actual nuthouse

Headache After a Long Night

2007-05-08T04:41:00.000-07:00

Well, friends, whoever is out there, George W. Bush and Condi and I hashed it out
over Camel No. 9's in the pink pack and Dead Guy Ales. Turns out the big terrorists
are not Osama bin Laden et al but instead it was an inside job--inside America, that
is. The Masterminds of the 9/11 and 3/11 attacks as well as Pan Am Flight 103,
for anyone that is interested, is a couple that includes my high school buddy
Nancy Jo Sales (see www.nancyjosales.com) and her husband Frank Morales
and their adopted son, who shot a few people at VA Tech a few weeks ago.
Nancy and Alex (his real name) intended to kill the Pope and Jesus Christ among
other targets. Mr. Bush assured me that the website with Nancy's "Rosebuds"
blog is under FBI surveillance and a warrant has been issued for the arrest
of Nancy Jo Sales (BA Yale University 1986, summa cum laude, MFA Columbia U.)
and her husband Alexander McCullough, who had his name legally changed
to Frank Morales after the couple's long bitter divorce between 1992 and 1994.
George W. Bush will not slide back into alcoholism because of last night's "slip"--
he decided it would be better to sip Dead Guy Ale than be a dead guy.
There was a plot against his life as well.

The ramifications of all this are huge, of course. Number One is that George
Bush, President of the USA, has authorized me, Harriet O. Leach, acting
CIA director, that the troops will begin returning home from Iraq and
Afghanistan on 25 May of THIS YEAR. I had demanded that they start
returning TODAY and some military personnel will be shipping home
today. IRAQ IS NOT TO BLAME, OSAMA IS MUHAMMAD
HE IS OUR FRIEND. SADDAM SHOULD NOT HAVE DIED.
HE WAS MY HUSBAND AND I LOVED HIM. MY NAME SHALL
HENCEFORTH BE HARRIET HUSSEIN, AS I NAMED MYSELF
1) 21 SEPTEMBER 1996 IN PRIVATE 2) 28 DECEMBER 2006
IN PUBLIC.

George W. Bush, the jolly rancher, is a rock 'n roll singer, who goes by
the name Don Henley, if that means anything to anybody. He has been
in love with me at least since I was 13. I refuse his hand in marriage,
because he killed Saddam, and because I am happy with Rae.
On the other hand, if the Celtic ring I wear yokes me to George forever,
I will say I do. For I am heterosexual, through and through.

I am also gay. Does that seem strange? Who's not gay? I'm sorry if they're not.
I'm sorry for anyone who is not gay. Gay marriage? Laura Bush says, well, OK.
After all, she has lesbian feelings for Harriet, which she has written in her
private diary.

Now, another thing I have been authorized to announce to the small group of
friends who may occasionally glance at the blog, is that Condi is running for
President in 2008 and I've agreed to be her running mate.

I'm not 43 but 45 years old. I was born 13 August, 1961, with my sister Karin
at a hospital in East Berlin.

I'M THE MOTHER-FUCKING BERLIN WALL AND I AM NEVER GONNA FALL
with love,
jc.

diary of a control freak

2006-12-06T16:34:00.000-08:00

OK, so I got my way, I made my blog private, at least temporarily, as an experiment.

I was becoming anxious and feeling out of control which is a typical way for a control freak to feel; this sort of feeling is what makes the freak a freak.

Another reason I'm a freak today is that it's not a good day: Tasso ran away again, and though he came back the last time, I just have a bad feeling, but maybe that's because I'm in a bad mood anyway.

I've got a killer headache. I didn't want to stay until the end of Tai Chi.

I'm feeling grouchy because Baba, the teacher, seems to go out of his way to ignore me. He spoke to me once when I first met him, admired my turtle necklace, then from that point on avoided eye contact.

Is there something wrong with me?

No comment from the peanut gallery.

I've had Tasso more than a quarter of my life. Maybe that's not all that long, but it feels like a while. I think it's pretty obvious why he took off; 2 new kittens have been tested for kitty leukemia and kitty aids and vaccinated for everything under the sun, but we didn't take Tasso in for his annual stuff even though he's due. OK, so he's a cat, and he doesn't know all that stuff. But could the actual meowing playful presence of the kittens have given him a clue??? Funny, though, he could have gotten jealous when we had a friend staying here with two cats--he didn't take off then. Why do I think my cat is smart???

Have any of you ever thought cats could be or contain spirits of the departed? OK, did I ask the question earlier: is something wrong with me??? Well, I have had this thought. To take out a mental inquest warrant, all you have to do is go down to the courthouse...

So Tasso has reminded me of my grandfather. That's one reason I haven't worried about him too much. I think if he's got the spunk to come back into my life as my skinny gray tom, he can pretty much take care of himself. If he wants to come back, he will; if it's time to move on, I should get over all the sad sentimental stuff.

I wonder if I can post another photo of the boy. OK, it published to the top of the blog, I guess that's alright.

Yeah, I worry anyway. It is cold, rumors of snow tomorrow.

I should go look in on the kittens. I have felt less enthusiastic about them since it feels like they have chased my guy away. Little Bit, i.e. Mehitabel,

is trying to get through the door from upstairs. Blank (our houseguest) had two cats here for months who were never clever enough to get through that door.

My friend S. says Tasso will be back. He may be. I don't know, I'm sorry.

I need to get back to my spiritual roots, being OK with not knowing things. Knowing I don't know and not needing to know. That's a much less anxious way to be, and being less anxious is a whole lot more comfortable.

Whom does anxiety benefit???

I think I better put a couple more pictures of Tasso on the blog.

I think his attitude shows in the photos. Tasso is definitely a cat with attitude.

I feel so much better not talking about politics. A friend told me I should not erase my blog because it's in some way good to be a "blue" presence on the Internet. I don't think of myself as "blue" necessarily. I don't like the whole red and blue thing, actually. I never have really liked Us and Them. When Tom Robbins talks about Angels and Cowboys, that makes a little more sense to me. I don't know if he talks about that in any of his books but the one about Invalids in Hot Climates.

I mean, when I became enlightened (I'm not going to put that in quotes as if I didn't really mean it) I then saw the world as being comprised of the enlightened and the goats. But then later I heard that when you're enlightened everyone is a goat. Or is it a sheep???

All this just goes to show there's a lot of value in dividing the world into

two groups.

The well and the ill??? Buzzer.

I don't know who I'm fooling if I'm thinking more people will read my blog now that I'm opening it to fewer people. I don't know what my problem is; I started out wanting to be published, appearing in print for the first time at age five, then involving myself in as much journalism as possible through high school, trying to publish first stories then poems.

All along I had a secret ambition to be a newspaper columnist. I never lifted a finger in that direction, though.

Blogging was a little along those lines. But I have discovered there's a dizzy feeling about blogging that I don't like. I'm much less interested in being famous than I used to be, less interested in being notorious. Though there's of course a difference between the two, I think there's a lot of overlap. Here's my poem about fame and notoriety:

The Icon Who Doesn’t Watch Herself

One day out of life, celebrate like mad.
Cross the borderline and cherish love.
Will I ever get past all the hairstyles
and the colors, and one appearance on Letterman
with fishnet stockings and combat boots,
another all obsessed with riding horses?
I’ve had a typical love/hate with Madonna,
though perhaps less typically, I’ve had dreams
that she and I were sisters, which in waking
seemed repugnant or attractive, depending.
No, let’s not call me sane: my last warrant read
“She said she and Madonna could only be
separated by death.” Yeah, I heard her voice
coming from my fingernail, as if it dwelt there.
Once while on a flight of fancy I grabbed
a grunge band’s microphone and sang
“I Shall Be Released,” saying Madonna wrote it,
and I said I was Madonna, in my white
wing tip shoes, with a new haircut.
Another time I was Madonna in a locked
isolation room at the State Hospital.
Then Madonna, wanting me to change
my hair, was my blonde silly roommate.
I got out on a pass and saw Madonna
at the bar at the Mexican place down the
street from me. I went down to the
kitchen, and I was Madonna, tasting
bits of cheddar cheese from fresh-made
enchiladas. But people didn’t seem
to understand. I could dance like mad
when I was mad, and now that I am not,
I really do not give a damn about
Madonna. I don’t like the curled wings
she had in her hair on Ellen, or the smug
look on her face. Now don’t get me wrong
I wish her all the best, but I’ll take
anonymity, and she can have her notoriety.

What will I do with a blog that is only for my friends? Why is it any better than communicating with each of you privately by e-mail? What is better about it than keeping a private journal or diary? In what way is it better to write here than to write new poems?

If none of you comment, will I become discouraged and mopey? Yes, I can guarantee that. But all of you have busy lives, and to read this blog you will have to sign in, an extra thirty seconds or so, which is the new hour.

Yes, thirty seconds is the new hour.

It's probably more correct to say thirty seconds is the new week.

Like they say that in the development of girl children, 10 is the new 15. But that's something else.

I do think that knowing the whole world does not have access to this blog will eventually give me more courage, but then again I'm a contradictory person because I do outlandishly courageous things and then I second-guess myself. I guarantee I've published blog entries that would sizzle Satan's socks... or something like that, but then I've erased them the next morning. Speaking of sizzling socks, I'm going to publish the poem I wrote for the exercise in ekphrasis at the Spalding residency:

The Farmer’s Curst Wife
after a painting by Daniel Dutton
21 C, Louisville KY

Is the tunnel of internal screams
merely an eternal surgery—
hopeless, painful try at exorcising
life’s burning thread?
Hell, the theme park, hurls fire
down its own black throat, the moods
the coaster knows available
to all who have abandoned hope.

I watch from what I hope is
a safe distance, as,
approaching an auxiliary entrance,
a demon hoists
the farmer’s gray and gruesome wife
on his hot shoulders;
she’s waving a baseball bat
at no one in particular
or maybe at the farmer
who finally shot her.

Another scarlet sprite
sits at the ticket window.
Who would pay to enter here?
Apparently the ghost crowd
all dressed in see-through
knows not what
horror
awaits on the
hell-rides.

So now I’ve paid my way inside
for the small admission price:
my life.
How about hell’s midway?
Can I win a sizzling prize?
I hurl softballs made of
red hot coals
into a choice of
fiery eye-holes.

All I am is on the line:
if I cause enough explosion
I will win the devil as a
plush toy,
wearing flannel, striped pajamas;
if I miss the mark, I’ll get
his sulfur breath,
and lava bed to share—
devil may care.

I'm sure my choice of artwork to write about says something about me,

even if the poem itself is pretty much a joke (I entered it in the Literary Leo "bad poetry" category).

Jokes about hell have been part of my vocabulary since I was ten and my babysitter got me drunk. If you came to my graduation reading you heard me read the following poem which is about this experience:

i. alison

Babysitter, sponsor of my fantasy and shame,
you, who taught me the compelling game
of pouring poison on my ten-year-old brain,
you’re a trace, a scratch, I go obsessively back
to the scar, to learn, to try to change it, but
it’s too late. Abstinence, medicine --- nothing helps.
The sober path will always be the road not taken.
You with your long hair tucked into your Mexican poncho
always looked British and sick, but I tried to be
like you, copied your handwriting, lowered my voice.
Soon enough I smoked. I was cynical, caught
in a Princeton drop-out’s vivid dreams of hell.
You taught me it was thrilling to be bad;
for years, being bad was all I had.

So this is turning out to be kind of like a form letter mailed out to all my friends at Christmas, something I have always vividly disliked. Is it simply pathetic not to have the "guts" to publish my blog for the whole world???

I have really been seriously stressing out about the blog lately. I mean it has given me headaches, for real. So if I'm a coward, at least my headache is gone for the time being.

While in reality every day is concerned with life/death questions, it is fortunate for most of us that we don't think that way all the time. But my blog had become entwined with ultimate concerns.

I'm going to stop writing this now. Please say a prayer that Tasso will come home. Thank you for reading this--I mean it, I know that the minutes it has taken to slog through it are the new hours.

Peace and love to all,

---h.

graduation photos part four

2006-11-19T19:10:00.000-08:00

2006-11-19T15:30:00.000-08:00

graduation photos part two

2006-11-19T12:53:00.000-08:00

graduation photos part one

2006-11-19T10:20:00.000-08:00

Acceptance is the key

2006-10-06T20:21:00.000-07:00

God grant me the serenity...

What do I know, anyway???

So tonight it's all about Buddy the Cat, who wants to climb down into the hole in the floor and do whatever secret kitty-kat things kitty-kats do in holes in the floor (three guesses).

Have I lost the ability to

string ten or twelve jokes together in a poor imitation of a bad comic???
forget about the purple elephant in my living room???
focus exclusively on myself to the extent that the NEWS is a matter of complete indifference???
apologize to my friends for apologizing for my most recent apology???
differentiate between myself and that Greek guy with the beard who called himself a gadfly???
blog about poetry???

Oh yeah, once upon a time these blogs were to be about poetry. I remember writing about Dickinson and Plath. Those were the good old days. What's different now???

---Harriet

Saturday in the Park

2006-09-09T11:34:00.000-07:00

Wilfred Owen, known to some as the "greatest war poet in the English language," said among other things two things I will quote.

I hate washy pacificsts (October 1917)

and

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
..................................................................................
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
to children ardent for some desperate glory
The old lie: dulce et decorum est
pro patria morire

---from "Dulce et Decorum Est"

Many Europeans, and the Japanese, and others, have
come to a place where pacifism seems to be the only thing that makes sense. The Germans and the Japanese, our former implacable enemies, are now both committed to the attempt at non-violent conflict resolution whenever conflict occurs. The following comes from a blog called Mid East Web Gateway; it is written by someone who calls him or herself a European who has lived in Israel and Lebanon.

The following has decided to shout in a huge font, I don't know why. It wasn't my choice.

I see two peoples, having lived side by side for so many decades and yet being ignorant of one another. How many Israeli civilians have experienced the charm of downtown Beirut, its busy streets and the joyful bustle at the beach, young people, yearning for life after so many years of destructive war? And how many Lebanese can imagine the sparkling life of the Tel Aviv promenade at a mild summer night? -- I see two peoples, both longing for peace, stuck together like the two sides of a coin, and yet -- complete strangers, deprived of the slightest glimpse of one another. What the Lebanese really know about Israel is air planes, tanks, devastation. And for many Israelis their picture of Lebanon is that of yes, a beautiful country, but inhabited by fanatic, Katyusha-launching Jihadists wearing explosive belts. It seems to be true that the behavior of humans is influenced not so much by reality as it is, as by their image of it. Disputes between nations are somehow a war of shadows; each side fights the image of his rival, the way he pictures him. As long as the enemy doesn�t have a face, a voice, a smile, he is not human and his death does not mean anything to me. "Terrorist" has become such a convenient term.

I don't know the name of the author of the blog. Blows my mind how easy it would be to plagiarize or steal people's ideas.

At the beginning of the Bhavagad Gita two armies are about to clash and one of the would-be fighters gets all upset thinking about how kinsmen will be fighting and killing kinsmen, etc. etc.
so just knowing your enemy isn't enough to insure you won't blow him away. But it does seem that Arab and Jew have a willful ignorance about each other. Then there are certain facts about Islam, and facts about Judaism that are found to be off-putting to the other side. Jews can't fathom why Muslim women would want to be so "oppressed," and Muslims have trouble with the Jewish claim to chosenness. Just to name one example on each side. There's a long long list of reasons why Arabs and Jews can't hit it off.

However there is no reason or set of reasons to give up on the pursuit of peaceful resolution.
Just because I become irritated about some minor detail of my daily living, just because I can make a list of reasons I am not Perfectly Happy, there is no one reason or set of reasons why I should abandon the quest for inner peace and harmonious relations with my fellows.

The fact that bloody nd destructive wars can be fought in this century may indicate that humans have not evolved. Or it may indicate that there will always be humans who were born to fight and die or at least fight and possibly earn great honors--too bad about the PTSD that afflicts some--they simply don't have strong constitutions.

Everything I'm saying has been said by so many in so many ways since humans developed language. However, I don't subscribe to the "war is inevitable" camp. I think the Germans and the Japanese are more evolved than we are, or maybe they've just been through too darn much to want to put the killing machine into action again which would mean to become a victim as well. Why do some people say wars cannot be won? Some people will say wherever there's a loser there's no winner. Only one state, Rhode Island, used to celebrate V-J, or Victory Over Japan Day. Yeah, we stopped that war, but we didn't get away without feeling a little guilty. It is not a victory we can gloat over.

Weapons are the tools of violence
all decent men detest them

Weapons are the tools of fear
a decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint
Peace is his highest value
If the peace has been shattered
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons
but human beings like himself
He doesn't wish them personal harm
Nor does her rejoice in victory
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?

He enters a battle gravely
with sorrow and with great compassion
as if he were attending a funeral.

---from the Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation

Can anyone read such an ancient text and get away without feeling a little
humility???

---Harriet

Dylan and Lee, Two Important Voices

2006-09-04T10:58:00.000-07:00

I'm listening to a blues tribute to Dylan, not new, having just read Rolling Stone's feature article on the new album, Modern Times. I may veer close to believing Dylan is our most important musician, rather than erring on tbe side of "one of the most important." There are many who have characterized him as a "jerk" or even an "asshole." And the hoardes of friends and relatives who won't listen to him because of his voice; well, I just think about David Bowie's description of his voice as "sandpaper and glue," and I'm OK with it. Now, I can't hang with Tom Waits--his voice sounds to me like an unhealthy automobile engine. They say Waits is a great lyricist like Dylan, but I can't listen so I don't know.

It's Labor Day and I ain't workin' on Maggie's farm. I've got a box of Parmesan and Garlic Cheez-its and a glass of cherry juice, my new diet. If you haven't seen Spike Lee's documentary on Katrina, it's required viewing for everybody. Right now you get it on demand from HBO, but it will most likely be shown again and come out for purchase or rental on DVDs. Yeah, it's four hours long and that's a lot to devote to tube-gawking on one evening.

I want to hurl these Cheez-its out the window.

---Harriet.

2006-09-03T21:59:00.000-07:00

I'm too tired to do anything but post pictures. The blonde in the photo with little Andrew will be p-o-ed that I posted her photo but I don't think it's too bad. Little Andrew will be one and a half in less than a month.

I think I must have lost my audience after not posting anything in however long. Thank you for reading this if that's what you're doing. Join me in waving farewell to Mr. Agassi, who lost today to Benjamin Becker.

---Harriet.

tennis and freedom

2006-08-31T21:13:00.000-07:00

The blogger emerges from--where??? the paddock? the pasture? the laboratory? Or was she sitting on the couch waiting to get these shots of the TV set???

It''s way past midnight and the turtle on top of the monitor is looking saggy though he's a beanie turtle.

What an awesome tennis match!!! The first one I've watched, I should add, in at least a decade. I was thinking, this match is so incredible, was tennis always like this??? So I was relieved to hear John McEnroe say
it was one of the best matches he'd ever seen. I mean,
the thing was teetering on the brink of disaster, with Baghdatis cramping up and Agassi hopping around.
If there had been ONE more deuce, I think one or the other of both of these tennis players would have
just keeled over.

All you losers who didn't watch this particular US Open match are just that, losers. See, I'm such an occasional sports fan that I win the right to make a huge stink about evey sports event I see.

---Harriet.

T'ai Chi and patriotism

2006-07-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

The man in the picture is holding a ball, a beach ball, I would guess, or maybe a big golden orb made out of nerf material (does anyone remember nerf balls?). If you look to the man's right (left side of the photo) you will see the woman behind him is holding a much smaller ball.

As for myself, I have dropped the ball. It was too much trying to concentrate on it and type at the same time.

Outside is a thunderstorm and here in this blog entry is a question: have you meditated lately on what patriotism is all about??? I mean today is the Fourth and it would be a good say for such a meditation. You can ask yourself the question:
so you support EVERYTHING your country does? Is it necessary to give your country blanket permission to do whatever it feels it needs to do in order to think of yourself, to be thought of, as a patriot???

