25.12.10
14.11.10
25.10.10
Smoke...
and mirrors.
It's autumn, time to roll around in ochre and hematite, eat pie, burn leaves. Time to read Pablo Neruda poems--especially this one.
Autumn Returns
A day in mourning falls from the bells
like a trembling vague-widow cloth,
it is a color, a dream
of cherries buried in the earth,
it is a tail of smoke that restlessly arrives
to change the color of the water and the kisses.
I do not know if I make myself clear: when from on high
night approaches, when the solitary poet
at the window hears autumn's steed running
and the leaves of trampled fear rustle in his arteries,
there is something over the sky, like the tongue of a thick
ox, something in the doubt of the sky and the atmosphere.
Things return to their places,
the indispensable lawyer, the hands, the olive oil,
the bottles,
all the traces of life: the beds, above all,
are filled with a bloody liquid,
people deposit their confidences in sordid ears,
assassins go down stairs,
it is not this, however, but the old gallop,
the horse of the old autumn that trembles and endures.
The horse of the old autumn has a red beard
and the foam of fear covers its cheeks
and the air that follows it is shaped like an ocean
and a perfume of vague buried putrefaction.
Every day down from the sky comes an ashen color
that doves must spread over the earth:
the cord that forgetfulness and weeping weave,
time that has slept long years within the bells,
everything,
the old tattered suits, the women who see snow coming,
the black poppies that no one can look at without dying,
everything falls into the hands that I lift
in the midst of the rain.
It's autumn, time to roll around in ochre and hematite, eat pie, burn leaves. Time to read Pablo Neruda poems--especially this one.
Autumn Returns
A day in mourning falls from the bells
like a trembling vague-widow cloth,
it is a color, a dream
of cherries buried in the earth,
it is a tail of smoke that restlessly arrives
to change the color of the water and the kisses.
I do not know if I make myself clear: when from on high
night approaches, when the solitary poet
at the window hears autumn's steed running
and the leaves of trampled fear rustle in his arteries,
there is something over the sky, like the tongue of a thick
ox, something in the doubt of the sky and the atmosphere.
Things return to their places,
the indispensable lawyer, the hands, the olive oil,
the bottles,
all the traces of life: the beds, above all,
are filled with a bloody liquid,
people deposit their confidences in sordid ears,
assassins go down stairs,
it is not this, however, but the old gallop,
the horse of the old autumn that trembles and endures.
The horse of the old autumn has a red beard
and the foam of fear covers its cheeks
and the air that follows it is shaped like an ocean
and a perfume of vague buried putrefaction.
Every day down from the sky comes an ashen color
that doves must spread over the earth:
the cord that forgetfulness and weeping weave,
time that has slept long years within the bells,
everything,
the old tattered suits, the women who see snow coming,
the black poppies that no one can look at without dying,
everything falls into the hands that I lift
in the midst of the rain.
26.4.10
You are infinite.
Also, if you get bored, who knows what's lurking just outside your door, waiting to be photographed!
19.4.10
Something
or nothing. You decide.
I'm drinking a New Belgium Trippel out of a (stolen--not by me, but by my friend) Nimbus Bistro glass. I just finished watching video of a Vermilion Flycatcher catching a bug.
Earlier today I brought the trash and recycling bins in, got the mail, washed dishes--y'know, mundane stuff. I sneezed and rubbed my eyes and blew my nose one million times. My allergies have been horrific this spring despite the fact that I've taken every "natural" remedy in the universe; I probably shouldn't be drinking beer. I stood looking out the front door and watched a baby banded lizard do push-ups on the porch. I stood on the side patio and watched a hummingbird drink from the aloe flowers. I went inside and tried to identify the species, but too many of the lady-birds look alike to me. I pre-heated the oven to 400 degrees and put three beets in shallow water in a baking dish. I had to cook beets because our ex-neighbor brought us a huge pile of the things yesterday. (I guess I better figure out what to do with the greens.) I went to the store and picked up the rest of the ingredients I needed to make the beet salad recipe I picked out for dinner. I picked up my husband from work.
When we got home I collapsed on the couch, suddenly exhausted. One of my best friends, whom I've known for twenty years, called while I was lying there. But I didn't answer it because I felt too tired to talk. I listened to her message, though, and she said she really needed to talk to me. So I called her back and she told me that her father has stage four esophageal cancer.
Nate and I finished making dinner and sat at the table (which we rarely do) to eat together. It was delicious.
I need to start praying again.
I'm drinking a New Belgium Trippel out of a (stolen--not by me, but by my friend) Nimbus Bistro glass. I just finished watching video of a Vermilion Flycatcher catching a bug.
