once upon a time

once upon a time i came across a poetry book that was a compilation of authors, styles etc... and it had the most exquisite poem in it. i wrote in my journal the following in reference to it.

"a red sun stains the lake like colored glass. Day is stopping." - Kayaks, pg. 425

i wrote it to myself as a reminder to return when i could.

i have often thought of that poem like an old lover, a set of sheets that i loved, the phone number of my friend in 6th grade named ian, my lost teddy bear from when i was 9 ... named bearspot...

there are things in the world we lose and we know where they go... our innocence, virginity, money, common sense... and there are things that we lament... relationships, the perfect mixed cd, opportunities.

then there are things that we long for. this poem, in it's entirety is one of those things for me.

little known facts

some little known facts about me:
i love the smell of morning and flowing streams and rain and irish spring soap...
i really love jameson, reading emerson, naps, the sound of the ocean and taking pictures of trees
i daydream of falling in love with a man that can live with me a cabin in the woods, sings to me in the morning and at night, will make me banana pancakes for breakfast and is willing to be honest with himself and others and live with integrity... everything else we'll work out.
i watch movies that are period pieces or historically based... i love great costumes and the feeling of being carried away... i also love foreign films and subtitles and quirky indie films
i don't like french toast or gin or any kind of carnation (even the milk)
i hate feeling frustrated or misunderstood and the idea and practice of karaoke
i write everyday here on my blog, in my personal journal, poetry and in what we're currently referring to as the novella of sorts
i never know what is going to come of those writing sessions and i never plan them ahead of time... i start by finding the playlist and then write how i feel based on what i wanted to listen to.
i find that my life revolves around music more than i ever knew... i have a soundtrack to most things in my life.

sometimes in my life i think about missed opportunities and the things that i didn't give enough time or effort to. i wonder if i had been different in the moment or ready for different things if my life would be different or if i would have gotten here regardless of the path that i took. sometimes i ache for the days back when i was just a child and everything was unwritten and unstarted and unknown. sometimes i long for these moments to be over so i can just be past them.

i worry (sometimes daily) that i am supposed to be doing more, feeling more, committing more, growing, learning, changing and experiencing more. sometimes i feel stagnant in the middle of change like a person feels in the eye of the storm... sometimes even with my life in upheaval things are so quiet and calm at the center of me. i wish that i needed less change and adventure. i wish that i would be content with a small life that involved less time on the battle ground.

i have become weary in the past few days of being on the forefront and wish that i could apply for furlough although i know there is no rest and there is no leaving the front lines. i hope for a person that can accept all the things that i have come to understand and own the battle with me. there are days when i wonder how i'll ever explain to someone how i got here and what the purpose is for continuing. more and more i've become afraid that there will never be another night's sleep without worrying about the things i've come to know and there will never be another moment of sanctuary or peace that i don't have to fight tooth and nail for. i find that in this particular time of beginning to understand and finally open my eyes that i hold certain people even closer to my heart... they have become an indelible part of my past, present and future. i could never release that bond because without the role model of living in love i think i would forget easily... or give up when the fatigue and the frustration at the state of the world became too much. they are my reminders and my talismans that true north exists, that there is a standard of gold and of love, that sometimes there are people in your life you are simply meant to love and lastly that all the answers are here if we are just quiet enough long enough to hear what our hearts are telling us.

tonight my heart is telling me to make tea, put my feet up and relax.... i don't have to do everything right now... just breathe and relax. and since my heart has had years of practice listening to that very sound advice i'm going to take it once again... while doing that i'm going to reflect on this:
"If we look wider, things are all alike; laws and letters and creeds and modes of living seem a travesty of truth. Our society is encumbered by ponderous machinery, which resembles the endless aqueducts which the Romans built over hill and dale and which are superseded by the discovery of the law that water rises to the level of its source. It is a Chinese wall which any nimble Tartar can leap over. It is a standing army, not so good as a peace. It is a graduated, titled, richly appointed empire, quite superfluous when town-meetings are found to answer just as well.

Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls. When the fruit is despatched, the leaf falls. The circuit of the waters is mere falling. The walking of man and all animals is a falling forward. All our manual labor and works of strength, as prying, splitting, digging, rowing and so forth, are done by dint of continual falling, and the globe, earth, moon, comet, sun, star, fall for ever and ever.

