on with her life, as if it were ten years later and we were just two grown ups speaking of funerals and the unfinished sentences of death. I didn't know what to say, so I walked next to her until her words and tears fell in equal measure.
The first three years of my twenties were spent living for someone else. The next two were spent in a negotiation between denial and indulgence.The next one was spent in a slow decline into depression.The next two were spent in self flagellation for succumbing to the depression. And the last one, the last one was spent breathing with my lungs alone, cut off from all other sources. The last one was spent shrouded in prayer and healing. Now a new thing is coming but I can't tell what it will be. This morning Frankie came into the classroom. She hasn't been to school for two weeks. I ran to greet her, realizing how much I really had missed her sweet spirit. He died she said. My father is dead. Her face was flat and calm and she deliberately worked her mouth to shape the words. I felt my own face melt into a shape that must have looked familiar to her because then her eyes spilled over with tears and I held her. She told me about his kidney failure, the dialysis, how his body hissed with machine life long after his brain had gone out. She spoke as a woman from far away, as if she had already graduated and moved on with her life, as if it were ten years later and we were just two grown ups speaking of funerals and the unfinished sentences of death. I didn't know what to say, so I walked next to her until her words and tears fell in equal measure.
March 19th, 2014
This time a student stole the dry-erase marker for me and said very gravely
Make sure you keep this with you. I didn't even end up writing on the board
that class, but I did slip the marker into my purse before leaving the college.
This is what it means to be a teacher: to be always armed with tools. Not all
of them are visible though. When Melanie and I were at the college I told her
about my wolf dreams and she noted how strange, or important, it was that
in both dreams when the wolf attacked it was my hands that I saw. In the first
dream, pushing into the wolf's mouth and tearing at the flesh of its cheek, and
in the second shaking off the wolf as he tried to close around my wrist and
drawing my hand back and then later watching each finger separate the keys
to get into my car before the wolf boys attacked. My hands and my voice.
In each dream I articulated my refusal to become prey; in each dream I yelled.
And those are your tools Melanie says, those are the things we use as teachers.
I sink my hands into my pockets and think about this for a while.
This time a student stole the dry-erase marker for me and said very gravely
Make sure you keep this with you. I didn't even end up writing on the board
that class, but I did slip the marker into my purse before leaving the college.
This is what it means to be a teacher: to be always armed with tools. Not all
of them are visible though. When Melanie and I were at the college I told her
about my wolf dreams and she noted how strange, or important, it was that
in both dreams when the wolf attacked it was my hands that I saw. In the first
dream, pushing into the wolf's mouth and tearing at the flesh of its cheek, and
in the second shaking off the wolf as he tried to close around my wrist and
drawing my hand back and then later watching each finger separate the keys
to get into my car before the wolf boys attacked. My hands and my voice.
In each dream I articulated my refusal to become prey; in each dream I yelled.
And those are your tools Melanie says, those are the things we use as teachers.
I sink my hands into my pockets and think about this for a while.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
March 18th, 2014
Yesterday I remembered as I turned onto my street with my new car how my father and I would invent, when I was 11, communist conspiracy theories. All the cars with neon lights belonged to communists. The huge mirrored glass building on the way to church was a communist welcome center. I would giggle and giggle and at night on the way home from that same church, watch the lights from cars going the opposite way catch in the electric wires which blended into the dark pine trees so the light looked as if it were coming from the woods. I am very different now; I am more likely to be a communist than to make up stories about one. The moon is outside my room again and I don't know how it's already been a month since I wrote that last. Dad, I'm turning 30 in three days. My room still doesn't stay clean, I still say "yeah but", and I still wonder whether or not I'm beautiful every single day. But if you were here I would tell you how I've changed in other ways. I never even got to tell you how I left him and how much it hurt. I would ask you why we imagined communists in every shadow when I was 11 or how many times you read the book of Revelation and which chapter was your favorite. Month to month time collapses swiftly in, but this grief, it is a long mantle wrapping around and around me and I cannot find the end.
Yesterday I remembered as I turned onto my street with my new car how my father and I would invent, when I was 11, communist conspiracy theories. All the cars with neon lights belonged to communists. The huge mirrored glass building on the way to church was a communist welcome center. I would giggle and giggle and at night on the way home from that same church, watch the lights from cars going the opposite way catch in the electric wires which blended into the dark pine trees so the light looked as if it were coming from the woods. I am very different now; I am more likely to be a communist than to make up stories about one. The moon is outside my room again and I don't know how it's already been a month since I wrote that last. Dad, I'm turning 30 in three days. My room still doesn't stay clean, I still say "yeah but", and I still wonder whether or not I'm beautiful every single day. But if you were here I would tell you how I've changed in other ways. I never even got to tell you how I left him and how much it hurt. I would ask you why we imagined communists in every shadow when I was 11 or how many times you read the book of Revelation and which chapter was your favorite. Month to month time collapses swiftly in, but this grief, it is a long mantle wrapping around and around me and I cannot find the end.
