Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Spider
We are sitting at our round kitchen table eating peanut butter toast with bananas, and she, who is six, wants to know about the Nazis (Who did they kill? Brown skin? White skin? Black skin? Old people? Children? The sick? Handicapped? Us? Me?).
“Would they kill us, momma?”
And I say that yes, they would kill us. If we were brave enough to stand and say they were wrong, that their ideas of perfection were wrong, and that all people all people all people are valuable, that they would want us dead.
I say this in my housecoat, in my unwashed hair, with one eye on the clock and one eye on her heart. She smacks her lips, and says that she hopes she would be brave enough.
I think of you. Of your cracked bones and split soul, of those crooked healings we were blind to, the secret brokenness, of your stunning new styles of self-deception, and of the way this one has eaten up those cupped crusts of hope we were feeding off of. The failure.
She asks me what the Nazi symbol looks like, and I trace it out on the table top with my finger, imagining it there between us, black and thick, that unforgiving spider spinning out its sticky perfection.
“Would they kill us, momma?”
And I say that yes, they would kill us. If we were brave enough to stand and say they were wrong, that their ideas of perfection were wrong, and that all people all people all people are valuable, that they would want us dead.
I say this in my housecoat, in my unwashed hair, with one eye on the clock and one eye on her heart. She smacks her lips, and says that she hopes she would be brave enough.
I think of you. Of your cracked bones and split soul, of those crooked healings we were blind to, the secret brokenness, of your stunning new styles of self-deception, and of the way this one has eaten up those cupped crusts of hope we were feeding off of. The failure.
She asks me what the Nazi symbol looks like, and I trace it out on the table top with my finger, imagining it there between us, black and thick, that unforgiving spider spinning out its sticky perfection.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Because I want new words like I want new blood, like I want new teeth, new elbows, new claws. Because I am sick to death of the whiny moan, the sad heart, the hopeful tales, because enough is enough, because when is growing up, because don't be a child - magic is real, fool, because words are so thin and bone and I want ripe and round. Because, oh, because, ah, because ah, ah, ahhhhh. God almighty, a new thing rising up.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
The Liturgy of the Hours
From the Rule of St. Benedict, chapter 16:
As the prophet says, "Seven times in the day I have given praise to Thee," so we shall observe this sacred number of seven if at the hour of Lauds, Prime, Tierce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Complin we fulfill the duties of our service. Therefore, at these times let us give praise to our Creator for the judgments of His justice.
Lauds
“O God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.”
5:50 am – The alarm goes off and I turn in my warm bed of red sheets under a white feather duvet. It is still black out the window and the announcer on the radio is blathering on about the pre-dawn weather as if weather, as if anything can really exist at this hour while the world sleeps on. But I am not ready for forecasts or dawn or God, and so I grant myself ten minutes more, banking on God’s mercy and on his memory of a warm bed on an early morning.
And then, I am up, grinding the beans, boiling the water - four minutes to brew the coffee in the press until it is thick and black with a foam on the top, and I pour it into my warmed brown mug. I sit on the couch with the windows that face the street, the dripping leaves beyond my front porch, the trash cans, the wet lines of dropped brown cedar needles, the dying grasses. I balance my coffee with my lectio divina, my sacred reading, my daily meditation: a verse, a sip, a thought, a sip, a verse, a sip, a thought, a sip, and I poke at the God that is hanging in the air around me. But I am tired and easily distracted, and most of my prayers are grafted onto lists of things to do and ways I should stop worrying or women I should become. Until I have only five minutes left. But then, I sit looking out the window at a small orange spot on the trunk of a skinny maple across the road. It is so bright and out of place that I wonder for a moment if it has been painted onto the bark, except that I can see now that it is growing. The orange moves upward like a spreading blush along the trunk and into the leaves, so that for a moment it is glowing and golden while the rest of the trees sleep in quieter colours and the sun pulls itself into the sky and into another day. I watch and inhale the light’s movement and the blooming of the colour across the morning.
Prime
“O God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.”
Waking her is the worst and sweetest thing I do. Her folded six-year-old self with it’s sweaty curls, sprawling limbs and parted lips sleeps so unaware and open, like a love letter left lying on the table. I sing to her and she smiles. I whisper to her that it is time to get up and she smiles still with her eyes closed. She moans and hides under the blankets to stay longer. So I practice some mercy and let her take her waking slow. But at 7:20 when the breakfast table is full of crumbs and she is talking or dancing or daydreaming more than she is eating my patience bashes up against the wall of its boundaries. “You need to hurry up, sweetie.” “Come on. A little faster.” “Get going.” “You’re going to be late. Now hurry up or you won’t get to finish your breakfast.”
7:45 am – Teeth brushing.
7:50 am – Her in the shower.
8:00 am – Both of us dressing.
8:10 am – Hair brushing.
8:12 am – Lunch made, bag packed, shoes on.
8:15 am- Out the door.
We arrive at her school at 8:20. Kiss. Hug. The bell rings. She smiles at me one last time and follows the line of wandering first graders inside. I’m not used to her being away from me all day, or of the way the school swallows her up whole and leaves me empty-armed standing on the pavement alone.
