Have a think.

I once read a blog where the writer posted about her husband lying down to have a think.  That image really struck me.  Who takes time out of their day to do that?  But then I thought it would be kind of nice to just lie on the bed or the couch and think about things.  It makes you slow down, maybe appreciate the good stuff in life.  Maybe it gives you a chance to work out a problem.  Well, lately I've caught myself actually putting the "have a think" into practice. 

I tend to read in bed before I go to sleep.  It usually calms my brain or, when presented with more boring material, actually makes me sleepy.  I noticed that sometimes my mind will start to wander to other things, especially if I'm particularly worried about something- to the point where 20 minutes later I find that the book has actually slipped and rests on my chest and I'm just staring at the wall straight ahead.  Now that's just silly.  Why not eliminate the middle-man and just go straight for the think?  So I did.  I got ready for bed and then caught myself reaching for the book on the nightstand.  I stopped.  Not that I wasn't into the book, but I've had a couple bouts with insomnia the last few nights because I've had a lot on my mind.  I figured, instead of just lying there in the dark cursing the sandman for skipping my house, why not get the thinking out of the way?  So I got comfortable, and I let my mind go and I thought and thought until an hour or so went by.  I still wasn't sleepy, but somehow it was helping.  It actually was kind of nice.  Maybe some people call that meditation or praying.  To me, that's something else.  I just call it having a think.

Psychoanalysis:  An Elegy

What are you thinking about?

I am thinking of an early summer.

I am thinking of wet hills in the rain

Pouring water. Shedding it

Down empty acres of oak and manzanita

Down to the old green brush tangled in the sun,

Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard.

Or the hot wind coming down from Santa Ana

Driving the hills crazy,

A fast wind with a bit of dust in it

Bruising everything and making the seed sweet.

Or down in the city where the peach trees

Are awkward as young horses,

And there are kites caught on the wires

Up above the street lamps,

And the storm drains are all choked with dead branches.

What are you thinking?

I think that I would like to write a poem that is slow as a summer

As slow getting started

As 4th of July somewhere around the middle of the second stanza

After a lot of unusual rain

California seems long in the summer.

I would like to write a poem as long as California

And as slow as a summer.

Do you get me, Doctor? It would have to be as slow

As the very tip of summer.

As slow as the summer seems

On a hot day drinking beer outside Riverside

Or standing in the middle of a white-hot road

Between Bakersfield and Hell

Waiting for Santa Claus.

What are you thinking now?

I’m thinking that she is very much like California.

When she is still her dress is like a roadmap. Highways

Traveling up and down her skin

Long empty highways

With the moon chasing jackrabbits across them

On hot summer nights.

I am thinking that her body could be California

And I a rich Eastern tourist

Lost somewhere between Hell and Texas

Looking at a map of a long, wet, dancing California

That I have never seen.

Send me some penny picture-postcards, lady,

Send them.

One of each breast photographed looking

Like curious national monuments,

One of your body sweeping like a three-lane highway

Twenty-seven miles from a night’s lodging

In the world’s oldest hotel.

What are you thinking?

I am thinking of how many times this poem

Will be repeated. How many summers

Will torture California

Until the damned maps burn

Until the mad cartographer

Falls to the ground and possesses

The sweet thick earth from which he has been hiding.

What are you thinking now?

I am thinking that a poem could go on forever.

 

-Jack Spicer

The human condition

I have to dedicate a post to my roommate, who, upon hearing I was feeling under the weather, took it upon herself to learn how to make fresh ginger tea.  It is seriously the best thing in the world.  It tastes a little like ginger ale but with more bite.  Plus it's hot.  And there's lemon in it.  So, thanks, Omaira Galarza.  Now I'm not so scared to go see The Roommate with you.

I asked Omi what kind of poem she would like dedicated to her today.  She said something about the beach.  Then I found this poem and we both had a good chuckle over it:

The Beach in August

The day the fat woman

In the bright blue bathing suit

Walked into the water and died,

I thought about the human

Condition. Pieces of old fruit

Came in and were left by the tide.