Monday, March 17, 2014
March 17th, 2014
They found the origin of the cosmos through the microwaves. Diego says after a class on outlining. He excitedly continues that scientists have proven Einstein's theorems but I am stuck with my mouth open imagining a black sky with space dust and gathered stars seen through the open door of the microwave in the kitchen. I tell him this and he laughs. You will be in my poem later I say. He laughs again and says he has read some of them. Really though, they are looking at the face of God he says. This hangs in the empty classroom as we leave the college for the cold March night. Joe is sitting at the coffee bar. He is handsome and smiling and I am so happy to see him. I navigate the menu carefully looking for vegan options in food and alcohol, and finally we decide most clear liquors must be vegan, so I order. We order a second drink and put our separate headphones in and turn the music up so loud that the noise of the bar comes through only as light through thick lace. Sitting here like this with Joe, I can imagine what it might be like to be joined with another person again, and this is good. The bagpipes puncture Matt Berninger's voice only sometimes, and as the gin hits my veins, I am excited for something I cannot see. The air collects in shimmering. I have seen this once before, and yes. Yes. I believe whatever they say about the origin of the cosmos.
They found the origin of the cosmos through the microwaves. Diego says after a class on outlining. He excitedly continues that scientists have proven Einstein's theorems but I am stuck with my mouth open imagining a black sky with space dust and gathered stars seen through the open door of the microwave in the kitchen. I tell him this and he laughs. You will be in my poem later I say. He laughs again and says he has read some of them. Really though, they are looking at the face of God he says. This hangs in the empty classroom as we leave the college for the cold March night. Joe is sitting at the coffee bar. He is handsome and smiling and I am so happy to see him. I navigate the menu carefully looking for vegan options in food and alcohol, and finally we decide most clear liquors must be vegan, so I order. We order a second drink and put our separate headphones in and turn the music up so loud that the noise of the bar comes through only as light through thick lace. Sitting here like this with Joe, I can imagine what it might be like to be joined with another person again, and this is good. The bagpipes puncture Matt Berninger's voice only sometimes, and as the gin hits my veins, I am excited for something I cannot see. The air collects in shimmering. I have seen this once before, and yes. Yes. I believe whatever they say about the origin of the cosmos.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
March 16th, 2014
If I had been born a boy I would have been named Joshua. When my only brother was
born 12 years later, the name which had been hovering over our family found a
place to rest. We drove around for an hour, down streets that were, every one, drenched
and soaked with memories that are no longer sweet to me. I wonder what memories are
sweet still to my little brother. He is not little anymore. He is a man and I am proud. We
try to untangle secrets through the lens of dreams. He has prophetic gifts, and I guess I
do too, and so the color of the world changes a little as we drive along together. There are symbols and truths hanging in every shadow. I hurt for him. All will be well, I know, but
he will have to fight for it, as I have. I want to fight for him, and just as I write that I know
I have. Not only as I drove home tonight and spoke into him promises and truths that will
break over him gently like a mist as days open themselves, but also when I closed a door
I didn't want to close, also when I walked away. Also when I said no and broke the curse.
We have the same name and the same call and the same burdens, but they are lighter the
longer we carry them. Rest, brother, it will not always be uphill.
If I had been born a boy I would have been named Joshua. When my only brother was
born 12 years later, the name which had been hovering over our family found a
place to rest. We drove around for an hour, down streets that were, every one, drenched
and soaked with memories that are no longer sweet to me. I wonder what memories are
sweet still to my little brother. He is not little anymore. He is a man and I am proud. We
try to untangle secrets through the lens of dreams. He has prophetic gifts, and I guess I
do too, and so the color of the world changes a little as we drive along together. There are symbols and truths hanging in every shadow. I hurt for him. All will be well, I know, but
he will have to fight for it, as I have. I want to fight for him, and just as I write that I know
I have. Not only as I drove home tonight and spoke into him promises and truths that will
break over him gently like a mist as days open themselves, but also when I closed a door
I didn't want to close, also when I walked away. Also when I said no and broke the curse.
We have the same name and the same call and the same burdens, but they are lighter the
longer we carry them. Rest, brother, it will not always be uphill.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
March 13th, 2014
My teeth feel swollen and the air around me is running in currents and waves,
as if it is water, but it is only air and as it runs its fingers over me I feel it to my lungs
which are still very apparent. I can feel them and see them, lit up and wired with veins,
as two fleshly lanterns held aloft by two long pale arms to a dark forest rimmed with
evergreens of a green so thick you can smell the paper of the children's book you've
gathered this image from.They pulse too, my lungs, and I don't know if this is even a
thing that is possible, but it's happening. I can feel them moving about within me. And,
for that matter I just received the most vivid image of my colon right to the screen of the
insides of my eyelids. My colon and the inside of my eyelids are the same color. Everything
buzzes with sleepiness and the expectation of new life. Soon I will be licking afterbirth
off me like some animal mother. I am a very still seed breaking into root. I am a very
large cloud moving without vision above a field. I am the concentrated pain collected
from the base of your neck and I manifest in a hangnail. Today I cried three times over
three different things without any warning. That, perhaps above all else, is a sign of healing.
