Blog
Today’s calling
Here’s what’s important today:
Gunpowder green tea, brewed very strong, drunk plain
Pigeon pose, both upright and in a forward fold, in yoga class
Meditation
The taste and nourishment of dried apricots, Greek yogurt (the Fage brand, with its very thick creaminess, that I buy at Trader Joes’), tamari-roasted almonds, an avocado, olive oil, and lettuce
Letting a prose poem, composed of shorter prose poems, take shape in its own fashion, with no push from me, so that whatever results, whether written today or in a week, startles this author with its beauty
A phone conversation with my friend Shelley in Urbana, Illinois
Going to my friend Kat’s performance, a house concert
Picking up Kat’s nearly 100-year-old neighbor, to take her to the performance, along with my friend Frances
Nothing pressing. Life calling, and I wouldn’t name any of that life today a job or a lesson or a gesture of good will. Rather, I feel called to be with everyday intimacies that feel at once necessary and desired.
Confiding in myself
Com, with, plus fidere, to trust, are the basis for the Latin confidere, which means to confide. Confidence derives from confidere, and one of the roots of faith is the Latin fidere. These ancient linguistic connections among faith, trust, confiding, and confidence bring to that last word a depth that we miss when we think of confidence only as self-assurance. Who asks, Am I willing to confide in myself? Am I my most trusted friend? Can I be my confidante rather than my confessor who every day belabors a multiplicity of mea culpas? Do I live with faith?
Coherent
I imagine that most of us have experienced the “need” to explain ourselves to someone we love, whether that person is kin, spouse, lover, or friend. We think that we must be clear or that the other person requires that. Often, such a need happens during or after a fight, and the source of the need is defensiveness. We have something to prove or we have to be right. Often, the other person is demanding that we explain ourselves, a demand that may be verbal or that may be aggressively implicit.
I don’t remember what my lover and I were talking about when he said, “You don’t have to be coherent,” but we certainly weren’t fighting. I do remember that the subject was deeply personal and that I was wanting to be clear about something I was feeling.
- February 4, 2010
- Filed under: Love, Men and women
- Comments 1
Girlfriends
She helps me with everything. From art to every other expansion of the heart.
She is my prophet of integrity.
She is practical and mystical, a family woman, an honest soul.
She and I meet once a week for talk and treats, like linzertorte and carrot cake. Living is our subject. I love how we live in one another’s presence.
She reads me well and with elation, the way a person who cares about a poem pays attention to it.
She sings the songs she writes, she plays guitar, she thinks of serving others because she is aware of generosity. She follows through.
She instructs me in the asanas that inform my every movement.
She puts me in the place that anyone would call love.
She is as auspicious as the black jaguar that attached itself to my leg in a dream last week.
She is my oracle, giving word of my own state of being.
- January 3, 2010
- Filed under: Love, Men and women
- Comments 3
Kissing him
You’re eating a meal with someone and he mentions a delicious taste from the food in his mouth. You want to share that taste with him. You want to kiss him, deeply.
Imagine the beginning of the same scenario, through the first sentence of the above paragraph. Then . . . rather than wanting to share and kiss, you feel repulsed. Lips, tongue, teeth, palate–what could be worse?
I’ve experienced such attractions mostly with men and such repulsions with both women and men. I felt those kinds of repulsions in my younger years, but I suppressed them much better than I now can. I did my best to stay unaware of them. People feel without awareness all the time. In effect, they feel without feeling. That causes confusion, unhappiness, misreading of others, and a loss of clarity, clear sight, and intuition. In that state, people’s actions bring unhappiness to both themselves and others. If you don’t know how you feel–and feeling requires awareness of one’s body–your thinking cannot save you.
- December 26, 2009
- Filed under: Body and mind, Love
- Comments 2
Smoky miracles
“Shop Around,” the 1960 hit by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, has been playing inside my head for the past couple days. In the lyrics a mother tells her son to find a girl whose love is really true and advises him to shop around till he finds her.
Shopping could be on someone’s mind today because it’s almost Christmas and she may still need to buy some gifts. But that’s not my story.
