Thursday, March 26, 2009
Battleship Impala
The vinyl is peeled off the roof of the car like old paint, furled and flapping in the wind. Flattened tires sit in mounds of vibrant green moss, which has crept along shallow treads. The maroon paint has become weary pink from sitting in the sun. I hitch my bag on my shoulder, noting the leaves caught in the wiper blades. All but one window is fogged. I step to it, and can see into the surprisingly debris-free interior. A furry gray head the size of a melon appears in the open window, accompanied by a howl of warning. Yellow eyes pin me with completely unwarranted loathing. I grin and start to say, "Awe, hi there-" when the cat lurches. I drop pretense and run.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Rainy Max Stop
I am caught idling at the intersection while the lights cycle through,and see fluttering out of the corner of my eye. She is barely five feet tall, scarves whipping about her head in the rainy wind, a map unfurled and bucking in her hand. Her free hand is trying to hold her hair and scarves out of her face, which is layered with delicate wrinkles and alight with laughter. At her side stands a square blue suitcase. A young woman bounds to her side and catches hold of the map.For a moment, as they make eye contact, the young woman seems startled. As I drive through the intersection, her face transforms from tight concern to a smile.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Carter's Midnight
I’m of an age of typewriters. I got my first smith corona in third grade, age 8.It had been my dad’s; he and mom had a matching pair, and he gave me his when he upgraded. The typewriter had a heavy brown case, and you had to push the keys way down to get the letter to hammer ink into the paper. I learned to type on it with a pounding of fingers. There were chips on a few of the keys, the “w” and the “c”, splatters of white-out deep in the side of the keys that were impossible to clean. Occasionally I would type so furiously and fast that the keys would jam up and I’d have to extricate them. I can smell the machine oil, the ribbon. The fuzzy dust on the long, delicate arms that led from the key pad to the heart of the machine itself. I learned to pry apart the arms and reset the pins. Over the years, I learned all the details of that machine and could repair most anything. The smell of that typewriter is one of my primal childhood smells, born of years spent with my nose poised over the keys. I learned to type one-handed while holding my handwritten manuscript in the other. I typed on old newsprint, yellow, that mom brought home from work. This heavy hand me down typewriter was my transport to another world, one of invention.
When I was beginning junior high (7th grade) we moved into an old house and in one of my closets, up on a shelf I found a dirt crusted round tin. Covered in dust. It had a curious weight to it. I pulled it down, stepped off my chair and examined it with the awe of discovery. When I swirled it, something heavy inside moved with the motion. I scraped away at the lid to reveal dark blue paint. Breath held, I continued to rub at the cement-hard mud, and knew it must have been buried at one point. As my shirt cleaned a small portion, I saw a star, then a tiny representation of Saturn. I hastily cleaned it, tried to open it and could not. My whole body vibrated with a “this is it!” intensity. My thumbs rubbed off some script lettering. “Midnight”. Stars, planets, midnight on a mysterious tin. I looked around my blue painted room, the plastic glow in the dark stars dangling from the ceiling. I finally broke down and got windex to clean off the grime, and could soon read “carters midnight typewriter ribbon”
The universe was speaking to me.
Thunderclap. Lightning strike. All that. Profoundly struck, I knew this was the Universe speaking to me of my destiny, maybe even God. Yet I could not open it. I even broke down and asked my brother to help, and he couldn’t get it to budge. He mused that it did feel funny, but had no idea what was inside. When Mom came home I showed her. She mused that it was probably a typewriter ribbon inside, with an eyebrow raised look that told me she was surprised I hadn’t thought of that. When I continued musing about it, she commented that the ribbon wouldn’t fit my typewriter anyway.
Yet I spun it, and the weight within it, swooshing along the inside of the tin. I knew it couldn’t be a ribbon inside, the whole existence of the thing was too miraculous, certainly it had been called into being and was speaking specifically to me.
I kept it with me whenever I wrote, in my art bag, beside my notebooks, picking it up to swirl whenever I contemplated something, or to stir up my muse. Through college and my early relationships, each person I would share the story of my discovery and they would be affectionately bemused, yet unimpressed, and equally unable to open the round tin.
Occasionally I would try to pry it open, but largely was content with the mystery it contained, and the talisman it had become.