The simplicity of the universe is very different from the simplicity of a machine. He who sees moral nature out and out and thoroughly knows how knowledge is acquired and character formed, is a pedant. The simplicity of nature is not that which may easily be read, but is inexhaustible. The last analysis can no wise be made. We judge of a man's wisdom by his hope, knowing that the perception of the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth. The wild fertility of nature is felt in comparing our rigid names and reputations with our fluid consciousness. We pass in the world for sects and schools, for erudition and piety, and we are all the time jejune babes. One sees very well how Pyrrhonism grew up. Every man sees that he is that middle point whereof every thing may be affirmed and denied with equal reason. He is old, he is young, he is very wise, he is altogether ignorant. He hears and feels what you say of the seraphim, and of the tin-peddler. There is no permanent wise man except in the figment of the Stoics. We side with the hero, as we read or paint, against the coward and the robber; but we have been ourselves that coward and robber, and shall be again,--not in the low circumstance, but in comparison with the grandeurs possible to the soul." Emerson

a work in progress

an imperfect work in progress... i don't usually share things that are so personal nor do i usually share them while i'm still working but this may take a different perspective to really edit. perhaps if i put it out there in the world i will see what is missing... and for once i am not embarrassed or worried about the things it contains simply because it is what it is. that being said here is what i've been working on for the past few days... in it's rawness and imperfection.

For Travis

it was that crisp moment
25 years ago… perhaps to the day
i became part of this fragment
i hid between bushes in your side yard
i was changed by that dark man
that ugly afternoon so fixed in my mind even now
indelible in it’s horror
his ugly voice and the lilt of words
asking me if i wanted
to be a big girl
then showing me roughly
what big girls know
shame fear blood
inability to grow beyond moments.

the salty tears stung my eyes
relieved that it was over
you sat close beside me
shoulder to shoulder
hands and feet sticky with autumn
held my hand
while the sore ache penetrated
my small thighs
blood pooled hotly
hidden by my panties
by my yellow butterfly dress
you showed me a caterpillar
trapped in an old rusty coffee can
three rocks and some leaves
left to sustain him
we watched while he explored
his small tin empty world
you said softly “it’s for you”
i felt flattered, honored and loved
like i haven’t since
years later when the
chemical mixtures had
wiped away those memories
for you and from our collective past
i wept because no one but
a dead man and i remembered

that summer you had showed
with patience and confidence
how to climb a tree
limb after limb
higher and higher
until we could look down
at the world removed
then i see you after we have grown
i am in the midst of forgiving
myself and living in the shame
i cannot see you
i forget that i loved you
it hurts too much to go back
i haven’t climbed a tree in years
i haven’t known safety since
i get another chance
after some searching for myself
on two coasts and several bad
variances of vulnerability
a different darkness has settled
i am a mother now
we spend two weeks remembering
each other with pleasure and confidence
the background of rum
you smell the same as that day
that crystal day so long ago
like youth and innocence
climbing trees at camp redlands
but you are in the midst of living
in the shame of your own
dark man
and you cannot see me
it hurts too much to go back
grown ups no longer climb trees

flowing like water
pounding like a headache
these words force themselves
upon me as i try to find
what to say to you
now that we are so far apart
the distance seems to great
i reflect on our moments
good and bad
your blue eyes shining
with guileless hope
your smile infused
with gaps the tooth fairy
left in her carelessness
all those years ago
our own history
what it means to know a person
what can be said now
we are intertwined
we are separate
the only way to go forward
is to look back
release the things that bind
release our collection of moments
if only it were as simple
as a caterpillar in a rusty coffee can
as climbing trees
higher and higher
limb after limb
until we are removed
from the dark world
our battles far below
a small world of safety
where i could say
“it’s for you”

persimmons

i found this today and was amazed by it... just thought i would share.
(image found at: http://www.u-aizu.ac.jp/~niki/photo/index.html )
(poem found at: http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1245.html )

'Persimmons'

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker
slapped the back of my head
and made me stand in the corner
for not knowing the difference
between persimmon and precision.
How to choose

persimmons. This is precision.
Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.
Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one
will be fragrant. How to eat:
put the knife away, lay down the newspaper.
Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.
Chew on the skin, suck it,
and swallow. Now, eat
the meat of the fruit,
so sweet
all of it, to the heart.

