mirror

"In me she has drown a young girl, and in me an old woman

Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish."

"Mirror" -Sylvia Plath

"I'm getting old," she says, touching her neck.  "Look at all these wrinkles."
A constant state of surprise
A strange reintroduction
A failure to recognize your self in your skin
How did things change when I feel quite the same?

I fear these pictures from my mom's wedding will take me a month to get through.  They're all there- ready- but I can't get past the smallest batch before the swelling of some horrible force of emotion stalls me.  Who IS that?  Who IS she?  Where AM I in that frame? How did I spend the whole weekend with them an not see them at all?  How is it that my face?

and to think these are the easy years- years that i will look back on in a few decades as vibrant with a lack of responsibility.  to think that the future scrapes toward a growing dependence- louder needs- more fragile mental landscapes- delicate conversations.

You can stop life from starting if you care enough to try, but there's no avoiding this sagging drag of time.
It makes me feel mad to live and mad to be and wild with urgency to experience everything and love intensely and

this pendulum
joy/despair
it swings and swings and swings

a case

1. I think the whole "live your passion" or "find a job that doesn't feel like work" vibe applies only to the hoping and wishing middle class. The upper class don't need to be reminded- it is their reality. To insist upon pursuit of passion to the disenfranchised seems cruel. How about pursuit of basic needs? Passion and dreaming are the curse and blessing of the middle dwellers. Those who aren't but might be.

2. food money sex popularity youth drinking aspecificperson spirituality music smoking fitness

at any given time, I think everyone it's in some manner controlled by some underlying fixation. listenand you'll hear it.

3. I think, out of nowhere, I caught a case of the blues. What to do.

glimpse

goddamn it,
to catch a glimpse is to crave the vision.

there are some leaps i could take,
i think.

a range of things

Something that used to make me happy but now (kinda) makes me sad:   teaching

Something that makes me sad:  Overweight middle aged people eating salad and raw vegetables for lunch every day.  What gives?  What is the point of anything?

Something that used to make me sad but now makes me happy:  When my new neighbor had two little kids with loud little feet and screams in tow, I was a little annoyed.  I mean, I did not move to a residential neighborhood to live next to kids, right?  Right.  But I've softened up.  Every few mornings I get to hear a little exchange between the little six or seven boy and his live-in grandma as he leaves for school.  "I love you, grandma!" "I love you to infinity!" she'll say.  "I'll love you to infinity PLUS ONE!"  he'll respond.  Or "I love you, grandma."  "I love you more!"  "I love you most!"  He always has the last word and it is always perfect.

Something that makes me happy:  ordering cat food from Amazon Prime.

belief systems

It occurred to me today that my doubt about the sustainability of long term romantic relationships feels a lot like when I first started seriously questioning and breaking away from my religious belief.  It had nothing to do with no longer wanting to believe.  It had nothing to do with rebellion.  It just no longer made sense.

I went through so much internal conflict in the beginning.  I begged for signs.  I tried to accept the lack of evidence.  I took the burden on myself, thinking that I just hadn't read enough or tried hard enough to make faith work.  But given that the questions I became brave enough to ask only lead to more unanswered questions, faith broke down entirely and rapidly when I refused to divorce it from my intellect.

I feel that way now on a lot of levels.  For most of my life, I have never questioned the plausibility of commitment or marriage as an end.  In many ways, I think I'm built for partnered life... for a shared life.  But the last year has moved me toward a general skepticism of the very nature of it.  If anything, a committed relationship makes sense to me as a sort of sober joining of small worlds for some pragmatic purpose- like taxes or living situations or companionship or the desire for kids.  In the same way, religion "makes sense" in providing a packaged world view and offering a sense of community and purpose.

But both of those "uses" for commitment break down so easily under the slightest scrutiny... or can be fulfilled in other ways less coated in confusion.

