The Snowman

I'm really tired. It's hard for me to write when I'm really tired, but I'm trying this writing every day thing, and if Franklin Cline can do it, so can I. I'm also feeling a little discouraged about some things, but I have noticed that discouragement often accompanies the tired for me, so I'm trying not to let the discouragement dominate this evening. I have been waking in the night for about an hour or so with this chest cold, the past three nights. It's taking a toll.

The kids are back in the house, and the space has so much more energy when they are here. Not to mention hugs. We are a huggy bunch, and I have missed the touch. When they are babies, you hold them so much that sometimes it feels like you have never done anything in the world except hold a baby. Now, I look at them and think, "My God, I know they came out of my body, but HOW?"

We went down to Columbia today for Christian's quarterly diabetes visit. Mark took the boys down, then we transferred kids + kid stuff, went to lunch, and took Sam to the orthodontist. I was late for the diabetes visit because I couldn't find my glasses this morning. I still have no idea where they are. Sam asked me at one point, when I was driving, "Can you see?" And I laughed and told him that I was wearing contacts. I should have gotten my eyes checked over a year ago after The Grant was finished. I think it just ruined my vision. But of course I haven't done it yet. So, then I decided that I'd do it this month. Sometimes I think the universe gives me little shoves, and hiding my freaking glasses will certainly get me to the eye doc. I don't mind contact lenses, but I don't see as well with them as I do with my glasses. And I'm lazy. And there is a lot of animal hair in this house. Nothing hurts quite as much as animal hair on a contact lens in your eye.

There are, naturally, parenting differences in our two family households. There has been disagreement about whether or not we can let Christian sleep in during our winter breaks. So, I got to the doctor just in time to be scolded for having let Christian sleep in. I said, "But we adjusted all of his snacks and meals accordingly."

The doctor turned to Christian and said, "Oh, you didn't tell me that!"

I didn't turn and look at anyone else in the room, but I felt smug.

Tommy asked me this evening what the worst thing someone could say to me is. Basically, if you tell me that I am a bad mother, you are dead to me. From that moment forward. I may smile at you and be pleasant, but you are DEAD. TO. ME. Fortunately, just as with the Mormons and outer darkness, there are only two people on this earth and in this town that fall under that distinction. I say hello to one, almost as an insult. I simply ignore the other. But I kind of like the Jewish perspective on forgiveness, which is sort of like this: Turn the other cheek, my ass. They don't have to forgive Hitler and the Bad Germans for the holocaust, and I don't have to forgive people who testified against me during my custody battle. Simple.

Okay, to be fair: Finally, Judaism does not recognize reconciliation (the whole-hearted yielding of all inner negative feeling) as a necessary part of the process of sin and repentance. Although reconciliation is known and even desirable, rabbinic Judaism realizes that there are other modes of rapprochement that are fully adequate and, perhaps, more realistic.

I know, I know. Now we are karmically linked in the next life: (Did you like how I did that just now? linked the word linked? No?...)

Paying off your karma, or karmic debt, may result in this life for you to incur specific difficulties accomplishing your goals, or being stuck with a relationship from a past life, or being unable to move on, or let go.

Whatever. It was the next sentence that scared the living shit out of me: 

E. g. a recent client experienced a connection with her husband briefly in this life and then they parted, now staying friends, both knowing that it is impossible for both of them to continue the husband/wife relationship in this life, but that they may continue in the next life. 

Uh, no. I'll do what I have to do to keep that from happening.  (I presume we all know which husband I am talking about, yes?)

Yeah, so... what were we talking about? See how cranky this whole damn tired thing makes me? Bah. And I haven't run since Friday.

I hadn't meant to talk about religion at all, but check out this story: Do you think God has a place being discussed in a newspaper? In a column on a regular basis?

It's hard to discuss, in the brevity of a comment, the amount of privilege that accompanies the author's idea that she has a right to talk about God as if God is real. In the newspaper. No offense intended. But I have become, over the years, comfortable with my own lack of religious belief.

When I was in graduate school, I took the most important, most powerful course I'd ever taken. The Joyce course. We not only read Joyce, but the modernists and Schopenhauer, whom I believe to be one of the most terrible philosophers (he is not a bad philosopher, he is just A TERRIBLE PERSON) in all history because that class made me want to slit my wrists with hopelessness by the end of it. I loved reading Wallace Stevens and Borges, (oh God do I love Stevens and Borges) but Djuna Barnes and Malcolm Lowry nearly did me in.

At that point in time, I could not fathom, could not comprehend that the awfulness of this life would not result in something better, somewhere better, somehow better. I have recently surprised myself to learn that I am not invested in the idea that I am eternal or that I have an eternal soul or essence that will continue after this body is dead.