Terce
“O God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.”
Now, I am running. Up Church Street, toward the river, down the hill and across the bridge. I think as I cross the river, as I do every morning, of the man that ran in front of me here once, bare chested, shirt in hand with the early morning sun already hot, and of the way he all at once unfurled his arms as he crossed the bridge, crossed the water, and flew down the sidewalk like a bird riding the wind, and of the way that some blue sky, a brown river, and an early hour can gather together and loosen the string to a heart’s unwinding.
I cross over the bridge and am down past the houses, the theatre, the same older couple that I see most mornings with the woman that smiles at me as I run by. I leave them all behind me and slip into the cool green trails of a treed park. My lungs rage, my legs burn, my skin is slick like a fever, and as I round a corner with gravity heavy on my back I am stopped by the cool liquid movement of a deer, two light brown deer as they slide from one green jungle to cross my path and back again into a greener side. I take off my headphones and peer into the undergrowth after them, but they have already slipped away into the secret world of animal.
Sext
“O God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.”
I have rushed from my run back home again. Showered. Dressed. Checked my email. Cursed at the time and at my impossibly tight schedule, and then raced out the door to the type kitchen, and now I am setting type: one silver letter at a time without even the possibility of a shortcut; my fingers cannot cheat; they smell of ink. I love the drawers of tidy letters, the sound of the roller, the white sheets of paper, the language of typeface and picas and slugs that I am just learning to speak, that I’m slow and awkward, that I fumble like a four-year-old with a pencil in her sweaty fist, that attention must be paid.
None
“O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.”
When I started applying to graduate schools, I held my daughter up to the map of the world that hung on my bedroom wall, and I pointed to the places where the different schools were: British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, and then some that passed over from the orange coloured form that was Canada into the dark green space of America. And though she was only five I could see her calculating her quantity of fear from distance to distance.
I broke something then when I told her we were crossing over that boarder line. I held her when she lay in her bed night after night as she sobbed and begged and cried with her face to the wall saying that she couldn’t move to that other country, away from all her family, her friends, and that no, it wouldn’t be alright, and no, she couldn’t trust me.
So now, I am crying in the media lab of the English Philosophy building on the university campus. I am crying in part because I am tired and rushed, because I have to leave to pick her up from her school in an hour, because I do not know when I will get my work done if I don’t finish it now, because I don’t have a damn clue about how to record my voice track for this assignment, or how to add music to it or, hell, mostly how to save the entire thing. I can’t even figure out how to save my work, and so I am crying in the media lab of the English-Philosophy building, but mostly because she still cries at night and I broke her for something I wanted and I can’t even figure out how to save my fucking assignment on this stupid fucking computer while the sacred moments tick past like a time bomb and where the hell is my lectio divina now?
When I finally knock on the studio door beside mine and confess to the woman working inside, like a sinner to a priest, that I’ve got nothing, am coming up empty, my voice catches on my failure and I do not want to cry again, but think that I might. And she saves me. In a moment. In five minutes. With grace, and with her pretty white teeth in a tidy row smiling back at me.
Vespers
“O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.”
On Friday nights we wash our hands, put on our aprons, and she pours and mixes while I measure and read from the recipe my mother used when I was small. While the pizza cooks we put on our pyjamas and then eat on the couch and watch a movie that we’ve rented from the library and that I will probably return late because I can never keep track of due dates. She tries her best not to spill, and I try my best not to overreact when she does. We do alright, though she spends most of the movie on my lap wiggling because she scares easily, and I let her stay because I snuggle easily.
Complin
“O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.”
It’s night. I lie in bed with her and the cicadas saw outside the open window while she chatters away about her day and the movie and all the things she’s thinking of, until I tell her again, for the forth time, to go to sleep. When she does, I stay and watch her for awhile. My days are bookended with me in my pyjamas, with the darkness draping the outside world, with my tiredness, God’s closeness. Her lashes are so long, I think again for the hundredth time. Her lips so sweet. I wait. And listen. I watch the sacred reading spread out and sleeping before me.
As the prophet says, "Seven times in the day I have given praise to Thee," so we shall observe this sacred number of seven if at the hour of Lauds, Prime, Tierce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Complin we fulfill the duties of our service. Therefore, at these times let us give praise to our Creator for the judgments of His justice.
Lauds
“O God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.”
5:50 am – The alarm goes off and I turn in my warm bed of red sheets under a white feather duvet. It is still black out the window and the announcer on the radio is blathering on about the pre-dawn weather as if weather, as if anything can really exist at this hour while the world sleeps on. But I am not ready for forecasts or dawn or God, and so I grant myself ten minutes more, banking on God’s mercy and on his memory of a warm bed on an early morning.
