March 2007

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Walls by Constatine P. Cavafy

The picture is a link to my StumbleUpon page. Rather than duplicating posts, or filling this site with things for which I do not hold the Copyright, I’m going to post them on SU and post the link here.

Cavafy is an old favorite (something I will probably say about every poet I share), and as I was writing the “All in all” piece, I thought of his poem Walls.

Technorati Tags: walls, constantine p. cavafy, poetry, poems

I knew things were getting bad when I turned up the radio, hit repeat and listened to Pink Floyd’s The Wall (Part 2) for the 4th time.

“No dark sarcasm in the classroom”

Fucking brilliant.

Visions of Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado played through my mind as I thought of Fortunato and wondered what sort of nutcase memorizes shit like:

“The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.  You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat.  At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled — but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk.  I must not only punish but punish with impunity.  A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser.  It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.”

I was a weird teenager.

It’s never a good sign when you begin to “connect” with major themes in The Wall. In reality, I feel more like Charles Plumpick from the King of Hearts.

Okay…I’ve been a little depressed.  I’d rate these last few weeks as some of my worst and “nobody knows you when you’re down and out.”

When that dapper little tune didn’t lift my sink-hole of a spirit, I switched to U2’s War and as much as I love the album Sunday Bloody Sunday wasn’t giving me the feel-good I needed.  Oh - I don’t know why.

Broken bottles under children’s feet
Bodies strewn across the dead end street
But I wont head the battle call
It puts my back up
Puts my back up against the wall

“Fuck it”, I said.  No more dour DJing for me.  Time to return to the random musical abuses of the iTunes shuffler.

Next up?  Traveling Wilburys‘ Handle Me With Care

Been beat up and battered ’round
Been sent up, and I’ve been shot down
You’re the best thing that I’ve ever found
Handle me with care

Reputations changeable
Situations tolerable
Baby, you’re adorable
Handle me with care

I’m so tired of being lonely
I still have some love to give
Won’t you show me that you really care

Everybody’s got somebody to lean on
Put your body next to mine, and dream on

I’ve been fobbed off, and I’ve been fooled
I’ve been robbed and ridiculed
In day care centers and night schools
Handle me with care

Been stuck in airports, terrorized
Sent to meetings, hypnotized
Overexposed, commercialized
Hand me with care

I’m so tired of being lonely
I still have some love to give
Won’t you show me that you really care

Everybody’s got somebody to lean on
Put your body next to mine, and dream on

I’ve been uptight and made a mess
But I’ll clean it up myself, I guess
Oh, the sweet smell of success
Handle me with care

And didn’t that just go and fuck up my whole “you’re bricking me in - I’m bricking you in” feeling.  Just when I had a delicious dreary funk going on, iTunes reminded me of the Traveling Wilburys, which made me think of Roy Orbison.  Some kids broke into my car when I was a teenager and the stupid fuckers took every tape I owned (no CDs then), including my mixed stuff (who the fuck steals mixed tapes?), but they did NOT take my Roy Orbison tapes.  I was more upset by their obvious Roy Orbison snub than I was that they broke into my car.

Some people might say that this kind of reaction is irrational.  Wouldn’t the logical response be anger over my lost possessions?  In my mind, no.  What’s done is done.  What’s gone is gone.  Any energy spent on irreversible past events is a waste of time.  Now, what value is there in getting upset at someone who’s not around to know I’m angry or offended by their lack of respect, or in this case, taste in music?  Not much.

I suppose that’s my problem.  I have always felt more passionate about what I believe in than what I own.  That is why, at 31, I own virtually nothing, and was ready to walk away from the little I do rather than stay where I don’t belong.  The whole “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose” crap…that means you have NOTHING to lose.  It means you have nothing.

I’ve spent the last 3 weeks securing my freedom.

Yahoo.