Here are some quotations from the recently deceased patriot William Sloane Coffin:

Christians forget that it was the Devil who tempted Jesus with unbounded wealth and power. And it is the Devil in every American that makes us feel good about being so powerful.

When there's doubt, there's more considered faith. Likewise, when citizens doubt, patriotism
becomes more informed.

It's wonderful to love one's country, but faith is for God. National unity too is wonderful--but
not in cruelty and folly.

The other day I read words of Alexander Hamilton more pertinent perhaps to our time than
to his: "To be more safe the nations at length become willing to run the risk of being less free."
Today our danger may lie in becoming more concerned with defense than with having things
worth defending.

How do you love America? Don't say, "My country, right or wrong." That's like saying, "My grandmother, drunk or sober;" it doesn't get you anywhere. Don't just salute the flag, don't burn it either. Wash it. Make it clean.

There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad ones are the uincritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover's quarrel with their country, a reflection of God's lover's quarrel with all the world.

The United States doesn't have to lead the world; it has first to join it. Then, with greater humility, it can play a wiser leadership role.

No further comment.
---Harriet.

T'ai Chi and idiocy

2006-07-03T20:04:00.000-07:00

The photo is not of me. It was a T'ai Chi demonstration at the ribbon-cutting ceremony
for the new Health Equity building.

I am already feeling like the village idiot again, one reason I stopped doing the blog thing.

I can give lessons in idiocy to anyone who needs them. At a cost of merely $99.99 per CD/DVD
set, YOU can experience:
Lesson number one: how to get fat.
Lesson number two: how to write bad poetry.
Lesson number three: how to lose friends.

I'm going to post a poem which is an answer to all the poems I posted yesterday. Note that it's a villanelle, a rather bland one, but it follows the rules.

The Poet Judges Herself

I’m a girl who needs to be ashamed
for writing down exactly what I feel.
I am the poet who deserves the blame.

Accuse me: I think writing is a game.
I am a bad exploiter of what’s real.
I’m a girl who needs to be ashamed.

At this rate I will not win cash or fame.
With what kind of demons do I deal?
I am the poet who deserves the blame.

In my quest to be concrete I’ve named
details that I had no right to steal.
I am a girl who needs to be ashamed.

Caesar said he conquered; I just came
and saw and lacked respect to pray, to kneel.
I am the poet who deserves the blame.

It’s not a case of someone being framed.
I really eat the truth at every meal.
I am a girl who needs to be ashamed.
I am the poet who deserves the blame.

---Harriet.

Derby Day

2006-05-06T16:44:00.000-07:00

This was the closest thing I could find to a photo of a horse in my own photo archive. Someday
I will learn how to take photos from anywhere on the Web. Would be interesting if the Derby
were run by elephants.

Since moving to Louisville 16 years ago, I blush to admit that I have not missed a single Derby, though one year I caught it on the radio. My friend S. was talking as cynically as you could imagine about the Derby today, but what was on her TV when I called her back around five pm?

I had a friend who told me she would NEVER EVER come to Louisville and I have tried to figure out if that was because she disapproved of racing horses or because of the chemicals and other unpleasant stuff in the air.

Anyway, now it's time for me to gloat about how I picked the second place finisher, Bluegrass
Cat. My pick for first, Steppenwolfer, came in third. None of which matters of course because I didn't bet. My dad's horse came in twelth.

Everyone in the house is now asleep--feline, canine, and human. It's a time when I can be alone with myself and give myself hell about my uncritical enjoyment of horse racing. Unpleasant as this may sound, I enjoy certain traditions--enjoyed graduating in the bicentennial class from my high school, enjoy Thankgiving and Christmas, and enjoy the Kentucky Derby. That sounds just too pink and fuzzy for words.

We're responsible for more than just our actions--we're responsible for our thoughts and feelings too--many believe. So I can't argue that it's Not My Fault that I watch the Derby on TV every year, that I get excited about it (even if I haven't heard of most of the horses until I see them heading down the track to the starting gate). I can't say: "Well, I moved to Louisville and they crammed this horseracing thing down my throat and told me to swallow--at gunpoint."

My first Derby was also the first time someone forced me to eat venison--it was my dad,
and I don't blame him, but I pray at least once a day that I never have to eat venison again to avoid hurting someone's feelings (see how I play the Victim???).

I can't think of a better way to close anymore than to just say I don't want to keep on typing.

---Harriet

Pegasus Parade

2006-05-04T14:26:00.000-07:00

Today is the annual lemming race through our neighborhood to Broadway for the second unignorable pre-Derby event, the first being "Thunder over Louisville," an enormous fireworks display preceded by the afternoon's completely obnoxious Air Show--I believe these delights take place two weeks before Derby; now we're counting down; maybe some of you out-of-towners are aware the Derby itself is always on the first Saturday in May. I am completely clueless about the horses, which is unusual for me--I do know my dad's favorite is Lawyer Ron, and that the overall favorite is Brother Derek.

In other news, i just fished drosophila out of my iced tea. I'm a bit weirded out at myself, as I return to blogging and observe that I followed a political blog entry rapidly with a religious blog entry. There are those who are of the opinion "you should never discuss politics or religion" but that's at parties. This is SO not a party... I mean, I feel less than partyish today, as the day began with the discovery of the door standing open and my tomcat gone and pornography all over my computer, along with viruses. Who was the architect of this situation? not someone who I feel good about right now, though I'm not going to publish his name. And do you know that after I confronted him about it, and he slunk off, he came back five minutes later asking for cigarette money???

I'm sorry if I've offended anyone with my politics or religion, neither of which have been well-handled in my impulsive whalish verbal spoutings--there, that's a mouthful. Now, I've got stop typing.

---Harriet.

Easter Prayer

2006-04-16T11:45:00.000-07:00

This is what I looked like in my Easter hat today. I'm going to try to make it double as a Derby hat.

It's a gorgeous day, thunderstorms promised later. Do we have God to thank for what my mom calls "crisis" weather, or "just" Mother Nature? Whoever is responsible, I don't blame them, because we humans have been arrogant and greedy. Jesus still loves us, though. Right???

I am praying to the Higher Power of my understanding today, because it seems like I'm not in charge of the world, which is too bad, because I can think of at least a few dozen things I would change if I could. I can't, so I have to trust. Why do I have to trust? Because if I don't I'll go nuts. I'm already nuts, the reader will argue. Point well taken.

I am not simply praying for a whole list of things to be or to turn out the way I want them to. Prayers of petition are not fashionable; apparently some study has shown that sick people who are prayed for don't recover any better than people who are not (never mind that another study showed the opposite). Maybe I'm not, at this exact moment, praying at all, I'm just saying I am. Not that I'm the sort of person who doesn't pray, because I'm not. It's just questionable to be talking to an audience saying "I'm praying this, I'm praying that." I am guessing God might find this a bit indirect.

It's not that I'm embarrassed about my faith. Since I was raised an atheist and exposed to the diatribes of some of the most fervent atheists imaginable (such as students at the U. of Chicago Divinity School), my personal discovery of God is something I can't be easily talked out of; whatever your arguments are, I've heard them.

If you call yourself a believer, I don't think that's enough to justify anti-social behavior. A personal relationship with God is fine, but while we all have the vertical in our lives, there is also the horizontal--our relations with our fellow humans. I think anyone can go off to a closet to pray and come out and say "God told me to do this." I've been nuts enough to know you can say God told you but that doesn't mean God did. That may sound cynical but I think it's rational.

It's time for another vacation from blogging. Enjoy.

---Harriet.

The evil music junkie speaks

2006-04-12T21:26:00.000-07:00

This is a photo of part of my mom's CD collection. It's all classical, except a couple of soundtracks I bought her: Chicago, The Phantom of the Opera. I don't have a photo of my CD collection.

You could say music-acquisitiveness is in the blood, only very few of my CDs are classical and those that are are the dustiest.

I want to recommend each of the three CDs that have entered my collection within the past 24 hours. I think I'm listening to a guy named James Blunt, a CD called Back to Bedlam which is very close to one of Anne Sexton's book titles. He has kind of a studied, polished, semi-effeminate voice which is compared to David Gray and Damien Rice, a couple of guys you'll hear on local WFPK--the "ecclectic" music station.

The other two CDs leapt into my hands when I entered Underground Sounds questing after the Moody Blues because I had "Nights in White Satin" playing in my head all day. Well, they didn't have any Moody Blues, but they did have the latest Morrissey CD and the debut of a group called The Magic Numbers. You see, I was good, I stayed in the M's.

Morrissey is someone you either like or don't. I was a Smiths fan in the 80's, and hung on for the solo career, even though I could objectively tell myself that the insistence on a kind of dark melancholy outlook could potentially get old, though Mr. Morrissey himself doesn't seem to tire of it. In case you don't know, he's a proselytizing vegetarian, first famous for the song "Meat is Murder." My first favorite Smiths song was "How Soon is Now" which was played often in the Providence clubs in the mid '80s. We would emerge from a night of dancing singing the lyrics:

I am human and I need to belong, just like everyone else does.

Funny, but those lyrics still seem relevant today. I don't have as much to say about the Magic Numbers, have only heard the CD once, and I can make the profound statement that it sounded good. I read a review which compared the group to My Morning Jacket, my favorite Louisville group.

I am human and I need to belong, just like everyone else does.

Oh, did I repeat myself or something???

---Harriet.

Trying to be green

2006-04-11T21:52:00.000-07:00

I read that Queen Elizabeth asked Tony Blair to talk to Mr. Bush about his assinine position on the climate crisis.

I am wondering when I'll get unstuck from the assinine idea that it's better to see both sides or every side of an issue than to cling desperately to one position. In other words, when will I grow up and be able to distinguish right from wrong.

Global warming is as real as--well, if you entertain on the one hand the idea that the material world is real, on the other hand--oh, screw the one hand and other hand way of thinking, never mind that it was taught by my favorite professor in college. I would drive a Prius if I could get one with my checking account balance. I could barely buy a used bicycle with my current checking account balance.

No, man, global warming is real, I don't have to be a liberal to know it. I am not going to be a sucker for the denial and obfuscation of the Bush administration. Now, I read that high speed Internet screws up the mating rituals of squirrels. Never mind that the article that reported this appeared on April Fools Day.

Realizing that you can't do everything frees you up to do something. OK, great, but how do you choose the something you're going to do??? I know that eating beef makes the rainforest situation worse because one reason for cutting the forest down is to make grazing land for cattle to make into hamburgers for all our fast food chains. I was slipping up and eating a little beef. Just like I was slipping up and puffing on a few cigarettes. The point is not that we're damned for a little slipping up, the point is WHEN YOU KNOW WHAT'S RIGHT, YOU SHOULD DO IT. None of us should be eating cows or pigs. If we each allowed the epiphanies to happen, as Mary Tyler Moore did, the world would be well-fed and there would be less heart disease and cancer.

The thing is, it doesn't fly to say well I'm just one person and my solitary habits aren't going to make much difference. It is actually worthwhile to do ALL the right things you can think of to do, and this is the best anyone can do; if everyone did, we would change the world, as my ex-boyfriend Charlie used to say (I have a sweatshirt he made, which says: CHANGE THE WORLD, RESPECT EVERYONE).

I know none of this is new or unique, but the thing is, as Al Gore says in a Vanity Fair article, there are times when cliches bear repeating ad nauseum. We're in a fucking crisis, and saying you're going to start making changes tomorrow, tomorrow--well, granted, some changes are easier than others. Like getting that hybrid; it won't even park itself in my driveway tomorrow, I'd say unless I win the lottery but you know, I don't buy tickets.

---Harriet.

On Defensiveness and Forgiveness

2006-04-10T19:05:00.000-07:00

The first thing I want to say is, thank God for true friends. I received a response (privately) to my blog today which made my day and threw light on what's really at stake--why I do what I do in my art and in my life.

Perhaps it would have been a good idea to keep a low profile, given the nature of my reality. In what sense would it have been a good idea? There have always been people who have become incensed with poetry about mental illness because some of it seems to romanticize conditions which can be very painful for the relatives and friends of those who are mentally ill. I began writing poetry after reading Robert Lowell. I had not felt, prior to the discovery of Lowell, that poetry was a venue for me; I didn't think I could use it to say anything I wanted or needed to say. Lowell has been roasted for half a century for his indiscretions.

I realize today more than usual that this revealing I have been doing is not and cannot be geared toward finding acceptance among people who simply cannot relate, and most people cannot. There are also those who can relate to some of it but don't want to. If I were the kind of person who always accentuates the positive, wouldn't I sweep all this stuff under the rug and try hard to fit in with those who are healthier and more productive???

Mental illness is dark and shameful, right? And if we want to be of the Light, we should wear a figurative fig leaf over any part of us that looks like--

what does it look like??? What does a person with mental illness do and say and think about???
I'm going to paste in a poem that is part of my worksheet for the May residency. Four poems in my worksheet are not about mental illness, one is. Can I spend 20% of my writing time dealing with something that conventional wisdom (among the mentally ill) says affects 100% of my life?

Drawing Crosses

It’s so much better not to be delusional,
better not to think
life goes on forever,
that there will be
money enough, so
you can throw it away
on all the little colored things that catch your eye.
You shouldn’t buy a long-stemmed rose
for nobody, or three bottles
of daiquiri mixer, when it’s not good to drink
on the medication.
And all those legal pads ---
God knows you’ve got enough stuff
to fill them
but it’s better not to think that creativity is meant to gush
like a broken water main.

It’s so much better not
to think that you have saved the world with love
when in fact you’re drawing crosses on your forehead
with cigarette ash, stirring up the nurses
who will ban you from the smoking room.
You think you’re the Messiah,
so when people call you narcissistic
it makes you want to cry, or when the TV anchorwoman
you place a call to from the patient phone
won’t send the cameras and the crew
to film your holy face and the Styrofoam box
in which you’re holding
Bin Laden in captivity
you sob and curse, invoke God’s wrath.
Then you wonder why Iraq is on TV.

It’s just a whole lot better not to be delusional,
not to think the psychiatric nurse you like has gone
to your apartment when her shift is over,
so you call, the phone rings and rings
and you feel so betrayed.
They say mania feels good, you feel powerful, strong ---
you sit on your mattress in the day room
clinging to things that seem to matter ---
the girlish mental health technicians
twirling their index fingers in their curly hair
snidely tell you
the test was negative ---
but you insist you are, there are indicators like
the fetus whispering
the very day that sperm met egg,
sending you to the store
to spend fifty bucks out of your bottomless resources
on pick threes with his due date, which to you seems
like the eleventh commandment;
the whole store waited while the lottery computer
printed out those tickets, and you felt
like God was working through the blonde cashier,
but inexplicably you didn’t win.
Well, as part of your ministry there were other tasks
like staging a reconciliation between God and Satan ---
beer and cigars and Pink Floyd by
candlelight in your decadent
living room ---

It’s better not to be delusional,
better not to think one dollar
can be one million if you take a ball point pen
and add some zeros.
You can hear the voice of God
and this will make you feel you can
have anything you want, and so
delusion feeds upon itself and grows.
You think as loud as thinking gets:
well if it’s not God talking, then
who the fuck is it and who
loves me, who the hell is gonna
love me?

---Harriet.

A Treatise on Self-Pity and Manipulative Behavior

2006-04-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

This is my pretend grandson, Andrew. Since he moved out of the house with his parents I haven't seen him as much. You can't see it in this photo, but his hair has grown long and curly in the back. Plus he's walking since the last time I saw him.

In related news (as related as vinegar is related to baking soda) I think everyone hates the idea of self-pity and there may be some saints who never indulge in it. I may choose my friends wrong, but I can't think of one who has been perfect at abstaining from self-pity. My grandfather was stoic and didn't mention pain, and by the time his colon cancer was detected, he had about two months of life left in him.

Why is it that most of us have such an unpleasant reaction when we hear someone seeming to whine about their perceived difficulties, when we detect a note of blame in the whining??? I myself am a veteran of much study of spiritual traditions that have close to zero tolerance for whining and blaming external people and circumstances for our problems. In theory I know how to take full responsibility for every little thing, for the things I like about my life and the things I don't like.

Then Ian walks in the door without knocking and I say OH SHIT.

We're all hopeless. We can go ahead and have incredibly high expectations for ourselves and maybe having such expectations will empower us to achieve at a very high level. But, can we do equally well in every aspect of our lives??? I have a very high-achieving mother who can be quite rude to salesclerks and low-level bureaucrats. Apparently she doesn't see Christ in such people, or anyone who reassures her.

I'm more hopeless than most because I sometimes blame my mental illness for aspects of my life that I'm less thrilled about. Sometimes my mental illness is not at fault, instead it's my weak character, lack of fortitude and GRIT.

On the plane to California last December I read an article in Psychology Today about how GRIT is the most important ingredient in a successful life. Why do I have so little of it?

There are those who claim we love each other for our strengths; perhaps I have been poisoned by reading books like The Spirituality of Imperfection which, believe it or not, suggests that none of us are God. I admire people for their strengths, am inspired by the strong and good things people do; when I realize that I don't possess the qualities of people in movies it is humbling and sometimes I get down on myself. In true friendship, consequently, at least for a person like me who is not perfect, there needs to be a great deal of forgiveness. If a person has qualities I feel I simply can't forgive, I am less likely to pursue a friendship with that person. If someone is already my friend and does something wretched, I can usually forgive it.

Perhaps I blame my mental illness for too many of my shortcomings and failures. Something else that happens is that friends will blame my shortcomings and failures on my mental illness, even when something else entirely is to blame. I was tired from a long trip when I visited my friend Ellen, she was upset because I was low on energy, and blamed my mental illness instead of the real culprit, which was my being tired and physically out of shape. For example, I stopped trying to do the postures in Ellen's yoga class after an hour and fifteen minutes of the hour-and-a-half class. I simply gave up and sat there on the mat and waited. Mental illness???

My "Underachiever" blog entry had a tongue-in-cheek undercurrent which perhaps was not detected by every reader. It is far from my intention to weep and moan and sob because I am not a tenured full professor of Comp Lit at Yale--though I can and will insist that in addition to all the other reasons I am not in this position, my mental illness has played an enormous role in making this impossible. But in truth I feel that nothing happens by accident, and the path that might have led to the Comp Lit doctorate and the tenured full professorship--even at Podunk University in Nowheresville, USA--was never a viable path, nor do I seriously regret not taking it. I bring up the mental illness by way of explanation because it does explain a lot.

The purpose of this blog is not to whine. And yet, what's really wrong with whining??? You point out some aspect of life that you at least sometimes find simply unacceptable, and you point your finger at it and throw back your head and sob like a cartoon character. Or you do the eqivalent of this verbally, and blame everything from Adam and Eve to George W. Bush, not leaving out, along the way, a few close friends who've hurt your feelings.

Men, of course, are usually upset when women cry. They can't stand it. I can remember strained relations with males of the species dating back to summer camp when I was--no, wait, I can remember fighting with boys in pre-school because I wanted to play with the police car, and I would (possibly) cry when I didn't get my way (it makes a good story to say I cried, anyway). So I have this habit of being manipulative with the opposite sex that dates back to when I was about two feet tall. The inch-high Freudian analyst that lives in my head is nodding now, and making big strokes on his notepad with his ball point pen. The thing is, if I had wanted to play with the Barbies, I would not have had to compete with these boys all the time.

It all kind of reminds me of the movie When Harry Met Sally in which the question of whether men and women can be friends keeps coming up. Of course, Harry and Sally cannot be friends, ultimately. Can a man and a woman only be friends if they are not attracted to each other??? Does this ever happen???

