holy poet

I’ve been reading a memoir, Holy Cow, and I came across a line that begged me to write it down. It goes like this: “Some stop to shave their heads, for every hair shed is ten thousand lives that don’t have to be lived.” I stopped on that page 2 days ago and when I picked the book back up my eyes did the same thing they did the last time, reread it, then reread it, then quietly toss it around on my tongue.

That line. I don’t know how you can ignore it. It’s haunting and visceral and itself lives ten thousand lives. The author is talking about the Khmbh Mela, an event where Hindus go en masse to bathe in the Ganges on a particular day to wash their souls clean. The details of the event get lost on me. I keep thinking about all the hairs I’ve ever shed causally, all the lives laying about my apartment, spared from pain and anguish, barred from love and glory.

That line, or its sentiment, will make a poem for me I think. It’s funny, how this writing stuff, this trying on of different forms, is churning and spurring poems in me again. I thought poetry was lost to me, gone to some other place where words and metaphors and images go to die. But poetry keeps coming back and I keep thinking of what Rita Dove once told me, “there is room for us all at the table.” Was she right? I don’t know. But poems and poetry keep looping about in my mind, in my world. They haven’t quite come down off my bookshelves, but lines keep coming to me. I wrote a whole poem last week, just like that, bam. And it was spurred by one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, Elizabethtown.

Poetry was a world I didn't understand wholely and at times I think I distanced myself from it even while living within it. My teachers wanted me to dig in and go to places in my writing that scared me, places that weren't perfect with eractic images and juxaposed lines and tossed about methaphors. I couldn't do it and so I stopped, just gave up. I couldn't let myself in my poetry be free. I couldn't give up the structure and comfort I thought I needed to make poetry, or maybe life, make sense.

The free flowing, hippy trippy life sounds good to me lately. Peace Corps or Mother India with sweat and heat and dirt seem like paradise compared to our overpriced, gas guzzilngly, unconnected lives. Sometimes I just wish to jump in and let the mud fly. I never do, but maybe poems are my mud flinging, my day at play. The author of Holy Cow is looking for spiritualness in whatever form feels most comfortable. I understand her plight, I’m looking for a writing form in whatever form works. She’s revering cows and making me think Yeats needs to revisit my bedside.

i now have a love/hate relationship with chocolate

Exhausted would be a lite word. I craved my bed from an hour away, stuck in my car on 95 telling myself that if I got pulled over for speeding, I'd just tell the cop, "Osifer, I'm just so tired. I gotta get home and go to bed. You'd really rather me speed than fall asleep while driving, correct?" And then I'd bat my eyelashes and he'd let me go.

Needless to say I crashed as soon as I laid down and when I slowly came out of the grogginess that was a 2 hour nap, I felt like I had been hit by a mack truck. Why, you ask. Well, I went to a girl's weekend entitled "Girls rule, boys drool," because, well, they do, drool that is.

My best friend and I cooked nonstop for 2 days. We made more food than 8 girls could possibly eat and a chocalote cake with chocolate mousse, chocolate shavings, and a chocolate whipped cream frosting for her mother-in-law. It was like cooking camp. We litterally stayed in her kitchen for 10 hours yesterday and this morning. I've cleaned more dishes in her kitchen in the last 2 days than I have in my house in a month. And now, well I can claim that I can make chicken satay with peanut sauce and chocolate mousse. Oh baby, you wish you were there.

grace

Someone skimmed through the Internet and landed here by using the search words, “my love anna.” When I saw that, I wanted to crawl inside those words and nestle in tight, find the crook of the arm that cradles and covers and protects. I wanted to swim in that sea of comfort and protection, that hazy emotion that feels a bit like a fog and yet the loss of sight is not alarming, it’s soothing, like blinders on a horse.

