Poetry and being heard

Went back to writing poetry this morning.

Thought about how the man in question would have sought this kind of thing out a year ago. Now I wonder if he'll bother to look at it at all, despite its presence on my Facebook page. Really, I'll have to start keeping it to myself anyway if I want to publish again, in magazines, I mean. And I do. Giving it away gets me nowhere and I've been nowhere long enough.

It occurs to me that the purpose of writing a poem is to express a complete thought. Usually it is a complete and fairly unusual thought, something you might want to think about but would not want to discuss. Usually something that couldn't be discussed.

Peripheral issues that thought stirs up could be discussed, but not the thought itself. That's what poetry is for, it is a single, clear observation that sets off resonances that create other observations in the reader. It is not a dialogue. It is more like a painting.

Been doing the ground work for a labyrinth project, slowly, slowly. Seems I do have all the time in the world to do these things, certainly more than I want, and it has occurred to me that walking the labyrinth is like making a poem (yes, poets call it that) or a painting but doing so with your body on the earth and doing it in a way where you leave no real trace and therefore put no ego into it.

You draw a symbol on the earth with your intention and that is how the earth is moved, changed, healed - it is how time is altered. It's a single statement, an idea too complex to discuss around which all other ideas about your life are formed, how you move on the earth, what you bless by your motion and your footsteps, how you pray, your intentions made manifest.

I have fallen in love with a man who is cloudy, muddied by the material aspects of life and all the complications, he cannot see clearly and yet he would be an artist. What he doesn't seem to realize is that the reason he works with images he gathers when he is not at home is because he cannot see while he is in his own body, on his own land, in his own place. He is up to his neck in the things that build illusions of permanence yet pass even as we are maintaining them - the car maintenance, the deadlines, the family crisis - waiting for these things to pass as they sweep his life into their current and out to the river of eternity.

Not that these things aren't important, even vitally so but to see them as the only things that matter - that way lies oblivion far too early.

Of course it is all too easy for us to see the things that blind and wound others. I am equally muddied, quite sure of that but because it is all within me, I can't see it. So I carry on, trying to act and speak from my higher nature, whatever that is and no doubt failing every day.

Someone I know quoted Mark Twain today, the one about setting sail for adventure because in 20 years you will only regret the things you did not do. Well, I have lived that way. I can say that with some certainty and although there is truth in that value there is equal truth in the fact that staying in one place, having family and friends who root you, understanding that place and loving it well, loving it fully - that is a different kind of adventure and one with value of its own. In fact, I would say one value is equal to the other. Many times it seems to me the value of being truly rooted in the love of one place for a lifetime is the greater adventure. It grants you the opportunity to see deeply into human nature, into your own nature and into the land you inhabit. None of us will ever live long enough to understand these things fully and they are worth knowing.

There is also the fact that Mark Twain never mentions the aftermath of adventures - coming home to the shut up household, the loneliness of traveling and returning alone, the longing for the people and places who are never permanent.

And what happens when you finally do find a place that stirs in you that deep love of home? The place where you could spend a lifetime and still have every day be an adventure? What happens then?

Like all travelers you cannot stay. Life itself is a temporary visa and there is heartbreak in knowing that truth. There must be much comfort in being somewhere you can say you have loved all your life and in making it your own. It makes me feel quite shallow, damaged and ashamed never to have found that before Austin and bereft to have found it now and not to be able to engage in that deeper adventure.

I suppose a part of me is in mourning and honestly - I'm so tired of hiding it.

Here is the poem I wrote this morning. Since it's already out there, there's no point saving it for paper publication.


in 2100 the dead will have a union.
or a consortium, the point is, they will speak
with one voice and keep a little money aside
enough to hire lobbyists
and make their voices heard.

they will have the vote
freedom of speech
and fair representation in 48 states

they will ask that all the bathtubs in home supply and department store displays
be hooked up to the plumbing
enough to make the taps work and the water run
but not to drain.
the flow will go only one way.

they will ask that you turn down the light
on your computer, in your living room
in the streets and alleys at night

and go to bed when you say you do, for a change.

they will ask that these things be made a part of the law
and we will see no reason not to

what reason is there?
not to grant last wishes.

They will speak as one group and define their members
only enough for us to know they were here once and they remember everything.

They will not say what it’s like to be where they are but
they will answer any question we can ask, while they hear us
if we phrase it exactly right.