It's as bad to be manipulative as it is to whine. When friends are low on money, and tell me specifically what it is they cannot afford, I tend to think they are hinting (rather obviously) that they want me to come across with the cash they're lacking. Because they are not coming out with a direct request for the funds, it strikes me that they are being manipulative. But I am not enough of a perfectionist on behalf of my friends to become incensed about what, to my mind, is simply very human behavior. And guess what, sometimes it turns out my friends were not even hinting, that they had no intention of suggesting I should be the one to help. They were simply telling it like it is--they didn't have any cat litter, they were out of toilet paper, and had enough coffee left for half a pot--but they were getting paid tomorrow.

To be quite frank, I don't generally intend to communicate in such a way that I would be accused of either whining or being manipulative or controlling. What I usually do intend to do, when I set out to communicate with my fellow human beings, is to tell it like it is. Either that, or make something up that might be entertaining, or throw some light on how it really is.

I'm not saying I'm innocent, like little Andrew (the kid in the photo up top). I'm just not guilty as charged, in the way I've been charged. I'm guilty of wanting to be accepted, I'm guilty of wearing my heart on my sleeve, I'm guilty of being afraid bad things will happen, and using a variety of tactics to try to prevent this. I am not guilty of wanting everything the way I want it, except insofar as--as I've just said, I want to prevent bad things from happening. Of course, healthy people KNOW they can't prevent bad things from happening; they "let go and let God," and they are not accused of being manipulative. When the unpreventable bad things happen, they don't whine. They know that nothing in this world happens by accident, they know there is a greater purpose to all they see happening--either that or they believe in Murphy's Law and in some funny way they are comfortable with it. They can laugh about it.

Maybe the more words I use, the farther I get from making my meaning clear. I'll remind myself that less is more next time. But for now, it will have to suffice that my words are beyond sufficiency. I love my friends but sometimes it seems this is so irrelevant I might as well not mention it. I don't mean from my point of view.

---Harriet.

A Great Way to Spend an Afternoon

2006-04-06T16:18:00.000-07:00

First things first: the guy in the photo is the guy I gave my last cash to about half an hour ago, so he could buy himself a Starbucks coffee. It wasn't for free; his job was to bring home (to my house) the gallon of milk I had just bought at Walgreen's which I had been carrying long enough to feel like it was too heavy to haul the rest of the way. Well, apparently Ian thought I was giving him the gallon of milk. Why in God's name would he think such a thing??? Anyway, neither milk nor Ian have shown up.

What bugs me about it is, I went out walking with my friend mainly to get milk, and now I'm here but there is no milk.

I passed up an opportunity to go hear Sallie Bingham read from her latest book. That was a great choice, because now I can sit here at home and fume about the blasted milk, which is far more edifying to everyone concerned than hearing a good reading.

If you go through life pissed off, always on the edge of a temper tantrum, it can seem like nothing ever works out right. I'm convinced Murphy's Law rings true for those who think the world is a crappy place. Believe it or not, I'm not a Murphy's Law person. I'm even calmer about the milk which was not actually stolen, because surely Ian simply misunderstood and thought
the milk was a kind and generous gift from someone who loves him dearly.

Never mind how I actually feel. It's clear life is not something a person (and I belong to this category) can control, and sometimes it feels a lot like the Universe is laughing--or God, if you're comfortable thinking something called God could do something like laugh, which I am but which
the person I live with is not, so I don't get to talk about God all the time like he/she's in the room. I mean just when I thought I was being fabulously clever, killing several birds with one tiny pebble (providing the cup of coffee Ian had been wanting, getting the milk home, not straining my abdomen, giving Ian a task to do for his few dollars, rather than just handing it to him), instead, I made Ian feel, I think, like he won the lottery. This was not something I would have done on purpose.

At least I didn't strain my stomach or my back.

It seems entirely appropriate that God ( insert life or the universe) would put a monkeywrench in my plans when I'm being judgmental, superior, and patronizing a person who has, from all appearances, more severe mental illness than I have. Just as Mary Tyler Moore at some point in her life met the gaze of a cow and realized she was not one bit more important (and she became a vegetarian on the spot)--oh now, wait, this is good, I'm comparing myself (obviously) to the human and Ian (one would assume) to the cow--but if you really do have a deep appreciation for all sentient beings, it is not insulting to be compared to a cow. The cow could be the superior being, probably is, in fact. Ian is like the Beatles' "Fool On the Hill." To appreciate such a person takes imagination. I am not imaginative, I am impatient and easily frustrated, and it doesn't take much for me to blow up at Ian. He would get very little out of reading this blog.
Not that he can't read, but for instance, when he read a European history book it began a fixation with "East German women who drink gin all the time." I'm being picky, but in the days of the German Democratic Republic, it was next to impossible to find gin. Vodka, brandy, sometimes whiskey, yes, but gin, no. And I possess the type of impatient mind that thinks: how f---ing annoyingly absurd, to speak of East German women drinking gin when East German women simply don't, or didn't, drink gin.

The happy ending to the story is that my housemate brought home a gallon of milk--not the same gallon, of course, but real live two percent milk a couple of ounces of which are now in the mug by my elbow making the couple of ounces of coffee that are in the mug less threatening to
my circulation. You see, I'm so frail I can't carry a gallon of milk home or drink black coffee.
And of course that's all tied up with the moral of the story:

don't ever become so frail you can't carry a gallon of milk home or drink black coffee.

---Harriet

More Troublesome Poetry

2006-04-04T09:42:00.000-07:00

The dog in the photo belongs to friends. He's the kind of dog I'm thinking of getting, a Mini-Pin.
Hyperactive, tendency to run and jump into his
humans' arms.

If I had a Mini-Pin, I would not read poetry to him. Dogs develop all sorts of dreadful diseases when humans read poetry to them, anything from rabies to heartworms. The one good thing what happens when one reads poetry to dogs is that the fleas get bored and fall asleep, and fall off the dog.

I am pasting the remaining poems from my sonnet sequence: Does the Clay Ask the Potter.

V. Doubt

One more poem, or two, or maybe three
will trace the lines God writes upon my heart.
Here among the sisters who feel called
to serve the diocese or serve their God,
I find myself compelled to try to see
if God has plans for me, if God has words.
I need a saving touch upon my head,
a feeling that can save me from my doubt,
a sense that God is real despite my doubt,
a courage to believe though many doubt.
I’ve ditched old Jesus time and time again
but it may turn out that he’s my friend.
I am reaching for him while my ears
suck music as a treatment for my fears.

VI. The Metaphysical

If I ever learn, the singer sings,
what my heart already knows. I think
I need to sing these lyrics to myself.
I wreck my head by trying to find out
the very simple truths that dwell in me.

My poetry is metaphysical
only when I let go of the science
I was raised with, when I turn my back
on my parents scorn of what is mystical.
Letting go of all this makes me happy.

I think of all the people far away
that I would like to see, to whom I’d say
it’s not just some unhealthy quirk of mine
that I am drawn to God, to the divine.

VII. Loony Tunes

Jesus, God—these two names are those
that many people we would call insane
seem to exhale every time they breathe.
Truly, people such as these have many thoughts
that we’d call loony tunes. For does it matter
if we stir our coffee left or right—
I know a woman who would pray and ask
this very question. She would ask God and Christ
literally for approval of each step she took—
to touch, avoid each sidewalk crack? And then
there are those who’ll wear the holy book
as loincloth, and no thread from head to foot.
Can we know what God has said to these;
Dare we give or take their right to be?

VIII. Delight

The music’s stopped, I’ll rest my tired ears.
In the silence I will call to God.
Gilded Christ hangs like a clever kid
showing me a trick he’s learned to do.

Life and death, death then life again?
Does Christ have anything to teach at all?
Should I learn from my own rise and fall?
Should I live my life as if it matters?

I don’t want to be a cynic or
be ungrateful for the many blessings
or turn whiny every time I’m sad.
I’d hate to point at life and say it’s bad.

I find delight in God, as many don’t.
I say take this and eat, but many won’t.

I'm aware that there are people in the world who find mental illness less threatening than
religion. If this is the case with my readership, so be it. I can only be myself.

---Harriet.

The Trouble with a Poetry Blog

2006-04-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

This hasn't been a poetry blog for a long time. I'm going to paste in some poems. They are sonnets I read to my writing group Saturday night which prompted one group member to say: "Now I know what that red cross in your painting is all about."

The cross appears in the lower right hand corning of a painting I have posted on my blog before. Beneath the cell phone on the right of the photo I'm posting today is Thomas A Kempis'
The Imitation of Christ. Most people would say the photo is religious. What about these poems?

Does the Clay Ask the Potter?

I. The Mumbling Nuns

I sit beneath a crucifix; at times
my eye will wander up the naked form
of Christ; he’s painted gold, his head
is bent, down and to his right, as if
attempting to admire his bloody feet.

For months my head’s had pressures of all kinds;
perhaps I need to turn my life to Christ;
is he some spirit who could show me how
to get past the conundrum of my doubt.
I pop a new CD in my machine.

The mumbling nuns that pass me in the halls
would surely say that it’s no accident
that Christ peers down at my fast-typing hands.
They’d probably tell me write what God commands.

II. The Prayer of St. Francis

Music starts inside my ears: a prayer.
Although the Walkman gives me headaches, I
must have my music. This prayer is the one
St. Francis wrote. Make me an instrument.
Is it just coincidence I’m here?
Some days I sit stunned inside regret,
as if each precious moment would feel better
if I’d forgone some pleasure long ago.
I wonder, though, if I might have it wrong.
It’s like a fortune cookie I once read:
life’s events transpire as they should.
This is of course not Christian but Chinese;
many don’t believe it and condemn
acceptance. Life’s a bitch for such as them.

III. The Singer

I’ve got the Holy Bible at my elbow
just because the sisters put it there.
Singing in my ear are several men:
a Christian group who buried their lead singer.
He was crushed beneath his SUV.

He really should have known that Jesus drove
a hybrid. I myself am slightly nervous
wondering if there’s some kind of holy law
that says a clay pot’s not allowed to argue
with its maker. Should I switch to prayer

of thanksgiving? It’s hard for me to thank
a God who will not put his holy hand
down on my aching head. A God who seems
hell-bent on rubbing acid in my dreams.

IV. Faith Can Be Easy

Faith hope love—the singer sings about
the three things that enable him to live.

I hear the voice of faith, I hear the hope
that God will not abandon those who love him.

Or even those who don’t, for loving God
can seem abstract, even to believers.

I’d ask God for the strength to know that things
that happen in some way are always good.

But if I smiled at all life’s tragic shit
what kind of person would that make me?

For years I’ve found it hard to figure out
if God’s a wimp or if he’s truly cruel.

However, somewhere in my skull I know
Faith can be easy like fast food to go.

So, now do you understand the cross in the photo? I must be dumb because I
don't. I mean it's not all crystal clear and focused like it apparently was to my
fellow poet. Feedback welcomed.

---Harriet.

Re-blogging

2006-03-29T19:18:00.000-08:00

I am not unfamiliar with the accusation that I am self-absorbed. In fact some of you reading this might be kind of half-grinning thinking the thought balloon: understatement of the year. I have my reasons for being self-absorbed, one of them being my tenuous grip on reality. Often I think things are much better than they actually are because I willfully ignore the s--- that is hitting the fan in my own little world and in the somewhat larger world. At other times I see all that s--- magnified about 1000X and I chew off all my fingernails. No, actually, I'm lying, I'm not a nail-biter. I should be, because it would be a good replacement for smoking, and I'm needing something.

The international news today made no impression on me whatsoever. I didn't even understand the New York Times headlines. Other days the headlines tempt me to hurl breakable objects against the wall. I can be every bit as angry as my friend Stacia, though it's not becoming in a woman of my age who is supposed to possess wisdom to balance things in her mind. Lately I've been crying about things, sometimes personal things and sometimes things happening half a world away---I don't feel like there's a damn thing I can do about many things that are close to me and tangible, let alone things that are happening as a result of f---ed up decisions being made by people with power they should never have been given.

The past two weeks have been a m-----f---ing nightmare in many ways, mostly personal. In the bigger world, it seems like there's plenty of negative s---.

This blog entry is an exercise in employing the hyphen. I don't mean to suggest that I've lost my capacity for laughter and raucousness. We had a real live spring day today all day, and that was wonderful---I mean it, though sometimes the word wonderful has a hard time breaking through the police tape around the crime scene (have I been watching too much CSI and Law & Order??? Actually, I only enjoy the latter; CSI is too gory for my weak stomach and after a couple of episodes I decided to avoid it).

Money is tight, health is poor, I haven't written a sane poem in three weeks, and sometimes it really does suck that I can't just chain smoke for an hour until my system shifts into a tolerable gear, or have a beer or a Cosmo or three and flush out my brain with music so loud I can't hear a single thought. I can get nostalgic, think about the club called The Cage in Providence, RI, where I used to go almost every Sat. my senior year in college with two gay guys. I was always the designated driver so I wouldn't drink much but the music was VERY LOUD and I could dance with the one guy and then the other all night and get a workout even better than a two hour ice hockey practice. Oh, I must not have gone to the Cage every Sat. with those guys, because there was the small matter of my boyfriend---I shouldn't say small, he was six foot seven---he never came to the Cage with us.

So it may seem I'm stuck in the past. Eckhardt Tolle in The Power of Now says you should REALLY forget the past so as to be in the moment; I agree more with others who say you can still think about the past even though you do attempt mindfulness and presence to the moment.
I don't think history books and museums are the bane of our human existence. I do believe we can learn from our mistakes.

I have heard it said that poets and other writers tend to be HAUNTED by their pasts, and that this is a big reason why they write. Others who don't write are less haunted. Is this a rather negative take on what being a writer is all about??? Writers often have more complete memories of the past. When I last saw my college roommate Ellen in 2000, I brought up a lot of common experience and she stared at me like I was some kind of comedian. She couldn't believe I remembered all that s---. Is she a lot healthier than me??? Well, she thinks so. She didn't speak to me for months after that visit and when she finally did she said she had decided not to have anything further to do with anyone who was mentally ill. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I chain-smoked during that visit and didn't climb up on the rocks when we went to the shore and do yoga with her against the backdrop of the ocean and the setting sun. Why didn't I?
My excuse was I was wearing clogs. A pretty good excuse if you ask me, considering the fact that the only time in my life I have ever sprained my ankle I was wearing clogs.

So why am I writing all this??? Am I trying to figure out what's wrong with me??? I already know that, you'd think, right??? Am I trying to prove I'm as self-absorbed as I say I am? Well, what if I'd begun this blog entry saying I was self absorbed and then written a whole long blog about the poor in Calcutta? I promise, mental illness carries with it almost a guarantee of self-absorption, as the sick person struggles to relate to a past self who makes no sense, or to one who makes a lot more sense than the current self.

Life is meaningful, even when your housemate has Ellen Degeneres turned up loud in the next room. Life makes sense, as long as you realize that people exist who in certain situations appear to have no souls or no sense of morality or decency or ability to act out of goodness and kindness---and you realize that people who appear this way publically are probably kind and gentle at home with their families. I guess the problem is a lot of people don't see that their behavior in the macrocosm CAN reflect the same lovingkindness they employ in their relationships with friends and family, and that IF IT DID, the world would not be such a f---ed up place.

de-blogging

2006-03-17T20:17:00.000-08:00

What does it mean, "de-blogging"?

To me, what's more important about the word blog than its origin (web log) is that it rhymes with fog and bog.

I've always liked that set of rhymes better than rain and Spain and plain. How you say the -og words matters just as much.

The fog was so heavy on the bog I reached for a glass of warm nog.

Of course I'm lying. Who really likes the -og words? After all, the most outstanding of them is hog. The hog rooted through the bog in the fog and got a bit soggy.

(de-blogger?)

None of which answers my question, what does it mean to de-blog??? I've thought about deleting every word of my blog but I'm perversely self-punishing enough that I won't do that, not yet anyway.

I think I'll just party the night away and not f---ing worry about that darn blog. Drink it out of my system--isn't that what de-blogging is all about???

In other news, I don't plan on blogging much for a while. Hurts my back to sit at the computer. I know how you all will feel about that:

---Harriet.

Have You Fired Your Tour Guide???

2006-03-13T17:53:00.000-08:00

I pray that I will have the strength to keep the light alive in my heart so that I can see and point to the promising shadows appearing on the walls of our world

Henri Nouwen

It would not be advantageous to a group of Mammoth Cave tourists somewhere in a dark passageway if the guide that got them there suddenly dropped dead. Some of the routes through the cave system are trickier than others, however. Life is trickier still. Sometimes we lose faith all of a sudden in someone who has been a role model. The faith can come back, it may even come back and disappear again time after time like a yo-yo--I think this happens with most of us in regard to our all-too-human parents or other adult figures we have known since early childhood. There are the epiphanies like "Oh wow, my dad sure is a pathetic angry fool, I wouldn't want to be like him in a million years." But then he'll do or say something impressive and he'll go back on the pedestal.

When I remember to, I pray that I can be of use to someone other than the four cats I live with. Granted, it feels good to be needed by them, to be the one who goes out and reels in the fish and scales them and filets them and sautees them and cuts them up into cat-size chunks, to be the one who keeps the toilet paper dispenser by their litter box loaded with Charmin. But my relationships with these cats are not always completely emotionally and intellectually satisfying.
We all want to be of use; we want someone to appreciate us, we want to feel we are worthy of the space we take up in this world; if no one needs us, appreciates us, considers us worthy, it is too easy to start daydreaming about the 2nd St. Bridge.

The bridge is neither here nor there, perhaps I mention it because a friend spoke of temptation to jump earlier today. How can I help a friend feel needed when she is so busy needing--she needs people to need her, but she's not strong enough now to give anything.

I think we have to need people just to be themselves sometimes. Why do we "have to" do this?
If we only want or need people if and when they can be helpful to us in some obvious way, there is something to look at in ourselves. Are we too caught up in our own interests? Are we living only for our own career, our own prestige, our own health and happiness???

I worry that I sometimes am overly concerned about these matters myself. Sometimes I have a hard time "being there" for people who do not have much to give. I worked for eight years in the mental health field, longer than I've worked in a any field but writing (I've always been a writer). The trick is, when you work in mental health you get paid for helping people, so it's no real indicator of character. Yeah, you can be a counselor or advocate for the mentally ill AND care about the people you work with, or you can have the worst attitude imaginable, and in the latter case your job is hell.

An attitude of openness toward one's fellow humans is to be avoided if one is afraid of getting involved. An attitude of neediness it to be avoided if one wants friends. Factually speaking, most of us are simply caught up in survival much of the time and feel we have little to give. I can give time and money up to a point because I love and care about someone. If the person keeps asking for more, pretty soon my back is up against the wall and I have to start saying NO. Can I continue to love and deeply accept the needy person when I've begun to feel threatened?

I've asked for too much from some friends, and sometimes this has meant the end of the friendship. Apologies don't always suffice. Promises to return the favors such friends have done are not always trusted.

I don't consider myself subhuman because I'm Bipolar. The episodes of illness are journies to a strange country; I can report on the journies like a tourist, what I see and hear and imagine. Many feel too threatened to listen to such reports. Some are too caught up in astonishment at the intensity of the experiences, and can't resist judging me because I get so caught up in my
stories I'm not aware at the time they are "only stories." Others judge me for the things I say of do, holding me fully responsible despite the fact that when I'm sick I do have poor judgment.

A tour guide can take people through danger giving them all through it a feeling that they are safe and protected. The guide may not mention every danger as his group safely passes it by.
The worst danger I myself have negotiated as I have been writing this blog entry is the stiffness
of my posture at the computer which has caused pain in my shoulder and slight numbness in my neck. I should give this blogging up for what remains of Lent.

---Harriet.

Turning to Another Source

2006-03-11T10:16:00.000-08:00

On Spirituality and Love

...we have to replace the battle for power with the battle to
create space for the spirit.

Love is an act of forgiving in which evil is converted to good and destruction into creating.

This is the way to spiritual maturity: to receive love as a pure, free gift.

