5/28/2007
Happy Memorial Day. Well now, we're going on vacation soon. So I'll be gone till...let's see..how about mid-June? No bloggage, I'm afraid. Though the ship we're taking will have an internet cafe. Maybe I'll post something from there. Let you know how all the drunk 54 year old moms in bikinis are doing. How the retired Rotarians in Speedos are holding up. Cinderella says she's going to be snozzled the entire cruise. I'm going to read and write and get some fried bananas in Puerto Rico.
The Washington Post piece went well. I have gotten supportive emails about it. I was expecting the usual trouble, but no. They fear me! Anyway, I have been talking about Immigration Monday for a while, so we'll try to launch that feature in July. Every Monday, some kind of immigration/border material. Our little secret--tell your friends.
Oh, and the essay is being made available to the 600 papers in the syndicate, so it might show up in your town. If the Post doesn't mind, I'll post it in the first I-Monday as part of the inaugural volley of info.
I'll be keeping a Wastelander's Notebook (see the archives, below) of the boat trip. Probably a Wastelander's Sea-Log. If it's worth reading, I'll give it to you here, along with more writing meditations, and a whole lot of cool travel and writing workshop stuff. Keeping busy. Giving it away.
See you in a few weeks.
XOXO, L
Church is in session
The Washington Post piece went well. I have gotten supportive emails about it. I was expecting the usual trouble, but no. They fear me! Anyway, I have been talking about Immigration Monday for a while, so we'll try to launch that feature in July. Every Monday, some kind of immigration/border material. Our little secret--tell your friends.
Oh, and the essay is being made available to the 600 papers in the syndicate, so it might show up in your town. If the Post doesn't mind, I'll post it in the first I-Monday as part of the inaugural volley of info.
I'll be keeping a Wastelander's Notebook (see the archives, below) of the boat trip. Probably a Wastelander's Sea-Log. If it's worth reading, I'll give it to you here, along with more writing meditations, and a whole lot of cool travel and writing workshop stuff. Keeping busy. Giving it away.
See you in a few weeks.
XOXO, L
5/27/2007
Here's what I'm aiming at. I'd like to get here as a writer (though it will no doubt make me an addle-pated goober), as a dad (though the endless inane teenybopper gurl squabbles about how nobody understands the 15 year old's PAIN make it unlikely), as a person (almost there on the right days), as a husband--hey. I'm there.
"I got up at sunrise and was happy, I walked and was happy; I roamed the forest and hills, I wandered in the valleys, I read. I did nothing, I worked in the garden, I picked fruit, I helped in the house and happiness followed me everywhere--happiness which could not be referred to any definite object, but dwelt entirely within myself and which never left me a single instant."
--Jean-Jaques Rousseau
What did that old hymn say? I got joy-joy-joy-joy down in my heart.
Pax vobiscum, y'all.
L
Saturday Rain
"I got up at sunrise and was happy, I walked and was happy; I roamed the forest and hills, I wandered in the valleys, I read. I did nothing, I worked in the garden, I picked fruit, I helped in the house and happiness followed me everywhere--happiness which could not be referred to any definite object, but dwelt entirely within myself and which never left me a single instant."
--Jean-Jaques Rousseau
What did that old hymn say? I got joy-joy-joy-joy down in my heart.
Pax vobiscum, y'all.
L
5/26/2007
e.e. cummings said:
To be nobody but yourself--in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else--means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.
#
Okay, so that's a meditation more about being than about writing--though you know by now that I believe in writing-as-being. Writing is what you are as well as what you do. (Notice I didn't say being-as-writing; that would be living for the page and the pen, standing back constantly from every experience to note: What an artiste am I!) You must fight to be yourself because everybody wants to control that aspect of you. Voter, tax payer, Republican, Democrat, parent, student, soldier, frycook. Lover. Writer.
I mentioned tree huggers in a previous post (among whom I stand proudly). I have had to battle to be me, even though being me is not always that great a prize in my opinion, but it is all mine. I am my own nation, and I will fight to defend my territories. Walt Whitman and me.
I also remember Kurt Cobain said, "I hate myself and want to die." That's me, too. I've had to fight right through that brush fire, as you all must, or have. Many of us more than once. But guess what--we're here. We won.
The theologian Will Campbell said organized religion (definition: "to tie down") was wicked, because it was a corporate entity, and corporate entities are about power, and their power is derived from binding and controlling the human spirit. Will C. was Johnny Cash's pastor. He leads a sinner's church, and that's for me. I need sinners because saints maintain such an exclusive club. Ol' Will once served communion to country-western singers and outlaw bikers in a bar, with bread and whiskey. God is too big for religion.
God is small as a haiku.
It's raining here. Cold and gray--and the cicadas are still hiding underground. My beloved Mr. and Mrs. Mallard walked around the yard again, complaining. They seem to have won the e.e. cummings battle upon hatching. They know who they are, all right. Though they seem to have some kind of suburban neighbor illusions. I feel like I should set out some chips and Buds for them.
My immigration essay runs in tomorrow's (Sunday) Washington Post. You ought to be able to find it on their website, in the op-ed area. And I got a gift in the mail today from Ana Castillo. She knew in her bones, I bet, that I needed some magic, and she sent a gift carved from amber. I won't tell you what it is. I learned my lesson when I received a certain fetish from Cinderella--a Hopi carving of an animal I loved. And I showed it to everyone. And it promptly vanished from the velvet pouch where I kept it in my pocket. It took one of the medicine women who helped me with Hummingbird to show me that the carving had become my own secret when I accepted it, and the showing was what made it go away. When you have lived in their world for a while, you listen and learn. So I tried again, minding my medicine.
Ana's object is so alive--the amber is still warm, as if the ancient sun were trapped in the stone. And it was definitely the right animals to send me. Plus, you know, she put some X's and O's in the card! Oh yeah! Writerlove moving around the country. My sisters and brothers are feeling each other in this season with so much at stake and so many threats to us all.
So fight the sweet fight. Fight to be you. Retain yourself. I can offer you this: I have no designs or plans for you; I only want to come upon you as you are, and experience you, and celebrate you, and lift you up in chants and ritual prayers when we part. You do the same for me. Remember what I said last time: to keep it, you've got to give it away. But nobody's getting Ana's amber!
My medicine is great, amigos.
Give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above! Don't fence me in!
Let me ride, let me ride through the country that I love! Don't fence me in!
Besos y abrazos, Luis
Thursday Meditation, 5/24
To be nobody but yourself--in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else--means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.
#
Okay, so that's a meditation more about being than about writing--though you know by now that I believe in writing-as-being. Writing is what you are as well as what you do. (Notice I didn't say being-as-writing; that would be living for the page and the pen, standing back constantly from every experience to note: What an artiste am I!) You must fight to be yourself because everybody wants to control that aspect of you. Voter, tax payer, Republican, Democrat, parent, student, soldier, frycook. Lover. Writer.
I mentioned tree huggers in a previous post (among whom I stand proudly). I have had to battle to be me, even though being me is not always that great a prize in my opinion, but it is all mine. I am my own nation, and I will fight to defend my territories. Walt Whitman and me.
I also remember Kurt Cobain said, "I hate myself and want to die." That's me, too. I've had to fight right through that brush fire, as you all must, or have. Many of us more than once. But guess what--we're here. We won.
The theologian Will Campbell said organized religion (definition: "to tie down") was wicked, because it was a corporate entity, and corporate entities are about power, and their power is derived from binding and controlling the human spirit. Will C. was Johnny Cash's pastor. He leads a sinner's church, and that's for me. I need sinners because saints maintain such an exclusive club. Ol' Will once served communion to country-western singers and outlaw bikers in a bar, with bread and whiskey. God is too big for religion.
God is small as a haiku.
It's raining here. Cold and gray--and the cicadas are still hiding underground. My beloved Mr. and Mrs. Mallard walked around the yard again, complaining. They seem to have won the e.e. cummings battle upon hatching. They know who they are, all right. Though they seem to have some kind of suburban neighbor illusions. I feel like I should set out some chips and Buds for them.
My immigration essay runs in tomorrow's (Sunday) Washington Post. You ought to be able to find it on their website, in the op-ed area. And I got a gift in the mail today from Ana Castillo. She knew in her bones, I bet, that I needed some magic, and she sent a gift carved from amber. I won't tell you what it is. I learned my lesson when I received a certain fetish from Cinderella--a Hopi carving of an animal I loved. And I showed it to everyone. And it promptly vanished from the velvet pouch where I kept it in my pocket. It took one of the medicine women who helped me with Hummingbird to show me that the carving had become my own secret when I accepted it, and the showing was what made it go away. When you have lived in their world for a while, you listen and learn. So I tried again, minding my medicine.