I’ve been uptight and made a mess
But I’ll clean it up myself, I guess
Oh, the sweet smell of success
Handle me with care

A few days before my flight to Europe I developed acute bronchitis. The family doctor pumped me full antibiotics, and prescribed a nasal decongestant, and cough syrup with codeine for the trip. The bronchitis drained me of all energy, but despite good advice and best intentions, there was no way I could “rest up”. I was a kid, about to hop on a plane with another kid, and fly 5456 miles or 8781 km away from parents, school and work, to wander around Europe. The excitement probably made me sick. Trying to sleep would only make me insane(r).

We had a 3 hour drive to LA before our first flight left LAX around 8 AM. It was a direct flight to New Jersey, with a 2 or 3 hour layover, and then the flight to London. We did not sleep in the car or on the plane(s). By the time we found the one and only place we’d made reservations for prior to seeing the place (a mistake on our budget) and dropped from exhaustion, neither of had slept in almost 36 hours.

And then we discovered that I am allergic to Codeine.

There’s nothing like spending your first night in a foreign country on your hands and knees cleaning your own vomit out of the carpet because you woke from a restless sleep with a splitting headache and the uncontrollable urge to purge your system of what it considers a poisonous toxin. The added bonus is when you learn your best pal, traveling companion and roommate has a sympathetic stomach, and upon hearing you, immediately begins to gag and add to the mess.

I would have felt bad about stinking up the room except the place was such a dump, I’m not sure anyone would’ve noticed a difference. We actually slept on top of the covers, fully clothed, including our coats. At some point I remembering looking up at my friend (who was pretty upset), waited for her to stop her furious cleaning, and smiled when she finally lifted her angry eyes at me. After a few tense seconds, she smiled back and then we both started laughing. There was no other appropriate response to that particular situation.

But neither of us slept for the rest of the night.

Our first official day in London is still a jet-lagged, mindless blur. We found another hotel (a lovely place) and wandered around London. I’d have to find my journals to tell you where we went, what we saw, and whether I enjoyed myself or not.

I do, however, remember the thing about the chandeliers.

As I said in the beginning…exhaustion does funny things to the mind.

We went to see a performance of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. As we made our way to our plush theatre seats, we noticed the lovely chandeliers, and with a bit of alarm, that they were swaying. It wasn’t the fact that they were swaying that was alarming but why. They seemed to sway, not because the chandelier was being pushed by a fan or wind, but it was as if the building itself were moving. The chandeliers became a bunch of glass daggers, suspended from the ceiling in an unstable building, essentially dangling on an unstable hook.

That’s when we became suspicious. We talked about other things we saw during our long day, that “swayed” or otherwise appeared “unstable” , and in our exhaustion the absurd seemed the most reasonable explanation. Our conclusion? Great Britain, the entire island, is constantly shifting because it’s geologically unstable and essentially no more than a gigantic barge, and we hadn’t read anything about it because the British, Scots and Welsh had simply gotten used to it. It was a distressing thought but exhaustion does a number on memory too, so soon as the houselights went out (the chandeliers), we forgot all about it.

It took a few days before the fog cleared and we realized it was all Much Ado About Nothing.

“Oh, they must be used to it by now.”

I went to Europe with a friend when I was 18 and insisted we visit Vienna because of Leonard Cohen’s Take This Waltz. I wanted to be able to say, “I danced with you in Vienna.” In retrospect, I suppose it’s a foolhardy reason to tack a country onto your itinerary.

Like every place we visited, we arrived without reservations, no real knowledge of the city except for what we’d read in history books or novels, and the only map we had was the one that got us there. Some people might find this kind of travel unnerving. Thankfully my companion was like me. You’re never really lost unless you don’t know where YOU are - once you can’t find yourself, you’re screwed. We arrived in the early evening and within an hour or so, found a place to sleep, some food, and learned enough about the local public transit system to get us wherever we wanted to go during our brief stay.

