Launching a New Venture

I'm securing a venue to host a monthly 4th-Monday open mic in my Southeast Seattle neighborhood, featuring spoken word (poetry, prose, memoir, etc.) and music, modeled after a thrice-monthly event that I attend in the northend of town. Choosing the location has been tricky — it must be open late and must serve alcohol (poets like to drink!). I spoke with one of the owners of Hummingbird Saloon last week, and he sounds 97% okay with the idea. Not excited, mind you. He hosted an open mic at a bar he used to own in New Orleans, and was overrun with loud and obnoxious (and offensive) slam poets. I'm not at all interested in the loud and obnoxious! Not interested in censorship either, but if I'm the one putting the time in to set up and host this thing, I get some say. (Glad the owner and I share this perspective.)

Need to track down an amp and microphone, and learn how to use the damn things. Any leads on this, Seattle friends?

It's been 22 years since I launched a poetry happening by myself, the last time in 1991. My boys were three and five years old, I was married, renting the house we eventually purchased, had different cats and a different job. How different my life was!

The writing group that launched is still meeting, with only one other original member other than myself. There have been at least a dozen other poets that no longer attend, including one who passed away. Currently we're nine-strong, just the right number!

In 1994, the group members at that time formed Floating Bridge Press, which has been operating in the black for 19 years — no small feat for an all-volunteer, non-profit poetry press. We were young and enthusiastic, and more than a teensy bit naive. But our leap into the unknown world of publishing resulted in dozens of books/chapbooks, as well as numerous issues of Pontoon: An Anthology of Washington State Poets, and now, Floating Bridge Review. Essentially, we opened a door to publishing for hundreds of Washington State Writers.

I resigned from my board position two years ago, and am proud to be a founder.

Somehow I seem to have reached an age where I can look back and take note of the ripples of effect a single thing can have on a person/life/community. When I began putting feelers out, all those years ago,  for other poets with interest in a critique group, I was desperate to connect with other writers. (Ah! Those pre-internet dinosaur days!) Little did I know the impact this would have on me and a community of writers, or that long-lasting friendships would be formed. I merely plunged forward with my plans, believing, always in infinite possibilities.

So it is with this same excitement that I'm putting together the open mic plans. I have no idea down which path it may lead, nor which intriguing characters I'll meet in the process. All I know is that it's a new beginning, a new direction, and I'm tingling already in anticipation.

Thieving Blue

I've been stealing branches of hydrangea on my walk home from work, glorious fading blossoms spilling over onto sidewalks, driveways, the street. Not sure what I'll do/say if/when I get caught, except that who could resist such an array of every shade of blue imaginable? And because the summer has been exceptionally dry (by Seattle standards), the flowers are losing their intensity earlier than is normal. But no less stunning in their waning!

I like to think that the color evaporates as the warm days persist, and that somewhere is a repository of blue droplets, perhaps in a cloudbank, or a pocket of fog.

Once, in an upscale restaurant in Ireland, I saw a woman wearing a dress of the most exquisite shade of blue possible — not royal blue or cobalt of cornflower blue or azure — but something I'd call beach-glass blue, dark yet with a shadow of green light, and a glowing brightness that defied an accurate description, a hue that changed depending on the direction of the sun. Rather, I'll call it impossible blue. And it's rare to find in an article of clothing, believe me, as I've searched for years for just this shade.

Before leaving the restaurant, I stopped at the woman's table to compliment her, and she seemed a bit uncomfortable, which was warranted because I wanted to rip the dress from her and take it with me. (But I didn't.)

And now there are hydrangeas on my kitchen sill, on my kitchen table, and all over my bedroom, some from last year with just a whisper of color, and then this year's crop — still holding on to a generous suffusion of pigment.

Moon, Blue and Not Blue

Who has seen the moon tonight?
— a sharpened sickle, a scythe to fell the long grasses in the abandoned barnyard.
— a scar on my palm, a deep gash from a fall at a young age.
— rind, orange peel, lemon wedge, and all the pulp toothed-out.
— the petal's edge, the color bled.

But before this gloaming, I sat at the bar at The Blue Moon Tavern in Seattle, and drank a toast with a stranger to poet Theodore Roethke, whose portrait hangs over the pool table.

In this exploration and discovery that I engage in while blogging, I came across the short film about Roethke and The Blue Moon:

And I'm cast into my own blueness-moonness tonight because poetry taps down into the deepest most unreachable parts of me, and is a danger for the power it wields over me, and for the raw edge of truth that surges when I'm under its spell.

Can a bird die looking up at the sky?

I got a call tonight from the friend who lives across the street from me, wanting me to come over to see something.

The minute I stepped foot in her yard, she started whispering, and led me around to the side yard, where a robin was standing completely still, eyes open and unblinking, beak raised to the sky. She said it had been that way for quite some time. (Long enough, and then some, for her to call me, and for me to walk from my back yard to hers.) She said she'd gotten her binoculars to get a closer view, and it didn't appear to be making any breathing or blinking movements!

I quietly crept closer, squatting, took my iPhone out to snap a picture. At a distance of about two feet, it suddenly jumped, fluttered a few times, and hopped off into the bushes.

All very strange.

At what was it looking?

(And it really did appear to be dead.)

Surfeit & Dearth

It's been a week+ of almost no writing, neither here nor in my serious and more focused poetry-writing, which casts me into a state of agitation and fidgets. Gotta write.

On several occasions, I've begun a blog piece, and then word by word I delete it. Bye bye bloggie.

And then I remember just how much is going on in my work-world, my home-world, my everything-world. Still reeling from the recent violence in the glass factory. We hired new help, a young woman who is beautifully blessed with grace and intelligence, but is only available two days a week. Not enough! My mortgage went up in price by more than I would prefer, eating up a significant portion of my raise. (But very grateful for the raise.) Sigh.

Love life is in the garbage dump, festering amid a pile of rotting whatever. My parking-strip vegetable garden, on the other hand, is growing crazily — I've gardened most of my life and I've never experienced anything like this. I like to think of this summer as the result of — instead of global warming—global charming. This abundance is a short-term bonus to the perils our planet seems to be surrendering-to.

