Recently in Poems and other Animals Category

Then I happened upon this jewel of a series. And I remembered the crucial thing: that I am an artist, that I have always been an artist, and that when that part of me is walled off from my daily life, I suffocate and die. It happens bit by bit, so that it is hard to notice it happening.

Oh, it's not that I never do anything creative. But the work I get paid to do is not creative, and it's been a long time now, that I've been pecking away at it, trying not to notice how much I hate it.

I am usually able to ignore it by the pure expedient of not throwing too much time at it. I work in spurts, so that I have weeks where I don't do much of that sort of work, and then weeks where I work round the clock to make some money so I can ignore it for a few more weeks.

But that plan is not really working for me, and I've known that for a while. I just haven't known why or what to do about it. I am still not sure of the next step, exactly, but the larger answer is clear. I need to make art, and to make it for a living. Somehow.

Somehow I have to do that, even though everyone has told me, my entire life, that it is impossible.

So the thing that made my cry while watching this beautiful series was here was the lie. The people who have said that have been lying. Because here are tons of people making things, and making a living at it. And god, they all sound happy. They sound just like I sound when I am playing, only they are working. Why? Because my play is their work, and their play is their work. And that is all there is to that.

From where I am sitting now, it could take any one of a number of forms. There are the photographs, there is a novel, there are plenty of other things I like to make and play with, and some of them are quite saleable, I think. I just need to hop tracks. Maybe I will go take some pictures of trains, as Boywich suggested the other day - just to get in the mood.

There are a lot of tall interesting things in the city, but sometimes it is also important to look down.

I wrote that last night and then discovered I had nothing else to say, and that it was 4 am, and I was so exhausted it took a herculean effort to haul myself off the couch to brush my teeth and proceed bedward.

And now I'm in an absolutely foul mood. I get that way sometimes, though these days it always seems to surprise me when it happens; I guess I've become more accustomed in the last year or so to feeling happyish. I can't say I've missed the depression - it's not a whole heck of a lot of fun, though there are certainly a few things going on right now that would account for it.

I have to both work and do my horrible frightening taxes this weekend, and I haven't yet decided which to do first, or how to arrange them. I am usually better off if I take one day off on a weekend than if I work both days, but this is a lot.

And there is also the fact that I need to bring my bike back to the shop sometime this weekend to get a little more work done on it, and I have a (brand-new! whoopee!) pain going on that is making me think tomorrow would be a better day for that. Which would mean today ought to be the work day, but I don't want today to be the work day. I am exhausted. And working on taxes would definitely push me over the edge of mere rotten grumpiness into dangerous dark despondency and possible fury.

So... I don't know.

Annabelle asked me to write her a poem about transformation, and it came out all fakakta'd (my very bad spelling of a Yiddish word which roughly translates to fracked-up). That is to say, it came out as more of a short story than a poem, but I reproduce it here for the sake of having something else to say other than massive grumbling.

***

All day the wood dreams of being a bird
his soft molten heart unfolds in the sun
watching them dance from branch to branch

One morning he tried to grow wings, one by one
stretching each cellulose fiber
breaking his own bonds in the attempt
But he was still a block of wood

---

One day the eagle saw him basking in the window,
watching the lesser birds flit
Sparrows would come up and chatter
the ravens mocking,
then flapping slowly off
to find treasure

The eagle stood
on the very edge of the sill
preening one long feather
and asked
Why should you wish to be like us?

When you are as stable as the ground
smooth as the sea
and live twice as long as we?

The wood looked into the light
and answered
What is the good of living twice as long
if you cannot bend your nose into the sky?

So the eagle grasped the wood,
one end in each long claw,
and flew him all day about the earth.

The wood saw the purple sea below,
the spiky tops of trees
the blood of antelopes slain on the plain
the dartings of the lesser birds below.

Once the eagle put him down on a stone
while it swept down to eat a rabbit.
When it came back, its claws smelt of blood,
and some seeped into the wood.

Once, they rested in a field,
and the wood was washed in lavender petals.

At the end of the long day,
the eagle asked the wood
where it would like to rest.

Could I live at the top of your nest, Eagle?

Yes, my friend.
You shall guard my chicks and be
the marker for other eagles
to know this den is mine.

---

Every evening when the eagle came in from his hunt,
he would clean his feet
on the wood, and then grip either end
with long claws
- and off they'd fly to hunt bats.

All words and images copyright 2008 Lizbon Grav

I've been having an interesting conversation (or rather, interchange, since there aren't technically voices involved) with Claudia about street photography, as a specific art form. Turns out, there are actually classes on the subject.

