Movies of Myself

Will you wait for me there until someone comes, to carry me, carry me down.

Mid Week Mini Music Mix 

Standing en pointe all morning
until your face is flushed
like a peach.

All of our yesterdays
are dances, all of our
present days are
a quick whipping fan
of images, a blur
of hours making my
eyes water.

The flush moves down
your hair, through your pretty
fingertips.

You take a running leap over the
porch fence. I say
nothing.

Dharma burns a path across
the noontime street, calling up
all our long tomorrows.

Follow You Down To The Red Oak Tree - James Vincent McMorrow Here's another song as promised from one of my new favorite singers. His poignant falsetto is at its bittersweet best here.

Blue - First Aid Kit These Swedish sisters, they know how to make beautiful music together. If you're in the mood for wonderful folk songs, look them up. Their latest, The Lion's Roar, is available now. 

Drifting In And Out - Porcelain Raft This is the solo project from Mauro Remiddi, a man of so many talents. This is a sweeping, looping, ethereal sound. Listen if you like Grouper or School of Seven Bells.

Kevin's - Sharon Van Etten A voice like this can bring you to tears through its sheer, brilliant emotion. Gorgeous. Sharon Van Etten's Tramp is out February 7th. It speaks volumes.

Tagged Again

Some of you may remember that I started an ongoing sticky quotes tagging project a couple of years ago. Well, the desire to leave easily removable and inspiring graffiti has struck again lately. This is one of my more recent tags.

I'm excited and looking forward to keep this up. If you guys have any quotes or thoughts that you think would work well for this project, please let me know!

When we kiss it feels like a flying saucer landing.

Mid Week Mini Music Mix

Some things are so damn pretty that they become powerful, a shield that deflects everything that is bringing you down. A lifesaver that buoys you up above the most chilling wave. If something can bring a tear to your eye because of the sheer, joyous beauty that it fills you with, that to me is true power. That's how this poem makes me feel:

"The Emperor"
by Matthew Rohrer 

She sends me a text

she's coming home

the train emerges

from underground


I light the fire under

the pot, I pour her

a glass of wine

I fold a napkin under

a little fork


the wind blows the rain

into the windows

the emperor himself

is not this happy

Rose Mary Stretch - Pepper Rabbit What a wonderful surprise this album is! I listened to it knowing nothing about the band or the music and found an experimental pop record that I was instantly drawn to. Love at first listen. Now I can't stop listening and it is just getting better and better. Red Velvet Snowball, you guys. It's a beautiful thing.

See Thru Eyes - Active Child I have been anxiously anticipating You Are All I See for months. Active Child's soaring falsetto combines with the electro beats and lovely instrumentation in songs that sound like pure heaven. This is a very impressive debut.

Ritual Union - Little Dragon The title track from Little Dragon's latest that I was raving about previously. This is the good stuff. If this song doesn't get you dancing, then I'm gonna have to ask you to talk to the hand.

Strange Powers (Magnetic Fields Cover) - The Shins This version of "Strange Powers" is from a compilation of Magnetic Fields' covers that my fave music tumblr put together. If you're thinking that Stephin Merritt's songwriting talents and James Mercer's voice would make a good combination, then you are most certainly correct.  

May good luck find you at your worst and back luck lose you at your best.

A picture, a poem and a song for summer:

"Epithalamium"
by Bob Hicok

A bee in the field. The house on the mountain 
reveals itself to have been there through summer. 
It's not a bee but a horse eating frosted grass 
in the yawn light. Secrets, the anguish of smoke 
above the chimney as it shreds what it's learned 
of fire. The horse has moved, it's not a horse 
but a woman doing the stations of the cross 
with a dead baby in her arms. The anguish of the house 
as it reveals smoke to the mountain. A woman 
eating cold grass in Your name, shredding herself 
like fire. The woman has stopped, it's not a woman 
but smoke on its knees keeping secrets in what it reveals. 
The everything has moved, it's not everything 
but a shredding of the anguish of names. The marriage 
of light: particle to wave. Do you take? I do.

Devil Knows You're Dead - Delta Spirit This song is a warm and gentle blessing, full of the sincerest love that we feel for our dearest friends and, if we're lucky, the same love that they feel for us in return. 

I'm wishing you all blue skies and green fields and all the good that summer can bring. 

Does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine.

Mid Week Mini Music Mix

This year I've been writing some spontaneous one-draft poems whenever the notion strikes me. I swore to make one every Wednesday in April in tribute to National Poetry Month. Today I almost gave it up. There's been a lot going on lately, some of it confusing and dispiriting. But what better time is there, I suppose, to turn to poetry.

---.....---.....---.....---

In another life I might
have joined a holy order.

Here and now, I commune
with painted gods under
energy-saving lights, their lips
smearing in slow motion on
coffee cup lids, everything
the color of cinnamon.

Restraint is first a choice then
an obstacle. Every night I come home
and sort through piles of forgotten
paperbacks (the plan is to give
them all away).

A note fluttters out of the middle
pages. I read "you are who
you are when no one is looking".
I press the covers together and think,
what if no one is ever looking. 

---.....---.....---.....---

We've had quite an influx of musical treats this week! The amazing music just keeps pouring in and I'm trying really hard to catch up :) Today I have a gorgeous new song from The National which they wrote for the video game Portal 2 (weird, I know), as well as three songs which were released Saturday as limited edition Record Store Day extras. Good, good stuff. 

Exile Vilify - The National

Swallowing the Decibels - Yeasayer

Invisible Red - Ryan Adams & The Cardinals

Supercollider - Radiohead

I just thought you might like to know, you're the only one I ever loved.

Mid Week Mini Music Mix

One month later we gather
by candlelight at a neighborhood park.
Birds of every color fly in
all around us.

One man shares photographs
water-stained, corners torn. Another
brings the blueprint of
the house where his children
were born. The great tree branches
fill with sighs.

Later that night we take your
mother's old car down
to the sea cliffs. Cold mist
coils at the end of a thousand
steps, melts into water and
sweeps away everything. 

I carve our names on the railing
all the way down. I write the difference
between what we said and what
we meant. 

