For most it’s an exertion of social bonding.
A selfish cascade of endorphins firing.
For me, it’s a source of furtive promises and loss.
A transaction of fulness, absence the cost.
Social bonding to be broken
Keep it tight
Fresh warm words to refresh and replace echoes nursed for so long.
Keep the bedding closed tight. Don’t let the cold air in.
Let the words, soft words, stay and settle for a little while. A little while.
Knew it
I knew when I felt it, that want and satisfaction had rushed
To each other, swirled and filled each other
And made life, for a time, calm.
Home loam
Several conversations and experiences with friends along the lines of “I’m not where I grew up” have led to these thoughts. I didn’t spend much time on this.
Home loam
My lungs and brain compress when in my hometown.
Every block drizzled with treacle and sour gravy.
Enough! Defy as it saps your bigness down to slavery
Until a forgotten tether tugs and summons you.
Red brown sleeping mouth draws in the box with corded tongues.
Ground fluffed stuffs it shut, you step away with others to quibble over funds.
Cede it all care for nothing,
Eager to get yourself away.
Eat as a guest with caution, deny the soil and stores that
Nourished you. Strive to not let the location of
Death define you. Vainly
Evade that someone’s home loam will compost you.
There once was a man from Nantucket
There once was a man from Nantucket,
Who wished that he had a bucket.
He carried the sand
In his left and right hands,
And when he got to the end he had nuthin’.
Why I will see “Hercules” starring The Rock
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is awesome. He always elevates whatever material he’s given. Brett Ratner is a mediocre director and a dimwit. Despite Ratner, I will probably go see “Hercules”. Why? Four big reasons:
1.) “Conan the Barbarian” is one of the best, knowingly dumb, macho muscle movies ever made. The DVD commentary between director John Milius and Arnold Schwarzenegger is hilarious. The world needs a successor. I doubt it will be this movie, but it’s important to keep hope alive.
2.) I had no interest in the OTHER Hercules movie that came out. Its trailer didn’t seem to have anything to do with the Hercules myths at all.
3.) In contrast, while this looks, at best, dorky – I was pleased to see the trailer showed ACTUAL ELEMENTS from Hercules’ myths including Cerebus, the Hydra, The Erymanthian Boar and Nemean Lion. (“Ah! Good!” I said aloud as these things showed up in the trailer.) Will this Hercules also clean the shit of thousands of animals that fill the Augean Stables by changing the course of a river? I HOPE SO!
4.) Way back in elementary school, I scripted out a film strip rendition of Hercules’ story that I didn’t complete in gifted mutant class (we called it PACE back then, later it was TAG. I don’t know what PACE stood for.) so I have a desire to read/tell his story to this day. He has a reputation as a brute, but actually his saga is more about the wit and might of man overcoming the chthonic amorality of nature. And kicking ass.
Hotel points
In a hotel
I never catch a movie at the start, it is at
Two-thirds left, or half, or fifteen minutes, or credits.
I never take the whole bed. Only half, or the edge.
The stacked pillows on the other side
Unmolested/unadjusted.
Bleach odors prove a person worked through,
Cleaned and folded and smoothed
This bed among dozens or hundreds today.
At times I don’t want her to do extra work,
And hang Do Not Disturb on the door.
More often, to my shame,
I don’t want a pickup, but want
To know another person walked through,
Did their thing, and left.
Like at a home instead of an asylum.
Once I’m in, and set my bags down,
The only laughs are mine.
The only smells are mine.
The only sighs and curses are mine.
The only browsings are mine.
The only detritus mine.
The only heart beating, steady or erratic, is mine.
The only sloth is mine.
The only staring mine.
The only rush of water is mine,
Or my neighbor’s.
Throb
Throb without.
Pulse within.
Fifty Shades of Anne Gray Sexton
I finished reading Anne Sexton: A Biography by Diane Wood Middlebrook. It was insightful, and the second Sexton-related biography I read this year. The first was written by Anne Sexton’s eldest daughter, Linda: Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother.
I enjoyed the Middlebrook biography more, but both played off each other well. Some thoughts:
1.) A Biography caused a stir
when it was released, for outing a sexual relationship between Anne
Sexton and one of her later psychiatrists. Among the immediate problems
that come to mind: conducting an affair during the scheduled therapy
hour as part of therapy and charging for it. Caused concern among her
friends at the time, and remains an eyebrow-raiser now.
2.)
More controversially, A Biography relies on many hours of recorded
sessions between Anne Sexton and the main psychiatrist of her life, Dr.
Martin Orne. The material was used with the permission of Linda Sexton,
her mother’s literary executor, and the book has a foreword by Dr.
Orne to put things in context. No big deal. Auxiliary family members had
a problem with it, Linda sanctioned it. Good insights resulted.
Middlebrook did a good job using fragments to shed light on Sexton’s
life and work.
3.) Anne
Sexton’s poetry started in her 20s, at the suggestion of Dr. Orne as a
way to deal with her mental and emotional issues. It helped.
4.) It is a romantic notion to regard the artist as shaman, one who has a
schizophrenic break and becomes shifted from the rest of our humdrum
reality. That has a bit of bearing on Sexton’s creativity and
productivity. Primarily, though, that romantic notion gets set aside as
true blue mental illness seems an outright pain in the ass with
devastating consequences for the sufferer, family, and friends. It’s not
that the person is ahead of his/her time so much as the wiring is off, leading
to sparks of brilliance than extended short circuiting and shutdowns.
The upcycle of mania may be fun. The downcycle is hellish.
5.) Middlebrook was trustworthy in both the conveyance of Sexton’s life and interpretation of her art.
6.) I admire Dr. Orne’s willingness to endorse use of the confidential
material, and especially admire Linda Sexton’s willingness to share a
variety of personally embarrassing and harrowing details in her own book
and allowing Middlebrook to probe and bring things to light the rest of
the family would likely object to. It mattered to understand the art.
Proximity
I am fullest by the ocean. The churning the muck and the mess.
