Activity, Art, Parenting, Poetry

Football, kids, Anne Sexton, Nintendo DS

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Driving home from attending a college football game, I traveled with my kids, who had spent the day with a set of grandparents, back to our home city. My daughter was asleep in the backseat, iPod touch probably still playing. My son was playing a word game on his Nintendo DSi XL. I had finished with listening to the football post-game show on the radio, and had switched to an iPod playlist of authors reading their own work. To the sound of Anne Sexton reading poems on the car stereo, my son asked me questions about his game.

Had there been a transcript of one particular point, it would have read like this:

Oh, darling! Born in that sweet birthday suit
and having owned it and known it for so long,
now you must watch high noon enter–

[Son: “Papa, what’s a word for a food that needs sauce?” Me: “Barbecue, maybe?”]

noon, that ghost hour.
Oh, funny little girl–this one under a blueberry sky,

[Son: “It doesn’t work.” Me: “How about spaghetti?” Son: “How do you spell ‘spaghetti’?” Me: “S-p-a-g-h-e-t-t-i.” Son: “That works!”]

this one! How can I say that I’ve known
just what you know and just where you are?

It’s not a strange place, this odd home

[Son: “Papa, how do you spell ‘weight’?” Me: “Like in, heavy?” Son: “Yes.” Me: “W-e-i-g-h-t.”]

where your face sits in my hand
so full of distance,
so full of its immediate fever.

Activity, Poetry, Writing

Remembering stones

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Sculpture on NW Lovejoy portraying the I-405 Fremont Bridge.

I like to walk long distances,

Stones in my pockets, and subpockets.

I know them each by how they clack and scrape.

Other, smarter, faster people shed stones from choice or shoddy pockets.

I like the feel of them crammed, how they complain or chatter.

Each step of mine heavier, a fall forward, foot pressed to ground to stop the fall, stomp, stand up.

It says “I am here”.

Step and fall and stomp and stand and stronger.

Though sometimes I just up and run for the fuck of it.

Art, Poetry, Writing

A chant.

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Pen to paper. Fingertips to keyboard.

Like thousands, millions, billions high primates before.

A boon, a propitiation to no one around.

I choose not to go numb, though stumbling clumsy and thick.

And frowning at what has been scrawled or tapped more often than smiling.

But I choose to try. To last.

Poetry, Writing

Autumn thoughts for mid-summer

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We each took a rake to a corner of our garden
And dragged the dead leaves, pulling grass tugging root,
Which made Earth flinch.
Then plunged our hands into the separate piles, clammy inside but warmer than the air’s bite.
And laughed as our fingers grazed deep and nabbed broad leaves almost whole.
“These I will share!” Each laugh from a corner an instigation to the other.
And we held leaves for review by the other.
In the leaves and detritus we christened meaning and belonging,
Then left with dirty fingernails.

Poetry, Writing

The heart is a potato.

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The heart is a potato.
Carried with you, talisman against famine in your breast pocket, pants pocket, skirt pocket, hip pocket, purse.
Next to your body, always warm, as warm as you.
Rough skin against your smooth skin. Pocked. Divots. Stems. Sprouts to be snapped.
You forget it’s there. Starchy. Filling. You forget.
Takes heat beneath the sun. Gathers heat inside the oven door.
Its rind crackles, it shudders about to burst.
Cut lightly on the rind and it blossoms and steams out to meet you.
Bready and sweet.
Plastic butter knife in your hand you ask do you want to share?
Cold pat of butter watch it lather and bubble and soak in.
Both are smiling, both of you glad. Dive in! With a fork, never a spoon.
Minutes, hours, weeks, years done.
Cool it down. Cram the fluff back into the casing.
Only you now. Tenderly pack with patience the settling starch.
Barely tug at its skin, pull the lip over the spuddy envelope.
Lick your thumb and run it along the gash’s edge.
Press it shut. Does the seal hold?
Back into your pocket.
Run your thumb along the seam when you want.
And you want.

Parenting, Poetry, Reading

A gal I once kissed died today.

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We’ve all had moments where the conversation starts: “Hey, do you remember so-and-so?”

Answer: “Oh, sure!” Cue mental memory of last interaction with that person. What the person was like, what you were like. If fond memories (almost always), a sweet haze surrounds the evocation.