My friend was fluent in Spanish, and I knew enough French to embarrass us, so we had great fun the few times we stayed in hostels. The one in Vienna was particularly nice. We would try to communicate with someone who spoke a little English, French, or Spanish, and eventually one of us would say something so totally wrong our new friend would fall down laughing. There were a few times we’d give up and draw pictures; first the outline of the United States, then an arrow indicating the West Coast. The best experience by far was being serenaded in the Paris train station. After telling a Frenchman where I was from, he stood up and started singing, “I wish they all could be California girls”. It’s one of those moments of time your soul folds up, puts in a safe inside your heart, and only lets you remember when you need it the most.

Today, dear reader, was one of those days.

Although it may not look like I’m making progress, the majority of what I needed to do is done, and last night I completed the most difficult part. I went through 5 years of paid bills, bank statements, tax returns, cards, photographs, user manuals, and a large collection of unbelievably odd and sentimental miscellanea. Hell…I saved the letter from the NH Department of Motor Vehicles welcoming me to the state as a new permanent resident and wishing me “miles of safe and pleasurable driving.” Who saves this kind of shit? Me, apparently. (No, I didn’t throw it away.) I have miscellanea from my move from California, which I find ironic as now some of it is no longer useless (like my library card).

What sort of mementos do I keep?

Aside from the NHDMV letter and my old library card, I’ve saved almost every letter and card I’ve received since I was a teenager and I believe there’s a box of letters from my preteens taking up space in my father’s attic. I’ve kept movie, concert and theatre tickets - something I’m finding extremely useful as I do not remember seeing Ice-T at the Anaconda Theatre on August 1, 1992. I remembered “An Evening With Leonard Cohen” at the Wiltern Theatre on July 5, 1993 but forgot taking private belly dancing lessons for six months around the same time. Who the hell forgets something like that? Me.

Inside the box of letters, I found a stack written by me to an old boyfriend (who lost them in the breakup). On the back of one of the envelopes, dated April 1994, is this quote:

We must endure our thoughts all night, until
The bright obvious stands motionless in the cold.

~Wallace Stevens from the poem Man Carrying Thing

When I read this, I remembered the red chair I sat in on the morning my friend and I left Vienna. Staring into the gray morning, over the city I came to because of a song, I remember thinking, “I missed my chance. I did not dance in Vienna.” It was at that moment I decided to take inventory of everything that had gone wrong since we stepped off the plane in London. I continued looking at the city as the list grew and my mood soured.

And then I thought, “This city has been around since the 5th century BC. Maybe I get more than one chance.”

I was up until 10 AM. When I finally slept, it was a deep dreamless sleep, and I awoke feeling rested for the first time in weeks.

As I put away old letters and thought about second chances, a few things became clear to me:

Things don’t always go as planned.

I married a good man. We never learned to live with each other but we were always friends. I will always love him.

Cities don’t move. You get more than one chance to visit. You can always buy a map when you get there.

Knowing where you are is more important than knowing where you’re going.

I am thankful for the crazy part of me that saves all this shit. Without it, I would forget that sometimes things do go according to plan. If I’m lucky, life surprises me, and what happens is better than the dream.

My parents took Rick to see the Wizard of Oz when he was 2. A few weeks later he and my mother had an argument and Rick, furious but composed, looked up into my mother’s face, pointed his little finger at her and said, “I will throw water on you and you will melt.”

Technically, implying that your mother is a witch isn’t a nice thing. However, in my family, creatively insulting one other is almost an endearment.

And no one, not even the Tooth Fairy, was safe from being a target of our prepubescent audacity.

I’d like to present to the court Exhibits A & B.

“Your late. Stupid Tooth Fairy Come on March 25, 1986″

“You Pay Me. I don’t pay You!” (Written by me to one delinquent tooth fairy.)

“Year? To Tooth Fairy” (Written by my father, probably with tears of laughter in his eyes, after he proudly showed the envelope to several of the neighbors.)

Apparently I’d waited one night longer than I felt I should have after losing a tooth. I was a private kid; I don’t think I told my parents I’d lost the tooth until I started to complain about the deadbeat fairy.

