October

01 Beach lunch
02 Metawriting
03 We're tired
04 Ways to live
05 Momhood
06 The antedawn
07 Artificial gemstones
08 Inorganics
09 Save the whimsies
10 Rain of relief
13 Minor tragedies
14 Starting over
15 Kundali moans
16 The virgin
17 The day before
18 The day
19 The day after
20 Animals
21 Fall
22 Fall magic
24 Morning of Minne
25 New flames
26 The motions
27 Shameless revelations
28 The eccentric, the immoral
30 Wedding update
31 The last word of the month

Home


October 1

Beach lunch

The water was deep there by the rocks, and green. It looked clean and alive. Waves came through rolling and splashing, with an irregular heartbeat. White crests of laughter every so often. The sun was warm. Wind chapped my lips. There was smog all around the horizon, but no radioactivity as far as I know.

Here I am, close to the edge, reciting my statistics.
I was born in Baltimore, Maryland. January 26, 1956.
My mother taught me to read.
I was the only bookworm in kindergarten.
I grew up outside Chicago.
My dad was an engineer.
I manufactured nebulizers one summer for $2.76 an hour.
I'm looking for a job.

Pebbles. Ants. Minnows. Ocean.

I give up. You can't see into the water right here, it's too green and too deep off the point. Opacity and turmoil always win. I could have stayed closer to the shoreline, near the channel. In the warmer shallows there are visible minnows, why can't I splash there? Why do I have to be out so close to the edge of the saline world

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October 2

Metawriting

Some thoughts about writing, etc.:

I worry that all my writing is so compressed. I'm always rushing. I read other writers, those whose work I admire, and I have such a strange feeling that they're taking their time. How dare they go on and on like that. I mean, how do they dare go on and on like that. I can't do it. On the other hand, I think compression is suited to web writing. It's not as easy to sustain attention to a screen as it is to a paper page.

This is related to a feeling of not being listened to, of not being able to hold the floor in a conversation. When these entries get long, I feel anxious that no one will want to read that much.

Susan Griffin: I am in awe of how you write about yourself. (What Her Body Thought)

Julia Blackburn: I am incredibly jealous of how you made a magical biography out of nothing. (Daisy Bates in the Desert)

I wonder what it would be like to take each entry over the past year and use it as a starting point for a new entry. I like this idea. It makes me imagine building up a crust, a heavily overworked surface design, or something very deep over several years. It drives time into writing even more than the daily journal format. It's a scary idea. I think it would become too artificial. The idea of the Talmud with all those layers of commentaries has always made my mind go blank.

I don't have much of a narrative gift. I never made up stories as a child. I made up words and I collected mental images. My sister and I used to go around the house saying "Voo-ah, voo-ah, voo--ah" because we liked the sound of it so much and it was so much fun to get our mouths to do that.

I collected emotional images. Standing outside in the dark, looking at the lighted house windows. Running downhill as fast as I could into the birch forest. The cloudy sky meeting the edge of the bare hill.

I like rhythm almost more than I like color. I've been too tense lately to write with much rhythm. And it's the easiest element to destroy when I revise. I first noticed rhythm's appearance in journal free writing. I don't like to read my writing aloud even though this is always recommended.

I like double meanings and symbolism almost as much as I like rhythm. Unintentional surprise double meanings and symbolism fill me with joy.

I wonder about the impact of composing on a keyboard and a colored screen, rather than with pen and white paper. People used to have to interrupt themselves constantly to redip the pen. And revisions used to be so much harder.

Sometimes I really want to study and make notes for most of the day. How do people get to do that?

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October 3

We're tired

Two women trimming a hedge. The hedge is supposed to be ten feet tall. The wild fresh growth extends three more feet and it's thick. She wants me to help stabilize the ladder. I put a foot on the bottom rung and grip the two legs as hard as I can. If the ladder were to go over, I would definitely not be able to stop it. "I feel so much better with you there," she says. She's using a plastic children's Halloween fright hook to draw the branches of the hedge into the reach of her clippers. The hook is covered with gobs of red paint supposed to resemble blood. Her feet on the ladder are just at my eye level. There are cuts on both feet. Real blood.

The ladder is positioned on top of a rock wall. It's standing on a plywood platform which is balanced on bricks to make it level. The street is about four feet down. I think the plywood platform is starting to crack. I don't feel scared. She ascends another step on the ladder. When she can't reach any more branches with her hook, she comes down. I track the long stragglers from the ground, get into the hedge to grab them, and hang on them, using all my weight to bend them close to the ground so she can cut them. Branches pull at my hair and scratch my arms. I observe calmly, "You've got poison ivy in here." "I know," she says.

