Generally, my enthusiasms are transient. I share this tendency with one of my literary heroes, Morgan Gower (of Anne Tyler’s novel _Morgan’s Passing_). Just as the attic of Morgan’s house bore the castoff hallmarks of various pursuits (first chapter of a sci fi novel, an unfinished bird feeder, foreign language tapes), my space in the apartment is crammed with the litter of my obsessions.
To say I have an addictive personality seems to underplay the matter. Sometimes I wonder if I have a touch of autism. If I watch the same TV show twice I have to see it each time it airs. Even if it makes me want to barf. The first time I tried falafel (in college), I ate it for lunch every day for two weeks. I have a map of every Tasti D*lite in a five-block radius from my apartment and my office. I search ebay every single day for discount Fluevog shoes.
Currently I am obsessed with belly dancing. I take as many classes as time and money will allow. I have developed a permanent ache in hip muscles I didn’t even know I had. I hear the din of the doumbek and the zing of the zills as I’m parsing out subject/verb agreement at work, navigating the theater district en route to the subway, trying to concentrate on the rhythms of poetry.
I have attended belly dance workshops on and off for years, never with enough regularity to acquire any actual skill. Maybe this time it will be different. Maybe. After all, I have had so many of these torrid affairs.
An abbreviated list of my addictions: Nietzsche, Thomas Hardy, lipstick, honeysuckle body lotion, Elsa Peretti jewelry, galoshes, sushi, A-line skirts (don’t judge me. you try finding an A-line skirt when they aren’t in style…and they only come into fashion every five years or so. it’s like a frickin part-time job finding them during the desert of pencil skirts, micro mini skirts, ankle skirts, and trumpet skirts. TRUMPET skirts, I ask you….), kung fu movies, pesto, real kohl eyeliner (searched every Indian grocery in Curry Hill until I found it. Looked it up on the Web to get the technique of applying it down. Wore it for two weeks, until I discovered that it has lead in it and it most likely contributed to shortening the ancient Egyptians’ life span), Henry Miller, Wicca, Latin language lessons, AbFab, mac and cheese, the Tarot, Lacoste T-shirts, kung fu, tai chi, pilates, yoga, sewing lessons (I spent thousands of dollars and six months of last year learning how to sew. Until I finally admitted that I loathe sewing and would rather run 15 miles a week so that I can fit my ass into a *gulp* TRUMPET SKIRT if that’s what it takes for me to never see another needle and thread. not that I run regularly anymore because I trained so hard at one point that I injured my knee.), rooibus tea, green tea, training to run a marathon, Fiesta ware tea pots, the soundtrack to Sweeney Todd, researching which breed of dog I should own (Cavalier spaniel, apparently, is the best match), shaving my head, encouraging my hair to grow faster via nutrition, ayurveda, food combining, acupuncture, homeopathy, how to make the best chana masala (hint: tamarind paste is unnecessary), Milan Kundera, Roald Dahl, Manhattan real estate, gothic literature, teen fiction, bongo drums, poetry slams, lingerie, BDSM, tattoos, piercings, DIY facials, the healing benefits of exfoliation, which color palette I belong in, and past-life regression.
You get the picture. There are themes: the arts, exercise, health, the metaphysical, cooking, shopping. But mostly this phenomenon occurs, no matter what the object is, because I find it difficult to disassociate from my mind. A thought pops into my head and instead of observing it and letting it pass, I run it to the ground and worry it between my teeth until I’ve broken its back and it’s lying limp in my foaming jaws. Then I usually drop it and it’s on to the next thing.
This is why Rod was not as upset as he might have been when for a period of ten days I was determined that we should have a baby. I dreamt about it every night, all night. I woke with tears on my cheeks and cramps in my stomach from grieving over the baby that I didn’t have. I spoke of it constantly, weighing the pros and cons. I called my sisters to see when *they* planned on having children so we could coordinate our schedules and rear them together. (They didn’t get too excited. They know better.)
Never mind that for my entire menstruating life I have been inveighing against the barest notion of breeding. I believe I told my mother when I was twelve that I’d rather throw my ovaries in the trash like bad caviar than have a child. She slapped me in the face, as I recall…
I forgot all about the baby thing when I decided that owning a dog would scratch the itch just as well. Abandoned the idea of a furry canine to love when I decided to read every Pulitzer-prize winning poetry book of the last fifteen years.
