has it been almost a week? it is not for lack of things to say, but for lack of focus on which one.
but a picture, at least, until focus shows up.
{the only frame that showed up on this roll of tmax100 from my friend's yashica. this frame also took a beating in the tank, thanks to cheap reels (temper tantrum!). i like the mess, though. just this once.}
I’m suddenly going to be requiring much poetry, for whatever reason. Like, two posts after I just said I don’t even know what a poem is. Now, rhythm and stanza and enjambment please, and frequently.
But poetry isn’t actually what this post is about. The above poem is.
Kind of.
I picked up this book at the library, and it was all I could do to keep myself from making wildly inappropriate noises of bliss back in the children’s section as I read through it. The funny thing about this particular poem is that I got it (ironic, of course, connecting to a poem about disconnect—gehhhht it?). Countless times I’ve felt just that—my words “disintegrating,” victims to an utter lack of connection. There is this ridiculous lack of connection everywhere! Quite depressing.
But 108 Sun Salutations later, I have a new perspective. There is a ridiculous amount of connection everywhere! Quite . . . inspiring. A community event at this yoga center, in which dozens of us moved, sweat, and breathed in unity for two hours, helped me remember. Connection! (It also helped me to get some really friggin sore arms.) There was even an i-want-to-stare-at-you-all-day-because-you’re-so-gorgeous woman next to me with a tattoo of the flower of life. In my ignorance, I did not recognize it, and she explained it to me as a representation of the interconnectedness of all. I nodded, and in my head, shrieked a giddy “connection!”
Except I still really like the poem. And so, hooray for disconnect, too. To be fair.
Waxing moon, crazy me. Just last night I told m’girl that I have two kinds of crabby: waning moon (woe is me) and waxing moon (everything! now! must!). She said, “the moon is waxing, right?”
I stay up too late, trying to desperately attend to all of the inspiration that speeds around my head. Sometimes I feel like a pack of hyenas upon myself, scavenging whatever is left, whatever we can get from the dead carcass of me.
The other night, around 10 PM, I felt tired. There is this wise zen-like woman in there somewhere that whispered, Burnout, love. This is burnout. Rest your body and your mind. You have all the time in the world. Take care of you. And probably, also, she said ommmmm.
But the loud, obnoxious one said, Burnout’s a stupid FUCK! A bitch I don’t have time for! A poor player that struts and frets her hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more! I’m not sure why Shakespeare was brought into it, but the loud one won, and I developed some film.
I just can’t help but like that bitchy one. She brings me things like this:
all 3 photos: tri-x 400 pushed a stop in mamiya c330 tlr
I’ve written those (first) two words into a poem—abandoned and reworked and abandoned and rediscovered and (you get the idea)—since I was sixteen. They have new meaning for me every time I write them.
Tonight, my newly-formed guitar string finger calluses tap-tap-tapped on the keyboard, as I began to love on my little-novel-that-could again. I wrote: Momentarily awakened in the moonless night . . .
And on cue, Shortcake woke up, calling to me from the bed. “Mommy?” I ran to her, snuggled up and kissed her cheek. “Mommy’s here,” I whispered. Sleepily, she put her arm on mine, and said, smiling, “Oh. There y’are.”
Then, Dimples woke up, febrile and coughing, with a sore ear. After ibuprofen and forehead kisses, he smiled and said, “Mom? My number one favorite thing is drawing.”
I wrote all of the above last night, and returned to Dimples’ side, eventually falling asleep with my ass on his floor and my head on his bed. And so I don’t actually know where I was going with this train of thought. Which reminds me. This weekend, traveling home from a blissful day alone on a snowy beach, I got lost in the boonies of Wisconsin. I ended up on a windy, hilly road in a thick forest, and completely lost my sense of direction. It was perfect. I was so far gone, and did not want to be found. Except that I really had to pee. Which reminds me. I’ve got to tell you about our lost-backpacking-in-a-blizzard-spring-break-trip sometime. Which reminds me. Of this, which I’ve posted before, maybe last spring:
![[img024.jpg]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_y6xhGdKb01A/SUgR71OMR7I/AAAAAAAAByY/whZ522OarZA/s1600/img024.jpg)
tri-x in holga, dusty neg scan, Mowgli
There is no escape. You can’t be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. You want to get drunk, so you have to accept the hangover. You say yes to the sunlight and your pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing, don’t try to lie to yourself. You are not a solid citizen, you are not a Greek, you are not harmonious, or the master of yourself, you are a bird in the storm. Let it storm! Let it drive you! How much you have lied! A thousand times, even in your poems and books, you have played the harmonious man, the wise man, the happy, the enlightened man. In the same way, men attacking in war have played heroes, while their bowels twitched. My God, what a poor ape, what a fencer in the mirror, man is -particularly the artist – particularly the poet – particularly myself!
Herman Hesse, from Wandering
tri-x in mamiya 645af pushed a stop. shortcake in a friend's playroom (best playroom ever!)
My brain is an absolute mess.
The kind of mess where you don’t even know where to start. Not that I’ve ever been any good at cleaning. Not that I intend to declutter this cranial disaster. I’m just letting you know, in case you don’t just automatically default to that assumption.
And so besides showing you this (awesome, if I do say so myself) photo, I defer you to Shel. No, really. I want you to seek out The Missing Piece, even if you’ve read it a million times before. And read it. Aloud. And maybe even sing the singing parts.
I like books with lots of big words. But this truly is one of my favorites. I get something different from it every time I read it. Ahem. I mean, read it to the kids.
35mm delta 3200 scan
While editing my steaming pile of NaNoWriMo the other night, I came across this sentence: “I hovered in the silent tension between my prayer and the hope for an answer.”