Abruptly we stop work on the hedge and go in to cook. She takes a roast out of the oven and starts making gravey in the pan. I wonder how she learned to make gravey but I forget to ask. She has to go to the store. I exert myself out of a stupor of discouragement and finish up the cooking. I make steamed broccoli in the only saucepan I can find. Then I drain the potatoes and mash them. First I crush them in the pan with a masher and then I whip the living daylights out of them with a fork. One boy won't eat anything at all. The other boy wants peas which are not on the menu.

"I don't feel very spiritual today," she says.

I say "I'm trying to pray, but I don't think anything hears me."

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October 4

Ways to live

A very bright soft quality fills the room. Weather both piercing and mesmerizing, brilliant and mournful, lightning and low thunder. Some of us touch hands; others twist our rings and fidget. Our voices sound shaky, but they also glow with tears. The same story is told many times. We are fighting so hard for intimacy. Our voices sound like cymbals, but our hearts make a slow deep back beat. Sometimes we are so brave to be so sad.

~~~~~~~~~

October 16: Marlene Shiwy's workshop in the city, "Writing the Conscious Feminine"

October 22 - 24: Family weekend at Berklee College of Music

October 30: Sister's Wedding (no web page available)

~~~~~~~~~

When other people in Alice's office are busy, I'm supposed to answer the phone. It's only polite. The problem is, I don't hear the phone ringing. Honest I don't. It has a funny sound and I'm concentrating hard on my work. When I do realize it's ringing, I pick it up and mumble the name of the business in a funny, furtive way, like I don't know where I am, or I'm not used to talking. Then I quake with fear that I will misuse the Hold button and hang up on the person. It's like asking some passing mole creature to answer the telephone.

~~~~~~~~~

I turned off the TV at 7:30 tonight. We won't get into a Hollywood Squares habit here if I have anything to say about it. Instead of watching TV, we lay on the floor on the upstairs landing with our legs propped up against the wall. We were hanging out watching the dog and the cat hang out, living dangerously with the door between them open. Very relaxing.

~~~~~~~~~

No hyperbole! I tell myself. No melodrama! What a way to live.

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October 5

Momhood

I talked to my son in Boston tonight. He sounded very monochromatic. He's a damn writer, I don't know what he's doing in music school. He wrote a 19-page story for English composition class when the minimum was 2 pages. One of the stories they read in their anthology was "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; he said he loved it. Maybe I did rub off on him just a bit. He has no money. Luckily I sent him some money Monday so I could feel magnanimous about that. He's eating pasta and drinking tea, even though he's on the meal plan. I told him I was worried about his diet, because that's what I'm supposed to say.

I'm remembering some of the writing things I did with him in the more difficult years:

  • I wrote thinly disguised stories about him in medieval settings (really bad stories) and made him read them.
  • I wrote a dialogue between me and him, and made him read it. It was a very bad political analysis of high school. His lines were mostly, "Uh-hunh," "Yeah," and "You're right about that."
  • I did timed writing with him regarding pros and cons of various decisions. I told him we would take 5 minutes to write and we did, then we would read each other's papers which we did. No further discussion was allowed at that time.
  • I wrote down options for him on little cards and then made him sort them in order of priority.

All this seemed awfully goofy and awkward at the time. But it did provide a welcome counterpoint to my yelling. Communication is so cool. Even crude attempts to communicate communicate the desire to communicate (this sentence being an example).

The impulse to do these writing exercises with him came from a book called Put Your Heart on Paper, by Henriette Anne Klauser.

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October 6

The antedawn

Burn out.

Probably because I got up at 4:55 am with the dog. The garbage trucks were roaming the streets. I had heard there was a celestial phenomenon going on, so I got up and went outside with Kirby.

The moon was bright and strange, a crescent with a pale circle behind it. Venus was huge and dripping with white blue light. And there was a bright star -- these three in a triangular configuration. In spite of the streetlights I saw more stars than I remember seeing in town before. And constellations that I somehow know -- Orion, the Pleiades, Cassiopeia, the big Dipper. Such familiar and reassuring patterns.

There was a lot of activity in my neighborhood at 5 am. The garbage trucks were roaring and squealing. There was a man walking a big black dog. The man was dressed in white sweatclothes and had a hood over his head, sort of a Wee Willie Winkie outfit. He seemed to be picking through other people's recycling. I chatted with my uphill neighbor, the friendly woman who calls my dog Little Pisser. This is because he pissed on her leg once while we were chatting. I've never gotten over it. I was horrified; he'd never done that to anyone else. Luckily, she's a truly nice person who likes dogs. She was taking out some last minute trash. We both looked very funky but neither of us cared.

I was so happy and contented walking around at that hour. And the sky was so beautiful. I didn't even mind that I was cold.

And when I got home, I had an extra hour of peace and quiet to prepare for today's interview and answer email and do a little reading.

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October 7

Artificial gemstones

The title of this entry means nothing, only the subject of a paper I did in high school chemistry, and vaguely related to pressure and facets, and I couldn't think of anything better.  
Who have I been this week?

