More sentence inspirations:

The yellow crocus just outside the front door is not a miracle of light. - Matthew Dickman

The
yellow pee in the bowl blossoms like a
crocus,
just another irritating reminder that life is kind of miraculous.
Outside, I'm prepared to be astonished:
the true flowers are enough, full
frontal plant nudity blows the
doors off my mind.  Must I be confronted with what
is my own one-in-a-billion chance of being, of being me -
not a rock, not nothing -
a miracle?  I don't want to appreciate that,
of a groggy morning, sleep-scented, relieving myself into a bowl of
light.

I don't have the razor's edge of bluster anymore.  - me

I will eat alone.  Please
don't call me,
have a plan to cheer me up.
The
razor's on the
edge of the tub, not in my hand.
Of unhappiness - I know it, but lack the
bluster of action.  It just doesn't matter
anymore.

Still breathing through.

...The woman you used to know is nowhere in your life. 

The crazy woman you have cut out already, a thousand cuts.

Strangely, somewhere down the line, you’ll want her blessing, still want her presence at an event, maybe a wedding.

You have no idea who she is now. 

She does not even look the same, and her reactions will be all wrong, and awkward, and it will be hard work to have her near.

But some small piece, a thousand cuts deep, says

I remember you.

Lots of skiing

So glad for lots of skiing this weekend, Wanoga yesterday and Meissner, miles and miles of Meissner, today.  I feel thirsty for exercise, I can't get enough of outside, trying to soak up as much snow and sunshine as I can, infuse all that bright energy into my cells.  I've been putting out too much, and not replacing enough.

Two small pieces

I'm enjoying these pithy little pieces created from the words of someone else's sentences.  They seem a bit mysterious, I'm grateful that they're out of my control.  Here's another piece with each word of a sentence the beginning of a line in a poem, of sorts:

I peeled a mango and
decided that life should have this much slip as
to escape, seal-like from one's fingers, and
heave upon the floor.  You
chase such a sweet thing.
A pit requires
technique
designed to separate the mango threads,
to suck the last bits of sweetness from the sunrise
weather of the fruit.
A hard fruit might belie a
storm ahead.

The line from whence it was born, "I decided to heave to, a technique designed to weather a hard storm."


And still one more:

Another young girl might have
factored in the brightness of the sun on her yellow dress, but
to consider such things is beyond her.  She
is instead within the sun, startled by daylight
the spangle of dust motes her dancing
color the thrum of blood in her delicate arteries
of flesh nearly not-human
the spins of her dance an arc upon
paper.

From, "Another factor to consider is the color of the paper."

Bits and pieces

Lisa and I have decided to hold each other accountable for posting bits of our 1 hour writing sessions, at least 3 or 4 times per week.  This piece was just today's warm up, a prompt that asks the writer to pick a line and write the words, one per line, vertically down the page, and then complete a poem of sorts.

I walk on a jetty, storm-battered balance makes for a giddy trip
needing the sharp stones to cut my toes, razor's edge presses reality up through me.
To recover some sense of presence
a
rhythm in the rocks is necessary, a universe of opposites
in balance.  Will
my
heart, not centered in my chest, upset
that delicate tightroping, will wind that
moves wraith-like around straining calves upset
my tortured dance?  A
body like water can
first hope to bubble
and shimmy but
mine will not
mind and will boil and burst
second.

The initial quote is, "I need to recover a rhythm in my heart that moves my body first and my mind second, that allows my soul to catch up with me.  I need to take a sacred pause, as if I were a sun-warmed rock in the center of a rushing river."  Dawna Markova

My pilgrim shrines

"those locations that have become like pilgrim shrines to us for the power they hold over imagination and identity."  
- one prompt among many from Kim Stafford's website: http://web.me.com/kimstafford/kimstafford/How_to_Sleep_Cold.html

Like a pilgrim shrine to me for the power it holds over imagination and identity, years ago, still now, I would choose our family's cabin, tucked in an insignificant New Hampshire town, without a mall, with the classic white Protestant church, small businesses, brick library....  But it was the cabin, on a lake, that formed the centerpiece of my identity.  My years started and stopped there, under the great pines, centered on the weeks we'd spend idle there, in the summer.  I'd read, nap in the sun, write, run, swim.  Eat with the neighbors, maybe listen to music.  My head would empty.  I did not know guilt for doing nothing.

