hate gasps for air

Trump’s press conference this week was infuriating to watch. But his lack of sense, the fact that he is unhinged, it’s all clear.
Yes, there is no bottom, but this is no longer sustainable. The GOP should be figuring out how to get Trump out of office immediately.
I don’t believe we will become Nazi Germany any time soon. Outing this behavior, getting the truth of the hate out in the open is a good thing.
Those who cannot let go of their hate and fear of “other” will have to repent, rethink, reform or crawl back into the dark caverns of the past, the dimly lit spaces where women aren’t free to do what they want with their own god-given bodies and functions.
Let the haters crawl back to their primitive, brutish spaces and admire their symbols and guns, their textbooks purged of truth and science.
Let them allow their children to handle weapons unsafely, adding to statistics of senseless deaths. Yes, keep clutching your AK-47s. Carry your handguns into your neighborhood grocery stores. Your votes for Trump are outed. It has been nothing more than misogyny, racism, anti-semitism, and gay-bashing after all. We have known this since before the election, we knew as we watched him incite violence at his own gatherings, cowering away in fear from what he created, being shuffled off the stage by his own white guards.
I believe we are at a turning point of our country coming to a better place, where our history of rape and lynchings, and the torture and killing of people with dark skin will come to light.
We need to face these facts and allow ourselves to be the subject of anger. We are human and we are capable of listening to what we’ve done.                                                           Show me, I am teachable.
The unleashing of anger from the side of hate and ignorance is a death cry. Hate gasps for air.

There have been horrible casualties and I fear there will be more, whether in the form of poorly-supported and angry, fearful police or blatant, ignorant racists with swastika tattoos. But change is at our feet and We Who Believe in the Good of the Human Spirit will prevail.
I thought living through Viet Nam as a little girl was the shit. I thought the tanks down at the end of my street in Detroit in 1968 with my mother clutching me to her legs was something that meant equality would now have a new life, that breath would come into our country, that peace was going to mean something. I thought that we had evolved. I was only 5, I forgive myself my ignorance and I see now. I keep seeing the work at the gate of my heart.
We are at the precipice of great change. Our country is begging for us to see clearly and to face up to our history.
LOOK at photographs of lynchings; by christ, this is what happened, not long ago, in our country.
THIS IS OUR HERITAGE UNLESS WE DENOUNCE IT.
It is time to let go. Take down the symbols and call the generals by name: RACIST. HATER. SLAVE OWNER. RAPIST.
Heal these wounds with action, tear down the statues, let freedom glide into us, pore by pore, soul by soul.
A slow ocean wave will come. I trust that you will be with me to receive it.

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the mice nest in the box and steal the German toy bricks

I am in the process of unpacking a box filled with dishes from my old house in Kent, Ohio. The box was packed by my mother in the summer of 2000, before we moved from Kent to Amherst, Mass. We moved mid-August that year. Fifteen years.

I know the dishes were packed by my mom—systematic, careful, each china plate and each china cup wrapped in a plastic bag and, in turn, wrapped in newspaper. The newspaper, before 9/11. Summer 2000. Nobody knows. We are safe in our beds, we are asleep. We dream of our stock portfolios and our trips across oceans. Everything is normal and we are naive, babies. One more year and we’ll be in the shit forever.

But I want to write about the box.  As I get deeper into the box, pulling up the wrapped cups and saucers, I find droppings, shredded paper, acorn tops, seeds: evidence of mice.

The funniest thing to me, the most amazing, is that the mice had gathered up 6 or 7 pieces of a toy brick building kit from the same basement cupboard where the dishes had been stored.

Paul and I bought the brick house kit in Bavaria in 1992 on our honeymoon trip to Europe. We didn’t have kids yet, but knew we wanted a family. We loved the German toys: solid; well-made; beautiful in form, color, and design. The box was wooden with a lid that slid into the bottom, cleverly designed. The bricks were real and the kit came with mortar that you’d mix to make the structure permanent.

We never made the house out of the bricks, but one of my daughters would sometimes pull out the box and build up the little house as best she could. It was surprisingly more complicated than one would think (it does make a real structure after all) and the instructions were in German. Finally this year, I gave the toy away. Little did I know that several pieces were missing.

How did a little mouse carry a brick into its home? Do they drag these things with their mousey teethessess? These bricks do look as if they could be made into a mouse house, the scale would be appropriate, brick to mouse, bricks to mouse house.

In any case, I don’t like mice nesting in my house. They smell and they are abundant and secretive. They are cute as hell, the mice. I don’t think we have any any more, but when we bought the house, the entire house smelled of old mice nests and for good reason. The former owners apparently never cleaned and weren’t bothered by the old and musty odor emanating from the basement. It being a ranch house, this wasn’t far from kitchen and living quarters. Eww.

Paul pulled out the insulation from the basement rafters way back then and it was full of nests; hundreds of mice, no doubt.

