Lessons, today:

1. Be careful what you wish for.
2. Embrace the unexpected.
3. Bring extra lip balm.
4. Enjoy sunshine in those rare winter afternoons when it appears.
5. The 'snooze' feature on my alarm is a dangerous trap.
6. Take some dayquil and be optimistic.
7. Always travel with Halls ginger ale cough drops.
8. Don't bother with makeup if you plan on spending most of the day blowing your nose.
9. Never doubt the possibility that Superman III and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert are linked.
10. Dreams often fall short of reality.

hope.

gravel angel in front of the Virginia Tech memorial.

maybe I'm just sentimental, maybe I'm over-medicated on dayquil and vitamin supplements (home, sick/miserable), maybe it's hormones or cosmic star-crossings... but this to me is beautiful.

I realize the paradox of symbolism - it has the power to inspire and yet lacks to power to itself act or promote change... so often many of us hide behind labels, flags, emblems, slogans, membership cards, resonant rally cries and yet maintain our lives of distance and quiet, turning a blind eye when we're most needed because we're uncomfortable or unwilling to risk our voices, time, reputations, comfort, money, self-image, etc.

And ironically it is most often the smallest and most minute of events that serve as catalysts for significant changes or enlightenment.

So often I think people just need someone to listen to them. The elderly are a perfect illustration of this... fear of mortality and the mysteries of life beyond our own tiny understanding of the universe compel some desire to leave behind us a legacy, some proof that our existence not only was real but somehow mattered.

We none of us seem to truly relish the fact that we are transient beings, just one of a succession of billions... Our misinterpretation of our own importance is the heartbeat of our ego-driven madness and anxiety. We inflate our worth far beyond the truth, develop grand notions of entitlement, as though the world owes us something. We live! Is that not enough?

Beyond that bizarre miracle our lives are our own, destinies our own, choices our own. Why is gratitude for existence so continually sneered at and discarded? The world can be terrible, cruel, wrenchingly painful, devastating, hopeless, unjust, and maddeningly overwhelming... and yet the sun rises, the tides change, leaves turn, and winter is always followed by the promise of spring.

It begins, it ends, it begins anew.

And in the midst of this we have each other... and angels made of pebbles as a reminder.

So kiss me when I'm hurting, whisper loving words in the ears of children, stare softly into the eyes of friends and extol their beauty, believe in the possibility of happiness, lend your strength to others, tread softly upon the earth, dance between raindrops, and sing in the starlight.

Gifts

My dream is the dream of a pond
Not just to mirror the sky
But to let the willows and ferns
Suck me dry.
I'll climb from the roots to the veins,
And when leaves wither and fade
I will refuse to mourn
Because I was dying to live.

My joy is the joy of sunlight.
In a moment of creation
I will leave shining words
In the pupils of children's eyes
Igniting golden flames.
Whenever seedlings sprout
I shall sing a song of green.
I'm so simple I'm profound!

My grief is the grief of birds.
The Spring will understand:
Flying from hardship and failure
To a future of warmth and light.
There my blood-stained pinions
Will scratch hieroglyphics
On every human heart
For every year to come.

Because all that I am
Has been a gift from earth.

- Shu Ting,
translated from the Chinese by Carolyn Kizer

self-improvement.

1. surround myself only with those who bring me joy.
2. more involvement in the arts scene.
3. remember to take more vitamins.
4. personal focus, internal: honesty despite the cost(s), sensitivity, forgiveness
5. personal focus, external: punctuality, accountability, return of ambition.
6. more naked time. obviously.
7. resume letter writing.
8. yoga.
9. 'in the now' mentality, carpe diem attitude, joie de vivre, etc.
10. channel energy toward positivity, light, calm, compassion, happiness.
11. happiness.
12. de-clutter physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
13. remembrance of those lost.
14. activism.
15. travel = priority.
16. acceptance of life outside of 'perfect.'
17. independence.
18. take more initiative... in all things.
19. read the rest of all these damn half-finished books.
20. release of unnecessary vanity.
21. reach beyond my comfort level, explore the world of the new, the mysterious, the unknown.
22. willingness to sacrifice... even the good times if necessary.
23. admit fear.
24. vacuum more often.
25. unconditional allegiance and love to those who love me.

