Have I ever mentioned I love being a grad student. Yeah...
Here's the result of a free-writing exercise for class last week...(talking about talking about writing):
Life. What we were swaddled in as children, the heartbreaks we've endured, the hope we hold on to, all of our cultural accouterments. To breathe is to be consistent, to breathe is to be living, to breathe is to conversate.
In every space, time, place...our voices can be heard. What's a voice? Such a strong thing that it can be recognized over the phone after years of absence, it can be heard across a crowded room - turning an ear into a homing device for familiarity.
There aren’t topics missing. This is Jeopardy. We’ve been talking about the same thing for years and will continue to talk about it because, like our lives, most conversations are cyclical. I’ll take Great Writers of 2010, Alec. The Long Conversation is us playing a round. Not playing around...but playing a round in this conversation that never began and will never end. We can’t know of every conversation that’s been held or the conversations about writing that will be held so it’s hard to say what’s missing. I think if anything is missing, it won’t be for long because if a writer can’t get it out there, who can? Someone will push, maybe we will all push. Writers live by their senses and pushing is what we do best.
What we talk about is the burden and the beauty. The weight of the world inside our heads. How do you pay bills when you have to will your hand to stop moving, make a conscious effort to take a break from your mind? What if you hooked up a food source and a portable bathroom option, how much writing would we get done then? What makes a writer write? What makes a writer different from a person who is writing a grocery list or a love letter? As we were so often was inspired to ask ourselves in Keith Abbott’s class - what moves the pen to paper? We talk about the disease. Words that keep us awake at night. We talk about the therapy of it all - what our hands moving across loose leaf notebook paper, writing poetry in middle school math class, meant to us then and now. How avoiding fractions healed our tiny broken capillaries of teenage struggle. How now as adults, we do the same thing, only most of us own nice computers or quality journals to hold that self medication.
I was born of ear and mouth, brain and hand. We need to get in there. Stop asking “How are you?” and start asking “How are you not?”
Everything holds a conversation. The engine to the fan belts, the ethernet cable to the modem. Silence even talks with us - silence on the lips of lovers as they move in the dark. Our skin talks, our organs never shut up. We are noisy inside. We create noise, maybe in response to our indigestion and what we hear in our ears when we yawn. Some animals talk with colors, others with vocal chords, still yet, others with text messages. What’s more authentic? What’s the difference between talking and having a conversation? Getting in there. Asking the questions. Giving the answers. Are there answers and if there are, what makes us think we’ve got them? Conversation.
Humans have been having a Long Conversation since the beginning of our time. We’ve looked up at the sky or into our own hands and asked how we got here. Eventually, we started asking aloud and despite a lot of talking and a lot more conversing - whole arenas full of people conversing - we still don’t know for sure. So, then we converse about how we disagree. We like those conversations because they make us feel alive. They let us get angry and be powerful. No one is wrong. No one is right. We just like to feel that connection with each other. Even if we disagree, isn’t it enough that we’re having the conversation? Doesn’t that do something for us all? We participate every day in conversations that will never end. A whole milleu of conversations. Conversations so old if we drank them like wine we’d die of the fermentation.
Our voices save us. From each other (“Fire!”, “No!”) and from ourselves (“It’s okay, everything is going to be alright, I’ll get through this”). We think the sound of a bird singing after a rainstorm is beautiful, but that bird isn’t just singing after that rainstorm, it’s singing after every rainstorm it was ever alive for and for every rainstorm its mother was alive for...on and on. We talk for the same reason. We write for the same reason. I wonder what the first human who ever put a writing utensil onto a form of recording material was thinking. What language was the first word written in? What was our writer feeling?
This Conversation is about that time as much as it’s about this time. We have a lot to say and we need to say a lot more to each other.
About:
carpal tunnel, eye strain, our favorite brand of pens, why we feel so hurt when someone doesn’t give us a reaction.
About:
what it means, really, to be given the genetic disposition to overflow with words and what that says about us.
About:
art, music, film, why so many writers die young.
About:
how to live it, how to make it come alive inside us.
About:
life.