“So-and-so is dead.”

Cue giant scythe swooshing down and cleanly slicing the reverie, slicing the moment to something horrible and abruptly sad.

That didn’t happen today. But I got word someone I once kissed died after a protracted fight with cancer. Same age, endured through her birthday last week and then surrendered following a visit from long-time friends and surrounded by family.

When someone we know dies, we become the sole caretakers of those moments. That person can no longer speak up with a smile or a head shake and say “Oh, yeah! I was there with you.” Even minor moments. A stark experience.

In high school, she was wavo/goth. By junior/senior year, pancake makeup, clove cigarettes. Usually second or third banana. Content to be in the background.

I went to college in another city for two years. Moved back into my hometown where she was by then in regular social rotation with a pocket of long-held friends.

The anthropology of dating was never my forté. I was a keen observer, but a lousy participant in picking up/acting on cues. Shy, easily daunted despite tendency toward extroversion and saying severe things very loudly to the acclaim/dismay of those within earshot.

So, in this small social circle she was initially unattached. She had also really blossomed. Dropped weight, got confident about her appearance. Went out into the sun. Got a retail job. A decent car that she painted colorful fish on. Strong sense of humor. Good listener. Fun to be around – good with a supplemental joke to follow someone else’s start. I got interested.

She had no problem dating. One of her boyfriends was a Deadhead guy who was the typical tightly-wound “It’s all good” mellow affectation, VERY PARTICULAR about the type of mellow to be, and who became highly agitated when his sensibilities were challenged. 22 years later, I wonder if he detected my circling around her and reacted to it, or if I was laying topical landmines for him to step on because I was jealous.

Eventually, I had a chance. I invited her to watch a movie with me at my parents’ house out in the country. I had just moved back and transferred to the hometown state university and hadn’t found a place yet. Can’t remember the movie we watched. She was wearing capri pants and I spent much of the movie semi-absent-mindedly stroking her lower leg, which she had rested on my lap.

I drove her back home to her apartment, dropped her off, and we kissed in the doorway. She put her hands in my pants pockets and said: “Oh, what have we here?” “Keys” I answered with a smile. She laughed. No invite in. Never kissed again.

I was still hanging around in group settings, sometimes hanging out in restaurants. I was still interested. I talked the ears off of mutual friends (thank you for your patience). They knew it wouldn’t work even if it DID happen. I kinda knew it, too. But I still liked her. Hadn’t dated for a while other than her. It was a goal.

She finally admitted to others that she wasn’t interested in me, but did like having me around for the attention. Mutual friends told her it was mean to waste my time like that. She reacted with a shrug. *GASP* was my reaction upon this report. Still I continued to hang around. Can’t recall for how long.

A sister of hers was getting married. Among her sisters, she was the only one NOT yet married or engaged. The Catholic wedding was on a Saturday, but she asked me to go as a date. Met a lot of her family, dull as I was, I was clearly a beard or being used to keep the pressure off her a bit. In advice column parlance, in this phase I had the knack of falling into the “friend” track instead of the “boyfriend” track.

During the wedding, someone had taped letters onto the soles of the groom’s shoes so when he kneeled for Communion it said “Send Help”. Really, really funny.

Later that night, I was to carpool with my brother to meet our parents for a weekend at the beach. As I drove with her to the reception, I mentioned looking forward to the beach. She got huffy and said: “Well, if you’re looking forward to the beach so much, you DON’T have to go the reception!” Then the weeks of being kept around, being a prop boyfriend/fiancé, not getting a thank you for sitting through a wedding all fell into place and I felt a bit of a spine forming. “Okay. I’ll drop you off, then.” Did just that. She slammed the door. I couldn’t wait to tell my friends. Drove to one friend’s workplace. We cracked up. Reported later that she was FURIOUS for days afterward, and they reinforced to her that I got fed up of being dragged around.

Eventually I think she moved to Seattle. Then a long while later I heard she got married.

A year ago I heard she had cancer, and that it was severe.

A few days ago mutual friends gave updates on her condition: fatal. She’s a mother and wife.

One of the friends posted a recent photo of her. The trend toward coming out of her shell continued. She looked radiant, proud, even prettier than when I knew her.