They're really both some weird fantastical risks we take in the name of some greater purpose or belonging.  But on the other sides of both are fallible, sometimes ridiculous realities that at the end of the day may be based entirely on myth.

I am no good at trusting blindly.  Not anymore.

I heard a snippet of a TED Talk by Christopher Ryan that questions the inherent flaws in societal expectations of monogamy.  The ideas just all swarm together to create some knot of conflict.  I suppose we're driven toward religion because of some buried fear of our own mortality and insignificance.  We're driven toward sex by the deeply rooted instinct to reproduce- stemming from the same encoded awareness of our own eventual end.  We're driven toward relationships for the same reason, I guess... to make sense of a purposeless world.  At first it feels like we're less alone in the confusion, and eventually it seems, our partners become the scapegoats for the confusion and feeling of isolation.  The drive and the desire seem so related to me- and the breakdown does too.

So does the loss.

If I had my way, long term committed relationships would make sense.  Trusting the integrity of another enough to share a life would not have to entail a divorce from reason.  But it seems as though we may not be wired toward the long haul.  Pragmatic partnership, maybe.  And that might not have to be entirely divorced from romance and love at times.  I can still sing Jesus songs at work and accept the weird nostalgic comfort I get from it- but I know now that the comfort comes from me, not from the outside.  I can still feel deeply connected to the world- full of compassion or the longing to serve- but that no longer comes from anything to do with a religious faith.  I guess I can still imagine a shared life that makes sense, it is just stripped bare of all of the things we are raised to believe are the bedrock of committed relationships.  And... I don't know.  I don't know what it would even take for that to seem like a better choice than the life I have on my own- just me trying to know me and love me and be a decent human being for the world.

If jesus christ wasn't able to convince me that he made sense for me, I certainly don't expect another human to.

Eventually a world without a god was a world that made sense to me too.  It doesn't feel like a loss, just a different sort of living.  And I think someday I can get there with these thoughts too.

Eventually.

correct me if i'm wrong

I'm starting to think that almost everyone in the world is kinda sleezy.

like a library book

so overdue
except minus the Dewey Decimal system-like order

1.  To a Senior who shared with me news about her acceptance into a NY Performing Arts school, "It will be overwhelming... because you'll feel special and not special at the same time.  And the reality is, both are true." #realtalk

2.  Said and heard while sitting around at coffeeshops over teh last few months:
"Let there be no record of our shame." -me "History is a trading of corruptions." -me "How many wars have the horses started?  None." -Neil #coffeehousephilosophers

3.  Too much work and no play makes Lindsey a financially stable(ish) adult.  #therearemoreimportantthings

4.  Last weekend I woke up in between unavoidable, restless naps with the distinct thought that someday, along with a birthday, I will have a death day.   Death hasn't been on my mind in any anxiety connected way since I dropped religion years ago.  I didn't necessarily feel panicked, just... somber.  Like Emily Webb all over again, "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?  Every--- every minute?"  That reality.  The thought has stayed with me- both heavy and igniting. #realize

5.  I believe in kindness and recognizing the goodness in others. #onethingiknow

6.  The Theory of Everything - Boyhood - Whiplash  ... film matters to me.  I cried or freaked out in some zoned-in way during all of these.  I'm sure I would feel the same sense of immersion with the other Oscar nominees.    This year, I'm going to try to see all of the Oscar buzz movies when they play at the Art Theatre.  There is something sacred about telling stories through film.  Film matters to me.  It inspires and reminds and devastates.  #humanexperience

7.  Huge pendulum swings of feelings with photography.  Learning so much.  This art requires immersion and impatience and forgiveness.  Growing, still.  I'm realizing I enjoy fine-tuning single images in conceptual-type work more than cranking out huge batches of event work.  When my schedule frees up, I hope to move more in that direction experimentally.  #chaseit

like a prayer

oh god, take me back to indifference:
that sublime lack

futility

"you sell yourself short.  aim high.  go in firing," they said.  they said to go in tall with unvanquished confidence.  a few hours later I got the polite rejection message and thought about the futility of aiming at all when it is almost certainly always too high or low (and which is better really?).  why aim at all?  why hustle or pronounce or project or aspire?

shadowboxing a locked vault.  sweat and adrenaline into an unfeeling vortex.

it's just unfortunate timing, really.  the real sting is just in the red i recently penned when i drew up my cost of living.  prognosis- negative.  subsisting on deficit for an unforeseeable future.