Everything appears to be patched together with thin and fragile stitches, when upholstery thread would certainly do a better job of it. But at the moment, my needle is threaded with the finest of filaments, finer than spider's silk and certainly without that tensile strength.

In these past few weeks I've witnessed a man pull himself back from actively choosing death by the bottle to embracing all of life's possibilities. I've witnessed a psychotic break, a personal assault and the destruction of thousands of dollars of glass. My heart has been shattered, people close to me have spoken of profound depression and devastating regret. I successfully rebuilt a loving relationship with my brother, something that, a year ago, I would have said was not salvageable.

I've re-established order in the production line at work, and was stunned by the realization of just how profoundly negative my former co-worker's impact was on every minute of my working day.

Relief! — amid the rising panic, when I see again the look in his eyes the moment before he swept $4k of inventory to the concrete floor.

My ridiculously amusing cat who, in complete darkness, takes a crazed running leap from the edge of the roof to the deck railing: ta-da! Lands upright and, if cats laughed, she'd laugh until tears flowed.

All of this.
All of life.
Spinning, grinding, swirling, singing, erupting, corroding, shining, falling apart, and, sometimes, if we're paying attention, we notice when it all begins to come together again.

Type, backspace, delete.
Type, backspace, delete.
Type, backspace delete.

It's been one of those summers.

Meanwhile, among the cabbages —

In the hail-pocked orchard....

....Eve left her blue dress under the honey-crisp tree.

Under Blue

Smoke

The After-Smudge

Our Angel with Broken Wings (more about him here), who has become somewhat of a regular character in the glass factory — all six feet ten inches of him — performed a cedar smudge ceremony today in the studio, the site of last Friday's shattering. Cedar is considered a sacred medicine of protection, and is used to invite unwanted spirits or presences to leave.

And although I'd heard of cedar and sage smudge cleansings, this was my first time experiencing one, and was moved almost to tears by the quiet power summoned by our Angel-Man. The lingering, sweaty scent of human rage (which I could unquestionably detect) was replaced with the clean dry essence of burnt cedar. At one point, I laid my forehead down on the work table and closed my eyes. There is so much to assimilate.

A sense of peace was restored — all rather astonishing for this skeptical mystic, this non-theist animist. (Yowza. That was admittedly a mouthful.)

These days flow through their hours with flares of dramatic contrasts. The garbage can outside is filled with glass shards, while the Angel-Man daily brings Melinda tiny affectionate tokens, my favorite by far being a clam shell cupping a tiny pale-pink rose. Gentleness and tender gestures: yesterday he read to us from Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul, a healing balm while we painted. He'll leave us soon — it's time for him to care more deeply for his own wounded soul and body.

Who knows when/if he'll return with sprigs of valerian, or lavender, or to pluck a book from his bag, sit on the window seat, and read aloud.
-----------------------------------------------

Listen:

Where were you?

Can you see me there, waving, from the white speck in the bottom right quadrant of the photo? No? Is 900 million miles too far away?

From an article in Huffington Post:

"Good photographers go to great lengths to get the best pictures, but few have ventured farther than Cassini did on July 19, 2013. From 5:27 p.m. to 5:42 p.m. EDT on that date, the robotic spacecraft peered across almost 900 million miles of empty space to capture a series of awe-inspiring images of Earth."

Last Friday, at 2:27pm PDT, I was finishing a late lunch at the picnic table under the awning outside at work, so I was most likely not visible in the photo. I didn't know! If I'd known, I would have sat on the lawn, away from the umbrella. 

(Full story here.)

Silliness aside, when I first viewed this picture, I broke down and wept, completely undone by the, the — the what, exactly? Grandeur? Vastness? Our own utter insignificance in the universe? That we possess this stunning ability to love, and to feel love? That we even perceive something we call beauty? (Which is what, exactly?)

In all truth, in the thick of all this personal investigation in the World of Physics, I was completely undone by the mere notion of a photograph of us — every last one of us, if you will — having been taken by a satellite sent into space by humans, from a distance of 900 million miles, and then transmitted to us across that same distance. I cannot fathom this. I want to understand it scientifically and poetically, and the possibility of either of these seems infinitely and staggeringly daunting.

Berries, Big Dipper

I'm sticky with blackberry juices, which have run down my arms
to mix with the remnants of paint I missed in the washing-up
at the end of my workday. Sweaty. Frizz-headed.
Rumpled.

Every morning I brush my way past the spider webs
spun from iron-railing to rhododendron, from climbing rose
to dogwood. They used to make me scream
but now I know that I am the intruder, breaking through
and ripping out their silken nets.

A berry cobbler is in the oven, and I had to get testy
with my son to clean up the dishes, now sitting
for 24 hours. (The dishes, not the son.)
He grumbled, I went upstairs.
He starts a training program in a week and a half
which hopefully will lead to some employment.
It is my greatest sadness that this intelligent, talented
young man has not been able to thrive.
He's seeing yet another doctor, I'm half-heartedly
optimistic. Trying a new angle, drawing on findings
gleaned from the Human Genome Project.
We'll see.

I tell myself to Trust The Process
but sometimes — often! — the process
takes too damn long.

In the meantime, these summer nights, with a clarity
of air that goes on night after night, almost seems
too good to be true. I've never had a vegetable garden
grow so much in such a short time.
(Kale to feed the masses.)
Seems like I'll awaken some morning soon
to a grey drizzle, slosh and splash my way to work.

Each night before sleep, I stand on my upstairs balconey
and check in with the Big Dipper: constant,
spilling what, exactly,  from its star-cornered cup?

Blue Season

Hydrangea stamen, suspended
by a solitary strand of spider's silk —

Much Ado

I could hear cats hissing and spitting at each other out in the alley, so I switched on the porch lights and went charging after them with the only thing I could quickly find to cause a ruckus more dramatic than the one they were creating: a ten foot long bamboo pole. I whacked at the laurel, sending cats scattering. (I was thankful for the relative darkness.)

Warning! Crazy lady charging through the July night brandishing a long bamboo spear!

