- Posts tagged Poetry
- Explore Poetry on posterous
Impolite Houseguests
While the unruly visitors were in residence, my entries in my writer’s notebook took on a despondent tone: “I am one with the waterfall. I feel myself spilling over the bluff that is my life. The output continues when nothing comes to replenish the flow. I gasp for breath and, dehydrated, fall into jumbled dreams. I languish on bleak sheets, too tired to care. I feed those around me as I starve to death.”
I wondered if suicide was really senseless and dallied with the idea that maybe when the pain was so great, it wasn’t such a stretch. With these dark thoughts flitting through my mind, I studied a shimmering ice pellet hanging on the railing of the deck—caught by some invisible thread as it quivered at the mercy of wind-whipped patterns of chaos. It was odd to be thinking of something so momentous with about the same intensity as wondering when the ice crystal would let go. These subjects reverberated in me—death was simply on my mind—as I felt the rain wanting to come to end the dance of the pinprick of ice. I could feel it as the sky puckered its brow in petulant warning but the crystal danced unafraid, its frozen strength refusing to budge until it was ready to leave. I knew that ice was fragile when temperatures rose but for the moment, it was a symbol of strength—a trait I felt I lacked so desperately. The fact that it could perish so organically without a shred of remorse made me wonder why we humans were so terrified of letting life go.
As I journaled about how the idea of death and the act of dying were not one in the same, it occurred to me that if I’d had a stable emotional life to underpin me, it would have been impossible for me to be unhappy in a home that surrounded me with windows on the world, lenses from which the pink fresh light of a brand new day replaced starlit nights filled with trembling pinpoints of illumination as far as the eye could see. I was fascinated by how the atmosphere changed throughout the hours of any given day, the sun marking the sky as her own. She took, greedily, the tangerine tranquility of morning and bathed herself in it until she knew the world was fully awake, that each of her subjects would be awaiting her. Only then would she burst above the mountain’s silhouette, leaving no doubt that she had arrived. She was vanity personified.
I was feeling her need for attention, her intensity blinding me as it reflected from the white page, as I journaled about a friend I had dined with the night before. She was a resident alien and her “take” on our inaugurations in America fascinated me. She hailed from Holland and said that a historian from her country deemed our celebrations of an incoming president as somewhere between a coup d’etat and a coronation! She had blocked off the entire day to watch President Bush being sworn in because she said it was important to honor the process (though she did admit she wouldn’t have tuned in if Dukakis had won!).
I was ashamed of myself for feeling so frustrated with politics that I had no stomach for a day of ceremonies and I realized she proved that Americans, myself included, often take liberties for granted. It was the posturing in the political realm that made me feel as if the arguments being waged amounted to a discourse as inane as whether the world is round or flat. When would the rhetoric advance beyond whether we would fall off if we wandered too close to the edge? I wondered, feeling as if the ineptness of it all was a gigantic waste of time.
Equally frustrating was my attendance at my first Vestry retreat for the church. The politics were just as insidious and I felt the insecurity of being a novice weighing on me the entire time I was there. I returned home to a rainy Monday, spent from the activities that found me giving my all without receiving anything in return. Worse than my outpouring of myself was the fact that our priest and Jim berated me for admitting that I had been nervous. “It was supposed to have been a relaxed time,” Padre said. Jim chimed in, “She doesn’t work that way; always tense…”
I suppose I was perpetually anxious but I’d never seen it as a negative thing. I simply saw it as my desire to give every moment the quality it deserved. Knowing that this was a flaw in Jim’s eyes sent me into a dejected place. I was so ready to chase the light—revel in vanity like the sun—but it seemed my life was determined to keep me wallowing in shadows, as the snippets of poetry I managed to record illustrated:
The pain goes deep
The storm grows wild
and darkest night swallows
my evolution
Stars collide in a skyless void
our world lacks
true solution.
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
Otra Ves
Our move to the “mountain house,” as we had dubbed it, was in full swing. I was surrounded by boxes and awaiting the arrival of the moving van. I would be so happy to get the chaos behind me and snuggle into the new surroundings as I put life back together piece by little piece. And yet there was a bitter-sweetness to it all: it was my last morning at lakeshore and Mother Nature had sent a fogbank to wrap me in cotton wool as I sipped my hot mug of coffee standing on the deck that now had none of the homey touches it once held. The sun, dulled by the moisture’s mantle, was rising ecru, its reflection dimmed on water bathed in wispy steam as the lake’s warm body fended off the chill of the air.
