Good Vibrations

My ten-year-old neighbor said "I hear you playing your tuba!!" I asked, "Does my saxophone playing bother you?" She said no. Her bedroom window faces the alley between our buildings and my saxophone sound must zoom right up into her window. All my neighbors tell me they can hear it but they like it. I am very lucky. I try not to play at crazy hours (heh heh heh). Well when I play crazy hours I play in the living room (which has no windows) so the sound won't wake anyone outside. One day Bill came down for breakfast and said I heard you playing your sax very early. The house apparently vibrated with the low notes.

Walking Around

It so happens I am sick of being a man.
It so happens that I walk into tailor shops and movie houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.
The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.
It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.
Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go throught the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the frost.
I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.
I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the gound, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.
That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night.
And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.
There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords.
I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.

     - Pablo Neruda

Quotes of the Day

Without suffering, happiness cannot be understood. The ideal passes through suffering like gold through fire.

     - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There is a day
when the road neither
comes nor goes, and the way
is not a way but a place.

     - Wendell Berry

You can write a song anywhere, in a railroad compartment, on a boat, on horseback - it helps to keep moving. Sometimes people who have the greatest talent for writing songs never write any because they are not moving.

     - Bob Dylan

Toaster Love

Another toaster died. They get a workout in this house of bread! Bill has rebuilt our current toaster three times, but this time it's done for. We have a graveyard of buried toasters in the backyard. (Just joking, they're actually in the cellar.) I will try to find a new one that is built like a tank, like the ones in diners. When I was young, I did a series of photo postcards called Toaster Love. They were black-and-white photos of me in my grandmother's flapper dress kissing my art deco 1930's toaster. I took them using the camera's self-timer, printed them up on pink card stock, and mailed them to my friends.

Tibetan Proverb

For one with faith,
Even a dog's tooth radiates light.

Mos gus yod na,
khyi yi so yang 'od bton pa.

A Joke from a Friend in Dublin

A woman in her fifties is at home happily jumping, unclothed, on her bed and squealing with delight. Her husband watches her for a while and asks, "Do you have any idea how ridiculous you look? What's the matter with you?"

The woman continues to bounce on the bed and says, "I don't care what you think, I just came from having a mammogram, and the doctor says that not only am I healthy, but I have the breasts of an 18-year-old."

The husband replies, "What did he say about your 55-year-old arse?"

"Your name never came up," she says.

The Blue Shirt Boys

I went with Angel last week to the Training School, which is what they call the juvenile prison. A few other teachers from AS220 met us there for the voluntary after-school classes. It was my first time there, and coincidentally the first classes of the semester. I was amazed at the faces of these young boys, a mix of Aztec princes and West Side Story gents. Sad, lively, and forgotten boys. I was hypnotized watching them in their cobalt blue shirts, some with collars and some without. I was soaking them up.

When I got home I ate cold left-over sesame noodles with lots of hot sauce. I went to bed very early and fell asleep in minutes. I woke at 4:30 a.m. thinking, where are the boys right now? I hope they are asleep. I got up and let my dog out and looked around my neighborhood. I spotted Michael, who lives across the street. He was nine in 1988 when we moved to Woonsocket, in a different neighborhood. He would knock on our door and ask to play with our two big dogs. Sometimes I turned him away. Now he's 29, a full-grown, handsome, angry, young man. Now he's a father, sometimes riding a motorcycle with his seven-year-old daughter on the back wearing a helmet, clutching his waist. Now he's dealing drugs and shouting curses at the neighbors. When he moved here we both recognized each other. We always wave hello. I hope he stays safe. I thought of the blue-shirted boys' faces again.

There was only one boy in the writing class I sat in on. He talked about getting married in prison, and seeing his daughter, who was born six months ago. We wrote poems, and he read his from his black-and-white composition notebook. I talked about the pitfalls of waiting for inspiration or stirring up drama as a way to get writing, and the importance of looking deeper to find the door behind the door. We laughed about the irony of all the clocks in the building being caged! He talked about books he liked. I said that I loved memoirs. He and I had both begun the same book! We had both read the opening pages of Blindness. I would like to visit again, and bring poetry.

Red Light

I almost ended up with another dog. I was in the passenger seat, at a red light, and the vehicle next to me had a droopy-faced long-eared Basset hound in the back seat and I was cooing at him through the window. The owner said, You want him? You can have him. I said ahhhh . . . yes! But at that very moment the light changed and Bill took his foot off the brake and gave me a little kick. And we drove off. I would've named him Red Light.

Quote of the Day

The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding. Finally, the lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.

     - Gretel Ehrlich, from The Solace of Open Spaces

Early Morning Tea Poem

Waking up at six feels like oversleeping when
I know the sky brightens at 4:30 am.
The loud neighbors are sound asleep.
Early morning tea in the backyard is a delight.
I am off to swim
while the park rangers scoop goose poop.
(6/06)

I'm In the Mood to Adopt Fifty Pugs

My aunt gave me a collection of little brightly-colored plastic slide-viewers that contain photos of my grandparents. I was reminded once again how much I look like my grandfather (blue bright eyes) and my sister looks like my grandmother (smile, head gestures).

A neighborhood girl told me she found a half-sister she had never known, aged 20 and pregnant, on myspace.com.

I'm enjoying coffee-mousse-filled chocolate dipped in peanut butter.