You - TV on the Radio TVOTR's latest album Nine Types of Light is so damn good, you guys It's even better than I was expecting, and I was expecting a lot.This is my favorite track from the album, an almost decipherable declaration of love, sweeping and bittersweet.

If I Find Love - Dolorean This isn't Delorean, the Spanish dance rock band, but a lovely indie band out of Portland, making sensitive, thoughtful folk-tinged albums. There's an alt-country sound to this latest album that I really like.

 Try to Sleep - Low I'm still trying to take in the melancholy beauty of the newest Low album. I can tell you that after the first few times though that C'mon is a hell of a recording. And it's damn sure worth the $3.99 special price they're selling it for on Amazon this week.

Es-So - tUnE-YaRdS     More from the tune-yards album which is so funky and so fresh that I really don't want you guys to miss it! Damn their groove is tight.

We will awake only to find nothing's the same.

A picture, a poem and a song for spring

"Prayer for Our Daughters"
by Mark Jarman

May they never be lonely at parties
Or wait for mail from people they haven't written
Or still in middle age ask God for favors
Or forbid their children things they were never forbidden.

May hatred be like a habit they never developed
And can't see the point of, like gambling or heavy drinking.
If they forget themselves, may it be in music
Or the kind of prayer that makes a garden of thinking.

May they enter the coming century
Like swans under a bridge into enchantment
And take with them enough of this century
To assure their grandchildren it really happened.

May they find a place to love, without nostalgia
For some place else that they can never go back to.
And may they find themselves, as we have found them,
Complete at each stage of their lives, each part they add to.

May they be themselves, long after we've stopped watching.
May they return from every kind of suffering
(Except the last, which doesn't bear repeating)
And be themselves again, both blessed and blessing.

Home is a Fire - Death Cab For Cutie

The world is a wheel.

365 - 95
April 5th, 2011

from "Nothing Stays Put"
by Amy Clampitt

But at this remove what I think of as
strange and wonderful, strolling the side streets of Manhattan
on an April afternoon, seeing hybrid pear trees in blossom,
a tossing, vertiginous colonnade of foam, up above--
is the white petalfall, the warm snowdrift
of the indigenous wild plum of my childhood.
Nothing stays put. The world is a wheel.
All that we know, that we're
made of, is motion.

And everyone around me's changed, but the garden that you planted remains.

Mid Week Mini Music Mix

Should the focus be on the woods or
on the hooded walker, on the salt marshes
or on the ocean taste of your lips,
teeth flashing in the firelight.

My conscience is heavy
like a paperweight. I search
my pockets for the keyring
and find an axe handle.

Blue Monday, blue Monday, I can
hear them singing as the house
trembles around us. Red butterflies
on a grey Monday. Nothing's the same.

The Garden That You Planted - Sea Wolf Sea Wolf is one of those bands that should be a beloved favorite, and yet I managed to bypass their first two albums entirely. I am managing to remedy that at a good pace. Loving their beautiful, folksy indie songs right now.

Sensations In The Dark - Gruff Rhys This is off of Hotel Shampoo, the latest solo album from Super Furry Animals' frontman Gruff Rhys. It is jazzy and infectious fun and you can't help but quick step to it.

Rooftops (ft. Curren$y) - Wiz Khalifa To further my love/hate relationship with Wiz Khalifa of "Black and Yellow" fame, I present this.

My Country - Tune-Yards Here's the opening track from the Tune-Yards upcoming LP w h o k i l l. This album is mad glad dazzling brilliance and I recommend getting a hold of it so it can rock your world all summer long.

But I forget what I tried to remember. I remember all I tried to forget.

Mid Week Mini Music Mix

The newspaper headline reads
live and let kill
underfoot as we step out
at Bedford Avenue Station
the whole crazy lot of us so entranced 
by symbols that we can't sleep
can't dream, can't speak at all.

I stay up late reading the same 
letter I've sent to you 
a thousand times in my mind.
We are friends but should
be strangers. We are razor sharp
but should be happy.

Meet me past Two Bridges after
the lights go down. We'll walk silently
with papers in hand. Let's squeeze
goodness out of even our most petty joys.
Let's watch the mermaids rising up
to kiss the tallest, blue diamond buildings.

Woman - Timber Timbre This canadian indie folk band sounds so creepy, and I mean that in the best way possible. There's a dark, eerie sound to their latest album, aptly titled Creep On Creepin' On, that speaks of dark woods and dark secrets.

Mirror - Thom Yorke, Burial & Four Tet If you thought that a song made through a collaboration by three separate geniuses would result in pure brilliance, then you were right. I just want to listen to this over and over it is so mesmerizing. 

Crinan Wood - Alexi Murdoch I've been waiting a long time for a new album by this wonderful sweet-voiced man. He's delivered again with some warm and beautiful music.

Relationships - Friendly Fires     Friendly Fires has been on heavy rotation again lately as I await what will hopefully be a rocking new album from them. For now, here's one of my favorites from their illuminating debut.

You know our hearts beat time. They're waiting for something that'll never arrive.

Mid Week Mini Music Mix

buy the ticket, take
the ride, come show them
what hate is, seal it tight
in mason jars under your bed
then turn the lights off

and go outside and shake
the dust off, watch it form
a transit map
where all points lead
to a room
free of worry,
no wasted space

in this moment which you've
captured in a silver picture
with the reverse lens
of your heart, a tiger
with a rose for a heart

Shine A Light - Wolf Parade I wish I were cool. How cool? As cool as this damn song.

In My Time - Kurt Vile This good man has a new album coming out in a couple of weeks called Smoke Ring for My Halo. He is as warm and strange as ever and I look forward to many more evenings in this record's company.

Whirring - The Joy Formidable Another stellar track from effusive group The Joy Formidable. Their music lifts me up with each listen, like an engine gathering up steam to power something big. Pre-order The Big Roar now and get unlimited streaming until the album's release.

Wildflower - Cee Lo Green  I'm finally moving off of "Fuck You", giving the other songs on The Lady Killer  a listen and oh how I'm loving it. Cee Lo Green is one crazy talented musician.

You think I'd leave your side, baby. You know me better than that.

