Monday, August 26, 2013

Daily Mantra

It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants.

The question is: What are we busy about?

-Henry David Thoreau

Monday, August 19, 2013

Go into art

"…go into the arts.

I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living.

They are a very human way of making life more bearable.

Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake.

Sing in the shower.

Dance to the radio.

Tell stories.

Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem.

Do it as well as you possibly can.

You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something. "

-Kurt Vonnegut's words, with my spacing.

Remind me to tell you about the time when I was 12 and I went alone to a Kurt Vonnegut lecture in the gym of a nearby college and sat in the very front row in a room full of twenty-somethings so I could get a good look at the man who confused me- and yet delighted me* - completely with Slaughterhouse Five. I left more confused and without my copy of the book signed and a little bit changed and without my parents knowing where I'd been for those two hours.**

*which in itself confused me

**It is also to be noted that sneaking into a lecture given by a prominent literary figure is exactly how an adolescent book-nerd rebels.

Monday, August 12, 2013

Shaking Off

Sometimes I'm scared.

Sometimes I keep myself awake because the fear of i'll never find love, be loved, be loving echoes louder when I shut down, close my eyes, try to slumber.

Gotta quiet that.

I can spend an entire evening bouncing from one website to the next: a friend's photos, a stranger's popsicle recipe (yum that looks good, I should make that), a self-help list on the 8 things to ask when seeking true vocation... I bounce between things, but not towards anything in particular. I'm avoiding my work.

I never bring work home - except tonight I did - and on a night like tonight that is all about avoidance, I slip into some adolescent self that can't focus and must play.

Or is it play?

I've been spilling over nostalgia lately; since I saw two friends from past lives and marveled at how much we've changed, how little we've changed, how the only change is time's fault, not our own. The nostalgia has been upon me and it causes me to feel jumpy, to feel as if my bones are knocking against skin, as if something is literally stirring in me.

What is stirring in me?

I can't focus. Work is harder when you are seeking something new. Now it takes me longer to do my work - now I bring my work home with me because it takes me longer because I have to spend as much energy trying to care about my work as I am trying to do my work.

This is not me - not ideal, not what I want. But it's who I am right now.

Scattered, unsure. Hopeful to hopeless in a snap. Distracted and distracting. Quiet screaming. An oxymoron on purpose?

I'm on oxymoron on purpose. I want love and I fear it. I want new but fear it. I want change but can't find it. I wonder why it's so hard to put myself out there. I didn't think I was a shy person, but I am learning I'm more introverted than I previously thought. I wonder why when I'm finally trying to put myself out there, I'm not getting clear signs that it is worth it. Is this just a fancy way of admitting I no longer know how to flirt?

I do know how to embrace insomnia though.

Something is knocking at me. It's keeping me awake. I can't pinpoint the problem, but I sense it is a deep and endless yearning. Or, perhaps, what some people call loneliness.

Sunday, August 11, 2013

garden bouquet

Cosmos, Black-eyed Susan, echinacea, sage and dill gone to flower.



It's very simple, I know.

But, it makes me very happy.

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

everything about this poem

Plans
by Stuart Dischell

She plans to be a writer one day and live in the City of Paris,
Where she will describe the sun as it rises over Buttes-Chaumont.
"Today the dawn began in small pieces, sharp wedges of light
Broke through the clouds." She plans to write better than this
And is critic enough to know "sharp wedges" sound like cheese.
She plans to live alone in a place that has a terrace
Where she will drink strong coffee at a round white table.
Her terrace will be her cafe and she will be recognized
By the blue-smocked workers of the neighborhood, the concierges,
The locals at the comptoir of the tabac down the block,
And the girl under the green cross of the apothecary shop.
She plans to love her apartment where she will keep
Just one flower in a blue vase. She already loves the word apart-
Ment, whose halves please her when she sees them breaking
The line in her journal. She plans to learn the roots
of French and English words and will search them out
As if she were hunting skulls in the catacombs.
On her walls she'll hang a timetable of the great events
of Western History. She will read the same twenty books
As Chaucer. Every morning she will make up stories....
She looks around her Brighton room, at the walls, 
The ceiling, the round knob of the rectangular door.
She listens to the voices of the neighbor's children. 
A toilet flushes, then the tamp of cigerette on steel,
The flint flash of her roommate's boyfriend's lighter.
When she leaves she plans to leave alone, and every
Article she will carry, each shoe, will be important.
Like an architect she will plan this life, as once
The fortune in a cookie told her: Picture what you wish
To become, if you wish to become that picture. 

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

August Shares

I want to eat this, live in this, make campfires under a starry sky with this, and live with a spirit of happy to have been here.

Also, a hermit crab could make an ok pet, granted it has a tricked out home.