february sun

so it's groundhog day. the little fella is surely seeing his shadow here in oregon, so i guess that means six more weeks of winter. i'm good with that.

january was a blur. it involved some pretty big bumps, some great new developments (limbo is over!), and a lot of "huh? where'd the time go?" i've said before and will say again that missing time that way makes me sad. i will also say again that i am hoping to pay better attention.

february is a little month. i have a new, looser work schedule and long, long lists of things to do. some of those include: purge the apartment. plan for our garden row. order seeds. edit recent poem attempts. bake a cake! (i'm failing miserably on that resolution). happy hours. move more. i'm excited to start over again (already!).

signed up for a million little pictures today! lights and beams is my theme (thanks for your feedback, friends!), and i'm hoping that my camera will arrive in time for me to capture a bit of this wonderful sunshine.

a little idea bouncing around my head right now: take my 27 pictures and write poems about each? sounds ambitious. sounds like great practice.

reading william stafford right now. writing the australian crawl is a title that i hadn't heard of until the stafford reading at linfield last month--someone read an excerpt, and i knew that it would be a book that i would turn to for inspiration and comfort again and again.

this morning i read, "Poems don't just happen. They are luckily or stealthily related to a readiness within ourselves."

today, i feel ready.


b

something new

for a while now i've been searching out little ways to get myself inspired and to impose deadlines on my projects--something that's really hard when there isn't someone else out there telling you to get your stuff done. a coworker told me about something called the sketchbook project, and in researching it i found this.

i like this project for a few reasons:

1. i've always loved taking pictures, and this is a great way to get back into that.
2. public art project!!
3. small committment: $20 and 23 photos (or something like that)
4. being part of something bigger than my little projects

what do you all think? i need to choose a theme soon, so that i can have a little time to find the best images. i was thinking about "watch" or "lights and beams."


b

hi-a-tus

hi-a-tus: (n) 1. a break or interruption in the continuity of a work, series, or action, 2. a missing part; a gap or lacuna, 3. any gap or opening, 4. Anatomy. a fissure, cleft, or foramen in a bone or other structure.



I’ve been on hiatus for some time now. I decided in the whirlwind of my last semester of college, that I would give myself time to recover after graduation. I wouldn’t pressure myself to leave town, to tackle a “real” job, to make ambitious plans of any kind. And I am so glad that I did that. These past six, now seven months, I have been lazy. I’ve done the same things every single day, established a routine, slept nine or more hours most nights. I come home from work, make dinner, and watch a movie with Erik. It’s a simple existence, and such a wonderful departure, interruption, gap.


I think, after many months’ hiatus, I am finally feeling like returning to the real world, so to speak. I am ready to ease myself into a more adult, busy, active existence. And I thought that a good way to approach this would be to make some New Year’s resolutions. I know, I know; that seems tacky. I mean, how much of a departure can making a New Year’s resolution be? For me, at this point though, identifying aims and goals for myself is something fresh and relatively new.

I have always been resistant to goal setting. Even as a kid and as a student, I didn’t like it. It makes me feel stressed, like I need to run around and achieve this thing RIGHT NOW. But I think maybe a resolution can be something different for me. Resolution means “a statement of intention.” I like that. I like the idea of facing the New Year with a sense of intention, after so many months of avoiding approaching things with an outcome in mind. I like the idea of intention, because it implies finding or choosing direction. Of being determined. Of creating and making and doing things, rather than just thinking about them; of committing to things again, after avoiding commitment in most aspects of my life.

So here are my resolutions, and a few of the sources of inspiration behind them. I hope that approaching this New Year in a way completely different than any that have come before, and with a new sort of intention, will bring about change and joy.

b





RESOLUTIONS

1. Give more love.
2. Bake cakes.
3. Road trip.
4. Write it down.
5. Share more.


INSPIRATION

A Homemade Life, by Molly Wizenberg
Orangette, orangette.blogspot.com
Handmade Living, by Lotta Jansdotter
3191, 3191visualblogging.com




Oh, and I loved this poem from today's Writer's Almanac:


After Our Wedding

by Yehoshua Nobember

When you forgot the address of our hotel
in your suitcase,
the driver had to pull over
in front of the restaurant.

Men and women dining beneath the August sun
looked up from their salads
to clap for you,
a young, slender woman
in a wedding dress and tiara,
retrieving a slip of paper
from the trunk of a cab
in the middle of the street.

And since that day,
many of the guests at our wedding have divorced
or are gone,
and the restaurant has closed
to become a tattoo parlor.
And we have misplaced and found
many more papers,
but no one was clapping.