A picture, a poem and four songs for Valentine's Day

.....---.....---.....---.....---.....

syntax
by: Maureen N. McLane

and if
I were to say

I love you and
I do love you

and I say it
now and again

and again
would you say

parataxis
would you see

the world revolves
anew

its axis
you

.....---.....---.....---.....---.....

I've got four cover songs for you again this Valentine's Day. It's my mid week mix coming to you a little bit early. I hope it brings some good love into your day.

By Your Side (Sade cover) - Gayngs - Thank you for this, Carolyn!

I Want You (Kings of Leon cover) - Javier Dunn - It's my delightful Javier Dunn again, the one who sang the gorgeous cover of Miike Snow's "Animal". This take on KOL is pretty damn good, too.

When I Get You Alone (Robin Thicke cover) - Glee cast - There's something a bit too raunchy about Robin Thicke but when the Glee cast takes this song, it gets a veneer of bright-eyed sweetness which just makes it so enjoyable for me. Darren Criss has the perfect voice for this track.

Lovesong (The Cure cover) - Adele - While I can't say this is an improvement on the original (which is untouchably perfect), Adele's voice is just so stunning that she brings magic to it.

Halfway Home in the Hilltop Trees

Mid Week Mini Music Mix

I'm thinking of

lightbulbs growing on trees and wolves
howling at the moon shining on
buildings that can up and walk to a new city
by themselves.

I believe what I'll remember

is the hushed whirr like a hummingbird
being born which is wind and ringing water
all together bound
with baling wire and twined
like a serpent circling
my ankle looking out
at galaxies and root words

I know this to be true

Half Moon - Iron & Wine

Get Myself Together - Robyn

All Land Crabs and Divinity Ghosts - The Cave Singers

Snow & Taxis - Gold Panda

Then you hold life like a face.

A picture, a poem and a song for autumn:

The Thing Is
by Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

No One's Gonna Love You (Band of Horses Cover ) - Cee Lo Green

Exactly the Way a Bowling Ball Wouldn't

This was just so damn funny I had to share it. I laughed so hard at a couple of these (especially #4) that I almost choked. Work is going to be long and trying tomorrow so I might take another peek at these to cheer myself up. These are supposed to be from a Washington Post article from a few years back so you might have seen them before but, come on, does this shit ever get old?

The Two Candles

A picture, a poem and a song for summer:

This season's edition is in grand celebration of W.S. Merwin, one of my very favorite poets. Merwin has just been named the U.S. Poet Laureate and I could not think of a more deserving writer. His writing style and subjects have changed greatly over time but his poems have always spoken to something deep inside my heart that wanted to know this world better.

"Summer Doorway"
by W.S. Merwin

I come down from the gold mountains
each of them the light of many years
high up the soughing of cold pines among stones
the whole way home dry grass seething
to these sounds I think of you already there
in the house all my steps lead to

you have the table set to surprise me
you are lighting the two candles

Ceremony - New Order

Lay my head on the hood of your car, I take it too far.

A picture, a poem and a song for spring:

 

"True Love"
by Robert Penn Warren

In silence the heart raves. It utters words
Meaningless, that never had
A meaning. I was ten, skinny, red-headed,

Freckled. In a big black Buick,
Driven by a big grown boy, with a necktie, she sat
In front of the drugstore, sipping something

Through a straw. There is nothing like
Beauty. It stops your heart. It
Thickens your blood. It stops your breath. It

Makes you feel dirty. You need a hot bath.
I leaned against a telephone pole, and watched.
I thought I would die if she saw me.

How could I exist in the same world with that brightness?
Two years later she smiled at me. She
Named my name. I thought I would wake up dead.

Her grown brothers walked with the bent-knee
Swagger of horsemen. They were slick-faced.
Told jokes in the barbershop. Did no work.

Their father was what is called a drunkard.
Whatever he was he stayed on the third floor
Of the big white farmhouse under the maples for twenty-five years.

He never came down. They brought everything up to him.
I did not know what a mortgage was.
His wife was a good, Christian woman, and prayed.

When the daughter got married, the old man came down wearing
An old tail coat, the pleated shirt yellowing.
The sons propped him. I saw the wedding. There were

Engraved invitations, it was so fashionable. I thought
I would cry. I lay in bed that night
And wondered if she would cry when something was done to her.

The mortgage was foreclosed. That last word was whispered.
She never came back. The family
Sort of drifted off. Nobody wears shiny boots like that now.

But I know she is beautiful forever, and lives
In a beautiful house, far away.
She called my name once. I didn't even know she knew it.

Bloodbuzz Ohio - The National

Yes, it is the first release from the upcoming album by The National, my most anticipated album of the year by far. My heart is unabashedly and wildly aflutter.

To all the ladies in the place with style and grace.

March 9th.

On March 9th, 1994 the poet Charles Bukowski died of leukemia at his home in Southern California. Three years later, March 9th, 1997: Notorious B.I.G. dies in an L.A. drive-by shooting.

Bukowski:

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, “I’m not going to make it,” but you laugh inside remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.”

“I don’t hate people, I just feel better when they aren’t around.”

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must live.”

Biggie:

"Thinkin' I'm gon' stop givin' L.A. props?
All I got is beef with those that violate me.
I shall annihilate thee.
Case closed, suitcase filled with clothes."

"Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis.
When I was dead broke, man I couldn't picture this."

Get Money - Junior Mafia feat. Notorious B.I.G.

02.14.10

San Antonio
by: Naomi Shihab Nye

Tonight I lingered over your name,
the delicate assembly of vowels
a voice inside my head.
You were sleeping when I arrived.
I stood by your bed
and watched the sheets rise gently.
I knew what slant of light
would make you turn over.
It was then I felt
the highways slide out of my hands.
I remembered the old men
in the west side cafe,
dealing dominoes like magical charms.
It was then I knew,
like a woman looking backward,
I could not leave you,
or find anyone I loved more.

Got To Get You Into My Life - The Beatles

A light that never goes out

via loveyourchaos.tumblr.com

I see things like this all the time now. No, not hipster cool pictures of song lyrics which basically lose all meaning once out of context (though I see that, too). But lyrics and words with no attribution. And incorrect ones at that. 