Fairy child girl sitting in the bed, crowned with leaves and flowers, offering fragrances, laughing with high pitched tones like windchimes.

Woman among engineers. She feels like her dad, surrounded by dads, surrounded by earnestness, surrounded by carpets, and cubicles, and toys, surrounded by trees on a corporate campus in the middle of nowhere.

Thready-voiced psycho woman, why is she unable to cope? too moral, too needy, too emotional? why can't she exert herself to keep her house a little cleaner?

Woman wearing an old shapeless sweater, depressed and discouraged by her friends' opinions, and ready to put on a slip dress in angry rebellion.

One of many beautiful nofault people working in a marketing company, making a high salary, trotting around town having coffee in trendy elegant shoes.

Coding woman, adding a shopping cart to a website, obsessively writing HTML, zeroing in on errors like a bird of prey.

School marm mom, hair in a bun, glasses down her nose, frowning about a ridiculous performance on a quiz on the figures of speech.

Woman ineffectively caring for her pain with a stiff flannel nighty, paisley comforter cover, and melting votive candles.

Celestial argonaut, she believes she's steering a comet through a minefield of meteorites.

Talking woman, answering everything, dry mouthed, out of breath, over eager, over tired, dizzy.

Answerless woman, offroad, terrified by speed and poor visibility through the windshield.

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October 8

Inorganics

 
Go with your gut, she said.

My gut. I have no gut. Instead a sweltering shallow sea of vanity, worry, and guilt bathes the whole inside of my torso.

My heart. I have no heart. Those poems don't move me. Even the tender hair of old people fails to earn my feelings.

My desire. I have no sexual organs. My dance is all arms and elbows. Who dances with their forearms? making lines across their eyes.

I have a big giant head. My mouth is attached to the side by a spiky tongue. It says whatever you want to hear.

My metal hands are clever mechanical spiders impaled on brittle wrists.

At home, I fling myself into the corner, a tangle of sticks and strings, old tortured marionette with painted eyes.

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October 9

Save the whimsies

 
I've been reading some Galway Kinnell. I like his poetry well enough. What I liked the most, though, was this description of his revisions from his prefatory note to 3 Books:

    Most of the material I took out could be described as familiar refrains, clotted conceits, fanciful elaborations, overemphases, exaggerations, willed sweetness, willed misery, wishfulness, grandiloquence, redundancies, irrelevancies, whimsies, pointlessly elaborate sound effects, contrived usages, efforts to enliven through heightened language what would have been lively if given straight, attempts to enliven what remains intractably dull, bravura cadenzas by the professor of creative writing.

It's a whole poetry course in one paragraph.

Because of my contrary nature, I want to write a poem full of conceits, whimsies, exaggerations, willed sweetness, and willed misery ... not to mention pointlessly elaborate sound effects. Listing all these flaws this way makes me feel compassionate towards them. It makes me want to embrace them. It's not their fault.

It's a constant theme: my desire to embrace and redeem imperfections, in men, in children, in companies, in churches, in writing. And then, failing, struggling, sickened and hopeless, I slink away into my own sterile controllable world, where I'm wicked with criticism.

What is good? What should we do, and for how long? How can we say "that person/poem/policy is bad"? We should love everything. We should always be positive and helpful.

I made the most spectacular mistake of my life because I didn't want to say someone was bad. But he was. Or was he?

I still feel closer to the bad and the flawed than I am to the perfect. Daily writing is riddled with flaws. It has to be. When I am tempted to really work on my writing and make it better and then post only "good" stuff, I hate myself for elitism. This way, I can only accuse myself of laziness regarding revision, and I'm used to that.

I think I paid too much attention in elementary school Religion class where they taught us "God is Love."

Or maybe I think the bad is really where it's at, and I don't want to be left out.

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October 10

Rain of relief

 
Rain all day. Rain of relief.

I got the offer I was looking for today.

I have to make about 50 phone calls tomorrow.

I'm dismantling the job hunting circus tent.

