All My Closest Friends in a Sinkhole

It was three days before my wedding and I was lost in Yucatan. And not just me, but three cars full of friends and close relations. I was convinced the road to Cuzama was right instead of left at the second pueblo outside of Merida. I think my internal map needed readjusting. I was stressed and the sun, as almost always, was blazing overhead, which makes thinking near impossible. In a caravan of cool maneovering, all three drivers managed to back up on the highway and take the correct exit south toward the region of cenotes.

...

reading

little women (on kindle, before bed), the witch of blackbird pond (in the bathtub), the ancestor's tale by richard dawkins (in front of the bookcase), a world lit only by fire the medieval mind and the renaissance (on weekend afternoons), and the crying of lot 49 (in theory, ifnot inpractice).

last night, the sky

looked bruised all over, right before predicted snow
every other west end house was lamp lit from within,
like fairy kingdoms magnified and furnished.
an old gentleman on his porch pipe smoking,
otherwise, quiet, quite still, and darkradiant, so
I could see all the way to the edge of portlandtown.
last night, the sky
was limitless until this morning,
when daytime always imposes its borders.

Gratitude and New Jeans

I get to dance all the time now. Full out, leotarded, leaping dance. I might try some layouts and tour jetes, if I can get off the ground. Ankle weights are a good idea. When you work with them you gain strength slowly so when you remove them your jumps appear powerful yet are almost effortless. It's like magic. My knees bend better and I feel more firmly rooted in the ground. I am dancing Nia unshod, the opposite of man in Gerard Manly Hopkins's God's Grandeur. I will feel the soil with my feet.

Brand new levi's arrived last night in the mail. They are dark denim, straight legged, and slim but not skinny cut. They feel like dungarees for another century, made for work, but work made stylish by the wearer's casual integrity. Wearing never washed but fitted new pants feels sort of transforming; they make me want to be a better woman. It is the experience so idealized by the shopping seeker, you fear it may not truly exist. But it does and I will wear them with boots!

A Novel Idea

Wit! Wordplay! Whatever!

the idea that I had (in the bath, a very good place for ideas) is for a story about a girl piecing her childhood back together after all was lost in a dumpster. this would be the most literal, autobiographical route, but liberties and license could, and probaly should, be taken with the plot details. It came to me that I would love to see a diary I kept when I was 12, but which, as well as most of my things from the first 20 years of my life, was banished to the sea of forgetting by my grieving, half-mad (Lear, yes) father upon the death of my mother. No one was there to save our stuff, Christmas ornaments we made in Kindergarten, grade school report cards, crafts, journals, photographs, scrapbooks of playbills and assorted awards. And we were flung out into the world unmoored without past, present, or future hope. Ten years later, finally in recovery, remembering what I was made to forget, I want to retrieve and remake those sentimental objects, to reconnect with my childhood self and nuclear family. Renumerating, re-animating, return.

Weekend Report/Plotting the Next Five Days

This weekend was a gift, and as an unexpected present sometimes is, was slightly underwhelming. We had mixed up our dates and instead of staying with friends in Brooklyn and seeing Aziz Ansari at Carnegie Hall - which is happening this coming weekend - we were left alone and without any promisng plans or inspiration. Actually, M decided to go up the coast to drink with one of his oldest friends on Saturday night, leaving me to my own devices, which, as it turns out, is just not as thrilling as it used to be. I walked the dog under a slow-falling flurry, which I knew wouldn't last from the size of the snowflakes. I drank some Effen vodka on the rocks, ate my new snack vice: lightly buttered water crackers, and watched An Education, some of the Miss America Pageant, and SNL. I also spoke on the phone to my grandmother, because I am wild like that. Undrunk and unsatisfied, I went to bed around midnight and read chapters of Little Women on my Kindle. Salacious.

Sunday I woke up already bored, which I hate, but could not quite ameliorate or alter all day. I walked the dog to the store for the Sunday Times, which I unpacked while I cooked thick cut bacon, slow scrambled eggs with chives, and buttered oatmeal toast. We watched Sunday Morning, took another walk, I took a bath and read Vanity Fair (magazine), started a book on the Medieval Period, A World Lit Only By Fire, which is written in a coloquial yet scholarly, therefore interesing style. I read the paper (must get the new Colm Toibin) and made prosciutto and basil pizza, which we ate while watching the Golden Globes, which always makes me feel somewhat worse about my life. Yet I love those shows, for their self-satisfied glamour and pats on the industry back. Pretty ladies and Ricky Gervais! How else to end a sluggish weekend. I don't feel depressed. Boring, perhaps, rather than bored.

Woke up bloated this morning, after eating like an undergraduate marauder for days. Must begin a better regimen. Will begin healthier practices after hitting up the Miss Portland Diner for lunch, in compliance with our blog obligations for the week's assignment. Patty melt + onion rings, yum. I am preparing nothing but chicken, soups and quinoa this week. Tonight, taking Nia with Maggie at the Railroad Building - that group of women is so warm. Tomorrow, I must renew the dog license at City Hall. It is so America there, I love it. Marble, vast and valted ceilings, imposing and cozy, smelling of decades of cigarette smoke, bureaucracy, and freedom. Wednesday, a brow tint and hair consultation. I do wish to cut it all off again. Perhaps not yet. Thursday, I teach Nia at noon, and before class practice freely in the yoga studio. Friday morning I have a meeting to discuss the possiblity of starting a new Nia class athe YMCA and that night, we fly. Here I go.

