WEEKLY WRITER’S PATH #21
Why am I the only one who smells the rotting garbage in the kitchen? Why doesn’t the kitten cover his mess in the litter box? Why do I have to remind everyone to wash their dishes? Why do I drink coffee every morning when it hurts my stomach? Why do we keep bringing up the past? Why do I procrastinate doing the things I enjoy? Why am I tired of people asking me what my passion is? Why do I bother cleaning the bathroom mirror when it just gets dirty again? Why does it bother me when people don’t hire me? Why aren’t I elated when people come to me for help? Why does everything cost money? Why don’t my checks cover my bills? Why does my sister’s internet service provider keep bouncing back my message unless I find an old message, hit reply and write to her that way? Why did Apple come out with an Intel dual-core processor macbook pro that not only doesn’t run creative suite 2 any faster but, in fact, won’t run any of the pro software for video editors, graphic designers and creative people at all? Why do we feel we need more stuff? Why do I always remember the one night I spent with Ronnie in a stone-floored one-room house every time we make love? Why can’t I finish all the fun projects I have in mind? Why don’t I ever feel like I am ahead? Why does kitten sleep all day?
Because I am the mom. Because kitten is lazy. Because they want my voice in their heads all the time. Because drinking coffee is a habit and I am addicted to the making pouring stirring sipping part of it. Because we have not healed the past. Because I enjoy doing new things more than I enjoy finishing things, or because I am afraid of not finishing something perfectly. Because passion can be generated for anything. Because I like to see things clearly, if only for a moment. Because I feel they are making a mistake. Because although I like helping people, more work means more work. Everything costs money because we have designated it as the currency of exchange. My checks don’t cover my bills because 1) I don’t charge enough, or, 2) my bills are too big to be covered by my checks. The emails I send my sister keep bouncing because I am sending from an unrecognized domain name. Apple has released incompatible hardware because they have identified the new market share for the next ten years and it is windows-users. We feel we need more stuff because we have not cultivated the mindset of being satisfied. Because memories are stronger, sometimes, than reality. Because fun projects aren’t something I can exchange for food, rent, internet access. Because I keep putting things in front of me. Because kitten stays up all night crashing into the door to catch the mice that run over the back step just out of his reach.
Monday, May 29, 2006
Sunday, May 21, 2006
imagery
WEEKLY WRITER’S PATH #20
Almost every evening now, when I used to take a break and go for a walk before it’s too dark, I instead don my sister’s Chicago Bears hoodie, my Dunkin Donuts cap, my yellow West County gardening gloves and generic white sneakers and head to the shed to sort through a few more boxes of mouse-detailed papers from my past.
It’s like a treasure hunt without the clues. Last week I found my college diploma, obviously too distasteful to rodents—not a nip or turd upon it. What was it doing out there?
I’m actually scared of mice; I jump and squeal like a girl when one darts out. Then I feel foolish and talk to them, saying, Time to go, buster. This is my space now. That makes me feel even more ridiculous, so I get my oldest son to come out and dump boxes on the ground for me to pick through, paper by paper. I really just want to toss everything into the back end of the truck and haul it away to the dump so I don’t have to see another stiff, dead mouse, jaws open in apparent painful death, or maybe just a yawn before dozing off forever. Then I find something amazing.
Last night I came upon a set of five folders that I recognized instantly. One was tiger-striped, one had Batman in his cape and wide-stance (the 1989 Michael Keaton version), one had an upside-down skate boarder in neon pink with the words, Rad Dog in green. Inside I found all the writing from the time when I had no computer, including copies of the papers I had written in college. Like “From Infinity to Infinity,” for my junior mathematics tutorial in 1985:
“Unlike Euclid, Newton strongly differentiates between the process and the goal. He states, in corollary IV of lemma III, that the ultimate figures, ‘are not rectilinear, but curvilinear limits of rectangular figures.’ He defines the process of infinity as rectilinear, but the ultimate derived figure is that of a curve. The emphasis here that seems absent from Euclidean geometry is that of limit. There is a time, Newton seems to be saying, that we can stop and actually be at the end of the process.”
