Open Water

Ooh, new year. Everything starts again. Great talks with my girls last night (Syd and Selah) and today (Heather and Sarah). Folks, I am a bumbling fool. I mean, what do I do with myself now that I am back from Dallas and not in school? Write, I guess. Shelly is coming over in a minute and we are having a writing date. And tomorrow I have a writing date with a new friend, MG, at her house. Um, isn't this exactly what a Writer's life is supposed to look like? Check, check. Meg suggested we get published in 2009, and I quite like that idea. No roadmaps yet, only just ideas. Just wishes and hopes. Pure desire.

I am thinking about not having kids. I know it may sound a little crazy right now because I haven't got a partner or anything approximating financial security or a career or any of that stuff that is "supposed" to come first. But I think it's a really important thing, I was telling my Ma, for every feminist to consider. I mean, it was such a given for so long, such a non-issue, that I think it must really become something for women to really study and prod into. Being with my nieces this past time reminded me of exactly how deeply in love I can be with children who are not my own (barely). And it always feels so good to go back to my own life after my trips to the Big-D. I am considering how much more time I want. See, I spent so much of my younger years sad and trying to make things work out in a chaotic family that (and everyone who knows me knows this) I didn't get to start figuring out what I really wanted or needed until I was in my mid-late twenties. When I consider needing to have a baby by the time I am in my mid-late thirties, I get squeamish. I don't know if 10 years is enough for me.

Undoubtedly, if I could live to 150, I would have a child from my own body. The thought of not doing it feels like the worst thing in all the world to me. Almost. But not quite. So I am trying to let myself luxuriate in the mere consideration of not having children. I am trying to feel what that feels like. Trying to mine that space for the answers it wants to give. Some first impressions are: weightlessness, void, sorrow, and a seamless sense of possibility. I mean, what if I truly decide to never put a bookend on my own self being at the center of my own life? I am getting too wise to not see that children need FAR more than they are getting, as is. If I decide to have one, I am bound and determined to figure out something completely new. I promise to keep ya'll posted.

In other news, I watched a movie, "Open Water" with Zoe last night. It is one of her terrible, guilty pleasures. Bad shark movies. It was really bad. But, I did find it fascinating to consider the open water. The dangling of legs into nothingness. The way creatures come up to nibble or bite at what floats on the surface. The utter vastness and unmappability of all that ocean when you are just floating in the current. In the end (and I don't feel bad telling you this because it truly IS that bad), the couple who had been left behind by their scuba tour get eaten by several sharks. The guy had been bitten earlier and had bled to death. The woman kisses his dead face and relinquishes him to the school of sharks surrounding them. He begins to bob up and down, getting yanked apart. She silently, calmly, slips out of her tank and gear and goes under. Goes right for them. Into the feeding frenzy. After 24 hours of trying so hard to fight it, she goes right into the thick of it, right toward the bite. That image of open water is gonna stay with me for a long time to come. It just feels like the best metaphor for the things I am trying to confront in 2009: my sexual/desirous/desirable self, my opulently open-ended future, my fat-ass mind and all the things it wants to think up and say, and the unbearable excitement and anticipation I feel when I even *try* to imagine what I will write this year. Loves, I don't know when Ima come up, but I have GOT to see what is down there. I have GOT to let current carry me. I bet Ima get bit. There might be blood.

I had a session with Syd

or something approximating a session, and am feeling much better now. Eating powdered Alfredo patsta and watching Sex and the City before bed...XO.