What I thought about the human

Condition was this: old fruit

Comes in and is left, and dries

In the sun. Another fat woman

In a dull green bathing suit

Dives into the water and dies.

The pulmotors glisten. It is noon.

We dry and die in the sun

While the seascape arranges old fruit,

Coming in and the tide, glistening

At noon. A woman, moderately stout,

In a nondescript bathing suit,

Swims to a pier. A tall woman

Steps toward the sea. One thinks about the human

Condition. The tide goes in and goes out.

-Weldon Kees*

*Note the last line in his bio: " It is not known whether he killed himself or went to Mexico."  Omi thinks he went to Mexico to lay out on the beach.

That'll teach me to avoid the whites.

Today I finally found the jeans I've been looking for!  And no, I wasn't shopping.  I had ordered 2 pairs of jeans off of a Groupon deal at the end of November.  I was pretty excited about them since they ended up being only $24 each, and I got in on the deal right before it expired.  The jeans took about a week to ship, but during that week we moved apartments and I went out of town.  My poor roommate was overwhelmed with everything going on, and, though she did tell me the jeans had arrived, she stashed them someplace so secure and secret that neither of us could figure out where they were once we started unpacking from the move.

Cut to: almost two months later.  Pretty much all the boxes have been unpacked.  The only ones left are the ones from the garage that are stacked in a storage closet.  I figured once I tackled those, surely I'd find the missing jeans package.  There was no where else to look!  So I thought.

Today I decided would be a good day to get some laundry done.  I was home when no one else in the building was, which meant no fighting over the one and only washer and dryer.  I was so optimistic about the amount of laundry I could do that I even tackled a load of whites.  I hate doing the whites because they're made up of a lot of little things like washcloths and socks and they're a pain to fold up and put away.  I'll usually do three loads of darks and towels before I'll get around to the dreaded whites.  Anyway, I schlepped my linen bag of white laundry out to the machine.  I unloaded everything into it and then I noticed a plastic bag at the bottom.  At first I thought it was a bag of dirty clothes that I had forgotten to unpack from a trip.  But then eureka!  It was the missing jeans!  So I guess sometimes adults still get rewards for doing chores?

This poem is not really related to any of the above, but it is kind of related to clothes, and I like it.

Old Coat

Dressed in an old coat I lumber
Down a street in the East Village, time itself

Whistling up my ass and looking to punish me
For all the undone business I have walked away from,

And I think I might have stayed
In that last tower by the ocean,

The one I built with my hands and furnished
Using funds which came to me at nightfall, in a windfall....

Just ahead of me, under the telephone wires
On this long lane of troubles, I notice a gathering

Of viciously insane criminals I'll have to pass
Getting to the end of this long block in eternity.

There's nothing between us. Good
I look so dangerous in this coat.

-Liam Rector

The simple things in life

I don't know if this is true for everyone, but there are certain moments in life when I experience pure happiness.  Not apropos of anything, it just is suddenly upon me.  There are not that many instances of it occurring.  Of course, everyone experiences happiness at certain occasions or while spending time with people they love, but usually even then at the back of your mind your to-do list is still there, your worries and anxieties are not that far behind.  When pure happiness hits, you know it because it's all you feel.  It's just plain joy at being alive.

I can remember one time when I was in college bringing back some lunch to my dorm.  I was carrying my drink and a sandwich and I was walking across the grass to the back door of the building.  I went to fish my keys out of my bag and it hit me.  I don't know why.  Nothing around me triggered it.  Just for a minute, everything seemed well and good in the world and I was happy.  It makes me think of that Florence + the Machine lyric:  "Happiness hit her like a bullet in the head/Struck from a great height by someone who should have known better."

Well, it's been many years since that incident, but the same thing happened to me today.  I was in the kitchen this morning.  I was standing there barefoot and in a pair of shorts I sleep in.  The window was cracked open so that a breeze was entering with the sunlight and hitting my bare legs.  It was somewhere around 75 degrees.  I was eating an apple I'd cut into slices.  I spread peanut butter on them.  It was quiet except for the cawing of a lone crow somewhere outside.  The strangest thing was that the linoleum of the kitchen floor felt so good against my feet.  It made no sense, but I was happy.