Do we ever really walk through life like this, protected and comforted? Is there ever a crook of an arm that can pull you into a place where just being feels perfect? Is there ever really a “my love” because we don’t really know each other? We can breathe the same air, touch and rumble, nestle into the same covers, share food from spoons and wine from cups, but what is yours is yours and what is mine is mine. I cannot have you and you cannot have me and I will quite possibly never be “your love, anna.”

what spurs me

Little ones. Seeing the joy and happiness over the mere fact that I have just walked in a room. It’s the best feeling in the world. It’s like ice cream everyday, like hot water in the shower ALL the time, like your favorite TV shows on whenever you want. It’s like home, like the most comfortable feeling in the world. Seeing that blissful, naïve, and love hungry spirit in children, whether related to me or not, is what gets me up in the morning, what keeps me going and prompts my writing.

The need to share. An unexpected and unexplainable need to wear my soul on the page. An every writer’s passion to form the contents of our brains into universal translations, black and write print. I’m such a guarded person with my heart, but not with my soul. I give it freely to those I love and those I don’t know at all. That ever-present hope for connection and harmony is an ever-present fire under me.

Memory. I can remember a handful of stories from childhood and they are separated by years and people. Memory is short in my mind, a string tied too loosely around my finger. So, I write to help resurface what my mind tries to hide and let go.

Release. Sometimes just putting down the words, making thoughts permanent is enough to let them go, to let them flow through me and into the ether. Wishes and dreams and stresses and fears can have short shelf lives if I just give them up to the writing gods. Sometimes whimsical notions can seem like serious emotions, but it’s the writing trickery letting me upload some meandering thoughts whether true or just frivolous.

Melancholy. It’s my favorite state of being, but I don’t view it as negative. I take the pensive route and that is what writing brings up in me. I’ve tried to vary it, to go for funny or wild, but melancholy is my voice, my muse, my Aphrodite. And I like the peace it brings, the contemplative stillness that lures me into some sort of zone.

what stops me

It’s an easy answer. I know it, with or without the therapy sessions. I have a fear of failure, vulnerability, rejection, commitment and most of all success. That last one is the one that throws you a bit. Fears of failure and commitment are so vanilla. Who isn’t afraid in some way that they will fail? But, success? Who’s really scared to actually do the thing and make it? I’m sure I’m not the only one, but it’s a strange dichotomy to be faced with.

So, I should just do it, right? Because what is the worst that could come, rejection? So what? Dust yourself off and try again. It’s not going to kill me. It’s not going to harm my family. Why not take the plunge? Oh good Lord, where to begin? It’s because of the success factor and the “what if.” Success can come in so many forms, so many unexpected ways and what if the way it comes is not the one you wanted. Yes, it’s still success, but it’s just easier to dream about it, make it perfect in your mind than to actually find out if the bubble will ever burst.

I’m a distance girl, an arms-length-away hugger, a “halt right where you are” director. Coming upon what I strive for hasn’t always given up the happiest moments for me. It’s that failure thing again. But even the successes, I think, have been a little lackluster. But with distance how could they not be? Things just look so much prettier from far away. They are so much more real, safe, and perfect. And it’s this viewpoint, this messed up fear of seeing the points too clearly that stops me short.

happy birthblogday

My baby is two years old today. I could go and write about all the changes and things I've learned and yada yada yada. I love this blog, clearly or I wouldn't do it. It serves some strange purpose in my life that I can't put my finger on. I'm sure it's the need to be heard or validation, but I think it's more, or maybe less, than that. So, thanks. To the three people who read this site or pass by it on the way to better things. I and my little toddler will be dealing with our terrible twos so keep coming back and checking in. We appreciate you. (And say hello. The comments are right there, right below these words. Just do a little click click and type.)

a pot of old

I could have gone to bed the minute I got home. And well, I did, sort of. I snuggled in and turned on the TV, just to tune in and tune out for a bit. And then the phone didn’t stop and I finally rallied for dinner and a movie. But, yawning be damned, I made it through.