I was pouring as much creative energy into my writer’s notebook as I could snatch from my busy days—knowing my nesting into a new home would make it difficult for me to settle into any intensity of writing beyond what felt like water in the desert—a meager smattering of liquid on a vast expanse of parched sand. The mornings were becoming quite chilly, the blooms on the flowers shivering as the cool breath of changing seasons touched their softness. A cloud, flat and gray—looking cold as marble—obscured the sunrise as it floated a delicate orange through powdery blue with the day’s progression. The phenomenon of a mood only a morning could hold was fleeing right before my eyes as I watched in wonder.
As the light changed, I wondered how I had managed to build a relationship with someone whose thinking was so opposite my own. Jim and I had watched the movie Barfly the night before and as I was admiring the acting, he said he saw no point to the film; that it was ridiculous. I disagreed but knew better than to challenge his stance. As far as I was concerned, in one line, the plot made its point when Mickey Rourke’s character, Henry Chinaski, remarked, “No writer can actually write in peace.” The comment seemed off-handed, of course, but that was just good screenwriting and directing. The line exploded in my head, haunted me as I slept, and stayed with me to jangle my nerves as I watched the orange sky spark into a burst of light. Could this possibly be true? I wondered. I craved peace, craved a settled life in which I could breathe and write. Would it be more of the same procrastination if I did somehow have the calm I believed would support a writing life? This thought unnerved me because it was the idea upon which I was pinning all of my hopes and dreams.
“My writer self finds only tiny cracks in which to sink her fingers as she climbs the shear rocky wall of this bustling life,” I wrote later that day. “She squeezes me down to try and seep through, just as a footfall on the crack blocks her light. She muses her next move only to crash into a ravine—bruised, battered and silenced.” This frustrated piece of me held sway—pouting through the throngs of life’s activities that included a mix of formal gatherings and private parties, vestry meetings, and a brutal exercise class I was taking to try to punish myself back into shape. She grew even more silent during a ski trip to Steamboat even when I spent a gloriously quiet day propped in front of the fire while the others were off skiing. I couldn’t eek a single word from her, and she and I seemed to be officially polarized in a nasty standoff. I just kept making notes, even inane ones, hoping I could tease her out but she was a stubborn conscientious resister.
As I settled into the mountain house, there was plenty to record. I was in awe of the natural mood of the landscape surrounding the home stepping down the cliff. The fog was different at the higher altitude—like sheets of milky white tissue paper that hung behind the trees, coming and going as it desired. The lake in the distance below blazed like a diamond when the sun burned the cottony moisture away. It was colder “on high” as well, and the wood slats on the deck sparkled with dainty flecks of ice. Frozen veins of it had carved lifelines into the glass-topped table, the pattern sophisticated and intricately elemental.
Though I was reveling in the newness of these surroundings, it took the desert surrounding Santa Fe, New Mexico, where we went to shop for fine art for the house, to bring my writerly voice back. As we rose above the clouds on our way there, we broke into sunshine illuminating a tightly knit cloud-front that could have been a lumpy sweater made of knotty virgin wool. It was unrefined and rough, but plush. I wanted to run my fingers over it and fondle the softness, even if it would have disintegrated at my touch and wisped through my outspread fingers like the vaporous matter it was rather than the wooly coat of a sheep that I imagined it to be.
“Snow should look like this as it falls thick and heavy, clumping here and there,” I wrote, “but Mother Nature retains the control when the wet flakes fall, orchestrating the blanket to be flat and uniform, each flake joining hands with another to bond in a perfect union. Yes, control is everywhere.” Why couldn’t my own humanly bonds hold this level of perfection? I wondered. I suppose the answer should have been obvious—I was not even remotely in control of my situation, but then who ever is?
We drove to Taos while we were in Santa Fe, through a vastness that illustrated how ethereal rain could devour the much weightier earth, chewing great rivulets wherever it willed. The sun glowed crimson on the rocks, the sheen of the dirt seemingly aglow from within. Snow rested in rocky furrows worn by time and weather, and I thought about how this was certainly another world—stranger than any I’d ever known. I wrote a poem entitled “Otra Ves” on the plane on the way home, a few good moments entering into the mix but not much of it remaining worthy of a mention. The point of the poem is missed opportunity, particularly where dealing with Native Americans was concerned. In hindsight, I see now that life was preparing me to deal with this issue head-on. “Otra Ves” ends: “We wouldn’t force custom to sleep/ We’d teach the wilderness to be wild/ We’d cling to our land like a child to its mother.”