The only reason I’m not at a dance class right now is that I can’t even stand without kneading fistfuls of overworked hip.
Shots of Jim Beam–are they ever a good idea? This is the second time the demon whiskey has scotched my plans to teach Rod how to salsa. What happens is that my sisters come over, and our cocktail hour lasts well into the night and we end up stripping, donning silly hats, and improvising impersonations of Tenacious D. Sometimes there are limbo contests, belly dance lessons, and philosophical, if increasingly slurred, discussions on the nature of fear. On Saturday night there was shot after shot after shot.
More than one compromising picture ended up on their cell phones. One of them prompted Rod and me to coin several different terms for men’s nipples. My brother-in-law’s nipples are more sporty. Rod’s are more sensual (in my opinion. i believe his own term was “bloated.”) I am almost glad my sister now has a photo of me wearing my prettiest bra and my rabbit fur earflap hat; it nestles sweetly alongside the picture she shot of my face creased with sleep, eye boogers crusty fresh and new, and my hair in one shock on top of my head like a troll doll’s.
I was forced to concur when my sisters yelped with glee about the striking resemblence I’m coming to bear to my great aunt Clara. Mainly it’s the knockers: Aunt Clara used to sunbathe by the pool, wearing only her swimsuit, and she carried a stunning array of necessary items in her cleavage.
We’d be like, “Aunt Clara, do you have any change for the ice cream man?” And she would fish around in her top and pull out some tissues, a pack of gum, her house keys, a change purse, a chapstick…
One thing I’d forgotten: No matter how old they are, little sisters steal clothes. My closet is a few items lighter after their visit. I will never understand this, as I shop at the thrift store and they actually pay good money for their wardrobes.
Needless to say, the hangover impeded my unbridled enjoyment of our niece’s second birthday party on Sunday. (We have two nieces. One is my sister’s baby, who is seven but who will be called “the baby” until at least her fifteenth wedding anniversary. The other is Rod’s sister’s baby, crashing into her terrible twos with a muddled but enthusiastic understanding of the difference between “yes” and “no.”)
Highlight of the party: Watching Rod complete the two-year-old challenge. Each year they stage a series of tasks that all the adults must do within a time limit. These behaviors are some of the key ones that the baby has mastered during the year, such as shaking out of her jacket (without using her hands), arranging blocks in a certain order, or crawling around the dining room table while pretending to talk on her cell phone.
I do not participate in the challenge because I hate games. How much can I not abide them? To the height and depth and breadth my soul can reach. But that is a subject for another post.
Here’s my question: Does everyone need a nemesis? I say yes, Rod says no. He is dismayed by my capacity for hate. I despair of his niceness, which borders on pathological. I always ask him: Why do you need me to like everyone? Why can’t I just hate once in awhile?
I’m with Jerry Seinfeld: People always say, “Oh, you should meet so and so. You’d like him.” I never like anybody!
The people I like most are those that are not like me, but like the me I wish I could be. Those who are similar to me make me want to gouge out their eyes with a nail file.
February needs to be over, already. I just cannot with the weather anymore. It’s a funny thing about bad moods: There is a time to indulge them, and a time not to get drowned in the downward spiral. It’s difficult sometimes to know when to lift myself out and when to wallow. If I don’t let things get bleak enough, the premature happy can feel tacked on, or like an emotional equivalent of blue balls.
When I was a teenger I wore a button on my leather jacket that read, “I don’t know whether to commit suicide or go bowling.” Naturally my parents made me remove it, and they were outraged at my apparently cavalier attitude to living and breathing and stuff like that.
But you know? I still feel like that most days. I need to consider the extreme of nonbeing before I can really commit to actualizing myself on this plane, in the now.
I have some fool-proof musical mood lifters. This is what I call the “get over it” mix:
1. “Uncle Fucka” from the South Park soundtrack
Because the juxtaposition of all the cursing with the soaring orchestral background reminiscent of “Oklahoma!” just makes me want to wet my pants. Every. single. time.
2. “Common People” the William Shatner rendition.
Because Shatner is my talisman for unadulterated joy, plus hamminess. I am a ham, always have been, always will be. And there is nothing wrong with that.
3. “Kielbasa” by Tenacious d.
