Gordon argues Dickinson had epilepsy

In "Lives Like Loaded Guns?" Gordon lays out her theory that Dickinson had epilepsy. I haven't finished the book, but it is interesting and the diagnosis seems to fit several facts. It triggers a different reading to words in her poems like "fit" and "throe" which makes it something worth considering. I guess there is nothing definitive available ... and even we had some doctor's explicit notes, we'd still question it perhaps, because the standards for diagnosis varied.

Illness neither deters nor attributes to genius. But one thing it might do, Gordon theorizes, is give Dickinson space and time--a doctor's encouragement to live a reclusive lifestyle.  It would have been consistent with treatments at the time ... acceptable to work late through the night where lamp light was softer than sun ... to avoid social situations, stress ... and even sex, Gordon reports, which was thought to risk a seizure.

Here's an example: I like a look of agony.

PS. One google trick I learned from a fellow #ModPo student was how to search a word in Dickinson's poems: google "throe site:edickinson.org"

meta this and meta that

I've been reading Lyndall Gordon's "Lives Like Loaded Guns," a biography of Emily Dickinson, and came across this quote (pg. 110):Biography is not exactly irrelevant, but bound to be misleading with poems that throw the onus of introspection back into the lap of the reader: they compel us to recognized how our cherished emotion of love--even (or especially) deathless love--is largely imagined, a fictitious vessel for our tastes and dreams.

Who or what is the Sea in “Wild Nights Wild Nights?”  Where is the “I” longing to moor? Did those nights exist only in Possibility? Doesn’t the Reader want a wild night too? I know I do.

With Dickinson, her storied life of seclusion (with Bronte sisters, George Eliot, EB Browning … ) is cultivated by her, her family and friends, and is well known by readers.

You could argue that all poetry, all reading, (perhaps any conversation at all) compels us to imagine. In Dickinson’s poetry we notice how far our imagination takes us.

More from Gordon (pg 111): With strong-willed imaginations it's vital to stress the gains that accompany the pains of denial and longing. During these extraordinary years [in her early 30s from 1860 to 1863] the poet is distilling theorems of experience from her life: desire, parting, death-in-life, spiritual awakening, the creative charge and creative detachment just short of freezing. I want to propose that her poems work when a theorem is applied to a reader's life. It's a mistake to spot Dickinson in all her poems; the real challenge is to find our selves. She demands a reciprocal response, a complementary act of introspection.

I resist the discussion in #ModPo on meta this and meta that. I'm not going to argue that some poets (poems) are not completely meta but those are ones I like (or respond to) least. Too clever (and exclusively clever -- no other idea, no other emotion) for my taste.

In Wild Nights, Wild Nights --  With "Rowing" I get the sense more of treading water (along with "Futile"), not making much progress into the "Wind", or not using the wind like a sailing vessel would. And then "Eden." I read Eden as prelasparian--so innocent. The Sea is opposed to Eden. Dickinson wants to moor in the Sea not in the harbor, not in Eden. Mooring there would be not really moored at all. Best case, she and her imagined lover, would be cold, wet and, entwined, bouncing around a bit.

I don't like a meta reading, that "thee" is the reader, and she is mooring tonight in us.

On Emily Dickinson's "I taste a liquor never brewed --" (214)

I agree with the conventional wisdom that the poem is celebrating nature and the inexplicable source of poetic inspiration. I take the “I” literally to be Dickinson, and that she, like the bee, is inebriated by air, dew and the nectar of the “molten blue” Foxglove. In this pub crawl from one blossom (“inn”) to the next, she persists even when her peers, the Butterflies, have quenched their thirst and “renounce their ‘drams.’” She continuously drinks even if she needs a lamppost, “the – Sun!” to stay upright.

The line that is hardest for me to understand is “Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats --.“ Many critiques skip over the difficulty of this line, taking “Seraphs” literally--if that is even possible. (The snowy Hats would be halos), This reading sets up an opposition between religion and nature--the human space where Dickinson operates. This is in the poem--I don’t disagree--but my gut tells me there is more.

Some read “snowy Hats” as snow-tipped and “Seraphs” as trees, and that Dickinson persists past summer, into fall and winter when the blooms have fallen, still “reeling” in nature. I also don’t mind that reading. I agree that her inebriation, her poetic inspiration, is everlasting. But interpreting Seraphs as trees is a stretch. The Seraphs are positioned in opposition to nature, they are watching the “little Tippler” at the flowers, so, for me, trees don’t fit. (Nor would clouds, pollen, a white flower.)