I came away from the desert of New Mexico feeling awed by the light and the landscape, questioning, Where else in the world would cacti bloom from heaps of pure white snow? And with that paradox looming, I turned away from a time of materialistic gluttony to prepare to head back to Costa Rica. What might the tens of thousands of dollars we had spent on art have done for the people we were “serving” there?
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
I had great fun in being featured on the Building Moxie site yesterday. To see a few poems that I continued to work over the years (I didn’t abandon many, only the ones like “Otra Ves” that could never find their centers) click here.
A #LetsBlogOff Redux on The Road to Promise
It's time for another #LetsBlogOff brouhaha and the subject we are to address today is "what makes a good story?" I think that identifying what constitutes a satisfying read for each of us is such a subjective thing that it's impossible to define the art-form with sweeping statements. I attempt to practice the craft here weekly (usually for #WriterWednesday) as I reveal bite-sized pieces of this memoir I'm determined to write and publish in book-form. Today I celebrate my 63rd post with this #TravelTuesday trip to the Appalachian Mountains near where I grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I received a beautiful gift recently when Rufus, a #LetsBlogOff crony, featured my storytelling efforts on Dog Walk Blog. I'd be interested to know if you agree with his premise that what I am doing is indeed storytelling. Even if you disagree, I'd like to know. To see my fellow blog-off'ers' contributions, click here: you will be well rewarded! And now, without further adieu, this week's chunk of my journey along The Road to Promise:
Berating the Wind
One night, I drank in the beauty of the full moon’s reflection as it cut a wide golden-silver swath across the lake, zigzagging its way from the other bank to ours. It seemed as if the radiant disk was determined to take a shimmering journey—casting off in the darkness as it searched for a mirror in which to view its visage. I reveled in the fact that from my spot on the deck, the lake seemed to have become the moon’s rippling partner in its quest.
The trip to the mountains had made a tremendous impression on me—it was one of the most spectacular days I’d had in quite some time. The pleasure arose from a combination of things: my good mood, the gorgeous weather, the music filtering through my headphones and my heightened awareness of the things around me. I could remember everything so vividly, especially how the sun had drenched each flash of my memory. It was my companion that day, illuminating things so unforgettably that my drive along the twisting and turning highways of the southern swath of the Appalachians seemed hyper-brilliant.
I’d perched for hours on a high bald and from my position on a blanket spread on the dandelion-strewn grass, I read several quotes by other writers about their families, one of which gave me pause for the poet’s use of the word “isolation.” Yvonne Sapia had written, “Aristotle told us that tragedy begins with the family. Isolation begins with the family. I write about the situations that separate us even though we are one. I also like to write about change, self-discovery and recognition of things. Finding a sense of place. Finding balance.” I thought about Aristotle’s premise as I stared at the statuesque stone tower rising above the hilltop, looking taller than a skyscraper from my prone vantage point. Because the ground wandered down a slope, it appeared as if the monument’s shadow had gone and fallen unceremoniously off the hill.
The dandelions, which glowed iridescent yellow when the sun struck them, bobbed their heads as the wind whipped up the sloping ground. It was as if they were nodding in agreement that they were all the prettier for their luminosity. A bird caught my eye, flying in circles above me as it put on a show—all powder-dusted indigo and white-tipped arcing wings. I sat, completely motionless, and forced myself to stare into more blue than any human could possibly absorb even as my vision swirled and my eyes begged me to close them so they could rest from the sky's intensity. Jim had gone off on his hike, leaving me to read and write. The only other person in sight was a boy who was lazing on the grass halfway down the ridge. Surrounded by the thin air, I thought about how Siler’s Bald seemed very close to the top of the world. The sound of the bees buzzing was so strong in the silence that it was as if they’d been primed with jet fuel and had been given extra power.
The hardwood trees had not yet sprouted green and the last withered leaves of winter clinging to their limbs were chattering along with the sere grasses skirting the edges of the field as the wind buffeted any exposed expanse it could find. Looking off into the distance where the mountains fell off to meet the valleys, it seemed certain that were I to put a finger on the seam between them, I would find a pulsing, a velvety green vein more alive than the one that snaked beneath the pale skin on the inside of my wrist.
