Tidbits and other words

A Significance of Dishes

2011-01-15T08:21:00.000-08:00

The dishes sit in the dishwasher, clean and waiting.
Others stew clumsily in the sink, stinky and impatient.
I notice and I pretend it's not happening.
But I know they wait for me and me alone.

Today I must unload the clean ones, without the anger.
For they no longer represent a promise you failed to keep.
They are just dishes, clean and waiting.
And the job is now mine alone.

And that, that is because you never truly made me that other promise.
The big one.
The one I labored to be worthy of.
Never realizing the futility of my efforts.
Like fretting about dishes...and windows...and floors.

This morning I will unload the clean ones, without the anger this time.
My sadness will wash over me like rinse water
As I seek to bring order and safety to my world.
As I look forward to the domestic comfort of the machine's swish swish.
As I leave the chore behind,
And go on with my life

Hope

2009-10-28T13:55:00.000-07:00

Is this how we give up on our hopes?
No really realizing it, but bidding them farewell
Without acknowledgment
Except in those painful moments of
Forced awareness
Which are so quickly buried in the business of
Being too busy to make what we so desire materialize
In the real world
Pulling it out of the realm
Of dreams and
Hopes

Counterpoint

2009-01-29T21:57:00.000-08:00

Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and this plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions, an awareness that - to borrow a phrase from music - is contrapuntal.

--Edward Said, from Reflections on Exile

Hope

2008-11-16T13:10:00.000-08:00

And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright – tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

--Barack Obama, Election Night speech

Phantasmagoria in Two

2008-09-25T18:48:00.000-07:00

If I gave up all of my pride for you
And only loved you for now
Would you hide my fears and never say
Tomorrow I must go

--Tim Buckley, 'Phantasmagoria in Two'

Being

2008-07-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

I rage and I rail,
People, they make me crazy.
People close to me and people I will never see again.

And yet, in my moments of awareness,
I am inclined to realize how each should be granted the same
Understanding and patience
I would ask of the world for myself.

The frustration becomes mixed with fondness.
And acceptance.
That's just how people are.

And I wouldn't have them any other way.

Kindness

2008-06-24T16:57:00.000-07:00

...but now I am grateful for the experience, however painful it was then. I learned what it feels like when people are unkind. I learned that I never want to feel that again, and I sure don't want to make someone else feel like that.

-- Laura Love, 'The Laura Love Collection' liner notes

Saeta

2008-05-27T11:49:00.000-07:00

Saeta.
The very term, with its double meaning, has a thrill to it.
The thrill of flight.
Its words you translated from your language to mine.
I could hear the music,
See your Christ in the lines,
Feel the passion,
The devotion and the agony.

The Christ of your language is alive - even in death
Warm.
"Ours" feels cold, cerebral, rigid.
No true passion,
Only cold sweat.

Individuality

2008-04-19T09:56:00.000-07:00

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears.

--Henry Thoreau

Solitude

2008-04-16T20:59:00.000-07:00

It must be a spirit much unlike my own which can keep itself in health and vigor without sometimes stealing from the sultry sunshine of the world, to plunge into the cool bath of solitude.

--Nathaniel Hawthorne, 'Footprints on the Seashore'

The Atlantic

2008-04-15T17:05:00.000-07:00

I stopped just short of the water line,
Savoring the anticipation.
Wading in slowly, reveling in the thought of a new body of water.

Waves to my calves, I stood and gazed in the direct I called home.
It was disorienting, facing the wrong way.

When I finally emerged,
I didn't want to rinse my feet.

I am not greedy

2008-04-09T11:31:00.001-07:00

I am not greedy; I do not seek to possess the major portion of your days.

I am content if,
On those rare occasions
When truth can be
Stated only by poetry,
You will, perhaps,
recall an image -
even only the aura
of my films.

And what more could I possibly ask as an artist than that your most precious visions, however rate, assume sometimes, the forms of my images.