In my rush to break up the fight, I brushed up against the overgrown collard "trees" in my garden, and when I came back into the yard, the air smelled pungently and heavily of brassica, like someone had just overcooked a brimming cauldron of broccoli.

(I really must stop having these exciting Saturday evenings.)

I looked just like this (minus the water, plus it was dark):

La Bicyclette en Rose

We wanted to walk in the woods, but a bicycle race blocked the looping road that led to the path. The riders sped past us, forty or fifty of them in a pack, in neon spandex, no sound except the whooshing of their spinning wheels and the gust of wind in their wake. A handful of spectators cheered them on.

Farther on we saw that a small festival was taking place, with a beer garden and food booths near the finish line, and a giant screen was set up in the amphitheater where, post-race, footage from the Tour de France would be projected into the balmy July night.

Loudspeakers blared jangly noisy atonal music, and my companion, newly versed in the particulars of French bicycle racing, said,

"Wouldn't it be better if they were playing a nice little French tune, like this —?"

He began to hum La Vie En Rose.

I imagined how a shift in the music would change this  scene dramatically, in this park where old growth firs still grow and eagles nest. And if I'd had the capability, I was feeling mischievous enough to shift it up myself — flip a switch, hook up my iPod and play a Pandora French cafe music station.

Think anyone would've noticed?!

Crank up the volume, here's Edith Piaf to serenade the bike race —

Before Sunset

I found a Stellar's jay feather smaller than my little finger tonight. It was stuck to a mint leaf in the garden.

Later, I took a walk in the woods (the air, only a 1/2 mile away, so different, so green) and almost tripped over two Pileated Woodpeckers, an adult and a baby, who were flushed out by my footsteps, and flew upwards into a Douglas fir, then walked up the bark, making nearly indiscernible sounds.

A little farther up the path I met a couple who were in search of the baby owls, but without luck. They walked with their heads tilted up, each with one ear cocked to the side, listening.

Six runners passed me, in the still and humid air.

I realized, having walked this inner-woods path for years, that I perceive the path musically, with a kind of classical melody, each twist around a fallen fir an arpeggio, my footsteps on the peaty earth: andante. I go uphill at a legato pace. During nesting season, the robins pipe a staccato alarm. And then there is the metronome of my heart, speeding up, slowing down. All of it: music. Moss music, fern music, maple music.

Leaf Line

Effervescent Melancholy

Population, and the Relativity of Happiness

To be exquisitely, and contentedly alone, on a planet of  7 billion people, is to enter a state of grace.

To be devastatingly lonely and alone, on a planet of 7 billion people, is a failure of civilization, and a tragedy.

---

To view a real-time earth population counter click here. (This made my jaw drop.)

Alive, Alive

I took my breakfast out to the yard this morning to read the rest of last Sunday's NYTimes (a treat which I make last all week), and, although I didn't really want to launch right away into the article titled The Joy of Old Age (No Kidding), when I noticed that Oliver Sacks was the author, I thought that it would be much more than just bearable. And it was.

A few particularly memorable lines:

Eighty! I can hardly believe it. I often feel that life is about to begin, only to realize it is almost over.

I am sorry to have wasted (and still waste) so much time; I am sorry to be as agonizingly shy at 80 as I was at 20....

I feel I should be trying to complete my life, whatever "completing a life" means.

At 80, one can take a long view and have a vivid, lived sense of history not possible at an earlier age.

I do not think of old age as an ever grimmer time that one must somehow endure and make the best of, but as a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the facetious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together.

As I read, sipped my coffee and took bites of the most perfect peach that I've had in years (with just a sprinkle of brown sugar), I heard a hummingbird making its funny, scratchy song, quite close to me. It took me a bit of a search to find it in the multitude of hazelnut leaves and the dappled morning light, but I did, finally, and it was a baby, whose wee head gleamed red in the right angle of light. (When newborn, they are about the size of a standard eraser at the tip of a pencil!) Its feathers fanned out in a ruffle above its tiny talons, and every now and then it stretched out its wings and then folded them back down. I was close enough to see its vibrational heartbeat. Probably not much more than a mere three weeks from hatching, not more than five weeks from conception to perching on the branch.

When I chirped back, it cocked its head in my direction, acknowledging my presence.

And I thought: I'm reading about the last years of a human life, while witnessing the first days, really, in this small bird's life. Yin and yang, birth and death, the spectrum of being alive all before me in a single moment on a summer morning.

I wondered if somewhere, someone/thing, in a size ratio equally as dramatic as the hummingbird to me, was observing me, noticing my taking-in and letting-out of breath. Noticing my nearly insignificant size, in the scheme of things. Who can know this?

The bones of cats long-dead are buried in the garden, just beneath the bird's perch, and my father's blue marble gravestone lies at the base of the apple tree. Collards have gone to seed, sending out their frail yellow lacework of petals across the yard. Not far away, pumpkins and cucumber vines measurably grow by the day.

The bird flew away, I drank the last drops of coffee, and  finished the article.

What came to mind was this:
My cup is empty, and yet, is still so full.

Thank you, Oliver Sacks.
And thank you, baby bird, for granting me this sweet perspective.

For the full text of the Oliver Sacks article, click here.

Midnight Sun Palette

A friend who is traveling in Alaska texted me today a photo of the "daylight" horizon viewed from his ferry last night at nearly midnight.

I was up to my elbows in oil paints, 24 tiny sand-blasted vessels awaiting their multi-color treatment, and, well, if I didn't end up painting one of them those same midnight-sun colors! To be exact: Payne's grey, verditer blue, zinc white (hint of Prussian). And to think that these will be shipped tomorrow to a gallery in Maine, where a stranger will lay out cash for one of these pieces with no inkling of the inspiration from whence those particular colors came.

