Oh Mama, the monkeys never did come down the street,
I tried, but they never did come. There was nothing
in the back woods but woods.
The trees never moved an inch when we weren't looking.
All that thumping we heard must have been rabbits rabbits.
No angels in the bushes.
No Indians underfoot. Just the boys hanging from their
home-made houses, waiting for us to come close enough
to catch.
That old beech I used to curl into never did know it.
When I carved my name there, it never winced.
It would have dropped me
like an apple for somebody else to bite, if it had apples.
You were right. You can tell me all you want to now.
That white sky
is just a lot of clouds moving together fast, not
an edge of paper that somebody might fold, and if
I'm having trouble with my breathing,
it's that I'm still trying to make room for myself
in an envelope that's not even there. I never did
learn the birds' names, did I
but they weren't singing to me, and the lilac blooming
in the far corner of the back yard, never bloomed,
I know it now, for anyone.
- Marie Howe
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
This Is How You Lose Her
Okay, we didn't work, and all
memories to tell you the truth aren't good.
But sometimes there were good times.
Love was good. I loved your crooked sleep
beside me and never dreamed afraid.
There should be stars for great wars
like ours.
- Sandra Cisneros
I'm currently reading This Is How You Lose Her, a collection of short stories by Junot Diaz, which opens with the poem above. This might be the only time in my life I've been compelled to pay the full hardcover price of $26.95 for a not-long book of short stories, which are not normally my bag. But something about this book kept screaming at me when I wandered in and out of bookstores, which I do a lot. There are enough tiny, perfect, dusty bookstores throughout the hazy streets of the West Village to keep me occupied for probably another seven years of work lunch breaks before I get bored of that neighborhood.
I've only read two of the stories, and so far it's safe to say I'm both enchanted and appalled - which is absolutely correct. The stories all feature the point of view of one man, serial cheating and somewhat hapless Yunior, an immigrant who grows up in a working class Dominican neighborhood in central New Jersey. It's odd to read a book in which someone loiters around Woodbridge Mall, but hey, it's also sort of grounding.
There is a lot to learn from the sparseness of this author's style. To achieve moments of wonder, you don't need to overwrite. You can be short, abrupt. You can tell the stories of a boy, later a man, growing up in a rough neighborhood with a rough family, with the spectre of a rough future pounding down on him, and still find a way to weave in beauty and insight. Without forcing it down the reader's throat. In fact, the beauty is that much more outstanding because of the contrast between the characters, who are ugly and real and full of hard edges, and the rare, fluid moments of clarity they still find. Just like real people do.
Write a paragraph like this and I'm yours forever.
"That was the summer when everything we would become was hovering just over our heads. Girls were starting to take notice of me; I wasn't good-looking but I listened and had boxing muscles in my arms. In another universe I probably came out ok, ended up with mad novias and jobs and a sea of love in which to swim, but in this world I had a brother who was dying of cancer and a long dark patch of life like a mile of black ice waiting for me up ahead."
Also, this:
"Nilda is watching the ground as though she's afraid she might fall. My heart is beating and I think, We could do anything. We could marry. We could drive off to the West Coast. We could start over. It's all possible but neither of us speaks for a long time and the moment closes and we're back in the world we've always known.
Remember the day we met? she asks.
I nod.
You wanted to play baseball.
It was summer, I say. You were wearing a tank top.
You made me put on a shirt before you'd let me be on your team. Do you remember?
I remember, I say.
We never spoke again. A couple of years later I went away to college and I don't know where the fuck she went."
...oof. Also, yes. Absolutely, totally yes.
memories to tell you the truth aren't good.
But sometimes there were good times.
Love was good. I loved your crooked sleep
beside me and never dreamed afraid.
There should be stars for great wars
like ours.
- Sandra Cisneros
I'm currently reading This Is How You Lose Her, a collection of short stories by Junot Diaz, which opens with the poem above. This might be the only time in my life I've been compelled to pay the full hardcover price of $26.95 for a not-long book of short stories, which are not normally my bag. But something about this book kept screaming at me when I wandered in and out of bookstores, which I do a lot. There are enough tiny, perfect, dusty bookstores throughout the hazy streets of the West Village to keep me occupied for probably another seven years of work lunch breaks before I get bored of that neighborhood.
