Sunday Walk at Dusk

I walk back from the asphalt of the school playground

where I picked up a piece of wood

in the shape of a tree thought

blown from above in the wind

of  two nights ago.

I walk along the sidewalk home thinking

someone might mistake this branch for a gun

in the headlight glare.

so I carry it loosely swinging by two fingers

pointing the delicate web of lichen into the headlight

to reflect pale green above the gray silver bark.

maybe they see me and think

about the darkness that I am not.

maybe they only see me vaguely with no comprehension

simply a blank silhouette against the dark shadow trees

and the sky holding the last of the day’s blue around the edges of

oncoming clouds.

Maybe they see me and think.

 

 

 

I don’t do enough walking at night. It is strange how it makes me feel younger, a little adventurous, but not in danger.  My mind opens up in different ways when I walk in the dark. I become much less a visual creature and stretch out more with my thoughts, trusting my feet to fall right.

Before my walk I was feeling a bit harassed by thoughts of things I wanted to get done before my weekend comes to a close. Now I feel calmly ready to get what I can done. And I will let tomorrow take care of itself.

A Novel Project

I am starting a project that has had several false starts already. I think maybe this time it will work. It is a multi-stranded novel based on a central character (in his early twenties as of 2009) written in the first person. The strands will include people from his family as far back or forward or sideways as it is possible to go and still be connected to this character.

I am calling it The Silk Weaver’s Tree.

I am hoping for it to be a cooperative effort. I really have no idea how it will look when it is finished. With Anansi’s help along with anyone else who is interested, I am hoping for a huge web of intriguing stories all connected.

Grasping Poetry

Receiving Messages From Separate Individual Realities

grabbing a handful porcupine jello, or  the space contained in a floating soap bubble,

lips vibrating, tongue clicking, throat coughing strangled groan,

staggering, shuffle leap into the blinding wall.

How can each voice be different and call

us on into what might be

oblivion.?

Could be life is in voices speaking not to be understood, but felt.

Feel the song of edges

Knife and saw, feather and leaf,

Twang!

vibrate and tilt until something not yet solid shakes into

the periferal field.

Don’t look! it is not for seeing.

Don’t listen! it is not a sound.

Feel it there, not in words

but whispers of grunting fetishes

ground into a powder and taken by the wind.

It sticks in the eyes stinging, muffles the ears and

leaves us arms stretched out waving about

frantically for something

real

to hang on to.

A Poem From Random Thoughts

From Reach to Tilt

The light shot strikes the corrugated pattern of the stone wall.

A lip accounts a tube,

undulating throughout a cruel century,

The spirit ventures,

a lonely tooth shaming the agony reflected in a

delicate molecule.

Cement coughs through stone.

Above the worthwhile danger faints the invented effect.

Can wealth summarize stone?

Tilt originates from reach.

The toe retracts under the tremendous shift of stone.

Reach walks in the gut.

Tilt leans the spirit forward.

I’ve Been Thinking About Recovery and Discovery

I have been reading May Sarton’s journal called Recovery which is initially about recovering from the loss of her life partner due to onset of senelity and finally recovery from a radical mastectomy.  I have not had to face any such life altering events in the last few years, and yet her ideas on finding meaning in the middle of life when you are lost helped put some perspective on my life. I have been feeling lost the last few years and actually most of my life.

In the journal, she tells of all the people who come to visit during the year, about all of the connections she has made in her life, and the people that reach out to her in letters. She writes about the difficulties of balancing the need to have space to create with the need to have connections with the world. My life is crowded with the world of work that I find overwhelming and family which has many positive aspects, but leaves me with just little slivers of time to be, to contemplate, to wonder, to study, to read, to absorb ideas and make sense of of them. This is what being a writer is all about. It is what makes me feel whole, and it is what I get to do the least of.

It does not help that I have been battling little illnesses all winter. I have had to use my low reserves of energy just to get through long dark days. But now I feel the light coming back. I am getting out in the world and moving and ideas are growing.

On Thursday I took some time to go to a recycled hardware store, something I used to do all the time for inspiration. I found some large bolts and nuts that I brought back to my class just to see how the children would use them. Just this process opened up other possibilities. How can we use the old muddy clay left over from last year. The bolts are heavy and cold and hard. What other materials with different properties can I find with which the children can experience different properties. Can we use clay to paint with? What about sand or coffee grounds? All of this is more valid than any of the other work on pre-academics and fine motor skills. I want to open their minds to the world and with preschoolers the world comes through what they feel and experience concretely. Maybe we will build stick houses and cover them with the muddy clay and coffee grounds. Maybe carving ice with colored salt water and eye droppers. What will inspire the connections in their brains to open up to the world and ask questions? Because questions are essence of true learning, questions that lead to more questions and further experiments. There is no need to make the answers hard and fill in blanks. The world should be full of wondering and open ends. They will have a life time to build frameworks of facts around the airy space of wonder. Let them discover the questions first and design their own structures to organize what they find.