My teeth feel swollen and the air around me is running in currents and waves,
as if it is water, but it is only air and as it runs its fingers over me I feel it to my lungs
which are still very apparent. I can feel them and see them, lit up and wired with veins,
as two fleshly lanterns held aloft by two long pale arms to a dark forest rimmed with
evergreens of a green so thick you can smell the paper of the children's book you've
gathered this image from.They pulse too, my lungs, and I don't know if this is even a
thing that is possible, but it's happening. I can feel them moving about within me. And,
for that matter I just received the most vivid image of my colon right to the screen of the
insides of my eyelids. My colon and the inside of my eyelids are the same color. Everything
buzzes with sleepiness and the expectation of new life. Soon I will be licking afterbirth
off me like some animal mother. I am a very still seed breaking into root. I am a very
large cloud moving without vision above a field. I am the concentrated pain collected
from the base of your neck and I manifest in a hangnail. Today I cried three times over
three different things without any warning. That, perhaps above all else, is a sign of healing.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
March 11, 2014
Everything is overwhelming about teaching. Every. Single. Thing. I have 12 inches of papers and a lingering lung infection and no energy, and 80 seniors who don't know how to write. Sometimes the mystical film over the world clears and I can see to the bones and sinews of things, and it is ugly. Today I was told "no one liked you last year" and "I mean, people thought you were nice, but, like, your class was boring." and "You've really stepped your game up." These do not feel like compliments. "It's boring NOW!" I yell. "We just spent two full days talking about thesis statements AND topic sentences AGAIN and you're SENIORS!" It feels good to let go of my eternal forgiving smile and become loud and indulgent. "No, miss, you're not boring this year" they insist. "I mean, you had a hard year last year. that's probably why you were boring. Those kids tried to poison you, your heart was broken even more than it had been, and your dad died." And as they line up these stones of pain in front of me and search my face for a reaction, I realize, yes, these things happened, and yes I have survived. Later one of them comes back alone with tears in her eyes over something that has injured her beyond her understanding. I listen. I am the person she trusts in the space of that moment. Everything is overwhelming about teaching. And beautiful. Every. Single. Thing.
Everything is overwhelming about teaching. Every. Single. Thing. I have 12 inches of papers and a lingering lung infection and no energy, and 80 seniors who don't know how to write. Sometimes the mystical film over the world clears and I can see to the bones and sinews of things, and it is ugly. Today I was told "no one liked you last year" and "I mean, people thought you were nice, but, like, your class was boring." and "You've really stepped your game up." These do not feel like compliments. "It's boring NOW!" I yell. "We just spent two full days talking about thesis statements AND topic sentences AGAIN and you're SENIORS!" It feels good to let go of my eternal forgiving smile and become loud and indulgent. "No, miss, you're not boring this year" they insist. "I mean, you had a hard year last year. that's probably why you were boring. Those kids tried to poison you, your heart was broken even more than it had been, and your dad died." And as they line up these stones of pain in front of me and search my face for a reaction, I realize, yes, these things happened, and yes I have survived. Later one of them comes back alone with tears in her eyes over something that has injured her beyond her understanding. I listen. I am the person she trusts in the space of that moment. Everything is overwhelming about teaching. And beautiful. Every. Single. Thing.
Monday, March 10, 2014
March 10th, 2014
And my question for you is has your life begun? yes and no, and beyond that I can't
explain. There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed. I read the red letters
by candlelight and the swell of watery music in the background seems to collect and
puddle between the lines, reflecting. With each breath in the candle dims and with each
breath out the flame flares because fire needs oxygen to exist. The rhythm of my breath
is in time to the music. Do not fear those who can kill your body but are unable to kill
your soul. The very hairs of your head are all numbered. In. Out. Dim. Light. The music
continues to ripple around. Earlier tonight I swear I heard wolves howling outside the
window. I know this cannot be possible, and no one else heard them, so I dismissed it as
a dog, or a spilling over of my dream world into the yard to the left of my house. I keep
asking the names of the wolves and I will continue to ask until I know. I do not fear.
Do not suppose I have come to bring peace on earth. There are old things here that I must kill. Sparrows. To love another more is against the natural order. What I tell you in the dark,
declare in the daylight.
And my question for you is has your life begun? yes and no, and beyond that I can't
explain. There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed. I read the red letters
by candlelight and the swell of watery music in the background seems to collect and
puddle between the lines, reflecting. With each breath in the candle dims and with each
breath out the flame flares because fire needs oxygen to exist. The rhythm of my breath
is in time to the music. Do not fear those who can kill your body but are unable to kill
your soul. The very hairs of your head are all numbered. In. Out. Dim. Light. The music
continues to ripple around. Earlier tonight I swear I heard wolves howling outside the
window. I know this cannot be possible, and no one else heard them, so I dismissed it as
a dog, or a spilling over of my dream world into the yard to the left of my house. I keep
asking the names of the wolves and I will continue to ask until I know. I do not fear.
Do not suppose I have come to bring peace on earth. There are old things here that I must kill. Sparrows. To love another more is against the natural order. What I tell you in the dark,
declare in the daylight.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
March 9th, 2014 "A Letter to My Male Students"
My dear boy: I wish I could tell you what women want, but I do not know what I want so I can
not hope to speak for the rest of my kind. I do know this: your words are more powerful than your fists; you can build worlds or break them with your mouth. Use this wisely. Your strength is most manifested by your restraint; when you walk away from a fight, you are at the height of your masculinity. Child, know this above all things about women: no girl can affirm or deny your manhood; it simply is. It is as sure as the sunrise and as magnificent too. Your heart may break, but it is not broken in the way a window breaks, but rather in the way your muscles break when you build them, break and build, break to build, until you are very strong and very steady and very sure, and alive enough to still feel every beat. It is not true that "behind every great man is a great woman". What is true is this: behind every great man is the little boy with big eyes who dreamed him into existence. Dreams are the bravest thoughts we have. Do not hide yours. You are kings. Make your eyes soft when you look into the eyes of others (but do always look them in the eye) because not everyone can bear the weight of such glory. Remember who you are, and even if no one has told you, I am telling you now: a king is no less a king because he has forgotten his lineage.