I'd never really thought about it as something that one might teach (or take) a class on. It seems so organic to me; you learn by doing, and maybe the streets teach you a thing or two about looking at things, ordinary things, and seeing their magnificence (and/or horror).

I find, for example, that the best shots come from the split-second pics I take without thinking: zap, zzap, zzzap. The faster I go, the more good stuff I seem to get - I think because then it all happens at the level of dreaming. It also helps that I am not burning film, though honestly when I shot more film, I - er - shot more film. I mean, I used to rip right through it, roll after roll after roll, because, you see, I'd already discovered the rule of unconscious genius. The more unconscious the artist, the greater his or her access to her particular genius. Well, that is my theory, anyway, and were I to start a school (a project I occasionally toy with), that would be part of the foundation of its curriculum. Developing the ability to be awake and yet only half-aware (or less) of what one is doing. It's a talent, honestly. Or a skill to be honed.

I don't know why, but I feel there is a connection between love and the unconscious. I think the things we adore, the things that TURN US ON are operating at the same level as art-making. They are tapping into parts of our brain of which we are only (if that) dimly aware, and which are perhaps meant to stay dreamlike.

Mystery is good.

***

The sands flame again
flowers crushed to ash
her feet held aloft
a bird untold
how to begin flight.

When again
he comes over the hill
bearing fruit in his trousers
She can't see the sun behind
his shoulder

That Laurence of Arabia
moment when he smiles
the blinding smile
That look of winter
in his one blue eye
(the other black, a dark
sea, an omen, a bird
she can't touch)

words and images copyright 2008 L. Grav. all rights reserved.

Okay, okay. I'll give you a little more to go on, though, really, I do think that sometimes there are no words needed, especially when one has many many photographs to play with. I am not going to go into gory details, but I have not been having the easiest couple of weeks, and I am not in the mood to discuss it. So let's just leave that by the wayside. Don't be emailing me with sympathetic whathaveyou. It's nice and all, but I don't need it, and I don't really want it. I'm in one of those moods. Everybody who knows that kind of mood, raise your hands and grumble in chorus. Very good! Now let's hear the same thing, only in Swahili this time.

Anyway, the city continues to give me its little difficulties (nothing major on that score; it's not the city's fault) and also its little gifts to try and cheer me up. I got two large boxes of $1 strawberries today. In March. Yes, that is my neighborhood telling me it still loves me. Just ask it.

"I'm gettin' hungry. Peel me a grape!" - if that line doesn't reverberate gorgeously in your chest, you clearly haven't heard Shirley Horn's recording of it.

Again, I seem to be running out of words. There is always the temptation to just shift into the abstract and be a purely visual creature. My friends tend to be artists, so they don't mind when I do that. And we all kind of look at each others' work and dig. But here, as in my professional life, I am expected to sling the Big Big Verbiage, phthwap! onto the page, and make with the grand pronouncements. I guess I just get tired and long for a damn pencil after a while, preferably the colored kind.

But let's see what mundanities I can ply you with. I've been quietly buzzing along on Snow White, though I've reached a point in it where I really need to email the designer and ask her if I can put the increases closer together to allow for my royal shortness of torso, or whether that will Frack the Math.

Speaking of Frack, there are mere weeks until the return of BSG, to which I am looking forward, despite its having jumped the shark to some degree a couple of seasons ago.*

End vhat else? as anyone's Yiddish grandmother might say.

There are no boys to speak of, which is perhaps just as well, since my body is currently far too broken to have much fun with them, had I them available to have much fun with. I am writing lots of poetry, which, now that I think of it, often coincides with a void in the boy department. So there's that. What is bad for the sex life and bad for the blog is good for art. So screw everything else. Art rules.

*Nota bene: Please don't be emailing me correcting my spelling of frack after you've followed the link to the sci fi channel. There should be a goddamned "c" in there.

Later additions...

From Band of Brothers: The tale of the Battle of the Bulge, as it is told today, is of (Gen.) Patton's army coming to the rescue of the encircled 101st Airborne division.

No member of the 101st has ever agreed that the division needed to be rescued.

From the back of my napkin at the bar last Sunday:

In the candle a hand
beat like a heart
and she heard nothing
but the drums
in her eyes
The sand rained
like a scratchy fog

and still the shells
fell, and helmets
ripped like cotton drawers.

In the end his hands were
small brown birds
that she let go.

copyright 2008 Lizbon Grav. all rights reserved. usual threats apply. hey, that goes for the photos, too.

There is a magic to randomness, sometimes, isn't there?

Not altogether happy with the recent poem I wanted to post, I decided to open my summer/fall notebook to a random page and see what I could find there.




