April 2005 April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the archduke's, My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. (more)
Because I do not hope to turn again April 1 2005 5:25 PM This always happens. I woke up this morning feeling less pain. I always do feel better on the day I'm going to a doctor of any kind. It wasn't like I was gonna cancel the appointment. I still had pain.
It was great to see Barbara. I feel better. But I'm sore. Which is normal. I'm going to go back and see her again Monday.
I got home and received a wonderful and very helpful gift from a friend. Which made me feel very blessed. And. A rejection for the book.
Just. I dunno. It's hard. It just is.
I didn't do a thing for Black history month. Nothing for Women's history month. But I am going to be reading poetry this month. I've been feeling the need to know more about poetry.
T.S. is probably pretty cliche as a starting poet for April. But sometimes ya just gotta go with the obvious. I'm going to try to put a new poem up every day. And I want to read poets I don't know. And support poet bloggers. The Elliot brought up a design issue. I couldn't make the type small enough to get the line breaks right in the table. They'll be all right once I move them to the page for April but ...line breaks are important to poets.
Because I haven't been able to read blogs I didn't notice that Maria had passed the book meme onto me. Done it.
It still hurts to sit in the desk chair. And I'm a bit weepy about the rejection. And (speaking of poets) Il Postino is on the tube. I'm gonna grab my ice pack (but only for twenty minutes says Barbara) and settle in. It's such a beautiful movie.
But one more thing from Fat Girl. There's a scene in which she has a friend over for dinner. They've enjoyed good food and some wine and they are talking about their love of poetry and they recite an Archibald Macleish together at the end of which she spontaneously plants a kiss on his cheek. It's a kiss of delight and the affection born in the after glow of good food and wine and the shared love of language. The guy moves away from her and she is embarrassed. I don't have the impression that she thought it was kiss to begin romance. It was spontaneous. And then she feels like she has to make it clear that she would NEVER imagine anything romantic. I don't know why I mention it. Except I'm thinking about poetry. And rejection.
And the need for healing.
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown--
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.
*
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,
Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,
Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind--
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.
*
A poem should be equal to:
Not true
For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.
For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea--
A poem should not mean
But be. (here)
*******
O my America for whom?
April 2 2005 11:46 AM Reading Fat Girl has been profoundly disturbing for me for more than one reason. I have had many of the experiences written in the book. Most fat kids have. Moore and I both met our fathers late in life and had complex relationships with our mothers and our maternal grandmothers. However, her mother and grandmother were cruel, soul killing and unable to love. I have my issues with my mom and my relationship with my grandmother was complicated. But I always knew that they loved me. I give praise and thanks for my grandmother's refusal to believe that there was anything wrong with my body.
Moore's book is about a childhood filled with abuse. Physical. Emotional. Being fat, in my view, was the least of her problems. But being fat provided the focal point for so much hatred. Hatred that came at her and from within her. If she had been thin I imagine she would still have a book to write about abuse. She was born into a family of emotional thugs. She was starved for love but she was also starved. She describes days and weeks and months of eating lettuce, dry toast and tuna. And she was a child. She writes about how she would lose to a certain point and then not lose more. It's a story I hear from so many fat people. The one time she was slender (her word and this was when she was a young adult) she was living on 900 calories a day and lots of exercise. 900 calories a day.
Despite the obvious fact that her's was simply a fat body as was her father's, Moore talks about the gorging that she did (and does) as the reason for her weight. Certainly there is a connection between what she eats and her weight but the biological choice she is given is to live on 900 calories or eat normally. In all the long descriptions of eating that she writes there is nothing that seems terrible. I read more tonnage of consumption in Wasted. Moore drinks a soda and that's the reason she's fat. She eats a candy bar. One. And that's the reason she's fat. But it's the combination of her DNA and the soda and candy that is the reason. And it should never have been made into such a big deal.
In the end of the book she writes a lovely description of her idea of having a fat man as a romantic partner. It is the most fat positive thing in the whole book. Until...she puts them both on a diet together.
Moore says she does not want anyone to feel sorry for her. See, this is the lesson that fat women learn. The thing that is wrong with you is your fault. So don't go looking for compassion. Ever.
We know that fat people are discriminated against. In what other form of discrimination is the cultural response for the person to change themselves?
What I feel for her is much bigger than pity. I feel rage. I want to find every person who ever called her fat with the intent to hurt her and destroy her sense of self and I want to annihilate them. Honestly. I feel murderous. Imagine the most wrathful dhakini and that is who I want to be.