That thing. That surprising luck, the event that catapults characters in stories from the mundane to greatness, the magic, the something special. That thing I was always looking for. The promise. Knowing we are of greater stuff than our immediate life bears witness. That thing that mysterious whatever that I never stopped believing in. Never stopped looking for.
I will never forget the day I showed it to TJ, and told her the story, and it opened. She popped it open, effortlessly, before I could finish the story. My gasp could not have told the story of the years of wonder, of dreaming, of inspiration it had given me. A lens was inside, a round lens.
When I was beginning junior high (7th grade) we moved into an old house and in one of my closets, up on a shelf I found a dirt crusted round tin. Covered in dust. It had a curious weight to it. I pulled it down, stepped off my chair and examined it with the awe of discovery. When I swirled it, something heavy inside moved with the motion. I scraped away at the lid to reveal dark blue paint. Breath held, I continued to rub at the cement-hard mud, and knew it must have been buried at one point. As my shirt cleaned a small portion, I saw a star, then a tiny representation of Saturn. I hastily cleaned it, tried to open it and could not. My whole body vibrated with a “this is it!” intensity. My thumbs rubbed off some script lettering. “Midnight”. Stars, planets, midnight on a mysterious tin. I looked around my blue painted room, the plastic glow in the dark stars dangling from the ceiling. I finally broke down and got windex to clean off the grime, and could soon read “carters midnight typewriter ribbon”
The universe was speaking to me.
Thunderclap. Lightning strike. All that. Profoundly struck, I knew this was the Universe speaking to me of my destiny, maybe even God. Yet I could not open it. I even broke down and asked my brother to help, and he couldn’t get it to budge. He mused that it did feel funny, but had no idea what was inside. When Mom came home I showed her. She mused that it was probably a typewriter ribbon inside, with an eyebrow raised look that told me she was surprised I hadn’t thought of that. When I continued musing about it, she commented that the ribbon wouldn’t fit my typewriter anyway.
Yet I spun it, and the weight within it, swooshing along the inside of the tin. I knew it couldn’t be a ribbon inside, the whole existence of the thing was too miraculous, certainly it had been called into being and was speaking specifically to me.
I kept it with me whenever I wrote, in my art bag, beside my notebooks, picking it up to swirl whenever I contemplated something, or to stir up my muse. Through college and my early relationships, each person I would share the story of my discovery and they would be affectionately bemused, yet unimpressed, and equally unable to open the round tin.
Occasionally I would try to pry it open, but largely was content with the mystery it contained, and the talisman it had become.
That thing. That surprising luck, the event that catapults characters in stories from the mundane to greatness, the magic, the something special. That thing I was always looking for. The promise. Knowing we are of greater stuff than our immediate life bears witness. That thing that mysterious whatever that I never stopped believing in. Never stopped looking for.
I will never forget the day I showed it to TJ, and told her the story, and it opened. She popped it open, effortlessly, before I could finish the story. My gasp could not have told the story of the years of wonder, of dreaming, of inspiration it had given me. A lens was inside, a round lens.
33 inches in four hours
Nothing short of miraculous my Hollywood snow
slow and steady for days
And for days it is embraced
Holiday feel snow brings such peace
Such peace the snow
Muffles the world
Muffles the snow muffles quietens
Shushes hushes\the world
People walk and drive
Travel in reverence
Of the world made larger by
Weather
Of the snow of the immense of
Bigness uncontrollable
Beyond control
The world hushed by snow
Snow hushed world
Reverent travelers
Awed by the power
Of the immense unexpected
Awestruck struck with awe
Beauty big universal
Large beyond control
world hushed by godsnow
church whispers
brought into high contrast
black sky white snow
do not go gentle into the night
at east not without a scraper, emergency band radio, blanket chocolate bar candle matches road flares.
slow and steady for days
And for days it is embraced
Holiday feel snow brings such peace
Such peace the snow
Muffles the world
Muffles the snow muffles quietens
Shushes hushes\the world
People walk and drive
Travel in reverence
Of the world made larger by
Weather
Of the snow of the immense of
Bigness uncontrollable
Beyond control
The world hushed by snow
Snow hushed world
Reverent travelers
Awed by the power
Of the immense unexpected
Awestruck struck with awe
Beauty big universal
Large beyond control
world hushed by godsnow
church whispers
brought into high contrast
black sky white snow
do not go gentle into the night
at east not without a scraper, emergency band radio, blanket chocolate bar candle matches road flares.