The temperance movement was strong at the time, as was the Second Awakening of puritanism. Many were railing against drunkenness and other scandalous behavior. The word "renounce" triggers in my mind a feeling of prudish zeal. Succumbing to peer pressure, perhaps, some Butterflies give up drinking. The white bonnet (picture a Pilgrim woman’s bonnet or a nun’s habit) “swings” as she shakes her head disapprovingly. (See this photo of Lucretia Mott wearing a white bonnet.) If male, he wags his powdered wig. “Seraphs” and “Saints” form a zealous Society. More narrowly for Dickinson, Literary Society condemned (or fixed) her poems which used unconventional grammar and lacked charming rhymes (“pearl does not rhyme with alcohol”*).

Another difficulty with the line is “Till.” Until when? Dickinson “tastes,” she reels, and will “but drink the more” until the Seraphs and Saints see her “Leaning against the -- Sun!” Society, protesting, can't but help "to windows run" and see who or what is making all that racket outside on the street. Dickinson, unrepentant, will keep drinking, keep writing poem after poem in which her liberated art shines as bright as the Sun. I can’t decide whether I think Dickinson is playfully teasing Seraphs and Saints, or if she is furious with them.

Dickinson’s creativity, her intellect (as expressed in her poetry) is “never brewed.” There isn’t an editor or publisher she trusts to oversee the poems’ aesthetic or potency. Inebriation is liberation from convention. She may have cared that Seraphs and Saints misunderstood her genius, but she wasn’t going to let them stop her. If her lamppost is the sun (which she can’t literally lean on) then she is relying on herself, her own artistic sensibility. If she leans against the Sun, then there is implied equality of scale between her and the Sun. And let’s not forget fire (Seraphs**, molten, Sun!) Her creative energy burns, renews; her urge to speak is unslakable.

The Black Sun

The Black Sun

1.
I sit far back from the center where people walk
their strollers and throw frisbees. Depending on what
the wind is saying I sit in or out of the late afternoon sun.
A small pool beside me collects coins. My focal point
is a big round polished piece of black granite,
an obelisk rolled upon itself glazed and lumpy
like a chocolate donut. It must have arranged my chair.
I survey the orange and red flowers in rows,
the reservoir, the redwoods, and after each in turn
I’m returned to Noguchi's Black Sun.

2.
Back a second hotter day I take the same chair.
The fountain is raucous. I smell chlorine in cool
mist when the breeze shifts. A woman spreads
a towel on the green lawn. She rolls up her shorts
and kicks off her sandals. I guess she's near Jack’s
age if he were here. Broader views contain more
bare shoulders and frisbees and trees, but the black
stone fills the same still space within me. You ask
me to say goodbye to Jack--an act of kindness--
a happiness project. I know your request is rhetorical.
Shadows track the listing earth day by day around
the sun. Jack is far away and moves as the sun
moves. If he could hear me would I say goodbye?

3.
My chair is occupied when I finally get here.
A neighborly lecture on street side parking
soured my sour mood. The lawn has browned.
The sun not the sculpture selects my new chair.
I seek relief in shadows from other people.
Blocked by a tree what does the Black Sun say
now? Last night I had two dreams. Jack is young.
We are on an ocean liner. Jack falls over the side;
I jump in after. In the other he wants to explore
dark and narrow steps leading underground. I fear
the dank cramped space--no room to turn and find
the sky. Don't go far, I say. I fear I won’t follow
when his fears awaken and I hear Papa? And towels!
To keep him clean! He wants five—I let him take three.
In my goddamn dream! The Black Sun is a ridiculous
metaphor for what it is like for years to lose your son.
It is cold and dead. Through its aperture, I can’t see
Jack's ashes on Hurricane Ridge. There is a reason
why mountains appear blue and blur in the distance.
Color disperses, contrast softens, background bleeds
through, and blue, blue light comes faster.

Reality calls for a name, for words, but it is unbearable, and if it is touched, if it draws very close, the poet’s mouth cannot even utter a complaint of Job: all art proves to be nothing compared with action. Yet to embrace reality in such a manner that it is preserved in all its old tangle of good and evil, of despair and hope, is possible only thanks to distance, only by soaring above it--but this in turn seems then a moral treason. - Czeslaw Milosz's Nobel Lecture

Thirst

Thirst

Everyone knows that berries go to seed.
How did this one become a pendant against my heart?