My dear boy: I wish I could tell you what women want, but I do not know what I want so I can
not hope to speak for the rest of my kind. I do know this: your words are more powerful than your fists; you can build worlds or break them with your mouth. Use this wisely. Your strength is most manifested by your restraint; when you walk away from a fight, you are at the height of your masculinity. Child, know this above all things about women: no girl can affirm or deny your manhood; it simply is. It is as sure as the sunrise and as magnificent too. Your heart may break, but it is not broken in the way a window breaks, but rather in the way your muscles break when you build them, break and build, break to build, until you are very strong and very steady and very sure, and alive enough to still feel every beat. It is not true that "behind every great man is a great woman". What is true is this: behind every great man is the little boy with big eyes who dreamed him into existence. Dreams are the bravest thoughts we have. Do not hide yours. You are kings. Make your eyes soft when you look into the eyes of others (but do always look them in the eye) because not everyone can bear the weight of such glory. Remember who you are, and even if no one has told you, I am telling you now: a king is no less a king because he has forgotten his lineage.
March 9th, 2014
Yesterday I wanted to write about how Genna's strands of hair on the shower wall twisted like a moebius strip. They looked also like a drawing of fire her friend had sent her in the mail the day before. Each point, however far removed by time or distance, touches another point through the intersection of lines and it goes on forever. Nothing is lost. Last night at Ezra's birthday party I sat with his family and I was happy to be a part of this. Later when his friends arrived I talked with Trevor who was as thoughtful and intelligent as I remembered, and as gentle too, and it seemed not at all like there are seven years between us. When I left at midnight I stopped to say goodbye and he hugged me tightly, and pulled from his back pocket a beautiful vintage scarf. I've waited a long time to give this to you,but it was nice to have it; I would look at it and enjoy it and think of you and wish you well. I blush and look down and I know he can see the tops of my lashes brush my cheek. Thank you. I wrap it tightly around my neck. I walk home and as the wind blows sleepily, I unwrap the scarf and hold it up so it floats behind me, twisting, and our shadows, mine and scarf, against the snow, are distilled and preserved forever, like Genna's hair on the shower wall, an image of what is true. This is what it is to love and live: a twisting, a dancing, against cold, white.
Yesterday I wanted to write about how Genna's strands of hair on the shower wall twisted like a moebius strip. They looked also like a drawing of fire her friend had sent her in the mail the day before. Each point, however far removed by time or distance, touches another point through the intersection of lines and it goes on forever. Nothing is lost. Last night at Ezra's birthday party I sat with his family and I was happy to be a part of this. Later when his friends arrived I talked with Trevor who was as thoughtful and intelligent as I remembered, and as gentle too, and it seemed not at all like there are seven years between us. When I left at midnight I stopped to say goodbye and he hugged me tightly, and pulled from his back pocket a beautiful vintage scarf. I've waited a long time to give this to you,but it was nice to have it; I would look at it and enjoy it and think of you and wish you well. I blush and look down and I know he can see the tops of my lashes brush my cheek. Thank you. I wrap it tightly around my neck. I walk home and as the wind blows sleepily, I unwrap the scarf and hold it up so it floats behind me, twisting, and our shadows, mine and scarf, against the snow, are distilled and preserved forever, like Genna's hair on the shower wall, an image of what is true. This is what it is to love and live: a twisting, a dancing, against cold, white.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
March 8th, 2014 "A Letter to My Female Students"
Among the uncertainties of life you may count on this, child: stockings will always rip on your
way out the door, and you will always feel fat when you most wish to feel thin. You will not ever be what you think you are, and there is freedom in this. You are neither as perfect nor as ugly as you think. You are tempered with all flaws of realness and this is to be prized and preferred over plastic. Dear girl, do not doubt your worth because he doesn't, or couldn't, see it; he doesn't have eyes sharp enough to bring you into focus, yet. Girl: you are not what you did with that boy. You are not any part of it, except what you claim. You do not need to change an inch of your body or hair, but, the skin you live in is yours and only yours; your body is both temple and canvas.. Paint it, pierce it, modify it, expand it, reduce it, but only ever for yourself. Dear girl: if I could live a thousand times over the pain I have felt in my womanhood to spare you the pain you will feel in yours, I would! But, in the living is the learning, and I can offer a surviving shoulder and strong arms. Come and receive strength, and then go and learn to speak these words through your own lips. And know you are loved with a love that is bigger than your biggest fear, and that I am too, and that all the scraped knees in the world or melting paper crowns cannot negate our regal birthright.
