Still life of duck at an open mic

I agree with you. It is silly to create a blog, post only sporadically and soon enough, not at all. I have very little belief in myself. I have no belief that anyone's interest in my writing. If my mother were alive and functional, something that hasn't been a tandem happening for over twenty-five years, she would read my blog. She might even post a reply, but that is unlikely, for reasons I will Rest In Peace. This speculation is of little use but to underline my understanding that only Mother is a fan. 

So what's the use of jumping back in? (To the blog.)

It feels good. Writing these few words feels good and by good I mean restorative. Turns out I do have an audience and she is me. If you (the nonexistent reader of My 3,000 Loving Arms) have seen King Richard, the film about Venus and Serena, their queenmaker father (and mother, really, as well as the sisters), you may recall he told them to write their plans for the morrow in their journals every night. In addition to being an athlete, canny teacher, one of the most hardworking working Joe's ever, Richard Williams had the gift of planning. 

Hence, project your goals nightly. Complete them daily. 

I was going to do that last night by I couldn't find a pen. Really. I have pens but they keep rolling out of sight. Maybe they are smoking dope under the refrigerator or napping beneath one of my stuffed vintage chairs. I will buy new pens, many, with my $25 gift card from CVS. For which I answered questionnaires for nearly six months. I consider that $25 passive income. It's not, but, heck, an online questionnaire every few weeks about my duties as an American consumer of goods and media? Not too much of a chore. Even without the gift card I have money enough to buy pens but it provides that special push. Get something 'free' to assist with wish fulfillment.

This is enough, right?

Poodles.

Acceptance. A Writer's Life

I gave a sort of impromptu talk today on art as career. How I ended up talking to that particular group of people is another story.

What interests me greatly in this story came when my mostly new friends were giving feedback. A few used the word humble. They didn't mean to say I was being humble about my achievements. I wasn't. My achievements are mere within the world of poets and that's that.

No. "Humble" was not, in fact, the correct word. What was meant and admired in me was my acceptance. "Acceptance." I don't need to be Wm. Butler Yeats or Elizabeth Bishop. I would love to be Rita Dove because that woman can tango, but I don't need to be her, either.

I want to publish my novel. I don't need it to be the great American. It's not. It's entertaining. That's enough. I will continue to publish poems and stories.

A few days ago a woman friended me on Facebook and commented she really liked my poem, "This Flesh Divine," published in Numinous in 2008. Yowza. That was three years ago. How wonderful. How satisfying. My writing hits a few in the right place and for that I am immensely grateful.

AIDS: My first to go

I flash in and out on remembering the name of my first friend to die of AIDS. It was over thirty years ago.

Friends gathered—I'm the very least of the "we" here and I'm not being humble—a care committee whose work intensified, of necessity, toward the end. While Sanderson's original life was sometimes aware, sometimes unconscious; had bumps, starts, stops, triumphs, loves, his death was conscious.

It's been over thirty years since he gave me a singular piece of advice. Sarah, let the weather support you. I think of those words often and make it so. Breezes, Humidity, Ice Storms. They are all acts of something greater than me (Nature, the Universe, Goddess, She, the Divine).

This year, 2009, early, maybe February, I hit a new high regarding my awareness of weather (or weather "conditions") and Sanderson's advice. I realized there is to be no complaining. Yes, I know about Katrina and monsoons and Indonesia and the damage. I am not the one to explain the existence of suffering, though on the simplest level, I've had heat rashes since I was a little girl on Long Island. That's one of my earliest memories, being uncomfortable in my skin, and the relation to external weathers.

But day-to-day, which is pretty much all I know any more, I see it all as a gift, so when someone complains about rain or fog or cold or other usual inconveniences of the natural world I can't figure the person out. Don't they know?

Practical

Let me tell you about my friend
Sanderson. Well he’s dead,
but what’re you gonna do — the first ones died
in that Rapture of malfunctioned immunity.
My early dead read histories of women
his last six months.

You know how it is when you stand still in
Spring because a breeze is
teasing the green of light from trees?
Sarah, Sanderson said to me.
I admit I get real emotional. Sarah.
Let the weather support you.

What is it about white people?
A chunk missing here and there.
Don’t run your panties through
a hand-crank wringer.
Delicates need a special cycle and
color is just a metaphor.

In the great Pacific Northwest, sky
is every type of blanket shaken over you
every two hours. Sanderson,
in the way of the dead, goes on retreats
there in the still early stage of whatever-
itisthatcomesnextwhichoughtnottobesuch-
afocusofmine as that here and now, this this,
their perfumed spring, those bills, gunshots,
a certificate of appreciation gotten kinda dusty
in its dime store frame — all enough diverting.

Oh yeah, did I mention?
He also said, I don’t understand
why all the women don’t kill all the men.

So it took years for me to understand why not.
Of course I’m damaged, and needing more from
my icon of grace, on what to allow to support me.

______

Sarah Sarai, first published in Main Street Rag, 2008, and included in The Future Is Happy, 2009

Odysseus Tying Himself to the Mast - Happy Bloom's Day

Yes, Molly Bloom fans.

Yes, devotees of stately plump, etc.

Today, June 16, is Bloom's Day in celebration or commemoration or expression of constant awe for James Joyce's Ulysses, loosely based on The Odyssey. Loosely as in easy as a rent boy. As in blowsy as a whore. And then there are various articles of clothing such as your oldest t-shirt or a gypsy-like blouse purchased fifteen years ago at a yard sale, or a muu muu you're reluctant to pass on. What if you retire early and to a trailer park? Hold onto it.

Loose, but epic. Also epic is my need to exercise self-discipline. To write a short blog every day (I've done good, lately). Work on fiction and poetry every day. Work on work. Jobs. Upkeep. Odysseus tied himself to the mast so he wouldn't be tempted by Sirens. A short-term solution.

The long-term solution is watermelon seed slippery. And so I shall now eat a slice of watermelon and contemplate the seed. And how I trundled from Ulysses to Odysseus without much of an explanation or the self-discipline to write a bridge, a transition. And absolute joy that those women in the upper right-hand corner look a bit like me (stately and plump). Sometimes artists get it right.