Ana's object is so alive--the amber is still warm, as if the ancient sun were trapped in the stone. And it was definitely the right animals to send me. Plus, you know, she put some X's and O's in the card! Oh yeah! Writerlove moving around the country. My sisters and brothers are feeling each other in this season with so much at stake and so many threats to us all.
So fight the sweet fight. Fight to be you. Retain yourself. I can offer you this: I have no designs or plans for you; I only want to come upon you as you are, and experience you, and celebrate you, and lift you up in chants and ritual prayers when we part. You do the same for me. Remember what I said last time: to keep it, you've got to give it away. But nobody's getting Ana's amber!
My medicine is great, amigos.
Give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above! Don't fence me in!
Let me ride, let me ride through the country that I love! Don't fence me in!
Besos y abrazos, Luis
5/24/2007
You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.
--Joseph Joubert
So often I have waited for the world to bring me something to write about. I want inspiration, or incident. I want a moose to come out, or a beautiful woman to smile at me, or a rainstorm to scream through Zion national park so I can see the water cascade down the red rock cliffs. But I don't often remember to make something to take to the world. I must carry the nugget of light inside myself so I can set the page on fire and make a burnt offering of my words to the great fat aching bejeweled and lovely mother. What do those AA guys say? To keep it, you've got to give it away.... Well, to get it, you have to already have it.
And you do.
5/22
--Joseph Joubert
So often I have waited for the world to bring me something to write about. I want inspiration, or incident. I want a moose to come out, or a beautiful woman to smile at me, or a rainstorm to scream through Zion national park so I can see the water cascade down the red rock cliffs. But I don't often remember to make something to take to the world. I must carry the nugget of light inside myself so I can set the page on fire and make a burnt offering of my words to the great fat aching bejeweled and lovely mother. What do those AA guys say? To keep it, you've got to give it away.... Well, to get it, you have to already have it.
And you do.
5/22/2007
Spirit talks to flesh--flesh talks to spirit. But you never know which is which. I'm not seeking the truth--nor was I ever. I was born knowing the truth. Everybody is. Trouble is they get it knocked out of them before they can walk.
-- Bob Dylan
Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters. High school graduation tomorrow for The Boy. We are old. I sit on the couch grumbling at teenagers. And all Naperville is waiting for the 17 year cicada plague to rise from the ground in waves of millions of little monsters. I'm hoping it happens during commencement--all those BMW cheerleaders shrieking, "Like, Omygawd!" I have to start writing things that aren't this blog. Back to work! More subterranean beasties busting thru my crust and swarming up out of my fingers, my mouth, my eyes. Expecting to fly. Looking to mate and lay eggs in the aspens. You don't need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows.
L
Seek And Ye Shall Meditate on Writing, 5/21
-- Bob Dylan
Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters. High school graduation tomorrow for The Boy. We are old. I sit on the couch grumbling at teenagers. And all Naperville is waiting for the 17 year cicada plague to rise from the ground in waves of millions of little monsters. I'm hoping it happens during commencement--all those BMW cheerleaders shrieking, "Like, Omygawd!" I have to start writing things that aren't this blog. Back to work! More subterranean beasties busting thru my crust and swarming up out of my fingers, my mouth, my eyes. Expecting to fly. Looking to mate and lay eggs in the aspens. You don't need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows.
L
5/21/2007
Hi--it's your ol' pal Dick Urethra here. (See last posting, below.) Hey, so I was saying on the blog that I was thinking about doing an Immigration Monday thing. Put in my two cents' worth and all that. I talked to a couple of you, and I emailed my Mexican Consul General cuz Enrique, and I checked in with Warrior the Friendly Border Patrol agent, and I even talked to a lit blogger or two to see if it was a good idea or not. And guess what--The Washington Post suddenly wrote and asked me to do a killer immigration piece...due Wednesday! What!!! Wednesday!?! This sounds way too much like work to me, since I'm basically watching Oprah, reading the new Lee Child thriller, listening to Black Sabbath--the Ronnie James Dio years--and lounging around naked with my wife. Look, I was just talking about being Mr. Immigration again! I didn't really, like, you know, mean it.
Funny how the universe listens and whomps you with your own inspiration, innit?
Of course, I am thrilled and honored to be asked, so I'm on it. I imagine it'll run on Sunday, so if you get the chance, take a look at Sunday's Washington Post and see how much trouble I get myself in. It might be fun to kick off Immigration Monday by posting the insane and badly-typed hate mail I'll get if I suggest in any way that Mexicans are human.
Or Border Patrol agents.
This turn of events put me in mind of a pithy li'l meditation for you writers and poets and readers and gardeners and love-makers and preachers and walkers and moms and birders and workers today:
"Work is prayer. Work is also stink. Therefore, stink is prayer." --Aldous Huxley
Let us recall what the holy St. Beau Jocque of zydeco fame used to sing: "Is it stankin'? Can you really make it stank?" Uh! Yow! Dance the two-step, y'all. I'm STINKIN'!
XXX, after a shower, Luis
Sunday
Funny how the universe listens and whomps you with your own inspiration, innit?
Of course, I am thrilled and honored to be asked, so I'm on it. I imagine it'll run on Sunday, so if you get the chance, take a look at Sunday's Washington Post and see how much trouble I get myself in. It might be fun to kick off Immigration Monday by posting the insane and badly-typed hate mail I'll get if I suggest in any way that Mexicans are human.
Or Border Patrol agents.
This turn of events put me in mind of a pithy li'l meditation for you writers and poets and readers and gardeners and love-makers and preachers and walkers and moms and birders and workers today:
"Work is prayer. Work is also stink. Therefore, stink is prayer." --Aldous Huxley
Let us recall what the holy St. Beau Jocque of zydeco fame used to sing: "Is it stankin'? Can you really make it stank?" Uh! Yow! Dance the two-step, y'all. I'm STINKIN'!
XXX, after a shower, Luis
5/20/2007
So we're at the neighbors' house--not really a neighbor--the mom and dad of one of Eric's fellow hi skool grads. We're having the ham and roast beef and teens gathering. I'm sitting with grandpa at the table, and we're talking about my books. He asks me, "What's your last name again?" Urrea. "How do you spell that?" U-R-R-E-A. He looks at me for a beat, then announces, "We used to call that PISS!" Cindy almost spits out her potato salad, and she and Eric laugh at me all the way back home. Just thought you'd like to know I did my part to spread joy among the congregation.
I have decided to change my name; my new stage name will be Dick Urethra.
Here's your meditation!
I shall be myself--
Free, a genius, an embarrassment
Like the Indian, the buffalo
Like Yellowstone Nastional Park.
--Philip Whalen
Micro-Meditation for a Quiet Saturday, 5/19
I have decided to change my name; my new stage name will be Dick Urethra.
Here's your meditation!
I shall be myself--
Free, a genius, an embarrassment
Like the Indian, the buffalo
Like Yellowstone Nastional Park.
--Philip Whalen
5/19/2007
Like all the writing meditations I have posted here, this one is about writing, and it is not about writing.
To know the plums
Own your heart--
Also own your nose.
--Onitsura
5/18--Treehugger
To know the plums
Own your heart--
Also own your nose.
--Onitsura
5/18/2007
I read an interview once where a naturalist was responding to being called a tree-hugger. He basically said: You bet I am--every one of us should feel free to hug the things we love. Yeah, baby! Isn't this what writing is often about? Giving it all an embrace? Even writing full of hate and vitriol is often fuelde by a fierce love of something else. My anti-immigrant buds who tell me I ought to be executed for writing about Beaners, for example, are certainly thinking they love Amurca a whole real big lot, and I don't, so I need to be whupped on. (I've been thinking of upping the political ante by converting Mondays into immigration blogs--Immigration Monday! What do you think? Straight talk about the issues. Like--what, exactly, is the law being broken? Do you know? I didn't.) If you look way back in the archived blogs, you'll find a "Wastelander's Notebook" about my train journey to Missouri to do a reading. I didn't post the second half of that trip, which included a return ride with a group of Kazakh jazz musicians, one of which was a beauty who was looking for an American to marry before her visa ran out. I sat with the Chick Corea of Kazakhstan! Nothing, at all, like Borat. Anyway, one of the peculiar delights of the visit to Missouri was meeting and hanging out with Rush Limbaugh's relatives. I think it suprised us all. We liked each other a whole lot. No whuppings on either side--just Americans gathered at a barbecue.