I applauded myself for one good sentence (thank heavens) in a sea of trash. Then I read something a friend had written, a similar sentiment of waiting and of prayer.
It is an interesting place to be suspended. And it is not actually comfortable. It is the place between winter and spring. March 3rd. It is the place before abadoning hope, the place before you realize what you’ve known all along, the place before the un-answer. And I’m not entirely sure what to do here.
So I’m just waiting, hands crossed in my lap, feet swinging. And I don’t even know for what.
There are those who would misteach us that to stick in a rut is consistency – and a virtue; and that to climb out of the rut is inconsistency – and a vice. (Mark Twain)
I often chastise myself for my inconsistency, despite my apparent tendency to praise it. Or maybe it’s the other way around? And I don’t, in self-pity, mean inconsistency in skills, but in interests.
This is not yet another defense or justification of my fickle-ness. (There are far too many of those on this blog.) I’m just sharing my thoughts. I won’t even quote Emerson. I promise. But I might quote William Blake. Yes. I believe I shall.
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained. (William Blake)
I do not have weak desires. And I have many—some yet restrained, some not. Here is where I am, regarding a few of the unrestrained ones: 1) in love with this film, and with putting bits of light and shadow on it. 2) in love with my novel again, and with fixing and strengthening it. 3) in love with this new guitar, and with building up these finger calluses. (not only can i sort of play and sing my funny little nonsense song, but i can also sing and play “blowin’ in the wind,” and so how sexy is that?) 4) in love with pencils and ink and watercolor paper, and working on a new drawing. 5) moonlighting, obviously.
When I think about it, there is this annoying grown-up in me that wags a finger and says things like, “Stop this frivolous nonsense!” and “Do the dishes!” and “Go to bed before 1:30 AM!” and “What is the point?” and “If you would just focus, maybe you’d finish something.” and “Be responsible. Make money.” But when they are quiet, which is most of the time, there is myth and art and music. And I can’t quite remember why that is a problem. Myth and Art and Music! I don’t want to remember why that is a problem.
So, to answer the annoying, finger-wagging, grown-up-me; there is no point, really—that is the recent epiphany. The only purpose of all of “this” is simply to share my experience of It with a capital I. If my whore-ish muse wants to flit and float, who am I to stop her? This is how I experience it: an overwhelm of inspiration and emotion and passion and . . . everything. And I do what I can to express that experience, simply because I want to. It’s never enough, I’m never enough, it will never be enough, and yet it is. And I am.
So there.
(tri-x 400 mamiya 645af)
(wrote this last night, so today actually means yesterday, and tomorrow means today, and whoa. trippy.)
Julie. The Louise to my Thelma. Julie so kindly got naked for me the other day so I could mess with some ideas I’ve got regarding this little tube sock problem obsession interest. Some stay-at-home-moms go to scheduled playgroups. You know, whatever, to each their own. I’ve still got some rolls to develop from this day, and some more ideas to play around with, and I wasn’t planning on sharing this right now, but . . .
the things I meant to do right now aren’t workiiiiiiing!!! None of them. Wonky ink in the printer and an empty bottle of developer and a guitar that won’t arrive until tomorrow and a twitchy brain. So, here it is.
STORIES!!!!
is the word of the day (week?) on the blog. I feel like I keep coming up with keywords. “Threshold” and “Illusion” and now, “Stories.” That’s so fucking annoying. (Ooooh, hoo hoo! I’m in one of those moo-hooods!) But annoying or not, that’s the way of it. (And now I’m going to picture Pee Wee Herman doing his word-of-the-day thing that he did. Great. Thanks a lot.)
Julie makes me think of the word “stories.” The woman has got. stories. And they just keep coming! I’ve begun to think that either she is lying about all of her adventures, or that she really is that much older than me (heh heh), or that she has clones that go out live and then come back to report to her regularly.
Besides being wildly entertaining, it inspires me. It makes me think about how I live this life that is presented to me, every moment raw and teeming with opportunity. Do I devour it? Savour both the illusion (there I go again!) and the clarity? Drink in the true experiences, despite their threat to this farce of stability and normalcy?
Now, I don’t think that living your life as a good story means actively looking for trouble, but it does make me reconsider my definition of “mistake.” It seems that the Great Stories of my life (and others) have been those times when Life has presented us with something, and we’ve accepted the offer, ignoring the fear of a possible mistake. Otherwise, it is a sad story ruled by empty routine and fear.
Also, I think, those mundane everyday things, like the whirlwind of snow-globe-like snow blowing today, or the trip to the grocery store in which the strange happy-lovey force between everyone was palpable, or the millisecond-prolonged glance, or the star-shaped center of the apple, or the laundry, can be a Great Stories when they are lived attentively. And then of course, there are the Great Stories told by nature—childbirth, tragedy, love, death—that sometimes give us no choice in the matter of attention.
What’s your story?
tri-x film in mamiya 645af. mowgli and a girlie friend.
Today I’m thinking about illusions. The illusions of vision, of art, of social role, of relationship, of should, of connection, of separation, of possession, of acceptance, of proper, of religion, of comfort, of security, of emotion, of praise, of beauty, of insult. Hey! Another one of those lists. I haven’t gone all there-is-no-spoon yet, but I do think I’ll go on a quantum physics kick, now that you mention it.
I’m thinking about how we can become so governed by those illusions, and about what would happen if we . . . weren’t. If we accepted their function when appropriate, loved the illusions for what they were, and then gratefully let them go in due time. “Arigato Zaisho,” if you know what I mean.
I’m thinking, and letting go of a few other . . . thinkings. Oooh, I have a lot more to say here, but I’m operating under the illusion of time, so I must go.
Have the illusion of a happy weekend!