I've only read two of the stories, and so far it's safe to say I'm both enchanted and appalled - which is absolutely correct. The stories all feature the point of view of one man, serial cheating and somewhat hapless Yunior, an immigrant who grows up in a working class Dominican neighborhood in central New Jersey. It's odd to read a book in which someone loiters around Woodbridge Mall, but hey, it's also sort of grounding.
There is a lot to learn from the sparseness of this author's style. To achieve moments of wonder, you don't need to overwrite. You can be short, abrupt. You can tell the stories of a boy, later a man, growing up in a rough neighborhood with a rough family, with the spectre of a rough future pounding down on him, and still find a way to weave in beauty and insight. Without forcing it down the reader's throat. In fact, the beauty is that much more outstanding because of the contrast between the characters, who are ugly and real and full of hard edges, and the rare, fluid moments of clarity they still find. Just like real people do.
Write a paragraph like this and I'm yours forever.
"That was the summer when everything we would become was hovering just over our heads. Girls were starting to take notice of me; I wasn't good-looking but I listened and had boxing muscles in my arms. In another universe I probably came out ok, ended up with mad novias and jobs and a sea of love in which to swim, but in this world I had a brother who was dying of cancer and a long dark patch of life like a mile of black ice waiting for me up ahead."
Also, this:
"Nilda is watching the ground as though she's afraid she might fall. My heart is beating and I think, We could do anything. We could marry. We could drive off to the West Coast. We could start over. It's all possible but neither of us speaks for a long time and the moment closes and we're back in the world we've always known.
Remember the day we met? she asks.
I nod.
You wanted to play baseball.
It was summer, I say. You were wearing a tank top.
You made me put on a shirt before you'd let me be on your team. Do you remember?
I remember, I say.
We never spoke again. A couple of years later I went away to college and I don't know where the fuck she went."
...oof. Also, yes. Absolutely, totally yes.
Friday, January 11, 2013
"My own kind. I'm not sure there's a name for us. I suspect we're born this way: our hearts screwed in tight, already a little broken. We hate sentimentality and yet we're deeply sentimental. Low-grade romantics. Tough but susceptible. Afflicted by parking lots, empty courtyards, nostalgic pop music. When we cried for no reason as babies, just hauled off and wailed, our parents seemed to know, instinctively, that it wasn't diaper rash or colic. It was something deeper that they couldn't find a comfort for."
- Steve Almond
- Steve Almond
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Things, etc.
In an effort to be appreciative of the little things, which are the only things, here is a short list of happy pieces of today:
1. To the person who went to the coffee shop I frequent every morning, pen in hand, and took the jug labeled "whole milk" and changed it to "whale milk" - thank you. Thank you sincerely for the ridiculous image of a girl with pigtailed red braids, sitting on an overturned tin pail, milking a whale at the bottom of the sea.
2. To the ice cream shop at the corner of Grove and 7th in the West Village - thank you for existing. The life-sized, violently pastel unicorn painted on your glass storefront and the rainbow bubbled words BIG GAY ICE CREAM underneath made me stop and actually guffaw in the middle of the street. The taxis almost creamed me, but a happier end of life moment simply could not be a real thing. The "salty pimp" ice cream cone does, indeed, sound delicious, so I'm glad to still be alive to experience that, at least.
3. Would like to formally thank The Hummus Place, my fav lunch spot, for being so delicious. Particularly the hot sauce! I'd further like to extend my thanks to Gina Golba for being the perfect lunch partner, and always going splitsies when it comes to couscous and falafel. Hummus will never be the same without you. So don't go anywhere. This is an order. And I'm your boss.
4. My couch is awesomely soft, and my dog snores on my feet in a way that is comforting, and for this I am thankful on a regular basis. For every moment she isn't trying to attack someone, or giving me the stink eye while I waste time online, I'm thankful for her from the tip of her tail, up her wire-hair back-mohawky thing, to her strangely red-bearded chin. You're a piece of work, dog of mine. You really are. I dig it.
