Two ways of telling it

 

1. 

The proliferation of reality TV is a consequence of wealth inequality. For the slight chance of winning the money they need to secure a home or take their beloved wife on the honeymoon for which she's waited nine years or pay off the small loan they took out in order to open the business of their dreams, non-wealthy people must perform for the wealthy. In some cases, they will be asked to perform degrading tasks or risk physical harm for the entertainment of millionaires who sit before them, judging, as well as people who are secure enough in their wealth and comforts to sit on their couches and watch the beleaguered poor people don a chicken suit or slip down an inflatable slide into a pool of foam or smash headfirst into a spinning hotdog spit the length of several humans before falling into the water and spending the next two hours in wet clothes and underwear, their carefully combed over bald spot uncovered or the mascara they'd applied to feel more comfortable on TV streaked across their cheeks.

2. 

How wonderful that the aspiring women's right activist and the recovered heroin addict with tattoos on his neck can enjoy this chance to demonstrate their prowess in the kitchen for a panel of accomplished judges on national TV. They must be so proud of themselves. This must feel like a very big moment in their lives.

From "December" by Matthew Zapruder

 ...

 

everyone understands

in a different

contradictory way

the so far purely 

abstract

catastrophe

so many millions

of choices

    brought us,

...

 

Notes to self

 

Hold your frame. 

 

It's hard not to be a little wistful sometimes. 

How can women write their anger? 

Not sure if I'm still settling.

Write about the oppressive banality of spending every day hungry.

 

He still lapses into selfishness. Can I live with that?  

 

"You are allowed to stay in difficult relationships." - Myriam 

 

Get your ego in check. 

 

 

You can integrate guppie Laura and this one. 

You met on the mountain.

 

The last four years have been the gift of remembering why nature is worth fighting for.  

 

I've spent so much time feeling like everyone else knows more than/is cooler than me and I need to constantly apologize/make up for my inadequacy.

 

Why bother fighting?  

 

You've gotta open your kindness up again. 

 

I have a tendency of giving up. 

Would he be able to forgive me as intensely as I've needed to forgive him? 

The question probably means I haven't. 

 

Get Rich, Lucky Bitch 

 

Maybe you're already doing enough. 

 

When I say that I have flashbacks I mean it. 

From "Reunion" by Charles Wright

 

 

 I write poems to untie myself, to do penance and disappear

Through the upper right-hand corner of things, to say grace.

 

 

 

 

Family chat is getting weird

Gertrude Stein was a fascist asshole.

Yes, but I give her more leeway. Men have had so many chances.



What does a snake smell like? The skin of its underbelly?

Yesterday we saw a baby snake navigating its way from trail to grass. Were we its first humans?



The country keeps getting smaller and I am opening up.

I'm braver than I've recognized.



Try the Pomodoro Technique for writers.

Try this burger with caramelized onions tucked into it.

Try to stay present.

Try not to think about how much you miss your parents' house.

Try to write something different.

You won't know if you love translating poems unless you try.

"Elegy" by Aracelis Girmay

What to do with this knowledge that our living is not guaranteed?

Perhaps one day you touch the young branch

of something beautiful. & it grows & grows

despite your birthdays & the death certificate,

& it one day shades the heads of something beautiful

or makes itself useful to the nest. Walk out

of your house, then, believing in this.

Nothing else matters.

All above us is the touching

of strangers & parrots,

some of them human,

some of them not human.

Listen to me. I am telling you

a true thing. This is the only kingdom.

The kingdom of touching;

the touches of the disappearing, things.

From "Visitor" by Brenda Shaughnessy

I was

hoping to sit with you in a tree house in a

nightgown in a real way.

"Believe, Believe" by Bob Kaufman

Believe in this. Young apple seeds,

In blue skies, radiating young breast,

Not in blue-suited insects,

Infesting society’s garments.

 

Believe in the swinging sounds of jazz,

Tearing the night into intricate shreds,

Putting it back together again,

In cool logical patterns,

Not in the sick controllers,

Who created only the Bomb.