Among the uncertainties of life you may count on this, child: stockings will always rip on your
way out the door, and you will always feel fat when you most wish to feel thin. You will not ever be what you think you are, and there is freedom in this. You are neither as perfect nor as ugly as you think. You are tempered with all flaws of realness and this is to be prized and preferred over plastic. Dear girl, do not doubt your worth because he doesn't, or couldn't, see it; he doesn't have eyes sharp enough to bring you into focus, yet. Girl: you are not what you did with that boy. You are not any part of it, except what you claim. You do not need to change an inch of your body or hair, but, the skin you live in is yours and only yours; your body is both temple and canvas.. Paint it, pierce it, modify it, expand it, reduce it, but only ever for yourself. Dear girl: if I could live a thousand times over the pain I have felt in my womanhood to spare you the pain you will feel in yours, I would! But, in the living is the learning, and I can offer a surviving shoulder and strong arms. Come and receive strength, and then go and learn to speak these words through your own lips. And know you are loved with a love that is bigger than your biggest fear, and that I am too, and that all the scraped knees in the world or melting paper crowns cannot negate our regal birthright.
March 7th, 2014
I fall asleep. At some point Genna screams because the fish has died. At some point Joe sits on my bed and asks where he can buy flowers for the fish. At some point I am aware of how cold I am toward animals. This stems from the time my grandmother was dying and all David could offer was a story about a dead Guinea pig. I wake finally to another David coming through the front door. I run to meet him, in stockings, half asleep, slipping down the stairs, and I am so happy to see his beautiful eyes shining with the great distances he has traveled. Joe comes back and places the flower where the fish tank had been, and we go to the once-a-month gay happy hour at the local art gallery. Michael, whom I've just met, makes a joke about math and says, just remember, there are no x's. He repeats this, and all other words fade, I turn to David who knows all about the other David, and we smile, and I know there are prophets everywhere. Dr. Zack, with whom I have never seen eye to eye, looks me in the eye and says if there is any reason I am here tonight it is to tell you to let go the weight of the past. Zack won't remember this in the morning, but I will never forget it. Every tongue is touched with truth tonight, and there are no ex's, there are no ex's. What remains when we solve for x is an unarticulated newness we feel to our bones. We are brothers in this, these men and I, and this is a feeling like home.
March 6th, 2014
After a performance, the actors emerge as normal people in the world when minutes ago they were symbols of our hopes and hurts. How can we survive this unbearable unmasking? My grandmother has this thing she says says Karizma. Sing when there are no words, dance when there are no songs. This is why she chose to represent the storm and the rabid dog in her stage adaptation of Their Eyes Were Watching God as a violent percussive dance performed by boys in street clothes. She is remarkable. She is the kind of student you dream of being able to teach, and I hope daily I have not failed her with my insufficiencies. I am so glad the wolf attacked me and not mom, I keep saying to my father in the dream. He is stirring eggs and he smiles but he can barely hear me over the din of the afterlife. Mom is resting in the other room and they are together again. I describe in detail how I gripped with both hands the bony leg, how I shook the body that would have torn mine apart until I felt the bone break beneath my hand, how I threw it over a cliff and didn't wait to watch the body fall, but ran with my mother out of the woods and into safety. Everything is a symbol. Dad rushes around, finishing all the things he died too early to do, but he is proud. I can feel this in the air that moves between us. His eyes are soft and full of water.
I fall asleep. At some point Genna screams because the fish has died. At some point Joe sits on my bed and asks where he can buy flowers for the fish. At some point I am aware of how cold I am toward animals. This stems from the time my grandmother was dying and all David could offer was a story about a dead Guinea pig. I wake finally to another David coming through the front door. I run to meet him, in stockings, half asleep, slipping down the stairs, and I am so happy to see his beautiful eyes shining with the great distances he has traveled. Joe comes back and places the flower where the fish tank had been, and we go to the once-a-month gay happy hour at the local art gallery. Michael, whom I've just met, makes a joke about math and says, just remember, there are no x's. He repeats this, and all other words fade, I turn to David who knows all about the other David, and we smile, and I know there are prophets everywhere. Dr. Zack, with whom I have never seen eye to eye, looks me in the eye and says if there is any reason I am here tonight it is to tell you to let go the weight of the past. Zack won't remember this in the morning, but I will never forget it. Every tongue is touched with truth tonight, and there are no ex's, there are no ex's. What remains when we solve for x is an unarticulated newness we feel to our bones. We are brothers in this, these men and I, and this is a feeling like home.
March 6th, 2014
After a performance, the actors emerge as normal people in the world when minutes ago they were symbols of our hopes and hurts. How can we survive this unbearable unmasking? My grandmother has this thing she says says Karizma. Sing when there are no words, dance when there are no songs. This is why she chose to represent the storm and the rabid dog in her stage adaptation of Their Eyes Were Watching God as a violent percussive dance performed by boys in street clothes. She is remarkable. She is the kind of student you dream of being able to teach, and I hope daily I have not failed her with my insufficiencies. I am so glad the wolf attacked me and not mom, I keep saying to my father in the dream. He is stirring eggs and he smiles but he can barely hear me over the din of the afterlife. Mom is resting in the other room and they are together again. I describe in detail how I gripped with both hands the bony leg, how I shook the body that would have torn mine apart until I felt the bone break beneath my hand, how I threw it over a cliff and didn't wait to watch the body fall, but ran with my mother out of the woods and into safety. Everything is a symbol. Dad rushes around, finishing all the things he died too early to do, but he is proud. I can feel this in the air that moves between us. His eyes are soft and full of water.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
March 5th, 2014
Today during 6th period I made coffee in the teachers' lounge. The women
in the room discussed the way they learned to prepare coconut milk. One
woman is from Puerto Rico and the other from Jamaica, and they both refer
to their home as "the island". One grates the coconut, the other uses a blender
on the "grate" setting to prepare the pulp. My grandmother would take the
shavings and rub them all over her legs and arms says the woman whose
home is Puerto Rico. I never take medication says the woman whose home is
Jamaica. Each woman takes turns sharing and listening and their eyes
squint with laughter. The woman from Puerto Rico sang a beautiful traditional
song from her island to me months ago, as the summer died at professional
development. She threw her voice as if it were a lasso trying to catch the note,
or as if it were a sob competing for the ear against the crash of ocean waves.
