I don't want all the things.

I don't want a diamond ring
I don't want a backyard, or a big house
I don't want a wedding with everyone we know
I don't want you to not be you

I want simple, and quiet
Something that says "for keeps"
On your knobby broken fingers
With fat Elvis in Vegas, in white

I want a porch or a stoop, a place to sit and watch
Space to lay down, take a bath, wash the dishes
I want music, and windows, and light
And you, just you, only you

Painting share :)

I love buying original art, even if it's less-than-perfect. Last week, admittedly, I did pass on a terrifically terrible Starry Night "replica" from Salvation Army. I just couldn't see myself selling it, though I did want to buy it just to smile. When I was a kid, I went to a visual and performing arts school, and in my art class, we, as a 5th grade class, recreated the famous Van Gogh piece by chopping it into parts, and then piecing it together like a puzzle. Good times.

I think if I had more space in my apartment, I'd create more. I'm no artist, but I do enjoy making things. Maybe I'd be more DIY. It's been a while since I had my sewing machine out in the open and quick to use. Maybe I'd bake more.

Honestly, I haven't written a poem in ages. I quit writing anything from my heart, from the deep. I know I'm protecting myself from being in love. I'm protecting myself from the great abyss of not being in control and everything being confusing and scary. I think it's better where I am, less interesting, but better.

Is it time for my sabbatical yet where I move to another country for six months and write in a quiet room? I sure hope so.

Be well :)

Poem of the day.

Sonnet 43

I search for your trace in the faces of others,
in this rough, winding river of women,
in their braids and barely submerged eyes,
in their soft sliding steps skating out on the foam.

Sometimes, I find I can make out your nails:
fugitive, oval, children of cherry-trees.
Sometimes it’s your hair I catch flowing by,
burning into water your portrait of fire.

I searched, but no one else had your heartbeat.
No one else had your light, or your dark forest clay.
No one else had such delicate ears.

You are whole, exact, you are one apart from many.
And so I’ll go with you, traveling and loving,
a wide Mississippi into a feminine sea.

 

Pablo Neruda (Translated by Paul Weinfield, 2013)

A beautiful thing :)

Anthropologie sweater from Field Flower

Two and a half months ago, I closed my poetry journal. It has remained on the floor beside my bed, and I have had no desire, or need, to open it, until today. I didn't want to look at all the poems I'd written for a man I no longer love. I didn't want to see the proof that I didn't know enough to say "good-bye". I didn't want to see my tears in words, all over the page, remembering how I cried through most of them, cried through nights for years, wanting the feeling inside of me to leave. But it never left.

It has now left, and I am reborn. I am solid and sure. I am open to radically new things. New has entered my life in a way I never expected, but has been an incredible gift. One day, the burden was lifted. And now there are things I do not know. There are things I have not planned. I am free in a way I've never been. It's a beautiful thing.

Joseph Brodsky.

Grow accustomed to the desert as to fate/lest you find it omnipresent much too late.

~Joseph Brodsky 

Someone sent me these poems a few years back, and the second half of the audio has two of my favorite poems by Joseph Brodsky, a Russian poet. There is something so beautiful about the idea that there are other people who exist in the world who understand the depth of being (as much as it can be understood, of course) and who are able to put pen to paper and make something of it, or maybe they create meaning with the writing itself. I dunno. Anyhow, listen if you like. The reader has a beautiful voice and cadence.

Merry New Year!

Fun vintage children's book - Circa 1967 :)

dwelling means to stay
present, grounded in the body
planted in the land
your toes becoming long and thin
longer and longer until no one
can pluck you out

you may have started as a weed
a foreign plant, unwanted and ugly
but you have made yourself at home
in this black asphalt
gray cement
and brown dirt
here you are - you are home

And I shall write.

Isn't this an amazing mug? I wish I could give it to everyone.

Esperanza means to wait -

Oh if I'd known this alternate definition,
I'd have suffered patiently,
to wait for healing, and precision

God exists within this pain -
she, triumphant in this waiting tumult,
years passing with each day

Inside my cold and wasting heart,
blossoms bud in silent reverence
for this Abba others cast away,
to ease their confusion, disbelief

I am quiet in my closet,
marking down with lines each day,
waiting for my esperanza - hoping God will find her way

I wrote this poem a few years ago, when life was bleak and I wanted something to hold on to. I was looking for God, or meaning. I was looking for a reason for pain. And I found that sometimes there are no reasons, that to truly accept the depth of evil, deep down in your soul, is suicide, and all we can do sometimes is love one another, and speak truth, and hold hands, and all that good mushy gushy hippie stuff.

