monday spirits.

Wednesday

I’d read in my horoscope
That Wednesday is my lucky day.
The day was like a damp room full of cobwebs.
On my daily walk to school
There was a hijra today.
I used to believe
That my day would be better if I see one of them.
Today, the carefully pleated folds of my sari
Were like hesitant droplets on a kachu-leaf.
After returning from school, I had just
Crashed on my bed
Like any other day
I just wanted to submerge myself in sleep –
Wednesdsay
Lucky day
But still I couldn’t.

The news of Apa’s death
Reminded me of the weird cry of a cat last night
Reminded me that
I’d also wanted to wear her gold earrings

Whenever I think Wednesday
I remember, Apa is lost
Like my lucky day.

- Reshma Khatun
Kalaam Writes

friday spirits.

b o d y

Look closely at the letters. Can you see
entering (stage right), then floating full,
then heading off — so soon –
how like a little kohl-rimmed moon
o plots her course from b to d

– as y, unanswered, knocks at the stage door?
Looked at too long, words fail,
phase out. Ask, now that body shines
no longer, by what light you earn these lines
and what the b and d stood for.

- James Merrill

thursday spirits.

On Being Fired Again

I’ve known the pleasures of being
fired at least seven times —

most notably by Larry who found my snood
unsuitable, another time by Jack,
whom I was sleeping with. Poor attitude,
tardiness, a contagious lack
of team spirit; I have been unmotivated

squirting perfume onto little cards,
while stocking salad bars, when stripping
covers from romance novels, their heroines
slaving on the chain gang of obsessive love –

and always the same hard candy
of shame dissolving in my throat;

handing in my apron, returning the cash-
register key. And yet, how fine it feels,
the perversity of freedom which never signs
a rent check or explains anything to one’s family.

I’ve arrived again, taking one more last
walk through another door, thinking “I am
what is wrong with America,” while outside
in the emptied, post-rushhour street,

the sun slouches in a tulip tree and the sound
of a neighborhood pool floats up on the heat.

- Erin Belieu

tuesday spirits.

1979:1

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

- Wendell Berry

Artwork courtesy of Leslie Banta

monday spirits.

I. NEW HAMPSHIRE

Children’s voices in the orchard
Between the blossom- and the fruit-time:
Golden head, crimson head,
Between the green tip and the root.
Black wing, brown wing, hover over;
Twenty years and the spring is over;
Today grieves, tomorrow grieves,
Cover me over, light-in-leaves;
Golden head, black wing,
Cling, swing,
Spring, sing,
Swing up into the apple-tree.

II. VIRGINIA

Red river, red river,
Slow flow heat is silence
No will is still as a river
Still. Will heat move
Only through the mocking-bird
Heard once? Still hills
Wait. Gates wait. Purple trees,
White trees, wait, wait,
Delay, decay. Living, living,
Never moving. Ever moving
Iron thoughts came with me
And go with me:
Red river, river, river.

III. USK

Do not suddenly break the branch, or
Hope to find
The white hart behind the white well.
Glance aside, not for lance, do not spell
Old enchantments. Let them sleep.
‘Gently dip, but not too deep’,
Lift your eyes
Where the roads dip and where the roads rise
Seek only there
Where the grey light meets the green air
The hermit’s chapel, the pilgrim’s prayer.

- T.S. Eliot
from Minor Poems

Artwork courtesy of Caleb Coppock

thursday spirits.

the house is so quiet this week. each family is taking turns taking vacations; this week, blue & dave and co. lit out for a reunion in pennsylvania. so our house has only one small. i’ll be honest: the change is nice. i get up in the morning and wander alone around the empty house, marveling at the stillness of each room.

with that, i’ll offer another poem and hope it brings some stillness in your own day.

Woman’s Constancy

No man is the island that a woman is,
Eroded from a sometime lying shore,
Her latchkey broken at the mainland door
She wades out deep, isolate, antithesis
Of continents, lost to the last isthmus.
Her Panamanian children splash, ignore
Low voices in the surf to scoop and pour
By hand an ebb and flow analysis
Of model oceans rocking in a box.
On the rim of an old caldera bay
They beach their boats between a pair of docks,
Her outstretched arms. She scrubs their hulls, mends sail,
And fills the barrels from her hardtack stores;
They take their leave, embarking for the Azores.

- Margaret Rabb

tuesday spirits.

I Knew a Woman

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin;
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing we did make).

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved).

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I’m martyr to a motion not my own;
What’s freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways).

