Here, Forward (Sarah)

I want to thank you all for the community and encouragement to write and connect and share these last few months. I don't know that I would have ever written the following poems without this group. Here are some pictures of the program from last night's concert and the final versions of the poems. 

Here, Forward

Skies

Through the mesh of the screen

On that lumpy mattress

On the roof

Trying to hold on to that view 

Those fires

Too many to count

Impossible to keep.

It was most beautiful at night.

Jump

So we jump. 

We go again. 

Take a step. 

Gingerly but not carefully. 

There’s nothing ginger about ginger. 

It zings. 

It sings. 

It’s alive. 

Jump.

We hope 

Our ankles are strong 

When we touch the ground.  

Knots

The knots are tricky in this body,

Fragile like that necklace with the maple leaf. 

“Are you Canadian?” 

“I just like leaves.” 

It broke but I saved it. 

I moved it again and again. 

It’s here with me now, 

Broken still. 

These knots are sore. 

They’re in my back and in my shins and creeping across these knuckles. 

I save them. I salve them. 

I loathe them and I hoard them. 

They hold me up

And give me shape. 

Ordering

It’s not about the order. 

It’s not a noun. 

A verb. It’s active and physical. 

Hard labor for the mind. 

At first it’s about who to tell and when. 

But then it’s inside and outside and everywhere.  

It’s boxes and tickets and pet visas and quarantines and views and birds and winds.

Selves and Shadows

I look out my window and see the flash of yellow birds. 

We whistle, we sing to each other.  

They think I’m also a bird

I think. 

But, surely, they know 

I’m just a person. 

My whistle becomes weak. 

The sureness that I’m real starts to fade. 

I’m a person. 

I’m a girl. 

I’m solid. 

But my bones are hollow and my skin grows feathers. 

I fight the currents. 

I float. 

I alight.

I sing. 

What will the song sound like? 

Will I trick them with this whistle again? 

Make them see I’m a bird? 

Lists

I have these lists in my head that keep everything straight, sharp, ready.

But they’re not very accurate. 

Especially when they rely on this memory, a broken cup.  

The ceramic has ridges and nubs that soothe my fingers and lips. 

It survived the flight home but not the hostility of our sink. 

It’s only cracked, barely chipped,

But the wine seeps out 

and stains 

and strains to remember the shape.

Routines/Rhythms

Routine is sedentary; routine is stagnant. Routine grows algae. 

Rhythm creates; rhythm enchants. Rhythm flows molten glass.

A volcano

Lava

Life

Movement.

This sounds like something beautiful is happening, 

But it is frightening

It is scary

Moving

Choosing

Leaving

Running

One foot before the next. 

Routines become life. 

Lives become routine. 

It’s hard to trust the new rhythm will come. 

Elevators

Wongs

Wrongs

Walks

Crashes

The little things we forgot we left behind.

Those earrings, that blanket, the painted bowl,

Remembered and lost anew. 

What happened to those pages? 

What parts of our skin are left in this place? 

The hairs, the threads from sweaters and socks. 

Pulled too hard. 

Unraveled. 

Will the birds use them in their nests? 

Will the orioles stash them in the trees? 

That kingfisher, the mynah outside the window, will they remember me?

An email to Mark (by Sarah)

Mark asked me what I've been reading lately that jazzes me up! Here's my response...

Hi Mark, 

Good to hear from you. Sorry for being so quiet these last weeks. Thank you for this Thought for the Day and for the question. I might be giving you more than you bargained for, but your question has been fun to think about throughout this long-ish day.  

This idea of courage has been on my mind a lot lately. I read a book called Deep River, by Karl Marlantes, and learned about a concept from the Finnish called sisu and it has to do with determination and courage. Throughout the book various members of a Finnish family call upon their sisu when necessary. They say things like, "it is the time for sisu" or "now is not the time for sisu." I love it.  

A couple of quotes from Deep River:

"There are three good-enoughs in basket weaving. The first is that your basket does the job it was made for. ... The second is that your basket will hold water for a year. ... The third is when you can make a basket without worrying about whether it is good enough. The third one is hardest." (473)

"'When we face hard or scary things, what do we do?'

Eleanor said nothing. 

'What do we do?' Alma insisted.

'Remember our sisu,' she said without looking at her. 

Alma waited for Eleanor to do what needed to be done." (594)

Something else: 
I haven't read any of Dr. Edith Eger's books, The Choice or The Gift, but I heard her say the following on a podcast the other day and it has been ringing throughout my body this last week. I also shared it with a 13-year-old student going through a tough time and am hoping she remembers this in the years to come. "The opposite of depression is expression. What comes out of our body doesn't make us ill. What stays in there does."

Another thing: 

In a book translated from the Japanese called Spark, by Naoki Matayoshi, comes this passage. It is just after one character interrupted someone playing a drum in a park and ended up sort of conducting his playing. 