This image was on my tumblr dashboard and although I tried at length to follow it to its original source, I never found it. I never saw who exactly had misquoted "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out". The line should read "because I want to see people and I want to see life." One small word replacing another small word. Big difference.

I use song lyrics and literary quotes all the time, too. I use them as post titles here, use them as names for photographs. I have an ongoing quote sticker graffiti project that relies heavily on quotes. I always make sure there is attribution in the body of the description and I make damn hellfire sure that I use the words painstakingly, as they were first put down, without error. If I find out that I've got it wrong, wild horses couldn't drag me away from rectifying it. 

If something reverberates deeply enough that you want to rewrite it and tell it to everyone else, you can take the extra minute to make sure it's right. Unfortunately, I see things like this all the time now. But this is The Smiths (and you bloody well do not misquote The Smiths) and it's a song that captured my heart when I was seventeen years old and made me approach life in a way I never did before. So this time I couldn't let it go.

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out - The Smiths

Tonight as it gets cold

A picture, a poem and a song for winter:

"Lines For Winter"
by Mark Strand

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

Needle In The Hay - Elliott Smith

Hauntings

Do you believe in ghosts? 

This is a question that I find myself asking people often, especially with Halloween just around the corner. Even though I simply cannot bear to watch scary movies and am quite unwilling to suffer the weeks of sleepless nights that come after I read a horror novel, I absolutely love to hear people's real life encounters with the supernatural. I get the chills when I hear these tales, but there is something in their stark simplicity, in the very telling of them, that I find powerfully compelling. So I will often ask, "do you believe"? More often than not the answer is "I don't know." But every once in a while someone will quietly reply, "Well, I have seen a ghost." All my senses move into high alert mode and I focus every molecule of my attention on them and let me tell you, I have heard some stories.

For instance, the girl who would repeatedly hear someone calling her name in what she knew was an empty house and would often feel some unseen thing brush up against her in the shower. And someone once told me of how for months their sister would have her bed covers forcibly yanked away from her and onto the ground by some unseen presence. She would sometimes wake with scratches all over her arms. And recently a friend described a night just a couple of weeks back when her young son refused to go to sleep because "the man in the corner" of his room wouldn't go away. She found out the next morning that a good friend of theirs had died in a car accident moments before the incident. Okay, I am seriously creeping myself out right now. 

And yet I am fascinated. So, do you believe? Do you have your own stories to tell? Leave a comment or email me. I want to hear them all.

Update: How timely! I woke up to a link from one of my Twitter contacts to a story in the Washington Post about some of today's best horror writers and their favorite scary stories.

Heart like a four-poster bed. Heart like a canvas.

A picture, a poem and a song for autumn:

"Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell"
by: Marty McConnell

leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them. you had to have him.
and you did. and now you pull down
the bridge between your houses,
you make him call before
he visits, you take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
don’t lose too much weight.
stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.

I Like What You Say - Nada Surf

Since You Already Know It

A picture, a poem and a song for summer:

Silence
by: Hayden Carruth

Sometimes we don't say anything. Sometimes
       we sit on the deck and stare at the masses of
goldenrod where the garden used to be
       and watch the color change from day to day,
the high yellow turning to mustard and at last
       to tarnish. Starlings flitter in the branches
of the dead hornbeam by the fence. And are these
       therefore the procedures of defeat? Why am I
saying all this to you anyway since you already
       know it? But of course we always tell
each other what we already know. What else?
       It's the way love is in a late stage of the world.

Motorcycle Drive By - Third Eye Blind

Queneau

via Thomas Guest

What is this strange and beautiful book? It's a copy of French poet Raymond Queneau's Cent mille milliards de poèmes (One hundred million million poems). According to the bevrowe.info page on the Sonnets:

Queneau’s Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes is derived from a set of ten basic sonnets. In his book, published in 1961, they are printed on card with each line on a separated strip, like a heads-bodies-and-legs book. All ten sonnets have the same rhyme scheme and employ the same rhyme sounds. As a result, any line from a sonnet can be combined with any from the other nine, giving 1014 (= 100,000,000,000,000) different poems. Working twenty-four hours a day, it would you take some 140,000,000 years to read them all.

How cool is that? The sonnets have been translated into English and the site even has a page where you can view randomized sonnet combinations or make specific medleys of your own. This is the first one I put together. The Sonnets themselves are both fanciful and unusual, so they make for a great creative pool to wade into.

Far Along In the Story

I first discovered W.S. Merwin as a translator of Neruda. It wasn't until a couple of years after that I realized he was a breathtaking and powerful poet in his own right. His work, much like Neruda's, speaks with an almost impossible longing and beauty about things great and small. He writes with less surface passion, but the words ring deep and true. It is a slow burn. His latest collection, The Shadow of Sirius, is simply remarkable.

Near Field
W.S. Merwin

This is not something new or kept secret
the tilled ground unsown in late spring
the dead are not separate from the living
each has one foot in the unknown
and cannot speak for the other
the field tells none of its turned story
it lies under its low cloud like a waiting river
the dead made this out of their hunger
out of what they had been told
out of the pains and shadows
and bowels of animals
out of turning and
coming back singing
about another time

So soldier on, soldier on.

A picture, a poem and a song for spring:

Portrait of a Lady
by: William Carlos Williams

Your thighs are appletrees
whose blossoms touch the sky.
Which sky? The sky
where Watteau hung a lady's
slipper. Your knees
are a southern breeze—or
a gust of snow. Agh! what
sort of man was Fragonard?
—As if that answered
anything.—Ah, yes. Below
the knees, since the tune
drops that way, it is
one of those white summer days,
the tall grass of your ankles
flickers upon the shore—
Which shore?—
the sand clings to my lips—
Which shore?
Agh, petals maybe. How
should I know?
Which shore? Which shore?
—the petals from some hidden
appletree—Which shore?
I said petals from an appletree.