I hope lots of people read this book. There is lots of truth in it. Truth that should rattle you. But if you are fat it may also hurt you. It hurts me. I'm glad I read it but it hurt me. My sorrow for this little girl who was so battered and the adult woman who cannot find the love for her body every person ought to have is overwhelming. She lives in Berkeley. I might be able to write to her and meet her. But I think she would find my point of view abusive. She is convinced that her appetite is the problem. She understands that it is also genetics but she believes that the onus is on her to conquer that natural expression of diversity. So she diets and diets and diets.
20/20 had a show last night about a young girl with Prader-Willi. I didn't watch because the commercials for the show suggested that the topic would be treated with the same fat fearing/hating smugness that most media uses to talk about people's lives. In the commercial you see her in a raging temper tantrum. If you saw this young girl on the street you would imagine that she is a glutton. And you would be right. Her hunger knows no bounds. It is not emotional. She is not comforting herself with food. She is not eating for pleasure. She has a syndrome that makes it impossible for her to experience satiety.
I'm glad that researchers are trying understand the syndrome because this little girl is suffering. But she becomes part of the obesity epidemic paradigm. The paradigm in which fat is a one size fits all term. Her life and the life of Judith Moore and my life and the life of other fat girls are not one size fits all.
Because of Moore I know about MacLeish. So, in honor of her wisdom and love of lanquage he is my poet of the day. There are problems with the line breaks again so best to read it here.
My back is better but still hurting. It just is what it is.
The very perfume Kienholtz must have used in his environments on the 1950's--the slow music, the polyurethane men at the bar, or servicemen in the waiting room of a house of prostitution, memorabilia about Eisenhower--all on a brown and red carpet of roses. Your mother's letters at your bedside table, unopened, overpower the wilting cherry reds. She follows you to Europe with her drawl and plaint. I practice the flute, cascading cheerful melodies with low notes on the end. The Festival, the tinsel, the flash of light in the eyes of the well known and us, driven into the event by your departure. That day we heard of the terrorism and shootings and were sorry we had believed you were going for a rest. Not that you would be involved, but that once there would find consort among those wronged. We surfaced among costumes on the promenade, the faces of the hotels marking a period of history when architecture was sculpture: colonnade and white facings below black ivory domes, crystal high in the dining rooms' omphalos. We drank Sambuca under the celebrated sky, blacker and more riddled for your absence. It was your drink, and we sipped to the hard coffee bean, split like a nipple; we were surprised--very few people had heard of it, although it is not uncommon. (more)
so that the images that led me down the spiral of forgetting self and listing like a phenomenon in the grip of its weather dazzling or threatening but free of civilization were the links whereby her terror made good its promise to annihilate my will her will I couldn’t tell the difference then as now when making love I can breathe in forever on that rise indefinite plateau whose briefness like an eye in unself-conscious and the sphere of the horizon its known line. (From Eye of Heart here)
April 3 2005 11:37 AM My poetry month project is supposed to be about me learning about poets and poetry. I have my favorites and I have some awareness of poets even when I haven't read them. So I want to use the time to read more and find more as well as honor the ones I already know and love. I just want to read poetry every day.
It was interesting to read the MacLeish but it didn't move me in a big way. And I am thinking about why. Unlike other kinds of writing I don't have a way to talk about why I do, or do not, like a given poem. It's a much more visceral response. Case in point. Cleis picked up on the project and posted some of the poetic collaboration of Olgus Broumas and Jane Miller, which did ring for me. But I can't say why I liked it any more than I can say why I didn't like the MacLeish. It really isn't as simple as like/didn't like.
The MacLeish was declarative and had a familiar form. Everything about the Black Holes Black Stockings was vivid and the form, the how they did it, was exciting. I can't say I know what it's about. But I know it feels thrilling. I wonder about the words and the meaning. I impose my own meaning. I don't have as much space to that with the MacLeish, or with the Elliot for that matter. But the Elliot is saying something that has a deep personal meaning for me in a way I feel.
I'm sort of fumbling around with this project. I'm somewhat dependant on the web for the project. I did find more Olgus Broumas and more Jane Miller.
This morning I was listening to the people holding a save the library read in at the Cesar Chaves library in Salinas. I value libraries. I have many fond memories of libraries. But I don't avail myself of them the way I might, which is mostly about being a slow reader. I thought I might see if my branch has any poetry.
