August, 2010
There are the tomato plants that
never bore fruit, leaves brown and wilting.
Apples the size of baseballs
plummet from the tree in the corner
of the yard with a thump.
Spindly-armed geraniums reach out,
bald with the last of the summer heat.
Damn the heat.
We’re all seeing spots
from looking at the sun.
I smile at brisker mornings,
at dew on the yellowing grass.
It’s a time for growth,
in the opposite direction of nature.
Nature dies, I grow.
That’s how it’s always been.
Die and grow.
Die and grow.
I’ve been decorating my office lately with some family artwork. Started off with some of my 6 year old’s framed crayon drawings of elephants and dogs, then I found some sketches my husband drew in high school, so I thought I’d dig up some photos I took in college.
I remembered the one above because it was such a favorite of mine at the time. This was taken on the jetty between the Manasquan Inlet and the ocean at Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey – a place that I spent a lot of great times during my teenage years. And, of course, it’s a reference (though reverence works too, as I first typed it…) to the REM song which was popular at the time, and is still a pretty rockin’ tune.
As you do in all beginning photography classes, I took the photo on some ancient all-manual camera and developed the photo myself in the dark room. This was definately one of the cooler classes I took in college.
For a long time I had the picture thumbtacked to my wall. Then I started dating this guy who was a huge REM fan. So what did I do? Instead of making a copy (and this was long before the days of flatbed scanners) I had the picture framed and gave it to him as a gift. He was thrilled. Nice enough guy, but things eventually ended, and that was the last I saw of the photo.
I’m hoping at some point during my clean up I’ll come across some negatives somewhere, but I’m not holding my breath. All I found in an old file folder was the Xerox copy above, which, especially when scanned, just doesn’t do it justice.
Lesson learned. A lesson I’ve learned from computers that I’ve died without warning as well. If it’s a photo you love, don’t rely on the original to survive. Oh well, it’s not like it’s the end of the world…
desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.
Take kindly to the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
Max Ehrmann c.1920
Sorry to make you suffer more, but tough…
Avanti
My eyelash landed on the wall
of the porcelain sink and stuck there.
Small, black and lumpy
with mascara – made of what?
Something strange, I’ve heard.
Chin, lips, cheekbones,
a wishbone leading to my eyes.
I examine my loss,
and look into the steamy mirror
to see if I’ve really changed,
but I can barely see my own face.
I remember experimenting
with mascara.
My best friend and I
were in the bathroom
of her father’s house.
Our breath smelled
of Bubble-Yum, our tanned
skin of the Chalimar left
by her father’s girlfriend.
With red eyes and inflated egos
we tried our best come-hither look.
We were just beginning.
I run my fingers down
the steamy mirror.
I rinse my face again
and splash water at the
eyelash in the sink.
But it clings
and clings and clings.
So, let’s get started with some old stuff, circa 1991.
The Seventh Stage
Hyde Park, London, Cartier-Bresson
A bundled woman gently
reclines on a park
bench stationed in front
of one of Shakespeare’s
stages in the rain
cane tucked into her
side as ready sentinal
by its master should
some red mourning
attempt to overtake
her grasping at her
collar trying to keep
the sky’s steady streams
from trickling down
her face
pensive and somber
into the warm shelter she’d
created with her London Times
across her chest leaving
nothing exposed but
her spotted hands held
like a praying mantis
before the show begins.
********************************************
Veranda
There are nuns under large orange beach umbrellas,
sitting in the sand every efternoon,
with the ocean clanking away in front of them.
Several years ago I learned about
the summer place owned by the church,
a house wedged between two four story wooden mansions,
balconies on every floor, several yards away from the water’s edge.
And every morning, these quiet women file out
onto a balcony for breakfast at sunrise,
saying grace together as they hold their hands up to the paling sky.
I’m not sure if these women go in the ocean like the rest of us,
but I imagine them sneaking out at night
in black flapper suits with white swim caps,
bobbing in the moonlight, the beach just a white page in front of them.
And the nuns in the moonlight would stand at the hardened edge,
but still they are somehow ordinary,
sitting through the afternoons in chaise lounges,
as the Mother Superior watches from the top floor window,
like the moon might if it had the chance.
*********************************
The only way to see how far we’ve come is to examine where we were in the beginning, no?
Just to forewarn the readers of this blog (both of you) that I’m going to start experimenting a little on here. I started writing again here not just because I have issues to work out that seem to work out better on paper (or screen, as it were), but because I have a physical need to write in general, and always feel better in the universe when I’m doing it regularly. Kind of like exercise for the brain. (Damn shame I don’t feel this way about exercise too…)
Anyway…I’ve started a new composition book – you know, those black and white marble covered books you can get for a buck at Target. They’ve always seemed to work well for me, much better than any other notebook or journal. I just like the way the pages feel – they’re thin enough that when you press hard to write with a pen, the imprint goes through to the other side. So when you get a good number of pages written, it gets this wonderful tactile sensation when I flip through it. Strange, I know, but it works for me.
I’ve been using these kind of books since high school, so I’ve got dozens of them in my office closet. Every now and then I go through them and, especially the teenage ones, can just make me blush with their gooey-ness. But, since I also lost my father in that time frame, there are some very interesting (to me) essays as well. (I have long since tossed my middle school diaries…it was painful enough the first time, I decided I didn’t need to keep reliving it…)
I broke out some from the last two decades this evening, and found one from a college poetry class. I opened the front cover and found this wonderful quote in big, saucy letters:
“Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, twist your toes, twinkle, prickle, know you are alone, and not alone in an unknown world.” Dylan Thomas
This struck me for two reasons. One, I remember this quote, and still just love the words in it, and two, one of my dear friends named her baby boy Dylan Thomas after this poet. I sent the quote to her this evening – this baby is one of those wonderful, smiley, makes-you-want-to-reproduce kinds of babies, so I thought the quote was well matched to how he makes everyone around him feel too.
Oh, so, back to my writing. I need to start putting some creative writing on here just to get it out in the world. Please don’t judge too harshly. I figure if I don’t care what I look like when I’m exercising my body (you’d know this if you ever saw me dressed for the gym…), I probably shouldn’t care anymore what I look like when I’m exercising my brain. You can always look away if you don’t like what you see!
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