Eating Poetry

-Mark Strand

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

Now I see why Ginsberg was imagining you in the watermelons.

I am enraptured by this poem by Federico Garcia Lorca:

Arbolé, Arbolé . . .

Tree, tree
dry and green.

The girl with the pretty face
is out picking olives.
The wind, playboy of towers,
grabs her around the waist.
Four riders passed by
on Andalusian ponies,
with blue and green jackets
and big, dark capes.
"Come to Cordoba, muchacha."
The girl won't listen to them.
Three young bullfighters passed,
slender in the waist,
with jackets the color of oranges
and swords of ancient silver.
"Come to Sevilla, muchacha."
The girl won't listen to them.
When the afternoon had turned
dark brown, with scattered light,
a young man passed by, wearing
roses and myrtle of the moon.
"Come to Granada, muchacha."
And the girl won't listen to him.
The girl with the pretty face
keeps on picking olives
with the grey arm of the wind
wrapped around her waist.
Tree, tree
dry and green.

Don't you just love that "grey arm of the wind"?  And why does picking olives sound so romantic? Where can I find some myrtle of the moon?

Lorca is a very big deal as a poet, but I had not read him until fairly recently.  He was a contemporary of Salvidor Dali in Spain, and his life ended during the Spanish Civil War.  Listen to this craziness:

"In 1936, García Lorca was staying at Callejones de García, his country home, at the outbreak of the Civil War. He was arrested by Franquist soldiers, and on the 17th or 18th of August, after a few days in jail, soldiers took García Lorca to "visit" his brother-in-law, Manuel Fernandez Montesinos, the Socialist ex-mayor of Granada whom the soldiers had murdered and dragged through the streets. When they arrived at the cemetery, the soldiers forced García Lorca from the car. They struck him with the butts of their rifles and riddled his body with bullets. His books were burned in Granada's Plaza del Carmen and were soon banned from Franco's Spain. To this day, no one knows where the body of Federico García Lorca rests."

Pale Blue Dot

I was cleaning out my hard drive and came across this picture, which blows my mind every time I look at it:

That is called the Pale Blue Dot.  It was taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft.  The "dot" is Earth, depicted against the vastness of space.  It looks so lonely; it's hard to imagine how teeming with life the planet is.  The best part of the picture, for me, is that it looks like Earth is caught in a shaft of light.  Really it's not a beam of light shining on it directly but a refraction of sunlight in the Voyager's camera optics.  But look at how tiny we are!  Earth is taking up less than a pixel of this photograph. 

Carl Sagan wrote a book called Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.  In it, he references the photograph, saying,

"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds . . . It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."


Sir, Say no More

Sir, say no more.
Within me ’t is as if
The green and climbing eyesight of a cat
Crawled near my mind’s poor birds.

-Trumbull Stickney

In honor of Edgar Allen Poe's birthday (and my friend Amanda's)

I killed a spider in my bathroom five days ago, and I have not yet found the nerve to dispose of it.  The first day it was to make sure it was dead.  The second was to be extra sure.  The third was to be absolutely Washingtonian about it.  The fourth was to let him be a lesson to all his friends.  And the fifth (today) is because I just plain don't want to get near it. 

Instead, I am going to focus on celebrating Mr. Poe's birthday, which my friend Amanda-from-New-York also shares.  Bet you've never heard this one:

"Alone"

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

Then—in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn

From ev’ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still—

From the torrent, or the fountain—

From the red cliff of the mountain—

From the sun that ’round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass’d me flying by—

From the thunder, and the storm—

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view—

If I said I meant Easter eggs as in video games, would that make you want to read this?