Look:

From a random page in my old notebook:

His quiet was unknown to her
Always a crowd in his star
Always an orbit to follow

The sand drained in the glass
as she drank it - one scraping grain
against her throat

his mind made up to sell
he canceled the light dinner
the leftover song
the shoes under the bed

His hands were flowers
and wilted
when she sang.

And from tonight's notebook:

His hands come unfolded
and in them are light birds
the wings made of leather
the feathers bells
the feet like seashells
crunching crunching underfoot

as he walks along the shore
dipping his face into the waves
and breathing in.

(both poems copyright 2007-2008 Lizbon Grav, all rights reserved.)

Note that I did not read the old poem before writing the new one. And the funny thing is, every poem I've written in the last several days has a line in it about "his hands." I have no idea what, if anything, is the significance of that, other than that I must have someone's hands on my mind. And curiously, I've apparently had someone's hands on my mind for months, even though the male players in my daily life have changed.

But art is not necessarily a direct reflection of life, and I have known some people who are only imaginary, in much the same way that there are dreams from childhood that might be real, or might not.

Hello my lovelies. I've had a busy, eventful, and rather swell weekend, which hasn't left me much time for blogging. Now I am on a long work deadline that will be crunching like a bowlful of headache cornflakes well into the wee hours, and so I really must focus.

But I didn't want to leave you hanging too long. Suffice it to say, I have been busy reuniting with my long-lost love, the bicycle. I have spent lots of time hanging with bike geeks, riding across bridges, jumping curbs, getting rained on, and talking bike parts, to my Turkish Delight (a shiny gold star to those who catch that obscure TV reference).

I also met her - in person, and, well, rather kidnapped her for the whole day, ably assisted by the alluring powers of pretty yarn and prettier girls (and one boy).

It was a good weekend, my friends, but my cat may never forgive me. She hates it when I have a social life. Wait till I snag a boy and bring him home, including, perhaps, an extra bicycle (beyond my two). She will be clawing my eyes out while I sleep. Too bad, dearie, too bad!

Ciao!

PS. Would you like a poem?

His dreams stretch until they are bonds
the sank-low feeling dissipates
as the piles of the shore recede
and his oar swallows juice after juice

his breath appears like a serpent of air
she signs puzzles in his face
the map of lines pointing out
various continents, east and west
her eyes move over the sands

Anytime he believes his heart
can grow new skills
he is done in by the silence
growing in the corners
like an old red dog
raw of temper
and cold of skin

only interested in training him
to stop coming aboard.

copyright 2008 lizbon grav. do not reproduce in any fashion, under penalty of death, prosecution, persecution, perfidy, prognostication, and sloth. Also defenestration.

In that last moment
as the cloud lifts her heel,
and she floats, transported
an alien faery above his face

he blinks his wet eyes
to clear them
but her wings have stained
his eyelids
and she is there
again and again

scorching each dream
he has about horses
and twilight
and canned yams eaten with fingers

his big yellow fingers
she will think about
as she flies to the next cloud.

copyright 2008 Lizbon Grav. All rights reserved.

And further, a list.

1) I ran.
2) I remembered what I love most about running. It is the best cure for sexual frustration there is, apart from actual sex. (And some sex isn't even as good a cure as some runs.)
3) I had to work. And work some more. I invoiced.
4) I made up funny epithets for the boy formerly known as Hot Blonde. All in code so I can say them on the street to my friends and we can laugh our asses off without being openly rude, even if he happens to be standing right behind us. Not that I always back off from open rudeness, but I still have some scruples about hurting his feelings (why I don't know. Perhaps because I suspect he means no harm by any of it, and because he has been such a pleasant distraction).
5) I watched two movies featuring mondo dopey eye candy (aka. Keanu). Well, he's only super-dopey in the second: Johnny Mnemonic. And then it's as much the script as it is his flat acting.
6) I drank some very strong hot chocolate.
7) I contemplated for the seventh time my next tattoo.
8) I decided to knit some socks as soon as my copy of Cat Bordhi arrives.
9) I made a knitting-und-bier date with Miz Fury and Special J. Rock on!
10) I tried on my Fremen goggles (they are blue within blue) and decided they are awesome. Same goes for new running shoes (thanks Daddy - those were a present).
11) I wrote a little poem and flung it up on the Interwebs. Instant!

That is all.

Today (I call it today until I go to bed, which gives me a little extra leeway) is the annual virtual poetry reading for St. Brigid's Day, and so I am putting up another.

But before that, a few important things that happened today:

I got invited to join Ravelry.

I got my yarn for Snow White (it is perfect).

I went out to brunch and ended up spontaneously spending the whole day out with the girls, meandering from eating place to haircut to eating place to shopping place to eating place. I am now very, very full. Overfull. Ouch.