We know that limestone, under pressure and heat,
becomes marble to line my bath.
Instead this cracked and crumbling grout?

And what about the plum?
Not a tree, not a tart, but a windshield splat.

I choose this water--not fresh
falling snow, not steam that clouds
the mirror--and swallow minty toothpaste.

Misdemeanors

Misdemeanors

Out front a cafe two folding chairs sit together,
a couple; a third to the side, a therapist or priest.

Between them a folding table. Even in bright sun
they are obviously waterproof. Longing for cotton

lycra blends, the chairs strike inviting poses
near a happy face chalked on the sidewalk.

After some time one chair challenges me.
“Why are you sitting over there?” I wish

I was waterproof too. The table is level
on rough pavement--no coffee would spill.

The chairs are similarly competent and measure
their worth in conventional terms:

number of butts cradled, calves itched,
how they stand up to weather. In these

terms they are feeling blue. They strive
to take each moment as it comes.

They imagine their each thought
is a white fluffy cloud crossing the sky.

"Oh it’s there. Look!” they say to each other.
A crow is not measured by who slips

past his perch. A flower, not by how
many bees drink her honey.

The table and chairs resist being swamped
by externalities they can barely influence much

less control, but most days they struggle.
I fold them, and sneak them onto my patio.

I place a budding pink rose in a vase
on the table's brave surface.

It complements the table.
My small crime.

the sense of touch

I

imagine

it blue or green. I am certain

it is a button. So sure I am that I don’t smell it.

Everyone had a parka, right? With thick buttons a mother

could fasten wearing gloves. It is the right size and has no

corners. My finger lolls its smooth belly from side

to side. Its top is crenulated like a slumping

stocking cap or the tented crowns of a

Russian orthodox church. I mistake

the shank for what remained

of the acorn’s style. Once

I say acorn it’s

over.

We need a bigger Sun

We need a bigger Sun

That was still when wires were small,

I tell my absent son. Before the walls

were alive with things. The refrigerator

slept when yogurt was low. The displays

didn’t listen for your tongue’s double click.

The power lines grew thicker until no poles

could raise them. They lined the streets

like maples and in the plants turbines grew

feeding our need to communicate. Now

it takes all the energy of the sun to teleport

just one ounce of you within this universe

and avoid the windshield of a passing car.

Stories we tell ourselves about Money, for example, or Love

Stories we tell ourselves about Money, for example, or Love

What if my phone was really big and came only in black?
What if it was tethered by twisted steel cable,
and I could only talk if I had a round piece of metal
and had thumbed through pages of names?
What if all the phones were connected by wires

like trees and grass by mycelium
like our homes by cleaned water in pipes?
I couldn’t drop it on the sidewalk and shatter its display.
I couldn’t lose it in my purse or silence it at recitals.
I couldn’t smell the last caller’s breath or feel his heat on my face.
The stories we tell ourselves would they stay grounded--
when our loved ones die would the stories hold meaning?
Like voices do when they bounce on a wet string
between dixie cups not at a loss for something to say.

Waiting for the big things

I've been reading Elaine Barry's Robert Frost on writing. In 1932, in a letter to protégé Kimbal Flaccus, Frost wrote (pg. 111):

[Art ] should be of major adventures only, outward or inward--important things that happen to you, or important things that occur to you. Mere poeticality won't suffice.

We must wait for things to happen to us big ... you can't have them at will.... And when you get a good one, given out of nowhere, you can almost trust it to do itself in poetry.

So, these two poems of mine don't seem very big to me. I rationalize them to myself this way--writing them is good exercise. And also, to stay in poetry land where I'm receptive to noticing the big things. But would I subject the world to the poems? (This blog? Are they ok here?)

In Frost's first book, A Boy's Will, the youngish (1913) Frost gives 1-line summaries to each of his poems. For example (pg. 37):

IN NEGLECT He is scornful of people his scorn cannot reach.
MOWING He takes up life simply with small tasks.
MY BUTTERFLY There are things that can never be the same.

These are some of the big things.

At a recent reading by Lucie Brock-Broido she said she goes 1000 days (plus or minus) after finishing one book before she starts writing again (and she starts writing in autumn). In a 2013 interview for Guernica, Brock-Broido tells Ricardo Maldonado:

As a writer, I am hard on myself. I write so much more than I would ever publish. I don’t write manically, the way I did when I was in my twenties, when I was writing 300 poems a year and I would just conjure up the verses every night.