I think the reason so many people don't like poetry is because it seems to take an awful lot of work to get to the bottom of a poem.  It's like digging for Easter eggs.  That's why I didn't really get into poetry until I discovered Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.  They are two confessional poets, and that just made what they were writing so much more accessible.  Then there's Billy Collins.  Billy Collins was the Poet Laureate of the U.S. in 2001.  Poet Stephen Dunn once said about him, "He doesn't hide things from us, as I think lesser poets do. He allows us to overhear, clearly, what he himself has discovered."  I leave you the following poem, and you can see if you think that holds true:

Introduction to Poetry

-Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

The sound of silence = the sound of my own paranoia

Have you ever heard of those sensory deprivation tanks where you sit in water in the pitch black with absolute silence around you?  At first I thought that would be kind of a cool experience, but now I'm not so sure.  I think my imagination is not cut out for something like that.  It would be kicked into overdrive.  After two minutes I would convince myself that I'm going to be stuck in there forever, that I am being punished for something, that the people in control of the tank are at any moment going to release a shark or a piranha or killer squid into the water to see how I react. 

What brought about these thoughts was the electricity going out on our block tonight.  Being in a new apartment, my roommate and I are not entirely sure of where everything is. We just kind of sat there in the blackness for a minute before launching into action.  Usually in the past when this happened it was because we overloaded the circuit or blew a fuse.  In this place, I don't even know whether it uses circuit breakers or fuses.  All I knew was that I was going to have to step over a lot of crap between where I was in the living room and where my flashlight was next to my bed.  And I cannot even begin to tell you where I packed the candles.  Anyway, my imagination kicked into gear as I was sitting there- it was really dark!  When my roommate ventured into the kitchen to find her flashlight, I sat there in the dead silence and imagined this was all the effort of a serial killer targeting me specifically.  Once I brushed off the serial killer scenario, I focused on the noiselessness and that freaked me out even more.  That's because it amplifies smaller sounds like rodents skittering. 

Look, I know I sound like a crazy person with a bunch of neuroses.  Maybe I am, but that rodent thing is legit.  One time we had a rat loose in our apartment, and when we thought we had it quarantined, we all went to bed.  Guess whose room it ended it up in.  I woke up to the scratching sound of rat claws on the wood floor.  When I turned on the light, it ran across my wall.  I didn't know rats could do that!  And that is why I sleep with earplugs.

Beach Walk

I found a baby shark on the beach.
Seagulls had eaten his eyes. His throat was bleeding.
Lying on shell and sand, he looked smaller than he was.
The ocean had scraped his insides clean.
When I poked his stomach, darkness rose up in him,
like black water. Later, I saw a boy,
aroused and elated, beckoning from a dune.
Like me, he was alone. Something tumbled between us—
not quite emotion. I could see the pink
interior flesh of his eyes. "I got lost. Where am I?"
he asked, like a debt owed to death.
I was pressing my face to its spear-hafts.
We fall, we fell, we are falling. Nothing mitigates it.
The dark embryo bares its teeth and we move on.

-Henri Cole

Getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren't we?

I was watching the Golden Globes tonight,  and as a result I feel compelled to admit something.  I think most people who have jobs in the arts imagine themselves up on the stage of some awards show, accepting the highest honor for their work in front of all their peers.  I, on the other hand, can think of nothing more tortuous aside from being stuck on a bridge in a car full of spiders over a bay on a gusty day.  I mean, before we even get to the horror of public speaking, let's consider the long march from your seat to the stage.  At least at the Globes everyone is too busy toasting drinks at their tables to be paying too much attention to the actual show.  Most other shows everyone is so bored that they just stare at you as you pass by and psychically bombard you with "keep it short" vibes.  

I guess I should put a disclaimer here that I've never been to an awards show, I'm only writing what I know from television, and it's probably a poor representation at that.  That still doesn't change the fact that if I was ever nominated for an award, I would quickly schedule something out of the country and hope that someone famously hilarious accepts on my behalf. 

I know you're thinking, careful, your misanthropy is starting to show.  I wasn't always like this.  In my bolder days of youthful vanity (read: middle school), I would pretend to be sitting across from Oprah talking about my most recent bestseller.  Award shows weren't really my thing, but network television's highly rated daytime shows apparently were.  In my angrier, angsty-er days (read: college), I pictured a scenario in which I would accept an award out of spite for all the haters and nay-sayers.  That speech would go something like, "This is no thanks to YOU, blankety-blank, who refused to write me a recommendation to get into such-and-such program.  Despite you, so-and-so, who rolled your eyes when I said I wanted to be a writer, I'm accepting this award.  Suck it."