I feel for her grieving spouse and children. A horrible loss for them, and an awful burden for her, to know you will die and not get to see your children become adults. This children you love losing a parent. Your spouse burdened by your permanent absence.

My memories of her will remain true to the time. I’m still proud of my little stand, slow-coming though it was, but I’ve no illusions: that moment in no way fully reflects on the people we each were and became.

News and contemplations like this can lead to new resolve to strive for something inward, or for something outward. As it does in the plots of books and movies. Even now, though, through the sympathy and sadness I still sense myself wanting what I want, as before. Am feeling the impermanence of things more than usual. Slightly increases the resolve of “capture the day” when it comes to projects and other ambitions, but that could fluctuate based on what’s on tv or other distractions. And had the last few lines of Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool” running through my head today:

              We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

Goodbye, S. I regret not knowing you better, but am glad to know you became a mother with a supportive spouse and children. I wish them well, and can imagine the depth of their loss knowing an aspect of you (and being drawn to it), though I will never meet them. Life goes on. Until it doesn’t.

Poetry, Reading, Writing

Attunement by a lusty old man

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I’ve been re-reading a favorite book, Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon, a massive elegy for the sublime in literature. Its tone of defiance and celebration of great art, yelling like Lear at the overwhelming storm of dying standards and political correctness. has always brought great pleasure.

And I hated, as Bloom did, what he labeled “The School of Resentment” — literature critics with political agendas that trounce aesthetics. The late 80s and early 90s were overrun by the massive overshoot by multiculturalists who went beyond consideration and reflection on other cultures to a mad competitive rush to see who could be the most sensitive over the self-identified labels of the day (generally fine) and on behalf of categories they did not belong to (okay in theory, hideous in practice).

And among the things I enjoy now, 20 years later, is the world feels as if the School of Resentment has significantly faded. Gone is the Carry Nation prudery and groupthink of anti-sex writers like Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. The feminist field is now as wide and diverse in approaches as it should be, given its constituents are more than half the population.

I credit this book for helping recover my love of reading after graduating college. Showing that it was important to read for reading’s sake – as I’d spent the last several years reading in anticipation of quizzes and discussions and dissecting the works in graded essays and other projects. Harold Bloom and Camille Paglia helped me recover my ability to enjoy and seek out works for their ambition and their strangeness, and that I could fly by the nets of identity politics and engage with art of lasting merit.

But Bloom himself.

The videos I’ve seen of him have been of a man who probably looked 60 by his late 30s yet has held steady within his sturdy torso, resembling a bag of profound sighs (though he rarely sighs). A melodious, despairing, challenging voice that suits his authorial tone. He proclaims himself “Bloom Brontosaurus Bardolator” as a badge, a sense of resignation, and “a certain fury”. He rarely looks at the interviewer or the camera. He obviously tasks his brain with searches and phrases too much for visual courtesies, though he is perfectly gracious in his words to people.

Naomi Wolf famously accused him of hitting on her while she was an undergraduate student at Yale. If true, doubtless a horrifying, macabre experience, and she’s entitled to her rage at the unethical behavior. Yet his alleged line to her was so sublimely skeezy (“You have the aura of election upon you”), the dirty old woman/man part within us all can’t help but feel a little moved.

But, all allegations, and who has NOT had a shady moment in the “Just trying to get laid” department?

Resolutely fond of him I will remain. Sorry for that Yoda syntax. I remain fond and grateful to the man.

 

Poetry, Writing

Waking from a nap

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I open the window to let in the sound of the rain.
Gust falls.
A police siren.
Subsides. A train whistle to the east.
Another heavy burst. Then quiet, steady.

Passing car in the alley splays the steady runoff down the pavement.
Dry room. Fond room.
Another heave of the wind brings water through the screen,
Onto the windowsill, onto the floor.
Worry later.

Poetry, Writing

The Soul Selects Her/His Own Society

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The Soul Selects Her Own Society
by Emily Dickinson

The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —

Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —

I’ve known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone —

 

Socializing when you don’t want to is a drag. Even when socializing isn’t a dreary duty, the people delightful, the occasion a privilege.

Yes, everyone feels that way at times.

I really enjoy writing. The concentration. But I need to be away from people I know to do it. If only there were some way to easily close the valves Dickinson writes of, then open them again at will without feeling/being an asshole.