– Theodore Roethke

you rang?

i can’t decide what’s funnier about this news flash: the fact that “asian women seek white, groveling men” (as the headline reads), or the fact that one of the butlers has completely overdone the bangs & hairspray.

the 80s called, they want their butt cut back.

ascent from the cave.

i’m writing from my second floor desk today, where i’m returning to a post that i began at 5:30 one morning, sitting on the porch swing, a winking orange cat surveying me from the fronds of the front yard hostas. there are whole herds of homeless cats in this neighborhood, most of them mainecoon, with fat tails and fluffy cravats. they usually run when they see you. this one preferred to observe. i’m remembering that cat as i stare out at the junky backyards and the alley, wondering where it is sitting on this hot day, wondering if it is winking at me again from beneath a rusting truck or within the rambling wisteria vines.

if you’ve been reading this blog for the last couple of months, you know that i was sick this winter around the time the oakie babies were born. without sharing details that the googling world doesn’t need to know, it’s been a strange season. in my immediate and extended family, there have been a host of things to celebrate and mourn. i took a couple of months off work and assumed that it would give me the space and time i needed to process. but two months back into “normal” life, i’ve found that i am still flaky, non-social, and prone to navel-gazing. i still slough off friendships, commitments, and basic hygiene as if these things are negotiable. of course, they’re not.

the bug recently lent me Listen to the Desert, a book about the Desert Mothers and Fathers of northern africa. the author and i don’t jive on theology (for instance, i get the sense that he believes the healing power of the Eucharist is a medieval myth), but the book offers brief, beautiful stories about the lives of these hermits, who withdrew to the solitude of deserts and caves to wrestle with God, themselves, and the human condition.

the first chapter opens with this well-known anecdote:

In Scetis, a brother went to see Abba Moses and begged him for a word. And the old man said: Go and sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.

later, the author returns to these ideas of solitude and attentiveness in a meditation on grief, where he admonishes:

Rather than be hostage to your anguish, be attentive to the process as it is happening. Be attentive to the shame and fear, the emptiness and despondency, with which the ego greets the dawning wholeness. Take the middle course during the stormy period of transformation. Don’t tamper with it. Let it happen. Let go.

grief is a hermitage. it is also a maelstrom that completely re-works a person’s interior landscape. what’s confounding me (and other people, whose calls/emails i haven’t returned in months) is the task of simultaneously grieving and living — without being forgotten, without forgetting grief, and without allowing the hermit’s cell to become a hall of mirrors in which the only face i see is not God’s, but my own.

but life goes on. my little sister doodle moved to DC; several good friends are getting married, moving away. the oakie babies get bigger and happier and more fun; ben starts med school rotations in the next few days. and significantly, we’ve come to the end of june: two months until the end of our lease here at the oakie house. in the next week, we’ll sit down to formally decide whether or not we’ll continue living together. it will be an important, and possibly difficult, conversation.

so i’ve got a good reason to blog at least once in the next two weeks. with this in mind, i’ll try to overcome my complete cave impulse, if only to keep all 5 of you readers well-entertained.

bruiser.

it’s official. bitty b has been re-dubbed bruiser. the cute pic above doesn’t do justice to his baby bigness. we’re talking 20 pounds of loveable chub, complete with neck, wrist, and ankle rings. he’s also very baby-manly: stinky feet, impressive gas. and he has great hair. lane enjoys sculpting it into the occasional faux-hawk.

speaking of bruiser, i’ve been perfecting my dunstan baby language skills. my mom, who keeps me up on all things oprah, sent the oakie house the first two DVDs in priscilla dunstan’s psuedoscientific baby-talk primer, which is based on the idea that the noises babies make are related to the physical experiences they want to achieve (filling the tummy, taking off a sweater).

i have yet to get official dunstan feedback from blue or jane, but the brief DVDs seem surprisingly accurate. so far, i think that bruiser’s favorite dunstan word is “NEH” - or “Help, I’m gassy!” and, i’ll have to say that inquisitive baby blue’s is “EH,” which means, “I’m uncomfortable … can I get a different view of this kitchen? more face time w/my roommates? fewer head-licks from nanook?”

i wish i had thought to whip out the dunstan DVDs yesterday, when baby blue and dave had a wee hours heart-to-heart about sleeping through the night without nursing. it was only the third or fourth time in our life together that i’ve woken up, rolled over in bed, and wondered which of the three kids was having a distressing night. i didn’t even know it was baby blue until late today, when i asked jen if everything was okay with the babies last night.

“i guess so,” she said. “i slept through it!!”

then she laughed, half maniacally, and explained that since she weathered three-and-a-half months of nighttime feedings, dave is in charge of nighttime weaning.

sounds like a fair deal to me.