Because it combines two-part harmony with lyrics about ass fucking. Reminds me of when one of my sisters (the opera singer) used to arrange her chorus friends in a rousing choral arrangement of the “Alleluia Chorus,” only replacing “alleluia” with “butt-a-lingus.” What? She was sixteen.
4. “Bamboleo” by the Gipsy Kings.
Because it reminds me of my niece being three years old and “dancing” to this song by running in a frantic circle around my sisters and me as we shimmied in the middle of the room.
5. “All Things Dull and Ugly” by Monty Python
Because at its root it’s a pagan lullaby.
6. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” performed by Kiki & Herb
Because I often feel like a washed-up lounge act that has been around forever and never struck gold.
7. “Muddy Mudskipper Theme” from Ren and Stimpy
Because of the jazzy horn section. Excellent for doing a spiffy finger dance to.
8. “Señor Burns” by Tito Puente, on the Simpsons album.
For the Monty Burns in me.
9. “Private Idaho” by the B-52s.
Because isolation and estrangement never sounded so great.
10. “A Little Respect” by Erasure.
Because Erasure reminds me of being young, of wild nights with simpatico punk rock companions, of no boundaries and no limits and no tomorrow.
It’s funny, when I tell people about how I’m blogging now, I get mixed responses. There are those that can see the appeal, and others who just can’t imagine writing their “private” thoughts in a forum where other people can read them. Mostly the people in the second camp are not writers, though.
What’s the conclusion? Are writers just natural exhibitionists? I think so. But also, I believe that writers have a better grasp on what we all instinctively know: the concept of the fictive self.
We are all inventing ourselves, mythologizing ourselves, moment to moment.
There’s a great part in Salinger’s _Seymour, An Introduction_: “The thing to listen for, every time, with a public confessor, is what he’s *not* confessing to….a man may suddenly feel it Within His Power to confess that he cheated on his final exams at college, he may even choose to reveal that between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-four he was sexually impotent, but these gallant confessions in themselves are no guarantee that we’ll find out whether he once got piqued at his pet hamster and stepped on its head.”
Incidentally, I appreciate this friendster blog because it is the only place that I can quote Salinger without having English lit anthologies lobbed at my head because Salinger is beyond OVER in the literary community. We’re all supposed to be informed by him but never mention him ever again.
All of this to say: I am the bluntest and most blisteringly honest person you will ever meet. Except when I’m lying. And still, people call me mysterious. It could be just brunette prejudice. But more likely it has something to do with the process of communication, and about my persona being received through other people’s lenses of perception.
This used to bother me enormously. I wanted to be understood. Now I accept that all I will ever have is the active creation of my persona. That my personal identity is something only I can apprehend.
Therefore, is it a failure of imagination on my part when I look in someone’s eyes and see only a freshly paved road? That I can’t accept the currency of others’ personas? I think so. I long to tutor my perception into that kind of receptive mode where I can see the eccentric beauty and value in everyone and everything. Often I am in that luscious space.
But more often I’m like, “If that person utters one more word about how many calories are in that ring ding, I’m going to choke her with my telephone cord.”
Even with the active creation of persona, there is only so much I can do to influence other people’s notion of me. Case in point: I am either cool, or the corniest person alive, depending on who you ask. Personally, I feel neither of these things, but they have been regularly applied to me for as long as I can remember.
In Rumi’s excellent poem “Say Yes Quickly,” there is a section that goes: “Everyone says *how are you*? No one says *how aren’t you*?”
My former roommate, also a poet, routinely asked me how i wasn’t. It led to some fun conversations. Try it!
Nothing like a good sulk to put me right back on track. Yesterday I was twelve kinds of pissy and actually engaged in a prolonged crying jag for my lost youth while consuming back-to-back episodes of “Undeclared.”
I commuted to college rather than boarding (I’m the oldest child, and don’t do well with roommates), and so missed out on the full experience, which I’ll never have the opportunity to have again. Unless I plan on being the belle of the old folks’ home. Which I don’t see happening. If I’m this consistently cranky *now,* imagine how charming I’ll be when my body is all broken down and doesn’t work right.
Have you seen Bubba Ho-Tep? That’s the scariest movie I’ve seen in a while, even if it does feature Bruce Campbell playing a decrepit but incognito Elvis Presley, because it’s all about being elderly and stuck in institutionalized healthcare. And I can just imagine me in some nursing home, and some perky young nurse demanding that I make a macaroni sculpture, and me not having the strength to club her with my portable oxygen tank.