I looked, for hours.  Small fish, close to shore.  The wind rippling the water.  At night, the steam rising from the lake, around the floating docks, forming ghostly shapes.  I found myself and felt whole there - but because there was always the return to home, school, the frantic life of a busy teenager - I doubted the realness of the place and what I felt there, couldn't imagine a future in which I permitted myself such a place, full time, couldn't imagine being able to make a living out of such a place, felt compelled to investigate more obvious, acceptable paths, and thus ignored my increasing feeling of alienation, the farther I went from the solace of that place.

This prompt drew my attention, resonated - a place like a pilgrim shrine, true north for identity...  What was that fleeting bird call of recognition, that high keening?  Not just the past... but ah, also what I've had here, in the high desert, and what I'm continuing to seek.  Not in this horrid house in the burbs, but the house we lucked into when we left the city, and used as a home base, looking glass, for all our explorations of this place.  I can't call that house home anymore, and without it we, too, are too removed from the daily miracles obvious only over time in an undisturbed, wide-open space, but I still feel it out there - the mountains, ever-changing, cool and mysterious; small creatures, dun-colored in the brush, surprising colors amongst the dryness, the giant sky.


I wanted it, want it, because I found myself there, too.  Felt my feet in the dirt, my heart beat slow, allowed my eyes to follow the birds across the sky, learned birdsong, thanked the universe each day for the river, became present, knew the place and felt how short my time in it.  I was innervated and slowed by the minute changes, felt myself a small, gratefully observant thing in the place the river calls home.



I am so much more the girl who walks through dust, sun overhead, beside rivers and lakes, than I am the one who shovels a cement walk that looks like all the others in a neighborhood of 400 identical houses.  I am the one that notices that day's new, minutest blooms, that notes flocks of birds migrating through the seasons, that lies back to watch the sky, that sees the water bend around a rock, that requires quiet and solitude to think, center, rest.  I declare myself a foreigner to urban, unimaginative environments.  I want to go home now, find myself, live from that fecund center. 

Be less stingy.

I'm resolved to be less stingy with myself this year.  As Siri and I walked along the river this afternoon, I puzzled about what that actually means.  My initial impression was that it was about treating my body better - more baths, more lovely oils for my winter-chapped skin - an attention to sustenance, in place of a misplaced and outmoded devotion to Puritan scarity, replacing the inner critic's "You don't need..." with an affirmative "I want."  Some of that is material, yes.  A piece of me cringes from that reality, even now - but I consider that the last few months are the first in years that I've had an adequate income.  I'm behind on necessities, not luxuries.

I've inflicted other stinginesses on myself, too.  Classes I've wanted to take, things I've wanted to explore that I haven't, because of money, but also because I thought I could live without them for now, in favor of more practical, pressing needs.  And then there is the giant stinginess, how I live my life, such that I don't prioritize the things I want to do, always putting the things I have to do first.  Inevitably, I have no time for writing, painting, walking, playing with my dog - and sometimes I'm almost relieved to be so singlemindedly busy, because who knows what would be unearthed if I wasn't?

So what does being less stingy look like? 
Gleaming skin - from being loved up with oils and lotions, at least 2 facials a year, and many warm baths. 
Signing up for beginning singing and guitar classes.  (!)
Making time for art - writing, practicing instruments, painting, photography, whatever. 
Buying some new music! 
Letting myself discover and follow my interests. 
Getting some fun winter dress-up clothes.
Taking the time to sit still, anywhere, and notice anything - asking "What is there to be enjoyed in this moment?", and enjoying it.

Ciao, 2010!  Bienvenue, 2011!

I'm not fond of our current neighborhood, but oh, the light in the trees at sunset!