April 01 to regrow roots 02 roots are dreams 03 outsmarted by everything 04 remedy? 05 some shards 06 connectivity 07 at home with the poem 09 Sunday / snow / struggling 10 well enough alone 11 money, sex, religion, and power 13 night of Bly 15 night of listening teapots 16 you have to silence them 17 more liquid than usual 18 the felix culpa 19 the other woman 20 mixed emotions 23 all i know 24 heart growing hot (again) 25 lying down, laying fallow, lying ... 26 more meowing 27 pondering temptations 28 Rippowam the Center 30 love the one you're with

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April 01 to regrow roots
History Day. This morning I was swimming in a sea of nervous hyperactive sixth graders. The pets are all messed up. I just can't cope with them. Pidge landed on my head while I was eating a chicken salad sandwich outside in the nice sun. I didn't like the feeling of his claws gripping my skull. We know he's a boy because of his incessant cooing. I rested most of the day. I went to the library. They didn't have the two books I wanted so I got some others. I read Louise DeSalvo's Adultery cover to cover. I felt a little better after immersing myself in her discussion of the subject. Louise DeSalvo gives me an uncomfortable feeling of difference, like if I met her, we wouldn't get on. But I still like her books. I ran into my surrogate dad in Staples. I rejected his poems -- but he took it very well. We're going to see Robert Bly in the city on April 12. He also invited me to his house April 30 for a memorial service and a sculpture viewing or something like that. Then, when I got sad around 6pm, I called K. Calling for help when I'm sad, at the time I'm sad, is an incredibly radical life-changing act. She talked to me and listened to me. Wow.

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April 02 roots are dreams
"Roots are dreams," she whispered. I got the strangest feeling. How could oak tree ever be anchored by such vaporous fingers? Dreams? They don't descend, don't reach for darkness, don't get gritty with dirt and slimy with worms. Still I saw the roots of dreams there underground, clear, sparkling, and tenacious. The dreams drank water and held strong. They said "Grow, make buds," and so we had to. Dreams are roots. Dreams are thick, or tendrils wide as hair, both invisible and powerful. Dreams drink and they hold on. ~~~~~~~~ I don't blame you for what happened. When I left, I was as beautiful as a bolt of lightning. A shooting star of nervous energy wrapped in a sheath of body. Fravashi inside, outside subtle, hair flying in the wind. But afterward, you never knew I crashed, disabled in the timeless muddy soup of change. ~~~~~~~~ Hope. You have to "cultivate" it. But I'm a hostile gardener. I'm better at destruction. Ripping away the choking vines, cutting and tearing dead brown stalks, uprooting errant raspberry and strawberry. This year I want to coat my yard in impervious black plastic.

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April 03 outsmarted by everything
Software will always end up outsmarting you. A ratty ugly funky Monday sort of day, but I wasn't paying very close attention. I was really believing "There is more to it than this." And I've been doing eight - nine hours of work a day, and THAT'S IT, and that's enough and I will not feel guilty. One son, forced to accept an afterschool activity, has agreed to take kung-fu rather than participating in that hated team sport, baseball. What I said to the Little League guy that called about the dropout: "We've had a change of plans." The kung-fu studio did feel like a good place to be, and I think the Master will be good for him. The other son decided he was going to drive his junker car back to Boston and park it somewhere "in the suburbs" and use it to cart all his stuff back home after school gets out. First, I argued with him, and told him how risky this all was, then I said "let go" to myself about a thousand times, and bit my tongue to avoid telling stories about myself at his age. But I can't help giving him a really hard time about money. He was at home today to contest the ticket he got in January. He was (almost) clean shaven and wore a sport jacket to court. He said court was quick and easy and "mercy" was handed out to him. I've been trying to pay more attention to the kids and their needs. My kids are stubborn and strange. They have a determined self-awareness and an awesome capacity for reflection. I had those qualities too -- it was called "strongmindedness" and was considered a flaw. Just a bunch of introverts trying to make their way through life.