5. To the person setting off fireworks that sounded like gunshots at 3 a.m., compelling me to shriek "Get down!" when I was already laying flat on my back in bed - fuck you. I am not thankful for you, but I am thankful they weren't really gunshots. I'd like to wheel a canon directly under your window so you can have the pleasure of waking up thinking you're in a civil war battlefield. Let's see how you like that shit, shall we?
That's it. Goodnight, internets.
1. To the person who went to the coffee shop I frequent every morning, pen in hand, and took the jug labeled "whole milk" and changed it to "whale milk" - thank you. Thank you sincerely for the ridiculous image of a girl with pigtailed red braids, sitting on an overturned tin pail, milking a whale at the bottom of the sea.
2. To the ice cream shop at the corner of Grove and 7th in the West Village - thank you for existing. The life-sized, violently pastel unicorn painted on your glass storefront and the rainbow bubbled words BIG GAY ICE CREAM underneath made me stop and actually guffaw in the middle of the street. The taxis almost creamed me, but a happier end of life moment simply could not be a real thing. The "salty pimp" ice cream cone does, indeed, sound delicious, so I'm glad to still be alive to experience that, at least.
3. Would like to formally thank The Hummus Place, my fav lunch spot, for being so delicious. Particularly the hot sauce! I'd further like to extend my thanks to Gina Golba for being the perfect lunch partner, and always going splitsies when it comes to couscous and falafel. Hummus will never be the same without you. So don't go anywhere. This is an order. And I'm your boss.
4. My couch is awesomely soft, and my dog snores on my feet in a way that is comforting, and for this I am thankful on a regular basis. For every moment she isn't trying to attack someone, or giving me the stink eye while I waste time online, I'm thankful for her from the tip of her tail, up her wire-hair back-mohawky thing, to her strangely red-bearded chin. You're a piece of work, dog of mine. You really are. I dig it.
5. To the person setting off fireworks that sounded like gunshots at 3 a.m., compelling me to shriek "Get down!" when I was already laying flat on my back in bed - fuck you. I am not thankful for you, but I am thankful they weren't really gunshots. I'd like to wheel a canon directly under your window so you can have the pleasure of waking up thinking you're in a civil war battlefield. Let's see how you like that shit, shall we?
That's it. Goodnight, internets.
Advice to Myself
Leave the dishes. Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have it's way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic - decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink mold will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.
- Louise Erdich
If I'm reading a poem, or watching a movie or listening to a song or just taking in any sort of art, really, I like to pay particular attention to the gut check moment. The one moment, or line, or note, that reaches out through the clutter and the beauty of the rest and brands you right on the heart with its intensity.
I always note that moment for me. In this poem, it's the line: Don't answer the telephone, ever, or weep over anything at all that breaks. It might as well be written in bold, or highlighted in bright yellow, it leaps out at me with that much strength and weight. It shines. It's something to do with the rhythm of the word "ever," the sudden intensity within the whole line. The poet is remembering something particular. Something that made her want to weep, but she refused to fold into her own instincts. I makes me think of all the times I have refused myself the same moment of weakness, how many kitchens or bedrooms or backyards I might have stood in and disallowed myself to fall apart. And the ways in which that refusal to give in can mean strength, but can just as easily be a weakness. It takes strength to feel something - anything - deeply enough to cry. I don't know if I agree with this line or disagree, but either way it catches my heart, and flickers like that are always, always worth noticing.
I enjoy noting these moments to myself, and wondering about them - why that line? What is it about me that responds to that piece more than anything else? But what I really like noticing is what jumps out at other people.
Lots of people don't pay attention to the little things; they just absorb the larger whole and then move on. Neither way is right or wrong, of course. But I relate best to the type of people who chew things over, who are both attentive enough, and self-aware enough, to feel those moments, that punch in the face sensation, and to note it properly. People that wonder. People that absorb. Even if what shines for them is different than what shines for me - actually, especially then. Then I'm so fascinated by their little brains, what makes them tick and hum and spark and what doesn't, that I'm fully, fully in. I'm so in for those kind of talks.
My (current) favorite, perfect pile of strung together words on earth: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Poet Mary Oliver, who lives on Cape Cod, writes about nature with a kind of cool, nearly stiff and academic regard that slips into near-religious beauty in moments that surprise you in her work. I love her.