Ray, the New Man, got a brand new top layer of teeth, which he proudly showed me when Honey and I walked by the Castle Luncheonette the other morning. He wanted to buy me a coffee, and I accepted. I told passers-by, "We're celebrating Ray's upper deck!"

When I was five, I thought monkeys talked. Now, knowing what I know about people, I realize they do.

One morning I walked by a huge bright yellow tow truck that had red script outlined with blue across the back of the cab. It said, "We don't want your arms and legs we just want your tows."

One drink is too many for me and a thousand not enough.

     - Brendan Behan

Doing the twist at the Brave Combo concert split open the soles of my shoes. They looked like smiling hand puppets. The shoe repair man on the bridge said he'd fix'em for five bucks! They'll be ready in a few days.

Sentiments & Heirlooms

I have never been given a truly valuable heirloom but there are things I have that I call my heirlooms and they are in my everyday life to remind me of my beloved grandparents. For instance, the pink Lady Ace comb from Grandma that is now missing half of its teeth, and my blue terry-cloth robe that was Grandpa's. My aunt and uncle have graciously sent me a coverlet that Grandma crocheted, and my grandparents' fancy stemware. I found a dish at a junk store that I use now to put teabags in. I love it because it's made of the same iridescent ceramic that Grandma's tea mugs were made of. I guess this makes me sentimental.

Cilantro Pesto

I had never heard of cilantro pesto until my sister suggested I make this, and it is fabulous. This is great news because I buy a bouquet of cilantro at the Asian store for a buck and tend to only use a sprig or two on our beans and tortillas before the rest goes bad. Now we can make use of all of it! I used one bouquet of cilantro, rinsed and chopped, olive oil, salt, toasted pine nuts, and garlic cloves. I buzzed everything in my antique Waring blender using a chop stick to mash things down. It made a mighty green goo. I put it on whole-wheat angel-hair pasta and shared it with ten people.

Poem of the Day

Carry me away seeds
is what I like
to call them.
When I examine one closely
it looks like a gondola
for a flea.

Moon Walk

Last night we saw the moon, huge and yellow, while we walked Honey in the dark. We sat on the bottom step of the Pothier monument in the Cimetière du Précieux-Sang (Precious Blood Cemetery) and watched wisps of long thin gray clouds wander over the face of the moon. Afterward, I went to bed at nine o'clock with a good book that my friend Phoebe had told me about: The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich. I'm loving it.

Doctor Poets

We pay our past little honor by pretending we can shed it easily.

     - Robert May

Ask not what disease the person has, but rather what person the disease has.

     - William Osler, as paraphrased by Oliver Sacks

I am fascinated by and love to read about mental and neurological quirks. I am reading a quote from a favorite book today; Hypochondria by Susan Baur, a psychologist. She writes like a poet. Just like my other favorite doctor writer Oliver Sacks, she is a pleasure to read. Poets pop up in many guises. When I read Sacks and Bauer I wish they'd come over for supper and break bread with me at my picnic table in the backyard.

Dog Joy

Dogs are our link to paradise.

     - Milan Kundera

Yesterday I brought a tennis ball in the canvas bag while walking Honey and when we got to the park I tossed it in the pond. She swam after it, and a blond-haired girl with blue lips who looked like she had been swimming all morning in her green cut-offs was all excited to throw the ball for Honey. Her older brother came over. He had a washboard stomach. They were having a blast throwing the ball for Honey. I just enjoyed them all enjoying. Today Honey is clean and content. This is what mothers must feel after taking their children swimming.

The Poets Way

I leave no trace of wings in the air, but I am glad I had my flight.

     - Rabindranath Tagore

So long ago my father led me to
The dark and impounded orders of this canyon,
I have confused these rocks and waters with
My life, but not unclearly, for I know
What will be here when I am here no more.

     - Thomas Hornsby Ferril

My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant.

     - Henry D Thoreau

I visited the poet,
Precisely at noon. Sunday.
It was quiet in the spacious room,
And beyond the windows, intense cold.

     - Anna Akhmatova

The Elders have waited for the young people to ask such things.

     - Wawatay Eninew

I regard the Poet as a sentinel warning us against the approach of enemies called Bigotry, Lethargy, Intolerance, Ignorance, Inertia, and other members of that brood.

     - Gandhi

More about The Poets Way at the Boulder CO Public Library can be found here and here.

Music and Mars

We are playing at a library fundraiser for the Chester CT Library, performing on Saturday, September 15th. It will be a tribute to Leonard Cohen. Bill and I are learning ten new songs on bari sax and keyboards. We are rehearsing tomorrow with a bunch of people we've never met. I am packing my jaw harps and accordion along with the bari, and sourdough bread and gazpacho for the pot-luck dinner! Seems like it's all magic this week. Even mars is big and bright in the sky.

How It Is

My friendly neighbors next door on the first floor are moving to the Coventry exurbs because they are so sick of the prostitutes and drugs in our neighborhood. The mom grew up in the neighborhood, and I can see she is disappointed with how things have changed. And the family upstairs in the same building has decided to keep their ten-year-old daughter from going back to school because the kids tease her about being fat! She is smart and special and loves her teachers. Staying home with nine cats in a smoky third-floor apartment with a sick mother, a grandmother, and a grandfather working three jobs is not good. She lives a half-block from the school. School is important and the child's weight problem should be tackled rather than run from. I brought her to the YMCA with me one Monday night and she loved swimming laps. I gave the family the scholarship application, hoping they might join the Y, but I'm not holding my breath.