I was writing in my writer’s notebook about how frightened I had been at one point on the trail when I’d had to traverse a skinny path with steep drop-offs on either side of my feet. I had steeled myself for the ten steps in front of me and had kept my eyes focused straight ahead. It was at that moment that we walked through a cloud. I looked to the sky as it was drifting around me and it seemed to be flying at a precarious speed into the clear air beyond my grasp. I was giddy as it rushed by, and I wondered if birds felt this same excitement when they were skimming along through a puff of fluffy moisture. I’d never thought of clouds as fun but having penetrated one, I’d found an altogether new appreciation for the whimsical side of what amounted to atmospheric vapor.
The sun was hot in the little clearing where I’d spread my blanket and I was contemplating moving closer to a scrim of gnarled and twisted trees weathered by an excessive exposure to sun, wind and rain when a girl came traipsing from the shade they created. She was on her way to Clingman’s Dome and she sat to rest for a bit, telling me that the trees would not be greening because a beetle was killing them. A blight had taken out all the Chestnut trees several years earlier, she said, lamenting that there were fewer canopies left during the summer months that ever before because the trees were garnering so many enemies.
I was anxious to get back to my reverie so when she heaved herself from the ground, the twisted branch with its splintered ends she was using for a walking stick making an indention in the moist earth, I smiled politely and returned to my sky-gazing. The only thing marring the beautiful day was the incessant intrusion of bugs as they repeatedly made Kamikaze dives at me. It was as if every insect in the world had decided to spend the day sightseeing just as I was. I wondered if there was a published itinerary somewhere entitled “Best Bug Spots of 1988” with a ping on a map that let them know this was the place to be on this particular afternoon. Maybe it was written in the star patterns at night and we humans weren’t privy to the language that would allow us to decode the map.
On the drive in, we’d seen first a bear and then a fox, each of them going about whatever it is that wild animals do, which due to their proximity to the road likely meant avoiding getting run down by automobiles. I was hoping nothing that intimidating would show up while I was lazing in the sun contemplating the razorback ridges with all their conifers gone. I was heartened that at least the trees were thinning only on the peaks, proof being that I’d spent almost an hour walking through the hollows on our way to the top of the ridge, feeling swallowed by great clusters of pines and firs that were breathing a chilly muskiness down my neck. I’d shivered more than once at the dense life-force they exuded, the experience reminding me that I’d always favored tree-lined streets to open expanses because they seemed so much friendlier with their protection from full-on sunlight. “If all the trees disappeared, the world would become disagreeable indeed,” I wrote in my writer’s notebook from my perch on high. “When will we humans begin to take this seriously?”
Seeking a better vantage point, I had moved to a large, flat stone, which seemed so ample it could have been a throne. As the sun moved away from the bald with the waning of the afternoon, I noticed that the seat, which was cupping me so generously, grew cooler and damper than when it had been warmed by stronger light. As I studied the scenery splaying before me, it seemed clear to me that when the mountains were formed in this part of the world, it was as if they had awakened to their new surroundings, yawned and stretched their arms to find their rippling muscles forever frozen in a sinewy display.
Because there were absolutely no “people” noises—such an oddity in the dizzy rush of a world I normally experienced—I’d begun to notice natural sounds, such as the groans emitted by the nearby trees. One in particular was decidedly fussy as the wind had its way with its contorted form. It was the saddest of them by far, one side of its leafless profile covered in thick green lichen. I wondered in that moment what the forest must think of the noises we humans make. I mimicked the tree’s sound as closely as I could and was surprised to hear an immediate echo. I said the word “tree” aloud in the best tree-like voice I could muster but it said nothing back. Hoping that it would repeat my word was too much to ask, of course, because it would certainly have wanted to wait until I’d left this patch of near-wilderness before it spoke of the name I’d given it to its gnarled cronies.
Just as I noticed that my hiking boot was perilously close to injuring a clump of tiny purple bluettes extending their faces from beneath the stone’s base, Jim ambled up—satisfied that he’d conquered another strip of the Appalachian Trail, or, as he likely saw it, had put another notch in his hiking belt. We headed back to the car and as I was about to turn a bend at the crest of a nearby ridge, I was startled when I heard the unmistakable sound of applause. I rounded the corner to see a bank of rhododendron bushes slapping their thick leaves. Suddenly I was flanked by two steep walls of them, and the sound they were making was delicious. We exited the ravine just as a cloud lifted its thumbprint from the mountain and I noticed there was a pattern to the twitching the wind inspired.
