The Times, They Are A-Changin'

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Freewriting: The Tarot

The card source is from the Victorian Tarot, which is one of my favorites.



The Judgment:

Change has been coming your way for a while now and today you may see the first explicit features of it. What happens today is only a beginning and you may look back in a few days/weeks/months and recognize that your life is in the process of making a turn for the better. It's the nature of life to not stay the same, and you are being moved forward now.

The Poets:  

Emily Dickinson
There are at least two judgment poems that I remember--"Judgment is Justest"--a great pun on the interchangeability of these words; "Departed to the Judgment" is the other.

Walt Whitman
My judgments, thoughts, I henceforth try by the open air, the road--Leaves of Grass 

Shakespeare
Sonnet XIV 

Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;
And yet methinks I have astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck, 
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell, 
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind, 
Or say with princes if it shall go well, 
By oft predict that I in heaven find: 
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert; 
Or else of thee this I prognosticate: 
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

_____
FREEWRITING ON JUDGMENT:
Keep a precarious balance--loss of balance--judgment balances--Libra--weighted scales--laurel wreath--red scarf and sword--rocks and chasm--read/red hair--yellow flower.  Why the bare breasts--figurehead of justice on a ship?--liberty and justice for all is not for all.


And after me the judgment.

(As in Satchel Paige's something may be gaining?)


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Caterwauling, Rising, Falling

SONNET 66

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,
And strength by limping sway disabled
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly—doctor-like—controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

_______

"When the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. Then he goes out to the Wet Wild Woods or up the Wet Wild Trees or on the Wet Wild Roofs, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone." (Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book)

I used to be that cat, walking by my wild lone, with all places alike to me, till I met Harvey. I became used to love, it became familiar, and then I became good at love, and then I became Harvey's familiar.

Now there's no point in being good at love; now nothing seems familiar. There is no one else and nothing else for me to do but resign myself that this is my life. There's nothing in it but work and kids and tears and lather rinse repeat. All places are alike for me, but my rambling days are over.

I have loved one man as well as I could. We had the happily part of it. I have written the book I promised that man I'd write. I wanted to see him hold it, and I wanted him to be proud of me. I wanted the ever after part. Now there's the aftermath, after 23 years, a calculus of misery.

All places are alike to me, as the Cat says, and all places are miserable. I have tried as long as I can to put a good face on grief--well, not an excellent face, but at least not a tear-streaked miserable one--but I cannot stand it any more. I am crying more and more and feeling more and more, and doing less and less.

Being the outsider, the caterwauling cat, the one who's still alive, is so hard. I think it might be too hard for me. I continue to mourn, to eat my heart out. Crane's poem tells us, "Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart," and I have chewed on it long enough.

At my age, there's no chance of falling in love again, and I don't want anything else. I want nostos, I want domos, I want my fucking husband back. I don't want someone else's husband. I don't want someone else's life. I want those 23 years back. I want someone to smile at me when I walk in the door. I want to feel my heart beat just a little faster when I hear footsteps on the stairs.

I don't want work. I don't want books. I don't want a cat or a car or a new pair of cowboy boots. I don't want platitudes from my church about how widows are to be honored, I don't want compliments from my friends at work telling me that I'm still pretty and why I don't have a date they cannot understand, I don't want my parents telling me to buck up, to keep my chin up, pay my taxes, clean my house and stop crying about how lonely I am, and write a novel not those stupid poems because money is the most important thing and we have taught you nothing if you believe in words instead of numbers.

I want, one time more, to see Harvey, the way he was the last time I saw him, when he said at Sewanee, Pamela, be fearless. You can do this. Those were words that for two days, I believed. Or I believed that he believed. And then Cherie Peters is putting her arms around me and telling me, "Dear, your husband is dead."

Once upon a time I thought I could learn to love, to feel what others felt, to have a home. And I came in from the Wet Wild Roofs and I sat by the fire, and I learned to purr and to sheath my claws and I learned that I had a person, that I was a person, that me myself I was good enough.

I don't believe that person I was exists any more. And I don't like the person I am now. I don't go out in the woods and ramble or up in the trees and look around, or up on the rooftops to read any more. This person has a house. This person is homeless. This person has a heart. This person is heartless.

Lather rinse repeat.

Thrifting and Riffing

Maybe Jesus didn't want Kurt Cobain for a Sunbeam, but I definitely had a come-to-Jesus moment when I saw this beauty.  This may be where the "S" for Superman came from--a 1930s mixer--or maybe it's otherwise. 

I also wanted more privacy in my bathroom, whilst letting in light, and here's what I found to fit:  Antique slag glass window!  There are eight more of these rectangle/squares in the winbdow.  Maybe I should move some of my milk glass in the bathroom.  