Fitz and the Dizzyspells - Andrew Bird

02.14.09

but if a living dance upon dead minds
why,it is love;but at the earliest spear
of sun perfectly should disappear
moon's utmost magic,or stones speak or one
name control more incredible splendor than
our merely universe, love's also there:
and being here imprisoned,tortured here
love everywhere exploding maims and blinds
(but surely does not forget,perish, sleep
cannot be photographed,measured;disdains
the trivial labelling of punctual brains...
-Who wields a poem huger than the grave?
from only Whom shall time no refuge keep
though all the weird worlds must be opened?
                                                                )Love

by: e.e. cummings

So wake up, make up some new song again around the same tune.

A picture, a poem and a song for winter:

Tree
by: Jane Hirshfield

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books-

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

Song Of Our So-Called Friend - Okkervil River

Busy, Busy Town

I recently bought a copy of Richard Scarry's Best First Book Ever! for Elysa and Kristen. Richard Scarry books were favorites of mine all when I was growing up, and the Pod also asked for them continuously at storytime. I loved his illustrations and all of the charming animal characters that populated his busy towns. My imagination ran wild when I was little and I found it difficult to differentiate the reality of books from that of the world I actually lived in. Of course these cats and pigs and bears went to school, docked tugboats and shopped for radishes at a produce stand. Of course the worm wore a feathered cap. "Rainbow pencil car," I pronounced, invisibly underlining the words with my finger. "That's what I want to drive when I grow up."

I fell openly in love with the Scarry illustrated dictionary we used in my second grade classroom. It was a thick, handsome hardcover volume and I took to ignoring the regular lessons, preferring to pore through the bright and irreverent alphabetized pages, day after day. For Christmas that year I declared to my grandparents that I would very much like to buy a dictionary. That was easy enough, they thought, But of course, none of the painfully dull non-Scarry children's dictionaries would do (I'm guessing the book I sought was a special edition done up for schools.) "The one I want has a bear in a green suit!" I insisted, to my grandparent's beffudlement. "It has pickle cars!"

Think of all the things you did and could have done.

A picture, a poem and a song for fall:

Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
by Dan Albergotti, The Boatloads

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life's ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

Leaving So Soon - Keane

Buoyancy

I have several copies of this poetry collection, one of the few books I read regularly. I turn to it, and my other Coleman Barks translations of Rumi, almost religiously; with both faith and fervor. These words must be read repeatedly, so fleeting is the feeling they contain. They remind you constantly to live, and that fire dies out so easily in the drizzle of our everyday lives. Each time I turn the pages, they nudge me right into life again.

I keep one copy in a breakdroom drawer at work, for afternoon inspiration. Three weeks ago I saw it on the lunch table and figured that one of my co-workers was flipping through it. This past week I found a small stack of loose leaf papers in the drawer, with bunches and snippets of the poetry hand-copied on both sides.

I finally realized that our dear refugee is using the Rumi as writing practice. She's enrolled in an English language class which meets several times per week and, in addition to filling out the vocabulary and grammar worksheets she's constantly poring over, she's been writing out pieces from my book.

I wonder if she understands a single word of it. In a way, it's perfect. To learn letters by rewriting the modern adaptation of the words of a 13th century Sufi mystic. There is poetry, there is life, in this. "Does sunset sometimes look like the sun's coming up?" What could this say to her? Last week she asked us what "if" means. I want to say, it means to keep asking.

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.

And when I see you, I really see you upside down.

A picture, a poem and a song for summer*.

Question
by: May Swenson

Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen

Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt

Where can I go
without my mount
all eager and quick
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure
when Body my good
bright dog is dead

How will it be
to lie in the sky
without roof or door
and wind for an eye

With cloud for shift
how will I hide?

A Lack of Color - Death Cab For Cutie

*I know. It's not warm and bright and ardent like summer should be. But this is my least favorite season, and there are very few moments when I understand it. We are merely tolerant of each other.

strange lights

I have come upon something wonderful: the work of the poet Jean Valentine, especially her latest publication: Little Boat.

Her poems are brief and keen and to the point. What point? It's not clear. I am never sure what she is saying, but I always feel exactly what she is saying. Yet, the poems change each time I read them. It's so easy to emphasize one line over another, this word or that syllable, and the very face of the poem changes, the very heart. 

The poem shown in this photo, which I've copied into my commonplace book of poetry is my favorite from the book, but there are many others that call me insistently back to their pages.

When she told me


When she told me over the telephone you died
I lay down and cried, "Don't you stop loving me."

In the West Side Market, I heard your voice
from the ceiling say out loud to me, I love you.

In the park, to a chestnut tree,
to the light through hundreds of leaves, I said, I love you.

It was you.          And it was my life, run, to what,
-----you closer than touch.

The Sound of Life's Sweet Bells

I've been thinking a lot about gratitude.

This is the first time in my life I have finally started learning to be properly grateful. Grateful not just for particular people, objects or happenings, but thankful as well for the countless other things which each treasured item is connected to.

I'm thankful for the ridiculous cotton hobo purse I've been carrying with the oranges and pears printed on it because a stranger stopped me in the street to exclaim that it made her feel like Spring, and that in turn made me happy for the gladsome tone of her voice when she said the word "pears", for the sun on our faces, for the shiny red bicycle that happened to be sailing past right then, for the time J and I rode our new bikes to get apple pie and milkshakes at Twohey's and on the way back I completely blanked on how to engage the brake and wiped out on a brick planter and the whole time I was yelping, "Oh no nonononooo nonoooooo."

The connections flow one after the other, like some dam has burst and so now beauty flows into every damn corner. The gratitude for so many things surprises me constantly. The gratitude for the connections themselves is like a little mushroom cottage I step into again and again.

I've been thinking, too, about how little we know and understand how these countless connections tangle together to make up our lives. I'm trying to stop cursing the bad things that come and go so harshly--precisely because of that. Because they go. And because something that makes you cry out in fear and pain today will somehow, just like the most gorgeous sunny day, hook onto a million other things swimming around you. And eventually you'll look back and think thank God that happened because I wouldn't have made it right here otherwise. I'm trying to stop judging things that happen. (Except for the person who keeps stealing/throwing away my tea stuff at work. Because that is just diabolical. You know that afternoon tea makes my day. And congrats on only taking the filter part of my glass pot. Sophia gave that to me, so I am justifiably enraged. Your days are numbered.)