 

Let the voices of dead poets

Ring louder in your ears

Than the screechings mouthed

In mildewed editorials.

Listen to the music of centuries,

Rising above the mushroom time.

From "At Last the New Arriving" by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

What a prize

you are. What a lucky sack of stars.

How long should a poem be

There will be cobbler.


I was so vulnerable. I was a sitting duck.


And so it is finally revealed on the global stage: so much of what we chalk up to just the way things are is deliberately and maliciously manufactured



On the garage door, above a large white heart: The only way out is through 



Does not doing make you buzz with electricity, or does it feel tinged with avoidance or depression? Pay attention.



He washed the purple bowl for me.



Take note of the tug inside--that's part of who you really are.



Food for thought. Check plus.

It's fiddle time

Who's the sugar nerd now



I have been missing Y terribly of late, the onset sudden and breathtaking. He touches me and I imagine his hands


Where once I would have relished the enthusiasm of the boy with the dog who wanted to play with my dog, today I tripped over myself trying to keep space between us. It was no use--my dog stole his dog's ball, and before I could kick it back he'd run to my feet, hand outstretched. This is the time I find myself in, when I am afraid of a child playing in an open field by the river because I have asthma and an autoimmune disorder and I do not know what, if anything, he's carrying. Nor do I know what, if anything, I am carrying; nor do I know, anymore--I who have made it my mission to make sure every child I encounter is safe in my presence, as I was not safe in the presence of so many adults before me--if it is safe for children to be around me



Maybe I'm not missing Y. Maybe I'm nostalgic, instead, for innocence, for the uncertainty of taking off my clothes or nodding my head to classic rock or drawing on a diner's placemat or seizing a truck's stick shift and not knowing what would happen next. Maybe I'm nostalgic for falling in love, which is so much easier than loving someone.




I have always been annoyed by writing that uses letters in place of a person's name.

I kept trying to get to the part where men explain Fiona Apple to her



Last night I saw my girlfriends' faces for the first time in oh-so-long, smiling and blowing kisses through a phone screen. It was more heartening than I'd expected. Tonight we will FaceTime with an old friend while watching Raiders of the Lost Ark. We will munch on big glass bowls of popcorn, us high up in the Rocky Mountains and him in the middle of Austin, hands reaching back into the bowl simultaneously, but never touching. It is both a heartbreaking and heartwarming state of affairs



I keep a list of the items we would like to purchase the next time he ventures to a grocery store, as many weeks as possible after the last visit. He goes each time--stepping into the shower the moment he returns--because I have asthma and an autoimmune disorder. I don't know if it's right. I am grateful. I do not know how long I can accept it. It's humbling and uncomfortable. It begins with vinegar

From "Of History and Hope" by Miller Williams

But where are we going to be, and why, and who?

"Goodbye to Tolerance" by Denise Levertov

Genial poets, pink-faced   

earnest wits—

you have given the world   

some choice morsels,

gobbets of language presented

as one presents T-bone steak

and Cherries Jubilee.   

Goodbye, goodbye,

                            I don’t care

if I never taste your fine food again,   

neutral fellows, seers of every side.   

Tolerance, what crimes

are committed in your name.

And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread,   

blood donors. Your crumbs

choke me, I would not want

a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped   

by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never   

falter: irresponsive

to nightmare reality.

It is my brothers, my sisters,

whose blood spurts out and stops

forever

because you choose to believe it is not your business.

Goodbye, goodbye,

your poems

shut their little mouths,   

your loaves grow moldy,   

a gulf has split

                     the ground between us,

and you won’t wave, you’re looking

another way.