And then, I am up, grinding the beans, boiling the water - four minutes to brew the coffee in the press until it is thick and black with a foam on the top, and I pour it into my warmed brown mug. I sit on the couch with the windows that face the street, the dripping leaves beyond my front porch, the trash cans, the wet lines of dropped brown cedar needles, the dying grasses. I balance my coffee with my lectio divina, my sacred reading, my daily meditation: a verse, a sip, a thought, a sip, a verse, a sip, a thought, a sip, and I poke at the God that is hanging in the air around me. But I am tired and easily distracted, and most of my prayers are grafted onto lists of things to do and ways I should stop worrying or women I should become. Until I have only five minutes left. But then, I sit looking out the window at a small orange spot on the trunk of a skinny maple across the road. It is so bright and out of place that I wonder for a moment if it has been painted onto the bark, except that I can see now that it is growing. The orange moves upward like a spreading blush along the trunk and into the leaves, so that for a moment it is glowing and golden while the rest of the trees sleep in quieter colours and the sun pulls itself into the sky and into another day. I watch and inhale the light’s movement and the blooming of the colour across the morning.
Prime
“O God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.”
Waking her is the worst and sweetest thing I do. Her folded six-year-old self with it’s sweaty curls, sprawling limbs and parted lips sleeps so unaware and open, like a love letter left lying on the table. I sing to her and she smiles. I whisper to her that it is time to get up and she smiles still with her eyes closed. She moans and hides under the blankets to stay longer. So I practice some mercy and let her take her waking slow. But at 7:20 when the breakfast table is full of crumbs and she is talking or dancing or daydreaming more than she is eating my patience bashes up against the wall of its boundaries. “You need to hurry up, sweetie.” “Come on. A little faster.” “Get going.” “You’re going to be late. Now hurry up or you won’t get to finish your breakfast.”
7:45 am – Teeth brushing.
7:50 am – Her in the shower.
8:00 am – Both of us dressing.
8:10 am – Hair brushing.
8:12 am – Lunch made, bag packed, shoes on.
8:15 am- Out the door.
We arrive at her school at 8:20. Kiss. Hug. The bell rings. She smiles at me one last time and follows the line of wandering first graders inside. I’m not used to her being away from me all day, or of the way the school swallows her up whole and leaves me empty-armed standing on the pavement alone.
Terce
“O God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.”
Now, I am running. Up Church Street, toward the river, down the hill and across the bridge. I think as I cross the river, as I do every morning, of the man that ran in front of me here once, bare chested, shirt in hand with the early morning sun already hot, and of the way he all at once unfurled his arms as he crossed the bridge, crossed the water, and flew down the sidewalk like a bird riding the wind, and of the way that some blue sky, a brown river, and an early hour can gather together and loosen the string to a heart’s unwinding.
I cross over the bridge and am down past the houses, the theatre, the same older couple that I see most mornings with the woman that smiles at me as I run by. I leave them all behind me and slip into the cool green trails of a treed park. My lungs rage, my legs burn, my skin is slick like a fever, and as I round a corner with gravity heavy on my back I am stopped by the cool liquid movement of a deer, two light brown deer as they slide from one green jungle to cross my path and back again into a greener side. I take off my headphones and peer into the undergrowth after them, but they have already slipped away into the secret world of animal.
Sext
“O God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.”
I have rushed from my run back home again. Showered. Dressed. Checked my email. Cursed at the time and at my impossibly tight schedule, and then raced out the door to the type kitchen, and now I am setting type: one silver letter at a time without even the possibility of a shortcut; my fingers cannot cheat; they smell of ink. I love the drawers of tidy letters, the sound of the roller, the white sheets of paper, the language of typeface and picas and slugs that I am just learning to speak, that I’m slow and awkward, that I fumble like a four-year-old with a pencil in her sweaty fist, that attention must be paid.
None
“O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.”
When I started applying to graduate schools, I held my daughter up to the map of the world that hung on my bedroom wall, and I pointed to the places where the different schools were: British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, and then some that passed over from the orange coloured form that was Canada into the dark green space of America. And though she was only five I could see her calculating her quantity of fear from distance to distance.
I broke something then when I told her we were crossing over that boarder line. I held her when she lay in her bed night after night as she sobbed and begged and cried with her face to the wall saying that she couldn’t move to that other country, away from all her family, her friends, and that no, it wouldn’t be alright, and no, she couldn’t trust me.
So now, I am crying in the media lab of the English Philosophy building on the university campus. I am crying in part because I am tired and rushed, because I have to leave to pick her up from her school in an hour, because I do not know when I will get my work done if I don’t finish it now, because I don’t have a damn clue about how to record my voice track for this assignment, or how to add music to it or, hell, mostly how to save the entire thing. I can’t even figure out how to save my work, and so I am crying in the media lab of the English-Philosophy building, but mostly because she still cries at night and I broke her for something I wanted and I can’t even figure out how to save my fucking assignment on this stupid fucking computer while the sacred moments tick past like a time bomb and where the hell is my lectio divina now?
When I finally knock on the studio door beside mine and confess to the woman working inside, like a sinner to a priest, that I’ve got nothing, am coming up empty, my voice catches on my failure and I do not want to cry again, but think that I might. And she saves me. In a moment. In five minutes. With grace, and with her pretty white teeth in a tidy row smiling back at me.
Vespers
“O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.”