Single spotlight, me, lying in the sawdust. Surrounded by horse and elephant and clown dung.

~~~~~~~~

Here's what I want to do next, in no particular order and with no particular guarantee:

Come up with new ideas for this website.

Work on a very amateurish exhibit of "computer art."

Make an outfit of light green floating chiffon panels.

Try to make some money writing.

Summarize what I have learned from web writing so far.

Buy some new underwear.

Get a cassette or CD player for the car since I'll have to commute now.

Run away to Cape Perpetua and live on the side of a cliff.

Get my hair trimmed.

Buy new bicycles for myself and my son.

See Abakanowicz on the Roof at the Met.

Recalculate my whole financial situation.

Join the Society for Technical Communications.

Get some more second-hand bookcases or filing cabinets.

Write gushing thank you notes to all my references.

That's all for now.

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October 13

Minor tragedies

 
Who's making up this story?

Whoever it is likes to throw in some truly unusual and minorly tragic plot twists. I've had to stay away from the computer for two days because I've been feeling so sick. It feels like an extreme challenge to write about my life right now, what to say, what not to say.

1) I accepted a job. That should be good. The only drawback is the 1/2 hour commute.

2) Immediately after I made the phone call accepting Job A, I got a call about Job B, the one job that interested me in town. They had resolved their budgetary situation and wanted me on a long-term assignment. No interview necessary. Job B is in town, pays more, but it's not permanent. I decided I had to say no since I had just said yes to Job A and I wasn't up to calling them and backing out.

3) The reason why all this matters is that my romantic interest works in town. Taking Job A means I won't see him anymore. That should probably be good, since he's not free, and I am.

4) Impulsively, I called him up and saw him on Monday. It was goodbye forever. We had a beautiful lunch at the beach. I sat in the sun for 2 hours.

5) Knowing I shouldn't sit in the sun -- now I've been in pain for 2 straight days from my health condition -- variously diagnosed as lupus, mixed connective tissue disease, or whatever. Severe leg pain, insomnia, burning skin, rashes ... it's very unpredictable where it will go, it could clear up tomorrow or bother me for months and months. I haven't had any significant pain for 5 years, so I'm very disappointed that this is happening now. I tell myself at least it didn't happen while I was interviewing (minor blessing).

6) Monday is my first day of work. All my doctors are in the wrong town. I have a rash on my face.

I am feeling just a little vulnerable.

My denial cracked, the denial that it doesn't hurt to be alone. The denial that it didn't bother me that he's married (it does). The denial that I can manage. The denial that I can be Superwoman. He was kryptonite and whew, I am paying the price.

I feel generally positive about the job change. I just didn't think it would all become so hard at the last minute.

Reading for tonight: Sagewoman article "The Goddess who Walks by Herself."

Metaphor for tonight: I was taking a bath trying to alleviate my pain. I had a black candle burning on the side of the tub. When I finally got out of the tub, I picked up the candle. A big ugly thick black tear of wax ran out of the candleholder down the side of the tub into the draining water. I'm letting it cool. I hope it comes off.


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October 14

Starting over

 
I'm feeling much more on the mentally / physically healthy side of the scale tonight.

Is this weird? Today I signed both the contract for the new job and the contract for the poetry journal grant. Monday I start the new job and attend the award ceremony for the grants. I don't know what to wear for either one.

I haven't actually adapted to the idea that I have to do either the new job or the poetry journal.

Oh well. I heard people say Congratulations to me a lot today and I couldn't immediately distinguish for what.