Much love.

Upside down.

I got a few Vera scarves that don't quite scream "Vera!" This is one of them.

this love has made me
undone, loose from my bones
like a yogi, upside down

I've been inspired by Heidi to put some poems up on the blog. But poems are so raw, so exposed. I feel naked in all of my poems. I guess that's the point, in the end. That's why it's art. But it's difficult. I'll say that much. The funny thing is, people see me as open and honest. And I suppose I am. But there's a whole lot more to me than I put forward. That's why I can afford to be so open. What seems open to you is not full-on exposure to me. This allows me to protect myself, all of the vulnerable parts.

Anyhow, in the interest of being a writer, I think I'll try to find some poems that I feel okay about posting. Obviously it will take me a while, since it took me ages to post this one, but I strive for growth, so...peace out.

Things I'm thankful for :)

1. Dogs - especially ones who whine ecstatically when they see me
2. Men who like big words - mostly because it means they're not afraid of me
3. Doctors - especially those who trust me
4. Art - because where would we be without really great nudes?
5. Insulin - cuz it's awesome; you should try it sometime
6. My poems - especially since I don't show them to anyone anymore
7. My job - because I love it, and I'm really good at it
8. Natalie Merchant - playing in my car all month
9. Rainer Maria Rilke - who always inspires me
10. All of the wonderful, brilliant, interesting people in my life - I love you all

Rilke, as ever.

Books about the rain for an elementary school classroom :)

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of
the next moment. All the immense
images in me — the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and un-
suspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods —

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house — , and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced
upon, —
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back
my too-sudden image. Who knows? Perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening...

Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke

Edited and Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Forever with me.

Vintage Silhouette - Made in Austria

I've written a lot of poetry in my life, lots of terrible wonderful poems about love and loss and longing and anger with God. I'm sick today, and feeling lonely in my sickness, because being sick is always a lonely occupation, isn't it? And I'm trying to figure some stuff out, so I start looking through the last two years of poems to try to get some clarity on my feelings and how they've remained constant in some ways over the years, how my trajectory has, in spite of all obstacles, stayed straight and sure.

Vintage Liz Claiborne - Totally make me think of the early 1990s

I've figured out something really important. My love for other people, my deep unfailing commitment to what some would (and have) declared delusional, has carried me through my life like a bright shimmering string of hope, woven through the mess of my life, inextricably linked to who I was, who I am, and who I will become. These people did not earn that love, nor did they provide it to me. It was something inside of me that kept it going, kept that fire stoked through many stormy times.

Those people can never give me that love that I've created for myself with their names on it. They can never live up to the hype I've given them, because they're human, and I made that hope inside myself so I could keep living when I didn't want to. I deeply want to show these people what they have, with their mere existence, given to me, but it seems to be an impossible task. How do you really love another person? How do you give a person, in a few moments, a decade of hope that you have forever inside you because of them?

So I love them, not because of anything they did, but because at one time, they loved me. And it was everything to me.

Solitude.

Bjorn Wiinblad, Nymolle Denmark-"August Bye Bye"

What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours - that is what you must be able to attain. To be solitary as you were when you were a child, when the grownups walked around involved with matters that seemed large and important because they looked so busy and because you didn't understand a thing about what they were doing.

Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet - #6)

Perhaps all is not lost.

Vintage, handwoven, Scotland, mohair, hot pink!

...And one more thing: Don't think that the great love which was once granted to you, when you were a boy, has been lost; how can you know whether vast and generous wishes didn't ripen in you at that time, and purposes by which you are still living today? I believe that that love remains so strong and intense in your memory because it was your first deep aloneness and the first inner work that you did on your life...

Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet - #7)

Rilke

Frye Boots - Women's Size 11 - A rare find!

Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other.

Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

Love them anyway :)

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

 ~ Kent M. Keith 

When I was in high school, and going through a pretty difficult time in my life (parent in the hospital), my school found it prudent to send me to a sports psychologist. Whatever. That was the last thing I needed at the time. They might as well have sent me to an accountant. I was sixteen, and my life was falling apart. I did not need to talk about swimming.

But he was a wonderful man, who really wanted to help me, but who, because of his credentials, could only do so under the auspices of sports psychology. Now that I'm older, I know that he could have done it differently and still have been ethical, but I guess he did the best he could with the information he was given. I admit that I was a particularly difficult teenager, who probably said that nothing was wrong, so I really can't blame the guy for trying.