Borges wrote a great short fiction about these immortals who hate their immortality because they are so bored. Sam and I talk about that a lot, about the curse of immortality. Time and life lose their value when you flood the market with them.

However, that is not the only reason I LOVE Borges. Borges was one of the first writers to start writing reviews of books that did not exist. Today, I noticed that Sam was carrying around a book about how to survive an alien invasion. We have tons of these books: Want to know what our Zombie emergency plan is? Because we've got one (Greenwood School is OURS, bitches!). Want to know who in our friend pool is a werewolf? Jamie D'Agostino, of course. Want to know why Mormons have a year's supply of food? For the zombie invasion. Seriously. Fortunately, there are nine Mormons living across the street, and we plan to steal theirs.

But it suddenly hit me today, with the alien book, that these books are all Borgesian, because they are long treatises about how to survive something that is NOT possible.

I would like you to take a moment to fully understand that I did not get this until it was a book about aliens. It did not occur to me with the other books because I actually believe in zombies, vampires, and werewolves. And in the great debate in our household about whether it is better to be a vampire or a werewolf (nobody wants to be a zombie, Robin! They eat brains! j/k lolz!), clearly it is better to be a vampire.

Back to Borges. The kids, for about a year now, will suddenly start a conversation at the dinner table that is pure Borges (and no, they have not read him yet, but soon, Young Skywalker):

"Hey, Mom, remember last year when we saw that movie with the guy? And that thing happened?"

"Was that the movie with that one guy or the other guy?"

"The other guy was in the sequel. That's what you're thinking of."

"Oh, when that other thing happened..."

and so it goes.

Imagination, folks.

That's where it's at. I will leave you with a poem about the imaginings of a snowman, who is the product of... imagination. The imagining of the imagined. Beautiful stuff that.

Good night.

The Snowman

--Wallace Stevens


One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Not a Nike commercial

Today, in an attempt to get my head back in the work game, I was sending out emails to my old/new Canadian clients. I have a contract with them right now that I am very excited about. I also have another grant due on Jan. 16, so I need to juggle a few projects.

During the course of these emails, one young woman with whom I've had friendly contact before (both through working with her in November and then emailing about a project I did after that trip) was telling me about her  Comps for her PhD program. She is 27-- so young!

I have come to realize lately one of the reasons it's so important for me to get a PhD (or maybe an MFA, or both). I have always known about myself that I wanted to get a PhD, even though those nearest and dearest to me who have PhDs (and whom I have watched suffer) think I'm insane. Especially if I insist (and I do) on waiting until the kids are out of the house (and, let's face it, probably out of college too) to get it. I won't make them endure a) the poverty and b) the absence of their mother that a PhD program would currently require.

And especially if I don't think the PhD will get me a job. I don't. As in the movie Barton Fink, the wonderful Tony Shalhoub says, "If you throw a brick in this town, you'll hit a writer. And when you throw it? Throw it hard."

One argument that someone from my past *cough* had with my wanting to pursue a Masters Degree was that, "The world doesn't need anymore English majors."

Well, technically, one could argue that the world doesn't need anymore people, period. That doesn't mean I should kill myself, and the lack of a need for English majors doesn't mean I shouldn't return to school. And the fact that nobody reads poetry doesn't mean I shouldn't write it.

Isn't therapy wonderful?

I should specify that my degree, when I get it, will be in creative writing, just as my BA was. What I have come to realize, though, looping back to the point, the reason why I want to return to school is that it will give me the time and structure to do Another Really Big Writing Project.

I am slowly typing up my Masters Thesis and posting my poems here (duh) in part so I will have a digital copy. But that's not all: Writing poetry begins, for me, with listening. Listening to a lot of poetry, reading a lot of poetry, and the very act of copying my poems is helpful. The feel of each word, the rhythms and alliterations and images. Sometimes I break lines differently now, and sometimes I read them out loud to myself. Denise Levertov has a great essay about line breaks in my poetry bible, Claims for Poetry, edited by Donald Hall. She says that you have to break the lines where you pause when you are reading the poem, so sometimes, I have to break the lines a little differently now.

Another argument, though, that I heard in graduate school, was that there is a kind of musical tension between the line breaks and where you would pause in speech that adds to the poem. Even though I think that can be interesting and legitimate, I prefer the Levertov philosophy. I have been talking to some of the art kids here. Amazing painters, these kids. We talk about how we get called all the time for becoming lazy, for doing the same things over and over again. When you don't want to try something, like a sestina or an aubade or a haiku, I think that shows in the writing. They tell me this is also true in their paintings. The key is to be able to throw yourself so hard into something you don't want to do (a structured poem, in my case) to the point that your work in this arena is as passionate as the work you do when you may truly love what you are doing, but you are not stretching, off-balance, uncomfortable.