Earlier today I brought the trash and recycling bins in, got the mail, washed dishes--y'know, mundane stuff. I sneezed and rubbed my eyes and blew my nose one million times. My allergies have been horrific this spring despite the fact that I've taken every "natural" remedy in the universe; I probably shouldn't be drinking beer. I stood looking out the front door and watched a baby banded lizard do push-ups on the porch. I stood on the side patio and watched a hummingbird drink from the aloe flowers. I went inside and tried to identify the species, but too many of the lady-birds look alike to me. I pre-heated the oven to 400 degrees and put three beets in shallow water in a baking dish. I had to cook beets because our ex-neighbor brought us a huge pile of the things yesterday. (I guess I better figure out what to do with the greens.) I went to the store and picked up the rest of the ingredients I needed to make the beet salad recipe I picked out for dinner. I picked up my husband from work.
When we got home I collapsed on the couch, suddenly exhausted. One of my best friends, whom I've known for twenty years, called while I was lying there. But I didn't answer it because I felt too tired to talk. I listened to her message, though, and she said she really needed to talk to me. So I called her back and she told me that her father has stage four esophageal cancer.
Nate and I finished making dinner and sat at the table (which we rarely do) to eat together. It was delicious.
I need to start praying again.
26.3.10
Tao Te Ching Morning
(Translated by Stephen Mitchell)
27
A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts
and keeps his mind open to what is.
Thus the master is available to all people
and doesn't reject anyone.
She is ready to use all situations
and doesn't waste anything.
This is called embodying the light.
What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man's job?
If you don't understand this, you will get lost,
however intelligent you are.
It is the great secret.
27
A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts
and keeps his mind open to what is.
Thus the master is available to all people
and doesn't reject anyone.
She is ready to use all situations
and doesn't waste anything.
This is called embodying the light.
What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man's job?
If you don't understand this, you will get lost,
however intelligent you are.
It is the great secret.
16.3.10
One of My Own
I was going to post one of my poems here today. But nothing's done, nothing seems finished or right; all I have are beginnings of things, scraps. Things marked incomplete. So?
This is the first blog in the new house. It's a windy day; the bamboo wall that separates our yard from the neighbor's waves back and forth. A flash of red: a pyrrhuloxia. All kinds of birds flit between the--blades? What's the right word? Isn't bamboo just some kind of mutant grass?
Anyway, speaking of birds, here's an unfinished poem about seagulls I started four years ago, when I was still living in Northern Michigan. It fits: I've been thinking of Michigan a lot lately. And summer is fast approaching--I must plan my escape.
This is the first blog in the new house. It's a windy day; the bamboo wall that separates our yard from the neighbor's waves back and forth. A flash of red: a pyrrhuloxia. All kinds of birds flit between the--blades? What's the right word? Isn't bamboo just some kind of mutant grass?
Anyway, speaking of birds, here's an unfinished poem about seagulls I started four years ago, when I was still living in Northern Michigan. It fits: I've been thinking of Michigan a lot lately. And summer is fast approaching--I must plan my escape.
Seagulls
A course language
caked with salt,
or cackles. That's what
the seagulls speak.
They spend their days
crouched on a shit-
caulked rock burping
up fish guts and Big Macs,
or circling, french-fry eyed.
They've developed
bread crumb radars.
The one perched
on the light post ogles
my hands, antsy
for anything to drop.
6.1.10
Californ-ia, Californ-iaaa....(Or: Sunsets +)
Nate and I went to California. We drove along the coast. I drove in L.A.--and we're still alive! We ate sushi in Sunset Beach and partied in Huntington Beach with my old friends Katie and Jen. We watched sunsets; I took pictures of those sunsets. We did cartwheels on the beach. We moonwalked on the beach in the moonlight. We sang cheesy karaoke songs in Ventura with Nate's brother Bobby and his new gal, Christy. We ate an incredibly delicious brunch in Santa Barbara at The Tupelo Junction Cafe. We drove up Painted Cave Road above the Santa Ynez Valley, where we found some wild fennel and I harvested the seeds. We drove down into the valley and saw beautiful ancient walnut trees wearing gowns of Spanish moss. Black cows grazed among the trees, ruminating on the brilliantly green grass. I took pictures of the cows. (My new camera got a workout on this trip!) We stopped in Solvang for about ten minutes, where I bought some legwarmers. Then we left (too many families riding six-wheeler bicycles). We watched another amazing sunset, and as we did an Amtrak train full of passengers zoomed by. They were watching it too. We drove back down the coast and headed west, through the Mojave Desert . We drove through Indio, Indian Wells, Palm Springs, Thousand Palms, past windmills and snow capped mountains, past date palms and grape vines, on a highway scattered with the carcasses of chihuahuas and coyotes. We stopped at a gas station/carniceria because we needed air in our tires and I had to pee. They didn't have a public restroom, but the chica at the checkout counter was nice enough to let me use the one in the kitchen; I threw my used toilet paper in the trash like everyone else. We drove past the Salton Sea and felt out of place, because everyone else was driving a Ford F-150 and hauling a motor home and forty dirt bikes. All I could think about was Val Kilmer. We drove past the Algodones sand dunes. We stopped in Yuma to eat dinner. We kept driving. We kept driving. When we got back to Tucson, our home for now, our kitties were happy to see us.
(Beachfront property on the Salton Sea. Get it while it's hot!)
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