I also found a dollhouse roll-top desk to sit on my antique rolltop desk and a restrung Bakelite bracelet in turquoise.  Oh, yes, and three prints that I'll photograph tomorrow.

Reflections in a Tarnished Looking Glass

In the past ye

During the past year, I've done the following: 

• Wrote a book, Cleave, that won the Trio Award and came out in March 2018;  
• Started a novel after writing short stories for Dale Ray Phillips' Forms of Fiction class; 
• Assembled a chapbook, Backtalk, that's currently making the rounds; 
• Reroofed my Queen Anne and started trying to repair the damage left by raccoons; 
• Adopted Rhett the Wonder Cat, AKA The Baby, who came from Ohio on a Best Buy truck.

That's pretty much it for last year. I went to Florida for the first time, for AWP, to read poems. I was in my first-ever art show, Wildfire Gold. I had my heart broken for the umpteenth time since Harv died.

RESOLUTIONS: I think it makes much more sense to make resolutions during your birth month than it does during the year change-out.  Here are mine.

• Listen better.
• Pray more. 
• Write more gratitude journal lists. 
• Exercise more. 
• Fit into my size 10 college Levis or throw them the hell away.  Currently they reside in my hope chest (as in hope I can wear these and still eat orange Hostess cupcakes by the carton).

Curve

Amy Devlin, oil on canvas

My life is a series of curves, more than a protractor can handle, more than my 1969 Matchbox car rally track had, more than the Ziegfield Follies boasted when my great-grandmother was a dancer there.  

It's a Start

“But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.”




Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

Not all the birds fly away, right away.

(See what I did there, Beatles fans?)

WORLD WIDE WORDS #752

View-Master, 1939 World's Fair Model

1. Transaction ::  Analysis


2. Green :: Sleeves 


3. Let’s roll ::  Mardi Gras (laissez les bon temps) 


4. Corporation ::  Greed


5. View ::  Master


6. Help ::  Me, Rhonda 


7. Massive ::  Monolithic


8. Format ::  Paper


9. Wife :: Widow


10. Screen ::  Japanese
    
    I always loved these "World Wide Words" and forget why I stopped pairing them. I loved View-Masters, too, with their clickclicketyclick worlds and captions.  I wonder if I could write a real poem about the View-Master and its reels, seven photos in pairs (a fortnight compressed), a stereoscope for the post-flapper age (1939 World's Fair, I believe).  An old View-Master may have been the first piece of Bakelite I ever held. 

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"Cirque d'Hiver": Bishop and Vogue

"Vogue" Ballerina on Horse Statue at The Condé Nast Store

Is there a link between this photograph and Bishop's poem? The photograph was published in the December 15, 1937 issue of Vogue. Bishop's "Cirque d'Hiver" was published in the New Yorker on January 27, 1940.

 I have a mind of winter, am interested in the dressage of formal poetry, and sometimes feel the big tin key that runs through me, as well. Anagrams/synonyms of pamela--am pale/I'm pale/impale.



Cirque D’Hiver - Elizabeth Bishop

Across the floor flits the mechanical toy,
fit for a king of several centuries back.
A little circus horse with real white hair.
His eyes are glossy black.
He bears a little dancer on his back.

She stands upon her toes and turns and turns.
A slanting spray of artificial roses
is stitched across her skirt and tinsel bodice.
Above her head she poses
another spray of artificial roses.

His mane and tail are straight from Chirico.
He has a formal, melancholy soul.
He feels her pink toes dangle toward his back
along the little pole
that pierces both her body and her soul

and goes through his, and reappears below,
under his belly, as a big tin key.
He canters three steps, then he makes a bow,
canters again, bows on one knee,
canters, then clicks and stops, and looks at me.

The dancer, by this time, has turned her back.
He is the more intelligent by far.
Facing each other rather desperately—
his eye is like a star—
we stare and say, “Well, we have come this far.”

AHR-TIK-YUH-LEY-SHUHN

Some notes on organic form with node and internode:

ARTICULATION:

noun
1.
an act or the process of articulating: the articulation of a form; the articulation of a new thought.

2.
Phonetics .
a.
the act or process of articulating speech.
b.
the adjustments and movements of speech organs involved in pronouncing a particular sound, taken as a whole.
c.
any one of these adjustments and movements.
d.
any speech sound, especially a consonant.

3.
the act of jointing.

4.
a jointed state or formation; a joint.

5.
Botany .
a.
a joint or place between two parts where separation may take place spontaneously, as at the point of attachment of a leaf.
b.
a node in a stem, or the space between two nodes.
___________

Q. If poetry is the act or process of form, thought, and sound, does the botanical idea of node and space between new nodes apply to stanzaic form?