Other topics in the book:

• metaphor vs. simile (pair)
• sentence sound (voice, tone are only part of it ...) vs a grammatical sentence vs a "book sentence"
• style (what makes us like a poem)

How much do you tip a mariachi?

A butterfly settled on the salty lip

The sun behind it boomed

I found myself in a flight path

The margaritas bounced

and for what seemed like days
the tables flitted this way and that

The mariachi bowed

and I bought them drinks

The sun behind them boomed

I am a sentimental drunk

She twirled a paper parasol between her lips

I brushed salt from them with mine

untitled for now

First red. A new Mazda.

Then the uprooted sidewalk

and Taylor Swift from a boom box.

A red, white and blue paper lantern

fading in a tree. The eye contact is friendly

this cool summer evening,

and I let the story of the game stop me.

Who is ahead? How many are out?

The pitcher wants to throw strikes

but he wants her to put the ball in play too.

The bench cheers the batter in the box

Shorts, T-shirts, flushed skin under lights--

they’re not thinking now of their day at the office.

She singles to center. A run scores.

From the chain-link fence applause.

A net rigged above the fence

keeps the street safe from foul balls.

A polite but insistent siren makes a wake of cars.

I am ready to move on but see a dog’s bandaged paw.

The dog paces while his owner talks on the phone

about how much the minutes cost.

Eau de Joy

Eau de Joy

My girlfriend picked roses from the landlord’s garden and put
them in a vase. The roses were mostly yellow; the petal tips,
fuscia. Stems were bent by lush ripe blooms. Some buds
hadn't opened. As she packed and boxed things up she moved
the vase until when I arrived it sat on top a bookcase under
a vent. That was nice. As the heater warmed the room, the roses’
fragrance displaced the smell of cardboard and dust from
normally out-of-sight places. The forced air stopped. And then
the noise of petals falling two or three at once from the most bent
bloom. In seconds the ruckus is over, and the silence starts this time
for real. Do roses die when she cuts them, or when the petals wilt
and drop? What if buds dry before they open? I've been told
my son Jack, yes he is dead but he lives on inside you, like a rose
inside Patou’s Eau de Joy, where I can’t hug or wrestle him.

I think I should speak

I cannot breathe.
I am swaddled in paper
dark in a box
with mummied glasses
and candlesticks.
I am not upset with you
stowing me here,
but you never smoked did you?
Why do you keep me?
I understand
your need to move.
Certainly the situation
is untenable
and the new place,
with her family,
well, that will be spectacular!
But they don’t smoke do they?
I’m not so pretty you’ll miss me.
Start with me.
Let go.
I’m easy. I never met Jack.

For the User Experience

For the User Experience

The UX artist chose us

because we’re ripe and isolated.

(Or did she step our siblings flat

then shoot from below

to obscure the act?)

Our stems are green and pliable.

She posed us so we touch

as if to say when I am with you

there is nothing else.

Our petals are office orange

under windows blue.

I’m happy. If the wind rose

we'd lean apart. If our stamen

stirred, we’d pollinate.

We'd follow the sun.

Like wallpaper on desktops

our life in waiting still

does not exist. I can see

why you feel we need some

real time--where we would display

our affections privately.

You ask me about the weather.

It is all spring--sunny and warm.

Please don’t ask me to marry you,

or why our sepals, like mini-skirts,

hold the bloom in the best light.

The Sense of Grief

The Sense of Grief

                “The countless that love caused to lose their lives” – Dante Inferno, Canto V

Cinderella and other countless tales

that end happily thereafter

are forgivable lies I told my son

until through living he grew less naive.

When a playground bully first dimmed his light

or when he heard me call from the sidelines

Who wants the ball more!

he listened but refused the lesson.

A mother killed the son she loved

not in any abstract or metaphorical way.

I so share the sense of grief

I cling like a last winter’s leaf

twisting crazily this way and that

The first to die, losing, still believes.

Shipwrecked

Shipwrecked

Bone-tired, salt-sprayed for years

exhaustion washed longing from my body.

I listen for a siren

and welcome rocks.

I take the broken mast and scattered timber

and build a bridal suite

where some day a tree,

resilient of her marriage bed,

would growing, start to die.

This is a time, though stubborn,

when my spirit could be won over

and yet I drown again

at home where the ships all burn.

Short sermon on the mount

"God came; she saw; she conquered,” said Jesus. When asked about the meek and all the other blessed people, his mom wouldn't elaborate.