Still, I think mice are amazing and adorable. Over the years, we had mice in spite of the fact that we always had cats and yet the mice thrived (throved?). Stupid cats.

The words German and brick inevitably make me think of the ovens of the Holocaust. I’m searching for photos on google images and even the little photos of German brick toy kits are too reminiscent of all things German for me.

My German mother and my German blood, my Jewish father and my Jewish blood. The brick ovens. It never stops, does it?

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damsel fly

If you have been a reader here for a while, this piece may not be particularly different or surprising; but maybe somewhat so. In any case, I am not writing to panic you or make you think I am not going to come out on the other side of my multiple myeloma treatment with anything but my life intact. I expect a full remission. On the other hand, I try not to project too much about particulars at this time. I don’t expect to know a lot of things, and I am learning not to be too cocky any more. I was really cocky, thinking I’d never get cancer: that will never be me. It had no place in my vision for myself or my life force. Now I won’t show such hubris as to project ages and dates because I think they will not have the same meaning to me that they used to. Now I don’t get too far ahead of myself. This is a piece about just what it is. If if helps, think of it as fantasy.

Also:

If you are going to comment, please do not put forth your own beliefs about how I am doing or whether I am doing the right or wrong thing. That is not what this writing is about. You may send your love and light and wholeness, your chi, your prana, your aligned and lit-up chakra energy. I know you are sending images and colors and calm and I love it all. I am filled with love for you and from you. You may pray to Jesus for me, to God, to Buddha, to a tiny pea seed hiding in the darkness, waiting for spring. You may bless me and love me. But I do not want your judgment, for that belongs to you alone.

♥ ♥ ♥

I lie on the table, looking out the window into winter. I am weak. The room is warm, too warm, making me give in further to my weakness. The effort to shift my bones is too much so I don’t move. I sink. To smile at the male cardinal cracking seeds in his beak is too much. I feel Victorian and gauzy. I am the weight of a square of gauze. If I had to wear anything but a silk gown next to my skin, I would surely break into pieces.

I want to fade away, but I would fade into misery. Do they talk about the pain? The exhaustion of hauling around a shell, the ghost of my formerly strong body. When was the last time I could take a deep breath without it getting caught at the sides of my ribs? When didn’t I gasp for air to come in or to wince in slight pain when it went out?

Now I know that lo these 9 months (and then some!) I was never being dramatic. I never had a low pain threshold. Au contraire. I wish I had listened with a non-judgmental ear to that pain. I never thought of myself as stoic, I thought I was whining. I thought my pain was a bore to those around me. I popped ibuprofen like it was candy. Ibuprofen and ice, sometimes dancing or vigorous hiking would give relief. So it must not have been that bad.

I birthed two babies, hard labors, at home. Especially my first birth was long and hard—21 hours of active labor on top of 2 days of early labor and I started out with a flu which had left me sleep-deprived and dehydrated. Baby had the cord wrapped around her body 4 times and was born with a compound presentation (her tiny perfect arm wedged up against her head). I did that without pain medication. Still I’ve thought of myself as weak in the face of pain.

Yet here I am and here I have lived for over 9 months, painful fractures throughout my bones.

Time is not time. Time is weariness is pain is too much. Time has to end now. Time is too much for me to bear. How can I stay alive through this? What if I get worse tomorrow? Surely I don’t have the reserves of strength this will take. Surely I need a pillow to be carried on, a sedan chair, does no one see this? Why aren’t the hospitals equipped with silken pillows and nursemaids who will bathe and oil and dress me. They have to carry my arms, move my fingers for me, lift water to my mouth. I am too weak to manage my own body. I am fading but no one sees.

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oh the things you’ll learn on the interwebs

I’ve learned so many things lately: Grumpy Cat is real. Ice balls have formed on the shore of Lake Michigan. Sharon Jones has cancer.

Let’s call it Fucking Around Friday and leave it at that.

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fact or fiction–feathers

1. The beautiful mobile with swirling feathers was one more place where dust collected, one more thing to add to the work of the household, one more reminder of the filth of life. That one could never get out from under evolving piles of dirt was what kept her up nights. She wanted to live encased in a room free from debris and detritus. She wanted to be clean.

2. Annie’s boyfriend, Hanford Fletcher, was a drunk and an asshole. His alcoholism was a given from way back when, as a boy, he started stealing vodka from his uncle’s liquor cabinet. The asshole part could only be attributed to Hannie having made an early fortune as vice president of Bonnie Bell Cosmetics. Retired at 35 with millions in the bank, he had turned into an entitled playboy. If only Annie had realized it sooner.

3. He figured he was around 5 when he bent down and picked up a small black-and-blue striped feather at the edge of the parking lot. His mother swatted it from his hand. “Don’t you know how many germs are on those things?”

Today, as he walked home from high school, he saw the matted pile of what was left of a dead bluejay. He scooped it up into his leftover brown paper lunch bag. This time his mother would not chide him when he got home. Everything dies.