We shan’t meet again—

unless you leap it, leaving   

behind you the cherished   

worms of your dispassion,   

your pallid ironies,

your jovial, murderous,   

wry-humored balanced judgment,

leap over, un-

balanced? ... then

how our fanatic tears

would flow and mingle   

for joy ...

the again-and-again of it*

When I move the book onto the table and it makes a noise that startles her, Hanna knows what medicine she needs. More belly rubs


When the worry escalates I stand up, move around, say, let's remember to focus on what we can control. Then I read a story about a man who pretended not to know what potatoes are and laugh until I cry


When I read Leslie Jamison's essays I realize what I want to do with my life. She is masterful. This is the closest I've come to idolization since I first discovered Lydia Davis. I have five years for refinement



I'm staying inside a lot these days, aren't we all, when I venture out it's to take Hanna walking up the ridge, far above the houses, or down alongside the river flowing faster and brown with snowmelt. When I go outside I feel my feet on the earth, I see the trees are still standing, two red-tailed hawks screech overhead.

Mary Oliver: Meanwhile, the world goes on.


I am endeavoring to shine whatever light I can. Let's keep writing, let's keep creating, because the human spirit is nourished by art and our spirits are in need of nourishing



I have been working, I have been trying to do, too much. It has been apparent to everyone around me and though I said I knew it, I have only just come to know. It has been A LOT. For nearly a decade my workload has been inhuman. I am tired. I am ready to come back to life, and grateful for it.


The First Healing took place in a cement-block room in a violent city in Guatemala, me alone with no windows or screens or sunlight writing to save my life. This time is different; it is slower, more circuitous, it is less clear, at all times, whether or not I am climbing up. Still, there are clues even here in the dark: I am crying more, because I am feeling more, I am doing less, I am writing again, I am on a path again, I am, in so many more ways, taking care of myself. I am focusing on the gains as I fill in the gaps.




I say: I worry that I've wasted my life. 

He says: Alton Brown also puts nutritional yeast on his popcorn.


So you see. The stars are just like us.







*thanks to Leslie Jamison, Make It Scream, Make It Burn

"Try to Praise the Mutilated World" by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh

Try to praise the mutilated world.

Remember June's long days,

and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.

The nettles that methodically overgrow

the abandoned homesteads of exiles.

You must praise the mutilated world.

You watched the stylish yachts and ships;

one of them had a long trip ahead of it,

while salty oblivion awaited others.

You've seen the refugees going nowhere,

you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.

You should praise the mutilated world.

Remember the moments when we were together

in a white room and the curtain fluttered.

Return in thought to the concert where music flared.

You gathered acorns in the park in autumn

and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.

Praise the mutilated world

and the gray feather a thrush lost,

and the gentle light that strays and vanishes

and returns.

From "At Least a Dozen Bluets" by Alison C. Rollins

I keep a pay phone in my living

room for you. 

And another thing

And another thing I decided last night that I am done with this pain in my chest, I am done with not being able to breathe. I am committed to caring for myself even if and when I'm not forced to. The pain and the shortness of breath that forced it has served its purpose, and I am grateful, and I do not need it any more, because I will be taking it from here

Leap

last night during the film festival I sat in the second row neck tilted up toward the enormous screen strangers on every side of me the blind man kayaking whitewater as his friends called to him, and called to him, my face flooded with tears


Remember Lonnie, I wrote, and

My favorite word: Remember



I have been feeling so weak, but I know that I know how to be strong. I just forgot for a little while


It's not fair that I have to clean up after all this, but nevertheless it's my responsibility


So I will feel it, I will feel all of it, come on then, come on, I know that I can not take but receive it, and I know that I can let it go



I am at a point where the only way out is through

Please sign the Doom Bird

I should have gotten the Doom Bird II.


How quickly things fluctuate. Exactly 15 days ago I watched him manipulate me and cried. Today we're better than ever.

It's because of a lot of things, including his commitment to me, his commitment to being healthier, my commitment to seeing and calling out things that aren't healthy, and my commitment to being nice to myself in some ways for the first time ever

So yesterday when something inside of me said I can't, I said, Okay. Let's go eat a nice lunch and sit on the couch. And earlier today when he was tired and overwhelmed and spewing grumpiness, I said, Your grumpiness is starting to wear on me please get a grip thank you I love you, and he said Sorry, and stopped spewing. And even earlier, when we were lying in bed and I was feeling so peaceful, and he started to perseverate about coronavirus, which is a fine thing to do but which would, in the past, have sent me into an anxious tizzy of empathy, I put my hand on my heart and repeated silently, You stay right here