The. Write. Er.
I see a striped stretchy shirt. Sleeveless, wide blue stripes, maybe tiny green ones, on white. Yellow windbreaker, open. Hood up, though. Hands in pants pockets. Watching me. Watching me watch.
I am the watcher. Having called myself an observer of people, a writer and thus recorder of all behavioral and emotional quirks of mankind, I had free liscence. I could stare. I am curious. I can absorb. The great amoeba.Saved me from shyness, hiding of my eyes. But my eyes would engage. When people looked up and caught me watching, I could not break the gaze. I learned to smile, slight nod of the head with confidence, then look away. Got caught with the deer in headlights look and the repercussion were much worse.
What are you looking at? Burn a hole!Take a picture! For along time I grew my hair long so I could bob my head forward and have an instant blind.
From this recklessly bold observation I would learn nuances. How to get along. How to charm, be witty, be brash, funny. Gauging responses. I learned by watching.
And I wrote it all down. Not the actuality of what I saw. I would be captivated by a boy’s long lashed brown eyes, and his shyness, and I would work those eyes into a tragic character who refused to bow to the unprincipled bullies. My heroes were always poor, downtrodden, and principled, or soaringly rich and clever.
When I wrote for others to read, I wrote cleverly. I wrote what they would like. Sometimes I wrote to shock. Mostly to move. I wrote for impact. Set me apart. Understated surprise factor. Not like “boo!”. Not like the Bukowski and Kerouwac copycats of college. Under the radar. Let them suck in their breath and wonder. Where did you get this material?
Stolen. Stole all of it. Right from under your noses. In fact, I stole your noses. And your grimace. And your propensity to exaggerate or brag or wheedle.
All in my little books.
I read, of course, everything the library would allow me to check out. And I would read of the horrors and awful circumstance it seemed everyone in a book had to face(whether death, rape, abuse, physical challenges) and would contemplate how I would handle these things. How would I feel? And how could I best prepare?
Nothing drastic has ever happened to me. But my friends say I tell a pretty good story. And then...
I guess you could say I loaded my canoe with life writing, set it a blaze and pushed it out to sea.
Now I feel I am playing with words like one would lazily play with candle wax. Lets see what happens. No urgency. No one to please. No plans, or made up plans, or quiet secret dreams.
I hear feet running through the woods. Pine woods, a hollowness to the footfalls. I see hair streaked back and the blur of someone rushing through the trees. I smell mossy rock and pine. Roar of nearby water. Breathing.
Silence. I see the person stand on the rock, looking at the falls. Rapids, really, breaking and crashing over large boulders.
A bird alights, white underwings, could be hawk or eagle? I feel the spray as we swoop. Fresh and cool. I don't think we are hunting, I think we are playing.
I hear the snort of breath and am the bear, watching the person catch their breath across the river. I hear a pine cone drop.The person becomes very still.
I see windmills, I am spinning spinning flying over them. Plains hills folding and rolling beneath me. Great speed. As if my momentum is spinning the earth.
My hands ache. I see sailboats on a lake harbor, am skimming the ocean, past charter ships, schools of leaping dolphins, buzz small islands. I am circling the globe.
I am the watcher. Having called myself an observer of people, a writer and thus recorder of all behavioral and emotional quirks of mankind, I had free liscence. I could stare. I am curious. I can absorb. The great amoeba.Saved me from shyness, hiding of my eyes. But my eyes would engage. When people looked up and caught me watching, I could not break the gaze. I learned to smile, slight nod of the head with confidence, then look away. Got caught with the deer in headlights look and the repercussion were much worse.
What are you looking at? Burn a hole!Take a picture! For along time I grew my hair long so I could bob my head forward and have an instant blind.
From this recklessly bold observation I would learn nuances. How to get along. How to charm, be witty, be brash, funny. Gauging responses. I learned by watching.
And I wrote it all down. Not the actuality of what I saw. I would be captivated by a boy’s long lashed brown eyes, and his shyness, and I would work those eyes into a tragic character who refused to bow to the unprincipled bullies. My heroes were always poor, downtrodden, and principled, or soaringly rich and clever.