How can you not want to hug it all? (I don't mean like Ari Gold, on Entourage, either, barking, "Hug it out, bitch!") I would hug the Limbaughs if I saw them. I want to go hug Kazakhstan. I want to hug the train. I try to do this--honoring and love--through the words. (See the Etheridge Knight quote I offered you in a recent meditation.) (I would hug Etheridge Knight.)
Although it's not hip, I believe in God--whom my Sioux bros call "Grandfather." What, now, is prayer for me but an embrace of gratitude? I don't beseech or beg anymore. I don't whine or wheedle or negotiate. I don't ask for $$$. I plant stuff and write stuff and surrender in trust every morning and night. Treehugger!?! I'm a Godhugger! Sorry. Don't mean to preach.
Hug a porcupine. Hug a Mustang fastback GT. Hug an aspen tree. Hug a snake. Hug a desert. Hug an orphan. Hug a Border patrol agent. Hug an armadillo. Hug a poet. Hug an ancient building. Hug a line shack. Hug a river. Hug a Mexican. The world's arms are open, and much of the world is lonely and dying for your comforting touch. It's true.
The great and intimidating Vine DeLoria Jr., great thinker, Sioux author of God is Red, was a friend of mine. You couldn't always tell he was your pal because he was a cranky man. But beneath his bluster and hard shell, he was kind. He often reached out to me with a gentle touch that belied his cranky squint. The world was diminished when Vine died. But one day, when we were standing in holy Colorado, beholding the surreal Flatirons over Boulder, I asked him about the spirits. I was getting rolling on Hummingbird's Daughter, and I didn't think I could get to the indigenous concept of Spirits. I was less of a heathenish early-church type than I am now. Less of a treehugger/Godhugger.
Vine said this--and I offer it as your meditation for the day--and I offer it to you in all his cranky, gruff, cigarette-smoke frankness--because Vine wasn't worried like I am about hugging us--believe that:
"When you Christians still had a faith, you used to call the Spirits guardian angels. Your own Bible states that there is an angel given to everything in Creation. Don't you remember that? Our Spirits are your guardian angels. And they're lonely. These mountains are lonely. They don't speak English. These mountains here in Boulder speak Arapaho. But the Arapaho are gone. People use tham all day and never talk to them. I can promise you one thing. If you learned Arapaho, and you went up there al;one, and you sang to these mountains in their tongue--something amazing would happen to you. Lonesome angels right there."
I never learned Arapaho, but I took what he said to heart, and I talked to the angels on every hike thereafter. And Vine was right--the Spirits of the Flatirons and Boulder Creek and the wild apple trees and the waterfalls and the lions and the wildflowers and the bears and the marmots and the wild peas and the glaciers and the high sun and the evolving clouds did speak to me. Things did happen. I am here now, telling you--but this journey really got going on Boulder Creek Path, on the Bluebell Trail, under Devil's Thumb, on the cross-coutry paths beyond Eldorado and across the elk meadows and beaver dams of Rocky Mountain National Park. I like to say I really met myself up there. But maybe, there, I finally met the spirit of writing--that thing that had enflamed me and tormented me and illuminated me and lay in bed with my lovers and confounded me for all those years.
I'm not perfect. None of us are perfect. But if we had eyes to see, we'd know this: none of us is ever alone.
Hey, what are you doing reading this? Get out and write. Hug what you love. Give the angels a poem.
Remember what Neal Cassady said: GRACE BEATS KARMA.
L
5/17
How can you not want to hug it all? (I don't mean like Ari Gold, on Entourage, either, barking, "Hug it out, bitch!") I would hug the Limbaughs if I saw them. I want to go hug Kazakhstan. I want to hug the train. I try to do this--honoring and love--through the words. (See the Etheridge Knight quote I offered you in a recent meditation.) (I would hug Etheridge Knight.)
Although it's not hip, I believe in God--whom my Sioux bros call "Grandfather." What, now, is prayer for me but an embrace of gratitude? I don't beseech or beg anymore. I don't whine or wheedle or negotiate. I don't ask for $$$. I plant stuff and write stuff and surrender in trust every morning and night. Treehugger!?! I'm a Godhugger! Sorry. Don't mean to preach.
Hug a porcupine. Hug a Mustang fastback GT. Hug an aspen tree. Hug a snake. Hug a desert. Hug an orphan. Hug a Border patrol agent. Hug an armadillo. Hug a poet. Hug an ancient building. Hug a line shack. Hug a river. Hug a Mexican. The world's arms are open, and much of the world is lonely and dying for your comforting touch. It's true.
The great and intimidating Vine DeLoria Jr., great thinker, Sioux author of God is Red, was a friend of mine. You couldn't always tell he was your pal because he was a cranky man. But beneath his bluster and hard shell, he was kind. He often reached out to me with a gentle touch that belied his cranky squint. The world was diminished when Vine died. But one day, when we were standing in holy Colorado, beholding the surreal Flatirons over Boulder, I asked him about the spirits. I was getting rolling on Hummingbird's Daughter, and I didn't think I could get to the indigenous concept of Spirits. I was less of a heathenish early-church type than I am now. Less of a treehugger/Godhugger.
Vine said this--and I offer it as your meditation for the day--and I offer it to you in all his cranky, gruff, cigarette-smoke frankness--because Vine wasn't worried like I am about hugging us--believe that:
"When you Christians still had a faith, you used to call the Spirits guardian angels. Your own Bible states that there is an angel given to everything in Creation. Don't you remember that? Our Spirits are your guardian angels. And they're lonely. These mountains are lonely. They don't speak English. These mountains here in Boulder speak Arapaho. But the Arapaho are gone. People use tham all day and never talk to them. I can promise you one thing. If you learned Arapaho, and you went up there al;one, and you sang to these mountains in their tongue--something amazing would happen to you. Lonesome angels right there."
I never learned Arapaho, but I took what he said to heart, and I talked to the angels on every hike thereafter. And Vine was right--the Spirits of the Flatirons and Boulder Creek and the wild apple trees and the waterfalls and the lions and the wildflowers and the bears and the marmots and the wild peas and the glaciers and the high sun and the evolving clouds did speak to me. Things did happen. I am here now, telling you--but this journey really got going on Boulder Creek Path, on the Bluebell Trail, under Devil's Thumb, on the cross-coutry paths beyond Eldorado and across the elk meadows and beaver dams of Rocky Mountain National Park. I like to say I really met myself up there. But maybe, there, I finally met the spirit of writing--that thing that had enflamed me and tormented me and illuminated me and lay in bed with my lovers and confounded me for all those years.
I'm not perfect. None of us are perfect. But if we had eyes to see, we'd know this: none of us is ever alone.
Hey, what are you doing reading this? Get out and write. Hug what you love. Give the angels a poem.
Remember what Neal Cassady said: GRACE BEATS KARMA.
L
5/17/2007
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
--Jack London
I always thought that was a really funny quote. And so Jack London! So macho! But it's like a zen koan--it suddenly reveals its wisdom to me after making me laugh or smile or smirk for years. Yeah. Go after it. Don't be passive. Hunt it down, don't be waiting for "the muse" to come whispering or for the right book to open of the angels to fly by. It's like believing the impossible (I can make it as a writer even if nobody will buy my books!). You have to actually do something. This quote reminds me that, if you're a writer (a lover, a mother, a painter, a guitarist, a police officer, a Karateka, a God-fearing woman or man, a gardener) then what you do is write. What you see is writing. What you eat is writing. What you plant is writing. Writing is an act, it's true. But it's a state of being. Is it a state of grace? It is a state of hunger. So hunt. That's what I get from it all, ol' Jack's little joke for this day.