On Writing

To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know. Thus, writing requires a real act of trust.
We have to say to ourselves: "I do not yet know what I carry in my heart, but I trust that it will emerge as I write." Writing is like giving away the few loaves and fishes that one has, trusting that they will multiply in the giving.

All quotes from Henri Nouwen, Seeds of Hope

Today's most interesting discovery so far has been a genuine rattlesnake's rattle on a necklace, found among Gabe and Amanda's things which they left in our dining room when they moved out a month ago. It seems like the sort of thing true Deadheads would possess.

I'm thinking today about forgiveness. I've been quoted on the radio; "a psychiatric patient I know said the following about forgiveness," said my friend Paul on his early morning radio show.
He had asked permission to use my name, but he refused to simply say, "My friend Harriet said;" he wanted the listeners to know that this quote came from a psychiatric patient. So I told him, if you must mention that part, then don't use my name.

What I said about forgiveness then was what a three-year-old might say: "You have to forgive so you can love." How lame, because if a person feels offended by another, that person really doesn't care about loving the other person, right??? That person wants to take time out of the
life of the spirit to feel as many negative feelings as possible toward the other person. That person wants revenge, and the feeling of love would screw it up. You wouldn't want to put a potato in the tailpipe of someone you loved, would you??? Obviously, radical Muslims aren't going to "forgive Americans so they can love them."

I like the quote about "love is an act of forgiving" for this reason. It doesn't go any further, maybe, in the direction of sowing love where there is hatred, or should I say, of course we can't force anyone to love us, and nothing we say is going to change someone's heart. I mean, it might, but we don't have control of that. Bonnie Raitt has a song about it, I can't make you love me if you don't...

As far as the quotes about writing go, well, it may be clear that I have very high expectations of what writing can do. Most of the time, writing doesn't do what I hope it will. I'm always thinking, maybe if I slowly and carefully explain myself, people will understand exactly what I mean.
In some ways poetry works better than these blogs. Maybe it's because people understand that all poetry, to an extent, is persona poetry, even "confessional" poetry, but when a person writes
these "confessional" essays, well that's their heart they're wearing on their sleeve. Yeah, I thought may I'd receive some reassurance that announcing that I'm Bipolar would not alienate the whole world. However, there's a new tone of voice even in the e-mail I have received from one person who has read these blogs.

The thing is, none of us are going to be forgiven by the whole world, not even always by the circle of people close to us. It's hard to forgive if you don't feel forgiven, Nouwen says. But the fact remains that we can easily be forgiven by God: If I return to God with a repentant heart after I have sinned, God is always there to embrace me and let me start afresh.

Am I sounding like a JW tract, or something??? I promise this is not an ad for some particular church.

The fact is, we can feel forgiven without receiving forgiveness from each and every human in our lives; as for those humans that don't forgive us, we can still forgive them. And you know what, if I sound pious here, so be it. I am not a secular person, I am a believer, though the term "believer" doesn't do justice to what I am. God has had everything to do with my experience of reality since I was 17. Don't ask how long ago that was. That was 25 years ago.

It's not to say I haven't been a skeptic and a blasphemer plenty of times, or a hypocrite, or a heretic. But I've always "come home," as they say.

It's not as important for me to be heard, for my confessional blogs to be read and responded to lovingly, as it is for me to know my own truth and be true to it. The writing helps take me in that direction. I'm not trying to "win friends and influence people," or whatever that book was called, I'm just trying to do what only I can do, which is manifest spirit that is specific to my being.

I do have enough acceptance in my life because I don't ultimately look to humans. If I take this "looking beyond humans" too far it can make me very sick. So I am grateful for my circle, for those who do love and forgive.

---Harriet.

Chasing Flutterbyes

2006-03-09T14:48:00.000-08:00

I seem to be chasing something.

On TV there was a girl who found out she was a boy, and his main concern was to find acceptance.
Or maybe his first concern was to be true to himself, his second concern acceptance.

I am NOT a boy, but acceptance is at least one of my concerns.

As for Spalding people who may have changed their minds about me, that's your prerogative. Perhaps when you hear the word Bipolar, it means x,y,and z to you. I can say that it's not an easy thing to live with, but though I did at one point make the decision not to have children because a) I doubted my ability to provide for them as well as I would in my heart want to, and b) there is an increased risk of Bipolar children--even so I don't feel that life is less worth living because of this illness.
Maybe in some ways I even feel privileged, because I have had experiences that not everyone has had. Ask yourself: have you been a patient in a Communist East German mental hospital??? Have you attempted to climb the Berlin Wall (too late for that, in case you're tempted)?
I don't know what to do with this cheerleader. I was trying to paste a wombat, and I was going to mention the country music song "I've got friends in low places," because that's pretty much true of me, though I've known fabulously rich and important people too.
Yes, I know, I'm pretty dumb to be putting all this info on my blog. I would be better off watching Law & Order on TV.
This is my final pathetic cry... no, I'll be back with another fun-filled blogging adventure sooner than you can say black and white tuxedo cat.

thanks for "listening"
love,
Harriet.

the underbelly of the swan

2006-03-06T14:34:00.000-08:00

My first close encoutner with a bird was with a swan when I was about three. I held out a piece of bread, my parents tell me, but then changed my mind, and as I was yanking it back, the swan grabbed my wrist. I remember that last part. A life lesson I didn't completely master. I write these long personal essays then consider yanking them back hours later or the next day. There have been times I've thought I had some sort of call to educate the world about mental illness, but the truth is at times I don't know if any of us are
"called" to do anything. Then I'll read a book like Paulo Coehlo's "The Alchemist." I can't get the italics to work right, that's why I used quotes instead. The concept of the "personal legend" is very attractive, just the kind of thing that would make my mom talk out one side of her mouth in spasms of derision. Some people believe that in some sort of spiritual pre-existence or transitional place between lives we make certain choices about the new lives we are about to enter, such as who our parents will be and what major trials and tribulations we will face. For example, our President made the choice to enter this life without a brain. You see how kind I am being, how much credit I'm giving him.

So I was sitting around sipping wine and talking to my spirit guides before I entered this life and I decided I wanted to see what life was like with an illness that made people suspicious of me, impatient with me, superior to me, and in some cases afraid of me. An illness that would cause me to lose jobs, to be locked up, to have to take medication that made me feel like s--- most of the time. An illness that would be embarrassing to talk about--yet built into my nature was a desire to be honest with people, a sense that one cannot make real friends if one does not tell the truth about oneself. Of course it's always possible to slip out of the One costume (ONE should this, and ONE should that, but I, on the other hand, am going to do This).

I was going to delete my blog entry entitled "The Underachiever," but there were problems with the server all night last night, and I couldn't get into the dashboard to delete. Now, even though at the height of my defiance of my atheist, anti-spiritual parents, I believe that nothing in this universe happens by accident (I have read arguments that this is compatible with some types of atheism) but I have to ask, well so it's not an accident, there's a cause for this effect, but the meaning of it might not be some drifty ethereal thing. In other words, my inability to delete my blog entry could be taken to be an expression of "God's will" or it could be taken to be a temporary inconvenience, and I could have deleted the offending blog entry today with impunity. I didn't, and now I'm writing more stuff I will wonder about in the wee hours--oh, blankity blank, I DO NOT have Borderline Personality Disorder, but I'm acting like a Borderline, all worried about acceptance and rejection, creating drama.

Ought I to be embarrased about my self-referential writing style??? Do I have to write about someone else to PROVE I CAN??? You know, the whole idea is just tiresome to me. I'll write about what seems appropriate. I don't know if there's any audience out there or not (hint hint) but on the other hand maybe I'd rather not know what you all are thinking.

---Harriet.

the underachiever

2006-03-04T16:26:00.000-08:00

This dog is named Hendrix. His namesake is often hailed as the best guitar player ever. But Hendrix the dog will not win comparable distinctions outside the home. Even within the
home, his skills with a Fender or a Gibson leave something to be desired. He does have a howl to rival the best, though, when there's a siren passing.

Like Hendrix, I am an underachiever. Some will ask: is that something to be proud of? When I was in college, I thought I'd become a hot shit academic, the kind who fire off ten articles a year and have five books published by age forty, along with tenure and a full professorship. But a funny thing happened on the way to my Bachelor's degree. It was a pebble in my path, which I tripped over. For those who don't know, it is called Bipolar Disorder, and it has not gone away.
It threatened to make me a statistic: those who never finish college, or if they do, finish in seven to ten years. I finished college in four years and went to graduate school in Chicago, where I discovered the Incomplete. My first year of grad school was essentially one big Incomplete, except for the three creative writing courses I took. I was indisposed while my colleagues were working on their Masters theses; when I recovered, I had ten days to research and write the 45-page essay and I did so, typed it on a manual typewriter, and I received the same grade 95% of my colleagues received: a B+. Offered admission but not funding for the PhD program, I decided I was a writer more than I was a scholar. I finshed my incompletes over the following months while working at a video store owned by the mafia.
There are times I look at the accomplishments of my current colleagues and peers and feel a tad restless and regretful, feeling that in some way I'm not in the same league, or not on the same fast track they're on, the fact being that I have not made any enormous ambitious effort to cause my writing career to take off. Related to the Bipolar is anxiety and fluctuating energy levels; I have developed phobias, too, which make me feel less mobile, less flexible. Can I assure a publisher that I would be willing to do a cross-country reading and signing tour, that I would be a face that would sell books? It's not that I won't fly; I've been to California twice in two years. But my fearlessness about hopping in a car and driving to any destination has disappeared. I know I'm not the only one, but in my case it's related to the flawed functioning of my brain.
There are plenty who think I make excuses for myself. I'm sorry they feel that way. There are those who think that every time my illness flares up, it's because I didn't take my medicine. The fact is that this happened only once. People who are upset with me will continue to hold me responsible, though. It seems inconceivable that a person would believe delusions as wholeheartedly as I do when I'm ill. 99% of people or more never would believe the things I believe at such times and they simply can't understand it. But whereas in the case of Einstein
people are willing to say "well he was capable of thinking in ways the rest of us aren't capable of," in my case people think something's wrong with my character.
I've been told, by way of explanation by friends who have decided they don't want to be my friend anymore, that my behavior doesn't achieve the high standard that they expect in their friends. OK, so this has been said in so many words only once. But I do suspect that there are many who would be more accepting if I kept myself on a shorter leash, and strove to attain the goals that someone on an academic fast track would strive for. Well, duh, people like to have things in common with their friends. So I can't fault anyone; high achievers are drawn to hig achievers.
Still, if I were to keep quiet about my mental illness and hope no one noticed it, and try to blend in, and hope to be judged in the same way as my peers, I would come up short. There would be questions raised like: how come she only teaches one class per semester, why doesn't she come out drinking with us after work, how come she has no money--etc. etc. I would be overjoyed if I could teach more without blowing a gasket, if I could drink socially, if I had any money to speak of. The fact is those things that set me apart from my peers are not accidental.
And I can only be me. No, I can't suddenly find the energy to apply for a tenure-track job, I won't be up for a drive to New Mexico next week, I'm not going to throw my dozens of poems about mental illness into the fire. I'm different, that's just a fact.
I'm an underachiever, if I'm compared to those my age who don't have mental illness. Oh, I have some goals, I do work very hard, but I resist responsibilities that carry too much stress.
Please don't accept my book for publication if I must fly to Australia to promote it. Of course you can drop me as a friend because I would rather travel surface roads to Shelbyville than take the expressway--it's your prerogative, obviously. But don't be thinking you are not hurting my feelings if you do that. Don't be thinking I love any less than anyone else; I probably love more than average, rather than less. I'd be more inclined to think of you as lacking compassion.
I recently made a new friend on the Internet who was also Bipolar, and she made a point of telling me not to tell a soul she has a mental illness, because she had built a whole persona and facade of stability and mental health. It is because of her that I'm writing this blog entry now. I could pretend but I can't pretend. I don't have the energy to pretend. And if I do pretend not to be mentally ill, I'm saying there's shame in mental illness. Maybe there is.

spiritual poetry, again

2006-02-27T10:51:00.000-08:00

I wrote a blog awhile back about spiritual poetry; sometimes I find the word "spiritual" about as meaningful as a mud puddle. I mean a clear puddle reflects a mud puddle is brown. I read a really great definition of the word "spiritual" recently but I lent the book out.

I was with my divorced parents this past weekend and they were both ridiculing spiritual and
mystical poetry. I like mysticism a lot but I don't much like mystical poetry. I don't write much poetry about mystical experiences. I do aspire to writing spiritual poetry if I can ever just figure out what that is. Or some version of it that is meaningful to me and that can communicate something of value to some readership.

Both mystical and spiritual poetry can be full of abstractions, and lots of people prefer poetry that has concrete imagery. But I find that good spiritual poetry has abstractions in it that speak to me. For instance this one by that old warhorse, RUMI:

Quietness

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an ax to the prison wall.
Escape. Walk out
like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You're covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest
sign that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon comes out now.

OK so do I have to interpret this??? One thing spirituality has to offer is a steamer trunk full of figurative meanings. No, this little Rumi poem is not very concrete, and not very literal. On the other hand, is it not apt for our times, the accusation that we run from silence. I'm especially guilty of this. If we didn't have to put words to everything we'd understand ourselves and our Earth and our origins far better, I do believe. Think about an infant's nonverbal universe!!!
Are babies BORED because they can't understand language??? Sure, they get upset at the drop of a pin and you don't always know why, though often the discomfort proves to have been physical.

I think mystical poetry is a subset of spiritual poetry. My own spiritual poetry is more intellectual than mystical. I have other ways of expressing the mystical, often non-verbal ways.
It's a good test for my to try to have non-verbal experiences, as the lion's share of my time is given over to words almost every day.

I'm interested in what you other bloggers and blog-readers think of as spiritual poetry.

---Harriet.

Tea and Sympathy

2006-02-26T15:56:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking things have gone from bad to worse with my blog.

I'm listening to my Walkman (to be traded in for an iPod soon? Or do I have enough gadgets?)
and the song that's playing is one I want to quote from. The group is Jars of Clay, the song's title is a phrase I've never understood, also the title of today's blog.

Tea and Sympathy
by Jars of Clay

fare thee well
trading all our words for tea and sympathy
I wonder why we try for things can never be
play our heart's lament
like an unrehearsed symphony

not intent
to leave this castle full of empty rooms
left the captive in the tower never rescued
and all the victory songs
seem to playing out of tune

Cause it's not the way it has to be
don't trade our love for tea and sympathy
it's not the way it has to be

you begin
all your words fall to the floor and break like china cups
and the waitress graps the broom and tries to sweep them up
I reach for my tea..

This is not the whole song, but listening to my headphones is giving me a headache right now. What I wanted to ask the reader, if there exists such an animal, is: what the heck does this song mean??? I mean, is it full of abstractions or what? Then the part about the china cups seems concrete, but that's just a metaphor. There's not really a waitress, she's just got a cameo role in this extended simile. Or, does the action of this song take place in a diner? So the people are literally drinking tea?

On Eccentricity

2006-02-22T17:06:00.000-08:00

You all have already met Kiwi. Now you see that she is really a very large cat, a breed indigenous to Kentucky. Well, actually, this breed is very rare, indigenous to our neighborhood, where it was developed by adding various big cat embryos to little cat embryos and stirring them all up together and then we added herbs and spices so the new breed would have a spicy personality. Kiwi hunts in the neighborhood, this is one problematic aspect of her being, because she can eat a dog as large as a labrador, and in fact she ate Rae's son's dog, we think.

On Eccentricity

Far from normal in a land called Nod
I often like the fact that I’m called odd.
But there are times I’d like to be Madonna
and you’ll have to label me a wanna be—
a million of us grow on palma trees.
sexy lingerie is how it’s gonna be.
But on the other hand I think I’ll just be me
and you can see just what you wanna see.
Don’t want a husband and a ranch house, no.
No kids two cats is how it’s gonna go.
I’ll pop Zyprexa till the cows come home
and make my underwear from Styrofoam,
drink black coffee like a lumberjack
and gobble tofu for my midnight snack.

I read a student's essay in the writing center today that was about "self-concept." The idea was that when we're children, we depend on others for our self-concept, but when we become adults we can figure it out for ourselves. We no longer need affirmation or definition and we don't compare ourselves to others. The student ended her paper by saying: when I was a child I depended on others, but now that I'm an adult I no longer do. It reminded me of the thing in the Bible about putting away childish things. But it didn't remind me of me. I mean, my self-concept is so weak that sometimes I think I have a shot at some kind of greatness. Sometimes I forget that I have learned--the hard way--that delusions of grandeur are to be distinguised from actual grandeur. So I almost have to learn the hard lesson all over again.

You think I'm joking but I'm actually not. I'm like Kiwi when it comes to delusions of grandeur. Let me burst everybody's bubble and say that Kiwi is actually quite a small cat. Maybe you guessed this. Maybe you realized that the young woman on the left is not actually a woman but only a photo of a woman. But Kiwi has all sorts of delusions of grandeur. She thinks she's big and bad enough to catch birds, and sometimes she believes it so hard that she catches birds. Last night she brought home a female cardinal, to our consternation. She brought home a male cardinal the first day of the National League playoffs last fall and I told my dad, the biggest St. Louis fan I know, and he thought it was a bad omen for the Cardinals. They did in fact lose badly.

Does Kiwi think she influences world events by catching certain birds??? Like Oskar the tin drummer in Gunter Grass's famous novel--Grass has Oskar essentially believe he's responsible for WWII, or something. And of course we meet Oskar in a psychiatric ward. Are we going to send Kiwi to a kitty psych ward, or the person who attributes human characteristics to Kiwi???

Now, you may wonder why the blogger is writing such weird stuff tonight. As if it's the first time this blogger has blogged like this. There may be an explanation. For lack of better, I will hazard a guess that this blogger has come to think it doesn't matter much what she blogs about.

---Harriet

ON HONESTY

2006-02-19T18:51:00.000-08:00

Honestly, it's time to do something about all the honesty that goes on around here.
Now that I've posted my cats, which I didn't make, I decided
to post something I did make. And I want to make up the right question to ask about honesty, which is under scrutiny.
I tend to believe that no one abstract noun should be placed on a pedestal because there are always times when something/anything is inappropriate, now matter how appropriate it may be at other times. Now, I call myself honest in an ironic way, because I believe most readers believe I'm painfully honest, but I'm not as honest as most probably think. I mean, the truth is, most people tell the stories about themselves that they want to believe, and I am no exception.
There are times when honesty is not only inappropriate, but deadly. I mean, what would the world be like if everyone were honest??? How many marriages would fall apart, how many friendships would dissolve, how much respect would go down the drain, how many people would be locked up on psychiatric wards???
What would happen if politicians were honest??? I shudder, it's unimaginable. I mean EVERYTHING would fall apart.
Of course I'm too darn honest. Why me, and not someone else? If I had been less honest. I would be a conventional person, would be married to the nice guy I met in college because I wouldn't have told him the ghastly truth about the Other Fish in the local pond (whom I had no chance of hooking, landing, de-scaling, fileting and having for dinner). If I had been less honest,
I'd have 2.5 kids who would be just about grown now, waist-deep in the river after their own
dinners.
If I had been less honest, I'd have friends that were all the same, interested in prestige and money and I'd dress for success, and get manicures. If I'd been less honest, you would like me.
On the other hand...
Here's the scoop: if I were less honest, I'd really be up a creek, because I wouldn't understand myself, and I wouldn't understand you. Because ultimately, the kind of honesty that really counts is honesty with yourself; it's the hardest honesty, the honesty of a St. Paul or a St. Augustine.
Don't be fooled into thinking I don't wear masks as much as anyone. The thing is, many choose dishonesty when they're feeling like their little world is caving in. And this is not evil but brave. By the same token, many reach desperately for help under those circumstances. And this is not terrible, this is brave.
Each of us has to judge what level of honesty we're comfortable with. I have written blog entries I've later deleted, not merely because I was too honest, but because I was too honest about negativity that was going through my mind. I don't like myself when I'm negative, and like many, I try to find a mask to wear while the storm rages inside my psyche.
I don't like bluntness. To me, people who are blunt are not expressing what they truly deeply feel, but what they impulsively feel or think in the moment. This may not always be true, but I prefer expressing considered truths, even if these wind up being euphemistic ways of saying the same thing---at least resorting to euphemism is a way of considering another person's feelings.
Do we have freedom of speech in this country so that the people may be excruciatingly honest? Honesty is often punished.
No, honesty does not belong on a pedestal. Honesty is not art. Honesty is not seductive.
Honesty is not appealing. I feel I have some kind of crazy mission to be honest; it's not for everyone. No, it's been my decision not to polish my nails or color my hair, but it's not for everyone. And I could change. I could do five things tonight that I've never done before in my whole life. I reserve that right.
And I reserve the right to be legally honest. Not as cute as legally blonde, or as legal as supporting the current administration. But I'm a person who needs to justify her existence every day. I'm a person who looks to others to confirm that she should be allowed to live.
Every goddamn day. That's how it is and godwilling it will change.