Oh, the things the folks save for posterity. I bet my first poem is landfill but these babies are going in the first tell-all they write about me. “She was a very strange child, but quite photogenic. Would you like to see photos of her during her…” At which time I politely cut in and remind them that I am going to be the one to take care of them when they’re old. Photograph books vanish, it’s time for Lipton Iced tea, and conversations about my mother’s dogs.

Around 6:30 a.m., I had the uncontrollable urge to change a few things here at Whirling Open, and apparently, broke some stuff.  If you clicked on “Comments” in the last 12 hours and kept getting sent to the Archives section, it’s not because I removed, deleted, or otherwise decided to disable that section.  I just lost it for a little while.

My bad.

Only people who are related to me by blood or marriage have the right to piss me off. If you’re pissing me off, and you don’t fall within these two categories, you’re poaching.

Since we’re on the topic of things that piss me off and I am Master and Commander of this meandering, pointless space, I’ll continue…

Last night, as I waited for my heater to warm up the inside of my car and I beat my frozen fingers against the steering wheel in an attempt to restore feeling, I thought about all the days when the temperature fell to the single digits, and the one inexplicable, unforgivable affliction I’ve endured in silence. What the fuck is up with the Boschian nipple torture? My nipples haven’t known peace during the winter months in 6 years. Is this why New Englanders are so cranky? Have all their nipples frozen and fallen off? There were days I’d arrive to work in so much pain that it was evident on my face. When asked by a coworker if there was something wrong and if there was anything they could do, more than once I was tempted to respond, “Why yes. Thank you for asking. Would you mind licking my nipples until they defrost?” I’m certain I would have gotten a volunteer or two, but how many coffee/nipple licking breaks can you take?

It’s March 9th, and as my dear California friends tell it, “the flowers are in bloom”…for them. But not for my nipples.

I received an interesting message tonight; it appears the sender registered the StumbleUpon account for the sole purpose of sending it.  It contained 7 words:

Beware of a wolf in sheeps writing

I despise petty intrigue, dubious warnings, and thinly veiled threats.  This message tells me nothing.  It’s real function is not to warn but to intimidate, instill fear and paranoia, make me suspicious, distrustful, wary, and ultimately change the way I behave and who I am.

Fuck that.

If you have something to tell me, if you believe I am being manipulated or that I am in danger, don’t cloak-and-dagger me - spell it out, especially if it’s the latter.  If sending it anonymously makes it easier, then do so, but at least provide some detail or information that does more than send me on a "ghost" chase.  I can’t prepare to fight an ominous fairy tale metaphor.

The world is peppered with atrocious people full of malicious machinations.  Okay.  I accept that.  However, I refuse to live my life questioning the honesty, integrity, and basic common decency of those I love.  My friends are good men, honorable women.  If I give in to all the scary noises and feed the beast of fear you’d like to let loose on my doorstep, I lose the very people I rely on, my foundation, my backup.  If there’s a shred of truth to your portent of a cross-dressing wolf, this person isn’t one of mine.  Why would I turn on my friends? Who do you think I’ll go to for help when I expose him?  If I’m going into battle, give me more to go on, because I won’t back down and I sure as hell won’t be alone.

It’s 5:19 a.m. and I’ve done it again. Where does the night go?

As I was sorting through my life’s diminishing treasure trove, I had a flash of inspiration: make a “To Do” list. That I consider a “To Do” list in the realm of inspired thought is frightening, and an excellent example of what happens when you combine chronically poor sleep habits with hours of uninterrupted time to go through every object in your life, remember its origins, and assess its personal value (did I really buy the soundtrack to Pump Up the Volume?). Once I had this brilliant idea, I stopped what I was doing, grabbed a pen and looked around for something to write on, which I couldn’t find. My next flash of inspiration, assuming at some point I found paper, was the first item to put on my “To Do” list: 1. Find paper. What kind of writer has no paper?

Why didn’t I write my “To Do” list on my computer? Excellent question!

Things have been strange lately.