My heroes were Ralph Waldo Emerson and David Thoreau. I was a romantic, a dreamer, at my core. So when he gave me this poem, it became incredibly formational in my approach to life. The ideas spoke to me in my I-refuse-to-be-cynical view of the world. They told me that there was power in my choices. It gave me hope to think that there were other people in the world who fought as hard as I did.

That thought still gives me hope :)

"The Hunger Games"

 

In an attempt to avoid spending the evening staring at my bedroom ceiling, I went to see The Hunger Games with my friend and her eldest son.

I haven't read the books, for a couple reasons. The first time I heard about the series, and asked about the premise, I was horrified. Later, I spoke about the books with a different friend, and discovered the philosophical nature of the series. Sufficiently impressed, I decided to read the books over the summer during my decadent book-reading marathon which will commence soon after graduation (Obviously only after I've sobered up and begun sleeping in my own bed again--Ha! As if).

The movie was wonderful, and powerful, and disturbing. The crowd was awful, and horrible, and emotionally disabled. They laughed when they should have cried. I wept all the way home. I wept for our world, where violence is normal, and a brilliant concept like Hunger Games is misunderstood by the masses as some kind of thriller series.

I am saddened by the state of our world, where a film whose cinematography gave me a migraine could draw such delighted crowds, and so many mothers with children. I feel like I should take off all my clothes, cover myself in ashes, and shave my head. I feel like nothing I ever do is sufficient. There will never be enough. The beast of greed is insatiable.

Until we are called to rise...

We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies--

The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king--

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Thrift Inspiration

Bad dreams. Fleas. Paperwork. Work, work. More paperwork. School work. More bad dreams. More fleas.

But then I rescue something absolutely beautiful, and I am inspired to continue.

Also, I got a good night's sleep.

4. Pablo Neruda

I spent some time looking for poems, and almost quit, but then I found this Neruda poem, and decided to post it by itself. I tried to find a Jimenez poem or a Rilke poem that spoke to me in this moment, but I couldn't. I think that poems are like music in this way: a song can speak to you so profoundly in one moment, and be meaningless to you in another. It all depends on the state of your soul at that particular moment.

Neruda makes me wonder if an artist could be an artist without suffering. That is a very painful thought. Would I be me without my suffering? If I were always happy, would I still be me? The answer for me is yes; my happiness is not dependent upon the absence of suffering, and I am not myself if I do not recognize suffering. This may not be true for everyone. I've heard of people going on and off psychiatric medications because it makes them not themselves, but they need it to live, so they take it until they can make it, then go off of it.

Neruda spent many years in exile because of his political beliefs. It's so interesting to learn about communism in school as a kid and think, "Okay, that sounds like a good idea," but then become an adult and realize how complex the issue is. I think that most people don't even question it because it's so confusing; they just say it's wrong because that's what they've been told.

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

Tus Pies

Cunando no puedo mirar tu cara
mira tus pies.

Tus pies de hueso arqueado,
tus pequeños pies duros.

Yo sé que te sostienen,
y que tu dulce peso
sobre ellos se levanta.

Tu cintura y tus pechos,
la duplicada púrpura de tus pezones,
la caja de tus ojos que recién han volado,
tu ancha boca de fruta,
tu cabellera roja,
pequeña torre mía.

Pero no amo tus pies
sino porque anduvieron
sobre la tierra y sobre
el viento y sobre el agua,
hasta que me encontraron.


Your Feet

When I cannot look at your face
I look at your feet.

Your feet of arched bone,
Your hard little feet.

I know that they support you,
and that your sweet weight
rises upon them.

Your waist and your breasts,
the double purple
of your nipples,
the sockets of your eyes
that have just flown away,
your wide fruit mouth,
Your red tresses,
my little tower.

But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.

"...I know no other way..." *

Ten Eleven things I love:

1. Songs about Mary the mother of God

2. Rhodesian memoirs

3. Anything about the Chilean coup of 1973

4. Pablo Neruda/Juan Ramon Jimenez/Rainer Maria Rilke

5. Missionary stories and missionary kids

6. Realistic and romantic science fiction

7. The Romantic Era

8. Modern folk music

9. Pictures of beautiful tattoos

10. Chocolate soy ice cream, chopped new banana, and natural creamy peanut butter

11. Thrift blogs

Perhaps I should have a series of posts where I outline my love of these things.

*Note: The title of this post is from Neruda's 17^th Sonnet. The whole section goes like this:

Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,

te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo: 

así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

so I love you because I know no other way