---Harriet.

Lessons from the Ruggieros

2006-02-18T14:04:00.000-08:00

The following seem quite relevant to some of what I've been saying in my blog lately. I should remark that though I'm a nut, there are things in life I take seriously. Or course, people often take me way too seriously. I guess I have to say this little prayer with Carlos Santana: Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

--BILL RUGGIERO (dad of women's hockey star)

Our team has put so much into this tournament and have postponed our lives to reach a goal: a gold medal. I never imagined that we would not be in that final game, so in a way, this is a new challenge for me and for the rest of the team. We spend the night silent, watching tv and getting some food in our systems. But, like in many situations in life, you must move forward and appreciate what you have. I am thankful to my family, frineds, and all the wonderful support that we have received through this site. I am planning on printing all of the well wishes and pass them onto the rest of the team. It is at times like these, when we have to use the support that we have around us, rally as teammates, and hold our heads up high. We still have a chance to win a medal and make our country proud

---Angela Ruggiero (of USA women's Olympic hockey team)

2006-02-18T09:40:00.000-08:00

The only reason I've been blogging every day is I've been so excited about posting my kitty photos. You can more or less forget about the text part.

I have now posted photos of all four of our in-the-house kitties. The first was Kiwi, next was Tasso, yesterday was Slick and this beauty is Roger, who is a female.

I will now observe the following about myself: as a certified Nut (who nevertheless possesses the KEYS to the Actual Nuthouse, an advantage), I have a tendency to say nutty things. If you have read my blog before you know this.

Oops! A Black Cat Crosses Team USA's Path

2006-02-17T13:09:00.000-08:00

Our friendly black cat is feeling contrite; she really didn't mean to. I'm only blogging about this because I kind of put myself in a position where I have to comment on our hockey team's 3-1 loss to Sweden. Probably the women were overconfident after their come-from-behind 5-goals-in-the-third-period win over Finland. I must confess I didn't watch today's event, I turned the TV on in time to see the bright yellow Swedish team celebrating.
See, actually I'm baffled by the fact that Olympic athletes and an undetermined number of TV spectators still think the Olympics is a huge big deal even in this century when nothing is a big
deal.
Nothing is a big deal? How many readers feel this is the case? I read an article about "today's youth" that described a disturbingly large number of young people as "generic." Well, thank goodness, I don't qualify for the category "youth" anymore, because if I did, I'd be so apathetic
I'd maybe think our current President was legit.
However the truth is, sometimes I have to make a concerted effort to avoid caring about this or that world event, so as not to go nuts.
Or is it more human and appealing to go nuts over the things that happen? What does nuts mean anyway? Depressed? Yeah, it's real easy to get depressed about world events, AND many of those who've been most effective in fighting for justice and correction of wrongs in the world have been chronically depressed, so I've read--people like MLK and Ghandi and Lincoln. But then you have someone like the Dalai Lama who, it seems to me, has a rather cheerful disposition. Assuming that it could be possible to CHOOSE between a depressive and a cheerful frame of mind, which would be considered more appropriate, and in which frame of mind would a person be more effective in dealing with the big (potentially depressing) issues?
I mean clearly, to me anyway, the goal of happiness is the lesser goal--survival of the species, the planet, being a zillion times more important. Would anyone disagree? Yeah, I'm really hard core, that's why I'm sitting at a computer in my dining room playing with kitty photos instead of picketing or serving time in jail for activism or helping people in Senegal with their agriculture.
Clearly I'm all about self-deprivation for the sake of the common good.
I'm not going to stick up for myself, so you can think the worst. I'm not going to list my unselfish deeds or even my unselfish thoughts. I'm sorry the women's hockey team lost and I know they're probably feeling bad but the thing is, the kind of women who play ice hockey are not the kind to hang their heads for very long. When I played hockey I was the the team tombstone. I mean I didn't get excited if we won or sad if we lost. It reminds me of a song by the Smiths: And if the day comes when I feel a natural emotion / I'll get such a shock I'll probably jump in the ocean. Female hockey players are not candidates for the Actual Nuthouse. They are paragons of mental health. I can guarantee that if there is an exception, she is probably a third-string player.

Why Women's Hockey is Good for Your Teeth

2006-02-15T18:50:00.000-08:00

I'm dealing with a toothache at the moment. I have one wisdom tooth left, and it's going to have to come out. I heard Winston Churchill quoted today as saying if you're going through hell, keep going. Now, honestly, my boy Tasso (pictured here) was not trying to be mean, he was only yawning. Looks like his teeth are in much better shape than mine, and he's geriatric.

How many of you are following women's ice hockey at Torino? My big event of the day was sending an e-mail to Angela Ruggiero, "the best female hockey player ever" to many. I played hockey in high school and college; I was not exactly a stand-out, though I scored a winning goal against our big rival in high school. The next year, when we played the rival gain, the coach--a new coach--wouldn't put me in to play AT ALL and I sat there on the bench and cried and cried and cried.
I had too much of a lust for glory and not enough ability to put the interests of the whole team ahead of my own interests. Tennis was really a better sport for me, but hockey was always more exciting, even when things weren't going my way. Now, many of you may feel cynical about the Olympics, but let me tell you, women's ice hockey is where it's at, is a big deal. If you don't turn on anything else, turn on the next two games Team USA is going to play, the semi-finals against Sweden on Friday and the final on Monday night. In women's hockey, you will see much more finesse and pure athleticism than in men's hockey. Body checking is not allowed, and there are very few fights. Yeah, rules are made to be broken and you will see some penalty box action, power plays. But I've known plenty of people who think they don't like hockey at all, but they've only seen men's hockey, and then when they see women's hockey, they're into it. So, this is the voice of your conscience:
Watch Team USA win the gold. Yeah, I know, we hear a little too much of this Team USA stuff--it's hard to like hearing it in the middle of the Iraq mess, etc.
But if you can put all your negative s--- on the back burner, and recover some of that innocent patriotic fervor (I don't know for sure if you had it as a kid, but I sure did--when I was in junior high I had a stars and stripes t-shirt and I loved going to hear fife and drum musters. The year was 1976, and to me the Bicentennial was the hottest game in town). You don't have to cheer on every skier, every snowboarder, even every figure skater, but treat yourself to the best new Olympic sport (it's only been around since 1998, I think).
OK, I'm not a pro at selling stuff. Thanks for putting up with me.

---Harriet

Nuthouse Taking New Patients

2006-02-15T05:43:00.000-08:00

Hi. I've promised a few friends some kind of super-duper blog entry, but guess what, the topic that would be therapeutic for me to write about at this point would be The Ambiguous Art of Second-Guessing. In other words I have retracted my Pulitzer-winning blog entry due to a friend saying that could be taken wrong. I'm sure I'm taken wrong 85% of the time ( like some people think I'm saying something very heavy when I'm intending to be funny--is it my facial expression? The poker face my grandpa taught me?) Anyway, I'm leaving it to your imagination, readers, what on earth I could have deleted, but I had to put Kiwi the cat on my page just because I could. Now I have three and a half minutes to shower and get out the door to work. Have a great day.

---Harriet.

pocket folders of sorrow

2005-12-07T09:24:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody. My title is borrowed from fellow Spaldingite Richard Newman's, "Briefcase of Sorrow," a terribly sad poem about the end of a teaching semester. I don't carry a briefcase, but
I do have a stack of pocket folders at my left elbow full of tonight's reading---in some cases three essays by students trying to meet the deadline after dilly-dallying all semester. After writing this blog entry I will have to go see the Humanities secretary about getting my grade-submission rosters this week instead of next; this must happen because I'm leaving town Saturday.

All of which is rather dull, but "all work and no play makes Suzy---" is it Suzy or Jack??? Play is scheduled in the near future. Overall, I have to exclaim: What a Semester. It's the first time since the early 90's that I've attempted to teach and be a student at the same time, and at my advanced age, I found this a little like --- I can't think of a good simile. Like digging an Oreo cookie out of a toaster while it's toasting??? Like hiking from Moscow to Paris??? Like pulling the hairs out of my head one by one??? Like eating twelve pounds of "freedom fries???"

Not smoking through all this has made it even more like nailing my big toe to the floor (any Christ-imagery in this simile is purely accidental).

I want to make a statement to any of my readers who are considering responding anonymously with links to very odd websites or blogs which might offer me a truly bizarre product or service.
NO THANKS!!! To those who commented intelligently on my last blog entry, thanks. I enjoyed your thoughts.

-Harriet.

confession vs. storytelling

2005-09-27T18:15:00.000-07:00

One of the main points of my ECE is that the poet I'm writing about, Eleanor Lerman, is not a confessional poet, though she mainly writes what can be called personal narratives. I'm not going to go into this right now, as I'm a bit sick of the topic --- my essay passed muster as far as the content, was returned for MLA corrections, has been corrected, but won't make it out until tomorrow's mail. I'm just glad I was able to paint a sympathetic portrait of Lerman even though at times during the writing of the thing I felt that Lerman was the worst poet ever to have her work published. Certainly not true, but I'll bet some others of you who've written ECE's may have had similar feelings about your poets, at moments.

No, what I'm thinking about now is my own poetry. What is the difference between "confessing" and telling a story which happens to be about your own life??? I will try to paste one of my latest
(I should note the title is borrowed from Rae's creative thesis):

Leaky Boat

A cup of ice water means the world to me.
Many in Katrina’s aftermath had less,
though I can make a list of what I don’t have:
working car, now, is the latest item, and
money to get it fixed, or even money for lunch.
At home the hot water pipe has sprung a leak ---
we scrounged seven dollars and change to buy
the less good of two clamps at Keith’s Hardware.
If we’re lucky, Gabe won’t be too tired from work
to screw the pieces into place. But we are blessed:
my girlfriend has a bookstore charge. So, here, now,
each of us has a shiny new book to read,
and let’s lengthen the list: I have this pen
and a big fat notebook for this assessment
of an impoverished life where things go wrong.
Ants run around on the wall I’m sitting on, as I wait
for Triple A, but none have bitten me yet.

There’s more. I’ve put everything I need
from the trunk of the car into my brand new
monogrammed LL Bean backpack on wheels,
frightening gift from my practical mother ---
cat food, medicine, a denim shirt in case the temp
should plunge from ninety down to sixty suddenly.
My girlfriend’s complaining of discomfort ---
how can that be? Sitting in a parking lot
in the heat? We are indeed a lucky pair.
My car will sit at the service station
a good solid week until payday. I will walk
or take the bus. Or hitch up the big dogs
to the red plastic wagon my girlfriend’s son
bought at Goodwill for the baby, which is now
taking up space on the dining room floor.
We will get where we need to go. We will get
our medicine. The cats will eat. Life is not
just a carbon impression of life today --- it is real.

I read this poem in its draft form (which it is still in) at Destinations bookstore in New Albany, Indiana. Response was good, but I'm seeing things in the poem to work on, like for example it sounds like the baby is taking up space on the dining room floor. And I'm not sure about the
last line -- which I've changed since reading the poem.

So what's the verdict, bloggers, is this a confessional poem??? The way I look at it, I'm not a hoarder of secrets; I guess I was influenced early on by my writer father, who kept telling me that "everything is material." I actually did write this poem sitting on a concrete wall at the edge of the parking lot where my parked car was leaking antifreeze like a geyser. In a way, I think this is a "found poem" --- or a poem which exploits a real-life situation to make a poem.

Of course it's psychological/psychiatric issues in poems that are most likely to win the confessional label. I don't even see why this should be. If a poet writes about being depressed, then suddenly they're confessional? To me, moods and brain-states are just part of life.
Because Plath/Sexton/Lowell/Berryman et al had psychiatric diagnoses, they were given the additional label (which I'm positive they LOVED) of "confessional." To me this is especially
ironic with Lowell, who had such a huge body of work that had little overtly to do with himself: historical poems, translations, etc. When you read almost any definition of "confessional" in a glossary, it says it was a "literary movement." I really don't think so. I think the poets in question were using the material their lives gave them. It's true that for example Elizabeth Bishop could have been a more confessional poet --- she suffered from severe alcoholism and depression --- but she either chose not to consciously, or simply wasn't drawn to writing poems about these psycological issues as much as others. She was Lowell's buddy, of course, and
critical of some of the decisions he made about subject matter, such as his decision to write about his ex-wife (am I dreaming this??? I think I read this somewhere).

Yes, each one of us poets is responsible for the choices we make as to subject matter in our poems (what an ungainly sentence). Of course, in the big wide world there is plenty to write about other than our mood or mood-medicine. Is the choice to write about the latter a matter of
"honesty" or is it exhibitionist? Is honesty a kind of exhibitionism? Would the confessional
poets have done a greater service to themselves and American Literature if they had kept mum about their hospital stays and states of melancholy, and instead written about mating habits of insects and fall foliage??? Would they have written better poems???

Are poets more or less likely to write, say, about suicide, now, than before Plath and Sexton?
Did these two make the climate more or less favorable to such poetry? Can a poet now write about ANYTHING she wants to write about, or did the "confessional movement" create new taboos, in the long run???

I'm actually interested in answers to these questions.

---Harriet.

the rehabilitated blogger

2005-09-22T17:30:00.000-07:00

The wicked stoned old witch of rock 'n roll, Marianne Faithful, is playing at this moment in this place. I've been accused of wanting to be the drummer for her band, an ambition I can't think of ever having consciously entertained. I once gave a cassette of her music to a TV newsanchor who tried to return it saying: "I don't like her attitude." Oh yes, Marianne has a lousy attitude.
I saw her biography in a bookstore but didn't buy it; she's one of these people you know pretty much as much as you need to know about without actually knowing it. Maybe the same can be said about me.

In other news I've had too much coffee and the DJ on WFPK goofed up and started playing the wrong song twice in a row. Maybe she was too excited because she was trying to play a new song by the excellent local band (the cream of Louisville's crop) My Morning Jacket. Anyway here I was excited about it myself, hanging on every note, and when the first vocal began I thought: "Wow, My Morning Jacket has really changed their style." But the then DJ cut in and said OOPS. Another song started, and once again I'm there, absolutely plugged in, and the vocal starts. "Oh, so My Morning Jacket has a female vocalist now --- oh, wait, that's Melissa Etheridge." The song stops, a third song comes on --- this time it sounds like the band whose new release I've been anticipating as much as I've ever anticipated a new release --- especially as they've put out a couple of weird CDs with B-sides or whatever. I guess CDs don't have B-sides so I don't know what to call it --- the kind of reject music.

All of which makes me think of Gwen's challenge to write about an anniversary. October 4th is the day My Morning Jacket's CD is due out, it is also the anniversary of the day I gave up drinking and the day I went back to drinking exactly eleven years later. I like this symmetry, though I have to say, while I'd love to be back on the sauce in a spectacular way, closing bars with zest and fervor, hitting the dance floors on the weekend in my leather mini-skirt and heels, the fact is I have wimped out. I can't drink anymore, a funny thing happened on the way to the cash bar, I realized I needed a cup of coffee instead. So while I give myself permission to drink,
while the taste of alcohol is not forbidden, three or four sips and I'm out of it. I don't know if there's a cure for this; I'm not really looking for one.

One final note: of course the MLA stuff on my ECE needs work, I knew it would. But apparently the content is OK. Maybe better than OK. Which is what I really wanted to hear. I honestly, time taken for blogging aside, worked harder on that thing than any academic project to date, including previous theses.

I apologize for my blog entry about brain-farts. I guess I had one myself.

---Harriet.

used brain for sale

2005-09-18T12:18:00.000-07:00

Camille Paglia, in her chapter on Emily Dickinson in her book Sexual Personae notes that Miss Emily uses the word "brain" in some unusual ways. Unfortunately, I have used the pages of Paglia's book to roll big fat joints which I enjoyed several times a day while enjoying my ECE (Extended Cannabis Episode).

Of course some of you may not realize I'm joking. No, I don't smoke marijuana because it inspires me to prepare gourmet meals in the wee hours of the morning. Or failing that, it alters a mind that is already permanently altered, and that's not necessary.

But I wanted to remark on Dickinson's usage of the word brain. It's not a very feminine word. Neither, or course, is "fart" --- the two together are deadly. I don't picture the average slim blonde cheerleader using the term "brain-fart." I'm neither slim nor blonde, but that is the first time I've ever used that term. A boyfriend introduced it to me, one of my creepiest boyfriends, I should add. He would wash his hair: the first day he looked great, the second day OK. The third day, the baseball cap would appear on his head. As the days went by, the hair sticking out in back would come more and more to resemble a waterfall --- no, not the right color for a waterfall, but the right degress of "moistness." And this guy was always
talking about "brain-farts." I thought it was the tackiest, most tasteless thing I'd heard anyone say since another of my creepy boyfriends (I had a string of them in the mid-nineties) spoke of how he was "dyin' to NAIL me." Let it not be thought these were long-term partnerships.

I can't find the poems Paglia has quoted, nor can I find Paglia's book. Oh, well.

There's a joke my mom told me about brains. Something about a college president's brain, a dean's brain, a department chair's brain, and on and on to a graduate student's brain. It's too bad I can't remember the punch line.

My own brain is of course no good anymore, after being bent out of shape to produce the most bent out of shape ECE anyone could imagine. So I'm not going to for example spend five or six paragraphs on the philosophical debate about whether the brain and the mind are the same thing. I've read books on the subject, that's another reason my brain doesn't work anymore,
and I've lost the last trace of my mind.

I have to let my tomcat out of solitary. To all bloggers: happy happy joy joy.

---Harriet.

obsession --- a user's manual

2005-09-06T22:30:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel like a hurricane has passed over my CPU --- yeah, that thing in my brain that processes stuff and then moves on. Anybody who knows me well knows I'm obsessive, something that some writers get away with because they're writers, but it certainly becomes tiresome not only for me but for many people I come in contact with.

For example I think I have written at least five SOS e-mails about my Extended Critical Essay to Kathleen, the administrator at Spalding who kind of keeps an eye on the third-semester students who are writing these essays. Well, those of us who are doing fine and not falling down and having self-doubt attacks are pretty much left to their own devices, though Kathleen (maybe someone else too???) checks the MLA formatting when we're done.

I have not heard back from my mentor since she told me she was going to contact Kathleen about the sorry situation my ECE was in. I'm hoping the reason I haven't heard anything is that my mentor has other things on her mind. I'm hoping there's nothing "going on," in other words. I have a paranoid friend who's always trying to figure out what's "going on" --- once she got all upset because Emeril the chef was making a chop suey sandwich --- she thought somebody was sending her a coded message.

OK so I have weird friends, but that happens to people who are themselves a little "different." My first residency at Spalding I definitely gave people a taste of "different." This semester's anxiety and obsessing are less surreal, more just plain pathetic.

I had a dream in which I received an e-mail from Kathleen that said:
"Who the hell do you think you are expecting all of us to drop everything and pay attention to your minute difficulties with your ECE???"