And the motion of the lives around us
has been like a great bus
slowly turning onto a crowded street.
And some of the passengers
have fallen asleep in their seats,

while others anxiously search
their jacket pockets
for the notes that might wed
their ordinary lives
to something lofty and astonishing.

a sigh of relief

this holiday season has been an interesting one for me. interesting being code for uncertain, quiet, and slightly disappointing. for one, i never really felt like i got into the holiday spirit. and for me, this is odd. usually i am itching to listen to holiday music, hang twinkle lights, and bake grandma's sugar cookies, but this year those desires were distinctly lacking. for another, the whole idea of christmas felt strange somehow. i will blame this partly on working a retail job and long hours, and partly on the fact that i'm not a kid anymore. what was i celebrating again? the merry season of buying-tons-of-things? a religious/quasi-consumer holiday that i don't particularly believe in? wow, i sound cynical. that makes me so sad.

i was chatting with one of my coworkers at the bookstore who is in her early forties, has four kids, and had a different, fun christmas activity planned every night leading up to christmas week. i asked her if christmas stops feeling this way (sort-of anticlimactic) when you have kids. and her answer was, "oh, ya." she remembered these years--the time when you aren't a kid anymore, and your christmas isn't orchestrated for you, and you are kind of at a loss as to what to do--and when you become a parent, and suddenly it's your job to make christmas magical for someone else. i found that wonderfully reassuring. i was thinking it was just me, but i think it might be just the way christmas will be for now.

that disappointment expressed, i have had a very nice christmas at home, with family and presents and good food just the way it has been every other year. it is also nice knowing that when i go back to work tomorrow, there won't be customers getting angry at me for not being able to get them something in time for christmas, or incredulous that i don't remember their specific order when i did fifty of them a day for two weeks in a row. i'm glad that things will be mostly back to normal.

so here's to christmas, and it's new form. and here's hoping that each of you found time to relax, recharge, and celebrate the season.


b

discipline

lately i have been reading a lot of books about how to write. all of them are linked by a common theme: discipline. and the more i read about discipline, the more i realize how much i lack it.

over and over again these authors, who have struggled and succeeded with writing, say that without discipline you will never be a real writer. you'll be a dabbler, a hobbyist--someone who plays with the idea of writing, but doesn't care enough to wake up early, to set aside half an hour every day, to invest in new books, to keep other poets words fresh in your mind, and capture your words when they arrive. i read once that william stafford woke up at 4 am every morning to write, because it was the only time that belonged solely to him. i've talked to peter, a writer who frequents union block here in town, and learned that he has rented out various work spaces over the course of writing his novels. he's written two to date, and is working on a third and a memoir. these people are willing to sacrifice for their work, to delve wholly into it. when do you get to that point?



maybe what frustrates me most about my current lack of discipline is that i have an inkling that writing is something that i really want to do. something that could consume me, give me direction, make me feel purposeful, alive, focused. every time i open a book of poetry, i get a little thrill. words reach into me and grab hold like few other things do. when i read essays about the art and task of writing, i am constantly underlining exercises and insightful remarks, making lists of things to try and to write about in the margins. it isn't that i don't have anything to say, or that i haven't thought about how i would say it, how it would look printed out on paper.

at the root of it, i think i'm scared. scared of committing to this thing that i know could take me over. it's a reasonable fear i think--we all want control over our lives right? we want control over our thoughts and emotions, and if i commit to writing, i know that those things will be closer to the surface, and that i will be more at the mercy of them. it's always scary to think of being taken over by outside forces. at the same time, i have tasted that loss of control before. i've had phases where i had to keep my notebook at hand, because the words were coming all the time, coming unannounced but truer than when i tried to force them. and i want that. it's just so hard to commit.



in "writing down the bones," natalie goldberg says that you have to write five years worth of crap before you will come up with anything that is worth reading. i find this really encouraging because it gives me permission to write over and over again, every single time i sit down, "wow, it's been a long time since i wrote." it also gives me permission to journal, rather than try to force myself to write something more substantive. i figure if i dump enough crap into my journals, eventually i won't have any more complaining to do, and i'll figure out what i wanted to say all along. now the trick is to complain more often and more thoroughly so that i can move on.

b


*****


lately, this poem has been fascinating me:


Ode to Plurality
Adam Zagajewski

I don't understand it all and I am
even glad that the world like a restless
ocean exceeds my ability
to understand the essence of water, rain,
of plunging into Baker's Pond, near
the Bohemian-German border, in
September 1980, a detail without any special
meaning, the deep Germanic pond.
Let the half-oxidized ego breathe
steadily, let the swimmer cross the
meridian, it's evening, owls wake up
from their daily sleep, far away
cars whir lazily. Who once
touched philosophy is lost
and won't be saved by a poem, there is
always the rest, difficult to reckon,
a soreness. Who once learned a wild
run of poetry will not taste anymore
the stony calm of family narratives
whose every chapter is the nest
of a single generation. Who once lived won't
forget the changing delight of seasons,
he will dream even of nettles and burdocks, and the
spiders in his dream won't look any worse
than swallows. Who has once met
irony will burst into laughter
during the prophet's lecture. Who once prayed
with more than just a dry mouth
will remember the presence of the strange echo
coming from a wall. Who once
was silent would rather not talk
over dessert. And who was struck
by the shock of love will return to his books
with an altered face.
You, singular soul, stand before
this abundance. Two eyes, two hands,
ten inventive fingers, and
only one ego, the wedge of an orange,
the youngest of sisters. And the pleasure of
hearing doesn't destroy the pleasure of
hearing doesn't destroy the pleasure of
seeing, though that flurry of freedom disturbs
the peace of the other gentle senses.
Peace, thick nothing, as full of sweet
juice as a pear in September.
Brief moments of happiness vanish
under an avalanche of oxygen, in winter
a lonely rook strikes his beak against the white
surface of the lake, another time
a couple of woodpeckers, scared
by an ax, are looking outside my window
for a poplar that is sick enough.
An absent woman writes long
letters and yearning swells like
opium; in an Egyptian museum,
the same yearning, unshaken and unbroken,
rubbed into a brown papyrus a few thousand years
older. Love letters always end up
in museums, the curious are
more persistent than lovers.
Ego gulps air, reason awakens
from its daily sleep, the swimmer gets out
of the water. A beautiful woman plays
a happy one, men pretend they are braver
than they really are, the Egyptian
museum doesn't hide human weaknesses.
To live, if only to live longer,
giving oneself to the power
of one of the colder stars and mocking it
sometimes because it is slimy and cool
like a frog in a pond. A poem grows
on contradiction but it can't cover it.

mink river and hello, fall.

since starting to work in the bookstore, i have created a shelf that consists entirely of books that are on my "to read" list. that shelf only ever grows bigger--unpacking boxes at work every day, hearing customers rave about a new title, working on old lists of recommended books from friends: they all conspire to make catching up on reading an impossible task. recently though sylla, my boss, asked me to read a new book by an oregon author. it's called "mink river," by brian doyle. she told me it was a unique book, and that if i managed to read it that she would love to hear my thoughts. the fact that sylla, who is an extremely well-read person, felt the need to talk about the book with someone really intrigued me. i borrowed a copy on my lunch break, and by the time i finished the first page, i was hooked.
it isn't often that novels (especially) command my attention from the first page. typically, i find myself struggling to get into them--having trouble keeping characters straight, and getting frustrated when thirty pages in there is no clear focus. "mink river" was completely different. the first page sang. it sounded like a poem. i had no idea what was happening, but that was okay.

this book is the best book that i have read this year, and that's saying a lot. i don't have a lot of books that i would recommend to other people without qualms or qualifying remarks, but this is one of them. every word, from start to end, was lovely, poetic, moving. doyle uses a wonderfully creative and playful voice that captures the way that thoughts feel inside of our minds--the way we run words together, skip around, make odd, spontaneous connections. he also writes beautifully about the experience of living in oregon (the story is set on the oregon coast): the gloom, the small, depressed towns, the odd individuals who are sprinkled around the edges. he writes about the search for happiness, and all of the challenges that stand between us and attaining it. he writes complex and beautiful characters who are richly flawed, but still worm their way into your heart.
really, i can't say enough about it: you'll have to read it. and if you do, let me know what you think.

****

so it's been a long time since i wrote last. the month of october completely consumed me in illness, mad work schedules, and shortening days. for the first time since leaving school, i felt really out of control of my life: in the end all i focused on was getting through the days. it made me sad to watch a whole month pass this way, but it did push me to make some decisions. i quit the coffee shop, deciding that having two days to myself was more valuable than the $300 dollars it was paying me, despite having made friends with many wonderful customers. i started working on a quilt for erik and i. i opened by my box of stationery supplies, and have plans to write many letters. i have been slowly catching up on emails and blogs from my friends who are now scattered all over the world, having their own adventures. i've started thinking about the future--engaging possibilities, trying to uncover what it is that i really want for my life, and yes, reading. i am going to start writing again.

i'm glad to have come to my senses in time for the last kick of gorgeous weather, before i will be leaving and coming home from work in the dark. i managed to make salsa and pear jam. erik and i have been renting fun movies, making popcorn, and buying beer. we're pressing cider with my family next weekend. i got my sewing machine out of its case for the first time since june. things are looking better all the time.

b

currently reading:

austerlitz, by w.g. sebald
farmer jane, by temra costa
chez panisse vegetables, by alice waters

where does the time go?

i foolishly thought that after i graduated from college, that the intertia of my life would lessen somewhat--or at least maybe pause. now it's already the end of september, and i am eating those innocent hopes every day as i realize that i missed peaches, and missing blackberries, and the tomatoes may not ripen if this cool weather keeps up. where does the time go?

i feel a bit like the leaves that are now beginning to tumble across the ground. buffeted. ragged. crisp and chilly. still clinging to their green. some mornings it's the best feeling in the world. others, i just feel tired.

my days recently are marked mostly by the passage of various books in and out of my hands. their weight is constant, which occasionally lulls me into the security of lost hours and their similarity. and then i realize i'm three titles further down the line, and i don't remember what i read four covers ago.

my start-of-fall recommendations:

"room" by emma donoghue
"zoli" by colum mccann
"all american poem" by matthew dickman

may your days pass slower than mine,

b