4. While Bertha distractedly did the dishes, she turned over a jar in the wash bin and began to notice its unusual heft. As she let the suds drip off of it she realized why it felt so heavy—it was made of glass. How uncommon glass jars had become, she thought. But this one was special, the last jar she had from her grandmother’s company, Featherweight Face Treat. She smiled as the heat from the jar pulsed into her hands. Her grandmother would be proud.

5. Pugnacious pugilists pummel porcine porcupines.

♥

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grammer grammer

I woke up with a peace settling over me: for the time being, I do not care if I’m not writing poems.

I also do not feel compelled to submit poetry to anyone or anywhere right now. It’s so great! I feel especially confident that journals which include in their submission information statements such as “if you can/can’t, do/don’t x, y, or z, then don’t bother submitting to us” are assholes and do not deserve my work. It almost makes me want to write some purposefully crappy sappy maudlin shit and submit it just to make their eyes roll, clench their sphincters, and congratulate themselves for having a completely relevant and hip publication. But hey, I’m sounding bitter and bitter only hurts me.

from my blog’s spam folder:

obviously like your web-site however you need to take a look at the spelling on quite a few of your posts. A number of them are rife with spelling issues and I in finding it very troublesome to tell the truth nevertheless I will surely come back again.

You can pretty much tell me anything if you throw a bucket of charm on it. To the credit of the author-bot, I just found a post from 2 years ago in which I misspelled grammar. Twice.

Here is a photo of my cat:

XO, twinkly

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je repars á zèro!

the words lap into one another

OR

the words lap one into the other

the words lap onto the shore

the words lap up on the shore

the days lap into each other, waves on the shore, even in cold, in winter, even even even

I am chaste

I am sorry

je regrette tout

je regrette tout, she said with tears in her eyes

Cliché? also French

all is fiction; writing, a lie

While searching the web for a French translation, I come across “The Top 5 Regrets People Have on Their Deathbeds”

Surely, sharing my emotions freely shall not be a regret of mine, for I have shared to a fault

I love the swelling grandeur of the opening orchestration, the strings, the horns, and the incomparable Édith. I never saw that movie you know. What more does one need? Here is a woman of small stature and great power.

Regrets? That I never learned to roll my rs like Édith Piaf did; mais j’ai du temps, mes petites, j’ai du temps.

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what makes twinkly happy (hint, hint, the holidays are coming!)

If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, perhaps this will; or perhaps could be put to some practical use?

http://www.tamponcrafts.com/gun.html

 

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red velvet cupcake road kill: mystery solved

Riding past the same stretch of road on my bike just now, I saw, flung and crushed in the hayfield to the side of Moody Bridge Road, an empty Atkins’ Farms’ plastic cupcake holder (for SIX cupcakes).

Now if y’all stay tuned until tomorrow, I think I may start a series called write ‘n’ bitch. It’s got the same ring as bike ‘n’ bitch if you ask me, with the short i sound and all. But SPOILER ALERT bitching about writing poetry may not really be the thing I need, may in fact, strike the wrong note when it does come to submitting to literary journals. But, hey, it’s just li’l ol’ me, humble, homey, trying to twinkle in the face of rejection. I gotta do something to keep my sense of humor.

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Dear Jeff Tweedy,

You don’t know me, Jeff (we simply call you Tweedy ‘round here), but I love your music. I love your lyrics. I don’t love everything, mind you, but Wilco’s music has become an indispensable part of our household musical canon. For the ages. Like the late greats you sing about.

It must be strange to have photos of yourself floating all over the internet. The electronic, the digital, the ethereal.

Oh, Tweedy. What can I say to you?

I have a friend who went to your concert in Hartford (CT) this past Wednesday. I am sort of sorry that was her intro to the band. She’s not really familiar with your music. The concert was good, maybe even great. You put the energy out, you all played and sang well. But I am afraid you seemed tired. It must be hard to be up there every night and not have things get stale. Yes.

I like it so much better when I see live bands and I feel a connection with them. That’s the whole point of live music. It breathes, it contains errors. It is energy and light.

Get some rest, Tweedy. I want to invite my friend back for Solid Sound 2013. I hope for great things there. Living art. Yes.

Here was a cloud up at Essex Junction, VT on Sunday, before sundown, before the band started playing:

I know the nose is sort of phallic-looking which is sort of unfortunate (not that I have anything against phalluses, on the contrary), but that’s how real noses sometimes are anyway. It is a great winking cloud face, don’t you think? It felt magical; an elixir, a balm.

I love having a wholesome, honest, not-sexed-up band to share with my kids. Here they are sitting on the lawn:

We saw this in the parking lot on the way in to the concert:Just so you know, we’d like to name our next dog after you. Not the Jeff part (no offense), but the Tweedy part.

I know that if wishes were horses, fools would ride, but still, I have hope, too. I think we like to pin these hopes on people like you, Tweedy. I am actually wondering if you can fix the T key on my keyboard. It seems to be sticking sometimes.

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