I do believe this is the message I deserve to receive, though it is not, of course, what I want to hear. Mainly, I just want to finish writing the darn thing, so I can be a poet again.

Oh yeah, I wanted to tell Amy Watkins, whose e-mail address I don't know, that I finally read her poem called "untitled" that she pasted into the comments section on my blog --- great poem, Amy. Sorry I didn't see it earlier.

---Harriet

prayer

2005-09-03T00:15:00.000-07:00

So I sometimes try to be funny on this blog; it's because of the relationship between an actual nuthouse and a factual funny farm.
But today I want to include a straight-faced prayer for the victims of Katrina. I am quite concerned by the suggestion that the relief efforts especially in New Orleans are being mishandled because so many of the citizens of the city are poor and/or black. As is always the case after a natural disaster --- or a man-made one, it's possible to watch a lot of TV or read the news or hear it on the radio and be misled. Generally there is an effort to give the impression that Everything Possible is being done.
This may not be the case. I find myself going along with what some people I respect are saying --- however I have not seen evidence with my own eyes and i have no way to really judge. Am I stuck in the kind of denial white folks can get into because they want everything to be hunky dory??? So maybe there was a traffic jam at one point that delayed a huge number of busses on their way to pick up people at the Superdome, for example.
Whatever the case, I feel helpless, frustrated, and annoyed because this disaster comes at a time when I have SO much on my plate --- by which I don't mean food, in fact food on the plate is a little hard to come by, as
my first paycheck doesn't come until the end of this month. Because of this I have no money to donate, which makes me feel helpless and frustrated. Oh, I already listed those adjectives, and added ANNOYED.
The last one is most relevant because of the comments I received on my ECE today --- apparently my mentor thought she ought to do her job, and give my essay a careful, thorough reading. Oh yeah, she did. And I have less than two weeks to pretty much do a quintuple bypass on the thing.
Maybe something's wrong with my work ethic, because I feel like the ECE is low on my list of priorities, which is to say if I really had my druthers I'd head for a hilltop and spend two weeks in prayer and meditation.

Back to New Orleans: they're running their mouths now about how things are "getting better" --- one man said that we'll talk for years about why relief (fifty truckloads of stuff) didn't come earlier than Friday, but on Friday "We have the sense a corner has been turned." Now I'm in that kind of sullen mood, after seeing thousands of people camped out by a highway being passed over by the convoy of yellow schoolbusses. After seeing some "heartwarming" stories --- a white family in town on their kid's college tour rescued by a private contractor, a white/hispanic family welcomed into a another family's home in Texas. Is it my imagination or did neither of these heartwarming stories feature a black family??? Am I simply not sitting down in front of the TV at the right moments to witness all the outpouring of benevolence toward non-white people? I will admit that I can only take the disaster area in doses. I should say I have the luxury of being able to take it in doses. I heard a man repeat several times: "WHY DO I HAVE TO BE A PART OF THIS???" How many of us TV-watchers are slowing down enough to try to imagine how a person who would say this FEELS, a person who has had nothing to eat or drink for four days and probably little sleep. I believe I have mainly had this feeling in nightmares. There's a chill involved, a dread, a fear that nothing will be good again, a lack of hope. Of course, the biggest culprit is Katrina. But we the people and the government whom we elected should be doing everything humanly possible, I mean going to every length and more, to make this horrific situation better.

It's almost midnight; I haven't had the heart to do a stitch of work on my ECE, partly because the TV is on, partly because of the surgery my mentor demands. I don't want to be p-o-ed all the time, it actually makes me hurt physically --- and emotionally. But I'm in awe of the challenge my mentor has given me, not in good awe but bad awe, if I can make that distinction. It's the kind of awe you feel when you've just had a car wreck, and you're looking over the damage to your vehicle. The kind of awe that Katrina has inspired.

Anyone sleeping in a bed at home tonight should be grateful, in other words I should be grateful, I know, but it's been occuring to me lately that gratitude isn't enough. Counting one's blessings is sometimes little more than a heartwarming mental exercise, there has to be something more if one is going to have a positive effect on the world beyond one's suburban driveway. SHARING one's blessings is something like what i have in mind. Have I shared one penny of my vast wealth today, one cookie out of my bottomless cookie jar, one smile out of my repertoire of happy smiles???

I've shared a piece of my mind, and that has benefitted exactly WHOM??? I've shared my anger, fear and insecurity with everyone I've spoken to or e-mailed this whole day, and perhaps the only recipients of untainted kindness from me from the time I rolled out of the wrong side of bed this morning have been dogs and cats. Oh yeah, and the little black puppy ran away, the same day Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.
To anyone who has accompanied my train of thought this far: may your minds and hearts find peace and comfort. And to God: may those affected by this wretched situation find peace and comfort, as well as food and drink and clothing and hope that they will again have a roof over their heads.

---Harriet

a walk to the park

2005-08-24T23:25:00.000-07:00

Today we took the little black grandpuppy to the park where he met a huge rusty golden retriever named Murphy who was trying to rub his way out of his "gentle leader." After a few minutes, he was reunited with his friend Frodo the beagle. Sadly, however, his new girlfriend Bailey the part Chesapeake was a no-show and the two little part-dachshunds who did show up, scared to death of anything canine bigger than a rat, were hardly a consolation prize.

Walking Aiko (the grandpuppy) is a bit of a dance. Bagel, the old dog, walks in a straight line, more or less --- sure, she gets distracted by a telephone pole or a shrub or discarded fast food wrappings. But Aiko's
movements defy any kind of mapping. Sometimes he zig-zags, sometimes he runs in circles, sometimes he wraps the leash around the legs of the lucky person walking him. Skillful switching of the leash-handle from hand to hand can stave this off. It's next to impossible to avoid tangles if you're trying to carry something in one hand, such as a Chai-berg, my favorite summer indulgence.

It's a revelation to me, has been now for over seven years --- but it's a chronically self-renewing revelation that walking a friendly dog makes all the difference. Aiko of course is a revelation in his own right, being a new pup. But I've been walking Bagel over seven years; she's the kind of dog you NEVER worry about when strangers, including the tiniest of children, want to poke stroke and fondle. The only time she's EVER exhibited anything akin to aggression is when a drunk femme-fatale-style blonde woman messed with her ears, which at the time were infected.

Prior to Bagel I had not walked a dog (much) since Mackey, the springer spaniel my parents got me when I turned 10 ("old enough" --- I had only been clamoring for a puppy since I learned to talk). Mackey was a full-blooded pedigreed show dog. He had a temperament that was at best grouchy, at worst hostile to anything that moved. Except me and my mom. No, he didn't like my dad. At all. He was only about half-grown when he first attacked my dad's hand and drew blood. A long series of attacks were to follow: friends, babysitters, grandmothers, you name it.
None of the attacks were severe --- sometimes there was no blood involved, but everyone was scared when it happened --- a dog can have
that sudden totally shocking and surprising way of lunging and suddenly all you feel is teeth.

Mackey could not stand to have anyone mess with his food. That was where he absolutely drew the line. But it wasn't just HIS food, it was whatever food he decided was his. I remember sitting with my parents in our living room, Mackey up on the coffee table slurping up our cottage cheese dip, my parents announcing to me that we were going to get rid of the hateful hound.

Well, I didn't hate him. I did hate worrying about him. When I came home from school and saw my dad's walking stick broken in two outside the back door, I knew, and felt sick to my stomach. Later that day my parents let me know that Mackey had died from his injuries and that we would be getting a kitten.

Having someone new to love does tend to ease the grieving for a lost friend, even though no dog or cat can be replaced, no new critter can fill the paw prints of the lamented departed one. I have fond memories of my childhood cat, Dutiful Penitence, but though I have some downright awful memories of Mackey, I dream about him at least twice a year.
In the dreams he either never died or he's back from the dead, and he's running and bouncing, chasing balls and sticks, slurping my face with
his long doggy tongue, doing everything but the bad stuff he used to do.

Bagel is a far cry from Mackey in the looks department. Well, Rae called Bagel, in a poem, "No longer cute / a marble cake with teeth." But I don't look at springer spaniels the way I used to. I don't look at any pure bred
show dog the same way, because I'm always wondering what was sacrificed to a) breed such dogs, and b) teach such dogs to obey.
Are dogs works of art to be admired, or are they delightful frolicking furry friends? I realize they can be both. Mackey wasn't. Aiko is. Bagel has the furry friend part nailed.

I hope you bloggers out there have plenty of encounters with four-footed intelligent life on a regular basis. It's better than poetry sometimes.

---Harriet

diary of a semi-retired hypochondriac

2005-08-22T20:01:00.000-07:00

Lili Tomlin, I think, was the one who said: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you." Along the same lines: "Just because you're a hypochondriac doesn't mean there's nothing wrong with you." What's wrong with me at the moment is that I have cell-phone-itis.
I just spend two hours and thirty-eight minutes on my cell with precisely the person I had resolved not to spend hours on my cell with. Not that I didn't wish to speak to this person, I was just going to do it on the land phone. Well, the land phone where I currently am situated is temporarily out of commission. I could have gone home, but there the land phone has such a short cord that to talk on it I have to sit in a chair next to the cat litter box. The friend I was just talking to on my cell has let me know her birthday present to me is a looooooooong phone cord. Another option would have been getting a new battery for the cordless phone, but such are the chores that get put off to my next lifetime.

Anyway, the news from Louisville to my fellow bloggers is that everything is falling apart. For example: the black puppy's voice has changed. Just now, I mean five minutes ago, I heard him howl for the first time in his life. Or anyway in my life. The black puppy is evolving beyond teething, too, which of course is welcome, and he has begun doing his business on newspaper we put out for him on the living room floor. ALSO: yesterday
the black puppy met the love of his life. She is just about exactly his age and size, both look like Labs but his mom is a Doberman, hers is a
Chesapeake Bay Retriever. They met in the park, they kissed, they hugged, they chased, they rolled in the grass. The girlfriend's owner lit a cigarette and I wanted one more than I have wanted one these two months, sometimes it seems a ceremonial cigarette should be smoked.
How can I possibily declare a moment sacred without the holiness of SMOKE???

But today I'm still on the wagon. It was the first day of school; a friend had told me "If you want to stay away from smoking, don't do anything you don't want to do, because if you feel put-upon you'll want to smoke."
So today I had to start teaching and believe me, I felt put-upon. SOMEBODY was making me do it. Now I couldn't tell you who somebody was; if asked to meditate on it I would be forced to conclude that I myself was the one who dreamt up the cock-eyed idea of going back to teaching when my life of liesure had only one defect --- it was making me crazy.
Why give up perfectly good crazy-making liesure for perfectly healthy
order-causing structure???

And when I was talking to the kids (college freshmen) today I realized:
I KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. I realized: when I'm going on about the value of reading and writing, when I'm going on about the value of writing and re-writing, I AM NOT BS-ING. In a class of 25, two or three are bound to hear me. One or two are going to really enjoy this class, come out of the experience feeling they've grown not just as writers, but as human beings.

So to go back to where I started this blog entry, I'm trying to put the hypochondriac thing on the back burner. Maybe it was the ECE that made me feel my wheels were coming off. I'm waiting to hear from Rae about her first day teaching at the men's prison. With any luck, they won't lock her up there with the guys. To all of you who have followed this blog entry to its feeble conclusion, thank you. I hope you're all feeling fine.

---Harriet

why it's OK to apologize

2005-08-12T18:58:00.000-07:00

A friend is always telling me "never apologize." I tend to speak two or three apologetic sentences before I read a poem. Anyway people seem to think the sentences are apologetic. It's not just one friend who tells me to SHUT UP AND READ, it's a whole throng of people, dating back as long as I remember. I haven't just apologized for poems, I've apologized for
2000 types of offenses, and now you're wondering why I'm so sure of the number, I'm borrowing it from the Lever soap commercial.

I actually think we should all apologize for existing. I'm especially apologetic tonight because my existence seems to require way too much explanation. Explanation is something poets sometimes do prior to reading which is mistaken, sometimes, for apologizing. "But if you don't know I grew up on a houseboat, you won't understand why in the poem
I talk about leaning out the kitchen window and grabbing a fat fish."
That's an apologetic explanation for an explanation. If Bob the poet at the reading you went to tonight had delivered words along these lines between poems, would it have ruined the evening for you???

I feel like apologizing because of what I've been publishing on my blog, but that's nothing new. I feel like explaining: Rae was holding a gun to my right temple, I said NO I can't publish your poem on my blog, I'll DIE before you do, but she clicked the orange button with her left foot. I didn't know she had done this until later, and by then it was too late, everyone who wasn't going to read the blog hadn't read it.

What makes me such an effusive blogger??? I've always got to write a new blog entry to apologize for the one that came before. The most awkward ones seem to be as awkward in reality as I think they are after clicking
the orange button --- OOOPS --- of course I know I can always delete.
I'm going to delete Rae's poem but not until I print out a copy.

Have I quoted this Elton John song before?

I'm sorry I took your time
I am the poem that doesn't rhyme.

---Harriet

Hairy Otter

2005-07-27T21:45:00.000-07:00

Lest anyone think my title is original, it's not. I don't know how many places sell the t-shirts, so far I've heard the Monterey Bay Aquarium and someplace in Alaska. They may sell them right here in Louisville for all I know. Of course, there are few actual sea otters in the Bay of Louisville---
In other news I went to see the movie about penguins today. There was a five-year-old in the seat next to me who kept climbing out of her seat and saying "Mommy I'm bored." She became happier when the baby penguins cracked their way out of their shells. I feel very dumb because after seeing the movie I'm not sure if penguins are made of feathers or fur.

Yeah, I know they're birds.

As I knew in advance a new Harry Potter book was due out in the middle of the semester, I probably should have put it on my reading list. Then I would have felt industrious rather than indulgent during the 48 hours in which free moments were spent glued to the misadventures of wizards and witches. What does a poet stand to gain from reading a book which sold 6.9 million copies in the first 24 hours on the shelf??? Wouldn't it be weird if a poetry book sold 500 copies in the first 24 hours? It's strange that I'm a Harry Potter fan, I used to enjoy avoiding fads and mainstream enthusiasms. While I was reading this number six of seven, I kept wondering if I was binging on literary junk food. At the same time I was having thoughts like: "Well, I'll take the trash out in a minute, right now I've got to find out if Snape is really a Death Eater."

For those of you who might have kept up with my blog and are aware of my intellectual/spiritual crisis --- I don't know the difference between good and evil --- I will let you know that my allegiances are clear when it comes to Harry and his gang. What I'm less certain about is whether the black cat walking on the keyboard as I try to type this is in league with the Wicked Witch of the West.Probably not, because this particular cat doesn't mind getting soaked when it rains .

So as you can see I'm still running alongside the poetry bus trying to wave down the driver. Either that or I'm passing the poetry bus in my
black Jaguar, with a patronizing wave at the driver. Neither of these scenarios are appropriate because today my mentor sent back her comments on the rough draft of my ECE, meaning I had better board the poetry bus gratefully, put my token in the box, and take a seat.

My next blog entry will be on the use of the definite article in Wordsworth's "Prelude."

--- Harriet

my cat asserts himself

2005-07-21T10:28:00.000-07:00

I read a portion of my last blog entry, the one about darkness, to a friend, and she said: "Oh, I'm so sorry you're so confused." Confused? I asked her what she meant. "You don't know the difference between good and evil," my friend said in a pitying tone of voice.

In a way I could say to my friend, in an indignant third-grader voice, "I do SO know the difference between good and evil." And to discuss the sense in which I don't, I'd have to pretty much get into politics. Or theology.

Another option is I could just pretty much shut up. Write my ECE. If I must blog, I could blog
about the finer points of prosody.

Thank you, blog-readers, for your kind comments. I must now brush my tomcat, who has arrived on my desk.

--- Harriet.

what color is dark???

2005-07-19T22:45:00.000-07:00

What are some similarities between pop-psychologist of the soul Thomas Moore and the young Darth Vader? How can I possibly concentrate enough to answer my own question with a big old buzzy fly on the curtain above my head and an craving for a Heine Bros. Chai-berg which has gone unsatisfied for three nights?

After resisting the second Star Wars trilogy through the first two movies, I finally broke down and saw "Revenge of the Sith" with my mom a month or so ago. I was captivated as Anakin (sp?) who was a great hero among the Jedi was lured over to the "Dark Side of the Force" --- he can't bear his prophetic dreams about his wife dying in childbirth, so the possibility of possessing the power to override death excites him to the core. The virtuous Jedi are presented by Anakin's mentor the prime
minister (who turns out to be a Sith lord) as lacking depth, as ultimately less powerful.

Thomas Moore's book "Dark Nights of the Soul" is just out in paperback.
Since I felt a little dark, engaged as I am in such existential struggles as quitting smoking and writing my ECE, I purchased the book, and I've been stealing time from critical writing and arranging sessions in the La-z-boy chair on the front porch to give Mr. Moore opportunities to educate me. Of course everybody knows dark nights of the soul are times of depression, illness or other difficulty; Moore suggests that "the dark night calls for a spiritual response." He almost ridicules anyone who would want to have their dark night over with quickly, or who would seek a merely therapeutic answer. The dark night of the soul can be a deep character-building experience.

OK, we're talking about two very different people, two very different concepts, right? Anakin, who becomes Darth Vader, is EVIL. We all root for the Jedi knights when we watch Star Wars films. There are unsavory qualities to the Sith, and they don't know how to love.

"Imagine that you didn't feel a stranger to your dark night and that you had a key to entering it and leaving it." Thomas Moore suggests that exploring our dark qualities makes us deeper and being deeper means possibly being stronger.

OK so the thing is, Moore isn't suggesting to anyone that they try to take over the universe. He offers no sinister powers, like newfangled ways of killing people, like special skills with the lightsaver, like replacing human body parts with whatever it is Darth Vader always wears after he gets burned up in that weird fiery place.

Moore has the following arguments to anyone who thinks they are exclusively virtuous beings of Light:

"However you present yourself to the world, on some level you are a dark person. You have thoughts you don't usually tell people. You are capable of things that your friends may know nothing about. You are probably more interesting sexually than the world realizes. You probably have some anger and fears that you don't tell people about. You may have secrets from the past that make you more intriguing than your persona would suggest. Certainly your potential for darker thoughts and behavior is rich."

To go along with Moore's argument for a moment. I would suggest that many of those of us who write poetry have explored the darkness even if only under linguistic cloaks of secrecy. Moore actually says that poetry is the perfect genre for such exploration. It is not necessary to be "confessional" --- after all, George Lucas certainly must have been exploring his own darkness with all those big expensive movies, but I don't know one single fact about his life. In the quote unquote real world, the dark side isn't literally populated with all those creatures and different types of space vehicles and weapons. The world of dreams, where most of us probably regularly encounter the dark side, is another story. Moore is certainly not the first in the field of psychology to suggest
that we can ignore the dark side when we're conscious, but it'll git us when we go to sleep.

The possibility of bizarre dreams aside, what would be the problem with avoiding dark nights of the soul, and living a carefully planned life of goodness and light and love??? There are spiritual traditions such as Jewish Kabbalah and Buddhism that suggest negativity, or darkness, can be willed away. We can become such creatures of Light that we don't express anger, that we don't worry or obsess, that we never become depressed. In layman's Kabbalah this is called being "proactive," in Buddhism there are three "afflictions" which are to be conquered, hatred or anger, craving or attachment, and delusion, and in theory a person can aspire to live without these.

Moore suggests instead that we burrow more deeply into negativity.
This is how we become people of character. The Sith do not rule anything out. They believe that power is what is most important and they will acquire it "by any means necessary."

Oh yeah, Darth Vader howls to raise the dead when he finds out that his wife has in fact died in childbirth. This is the heartbreaking fact of this evil one's more human past. So, if keeping his wife alive was the main reason Anakin went over to the dark side, could it be said he did this out of LOVE???

