apparently we ladies should blame the egyptians for the shaving tradition. i was looking for someone to blame.
perusing weblogs this morning i have come to the conclusion that the younger generation speaks another language. since i plan on living forever i fear their may come a time when i don't understand any of the people around me....could someone point me to a good teen-ager dictionary? gracias.
never do a search for bible truth....you won't find what you're looking for. well, i guess maybe you will, it depends on you. me, i'm out of luck.
oh my gosh. followed gigglesnort hotel, and of course i watched romper room...now can someone please tell me the name of the cartood that had a speed buggy named speedy who had eyes for headlights? that one has haunted me for years!
the snow has pushed it's way over the foothills and started to fall, but only lightly. i've been sitting at this keyboard since i got out of bed....searching forsomething. perhaps it's inspiration, but perhaps it's escape. i've surfed the survivor 2 website, and racked my brain for songs to download. fact be told i'm depleted. i can't seem to think. i blame it on the long island ice tea i started the evening with last night. something about hard liquor liquifies my brain. showtime is approaching slowly and i keep thinking i should lay down and take a nap. sleep would be comforting now. brad's watching educational television...he's so good, and the houseguest is asleep. i guess he didn't work today. i've gotten a few e-mails that i need to answer, but i have little to say. i think i may call my great-great aunt in florida to find some info on my ancestors. i onder why it is that i can't surf the web like so many. i have to have something to look for or i feel like i'm wasting my time. please send suggestions of what to do on the web. i seem to be running out of ideas, what do you do when on-ine?
it's wonderful to see patti discovering dylan thomas. she makes some wonderful points about the benefit of finishing high school...you usually can count on a high school graduate to have read many works, but there's a another way to look at it. patti (if you're reading this), you have an opportunity to truly appreciate the works of many great artists. in high school it was jammed down our throats, we were often asked what we thought a poet was saying only to have a teacher tell us we were wrong. we had to learn many things over short periods and exploration was nearly imposible unless done on your own. we grew to resent the greats....we aborted them early and many of us never returned.
it's the terrible "head against the wall...avoid the wall" syndrome. many didn't get it then...so they never venture to get it now. dicovering dylan thomas later in life may be a blessing in disguise. read it, re-read it, make notes in the margins. learn about thomas....what happened during his life? what inferences can you make from his writing and the times that he lived in. allow stories and mysteries to brew in your mind. find personal signifigance and re-live it day after day. let other things remind you of it, pull things full circle. find the one poem and tape it to the wall. pause to reflect on it sometimes. pick a book with an incredible passage and when a friend enters into an experience that seems relevant highlight that portion and ask them to read the book. hope that they get some joy from it, but don't worry if they don't. they may still be jaded.
i am a literary savage. i have not read all the greats. and i know only what i've been taught and what i've picked up. i live for certain poets and authors. i find religion in their words...and i find power. in my college poetry class my life was changed. i was the only one who enjoyed whitman and eliot. i fell in love with someone once who said e.e. cummings reminded him of me. and i had yet another guy point me to e.e. later with a different poem in mind. i feel cosmically drawn to his words. i am a literary geek. i make notes in my margins. so in honor of patti's discovery i offer forth some of my favorite words. "believe it if you need it or leave it if you dare. just a box of rain or some ribbons for your hair, such a long long time to be gone and a short time to be there."
from Song of Myself, Walt Whitman 1 I celebrate myself, and sing myself And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy.
6 A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is anymore than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly I will use you curling grass, It may be you transpire from the breats of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps, And here you are the mothers' laps.