--Maya Deren

Blossoms

2008-04-02T13:28:00.001-07:00

The thing I love about cherry blossoms
Is that one day they seem suddenly just there
Overflowing with abundance and beauty

They remind me that life
Occurs in an instant

Plata quemada

2008-03-28T18:03:00.000-07:00

- ¿Te importaba?
- No, era un lugar donde esconderse, nada más.

- Did you care about her?
- No, she was a just place to hide, that's all.

--Plata quemada (Burnt Money)

Lies

2008-03-26T20:32:00.000-07:00

If it were not for language, could we lie?

--Joyce Carol Oates, Foxfire

The Return

2008-03-24T23:02:00.000-07:00

And as so often happens, we soon came to a fork in the road.
You let me venture a ways down one,
On my own, as it turns out.
As I clumsily sought solid ground, you strode off along the other,
A well-paved path leading back around to familiar territory.

I still cannot be sure how far I had advanced
Before I realized I was alone in my explorations.
The puzzle I now faced being how to find my own safe route.
To circle back and return to where I'd been
Before our trajectories coincided.
The 'I' before the 'you' and the 'we' that was never really one.

If there was to be no future,
I wanted there also to be no past.

Approval

2008-03-23T10:44:00.000-07:00

My legs weakened and buckled when she told me the news.
A performance of tragedy I would not have truly believed
Had I not experienced the sensation myself.

Years have elapsed.
An accumulation of distance measured only on the arbitrary scale of time,
Not the space between ingrained feeling and unthinking reaction.

I'm taller now, but from my knees,
I still look up,
Hoping for something.

Happiness

2008-03-18T02:07:00.000-07:00

Happiness is a precipice.

--Emily Prager, Clea and Zeus Divorce

Reality

2008-03-10T23:02:00.000-07:00

I like to read about people who have done nothing spectacular, who aren't beautiful or lucky, who try to behave well in the limited field of activity they command, but who can see, in their little autumnal moments of vision, that the so-called 'big' experiences of life are going to miss them; and I like to read about such things presented not with self pity or despair or romanticism, but with realistic firmness and even humour...

--Philip Larkin to Charles Monteith (Vanity Fair, July 2000)

Awareness

2008-03-08T22:07:00.000-08:00

I sat on the rocks
Trying not to look as if I were posing
Yet the knowing that you were there with the camera
Forced my body to attempt an evocation of the picturesque

You took the photograph
And I was surprised - even as I expected it
A silly funny moment
Made bittersweet by the remembering of
How I would feel looking at it later

That remote sensation

2008-03-08T20:19:00.000-08:00

He wanted to know the reason for that remote sensation which gave him contentment and rest; a sensation like the one he used to have when he had finished watching a film, and felt that life was grand and vast and that in the future he would be one of those men who spend every hour and day of their lives in exciting fulfillment and variety.

--Ghassan Kanafani, Men in the Sun

Dreams

2008-02-18T20:59:00.000-08:00

A dream is a garden of devils, and all dreams in this world were dreamed long ago. Now they are simply interchanged with equally used and worn reality, just as coins are exchanged for promissory notes and vice versa, from hand to hand...

--Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars

Intimidation

2008-02-12T21:03:00.000-08:00

The more I learn about you,
The more I fear that
I am not so amazing as I try to convince myself.

And while I know it's not a competition.
Feelings don't work like that.
I believe I see why you were the chosen one.

I wish I couldn't.
For that would allow fool hope some room to roam
Around my brain,
Filling it with useless thoughts that go nowhere.

And stop me from being someone
Who is not intimidated.

Hope of believing

2008-02-12T20:38:00.000-08:00

I had believed in the hope of believing in something.

--Henry Callahan, photographer

17 years

2007-10-19T21:57:00.000-07:00

You once told me you slept better when I was there.
One of so many chance remarks you've surely long since forgotten.