You are beautiful and young, many men love you, but my white hair betrays me
the song said. Someday soon a love will come and claim you the song said.
__________________________________________
And when they said the coconut oil is bad for you, well, we just didn't listen
says one of the women. Right, says the other, and now it is in everything!
Don't they make lotions from it now? she says turning to the younger woman
sitting between the two and listening with a respect that stuns and stills me
so I sit too, to listen and learn. Yes. says the younger woman, it's all the rage.
yes continues one of the older women and it is good for your hair and your skin
and your lips. And you can cook with it even. These are true things and I like
to sit and listen and sip my coffee and eat the tiny chocolate eggs someone has
left out in small bowls on the table. I am silent. I have nothing to add but this
conversation continues, women sharing secrets of beauty and cooking and health
and each one shines from her cheek bone as if touched by a god. I leave the room
without a goodbye because they are all three talking at once now, in excitement,
over something I can't remember. As I turn the lock to my classroom door and let
the students in, I am glad for beauty everywhere, in youth and age, equally dwelling.
Today during 6th period I made coffee in the teachers' lounge. The women
in the room discussed the way they learned to prepare coconut milk. One
woman is from Puerto Rico and the other from Jamaica, and they both refer
to their home as "the island". One grates the coconut, the other uses a blender
on the "grate" setting to prepare the pulp. My grandmother would take the
shavings and rub them all over her legs and arms says the woman whose
home is Puerto Rico. I never take medication says the woman whose home is
Jamaica. Each woman takes turns sharing and listening and their eyes
squint with laughter. The woman from Puerto Rico sang a beautiful traditional
song from her island to me months ago, as the summer died at professional
development. She threw her voice as if it were a lasso trying to catch the note,
or as if it were a sob competing for the ear against the crash of ocean waves.
You are beautiful and young, many men love you, but my white hair betrays me
the song said. Someday soon a love will come and claim you the song said.
__________________________________________
And when they said the coconut oil is bad for you, well, we just didn't listen
says one of the women. Right, says the other, and now it is in everything!
Don't they make lotions from it now? she says turning to the younger woman
sitting between the two and listening with a respect that stuns and stills me
so I sit too, to listen and learn. Yes. says the younger woman, it's all the rage.
yes continues one of the older women and it is good for your hair and your skin
and your lips. And you can cook with it even. These are true things and I like
to sit and listen and sip my coffee and eat the tiny chocolate eggs someone has
left out in small bowls on the table. I am silent. I have nothing to add but this
conversation continues, women sharing secrets of beauty and cooking and health
and each one shines from her cheek bone as if touched by a god. I leave the room
without a goodbye because they are all three talking at once now, in excitement,
over something I can't remember. As I turn the lock to my classroom door and let
the students in, I am glad for beauty everywhere, in youth and age, equally dwelling.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
March 4th, 2014
And how can there be any honesty then? When the way I FEEL is so far from the way I look? My eyes lie and not even on purpose. They are green today said the student three times. I thought of lovers who had created codes that they believed only they could break: your eyes are green when you are angry. Your eyes turn green when you are excited. My eyes turn green when I am facing my students whose backs are to the sun streaming through the window. My eyes turn green when I wear skin-toned eye shadows or green shirts. My eyes turn green when tears gather and catch light. I taught well. I was strict and organized and clear with my expectations. I ignored or bested disrespectful students. I comforted a child who had broken her heart and helped another organize the arguments in her paper. There is nothing wrong with this life. There is nothing wrong with this life. Except that it is like sleeping in a very good bed in which many people who are a very different shape from you have died. All the physical and psychic discomfort of that. All the twisting and groaning and sleeplessness of that. All the cascading fears and finities dripping from the strange still-life of fruit on the wall and you have turned out to be a very absorbent material. When did you wake up in this haunted house with other peoples' bills to pay and so many broken clay busts?
____________________________________________
I left "the cloud" in the dryer for three days in a row now and have slept in spite of its absence. it is beginning, this feeling of leaving the body and I am nervous. The computer is very far away, my torso has gained inches. My stomach growls, but I could live on this feeling alone for the length, at least, of any book by Camus. Melting clocks are good, and although I would change the name of the dadaists, I do believe the rows they make in the garden are, if not entirely planted with seeds that bear, at least fertile. What life have I failed to live within myself? What seed have I let die against my skin? The insides of my veins feel like the blood is trying to get out. I woke to scratches like a claw across my left breast and one across my stomach, but I remember putting them there. Patterns emerge in the space between words. What is rain and sun together? She asked, and I heard my voice say from a long way off, as a recording, rainbow. I have wandered far beyond the no trespassing sign. Maybe they paused for that long moment, their skin the same color as the air, as the snow, as the clouds, to say: this will never be. I drowned in the two inches of water at the bottom of the tub as I poured epsom salt, lavender, and my own blood, into the bath I prepared for you. When I rose again I turned my back. Look through me, I am made of glass, and see what light you can.