Unreality Check
--Jack London
I always thought that was a really funny quote. And so Jack London! So macho! But it's like a zen koan--it suddenly reveals its wisdom to me after making me laugh or smile or smirk for years. Yeah. Go after it. Don't be passive. Hunt it down, don't be waiting for "the muse" to come whispering or for the right book to open of the angels to fly by. It's like believing the impossible (I can make it as a writer even if nobody will buy my books!). You have to actually do something. This quote reminds me that, if you're a writer (a lover, a mother, a painter, a guitarist, a police officer, a Karateka, a God-fearing woman or man, a gardener) then what you do is write. What you see is writing. What you eat is writing. What you plant is writing. Writing is an act, it's true. But it's a state of being. Is it a state of grace? It is a state of hunger. So hunt. That's what I get from it all, ol' Jack's little joke for this day.
5/16/2007
In the last "Writing Meditation" post, I put up a nice quote about believing in the impossible. And I believe that quote--anyone who knew me in my poverty days in California can tell you. I bought books at the used paperback shop and the Woolworth's bin downtown, between bus rides to hellish jobs. (I found Jim Harrison there and blew my entire meal budget on a pile of his books they were unloading for $1.50 each; oddly enough, I also found A.R. Ammons there--I discovered one of my favorite poets right over near the goldfish and parakeets, under the escalator for $3.00 a copy.) I bought all my records at Arcade--$1.98, used. But I always had music and books. How I abused my patient girlfriends there--they stood aside as I dug through every bin in the store, deeply unmoved when I found SRC's "Milestones" and whooped with joy, only to have the clerk offer me any two other records in the store if I'd just let him have the SRC.
All of it was fuel for the rocket inside me. I used to eat old chili mixed with corn from cans at the missionary storehouse--me an' the relief workers catching a meal from the cast-offs of suburbanites--before we went back down into Mexico for more hours of blood and mud. Impossible, everything that has happened since.
Still, I look at the impossibility thing slightly askance. Am I lying to you? Is this some happy scam, like "The Secret"? Magical thinking? I'm not an idiot (not completely)--I'll never be in Latino People magazine's "50 most gorgeous Gente del Mundo issue"! No matter how much I "manifest" it. My pal, Nicholas Gonzalez was there once, but it won't be me. I was actually in a Playboy photo shoot last year. My dad would have done hand-stands if he'd been alive. A fashion shoot! Do you know what the fashionista woman said when she saw me? My dresser? She took one look at me and yelled, "Fuck!" Uh-huh. Put a rhino in a fancy business suit.
I hear all the anti-God industry at work now. The Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens et al "God sucks/is dead/doesn't exist/is ridiculous" industry. We are ever less likely, I think, to believe the impossible. Especially in this era of holy wars and hypocrisy. (Who was it who said, "I believe precisly because it is impossible"?)
But, you know, those baby maple trees are sprouting up all over. Those nasturtium seeds are putting up round and eager leaves all over my garden. That seems impossible to me. Ridiculous! But it's right there in front of me, so I believe.
During the long torture, I mean delight, of writing Hummingbird's Daughter, I saw ghosts. I saw spirits. I was physically touched by something firghtening in the dark. I felt its claws scraping across my feet until I woke up and bolted from my bed and sprinted away. Do you think me mad? I am not. It was all before me, and I believed.
So, you know, I believe, and I urge you to believe in the Writing of the Universe. However, the new issue of Harper's magazine came this week. They have listed osme sobering satistics in ther "Index" section. Believe the impossible? Check it out: the minimum number of books that sold in the US last year was 1,446,000 (according to the Nielson Book Scan); the number that sold fewer than 99 copies was 1, 123,000; the number that sold over 100,000 copies was 483.
483 out of 1,446,000 sold in substantial numbers!
Most of my books are in the fewer than 99 copies column!
I have still not cracked that exclusive club of the 483!
So do it for love or for joy.
There aren't a lot of Cadillacs in this game.
Because it is impossible....L
Writing Meditation 5/14
All of it was fuel for the rocket inside me. I used to eat old chili mixed with corn from cans at the missionary storehouse--me an' the relief workers catching a meal from the cast-offs of suburbanites--before we went back down into Mexico for more hours of blood and mud. Impossible, everything that has happened since.
Still, I look at the impossibility thing slightly askance. Am I lying to you? Is this some happy scam, like "The Secret"? Magical thinking? I'm not an idiot (not completely)--I'll never be in Latino People magazine's "50 most gorgeous Gente del Mundo issue"! No matter how much I "manifest" it. My pal, Nicholas Gonzalez was there once, but it won't be me. I was actually in a Playboy photo shoot last year. My dad would have done hand-stands if he'd been alive. A fashion shoot! Do you know what the fashionista woman said when she saw me? My dresser? She took one look at me and yelled, "Fuck!" Uh-huh. Put a rhino in a fancy business suit.
I hear all the anti-God industry at work now. The Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens et al "God sucks/is dead/doesn't exist/is ridiculous" industry. We are ever less likely, I think, to believe the impossible. Especially in this era of holy wars and hypocrisy. (Who was it who said, "I believe precisly because it is impossible"?)
But, you know, those baby maple trees are sprouting up all over. Those nasturtium seeds are putting up round and eager leaves all over my garden. That seems impossible to me. Ridiculous! But it's right there in front of me, so I believe.
During the long torture, I mean delight, of writing Hummingbird's Daughter, I saw ghosts. I saw spirits. I was physically touched by something firghtening in the dark. I felt its claws scraping across my feet until I woke up and bolted from my bed and sprinted away. Do you think me mad? I am not. It was all before me, and I believed.
So, you know, I believe, and I urge you to believe in the Writing of the Universe. However, the new issue of Harper's magazine came this week. They have listed osme sobering satistics in ther "Index" section. Believe the impossible? Check it out: the minimum number of books that sold in the US last year was 1,446,000 (according to the Nielson Book Scan); the number that sold fewer than 99 copies was 1, 123,000; the number that sold over 100,000 copies was 483.
483 out of 1,446,000 sold in substantial numbers!
Most of my books are in the fewer than 99 copies column!
I have still not cracked that exclusive club of the 483!
So do it for love or for joy.
There aren't a lot of Cadillacs in this game.
Because it is impossible....L
5/14/2007
Believing in the impossible. It's essential to being a writer, to applying oneself daily to a task the results of which cannot be seen. How to believe in the impossible? Create an environment where the impossible is cherished. Gather people around you who will encourage and not discourage you in your goals. Ask only supportive individuals to critique your work. Remember, those surrounding you will act as mirrors, reflecting your belief in yourself. And each completed task, each encouraging word from an editor, each published piece will reinforce your belief in the impssible.
-- Laurel Becker
I believe her. When I was a kid, I got the "concerned parent talk" a lot--no, not that one from my mom where she thought it wasn't such a good diea that I kept having those long late-night "talks" with girls, ahem--but the other one that all writers, rockers, actors, poets, painters probably get. The "it's not practical" talk. The you need a career, like law or medicine! talk. The one where they tell you, helpfully, writing is a hobby, but it isn't a career. I wanted to ask, How do you think I arrange all those late-night "talks" with my honeys, Ma??? But she would not have appreciated my answer...though she would have laughed. My dad would have probably urged me to go ahead and write.
So here I was, Mr. Dreamer, Mr Writing-Fu, faced with a teenaged boy who wants to be a rock star. Oh come on! I cry. What, are you kidding? I tell him that there are a million drummers in a million schools in a million towns, and every one of them plans to be a rock star. Completely unaware of the irony of this, I explain to him that drumming is a hobby, but it isn't a career. And I say to him, "How likely is it that you will get into a college on the strength of your drumming? And how likely is it that you that you will be able to make a life out of it?" And he turns the Drum-Fu on me and flips me: "How likely was it," he says, "that you would take your little poems and stories and make a life out of them?" He gestures to the big fat house we're sitting in and smirks. I bow to him. "You are my master," I announce. But, before he cal gloat too much, I tell him: "Be prepared to suffer and bleed. Don't cry to me when your life is hell, because there is much hell in a life of art. But it's worth it if you can withstand the pain." He says, "I can." I believe him.
And, of course, he auditions into the impossible U of I music program in Champagne/Urbana. And then he auditions into the elite Marching Illini drum line. So Ms. Becker is right--believe the impossible.
Was it Bill Haley who said: YOU CAN'T STOP THE ROCK?
Rock around the clock--L
Mother's Day Meditation
-- Laurel Becker
I believe her. When I was a kid, I got the "concerned parent talk" a lot--no, not that one from my mom where she thought it wasn't such a good diea that I kept having those long late-night "talks" with girls, ahem--but the other one that all writers, rockers, actors, poets, painters probably get. The "it's not practical" talk. The you need a career, like law or medicine! talk. The one where they tell you, helpfully, writing is a hobby, but it isn't a career. I wanted to ask, How do you think I arrange all those late-night "talks" with my honeys, Ma??? But she would not have appreciated my answer...though she would have laughed. My dad would have probably urged me to go ahead and write.