~~~~~

As long as I was interviewing, I was maintaining a backbone. Now that it's over I've turned into a quivering bowl full of jelly.

~~~~~

This morning I was meditating on the subjunctive tense. Are these sentences by Julia Blackburn correct?

    "They gathered around the prostrate body and wondered whether Catherine was dead or alive."

    "She had sat beside him through the night, singing to him as if he was a restless child..."

    "She used to place it on her lap and stroke it as if it were a cat."

I'm totally absorbed in Julia Blackburn's The Leper's Companions but I'm finding myself bothered by TYPOS and questions of grammar. I want to read "were" instead of "was" in those first two sentences.

(Actually, I'm happy to find an author who uses lots of "wish," "wonder whether," and "as if." I'm afraid it's out of fashion.)

Oddly enough, there was a big reference book on English usage sitting on the checkin counter at the library when I dropped my books off. I found the article on the subjunctive tense, but I didn't get to read it because I was worried about getting a PARKING TICKET and I'm tired of paying the city $10 especially after they cut my grant amount requested by $1000. Some other time.

Speaking of grammar, I think I totally destroyed the usage of the word "denial" yesterday. I don't even want to reread what I wrote. I can only attribute it to my distraught state of mind. Does a positive or a negative follow the word denial? Oh, scrap the whole construction and start over.

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October 15

Kundali moans

 
I'm unsettled. Change is too hard. I can't think straight. My nose is dry. My lips are dry and swollen. I can't catch my breath. I eat breakfast at 10. I make myself cream of wheat, two servings. I read and read, again the story of Kundali and Svayambhu. I never understood it and I still don't understand it. I'm in a meeting with six women. Many of them are crying about relationships. I feel like a cold capsule. For lunch, a lightning fast woman with too open blue eyes and a bruise on her arm makes me a chicken salad sandwich with salt and pepper while she brags that she changes her own oil. The day is too bright, too windy, too warm, too cold. I can't see. The trees. Some are at their peak, some are old, some are too green and too dry. I don't know where I belong. I'm in a meeting with four women. I'm not there for any reason. I eat a hypersweet chocolate brownie with rum in it. Each of us has skin that is imperfect: warts, moles, rashes, wrinkles, and age discoloration. For dinner I get Chinese food, sweet and sour chicken in a fluorescent red sauce. The teenage clerk has long black pigtails and a gold stud in her nose. She looks Indian, but she might be Chinese, and speaks Spanish to the customers. My ex-husband happens to be at my house, so I invite him to eat. We share two cream sodas amongst three people, and I'm still thirsty. I feel sick. My son becomes silent. I hug him goodbye. He comes up to my neck. He goes with his dad. I don't understand men. I'm alone. I fall asleep on the couch. When I wake up, I'm accidentally watching a show about single New Yorkers. I'm repelled. I talk to my dog and my cat. They too are lonely.

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October 16

The virgin

 
I'm too trembling and atomized to write. I looked at my books today and felt as though I had never seen them before.

For strength, I meditated on Gertrude Stein's backside. The offerings in her lap this time: a dime and a tiny pebble. It was so noisy in Bryant Park and so full of bus exhaust . There was a horrible Tag Heuer exhibit in metallic cubes installed right before Gertrude's eyes. I couldn't stay long.

I curled up on a light green couch at the City Athletic Club and wrote and then tried to sleep. I couldn't talk to anyone at the workshop and I left early.

I'm living the Virgin archetype very strongly. A woman unto herself.

I walked around New York whispering in my own ears. I said "Ardhanari," the androgyne, oneness.

In my journal, this word appeared: "workship."

I keep telling myself I am safe.

I'm very ungrounded. Too much air, too much water, not enough earth. Even the dirt was flying through the air. Maybe tomorrow I will dig a hole and bury my old job.

I hated the pavement in the city. I hated all the people. I hated their clothes, their activities, their hair, and their facial expressions.

I didn't want "we." I wanted "you" but only "you" within "I."

I want someone to place their hands on the sides of my face, and hold my head firmly, and look me hard in the eyes, and say "You are strong. You can do this."

Even when I'm trembling and atomized, I still have a lot of chores like washing dishes and cleaning the bathrooms.

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October 17

The day before

 
Scaring myself with thoughts and projections about my new job:

I will have to work really hard right from the beginning. Overtime the first day.

It will become glaringly obvious on the first day that I don't know what I'm doing.

I won't be able to eat lunch because I don't know how they eat lunch there.

I'll be overdressed. They'll notice a lot of dog hair on my clothes.

I'll be in pain.

I'll be in too much pain to work.

I'll discover I hate my boss.

I'll be horrified at how much of a mess everything is in, how incompetent everyone is.

It will take them a long time to hook up my phone, my computer, my user ID, email, etc. I'll feel cut off from the world.

There won't be any work for me to do. I'll have to sit there wondering how much initiative I should take. Fighting not to fall asleep.

There won't be a cubicle ready for me.

I'll park in the wrong place. My car will break down on the way there. I don't have a cell phone.

I'll have to meet a lot of new people. I won't remember their names. I won't get any time to myself.

~~~~~~~~

Today I got some good advice: "Just show up."

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October 18

The day

 
I didn't have to work really hard today. I left at 5pm. The boss said "I'm not a stickler about time."

I know how to open a removable CD cassette and I know what Rational Rose is.

I had a hot roast beef sandwich on a Portuguese roll for lunch at a deli up the road. The trees were blazingly beautiful along that stretch.

I was overdressed. They could care less about dog hair on my clothes.

I was in pain, but not too much pain to work.

I've got a key card and a cubicle and e-mail and internet access. No phone yet.

I spent the day loading software, doing FrameMaker tutorials, and setting up preferences.

I did park in the wrong place but this was easily corrected after lunch.

I met some new people. I got more than enough time to myself. I was introduced as a "the new writer." Writers are expected to be introverted, thank god.

~~~~~~~

Tonight I shook the mayor's hand and took a check from him for the poetry journal grant. I am awed to be in the company of these amazing local arts activists. My hero, the guy from the International Surrealist Film Festival, got some money. He was dressed in a weird green space suit, with an oversized silver jacket, and a halo of orange hair.