(Thanks to Anne Carson & Sierra Nelson & Colm Toibin.)

Assignation

John and I used this poem, among other props, to discuss my guilt. He says I am constantly surveying the landscape, the walls around me, the trees for mistakes I can make.

I say I'm looking for opportunities for guilt.

He says that sounds like something the old Woody Allen would say. John says stuff like that.

We are in the middle of a long debate about me the poet (the writer) and me. Why & when & what happens when I put on the writer's hat. "Assignation" is a good poem, he says, but it is clearly illustrates, too, that the problem isn't "love," or "poem," it is my focus on the word problem.

Assignation

The assignment this week
was to write a love poem.
     “I want to undress you with my words.”
I struggled, you see.
Maybe the word “poem” was the problem.

I want to meet your lips at my door.
I want to lead you inside
and leave us open to birds and the sun.
I want to pull you close
feel your hips against mine.
I want to slip my hand under your top
trace your shoulder blade with my thumb.
Maybe I’d pause, then, if I could,
and lift my face from our kiss.
But still I would stay close,
breathe your breath,
rest my forehead on yours and ask
     if you’d like a glass of wine
     if you’d like me read you from Howe, Gilbert, from Bishop
     if you’d like to lay down on the rug and let me undress you.
I watch your eyes watch mine asking me
     who is this guy?
     what does he want?
     why is he so quiet when we talk,
     when we make love?
I unclasp your bra and slip your shirt over your head.
I kiss your neck, kiss the strap off your shoulder.
You let your bra fall.
Maybe the word “love” is the problem.
I drop to my knees.
Maybe the problem is me.

Corona

Corona

Tambora erupts and smears chrome yellow all over.
The sun blurs behind storm clouds.
Yellow wind froths waves, and foam
tumbles across the expansive canvas.
Rocks are yellow. Cottage windows are yellow.
Palm trees are yellow because green costs too much.
Still beneath the horizon the moon is round
and palpable like pain. I lick its often shadowed face
which turns through every phase to me.
Near enough to block the sun, the moon
casts the jetting corona in yellow light.
I can’t disobey its blunt insistence over every thought.
Look! The sun hasn't abandoned you.



Thanks to E. Bishop's "Write it!" demand from One Art. And Sierra Nelson.

The Tree

The Tree

Open the door
and inside, the bible and prayer.
I hear all the words and sprout leaves.
I don’t want to bear more fruit
but I’m torn. Knowledge
of good is a good thing.
Outside the stained glass a bird flies
abandoning me
to join with others freed
east above the rolling hills of man.


My friend said Blakean: A Poison Tree. I'm happy Blake wrote that one.

To gather Paradise

I dwell in Possibility—
A fairer House than Prose—
More numerous of Windows—
Superior—for Doors—

Of Chambers as the Cedars—
Impregnable of Eye—
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky—

Of Visitors—the fairest—
For Occupation—This—
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise—

Emily Dickinson

On Friday night when I was wrapping up a draft of my sledgehammer poem, I told myself, "dammit I get it. I don’t need a metric like money to measure my worth--this poem, this feeling right now, is enough. I've already paid my dues. My only job is recovery and poetry. Showing up every day is the only thing I have to do."

But then on Saturday I wrote my therapist a note, but I didn't hit send; it was too pathetic. On Sunday I could have written it as well. On Friday afternoon I could have written it.

John every day I have these hours of real pain. Today it was after my poetry workshop. I know I'm going to a movie with a friend this afternoon. So Saturday is filled with positive activity. I should be resilient but I hurt so much.

On Sunday a different friend asked if I'd considered medication. (I have friends!)

This idea that I've already paid my dues, and showing up is enough, is abstract. I haven’t found a way to have it hold me, calm me, quiet my demons(?) (I’m afraid of that "demons" word because many psychiatrists/psychologists used it when describing Denise going crazy--her demons let loose like the dogs of war.)

In Dickinson's poem, I interpret her dwelling to be the land of poetry and her task to spread wide her narrow hands and gather paradise. When I read the poem, I have no idea if she is like me, knowing this only in an abstract way, or if she really feels it and her occupation provides her solace. In paradise, surely we feel no pain.