So here I was, Mr. Dreamer, Mr Writing-Fu, faced with a teenaged boy who wants to be a rock star. Oh come on! I cry. What, are you kidding? I tell him that there are a million drummers in a million schools in a million towns, and every one of them plans to be a rock star. Completely unaware of the irony of this, I explain to him that drumming is a hobby, but it isn't a career. And I say to him, "How likely is it that you will get into a college on the strength of your drumming? And how likely is it that you that you will be able to make a life out of it?" And he turns the Drum-Fu on me and flips me: "How likely was it," he says, "that you would take your little poems and stories and make a life out of them?" He gestures to the big fat house we're sitting in and smirks. I bow to him. "You are my master," I announce. But, before he cal gloat too much, I tell him: "Be prepared to suffer and bleed. Don't cry to me when your life is hell, because there is much hell in a life of art. But it's worth it if you can withstand the pain." He says, "I can." I believe him.
And, of course, he auditions into the impossible U of I music program in Champagne/Urbana. And then he auditions into the elite Marching Illini drum line. So Ms. Becker is right--believe the impossible.
Was it Bill Haley who said: YOU CAN'T STOP THE ROCK?
Rock around the clock--L
5/12/2007
Cinderella comes home tomorrow night, trusting her mother to her own fate and returning to her family. I am locked in an insane marathon of awesome gift-giving that we unleash on each other. Gifting is a great spiritual secret, I think. It is the nature of the earth and of the commong grace of life to give, don't you think? I was once giving a talk at Kim Stafford's fine writing program in Portland, and I said the universe was sending us birthday presents every hour of the day. Miracles and portents, signs and goodies. But we are simply too busy with trivia and worry and doubt and rage and fretting and American Idol and money panics and fear to ever even see 99% of our presents, much less stop and open them. Oh yeah--I was feeling cosmic! I was preaching! And Kim, who was paying me a lot of $$$ to talk to the gathered writers, stopped me and said to them, "Did you hear what Luis said? He said the world is trying to give you gifts. So get a pencil and a notebook and get out of here and go into the world and see what gift is awaiting you and write about it." And they left! I had only spoken for about fifteen minutes. "Ah," said Kim, "but they were the right fifteen minutes." You can't trust those Staffords--they're writing crazy.
So, you know, how do I gift Cinderella this time? After all the pain and worry of this long awful week in hospitals. How do I honor Mother's Day? Anybody can get flowers. Anybody can get chocloates (hope she's not reading this in Seattle--I did, I did get her chocolates!). I often write a poem, or make her a whole book of poems. So I was thinking this--and all of you who have been following the blog these last couple of weeks know what I've been up to--anyb husband can buy some flowers, but no husband would plant an entire flower garden! Won't she be surprised! I can tell she will be, because the neighborhood hot-moms came over to gawk at it.
I have "enjoyed" many days of sore muscles.
So, happy Mother's Day all you moms: wish I could plant you a garden too. But I give you this sweet and very sexy mom-type poem from Karl Shapiro. It's not really a writing meditation, but it is. I've said it before--it's all writing. The world, all of it, the sun and the trees, the flowers and the floods, the bees and the mockingbirds and the poets and the bikers and the mothers and the armadillos and the dandelions and the Rockies and the gators and Beau Jocque and the Zydeco High Rollers, it's all written. God is a poet. Here is my poem to you, Cinderella, and to you my sweet moms--I hope your Day is full of chocolate.
* * *
And where are the poems that got lost in the shuffle of spring?
Where is the poem about the eleventh of March, when we raised the battleflag of dawn?
Where is the poem about the coral necklace that whipped your naked breasts in leaps of love?
The poem concerning the ancient lover we followed through your beautiful sleeping head?
The fire-fountain of your earthquake thighs and your electric mouth?
Where is the poem about the little one who says my name and watches us almost kissing in the sea?
The vellum stretchmarks of your learned belly,
Your rosy-fingered nightgown of nylon and popcorn,
Your razor that caresses your calves like my hands?
Where are the poems that are already obsolete, leaves of last month, a very historical month?
Maybe I'll write them, maybe I won't, no matter,
And this is the end for which we are together.
--Karl Shapiro
from "Aubade"
Saturday Meditation
So, you know, how do I gift Cinderella this time? After all the pain and worry of this long awful week in hospitals. How do I honor Mother's Day? Anybody can get flowers. Anybody can get chocloates (hope she's not reading this in Seattle--I did, I did get her chocolates!). I often write a poem, or make her a whole book of poems. So I was thinking this--and all of you who have been following the blog these last couple of weeks know what I've been up to--anyb husband can buy some flowers, but no husband would plant an entire flower garden! Won't she be surprised! I can tell she will be, because the neighborhood hot-moms came over to gawk at it.
I have "enjoyed" many days of sore muscles.
So, happy Mother's Day all you moms: wish I could plant you a garden too. But I give you this sweet and very sexy mom-type poem from Karl Shapiro. It's not really a writing meditation, but it is. I've said it before--it's all writing. The world, all of it, the sun and the trees, the flowers and the floods, the bees and the mockingbirds and the poets and the bikers and the mothers and the armadillos and the dandelions and the Rockies and the gators and Beau Jocque and the Zydeco High Rollers, it's all written. God is a poet. Here is my poem to you, Cinderella, and to you my sweet moms--I hope your Day is full of chocolate.
* * *
And where are the poems that got lost in the shuffle of spring?
Where is the poem about the eleventh of March, when we raised the battleflag of dawn?
Where is the poem about the coral necklace that whipped your naked breasts in leaps of love?
The poem concerning the ancient lover we followed through your beautiful sleeping head?
The fire-fountain of your earthquake thighs and your electric mouth?
Where is the poem about the little one who says my name and watches us almost kissing in the sea?
The vellum stretchmarks of your learned belly,
Your rosy-fingered nightgown of nylon and popcorn,
Your razor that caresses your calves like my hands?
Where are the poems that are already obsolete, leaves of last month, a very historical month?
Maybe I'll write them, maybe I won't, no matter,
And this is the end for which we are together.
--Karl Shapiro
from "Aubade"
You have to be telling people essentially "I love you," or you have no basis for your art.
--Etheridge Knight
Learning to Write
--Etheridge Knight
Saturday. I spent the morning with Walt Whitman, learning to write. Walt! His poetry is the newspaper of the universe, the breaking news of the body and soul--the sex-temple of all that is mutually of the flesh and sacred. Happy Walt--so like Basho in his wanderings. And I spent the morning with the nasturtiums, learning to write. Nasturtiums! Just today I read in the news that their leaves and flowers add "peppery" flavor to salads. But their bright flowers add pepper to the light of day. They surrender so completely to their growth. They attack the light. They move in laughter when the wind blows. I can't fathom the various secrets they share with the columbines--silent chemical signals, rare root-brushings in the deep ocean of the black Illinois soil--where the pale worms swim past like narrow whales. Those columbines, filling my Rocky Mtn void with their Colorado blossoms. They blew up like fireworks all of a sudden. Stalks. Flowers. It's the 4th of July out there.
Darrell Bourque, the Cajun poet and my bubba from Lafayette, once told me that the swamps had the same exact spiritual energy as the Rockies--only it was upside-down. I was learning to write.
My dad once explained to me that the world was a closed circuit. That all the water there ever was is all the water there will ever be. That the water Jesus washed his feet in would one be the same water I drank from the tap. Cleopatra is in my garden right now. (As is Walt Whitman. He has some morning glories growing out of his beard.) I was there with my dad, learning to write.
What are we writing?
We are writing ourselves.
We are imprinting ourselves on this grand light.
We are singing our silences into the erotic night.
I like Walt. I like the writing. I like you very much. This morning, I even, almost, like myself.
L
Morning Devotions
Darrell Bourque, the Cajun poet and my bubba from Lafayette, once told me that the swamps had the same exact spiritual energy as the Rockies--only it was upside-down. I was learning to write.
My dad once explained to me that the world was a closed circuit. That all the water there ever was is all the water there will ever be. That the water Jesus washed his feet in would one be the same water I drank from the tap. Cleopatra is in my garden right now. (As is Walt Whitman. He has some morning glories growing out of his beard.) I was there with my dad, learning to write.