20 January 2008
18 January 2008
We Feel Fine
Here's something to think about when you're updating your mood on networking sites...
Do you consider it art?
You will after you check this site out!
http://wefeelfine.org/
(Dave, thanks for sharing this site with everyone!)
Do you consider it art?
You will after you check this site out!
http://wefeelfine.org/
(Dave, thanks for sharing this site with everyone!)
12 January 2008
Saturday Sunning
Here are the makings of a wonderful afternoon:
Bright, sunny sky
Cool sea breeze
Finishing a couple of great books
Blank pages in my journal
The sweet smell of Banana Boat Tanning Oil
Thinking back about fishing as a child
Watching two Anoles watch me
The symphony of mid-day crickets
Opening my eyes after being long shut and sun drenched - to see the tiny fireflies of light swim in my retinas
Staring at the clouds so long they start to undulate as if they were the crests of waves
Condensation from my water bottle dripping on my legs and chest as I rehydrate
Knowing I spent the day exactly how I wanted to
Having the luxury of quiet
Being able to pin-point how the grass smelled at 3:41 today
Enjoying the sun - for tomorrow, there will be rain
08 January 2008
Notes on New Hampshire
Warning: this entry contains political opinions. They may or may not meet yours. I hope you'll read anyway. It's high time we start talking to each other, respecting each other's stances and finding common ground for a better America. Seriously.
Moving on...
What an interesting night.
Hilary and McCain came out on top.
Tonight I realized that while my heart may lie with Gravel, this country needs my vote to go for O'bama.
Everyone stands at their podium and says they're going to pay teachers more, end poverty, end the war, save the planet and fix our healthcare system. It's as if they all pull words from the same master speech -- and we believe it. Why? Hope. Hope that once, someone will mean it. Tonight, O'bama did:
"In the story of America, there has never been anything false about hope"
"...when people vote not for a party -- but for hope"
O'bama spoke from his heart. No cue cards, no cheat sheets like Hilary and McCain. I suppose if you're winning the primary you have too much ass to kiss to try to work out your thoughts on your own? It made my heart sad to see this. Even Edwards spoke off the cuff. Lawyers are good at that sort of thing, but still. It means something. How you speak to the American people means something. Look at President Bush -- we make fun of his speaking (stuttering) more than anything else he has done in office. It means something.
Tonight, I have hope. Hope that we might have a president who speaks. Not a president who talks at us, talks down to us, panders to what he/she thinks we should hear, but rather, speaks. TO us and FOR us. That president-elect is O'bama.
Watching him speak tonight after the primary, I heard Martin Luther King, JR. Not because they share an ethnic background, but because they share a passion; a meaning and a voice that has the depth to cross parties and blind prejudice. That voice reaches right into the heart of my generation and pulls at us. This country needs a voice like that in its tier again. A voice that comes from the one place we have needed it to for so long. Inside.
As I watched Michelle join her husband on the stage and Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" played in the background of supporters yelling and shaking signs - undulating in the same wave of O'bama's words -- I FELT hope. For a young America to have a voice in 2008. For an old America to have another chance at making this country what they want it be. For America to mend itself, mend the world.
"Stand for Change" is one of O'bama's campaign slogans. Tonight, I can't think of anything I stand for more.
http://www.barackobama.com/
Moving on...
What an interesting night.
Hilary and McCain came out on top.
Tonight I realized that while my heart may lie with Gravel, this country needs my vote to go for O'bama.
Everyone stands at their podium and says they're going to pay teachers more, end poverty, end the war, save the planet and fix our healthcare system. It's as if they all pull words from the same master speech -- and we believe it. Why? Hope. Hope that once, someone will mean it. Tonight, O'bama did:
"In the story of America, there has never been anything false about hope"
"...when people vote not for a party -- but for hope"
O'bama spoke from his heart. No cue cards, no cheat sheets like Hilary and McCain. I suppose if you're winning the primary you have too much ass to kiss to try to work out your thoughts on your own? It made my heart sad to see this. Even Edwards spoke off the cuff. Lawyers are good at that sort of thing, but still. It means something. How you speak to the American people means something. Look at President Bush -- we make fun of his speaking (stuttering) more than anything else he has done in office. It means something.