Because this is what you do

because this is what you do. get up.
blame the liquor for the heaviness. call in late
to work. go to the couch because the bed
is too empty. watch people scream about love
on Jerry Springer. count the ways
it could be worse. it could be last week
when the missing got so big
you wrote him a letter
and sent it. it could be yesterday, no work
to go to, whole day looming.
it could be last month
or the month before, when you still
thought maybe. still carried plans
around with you like talismans.
you could have kissed him last night.
could have gone home with him, given in,
cried after, softly, face to the wall, his heavy arm
around you, hand on your stomach, rubbing.
shower. remember your body. water
hotter than you can stand. sit
on the shower floor. the word
devastated ringing the tub. buildings
collapsed into themselves. ribs
caving toward the spine. recite
the strongest poem you know. a spell
against the lonely that gets you
in crowds and on three hours’ sleep.
wonder where the gods are now.
get up. because death is not
an alternative. because this is what you do.
air like soup, move. door, hallway, room.
pants, socks, shoes. sweater. coat. cold.
wish you were a bird. remember you
are not you, now. you are you
a year from now. how does that
woman walk? she is not sick or sad.
doesn’t even remember today.
has been to Europe. what song
is she humming? now. right now.
that’s it.

Marty McConnell– survival poem #17

courtesy, caitlynintherye

Full Time Whore.

This weekend's antics have inspired me to recreate an old college tradition... the Wall of Shame. Home to scandalous visual evidence of all one's sins, regrets, revelry, merrymaking, misbehavior, general mayhem, and civil disorder.

... and photogenically-challenged moments, of course.

Because everyone needs to see their darkest hours face-to-face... and there has to be some marvelous place to collect all of the things too inappropriate for public (and/or online) view.

The past 5 days... let's just say I won't have to dig too deep into the archives to fill the WOS.

the way it was.

This morning, College Ave, 10 am, on my way to jump my car battery.
Wearing Eric's pajamas, last night's clothes in hand.
Disastrous.

favorite.

I would know that
before this life closes,
a soulmate to share my roses -
I would make a spell
with long grey beard hairs
and powdered rosemary and rue,
with the jacket of a tux
for a tall man
with broad shoulders,
who loves to dance;
with one blue contact lens
for his bluest eyes;
with honey in a jar
for his love of me;
with salt in a dish
for his love of sex and skin;
with crushed rose petals
for our bed;
with tubes of cerulean blue
and vermilion and rose madder
for his artist's eye;
with a dented Land Rover fender
for his love of travel;
with a poem by Blake
for his love of innocence
revealed by experience;
with soft rain
and a bare head;
with hand-in-hand dreams on Mondays
and the land of fuck
on Sundays;
with mangoes, papayas
and limes,
and a house towering
above the sea.
- Erica Jong

typical.

me: haven't had it in so ... LONG

Chona: oh, i thought you were talking about sex

Chona: you're talking about pizza

Robert Creeley

For Friendship

For friendship
make a chain that holds,
to be bound to others, two by two,

a walk, a garland,
handed by hands
that cannot move
unless they hold.

For Love

Yesterday I wanted to
speak of it, that sense above
the others to me
important because all

that I know derives
from what it teaches me.
Today, what is it that
is finally so helpless,

different, despairs of its own
statement, wants to
turn away, endlessly
to turn away.

If the moon did not...
no, if you did not
I wouldn't either, but
what would I not

do, what prevention, what
thing so quickly stopped.
That is love yesterday
or tomorrow, not

now. Can I eat
what you give me. I
have not earned it. Must
I think of everything

as earned. Now love also
becomes a reward so
remote from me I have
only made it with my mind.

Here is a tedium,
despair, a painful
sense of isolation and
whimsical if pompous

self-regard. But that image
is only of the mind's
vague structure, vague to me
because it is my own.

Love, what do I think
to say. I cannot say it.
What have you become to ask,
what have I made you into,

companion, good company,
crossed legs with skirt, or
soft body under
the bones of the bed.

Nothing says anything
but that which it wishes
would come true, fears
what else might happen in

some other place, some
other time not this one.
A voice in my place, an
echo of that only in yours.

Let me stumble into
not the confession but
the obsession I begin with
now. For you

also (also)
some time beyond place, or
place beyond time, no
mind left to

say anything at all,
that face gone, now.
Into the company of love
it all returns.

In a nutshell.

love this.

courtesy, my dear friend:

_____________________________

December Sky

Exposed like naked flesh, you’ve never seen before.

A little shocked to be looking at it,

“Was it there the whole time?”

Those black and undulating branches, back lit by an overcast canvas, stir my imagination with their every sway.

Was that sky there the whole time, only glimpsed, all spring and summer, through the rippling dragon scales of heavy deciduous leaves?

No one loves the foliage more than I, except perhaps for caterpillars!

But, my word, these empty branches.

They tickle my melancholy.

Leave me loving what isn’t there

for being gone.

____________________________________

H-A-N-G-O-V-E-R.