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April 04 remedy?
I was this close to writing a raging stream-of-consciousness nightmare of an entry about all the irritabilities and annoyances and tedious disappointments and continuing tears of today ... but instead I will try to envelop myself in thoughts of this exhibit ... and I beg you not to take away my chance to go see it. ~~~~~~~~ From the National Museum of Women in the Arts website regarding the Remedios Varo exhibit: "From her first solo exhibition in Mexico in 1956, Varo was an instant celebrity, with crowds lining up to see her work and long waiting lists for commissions. In her meticulous paintings rendered in jewel-like tones, worlds overlap to create a reality apart: a chair back mysteriously opens to reveal human faces, hands reach through walls, and tabletops peel back to expose living roots. Varo wanted to know how and why the universe functioned, and looked to dreams, astrology, and science for inspiration, and to visual and literary sources for themes. She set up hypotheses and explored them in paint, opening the door to new ways of envisioning nature and the self." "Most of the people who inhabit Varo's paintings reflect the artist's features, the heart-shaped face with large almond eyes, long sharp nose, and thick hair. In many of Varo's works a female character employs alchemical methods, as in Creation of the Birds (1957), in which an owl artist/musician uses synthesized materials to create a bird that takes flight out of a window. And though Surrealism was the aesthetic within which she developed, her later work creates an alternate vision of the movement. In Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst (1960), the traditional Oedipal drama is reversed as a daughter drops the head of her father in a psychological rite of passage. Varo also built a world based on women's domestic activities as a vehicle through which to explore creativity and the fantastic. In Celestial Pablum (1958), a woman seated in a tower floating among the clouds grinds star matter into a pablum that she feeds to a crescent moon in a cage, thereby gaining access to celestial realms."

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April 05 some shards
One works, the other doesn't. One writes, the other doesn't. One cares, the other doesn't. I supply dog food, cat food, cat litter, dog walking, kung fu lessons, chicken noodle soup, Friday pizza, car insurance, clothing, shelter, storage, and I satisfy all your documentation needs. Insomnia. Woken by a nightmare -- not a dream of sex, but a dream of sexual harassment. Give me a break! Well, the guy ended up on the floor and then I fired him, so -- a nightmare about power? or a nightmare of empowerment? Who or what is my Krishna, my charioteer? Bronze buds in horizontal sunlight tree green flowers flung to the street neighbors running for the early train their legs feel phony and won't operate the poets, drunk with anxiety, obsession, are on the phone all hours talking dollars she eats more gourmet the worse it gets and punctures all enthusiasms with asparagus spears watched by the cold-eyed pansy

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April 06 connectivity
Three speak in one day. Two Carls and Music Student. AND I got Sagewoman -- this issue's theme is Abundance. Music Student drove his junker car back to Boston. It rained the WHOLE way and his car doesn't have much of a roof. He waited three days to call me and let me know he made it. For 24 hours, I worried he was dead . Then I found out he was okay by talking to his roommate. My first car didn't have much of a floor. I refrained from talking to him about my first car. I was SO nice to him on the phone. I wanted to make up for the severe hassle I gave him on Monday. Isolation is my biggest fear. I get crazy when I don't hear from people. I hate it when mail, email, UPS, and all other deliveries from the outside world seem to dry up. I need input and connection. I get crazy when I have too much input. I get judgmental about the quality of the input. I cut the input back to nothing. I withhold information from other people like crazy. I'm watching myself hoard information at work. Sharing is my biggest fear. I'm going to meditate on information abundance and permeable membranes.

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April 07 at home with the poem
What to write? The poem knew who he was. The poem thought through the ends of his hair. The poem lived on a boat. The poem felt pity for music, and paintings, and clay pots. The poem washed his floors every day. The poem was occasionally jealous of other poem's clothes. The poem sipped his soup very loudly. The poem drew words in paisley shapes right in the middle of the walls. The poem disdained windows, but he cared about windowsills. The poem was attracted to frost and washed his face in it. The poem's ears were broken, but they healed. The poem had escaped from the book, but he still felt constrained. The poem wondered until his wonder made a whirlwind. The poem felt the ends of his hair frizzle up in the heat of the gas flame. The poem worried about quitting too early, but how early is too early? The poem was unhappy about the proposed visit of his cousin, the text. The poem developed a system of notation to record the colors of clouds. The poem had a black velvet bag full of clear marbles. The poem failed to befriend any of the songbirds in his yard. The poem worried about his monstrous tendencies. The poem put on his socks one foot at a time, just like anybody.