So that's over, thank goodness.  Now I'm sorry to tell you, friends and family members, I will not ever be a good bet for an awards show ticket, but in return I invite you to join me on a secluded beach somewhere- many time zones away from the video feeds (and unfortunately, the gift bags).

The Pillar of Fame

-Robert Herrick

             Fame’s pillar here at last we set,

             Out-during marble, brass or jet;

                  Charmed and enchanted so

                  As to withstand the blow

                   O f   o v e r t h r o w ;

                   Nor   shall   the   seas,

                     Or     o u t r a g e s

                   Of   storms,   o’erbear

                     What    we    uprear;

                   Tho’   kingdoms   fall,

                This   pillar   never   shall

                Decline   or waste at   all;

         But   stand   for ever   by   his   own

         Firm   and    well-fixed    foundation.

End of the Reading Rainbow

I wanted to post this poem yesterday, but the Stevenson poem seemed more appropriate for that entry.  While we're still on the subject of reading (we are until I say we're not), I'm going to include it.  I always find joy in stories about the lengths people will go to to learn to read.

Learning to Read

-Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Very soon the Yankee teachers
Came down and set up school;
But, oh! how the Rebs did hate it,—
It was agin' their rule.

Our masters always tried to hide
Book learning from our eyes;
Knowledge didn't agree with slavery—
'Twould make us all too wise.

But some of us would try to steal
A little from the book,
And put the words together,
And learn by hook or crook.

I remember Uncle Caldwell,
Who took pot-liquor fat
And greased the pages of his book,
And hid it in his hat.

And had his master ever seen
The leaves up on his head,
He'd have thought them greasy papers,
But nothing to be read.

And there was Mr. Turner's Ben,
Who heard the children spell,
And picked the words right up by heart,
And learned to read 'em well.

Well, the Northern folks kept sending
The Yankee teachers down;
And they stood right up and helped us,
Though Rebs did sneer and frown.

And, I longed to read my Bible,
For precious words it said;
But when I begun to learn it,
Folks just shook their heads,

And said there is no use trying,
Oh! Chloe, you're too late;
But as I was rising sixty,
I had no time to wait.

So I got a pair of glasses,
And straight to work I went,
And never stopped till I could read
The hymns and Testament.

Then I got a little cabin—
A place to call my own—
And I felt as independent
As the queen upon her throne.

If Black Books and Inkheart had a baby, it would be this post.

Sometimes when my mind wanders I like to imagine that I run a little used and antique bookstore somewhere around Stratford-upon-Avon.  Hardly anyone would come in to buy things, and the sun would stream through the high windows.  I would sit there reading all day, only to glance up once or twice at the dust settling in the beams.

It occurs to me that many of the best gifts I have ever been given have been books.  For Christmas this year, my family all drew names and then made a pact to only give one homemade gift to that person.  It turned out to be a really special Christmas.  I unwrapped a cookbook created by my mother.  It was hardback like a real book, with a photo of her kitchen on the cover and a picture of us together on the back.  She took some pictures and used others that I had taken and posted online and then typed up some of her best recipes.  It is one of my favorite things ever.

The Christmas before that, my best friend gave me the most unexpected and exciting book I could have ever imagined.  It's A Child's Garden of Verses written by Robert Louis Stevenson, and there's a sticker inside the cover with a 1929 calendar on it.  It's got that musty smell that the farthest reaches of the library stacks have, and sometimes I feel like Mary Katherine Gallagher sitting there and smelling the pages like a fool.

Runners-up in the best books I have been given category are Are You Being Served?: The Inside Story of Britain's Funniest--And Public Television's Favorite--Comedy Series, Catch-22 (loaned to me by a friend and then later given to me by my dad), and The Making of Pride and Prejudice (the BBC version because I am a die-hard nerd).

Here is a poem included in that collection of Stevenson verses.  Do you ever wish you could just live in the pages of a book?