When faced with the possibility of going out and getting sloshed on green beer, my mind said, “Go home, go to bed. Screw the leprechauns.” And I love the Irish. I love all things that might give my white bread some flavor. I’ve never been a green beer drinker, a St. Patty’s Day reveler (well, there was this one time in Memphis, TN…). It isn’t a call inside me that must be answered. I can let Erin Go Bragh; I have no problem with that. I just don’t need to go with her.

I’m a homebody. I like my place, my space and my friends close by. I don’t need parties and craziness. I like saneness and intellect. Sometimes, though, given that I knit like a fiend, I feel like an 80 year-old woman.

ethernet

I’ve been going to bed early. It’s a tedious thing to know. I know. And yet I tell you because it’s a feat, a masterful accomplishment not unparallel to walking on the moon. Well, maybe unparalleled with that one.

When sleep pushes down on my eyes, I get more creative. In that brief moment, my mind is more alert, more sharp than is has been all day. That moment is the ether of my sleep and waking life, the in-between my own sun and moon. And then sleep drifts in and I’m sure a few minutes later I start deep breathing. If I could capture those moments of clarity I could solve the world’s problems, I could write the best poems.

I’ve decided I live on the edge of what I want and yet listing all those things seems like a chore that would bring no further push than sitting and wishing does. But knowing is half the battle I’ve heard so I’ll list one thing: I want a man who buys me poetry books and marks his favorite ones before he gives them to me. There, ether, make it so.

i’d like to be mo roccan

I just went to see Mo Rocca. I will confess, I have a bit of a crush on the boy. He came to town as part of the Jewish Community Center’s annual forum. Being the ever Judaism enthusiast that I am, I was so happy to hear him spout every Yiddish word he could in talking about the historical events which led to Purim. Although he was raised Catholic, it was hilarious and had the Jewish audience laughing at every “kvetch” and “schlep” reference he made. Then he went about ala “The Daily Show” and “I Love the 80’s” to talk about the ever-present political truthiness and pop culture embarrassment that makes up our media empires. I love this boy. With his salt and pepper hair and “I’m a literary type” glasses. He makes being a dork cool and that makes me a little weak in the knees. I will say that while tempted, I resisted the urge to write on a little yellow sheet for the question and answer portion, “Are you single? Cause HEL- LO!” Instead, I sat back and merely panted. That boy and his lisp and random factoids can call me anytime.

the world is imploding

It just seems like life is getting weirder. First, I've got a bit of a stalker situation going on. Said stalker doesn't know about this site and let's pray never does or I fear for far more things than my life. My face-to-face friends know the details, but now you know a hint of it so if something happens I hope you'll be informed. It's not that serious, well, then again, we are talking about a stalker.

Then, someone on eVite sent me an invitation to a 40th high school reunion in Salimas California. OK.

This past weekend I hung out with an old high school friend. We haven't seen each other for about 10 years. He found me on the internet. And that was pretty cool.

I'm going to a conference for 3 days with my parents (read: even though I'm a grown-up, I'll be sleeping in the same hotel room as my mother and father and yes, this makes me want to shell out the money and get my own room and then I remember that it's free and so I shut up). This trip may drive me insane. We'll see who gets me first, the stalker, or the 3 night stay with moms and pops.

An THIS, this is the best thing in the world!!!!!

locks of love

I gave my hair away yesterday, 10 inches of it. Clearly I had planned this, for months, actually. It was sweet relief to let it all go. I’m a short bobb kind of girl and the long tresses were driving me a bit crazy with the drying time and the in-the-wayness. I was over it and yet the hairdresser tried to convince me to wait longer so that my hair would not be so short when she cut the hunk off. I almost slapped her as I stood there telling her that I wanted to do this and that didn’t care about the length. It was like pulling teeth and finally, finally, she bundled my hair in a pony tail, took out the clippers (the CLIPPERS) and buzzed that 10 inches right off. I turned around and looked at a year of browness and smiled. My hair is now cute, cute, cute and no, even though I thought about it, I did not take a picture of the lost locks. They are being sent to Locks of Love and I hope that someone, somewhere will find comfort in my hair, I do.