(if i could go back, and had not been born in the midwest to a breed conditioned toward higher education, and had had a bit more prompting in the way of self-promotion and artistic edification, would i even have gone to college at all?)

in the morning, after a night of light dreams, the parking ticket stuffed under the wiper greeted me like a bully.  waiting and callous.  i mindlessly chose one spot instead of another (though i've lived there for over a year) and so the forces that be- like pheromones or gravity- demand recompense.

but i summoned my courage and found some silver in a penny found- in my leftover lunch from yesterday that hadn't been thrown out yet- in a kind word.

later, when i went to  prepare my camera to use at the school rally, i found a battery had exploded into a crusted mess into my external flash like cancer.  how long had it been inside there?  could i have stopped it or even known?  there is no stopping it now.  an hour later was like the day after a funeral, singing a six hundred dollar dirge to useless shell in my hand.

and it seems that these little threats lie everywhere.  there is no safety.

on the way home, i heard on the radio about the man recently released from years of interrogation and torture in some cold cell.  and i watched the obese woman crossing the road.  and saw that man in the wheelchair with the long ponytail and i thought of the futility of everything

and what very different shapes a bad day can take.

and the futility and the danger and relativity of it all means a handhold with despair.  right here and far away from my family and any real suffering and an old, sad ache.

hemingway

We only want facts here. We'll derive feeling from how they fit together, or from the gaps they leave between. Just tell me about your day, Hemingway. You're chasing a ghost with a drink in your hand. The stupor will excuse you from fidelity to the truth, but you'll still record it in minute detail. Tell me more about which way the cab was headed, or what it looked like out that train window. I'll know by the middle that you're prophet for some obsolete religion. The cathedral walls ring empty, but I recognize that pull toward prayer. Hold her up like a relic. Chant with the choir over cocktails. We're all just along for the ride.

I understand you like I understand the need to remember after the fact. The scramble to recall the morning commute that you ignored until you lost that job.  The pining for the everyday constants in middle of the relationship once your lover has moved on. How was it ever before? How was it ever at all?

words

I wish these words meant something a little different from what they do:

LEVITY:  I wish it just meant lightness, without the disrespect

VIGILANT:  I wish it just mean alert or aware, maybe even excited, without the threat of danger.

desire

A consistent urge to utter

forgive me
forgive me
forgive me

And a consistent whisper in return

of course
of course
of course

A source of exoneration.
A place to adore and to repent.

Something like a bow.

the desire to confess
to be known utterly
and to still hear
yes.

don't need no

 Seems legit.

One girl's contribution to the class potluck:

out of context

me:
-That place was magic to us.  Magnetic, still.
-And ordered pizza?  I think that was the first day I tried on skinny jeans.
-Took 3 naps today.  Ate two corndogs.  Gonna go read about wolves for awhile.  LIVING.
-Is this what will become of us?  These concerns?  These fixations?
-And bouncing around in slow motion!  It's almost unbelievable.  Almost.
-Are you thriving or surviving?
-Yeah, ouch.  It hurts.  Sorry in advance.  Proceed with caution.
-Little by little.  maybe maybe.  Try try try.

them:
-Lightning strikes.
-There is no such thing as growing out of a mole.
-We will come back to this place.
-Do you want a banana?  I've seen you eat a lot of bananas.
-If your farts were visible would you still fart in public?
-Deal
-Don't leave without hotdogs.
-Yeah.  Struck a nerve.