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, Darker than the colorless beards of old men, Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues, and I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appeared.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier
**what i learned about granddaddy walt in college: whitman believed in the oversoul....a place where truth was held. he believed his mission in life as a poet was to ferry truth to the rest of the world from the oversoul. he didn't believe his position was better than any other even if many think his poetry strikes on egotistical. he felt each person had their reason regardless of position. his was simply to convey the vision. he loved that the u.s. was called the union because it personified his belief system. during the civil war whitman volunteered as a nurse. the war broke his heart. it was the devastation of what he loved. he was disappointed when america became the untied states because recognizing the states as their own entity was too different from a union. whitman was gay. he often writes from a women's perspective to conceal his lust and love. his poem crossing brooklyn ferry symbolizes his voyage into the oversoul and returning with the truth. another poet, hart crane had whitman's vision and wrote The Bridge, which symbolizes his taking the place of whitman as the brooklyn bridge took the place of the ferry. crane committed suicide by jumping ship into shark infested waters. whitman is the granddaddy of transcendentalism. he was beautiful.
My daughter plays on the floor with plastic letters, red, blue & hard yellow, learning how to spell, spelling, how to make spells
and I wonder how many women denied themselves daughters, closed themselves in rooms, drew the curtains so they could mainline words
A child is not a poem, a poem is not a child. There is no either/or. However.
I return to the story of the women caught in the war & in labor, her thighs tied together by the enemy so she could not give birth. Ancestress: the burning witch, her mouth covered by leather to strangle words.
A word after a word after a word is power
At the point where language falls away from the hot bones, at the point where the rock breaks open and darkness flows out of it like blood, at the melting point of granite when the bones know they are hollow & the word splits & doubles & speaks the truth & the body itself becomes a mouth.
This is a metaphor.
How do you learn to spell? Blood, sky & the sun, your own name first, your first naming, your first name, your first word.
**no real comments on this one. i like how it lends to the power of words almost like a spell....and how it speaks for the women who were persecuted for speaking up from behind the men...who were denied life, and to those who denied themselves life. the power of the poet becomes witchcraft.
from Twenty-One Love Poems by Adrienne Rich I Wherever in this city, screens flicker with pornography, with science-fiction vampires, victimized hirelings bending to the lash, we also have to walk...if simply as we walk through the rainsoaked garbage, the tabloid cruelties of our own neighborhoods. We need to grasp our lives inseparable from those rancid dreams, that blurt of metal, those disgraces, and the red begonia perilously flashing from a tenement sill six stories high, or the long-legged yound girls playing ball in the junior highschool playgound. No one has imagined us. we want to live like trees, sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air, dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding, our animal passion rooted in the city.
**this poem is dated 1975. it chronicles the rise and fall of a lesbian relationship. any time i hear of hate crimes i always flash to this poem in my mind and grieve for those who cannot live like sycamores, but who must conceal their realness and their passions. it sickens me to think of how far we still have to go in becoming a compassionate, caring society.
anyone lived in a pretty how town, e.e. cummings
anyone lived in a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down) spring summer autumn winter he sang his didn't he danced his did.
Women and men (both little and small) cared for anyone not at all they sowed their isn't they reaped their same sun moon stars rain
children guessed(but only a few and down they forgot as up they grew autumn winter spring summer) that noone loved him more by more
when by now and tree by leaf she laughed his joy she cried his grief bird by snow and stir by still anyone's any was all to her
someones married their everyones laughed their cryings and did their dance (sleep wake hope and then)they said their nevers they slept their dream
stars rain sun moon (and only the snow can begin to explain how children are apt to forget to remember with up so floating many bells down)
one day anyone died i guess (and noone stooped to kiss his face) busy folks buried them side by side little by little and was by was
all by all and deep by deep and more by more they dream their sleep noone and anyone earth by april wish by spirit and if by yes
Women and men(both dong and ding) summer autumn winter spring reaped their sowing and went their came sun moon stars rain
well, it's a saturday morning and i had a glorious night last night with leftover salmon. i wasn't sure what to expect with the 3 new guys and this was the first time i had heard them with an organ. all i can say is that i was happy...and amazed and quite satisfied. i could watch drew emmitt sing and play forever. he has a charisma about him, and man, he can wail on the madolin. my biggest love of the band comes from his voice. it weaves through my insides in a way i can't desribe, and i feeel the words. i can't wait until tonight's show. hopefully the crowd will be a bit thinner and i can swing my butt a little wider. thanks for humoring the long post. and thanks to john and rick for welcoming my new blog.