Tonight, I have hope. Hope that we might have a president who speaks. Not a president who talks at us, talks down to us, panders to what he/she thinks we should hear, but rather, speaks. TO us and FOR us. That president-elect is O'bama.
Watching him speak tonight after the primary, I heard Martin Luther King, JR. Not because they share an ethnic background, but because they share a passion; a meaning and a voice that has the depth to cross parties and blind prejudice. That voice reaches right into the heart of my generation and pulls at us. This country needs a voice like that in its tier again. A voice that comes from the one place we have needed it to for so long. Inside.
As I watched Michelle join her husband on the stage and Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" played in the background of supporters yelling and shaking signs - undulating in the same wave of O'bama's words -- I FELT hope. For a young America to have a voice in 2008. For an old America to have another chance at making this country what they want it be. For America to mend itself, mend the world.
"Stand for Change" is one of O'bama's campaign slogans. Tonight, I can't think of anything I stand for more.
http://www.barackobama.com/
02 January 2008
Burrrrr...and Baba Ram Das
My nose is cold. My hands are colder.
So...this is winter? It seems like it's been so long since I've felt this COLD.
It can go away now.
I want bathing suit season. Coconut lotion. Fresh pineapple slices. Feeling the warmth of the sand radiate through my skin. The satisfactory release when surf washes away a fine mist of sweat. Why is it that I must lose feeling in the tips of my toes in order to appreciate the humid swell in which I thrive?
Target is full of shiny things that make me smile - yellow patent leather, ballet flats, nautical inspired baubles, bohemian flower prints and warm-weather madras shorts. My favorite: a light jacket that reminds me of a boat's sail -- creamy mulled navy canvas with big white rope ties -- perfect for a cool spring night by a campfire, heels buried in the sand, eyes drinking in the starry sky. Spring is a promise.
Winter is death. A freeze. Drying up of plants. Etching of smells and chills. A shutting of windows. A shutting down. A blast of forced heat. Getting shocked on metal objects due to the lack of ions in the air. Dry eyes. Desert throat. Coughing. Supple skin taunt and pasty against frigid wind. I've been in Florida for so long I can't imagine dealing with this for more than a week or two. How do people do it? How do they live without the sun for months on end and not simply retire to a life under a down comforter - giving up work and play just to stay near a normal body temperature? I saw a blue Volvo from Ontario in the parking lot today - on it, a layer of road salt so thick it looked like frost. It sent shivers up my already shivering spine. How brave those people are, or, how thick and hearty they must be inside. How warm and present their lives must be...
I lived in a house with a fireplace a few years back. My roommates and I put up a Christmas tree and hung stockings near it - Norman Rockwell style. We all worked and studied so much I only recall one night of real enjoyment of the wood-burning accoutrement - a light crackling while I was hosting a holiday shindig. It taught me that life is not empty without a fireplace and for that one morning of the year when something American inside of me calls, there's Brighthouse's Yule Log on Demand where someone else's fireplace and holiday music can fill my home. Life would cease in the very way I know it to be without a skyline of palm trees but without a fireplace, I'd have a few less trees to add to my carbon footprint.
I like the crisp freshness of a low 70's day with a nice sea breeze moving the sweet air. I live for those slices of climate paradise. I love the sounds the seagulls make on my morning break and the smell of the salt; the hot whisper that curls my hair. I enjoy a good sweat, the smell of newly cut grass and snoozing to the serenade of tree frogs and cricket leg cellos. I love the sound of the ocean on a warm day, that lulling powerful song that resonates in the most primitive place inside of me, where I, like you, am 75% sea.
Brewing tea to keep my hands and throat warm, I digress...