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April 09 Sunday / snow / struggling
A radical sense of trust caught up with me. X-Files directed by Gillian Anderson Snowstorm in April I don't "date" I don't buy motivational speeches That's not my definition of long-term success I'm feeling just what I'm supposed to be feeling at this point in time My friend the moon in the back yard (rebellion) My friend the street light in the front yard (loyalty) I stood in my driveway, freezing, and acknowledged my essential aloneness I'm angry with people who want me to doubt myself I can be loyal to emptiness if I want to experiment Emptiness of potential, not emptiness of death I can believe it will be fullness in time I'm grateful for my friendships I'm different from my friends I can express difficult feelings without dissolving in tears I can be extraordinarily quiet I can bring my teapots to the poetry reading I made the February and March archives. I'm catching up.

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April 10 well enough alone
I have to write, it's the only solution, it's the only it's the only solution Screamer, you write Breastless, you write Colors, you write Impulsive, you write What will you write? Make some soft make some softness make some song make some sense make some swooning opportunity why not? under anger, all day, suffering over intimacies and suggestions and advice that leave me sitting on the doorstep pissed off and refusing to go into the house or leave the premises I'm insulted by my own confessions well, I'm angry when intimacy means admitting my weaknesses and horsing around in my past and I'm angry because I just don't have any more than the most tentative fingertip on the pulse of a future of any kind and ... well, just leave it at that.

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April 11 money, sex, religion, and power
This morning there were two horses and a llama grazing in the woods on the steep hillside overlooking the office building. I don't think they were real. I think my overactive erotic imagination became so strong that it materialized two horses and a llama. Snow fell. I froze up. I dreamt of a priest. He was sort of a small, young, alternative sort, dressed casually. He was really going to wrap up this Mass in a big way, he announced. He went around to each of us, individually, and said something and blessed us. He said to me "You are gifted" and drew a long horizontal line on my forehead, his finger dripping with oil. Money came flooding in today. Why? A loan I made to a family member came back, with interest; I loaned that money never expecting it back. And my boss told me I'm for sure finally getting the raise for becoming the manager. I was supposed to get it two months ago. He said it's supposed to be retroactive. I told him, well, I'll have to pull out my calculator. And tomorrow he's going to "Chat" with me about something extra for this year. The most exciting thing that happened today was -- I woke up knowing I was going to start a "secret diary." Over my breakfast Wheatena, I reread Audre Lorde's essay "Uses of the Erotic; The Erotic as Power" and it made my head explode and I knew what to do.