On Friday nights we wash our hands, put on our aprons, and she pours and mixes while I measure and read from the recipe my mother used when I was small. While the pizza cooks we put on our pyjamas and then eat on the couch and watch a movie that we’ve rented from the library and that I will probably return late because I can never keep track of due dates. She tries her best not to spill, and I try my best not to overreact when she does. We do alright, though she spends most of the movie on my lap wiggling because she scares easily, and I let her stay because I snuggle easily.
Complin
“O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.”
It’s night. I lie in bed with her and the cicadas saw outside the open window while she chatters away about her day and the movie and all the things she’s thinking of, until I tell her again, for the forth time, to go to sleep. When she does, I stay and watch her for awhile. My days are bookended with me in my pyjamas, with the darkness draping the outside world, with my tiredness, God’s closeness. Her lashes are so long, I think again for the hundredth time. Her lips so sweet. I wait. And listen. I watch the sacred reading spread out and sleeping before me.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Little Ghost
She wakes to a moan. At three in the morning she had been lying in bed, between the red sheets, beneath the white quilt, limbs floating loose and hair streaming under that dreaming black sea with a book asleep on the pillow beside her. She hears it. Wakes blind and waits for the shifting tilt of the real. What had she been dreaming.
She does not believe in ghosts. She believes in the dead and in secrets and in the way truth gathers more thickly around anchors to the unknown when she is looking left instead of right.
She holds her breath. The air moans again above her, soft but unboundaried, and travels through the dust that is trapped in that secret space between floors, between the neighbour’s suite above and her ceiling below, over eighty-year-old plaster and nails and joists still smelling of sawdust, and out into her room, spilling spirit.
Her sheets were once white, but she has had visions in the bedding aisle of a crowded super store and changed the flat and fitted ones to red, imagining, in the folding back of the white quilt, the peeling of a fruit to a soft warm centre like a burst pod, or a surgeon’s knife drawn along tight skin to a popped bright wounding. She wanted cinnamon, but they only came in red. So she is lying between her red sheets with the book beside her, when she wakes to this ghost in the groaning air. A climbing, unclothed little sound.
In the hall, in her room, up above and beside her bed, against her neck and in her hair the moan and moan and the moan. Her throat still full of her dream, her lungs, busy exchanging visions for wakened air, push up against the quickening lub dub. The book on the pillow sleeps on unaware, a loud boozy snore from its opened mouth, even when then, the ghost pulls back the quilt and slips in beside her, and she sees that she knows that she knows her dead face. And is pinned to the sheets by it.
But such a sweet, unpretentious little soul, warm and singing, carving out a sacred hollow in the air with her breathing, no rattling chains, or banshee screaming, just an unadorned ascending. And the mountains, wherever they say they are, do not move in their places, and the earth’s crust still solid as always. But there is sweat and maybe love, she decides from the red sheets below. But if not love then at least a gentle exposure, which is something in itself for the dead.
She does not believe in ghosts. She believes in the dead and in secrets and in the way truth gathers more thickly around anchors to the unknown when she is looking left instead of right.
She holds her breath. The air moans again above her, soft but unboundaried, and travels through the dust that is trapped in that secret space between floors, between the neighbour’s suite above and her ceiling below, over eighty-year-old plaster and nails and joists still smelling of sawdust, and out into her room, spilling spirit.
Her sheets were once white, but she has had visions in the bedding aisle of a crowded super store and changed the flat and fitted ones to red, imagining, in the folding back of the white quilt, the peeling of a fruit to a soft warm centre like a burst pod, or a surgeon’s knife drawn along tight skin to a popped bright wounding. She wanted cinnamon, but they only came in red. So she is lying between her red sheets with the book beside her, when she wakes to this ghost in the groaning air. A climbing, unclothed little sound.
In the hall, in her room, up above and beside her bed, against her neck and in her hair the moan and moan and the moan. Her throat still full of her dream, her lungs, busy exchanging visions for wakened air, push up against the quickening lub dub. The book on the pillow sleeps on unaware, a loud boozy snore from its opened mouth, even when then, the ghost pulls back the quilt and slips in beside her, and she sees that she knows that she knows her dead face. And is pinned to the sheets by it.
But such a sweet, unpretentious little soul, warm and singing, carving out a sacred hollow in the air with her breathing, no rattling chains, or banshee screaming, just an unadorned ascending. And the mountains, wherever they say they are, do not move in their places, and the earth’s crust still solid as always. But there is sweat and maybe love, she decides from the red sheets below. But if not love then at least a gentle exposure, which is something in itself for the dead.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Sweet Sweetness
Meeting John McPhee was pretty cool, talking with Michael Silverblatt was super cool, but today these hands, these here very hands with their busted up and ragged nails touched the pages of the very first run of the very first book EVER printed - the Gutenberg Bible.
I almost cried right there in special collections.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Dear You
I'm digging in the garden looking for something to bury
a coffin to contain it
and put it away from me
sorting through my costumes for a little black dress and armband to match
with the fishnets that are hoping for an easy fuck to fix it all.
After I punch straight through the crust and out into China
he sits beside me on the couch and tells me to slip on my sadness,
to pull it over my head and wear it next to my skin for the day
-as if sunrise and sunset could be the walls of that box
and the allowing the body buried.
