to sleep, perchance to dream...

I've started charting my dreams. For the sake of curiosity, and also, who knows--maybe they hold the cosmic key to my destiny. My poor submerged iceberg has certainly been sweating it out, working overtime. I mean, Baz Lurhmann would be jealous of these productions. I haven't reached any epiphanies just yet, but I have been mightily entertained. Here's a sampling:

A mountainous tidal wave of the clearest crystal water (ug, I can still see it!) is about to slam me to smithereens before the dream jump cuts to me in a bar on the beach, where a man whispers instructions for a secret mission to break into the principal's office.
(I should drink more beer to avoid problems and find my purpose. Um, thanks subconscious, I think that's called alcoholism.)

I'm supposed to rent out a house, but the rooms keep expanding and rotting as I show potential buyers. Just as I get really discouraged, Sufjan Stevens organizes a private concert in the back room and offers artistic advice to all who attend.
(I should focus on my art and on swarthy, artsy men, and not on my secret desire to become a real estate agent.)

A Bomb! This one takes place at Point Loma's library, where I'm warned, by a guy who once asked for my number but didn't call, that bombers are flying in, and that I need to get to the underground shelter S.T.A.T.. I think to myself, well, he's saved my life, I guess that's worth more than a silly lunch date. When I get inside, I'm herded through door #8 by my elementary camp counselor, downstairs and into a bomb shelter where we all dance to some bumpin' trance music.
(Perhaps I should not be so quick to write this guy off--perhaps he will save my life...or at least clue me into the hottest underground discoteche in L.A.)

It's a Sunday morning and I'm writing. I find a new coffee shop that looks like the Ikea cafeteria. The extremely flamboyant barista offers me the best Chai I've ever had. Behind the bar, willowy African women weave floral bouquets. After chatting with my high school choreographer for a while, who is also loving this new hot-spot, I ask the barista if it will cost money for a refill. He gets flustered, walks away, and comes back to inform me huffily that this coffee shop, in several studies, has been linked to many Pulitzer prize winners. I am extremely impressed.
(I've got nothing. Um...find that coffee shop and write there all. the. time.)

Also, at one point I murder someone, at another I poison someone...I have a child that I only see for an hour a week, I play a "game" of volleyball where the ball appears magnetically attracted to my face, I am car-jacked by Rita Dove and forced to walk 40 blocks with my arms full of books, a poem of mine is accepted for publication but then accidentally misprinted into a roll of golden coins with kitschy mountain scenes stamped on the front.


But my favorite was last night!

I am working in the White House as the 'coffee girl' (it's an official title). My duties extend to sitting in on every meeting Obama holds. Nancy Pelosi and I are totally besties, and we gab through most of the meetings--I don't hear a word Obama says. Later, back at the coffee station, she tells me that a female spy will be coming in and will need the Toddy coffee and NOT the iced Americano, and it is up to me, and only me, to make sure she receives the correct cup. Both are already in the fridge, unmarked.

Again, I don't know what any of this really means, but I do know that I'm enjoying it all. Perhaps my budding career in coffee will lead to Pulitzers and politics. Yeah. That's it.

the best.

Source: hooraytinyanimals.tumblr.com via Krist on Pinterest

BABY OTTER!

One side of It

to stand as witness and be swallowed
in the returning wonder walls of sea
one side to be blinded
by the stinging tail of the miracle
drowned in the froth of its slamming shut
stuck in its sliding door still
unsure of the force you’ve followed

but here all our sons have died
strangled by angels
and the blood has dried
on the gaping doorframes
now the whole place reeks of a mystery
stronger than the heart can separate
or part back into two waves

fragments

I'm reading Anne Carson's Sappho translation If Not, Winter, and thinking about lost things. I'm thinking about my favorite swimsuit in 8th grade (my first two-piece), my first CD collection, the pictures on my memory card when I doused my old camera with coffee, my green wallet, and one stack of 4th period's character analysis essays (I know, I'm awful). None of these things would be on my mind if I still had access to them. They all shimmer with unique beauty because they have entered the realm of the never-to-be-recovered. For an absentminded type like me, that's a large realm.

My curiousity about Sappho was peaked when I studied e.e. cummings. In college, cummings was greatly influenced by the fragments and shaken syntax of Sappho. Here's a poem of hers:

]heart
]absolutely
]I can
]
]would be for me
]to shine in answer
]face
]
]having been stained
]

The open brackets indicate torn or rubbed away fragments of papyrus. Anne Carson, in this version, has taken what is legible and morphed that into a poem, of sorts.


Now here's one of cummings:

(but

true

to the incomparable

couch of death thy

rhythmic

lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)

The way he forces whole thoughts into fragmentation is homage to her fragmented thoughts. This fragmentation is arguably what made him such a popular poet.

