August, 2012

Lots of conversations about who to write/create for. Audience. Audience? (audience) Self - the muse - gGod. Should there be a gaze or direction... or should the work just be served - write itself essentially? These are my thoughts, coming from a bi-weekly book club discussing Madeleine L'Engle's memoir on the writing life, Walking on Water. And these are my thoughts while both winding down from writing an autobiographical poem that I actually liked and gearing up to revise a slasher screenplay with Eames.

So, this, from the world of a former classmate (now rockstar poet and performance artist) Kate Durbin and her muse Lady Gaga, "To me, to be a woman, an artist, and to be free, the bitch has to trust herself, has to trust her art."

Today, the second day of an important month for me, is the first in which I've cut off all forms of contact (email, texting, facebook) other than telephonic. So I am anxious to see what transpires, nervous to see who I alienate and frustrate (remember, these are among my greatest fears... what wonderful things might happen if they are realized and slayed?!), and I am hopeful that somethings creative might be distilled from the experience. All bashful sideward glances aside here, I am trying to trust my art these days. Life is short. Might as well make it happen.

On "The Woman I Kept To Myself" by Julia Alvarez

When I read a poem that... Well, that feels like it could have been written by me, if only I could write, because the naked truth of it is my naked truth... When I read a poem like that, I am struck by the possibility that there are so many different incarnations of my self, living different lives in different places at different paces, but under the shirtsleeves and skin and flesh, the same scarred soul, finding breadcrumb clues along the bitterly beautiful way and sharing them with the others as we can. Through poems. Smoke signals. Signs of life. What you know, we know. What you feel and perceive, whether real or imagined, occurs to us too. You are still out here. We are still out here. You are not alone. You are connected by DNA to kindreds across the earth, across time, and the pangs of consciousness and horror and understanding - we feel them too. So do not be afraid. We don't know you, but we know ourselves, and when our paths cross in pages, we know that we are many.

Henri is a good name

“Aren't you, like me, hoping that some person, thing, or event will come along to give you that final feeling of inner well-being you desire? Don't you often hope: 'May this book, idea, course, trip, job, country or relationship fulfill my deepest desire.' But as long as you are waiting for that mysterious moment you will go on running helter-skelter, always anxious and restless, always lustful and angry, never fully satisfied. You know that this is the compulsiveness that keeps us going and busy, but at the same time makes us wonder whether we are getting anywhere in the long run. This is the way to spiritual exhaustion and burn-out. This is the way to spiritual death.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World

“We have probably wondered in our many lonesome moments if there is one corner in this competitive, demanding world where it is safe to be relaxed, to expose ourselves to someone else, and to give unconditionally. It might be very small and hidden, but if this corner exists, it calls for a search through the complexities of our human relationships in order to find it.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen  

“At issue here is the question: "To whom do I belong? God or to the world?" Many of my daily preoccupations suggest that I belong more to the world than to God. A little criticism makes me angry, and a little rejection makes me depressed. A little praise raises my spirits, and a little success excites me. It takes very little to raise me up or thrust me down. Often I am like a small boat on the ocean, completely at the mercy of its waves. All the time and energy I spend in keeping some kind of balance and preventing myself from being tipped over and drowning shows that my life is mostly a struggle for survival: not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle resulting from the mistaken idea that it is the world that defines me.

As long as I keep running about asking: "Do you love me? Do you really love me?" I give all power to the voices of the world and put myself in bondage because the world is filled with "ifs." The world says: "Yes, I love you if you are good-looking, intelligent, and wealthy. I love you if you have a good education, a good job, and good connections. I love you if you produce much, sell much, and buy much." There are endless "ifs" hidden in the world's love. These "ifs" enslave me, since it is impossible to respond adequately to all of them. The world's love is and always will be conditional. As long as I keep looking for my true self in the world of conditional love, I will remain "hooked" to the world-trying, failing,and trying again. It is a world that fosters addictions because what it offers cannot satisfy the deepest craving of my heart.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen 

“One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Making All Things New

 

“[Praying] demands that you take to the road again and again, leaving your house and looking forward to a new land for yourself and your [fellow human]. This is why praying demands poverty, that is, the readiness to live a life in which you have nothing to lose so that you always begin afresh.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen 

of the lately insomnia

There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.
There are worse things than these miniature betrayals,
committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things
than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.
It is 5 a.m.  All the worse things come stalking in
and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse.

-found on watergallop, which is named for (?) this:

epiphany, eamon grennan

While you’re gazing in the mirror all the names change.
It will all be all right, you’ve said, when push comes to shove
And the snow’s sheer mortal diamond will have left us
Its legacy of watergallop and what-have-you: it will be
A question of reflection, not this heartlessness of lightbreak,
The horrid jag edge of shadow.

Take, for instance, this morning:
Beneath the ice-clamp of Casperkill Creek you saw clear water
Run into its own life against the odds, making (the way things
Will) a fresh start. Just as a raucous, high-minded, truth-telling
Matter-of-fact congregation of crows comes tumbling.

-also, naming is important. because:

"The Christian and Jewish traditions worship a God whose name is unutterable because in one sense, to name something is to have some measure of control or ownership over it." 

-B. Gorman

On a hopeless mission to recover gravity in Rehobeth Beach, I stumbled across a Laurie Halse Anderson novel in a lame/awesome bookshop on the main street. I got halfway through, but then lost it in the wrong purse for a few days. Finally, tonight I finished it. (SPOILER ALERT: She survives the suicide attempt! Hooray!)

Winter Girls reminded me 1) of Wasted by Marya Hornbacher, which always inspired my college roommate and I to try to develop an eating disorder (oh Fletcher) until Meyers hid it and wouldn't let us read it AT ALL EVER NO WAY, and 2) of Catalyst, my favorite LHA novel, and 3) of Speak - LHA's most famous novel which was adapted to made-for-tv-movie starring a yet-to-be-discovered Kristen Stewart. I think she got raped in the story. At a party. The Winter Girls "heroine" was anorexic. The girls in her story always have significant girl problems. Eating disorders and getting raped and fighting with their bitchy friends and surviving the divorce of the parental unit.

I feel like these stories should make me feel well-adjusted and grateful and empowered to be a survivor. The only problem is, well, they don't. They don't make me feel well at all.

My Sea Life

As a kid, holding my breath was my most impressive skill. (And blowing really hard, by proxy, though that was just a side effect.) Holding my breath may seem like a pretty useless skill to most people (unless I got kidnapped and trapped in the trunk of a car or something), but I understood it to be my ticket to paradise. After all, how could I become a mermaid unless I learned how to stop breathing?