X-mas in Dallas

AH, the blog. Perpetual home of my loneliness. It is embarrassing how I come here when I haven't another place to go. I am stuck at my sister's house - alone. This is a strange place to be when no one is around. The electricity went out in the kitchen for about 8 hours and so I had to unplug the microwave from the kitchen and move it to the hallway so I could cook scrambled eggs for dinner. Plus, I scrapped my bare big toe on the concrete of the driveway as my sister left to go out of town to visit her friend. It took a big chunk of toenail and skin off and it still hurts like hell. I left toe-blood on the hood of her car before she pulled out and left me with no band aids and no car and my youngest niece who cried because I had promised to take her to the park up the road. I wanted to go for a walk so badly. I need those endorphins today. But my toe is fucked.
I was supposed to be going to my high school reunion tonight, but my old friends were all too drunk to pick me up from the suburbs by the time I got my niece off with her dad. My older niece is at her friend's lake house and now I am alone here after a week and a half of constant family time. I am in for the night, make-up done, new Christmas clothes on, a box of wine for company, and I feel like shit. My toe hurts. I can hardly remember who or what I am.
Two weeks is a damn long time, friends. Not having the money to pay rent is on my mind. I forget how much work there still is to do in Cali. I feel like a particularly large failure right now. I mean, I don't even have a car, much less any savings. I am single. I've never been published. I am overweight and too reliant on feeling intoxicated. I picked up and left all the people I love in Colorado. My phone doesn't work right and so phone conversations suck on so many levels. Yes, this is the after-Christmas blues. This is the "feeling sorry for myself" post. This sucks. Plus, my grandma's dead. And I miss her. It feels like Dallas isn't mine anymore. I feel like a fake. But I'm no Coloradan or Californian either. How did this happen?
I had the most wonderful day with my mom and sister when I first got here. We went to the movies and they paid for me, without even arguing about it. It was like heaven. I kept wondering what had changed. No fights. Just generosity and relaxation. Folks, it lasted one whole day. And while Amee and I have had more fun together than any time in recent history, it has all gone to hell. My mother is pretty much the most depressed person I have ever known. My friends here don't seem to give a damn about me anymore. Correction: not in a way they can show. And everyone drinks so fucking much. I'm drunk right now, for God's sake! Oh, I am a miserable Dallas bitch right now. I cannot wait to go home and be in my own room with my own journal and my own altar and my own bed. My life feels pretty silly from this spot here. I don't know what makes sense, is worth while, counts for anything.
More wine now. And the cuddly kitten my sister recently adopted. I try not to watch cable. Please get me home quickly! Christmas *cheer*.
Michelle

1/4 down, 3/4 to go

Hi, my people. I just finished my first semester of grad school. (little booty dance). I turned in 55 pages of writing in the past week. I'm rockin' in a way I ain't ever seen myself do. It's, kind of cool. But now, after all that work, I feel crazy not knowing what to do with myself. I feel lonesome for my classes (and classmates!) already. My poetry class would've been tonight, but it's over. I was telling Meg in class yesterday that I was always crying on the last day of school when I was a kid because I was gonna miss my teachers and friends. Yep. I was born to be a student. I don't think I've ever liked anything as much as school in my whole life. Except, of course, for the bodies and minds of the people I love. Nothing can beat that. But OTHER than that, well, it's no question. I'm glad I've realized that I wanna write and teach. That was a smart decision. Is one.
I am also watching another year come to an end in which I have no partner. I don't like this one bit, but I'm STILL not exactly sure what to do about it. I know ya'll think I'm crazy, but dammit, this shit is hard for me! And I'm not just talking about some ass. That's not how I roll. I think Ima do some hoodoo on it. I have been so far away from my spirituality this semester. But I did get a dressed love candle from Miss Cat Yronwode for my birfday so I suppose it's a good time to get all up on that. I try to be patient, and then I wonder if that's the very problem.
I'm heading to Dallas next week for Christmas. Gonna see those baby girls I fuckin adore. One is twelve. Bordering on having a boyfriend. The other is seven. There will be no more Gramma and that is just strange in every way. My sister bought a house. I'll see some high school friends. I hope it rains while I'm there. I miss the rain. THAT'S what I want for Christmas. A big, Texas thunderstorm with a bunch of lightning and thunder and wind and a grey-black sky. Please, oh please.
And I gotta send a shout out to my Boulder peeps. I miss ya'll in that snowy mountain town! Shit, who'm I kidding? I miss all ya'lls asses, all over the world!!! Happy Advent, fuckers. xoxo.

Guns and Butter

Yesterday I was in my kitchen cooking mashed potatoes, on the phone with Georgia Rose, chilling with the back door open and then, all of a sudden, I heard BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG! Directly out my door, there was a shooting. I cannot tell you how loud, terrifying, and confusing it all was. The police found no blood, though witnesses saw a man on the ground who then disappeared. The cops found bullet shells (or whatever they're called) across the street in front of my neighbors house. And last weekend, I walked outside to find 15 cop cars on my street. I counted them. They said it was safe to leave the house, and I did, warily. I heard they found bullet shells in front of my next door neighbors' house that night, as well.