“Shop Around” is a joyful song, and its morals are down to earth: Don’t settle for just any good looking match and Secure the one who loves you. I just watched Smokey and the Miracles perform the song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YPdVqwk978), and he’s especially suave and sparkling, even with out of sync vocals and visuals.
My friend Frances, with whom I’ve shopped numerous times, says that I’m very clear about what I’m looking for, whether that’s groceries or clothing. We’ve been friends since our early thirties. She says that if I find what I want, then I don’t keep looking for other items, and if I don’t find what I want, then I go someplace else or forget about the desired purchase for a while.
Shopping, shopping, shopping–decades and decades, 2 husbands, women and men. Frances would say that I know now what I want.
Smoky miracles. Aren’t all miracles smoky? We may know what we want, but all the causes that create the effect that is a miracle remain mysterious.
- December 20, 2009
- Filed under: Love, Men and women
- Comments 1
Faithful
Faithful husband
Faithful wife
Faithful friend
Faithful servant
Faithful dog
Faithful follower
I’ve been thinking about faith, and the above list came to mind. What does it mean to be full of faith? How is that different from a stereotypically or archetypally faithful relationship or role, such as the ones I’ve mentioned? (I think that each item in the list operates both as stereotype and archetype.) Read more
My sister’s boots
My sister often wears work boots, which I imagine to be grimy, and she always put her feet up on the sofa in my living room without taking off those boots. That used to bug me and I’d tell her (in what I thought was a reasonably polite way) to take them off. Now I don’t care! She and her partner were house guests over Thanksgiving, and my sister and I were watching the latest Star Trek movie when I noticed those boots on the orange chenille of the sofa. And then I noticed that I had no desire to say anything about them. Ahhh, progress in the world of love.
Golden skin
Line 8 of Sexual Advances reads:
I’m thinking of your goldenness
The first time I saw my lover naked, the color of his skin surprised me because it was so purely and creamily golden. Maybe the light, which was shining softly into his bedroom, warmed his skin tone. Maybe I’m still enwrapped–enrapt and wrapped up in–the romantic radiance of our initial lovemaking, and maybe that radiance colors my memories and present observations of him.
Of course, he is golden to me–his heart feels rich and enriches mine–as everyone we love is golden when we spontaneously fill the connection between that person and ourselves, and life in the process, with generosity and with first sight, which allows us to see what is truly in front of us. In Sexual Advances I see with first sight every time, in each of the 1,000 lines, and that liberates my vision from looking for what my lover should be in the future or wasn’t in the past, from problems that fear, running rampant, or just walking along at a steady pace, creates out of speculation, obsession, and impatience. Fear turns gold to mud.
- November 2, 2009
- Filed under: Beauty, Love, Men and women, Pleasure
- Comments 1
Intimacy and art
An artwork can be an intimate object. It’s a matter of the relationship between the observer and the object. Response, even responsiveness, may be more precise and profound than relationship. For me, pleasure is the ground of responsiveness. In light of that, I’m astoundingly responsive to Caravaggio and Rossetti. Sometimes my own responsiveness, my own intimacy with them/their art surprises me. I want to be closer closer closer . . . They bring me into intimacy with myself, soul-and-mind-inseparable-from-body. The feeling of being in love, not in a horridly romantic obsessive way, but in a light and fascinated way that propels you to want to know, see, and create the best and most beautiful you can be, is the intimacy I feel with Rossetti’s and Caravaggio’s art.
It would seem that materials used by an artist could create greater or lesser intimacy. In an abstract way, embroidery can be seen as more intimate than oil painting, and perhaps experienced as such, because of its (feminine) history and the process itself of embroidering. However, is oil paint, despite its high art history, in and of itself any less intimate or erotic than thread? Is painting in oils any less about touch than is embroidering?
When I think about the effects that many Rossetti and Caravaggio paintings have on me, I know that a complex of intimacies is playing with me. The intimacies are emotional, sensual, psychic, and to a lesser extent intellectual. Their gentle and dynamic reach into my very self inspires and excites me.
