On the last day of national poetry month you're hearing from me. There are poets I wanted to introduce to you, poems I wanted to send out into the ether so that you too might taste their words on your tongue. They are delicious. So delicious, in fact, that I'll post them another time, in May or June or July. When spring has settled deeper into my bones. I'm fine. The funk has marinated a while and is soon to pass. Nothing to worry about. These are days when I think, and it's a good deep thinking way of being. I don't mind.
One of those poets I want to share is Stephen Dunn. He is amazing and lovely. He writes poetry that is the color of bruises.
But for now:
Thinking About Stephen Dunn
and tattered
mute angels no one has called upon in years
-Stephen Dunn, Landscape at the End of the Century
He writes about a landscape
at the end of the century
a place not barren enough for the likes of us
and yet too empty to hold an angel.
No foothold for the heavenly host.
I'm standing on grass and melancholy
influenza
recession
a post post-modern world
that is beyond the imagination of a poet
I was born in the last quarter of the last century
and if anything holds true it will be this:
I will live to see my daughter married
a girl grown older and then old
and then sometime in the middle of this
the twenty-first
I'll die
But not without begging the questions
of where I belong
of which era was mine
of why such a thing would ever seem to matter
much anyway
The angels aren't as patient.
They've moved on to another time
knowing that there will be room for them
there
(c) amy lynn romero, april 2009
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
the man in the paper mask
The last couple of days, I've been in a weird and low sort of mood. It isn't anything major, I just feel funky. In response to The Funk, I am giving myself permission to post whatever I want. And I'll get to the Other Stuff eventually. Or not at all. You know, whatever works.
And the swine flu? I am having a hard time contemplating bad news like that. It has me wondering if the wearing of surgical masks in public is finally going to cross over from a suggested-thing-to-do-in-hospitals-and-doctor's-offices-but-no-one-ever-does-it-because-they-feel-ridiculous thing to a yes-we-are-people-who-wear-surgical-masks-in-public-and-it's-absolutely-normal thing. Reminds me of a flight I took last summer to Utah. Alice and I were flying alone, and there was a guy across the aisle who was doing his level best to entertain Alice with his immensely furry eyebrows. He was wearing a surgical mask. At one point, a lady walked down the aisle past us. The guys pulls down his mask and looks at me, "Did you see that lady?" he asked. I told him yes, of course. And he goes, "That's my wife. She doesn't want to sit next to me when I'm wearing a mask. Says I look ridiculous. I told her I didn't care, I just didn't want to get sick again." Every time I see surgical masks I think of that guy.
And the swine flu? I am having a hard time contemplating bad news like that. It has me wondering if the wearing of surgical masks in public is finally going to cross over from a suggested-thing-to-do-in-hospitals-and-doctor's-offices-but-no-one-ever-does-it-because-they-feel-ridiculous thing to a yes-we-are-people-who-wear-surgical-masks-in-public-and-it's-absolutely-normal thing. Reminds me of a flight I took last summer to Utah. Alice and I were flying alone, and there was a guy across the aisle who was doing his level best to entertain Alice with his immensely furry eyebrows. He was wearing a surgical mask. At one point, a lady walked down the aisle past us. The guys pulls down his mask and looks at me, "Did you see that lady?" he asked. I told him yes, of course. And he goes, "That's my wife. She doesn't want to sit next to me when I'm wearing a mask. Says I look ridiculous. I told her I didn't care, I just didn't want to get sick again." Every time I see surgical masks I think of that guy.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
reality
Why the second post? Because I just had to say this: Me = BIG MOUTH. This is what I get for talking to you yesterday about all the Big Ideas I had to share. I tried to start on something last night and I just... sat there. Stared at screen. Tapped keyboard. And what came to me? A big fat ZERO. I went to sleep and hoped for inspiration. In place of inspiration, I had the dream. It was lovely. Far more lovely than I was able to explain in my post. Want to know why? Because at the time of writing it, Alice was doing these fly-by visits where she'd toddle by, try to bean my keyboard with a toy or random bit of food, then she'd rush off to some other part of the room. Toward the end of the post, Alice decided to get more insistent with her visits and started to reach into the keyboard and push buttons. She wiped out the entire entry more than once. Let's just say by the end of writing it (AGAIN), it was hard to feel warm and fuzzy about Beanhead.
I'm hoping tomorrow will find me in a more writerly mood. Not that I'm making any promises. We know what happens when I do that.