There's no time to judge. I have to jump into the fray and just keep up. Last Saturday morning I had fresh juice but I'd run out of bread. It was a perfectly warm morning and I was excited about the Kentucky Derby and about Maker Faire. I literally jumped for joy onto my bed to open the window. Only I misjudged the distance and kicked the shit out of my foot against the wooden bedframe. I think I stood for 10 minutes on the mattress muttering "holy fuck" and looking painfully out into a lovely day. I iced my sprained toe down with popsicles while I caught up with friends on the phone.

This has all made me more conscious of how I spend my time, has made me more willing to take everything in, even if I'm just watching What Not To Wear. It has made me keep yanking myself back into now, because I tend towards dreaminess and drifting off like an unclutched balloon. Right now I am about to leave for the library, I am feeling guilty for wanting to buy more bottled water, I am typing out this long poem at the end of an already overlong post and hoping that you are having a very good now:

Lead
by: Mary Oliver

Here is a story
to break
your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

Diving into the Ocean

A picture, a poem and a song for Spring:

Diary [Surface]
by: Rachel Zucker

Spring is not so very promising as it is the thing
that looking back was fire, promising:
ignition, aspiration; it was not under my thumb.

Now when I pretend a future it is the moment
he holds the thing I say new-born,
delicate, sure to begin moving but

I am burned out of it like the melody underneath
(still not under my thumb)--
was he ambiguous, amphibian?

Underneath, his voice, the many ways
he gathers oxygen; it will not stop raining
until the buds push through the brittle trees.

If they fail we will not survive,
washed and washed with rain, will we?
No,we are not there yet.

She is pushing me two ways until
I am inside the paradox, the many lungs,
and they're at it again, gathering oxygen;

no wonder I am wrung out
holding out for the promise of
something secret, after--

Too Late - M83 - It was Jen who first introduced me to M83 a few years ago so I have her to thank still for the absolutely jaw-dropping beauty of this song from their upcoming release, Saturdays = Youth. This is one of those that you have to put on repeat and listen to for ages, early in the morning or in the middle of the night.

Now Is The Time

Of all the things I worked on for Thing-a-Day 2008, this is my favorite:

It features a quote from Horace's Odes, "Nunc Est Bibendum", which is translated as "Now is the time for drinking". If you leave it at that I think this would make a really fun and glib print to hang in your bar area, and the phrase makes an excellent toast.

However, the original extended version of the quote reads: "Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus" or "Now is the time for drinking, now the time to dance footloose upon the earth." It's a compelling thought; something I want to keep at the forefront of my mind. I spoke with another Thing-a-Day participant about living in wise indulgence; an "eat dessert first" philosophy. It inspired me to make this poster and also a matching print:

"Nec mora, nec requies" is the proper response to "Nunce est bibendum" and it's translated as "Neither delay, nor rest".  I think it's damn cool that there's a proper response. The reason why I love these quotes is because of their bracing and sincere carpe diem perspective; drinking, dancing and enjoying everything you can now. Rousing yourself and others to remember to do what you can with what you have in this moment, whether that is carousing, working or resting.

Versions of this quote are all around us. From the Bible: "Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!" One of my favorite lines from Braveheart: "Every man dies. Not every man really lives." From Virgil's Minor Poems: "Death twitches my ear 'Live,' he says, 'I am coming'". This thought is always there, always making us just a bit restless while we're preoccupied with the little tasks that make up our days. It is up to us to hear it out, and to do so now.
 

I'm Going Out Sleepwalking

A picture, a song and a poem for Winter:

2:45 a.m. - Elliott Smith

Snow
by: Louise Glück

Late December: my father and I
are going to New York, to the circus.
He holds me
on his shoulders in the bitter wind:
scraps of white paper
blow over the railroad ties.

My father liked
to stand like this, to hold me
so he couldn't see me.
I remember
staring straight ahead
into the world my father saw;
I was learning
to absorb its emptiness,
the heavy snow
not falling, whirling around us.

Por Toda A Minha Vida

I've begun to fulfill a longtime dream. (How often do you get to say that?) I'm learning Portuguese! Last week I started my mission to work through all three levels of the Rosetta Stone system and so far it's been pretty cool. It will be nigh on impossible to gain fluency just studying on my own, but I think I'll still learn a ton. Maybe I'll just have to travel to Lisbon or São Paulo afterwards.

The desire to learn this language first came to me in high school when Sophia and I used to drive around after school listening to Bossa Nova cassette tapes that our friend Chuck had copied for us. These were probably dubs of dubs of dubs, full of satisfying pops and crackles. We had never heard anything like this before and we fell instantly in love. I wanted to understand what these artists were trying to say. I could feel it, but I needed the words:

Águas de Março - Antonio Carlos Jobim

Insensatez -João Gilberto

Since then I actually attempted Portuguese classes a couple of times, but something always got in the way. Then recently a couple of things inspired me to finally just do this thing already.

I was talking over some unpleasantness with my Brazilian friend Ea; beautiful Ea, sweeter than a sugar lump. 

b: And I couldn't explain myself. She just could not see things that way because she hadn't gone through all that.

e: Of course she would not understand. Pimenta no cu dos outros é mel!

b: What does that mean?

e: Literally it means that pepper in someone else's asshole is honey to you.

b: ....

e: Because she doesn't know how hard it was for you, see? She feels fine, but she didn't face it.

b: But....but. Ea, what does that have to do with putting a pepper in someone's ass???

I decided that I HAD to learn this language :) But on a more serious note, what truly decided things for me was saudade.

Saudade. A word that's almost impossible to translate from the Portuguese but basically describes a sort of hopeless longing for the things which are lost to you. The A.F.G. Bell book In Portugal puts it best at:

The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness.

It reminds me of the feeling you get when you listen to an amazing sad song. It's beautiful isn't it, but the kaleidoscope of feeling it brings, some of that is definitely saudade. Think of your favorite breakup song. That feeling. The Portuguese have a single word that describes that. There's no way I'm not learning this.

Different Names for the Same Thing

Prayer
by: Galway Kinnell

Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.

Can I please buy you a drank?