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April 13 night of Bly
"You have to realize the octopus is illiterate." (yes, and the turtle is immoral!) "... learn the arts and double the madness ..." "My friends, tell me what to do, since I am a man in love with the setting stars." Quotes from Robert Bly's reading (except the bit about the turtle, which is C. Lispector) Train; worry about the train. Where's my friend? Oh yes, the guy in the hat, with the white beard. He's dressed monochromatically, in gray. He has a bag of toys and jewelry made out of found parts, hematite beads, and wire. He gets me to try on a ring, but it's too small. We meet the girl from Azerbaijian. She is very lively. We take the shuttle in the wrong direction and have to take it back again. I think this is charming -- what else is the point of a shuttle? There's a young girl, chubby with chocolately skin, doing her math homework while jammed into a seat on the subway. She surreptiously counts with her fingers. I'm amazed she can do any homework on the subway. She writes her answer in tiny pencilled numerals. It's cold and windy above ground. Today my face is chapped and I can't whistle, my lips have stiffened up. We ask a woman with a dog where to eat dinner. The dog has peculiar fur, wiry and rusty, looking like it's been over-straightened. It was shivering, so the woman put it into a tote bag. We have dinner at a nice place. Glasses of wine, waiters with accents, little candles. Pasta. I feel like a person. Or I do until my friend starts giving me a lot of advice, and tries to write a personal ad for me. Then I feel like a bull, all sullen hide and aggressive snorting. We finish eating and go to the reading. I feel overly reactive to new age vibes. Incense. Lots of flyers. My friend makes me take some. New York Living Naturally. What the hell is holistic? I see my illustrator's little self-published book for sale in the bookstore. This is a thrill! Robert Bly is big and gruff and white-headed. I am still surprised that I like him, because I did not used to like him. I feel good that I can recognize much of what he's talking about from my own writing. He reads poems about the Viet Nam war, and suddenly I want to write about my own private murder story. I don't know how. My son is in the story, though. That way, I won't have to write about myself. Robert Bly has a lot of philosophies. I have a problem with that, but I forgive him because he is a lot of fun and he talks about children and he discounts almost everything he says. He reads his poems over twice and interjects between the lines. He repeats lines, and says "I love that poem." He's into very wacky ghazals lately, and I can identify. He stops on certain lines and asks the audience "Can you feel that? Do you know what I'm saying there?" It's a way to catch the attention of the sleepers in the crowd. At one point, he says "There's a man in the audience crying. Now he really understands poetry." I think this is a gratuitous comment that makes everyone else wonder what's wrong with them because they're not crying. I have a problem with him saying that, but I forgive him because his ghazals are so phenomenal and wacky. I don't feel like buying any books. I'm exhausted. We walk in the cold back down to Prince Street and underground. I'm exalted. The subway is breathing. We take a train uptown. A young woman is standing next to me, talking to a man, and tossing her hair. They are talking about tattoos. She wants to get a snake in the shape of a figure eight. It's a symbol of female power, she says. He doesn't answer. She tosses her hair. Her teeth are very small and white and her lips seem to have more muscles in them than most people's do. I'm tired of my friend. He talks to me on the train home. Describing designs and patents and inventions -- spatial relationships I can't visualize even when I'm alert. We both keep saying "Cool" and "Very Cool" and it sounds extremely stupid, but I can't think what else to say. I swig down a can of club soda because I'm so dehydrated. He made me pay my own way right down the middle because I'm a single woman and he's a married man and this is not a date. But I don't begrudge him because he's retired. We get off the train. I go to another littler train and he walks home. He lives downtown in a hexagonal pod house set on the only rocky hill in the middle of this metropolis. I did kiss him goodbye. I sit on the little train a long long time alone until I'm ready to freak out. Finally, the big express train pulls in and a bunch of people transfer to the little train and we leave. I get to the little station near my house. It's midnight and icy icy cold. I walk home clutching my flyers, which I don't want. I go to my friend's house and stumble around in the dark. One of those blankety figures comatose on the couch is my son. I identify him and rouse him. He is remarkably cooperative. He says "How was the poetry?" He has his bike with him. We have to load it into the car, and then unload it at home. The bike is remarkably uncooperative. I almost go over the edge struggling with handlebars, pedals, seat backs, tires. I guess it was worth it. Tonight, I washed all the teapots.

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April 15 night of listening teapots
It was mythological. But it was also hyperreal. I can't tell the story because I don't know it. But I can make notes of some details (for later). Tulips, yellow and light purple. Tables. Tablecloths. I brought all my tag sale linens out of the closet. The red Christmas tablecloth with golden pinecones. The stained square tablecloth greener than evergreen. Two Indian bedspreads, one blue-green and one pink-red. The satiny peach colored polyester napkins, and the screaming chartreuse cloth napkins, and the chestnut brown cloth napkins embroidered with whipstitch in pastel floss all around the outside. And -- we had deep purple paper napkins! Teapots. I brought my teapot collection. They ended up being entirely decorative because I forgot to bring tea and there was very little milk or sugar. Oh well. These teapots needed to get out. Candles. Every table had candles. Each table was completely different. It was a room full of vignettes of individual tables. And my friends set up the tables, I just brought all the stuff out of my closets in cardboard boxes. There was coffee and hot water. We stole a box of Twining's teabags from the church cupboard. B made huge quantities of stromboli. Tiny beautiful cookies, all different. There were two microphones and two stools. My son sold books at the door. He managed to learn to greet people coming in, and ask if they were one of the poets, in which case they got two free books in an envelope with their name on it in green calligraphy. Lots of people came. I was nervous at first, but I got over it. An intensely deep spirit of hospitality came to me. Anthologies need a party for contributors. It was incredibly rewarding to see people from all these different venues meeting each other and talking. A few poems I adored and managed to listen intently. Others I was distracted the whole time and could only focus on not trying to wiggle my leg while sitting up there in front, just outside the limelight. I tried to read my poem dramatically. I found I had some of it memorized, without intentionally trying to do so. All my miserable experiences with public speaking in the business world kicked in and I managed to make eye contact with the audience while I read. Afterwards I got some truly memorable hugs. And my friends cleaned up and put away all the little jewel like tables. All I had to do was load and unload my car. Today I'm exhausted, heavy in the chest, stomachache, whiny as a child... I walked at the arboretum in an obsessive, frantic way. The fiddleheads are just starting. They look like blond knobs coming out of the soggy leaves. They're covered with matted frosty looking hairs. I touched some of them and tried to steal their energy.