Archives

Can't sleep. Perusing old photos/comments/etc online. Found this and laughed out loud, courtesy Facebook:
___________________________

The Photo:


Elise, Em, and Me
Summer 2007
Indiana
After-party pose from the mama's surprise 50th

The Comments:

1:16am on September 13th, 2007

Me: high-waisted drawers have never looked so hot... and can we talk about our poses? Em clearly has mastered the Urkel, but Elise and I are meandering somewhere down another path more commonly used in old films about the Gold Rush of '49 or the musical Oklahoma ... the off-off-off-off-off Broadway version... you know, very 'surrey with the fringe on top.'

1:27am on September 13th, 2007

Me: on second thought, perhaps Elise is attempting to lead us in jazzercise.

6:38am on September 13th, 2007

Elise: sick sick sick. but too priceless to untag. even though i did think about it.

7:07am on October 17th, 2007

Elise: In response to Allison's ever-so off-broadway Oklahoma Theory: I would consider this outfit a vast improvment since my former "Surrey With A Fringe On Top" days. Thats right. Kristie Wright School of Dance recital, circa 1994. White TIGHTS, Black Tap Shoes, NEON GREEN and white PLAID and LOTS OF TOILLE. And a matching, over-sized, head-bow of course. Think Good-Ship Lollipop, meets Appalachia, attacked by our favorite Ghostbusters character, Slimer. Every time I hear that damn song I end up in a corner somewhere clutching my knees and rocking back and forth. Shuffle, ball-change...shuffle, ball-change....

2:25pm on October 18th, 2007

Me: well at least YOUR mother doesn't choose that dance costume photograph to display in full glory in the sun room of your house. note: we are not a photo-display kind of household. you will not find gargantuan family portraits or snapshot collages. diana selects her display photos quite carefully, thus giving each one a certain significance...

and she totally has my fourth grade recital portrait (one of 2 framed shots of me in the entire house, I might add) in it's awkward splendor - it's Pre-Op Allison, don't you worry - with a SIDE PONYTAIL, white tulle skirt that makes me look like a floating cupcake, and large fake rose not-so-elegantly displayed in my little stick arms...

so basically I shall be joining you in the corner-hiding/twitching/rocking back and forth/crying on the inside/anxiety/remorse behavior. oh, and since that was a ballet costume, I suppose I shall be forced to conclude with an arabesque... twirl... arabesque... twirl...

____________________________-

Ahhh... good times.

ADD

Winter restlessness has kicked in, full force. Have cleaned out my closet for the umpteenth time, am staring at a pile of art papers, have tackled the dreaded 'dry clean only' pile with a vengeance, and am delving dangerously into the 'What the hell am I doing with my life?' mindset.

Time for change is upon us.

Maybe all of this caucus nonsense and political clap-trap is getting to me. Not that I'm not politically-minded. I'm the frightening bring-it-up-in-bar-conversation liberal tree-hugging free-love-for-all variety. But my passions and convictions can only handle the bruise and fall-out of publicity campaigns and poll speculations to a certain extent before my mind checks out completely. I've stopped watching C-Span altogether and CNN is limited. Soon I will have given up entirely on television news and will base my education entirely the E! network.

I've started books and not finished them, shredded resume drafts, left cleaning tasks half-completed, scribbled dozens of to-do/to-call/to-write lists, and let most of my perishable food... well, perish in the refrigerator. And I managed to finally rent some films at Blockbuster and not watch them... and they're due soon. I do really want to see Away From Her. Maybe I'll watch that tonight if I can't sleep. (always likely)

January is the dreaded month of financial fall-out, and getting the cash under control has left a bitter taste in my mouth. Oh, and I keep forgetting to mail my thank-you notes. And get my vacation photos printed. And vacuum.

Oh, Mexico. [sigh] How wonderful life was in that magical responsibility-free Pacific dream bubble.

Life has careened around another corner, now, and I'm staring reality in its terrifying face.

Also, I'm thinking of seeing an energy specialist. Except I have a feeling she's not covered by my health plan. Just a guess. And considering the astronomical fees of the doctor who recommended her to me... this one could really bite me in the ass. But I'm optimistic.

I need to work up some energy for tomorrow night. It's Wednesday, after all... and you know what that means. Am determined to sleep in my own bed for once. Really. I mean it this time.

Side note: Last week we had a blizzard. Today temps rose above 60 degrees. If Indiana skies next produce flying monkeys singing the Wizard of Oz theme I won't be the least surprised.

I really miss this.

Saturday

1. working on Brahms.
2. it's cold.
3. clean kitchen = amazing.
4. avian art project continues.
5. finally started Winesburg, Ohio.
6. errands.
7. preparations for "We survived the Holidaze" event with the ATL girls.
8. still catching up on email, photo posting, etc.
9. class strategy summit continues. [survived extended phone call with diana, no less]
10. feeling productive and content.