The Land of Storybooks

At evening when the lamp is lit,
Around the fire my parents sit;
They sit at home and talk and sing,
And do not play at anything.

Now, with my little gun, I crawl
All in the dark along the wall,
And follow round the forest track
Away behind the sofa back.

There, in the night, where none can spy,
All in my hunter's camp I lie,
And play at books that I have read
Till it is time to go to bed.

These are the hills, these are the woods,
These are my starry solitudes;
And there the river by whose brink
The roaring lions come to drink.

I see the others far away
As if in firelit camp they lay,
And I, like to an Indian scout,
Around their party prowled about.

So, when my nurse comes in for me,
Home I return across the sea,
And go to bed with backward looks
At my dear land of Story-books.

Yes, but what does it mean?

I am reading a book by Neil Gaiman called American Gods. It's a novel that deals with mythology and its place in America now that we are a society so immersed in technology and information. I'm enjoying the read so far, not least because it has confirmed two truths for me.

One, and I'm quoting Gaiman here, is that there is a phenomenon where "you only ever catch one episode of [TV] shows you don't watch, over and over, years apart." I had always suspected this was some kind of cosmic joke I was imagining, but now that he's writing about it, I realize that at least one other person has experienced this happening to him.  For me it's an episode of Wings where two of the characters get married. Although it's been a while since I've come across a network playing Wings reruns, chances are if I did it would be that episode.

Two, that you can go your whole life never knowing something or someone existed, but as soon as you learn about it, it becomes immediately ubiquitous. For example, I had never heard of Louise Brooks until a week ago. She had always existed, but I was never aware of her. Now, as soon as I read her name in this American Gods book, she's all over the place.  Is it just that I'm more aware of her name being mentioned?  Possibly.  But it's pretty strange that a friend of mine brought her up in conversation, randomly, at this particular time.  On the other hand, my friend was saying that her face is up on a mural on the outside wall of a school in Los Angeles that I've probably driven by at some point.  But while watching TCM the other night, Robert Osborne referred to Louise Brooks in connection to another film that was airing.  So yes, you could probably come up with a solid argument against it, but I'm convinced that this is a real thing.

I'm close to finishing American Gods, so I'll let you know if anything else is illuminated.  I just hope it's not another In the Woods-ian epic disappointment at the end.  You'll be getting a full rant from me on that one one of these days. 

French Movie

-David Lehman

I was in a French movie
and had only nine hours to live
and I knew it
not because I planned to take my life
or swallowed a lethal but slow-working
potion meant for a juror
in a mob-related murder trial,
nor did I expect to be assassinated
like a chemical engineer mistaken
for someone important in Milan
or a Jew journalist kidnapped in Pakistan;
no, none of that; no grounds for
suspicion, no murderous plots
centering on me with cryptic phone
messages and clues like a scarf or
lipstick left in the front seat of a car;
and yet I knew I would die
by the end of that day
and I knew it with a dreadful certainty,
and when I walked in the street
and looked in the eyes of the woman
walking toward me I knew that
she knew it, too,
and though I had never seen her before,
I knew she would spend the rest of that day
with me, those nine hours walking,
searching, going into a bookstore in Rome,
smoking a Gitane, and walking,
walking in London, taking the train
to Oxford from Paddington or Cambridge
from Liverpool Street and walking
along the river and across the bridges,
walking, talking, until my nine hours
were up and the black-and-white movie
ended with the single word FIN
in big white letters on a bare black screen.

"I gave you love, you gave me asthma."

That is what a sign said as I drove by a bus stop today.  Amazed, I quickly tried to capture a photo with my phone, but it came out all grainy:

You're just going to have to trust me when I tell you that some genius marketing person decided that a picture of a baby with an inhaler and the caption "I gave you love, you gave me asthma" was something that would really get people riled up about this issue.  It wouldn't make them laugh.  Not at all. 

Man, I love this so much that I have to let it stand on its own.  No poem today- unless you can come up with one.  It might help their campaign.