My back is better but the mornings are still bad, the computer chair is still painful and I'm just glad I have another appointment. My mood is really unformed. (Like my thinking about the poems.) I think I'm fending off a crash. I watched Fierce Grace yesterday, which was another one of those perfect timing Netflix arrivals. I met Ram Das years ago and, of course, read Be Here Now. He's a sweetheart. So I'm trying to ignore my melodrama and take care of my back. I don't think I'm really being here now. I think it's more like I'm being neither here, nor there. Which, may be as good as it gets right now.
I'm tired.
stars in a blender driving down stars to a black pitch being so out of alignment, wasted hallelujahs shatter my windshield. dust tastes like eternity on my lips
all these facesI guess I should read again.
All these faces have lost the dimension to convince me of their reality;
all our plots have become entangled, though too insignificant to move much.
(If we’re lucky we might get a little soft porn in the pile up)
in the woods they’re sanding something down to essence; I hear the friction though I can’t see it.
My lover too is never near enough. She’s off playing the flute in a vacuum
for deaf mutes who try to catch her voice with tongues flapping like Venus fly traps.
at my doorstep I heard her once loud and clear
(later she taught me Braille so I could touch what wasn’t there)
it was the cry of a lone Mallard, lost from the Mallard Convention, crossing the busy street without a crosswalk.
April 4 2005 1:33 PM Oh. Well. Gee.
I do feel better. Mornings are still painful but I can move more and be up for longer and have more range of motion and I will get an adjustment later and it will be better and ...
I think I'm slap happy.
I just. I just. I'm. I dunno.
There have been ways in which I was waiting to hear about the contest. And now I have. So now I have to pull it together and do whatever it is I'm going to do next. And I can. And I will. And I still feel sore and tired.
I never feel like I understand the difference between taking care of myself and indulging my limitations, fears and confusion. It's like that know what I can change, know what I can't and know the difference thing. Sometimes it's harder than other times.
It's late enough in the day so the first dose of Advil and ice pack therapy has kicked in. There's a little time before I need to leave for my appointment. I'm trying to come up with something to do. I did the lighting candle, incense, fill water cup, put apple in place part of my ritual. I'm a little afraid to try to do yoga just now, although I was able to do a few stretches.
Slow. Slow. Slow. I'm so slow. I wasn't always slow. I was even sort a fast sometimes. I don't even want to be fast. Just not so slow.
Actually I don't really mind being slow. I guess.
Ray is my poet of the day. Just coz. I've posted Ray's stuff before. I'm crazy about him. I will admit that the line about being so out of alignment had a personal meaning for me right now. That's what we do. We grab other people's language and use it for our own purposes.
What the bad news was
became apparent too late
for us to do anything good about it.
I was offered no urgent dreaming,
didn't need a name or anything.
Everything was taken care of.
In the medium-size city of my awareness
voles are building colossi.
The blue room is over there.
He put out no feelers.
The day was all as one to him.
Some days he never leaves his room
and those are the best days,
by far.
There were morose gardens farther down the slope,
anthills that looked like they belonged there.
The sausages were undercooked,
the wine too cold, the bread molten.
Who said to bring sweaters?
The climate's not that dependable.
The Atlantic crawled slowly to the left
pinning a message on the unbound golden hair of sleeping maidens,
a ruse for next time,
where fire and water are rampant in the streets,
the gate closed—no visitors today
or any evident heartbeat.
I go rid of the book of fairy tales,
pawned my old car, bought a ticket to the funhouse,
found myself back here at six o'clock,
pondering "possible side effects."
There was no harm in loving then,
no certain good either. But love was loving servants
or bosses. No straight road issuing from it.
Leaves around the door are penciled losses.
Twenty years to fix it.
Asters bloom one way or another.
-John Ashbery
April 10 2005 4:42 PM My back got kinda worse. And I got kinda depressed. And I just haven't had it in me to write a post. I'm not sure I have it in me now. There's only so much you can say about being in pain and being in a bad mood. All the funerals and weddings and wars and rumors of wars come to me from the TV and the radio. Nothing moves me.
But my back is feeling better and I'm hoping the rest of me will follow.
One extra nice thing happened. I got to meet Barry. He's in town for a comics convention. I was worried because I wasn't able to leave the apartment but he was kind enough to come over. That pulled me outta my funk for a bit.
My poetry project has been ignored. I went looking for someone and found the Ashbery. He's someone I've heard Krisitna talk about and I liked the idea of morose gardens. Suits my mood.
I am working on my mood.
