Sitting 'Round

It's so good to sit 'round with people who just get you. Even if you've not known them that long, sometimes, it just makes sense. It's comfortable, familiar. Thank goodness for being in the family.

You see...

You see, throughout the day different events capture my imagination and a little switch in my brain goes 'Ooh, that would make a good blog post.' Funny, witty, heart-wrenching, evoking, dull: it all has potential. And then the day carries on, as it does. There is work to be done, a train to catch, dinner to make or dishes to do. By the time I sit down to write as part of my daily committment to my writing practice my eyelids are already heavy, my wrist sore, and my lover falling asleep. I am not complaining. This is my life. In this moment. Beautiful things happening all the time. Things that fill out the shape and provide contrast.

This morning as I was awoken by my lover to say goodbye. She said to me: 'Remember: there will be only one 11th of February 2010.'

A...

A girl...
A girl walks in...
A girl walks into a bar...
A girl walks into a bar, and sits down...

So begins the storyteller...

One little sentence...

'Oh, I found your Valentine's gift tonight...'

Makes a girl giddy...

Mt. Shasta....

I miss my mountain. I know it's a half hour's drive away from my hometown. I know it's not always visible from every vista of Yreka. And yet, Mt. Shasta has always signaled home. Driving around those bends in the canyon where the mountain just peeks through after the long drive through the Northern California valley and hot hot Redding. Its towering facade from the actual city itself nestled at its base, the snow ever glowing in the moonlight. Over fields and football stadiums, Mt. Shasta is a symbol of home. I about fell out of my computer chair tonight when I saw it online in the most random of places. There were tears in my eyes.

List of Poetry

The Times published an article/interview on Carol Ann Duffy today in which she said that all poetry is love poetry and she is infinitely interested in love because desire and possibility are everywhere. Part of my being was called forth as my breath caught: 'Why am I not writing more poetry?'

I entered a poetry contest last month with about my love and the Natural History Museum. I didn't win, and I didn't expect I would. It was a Queer London contest, and the title of my piece was 'Whale Poems.' Still, how do I begin to write again, to write again like I know what I am doing across the page. Because I do.

For Saturday - Poem a Day

For Christmas, my mom bought both of us a book we could read simultaenously, transtlatically: Poem a Day. I thought it was a brilliant idea; she thought it was kinda cheesy. As New Year's things go, I did alright for the first few weeks of January, but found my bookmark somewhere around January 21st last night when I opened it up again. As a I read from January 21st onwards, these are the things I learned:

• not all poetry before 1900 is terrible
• Keats was pretty cool
• Robert Burns kicked ass
  
• and part of me really wants 'My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose' read at my wedding.
  

For Friday - Erika Meitner

From 'Elegy'

...I was at the Museum
of Natural History today--

dinosaur bones set carefully, dioramas
of Neanderthals in cases reenacting hunts, and an exhibit

on body art entitled "Marks
of Identity" this is what I learned:

that in the afterlife, where all things are reversed,
dark tattoos shine brightly

to illuminate a path
for the dead. I learned

that women shamans
painted their bodies

with vicious snakes and jaguars
to protect them in journeys

to the spirit world. I learned
that the female body

must be marked
before it can serve

as a vehicle for the spirit.