What IS the difference between good and evil anyway??? I don't think I have the answer today. Rae, who is somewhere close to the last page of the new Harry Potter, probably has a better answer than I do.

--- Harriet.

life in a box

2005-07-18T23:15:00.000-07:00

Now that I've chased away my readership with yet another WEIRD blog entry, I will pause at the end of Monday night to address the blog spirits or poltergeists or extremely hardy souls who venture to adventure with me one more time. My title is borrowed from a recent blog entry by Gwen. It also reminds me of a song by Alice in Chains called "Man in a Box." Though I'm the wrong gender, I have identified with that song at times, been known to turn it up loud when it comes on my car radio.

SO, the exceptionally hardy reader of this blog entry is wondering, WHEN do we get back to poetry??? Probably not until the ECE joins with the family picnic on the 4th and the grandbaby's first birthday as a Polaroid memory (or is that supposed to be Kodak???) Oh, I suppose I could share heartwarming stories of my progress on the ECE. This morning I woke up to the sounds of an intruder in the kitchen. Not to suggest that I had no clue as to who this intruder might be. Yes, my girlfriend's schizophrenic son, whom I mentioned in my last blog entry, a young man who has been repeatedly politely asked by his mother to PLEASE knock and wait for a response before coming in. He had emptied the refrigerator of everything but a few science experiments, and there were pots boiling on all the burners and there was something in the oven which smelled vaguely like charcoal. I said: "Ian, what the BLEEP are you doing here???"

Tomorrow, should I detect anything with my schizophrenia detector upon rising and shining, I am cleared to make a pleasant call to the local precinct, letting them know they should sent someone from the CIT team --- cops specially trained to deal with the mentally ill.

So what does all this have to do with progress on my ECE??? After Ian left (neglecting to turn off the burners), I sat down and spent a few amusing moments considering the work of Eleanor Lerman.

The poetry of Eleanor Lerman IS, after all, amusing; I don't know why I sometimes think or say it's not, except that of course I know why, it's because when you eat drink and breathe someone's poetry (I never intended my ECE to be about only one poet) it can start to feel like your own, and I, for one, do not always feel so terrific about my own work.
Lerman is not a well-known poet and I feel self-conscious writing about her --- my ECE may well be the first critical writing of significant length that anyone has done on her work, and that's sort of a lot of responsibility for an actual nut like me to take on.

Yeah, for example Lerman's publisher, Sarabande books, has expressed interest in seeing the finished essay. Gawd, I just want to hide behind the refrigerator. As any reader could tell from reading my blog, I am very shy and slow to reveal my opinions. Would Spalding let me adopt a pen name when I turn in my ECE??? Maybe the nice folks at Sarabande will have forgotten my name by the time this essay is all MLA-ed and approved.
That's if all that good stuff happens; before it does, I'm going to have to
spend some more quality time with Ms. Lerman.

But now before signing off on this cyber-document, I should think back to the title of my blog entry: life in a box. Do I live in a box? Do we all live in invisible boxes? Oh, hey, this is all a little mystical or deep for me. Yeah, we all have our limitations, and we all have limits imposed on us. Big deal. If these things weren't true, each one of us would be the Universe, or God, or something.

I will need a box to hide in. Instead of hiding behind the refrigerator, I should hide inside it. If I can figure out how to do that, I can surely figure out what to say in the homestretch (last ten pages) of my ECE. I want to thank anyone who has born with me through this and other nutty installments of purple prose in the actual nuthouse.

--- Harriet.

my cartoon vacation

2005-07-17T01:02:00.000-07:00

When you don't know if it's stress or MS that's making you shake and then your girlfriend's schizophrenic son walks in the house saying something about East German women drinking gin and building rockets... you know it's time for a tropical island, the kind with the cartoon fish that talk to you and the cartoon guys with dreads who drape coral necklaces on you and can make alcoholic drinks that don't interact with your blood pressure medicine (this paragraph contains fictional details, believe it or not). Or, you sit down to write a blog entry as a way of ignoring the schizophrenic son and the creepy feelings in your head which your girlfriend says are weather-related --- no, you're not about to explode. You wish you hadn't treated your mentor to a play-by-play of your Space-Invaders-type-shoot-em-up-competition with a list of physical symptoms all of which probably were related to anxiety. You wish you hadn't let all the bloggers and blog-readers know the extent of your malaise but now it's too late, not really too late because after all there's a backspace key and a delete key but you throw your hands in the air, this blog is called Actual Nuthouse so you might as well tell the truth (and throw in a few fictional details to keep em guessing).

Enter puppy. Yap yap. Turns out this puppy is part Doberman, even though he's all black. He comes bouncing in, licky licky licky.

What I like about blogging is it doesn't have to be all about poetry, though maybe it should be. Today I wheezed out a few pages of ECE, struggling with the sensation of knives in my head and an urge to smoke. Meanwhile my girlfriend was buried in Harry Potter, purchased at last night's bookstore party which was blessed by a certain red SUV that kept circling the block, its passengers shouting obscenities, finally mooning the Potter-ites --- I recreationally wondered: why do they hate us??? --- a question asked on nine eleven by more than one of my clients at the halfway house (and plenty of Americans who did not suffer from mental illness as well). Today, a friend remarked: "Anyone who doesn't like Harry Potter fans is un-American." I reminded her that it's a British phenomenon. "Selling books is an American phenomenon," she reminded me.

two little poems

2005-07-13T05:40:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have read my post on quitting smoking. I know two of you did, because you made kind comments (thank you). I would now like to share my miniature poems, the first signs of life after shocking my brain by cutting off its smoke and nicotine supply.

Crisis

I can’t punctuate each breath with smoke
or walk on smoke, mentally,
a trick I learned too young.
My voice feels like a yo-yo self-
motivated, leaving my grip,
visiting Japan or maybe
Senegal. I can’t make thoughts
by pouring strong coffee
on my frontal lobes; I can’t
write poems.

The other poem was inspired by a fellow blogger.

Untitled

When I am asked
how I began writing poems
I say I did it in my head
midwinter, Texas,
last ride through the neighborhood
on my big green bike; I stopped
and stood beholding prickly pear
in a vacant lot which the hillside
formed into a gentle L-shape;
the clubs of the cactus
were proud against turquoise;
I photographed them mentally then
when I was ten.

I welcome any feedback. I would like to know if there's any future for me as a poet without the omnipresent cylinders of tobacco. If not, I would still hope to have the sense to avoid the nasty weed. So please be honest.

--- Harriet.

notes from a dark room

2005-07-13T05:00:00.000-07:00

By dark room I don't mean a darkroom. I don't mean a figurative dark room, as one might represent a grief or a depression. I mean precisely what I say, a room in which there is little light. There various reasons why this room lacks light, one is that the puppy unplugged --- more than unplugged, somehow messed up (chewed?) the only light source other than the dim bulb on the ceiling. Another is that today is a gloomy wet treat of a day bestowed on us by Dennis.

I was drawn away from my ECE just now for various reasons. Perhaps you have noticed that I tend to assign several reasons to everything that happens in my world. My mom, when I was growing up, had a habit of
prefacing her statements about unusual or uncomfortable events by saying "For some reason." So for example she would say: "For some reason my foot has turned green and fallen off." Or: "For some reason
there is a brontosaurus in the back yard and it has eaten our dog Skippy."
I think that particular kind of dinosaur is supposed to be vegetarian, so there's a whole other set of reasons to contemplate.

I was drawn away from my ECE because of reasons too boring to contemplate. I have just been reading Camille Paglia on Emily Dickinson.
According to Paglia, Dickinson is and always will be "the greatest of women poets." I am normally quite bored by such worship of a poet whom I never bothered to read unless a poem of hers was quoted
somewhere as was frequently the case. I always thought of Dickinson as "prim." I'd picture her demurely seated in the parlor doing God knows what --- whatever is done in parlors, I always assumed just sitting. I did see Julie Harris performing the one-woman-show "The Belle of Amherst" when I was about thirteen, but what I remember more than anything specific pertaining to the poet is the recipe for brown bread that came in the Dickinson biography that I think my mom purchased after the show.
My mom tried the recipe and it was a notable disaster.

I was always bothered by the rhyme and meter in the Dickinson poems I encountered. I didn't always find her diction praiseworthy, I thought she chose words for the sake of the rhyme and meter so she could not be trusted (I tend to feel that poets who do this cannot be trusted).

Camille Paglia (whom I basically loathe) has an interesting take on Dickinson. I don't know how original it is, as I am not familiar with Dickinson scholarship. Paglia calls her "Amherst's Madame de Sade." ("Sexual Personae --- Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson") She focuses on those poems which say grisly things about body parts, and makes comments like: "The brutality of this belle of Amherst would stop a truck. She is a virtuoso of sadomasochistic surrealism."

So now I have this new take on Miss Emily in her parlor. This poet who according to most biographers suffered through a great deal of unrequited love is not meditating on the beautiful and the pure all the time, but she's picturing things like: "If ever the lid gets off my head/
and lets the brain away," or, "The Brain is just the weight of God/for Heft them Pound for Pound." Paglia comments: "The poet hefts the brain like
a shopper picking through cabbages at the market."

Paglia happens to be a great admirer of the Marquis de Sade, or so she says. I suspect this is an affectation which is related to Paglia's sensational style of scholarship. To me, "sensational" scholarship is a bit of an oxymoron. Paglia is approved of by the great Harold Bloom;
what he says about "Sexual Personae" is "[it's] an enormous sensation of a book." I wouldn't disagree, but he goes on to say "in all the better senses of 'sensation.'"

Paglia is a self-proclaimed enemy of nature, which, she says, can only seem beautiful to the shallow. Throughout the two chapters of the 700-page book I was able to get through, she repeats the adjective "cthonian."
Nature is actually not comprised of beautiful sunsets and daffodils,
but is a threatening noxious soup of destruction. And sex, which is "the natural in man," is "daemonic."

I don't know why, in light of these sentiments, Dickinson is so appealing to Paglia, except that in those poems she quotes, she seems to have a similar pessimistic view of humankind's relation to nature.It's likely that Dickinson had an unorthodox view of sexuality as well; from what I've read it seems likely she didn't experience much sex.

I would not recommend Paglia's book. A better book on Dickinson is by Paula Bennett: "My Life a Loaded Gun." Paglia is more of a cartoonist than a scholar.

I have had from both these books a crash course in the complexity of the mind and art of Emily Dickinson. It still seems stultifying to say she's "the greatest woman poet;" she's perhaps one of the more conspicuous, and
none of us now can have the historical impact she had --- there are, after
all, so many of us. Paglia thinks MEN are to be thanked for the fact there are so many of us and we have so much freedom. When I'm done with my ECE, I'm going to take "Sexual Personae" out back to the fire pit.

--- Harriet.

the saga of the smoked

2005-07-10T02:00:00.000-07:00

A brief review of the history of this blog: 1) it was started by accident, all I had wanted to do was comment on someone else's blog and I stumbled on a prompt asking me for the title of my blog. 2) it was all downhill from that point on.

I should reassure visitors to this blog that this blogger has not been vacationing in an Actual Nuthouse, just the closest thing: home, where stacks of ECE-related books covered with dust threaten to topple, where an adorable little black puppy chases cats and poops on the floor (always minutes after returning from a walk).

This blogger has been resisting the craving for a cigarette for ten days, and for ten days has not written a poem or a single solitary sentence of her ECE. In the past, frustration has led her back to smoking. Poetry is more important than health, right??? The new answer: NO.

But will this blogger experience the very strange experience she always has predicted when pondering giving up smoking: she will suddenly become so GOOD that not only will there exist a halo over her head that makes it hard to fit through doorways, more than this she will actually levitate, she will be so virtuous that gravity won't be able to hold her to earth.

Yeah, right. I think you can all tell I've become a Saint. Now, just don't go probing around in my thoughts, to see if they're pure, or be the fly on the wall when something makes me mad, so I borrow colorful curses from Arabic because English ones aren't strong enough.

Well, I hardly need to dig deep to uncover numerous flaws. Anyone who knows me well could make a list like the monthly grocery list for a family of five. It's just that smoking was so reassuringly obvious. I could put my best foot forward meeting someone new, speak of my accomplishments and credentials, then, because I couldn't help it, light up a cigarette, and my new acquaintance would take a mental step back: "Oh, how unpleasant, she's a smoker."

I went to my writers' group, Green River Writers, tonight, and when my smoking buddy winked and pointed to the door at break time I accompanied her outside and then broke the news. Smokers are "happy for" their fellow smokers when they quit, at the same time they feel betrayed, a tad resentful, even a little depressed at being left behind in the dingy stinky world of cigarette addiction.

In other news, the little black puppy is quite skilled in the fine art of removing insoles from shoes. He also has rows and rows of tiny razor-sharp teeth. I have shoes with no insoles and rows and rows of tiny red bite-marks.

In theory, I could go back to smoking any minute. Some would-be ex-smokers refuse to say "I've quit." Instead they say "I'm choosing not to smoke right now." What's up with that??? They want to leave their options open. They don't want people to be upset with them should they turn up sucking smoke again. "I'm choosing to smoke now, so what's your problem???"

Just as I didn't plan to create this blog, I didn't plan to stop smoking. I know, this makes it sound like I have little control over the events of my life. If this semester had gone as planned, I'd have no blog, my ECE would be finished down to the last MLA minutiae, and I'd be Puff the Magic Chain-Smoker.

In the past ten days, I've experienced weakness, dizziness, chest and other pain, hot flashes, disorientation, anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. I wasn't going to write about this in my blog, but perhaps an Actual Nuthouse is the place for all this. Anyway metaphorically.

Because really the world is not divided into smokers and non-smokers, but there is a third group: the smoked. I'm not a smoker, I'm not yet a non-smoker, I'm just smoked.

And I'm blogged. And you, my readers, must be about blogged-out by now. Please wish me luck getting my ECE, a battered old Chevy, off the shoulder and back on the highway, as I wish all of you the best in matters pertaining to writing and life.

--- Harriet.

Poetry as a Healing Art?

2005-06-26T15:30:00.000-07:00

Do any of you ever think about the effect of your poetry on the mental and physical health of your readers? I sometimes do. Often, I admit, I'm thinking about "writing a good poem." I have a poet friend I e-mail with who once read one of my poems and said it depressed her, it ruined several hours of her day. Is this what I want?

I don't think poetry should just be about "making people happy," though of course we all want to be happy --- right? But should poetry AVOID making people unhappy?

Of course "healing" is not just about happiness and unhappiness. For example, there's the grief process, which involves plenty of unhappiness, but is necessary for healing.

What kind of question was that, "should poetry avoid making people unhappy"? I mean what kind of control do we have over the effect of our poetry? Sometimes it's precisely "happy" poetry that rubs some the wrong way.

Do we write poetry primarily for ourselves? I know I write some poems because I "have to," emotionally. Yet sometimes people thank me for writing, or reading a poem. They have apparently gotten something out of it, either I have articulated something that have felt, or I have said something that gave them insight into something in their lives, or I have somehow, despite myself, said something uplifting.

Why did I write that poem about the bird? How did people react to it? My guess had been people found the poem creepy and didn't know how to react or what to say. Was it a depressing poem? Did it ruin anyone's day? I didn't have any particular intention when I posted the poem, I just did because I had written it and thought: well, I could post this new poem. Perhaps it was a healing poem for me. The fact is, I tortured myself about that bird the entire day I wrote the poem. I checked on its welfare about every five minutes. I obsessed about what I could possibly do with the bird, where I could keep it, what I would feed it --- but I concluded that it would probably die no matter what I tried to do.

The funny thing is, the cats found another baby bird last night, and Rae did exactly what I didn't do with the first bird. She picked it up, brought it in the house, put it in the safest place she could think of (a paper bag). This morning she broke off little bits of banana to feed it. The bird was hungry and devoured the banana, and kept opening its beak for more.

Probably, Rae's bird will die like mine did, but at least she will have tried to help it. She wouldn't have been able to live with herself if she hadn't. She may or may not write a poem about it. I had to write a poem as a way to live with myself. But it's a creepy poem. It makes me sound like a cold unfeeling person.

I raise questions on this blog about what poetry "should and shouldn't" be about, but I don't honestly believe there are any rules, or if there are, each poet makes her own rules. Yeah, there are the extreme exceptions, like if a poet broke the law in some heinous way and wrote a poem about it as a confession, readers might contact the authorities. But I do think, though, that it's worth thinking about why we write, and the effect our work can potentially have.

Those of us who are enrolled in an MFA program read quite a lot of poetry. For us, one the one hand, no one poem is likely to make too much of a difference --- if we read a depressing poem, we go on and read a "happy" poem ten seconds later. On the other hand, when we read and read, there are going to be poems that stand out --- we are looking for such poems. Some of them are going to be poems we find hilarious, some that awe us, some that we think are just especially successful, some that we find disgusting, some that are so depressing we almost wish we hadn't read them, but since we have, we won't soon forget them.

Perhaps healing is only one of a large number of purposes poetry can have. If a poet writes to facilitate her own healing, as some poets have obviously done --- Sharon Old's father poems come to mind --- is this a selfish thing? Well, Olds' poems have probably helped many with similiar grief issues and conflicts. If the writing is deeply engaged with processing and healing, and the work is powerful, it is unlikely that only the poet will benefit. But some benefit more from writing and reading humorous poetry. Or poetry that makes light of dark subject matter.

I'm happiest when I'm writing poetry that "feels important." For poetry to feel important to me, it has to be about something that matters, and if it's something I think matters to The World, and not just Me, then it feels more important. And yet, if I can write something that makes people laugh, there's something important about that as well.

So my conclusion is, there's really no conclusion. It's just something to think about, or anyway something I think about, that I wanted to share. I'd be interested to hear any thoughts other bloggers have about these questions.

--- Harriet

On the Run from "I" Poems

2005-06-24T01:05:00.000-07:00

Emily Dickinson wrote at least 150 poems beginning with the first person singular pronoun "I," but lest we immediately assume she thought a great deal of herself, or always took herself seriously, we should look at the following example:

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you---Nobody---Too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise---you know!

How dreary---to be---Somebody!
How public---like a Frog---
To tell one's name---the livelong June---
To an admiring Bog!

I want to change the last word to Blog. But what I really want to write about is something I think about at least three times a day --- not at regular intervals --- and sometimes I think about it more. Who is the poet behind the poem? Is there such an entity?

I should speak for myself in this blog-blurb (doesn't that sound ugly?), and stop saying "we" because I'm sure some of you are quite different from me. Here's what it is that bugs me: I write poetry "spoken" by a variety of personas, this is true. But I also write poetry from the point of view of an "I" that is at least approximately me. For example I just wrote one the other day, called "Multitasking"--- this is not precisely about me, it's kind of a spoof, and not all the "facts" are factual.

Is there a problem with "I" poetry because as the Buddhists say "I, me and mine" are illusions???

I wrote a poem about the problem of being an individual a few weeks ago.

Being Singular

A girl of ambiguous race in New York City
feels invisible,
eats chips and guacamole from a take-out place
in front of the TV.

The sun sets in Louisville,
thousands on cell phones, thousands on the Internet,
thousands flipping channels,
I with my headache, sadness
smoke on the front porch.
The little skinny stripy cat Kiwi
perches on the maple,
sniffs the vapor,
not the weight,
of being.

What is it to have one pair of eyes
one set of ears and one
brain? What does it mean to be one
and only one
network of arteries and veins
sitting in one
chair, hoping
the sky will not
fall?

Is there such a thing
as an eternal flame?
Years fly past like geese.
What came and went
just might not come again.

If "I, me, and mine" are an illusion, why do other people normally not
have a memory of the things that are "my" experiences?

I mean how do I differentiate between the brain I walk around with and the one you walk around with except by speaking of "mine" which contains "my" stuff, and "yours" which has been with you since your birth?