What are we writing?
We are writing ourselves.
We are imprinting ourselves on this grand light.
We are singing our silences into the erotic night.
I like Walt. I like the writing. I like you very much. This morning, I even, almost, like myself.
L
5/11/2007
Check out the Ed Abbey meditation, below.
These days, I am a monk. I approach the mornings as an acolyte studying with a master. The old Zen story about the student having supper with the teacher, then asking him, "When do I begin to get enlightenment?" And the teacher tells him, "First, wash your dishes." Ha ha.
I make the strangely solitary yet well-accompanied lone parent rounds: everybody up, breakfasts happening, uncover the bird, feed the bird, feed the cat, let dogs out for a squirt and a tussle, let dogs in, feed the dogs, see big kids off to school, make sure little kid is eating breakfast, retrieve newspapers, brush little kid's hair, make sure the backpack is packed, walk to bus stop, endure the inane blab of the boys at the bus stop ('In Halo you, like, kill all these MONSTERS!"), get home and make oatmeal, catch news, water plants, fill bird bath, watch doves and grackles drink, check email, check various internet news sites, drop in a blog, read paper, take out the trash, make coffee, unload dishwasher and reload dishwasher, pee like a Roman fountain, chase the dogs around with a squirtgun. By the time Oprah comes on, I am well on my way to a state of grace. By the time I take my fish oil capsules and wash them down with green tea, I am seeing angels.
King Ralph, the red maple, is a reproductive delinquent. So many maple seeds are falling that it sounds like rain. I keep looking out to see if a shower has come along, but it's those whirlybird seeds delightfully helicoptering through the air, looking like little green butterflies. And speaking of butterflies, I watched an amusing scene in the afternoon light. The back of our house faces west, so the sun rises on our front door and sets on our back door. I wonder what that means for the feng-shui of the whole deal. Anyway, the afternoon casts a blast of sun against the walls of the house, and this insane black butterfly was bombing around the lilac tree (it ought to be a bush, I know, but it's two stories tall--Chayo has fresh lilacs outside her upstairs bedroom window--a sky garden). And the sun threw the butterfly's shadow on the wall; apparently, the butterfly saw its shadow-self and took umbrage, because it began a long aerial battle with itself, rushing at the wall and trying to attack the shadow. Oh, if only Aristotle or St. Augustine were there to watch it--we'd get some juicy philosophy out of that scene for sure.
Imagine this: grandma's heart has ripped. The only thing holding it together is the scars from old traumas. Her old scars are keeping her alive. Man, that's rich. That's some kind of Dr. Phil moment. When life hands you lemons, make metaphors.
The upshot of all this is: I'm going to have a hundred baby maple trees again. I can't stand it. I feel like a Nazi when I go around pulling them out of the ground. I need to find some wasted superfund site, or some tattererd and battered abandoned construction site near O'Hare, some old festering semi-buried garbage dump, and plant those li'l suckers! I'm telling you, a Son of San Diego cannot throw away baby treelings without feeling like the world is ending. I'm going to wrap them in wet paper towels and sandwich bags and stuff them in toilet paper rolls and mail them to you.
Did I ever tell you I got emails from Jim Morrison? He's in Duluth. Remember when he sang, "What have they done to the earth? What have they done to our fair sister?"
Tu amigo, Luis
Cactus Ed Finds God--Med 5/11
These days, I am a monk. I approach the mornings as an acolyte studying with a master. The old Zen story about the student having supper with the teacher, then asking him, "When do I begin to get enlightenment?" And the teacher tells him, "First, wash your dishes." Ha ha.
I make the strangely solitary yet well-accompanied lone parent rounds: everybody up, breakfasts happening, uncover the bird, feed the bird, feed the cat, let dogs out for a squirt and a tussle, let dogs in, feed the dogs, see big kids off to school, make sure little kid is eating breakfast, retrieve newspapers, brush little kid's hair, make sure the backpack is packed, walk to bus stop, endure the inane blab of the boys at the bus stop ('In Halo you, like, kill all these MONSTERS!"), get home and make oatmeal, catch news, water plants, fill bird bath, watch doves and grackles drink, check email, check various internet news sites, drop in a blog, read paper, take out the trash, make coffee, unload dishwasher and reload dishwasher, pee like a Roman fountain, chase the dogs around with a squirtgun. By the time Oprah comes on, I am well on my way to a state of grace. By the time I take my fish oil capsules and wash them down with green tea, I am seeing angels.
King Ralph, the red maple, is a reproductive delinquent. So many maple seeds are falling that it sounds like rain. I keep looking out to see if a shower has come along, but it's those whirlybird seeds delightfully helicoptering through the air, looking like little green butterflies. And speaking of butterflies, I watched an amusing scene in the afternoon light. The back of our house faces west, so the sun rises on our front door and sets on our back door. I wonder what that means for the feng-shui of the whole deal. Anyway, the afternoon casts a blast of sun against the walls of the house, and this insane black butterfly was bombing around the lilac tree (it ought to be a bush, I know, but it's two stories tall--Chayo has fresh lilacs outside her upstairs bedroom window--a sky garden). And the sun threw the butterfly's shadow on the wall; apparently, the butterfly saw its shadow-self and took umbrage, because it began a long aerial battle with itself, rushing at the wall and trying to attack the shadow. Oh, if only Aristotle or St. Augustine were there to watch it--we'd get some juicy philosophy out of that scene for sure.
Imagine this: grandma's heart has ripped. The only thing holding it together is the scars from old traumas. Her old scars are keeping her alive. Man, that's rich. That's some kind of Dr. Phil moment. When life hands you lemons, make metaphors.
The upshot of all this is: I'm going to have a hundred baby maple trees again. I can't stand it. I feel like a Nazi when I go around pulling them out of the ground. I need to find some wasted superfund site, or some tattererd and battered abandoned construction site near O'Hare, some old festering semi-buried garbage dump, and plant those li'l suckers! I'm telling you, a Son of San Diego cannot throw away baby treelings without feeling like the world is ending. I'm going to wrap them in wet paper towels and sandwich bags and stuff them in toilet paper rolls and mail them to you.
Did I ever tell you I got emails from Jim Morrison? He's in Duluth. Remember when he sang, "What have they done to the earth? What have they done to our fair sister?"
Tu amigo, Luis
Writing is a form of piety or worship. I try to write prose psalms which praise the divine beauty of the natural world.
--Edward Abbey
Daily Meds 5/10
--Edward Abbey
5/10/2007
Morning. Chayo eats her waffles, then shows me around the garden, explaining how bees enter the plant to enjoy the nectar, and the male parts of the plants put the pollen on the bee so when the bee goes to the female parts of the plant, the pollen will "crumble off" and make a "root" that will fall out when the flower dies and make a new flower. Close enough. I wonder how she knows this stuff at seven years old and at seven in the morning. Not liking to be stung, she is concerned about "bumblebees, wasps, and hornens." Those pesky hornens!
Today's med comes from our new friend Sharman Apt Russell, from her gorgeous and even sexy book, Anatomy of a Rose. I think writers could learn soulful things from this book, but so could gardeners and rose lovers and people who like good writing. (Being a lifelong bug-maniac, I was happy to get her An Obsession With Butterflies.) You know how it is when you get these writing sweethearts--you just get giddy and walk around with them, holding hands and smiling a lot. I was busy courting Annie Dillard and May Sarton and Joan Didion andDiane Wakoski and Linda Hasselstrom and Sue Hubbell and Mary Oliver and Diane Ackerman and Lisa Chavez and... Now I'm all crushed out on Sharman Apt Russell.
She says:
"We get up every day, surrounded by mystery and marvel, enthused by all the things we do not know. Life on earth has had four billion years to get this far. We woke up this morning to try and figure it out."
I'm working on that cipher on a daily basis; it feels like I'm in first grade, right along with the Chayonator. It's quiet now. Everybody's gone to school. Cinderella's still with grandma, who seems--remarkably--to be feeling better. Just me and the dogs for long glorious hours of silence. Books.
Watch out for the hornens.