Donna undresses, her stomach is white.
In the yard, dewy and shivering
with crickets, we lie naked,
face-up, face-down,
I teach her Chinese. Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I've forgotten.
Naked: I've forgotten.
Ni, wo: you me.
I part her legs,
remember to tell her
she is beautiful as the moon.

Other words
that got me into trouble were
fight and fright, wren and yarn.
Fight was what I did when I was frightened,
fright was what I felt when I was fighting.
Wrens are small, plain birds,
yarn is what one knits with.
Wrens are soft as yarn.
My mother made birds out of yarn.
I loved to watch her tie the stuff;
a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.

Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class
and cut it up
so everyone could taste
a Chinese apple. Knowing
it wasn't ripe or sweet, I didn't eat
but watched the other faces.


My mother said every persimmon has a sun
inside, something golden, glowing,
warm as my face.

Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper
forgotten and not yet ripe.
I took them and set them both on my bedroom windowsill,
where each morning a cardinal
sang. The sun, the sun.

Finally understanding
he was going blind,
my father would stay up all one night
waiting for a song, a ghost.
I gave him the persimmons, swelled, heavy as sadness,
and sweet as love.

This year, in the muddy lighting
of my parents' cellar, I rummage, looking
for something I lost.
My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,
black cane between his knees,
hand over hand, gripping the handle.

He's so happy that I've come home.
I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.
All gone, he answers.

Under some blankets, I find three scrolls.
I sit beside him and untie
three paintings by my father:
Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.
Two cats preening.
Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.

He raises both hands to touch the cloth,
asks, Which is this?

This is persimmons, Father.

Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,
the strength, the tense
precision in the wrist.
I painted them hundreds of times
eyes closed. These I painted blind.
Some things never leave a person:
scent of the hair of one you love,
the texture of persimmons,
in your palm, the ripe weight.

-- Li-Young Lee

it will be worth your wild....

still on my finding things streak. today i found a note that ended with the sentences "it will be worth your wild. i'm begging you."

i have had the best day i've had in a long time. it's strange how the biggest priorities in our life our often the ones that have the least to do with our general well being.
i woke up to the sound of a friend's voice on the answering machine. it's been about 10 days since i've been lucky enough to have his voice be the first voice i hear. a long conversation filled with insights later i was back at my car to see if it would magically start this morning but it didn't. i ended up turning around and walking back home in cold rain falling from a sunny sky and finding a great soundtrack to my morning. i'd love to be the kind of girl that is saavy enough to embed a little thing here that would simply play what i was hearing on my walk but i'm not... it's sad i know... but here is the next best thing.

i'll give you the playlist and you can listen along or just imagine that you're listening and walking with me:
trapeze swinger - iron & wine
opus 36 - dustin o'halloran
in my lady's house - iron & wine
collide - howie day
home to me - josh kelley
every little thing she does is magic - the police

here is sort of what was going through my head:
it's raining with out a cloud in the sky
wishing you were here
simply
because together we seem to have
found an ebb and flow

my thoughts that seem so private
undiscovered and unadmitted to the world
have ventured into your heart long
before i ever even knew you.
sometimes it feels like finding
myself refracted sharply
stumbling upon that reflection
is always a happy soothing surprise.
i thank you each time
for lack of more to say
for your generousity
for your laugh
for the rise and fall of you voice
coming across the miles.
walking past stores and churches
your laugh still ringing in my ears
and the words exquisite asshole
making my heart a little lighter
knowing what was meant to
break our friendship
could only make me trust you more.
you said this morning that that i trusted
you completely
as those words echoed through me
i felt a little afraid
now that the moment has passed
i'm grateful and sated by them.



with those thoughts i find myself at home without a cloud in the sky and my playlist over. i curl up on my couch and breathe deeply into the pillowcase. then the most amazing thing happened. i fell asleep and had a perfect nap. afternoon sleep after not having solid restful sleep in two weeks changes everything.... a few hours later i am listening to the new 'this american life'. i am a happy happy girl. things could not be better.... well... ocean view would be better but besides that things are perfect.