I'm hoping tomorrow will find me in a more writerly mood. Not that I'm making any promises. We know what happens when I do that.
last night
In the dream I was holding dozens of small glass tiles. The colors of the most brilliant jewels: saphire, ruby, emerald, amber. I was sitting in a large yellow room, the sun streaming through a window to warm my face and hands. I tried to piece the tiles together, searching for a way to connect them. The sun glinted off the glass as I tried to find a meaning, as I tried to see what would bring the pattern into focus. My hands weren't strong enough to hold all of the pieces and I looked to someone for help. Alice sat across from me at the table, her soft face reflecting the colors before me. She pointed to blue, gold, crimson. She smiled for the joy of it. As we worked together I understood that I had everything I needed to make sense of the work before me. It was our combined effort that created a beautiful mosaic and as I woke, the sun streamed warm through the glass - bathing the room in a rainbow.
Monday, April 27, 2009
finding bliss in the canola oil
I stared at my computer screen for over twenty minutes last night, composing and recomposing a blog post. I didn't ever get anything down, not for lack of trying. It's not a big deal why--- I was so tired, I'm not sure if anything I was writing was making sense at all. In the end, I scrapped the whole ting, closed the laptop, and went to sleep--- Chip had already jumped ahead of me in that department, snoring away.
I like writing when I'm sitting in bed. It's a comfortable place. I'm at peace there. The bedroom is quiet around me, and the cats are usually somewhere within petting distance.
There are some posts that are rattling around in my brain for this week. A few of them about POETRY, seeing as how April is roaring to a close this week, and with in another national poetry month. I like the fact that we have a national poetry month, even if most people don't know about it. It makes us seem civilized. It makes us seem like we are sensitive enough to take the time to appreciate something small, something gentle. My life needs to take the time to appreciate poetry. I need the soft focus that reading it lends to a day. I dare say that our country needs to take time to appreciate poetry. More on this later.
Blog bleurgh
My theory of good blog writing goes something like this: find a balance between inner and outer thoughts. This is essential. Writing about those daily things that give context to the inner workings of a mind--and then writing also about those. To wit: coming back from our time in North Carolina, I kept thinking about Big Topics I wanted to write about, and I'm going to get to those. But not without first posting this dandy rambling entry, where I tell you about coming home, where I tell you about some stuff that could be VERY boring. My theory of good blog writing is born out of those blogs that I really like to read. I can get into them because these bloggers will talk about deep things and shallow things. They will ramble about the meaning of motherhood one day and the contents of their kitchen sink the next. There are blogs out there that only focus on Big Thoughts, and the writing is just fine. But without the context of daily things, I quickly lose interest. I need to care about a writer. And I need to know about some pretty mundane things to do that. On the other hand, there are blogs that only talk about daily life, the Small Stuff. And in just the same way that an Exclusively Big Thinker bores me to tears, so does the one who only talks about what they ate for breakfast (me: toast and some bits of leftover banana from Alice). So. That leaves me here, writing an entry today that few of you will ever get all the way through.
Being home
It's good to be here. Good to feel the house around me again. Good to check on the status of the now-dry-previously-flooded-hallway (all is well, thankfully). Good to spend time with some fuzzy kitty bellies (LOVE THE FLUV). Good to just be able to do dishes and mop the floor and make the bed and do the laundry. I may complain about it some time, but I like my life. Speaking of mopping the floor, Alice dumped half a bottle of canola oil on the kitchen floor last night. We'd been hanging out in the kitchen, she and I. I was talking to my mom on the phone, Alice was investigating the contents of a cupboard. Usually I move the canola oil onto the counter before she gets curious, but Alice was too quick for me. Just a moment before, she'd been carrying a can of Pam around, chewing on the lid (mmmm oily). Next thing I know, she's got the canola oil and she just chucks it to her left. The lid must've been screwed on pretty badly because as the bottle struck the floor, BAM--- oil chugging out onto the wood. In that moment of me moving Alice out of the stream of spreading liquid and simultaneously throwing a towel over the worst of it, I realized that I am suffering from a type of post-traumatic-stress-disorder associated with FLOODING, and specifically, associated with liquid on my floor, because I FREAKED OUT. I mean, any sane person would have just been like, Oh gee this is gross, but at least it's sort of slow moving, you know? I was all RED ALERT RED ALERT BEEP BEEP BEEP WHAT THE HECK DO I DO AND IS THIS GOING TO CAUSE PERMANENT DAMAGE RED ALERT RED ALERT FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAK OUT. In the end, I picked up the nasty towel (WHO THE HECK PUTS A KITCHEN TOWEL ON AN OIL SPILL?!?!), and used a hefty number of paper towels (so much better), stripped Alice down to her diaper, and then cleaned up the greasy mess with a healthy wad of Clorox wipes (Oh Clorox Wipes where have you BEEN all my life?). After I got Alice to bed, I mopped the kitchen floor, but not before I got another nice little blip of the PTSD RED ALERT when Alice peed on the bathroom floor in the 3 seconds she was diaperless prior to getting into the tub. I'm traumatized, people. TRAUMATIZED. Chip was taking a shower on Saturday night and we have a cloth shower curtain which usually does a fairly decent job. Chip had been in there a while, and had turned the shower head in a way that made the water hit the curtain more than usual. The outer curtain started sticking to the inner one, and the end result was a sizable puddle of water on the floor. What did I do? RED ALERT RED ALERT RED ALERT BEEP BEEP BEEP FREEEEEEEEEAK OUT. I swear there was even a red light flashing in the room. I threw a towel on the puddle, wiped it up, then poked Chip through the curtain and told him in a terrible hissing voice, YOU'RE SOOOOOO FIRED. Again, WHO DOES THAT? I do.