I keep getting mad at myself for feeling afraid. Like it makes me weak or something. Like I am not allowed to notice how tenuous life really is. In the past month I have had two friends have cancer scares (one is not out of the woods yet), one friend's father died, another friend survived a suicide attempt, another friend is dealing with being left by his long-term partner, and at least 2 shootings have occurred on my street. Looking even further outward, I notice the unspeakable tragedies of the attacks in India, consumers trampling a Wal-Mart employee to death, and fast-growing joblessness. Indeed, the Buddha had it right: Life is full of suffering.

And yet it is full of wonderful things, as well. In the midst of all of this, in the past month I have not only sat with the suffering, and suffered my own self, but have seen the exquisitely beautiful. We have elected Barack Obama. I have reached 32 years of age, in one piece. I worked hard on and sweated profusely during my project to teach a class on Myung Mi Kim's gorgeous book, Commons. It went really well. I presented my work in my fiction class on Lee Harvey Oswald on the 45th anniversary of his public murder. I began working on a syllabus for a community writing workshop I will teach next semester. I met poets who work "on the margins" of the writing community, outside of academia, and I have remembered that the human heart can survive, be fed, and be central to the writing I pursue. That, while I love my mind, as well as the minds of others, it remains necessary to come out of our heads and into our bodies. To tend to the living we must do. And finally, I have eaten the most delicious and buttery foods in a house full of lovely people on Thanksgiving day. Have been surrounded by people who fascinate me.

My friend Shelly called me up frantically the other day to tell me about a radio show she had heard called "Guns and Butter". It had been on the anniversary of the JFK assassination and she thought it might be of interest to me because, not only am I writing about Oswald, but also because guns and butter are recurrent themes in that writing. It was eerie. I looked it up and found that "Guns or Butter" is a common term used in economics to point to the necessity of governments to prioritize its needs. The theory says a government cannot have both. That, instead, each administration must decide to spend on military or civilian causes. That effective government chooses which to do when, wisely. And I read an article that accuses George W. Bush of choosing both, thus putting us in this terrible position we are in. I quite like the analogy and am fond of appropriating it to talk about things beyond economics. My life, as always, is filled with both. And while I prefer butter and hope to keep the balance tipped to that end, how does one measure? Upon which system shall I calibrate my devices? Which instrument can I use? Ariel Goldberg, my classmate, asked the other day whether having had Oswald's life tangled into my family history had been a blessing or a curse. In that space, I search. How to measure?

I am not in favor of suffering for Art's sake, but it continues to exist - despite Art. Perhaps Art is an expression of the Middle Way. A reach toward appreciation of "what is", while hoping for "what might yet be". Bhanu Kapil talks about wanting a book that "suffers" with the reader. I think that that book would only need to sit in the moment, feel the rubbing of two things beside one another. Explore the electrified sliver of space there. Bashfully, I admit to, like George W. Bush, preferring Guns AND Butter. After all, Butter alone makes one fat, slothful. Guns alone make the world unbearable and hungry. And though it began with bullets, I suppose this is my Thanksgiving blog of gratitude. Kahlil Gibran says children are the "sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself". I grope around, amongst you all, longing for this life.

why are my friends so fucking great?

wow. 9:39, sunday, the 16th of november night. had a haircut by syd. had a poetry reading, had a dinner with amber. had several wines. had a funn time. have (currently) several star-gazing lilies, a brown candle with fat flame. sound of roommates.

how does one spell it?

"jesus". i say it out of respect.

what shall we think when we have been given so very many directions/instructions. (let this critique sweep far). i had lion for supper. had bad bread and smooth Southern talk. i forget to forget. i really hear people being ferried, all day.

quoting, like exercise, is aerobic - mirrors lungs. what happens then? how does it sound? who is responsible? sometimes, we don't have to explain. sometimes, u get mad because i always talk politics. quit this. be serious. cuddle up for the cozy.

To the Blessed 44th President of the United States

So we are supposed to record it. To remember, forever, that this thing happened. To remember that I was eating soup from a can and that I was really, really broke at the time. To remember the sound of cars honking and people beating pots and pans and blowing whistles. To remember how, when I wanted to cry, laughter came up instead. To remember stone-cold sobriety and uncontrollable laughter. To remember the look of so many black faces on the television crying because something so good had happened. To remember that his face reminded me of James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" because he looked "so touched, I think, that he could have cried, but neither hiding it nor showing it, riding it like a man" he gave his speech and kissed his family. To remember that people can claim dignity even after they've been led to believe they had none. To remember the moment it all changed. The motto remains, is not finished: Yes, we can!