L
Meditation for Lovers and Poets 5/9
Today's med comes from our new friend Sharman Apt Russell, from her gorgeous and even sexy book, Anatomy of a Rose. I think writers could learn soulful things from this book, but so could gardeners and rose lovers and people who like good writing. (Being a lifelong bug-maniac, I was happy to get her An Obsession With Butterflies.) You know how it is when you get these writing sweethearts--you just get giddy and walk around with them, holding hands and smiling a lot. I was busy courting Annie Dillard and May Sarton and Joan Didion andDiane Wakoski and Linda Hasselstrom and Sue Hubbell and Mary Oliver and Diane Ackerman and Lisa Chavez and... Now I'm all crushed out on Sharman Apt Russell.
She says:
"We get up every day, surrounded by mystery and marvel, enthused by all the things we do not know. Life on earth has had four billion years to get this far. We woke up this morning to try and figure it out."
I'm working on that cipher on a daily basis; it feels like I'm in first grade, right along with the Chayonator. It's quiet now. Everybody's gone to school. Cinderella's still with grandma, who seems--remarkably--to be feeling better. Just me and the dogs for long glorious hours of silence. Books.
Watch out for the hornens.
L
5/09/2007
Who else, but Pablo Neruda--
Other days will come, we'll all understand
the silence of plants and of planets,
and so many pure things will happen!
Violins will have the fragrance of the moon!
Perhaps the bread will be like you:
it will have your voice, your condition of wheat,
and other things will speak with your voice:
the lost horses of autumn.
Even though it's not what love prefers,
it will fill great barrels
like the antique honey of the shepherds,
and you, in the dust of my heart
(where there will be immense storerooms),
will come and go among the watermelons.
***
Still grim. But the bees are bumbling. Keep planting. Keep watering. See you tomorrow.
Among the watermelons. --L
Disasterpiece
Other days will come, we'll all understand
the silence of plants and of planets,
and so many pure things will happen!
Violins will have the fragrance of the moon!
Perhaps the bread will be like you:
it will have your voice, your condition of wheat,
and other things will speak with your voice:
the lost horses of autumn.
Even though it's not what love prefers,
it will fill great barrels
like the antique honey of the shepherds,
and you, in the dust of my heart
(where there will be immense storerooms),
will come and go among the watermelons.
***
Still grim. But the bees are bumbling. Keep planting. Keep watering. See you tomorrow.
Among the watermelons. --L
5/08/2007
I'll get back to giving you writing meditations, I promise.
No, not in a good mood yet. Every morning and every night, I wait for the Seattle calls to hear if grandma or Cinderella's sister have worsened...if that's even possible. Situation: grim. End of game grim.
But, you know, the sun comes up. I drag out of bed at 6 or 6:30 and see the big kids off, then prod poor Chayo out of a deep sleep and get her eating her cereal and brushing her hair. After we walk to the school bus, it's morning gardener time. You'd almost think life was sweet. The neighborhood woodpecker has been hammering his skull silly on the trees. How can you not laugh? I put in a birdbath ringed by violas. The new hydrangeas are blooming. I found a bleeding heart bush I didn't even know I had--the ivy had covered it last year, and when I trimmed back the stinking ivy, this plant leaped out of the ground and bloomed in about, oh, 45 minutes. Last night, a drunk-sounding frog let out a long, yawning croak. Where did a frog come from? And, I am happy to report, I have been sharing the forsythias and the insanely exploding lilacs with the fattest bumblebees ever. Tomas Urrea's spirit keeps the Naperville bees working and alive.
Hearts fail in Seattle. Hearts thrum in our neighborhood.
Disasters are everywhere, of course--down the street, the neighbors have a dad whose cancer keeps on spreading, and is now in his brain. Everybody shrugs. What are you going to do? Ther's not much dancing on the block, but there is a lot of watering.
I was reading Styron's Sophie's Choice. But it just got too severe around here this week. So I have been reading Robert Sullivan's Cross Country. Awesome. Funny. Informative. And I found myself in the basement yesterday digging out the well-worn poaperback of Blue Highways. Oh no! My celebrated gypsy blood is kicking in! I...I...I'm starting to need to go. That need to go wreaked havoc on my loved ones back in the day--whatever day that was. Maybe a Tuesday, in 1982. I couldn't stop. I couldn't breathe. My sweetheart who crept into my room on some mornings to awaken me with a kiss must have been shocked when I seemed to leap out the window and run across country, never to return. I tried to spend the next years crying: I'm sorry.
It's all this death. And all these yellow flowers. They're making me dizzy. They're making me want to run. But I cannot run--I have to cook supper tonight, have to do a PhD oral exam at UIC tomorrow, have to give an uplifting lecture in Chicago tomorrow night, have to get breakfast going the next morning. Mr. Mom! Maybe I'll get lucky and pick Cindy up at the airport.
What I should be doing, but have no psychic space yet to do it, is writing. So I move a marigold from the front yard to the back. My secret garden is divided by yellows, oranges, reds, pinks, whites, lilac/purples. I'm going for some kind of psychedelic sweep of the spectrum. Honestly, I don't know what I'm doing. I have my tomatoes in pots. I feed the birds. I listen over and over to The Arcade Fire. I read Sullivan and Rilke. I write this post to you.
I know, somewhere along this sad line of bad happenings, a poem will appear...and then a chapter...and then an essay. Then I'll get in the World's Biggest Van and fill it up with $4.98 gas and floor that fat bastard on down the interstate and come up with a new Wastelander. Got to get the kids over to the Rocak and Roll Hall of Fame to look inside Jimi Hendrix's shoe! You can see his feet's sweat stains in his shoe! Jimi! COME BACK.
I'm just in that phase where you mulch and fertilize the garden--cow dung everywhere.
L
Darkness, darkness
No, not in a good mood yet. Every morning and every night, I wait for the Seattle calls to hear if grandma or Cinderella's sister have worsened...if that's even possible. Situation: grim. End of game grim.
But, you know, the sun comes up. I drag out of bed at 6 or 6:30 and see the big kids off, then prod poor Chayo out of a deep sleep and get her eating her cereal and brushing her hair. After we walk to the school bus, it's morning gardener time. You'd almost think life was sweet. The neighborhood woodpecker has been hammering his skull silly on the trees. How can you not laugh? I put in a birdbath ringed by violas. The new hydrangeas are blooming. I found a bleeding heart bush I didn't even know I had--the ivy had covered it last year, and when I trimmed back the stinking ivy, this plant leaped out of the ground and bloomed in about, oh, 45 minutes. Last night, a drunk-sounding frog let out a long, yawning croak. Where did a frog come from? And, I am happy to report, I have been sharing the forsythias and the insanely exploding lilacs with the fattest bumblebees ever. Tomas Urrea's spirit keeps the Naperville bees working and alive.
Hearts fail in Seattle. Hearts thrum in our neighborhood.
Disasters are everywhere, of course--down the street, the neighbors have a dad whose cancer keeps on spreading, and is now in his brain. Everybody shrugs. What are you going to do? Ther's not much dancing on the block, but there is a lot of watering.
I was reading Styron's Sophie's Choice. But it just got too severe around here this week. So I have been reading Robert Sullivan's Cross Country. Awesome. Funny. Informative. And I found myself in the basement yesterday digging out the well-worn poaperback of Blue Highways. Oh no! My celebrated gypsy blood is kicking in! I...I...I'm starting to need to go. That need to go wreaked havoc on my loved ones back in the day--whatever day that was. Maybe a Tuesday, in 1982. I couldn't stop. I couldn't breathe. My sweetheart who crept into my room on some mornings to awaken me with a kiss must have been shocked when I seemed to leap out the window and run across country, never to return. I tried to spend the next years crying: I'm sorry.
It's all this death. And all these yellow flowers. They're making me dizzy. They're making me want to run. But I cannot run--I have to cook supper tonight, have to do a PhD oral exam at UIC tomorrow, have to give an uplifting lecture in Chicago tomorrow night, have to get breakfast going the next morning. Mr. Mom! Maybe I'll get lucky and pick Cindy up at the airport.
What I should be doing, but have no psychic space yet to do it, is writing. So I move a marigold from the front yard to the back. My secret garden is divided by yellows, oranges, reds, pinks, whites, lilac/purples. I'm going for some kind of psychedelic sweep of the spectrum. Honestly, I don't know what I'm doing. I have my tomatoes in pots. I feed the birds. I listen over and over to The Arcade Fire. I read Sullivan and Rilke. I write this post to you.