Words and/or phrases I want to start using more:

• son of a bee sting

• tubule

• homunculus

• buy you a drank

• bane of my existence

• plebeian

• juice club burned down

• lambast

• some girl's panty room

• MacGuffin

• skedaddle

Life Line

It's National Poetry Month again!

And I am most definitely in the mood for poems. I've slipped back into reading mode and it's a wonderful thing. Go dig up one of your favorite poems (or two) and look at them again. If you don't have one, maybe I can be of assistance.

One of my favorite things about National Poetry Month is the Poem-A-Day feature from poets.org. A featured poem, delivered through email, each day. Today's poem haunts with a shadowed beauty, and leaves me looking forward to more:

Letter Home
by: Pamela Alexander

I can’t write you because everything’s
wrong. Before dawn, crows swim
from the cedars: black coffee calls them down,
its bitter taste in my throat as they circle,
raucous, huge. Questions with no
place to land, they cruise yellow air
above crickets snapping
like struck matches. My house on fire, crows

are the smoke. You’ve never left me. 
When you crossed the river you did not
call my name. I stood in tall grass
a long time, listening to birds
hidden in reeds, their intricate songs.

The grass will burn, the wrens, 
the river and the rain that falls on it. 
I can go nowhere else: everything
I cannot bear is here.

I must listen deeper. Sharpen my knife. 
Something has changed the angles
of trees, their color. Do not wait to hear
from me. I cannot write to you
because this is what I will say.

Happy First Day of Spring

**First a picture:

**Then a song: Spring Released - Grant Lee Phillips

A groovy, goofy and whimsical song that I've fired up at the beginning of every springtime since 2001. So catchy! Damn, this floor is thumpin'.

**And finally, a poem, all sweeping loveliness.

From Blossoms
by Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

A word to say about things today and fallen leaves.

A Picture:

A poem:

Waves in August
by W.S. Merwin

There is a war in the distance
with the distance growing smaller
the field glasses lying at hand
are for keeping it far away

I thought I was getting better
about that returning childish
wish to be living somewhere else
that I knew was impossible
and now I find myself wishing
to be here to be alive here
it is impossible enough
to still be the wish of a child

in youth I hid a boat under
the bushes beside the water
knowing I would want it later
and come back and would find it there
someone else took it and left me
instead the sound of the water
with its whisper of vertigo

terror reassurance an old
old sadness it would seem we knew
enough always about parting
but we have to go on learning
as long as there is anything

and a song:

River Man - Nick Drake

Movies of Myself Lexicon II

More general unhealthiness on the Beckie Tran front, so I've gone into non-socialization mode for a couple of days. But I can still imagine talking to you guys, and these are the phrases I'd use. More macros, for your pleasure:

Upset Stomach, Diarrhea! - Please, please tell me you've seen this commercial for Pepto Max. We cannot play chinese jump rope together anymore if you haven't seen it. It's utterly bizarre and ingenious. Why is Paul Bunyan terrorizing people? And how does a robot come down with indigestion? This macro is used when a difficult situation presents: a: She hasn't returned either of my emails and her cell phone is suddenly disconnected. b: Upset stomach, diarrhea! **bonus points if you actually perform the diarrhea butt grab.

So am I!! - Under the Specialties column at Dusita's Thai restaurant you'll find two interesting items: Chicken Run (But not fast enough) is one of them. Har, har. Corny, but slightly amusing. Then there's Duck Run (So am I!!). What? What is the meaning of this? I've given it a lot of thought, and for the life of me I cannot figure it out. It's the perfect all-purpose macro: v: There's too much whip cream on this frappuccino. t: So am I!!   or  b: I mean, who doesn't want a sexier baby? j: So am I!!

Up Shit Creek - I haven't heard this phrase in so long that when I randomly said it to Chris this past weekend I shocked myself into utter merriment. We were discussing what would happen if Rivoli shut down so, yes, this macro is best used when something harmful, but non-fatal, occurs. t: Get me the 7-Up. w: I bought Sierra Mist. Is that okay? t: It is when you've drifted up shit creek!

The capitol of Jabooty is Jabooty. - I was surprised to see this Coke ad on tv again this week. Shante first started saying this to me last August. But this can't be the original source of this phrase. Does anyone know where it actually comes from? It's a good retort, in myriad forms, when someone says something tres obvious: v: These marshmallows are so soft. b: I know. I bought them in Jabooty.  And yes, I am aware that it's actually Djibouti. So am I!!

Ghost Ride the Whip - Celeste introduced me to this hifey phrase, describing lunatic car shit that people in the Bay Area attempt when they are feeling way too fast and furious for their own good. Apparently it's one of her nicknames, which I think is hilarious. Use as a synonym for "cool": n: They're carrying Heinz Salad Cream again at Safeway! b: Yes!! Ghost ride the whip!

Coca-cola chicken kentucky fried cheese yes - Kerry told me about this Kevin and Bean segment in which they interview "Anthony Kiedis" (Ralph). In order to mock the sometimes nonsensical RHCP lyrics, Ralph replies to all of their questions with one word answers prefaced by a string of tomfoolery. This was one of those strings. K&b: Are you excited about the tour? AK/R: Coca-cola chicken kentucky fried cheese yes. Another multi-functioning phrase to add to your Swiss Army knife of macros. God, I'm just passing them out left and right toay!

Juice is soft - Remember the jingle for Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum? Good old o.g. Juicy Fruit (none of that Strappleberry junk for me!). Well, I always thought the chorus went "Juicy Fruit it's gonna move ya. Juice is soft, it gets right to ya!" I asked Chris and James recently, "Why is the juice soft?? How can juice be soft?" That's like saying "the pink hug" or "a sour scream". It almost makes sense, but falls short. I've posed this question now to many people but have yet to find a satisfactory answer. I did however, remind people that there are lyrics to this jingle besides the chorus. Magnificent lyrics. Remember this?

Get your skiis shined up,

grab a stick of Juicy Fruit,

the taste is gonna move ya.

Take a sniff, pull it out,

the taste is gonna move ya when you pop it in your mouth!

Juicy Fruit, it's gonna move ya.

Juice is soft, it gets right to ya.