Sledgehammer

Sledgehammer

I confided to my friend another okcupid faux pas.
Still about Jack--
Still disclosing the crime that killed him.
She said it was manipulative.
That I had to stop it.
That I was selfish.
That I wanted to recruit new mourners to my side.
It prevented the woman, ever, from revealing herself.
I had to get past this she said.
So,
I’m walking down the street completely self-absorbed,
looking for a new spot to get my haircut.
Her lecture finds an appreciative audience
who sits for hours in coffee shops replaying her withering lines.
I'm barely aware I am not performing my daily observations
of Rome and her cats,
of a bruised banana peel
on a pedestal
supporting a massive granite column, and bam!
sledge hammer!
bam!
breaking through from the out there,
bam!
throwing me up against the squad car,
bam!
kicking my legs apart.
cuffing my dithering thoughts behind my back.
See the stop sign, bam!
See the white enameled crosswalk, bam!
See silhouetted branches
like a nest of snakes
against the mottled woolen sky!
See the web of hemorrhaged capillaries
blossom on her face our first mother's day.

Stop and smell the roses.

as if they were carved in latin

Dammit Stop and Smell the Roses!

I'd been hearing this advice from various quarters (The Joy of Living, John, my Saturday poetry workshop even gave us homework to observe daily the world around us) yet yesterday I could still be walking downtown completely self-absorbed. Until this.

the noisy set ... the martyrs call the world

Towards the end of our session, John miraculously pulled these lines out of his mind, recalled from his college days, about the labor of poetry:

Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’

We were talking about how writing poetry makes me happy. When I'm making a poem, I allow myself to be free of judgment, of yardsticks, of rules of right and wrong.

With poetry, I am completely happy if in one day I only improve a poem by 1 word. Or, quoting Oscar Wilde, "I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."

With poetry, I don’t have expectations or place demands on myself for success. I know there is no money. I’m not looking for acclaim. Yes, I’m happy to workshop a poem ... happy to hear what readers think … but that criticism doesn't feel like I’m being scolded by the “noisy set of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen, the martyrs call the world.”  Or like feeling scolded by my parents if I get something wrong.

With poetry, autobiography and fiction become irrelevant. Truth doesn't fit neatly between the gold-leafed pages of a bible.

With poetry, life is slow, no clock is ticking. With poetry, I can spend time watching leaves move branches around.

There is something about writing a poem that is the same as being around children. It is, in part, that when doing both I don't feel judged.

So I had a good cry. It was about Jack and Libby of course, And how I feel like a good daddy when I pick up my four year old friend. He asked if I could not find a way to make a relationship with someone, the way I would make a poem.

I have to get over feeling judged by the world, feeling guilty for letting people, friends, lovers … down … for not living up to the task of life.

John started our session by quoting a friend. The friend's last words were that he’d been listening to people all his life. John interpreted that to mean, listening to the friend's very demanding mother. My mother was demanding. And as I type this I realize she wasn’t just demanding of me, I watched her, all the time, be demanding of her husband … defining in part the father and soulmate I should become. I could not live up to her measure of being a good man. I tried. I tried so hard. Came so close. Denied so much in reaching for that. (My mother would disagree. She would say I had. I was a good man. She would console me, and I wouldn't hear her.)

So here’s Yeats poem on poetry, and the fall of man that seems to get in the way (makes hard work of) love.

Adam's Curse
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’
                                          And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There’s many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know—
Although they do not talk of it at school—
That we must labour to be beautiful.’
I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’
We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

memorize a poem homework

I committed to Stephen Mitchell's translation of Rilke's:

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: from here there is no place
that does not see you. You much change your life.

Short talk on happiness

According to Yongey Mingyur, who quotes other Rinpoches authoritatively, emptiness is absolute and pregnant with infinite possibilities. He writes that happiness is possibility. That achieving nothing, ever, even a single line of poetry, makes you happy.

(Thanks to Anne Carson & Sierra Nelson & Candy Shue.)

A first draft

the happiness project

my tears run all over the linoleum floor

they spill over thresholds and window sills

and seep through cracks to the basement below

all griefs boiling

dissolving one into another

fire burn cauldron bubble

over heat stainless steel

unbonds

a bicycle bell,
chrome grill and trim find a sky blue cutlass to accessorize.

iron? thumping the line flat with sweet smelling starch.

and carbon, graphite--this poem.

a break-up done well, does that.

stainless steel doesn’t crack, cannot grow.

so how?

is it time passing?

is it a project? filling your life with friends and hiking and sailing lessons?

is it exercise and a rose garden?

daily meditation? a season of therapy?

is it joining okcupid

answering questions

messaging strangers

then coffee chemistry and falling in love

again?

tasting her breath? wine on her lips? the salt inside her thigh?

i think it is space

only

the possibility

between diffused atoms

a stance of mere willingness

(Prompted by the rune Inguz and Richard Ford's alloyed with loss.)