There's something particularly enchanting about that, I think. That this thread of inspiration originated in the Gulf of Alaska, in view of glaciers, traveled via the marvels of modern technology to a small house/studio in Seattle (the garden in lush bloom, the crocosmia luring hummingbirds, a Stellar's jay alight on the suet feeder), where the colors were squeezed from tubes onto a porous surface, smoothed & blended, fired, and then wrapped in blank newsprint, stuffed into recycled wine boxes, set out in larger cartons for our reliable UPS driver, then trucked cross-country 3,000 miles to a coastal town on another ocean. And I'll never see them on the gallery shelf!

I believe that some essence of spirit travels with these pieces, embedded in the layers of color — some fragment of the music I was listening to, the conversation that might have been taking place, even possibly a hint of the coffee cooling in my cup, with milk. A slant of afternoon light, caught in the angles of the prism hanging from the west window, distorting for just a glance all the colors into a rainbow's array —

I know, in fact, that all of this is true: that these colors entered into me through my eyes, then traveled out again through my hands.

And what spark, what flare of intuition will compel some kind stranger to see this glass and feel a shiver of cool northern breeze at her neck, breathe in barely a nuance of deep woods, lucent glacier, sense a trace of salt-spray on her cheeks? And know the trail leads back and back, past rutted road and ramshackle cabin, to some unnameable heart of intention, to an unseeable light impossibly blue and wrenched from a dream-haze night after unremitting night?

Yes.
Just this.

photo courtesy of Jed Myers

Delving

Prussian blue skies at dusk, sinking into a burnt sienna horizon.

Dipping deeper and deeper into the seemingly unknowable world (if you can call it that!) of Quantum Physics and Quantum Mechanics. Nothing is as it seems, a notion which is at once unsettling and also outrageously thrilling.


An acquaintance stopped by work today, and when this science subject-of-the-day was casually mentioned, the friend said, "Oh, I'm currently reading The Dancing Wu Li Masters ."

WTF.
I'm reading this, and so is Melinda.

What are the odds, the probability, that a book published in 1979 would be the current choice of reading material for three artists who just happen to be in the same room?

Evidence, indeed, that other forces are at work.

Entanglement?
Synchronicity?

From a Wikipedia article on Synchronicity:

Even at Jung's presentation of his work on synchronicity in 1951 at an Eranos lecture, his ideas on synchronicity were evolving. Following discussions with both Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli, Jung believed that there were parallels between synchronicity and aspects of relativity theory and quantum mechanics. Jung was transfixed by the idea that life was not a series of random events but rather an expression of a deeper order, which he and Pauli referred to as Unus mundus. This deeper order led to the insights that a person was both embedded in an orderly framework and was the focus of that orderly framework and that the realisation of this was more than just an intellectual exercise, but also having elements of a spiritual awakening. From the religious perspective, synchronicity shares similar characteristics of an "intervention of grace". Jung also believed that in a person's life, synchronicity served a role similar to that of dreams, with the purpose of shifting a person's egocentric conscious thinking to greater wholeness.

---

And finally, something (perhaps) to make you laugh:

Is that a cookie falling from your mouth? Or is it just a Fig Newton of my imagination?
        —She said, with gravity.
 

Blue Froth

Moth

This exquisite creature has been fluttering about my upstairs since last night, and my attempts to catch-and-release have all failed.

I am in awe.

With Liberty....

After celebrating the wonders of capitalism by working on Independence Day —
we are two weeks behind on orders and working like fiends
while re-orders stack up into the fall —
(and let me mention that the 9-5 day was not without
its marching about the work space
to the tune of Yankee! Doodle! Dandy!
 with impromptu hats a'head) —
I walked home and set to cooking an extremely casual holiday meal:
kale caesar (greens from the garden), burgers, potato chips
and chocolate cake with whipped cream.
One estimate of guests was seven potential arrivés,
(all invited very last minute as in *this morning*)
and in the end, three showed up.
It was me and three men (two related)
and nary a complaint from the cook.
The sun was shining, the wine was flowing
and the conversation veered, as it often does in this particular group,
to The State of the Nation/World:
America, Egypt, Syria, Israel, Mali, Ecuador, China,
Obama, Snowden, Monsanto, GMO's,
the NSA, solar energy, corn, etc.
We are a lively group.
(The cake, made with whole wheat pastry flour, was weird.)
(The whipped cream, thankfully, was not.)

Once dessert was consumed, I stepped away from the table
and, snippers in hand, ventured into the snaggled snare
that is at the back of my garden:
grapes, collards, morning glory, lemon balm.
Entwined, entangled, aphid-infested, mildewed,
gone to seed, over-extended, an over-abundance of everything I don't want.

I pulled, yanked, uprooted, clipped, tore-at, broke,
sliced, ripped, severed, flung, tossed, cursed-at.
Aphids took up temporary residence in my hair
and all the while I listened to the three men debate
the future of life on the planet.

And I had to stop them in mid-sentence
and point out how much like their conversation
my chore-of-the-moment was:
a state of a contained universe (the earth)
where overpopulation (grapes, collards, morning glory, lemon balm)
threatened its very existence. Not enough air flow (pollution)
resulting in an explosion of aphids (viruses/disease/decay)
and mildew (crop-failure where the end result is mass starvation).
And would my coming in with the big weapons (clippers/muscle)
at the last minute, really do any good?

The three men looked at me as if they'd suddenly encountered a crazy lady.
(Which was not wholly untrue.)
Standing before them, I leaned over and thoroughly shook myself
in an attempt to dislodge bugs/leaves/seedpods, not unlike a dog after a bath.
And then they resumed talking.
It seemed my impact on them was, at best, minimal.

Sigh.

Now, an hour later and nearly dark, the sounds of our yearly war-re-enactments
are gathering steam, spark & flare.
The universe is humming with explosions
and the sky is beginning to light up with colors of $$$ burned.
Shortly I'll go out to my balcony and watch the show
from every corner of my horizon, knowing that I did what I could
to tame everything that's out of control
in this minimal fragment of what I call my own.

A Version Mary

It's too hot for words.

Fragment

The night is an empty bowl,
a rat-ravaged nest, a burlap sack of eggs
unravelled at the seams, dislodging
one tidy promise of life after another —

Quantum Poetry

As if this was any surprise.