When I married, I intended to stay married, so I bought things I normally wouldn’t because being married felt like I could set my luggage down, unpack, hang curtains. Now I own more than I can carry by myself and I’ve spent the last week figuring out how to change that. Of course, this sort of thing comes along with the obligatory confidence shattering self-assessment and Pandora’s encyclopedia of unanswerable questions that nevertheless dog you with feelings of remorse, resentment, and fatalism.

And just when I think I’ve had more than I can handle, I find some odd memento from my past that makes me wonder when and exactly how many times I’ve been abducted by aliens, as that is the only acceptable explanation for why I found a book comprised solely of photographs of angry cats in my collection. I freely admit I cried when Michael Jackson’s hair caught on fire while filming the Pepsi commercial. I was 9-years-old at the time. The angry cat book happened well after puberty and the worst part is, once I found it, I sat and looked through the damn thing for 30 minutes. I don’t know if this is evidence of extraterrestrial life or that I’ve done stupid, embarrassing, and possibly painful things in the past and survived but, that damn cat book is definitely being donated to the library.

To Do:

1. Go to library
2. Find paper
3. Take a nap

by lily blake

I write, erase what I have written, write (it) again,
Nothing is (ever) said, recorded,  exposed, released,  relieved.

This I, that (should) walk(s), talk(s), houses (is house(d)), believes
 in feeling (carries hate, scatters words)
   wishes, dreams, creates, destroys;
 she (I)
would disappear (vanish)
 prays for an erasure (a philosophical death)

to devour what I (she) am (is)
 (but mostly) to kill what I am not.

Nothing is me in this light.

Here, the “I” (pretending I am somewhere/someone)

decorated in skin, wounds, pains  (common enough to tire of)
have handed over (given, out of nothing more than an exhaustion too unbearable to
   believe in keeping)
 all that could be me

(have no destiny, am not destined to be) anything “ after all, she’s dead because I would
       not give (save) her life.

 The word runs from me
  indifferent “to being what I am“ have been
(a) continuous surrender
  a painful sigh (a deep obliterating silence)
which, in our hour, speaks not, even to itself.

I believe I’m damned?
 Foolish questions lingering in the shadow of a self I have not become
(will not become) as there is nothing to be

in this light.

Vanity, youth and arrogance
Write in my place
 my unhappy palace

(a woman passing might look upon my life with envy)

And, even with her shadow near me, I know I go (am gone)
 from her, this self, all the others

trapped in poems I am too afraid to write.

So this is what I have.

This. 

(Insignificant, insufficient, unworthy of the eye that wanders over it)

Only my own,
 unburdening (disbelief)

crude (re)workings of the already written to conspire with

only me in this palace (this (non) home) 

of which my time is limited by my understanding

  of

this child
these small hands

Seeking out those places within me already lost

I wait on love.

There are a few miraculous times when life shakes me awake and I let whimsy direct my course. One of these precious pearls of memory was born on the streets of San Francisco.

The day was perfect California, the blue sky a patchwork of fat white clouds, drifting through air warm as a dryer-fresh blanket. The great Pacific, an all-powerful mistress to the windblown peninsula, gifted the city with her sea-scented breeze, soothing as it passed over with the gentleness of fingertips. A lonely occupation common to all city dwellers, I took a walk on my lunch break, my headphone-covered ears tuned to a woman’s lilting cadence masking the usually sharp metal sounds of the city. Cherry blossoms sparsely carpeted the pavement and each step I took felt light as if at any moment I could fly away. The feeling persisted block after block until this unnamable emotion overwhelmed me. I stopped walking and looked at the sky. With my face washed in sunlight, I lifted my arms, opened wide my palms, stretched out my fingers as if to test my feathers and, there in the middle of the sidewalk, began to whirl. It started slow, each step less hesitant than the previous, until the landscape around me blurred into a comet tail of uneven streaks. I was the center of color and light, the axis holding the universe together. A sadness I had been clinging to seemed to slip from my fingers and I felt free again, full of hope and grateful to be alive. Caught up as I was in my moment of joy, I almost ran into him.