________________________________________
that night I got struck by lightning I wouldn't stop driving I wouldn't stop I couldn't because what if I stopped and I was suddenly hit again? the moving gave me a head start on the thing that was chasing me and I remember my mother, her voice tight and thin and concentrated into a pin's head of calm, trying to get my to pull over as my whole body shook and my teeth chattered and I explained to her again and again my theory of movement, until I knew how crazy I was and in the knowing didn't stop being crazy and so forced myself to the side of the road but wouldn't open the door when the cops came for fear conductivity. Imagine being frightened to the point of immobility by the sky and secret exchanges light. Upon telling someone years later of this, he looked at me with incredulity and concern and said do you feel the universe is out to get you? I should have hit him but instead I made apologies for my experience. These are the garments we women learn to wear: fear and instinct, and then layers and layers of apology and laughter and white teeth and red wine and cleavage, all the better if you laugh because you will appear agreeable, and you want, over all other things, to divert from those original animal skins of survival, because, it is the twenty first century, and now, now, she says laughing and adjusting and reapplying, we are liberated.
And how can there be any honesty then? When the way I FEEL is so far from the way I look? My eyes lie and not even on purpose. They are green today said the student three times. I thought of lovers who had created codes that they believed only they could break: your eyes are green when you are angry. Your eyes turn green when you are excited. My eyes turn green when I am facing my students whose backs are to the sun streaming through the window. My eyes turn green when I wear skin-toned eye shadows or green shirts. My eyes turn green when tears gather and catch light. I taught well. I was strict and organized and clear with my expectations. I ignored or bested disrespectful students. I comforted a child who had broken her heart and helped another organize the arguments in her paper. There is nothing wrong with this life. There is nothing wrong with this life. Except that it is like sleeping in a very good bed in which many people who are a very different shape from you have died. All the physical and psychic discomfort of that. All the twisting and groaning and sleeplessness of that. All the cascading fears and finities dripping from the strange still-life of fruit on the wall and you have turned out to be a very absorbent material. When did you wake up in this haunted house with other peoples' bills to pay and so many broken clay busts?
____________________________________________
I left "the cloud" in the dryer for three days in a row now and have slept in spite of its absence. it is beginning, this feeling of leaving the body and I am nervous. The computer is very far away, my torso has gained inches. My stomach growls, but I could live on this feeling alone for the length, at least, of any book by Camus. Melting clocks are good, and although I would change the name of the dadaists, I do believe the rows they make in the garden are, if not entirely planted with seeds that bear, at least fertile. What life have I failed to live within myself? What seed have I let die against my skin? The insides of my veins feel like the blood is trying to get out. I woke to scratches like a claw across my left breast and one across my stomach, but I remember putting them there. Patterns emerge in the space between words. What is rain and sun together? She asked, and I heard my voice say from a long way off, as a recording, rainbow. I have wandered far beyond the no trespassing sign. Maybe they paused for that long moment, their skin the same color as the air, as the snow, as the clouds, to say: this will never be. I drowned in the two inches of water at the bottom of the tub as I poured epsom salt, lavender, and my own blood, into the bath I prepared for you. When I rose again I turned my back. Look through me, I am made of glass, and see what light you can.
________________________________________
that night I got struck by lightning I wouldn't stop driving I wouldn't stop I couldn't because what if I stopped and I was suddenly hit again? the moving gave me a head start on the thing that was chasing me and I remember my mother, her voice tight and thin and concentrated into a pin's head of calm, trying to get my to pull over as my whole body shook and my teeth chattered and I explained to her again and again my theory of movement, until I knew how crazy I was and in the knowing didn't stop being crazy and so forced myself to the side of the road but wouldn't open the door when the cops came for fear conductivity. Imagine being frightened to the point of immobility by the sky and secret exchanges light. Upon telling someone years later of this, he looked at me with incredulity and concern and said do you feel the universe is out to get you? I should have hit him but instead I made apologies for my experience. These are the garments we women learn to wear: fear and instinct, and then layers and layers of apology and laughter and white teeth and red wine and cleavage, all the better if you laugh because you will appear agreeable, and you want, over all other things, to divert from those original animal skins of survival, because, it is the twenty first century, and now, now, she says laughing and adjusting and reapplying, we are liberated.
Monday, March 3, 2014
March 3rd, 2014
I mostly slept today and wondered why my sleepiness persists
and tomorrow I must go back to everything I haven't had the
energy to face. I feel very much like I'm floating. Particularly
right now as I lie in bed and wait for sleep, but in general in my
life as well. Have you ever had to confront yourself outside
of yourself? Seen a video, picture, heard your voice when you
hadn't authorized it? Well, in addition to floating, I feel that I
am beginning a long confrontation with these selves of mine
I don't know. I only know my mirror self and she isn't what
everyone else sees. She is shy and tailored to my eye. She is
lovely and thin and pale and very very nervous about the outside.
What everyone else sees is a ragged hair cut and bigness; big
eyes, big lips, big hips, big breasts, big arms and big legs.
Big smile. I am cracking porcelain, but I appear as a blowup doll.