As I waited for Jim to unlock the car doors, I celebrated the beauty in which I’d been steeped that day, thinking of Henry David Thoreau’s statement, “I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.” I had certainly felt magnetism during my time on Siler’s Bald and it was my turn to applaud nature for entertaining me so thoroughly that day.
During our drive home, I revisited Sapia’s musings, especially her desire to explore “situations that separate us, even though we are one”—there was a time when we were one with nature; a time when “finding a sense of place” would not have been an articulated issue because we were “of a place” simply by being in (and staying in) that place. My life had become such a frantic ebb and flow of movement that I had no idea where “my place” would have been. Isn’t that what makes me feel so off balance so much of the time? I wondered. We were two months away from beginning a new project in Costa Rica and I thought of the prospect with trepidation. How in the world would I find my balance with that challenge looming before me? I asked myself silently, not daring to voice my consternation aloud as the light leaked from the evening sky and we slid silently westward toward home.
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
On Another's Sorrow
I had brought the woman who took my tennis shoes and scrubbed them clean a new pair of bright pink ones. She came rushing out of her concrete-block house in the pouring rain with those same tennis shoes on—no strings in them, the tongue flopping about and the crushed heel that she had flattened with her foot clip-clopping in the mud. The look of gratitude I received from her obliterated the protection I’d subconsciously put in place and once again I stood on Costa Rican soil choking back tears, speechless in the face of such gratitude for so little.
The episode dogged me as I tried to settle in to the normal mission-field routine, which wasn’t exactly normal thanks to a strange soundtrack of military helicopters that buzzed above Limón so incessantly it felt as if we were under a state of siege. Gus explained that heavy rains had caused the mountain to gush water and the Sixola River had swept away about 300 people near the Panamanian border. The choppers were looking for survivors, and I wondered if John the Baptist was among the unfortunate victims.
Gus and I were sitting on the porch of the center listening to the blades pulsate in the air, which was once again pregnant with moisture, when he spotted a girl with ebony legs sashaying down the street. What caught his attention were her shoes—she wore a pair of white pumps that achieved a chiaroscuro effect against her dark skin. The visual trickery made it seem as if there was a pair of glowing heels walking down the street completely detached from human control!
She was one of the teens I had seen hanging around the streets in groups. I wondered what they dreamed about surrounded by peeling paint and rusting tin as they were. I wondered how their world would be shaped by the television that leaked into their living rooms aided by the antennas that left their sinewy imprints against the sky. They were all so enamored with the snippets of what Americans considered the “real world.” If they only knew that their world was so much more authentic than what they saw on the scraps of television programming that made it into their crackling, black-and-white stream of programming.
Gus’ giggling grew quiet and I heard rather than saw him lean back in his rickety chair that squeaked each time he shifted his short frame from my spot on the cement porch against the brick wall. I was trying to absorb as much heat as I could from the sun-warmed wall as I watched a skinny palm swaying, its graceful neck bent like a swan’s from the wind’s agitation. Suddenly my reverie was halted by that “real world” when someone in the house across the street turned up the volume on the Miami Sound Machine and Gloria Estefan’s husky voice oozed into the sultry air as she sang the opening lines of “Prisoner of Love.” “I’ve gotta run away from you/ if I wanna save myself,” she sang, the drums pulsing in the rhythmic beat that had made her so popular.
Given the lyrics, this was definitely one of the most ironic moments I’d experienced in the mission field, but I had little time to think about it because the sky scowled yet again and spat its liquid to earth. I scurried for cover like an insect fearing being washed away, watching from inside our room as the giant palms billowed, the wind whisking through their fronds like it would have the serrated banners tied to the fences that ringed used car lots.
The street was a sea of color—bright umbrellas floating along in an endless array of hues and patterns. There were those who had no protection from the deluge. As they slogged along, water dripping from their hair into their eyes, they swiped good-naturedly at the liquid, obviously welcoming the torrent even though they were soaked to the bone because it trumped the afternoon heat they would normally have been navigating through. Mothers held their babies to their chests, many of them wrapped in towels. The ones who had umbrellas shielded their children, letting the water drip down their backs as they struggled to hold bags, babies and umbrellas all at once.