North Carolina and nary a southern accent to be heard
The trip was fantastic. It was so great to visit with M, the artist formerly known as The Wife and if you want to know why she changed her handle, go here and read a breath-taking post about identity. Her little boy is perfect and delectable. If one was to sample his scrumptious belly he would taste very much like honey bunnies because BOY did he and Alice have a hay day with thouse or WHAT? We had some really wonderful talks. We worked on a project for our dearest friend SS, who is all knocked up and stuff and we couldn't be happier about that. We ate vanilla pudding with Nilla wafers. We vexed M's husband Chris when we insisted on eating pizza my last night there (forgoing a trip to eat tried-and-true southern food, reason: we really wanted to sit on the floor and keep talking, so he brought pizza in and we did sit on the floor and it was AWESOME). There are some blog posts that are going to come out of our trip. But that's going to be later.
Is anyone still reading this rambling mess?
The good guys
You all are very sweet. Thank you for being so awesome about the terrible-no-good-green-shirted man at the Phoenix Airport. The most irritating part about that sotry is all the things I thought about saying to the dude after the fact. But I know why I didn't do anything at the time: I was scared. I felt exposed and alone, even in an airport packed with people. And in the end, I knew that my biggest responsibility was to Alice, and keeping her safe. I hated that she came so close to being hurt. I hated that it was her out there in front of me (in her stroller). And I hated that someone felt it was perfectly appropriate to actually OD A LITTLE TURN-IN-A-CIRCLE DANCE to show he had more power than me, and if he didn't want to move, he wasn't going to. I am in awe of both of the women who came to my rescue. That shows some guts, people.
The week ahead
We're heading out of town again this week. Because I am INSANE. But also because I can't bear to say goodbye to Chip so soon. It's a bummer to be leaving again, but at least in a hotel room Alice won't be able to find any Costco-sized bottles of canola oil to dump on the floor. Or, if anything along those lines does happen, I can at least share the clean-up duty with housekeeping.
Now. How are YOU?
I like writing when I'm sitting in bed. It's a comfortable place. I'm at peace there. The bedroom is quiet around me, and the cats are usually somewhere within petting distance.
There are some posts that are rattling around in my brain for this week. A few of them about POETRY, seeing as how April is roaring to a close this week, and with in another national poetry month. I like the fact that we have a national poetry month, even if most people don't know about it. It makes us seem civilized. It makes us seem like we are sensitive enough to take the time to appreciate something small, something gentle. My life needs to take the time to appreciate poetry. I need the soft focus that reading it lends to a day. I dare say that our country needs to take time to appreciate poetry. More on this later.
Blog bleurgh
My theory of good blog writing goes something like this: find a balance between inner and outer thoughts. This is essential. Writing about those daily things that give context to the inner workings of a mind--and then writing also about those. To wit: coming back from our time in North Carolina, I kept thinking about Big Topics I wanted to write about, and I'm going to get to those. But not without first posting this dandy rambling entry, where I tell you about coming home, where I tell you about some stuff that could be VERY boring. My theory of good blog writing is born out of those blogs that I really like to read. I can get into them because these bloggers will talk about deep things and shallow things. They will ramble about the meaning of motherhood one day and the contents of their kitchen sink the next. There are blogs out there that only focus on Big Thoughts, and the writing is just fine. But without the context of daily things, I quickly lose interest. I need to care about a writer. And I need to know about some pretty mundane things to do that. On the other hand, there are blogs that only talk about daily life, the Small Stuff. And in just the same way that an Exclusively Big Thinker bores me to tears, so does the one who only talks about what they ate for breakfast (me: toast and some bits of leftover banana from Alice). So. That leaves me here, writing an entry today that few of you will ever get all the way through.