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April 16 you have to silence them
I'm searching for the writing voice, but I can't find it. Many of these voices are full of judgments. Others are full of complaints. One is obsessed with a stomachache. That one is delivering commentary about a tennis game, ball bouncing back and forth between friends. That group of women's voices, doing comparison shopping. Those are seeking men. Men seeking women, women seeking men. Several are trying to outdo each other as far as parenting skills. A voice of false honey is trying to soothe another's anxieties. One voice is speechless at the tendency we have to plead our own case. I listen through them flipping radio channels. They are all bad. I can't hear anything else. The wind chimes are going crazy in the hectic spring breeze. The computer is humming. I forgot about my bones and muscles. I forgot to leave a nightlight on. I forgot to wear a nightgown. I don't have a nightgown. I spent most of the weekend in bed, wearing my boots. The weather changed, over and over. The pear trees are in bloom. There's a vagueness in the back of my throat that's very hard to express. He wouldn't like me trying to write about nothing. He doesn't appreciate how I try to document the oozing bog of consciousness. The Universe doesn't take care of us. I don't know who takes care of us. There are no tricks to be had anymore. I am searching for a purity that is impossible. A purity of weather, windchimes, the white gauze nightdress hanging on the hanger, waving, hovering, waiting, waiting for me, waiting for me to wear it, to dance, wavering, uncertain under clouds, then stars, then clouds of the long night, holding hands with the white pear trees of another story.

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April 17 more liquid than usual
Maybe you have to acknowledge this dream before it will die. Maybe this has something to do with dreaming. It has to do with possibilities. I'm no good at possibilities. I'm only good at duties and desperation born of duties. I fight dreams. If I accidentally have one, I consider it an obsession and I resist it fiercely. I felt a little better when I discovered this. It came out after about ten pages of private writing. The most frustrating kind of writing. Circling, circling, circling, sifting through layers of banalities. You can feel yourself refusing to go to the place you need to go, but you can't make it happen, you don't know where it is. Just that it's not here. So you try pushing on that wall, then that one, you go down that path, then the opposite one. You try to fake the answer into an appearance by pretending not to care. You think about eating a bowl of cereal. The pen moves. You blow your nose again. The pen still moves. The dog looks at you, and his eyes seem bigger and more liquid with concern than usual. The pen moves, and you feel crazy. Finally, a few words resonate. This time it was "allow for the possibility." I immediately circled away. Three pages later, I came back. I said it sounded good. I spent some time with it. "Maybe I won't let myself be as idealistic and innocent and starry-eyed and teary as I want to be." I've been thinking about "possibility" for a long time. Ever since October when I wrote about "turning blue into possible." But right now I haven't a dream in my head. Just a ton of work, daily writing, groceries, trash night, leaving, and obsessions. But a little worm of faith can be very insidious. "there'll come a time when you are tired as tired as a dream that wants to die further to fly further to fly..." Simon, Rhythm of the Saints

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April 18 the felix culpa
Strange day. Insomnia -- walking dream all day. Leave work early to pick up my son at kung fu. I have no gas. Should I get gas? No, I can make it. I'll take a chance. I'll risk it. If I stop, I'll be late and he'll be upset and feel abandoned. Needless to say, if I run out of gas and am stranded on the highway, he'll be very upset and feel very abandoned. How did this happen to me? How did I get so backed up with work and errands and efforts that I haven't delivered all the poets' journals yet, and my dog and cat are not cared for, and my electric meter hasn't been read in years and I totally forgot I had an appointment with them yesterday and my son in Boston hasn't been spoken to in so long that I'm having wicked insomnia worrying about what might be happening to him and -- and -- and -- I just have so much WORK to do, and I spent so much time today reviewing two employees' work and I introduced the new hire to each person in the entire QA department very graciously ... anyway, I left without gas. I drove 70 miles per hour down that bowling alley stretch of highway. Then zoomed past every gas station. Things are going pretty well. I'm in a zone of exhaustion. I get off the highway a half hour later. OK. Should I stop at home? No. Should I stop at Food Bag and get gas? No, I'm this close. The car starts to cough right at the middle school intersection. It gets a little second wind. I start to scope out the nearest gas station. Over to the left, one block down. I don't pull up to the stoplight behind the other cars, I pull into the other lane -- no oncoming traffic. I cough into the gas station and come to a dead stop about three feet from the pump. Ahem. I go into the station and say sheepishly, "My car ran out of gas in a really weird spot." There it is parked at a very random angle out in their lot. I feel a little hysterical. The kung fu school is directly across the intersection from this gas station. I'm nervous because with the delay caused by fussing with a gas can and a funnel, class is now over and I'm not there. I keep looking over at the front door of the school. I see a small figure. He looks very small, and he's across this great big intersection. He's dressed in that black kung fu uniform with the mind-body-spirit patch on his chest and he looks very small and strange. I wave to him way over there and somehow he sees his wretched mother over at the Amoco where I never go for gas. He can't get across the street, it's too busy and too complicated. I pay for the gas and start up the car. I pull out of the gas station and through the intersection and pick him up. We laugh our heads off about the gas story. It's funny, but I don't know what it means. I don't know what it means for me and I don't know what it means for him. Later I'm reading -- Robert Bly and Marion Woodman, The Maiden King, the Reunion of the Masculine and Feminine. I'm not too interested in it. Marion Woodman writes too densely for me. Just before I put my son to bed I come to these words: "It's the felix culpa, the fortunate blunder." I guess so.