To explicate: in my ponderings of all things quantumly physical and mechanical, and after a ton of reading and listening to talks on YouTube, I've think I've finally figured out the nature of the universe. It goes like this:

Uni = One.
Verse = Poetry.

Therefore, Uni + Verse = One Poetry.

In other words, we're all just one big poem, constantly expanding, unto infinity.

There.


Any questions?

Pink Hectic

So Much Still To Learn

In my attempt to understand the smallest things in life, I've been reading about the big things: quantum physics and quantum mechanics. It's daunting, humbling, thrilling, confounding, exasperating, unintelligible, and lights my brain up like nothing ever has.

Last night it was a bunch of stuff about the atom and the electrons going about their orbits. The night before was the language of mathematics in physics' problems. (Keep in mind that I'm operating from the standpoint of Liberal Arts  = The World.)

It's kicking my ass, but I still go back for more.

Here's my current favorite "go-to" thanga-ma-jang:



Not that I expect anyone tuning in to my blog will give any kind of a hoot about listening to a debate between the evolutionary biologist  Richard Dawkins and the "sexiest astro-physicist on earth" Neil DeGrass Tyson, but then again, maybe, just maybe, it'll strike a chord with one of ye.

Cryptic

Hello, Buenos Aires!

Hello Vienna!

Not Justified

The
problem
here
is
that
the
muse
has
taken
a
hike.
Don't
wanna
see
me
no
more.
Has
parted
ways
with
me.
 

Sunk deeply under a whirlpool, white-water, the tide.

Wandered to some unnamed ravine, arroyo, canyon.

Burrowed under an avalanche, a mudslide.

Teetered on the brink, plummeted.

Turned off the lamp,  extinguished the flames.
Shut off the gas, silenceed the phone.
Blackened the windows.
Boarded up the doors.
Gave up the drink.
Severed the wires.
Stopped eating.
Went AWOL.
Abandoned.
Abolished.
Aborted.
Exited.
Quit.
xy
z

Honk Fest

Headdress Man

Tuba Man

On the Job

My life is a country-western song played backwards double time in the desert. No water. 
     
A literal giant-of-a-man said this, a painter, who has stopped by our humble glass studio the past few days. We're calling him an angel with broken wings, standing at nearly seven feet tall and filling an entire room with his energy, his enthusiasm, his passions. I see him as one of those people who takes into his self absolutely too much all the time, with few filters, and he suffers for it. He's wounded and deeply perceptive, and also very funny — a person who's endured the contusions of a life lived with acute sensitivity, a person susceptible to injuries of the soul.

Who is this man? And from where did he come?

Dropped from some disintegrating cloud, I imagine, carrying a sackful of oddities to show us. Yesterday it was a long worm-riddled branch, as thick his forearm, grown at one end into an extended hook. I quickly stumbled over it and cut my foot. From his bag he plucked the dictionary he received as a child from his grandmother, and read me the inscription. Today it was a book of line drawings meant as architectural examples: trees, airplanes, cars, fences, boats, etc., all delicately rendered in exacting detail.

He played his harmonica and sang, some bluesy-gospel tunes with air between the lines, spaces of silence. He told stories, some tragic, others less so, but all delivered with fire and drama and a swinging of his lonnnngggg arms and sometimes, to illustrate a point, he'd jump to his feet and loom above us like a Douglas fir in a turbulent storm, all muscled energy.

(And yes, work was going on at a frantic pace throughout!)

There's no story arc here; just a recounting of one of the many reasons I am grateful to have the job that I have. Sometimes it feels like no end of paint, glass, boxes, packing peanuts.....  And then from out of the stratosphere falls this human, this wanderer, this troubled messenger who, along his path, has chosen to pause where we grind out our modest and colorful commerce.

Wistful

Now that school is out, my morning walk to work is so much less colorful: no hip mamas pushing state-of-the-art strollers down the sidewalk, no dads with a baby in the snuggly and a first-grader by the hand. I don't have to look for cars because there aren't any. The urban streets are quiet, subdued, a little asleep at 9am, and this morning, for just a moment, I felt as if I was back on the rural roads of Carrowholly in Ireland, with the occasional farmhouse and a plethora of sheep, it was that quiet. A marvelous moment, really, being that I am indeed walking through an urban neighborhood, that, just last week at this time, was buzzing with the beginning-of-the-day hubbub. Gone are the buses, the backpacks, the ringing of the bell, the tangle of cars on the narrow streets surrounding the school.

All a little lonely, and I was a little wistful, thinking that if I looked just a little farther down the road or leaned just a bit over a fence, I'd see the aquamarine waters of Clew Bay, with a stiff breeze ruffling-up my hair, and that earthy pasture scent pervading everything. A pub within ten minutes, a witty conversation to be had over a Bulmer's cider.

But not to be had.

Life careens us ever-forward, sometimes so quickly that we are left tripping over our own feet and a little out of breath. When we take the time to slow it all down just a little bit, there we are, in two places at once, one real, one wrenched up from a bittersweet memory.

I held those two spaces open, in my consciousness, for maybe six, or seven steps. Then it was back to the concrete universe that is a city, with nary a sheep to be smelled.

Friday Night

It's been a helluva week: the lingering presence of my deceased co-worker, a romantic break-up still wreaking its havoc on my consciousness, sons in conflict. And yet always the nagging voice telling me to give thanks for something, for anything.

So tonight I'm thankful for my carrot seedlings.

In fact, if I really made myself sit down and take stock, there'd be a list from here to Kingdom Come, but, damnit, I don't wanna. Sometimes it all just sucks. And we have to keep on keeping on, like it or not.

So here I sit, keeping on.

And here's to all of you in your own version of whatever "keeping on" means.

Cheers.

Garbanzo Entanglement

I was at my local food co-op (PCC) yesterday (there are several locations of this particular co-op throughout Seattle), looking at seeds from their small selection, and saw garbanzo seeds, which I've never seen before, and wondered, Who grows garbanzo beans in Seattle?

Later last evening, I spoke to an old friend — who lives on the other side of town — on the phone. It's been a while since we've had a good long chat. And she said, T., I'm growing garbanzo beans! I bought the seeds at PCC!