So I do, and it smells freshly laundered
worn and familiar
and ready for the wearing.
What it wanted all along.
A.
a coffin to contain it
and put it away from me
sorting through my costumes for a little black dress and armband to match
with the fishnets that are hoping for an easy fuck to fix it all.
After I punch straight through the crust and out into China
he sits beside me on the couch and tells me to slip on my sadness,
to pull it over my head and wear it next to my skin for the day
-as if sunrise and sunset could be the walls of that box
and the allowing the body buried.
So I do, and it smells freshly laundered
worn and familiar
and ready for the wearing.
What it wanted all along.
A.
Monday, October 5, 2009
For Now
While it may be true that I feel as though I need to schedule time to breathe, that heart break abounds back home while I am here instead, and that India is getting increasingly anxious about EVERYTHING, it is also true that I am about to go to bed with a glass of wine and a book and call it homework, and that I get paid enough to be here to just think and write and learn.
That's all I've got for you right now, kiddo.
That's all I've got for you right now, kiddo.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Don't you wanna know why it keeps getting hotter?
I've been sick. Again. With a fever of of 39.9 (that's over 103) and sweat rushing like a glacier melt between my breasts every time I sat up. There was a lot of vomiting. Shaking. Bizarre dreams and the guy above me funnelling his party noises straight into my bedroom on a Saturday night. There was me praying God would strike all the revellers sick and send them home. And me not knowing what to do, what to do, what to do in the middle of the night with the fever climbing and me not even knowing where the hospital was. And then the next day there was me being driven to the emergency for an I.V. and some tests and, good glory, I love me a saline drip.
The nicest thing about a kidney infection is that it isn't contagious. India would be no fun at all with one and someone's gotta keep up moral around here when the momma goes down. She's doing a pretty fine job of it. She told me yesterday that she had been too hot at school in her bright orange tights and skirt and so to fix the problem she took off her skirt. Problem fixed. The image of my baby girl in her long scrawny legs walking around class in her big runners and orange tights until the teacher noticed and told her to put her skirt back on gave me a whole lot of joy that's gonna last awhile.
The nicest thing about a kidney infection is that it isn't contagious. India would be no fun at all with one and someone's gotta keep up moral around here when the momma goes down. She's doing a pretty fine job of it. She told me yesterday that she had been too hot at school in her bright orange tights and skirt and so to fix the problem she took off her skirt. Problem fixed. The image of my baby girl in her long scrawny legs walking around class in her big runners and orange tights until the teacher noticed and told her to put her skirt back on gave me a whole lot of joy that's gonna last awhile.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
The Lowdown
I am, these last few weeks, living with all my emotions only one cell layer deep below my skin. I've been walking around in that place of all joy or all sadness, like in grief when there are no shadings to anything but black and white, happy or sad, confused or asleep. The move could not have gone better, the house could not be sweeter, the neighbours kinder. It has been like walking through a dream where every thing slips into place when you tap twice and wave your hands. There's magic in these here fingers; tell me your wishes and I'll make 'em come true.
But there is the sad, too: India crying and crying that she misses Canada, me finally having a house of my own but without sisters and a momma to bring over for coffee; all the missing; I still don't have a phone. And this weekend I was sick. Caught somewhere between sick as a dog and on death's doorway - maybe more like two blocks away than his doorway, but still, I could smell him from where I lay and it was awful. I spent hours curled like a peeled shrimp in the bottom of my tub trying to stay warm in the hottest water I could get until it drained through a leak somewhere and I filled it again until I ran it cold, but still I was shaking so much that I thought I might snap something. It was not fun. I wanted my momma. I wanted a friend I knew. I wanted to pick up the phone and have someone take me to the hospital, but I don't have health insurance until the first of the month so I toughed it out and India watched movies and played with the neighbour's friends' kids for an hour at the park and I still don't know who they were, but God bless them good.
But, John McPhee is coming to my class for a question and answer in September (hahahahahahahah. I know), the people here are knock-you-over-in-amazement friendly, my classes are going to be a-freaking-mazing and India's been invited to two birthday parties already. We are swimming around in thick goodness here. I feel blessed; I feel lonely as hell; I feel anchored; I feel worried as all get out; I feel brave.
And that's it. The way it goes. And right now, tonight, it is very good.
But there is the sad, too: India crying and crying that she misses Canada, me finally having a house of my own but without sisters and a momma to bring over for coffee; all the missing; I still don't have a phone. And this weekend I was sick. Caught somewhere between sick as a dog and on death's doorway - maybe more like two blocks away than his doorway, but still, I could smell him from where I lay and it was awful. I spent hours curled like a peeled shrimp in the bottom of my tub trying to stay warm in the hottest water I could get until it drained through a leak somewhere and I filled it again until I ran it cold, but still I was shaking so much that I thought I might snap something. It was not fun. I wanted my momma. I wanted a friend I knew. I wanted to pick up the phone and have someone take me to the hospital, but I don't have health insurance until the first of the month so I toughed it out and India watched movies and played with the neighbour's friends' kids for an hour at the park and I still don't know who they were, but God bless them good.