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April 19 the other woman
Is that her? That could be her. Any of these people could be. The phone rings. Is it my mom? Is she calling to wish me happy birthday? No, it's not her. Which is one is she? The one with puffy eyes and reverse-frosted hair? Her natural color is so dark. Her tan skin is so old. She doesn't want to infect any of us. She should go home sick. She likes to get up from her desk and wander around. What's her name. Does she have a child. She has many children, more children than siblings, more children than chickens. She used to work here. She doesn't work here any more. She picked up her chair and left. Exactly how much money does she make? Who is the custodial parent? She receives absolutely no child support whatsoever. Does she make notes? Use a Palm Pilot? A Day Timer? No, her mind is magnetic and she never forgets. I'm afraid she likes to throw things. Steak dinners. Chairs. Frying pans. Now she throws magazines; it's less destructive. Her voice sounds chilly. No, her voice sounds friendly. Her voice sounds like bells. Her voice rings a bell. I remember that call. Has she ever been curious about lesbianism? How do you know? She never had an "experience." Only when she was drunk. Who lost their virginity first? Her best friend. When her turn came, everyone else had repented. Did she have a garden last summer? Did anyone? Can she live without air conditioning one more year? I'm sure she is high maintenance. Hair, nails, shoes, gloves, bag, chauffeur, maid, husband, and not happy. There's no energy in her voice. Who's doing all the talking? I'm the one that needs cheering up. Hang up on all this sighing. Her daughter asks her to go into her pocketbook to get something, maybe some tissues. She looks in a velvet bag and finds a pipe. She has little small white teeth and a headful of moussed ringlets that she tosses. She stands like an Amazon and squeaks like a mouse. What's her name? Which one is she? Is that her? She's the taller one. The smaller one. The sexy one. The one with teeth. The smartest one. The oldest. She's our baby. She's the boss. She's the other one. Watch out for her.

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April 20 mixed emotions
accident of ginseng dark with starlust veils my shoulders though we're grounded goggled eyes cast down resisting heaven's horizon of horizontal trust while rises from the guts an opalled snarl mined from the spangle of champagne or sparkling blood or satin's dust mixed inequal empties make a seagull mud and kites of jellyfish

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April 23 all i know
Fair, fine, and faraway. We are at a great distance from the sugar farm, and we want to get there. See it? It's restful. It's not too hot and not too cold. People talk to you. They look into your eyes. They let you sleep. I know the carpeting is uniform and soft and firm, and the floor tiles align without buzzing. There are oranges to eat and blooming night flowers. Even the mosquitoes, even the ants there are entertaining. Boredom smiles and relaxes his tense feet. A moment of relief. Outdoors, the bloodroot are folded into their green umbrella coats. The spring burbles; it can't be stopped. I'm dead sure many creatures are able to climb over and through those hundred-year-old hedgerows. Fiddleheads strive to raise themselves into their own lush song. The dark sky makes light of the pond. Silver spoons and old medicines rise up out of the dirt. Mexican surrealists sit on the porch and tilt their large heads to one side and observe me through their eyes. Tomorrow. The train of anger surges along these circular rails. Will it take us there? I question the conductor urgently. I shake him by his lapels and rattle all his equipment. He tells me to call the airline. I'm not so sure. We try to sleep upside-down, but Selena and Cheyenne are so disruptive. I have this green fleece blanket from home. And I have a pack of notecards. That's all I have.