We stopped and examined each other, this stranger and I, on our city street sidewalk. As dizziness abated, my vision cleared to reveal a tall man, his form defined by the sharp angular lines of his suit and the noose like knot of his perfect silk tie. He was carrying a briefcase; his pale slender fingers wrapped tightly around the handle appeared cold and lifeless as stone. I expected to see irritation on his face, maybe even contempt. Having regained my balance, I squared my shoulders and braced myself for a reprimand. Our eyes met and I returned his steady gaze. His eyes were warm, intelligent, pinched in the corners from smiling as he studied me, his expression a mask of charming confusion without any of the anticipated anger given his evident amusement. “What are you doing?” he asked without a hint of censoriousness. He sounded genuinely curious. “I’m whirling,” I replied, as if it were as obvious as if he asked why I was breathing. “Sometimes it just feels good to whirl.” He nodded sagely, as if he understood, though uncertain he agreed. I smiled at him like a foolish imp, and then looked away, aware of the noisy city surrounding us once again, as if it stopped just for that moment and was now signaling the end of our time together. He returned my smile and without another word went on his way.

His departure freed up the sidewalk and suddenly I felt bereft. I lifted my arms to recapture the delightful sensation of whirling myself into a giddy frenzy. About 10 paces from the point of our near collision, my woozy head demanded immediate whirling cessation, and I stumbled toward a chain link fence to brace myself while I regained my equilibrium. Facing away from my destination, my stranger appeared again, now a blurry apparition with a determined pace, each measured step taking him further away as he approached an intersection. My heartbeat’s pounding rhythm slowed and my vision cleared. His steps began to slow, his pace curiously hesitant. When he suddenly stopped at the corner, I assumed it was to push the crosswalk button but I was wrong. He bent over oddly, like a child imitating a teapot, and set his briefcase on the ground. Then abruptly, as if once he made his decision there was no going back, he straightened himself, lifted his arms high and expanded them like wings, turned his face toward the sun and began to whirl. It only lasted a few seconds, a perfect use of time. Magnificent. As suddenly as he began, he stopped, bent to pick up his briefcase without pausing to steady himself and stood up. I saw his chest expand with a deep inhale and he exhaled with a rich happy laugh. Shaking his head slightly, his posture as perfect as his suit, he began walking, turned the corner and vanished.

The gesture was humbling, beautiful in its human simplicity, a proffered reverence to life.

Seven years have passed and I still remember the color of his tie. When I feel myself closing off, going into deep hibernation, leave-me-alone mode, I think of the whirling man and remember what it took to have that experience in my life. My arms were open wide and I nearly whirled into him.

How to Cure Insomnia

Step I
Pack everything you own.

Step II
Carry everything you own down stairs (be sure you can see your feet), outside, down more stairs, then up wet, icy grass incline to a moving vehicle of your choice. Watch out for ice that looks like wet grass. As much as I love Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, there is no way to look cool as you fall or as stuff falls on you. Trust me on this.

Step III
Unload everything, carry into house and up more stairs. (See above re: feet and falling.)

Step IV
Unpack.

Step V
Prepare to do all of the above again in less than 3 weeks.

Oh… Did I forget to mention I’m moving twice? My transcontinental leap is the second move. I inadvertently angered the Gods of Moving and Give Me A Frickin’ Break, so my journey to the land of perpetual sunshine and barely detectable breast augmentation includes a pit stop. Not only am I exhausted from moving all my junk (and I don’t own much), the idea of doing it again makes me want to sleep until I’m in California. The only drawback to pulling a Sleeping Beauty is I’d miss the road trip and that is something I’m looking forward to. My last cross-country journey was in 2001 (surprisingly, it involved me moving somewhere).

Okay, yes, I am writing this at 2 a.m. but I plan on going to bed as soon as I click “Publish”. That’s at least 3 hours before I’d normally pass out. Insomnia CURED!

I wonder if delirium brought on by extreme exhaustion has any longterm negative effects…