But, John McPhee is coming to my class for a question and answer in September (hahahahahahahah. I know), the people here are knock-you-over-in-amazement friendly, my classes are going to be a-freaking-mazing and India's been invited to two birthday parties already. We are swimming around in thick goodness here. I feel blessed; I feel lonely as hell; I feel anchored; I feel worried as all get out; I feel brave.
And that's it. The way it goes. And right now, tonight, it is very good.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Notes On Our Americanization
India and I have been "taking our coffee" on the porch after supper. She has her little brown mug full of sweet and milky decaf and I have a big brown one full of not. We sit in our rockers and dip our cookies and make up games usually involving the passing cars. A couple nights ago, India, with her little legs crossed at the knee said to me in a very grown-up passing the time, serious sort of voice, "I can't believe Obama smokes." Which was all sorts of wonderful, but especially so with her little lips pursed and her face covered in chocolate.
Friday, August 14, 2009
The Tree
The maple in the back holds the sun and shade in varying measures, a god blessing and withholding at will to us below its branches. A little breeze, a little wind, and the cool places shift with the ones that burn, and the rise and set of the sun that turns it all. Once, I had thought, here below, that I could gather the sun in little cups and shoot it down with a shot of shade to walk a straighter line. Or only learn to the point of an easy prediction the rustle of leaves and the bending of arms that let the light in. The comfort of those limbs.
But a tree is a codeword for God, a planted map of chloroform, rough bark, blood sap to the root of eternity. And the shushing of mystery as she moves.
What I mean is that I know nothing. Not hows or whys, yeses or nos, not even sin or safe. Only that like an animal, I need, snuffling around for bits in the ground, the grasses. And that I pray to the tree for mercy and she exhales. The patterning of us beneath, as we live between the soothed and burnt, writing a lacy word across our skin. Light and dark, we are coloured green.
But a tree is a codeword for God, a planted map of chloroform, rough bark, blood sap to the root of eternity. And the shushing of mystery as she moves.
What I mean is that I know nothing. Not hows or whys, yeses or nos, not even sin or safe. Only that like an animal, I need, snuffling around for bits in the ground, the grasses. And that I pray to the tree for mercy and she exhales. The patterning of us beneath, as we live between the soothed and burnt, writing a lacy word across our skin. Light and dark, we are coloured green.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
And he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel
I am her momma, so when she told me, all excited and flushed that she had found a snake in the garden, I lifted my eyebrows and practised my delighted with joy face. I went and had a look, and lo, and behold, there he was. Sitting on one of the fat big flower leaves all shiny with his sides panting in and out in this steam room heat. I did a very good job of not screaming, or jumping, or of letting the sound waboloahmobagadageta! out of my mouth. "Wow. Look at that," I said instead. "A snake where I had been planning on kneeling and digging in the dirt with my bare hands. Really. Wow." I think she bought it. We've been on the look out ever since, but for different reasons.
So, I don't have a lot of experiences with snakes. Actually, I only have "experience" with a snake. Singular. My uncle caught a garter once in a grassy field outside his house and showed it to all us kids playing in the backyard. It peed something yellow on his hand. Maybe pee. And then he let it go. And that was that. But, apparently, or so it seems, in Iowa, in my backyard even, snakes abound. My sister found a snake head in the campground shower that they were staying in. Just the head. And she made a face to show me what it's mouth looked like. Not pleasant. But worse than that was the bizarre and upsetting experience of the Amana Colonies. We all drove out there for a day of hand carved clocks, weaving looms, German sized schnitzel and all around old tyme fun, but instead we met a snake. A big shiny stripy thing that slithered sideways across the dirt road and shook its tail at us like it thought it was making a rattle. And it was amazing. And beautiful. And I gave it plenty of room to get where it was going without worrying about me. We all did. My whole family stopped to have a little look. And then we noticed a car, which was being driven slowly toward us gathered on the road, and we all "Oh, no'ed" and willed the snake to hurry itself along. My dad stood up straight and pointed toward the road so that the driver, an older woman with a white puff of grandma hair, could avoid it. She saw my dad. Saw the snake. And turned the wheels of her very slow moving car. But she turned them right toward the snake. She drove over it slowly and deliberately with all of us and all the kids watching in slo-mo horror, until the last second when we turned away to avoid seeing the inevitable pop that we would hear. When I looked back, the snake had contracted into a tightly coiled rug of itself. It spasmed and jerked and India celebrated that, "It's alive! Look momma, it's still moving!" I think someone swore. I think my dad shook his hands at the car and started to walk after it.
Later, I asked an elderly lady if there were any poisonous snakes in the area, thinking that the woman had maybe driven over it for our safety, but she said that there weren't and that in fact, she hadn't seen a snake there in ages, not since she was a girl.
One of my friends, a good friend that I've known for years, told me that he found a snake once in some rocks by a lake. A harmless little snake, he knew, but he had killed it when he found it. The meanness of it bothered him, and when I asked him why he had done it, he said that he thought that it was because he was afraid of it. And it surprised him, I could tell; he hadn't known that violence was sitting in him.
