Robert Browning

Is it when we experience regret for having stopped our own heart from beating that these quotes, by Robert Browning, grow stronger by their meaning? 

And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost 

Is - the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin.

 

There, that is our secret: go to sleep!  You will wake, and remember, and understand.

Death was past, life not come: so he waited.

Live now: Time is as indifferent as it is impartial.  - that's one from me. 

Second Hand Coat, by Ruth Stone

I feel
in her pockets; she wore nice cotton gloves,
kept a handkerchief box, washed her undies,
ate at the Holiday Inn, had a basement freezer,
belonged to a bridge club.
I think when I wake in the morning
that I have turned into her.
She hangs in the hall downstairs,
a shadow with pulled threads.
I slip her over my arms, skin of a matron.
Where are you?  I say to myself, to the orphaned body,
and her coat says,
Get your purse, have you got your keys?



Was reading Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, And Drama, 6th Edition
I came upon the poem above and it inspired this:

I'd gone up to the attic in order
to fetch a string of Christmas lights.
Nearing dusk, the slanted shadows
barred the glare of December sun.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw
my first wedding gown.
Summer white, Laura Ashley long, it hung
over the mannequin an exhausted tulip,
so unlike the crisp oxford that was
my uniform, post-divorce: boxy, untucked
over men's tan chinos - very wisened, I'm afraid.

I found the box of white lights at the foot of a stuffed tyger.
We weaved them into the garland on the mantel over the fire.

I didn't mention the dress to Mother; her heart had broken harder
when he left me than my own - strange to find such sober figures
while looking for holiday cheer.

Inception

I went to see Inception tonight. And, I have to say that I now believe that there are people tapping into my brain, my writing....so much commonality. I am bloody Leonardo DiCaprio's Character. 

A few years ago, I came up with some t-shirt phrases that I am going to have printed.  One of them is "Keep your projections of my reality."  Another variation is: "Keep your projections off of my truth."

When your dreams die, you die.  I am now living in Death.  It looks like any suburbia.  The grass is soft and green and even.  There is no sand on the black paved roads.  My hands and legs move; my eyes arch and my lips curl back - just like they did when I was alive.  How very... 

"Loves of the Puppets" by Richard Wilbur

Meeting when all the world was in the bud,
Drawn each to each by instinct's wooden face,
These lovers, heedful of the mystic blood,
Fell glassy-eyed into a hot embrace.

April, unready to be so intense,
Marked time while these outstripped the gentle weather,
Yielded their nature's to insensate sense,
And flew apart the more they came together.

Where did they fly?  Why, each through such a storm
As may be conjured in a globe of glass
Drove on the colder as the flesh grew warm,
In breathless haste to be at lust's impasse,

To cross the little bridge and sink to rest
In visions of the snow-occluded house
Where languishes, unfound by any quest,
The perfect, small, asphyxiated spouse.

That blizzard ended, and their eyes grew clear,
And there they lay exhausted yet unsated;
Why did their features run with tear on tear,
Until their looks were individuated?

One peace implies another, and they cried
For want of love as if their souls would crack,
Till, in despair of being satisfied,
They vowed at least to share each other's lack.

Then maladroitly they embraced once more,
And hollow rang to hollow with a sound
That tuned the brooks more sweetly than before,
And made the birds explode for miles around

Gabriel Yared - Greatest Hits

mmm...the rare composer who gives my soul rapture.  Just skip right to 725 and then start over. 

Descartes

My body awoke to the furnace of my mind

branding all my misdeeds like cattle

set to wander a grassless pasture

I don't know why my mind can't

put these things into some capsule

sneak them on to the dock of a rocket

send them on their way, they are no use to me.

My mind is filled with garbage. 

There's an obsessive-compulsive recycler

spinning in circles on a tricycle in the corridors of my brain

nothing new can come in. Nothing new has any room.

All the little nebulae, like faces pressed against a glass

voices, muffled by the thickness, are forced into silence;

the occasional screech that reaches beyond

there's so much trash piled up against the glass that I am barely

aware that I exist.  I want to sell off the garbage 

to some lumber company in Canada 

that makes shiny new castles out of recycled pasts

castles I'll never have to live in or walk.

I'll take my grass shack, my salt-dry lips, my thoughts--

the newness of them, like dew

on the grass, where cows graze,

chewing in contemplation

Woman In Biege

I'm angry.
So be it.
Why is Spock so cross?
I'm a woman pinned
in a land of paper dolls.

He loves me for my virtue
and that keeps us
as polite as tea.
I yearn to be

stalked and ruined for
the reign-less passions,
the prurient morning stomach's growl.