What the heck??!! We are all entangled, proton by proton.

(Read more on Quantum Entanglement, my current obsession, here and here.)

A Bright Spark Amidst Gloom

This week, Cascadia Review is publishing one poem of mine every day from Monday through Friday. You can check them out here.

And....tonight I actually received a fan letter! A FAN LETTER!! From the poet Henry Carlile! Here's the link to his page at the Poetry Foundation website: click here.

Needless to say, this certainly made my day. I've been slumping around these past few weeks, adrift in melancholy, mastering the art of moping. I can hear my mother say "Snap out of it!"

Sure, Mom. I'll get right on it.

A Truth

A quote today from my wonderful friend Rosanne Olson, which sums it all up:

"Oh, poetry: confessor, therapist, best friend, story-teller, lover."

Requiem

All of the house became an altar for her wake: her paintings on every wall, photographs from her many years of living, bouquets of flowers on every surface. I could imagine the gardens from which they were gathered, from across the city, June gardens overflowing with renewal.

In the bedroom, where she lay, a row of candles lined the windowsill above her head, and her body, in repose, was framed in flowers of every kind: roses, peonies, foxglove, allium. I gasped when I saw her, grateful to have witnessed this scene of exquisite devotion. She was more beautiful than a Frieda Kahlo painting.

In the yard, in the late afternoon sun, were tables of food, wine, whiskey, beer. Her passing, just that morning, was as present as oxygen, and it seemed as if everyone breathed tentatively, the loss so sharp still, so tender.

Her mother, who, at 94 looked so frail she might blow away, or tip over, held a bouquet of lavender roses on her lap. Her two daughters moved through the crowd like lilies in a breeze, soft, wounded.
Her husband seemed a barely held-together vessel of broken glass, jagged.

Luminaries from the local glass-blowing community were present, as were friends from the many threads of life in which her spirit was entangled.

A man with bagpipes arrived, played Raglan Road, Danny boy, a Celtic jig — oh, so many of us wept when we heard that music, in the way that music has of penetrating every defense. And we were thankful for it — that release.

I was on my way to the ballet, and had to leave before the rest of the musicians arrived — the fiddlers, the guitar players, the banjo players — before the fire that would blaze into the night, before the musicians gathered around her bed to play for her one last time.

But before I left, I placed this poem — typed and mounted on card stock — on the kitchen table altar:

 

Remembering Connie

Sitting beside her, day after day

painting leaves and stems

on sandblasted vessels

while I babbled on about something,

who knows what, I’ll never remember —

she reminded me that sometimes

just silence is okay. And so we let it sit

between us, a comfortable pause

that came and went unannounced

as each of us settled

into our private reveries.

When we cleared away the palettes,

the sap-green tubes and perylene maroon

to make a space for lunch, most days

she offered a cookie, half a slice

of rhubarb pie, spoonfuls of fragrant soup.

It’s good, isn’t it? She always said.

And my happy mumble, my mouth-full thanks

for what needed no words.

And though her chair is empty now,

her paint-splashed apron

retired to a hook,

it’s in the hushed afternoons

when I’ll hear her, in the quiet

brushstrokes, all that was

not necessary to say,

and yet understood.

 

Dear friend, we miss you already.

A Small Proclamation

At the risk of sounding cliche and woo-woo, I want to pass along some of my new philosophy/practice that has, well, changed my life.

Upon the end of my marriage two years ago, I decided to try, and I mean try, to approach every situation/person from a standpoint of loving kindness. And I'll say right out that it hasn't necessarily been an easy thing. It's called a practice because one has to, well, practice it. It's so much easier to practice resentment, anger, envy, crabbiness, irritability, etc. I admit to having failed miserably and to also having succeeded fantastically in this venture.

And the longer I practice, the easier it becomes.

My mantra:
No expectations, no grievances.
Just right now, this moment, all in loving kindness.

In the past few months, this has begun to pay off. I've started the process of healing broken or damaged relationships, with astonishing and surprising results. It almost feels a little selfish, because I receive so much more back than I feel I deserve for the energy I put out. But it's not really about deserving, but about giving.

I was talking to my younger son about this, and he said that he loves going into a store and seeing how many people he can get to smile, or laugh. I love this!

It's not complicated, and it works, and I say this knowing that I may go to the end of my life with unfinished business re: forgiveness. But there is still time, and not one of us really knows what lies beyond the next corner.

Anyway, I'll get down off my soapbox now, but not before saying that I recommend this highly.

Prom, Wilted

Dusk Walk

In the woods at the park, we heard the baby owls but didn't see them. But we not only heard an eagle, it swooped across the path in front of us, damn big.

My younger son likes to point out that before the eagle was made our national avian symbol, eagles were considered a nuisance by many, something to be gotten rid of,  a bird that could conceivably carry off a toddler.

Check this out:


And in other nature news, I watched my 2 year old cat climb a post from my lower deck to my balcony just now, through a tangle of kiwi vines! Solved the mystery of how she arrives at my balcony door in the middle of the night, scratching to be let in.

Random Video, or Why I Love the Internet

I love this.

Once More, A Shattering

Again, the tumbling from heights above my head of all things glass and breakable. (This happened two years ago, here.)

In my left hand: a drinking glass ready to scoop ice cubes from the freezer. As my right hand opened the freezer door, bowls stacked atop the refrigerator slid the millimeter-or-two that they needed to slide in order to pitch forward, off the edge into gravity's depths, shattering in the fall the top half of what was clutched in my left hand, and breaking themselves into hundreds — thousands — of light-glittering shards, to every corner of the kitchen.

In my attempt to stop the tumble, my right shoulder wrenched to a place of staggering pain. I was immobilized, in a sea of sparkle and sandal-footed peril, still clutching the jagged bits of the glass that would have much preferred, at that moment, to be a receptacle for a lime-twisted vodka-tonic. My friend who came for dinner, on the porch to take a call, stepped back in to see what the commotion was about, and said something like Oh T.! Always with the drama!

I suppose it's true. It's like I carry around with me cylinders of agitated energy which, without warning, burst out and wreak their havoc on my world.