loving is a dangerous thing to do

loving is a dangerous thing to do

even in small amounts

every expansion and every release

comes with a stronger contraction of doubt

this is the best that i can do-

considering all

(considering all)

words that have been rehearsed and said

are very easy to say again

and the deeds, they speak for themselves

but then

an uncomfortable descent

(Morrison knew)

a reckoning with some rusted memory box

an urge to apologize 

incessant chattering, clarifying nothing

lonely for the lie

for all of my attempts

my best won't be enough

again

the offering is exhausting  

giving away your tells
opening up your insides to an unforgiving,

harsh light scrutiny

(repulsive)

it's hard to remember what

it feels like, now

to have laid it all bare and to still be there

or how it ever felt right before

rusted

rust and grey- a winter array

you knew that this was coming

resting consuming investing clothing stepping growing saving asking looking toning cutting watching moving knowing

a critical voice wakes me up in a panic

from some happy dream

not sure quite how to get myself there anymore-

what i like from your face, what i trust in your core

not sure quite how

when there's nothing at stake

when there's no keeping and nothing to lose

i don't know how to believe 

that someone's words might match their deeds

so i won't assume and i won't wager,

keep myself safe from all those

obvious dangers

let's not even talk about next year

it is still in between the head and the heart

but it's nothing like a home

go to bed and wrestle that subconscious part

tomorrow, wake up alone

defeat

Seems like everyone's feeling a little defeated around this time of year.  A pressure cooker of obligations in every walk of life.  The students are two scantron bubbles away from insane, and I'm about one cafeteria meal away from joining them.

Today I had to exercise my Mandated Reporter title based on what a student wrote in her warm-up exercises.  I can't remember ever having to do that before- at least not to this extent.  When I read it, everything slowed right down for a second- and then everything sped up.  A rush.  A life saver thrown to sea.  Please, don't be too late.

I'm not sure how to even feel.  I feel a lot.  I don't know what that means.  I could have identified a bit of melancholy, but I had no idea of the extent.  Some people bear the weight so silently.  

I thought of her for the rest of the day.  And on the drive home.  And throughout the evening. I wonder if she's ok right now.  Wonder if she gets a break from it sometimes. Wonder if it will all pass with time.  Wonder where anything begins or ends. 

The reality is-

hers is a very solitary struggle.  so very inside.  somewhere words don't reach.  

some harsh and tempting depth.

But the other reality is-

sometimes you need other people to lift you up a little while you try to want to swim.

come on

Throw yourself into an all-giving ocean. Name it after a hurricane. Drift awhile on some new wetness. Thrash around longer than you should just to defy the drown. The tide comes and goes. It'll always go.

Linger
Longer
Then
less and less

Sn  a  p

Ssssssssssnake
$79.99
Sssssssssshhhh
Esssssssssssss
No need to
Ssssswallllooww

Hisssssssssssssss

Hollow words

Coiled somewhere snug
Safe, stifled and starving
Release it up my sleeve.
You've really got a
Hold on

Hollow
Is it me
(you're looking)
PLAY

Come on.

the past is prologue
he said that once, to her
and now there's a baby baby
and some could have but didn't.

A prolonged production of the most important part.  Proper then primal. Prepare. Postpone. Perform. paddle paddle paddle. Process, perhaps.

This is all foreplay.
This is all foreplay.
This is all.

close

i have a sense for poison, now.
a recognition in a tone.
a calculated mystery.
a silence where there should be sharing.
a rush of words to cover some shame.
an eagerness to be pleased.
an excuse for not pleasing.
those voids- - -
black holes of adoration.

even now, finishing arguments.
honest conversations with the walls
and a fist locked firm around some old vial.

riots in some middle state.
people losing lives and friendship and security.
we watch from the coast with eager, hungry eyes.
follow the minute-by-minute just to know how safe we are.