But I took it to mean I was welcome to a place in your world.
That I belonged.

War

2007-09-10T23:34:00.000-07:00

Overnight, whole portions of what had been acknowledged as reality simply vanished. That is what happens when there's a war.

--Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

The clock

2007-08-06T13:14:00.000-07:00

I hear the time pass in the neighbors' daily routines.
They mark the hours,
The days as they slip by.

Hurrying towards the future,
I often pause and wonder,
Do I really want this to be my past?

Belief

2007-08-06T13:13:00.000-07:00

Nations become the stories they tell themselves,
stunted by lies, or flowering as truths.

--Ben Okri

Travelling

2007-08-02T22:01:00.000-07:00

As I make the same journeys
Back and forth
To and fro
Hither and yon
Attending to the minutiae of existence
Getting things done

I wonder

And my mind mimics the tread on the tiles
Digging itself deeper into its own ruts

I wonder again
How much of the travelling we do
Takes us nowhere

Convenience

2007-07-31T03:02:00.000-07:00

We've bred all our kittens white
So you can see them in the night

--Nick Cave, 'God is in the House'

Good intentions

2007-06-16T06:26:00.001-07:00

We started out with good intentions
but for a dime now i think i'd walk away

--Terry Lee Hale, 'Hardly Ever Two'

En el entierro de un amigo

2007-04-21T05:23:00.000-07:00

Tierra le dieron una tarde horrible
del mes de julio, bajo el sol de fuego.

A un paso de la abierta sepultura,
había rosas de podridos pétalos,
entre geranios de áspera fragancia
y roja flor. El cielo
puro y azul. Corría
un aire fuerte y seco.

De los gruesos cordeles suspendido,
pesadamente, descender hicieron
el ataúd al fondo de la fosa
los dos sepultureros...

Y al reposar sonó con recio golpe,
solemne, en el silencio.

Un golpe de ataúd en tierra es algo
perfectamente serio.

Sobre la negra caja se rompían
los pesados terrones polvorientos...

El aire se llevaba
de la honda fosa el blanquecino aliento.

—Y tú, sin sombra ya, duerme y reposa,
larga paz a tus huesos...

Definitivamente,
duerme un sueño tranquilo y verdadero.

At the Burial of a Friend
Into the earth they placed him, one horrible afternoon
In the month of July, under the burning sun.

A step away from the open grave,
were roses with rotten petals,
amidst geraniums of bitter scent
and red flowers. The sky
clear and blue. There blew
a strong, dry breeze.

Suspended by thick ropes,
the two gravediggers heavily
lowered the coffin
to the bottom of the grave...

And it came to rest with a loud thud
solemn, in the silence.

The thud of a coffin on the earth is something
truly solemn.

Over the black box broke apart
the heavy clods of dusty earth...

The breeze carried
the white breath from the deep grave.

—And you, no shadow left, sleep and rest,
long peace to your bones...

For all time
sleep a tranquil and true sleep.

--Antonio Machado

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

2007-04-20T13:03:00.000-07:00

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it's queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there's some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

-- Robert Frost

Unbalanced

2007-04-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

A ringing sensation
As if from a blow to the head
Such thoughts
So rapidly they come
Impossible to catch them all
Open their different papers
And dissect each one

Perhaps pain and grief are like a disorder of the inner ear
Shattering equilibrium

Dover Beach

2007-04-15T15:32:00.000-07:00

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dream,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

-- Matthew Arnold

Welcome

2007-04-14T02:24:00.000-07:00

You may as well take your coat off.

I'm sorry, that sounded less cordial than I meant it.
You've been around so long.
So many years I've been trying to rush you right back out the door.
Force of habit, I guess.
I've resigned myself to your presence before,
But now I've decided to embrace it,
Even to look forward to your occasional visits.
I have loved you long and hard,
And hated every minute of it.
Now I've decided to let you in.

Welcome.