CBT

I had a good session with John on Tuesday. 2 good cries about Jack. "You were happy when you were with Jack. You loved Jack."

I am the main character in the Depression or Grief movie playing inside my head. When the main character is outside me, my child or my date, or an object like a soccer ball which I can step up and intercept, those movies are happy (or more likely to be happy I assume).

When I'm the main character, the movie is narcissistic, overflowing with self-consciousness.

John doesn't have a problem with my writing, per se, if I'm describing something outside me. But he is concerned when I write about myself. (Which is pretty damning since I write poetry and memoir. And these blog posts.)

I'm feeling enough, John said, I need to think my way out of the feelings--hence Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. By examining my thoughts, stop the movie (the feelings) before it starts.

This is where John's advice touches something new. I always thought my problem was I wasn't emotional enough. Whether I suppressing emotions, absorbing emotions, not expressing my emotions ... for the last few years I thought my work was emotional. I'm not sure John is contradicting this, but he says start with my thoughts. Notice my depressive pattern. When I start beating myself up, second guessing all the decisions I made with L, or start directing some anger at L, I should look at my thought and question it. What data do I have to support the thought? John used the word "data."

It seems consistent with mindfulness meditation. Stepping back from my thoughts and seeing where they come from.

Another tangent to our conversation was ... if something goes wrong, I fall back on my "good guy defense." I am a good person because I'm a gentleman, a boy scout. I follow the rules. I take out the trash. I pay my debts. I give up my seat on the bus. Believing I'm good, I battle the depression, the bad thoughts & feelings. I can hide there, safe, within the rules.

The Writing Part

Part of this Happiness Project is writing. I started that this morning. I have a Prologue and a Chapter 1 completely in mind--they could almost write themselves.

Prologue -- How did I get here? I've had agency. I've made the decisions.

I left my friends, my tennis and soccer buddies in New Jersey and moved to Seattle. I left a vibrant poetry scene in New York (and New Jersey--Princeton, Drew, Patterson). I chose a writer's life of solitude. I don't have a job--so I miss that social outlet and income. I live on the portion of my pension that survived the divorce. I moved 3000 miles away from my daughter. I recently broke off a relationship with a wonderful woman and am still deeply grieving Jack. Sackcloth and ashes. A life of denial.

Chapter 1 -- Denouement. I finally understand what "falling action" means. If the climax was the break-up, the denouement was the swarm of emotions engulfing me as I began to realize what I had done, what I had lost. I'd been merely surviving. I wasn't trying to make a life together with L. What doesn't grow, dies. I arrogantly perform euthanasia.

But I'm stuck. I'm full of doubts--with not a a single original one among them.

• In writing about myself, I write about others. I don't want to. I don't want to create caricatures. I don't want to "use" my friends.
• I doubt my skill. Can I write a description? Could I describe L to you?
• Is it fair to anyone new I meet, that they might provide content for this story?
• Is it fair to me? Can I have any hope of success in my project, if I'm keeping my writerly remove from the action?
• Is my recovery story of  any interest to anyone?

Moving forward is the thing. I have to just write. The goal here is to be happy--not to produce a book. I need a project. To be happy, I have to be working towards something. Happiness comes from pleasure but also from meaning and accomplishment. If at the end, the project doesn't work as a book. Fine. Maybe even a relief.

Chapter 1 is too fresh and painful. When I was writing Dear Denise, I constantly heard the advice that I was too close to the subject. "Maybe it would be better, Bill, if you let time pass and gain perspective." So I could choose to be kind to myself, and put this chapter aside. Some would argue it would make for a better book. But what if Chapter 1 part of the work I need to do? What if I can't get to happy unless I finish Chapter 1? I can rewrite later with perspective.

PS. I reviewed this post with my therapist John. I wanted to make sure I was respectful. His reaction was that the post was fine though he didn't understand this world of social media and blogging ... in fact it repelled him. He had concerns, though, about my abstracted, writerly self. That perhaps adopting a writer's personae got in the way of truly meeting people--being in the moment with them. Maybe it was the same thing Grace was saying in Dear Denise, when she said that my letters to Denise were a shield.

This is an old familiar concern of mine. I told John that he was finally getting me.

Our relationship is strong and I trust him. Maybe he is able, now, to help.