Juicy Fruit, the taste, the taste, the taste is gonna move ya!

Oh! I almost forgot to explain macro usage here. "Juice is soft" describes something pleasant, pretty or cute. I.e.: j: Tyler is a sweetheart. b: He's a tidal wave of adorableness. Juice is soft. t: Juice is so soft.

Quiero hacer contigo

A poem for Valentine's Day, 2007

What first brought me to Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair? Was it Sophia? Was it Chuck? In any case, what started with "Tonight I can write the saddest lines..." became years and years of devouring every Neruda poem I could get my hands on. But I always come back to this collection, written when Neruda was just 19. Bold, impetuous, equivocal, tortured, histrionic, raw, cavalier--everything that the young feel about love, to the fervent extent that only the young can appear to feel it. But not many 19 year olds (not many people of any age) can express these feelings quite like this. Here Neruda paints a uniquely gorgeous, if unsubtle, picture that manages to pierce all of the senses, culminating in what I happen to think is the most perfectly erotic line in all of poetry.

          Poem 14

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.

I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

Hooked on Phonics

I'm making it a goal this year to read 52 books and, although I've devoted this past week to crafting and to trying to get rope in my newly returned insomnia instead of book larnin', my reading rate is actually much higher than I anticipated. I have a good blend of classic fiction, graphic novels, historical research, FunScience and novels which are getting some buzz going right now, and I'm determined to whittle my to-read stack down to a size that isn't completely laughable (I think it's at around 75 books right now.) I've finally come to terms with the idea of setting aside time for reading. Between the ages of 8 and, I'd say, 13, I probably read at least two books a week. I was a voracious reader and I always carried a book with me. I don't expect to get to that level of reading again, but it did pain me to have to schedule reading time. It made it feel like homework and took some of the fun away. Now I look at it as making time for something that I enjoy. As I go along I'll be listing the books I've read here. I'm looking forward to a great year of literature.

January 17th

*
In Blackwater Woods
by: Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifeteime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

*The poem that I had parsed out here, reprinted in full by request.

52 Books

The Goal: to Read 52 Books in 2007. Bring it! 

1) No Regrets, Crime Files Vol. 11 - Ann Rule

2) Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall - Bill Willingham

3) To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

4) The Best America Comics 2006

5) Let Us Be/Perfectly Clear - Paul Hornschemeier

6) Tales of Woodsman Pete - Lilli Carre

7) Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair - Pablo Neruda

8) American Born Chinese - Gene Yang

9) Will in the World - Stephen Greenblatt

10) Eclipse - Stephenie Meyer

11) Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce

12) Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche

13) A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 - James Shapiro

14) Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America - Bill Bryson

15) Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen

16) The Castle of Crossed Destinies - Italo Calvino

17) King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table - Roger Lancelyn Green

18) Not In Kansas Anymore : A Curious Tale of How Magic Is Transforming America - Christine Wicker

19) Averno - Louise Glück

20) After - Jane Hirshfield

21) Pathways to Bliss - Joseph Campbell

22) Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul - Tony Hendra

23) Original Fire - Louise Erdrich

24) The 5th Horseman - James Patterson

25) Dance Hall of the Dead - Tony Hillerman

26) Batman: Year One Hundred - Paul Pope

27) Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

28) City of Glass - Paul Auster

29) 300 - Frank Miller

30) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling

31) The City in Which I Love You - Li Young Li

32) The Stone Skippers - Ian Burgham

33) The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights - Richard Burton

34) Preacher Vol.1: Gone To Texas - Garth Ennis

35) Strangers in Paradise - Terry Moore

36) Gift from the Sea - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

37) King-Cat Classix - John Porcellino

38) Candyfreak - Steve Almond

39) American Gods - Neil Gaiman

40) Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman

41) Castle Waiting - Linda Medley

42) The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon

43) A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson

44) The Mephisto Club - Tess Gerritsen

45) The Raw Shark Texts - Steven Hall

46) Bella Tuscany - Frances Mayes

47) The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

48) An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain - Diane Ackerman

49) Letters to a Young Poet - Rainer Maria Rilke

50) Stumbling on Happiness - Daniel Gilbert

51) Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert

 

Let go the string.

My new tattoo. I originally wanted to get this placed back in June but I missed the small window of time that felt "right" to get it done. That feeling came around very strongly again recently, so this past Saturday I put everything aside and just went for it, even though my day was already packed. I managed to slide it in between a Minty Fresh job, outlet shopping in Gilroy, dinner at Arcadia and the Borat movie. It was bizarre, but I don't regret it for a single minute. For personal reasons, this tattoo was extremely important to me, not just a whim or something I thought might be cool. It turned out wonderfully, and though it's currently scab-acious and itchy as all get out, I am content.

It took 45 minutes to ink this. Forty five endless minutes of intense pain, and I have an extraordinary tolerance for pain. The artist asked me to tell a little bit about my design. So I explained that it was the image on the back cover of my favorite book of poems: Galway Kinnell's The Book of Nightmares. The first week I had this book I read it six times straight through, until it was a blur of strange and grievous beauty. And I knew that it would take the rest of my life to really understand it. In the years since then I've returned to this volume again and again. There are strophes in it that almost allow me to grasp what it means to be alive. As I explained to my Reading Triad three years ago, there is a piece in here that is the poem I want to read to my children one day. Sometimes I feel like these seventy-five pages with its red covers has all I know, and all I need to know.

The artist did not respond to this for a few minutes. He was busy filling in the solid circle, coloring like a child would with a crayon. Only forever. Then he asked if I would be able to read some of the poetry while he worked. I said I could try. So there I was, sitting on the tattoo bed next to a man getting a flaming Superman insignia inked onto his arm. And I was reading Galway Kinnell's masterpiece out loud, in a voice that skipped depending on the pressure of hot needle points tearing mercilessly into my back. There I sat, leaning lightly into the pain, my whole heart, my whole body, radiating with everything I had lost. And in that moment I knew exactly why I had needed to do this.

The witness trees heal
their scars at the flesh fire,
the flame
rises off the bones,
the hunger
to be new lifts off
my soul, an eerie blue light blooms
on all the ridges of the world.