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April 24 heart growing hot (again)
There was a man in the woods today at about 2pm. He had a long, long white beard, and a shorter dark ponytail. He had a wire-haired dog with him -- maybe it was a miniature schnauzer. He had a can of beer in his vest pocket. I just wanted to sit down and talk to him. Maybe I could have told him my problems. We exchanged comments about the weather. It was sunny, but very windy. He guessed the temperature -- 65? I said no, more like 55 or 60. I have no ability to guess the temperature whatsoever. I think this was the first time I ever talked to a human being in the woods. If he was a human being. I don't know how to surrender without crying bitter tears. Maybe if I start burning little pieces of paper. Mowing the lawn put me in a lethal mood. I'll have to get some beer, so I can drink after mowing the lawn. Is that a Really Good Idea? My mind is empty. Housekeeping is not good for me. Here's a Good Idea -- the Crying Date. Two people get together and don't say anything to each other. They hardly know each other. They just get together and cry the whole time. That's the stupidest idea I ever had. I burned a little piece of paper today. It was a prayer for a better lawn attitude. I buried it in the red dirt of Prince Edward Island. Maybe my yard will be a red desert when I wake up. I think this is the worst thing I ever wrote. I can't write in my private journal. That in itself is scary.

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April 25 lying down, lying fallow, lying ...
Lying on the couch, "resting" (stupefied), the sugar of chocolate malted milk eggs racing through my blood, both my feet cramping up even though I don't wear high heels anymore, unable to pay any attention to my son who's talking to me, unable to care about the broken hair dryer and portable phone and wall lamp, or the giant hot air balloon he's building out of tissue paper, unable to care about the dog staring at me (why is he staring at me?), cold, weary, silly ... I'm feeling full of the biography of Mabel Dodge Luhan, Intimate Memories, and her difficult romantic situations and what she does with people ... and places ... I want to engage in the texture of all this in a different way ... I can too ... that's what B is worried about ... I'll go meet John Frohnmayer; first I'll read Leaving Town Alive. I created the structure of the document today -- the magical solution document that everyone's been talking about. I just sat down and made myself do it. I concentrated on it extremely hard for 4 or 5 hours and did not let anything distract me, although many distractions arose. I feel gratified by this. I am a tech writing weenie. I can finally distinguish when to use "that" from when to use "which." I hate Microsoft Word and I love Framemaker. To a great extent I am fueled by a need to feel superior. Maybe someday I'll be able to distinguish the need to feel superior from the desire to serve beauty. I lied at my parents' house (again). Oohing and aahing about the miracle of someone he knows having a website, and I say nothing. I lied at work (again). When asked about my weekend, I sort of neglected to say I went to Washington DC for one day to see Remedios Varo. It seemed extraordinarily impractical, completely beyond explanation. The train was two hours late getting in. We were trying to snooze, stranded in the station two miles from home. The next day we were exhausted. I slept so soundly in Union station waiting for the return train -- my son told me they took a man away on a stretcher, giving him oxygen, and I had no awareness of the commotion. I just need to do things, okay?

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April 26 more meowing
I was making the tea and dipping the tea bag up and down with a spoon, when I saw a tiny reflection. The motion of the spoon was reflected in a little brightness in the pyrex measuring cup on top of the stove. Glimmer, glimmer, glimmer. I started to pray to the little reflection, which seemed so friendly. Take away my loneliness, I asked. But this made me cry and I went to stick my head out the back door. It was cold. Cold, cold, cold, and windy and dark. I looked at the dark shapes of the trees up the hill in the back, opaque now with their burden of buds. They looked like people, but they were remote, and had no minds, and stood too tall, and tossed with unconcern. Nothing is more curious or more common than dreams. Courage cries bright tears, but pride is watchful and sullen. Why am I holding on to all these Treasures of Wrong? The churchyard is cast iron; Edna St. Vincent Millay howls outside the gate. The dogwood blooms shrivel and their tips are darkened with cold. Hermes ignores me and runs off on holier errands. Some creatures make tentative contact, sticking their heads over each other's cubicle walls. Most of them are embarrassed about their brand new casual shooes. Zero, one, zero, one, zero, one, first I am better, then I am worse. Whose hut is this anyway?