When I wrote for others to read, I wrote cleverly. I wrote what they would like. Sometimes I wrote to shock. Mostly to move. I wrote for impact. Set me apart. Understated surprise factor. Not like “boo!”. Not like the Bukowski and Kerouwac copycats of college. Under the radar. Let them suck in their breath and wonder. Where did you get this material?
Stolen. Stole all of it. Right from under your noses. In fact, I stole your noses. And your grimace. And your propensity to exaggerate or brag or wheedle.
All in my little books.
I read, of course, everything the library would allow me to check out. And I would read of the horrors and awful circumstance it seemed everyone in a book had to face(whether death, rape, abuse, physical challenges) and would contemplate how I would handle these things. How would I feel? And how could I best prepare?
Nothing drastic has ever happened to me. But my friends say I tell a pretty good story. And then...
I guess you could say I loaded my canoe with life writing, set it a blaze and pushed it out to sea.
Now I feel I am playing with words like one would lazily play with candle wax. Lets see what happens. No urgency. No one to please. No plans, or made up plans, or quiet secret dreams.
I hear feet running through the woods. Pine woods, a hollowness to the footfalls. I see hair streaked back and the blur of someone rushing through the trees. I smell mossy rock and pine. Roar of nearby water. Breathing.
Silence. I see the person stand on the rock, looking at the falls. Rapids, really, breaking and crashing over large boulders.
A bird alights, white underwings, could be hawk or eagle? I feel the spray as we swoop. Fresh and cool. I don't think we are hunting, I think we are playing.
I hear the snort of breath and am the bear, watching the person catch their breath across the river. I hear a pine cone drop.The person becomes very still.
I see windmills, I am spinning spinning flying over them. Plains hills folding and rolling beneath me. Great speed. As if my momentum is spinning the earth.
My hands ache. I see sailboats on a lake harbor, am skimming the ocean, past charter ships, schools of leaping dolphins, buzz small islands. I am circling the globe.
Taste the Daily Exquisite
David Whyte talks about the death of self, when we achieve what it is we so long sought, the studio the paint the blank canvas, and then we have death. Death of self, death of what we thought we were/wanted, death of those dreams. What is achievement? The world, the world we live in, the world is being rewritten. The world is reawakening.
As we blink into the light blink blink until we realize we do not see with our eyes.
Stumble until we fly
Jabber until we sing
They said quite clearly “babble”
it is not with our eyes that we see
it is not with our tongue that we speak
we breathe with every cell
with these hands only love
with these hands only joy
only now
only everything, only all
every minute
sacred in each moment
sacred in each moment
remember in their eyes
remember for them
that it is now this moment this breath, this now, which is
all else is elusive
I feel at a vortex
a magnetic center a gravity sucking toward me
i call to me the like
the like
the like minded the like souled i summon my teachers and students; I call my traveling partners, and feel them spinning toward me, dropping from their orbit. Authentic. True. Now.
As we blink into the light blink blink until we realize we do not see with our eyes.
Stumble until we fly
Jabber until we sing
They said quite clearly “babble”
it is not with our eyes that we see
it is not with our tongue that we speak
we breathe with every cell
with these hands only love
with these hands only joy
only now
only everything, only all
every minute
sacred in each moment
sacred in each moment
remember in their eyes
remember for them
that it is now this moment this breath, this now, which is
all else is elusive
I feel at a vortex
a magnetic center a gravity sucking toward me
i call to me the like
the like
the like minded the like souled i summon my teachers and students; I call my traveling partners, and feel them spinning toward me, dropping from their orbit. Authentic. True. Now.
Letter to Ashley
Conversations on the meaning of life
What is my truth? Who am I? What is my purpose? What’s it all mean?
Questions I began asking at a fairly young age. As human beings, there are certain stages in our lives when we are undergoing great shifts, and we find ourselves yearning for meaning. Adolescence and midlife seem to be fairly universal times of inward searching. For the enlightened, that is. For people who care, who understand that there is more to life than the superficial, who feel driven to have meaning and substance in their lives. This is not directed to those who are mired in the world of things, attainment on the physical. Just those of us with a thirst for answers.
I have given you the books that impacted me at your age; Illusions, Bridge to Terebithia, the Narnia Chronicles. I believe one of the magical qualities of books is that our consciousness can meet in the land of imagination, in the nonphysical, and find understanding.
I found many springboards in books. Launching pads to vault me away from reality, into the place where all things are possible, where you can cozy up with fantastic people, places, realities, and try on different ideas. I started reading to escape, and was soon a courageous voyager, setting out to learn all I could about people, life, and the meaning of it all.