Even more surprising were the poems in another folder. These I didn’t recognize as being mine, which was a very strange feeling. There were minutes when I read through them and almost knew them as mine, then reconsidered. It was like when you see someone getting coffee in the line ahead of you, and you know you know them but just can’t place them. I saw a man in Starbuck’s with a thick wiry ponytail and I knew him, but from where? From when? The intricately detailed image of a tiger on a red background came immediately to my mind. Later I remembered his name, and that I had designed a book cover with a tiger on it for him ten years ago.
It was finally the imagery in the poems that told me they were mine: a particular Chagall poster, a blue ribosoo with gold thread, the cost of a cotton dress equaling what I paid for my last car, how it used to rain at 4:15, and a place where all numbers lean into zero. Images that only this mind in this body through these eyes could have seen. Images are clues; when they repeat, you know you’re onto something.
I’ll leave you with this old poem about the beauty of deterioration:
Blue sky from pain
Morning from last night’s empty whiskey bottle
Weed seeds saved and arranged in diamond formation
On Bodhisattva’s lap
Blue sky from pain
Electric humbuzz of warmed coffee
Flowered oilcloth spread over the kitchen table
And the tracks of roach families
Blue sky from pain
Spray-gold chairs with turquoise peeking through
Rag rug hiding a scar from a hot pot
Set on linoleum
Blue sky from pain
Hope from heavily curtained windows
Bone, marrow, beloved flesh
Blue sky from pain
Hard to tell the difference
Almost every evening now, when I used to take a break and go for a walk before it’s too dark, I instead don my sister’s Chicago Bears hoodie, my Dunkin Donuts cap, my yellow West County gardening gloves and generic white sneakers and head to the shed to sort through a few more boxes of mouse-detailed papers from my past.
It’s like a treasure hunt without the clues. Last week I found my college diploma, obviously too distasteful to rodents—not a nip or turd upon it. What was it doing out there?
I’m actually scared of mice; I jump and squeal like a girl when one darts out. Then I feel foolish and talk to them, saying, Time to go, buster. This is my space now. That makes me feel even more ridiculous, so I get my oldest son to come out and dump boxes on the ground for me to pick through, paper by paper. I really just want to toss everything into the back end of the truck and haul it away to the dump so I don’t have to see another stiff, dead mouse, jaws open in apparent painful death, or maybe just a yawn before dozing off forever. Then I find something amazing.
Last night I came upon a set of five folders that I recognized instantly. One was tiger-striped, one had Batman in his cape and wide-stance (the 1989 Michael Keaton version), one had an upside-down skate boarder in neon pink with the words, Rad Dog in green. Inside I found all the writing from the time when I had no computer, including copies of the papers I had written in college. Like “From Infinity to Infinity,” for my junior mathematics tutorial in 1985:
“Unlike Euclid, Newton strongly differentiates between the process and the goal. He states, in corollary IV of lemma III, that the ultimate figures, ‘are not rectilinear, but curvilinear limits of rectangular figures.’ He defines the process of infinity as rectilinear, but the ultimate derived figure is that of a curve. The emphasis here that seems absent from Euclidean geometry is that of limit. There is a time, Newton seems to be saying, that we can stop and actually be at the end of the process.”
Even more surprising were the poems in another folder. These I didn’t recognize as being mine, which was a very strange feeling. There were minutes when I read through them and almost knew them as mine, then reconsidered. It was like when you see someone getting coffee in the line ahead of you, and you know you know them but just can’t place them. I saw a man in Starbuck’s with a thick wiry ponytail and I knew him, but from where? From when? The intricately detailed image of a tiger on a red background came immediately to my mind. Later I remembered his name, and that I had designed a book cover with a tiger on it for him ten years ago.