My son swept (and swept), and because the setting sun illuminated many slivers seemingly immune to the broom's bristly straw, we brought out the vacuum, which (hopefully) finished the job.

I bandaged my bleeding fingers and toes, set an ice-pack on my shoulder and settled in with — finally — my much-anticipated vodka-tonic, lime twist.

This all happened last night, and this afternoon, I ran into the friend who came for dinner, and he had this to say:

You won't believe what happened last night after I got home....I opened the cupboard to get a glass, and glassware slid off the shelf towards me and fell, and shattered! Yes! It really happened!
 
Now this is more synchronicity than I'd like to acknowledge. The last time this happened, my life skidded into wreckage that was a long time in repair.

This time? Fingers crossed.
I like to believe that I've got it under control.

This poem has been dancing in my consciousness all morning, after writing the previous post:

Danse Russe

 
If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,--
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
again the yellow drawn shades,—

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

—William Carlos Williams

Sunday Morning

Sitting on my back deck, looking at this pure blue through the branches of my apple tree (wild, unpruned, rambling), a single cloud wisp in the corner of my vision —

Hummingbirds performing — they seem always to be such concentrated feathered bundles of energy, amazing for their lack of heft. I filled the feeder for the first time in maybe six months on Friday night at sunset, and yesterday morning they were at it first thing, buzzing first just a few feet from my face as if to say, it's about time. I like to think that they are the same pair of hummingbirds that I first encountered when I returned to my B-Street house two years ago. And they may be, but how is one to know? It's okay to believe this, I do know that. And if so, this may be their last year, as the life span of a hummingbird averages 3-4 years. But no matter. There always seems to be a recognition, a greeting as of old friends, and this is enough.

Thinking, also, of aloneness, of the human — and my — desire for companionship. And how, even with a companion, the sense of loneliness might still exist, intensely. Are we bound by our natures to feel this? And is it necessary, so that we'll continually seek out others, who ultimately help to ensure our survival, if not in literal food/shelter/water, but in the need for human interaction? I believe this to be true.

And so we go on. And the hummingbirds return to my speck of the microcosm, their need for a constant source of nectar driving them to my feeder, my need for connection with another living being driving me to refill the feeder.

Sugar and water.
Apple tree, the blue infinity.
Cloud fragment.
Sunday.
Living, still.

Sugar Therapy

It's been a challenging week, with eruptions/explosions on the homefront; while at work, 1/3 of our staff (which = one person) at home sick with "intestinal flow" (and I think he actually said "flu" but "flow" seemed so much more apt), and then a turbulence of the heart. Ah, the heart. One would think that by this age, we'd be so over these kinds of fusses. Well, we aren't. Welcome to singlehood at 56.

But I walked in the door tonight to a heaven-sent scent, and my son was in the kitchen bent over a bowl of something pink and creamy, and a single-layer chocolate cake was in the oven, nearing that perfect state of sponginess. We each had a slice, while it was still warm (raspberry cream cheese frosting!), and goddamn that was the best cake I've ever eaten. (He realizes that this is a high compliment, as I consider cake to be a gift of the gods.)

Not a complete cure, but probably the best balm possible on a lousy day. How did he know?

Fern

photo courtesy of Utah State University Cooperative Extension

Where bracken ferns grow thickly, if you are nimble enough (and probably small enough) you can scoot on your back until you are thick in the middle of them, underneath their lace, and you'll find that you have a kind of private room there, and you'll be invisible, because no one will ever look for you under a canopy of bracken ferns, as it is the most unlikely of places to linger.

I've been making so little noise here, one might begin to get concerned.

Sometimes silence descends, in its various forms, and these days it's blog-silence. The poetry is still flowing, in spits and furts, but flowing nonetheless. The landscape here grows lush and full, over-leafed, over-greened, and today wetwetwet, hours of wetwetwet. Too lazy to walk to work in the rain, those slosh-footed urban blocks.

Out with poet-friends tonight, an informal gathering to read our work & talk about our work, less structured than my longtime writer's group. Bits of music: guitar and voice. Wine. A good way to end the holiday that was not a holiday for me, worked a full get-it-done day.

Plodding.
One minute at a time.

Subdued

Daft.

To correct:
I have five sisters;
I am one of six sisters.

Unremarkable, except —

This: an ordinary pink rose.
I don't know it's variety except hybrid tea.
And unremarkable, except for the fact
that every spring now for 26 years,
when I smell this first of many blooms,
I think immediately of sitting on the couch
with my five sisters, when we all fit on a single
couch at the same time!

Every year, it's the same.
A scent like apples still on the branch,
and lemons. And there we are,
laughing, elbowing, making room for each other.
And there was a time when we all fit.

Are Words Even Necessary?

Keeping this in mind....

When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.”
― Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

Sublime

I want to be looking at this flower....

and listening to this....

Meat Pie, Bittersweet

I just finished the last slice of a terrific beef pie my son R. made. Now, it's been a long week already, and it's only Tuesday: turbulence in and around. But as I put the last bite into my mouth (I made him save me one last piece), I had a moment of thinking, this is the perfect food. It was a deeply soul-satisfying, primal-animal comfort, all wrapped up in yolk-glazed pastry. Even sitting alone at my table for dinner, the sense of satisfaction and completeness was profound. Life. Is. Good.

R. has a Culinary Arts Degree, but because of multiple health issues, can't work in the field. The meds that could possibly enable him to work a kitchen line would most likely also cause his death, by heart attack. He's been unemployed — except for some seasonal umpire work — for over two years. Unemployment depleted. Savings: bye bye. He's 27, intelligent, talented, capable, and financially supported by me. It's a struggle, and I get angry and frustrated with him far too often. Last winter he started back in school in a worker retraining program, and then was rear-ended in a collision, got a concussion, and landed immobile for two months.

Not much has changed since then. He's applying for entry-level jobs, battling depression, and cooking for Mom. Changing the litter box. Doing the odd job at the glass factory.