Aikido

The way of unifying with life energy. A Japanese martial art. Most importantly, it is characterized as self-defense that protects the attacker from injury. Aikido redirects the force of attack, using that energy and momentum. Learning to fall and to roll are first practices. Relaxation, flexibility and endurance are emphasized, as well as whole body movement and balance. Meet attacks with confidence and directness, mental preparation and maintaining ki, defined as unified mental and physical intention, also understood as life energy.

Refrain

verb: to abstain from an impulse to say or do something.
noun: a phrase or verse recurring at intervals in a song or poem

I really must drink less wine.

Josephine Falco Schopp

Josephine so values her independence that her body is failing, now that she can definitely no longer live alone. She is not a demonstrative woman, neither strong nor composed, but she has been brave, competent and even occasionally funny as she confronts life alone in the twenty-first century. She has been a widow for more than a decade. She outlived her eldest daughter. She functions highly for an octagenarian who broke her back, arm, leg over a period of years, and who elects to smoke instead of exercise, to watch the Lady Huskies and Dancing with the Stars instead of joining a senior citizen center. She expresses disbelief that working people would vote Republican. She and my grandfather, children of immigrants, who had their own business, briefly, supported Democratic candidates, labor unions and social reforms. She wants to talk, but has no one to listen. Another daughter who only calls. Doctors who only hear her babble. If I saw her feebly buying a newspaper at Stop and Shop I would wonder why no one was minding this old woman; and yet she smiles to her everyday companions, the pharmacists and adolescents who never left their after school jobs. I have grown to admire her and like her much more than I would have expected. We drive around my home town. She showed me the beach I've known since I was a toddler swimmer. We talk about food and black and white movies. I discover family stories I'd never been told. I will miss her old bones when they are gone, and they are going, she is soon to be among our any dead. I will miss her very wrinkled face, raspy voice and unexpected wisdoms. I wish I could believe she and my mother will be together in heaven. There is no comfort in such a lack of faith. Only, I do think I have swallowed some part of her, somewhere between now and my birth. I hope this knowledge provides some solace when Josephine is finally, forever gone.

Reviewing my Twenties, Part I

It very recently occured to me that I have been selfish. The last four years are seeming more like a dream every day. The time has passed as in a modern novel; I can flash back to the events but am wondering if there was any meaning. It all ended in such a shitshow. I was a nervous wreck. My marriage almost ended. I trembled. Instead of feeling fearless and accomplished, I felt flung out into space, without home or self or ground beneath my feet. I am still recovering from this spoilt adventure. And I am angry about this, because this trip was supposed to save me, but it's almost as if the journey pur growth on hold. Though there are more than numerous moments I can recall that were joyful and enlightening, that cracked my world open, right now all I have left is feeling lost. Being back, I feel connected with the old emotions, but also detached. I wonder how I let it all get away from me. When I lost my ambition. Why no one questioned my torpor and lack of discipline. I was unemployed. broke. aimless. drifting. depressed. strange. It didn't bother me; I was in a fog, sometimes contented enough. I feel angry for this lapse. I could have been doing so much more. But I didn't. I waited. I remained tight in a bud. And then I tried to blossom. But that also stung and I got strung out and all was terrible. Here's another opportunity. And yet I feel so behind, catching up with myself, as well as with my peers and contemportaries. I suppose I have to follow natural time and my own true path. I am striding toward the horizon once again, looking back quizzical, forward momentum finally mine.

The Foreshadowing Pinata

where was I? Oh yes, standing in the doorway of a dormroom decorated just for me. At the center of a cluster of my closest friends, including my future husband, hung a colorful (is there any other kind?) pinata, in the shape of a donkey. Or is that some kind of alpaca? Its shape is distinctive, classic Mexican, so maybe it's a burro. No matter. It was glorious. And after drinking copiously from my garnet whiskey goblet, I busted into my prize, or is the pinata the keeper of prizes? From its paper flanks flowed tiny wrestlers, matchbox trucks and golden wrapped hazelnut candies. The boon was courtesy of Malcolm via the Group W Bench, a local legend headshop where we both spent time behind the cluttered glass cases. I never would have guessed that eight years later we would be married and living in Mexico, and I would be battling another birthday pinata from the front porch of our beach front home. Was it always meant to be?

Collective Birds

a parliament of owls
an exaltation of larks
a watch of nightingales
a covey of partridges
a nye of pheasants
a congregation of plovers
a murder of ravens
a host of sparrows
a building or rooks
a murmuration of starlings
a venue of vultures
a herd of wrens

a writer without a plot

writing every day, according to bird by bird is the best way to become a better writer. It's why I started this blog. Feeling frustrated and frightened. What a waste. or maybe not. I already squandered so many opportunities. Perhaps I need to start again with a morning regimen of writing at the library. Why am I not inspired? Why do I have nothing to say? What am I afraid of? I need to get into a writing program. Perhaps before September. But what if I'm the only one there without drive or inclination? Why do worse writers have more to say? oh, Fuck all.