O THOU whose exit wraps in boundless woe, From every ill mortality endur'd, April 12 2005 2:59 PM It's the little things. Ya know? Like being able to get in bed and be comfortable, turn over with out crying, get out and stand up and walk. I still have some tightness. But I am just way better.
I need to do laundry. In the time it took me to sort it my back began to ache. I took some Advil and rested and ... it's OK. The laundry room is down a buncha stairs. It feels so good to move but I'm still worried about the pain. Back to the task of trying to navigate what I can do and accept what I can't do.
I haven't been swimming for a variety of reasons but there is a pool a block away from me that is supposed to reopen soon. I love swimming.
Andrea Dworkin. Well. I am sad to say that I haven't read much of her writing. I have read some but it was years ago. I am not an anti- porn feminist but I took her ideas to heart. As too often happens I will probably read more now that she has passed. I don't have a personal reaction but I do have a reaction to the idea that she isn't being treated kindly on the net because of the radical nature of her feminism. (And, I should say that I haven't read much of it. I'm still having trouble sitting at the computer.)
It makes me think of conversations I've had with my dyke friends when I have romantic feelings for a man. There is a way in which I lose myself when I feel attraction. There is a way in which I make allowances. There is a way in which I don't ask much of my male friends and romantic interests in terms of feminism.
The last time I had feelings for a man it was because of his web writing. It was the way he wrote, the music, art and books that he loved, the artistry of his page. I never knew what he looked like and I still felt attraction for him in my body. We exchanged some e-mail and things got a little confused. I'll never know exactly why things got as bad as they did. I thought we would have a friendship if nothing else. And in the last communication between us, along with the discussion of what we did and did not feel for one another and how we were dealing with all that, was an altercation about a post I made about feminism. It confused me then. It confuses me now.
These text based relationships are odd. We read each other. How well do we read? It seems so delicate and fraught. I like to think that if we just keep talking things will work out but I know that isn't always true. I know it from my on line world and my off line world. The number of possible misunderstandings is just ... phew. HUGE.. But there are things that feel absolute.
I am a feminist. I don't really get people who can't say that. I know some people don't like to be too political. I know some people like to say that the issues of feminism are really the issues of us all and therefor fall into humanism but that always feels like a side step to me. The issues of people of color fall into a broader humanist stance as well but we talk about racism. We need to talk about specifics. We need the language of the isms to unseat the assumptions of the dominant language structures. We need to have the difficult conversations. I do.
Feminism, like everything else, is not a one size fits all concept. When I say I'm not an anti porn feminist I mean that I want us to remember the body. The body with its smells and needs and inconveniences. Obviously we have a head and a heart and a spirit and we like to think we are more than our body and I suppose in some very real ways we are. But we have these bodies. We are, all of us, sometimes profane, if we pay attention. No doubt most porn would make me want to pull my eyes out of my head. No doubt most of it lacks any fundamental humanity. No doubt most of it is done for the male eye and serves the objectification of women. But, there are women in the industry who are doing their own thing.
Yesterday Deb took me to get my adjustment and then we went to get some dinner. A table of six people, three m/f couples sat next to us. They were loud but I didn't really care. I was feeling less pain and eating good food with a great friend. I wasn't going to be bothered. But they were loud. One man told story after story in which a "good looking" woman was featured. I didn't listen to it all but I kept thinking about the three women at the table. I wondered how it made them feel to hear story after story about "good looking" women. There's no way for me to know. I know how I felt listening to these bits and pieces. I felt the need to be on guard.
It's interesting that just the mention of Dworkin brings all this out of me. It comes from a scant reading of her, done years ago. I do have a deep and personal response to the ideas of feminists, feminism and what is radical. I think of myself as radical. I want to be radical. Do I think I lost the opportunity to have a romance because of that? Oh. Not really. There was more going on in all that mess. Things that I may never understand. But the part that was about feminism cut into me and left me feeling less hopeful about the world.
Because these things matter.
Barry wrote a post about fat men and their thin wives in cartoons and sitcoms. We talked a bit about it when he was here. It rivals his Absent Fatso post in terms of coolness. I don't watch a lot of those shows so I feel like I can't jump into the conversation but as I read through the comments I feel this thing that I so often feel when fat hatred is the topic. Everything seems beside the point. In some ways I feel that people just don't want to take the bias against fat people seriously.
Barry and I talked about how men can be fat because (in general cultural terms) men are allowed to have appetite. Men are allowed to have bodies.
