January 2008 Archives

Last night Todd, Alea, and her fiance Matt and I all got stoned on kava kava tea. I have had kava before, in a gentle Yogi tea blend, and in these pills called "Happy Campers" that I took last winter to make me less sad, but this was bitter, groggy, sludgy mud gunk and was almost impossible to drink. Our tongues tingled and my eyes lost focus, and I couldn't stand up for a while. Todd and I tried to watch this animated adaptation of the Popul Vuh, but neither of us could concentrate, and words seemed to drip out of the sides of my mouth. Then eight hours of dreamless sleep, and a grog headache all day long. Was it worth it? Somehow, yes. We all drew tarot cards for each other. Alea and I both drew the Ten of Swords and decided that card was too much of a downer so we cheated and put it back, and I think I drew the Four of Pentacles next. Much better. Much wealth and happiness. Then we ate hard bits of 99% dark chocolate. It was nice having a forester, florist, and arborist crammed into my tiny "living room." Sensual naturalists are my people.

I am a blank, random slate right now. My mind is empty, a windless highway. Salt that she stored in her seas. Tonight I have a thin stack of short stories from Daniel and an early draft of Bethany's chapbook, and the papers are white and whistling snow on my quilts. I will take them to the cafe in the morning and rattle them around. I want B. to help me approach the idea of publishing more clearly. I hide my work. I hide selves. Petra's masks, chipping away. I need to send new poems to David for consideration for the Spare Room series, in the summer or fall. I'd also like to read for Tangent. For my next readings, each person in the audience will receive a poem, curled up in something. Perishable withinness.

In other news, my pitch to the Bear Deluxe was accepted, and I will be writing a feature on one of my favorite photographers, Corey Arnold, for either their summer issue or their fall art issue, which will be accompanied by an exhibition at Lewis and Clark. We have an interview date after Valentine's Day. The Ecclesia is cruising. We have Joshua Marie Wilkinson and Noah Eli Gordon scheduled for the first reading on March 6, and I'm fairly certain we will be having the events at my old house, The Church. I think I even negotiated a year's worth of wine donations as of this afternoon, but...that is pending. Now we have to finish our manifesto, write a press release, get something on the the website, say a prayer to the gods of gnosis, and flay ourselves on stage.

I just did a weird photo shoot for Abercrombie & Fitch. I'm totally selling out.

I'm actually considering going to this on Saturday.

The golden morning breaks.

It is 4:20, and I am on a train traveling north, to Seattle, but I am facing south. The movement is like a backwards wobble. I like to organize things on trains, like disparate lists, bills I've never opened, e-mail. Steering small writings into their appropriate drawers.

The contents of my bag, which almost qualifies as a more stylish duffle, includes several notebooks: one for grocery lists and "administrative" lists, one for UDLE meeting notes, and one for everything else, a rogue, capless tube of lipstick, three NetFlix movies (a documentary on Andy Warhol, Tarkovski's The Mirror, and William Graves' Symbiopsychotaxiplasm), scarves, mittens, headphones, iPod ear buds, 4GB of John Lennon bootlegs, unfinished client project work that I filed away under the assumption that I'd get to it this weekend, miniature mock-ups of comic books that I swiped from work, scissors, a Youth bus pass (Safeway believes me when I give them the puppy dog eyes and tell them I'm 17 or under, saving me $50 in transportation expenses EVERY month - I've done this for almost two years now), Klonopin, extremely powerful B vitamins that turn your pee Mountain Dew sallow, pens of all thicknesses, paper samples, business cards, more bills that I've managed to open but never actually look at (mostly medical), The Secret Life of Plants, the 2006 edition of No: journal of the arts, and a handful of kumquats. And some nuts. Oh, and a bag of dry black eyed peas (?).

Travel makes me want Diet Coke. Everyone on this train is drinking it. We were talking about Diet Coke the other night, over the Spinach Madeleine mac 'n cheese that I made for Matt and Bethany, before watching the Tammy Faye Baker documentary. We're starting a casserole and movie night. [Non-sequitur: Is Minnesota the only state that calls casserole "hot dish"?] Apparently, Diet Coke contains the same additive that is found in the anti-depressant Wellbutrin (the one that almost gave me a heart attack at work two years ago), thus explaining that special quiver you feel pumping its way through your nervous system, hands and feet, tenderloin. Tammy Faye Baker never went anywhere without one.