I have sworn off pursuing boys. I am tired of the fuss and the nebulousness and the frustration. We came up with several good shorthands for this, which I will not at the moment share here, but suffice it to say, I had a moment in Ricky's where I was laughing so hard I was doubled over. And then I looked at a robot t-shirt and bought some sugar scrub. So I can have incredibly soft skin that no boys will get to enjoy. Also, earlier, I bought two more "date tops." Yeah, so that swearing off is going really well for me.

And so to the poem.

Cream, she said, and ran her
eyes into his stars
his legs tangled in a weedy
mess along hers
the dark blanket a forest
for them to chew into

The sudden dearth
his arms gone and then fluttered into birds
So many damn birds
All that's left after a rain
is chatter and flight.

copyright 2008 Lizbon Grav. All rights reserved.

"Take me now, Subcreature."

If you need me to identify the source of that line for you, you clearly weren't enough of a geek during the '80s.

Anyway.... Home again. Had an unexpectedly nice time, even though I was there to be a temporary wife for my sister and her hubby, while she was laid a bit low. I got to play with my extremely adorable and funny niece, who has a special nickname for me, which she says in her tiny girl's voice. And I got the kind of magical, just-hanging-out time with my sister that I almost never get these days. It was lovely to just drive her around to do her errands, and keep her company, and read stories to the niece while she laid her little head against my chest and put her little hand against each page.

And now I am back on my couch, watching TV and listening to a rumbling purr in my ear (she's perched over my left shoulder) and IMing with Miz Fury about yarn and knitting and how I've completely hooked her on both of those (insert maniacal cackle here), and that is basically the story.

I am back to my life here, and I'm a mixture of blue and relieved. It was, in some way, a break to just be away and be focused on someone else's needs for a few days. Especially since these are all people I love. My life is mostly very self-centered, and there are good reasons for that, and I mostly do need it to be that way, but once in a while it is good to get out of my head, and not think very much at all about the work I have and the work I need but don't yet have, or the boys I don't really have but would like to have, or the money I don't have but really kind of need pretty soon, and so on.

Poem #2:

In the dark that heart
beats into your ear
its voice the other voice
you hear sometimes in sleep

its hands the hands at your throat
when, silent on the grass,
you drink of the night-veil
and sleep the sleep of the drugged.

***
In its answer the voice
never calls to you
only whispers
-- pieces of styrofoam
clogging your sight
with their soft white hands

-- his heart the beat in the dark
an ancient drum
or a landmine.

copyright 2008 Lizbon Grav. All rights reserved.

Is it wrong to kiss one's camera on its forehead? Some days when I am getting dressed I happen upon a combination of colors or fabrics or textures or shapes (or any combination of these) that makes my heart do a little zing! as I look in the mirror. It's like painting oneself in the most beautiful colors - or becoming a living Bonnard painting.

Today I was all flame-colored, dipped in small suns, or sealing wax. My favorite new orange corduroy pants and an old pale orange t-shirt, and knitting this glorious tawny yellow yarn. Immediately after I woke up and put it all on, I also put on some Clash, and danced around the apartment while my tea was brewing.

Every day should begin like that.

Of course, as the day went on, and I ran, and hurt my other side while doing it, and went to PT, where the therapist practically begged me to hold the running down to one day a week while we're working on building up my strength and flexibility, some of that glow wore off a bit.

He did say I could ride, though, and so I will try to get my needed bike maintenance (tire changes, chain cleaning, new pedals - and yes, I can do all of those by myself, thank you) done by Saturday and give myself an inaugural ride up the west side path. Or in the park. Or something. Maybe the blonde would come with me. He would match the yarn so very well.

Postscript. I think that instead of imitating Cari's fiction fragments, I will do something slightly different that's in a similar spirit. Once a weekish (or whenever I want to) I will put up a little poem or scraplet from my notebook. The rules are these: it will not have appeared anywhere in print, and it will be straight from the first handwritten draft, with little or no messing about. In other words, raw. We'll just see how it works out. I may decide I don't want to put so much of me "out there" and withdraw them. Or people may hate them and I may cave to that (though I doubt it. I am stubborn.). Or it may be a short-lived phenomenon. Or who knows what else. But here is #1.

Sun setting over hot water
The colors melt into the sea

as the girls play marbles on shore
tossing coin after coin
to the giant fish's mouth

He swallows, belches their fortunes
their wide warm futures at them
puffing little clouds above their heads

When the bubbles pop, the girls
are wearing crowns.

copyright 2008 Lizbon Grav. All rights reserved. And furthermore, my flesh-eating intellectual property lawyer ex-boyfriend (no, not Boywich; a different one) will come after you with knives, sticks, and the long arm of the law.