I want a simple hearty life - like what I imagine those Canadians have deep inside - minus the salty car. For I think, they must have something really good to put up with frozen fingers. For me: tenure at a good college, an office full of books where my students feel comfortable enough to take off their shoes (because I surely won't be wearing mine), a convertible, a hammock in the sand, a hurricane every couple of years (just a mild one, to regulate the seasons and clean the earth), family close, occasional scarf weather, sunny days on which I can grade papers in my backyard full of flowers, butterflies and a real clothesline. I want to fall asleep at night with the windows open and know that I'm serving my niche in this life, that with every word I caress out of myself or others, I am healing someone or encouraging them to heal - giving them a voice line from their heart to the page. I want to grow old and gray guiding women whose thighs have taken over their lives and cuddling men who weren't held enough as children - releasing them from themselves into literary freedom. I want to travel to places where I need a heavy jacket, see the sun reflect on the snow and know that when the landing gear comes out on my plane home, I can peel that jacket off, strip off the socks and watch the ghost crabs scuttle in and out of their burrows at sunset.
I have spent a large part of my life moving around and what I've failed to learn, really learn, from all of that packing and unpacking is that there are some things I can't move away from. A fear of stagnation - of sitting still too long and mold growing on my shoulders - has always dwelled inside of me. As a nomadic child I craved the sound of our wood paneled station wagon being loaded, of canned beans in a campground and our family of three huddled together at a roadside fruit stand buying strawberries in a town where I knew no one. Perhaps from so early on, my little life moved so fast I couldn't keep up. What I have always been afraid of is missing something and as a result, my dreams have been filled with the blurry yellow lines on the highway - a promise that somewhere, somewhere else, things would be perfect.
As an adult, I can say I feel I'm finally coming to terms with the fact that there is no tangible perfection - not in weather or a zip code or in myself. It's a slow process, a heady realization that comes in accepting and celebrating what is here instead of what is not. There will always be days when it's too hot or too cold for my liking, no matter where I live. There will be periods of time I feel like a wild mess - a horde of bees inside me buzzing to be let out and other periods where in the spaces of moments, the petals of a violet blooming at my core.
Tonight as I imagine what snow would look like falling over the Atlantic, I feel a beautiful peace with where I am. I will not miss anything as long as I live with my eyes and heart open. There will be no mountain un-climbed, no path un-hiked, no bear or rosebud un-noticed. It's up to me what I miss - the chances I don't take, the opportunities I pass up, the gifts I don't accept. Above all delights, I want to be an old person with a lot of stories just as now I am a young person with a lot of dreams. To do that, the answer is simple. First, I must be here.
Here - as in: hearing the click-clack of the shopping cart against the floor in Publix at 6:32 on a Tuesday on the 4th of March. Here - as in: practicing a walking meditation where I envision a flower growing behind each step I take. Here - as in: not pondering about yesterday, not worrying about tomorrow, but being present - for all the pleasure and the pain. With it all, I will grow a bigger heart, a stronger body, a more broad and refined taste for the organic sweetness life. That's living to me - being alive inside and having enough depth to let the things that drag me down become as light as dust in comparison.
I have only one goal in 2008 - a goal I feel I will carry with me in every breath I take in life from this point forward and I have a book of the same name, written by Baba Ram Das, to thank for the lesson.
"Be Here Now"
It's taken me 25 years but I'm ready. To be. Here.
So...this is winter? It seems like it's been so long since I've felt this COLD.
It can go away now.
I want bathing suit season. Coconut lotion. Fresh pineapple slices. Feeling the warmth of the sand radiate through my skin. The satisfactory release when surf washes away a fine mist of sweat. Why is it that I must lose feeling in the tips of my toes in order to appreciate the humid swell in which I thrive?
Target is full of shiny things that make me smile - yellow patent leather, ballet flats, nautical inspired baubles, bohemian flower prints and warm-weather madras shorts. My favorite: a light jacket that reminds me of a boat's sail -- creamy mulled navy canvas with big white rope ties -- perfect for a cool spring night by a campfire, heels buried in the sand, eyes drinking in the starry sky. Spring is a promise.
Winter is death. A freeze. Drying up of plants. Etching of smells and chills. A shutting of windows. A shutting down. A blast of forced heat. Getting shocked on metal objects due to the lack of ions in the air. Dry eyes. Desert throat. Coughing. Supple skin taunt and pasty against frigid wind. I've been in Florida for so long I can't imagine dealing with this for more than a week or two. How do people do it? How do they live without the sun for months on end and not simply retire to a life under a down comforter - giving up work and play just to stay near a normal body temperature? I saw a blue Volvo from Ontario in the parking lot today - on it, a layer of road salt so thick it looked like frost. It sent shivers up my already shivering spine. How brave those people are, or, how thick and hearty they must be inside. How warm and present their lives must be...