The train is stricken in golden. I have been thinking about playing music again. One of my unintentionally well-kept secrets is that I was a classically trained pianist for 14 years, from the age of 4 - 18, until I decided against attending conservatory and opting for an English degree instead. Thinking about pianos often gives me a sensation similar to that which some childless women have when they are around newborns. I well up. My fingers are tendrils reaching for the nearest light. The fatness of keys, the rigidity and softness of sharps and flats. Sheet music always held a synesthesia. The cream of white keys. A very nice friend has offered to possibly pay for the cost of shipping my spinet from Mississippi to Portland, which costs roughly ~$700.

I always want to ask my musician friends what is most likely the most unanswerable question. How to perceive arrangement? How to make the violin here sound good next to the guitar there, how to conjure layers, sing harmony, and so on. Many of these things are not "how" situations. I can still play some Chopin etudes and Rachmaninoff concertos, even the most nuanced of Debussy preludes, in their entirety, with a little practice, but the closest I have come to composition is writing simple Farfisa organ accompaniment to some of Derrick's old songs and banging a tambourine against my hip. Derrick taught me how to sing harmony, kind of, but singing is an eclipse to me, and I am a shy moon. I can't really belch it out like some people can, so I usually hum along, or drink enough to convince myself that I CAN sing that Stevie Nicks song until my throat bleeds. I did get pretty good at singing along to some Yo La Tengo songs, because that chick and I operate in the same register. Secret admirer of the Bone Thugs. Bonesetter.

We sleep in rooms that people leave.

A nice poem from that No anthology:

I resume my day of a rabbit,
my night of an elephant at rest.

Meanwhile, convulsively, harshly
my restraint convalesces,
suffering like I suffer the direct language of the lion;
and, because I have existed between two brick powers,
I myself convalesce, smiling at my lips.

It is helpful to read a day backwards.

It's the speed of what's to come.

I took the day off on MLK Day because my stomach was in twisty knots, my ovaries unusually palpable, and it was a holiday (weak honkie excuse, I know). My boss had a 24-hour stomach flu over the weekend, so I thought I might be experiencing a milder strain of it, but in my pelvis, perhaps (?). The goal was to get a walk-in appointment at PP so as to rule out the ol' ovarian cysts, but ALL of their offices (almost typed orifices) were closed on MLK Day. My mother and grandmother were plagued with them around my age, so maybe it's just my turn at the wheel of gynecological fortune. Ovarian cysts look a little like kombucha cultures, upon closer inspection. I should have results tomorrow. And a fresh batch of kombucha in 9 days. By the way, I'm a HUGE hypochondriac.

The body is a forest.

I'm weary from Malbec, margaritas, and an hour's worth of Martin Luther King's lullabies at Matt's place. Here is the weekend in rapid review:

FRIDAY

Our third UDLE (Unwin-Dunraven Literary Collective) meeting at the Roadside Attraction. Our proposal was accepted into the next Pecha Kucha lecture series, so come hear us give you a talking-to (Feb. 11 @ the Imago - I will post more details as they froth forth)!! Also, a good harbinger has flown in, and it looks like the church (www.funkychurch.com) might be our regular venue, but I'm waiting to hear back from the tenants, so more thumb-sitting until then. Also, it's looking like we might have Joshua Marie Wilkinson and Noah Eli Gordon on the roster for the first reading! We win.

The other two UDLE members convinced me to go out dancing to DJ Beyonda at Rotture. An unbeatable blend of Memphis krunk and neu Italo Disco. A prize combination, in my opinion, but I am very white. DJ Beyonda is from Memphis, my home nest. Stayed out till 3AM, managed to suck down three, count 'em, THREE double whiskey & cokes without waking up to an incorrigible hangover. You go girl. The key to successful drinking: don't stray far from the pack.

SATURDAY

Walked to Blue Gardenia for jalapeno cheesy biscuits and thick black coffee. Met Becky for more coffee at the Fresh Pot. The bulk of my time hanging out with Becky is me prodding her for more crazy stories about her crazy life, and watching her gaze wander along the walls. Neither of us are eye contact people.

Then I convinced myself to stop being such a wimp. I dressed up like a farmers market/produce lady and went to the Loch Lomond show at the Doug Fir and ogled and was bashful, but managed to stay out until 3AM again, whereupon I ended up watching fucked up Ray Charles and Joe Namath videos on YouTube with Nick, until we both passed out into platonic slumber.

SUNDAY

I'm confused. Sunday was the morning I ate cheesy biscuits. What happened on Sunday?

Oh well, ok. Monday was MLK Day, and we listened to MLK's speeches and ate fried okra and black eyed peas and twizzlers at Matt's house, and since then it has been no rest for the weary. So now is the time.