They will remind us, they know where we have been
and have been where we are going
their rights will become bylaws and ritual will grow again
like weeds and grasses on roads where cars no longer go

we will wear black for a year
we will speak in hushed tones when we speak of them

we will think their earmarks and filibusters are tyrannical
but we will not say

only look at each other and see their place in our pasts and our futures
drink sometimes, dance and deny it.

And I know all this because I live in a place where it snows every day
and the snow is on the television
and in your hair

the wind blows every day

the wind is in your ears and on your telephone and it says things that are random
if you are still sane and quite specific otherwise

and those rights and regulations
in a place like this

are as close as your hand to your face
or your pillow to your cheek

on those long, silent nights when the phone doesn’t ring
and you cannot find a candle.

Back in Canada

I am in Ottawa again and looking out over a frozen landscape. It will stay that way for the next four months. I was thinking this morning, as I made my breakfast, about women and "extra sensory perception."

I do not believe there is anything unnatural or extraordinary about the way most women, if they let themselves, know what is happening with the people in their lives as it happens. This occurs in so many species, we would have to be fundamentally damaged for it not to be true of us. Distance doesn't matter, time and space are not part of the dynamic - when someone close to you emotionally and/or physically or even mentally, takes an action that will have an impact on your life, you can't help but feel it.

As I felt the tiny drop in my head - the distinctive sound/feeling of someone reading an email from me and composing a reply, I felt myself begin to brush it away and paused. It occurred to me that we are all capable of reading the future because we are all aware of the present in much deeper ways than we realize. When we say we would like to be able to read other's minds or read the future, we really mean the dramatic or good parts.

I wonder, if we let ourselves accept that we always know if we only choose to look - would it make a difference? Would our lives be any easier?

When is a reversal not a reversal?

I feel better today.

I still can't write about half the stuff that matters to me. I'm still stuck in the same situation, (if I ever was stuck) but I feel different.

Yesterday I walked to Barton Springs. It is a natural spring that feeds a swimming pool and a spring (that should have been the water source for the city but never mind). It was sacred to the people from this area and I can see why.

I walked to the springs, put my hand in the water, thanked the water and took a sip. And today, I feel cleansed. That might sound crazy but it is the closest thing to a ceremony rooted in the land that I've been able to have here. And it matters.

More later.

Things are going to be ok.

Winter

In Austin, winter comes in little spikes and then goes away again. By February, summer clothes will be all a person needs here. Right now, there are days when a jacket is a good idea and nights when scarf and gloves make sense but it will never be as cold as it is in Victoria or Ottawa or even New England and the sun shines every day.

I never thought I'd understand snowbirds. All my life I've wanted two things, my freedom and security. Seems to me now that alone, those two things cancel each other out. In order to feel safe enough to consider options, a woman really needs to be married. I was foolish to think it could be any other way.

The paradox of life is very much with me now. Things, places, situations, relationships - yes, they can become yours forever but even your forever won't last. As much as you love anything, everything - life is a temporary condition. It feels permanent but it's not, an element of loss is built in for everyone just because we all, one way or another, love each other.

So we keep our eyes on the things we want to keep - that's the only sensible way.

I can't help but notice the rest of the world is slowly catching up to some of the choices I've been forced to make in order to make my own life livable. I read an article about living in a smaller house today. Apparently it is becoming chic. I have lived for so long in an apartment that is under 500 square feet that I'm no longer comfortable with the idea of living in a space larger than 1200 square feet with someone I love. I look at houses and apartments to imagine how life might be for us some day and find that most of the ones I reject have one thing in common, they are too big.

More than anything else, if and when I am finally able to live with someone I truly do love, I want to live close.

So the year draws to a close and who knows if I will be able to keep my love, freedom doesn't matter so much to me anymore, now it's love and security. Maybe it's a function of the season but really, I think I'm just finally realizing what matters.

Sustaining

If we're all going to learn to live sustainably, eat locally, all that it entails, I think many of us are going to have to become migratory creatures.

I had spinach from a local farm yesterday. Tomatoes and avocado too. Meanwhile, over half the continent has ice and snow already and the only thing that seems to be growing is anxiety.