While it was a clear choice for Cummings, Sappho never meant for her writing to be broken apart. Yet it's taken on a life its own because of this loss. For example, this one:

]
]
]Atthis for you
]
]

That's all of it. There's nothing particularly magical about those words. It's the emptiness surrounding them that sings.

There is something really powerful in silence. The situations that still haunt you, in all probability, are the ones for which you still don't have clear answers.



What I leave out

the whole pieces

of nights when maybe it rained

I trained

memories to flake away

like cheap gilding

like that was all you weighed

so truth patches

beneath other things

even for me

what I want

is to find the scroll

where you keep me

in scratches and [

there is no reason

except

things erased

still

factor

first crush

I’ve fallen in love with a house. An old, rundown, oddly shaped house. It’s gone through many tenants, and I toured it once, when it was up for rent. It was perfect.

How do I know for sure it’s a full-blown crush? I’m rationalizing. I'm dusting away the quirks away with creative logic. That's love--the ability to see potential where others raise eyebrows.

For example, the yard is terrifying. A giant side-yard, overrun with shoulder-high weeds, a grove of unruly, snarled trees, and most likely a few woodland creatures. Instead of admitting that this would be a pain in the ass, I think to myself: what stress-relief weeding would become. I imagine myself, well-clothed to protect from spiders and sharp teeth of smallish animals, trekking into the heart of it all with a scythe.

Or, take the extremely long, narrow hallway that joins the kitchen to the rest of the house—I've decided there’s just enough room for a book-nook. Maybe squeeze a window-seat into the dormer. Cozy-chic.

Once I talked a walking buddy into trespassing (the house was still for sale, so we figured we could just say we were checking the place out.) We picked oranges in the backyard. If I’d had my way, would have spent the evening sitting on the crooked brick patio until somebody kicked us out.

My housecrush has recently blossomed to a fever, fanned by the flames of impossibility. Someone bought the house. Someone is fixing it up—he’s venting his aggression on the side-jungle. He’s taking out his long days rooting up the sagging front fence and putting in a (rather kitschy, if you ask me) white-picket number.

Once, while on a run, I saw him industriously rooting up old fence posts.

I opened my mouth and choked out, “I love this house,” and then, “and you’re making it look so good.”

“Well, thank you,” he returned, taking a step away from me. “Thanks a lot. My partner and I certainly enjoy the challenge.”

“You’re doing great,” I gulped, and jogged on, seething with jealousy, but also a little awed—this is the guy who can light the outdoor fireplace any time he wants. He (and his partner) are free to pick the oranges without a twinge of guilt. Perhaps they even see the nook-potential of the dormer window.

I like to pretend that I don’t have many real fixed dreams, that I’m content letting the current of life take me to what is next, and doing my best there. Outright expectations make me nervous. To outright try is to potentially outright fail.

But somewhere in the brick patio and beveled glass doors that lead to the kitchenette, I love this little white house enough to risk embarrassment and say, outright— I want this.

For now, I’ll try and keep content walking by (and perhaps staring in the window a split second longer than appropriate.) But someday, something stronger might develop. A girl can dream.

Works of Love--Love Builds Up

There is nothing, nothing at all, that cannot be done or said in such a way that it becomes upbuilding, but whatever it is, if it is upbuilding, then love is present. Thus the admonition, just where love itself admits the difficulty of giving a specific rule, says, "Do everything for upbuilding," It could just as well have said, "do everything in love," and it would have said the very same thing. One person can do exactly the opposite of what another person does, but if each one does the opposite--in love--the opposite becomes upbuilding. There is no word in the language that in itself is upbuilding, and there is no word in the language that cannot be said in an upbuilding way and become upbuilding if love is present. Thus it is so very far from being the case that the upbuilding would be something that is an excellence of a few gifted individuals, similar to brains, literary talent, beauty, and the like (alas, this is just an unloving and divisive error!) that on the contrary is the very opposite--every human being by his life, by his conduct, by his behavior in everyday affairs, by his associate with his peers, by his words, his remarks, should and could build up and would do it if love were really present in him. Kierkegaard, 212

Just earlier today, I asked myself if there were any new ways to describe sunsets. Yes, I really asked myself this question. I know, I know. Too much poetry.

So now I'm reading Christian Wiman, (who is coming to the SPU residency in March! hooray!) and I find this, which is so good, and fresh, and exactly what I could not make my little brain do while looking out my window:

I remember that. And I remember seeing,
Past Abilene, the sun come plunging down
In front of us and spatter back in the sky.
It was like no sunset we'd ever seen.
Thick light dripped and puddled on the far
Horizon, yellow smeared and flecked with red
Like a broken yolk that had begun
To grow. There was a moment when the sky,
Ground, and the air between were all one color,
My family's faces, too, glowing, fading...
Then everything was gone and we were driving
In the darkness toward whatever edge the day
Had fallen from, whtaever space it now
Was falling into. - The Long Home