We looked at a house and the realtor wanted us, I think, and we wanted the house, but not for more than half a million dollars, and that's what houses cost out here. (Out here, as if my frame of reference is still somewhere far away.) So it was a mixed bag of emotions--feeling excited and actually seeing it and wanting it and then using a mortgage calculator (and then another one, in case the first one got it wrong) and realizing that for now most likely probably we can't have it, though I'm going to meet with Grant asap to see if there's anything we can do


Something I have been really tuned into is just how much people lean into alcohol and assume that everyone loves alcohol and should be drinking it in as many contexts as possible. It's off-putting and lame


Granted, I was prepping for pandemic


When he dated that girl at Barnard he'd visit her and go to the Upper West Side and eat tacos oozing queso Oaxaco

I have never had Oaxacan string cheese, but I like to imagine him eating it



Thanks Simon! 

"Why We Don't Die" by Robert Bly

In late September many voices
Tell you you will die.
That leaf says it, that coolness.
All of them are right.

Our many souls—what
Can they do about it?
Nothing. They’re already
Part of the invisible.

Our souls have been
Longing to go home
Anyway. “It's late,” they say,
“Lock the door, let’s go.”

The body doesn't agree. It says
“We buried a little iron
Ball under that tree.
Let’s go get it.”

2-23

Started the day with a in my mouth

Blasting Kishi Bashi into my ears from close range to drown metal baskets clanging

He was mean then I was mean then Hanna and I went skiing

through the rain-snow getting wetter no-seeing through sunglasses trusting metal edges on previously corduroyed snow

Do not underestimate girls' agency

What I am learning from reading more and more and more is that I can do it any which way, need to stop imagining audience and write

panicked-blocked it is harder in some ways to be the one who hurts

I guess I got tired of being the one who's hurt

Hanna and Wilson snuggle into my chest hard to be anything but content when you're this loved

The label I have denied myself that feels most truthful is artist

(Give birth to that which wants to be birthed through you)

no way to do it but doing it

from "A Litany for Survival" by Audre Lorde

So it is better to speak

remembering

we were never meant to survive.

salvage by Rachel McKibbens

I have learned to need the body

I spent years trying to rid the world of

have learned to cherish its pale rebel hymn

warped by ghost heat, carried, carried

by all my loyal dead. I have learned

to crawl backward into the wildnerness

to ask, to eat, to steep in your gentleness. 

Let this be where I permit forgiveness

to know your name, to leave our cruelest years

where & how we need them most—

                                                       behind & unlit. 

BLK History Month by Nikki Giovanni

If Black History Month is not

viable then wind does not

carry the seeds and drop them

on fertile ground

rain does not

dampen the land

and encourage the seeds

to root

sun does not

warm the earth

and kiss the seedlings

and tell them plain:

You’re As Good As Anybody Else

You’ve Got A Place Here, Too

"Bone and Hue" by Olivia Clare

There was a young woman

who lived in her shoes.

Bare-backed, she sat

with elders and sheened

her nails with sloe.

Felt purse, trunk,

berries in bottled gin.

Smoke rose

from the purples of the ground.

Moscow maybe next, or

Poland, where the numbers burned.

Purples of the mosses turned.

Some million shades.

Six million more.

Purples of the mosses,

and all the millions, blue.

She had so many lives,

she didn’t know what to do.

Heavy

When I finish reading Heavy I sob in the bathtub until the water turns cold.


I feel so much sorrow for Black pain, for the fact that "my" country is premised on the exploitation and the fervent, mob-ish hatred of Black and Brown bodies and Black and Brown people, that simply because of the color of my skin I am in some ways complicit and in so many ways brutishly empowered. My chest hurts. My stomach hurts. In the words of the small refugee Brown girl interviewed by Valeria Luiselli, it gives me bellysadness.

I am so bellysad.


And I am so inspired to tell the truth.


This, perhaps the only bit of worthwhile feedback extended during 45 minutes of egotistic bullshit: I've been hiding.