I lived in a house with a fireplace a few years back. My roommates and I put up a Christmas tree and hung stockings near it - Norman Rockwell style. We all worked and studied so much I only recall one night of real enjoyment of the wood-burning accoutrement - a light crackling while I was hosting a holiday shindig. It taught me that life is not empty without a fireplace and for that one morning of the year when something American inside of me calls, there's Brighthouse's Yule Log on Demand where someone else's fireplace and holiday music can fill my home. Life would cease in the very way I know it to be without a skyline of palm trees but without a fireplace, I'd have a few less trees to add to my carbon footprint.
I like the crisp freshness of a low 70's day with a nice sea breeze moving the sweet air. I live for those slices of climate paradise. I love the sounds the seagulls make on my morning break and the smell of the salt; the hot whisper that curls my hair. I enjoy a good sweat, the smell of newly cut grass and snoozing to the serenade of tree frogs and cricket leg cellos. I love the sound of the ocean on a warm day, that lulling powerful song that resonates in the most primitive place inside of me, where I, like you, am 75% sea.
Brewing tea to keep my hands and throat warm, I digress...
I want a simple hearty life - like what I imagine those Canadians have deep inside - minus the salty car. For I think, they must have something really good to put up with frozen fingers. For me: tenure at a good college, an office full of books where my students feel comfortable enough to take off their shoes (because I surely won't be wearing mine), a convertible, a hammock in the sand, a hurricane every couple of years (just a mild one, to regulate the seasons and clean the earth), family close, occasional scarf weather, sunny days on which I can grade papers in my backyard full of flowers, butterflies and a real clothesline. I want to fall asleep at night with the windows open and know that I'm serving my niche in this life, that with every word I caress out of myself or others, I am healing someone or encouraging them to heal - giving them a voice line from their heart to the page. I want to grow old and gray guiding women whose thighs have taken over their lives and cuddling men who weren't held enough as children - releasing them from themselves into literary freedom. I want to travel to places where I need a heavy jacket, see the sun reflect on the snow and know that when the landing gear comes out on my plane home, I can peel that jacket off, strip off the socks and watch the ghost crabs scuttle in and out of their burrows at sunset.
I have spent a large part of my life moving around and what I've failed to learn, really learn, from all of that packing and unpacking is that there are some things I can't move away from. A fear of stagnation - of sitting still too long and mold growing on my shoulders - has always dwelled inside of me. As a nomadic child I craved the sound of our wood paneled station wagon being loaded, of canned beans in a campground and our family of three huddled together at a roadside fruit stand buying strawberries in a town where I knew no one. Perhaps from so early on, my little life moved so fast I couldn't keep up. What I have always been afraid of is missing something and as a result, my dreams have been filled with the blurry yellow lines on the highway - a promise that somewhere, somewhere else, things would be perfect.
As an adult, I can say I feel I'm finally coming to terms with the fact that there is no tangible perfection - not in weather or a zip code or in myself. It's a slow process, a heady realization that comes in accepting and celebrating what is here instead of what is not. There will always be days when it's too hot or too cold for my liking, no matter where I live. There will be periods of time I feel like a wild mess - a horde of bees inside me buzzing to be let out and other periods where in the spaces of moments, the petals of a violet blooming at my core.
Tonight as I imagine what snow would look like falling over the Atlantic, I feel a beautiful peace with where I am. I will not miss anything as long as I live with my eyes and heart open. There will be no mountain un-climbed, no path un-hiked, no bear or rosebud un-noticed. It's up to me what I miss - the chances I don't take, the opportunities I pass up, the gifts I don't accept. Above all delights, I want to be an old person with a lot of stories just as now I am a young person with a lot of dreams. To do that, the answer is simple. First, I must be here.