Until next time,
*

Re-reading one of my favorite books by artificial candlelight and gamelan, I've lost track of the age of time. This copy has sputtered in the sun so long, the pages are framed in yellow, and the cover is peeling. I picked up a copy for Dan-in-L.A. at Powell's on Sunday and will be mailing him a little parcel this week. His copy looks (appropriately) virginal compared to mine, but I couldn't deprive myself of the marginalia and the perfectly ruled underlining I thought made a difference in college.

Mohawk prefers candles and is covering his eyes with his paw. Walter generally swims in darkness, between knees, away.

This morning arrived with bleak hedge-frost, the sun a brittle scalpel. I click into place. I'd rather be in the Outer, rather than "in transit." #4 bus, my blood-stream to work and back when it isn't fair-weather. I listen to one album, obsessively, for about a week. "Remain in Light" hasn't grown old yet.

Cold weather fills me with moss, I don't know the difference between myself and water.

We never made it to the Eastern Oregon canyons, with another other perhaps. An invisible blot on a map that has chosen to furl inward again, six months to the day. A sleeping scroll.

Camping is an immense life-form in which many small consciousnesses are working away like roots. Captive themselves. Taking on its color.

I want to bleach myself in it. A stepping on, around, upon many tendrils.

I didn't seem to remember our half-asleep conversations. Handbells. Change-ringing. Once Matt said he felt like a cone, triangulated. A tip for a brain, his legs expanse slants. Or perhaps it was the other way around, inverted, more like a horn?

He once said, I would be honored to be your, if but fleeting, canvas. I wanted to use his back as a pillow book.

I, however, usually feel like a bell, paunched shoulders, lower heat. A swirling clip circumnavigating the center, my imprint leaving nothing behind but a scattered vapor.

Just hung the dying eucalyptus that was left alive on my porch "stoop" a week ago. There were all these things I wanted to say tonight, about oracles and deserts, the feeling of walking sideways, the etch of sacrifice. Life has been at a slant this past week, but frankly, I am more in favor of welcoming tiredness right now, so I will have to save these passages for tomorrow.

Good night.

~A.

A few rumbles of thunder. It's possible!

The subject line is from Plainwater, the Anne Carson book that I force onto everyone, and no one ends up reading. My favorite book of illumination. I've been re-reading the bits about the pilgrimage to Compostela:

How can you see your life unless you leave it?

...

Animals ride on top of one another. Animals ensnare themselves in plants and tendrils. These are two motifs that may be seen repeatedly in reliefs and other works of art along the pilgrims' route. Signs are given to us like a voice within flesh, that is my question. Signs point to our virtue. I want to ask how is it this man and I are riding on top of one another, and how ensnared, for it is not the customary ways. We take separate rooms in hotels. Carnal interest is absent. Yet tendrils are not. A pilgrim is a person who is up to something. What is it? A pilgrim is a person who works out an attitude to tendrils and other things that trammel the feet, what should that be? Chop them as fast as they grow with my sharp pilgrim's knife? Or cherish them, hoarding drops of water of every kind to aid their struggle? Love is the mystery inside this walking. It runs ahead of us on the road like a dog, out of the photograph.

I want to buy a copy of this book for everyone I know, but no one would read it.

So far, I have 25 Theses & Imperatives for the New Year, nailed to my own door:

1. Go to Spain. And maybe the French Provence.
2. Hire a personal assistant so I can travel and suffer minimal work-related guilt.
3. Take more walks.
4. Cook something provocative once a week.
5. Finally get around to watching every single episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm."
6. Publish my first self-published poetry chapbook by summertime.
7. The super top-secret, covert, extremely undercover Unwin-Dunraven Literary Ecclesia goes public.
8. Cook more Asian food (particularly Schezuan).
9. Exer-what?
10. Less coffee, more tea.
11. Play my guitar more often, and with more calloused fingers.
12. Find a way to ship my piano from Mississippi to Portland.
13. Put the piano in a room.
13a. Play the piano.
14. No more cats.
15. Eat more often.
16. Drink more water, even if it's flavored.
17. Write more paper letters.
18. Deep breaths.
19. Go backpacking again, for a longer stretch.
20. Swell in solitude.
21. Appreciate languor.
22. Climb Mt. Hood.
23. Life as archaeology.
24. Life as architecture.
25. A tired parable, I'm sure, but love people for who they are, not for who you want them to be.
26. Apply to medical school, maybe? Eek!