I'm never not
exhausted enough to pretend;
but you take
no notice, kissing my hair
on your way to work
whistling.

J.D. Salinger Envy

I just read on the BBC that Catcher In the Rye author, J.D. Salinger passed away. I Can remember how I came to it when I was in my late teens: a male friend, whom I likened to a much older brother, handed it to me and told me that it reminded him of me; I couldn't finish the book. I had such a negatively charged reaction to Catcher. It is a feeling I struggle to explain. To me, it was like a migraine to my psyche.

The BBC article stated that after the publication of Catcher, "Salinger shunned the fame it brought him" and so he bought a house in New Hampshire and "retreated into seclusion."

How I wish I had the time, clarity, and organization to write an autobiography, and, my grandmother and mother's biographies; and that they would earn enough to make it possible for me to move to an island in the Carolina's, where I would disappear.  Poetry certainly isn't going to bring it.

Citizenship, Politics, and the Lessons Teaching Has Taught Me

Obama...hmm...

Thousands of children go back to school every fall, and what do they do for the first month or so? Review and refresh. Obama's campaign communicated to Americans the concept and theory behind universal health care; the shameful practices of pharmaceutical companies, lobbyists, and BIG government (yes folks - Republicans are big government architects because they are in the pockets of Big Corporations). The result of this is that We the People are held hostage to the immense control, suppression, and exploitative oligarchy of power these politicians and big industries hold us hostage to. So, Obama got elected, was sworn into office a bit later (just enough time for citizens to slip back into the passive panacea of materialism and vanity, and FEAR), but he forgot the golden rule of teaching to returning students: he didn't review, but rather, he bulldozed ahead with big plans to shake things up and change laws, rather than remind the country what they voted for with a refresher course in his campaign platform... what he should have done was gradually ease people back into being active listeners and citizens, and, worked with congress to change/modify existing laws around insurance, prescription drugs, and the various other exposures he made during his campaign. When citizens become passive, again, it is easy for Fox and Rush and the rusty regime of the right to sneak in with the old fear-propaganda, and then we are back to red/blue dualist reactionary ignorance and obtuse behavior.

So, President Obama, please learn from this: review review review, and then you can introduce bold new concepts, once everyone is back in the spring of your agenda.

Connections...as a result of all of this, I also see from my experience teaching, that people do not have the skill of making connections from the political arena to themselves. Text-to-self connections are key to comprehension, analysis, synthesis and just being a good, old citizen, patriot...

Here is an analogical lesson for our time:

When you spend eight years eating Twinkies, and then one year eating your vegetables and whole grains, it is irrational to be outraged that your body isn't in fighting condition.

When you spend eight years getting kicked in the head every time you brush your teeth, you might have a fear of going near a toothbrush, even if the kicking ended one year ago. Even if your teeth rot and fall out - some of you will never brush your teeth again. You will simply get dentures and eat mush.

John Locke

So, I'm brushing up on my John Locke in preparation for my Civics classes, and I start to daydream about the idea of ego as this relates to intelligence. This is how my mind works:

Wow, John Locke (JL) is so right on brilliant. I bet that if I had been a woman around during his life, he would have been a pleasant and kind person. But I'm a woman, and maybe he would have been a bastard to women. Or, perhaps he would have been made arrogant by his awareness of his own potentiality? Well, I can't assume that JL would be nice to me...if I were alive and living in Holland or London, or wherever, and I saw him at a party, I would bow (metaphorically speaking) to the awesome power of his intellect, and ..not approach him, but stand back, with profound respect for his brilliance. It then dawned on me that this stream of ideas in my head were absolutely ego-driven. Because, I make the assumption that I am smart enough to recognize what brilliance looks and acts like, and that my opinion is valid because I act on behalf of my opinions...as most of us do simply by deciding what to eat: what tastes good or bad, what we say, painfully trying to be as articulate and exact as possible (when I'm not depressed), where to walk, what door to open or close...and that, obviously I perceived myself to be capable of such divine fact finding, and, what is worse, perhaps, is that I obviously place a higher premium on people whom I perceive to be very intelligent, over people I perceive to be less intelligent -- even though, to my mind, I treat everyone equally, which is a contradiction to say the least!


Of course I think Locke is brilliant because my ideas...values align with his; and I value myself as capable of saying, ah, he is brilliant! I can say that because I know what brilliance looks like.
So, I guess I've exemplified, in small part, Locke's question around examining our own ability to accurately recognize, judge...the ideas of another.

Suffice it to say that, even with all of this babbling, I still would not approach him on the street, and I would be awed with the hindsight of a 21c. advantage.

welcome to my world.