Listing the books that impacted me would be enormous, but there do remain a few so powerful that to not include them would be remiss: Richard Bach, Katherine Patterson, Zen & the art of Archery, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickenson, Annie Dillard, Writing Down the Bones.
Annie Dillard writes: “I would like to learn, or remember, how to live...learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive.”
I do not presume a wisdom or deeper knowledge. I have been guided along a path of discovery. Sometimes gently, with signs easily ignored; sometimes shoved roughly from one road to the next.
Signposts along the way. I feel that the journey is one of remembrance, peeling away the layers of illusion we build around the truth, to protect ourselves from having to live the raw awake. Being present, holding the responsibility for your life cupped like water in your hands, can be tiring. To be vividly alive each moment requires discipline which I certainly have not attained. But I can go there. I know the path of stillness and listening. That pool of quiet deep inside, where the answers lie, whispered on the wind and spoken in gentle ripples, waiting to be asked.
I think my big steeping stones were these: learning breathing techniques for meditation, seeking to feel the life force in everything (trees, trees!), being a constant observer, soaking things in without bias, rediscovering the knowledge that we are all connected, there is a godforce in all of us, and that the answers, the truth, the meaning of life reverberates in everything in existence. From our DNA to the stars to the serendipitous moments in everyday, what we are seeking is right in front of us, around us, and inside of us.
I'd like to honor a few personal guides; those who have directly, whether as examples or working with me, impacted my spiritual growth: Miriam (who taught me to be okay with being different, to glory in everything, to relax and have fun), Dorothy Crain (who I wish I could engage in further conversations, on the way to the simple life).
What is my truth? Who am I? What is my purpose? What’s it all mean?
Questions I began asking at a fairly young age. As human beings, there are certain stages in our lives when we are undergoing great shifts, and we find ourselves yearning for meaning. Adolescence and midlife seem to be fairly universal times of inward searching. For the enlightened, that is. For people who care, who understand that there is more to life than the superficial, who feel driven to have meaning and substance in their lives. This is not directed to those who are mired in the world of things, attainment on the physical. Just those of us with a thirst for answers.
I have given you the books that impacted me at your age; Illusions, Bridge to Terebithia, the Narnia Chronicles. I believe one of the magical qualities of books is that our consciousness can meet in the land of imagination, in the nonphysical, and find understanding.
I found many springboards in books. Launching pads to vault me away from reality, into the place where all things are possible, where you can cozy up with fantastic people, places, realities, and try on different ideas. I started reading to escape, and was soon a courageous voyager, setting out to learn all I could about people, life, and the meaning of it all.
Listing the books that impacted me would be enormous, but there do remain a few so powerful that to not include them would be remiss: Richard Bach, Katherine Patterson, Zen & the art of Archery, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickenson, Annie Dillard, Writing Down the Bones.
Annie Dillard writes: “I would like to learn, or remember, how to live...learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive.”
I do not presume a wisdom or deeper knowledge. I have been guided along a path of discovery. Sometimes gently, with signs easily ignored; sometimes shoved roughly from one road to the next.
Signposts along the way. I feel that the journey is one of remembrance, peeling away the layers of illusion we build around the truth, to protect ourselves from having to live the raw awake. Being present, holding the responsibility for your life cupped like water in your hands, can be tiring. To be vividly alive each moment requires discipline which I certainly have not attained. But I can go there. I know the path of stillness and listening. That pool of quiet deep inside, where the answers lie, whispered on the wind and spoken in gentle ripples, waiting to be asked.
I think my big steeping stones were these: learning breathing techniques for meditation, seeking to feel the life force in everything (trees, trees!), being a constant observer, soaking things in without bias, rediscovering the knowledge that we are all connected, there is a godforce in all of us, and that the answers, the truth, the meaning of life reverberates in everything in existence. From our DNA to the stars to the serendipitous moments in everyday, what we are seeking is right in front of us, around us, and inside of us.
I'd like to honor a few personal guides; those who have directly, whether as examples or working with me, impacted my spiritual growth: Miriam (who taught me to be okay with being different, to glory in everything, to relax and have fun), Dorothy Crain (who I wish I could engage in further conversations, on the way to the simple life).
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