I read once in a book on child development that around the age of two or three toddlers begin to develop a natural fear of slithery things like snakes and bugs and spiders - a built in safety mechanism to give the kid a fighting chance in a world where bears or cougars or, I don't know, the flu might do them in. So it could be argued, I suppose, that the creepy feeling I get when I see a snake in my own yard is a natural thing. I've a right to be afraid. Maybe it's even natural to want to kill it, though I think we all know that's not going to happen with me. I just wonder though, about this tendency toward violence when we are afraid, about the different manifestations of violence we morph our reactions into, about my own hidden versions of violence. And fear, of course, about all sorts of things - like failure or insufficiency or shame or sex or embarrassment or loneliness or death or powerlessness. One day I might write a book. It might be called something like, "The Way I was Afraid," because I'm not great at titles. I would probably also like to put a snake on the cover.
So, I don't have a lot of experiences with snakes. Actually, I only have "experience" with a snake. Singular. My uncle caught a garter once in a grassy field outside his house and showed it to all us kids playing in the backyard. It peed something yellow on his hand. Maybe pee. And then he let it go. And that was that. But, apparently, or so it seems, in Iowa, in my backyard even, snakes abound. My sister found a snake head in the campground shower that they were staying in. Just the head. And she made a face to show me what it's mouth looked like. Not pleasant. But worse than that was the bizarre and upsetting experience of the Amana Colonies. We all drove out there for a day of hand carved clocks, weaving looms, German sized schnitzel and all around old tyme fun, but instead we met a snake. A big shiny stripy thing that slithered sideways across the dirt road and shook its tail at us like it thought it was making a rattle. And it was amazing. And beautiful. And I gave it plenty of room to get where it was going without worrying about me. We all did. My whole family stopped to have a little look. And then we noticed a car, which was being driven slowly toward us gathered on the road, and we all "Oh, no'ed" and willed the snake to hurry itself along. My dad stood up straight and pointed toward the road so that the driver, an older woman with a white puff of grandma hair, could avoid it. She saw my dad. Saw the snake. And turned the wheels of her very slow moving car. But she turned them right toward the snake. She drove over it slowly and deliberately with all of us and all the kids watching in slo-mo horror, until the last second when we turned away to avoid seeing the inevitable pop that we would hear. When I looked back, the snake had contracted into a tightly coiled rug of itself. It spasmed and jerked and India celebrated that, "It's alive! Look momma, it's still moving!" I think someone swore. I think my dad shook his hands at the car and started to walk after it.
Later, I asked an elderly lady if there were any poisonous snakes in the area, thinking that the woman had maybe driven over it for our safety, but she said that there weren't and that in fact, she hadn't seen a snake there in ages, not since she was a girl.
One of my friends, a good friend that I've known for years, told me that he found a snake once in some rocks by a lake. A harmless little snake, he knew, but he had killed it when he found it. The meanness of it bothered him, and when I asked him why he had done it, he said that he thought that it was because he was afraid of it. And it surprised him, I could tell; he hadn't known that violence was sitting in him.
I read once in a book on child development that around the age of two or three toddlers begin to develop a natural fear of slithery things like snakes and bugs and spiders - a built in safety mechanism to give the kid a fighting chance in a world where bears or cougars or, I don't know, the flu might do them in. So it could be argued, I suppose, that the creepy feeling I get when I see a snake in my own yard is a natural thing. I've a right to be afraid. Maybe it's even natural to want to kill it, though I think we all know that's not going to happen with me. I just wonder though, about this tendency toward violence when we are afraid, about the different manifestations of violence we morph our reactions into, about my own hidden versions of violence. And fear, of course, about all sorts of things - like failure or insufficiency or shame or sex or embarrassment or loneliness or death or powerlessness. One day I might write a book. It might be called something like, "The Way I was Afraid," because I'm not great at titles. I would probably also like to put a snake on the cover.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
The Thing About Time
Something happened to me on the way to summer: my heart stopped feeling so alone. And I've been meaning to tell you.
Being single is hard. Make no mistake. The world is set up for twos and at every turn you can find a slap on the face without even looking for it when you are newly one, but, (and this is where I can't decide if I'm at an advantage realizing this or not) being married is also hard. Teeth shatteringly hard. I know it full well. And, if pressed, if pushed to the wall with a gun to my head, I don't know if I could honestly say one was easier than the other, or more suited to me, or more likely to carve me beautiful. I just don't know, though I guess the point was never to find the easier. What I do know is what I have known for years: that single or not isn't the point. Whether I am in love and loved, or not and not there is goodness for the finding. My head knows it, could argue it till it falls off my shoulders, but my heart, that silly old girl, has a mind of her own. Not that I blame her, and she's done me fine in the past, but she follows as well as a cat on a leash, which is to say, not at all.
But back when I was smack dab in the middle of suddenly being without a husband and India was nine months old and not sleeping through the night and we were living with my parents', the smallest things, like going to a nephew's soccer game and winding my way through the devoted families, made me want to vomit. It was hard, and sometimes still is hard, not to feel constantly on the cusp, the fringe, the edge of life -- the one you're missing out on because you are single, unmarried, uncoupled, uneven. So, things like this would happen, and my brain would have a chat with my heart, and we would get it together, and then I would have to take India to the doctor's alone, or plan a holiday alone or hell, crawl into bed one more night alone, and I would strain and pull and try not to take that easy out by imagining that my life would be so much better if I were not alone but then, of course, eventually throw my hands up at it and fall flat on my face in the middle of it. Poor, silly heart.