I'm reading a lot of writer Cheryl Strayed these days (another oh-so-passionate-and-certainly-obsessive post to come), whose memoir Wild is just an assault in heartbreak and raw beauty. She quotes poetry a lot in her book, begins chapters with lines of it that meant something to her, acknowledges regularly that she chants some lines in her head every day like a mantra. Like I do. Helplessly and without purpose or plan. She quotes that same perfect line in her book, and I felt the zing of OH MY GOD YES SHE GETS IT, WE BOTH GET IT. I am so in.
My writing instructor Kerry Cohen wrote a memoir called Loose Girls. I've known Kerry for almost a year now, and finally (ugh I hate myself) read her damn book a few weeks ago. Nearing the end, she quotes the same line. And there it was, of course. That moment. That punch.
Out of all the poets, all the novels, all of the arrangements of words in all of the world that might mean something to any human, we three picked the same line. That line is a big deal, it means something to lots of people, of course. But still, loving it makes me feel like I'm a part of a circle of beauty. It makes me believe in the connectivity of art. It makes everything shine.
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have it's way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic - decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink mold will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.
- Louise Erdich
If I'm reading a poem, or watching a movie or listening to a song or just taking in any sort of art, really, I like to pay particular attention to the gut check moment. The one moment, or line, or note, that reaches out through the clutter and the beauty of the rest and brands you right on the heart with its intensity.
I always note that moment for me. In this poem, it's the line: Don't answer the telephone, ever, or weep over anything at all that breaks. It might as well be written in bold, or highlighted in bright yellow, it leaps out at me with that much strength and weight. It shines. It's something to do with the rhythm of the word "ever," the sudden intensity within the whole line. The poet is remembering something particular. Something that made her want to weep, but she refused to fold into her own instincts. I makes me think of all the times I have refused myself the same moment of weakness, how many kitchens or bedrooms or backyards I might have stood in and disallowed myself to fall apart. And the ways in which that refusal to give in can mean strength, but can just as easily be a weakness. It takes strength to feel something - anything - deeply enough to cry. I don't know if I agree with this line or disagree, but either way it catches my heart, and flickers like that are always, always worth noticing.
I enjoy noting these moments to myself, and wondering about them - why that line? What is it about me that responds to that piece more than anything else? But what I really like noticing is what jumps out at other people.
Lots of people don't pay attention to the little things; they just absorb the larger whole and then move on. Neither way is right or wrong, of course. But I relate best to the type of people who chew things over, who are both attentive enough, and self-aware enough, to feel those moments, that punch in the face sensation, and to note it properly. People that wonder. People that absorb. Even if what shines for them is different than what shines for me - actually, especially then. Then I'm so fascinated by their little brains, what makes them tick and hum and spark and what doesn't, that I'm fully, fully in. I'm so in for those kind of talks.
My (current) favorite, perfect pile of strung together words on earth: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Poet Mary Oliver, who lives on Cape Cod, writes about nature with a kind of cool, nearly stiff and academic regard that slips into near-religious beauty in moments that surprise you in her work. I love her.
I'm reading a lot of writer Cheryl Strayed these days (another oh-so-passionate-and-certainly-obsessive post to come), whose memoir Wild is just an assault in heartbreak and raw beauty. She quotes poetry a lot in her book, begins chapters with lines of it that meant something to her, acknowledges regularly that she chants some lines in her head every day like a mantra. Like I do. Helplessly and without purpose or plan. She quotes that same perfect line in her book, and I felt the zing of OH MY GOD YES SHE GETS IT, WE BOTH GET IT. I am so in.
My writing instructor Kerry Cohen wrote a memoir called Loose Girls. I've known Kerry for almost a year now, and finally (ugh I hate myself) read her damn book a few weeks ago. Nearing the end, she quotes the same line. And there it was, of course. That moment. That punch.
Out of all the poets, all the novels, all of the arrangements of words in all of the world that might mean something to any human, we three picked the same line. That line is a big deal, it means something to lots of people, of course. But still, loving it makes me feel like I'm a part of a circle of beauty. It makes me believe in the connectivity of art. It makes everything shine.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
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