Can someone help me? I just don't understand the following statement,
by Jon Kabat-Zinn: "Awareness has no center and no periphery."
If I said I understood --- tempting as it is to say you understand things that reek of depth --- I would be lying. I may be spiritually wimpy but I
feel like there is a center to the entity I am, a point, a cursor, call it what you will --- a location, at least, around which all that I perceive is arranged.

Just because you write from "your own" point of view doesn't mean you're incredibly self-indulgent --- does it? I mean even when we write in the third person omniscient about characters who do not resemble us, we're still looking through the lens of our own perception ---right?

I'm acting like I'm worried about this. Actually I'm not. I've done a lot of experimenting with point of view --- you can tell yourself, if you're a white
American female in the 21st century that you're going to write from the p.o.v. of a male Sufi mystic in 1472, and the result will at least be interesting. Or you can write about the break-up of your love affair last week --- from the point of view of your ex-lover, or the p.o.v. of
your boss at work, who's SO glad you finally broke up with the jerk.

I guess I don't think that the "I" that is "central" to "me" is necessarily attached to anything of substance --- this is where I may agree with Kabat-Zinn. Yeah, there are a million elements that make up the microcosm that each one of us "is" --- elements that are more physical and biological, elements that are more "spiritual' if you believe in that ---
there is a list of so-called facts a mile long "attached" to each of us,
but aren't we also, at the same time, "Nobodies?" As much as we are
full, are we not at the same time empty?

To tell one's name---the livelong June
to an admiring---Blog?

---Harriet

In Praise of Eccentricity

2005-06-19T10:19:00.000-07:00

Mathematically speaking, eccentric means "not having the same center."

It's one thing to be "drawn over to the Dark Side." Eccentricity is a little different. Most, I think, would agree with me that it is not precisely the same thing as evil.

My ECE topic is a poet who has let me know one of her two main "teachers" when she began writing poetry was Leonard Cohen. Some of you younger bloggers may not have heard of him or know his music --- others may not realize he wrote/writes poetry. But at the moment the quote I would like to post here is not from a poem, but from a song, probably Cohen's best-known song. I bought a book of his poetry and songs to try to figure out how my poet was influenced,
so I've got the lyrics in front of me. This is the third verse:

Now Suzanne takes your hand
and she leads you to the river
she is wearing rags and feathers
from Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
on our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
there are children in the morning
they are leaning out for love
they will lean that way forever
while Suzanne holds the mirror

This Suzanne is perhaps not your archetype of a well-dressed career/soccer mom. I certainly don't mean to knock the latter, my own mom is one (though I played ice hockey) and our society would collapse without them. But what about this strange woman in her rags and feathers pointing at garbage and flowers? Certainly Cohen paints a romantic picture of her (which began in the first verse, then there's a verse about Jesus). Suzanne is no desperado suicide bomber,
there is no suggestion that she is breaking any law at all.

The line about the garbage and flowers is my favorite. I think we all have to look at both, as human beings, and it is my contention that it is more honest to look at both as poets as well.
Some would argue that as poets we don't have to be honest, that art is not about honesty. Yes, flowers smell better, look prettier. Of course we keep the kitchen trash can covered, sometimes hidden away under the sink for a good reason. I would not suggest to anyone that they do otherwise. It goes into the big plastic city garbage can, out to the curb, and off to the landfill.
One of the reasons we Americans sometimes feel superior to other cultures is that we keep our garbage pretty much out of sight.

Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton were two poets who made poems out of their garbage and published them. Non-suicidal poets like Sharon Olds have done the same thing. Olds I'm sure has won many awards; most recently I saw her listed as the recipient of the "Golden Rose" award from the New England Poetry Society --- a flower!!! This is the poet who wrote poems about a jar of mucus on her dying father's bedside table, about her dying father lifting his hospital gown to show her his naked body.

I happen to find these two poems by Olds, much of Sexton and Plath quite unpleasant. Do I wish they hadn't written the poems? No. Each of these poets writes about stuff that is a part of all our lives. Speaking of literal garbage, my uncle spent two or three years ingeniously making art out of it --- not that garbage art was by any means his invention, but he gained some notoriety, had some shows, and my aunt and uncle had a very colorful living room, until he finished with this phase and trashed it all, moved on to something else.

In a world of divorce and war we have to consider our options. We can ignore what's going on around us and write about the "flowers" exclusively, that's one option. Will this keep us happy, balanced, healthy and in some way contribute to the greater good? There's a new movie out, my dad just told me about it, called "Turtles Can Fly." It's an Iranian/Iraqi collaboration, about the situation near the borders of the two countries, and the Kurdish refugees. My dad said it's "in some ways grim, but has a sense of humor to it." It's about realities like land mines and women who had been raped by Saddam's army.

As Americans, we don't often have such "grim" things to deal with in our everyday lives --- we are still blessed. But what about those of us who have grim or frightening or just whacky things to deal with --- not in the world out there, but inside ourselves??? The Leonard Cohen song is not grim, it does romanticize this rather eccentric woman. I'm sure I don't understand everything the song is about.

I'm probably a little whacky today because I didn't get enough sleep. Whacky enough that I want to share a poem that is written from an "eccentric" point of view. I would welcome feedback as to whether this poem has a right to exist.

Haloperidol

In a mental interview with herself, the psychiatric patient
asks: have you ever been
scared of yourself?

There was a time I saw white.
From the bottom of the screen of my awareness to the top
there was nothing but
white.

I was in a little room, then, wanting nothing more
than to smoke a cigarette. I found
a pack in my pocket, somehow
they hadn’t taken it, and I put one in my mouth,
tried to will it lit.

On the white screen was a figure:
a dark man. He was dragging
a garbage bag full of liquor bottles.
He was my roommate’s boyfriend, a drunk.

Another frame: my roommate, dressed in white
showing a white house
to potential buyers who are not
visible. She stares up at the white walls
which extend so high she cannot see the top.

Yes, I’ve been scared of myself because I’ve seen
stories that did not have happy
endings, and I’ve not been able
to smoke.

Then when they took me upstairs I thought
someone would come rescue me ---
I always think that.

--- Harriet

Aimee's exercise

2005-06-16T20:00:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have read my awful poem called "exercises" where I whined about writing exercises. But after reading Rane's and Aimee's results from that exercise, I decided to try my own. I didn't get the words from the dictionary, I grabbed the nearest book which was
Komunyakaa's Neon Vernacular.

The words are: alphabet, poodle, locomotive, laughter, hubcap, music, fruit, unicorn, junkyard
mountain

The Alphabet of Laughter

I heard the music of the hubcaps late ---
later than I possibly could wait.
The locomotive, show and lumbering
had shaken my foundation, I did not
sleep that night, my poodle also stayed
alert; he must have heard the music too.
But lest you think I suffered through the night,
let me reassure you that the sight
of that junkyard unicorn made it all worthwhile.
Yes, the hyper-vigilance bore fruit.
A mountain of ethereal white flesh ---
that unicorn was dressed in heaven’s suit.
I wrote an alphabet, an alphabet of laughter,
and all the dreams that come must follow after.

Thanks for the exercise, Aimee. I personally like the result much better than that tortured
thing I wrote the other night.

--- Harriet

just for the record

2005-06-16T18:18:00.000-07:00

I THINK I've changed my settings now so anyone may comment. To all who have visited my blog and been unable to comment, sorry to have seemed so inhospitable.

--- Harriet

on spiritual poetry

2005-06-16T03:23:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about posting something on my blog that is actually about poetry. Should you have read any of my previous posts, you by now are asking yourself the question: "What's her day job, and when is she going to go do it?" The fact is, I'm enjoying the "academic" summer vacation, teaching doesn't start until fall. SO, I divide my time between a) being up to no good and b) writing about it. And of course there are responsibilities such as a baby (not mine) and a puppy (not mine either) in the house; though neither is mine there are hours in the day devoted
to making sure one little one has his "binky" and the other doesn't poop on the floor.

Now that I've broken my promise to write about poetry for an entire paragraph, I'm going to ask the question which I refuse to answer: what IS spiritual poetry? which begs the question (which I will NEVER answer) what IS spirituality? Now for my answer to the latter question: it's that thing people write all those tacky bestselling books about. So what is spiritual poetry, a response to that kind of book, the kind that explains the whole universe and gives simple practical steps for being happy and getting what you want???

When people talk about spiritual poetry, names like Rumi and Rilke come to mind. To be a spiritual poet, your name has to begin with a R and end with a long e sound (as in the Incorrect
pronunciation Rilkee)

OK, that's the long and short of it.

Well, I was reading Rumi last night as I do once every six months or so. Yeah, there's that age-old (or late twentieth century?) distinction between the spiritual and the religious. Great minds like Monica Lewinsky have said things like "I'm a very spiritual person, just not religious."
Rumi is not your run-of-the-mill Muslim though I believe technically he was Muslim. Now, at this exact moment I don't have a single Rumi book on hand to refer to. But Coleman Barks,
Rumi's best-known translator, has said things like: "Rumi's religion was everything," or "Rumi's religion was love." These are not direct quotes.

There are those who would claim for poetry a greater capacity for communicating whatever that thing is we call spirituality. A poet whose name does not begin with R, namely Dickinson, has a poem that begins: "I dwell in possibility/a fairer house then prose."

Is spirituality about "possibility?" A quote from a Rumi poem entitled "The Many Wines":

Drink the wine that moves you
as a camel moves when its been untied
and is just ambling about

Rumi supposedly (I've heard more than once) never actually drank wine, but used wine as a metaphor. He was big on this thing he called "freedom" --- I do feel, myself, that the practice of poetry gives unparalleled freedom, by which I don't just mean "freedom of speech." I mean I don't groove on poetry because I can use the f-word if I want --- actually I USUALLY save my vulgarity for shouting from behind a closed window at other drivers.

I would be doing much better if I had the book with me that I was reading last night. But here's my question: does poetry have limits??? Mark Strand says:

"I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits, limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits that language itself imposes. These limits exist in turn within the limits of the individual poet's conception of what is or is not a poem."

Does this sound like something Rumi would have said, or Dickinson??? One of my favorite Rumi poems, which I would quote in full if I had it here, ends:

poems
are rough notations for the music we are.

Rumi has a thousand metaphors for God in his poems. No, I'm sure he has more than a thousand. And yet he says that no metaphor can describe whatever it is. He was a compulsive talker, singer of poems, but he often seemed to indicate that silence was --- what did he say silence was? He recommended silence. He also said prayer was one level of spiritual communication, meditation a higher level, and the highest level sohbet, or conversation.
He seemed to frequently "converse" with people who weren't there. Or, one supposes, with God. Should we lament that he was born too soon for Haldol?

I maintain a certain level of suspiciousness, myself, about spirituality, about all those bestselling books of which I've read a few, but I'm not like my dad who, when he says "that sounds spiritual" may as well be saying "that sounds like horse----." I don't, for example, believe with tha Kabbalists that it is possible or even desirable to purge ourselves of every trace of
negativity, that if we do we will literally live forever. Rumi doesn't believe this either, I remember one place in a poem where he says "good and bad are mixed."

If I thought I could only say "good" things, either out loud or in my poetry, I would be mute and have a severe case of writers' block. No, I don't think that to be a spiritual person or poet is to be "good" or virtuous at all times. To me, what is spiritual is to be a witness, not in the specifically
Christian sense (like JWs and other evangelistic types), but in the sense of being present, as Rilke said (finally I'm going to quote Rilke) in the 7th Duino Elegy: "Truly being here is glorious."

With that I will say my amen, and make the note that I hope there is something worth commenting on in all this drivel...

--- Harriet.

on taking oneself seriously

2005-06-16T00:15:00.000-07:00

My beloved mother, when talking about herself, uses the pronoun "one."
Most women, I think, have those distressing moments when they realize they're turning into their mothers. Well, I don't. OK, so my nose just grew three feet. Now, I was not raised to take myself too seriously. I was warned at an early age about the ugliness of self-importance. And I will not accuse my dear mother of it, especially. No, she's just mean. That's not fair either. She's really quite nice, except to golden retrievers and
my friends. OK, so what's the point here?

I will throw in another quote from Charles Simic:

"What's the point in reading a poem, many will say, if there's no point to it? For the same reason, I would answer, that it's pleasant and even poetic to take a walk to a strange city with no destination in mind and end up getting lost."

I find these words comforting; maybe there's hope for someone like me. But I did sort of have a point: I want to let my fellow bloggers know that if I had had time today, I would have felt monumentally embarrassed about
my early early am post, about the particular quotes I chose, and the rough and sentimental poem, which, to my self-critical eye, displayed a whopping scoop (I'm thinking mint chocolate chip) of self-importance.

Stacia told me not to be self-depricating, and since I can't even spell the word, I must be on the right track. No, I will toot my own horn from now on. The only problems are, a) every time I've stuck the mouthpiece of a horn in my mouth and followed directions, only the most pathetic little fart-like sound has come out of it, and b) even if I could get the horn to make a sound, I most certainly couldn't coax it into any kind of tune.

I don't always feel my poetry is lousy, Stacia. In fact sometimes I feel pretty darn elated to have written whatever it is. But this particular poem,
with its use of the word "heart" which Ernie O'Dell, president of Green River Writers, says along with "soul" should be used as often as the button which will unleash nuclear war... and with it invocation to robots, beginning with the "O" of pathos...

Well, I've climbed a tree and I'm not coming down until graduation. Or was I in a tree all along? Is the "actual nuthouse" of this blog actually a treehouse? That's a good place for nuts, actually. My favorite tree grows
Mixed Nuts. Or provides refuge for them. It even feels protective toward Brazil nuts, tough nuts to crack which seem unworthy of the effort. I have to provide protection for Brazil nuts because I am a Brazil nut.

Which by now will not be difficult for any of you to believe. Yes, this blog
has taken a somewhat bizarre turn. Remember, I like it when there's no point. I enjoy getting lost. I used to get lost in Chicago between the South Side and the North Side. Some people call it downtown. I called it a labyrinth. I was never truly lost, because I always knew where the Lake was.

So where's the Lake?

--- Harriet, who has her ECE half-done

A Fool's Paradise

2005-06-15T00:45:00.000-07:00

"...the poet who refuses to face our tough and predatory reality
is living in a fool's paradise."
Czeslaw Milosz

on the other hand:

"It's a bad idea and a complete waste of time to prescribe what poets must or must not do because the best ones will always rebel and do the opposite."
Charles Simic

and here's a poem by HL:

Exercises

On their blogs, the poets give writing exercises
I, being contrary, think life's meat demands
such attention; how could I write
simply to display my virtuosity, using,
say, a list of twelve words?
No, I don't write poetry because I'm clever;
some days I write because
I simply must acknowledge
this
moment.
I must make something of it, because a blink
is all it is. And one day I'll be dead.
No one will know about
how blessed I feel now
with the cool air blowing in my face
the cats curled nearby
heavy metal rocking in the corner,
the possibility of
a cigarette.

There are so many humans now;
one day there will be none.
Will there be Spielbergian robots
that can read our poetry?
Do we want to leave behind
clever
displays of skill?
Or is it, as I think, more important
to write down our hearts,
to write down how baffled we are
by the mystery?

O robots,
if you are the only intelligence
left on this earth ---
capable of deciphering the printed word,
perhaps not capable of
feeling ---
try to wrap your electronic
brains around this concept:
I feel sad today,
thinking that the human future
we all should want to hold as its heart beats
is being wrecked by
our own apathy,
meat-shredding teeth,
boredom, which drives us to
kill the sky, make Hell,
pretending to dwell
in peace.

I should mention that the quotes above the poem are from an excellent book of essays by Charles Simic entitled The Metaphysician in the Dark (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2003).

Another remark: no offense to those poets who enjoy writing exercises, so do I in just a slightly different frame of mind. Another quote from Czeslaw Milosz:

"The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person."

So to all of the various people each of us are, may the poetry gods bless you with iambic blessings, or if you're really picky, with dactyllic ones.

--- Harriet.

contests

2005-06-13T17:40:00.000-07:00

I thought maybe (why do all the fonts look the same when I type them here?) I'd mention a couple of contests --- I've frittered away a couple of hours getting submissions ready, and
could use some competition --- I mean I KNOW I'm the only poet in the US who has entered
these contests so far.

An easy one to enter is Literal Latte (www.literal-latte.com for guidelines).
A picky one is The Comstock Review (www.comstockreview.org)
I also entered the Bitter Oleander one, though my poems are nothing like what they
publish. Their postmark deadline is June 15th (www.bitteroleander.com).
And if you have travel/foreign culture poems or if you're a woman and have a lyric poem 21
lines or less, the New England Poetry Club has a contest for you (www.nepoetryclub.org)

Of course, any of you who subscribe to Poets & Writers has all this info at your fingertips, unless of course the latest issue is buried under a stack of mail. Actually, my new issue came today and
these contests are in the old issue.

I'm afraid this accidental blog got my day off to entirely the wrong sort of start --- I've been doing everything BUT consulting my ECE materials. I never enter contests, for example. I mean never is a relative term: I enter book contests with huge cash prizes and spend five months
spending the money mentally, until I finally receive the notification that Betty Boop in
Bad Butte, Montana has won with her collection: "Sunsets, Waterfalls and Adorable Kittens."

So anyway, may the poetry gods and my fellow poets forgive me for this blog. Happy writing to all.
---Harriet

Busy Signal

2005-06-13T11:41:00.000-07:00

I had absolutely no intention of creating a blog today. I tried to register so I could make a comment on Stacia's blog and suddenly blogspot.com was prompting me for a title for my
blog. I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS, I said meekly, but no one was listening. Yeah, I'm
one of those 3rd semesteers who must eat ECE for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Well, at times
like this in the past I have had various options, and one of them is to "make the best of it."

I think the comment I spent all of about five minutes typing for Stacia's blog has probably
been erased. FIVE MINUTES OF MY PRECIOUS TIME, down the drain. So by way of intro-
duction to this blog I had no intention of creating, I will attempt to re-construct my comments,
as they are apropos of something.

Or, no, I won't try to duplicate what I said. I'll try to make some statements which are a response to all the blog-reading I've done in the past couple of weeks.

Stacia and Gwen were talking about the pros and cons of writing about "family stuff." Jae was
talking about the questionable value of "accessible" poetry. I am a poet who tends often to write about family stuff, and who most often writes accessible poetry. I think a good ten percent
of my poetry is accessible narrative poetry about family stuff. Maybe even twelve percent.

Obviously, not every poet is striving to live the Socratic "examined" life through her (or his)
poetry. Some would contend that poetry is an art form, not a form of therapy. And accessible poetry is not "art" because it "dumbs down" the reader. The comments on Jae's blog included
the expressed desire to credit the reader with intelligence, to give him (or her) some work to do.

Back to family stuff, especially negative family stuff: Plath avoided writing it, but then it all came out at the end of her life. I'm not saying there's a lesson in this; obviously we are not all "disturbed" like Plath. I do agree with Gwen about balance. If writing about negative things
is a way of "exorcising demons" --- is that using poetry the wrong way? I don't think the choice
of subject matter is what makes a poet healthy or disturbed. One can write about horrific stuff in a balanced, sane way.

Back to accessible poetry: on the one hand, one might write it if one wants a larger audience than just fellow poets. For example, I wasn't going to write something emulating Pound's Cantos when I was memorializing a friend who had committed suicide, in a poem which I read at his funeral. On the other hand, I admire clarity in the work of other poets, I began writing poetry only after I had read poetry that spoke to me, that was about real life, that didn't give me a headache as I tried to figure it out. Sometimes the material a poet chooses to write about is very complex, and it is a challenge to convert this material into an accessible poem.

I don't mean to sound defensive. I think there's a place in the poetic universe for the kind of poetry Jae prefers, I hope there's a place for my stuff as well. There have never been more poets than there are at this moment; we can reject what we don't like, keep our eyes open for stuff that grabs us. Reacting to what we don't like is important in the development of our personal aesthetics.

--- Harriet, who is too busy to have written this.