When a stronger wave of water was urged along by a driving wind, everyone simultaneoulys tried to duck under anything they could find, including the makeshift metal canopies of stores and restaurants—the lucky ones snagging a tiny patch of shelter. Their eyes showed no impatience, only resignation; and many of them struck up conversations with others who shared the spontaneous protection; laughing and smiling as they saw the moment for what it was—a chance to visit or simply to do nothing.
I spotted Eggland Smith, the bell-ringer at St. Mark’s, who reminded me of an organ grinder’s monkey—his jerky movements always exacerbated in perpetual motion. He was talking to an elderly woman who had inadvertently become his captive audience as curtains of water pouring from the corrugated tin framed them. He was jumping from one spot to another, illustrating his words with flailing arms—a dicey situation given the tiny dry spot they occupied. I’d never seen such a persistently mobile and expressive face as his, and the fact that not even a dousing in a rainstorm could dampen his spirits was no surprise.
I retreated to the bed, away from the lightening flashing alarmingly bright through the window—the sizzle of its electricity setting my teeth on edge. The book on poetic forms had inspired me to delve into what I thought of as my poetic ancestry, though I realized that was quite arrogant of me given my fledgling status and the mess my poetry was in. I’d picked up William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience,” and decided it would be a good companion to weather the storm. Much to my surprise, my dilemma was being reflected back to me even from the mid 18th-century:
On Another’s Sorrow
Can I see another’s woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another’s grief,
And not seek for kind relief?
Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrow’s share?
…
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
I featured this post in my #LetsBlogOff entry; to check in with other tweeps who will be posting, click here. It will be worth the effort!
Time Trusts No One
Knowing my stubbornness, we were in for a lengthy campaign as he said he could admit when he’d made a mistake. The meaning, of course, was that I was the mistake! On the night we celebrated his birthday, we dined across from each other staring at different points across the room with feigned interest in nothing, eating in complete silence. This was likely to go on until I began to be the “me” he wanted me to be, accepting that the work for the church would continue to be a part of my life for the foreseeable future. It wasn’t just the mission field that was ravaging me; my hectic “other” life left me no time to make sense of anything and I was beginning to doubt my sanity. I truly wanted to “get it all together” as he was asking me to do, but what did that even mean? And why did I become more ineffective the harder I tried? It was as if everything I did, including therapy, only left me more befuddled.
It struck me that night at dinner that I had practiced this scene all my life; that learning the quiet game when I was a child had come in so handy in my relationship. The barrier of silence that took over felt as deafening as angry screams but somehow more sinister. At least a scream was something, a tear was something, but silence killed every chance of making things right. It was my fault, of course—that’s what I’d been taught and that’s what I was being told. I wasn’t measuring up as a wife; I was making too many mistakes. Though I’d barely been reading and writing, I had managed to submit a poem to Byline, hoping to be able to break the barrier that had prevented me from being a published writer. Eyeing the calendar each morning as I journaled, I counted down the days until we returned to Limon—eight, seven, six, five…
I had found a book by the poet Yvonne Sapia entitled Valentino’s Hair. My goal was to read a poem every time I had a few minutes to spare. My favorite was about her father, who had been a New York barber and had once cut Rudolph Valentino’s hair—a story he loved to repeat anytime anyone would listen. I thought it was terrific that she’d chosen to commemorate one of his proudest moments in a soulfully crafted poem. The epigraph reads “1960—my father cannot help but tell,” and the first stanza sets the scene:
It’s been almost thirty-five years.
I can scarcely believe it, niña.
Time trusts no one and so it disappears
before us like the smoke from my cigarette.
In 1925 I was young. I was a part
of a world eating at its own edges
without being satisfied.
The Roaring Twenties didn’t roar.
They swelled with passions.
They danced, and I danced with them.
My world was eating at its own edges without bringing itself or me the least bit of satisfaction and I was trying to behave, trying to acquiesce so that I could manage what was being asked of me. In order to do so I picked up the habit of figuratively wiring my jaws shut but the binding simply wouldn’t hold. When would I learn to go with the flow? I wondered. Was it even in me to do so? Would I ever dance again and feel the abandon of the act rather than always feeling guilt or remorse?
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