Mi amore

I have an obsession with pasta.  It's not at all something I've recently discovered.  I'm not having a whiny, middle-aged woman-who-takes-a-gap-year Italian food renaissance,  My passion for pasta has always been and always will be, to the point where I first considered writing a blog about spaghetti long before I even entertained the idea of writing about poetry. 

Pasta and I go way back to a time when I was a toddler and it was a pastina.  My mother used to coax me with a mixture of pastina and egg when I refused all other food, and to this day it is still my go-to dish when I'm sick.  The pasta's and my relationship escalated last year when I was no longer satisfied with simply emptying a box of linguine into boiling water.  I wanted to get my hands dirty.  So I bought a $40 pasta-maker at Bed, Bath & Beyond, and, armed with a book of recipes from Mom, I hand-cranked my first batch of noodles.  Well.  What can I say that will convince you to live a life of only homemade spaghetti?  That it is like nothing else in the world?  That angels and Etta James sang? That it really is the easiest thing to do and cooks up in about 2 minutes?  That true pasta in its plainest form actually tastes rich and eggy and not at all like cardboard?  

Now that I have found gastronomic bliss with my pasta maker, I am continuing to build our relationship.  I have discovered two things in the last month, during which I made a Christmas and a New Year's batch: 

1) Using Italian "00" flour really does make a difference and only costs about $3 if you can find it.  It is so finely ground, it is like working with talcum powder.
2) Instead of relying on a food processor to mix the dough, make an old-fashioned well out of the flour, put the eggs and olive oil in the middle and mix it up yourself.  Ten minutes of kneading dough will certainly help you feel less guilty about that big bowl of fettuccine you're about to eat.

And for those of you who are reading this and thinking, when did I sign up for a cooking blog?  I say, come over and I'll show you what all the fuss is about.

Pumpernickel

Monday mornings Grandma rose an hour early to make rye,
onion & challah, but it was pumpernickel she broke her hands for,
pumpernickel that demanded cornmeal, ripe caraway, mashed potatoes
& several Old Testament stories about patience & fortitude & for
which she cursed in five languages if it didn’t pop out fat
as an apple-cheeked peasant bride. But bread, after all,
is only bread & who has time to fuss all day & end up
with a dead heart if it flops? Why bother? I’ll tell you why.
For the moment when the steam curls off the black crust like a strip
of pure sunlight & the hard oily flesh breaks open like a poem
pulling out of its own stubborn complexity a single glistening truth
& who can help but wonder at the mystery of the human heart when you
hold a slice up to the light in all its absurd splendor & I tell you
we must risk everything for the raw recipe of our passion.

-Philip Schultz

Finally, the internets!

I almost hugged the Time Warner man as he came through the gate this morning.  Not only was he well within the four-hour window, but he hooked us up with the strongest signal in the whole building.  And on top of that, he left his cell phone number in case someone else moves in and steals away our prime cable spot when they hook up their internet/cable.  Bless you, Manuel.

In other news, my friend Todd gave me a shout-out on his brand spankin' new blog, so I thought I'd return the favor.  He does something similar to what I do with poetry, except with music lyrics.  Let's give him a little traffic: go here.

So, happy new year, everyone.  It's a time for new resolutions, but I seem to spend more time trying to keep things the same as they've always been rather than to embrace something new.  Maybe that should be my resolution, to be more open to change. Because damned if change doesn't find me no matter how cleverly I think I elude it.

Dialect of a Skirt

The young girl wanted a new voice. After all, people got
new things every day. A new hip, a new nose, a new set
of suspenders. She adored the consonants that landed
like wooden shoes. She loved the type of L-sounds
that made a mouth drool from the back of the tongue
to the front. She practiced her new voice into seashells,
tin cans, caves. She gave her first performance quietly,
into the ear of her sleeping dog. She could tell by his snorting
that his dreams were of fat tree trunks and black, truffle-filled
soil. Later, she drove to the local gas station and used her new
voice to ask for a pack of cigarettes. She wasn't wearing a bra,
but the attendant didn't notice. He was too busy listening
to the way sound seemed to drip out of her mouth
as she said the word, Camel.

- Erika Miriam Fabri