Being home
It's good to be here. Good to feel the house around me again. Good to check on the status of the now-dry-previously-flooded-hallway (all is well, thankfully). Good to spend time with some fuzzy kitty bellies (LOVE THE FLUV). Good to just be able to do dishes and mop the floor and make the bed and do the laundry. I may complain about it some time, but I like my life. Speaking of mopping the floor, Alice dumped half a bottle of canola oil on the kitchen floor last night. We'd been hanging out in the kitchen, she and I. I was talking to my mom on the phone, Alice was investigating the contents of a cupboard. Usually I move the canola oil onto the counter before she gets curious, but Alice was too quick for me. Just a moment before, she'd been carrying a can of Pam around, chewing on the lid (mmmm oily). Next thing I know, she's got the canola oil and she just chucks it to her left. The lid must've been screwed on pretty badly because as the bottle struck the floor, BAM--- oil chugging out onto the wood. In that moment of me moving Alice out of the stream of spreading liquid and simultaneously throwing a towel over the worst of it, I realized that I am suffering from a type of post-traumatic-stress-disorder associated with FLOODING, and specifically, associated with liquid on my floor, because I FREAKED OUT. I mean, any sane person would have just been like, Oh gee this is gross, but at least it's sort of slow moving, you know? I was all RED ALERT RED ALERT BEEP BEEP BEEP WHAT THE HECK DO I DO AND IS THIS GOING TO CAUSE PERMANENT DAMAGE RED ALERT RED ALERT FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAK OUT. In the end, I picked up the nasty towel (WHO THE HECK PUTS A KITCHEN TOWEL ON AN OIL SPILL?!?!), and used a hefty number of paper towels (so much better), stripped Alice down to her diaper, and then cleaned up the greasy mess with a healthy wad of Clorox wipes (Oh Clorox Wipes where have you BEEN all my life?). After I got Alice to bed, I mopped the kitchen floor, but not before I got another nice little blip of the PTSD RED ALERT when Alice peed on the bathroom floor in the 3 seconds she was diaperless prior to getting into the tub. I'm traumatized, people. TRAUMATIZED. Chip was taking a shower on Saturday night and we have a cloth shower curtain which usually does a fairly decent job. Chip had been in there a while, and had turned the shower head in a way that made the water hit the curtain more than usual. The outer curtain started sticking to the inner one, and the end result was a sizable puddle of water on the floor. What did I do? RED ALERT RED ALERT RED ALERT BEEP BEEP BEEP FREEEEEEEEEAK OUT. I swear there was even a red light flashing in the room. I threw a towel on the puddle, wiped it up, then poked Chip through the curtain and told him in a terrible hissing voice, YOU'RE SOOOOOO FIRED. Again, WHO DOES THAT? I do.
North Carolina and nary a southern accent to be heard
The trip was fantastic. It was so great to visit with M, the artist formerly known as The Wife and if you want to know why she changed her handle, go here and read a breath-taking post about identity. Her little boy is perfect and delectable. If one was to sample his scrumptious belly he would taste very much like honey bunnies because BOY did he and Alice have a hay day with thouse or WHAT? We had some really wonderful talks. We worked on a project for our dearest friend SS, who is all knocked up and stuff and we couldn't be happier about that. We ate vanilla pudding with Nilla wafers. We vexed M's husband Chris when we insisted on eating pizza my last night there (forgoing a trip to eat tried-and-true southern food, reason: we really wanted to sit on the floor and keep talking, so he brought pizza in and we did sit on the floor and it was AWESOME). There are some blog posts that are going to come out of our trip. But that's going to be later.
Is anyone still reading this rambling mess?
The good guys
You all are very sweet. Thank you for being so awesome about the terrible-no-good-green-shirted man at the Phoenix Airport. The most irritating part about that sotry is all the things I thought about saying to the dude after the fact. But I know why I didn't do anything at the time: I was scared. I felt exposed and alone, even in an airport packed with people. And in the end, I knew that my biggest responsibility was to Alice, and keeping her safe. I hated that she came so close to being hurt. I hated that it was her out there in front of me (in her stroller). And I hated that someone felt it was perfectly appropriate to actually OD A LITTLE TURN-IN-A-CIRCLE DANCE to show he had more power than me, and if he didn't want to move, he wasn't going to. I am in awe of both of the women who came to my rescue. That shows some guts, people.
The week ahead
We're heading out of town again this week. Because I am INSANE. But also because I can't bear to say goodbye to Chip so soon. It's a bummer to be leaving again, but at least in a hotel room Alice won't be able to find any Costco-sized bottles of canola oil to dump on the floor. Or, if anything along those lines does happen, I can at least share the clean-up duty with housekeeping.
Now. How are YOU?
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