Yesterday, at the restaurant, Deb and I had desert. As it arrived the guy with all the stories about "good looking" women turned to look and the whole table looked with him. I somehow knew they would. I had a brownie hot fudge sundae thing. As he turned I held up the first spoonful and asked if he wanted a bite.
Yes I did.
I was acting out. I was saying I wasn't ashamed to be eating. I was saying I was willing to share my pleasure. I was owning the part of me that experiences pleasure and wants to share pleasure and is able to experience and share pleasure. Quite a bit of stuff and none of it clear to him. He stammered something about them getting their own and turned back.
Funny. When Barry was here we talked about blog popularity. He said I write long paragraphs. It made me laugh. I'm still laughing. It is somewhat true that blogging is short attention span writing and sometimes I write in a long winded and all over the place manner. Today my unruly and profane body is feeling better and with that relief comes a torrent of thought. It is what it is. Want a byte?
Heh.
I'm posting some Phillis Wheatly today. Because as I was writing all this I was thinking about women and oppression and isms and poetry. I have read some her poetry and I don't really like it that much. It is too formal for me. I have read that she hid messages in her text but I haven't the wisdom to parse them. But I thought of her because she was a woman, a woman of color and a slave. Owned. It brings the same tension to my body that I felt overhearing the stories about "good looking" women. It would be nice to post her poetry because I like it and not in service to some political agenda. But. These things matter.
And. One more silly thing. If you are reading because you came her from Barry's link and you want to see a picture of my drivers, look here. I gotta go get the laundry.
To what good, in the alleys of the lilacs,
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
From Thireteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.
VIII I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.
- Wallace Stevens Loren Webster on Stevens April 13 2005 12:27 PM Four loads of laundry. An hour of folding, at the end of which there was still a pile of pants that I thought I'd do today but did just before I went to bed in some reflex need to feel complete. And no relapse of the back pain. I was a bit stiff and achy but I did the ice/heat/Advil routine. And I changed the sheets on the bed.
This morning I turned over on my stomach and stretched my legs out. It's my favorite way to sleep but even last night when I tried it my back spasmed. This morning I could do it for the first time in two weeks. I was filled with relief and gratitude.
There's still a load of laundry and the freezer needs defrosting and it would be good to vacuum. All this stuff that people do and it's no big deal but being able to do them is filling me with an almost giddy sense of joy. You know there is that saying about after enlightenment the dishes and for me, today, the dishes feel like enlightenment. I may be grouchy and discontent all too soon but not today.
I am a little grouchy about the conscription of Cookie Monster into the food fear gulag. I suppose I am over stating but I was just thinking about appetite and who is and isn't supposed to have it. There's nothing terrible about kids being encouraged to eat fruits and vegetables. I can think of a million ways to do that. But Cookie Monster is about something else. The Count counts. Oscar is a grouch. And the Cookie monster loves cookies.
When I was stuck in my chair I had cravings for things that I don't usually want. If someone would have brought me a box of Krispy Kremes I woulda eaten it in one sitting. I didn't really have an appetite and I wasn't able to cook so I wasn't eating much. But the cravings didn't feel like they were about hunger. I would have eaten them. And I probably would have gotten a stomach ache. And so?
I always feel the need to qualify when I write about things like this. I know there are fat people who eat a lot of what I would call junk. I know there are people struggling with compulsive over eating who would have found a way to get those Krispy Kremes and eaten them and more and then felt guilty. I never want to shame those people. But ya know, it's the Cookie Monster thing. Some people just love cookies. It really is OK.
Now. Let me qualify some more. If you took me to Cafe Du Monde right now I would eat some beignets. Oh yeah baby. Laissez les bon ton roulette! Gimme sumthin mister and all like dat der.
I dunno. I just think we need the moments of excess. We need the people who are excessive. Too much moderation is just too much moderation. It is as much of a trap as anything else. And all this fear of food is going to mess these kids up.
Anyway.
My whole poetry project things is suppose to be about reading more poetry by new poets and not just my old favorites. But awhile ago I jumped to this site from a link on K's blogroll. Interesting woman. Has a knitting blog. Seems to be into Amma. And she has this whole blog for Wallace. I first heard Wallace from a blues and jazz playing piano playing and singing guy who used to get ripped and recite the Emperor of Ice Cream. I had a crush on the guy despite the fact that he was kinda mean and in some ways women hating. I was young. I stopped liking him after he did all my dope and used my tooth bush. But I still smile when I read the poem.
Because She Must on the dark cold street barefeet toughened by shards of glass she will survive the invisible day
Sublime Paradox
remnants of the distant sky |