He is trying to care better.

Wilson keeps seeking my chest but the cartilage attaching to the bones within my sternum is so inflamed, for 11 days now I have been short of breath and in so much pain, I cannot cuddle the way we normally do in the evenings while I read or write on my back on the couch, but I cannot tell Wilson that and he cannot understand or accept why I cross my arms over my chest each time he draws near. So he holds Wilson on his stomach, so that I won't be hurt by nine more pounds of pressure on my chest, which already feels like a bear is sitting on it, a big round pre-hibernation bear that has been gorging itself for months on mountainside berries.


And here is the lesson again: I have to slow down sometimes. I have to take time to breathe. I have to tell the truth.

"mulberry fields" by Lucille Clifton

they thought the field was wasting

and so they gathered the marker rocks and stones and

piled them into a barn    they say that the rocks were shaped

some of them scratched with triangles and other forms    they

must have been trying to invent some new language they say

the rocks went to build that wall there guarding the manor and

some few were used for the state house

crops refused to grow

i say the stones marked an old tongue and it was called eternity

and pointed toward the river    i say that after that collection

no pillow in the big house dreamed    i say that somewhere under

here moulders one called alice whose great grandson is old now

too and refuses to talk about slavery    i say that at the

masters table only one plate is set for supper    i say no seed

can flourish on this ground once planted then forsaken    wild

berries warm a field of bones

bloom how you must i say

Glissade

So we find ourselves at this impasse: If I tell you the truth you'll ask why I stayed.



I am scared to start again, because things went so poorly the first time.


I have restarted at least one major thing in my life and so far it's contributing to a level of happiness that I haven't felt in a long time



The reason I am going to the mountain every chance that I get is because every time I ski I feel joy. How many activities is this true for: If I do this, I'll be happy


Today by myself I lapped 10 runs while he and she hucked cliffs in the glades. As for me I went faster, and faster, practiced keeping my skis together through the entirety of each turn. Practicing over and over by myself, for the joy of it, for the chance to do the same under more extreme conditions in the backcountry, because I want to do more of it for the rest of my life, at the top of a mountain

Then we skied down to mid-mountain and ate shared lunches brought from home. Then on to the bottom with a quick detour, I sat on the deck and watched the sun and the mountains come out


Something I am doing more and more and it feels good



Hanna is so happy to have her best friend here for a sleepover. I remember so many of them with a bad taste in my mouth



Listen: Fuck 'em. June you've gotta get back into it

Cringefest 2019

Why go back to it? I am writing this from a time when I do not feel scared or harmed or broken. Still I feel that it is necessary to retrieve something, or someone, who was lost there without either of us knowing. You see, I did not exist then, and she did not or could not or would not see.

What she could not see is that lies were not protecting her, but obfuscating herself from herself, acculturating her to lies so that when other people lied to her she could so easily be lied to, because being lied to was normal.

Her mother lied. For a long time, her sister lied, though she doesn't lie so much any more. Her brother didn't lie but he hid himself away, so that she was never exposed to his truthfulness. Her father told the truth until he stopped talking. Many of her partners lied, but not all of them.

The truth is you can spend a whole life lying to yourself and other people. In some ways it's a victory to know it after a few decades instead of all of them. Still it leaves an awful lot of mess, an awful lot of loss, so much regret. That girl who everyone said had so much potential -- did she exist? Can anything built on a foundation of lies have potential? Or does that foundation render the potentiality itself a lie?




I just spent eight years not being myself. Not long before that, it was a decade. I think I have been myself from the ages of 0 to 8, from approximately 22 to 23, and again from around 31 to present. Because this year I am focusing on the gain and not the gap, I will count nearly one third of 32 and a half years as a win. Also there were certain moments when in relationship with certain people that I felt wholly myself.


Remember lying belly-down on the bed laughing? Those moments are about as real as it ever gets.



I love being in school.

I hope to be a teacher.

From "New Year's Day" by Kim Addonizio

Today I want   

to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk

a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,   

and lift my face to it.