But lately, things have changed, and I am cautiously hopeful. Maybe, in the language of my dad, I've been granted a special grace for a time; maybe, God knows I've got my hands full balancing school and mothering and a new city in a new country and so has lifted that off; or maybe, my slow and doe-eyed heart is listening more than she pretends to because, other huge life change induced fears aside, she's doing just fine on her own, imagines she will always do fine - come what may, alone or not, which, of course, she tells me in her smiling and secretive way, she always knew she would.
Being single is hard. Make no mistake. The world is set up for twos and at every turn you can find a slap on the face without even looking for it when you are newly one, but, (and this is where I can't decide if I'm at an advantage realizing this or not) being married is also hard. Teeth shatteringly hard. I know it full well. And, if pressed, if pushed to the wall with a gun to my head, I don't know if I could honestly say one was easier than the other, or more suited to me, or more likely to carve me beautiful. I just don't know, though I guess the point was never to find the easier. What I do know is what I have known for years: that single or not isn't the point. Whether I am in love and loved, or not and not there is goodness for the finding. My head knows it, could argue it till it falls off my shoulders, but my heart, that silly old girl, has a mind of her own. Not that I blame her, and she's done me fine in the past, but she follows as well as a cat on a leash, which is to say, not at all.
But back when I was smack dab in the middle of suddenly being without a husband and India was nine months old and not sleeping through the night and we were living with my parents', the smallest things, like going to a nephew's soccer game and winding my way through the devoted families, made me want to vomit. It was hard, and sometimes still is hard, not to feel constantly on the cusp, the fringe, the edge of life -- the one you're missing out on because you are single, unmarried, uncoupled, uneven. So, things like this would happen, and my brain would have a chat with my heart, and we would get it together, and then I would have to take India to the doctor's alone, or plan a holiday alone or hell, crawl into bed one more night alone, and I would strain and pull and try not to take that easy out by imagining that my life would be so much better if I were not alone but then, of course, eventually throw my hands up at it and fall flat on my face in the middle of it. Poor, silly heart.
But lately, things have changed, and I am cautiously hopeful. Maybe, in the language of my dad, I've been granted a special grace for a time; maybe, God knows I've got my hands full balancing school and mothering and a new city in a new country and so has lifted that off; or maybe, my slow and doe-eyed heart is listening more than she pretends to because, other huge life change induced fears aside, she's doing just fine on her own, imagines she will always do fine - come what may, alone or not, which, of course, she tells me in her smiling and secretive way, she always knew she would.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
For the Night Shifter
Dear Little Knives Seeking Sore and Wounded Hearts,
Pardon my French, but it's time you fuck off. I don't mean to be crass, but you seem to have not heard the prayers for strength and peace and "your will not mine," so I'm giving it to you straight.
Enough.
Fuck off.
You don't belong here, so get your damn feet off the coffee table and your sorry ass out the door, you poor and withering fool. That we breathe in gasps, taste our hearts in our mouths, feel our stomachs turn to stone at the sight of you, at the thought of you, at the out of a blue of you, damned little knives, means only that we are not yet dead and so nowhere near to lost.
You and your razor edge, your fine slice, your blooming blood in a bud of split skin are a midnight's flowering, and though the dead will rise, death will not. You are not the only lion prowling for a meal. Light on the horizon. And it will devour you whole.
And did you catch that part where I told you to fuck off?
Pardon my French, but it's time you fuck off. I don't mean to be crass, but you seem to have not heard the prayers for strength and peace and "your will not mine," so I'm giving it to you straight.
Enough.
Fuck off.
You don't belong here, so get your damn feet off the coffee table and your sorry ass out the door, you poor and withering fool. That we breathe in gasps, taste our hearts in our mouths, feel our stomachs turn to stone at the sight of you, at the thought of you, at the out of a blue of you, damned little knives, means only that we are not yet dead and so nowhere near to lost.
You and your razor edge, your fine slice, your blooming blood in a bud of split skin are a midnight's flowering, and though the dead will rise, death will not. You are not the only lion prowling for a meal. Light on the horizon. And it will devour you whole.
And did you catch that part where I told you to fuck off?
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Right Now
If I knew how to make the word "OVERWHELMED" flash in neon lights on the screen for you, I would. Everything is good and great and perfect, and I'm scared as all get out.
Nothing to do but live it out like the lady said, and ride it on, baby.
Nothing to do but live it out like the lady said, and ride it on, baby.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Also
My mom, dad, daughter, two sisters, brother, uncle and aunt are in the motor home in a campground in South Dakota after a loooong day of driving. The adults are drinking, my dad is playing some crazy Latin rock music from the 90's and teaching India dance moves that will win her friends and influence people. Possibly the wrong people, but people who will love her.
I love my crazy family.
I love my crazy family.
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