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April 27 pondering temptations
Let's think about "as if." As if it were warm, as if I really had a heart, as if we were friends, as if 40 years were a long time, as if I were familiar with the desert, as if I wanted to fly away to Portland, as if I didn't actually like the rain so much, as if my back door hadn't been shattered into a million pieces of glass, as if ... What's the difference between "as if" and the imagination? What's the difference between pining, and wondering, and fantasizing -- making up, waking up, and taking care of business? I know, it has to do with how hard it is and the temperature of the emotional field. This is a song about emotional struggle. Something must be subdued. Arthur must be subdued. Who's Arthur? Why does that name keep coming to mind. Here it's a muscle and there it's a sculpture made of glass. The muscle is raw and disgusting; it deteriorates; it's unhappy exposed to the air like this. The glass is cool, its flows are immobilized, and its flaws create distortion. It becomes immediately impossible to combine them, muscle and glass. The muscle stands for pining; the glass for taking care. One by one all my tensions cease and I become a human form made of a sheer fiberglass fabric. I mean -- all my tensions increase. I mean -- I don't know what I'm doing. This is a song about fervor. My childhood prayerbook said tepid souls would become fervent and fervent souls would quickly mount to sheer perfection. In second grade I was fascinated by the words tepid and fervent and sheer and perfection -- and by the thought of change in the soul. I forget what was promised to cause this progression -- probably devotion to the Sacred heart muscle -- some kind of asinine devotion! Well, that is what I'm good at!

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April 28 Rippowam the Center
Arthur is treason and the pond is broken, Catherine has forgotten the tulips last week painted. Crows curl like rabbits in the lawn while wild turkeys shake their tails; highway festoons herself with accidents, celebrating pink and blue in her frustration; howls echoing in Springdale, the lovers stall in Hondas, one more night. Walking dogs with longer strides than most, past ten's sidewalk cemeteries, left turning into darker neighborhoods, Diana picks up tiny dropped bouquets, red-tipped maple seeds on blushing stalks and baby-handed oak leaves. No cove waves nurture vanished horseshoe crabs, who is there to solve sea-mist if selky drowns, if mermaid cuts her hair. Aphrodite in the first light slaps her ruddy thighs. Flagrantly in imitation of Marie Ponsot, "Rockefeller the Center" in City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology

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April 30 love the one you're with
I got mixed up and called you by the name of your rebirth. I forgot you weren't there yet. How long will you persist in this experimentation? We both wonder. Your skin itches all over and you wear your hair in a braid. "I don't feel normal," you tell her. "How long has this been going on?," she asks. "I see the face of a man in the doorknob, and the face of a wolf in the rock wall. When I close my eyes, I see an old woman. She holds a grudge against me. Her head is floating in air." I see the old maids. Five of them sit in a row. I'm so afraid of them. Their skin itches all over and they have never had sex. They won't sit with their legs open and they hold their elbows at funny angles. Their faces are stiff with windburn and blurred with deprivation. I see the widow when I'm returning the ice bucket. She admonishes me, saying "People should leave notes, saying don't panic, I've temporarily stolen the ice bucket, but I'm bringing it back." I ignore her. She serves two small platters and says she's been cooking for weeks. She calls me down off the rocky knoll because of her fears. I kiss her goodbye. My skin crawls. I make myself talk to men. Men who burp and men who sneeze and men wearing cervical collars. Men whose eyes peek out of nests of hair and men whose pants inexplicably stay up or inexplicably come down. They seem interested in my process. One asks if I can cook. One offers a reference on the NT registry. One is doing an article on my creative process. Does that count as a date? (She says "Pray for them. Pray for their everlasting happiness.") The old woman dreams of the young woman. The young Puerto Rican woman, Cher, your sister, tends a fire the size of a sundial in the backyard. She call you by name. She asks about your education. You give her backwards advice, saying "the first half of your life is for comfort. Don't push it. Do what you want to." The old woman dreams of the young woman. The young Indian woman, Mickie, from Inchelium. She recognizes you. You greet each other warmly on the soccer field. She's studying for her BA in a town called "Pentecol." You've never heard of it. When conversation fails, she teaches you cartwheels. You hold each others' ankles and spin and spin in a sunshine of laughter.

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