my blood runs too- safe and contained
watching smaller dramas unfold
watching from some safe seat
like a voyeur for heart violence

there is a draft in here
in need of an edit

this doesn't deserve another grappling poem
romancing the poison
exonerating the pain
it all feeds the vacancy
that should be left to starve dry

the cycle
the magnetic shift,
i want to be separate from it.
another swearing off- - -
another experiment with dosage- - -
another confrontation with evidence- - -
the same heartbreak with another face- - -

i look for the reminder.
remember remember
there is no yours or mine anymore
there never was a mine

carve that cave out of old, scribbled pages.
fodder for some pyre
it's your funeral,
and every word seems to [be the] last.

not even words.  not words or visions.
some poison in the blood, still running red.
still habits to break.
still an empty to leave unfilled.

close. close. close

we were close
but to no end
close, but not as in almost

close to closing
some wound
some vein too connected
to the source

wild thoughts on dark nights
but morning brings light
mourning brings light
eventually.

tell me

"Wild Geese"

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things. -Mary Oliver "the kind steeped in books, with a curious eye, a digger, someone unfond of the common question.  a rarity, not a kind of person at all, but a singular example of personhood."

found

i found this gem in the back of a student's notebook left behind from last year.

the risk you take

when you let international students choose their own poem to recite, and you include Bukowski on the list of author options...

battle anthem

there is all this to do
at the start
who am I
who am I not
who might I be
for you with you to you after you
where does the line of the I stand firm
and where does it topple over
to stretch to something wider
and when does a stretch mean a break?

(threaded bare
tears streaming down the sides
bring the pain
bring the pleasure
two's company
THREE's company
I'm ready for anything
prepared for nothing
you'll have to take me as I am
take me
take)

"until there's one you can't ignore"

what is wanted here?
what do any of us truly want that we can even name?
acronyms to infinity
cut to the chase
dial it back
double check
before you send
there are no promises to make

(There was never time. That was always the reason offered. Never time for old and new.  But now there seems to be. Now there's time and now you do. There wasn't time for me and you. You must have been done long before I knew.  And there I was still trying. Still holding on after you were through.)

"you are a warrior, so stop your worrying."

I fear I am too ready.
Noticing too much
Accepting too little
from clashing, crashing voices.
Entertaining a shore full of crabs
at the edge of a shallow pool
where I and so many have stood before,
where so much overlaps.

(So what I understand is... you're meant to busy yourself with fulfilling things until someone comes along that you value so much that you're willing to set aside some of those fulfilling things to make room for them... and then you try to fulfill each other for a few years and at times you succeed and at times you fail and eventually you resent them for the space you lack for other fulfilling things.  Do I have that right?)

"what I want, I feel, is some rough kindness."

let's just say yes
let's just run amok-
see if we're still laughing
after a few cold months.

The Museum of Tolerance

"i always feel like such an outsider when i walk down the streets here" she says
almost every time she visits
it's after labor day and she's wearing white.  she has no idea that there are rules.

on a grey tuesday, we go to the museum of tolerance
this was her only real goal for her visit- the only place she knew she wanted to go
fifteen minutes into the tour,  she leans over to me
"what does antisemitism mean?" she asks

the part of me that, three years ago, would have judged her so harshly for being so out of touch with the world- for her inexperience- would have been so embarrassed about her ignorance-
now burst at the seams with a sort of compassion
that is new

Her voice was so curious.  So genuine in her desire to understand.  So innocent.

She's aging.  We both know.  She says.  I watch.

She is slower to react.  Slower to acclimate to her surroundings.  Slower to recover from a coughing fit.

And also

Slower to judge.  Slower to snap.

We are resting this week.  Together.  Resting our eyes like seniors in a home.  Resting our minds from the racing outside.  Resting our hearts from having to say anything too deep or too serious.  We are just being together in a way that feels more together than it's been in many years.

"what do you want to eat tonight?" she asks
"i don't know, something light."
"ok, let's get chinese food."
and she believes, truly, that chinese is a light dinner option.
"because it goes right through you," she says.  and i just laugh and laugh and love her despite and love her because.