Matt Killingsworth on Mind Wandering

Be Here Now!

Live in the Moment!

Killingsworth has some data to back that up. From moment to moment experiences in real lives.

At minute 6 of this 10 minute 2012 TED talk, he starts presenting results. When our minds wander, when my mind wanders, it does often find my worries, anxieties and regrets. On average our minds wander 47% of the time, and even during sex, our minds wander 10% of the time.

The good news for me is that for reading and writing, my mind is with the words on the page. Yes I can drift when I read, but for the most part reading reins me back to the moment. Last night I woke almost every hour--I have my anxieties right now--but to calm myself, and to get myself back ready for sleep--I picked up David Shafer's Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

Similarly I love my Sunday morning pick-up soccer with the guys. Yes, I can start wandering--beating myself up for a stupid pass or wondering what am I going to do at the Seahawks party at my ex-girl friend's ex's house. But a forward runs at me and the thrill of the game takes back over.

And now Ray LaMontagne, and "Be Here Now."

My friend sent me this clip early in our relationship. She was right. She was always trying to get me there until we stopped.

Footnote: Garner is right, WTF is a "paranoid, sarcastic, and clattering pop-thriller."

Notes to Self

Each day I work from a small dashboard and track tasks against projects:

Money / Find work: check & and apply on craigslist for part time office admin jobs. A friend gave me a nearby Starbucks manager's phone ... I left a message, dreading the call back. Friday was a good day for the S&P. Note to self: you let your happiness depend on the S&P?

okcupid/social/get out: I learned that the car2gos do flea downtown on a Saturday night. Not to self: wise to end a date in some other neighborhood.

I also found that it was simple (in 2 of 3 cases) to google the full names of women after a nice okcupid chat. Note to self: this is real! Can I be on okcupid if am looking for a friend and not a relationship? I listen to coaching from friends. Sure, maybe, if you're crystal clear. But if your're just looking for a friend, why do you screen for attractiveness?

Writing: nice workshop Saturday at Hugo House "Loss, text and Poems from the Fall." Note to self: stay with my tribe. I have daily homework: a reading log, an observation log and this from Virgil (Book IV, 740 741:

Look now, what can I do?
       Turn once again
To the old suitors, only to be
       laughed at -- 

This relates to a Brezny New Years horoscope that helped launch this project:

The fish known as the coelacanths were thought to have become extinct 66 million years ago. That was when they disappeared from the fossil record. But in 1938 a fisherman in South Africa caught a live coelacanth. Eventually, whole colonies were discovered in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa and near Indonesia. I foresee a comparable phenomenon happening in your life during the coming months, Virgo. An influence you believed to have disappeared from your life will resurface. Should you welcome and embrace it? Here's what I think: Only if you're interested in its potential role in your future, not because of a nostalgic attachment.

Dear Denise: Friday I submitted (went to a real post office) to Algonquin.

I need this list of tasks to face each day. It's my rudder--to hold my keel against the water and push me forward.

OK OKCupid

It would be irresponsible not to try OKcupid. (Note to self: keep the identity of my account a secret. How?)

How is OKcupid part of the happiness project? I want to find a friend that will be a tour guide, take me hiking. I will pay for gas.

I'm serious--that's my conceit. I can't hide the fact that I ride the bus, take car2go, stay trapped within my urban Home Area.

Huh!? Why don't you try hiking meetups? Go to REI and look at their calendar & bulletin board? I did! I will!

What have I learned so far.

• Even if friends say,"have fun with it, stay light-hearted," this is a not game
• It is clarifying. Writing the profile, answering the questions, staying honest ... it's useful
• I'm relieved that I've scored only the tiniest bit More Arrogant than the average personality
• It is hard not get depressed. All the lonely people, myself included, where do they all come from

Get happy. Stay with it until you're sure it's wrong.

I welcome any pointers, advice.

The Happiness Project

Now there are two ways to save at Sundance Seattle

ORCA Card Mondays: Only $5 per ticket when you show us your ORCA card at the box office.

Girls Movie Night Out Tuesdays: Only $5 per ticket every Tuesday night for groups of two or more ladies. 

I ride the bus. I hear the first step is admitting you have a problem. It isn't the bus, per se, I like its progressiveness, its humanity, and the economics. But it does cramp my style. Maybe ORCA night out at Sundance is where I'll find my support group.

Friends out there: would you go out on a date with someone who walks you in the Seattle drizzle to a bus stop?