~~~~~~~

Later tonight my son said something that hurt my feelings quite a lot. I had to go outside in my bathrobe and sit on the stone wall and swallow my hurt feelings along with the rest of my tea. Then I had to come back in and discuss what happened maturely, like a parent.

~~~~~~~

Early this morning, walking the dog, I allowed myself to sink completely into my feelings of loneliness. I wasn't afraid, I was just completely and utterly lonely. I said out loud, "This sucks."

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October 19

The day after

 
There was a little girl
and she had a little curl
right in the middle of her forehead
and when she was good
she was very very good
but when she was bad
she was horrid.

Tonight I am horrid. I'm having a black tantrum of frustration. The Internet, Kryptonite, lodgings in Boston, desk chairs, Pokemon cards, money, vehicles, not taking NO for an answer, voids of initiative, trash, insomnia, the Mets, inequitable distribution of supervisory skills, guruhood of various kinds, predictability, unpredictability, the end of October, capitalism, land for lease, lawn mowing, beeping sounds, witchcraft, Buddhism, unwarranted silences, unexplained absences ... I guess that summarizes what is bothering me.

Especially not taking no for an answer. I was pushed over the edge by a message on the machine from a no-longer-potential employer who really wants to "speak to me in person." She weaseled my home phone number out of the recruiter. I know she feels like she messed up by delaying, but hey them's the breaks. I couldn't tolerate this regression now that I'm in the process of committing to a job, so I made everything worse by staying online most of the evening frustrating myself.

Writing, destroy my bad emotional attitude.

Writing, don't go there. Don't embrace that.

Writing, be bigger. Be better.

Writing, uplift and be noble.

Writing, can I make it happen? Can you make it happen? Can I make you happen?

Writing, who are you? Are you me? Who am I?

I don't know.

Going to bed early at times like this may be the best idea. I think a lot of so-called spiritual struggle is damn nonsense.

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October 20

Animals

 
Canadian geese in the parking lot.
Deer grazing by the side of the highway.
Risktaking woodchucks.
Squirrels by the hundreds.
Crows standing in the rain.
A big fat glistening brown slug with horns out.
A llama.

There was a llama loose on the grounds of the corporate complex when I went back for my second interview at this company.

When I drive up my driveway, the pet pigeon makes a big showy whistling flight around the house. The undersides of his wings flash white.

I'm partial to earthworms. I surprised myself once by thinking "earthworms are my totem animal." I have a habit of rescuing them from the street when they are stranded after a rain. I can't bear to watch their succulent thin skins making slow (painful?) progress over sand and gravel going the wrong way. I stoop down to pick up a big one and with an incredible burst of energy, he squirms like a tiny tornado to get away from my hand. Finally I get hold of him and fling him into the lawn. One day there were so many I just shook my head and announced, I can't save you all.

Today I read this quote in the Connecticut River Review:

It is as essential that some people do think about earthworms, at least sometimes, as it is that not everyone does.

David Quammen, The Flight of the Iguana

I'm not much impressed by the quote, which seems muddy and awkward. I am impressed that somebody would notice that some people do think about earthworms and try to make something of it.

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October 21

Fall

 
She emboldens gold

with her wealth of sparkles.

She makes blue into possible

and darkens purple with extra twilight.

Pink blushes at her touch ;

Any white would die

to be her mist.

She offers pears

with the cup of her hand

Their juice turns to sting

but she won't free her lips.

Now night squirms from her fingers

her bones broken diamonds and

her breasts a bowl of frost.

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October 22

Fall magic

 
I can't help it. I want to write notes about that poem from yesterday.

I had to edit a few words from that entry tonight. Some people won't change their entries after they post them, but I'm not one of those people.

Phrases like "Any white would die" ran through my head most of today.

There's an invisible man in the poem. Should I make him appear? I don't think it needs him.

Some of the images are grotesque. I like them that way. They make me shudder.

The poem is an anti-myth. An alternative myth.

There were three stanzas, but technology turned it into one. I just left it that way. I didn't really care to fix it.

The first part with the colors goes on too long. I was getting carried away with the concept. It doesn't flow. It starts to feel like showing off.

I almost stopped writing after the first part with the colors. But a curious feeling of pain started and I knew I had to keep going into somewhere. Into a real sadness.

What if I made it longer? Relaxed more into it? Made it less cryptic?

What should I do with this poem? It has some big flaws. Maybe I should work on it. Deciding this is always traumatic for me. I don't want to. I want to let go of it.

I find this poem disgusting. I can't believe I actually let it come out.

At the same time, it's magic. Poetry is magic.

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October 24

Morning of Minne

 
Boston yesterday. I left home without my wallet. No money, no plastic, no driver's license. On the way home, I got terribly lost in suburban Brookline. I went around the same rotary about four times. All in all, a typical trip. This chaos comes from the genes on the other side of the family, but it's rubbed off on me.

My son is having an excellent adventure in Music College. I am stunned.

~~~~~~

Today I stayed home and studied all morning. I'm doing research on SEX. I told this to my best friend, but I don't think she understood. I really am doing research on sex. I read the most amazing articles in the Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. No chapter on Aphrodite, but try "Tantrism," "Shakti," "Romance," and, well, "Sex." Sometimes I wonder if Barbara Walker is making this stuff up, it seems so preposterous. But -- my culture wants me to think that.

Notes:

There's a Sufi spirit called "Fravashi," a fairy mistress, "Spirit of the Way," "an occult love-priestess like the Tantric shakti."

Poets of the Middle Ages, called minnesingers, worshipped the Goddess Love, Minne. "The bards invoked not God but Erda -- Mother Earth -- and the Goddess Minne, whose name was a synonym for Love."