A. It does to me. Stanzaic structure ought to be organic, but how? It depends on the organism...

__________

MEDUSA, Catrin Welz-Stein (one minute free write)

Poppy, poppy, peony, peony.

Shame, shame, oblivion, eternal sleep.

Book cover--all that pink for girls?  petals soft as areoles?  palest?  pale rhymes with fail, frail, bale (of a necklace, of hay), kale from the garden, Dale, Gale (as in Dorothy, as in her stormy path), hail (would shatter all those petals, pingpong), jail (monopoly, menarche--WTF?), mail/mail dichotomy, nail (with its moons, with its hammer), quail (bird, shiver in fever, in fear), rail/rale (a train, a cough, a rumble nonetheless), sail/stale/scale (practice notes, note your practice is beginning again), tale/trail/tail/they'll, vail/vale/veil, wail, azalea/Zales.

Medusa--MED USA (what a name for a lab service!), snakes, cameos, revenge, mirror, shield, dammit i hate perseus for killing her, harpy (Harpy Leigh instead of Harper Lee), beauty shamed and we are back to peonies

Cameo Appearance:  Here Carved

Medusa’s hair snakes, split ends
Wriggling, writhing. Imagine
It all as dissonance, that face
Uncovered in stone. Imagine
Medusa, her striking grace
Notes, these striking
Strokes on ivory. Imagine all these
Keys, all lost, that don’t fit,
Any locks but hers; imagine all this
Silence hanging heavy
As lava, before chisel eventually
Comes down, cleaving
Like a sword. Imagine it all as past:
No face, no glare, no splitting
Ends; imagine only her smooth back
Before she’s been transformed:
Hair falling, wrinkling into waves.
Imagine her only as stone.

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ONE WORD: Incense (010816)

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joss sticks the best smell was the scent of curry the afternoon you asked me to marry you in the cheap indian motel in downtown paducah where every room was redolent of the meal the owners were cooking and i said yes i will yes the incense of curry is still the most erotic smell i know and when i walk into the spice store in downtown chicago 28 years later whilst they are assembling curry powder for a customer i am flooded with you and i am incensed that you died and left me here with all this long-time longing and nothing in season cardamon coriander fenugreek chili turmeric weak knees and all that scent scent scent and I think of Louise Gluck and "Mock Orange" and I cry out

Here's a little free writing from the fabulous oneword.com site.  I have almost no time to write, but that's no excuse.  I have 60 seconds, every day, to post and to return to later.

The photo is by STAR NEWS ONLINE, which also has a recipe for making your own curry powder.

Juste à temps

from Poems for Blok, by Marina Tsvetaeva 

Your name is a—bird in my hand,
a piece of ice on my tongue.
The lips’ quick opening.
Your name—four letters.
A ball caught in flight,
a silver bell in my mouth.

A stone thrown into a silent lake
is—the sound of your name.
The light click of hooves at night
—your name.
Your name at my temple
—sharp click of a cocked gun.

Your name—impossible—
kiss on my eyes,
the chill of closed eyelids.
Your name—a kiss of snow.
Blue gulp of icy spring water.
With your name—sleep deepens.

_____

I adored your eyes, your ears, your nose, your neck, your name; I'd repeat it like a litany, like a rosary, like a spell; I'd spell it out; and then it became merely a four-letter word, like poem, like love, like time, like past. It was past time for me to be your pastime, so I thought of other four-letter words:  rift, left, gone.   And I went.

Now your name's a cliche: Once upon a time, there was a boy...and it ends with And she escaped in the nick of time, from the Nick with whom she spent time, and she lived, not happily, but through it.

Noun: a strike-through.

Verb, to steal, purloin.

Noun, a small edit.

Verb, to make a little cut, or scar. .

Redacted.

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REMEMBERING YOU THROUGH LEONARD NIMOY

I miss the decades of conversation and coffee, in cafes and on couches, learning about cartoons and cartography, catasterism and Caravaggio. I miss writing while you sketched. I miss your grin when you'd read something you liked. I miss reading in bed with you, knowing that your book and my book usually ended on the floor, while we'd debate the merits of Bugs versus Daffy, Tom versus Jerry, The Lord of The Rings versus Narnia, Star Wars versus Star Trek, which boiled down to Solo versus Spock. 


I wonder what you'd say about my favorite spaceman, whose death made me cry a little bit. I once never cried. In fact, you always teased me that I was part Vulcan. I can do the eyebrow. I can do the finger-spread greeting. I even have a Vulcan death grip when there's something I want at a thrift store or an auction.


I used to joke how "Live long and prosper" was a better end to the wedding vows than "till death do us part. I didn't realize there was a comma, because for the last 4 years, 7 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, it's been live, long, and prosper. 


I'm still living. I'm still missing you. And I know I'm richer for having known you.





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