I mostly slept today and wondered why my sleepiness persists
and tomorrow I must go back to everything I haven't had the
energy to face. I feel very much like I'm floating. Particularly
right now as I lie in bed and wait for sleep, but in general in my
life as well. Have you ever had to confront yourself outside
of yourself? Seen a video, picture, heard your voice when you
hadn't authorized it? Well, in addition to floating, I feel that I
am beginning a long confrontation with these selves of mine
I don't know. I only know my mirror self and she isn't what
everyone else sees. She is shy and tailored to my eye. She is
lovely and thin and pale and very very nervous about the outside.
What everyone else sees is a ragged hair cut and bigness; big
eyes, big lips, big hips, big breasts, big arms and big legs.
Big smile. I am cracking porcelain, but I appear as a blowup doll.
March 1st, 2014
Oh how I have loved. I breathe these words to myself in the nearing March twilight from my second floor bedroom, a bird cage of a bedroom, and the words sort of hang above me. There is
almost the choke of sob and sting of tears, but nothing comes of it. I am nearly done with the
mourning. Nearly done in the way that a woman is nearly done giving birth when the contractions begin. Nearly done in the sense that I am approaching the hardest and deepest work. I prepare
my muscles by breathing deeply into long yoga positions, suspended in transition above the mat.
In that porch, on those days when you took the practice LSATs and I wrote my Master's thesis
we had wine as the warmth rose from the pavement and curled my hair and made your skin
sweat. I looked out into the sky, the ever blue sky, hanging low over roof tops and I felt the ache
of longing. I wanted to tell you this, but I didn't know if you were part of it. So I was silent, but
I counted the clouds, listened to you scratch answers on paper, and wondered when life would
actually begin. It has begun now, these few years later, in various ways, but I suspect it will really begin when the you I am talking to is no longer you. Between all the grey shadows on my wall there is one that is colored: the thick plastic of the medicine bottle paints the wall gently.
__________________________________
I am often confronted with my complete lack of useful and worldly knowledge at the moment when my melancholy is at its height and I am in the throws of the drama in my head. Tonight it came to me by way of Egyptian seeds. I don't know what Egyptian Seeds are, except that they look like sunflower seeds, and that's when the trouble began. Am I, I said in my mind,
silencing all the sad and lovelorn thoughts that had held office to that point, supposed to eat the whole thing? I did, but it seemed more difficult than it should, and so I googled it. The answers
were not exact, and more searches than I expected referenced the Arab Spring. I, chewing thoughtfully, came upon a search result that read: Europe's E.Coli Outbreak Linked to Egyptian Seeds. That's when I gasped and inhaled a piece of the shell that I wasn't sure if I was or was not supposed to eat. And that's when I coughed so hard that all the pneumonia (and by pneumonia I mean the mucus that had become cement in my lungs so that when I breathed I felt a heaviness fighting me and when I walked my body inclined towards the floor from the weight of it) came out of me like an exorcism. And that is how a tiny seed broke up some rather boring and worn out thoughts and the congestion sitting in my lungs like a spoiled cat on the back of the couch.
Oh how I have loved. I breathe these words to myself in the nearing March twilight from my second floor bedroom, a bird cage of a bedroom, and the words sort of hang above me. There is
almost the choke of sob and sting of tears, but nothing comes of it. I am nearly done with the
mourning. Nearly done in the way that a woman is nearly done giving birth when the contractions begin. Nearly done in the sense that I am approaching the hardest and deepest work. I prepare
my muscles by breathing deeply into long yoga positions, suspended in transition above the mat.
In that porch, on those days when you took the practice LSATs and I wrote my Master's thesis
we had wine as the warmth rose from the pavement and curled my hair and made your skin
sweat. I looked out into the sky, the ever blue sky, hanging low over roof tops and I felt the ache
of longing. I wanted to tell you this, but I didn't know if you were part of it. So I was silent, but
I counted the clouds, listened to you scratch answers on paper, and wondered when life would
actually begin. It has begun now, these few years later, in various ways, but I suspect it will really begin when the you I am talking to is no longer you. Between all the grey shadows on my wall there is one that is colored: the thick plastic of the medicine bottle paints the wall gently.
__________________________________
I am often confronted with my complete lack of useful and worldly knowledge at the moment when my melancholy is at its height and I am in the throws of the drama in my head. Tonight it came to me by way of Egyptian seeds. I don't know what Egyptian Seeds are, except that they look like sunflower seeds, and that's when the trouble began. Am I, I said in my mind,
silencing all the sad and lovelorn thoughts that had held office to that point, supposed to eat the whole thing? I did, but it seemed more difficult than it should, and so I googled it. The answers
were not exact, and more searches than I expected referenced the Arab Spring. I, chewing thoughtfully, came upon a search result that read: Europe's E.Coli Outbreak Linked to Egyptian Seeds. That's when I gasped and inhaled a piece of the shell that I wasn't sure if I was or was not supposed to eat. And that's when I coughed so hard that all the pneumonia (and by pneumonia I mean the mucus that had become cement in my lungs so that when I breathed I felt a heaviness fighting me and when I walked my body inclined towards the floor from the weight of it) came out of me like an exorcism. And that is how a tiny seed broke up some rather boring and worn out thoughts and the congestion sitting in my lungs like a spoiled cat on the back of the couch.