"Before the 13th centry, poets were denied Christian communion and denounced by churchmen as "ministers of Satan." Later they won acceptance by using biblical and theological motifs in their songs, but romantic poetry remained suspiciously heretical." (p. 860)

The name Minne may come from "the erotic Fish-goddess Minaksi-Kali of India. Minne often appeared as a mermaid, like Aphrodite. But the Minnesingers said of her, "She resembles nothing imaginable. her name is known; her self, however, ungrasped. ... She comes never to a false heart."" (p. 659)

And then there's the Meistersinger school of the later stages of the courtly love movement: "The obvious spirituality of the movement led some to interpret it as a sentimental asceticism inspired by adoration of the virgin Mary. Yet some of the minstrels' poetry was intensely -- even grossly -- erotic, focused on a real female body, not an ethereal vision. Scholars failed to understand this combination of spirituality and carnality because they failed to discover its historical root: the penetration of Europe by yet another wave of Tantric sex-worship." (p. 862)

I wonder what are the chances of my finding some of this poetry in the library.

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October 25

New flames

 
Take all these dusty unlightable candles from the bedroom down to the kitchen.

Warm them in an old frying pan full of water over low heat. Force the softened wax out of the votives' glass bowls. Wipe the waxy residue from the candleholders with paper towels.

Play with fire. Light the one salvageable pillar candle. Drip wax out of its heart into the trash until the drowned wick is visible again. Pick the swimming bits of blackened match out of its pool of melted wax.

Set up the fresh votives for Samhain.

Wonder how you shall burn now, now that you can.

~~~~~~~

I had my first manageable evening tonight in a long time. I puttered around in the kitchen. I made my son eat with me at the kitchen table, not in front of the TV.

I cooked.

Do you cook?

Yes, I cook.

~~~~~~~

Has there always been a non-consuming flame within? Or am I imagining it back into the ashy melted past?

Why have I lived long enough to know this light?

Who cleaned out my blackened bits? Rescued my drowned wick?

How do we move from torture to torch?

Stop being burned and start to burn?

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October 26

The motions

 
I don't really want to be here doing this. What would I rather be doing?

Getting two friends to turn the rope. Jumping in. Jumping rope to a jumping song.

Finding a friend, starting to clap hands, patterned clapping to a clapping song.

Just me. Making up a dance, making my motions to a dancing song.

The rhythm is so fundamental, I don't know how I survive without it.

Walking is a partial substitute. I walked at lunch today. I walked into the woods behind the corporate campus. There was a path through golden trees. I walked along the path past two or three forks. Questioning myself suddenly -- was I sure of the way back? It wouldn't do to get lost in the woods during the work day.

A man held the door for me at the post office today. He had been many steps ahead of me. I quickened my steps into a little run to catch up and get through the door. He said "Take your time." I had a huge complex of thoughts in an instant. 1) Why don't I take my time? 2) Should I take my time? 3) I rather like to hustle. 4) I have a lot of energy this morning. 5) I don't want to take my time. 6) I'm not old yet; I'm not disabled; I'm not in pain; I'm not fatigued. 7) I'm wearing !sneakers! to work, how can I help but run a bit? 8) Why don't I know how to act, how to move, how fast to move? 9) Will I never relax and let people go out of their way for me? 10) Am I the hustling little mother figure, serving everyone else's needs?

That kind of thing.

On Sunday, I told my friend that I was "just going through the motions." As soon as I said it, I knew it was untrue. On the surface, I am going through the motions. Trash night, for example. Trying to get minimally prepared for this wedding on Saturday. Getting used to my new routine.

That's not important. There's a hot underground seething, a great grappling with forces seen and unseen, a now-heard deafening drumming, a wrenching dance into alignment along a new magical fault line. This I describe as "going through the motions." Bah. How do I describe this in normal words? I'm going through some changes. Bah.

I'm almost breathless just sitting here in this chair.

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October 27

Shameless revelations

 
I have a big clog in the middle of my chest under my lungs. This came from the Internet. It's making me sick. Empty seeking and never finding.

I have an abrasion on my right ankle, an invisible pricker embedded in my left index finger, a sore toe, and bits of twigs caught in my hair. These came from the woods. I found out there's a park next to the corporate campus. It goes on for miles. There are many trails. I didn't know this when I took the job there.

I'm consumed by a faith that I'll be able to both seek and find in these woods. I'm obsessed with thoughts of exploring them. All winter.

There's no search engine for the woods. No urls. No programming languages. No hot, neat, or cool. Nothing glaring. Nothing flashing. Nothing ugly. No hype.

I saw a large bunch of brown mushrooms clustered together like a Louise Bourgeoise sculpture. I wanted to eat them, not caring if they were poisonous.

I saw a chunk of white quartz, palm-sized. It rested on a larger rock as though someone had placed it there on purpose. I picked it up and then tossed it back into the leaves.