Texas is heaven. No wonder the PR is so terrible, they're trying to keep people from finding out about it.

http://www.farmtotabletx.com/2010/11/111510-update/

Been too long

I can barely remember how to use this blog. Please accept my apologies for the messiness of it, the repetition of the pictures, all of it.

Writing from Austin, I love it here but I've been silent because I've been threatened. Seems on more than one level, my transparent life has become about keeping secrets for the benefit of others and, I've been told, for my own benefit.

This presents a huge problem for me. Absolute transparency has always been my ally. I believe in it. In the spirit of transparency, I have to say here and now, the conflict between who I am and who I love has reached the point where it must break something or be resolved somehow.

The subject of men and women has been brought into the foreground for me - this wasn't intentional but circumstances being what they are, I find myself being confronted with my own philosophy of life and looking pretty hard at the areas where I've accepted social and cultural restraints that run counter to my own beliefs. It's an interesting time. (and I can see why that's a curse.)

Most recently the issue of my value as an individual versus my social value as a spouse has been pressing at me. My father raised me to be married - my mother was so passive her influence meant nearly nothing. I was lucky enough to be given the raw materials to make me attractive to men and this "training" while it may have been rejected by me, given the choice, did take root.

Feminism is a noble ideal but the fact of the matter is, we live in a civilization where it is foolish to the point of being dangerous for a woman without an economic foundation in place to decide to live independently. I am that woman right now and I am increasingly aware of how the men to whom I am attracted benefit from that without ever having to make an appropriate reciprocal gesture.

That may sound materialistic or mercenary or worse - but it is still the truth that marriage provides a material benefit to women that it does not provide to men at the same time as it provides a social and emotional benefit to men that it does not provide to women.

To date, I have provided the emotional and social benefit with no expectation of the material security. That needs to change. I may think it is only right that I make my way in the world as a man but as Malcolm Gladwell points out in Outliers even that idea is more myth than reality and it is time I made my peace with it and acted accordingly.

That's all for now. More pictures later, this is something I need to hash out. I do so not only for myself but for any other woman who, like me, thought Virginia Woolf was no longer relevant to contemporary women and makes her way through life without a net.

Things begin to settle

I don't know why it seems to take me so long to make transitions. I've been here two weeks now and have barely written a word, just got electricity, haven't got the gas hooked up. I suppose part of me is just as surprised to be here as the people I talk to who tell me I'm brave to go away for such a long time.

But really, I don't see it.

If you can possibly be somewhere you love with someone you care about, wouldn't you do it? Shouldn't you do it? Shouldn't everyone move heaven and earth to be happy? And isn't life short enough without assuming you can't do what you want to do? (provided you do not hurt others of course)

I think life is short. The world is pretty big to a little creature like me and if it is even remotely possible for me to pursue happiness, then I am going to do exactly that to the exclusion of everything else.

The thing is, when I was in my 20's I had this little breakthrough that life without real happiness was pointless. Sure, I wanted to do right by the people around me, be a good person, benefit the world, all that stuff but if I lived in absolute misery while I was doing those things then what did that say about the gift of life that the Creator gave directly to me? After all, that's the only gift I know for sure was meant for me.

Singing is for other people too, so is writing, art of any kind, a sense of duty, the ability to exert oneself on behalf of others, the health I gave to my only son - those are gifts G-d gave me to pass on to others and it was an honor to do so but without a sense of joy and wonder and without some daring, daring to be fully alive - they don't mean very much.

So here I am, finally cracking the crust of my inactivity. Settling like a feather on a ledge, I suppose - probably easy enough to set me adrift again, although I hope not.

I have been true in my heart. True to myself and true to love - in all its many forms. I hope, I like to think, we can all say that but I'm told it's unusual. It shouldn't be.

I've been told I'm lucky but I think I'm just awake. I'm poor - poorer than I've ever been. Certainly poorer than I ever expected to be but if the cost of money is your soul, then I really think it is a blessing to be poor.

It is a blessing to have a mind and be able to speak it, however clumsily. It's a blessing to stay awake, a blessing to draw breath and see the sky. I'm aware of it - so aware I can't dismiss it, can't put it off for even a minute. I can endure the reluctance of others, people I love who are still afraid to stand up and be in the world but not of it but I can't live that way myself. For me there is no other choice and I do need to remember that. Waiting seems kind but ultimately it is wasteful.

I need to write but maybe I also need to just shut up and post some more pictures.