i really need to proofread before hitting post. i was sure that i had lost my previous post and never even checked it. luckily a good friend clued me in before it got too late in the day, and i am glad i didn't lose the post.
today is a glorious day in colorado. i wore a heavy ski sweater to work and spent my break sitting outside. days like today remind me of how lucky i am to live in this beautiful state. over 300 days of sunshine, baby!
i've started printing my tax forms off the net. hopefully i'll be getting a nice fat check in the mail soon, but with my luck good old uncle sam will sock it to me. anyone else want to lobby for itemized statements? personally i'd like to see where my tax dollars go.
sometimes it's good to be blunt. it may not make everyone comfortable, but it usually clears the air.
tonight begins a two night stretch of leftover salmon shows at the aggie. i have tickets to both and i can't wait to shake my groove thing. something about the crowd at a leftover salmon concert personifies youth and vigor and smiles. i've needed this.
music is starting to pick up here. on feb. 10 the radiators are playing the starlight, and rumor has it that the wailers will be making their way to the aggie at the end of februaury or early march. i may be putting on my dancing shoes for both....confirmation to follow.
it's friday, and i don't think i've needed a friday so bad in quite some time. this is only my third day of work this week...why am i so exhausted? happy friday, everyone!
so you think you've chipped away the blemished exterior now you're feeling all mighty and a trifle superior do you really think you know what's going on in here?
please forgive the crassness, but this is my silent response to the poetry on my desk from the houseguest. the poetry that flagrantly points at me with a mocking finger for living by consequences. i have to wonder why some people don't realize that we all live by consequence. if they aren't our own consequences they become someone else's.
the creation of this site began long ago when i created alter::ego. i had a vision upon moving to minnesota that i could become whoever i wanted. it was a time of contemplation...a chance to grow in a new direction. to pass myself off as something i had always wanted to be. after some time i realized that i liked who i was and the things i had and the fact that i didn't have many of the things i didn't have. and even that i thought the way i thought and enjoyed what i enjoyed. so the idea flitted away as so many do. at the time however i was a stranger in a strange land. the anonymity released me to a degree and allowed me the time needed to write. the instinct to have friendly communications on a regular basis brought me to the dead newsgroup and blogger. combining the motifs i ended up meeting some pretty interesting folks with websites and read their daily jots with vigor. in exchange i'd post some of my experiences and feelings for anyone who cared to stop by. it was free and flowing and rather nice. it literally has been years since i've written so many words, and i even began experimenting with things that were more adult. after all i don't live with my parents so they aren't going to find it under my mattress. i am human and not all things in my life have been snowy white. being able to use the dirt along with the good is what has pulled my stories together in the end.
writing has been an integral part of my life for years. i use it as a tool to voice my frustrations without bringing others down. i unload grief and remember happy times. it's a way to renew the shining moments and extinguish the bad. it helps me maintain balance, and when someone says "hey, i know how you feel" i feel validated.
of course with a move to a new exciting place comes an increased interest in what you're doing. and when you put your name on your site you're target for anyone you've ever known. and even though i really don't feel that i have anything to hide i prefer some anonymity. after all my aunts and uncles know me as a sweet young lady, and i would prefer that any dwelling i might do over a minute instance in my life not mar their image. and old high schoolmates may be long forgotten and gotten over, but i have some work i want to do at the 10 year reunion, so i prefer to remain mysterious in my own little way......for all the people who never took me seriously.........i prefer they not use some of my wacky thoughts to hurt those i love. and for my mom who doesn't invade my privacy to read my journals, i want to keep it under key to a degree so she doesn't feel hurt when my aunt tells her she went to my site and i'm kind of "weird." so, to protect the innocent i created this space. a site unrestrained from searching eyes. if you find something you like here, please come again. write me. become a friend, but remember that i'm only human and that a microscopic view of a section of life will show you all the blemishes.