It was finally the imagery in the poems that told me they were mine: a particular Chagall poster, a blue ribosoo with gold thread, the cost of a cotton dress equaling what I paid for my last car, how it used to rain at 4:15, and a place where all numbers lean into zero. Images that only this mind in this body through these eyes could have seen. Images are clues; when they repeat, you know you’re onto something.
I’ll leave you with this old poem about the beauty of deterioration:
Blue sky from pain
Morning from last night’s empty whiskey bottle
Weed seeds saved and arranged in diamond formation
On Bodhisattva’s lap
Blue sky from pain
Electric humbuzz of warmed coffee
Flowered oilcloth spread over the kitchen table
And the tracks of roach families
Blue sky from pain
Spray-gold chairs with turquoise peeking through
Rag rug hiding a scar from a hot pot
Set on linoleum
Blue sky from pain
Hope from heavily curtained windows
Bone, marrow, beloved flesh
Blue sky from pain
Hard to tell the difference
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
my fort
WEEKLY WRITER’S PATH #19
I am sitting in my studio tonight, birds chatting outside as the sun sets in a stormy sky. The open door invites a fresh, cool breeze that flutters the frayed ends of silver duct tape peeling away from a gap in the window glass. It sways a white spider web, one thick thread, hanging from the ceiling that is punctured with three-inch nails. It plays with the edges of my old high school yearbook, the corners bitten away. The breeze lifts for a moment the lingering smell of dead mouse.
Yes, it’s my studio, but no, it’s not the downstairs corner office at the Lofts. It’s the shed out back of our house that has been the home of waterlogged boxes of kids’ art, the rototiller and various car seats and van benches pulled from unknown vehicles. Last week we began trolling through the 150 square feet of books and boxes to find a place for me to work, to write, to hear silence.
Because that is the most important part about having “a room of one’s own.” It’s the need for complete and utter silence. The lack of interruptions. The sense that you have all the time in the world to write. “Creating the illusion of the passage of time,” as my excellent high school writing teacher Dr. William Lally always said.
The wind picks up and howls through the trees, and the underbelly of a heavy cloud that covers the horizon is gilded as the sun sets, “just like your Magic cards,” Talaya says to her little brother. Asher props a frayed window blind in a huge box, the torn white fabric fluttering and snapping in the breeze. His flag. I can see him out the door, the sprawling juniper tree bissected by planks of wood as he climbs to the highest platform.
When we were kids, we had forts. My kids have forts. And now I want my own fort. A place where I can protect my stuff, keep everyone else out, test my secret gadgets, spy on the world.
I am sitting in my studio tonight, birds chatting outside as the sun sets in a stormy sky. The open door invites a fresh, cool breeze that flutters the frayed ends of silver duct tape peeling away from a gap in the window glass. It sways a white spider web, one thick thread, hanging from the ceiling that is punctured with three-inch nails. It plays with the edges of my old high school yearbook, the corners bitten away. The breeze lifts for a moment the lingering smell of dead mouse.
Yes, it’s my studio, but no, it’s not the downstairs corner office at the Lofts. It’s the shed out back of our house that has been the home of waterlogged boxes of kids’ art, the rototiller and various car seats and van benches pulled from unknown vehicles. Last week we began trolling through the 150 square feet of books and boxes to find a place for me to work, to write, to hear silence.
Because that is the most important part about having “a room of one’s own.” It’s the need for complete and utter silence. The lack of interruptions. The sense that you have all the time in the world to write. “Creating the illusion of the passage of time,” as my excellent high school writing teacher Dr. William Lally always said.
The wind picks up and howls through the trees, and the underbelly of a heavy cloud that covers the horizon is gilded as the sun sets, “just like your Magic cards,” Talaya says to her little brother. Asher props a frayed window blind in a huge box, the torn white fabric fluttering and snapping in the breeze. His flag. I can see him out the door, the sprawling juniper tree bissected by planks of wood as he climbs to the highest platform.
When we were kids, we had forts. My kids have forts. And now I want my own fort. A place where I can protect my stuff, keep everyone else out, test my secret gadgets, spy on the world.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
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