When he was in his first year of cooking school, we had our run-ins re: the kitchen. That year, on Christmas Eve, I was preparing a traditional (for my family) Christmas Eve dinner: French Canadian Tourtiere, a pork & beef & potato meat pie. It's a dish that is much beloved by my boys, and is often fought-over as a Christmas morning breakfast treat.

But that particular Christmas Eve, R. came into the kitchen, observed very briefly what I was doing, and snatched the wooden spoon from my hand.

"Hey! What the hell are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm just trying to introduce classic French cooking techniques into this kitchen!" He answered.

After an impassioned spate of back-and-forth, I ordered him to leave My Kitchen.

And he did.

And the tourtiere was, as always, fabulous.

As expected, R. mellowed as the years passed. A few nights ago, when he was making the gravy for this current meat pie, he asked me to taste it, wanted to know what was missing.

Well!
I was quite taken aback: R. was asking me for cooking advice? I mean, we've collaborated on a number of recipes, but he's never asked me, outright, to identify something missing/needed in one of his creations.

Needless to say, I was astonished, and suggested a trickle of Worcestershire, or even a splash of soy sauce to deepen the complexity of flavors.

"Oh! Yeah!" He said. And did it. And it worked.

Which brings me to this evening, and my dinner, and my one moment of gratitude, of goodness, of appreciation for this one small thing which turned my week — early though it still is — into a good one.

Of course, what would make it an exceptionally good week would be for R. to get a call about a job, any job. Or for the pharmaceutical gods to alchemize an ADD med that isn't a stimulant, that actually works.

Lacking that, I'll savor these last flavors of R.'s meat pie, and that he asked me for some honest input. It wasn't tourtiere, but it was a damn fine pie.

And conclude with the fact that life is indeed good, could be better, but this, ladies and gentlemen, is what we've got.

Rustic Imprints

Shameless self-promotion in the interest of staying afloat:
I'm launching a new side-gig called Rustic Imprints, mixed-media pieces using original imagery photo-transfer onto birch boards, suitable for framing. They measure 9x12" and are signed by the artist. (That would be me.)

Currently working on a line of dress photos. My younger sister wore this dress, at the age of 6, in our sister Ann's wedding (flower girl). All lovingly stitched by our mom.

Each piece is given a girl-name, this is titled "Kathleen", after my sis.

And....it can be yours for $125.
I ship.

(Don't have a paypal account set up yet, but it's to come, soon.)

If you have any interest, shoot me an email at t.clear@comcast.net.

A Mural....

....about which I have nothing to say.

UnderWater

Pema Chodron

I do so love the wisdom of Pema Chodron:

"First, come into the present. Flash on what’s happening with you right now. Be fully aware of your body, its energetic quality. Be aware of your thoughts and emotions. Next, feel your heart, literally placing your hand on your chest if you find that helpful. This is a way of accepting yourself just as you are in that moment, a way of saying, 'This is my experience right now, and it’s okay.' Then go into the next moment without any agenda."

Breaking Out

I'm the featured reader tonight at an open mike event, the first "solo" reading I've done in almost nine years. Minor jitters, though I'll know many of the people there. The question I have to ask myself is this:

"In what manner do I desire to remove all my clothing in public?"

Because being a poet, and reading one's work in public, is a lot like that.

I used to give readings several times a year, but went into a hermit-like state with my writing after some major life-shattering events a decade ago. Other than blogging, and my monthly writing group, I dropped out of the scene. Rarely submitted new work to magazines. Rarely went to readings. Stopped reading most poetry.

And then last fall, on the encouragement of some friends, I began going to a 3x/month open mike event, and found a new home. There is music, poetry, fiction, memoir — a little bit of everything, from people of varying abilities, and a wide range of ages. All warmly welcomed, all entertaining, mostly all inspiring.

Part of me is still kicking and screaming, wanting to retreat to the safety of No Exposure. And then there's the other part of me, who finds great comfort as well as a thrill in the well-tuned line of verse. And I'm taking an even bigger risk tonight with my theme. Instead of my usual assortment of family/death/birds/humor, I'm reading an all sex/love/desire collection of a "poet's dozen" of 13 poems, including a few that have received no critique from anyone. Nothing like jumping off the cliff at full speed, eh?

Absent

As I've been.

Ruminating the many absences, disappearances, those finite/infinite losses that make up a life.

Meanwhile, the earth is blaring out in blossom, so much I can't keep track.
So many scents.
Color like I believe I've never seen before, yet know, of course, I have.

To hold both this abundance and this scarcity in the same hand, that is the challenge.

Saturday, there were only buds.
Today: 37 blossoms.
As always, I am in awe of this planet.

A Couple of White Boys

photo by Andrew Baldwin

That's my boy on the right there, and on the left, his friend from childhood, G., who spent a good portion of his early years at my house. They've recorded a rap/hiphop album of their duo "South Brandon", and this is one of the promo photos.

Not sure how I feel about the rap lingo, but these two guys do it all a little tongue-in-cheek.

Who woulda thought, back in their Ninja Turtle days, that they'd still be buddies and playing rap music together?

Gone to Seed, Gone to Blossom....

Night Dress

Under a half-egg moon
I'm out with a 46-year-old dress
my mother hand-stitched for my sister Kath
to wear in my sister Ann's wedding —
rinsed clear of its accumulation of years
and freshly pressed, I let it float down
to a bed of deadnettles and bluebells
on the last April evening of the month.
It's chilly and I've not donned a sweater —
so I work quickly, the flash illuminating
a dark garden in bursts of surprise light.
I drag over a green metal chair
and position it in the unsteady earth,
climb warily up to a better vantage,
breathing my balance
until I'm just above the lace skirt
and pink-ribboned bodice.
I think of how my mother would disapprove
of her stitch-work tossed to foliage,
and how she'd tut-tut at my middle-aged self
perched in moonlight on a rickety chair.
What she doesn't know — gone these long years —
is that I handle this dress with a reverence
saved for relics — which this is.
Done, I gather up the rustling taffeta,
cradle it in my arms, leave satin trailing
in lemon balm, sweet woodruff —

Under the Apple Tree, in Moonlight