"That then led Kamiya to start philosophizing: 'The essential thing, Tokunaga, is to disrupt things. Disrupt the colourful, beautiful world, and another unreal, more awesomely beautiful world will appear all on its own. That dude in the park had a radical instrument, but he wasn't doing anything with it. An instrument like that has to be taken seriously. There's no beauty in a world where it isn't. I dunno how he got that instrument, but somehow he did, so now he owes it to the world to play the hell out of it. You can't just go through the motions - it has to be done with total heart.' And then he sipped his very expensive coffee." (36)

And one more thing... 

I was completely jazzed reading this passage from Macbeth today with a few students in our witchiest of witchy voices. It was silly and dark and fun.

"Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,

Witches' mummy, mawa and gulf

Of the ravined salt-sea shark, 

Root of hemlock, digged i'th'dark;

Liver of blaspheming Jew, 

Gall of goat, and slips of yew, 

Slivered in the moon's eclipse;

Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips, 

Finger of birth-strangled babe, 

Ditch-delivered by a drab,

Make the gruel thick and slab. 

Add thereto a tiger's chawdron

For th'ingredience of our cauldron." (4.1.22-34)

I am looking forward to Sunday if anyone is still available to meet. I also (thankfully!) have the next two Thursdays off for term break, so if people are planning to meet on Wednesday nights, I'll be around then too. And in other news, my poems are being recited with Brian's music this coming Saturday at a recital for about 50 people. It's a freeing feeling!

Thank you. 

Take care and talk soon,

Sarah

The best author’s note I’ve come across [Katrina]

 By nature, a storyteller is a plagiarist. Everything one comes across—each incident, book, novel, life episode, story, person, news clip—is a coffee bean that will be crushed, ground up, mixed with a touch of cardamom, sometimes a tiny pinch of salt, boiled thrice with sugar, and served as a piping-hot tale.

From The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine...not the novel itself. Just- “just”- the author’s note/acknowledgements.

F

Goodreads

 Thank you, classmates, for reminding me about Goodreads as a helpful way to catalog the books I've read and those I hope to read.  I just updated my account with what I could remember that I've read over the past few years.  I'd love to connect with any of you who are on the platform and could take the time to search my name and establish a connection.  

Hope you all have a 2021 rich with good books!

A Great Fire [Justin]

I'm reading a biography of Thomas Edison by Edmund Morris. 

On December 9th, 1914, a great fire engulfed thirteen buildings across more than half the complex of Edison, Inc. I found it very interesting how Thomas Edison reacted, especially given our closing of 2020 and entrance into 2021.

He joined the crowd of townspeople watching and said, "'Get Mother and her friends over here,' he said to Charles[his son]. 'They'll never see a fire like this again.'"

Later, near the end of the flames, he said, "Yes, Maxwell, a big fortune has gone up in flames tonight, but isn't it a beautiful sight?"

After learning insurance would cover less than a third of the damages, he "radiated energy and excitement as he rose to the challenge of full recovery in the new year. 'I am sixty-seven....I've been through a lot of things like this. It protects a man from being afflicted with ennui.'"

From the Book I'm Rereading [by Mark]

 

Word of the Day: Apokatastasis

Allen Ginsberg: …The conditions of revolution in late twentieth century are conditions unforeseen by any other civilization. We are going to the moon, we have drugs that go to the moon inside, we’ve recovered the archaic knowledges of the Australian aborigines, most primitive societies are available to us if we take the effort, many different forms of magic warfare or peacefare are available, apocalypse, classical Armageddon, destruction of the planet, millennium, all this is a possibility. So it’s now unlike it’s ever been in history, this should mellow everybody out and make it possible for everybody to work together, to create a revolution that has no enemies, a revolution by apokatastasis.

Interviewer: What do you mean exactly?

Questionnaire by Marcel Proust [via Mark]

 

• What do you consider your greatest achievement?
• What is your idea of perfect happiness?
• What is your current state of mind?
• What is your favorite occupation?
• What is your most treasured possession?
• What or who is the greatest love of your life?
• What is your favorite journey?
• What is your most marked characteristic?
• When and where were you the happiest?
• What is it that you most dislike?
• What is your greatest fear?
• What is your greatest extravagance?
• Which living person do you most despise?
• What is your greatest regret?
• Which talent would you most like to have?
• Where would you like to live?
• What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
• What is the quality you most like in a man?
• What is the quality you most like in a woman?
• What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
• What is the trait you most deplore in others?
• What do you most value in your friends?
• Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
• Whose are your heroes in real life?
• Which living person do you most admire?
• What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
• On what occasions do you lie?
• Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
• If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
• What are your favorite names?
• How would you like to die?
• If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
• What is your motto?