We see the world in two different directions.  I can laugh now.

we are listening to a holocaust survivor  (her reason)
and she is nodding off in the seat beside me.  fighting it, but still

and he is happy as a lark- wearing orange argyle socks and a page-boy cap-
talking about seeing babies thrown up in the air and shot- being found out because a woman
he was hiding with had a big butt that wouldn't fit through a wall- cracking jokes that no one but me would chuckle out loud at- everyone so somber- he had survived and he could laugh-
how he'd gone from hiding to working the German Underground- layers of identity- nearly killed four times

stranger than fiction, this life

moved to America and offered his hand in marriage to a woman
if her father would give him a free pastrami sandwich

and she sat behind me, helping him finish his sentences
repeating questions when his hearing failed
his story so carefully preserved along side hers
in pictures
and memory
and the telling
and retelling

one survivor's lot in life
so many lives
so much death and
so much living

my mom comes out from showering now
"did you understand everything we heard today?"
...
"why did they hate the Jews so much?"

she's still thinking about it.  she's still trying to make sense of it.

and i am too- and i am humbled-
 i am a daughter turned mother-  student turned teacher
with so much to learn
about love and compassion
and living

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174555

thoughts upon waking: sequel

They say that in dreams, teeth represent control.

Last night I was in the backseat, my dad was driving me to the B's. Three of my teeth came out.  They came out easily, all at once. There was a lack of panic in my reaction. I wasn't upset. In fact, I felt relieved that we could turn around and go to the dentist instead of the B's because I didn't want to go visit them anyway.  I sat patiently during the drive, holding my teeth in my hand.  My dad, the worrier, was more concerned, but even he didn't seen too bothered. He knew a good dentist.  I later noticed that some of my bottom teeth were loose and wiggling too.

When we stopped at the house and I looked in the mirror, I didn't think the gap from the teeth looked all that bad. Maybe even cute in a quirky way. I figured the other teeth would eventually shift over and make up for the absence.

This bodes well for letting go gracefully.
This bodes well for making peace with the gaps.

Grow grow grow.

dat moment

1.   Can the English writing people of Earth please agree to stop using "dat" for "that"?  When did that become a thing? It makes my innards shriek.

2.  2 chocolate chip cookies for dinner. Feeling myself lately.

3. This weekend I got out of my head and into my body, and it's astonishing how easily all that anger melted away. All that was boiling was caused by a speck.  All that incited has been dissolved.

4. Who are these instagram wonders who eat fancy eggs and drink the fanciest coffee served on perfectly crisp tabletops and linen every goddamn day? Who are they, where are they, and how do I get there?

5.  AND ALSO, let's just clarify that a moment is generally an ephemeral, very brief occurrence.  Let's stop saying "that moment when" you worked a 70 hour week or "that moment when" you try and try and nothing ever works.  Those are not moments.  Stop.

6.  and also too- man, the little hiccups of rage.  the little wishes that i never capitalized.  i wish i had called you out- to your face.  been less like butter, so ready.  So eager to hear a soft word spoken. wish I'd been less quick to shoulder blame that was not mine, and less inclined to offer justification that i don't believe in.  i wish it would do any good at all to be true.  to be harsh.  to be honest.  to be as openly disappointed as i feel at times.  i wish i had been less quick to accept apology for doing what you've always done when faced with uncomfortable situations- avoid.  it's always only made it worse- harder than it has to be.  i was never going to like it- really.  of course not. but i do judge. with reason. they are patterns.  she is a vapid, beautiful, vulnerable and young choice like so many others.  but I need to divorce my wishes for you. They are not (were never) your wishes for yourself.  and it is no longer my business to judge (though I do).  it is no longer your lot to know my thoughts (and so i make good and refrain, mostly).  it is no longer your onus to care (what weight.  what freedom).