I have heard, and I believe, that we are never really capable of learning, stretching, and growing unless we are a little off-balance and out of our comfort zones. I've been out of my comfort zone a LOT in the past month, and yes, I can also feel the growth that has seeped in through the cracks of my facade.

Anyway, graduate school. This lovely young PhD candidate shared with me that there is a prestigious online MFA program I could look at. Of course, there are some in the U.S. too. Though, when I consider the cost of such a program (um, student loans? I don't think so. Been there, done that). So, I think I'd rather try to get a teaching stipend and get my education paid for. Which will mean waiting until the kids are old enough for me to travel to graduate school and commute. My neighbor got her PhD by commuting. Depending on where I were to go, maybe that would be possible for me too.

The University of Iowa also has summer creative writing workshops. Every year, I say I am going to take one. And every year, I never do.

There is never a good time to have kids. Maybe there is never a good time to go to school.

Maybe you just have to do it.

Blue Bird

When I see the small, brown-backed bird,
round, white belly on the fence,

I have a sudden desire to name it.
Not robin, obviously, or jay.

But thrush? Or sparrow?
Whip-or-will?

My son says a brownbird,
like the day we take his parakeet to school.

Pre-schoolers gather round the table,
clamor close to see the cage.

My son announces, It is a blue bird,
and they nod.


Actually,
it's a parakeet I tell them,

but they are already beyond
my sphere of authority.

They are looking at a bird,
white feathers, rings of blue.

Knowing nothing of taxonomy
what they know is this:

They have never been so close to a bird.
Five or six of them circle, press

tiny hands on the table,
whisper little words of praise.


Bluebird, bluebird, bluebird.
I step out of my body

and break into feather.

The Circle of Time

Your nose behind his ear, your lips at his neck,
you could his legs on your legs, your body
curled around his
restless arms,
your fingers on the laces tie his shoes.
He struggles to go outside and is gone.

But

For a second he's suspended
in a smell, a baby taste
you can't hold onto, anymore than you could
keep him in your body
suspended with water, strung
by cord or hanging

in the circle of time:

There was a woman looking at a man,
White pillowcases, pressed and hemmed,
blue sheets,
wind on the ivory curtains,
the ebb of the lamp against the darkening sky,

stars, infinite and cold,
he waited in the moment in between.

Left Bank

And here is the poem I wrote for you
on the Left Bank of the Seine
one sunny Spring afternoon
between the Ides of March and Easter:

My outstretched arm,
four broken pieces of shell,
blue porcelain egg
cupped in my hand like the water.

Anatomy of a poem: The revision process

There are many copies. And they have a plan. These are earlier versions. Which one, however, is the "real" poem?

Good question.

No Exit

All primates like touch.

It’s a clinical response to

The need to release

Endorphins.

“Monkey infants who are denied contact

a "secure base"

cease to explore

their environments.”

Touch fosters grooming, fewer

Nits to pick off.

It’s worth noting that

none of this is 

a recent phenomenon.

Touch reinforces

Socialization

Or alienation:

Touch is the cold metal that

Scrapes her uterus,

The slice of a surgeon’s knife,

The feel of wood in hand

As pencil moves on the page.

Dance is

A rhythmic social

Interaction.

Scientifically and coldly designed

To make sure primates touch.

But when you take her in your arms

She is warm and soft

Your hairless palms at her waist,

The curve of her breast against you

And her hair beneath your nose

Smells like the shampoo

She used to groom herself

for you.

Touch and smell

And song are all around

You

At the dance.

Every sense is engaged and

She tastes like cinnamon.

All touch is fleeting

Less powerful than smell

Or taste,

The hardest

To remember,

Reproduce.

In No Exit,

They lost their eyelids because

They never used them.

Which part of me reaches to touch you

Even in sleep?

And which part of me

Atrophies when

you are not there.

 ________________________________________________________________________________

Primate

Touch is the cold metal that

Scrapes a uterus or

The feel of wood

As pencil moves on the page or

My palms on your chest

The curve of my breast

Your musky hair, my

Cinnamon tongue.

All primates need touch.

It releases endorphins

That help reinforce the benefits

Of grooming and socialization.

In No Exit, people lose their eyelids

Because they never blink.

Which part of me reaches to touch you

Even in sleep? And which part of me

Atrophies

when you are not there.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Primate

1

No monkey has died
during isolation. When

initially removed from
total social isolation,

however, they usually
go into a state of
emotional shock,

characterized by ...
autistic self-clutching and rocking.

One of six monkeys
isolated for 3 months

refused to eat after release
and died 5 days later.

The autopsy report attributed death
to emotional anorexia.

2

Monkey babies cling
to fabric mothers,

ignoring wire rivals:
clothes hangers with food.

The same part of me
reaches for you

even in sleep
and hungers when you are not there.