Bliss Bliss Bliss

That's all. What else is there to say about that? Except, for now, world, I thank thee.

Fireworks Galore

Have not had a happier fourth ever. Lemon meringue cupcakes and sweet company and King of Hearts (a movie I'd never heard of and adored.)

July, July, a month that owed me a bunch of redemption, I high five thee.

Earle Grey Ice Cream

To lift the bergamot from your cold mouth.
Sun Bicycle in a Color Called Overjoyed or Over You.
To spin the spokes to a daisy wish with an odd number of petals

Time to watch Penelope Cruz and Ben Kingsley in another Elegy.

Ci vediamo su quando torni.

BicycleItalianBikiniBookPacificStarlight

To Lift the Pain Whole from You

I am thinking of my sister here, how hard this lately is and how hard to say the right words about love, what it means, how to get it and how to get it and so on. I am packing up all the Mary Oliver and Anais Nin I can. I am reminding her, reminding me, reminding all the good architects of all the good houses for birds that it's not all for the birds. But some days, Chickadees.

Roberta Flack singing The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. The rain pouring hard outside. The Zelda room's good memories, if achey. The ginger-green tea I drank on the way back from the gym (in the rain) and the so many "me-toos" we kiss goodbye when we lose someone.

Oh Sister, I wish I could band-aid this for you. I am full of missings and musings but the world does "offer itself up to your imagination" and that makes everything possible once you pull anchor and sail.

ELEGY FOR THE UNSAID

after Neruda

In this mouth I gather darkness, an aria,
rosewater tongue, tympanic bone,
a poem more quiet than quietness,
a bronze song, something undone, salvia,
a crushed butterfly.
It is the blood on a light bulb, the seventh sadness,
a fluctuation that closes oceans and eyes.
The vermilion and solitary luminary
shimmies and singes the feathers of the aviary.

Moon, the clock's word, dear mother, ruin, rain.

Simone Muench

I'll Run Away with You

The shuffle saved me tonight while the mood was a blender set to frappe, and my insides all cycloning, I tore out the door running and out to the park where the songs of infinite cheez-whiz kept my feet as angry as they were sad and as sad as could keep them churning (which kept the blender switched off in the stomach). I came home awash in sweat and just enough endorphin-buzz to keep me from weeping. Yes, one of those days, but not without good reason and not without gains. For a minute, I could see how much was possible and how wrong so many of the previous places had been for finding it. There's that and that's not nothing.

So,I am a sea of self-indulgence tonight and self-indulgence makes a great bedfellow for Ms. Nin's various wisdoms.

People living deeply have no fear of death.

The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle

There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.

Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.

Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.

That last one is a feeling I had for nearly six whole months. Then I risked it, and for good worth-it reason and I tripped, but I'm good for it, a little scraped but only flesh wounded. It's only Wednesday night, after all, and not the end of the world. Beginning with Anais and ending with The Cure, how odd that journey.



...a raging sea Stole the only girl I loved, drowned her deep inside of me

Found a friend's blog and was reminded of what I told myself the beginning of this year and how lately, I have been reminded that getting what one wants is one thing, knowing about the care and feeding of it is another.
Something happy-making happened and it was so good for me. I am determined to be good for this sort of thing, and the next few weeks and this summer schedule are all going to be devoted to finding my way to that, to finishing the novel's first fifty and sending out my new story, to getting the gym schedule solid again and with yoga and trying very hard to learn from my losses.

I am posting the poem I most need to remember right now. It is, admittedly, repost, but I need it--(like diaquiri ice and movie nights of late and so much that I had, not long ago and deeply-cherished but not well enough or correctly)--close at hand.

AT THIS MOMENT OF TIME

Some who are uncertain compel me. They fear
The Ace of Spades. They fear
Love offered suddenly, turning from the
mantelpiece,
Sweet with decision. And they distrust
The fireworks by the lakeside, first the spuft,
Then the coloured lights, rising.
Tentative, hesitant, doubtful, they consume
Greedily Caesar at the prow returning,
Locked in the stone of his act and office.
While the brass band brightly bursts over the water
They stand in the crowd lining the shore
Aware of the water beneath Him. They know it.
Their eyes
Are haunted by water.

Disturb me, compel me. It is not true
That ‘no man is happy,’ but that is not
The sense which guides you. If we are
Unfinished (we are, unless hope is a bad dream),
You are exact. You tug my sleeve
Before I speak, with a shadow’s friendship,
And I remember that we who move
Are moved by clouds that darken midnight.

Our Own Phillipsburgs

I owe my students a poem about my Phillipsburg. I thought it was the Fr. Quarter in my lovely, sad Nola. But that town is so bear-linked and right now I am all about the present-moment, the present in the moment and being happy with the bright-eyed feeling I am trying to learn to believe. The sandcastle-boots have been put away for the season and the fragile beginnings of a house near the sea and the little frail visits are forming their own summer memories. Maybe just maybe, this kid can stay happy with being happy long enough to shore it all up, resin or whatnot and brave it, prepare it, bring it in for the upcoming cold. After all, even Phillipsburg, as was pointed out to me, ends with the flash of red hair on a wall, lighting it all up with something like a brand of hope.

Tonight is wine and Wednesday wonder. (And sappy alliteration.)

Who Writes Better than Bobby?

Now if you see Saint Annie
Please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move
My fingers are all in a knot
I don't have the strength
To get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor
Won't even say what it is I've got