Here - as in: hearing the click-clack of the shopping cart against the floor in Publix at 6:32 on a Tuesday on the 4th of March. Here - as in: practicing a walking meditation where I envision a flower growing behind each step I take. Here - as in: not pondering about yesterday, not worrying about tomorrow, but being present - for all the pleasure and the pain. With it all, I will grow a bigger heart, a stronger body, a more broad and refined taste for the organic sweetness life. That's living to me - being alive inside and having enough depth to let the things that drag me down become as light as dust in comparison.
I have only one goal in 2008 - a goal I feel I will carry with me in every breath I take in life from this point forward and I have a book of the same name, written by Baba Ram Das, to thank for the lesson.
"Be Here Now"
It's taken me 25 years but I'm ready. To be. Here.
01 January 2008
Happy New Year
As my body processes the Crown & Cokes from tonight and I listen to one of my neighbors throwing up in the parking lot of our condo, my mind is jazzed...not yet ready for sleep.
Here are some interesting New Years facts:
-- The New Years tradition started in 4000 BC in Babylon
-- it's the oldest of all holidays
-- it used to be celebrated on the first day of Spring (the first new moon)
-- January 1st holds no astronomical or agricultural clout
-- January 1st has only been celebrated as the start of the New Year for about 400 years
-- resolutions date back to the Babylonians
-- American's most popular resolution: lose weight
-- Ancient Babylonians most popular resolution: return borrowed farm equipment
-- Egyptians and Greeks are responsible for the effigy of the New Years Baby - it dates back to 600 BC
-- the Rose Bowl was introduced in 1902; it was replaced by Chariot Races in 1903
-- the Rose Bowl returned to tradition in 1916 - where it's remained
-- the Dutch believe eating doughnuts on New Years day brings luck - anything in the shape of a ring means "coming full circle"
-- American tradition presents that black eyed peas, ham, rice and cabbage are good luck foods to eat on New Years Day as they all represent prosperity (of gas maybe...)
-- the song Auld Lang Syne (which means "the good old days" or literally "old long ago") has been a staple of the English speaking New Years Eve celebrations since the 1700's
All in all - it's a strange holiday. However, I'm all about new beginnings -- Mondays, Saturdays, mornings, 1st of the months, end of years - I am constantly starting over, always looking for fresh, new, different. So, I quite like it. If nothing else, it's fun writing a new date on paperwork.
Here's to 2008 -- a "new year", a new date, an even number, a new president, the Olympics in China and just as yesterday and the day before that and three years before that - a new me...always evolving, always growing.
Now, let's go return that farm equipment!
Here are some interesting New Years facts:
-- The New Years tradition started in 4000 BC in Babylon
-- it's the oldest of all holidays
-- it used to be celebrated on the first day of Spring (the first new moon)
-- January 1st holds no astronomical or agricultural clout
-- January 1st has only been celebrated as the start of the New Year for about 400 years
-- resolutions date back to the Babylonians
-- American's most popular resolution: lose weight
-- Ancient Babylonians most popular resolution: return borrowed farm equipment
-- Egyptians and Greeks are responsible for the effigy of the New Years Baby - it dates back to 600 BC
-- the Rose Bowl was introduced in 1902; it was replaced by Chariot Races in 1903
-- the Rose Bowl returned to tradition in 1916 - where it's remained
-- the Dutch believe eating doughnuts on New Years day brings luck - anything in the shape of a ring means "coming full circle"
-- American tradition presents that black eyed peas, ham, rice and cabbage are good luck foods to eat on New Years Day as they all represent prosperity (of gas maybe...)
-- the song Auld Lang Syne (which means "the good old days" or literally "old long ago") has been a staple of the English speaking New Years Eve celebrations since the 1700's
All in all - it's a strange holiday. However, I'm all about new beginnings -- Mondays, Saturdays, mornings, 1st of the months, end of years - I am constantly starting over, always looking for fresh, new, different. So, I quite like it. If nothing else, it's fun writing a new date on paperwork.
Here's to 2008 -- a "new year", a new date, an even number, a new president, the Olympics in China and just as yesterday and the day before that and three years before that - a new me...always evolving, always growing.
Now, let's go return that farm equipment!
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