I know, somewhere along this sad line of bad happenings, a poem will appear...and then a chapter...and then an essay. Then I'll get in the World's Biggest Van and fill it up with $4.98 gas and floor that fat bastard on down the interstate and come up with a new Wastelander. Got to get the kids over to the Rocak and Roll Hall of Fame to look inside Jimi Hendrix's shoe! You can see his feet's sweat stains in his shoe! Jimi! COME BACK.
I'm just in that phase where you mulch and fertilize the garden--cow dung everywhere.
L
5/05/2007
Cinderella flew home to Seattle early this morning. I told you her mom had heart trouble a few days ago. I usually don't like to list woes here, but--grandma had a heart attack. After several days in the hospital, bad lungs and bad arteries from smoking those frigging cigarettes, they sent her home with oxygen tanks and meds because she's in too bad a shape for surgery. But when they got her home, they found Cindy's sister having a major stroke. Chaos falls in this tornado season. So the siblings have gathered there to try to keep two women alive and the family afloat. Me, I'm doing super-dad for a while. Might not get to the blog as regularly as I like--I can find time, but I don't feel much inspiration at the moment. Remember that William Mattews meditation a couple of days ago? About tears? I've said it before--put your arms around your loved ones, even if you don't like them much. And keep your eye on the sky--those funnel clouds come fast.
Writing Meditation 5/3
5/03/2007
Our good friend, David Grayson, has a profound thought about writing:
I suspect there are higher purposes in writing than our own enlargement, our own release, our own comfort--but a writer of necessity writes what he is and what he must. Let it go at that! Even some men on fire with a passion for objective truth, I suspect, write to release thoughts that might otherwise burst them. The scientist expresses his mind as the poet his creative passion: but it is a mark of all great writing, of whatsoever kind, that it somehow release the soul of man: the poor caged spirit seeking in the beauty of the world, or in the lives of the brave and noble of the past, some balm for the brevity of life, some friend for the loneliness of it. The little soul that we are, carrying about a corpse (as Marcus Aurelius says), yet singing a little each day, yet enjoying the hills and the trees--forgetting for a moment the past--ceasing for a moment to think of the future--is there not something beautiful about that?
The Countryman's Year
14 Possible Ducks
I suspect there are higher purposes in writing than our own enlargement, our own release, our own comfort--but a writer of necessity writes what he is and what he must. Let it go at that! Even some men on fire with a passion for objective truth, I suspect, write to release thoughts that might otherwise burst them. The scientist expresses his mind as the poet his creative passion: but it is a mark of all great writing, of whatsoever kind, that it somehow release the soul of man: the poor caged spirit seeking in the beauty of the world, or in the lives of the brave and noble of the past, some balm for the brevity of life, some friend for the loneliness of it. The little soul that we are, carrying about a corpse (as Marcus Aurelius says), yet singing a little each day, yet enjoying the hills and the trees--forgetting for a moment the past--ceasing for a moment to think of the future--is there not something beautiful about that?
The Countryman's Year
5/02/2007
Yesterday, in the immigrant rallies, marches and protests, I was spared. Not even my pals in radio called to make me babble about the border. No CNN, no MSNBC, no local news, no newspapers, no C-SPAN. No Jay Marvin or Air America! No NPR! I slipped under the border fence this year, and I want to say Thank You to the universe for that! Because the upshot of being forgotten this year is: no hate mail, no veiled death threats, and no insults from good Christians and noble patriotic Americans. No Minutemen manques writing me insane "lick our boots" screeds. No idiots sending me diatribes about criminal Beaners. Nobody saying I'm a bad American, a bad Mexican, or a traitor to anybody. Nothing! Just...poems. People send me poems! Nice notes! Pictures of hummingbirds! Thoughts about God and David Grayson! People even flirt!
Still, immigration never sleeps. I'm ending my first border/immigration course at UIC this week, and my big bad Border Patrol amigo, Warrior--The Swedish Samurai--will come and end the class with a visit. The students don't know what to expect. Perhaps he doesn't, either. But we have had undocumented farmworkers speak. And we have had authors write them letters. And now the USBP will be representing. The secret message, as always, is: Oh my God, they're human.
All you need is love, John Lennon used to sing before he got shot.
Hey--the garden has gone INSANE. I approach the plants like I approach the cat, my writing, and my relationships--as a sensual experience. I can't help myself. I pet the plants I put in like they're my prom dates. I'm a freak. But the flowering dogwood flowered, the dead poppy set off unexpected fresh fireworks, the columbines know I'm missing the Rockies and overnight put up massive stalks loaded with buds, the hydrangea is blooming, and I already have three tomatoes. I AM MR. GREEN JEANS.
We put a birdbath in the middle of our little circle garden in the back, and I put violas around it. I'm just faking it, since I have no idea what I'm doing. But, you know, it's yellows, reds and oranges over here, whites and pinks over there, and lavender/purples over yonder. We'll see how it grows. The birds are contributing by scattering sunflower seeds, so it'll be a human / avian garden. Kind of like my writing.
I like to think that the earth and the hummingbirds help me compose. This is how Spirit (and the spirits) speak to me. Through the Border Patrol! Through the geese that get on the neighbor's roof and scream threats at me. Through that slinky little tweener raccoon who lacks only an iPod to make her fit in with the girls around here. Chayo loves worms and dirt and millipedes and more worms. How can God not talk to me when she yells in delight over a long red centipede or a colony of roly-poly bugs? These are my partners, along with the writers I attend to. The cardinal, the goldfinch, the butterfly, the nasty monster spiders. My crazy kids. Dragonflies really get me going. I need a pond with many, many dragonflies. That's for the future Rancho Urrea: dragonflies! Oh, and some peacocks! Uh, and a pig! And chickens! I enjoy spending mornings with chickens!
It is all brilliant chips of light. It is all fragments of the Soul. The big Maker's Soul. Scattering verses across the page of the world.
Can't we stop killing it all?
Can't we stop erasing God?
By the way, the mallard family that has been grousing all over our back yards has settled in Miss Felicia's garden and laid 14 eggs. Ducks, man! 14 potential ducks! How can you not WRITE?
Send me a letter--I miss you.
Luis
Still, immigration never sleeps. I'm ending my first border/immigration course at UIC this week, and my big bad Border Patrol amigo, Warrior--The Swedish Samurai--will come and end the class with a visit. The students don't know what to expect. Perhaps he doesn't, either. But we have had undocumented farmworkers speak. And we have had authors write them letters. And now the USBP will be representing. The secret message, as always, is: Oh my God, they're human.
All you need is love, John Lennon used to sing before he got shot.
Hey--the garden has gone INSANE. I approach the plants like I approach the cat, my writing, and my relationships--as a sensual experience. I can't help myself. I pet the plants I put in like they're my prom dates. I'm a freak. But the flowering dogwood flowered, the dead poppy set off unexpected fresh fireworks, the columbines know I'm missing the Rockies and overnight put up massive stalks loaded with buds, the hydrangea is blooming, and I already have three tomatoes. I AM MR. GREEN JEANS.
We put a birdbath in the middle of our little circle garden in the back, and I put violas around it. I'm just faking it, since I have no idea what I'm doing. But, you know, it's yellows, reds and oranges over here, whites and pinks over there, and lavender/purples over yonder. We'll see how it grows. The birds are contributing by scattering sunflower seeds, so it'll be a human / avian garden. Kind of like my writing.
I like to think that the earth and the hummingbirds help me compose. This is how Spirit (and the spirits) speak to me. Through the Border Patrol! Through the geese that get on the neighbor's roof and scream threats at me. Through that slinky little tweener raccoon who lacks only an iPod to make her fit in with the girls around here. Chayo loves worms and dirt and millipedes and more worms. How can God not talk to me when she yells in delight over a long red centipede or a colony of roly-poly bugs? These are my partners, along with the writers I attend to. The cardinal, the goldfinch, the butterfly, the nasty monster spiders. My crazy kids. Dragonflies really get me going. I need a pond with many, many dragonflies. That's for the future Rancho Urrea: dragonflies! Oh, and some peacocks! Uh, and a pig! And chickens! I enjoy spending mornings with chickens!
It is all brilliant chips of light. It is all fragments of the Soul. The big Maker's Soul. Scattering verses across the page of the world.
Can't we stop killing it all?
Can't we stop erasing God?
By the way, the mallard family that has been grousing all over our back yards has settled in Miss Felicia's garden and laid 14 eggs. Ducks, man! 14 potential ducks! How can you not WRITE?
Send me a letter--I miss you.
Luis
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