I've been thinking a lot about my spiritual life lately. "Direction?" The next step has consistently appeared -- organically -- from within -- over the past year. The online journal has trained me to examine my interior world every day and see what cries out "Important." The beginning was the prayer to Durga, "Hard-to-Reach." (When I found out that name, I thought "it figures.") I was led through the book Devi, my text, Chapter 2's Prajna (Wisdom), Chapter 1's battling the buffalo demons, Chapter 3's Shakti. Vac and Sarasvati came in on their own. I went to the Devi exhibit in Washington DC. I found female divinities who were angry, ugly, all powerful, dominant, sexual, loving, meditative, expressive, clothed, naked; muses, poets, warriors, ghouls, mystics, creators, destroyers, lovers and haters; so many more aspects than the Virgin Mary figure of my childhood religion. I NEEDED THIS! I want to scream at my prior impoverishment.

I don't know where the Shakti figure will go. I would like to have a relationship in my life (on my own terms, of course). I'll follow if that is the next direction. Either way there is meaning. I brought flowers to work today as instructed by the prayer to Aphrodite.

Now I see part of the next direction is the woods. I don't know what is there but I know how to follow when I hear a call.

~~~~~~~~~

The prayers (aka "Dianic Affirmations"):

Upon rising:

I reconnect my soul with the Universal Intelligence, the Goddess Durga! Organizer of the Universe! Multi-armed, ever-ablaze with the fire of life. Let me be led by Durga's power. Blessed Be!

When falling in love:

O Aphrodite! I felt Your sting and now You are on Your way. I shall prepare my soul for You with flowers and lack of fear!

These are from Z. Budapest's The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries (page 53).

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October 28

The eccentric, the immoral

 
I followed the path at lunchtime. The path was barely visible, a slight troddenness of leaves in the heavy carpet of leaves. I worried that I would lose the path on the way back. I reminded myself to have faith that I would see the path. And I did. Even when it was completely eccentric, twisting and curving and making abrupt oblique right turns.

I took the path into a large bowl-shaped clearing. It was astonishing. So much space, so few people (me). Trees, leaves, hills, rocks. Faint sounds of the highway in the distance. I stood completely still in the open theater of the woods absorbing the vibrant play of autumn stillness.

I turned around and took one step -- a heartstopping sudden rustling in the leaves -- I had almost stepped on a large garter snake. I thought it was too cool for snakes. I guess not. He slithered a body length away and then stopped so I could admire him. He had black markings scratched in gold on his side; actually on his neck, if snakes can be said to have necks. The markings looked like a text I could read if I knew the language.

Then I walked back and went back to work. My name came up three times at the status meeting this afternoon so I guess I am getting integrated.

I am going into a big big big weekend. Family time. Wedding (Mass). Reception. Halloween. Samhain service at church -- I'm the East. I'm not handling the anticipation very well. I'm irritable. I feel like the bad fairy at the christening. I detest these grand weddings. I think they are immoral, but I'm not brave enough to make a statement. I have a lot of other bad attitudes which I'm sure will get some exercise. I will try to keep in mind that I will need enough serenity to light my candle to the east on Sunday morning.

I picked up Chronicles by Clarice Lispector again. Oh, her writing just puts my head on straight. She writes about Animals. She says of the turtle:

I find the turtle exceedingly stupid. It does not relate to anything, not even to itself. It is an abstraction. Sexual contact between two turtles must be devoid of any warmth or life. And while I am no scientist, I can confidently predict that the species will disappear within the next few thousand years.

I forgot to add that I find the turtle completely immoral.

I find this bit about the turtle more than amusing -- it feels nourishing -- it both quiets and excites me, all along my spine, with its originality. I'm enchanted. Writing about animals is a very good practice. Writing down outrageous unfounded eccentric negative opinions is a very good practice. Putting words together inexplicably (the turtle ... is an abstraction) is a wonderfully good practice. Maybe I will try to use these ideas this weekend.

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October 30

Wedding update

 
I danced my fucking brains out with my three overheated single sisters and my two overheated single nieces.

The men sat in their chairs and watched like fat slugs.

My dad said he was "proud" of us for such dancing. I'm not sure what this meant.

A tight circle of six -- much shimmying of bosoms and whipping skirts into a frenzy -- arms flung skyward, accusing fingers pointing -- YOU -- there's the door -- spontaneous choreography -- hooting and spinning -- yelling along to "Love Shack" (we all knew the words) -- making star of hands -- swaying hips, circling, bumping. The 13-year-old of most graceful fiery shimmy dares to work the center; we egg her on. No fire in the woods, but I could see it through the veil.

So this was the wedding.

The DJ finally had to cut us off so he could play music more appropriate for the bride and groom. But I think we were entertaining.

I have great sisters.

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October 31

The last word of the month

 
Some (women) may get religion, then they're all right, I expect. But for the others, for so many, what can there be but witchcraft? That strikes them real.

Lolly Willowes
Sylvia Townsend Warner

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