Do you watch that show “House”? It’s like an exquisite little horror movie, every week, if you are a hypochondriac, which I am. Every week, pushing back the frontiers of what I have to worry about. For instance, did you know you can become allergic to your own blood? Imagine waking up one day and all of a sudden your body *rejects its own frickin blood.* Also, every week somebody has to get a spinal tap and a bone marrow test. And this is the future. This is what happens to the body. It just disintegrates. One of my parents’ friends just had a stroke, in his early sixties, and he was a frickin vegan for years AND he survived cancer, twice. These are they kinds of things that keep me awake at night. This is why I don’t have time for movies like “Oasis of the Zombies.” This is why every David Cronenberg movie makes me claw my own skin off in fear.
But all that was yesterday. Today: Hilarity everywhere I look. Ecstasy at every turn.
For example, on the corner of Broadway and Twenty-first street this morning I saw a car with vanity plates reading “BIG JONN.” The kicker? It was a *teal two-door sedan.* I was like, am I in Asbury Park, New Jersey, or what? Overcompensate much, BIG JONN?
Revised my poetry manuscript this evening because I’m going to send it to another round of contests. Sarah Arvio’s second book of poems _Visits from the Seventh_, wasn’t doing it for me (too hoity toity), so I chucked it in favor of Yusek Komunyakaa’s _Neon Vernacular_. It’s making me drool on myself it’s so wonderfully savory and rich.
Went to a basic bellydance class at Serena Studios. Serena makes everyone take this class, regardless of dance experience, so that you know the standard 8 or 9 positions. Serena was supposed to be teaching but wasn’t, so even though I’ve had lots of dance training and a fair amount of bellydance lessons, I might go to the basic class at least once more to take it from her. Because I heard Serena yells at you right out in beginner 2 class and humiliates you if you’re not spot on.
This dance studio is conveniently located next to the JY Market, which I call the dumpling deli because they sell frozen gyoza. When I was twelve my friend Michele and I used to jog to the Dairy Queen in lieu of exercise. Now I can walk over to bellydance class and get some dumplings for the way home. This also means that I will be taking at least half of my meals in dumpling form for at least the next six weeks.
Speaking of “lots of dance training”–do you want to hear one of the great Greek tragedies of my entire life? Here it is: When I was 13, my dance teacher wanted me to audition for the high school of performing arts (the “Fame” school) and *my parents wouldn’t let me.* Effectively ensuring that I would never have a dance career, as you have to make it by the time you’re seventeen.
All part of their nefarious plan, as they wanted me to go to college and get an acceptable desk job. Which I have, damn their miserable hides.
In my twenties I did everything I could to resist that fate. I even auditioned at go-go bars. The only reason I never became a go-go dancer is that I find it absolutely impossible to carry on a conversation with stupid people. I can stick my naked ass cheeks in someone’s face, no problem. But then to turn around and giggle and flirt and blink my eyes at some toothless, unshaven, rotund man with the red veins on his nose from hitting the bottle once too often…um, no.
One time on a go-go audition I started laughing and could not stop, when a guy asked me, “You’re wearing a leopardskin thong–are you Jane? Are you looking for a Tarzan?” People, I couldn’t make this up. Needless to say, I had to slink out of the club ignominiously, shaking with laughter, the tears pouring down my cheeks.
Oh, and also, these dance club owners were all, “We need you to take your piercings out, because this is an upscale club that caters to gentlemen.” And I’d have to be all, “Shyeah! If I wanted to remove my body jewelry, I’d work as a server in a restaurant.” And under my breath, “These guys are gentlemen like I’m Rosalynn Carter.”
On the way home from Serena Studios, I got a bag of dumplings and a Tab diet soda. Remember Tab? I used to think that it tasted like pan-fried ass, but I haven’t had it in years. It’s in such an unabashedly pink can, and I love the retro font. But the flavor is still awful.
I passed the Westerly health food market and inhaled the scent of wheat germ, which reminds me of endorphin rushes and exhilaration because most gyms have vitamin stores attached to them. I passed Valhalla, a new bar that has Scotch flights for $36. And I thought please goddess never let me have to leave Hell’s Kitchen.
Work. What can I say? It feels as though I have been trapped in a six-year-long episode of the Black Adder.
Wallace Stevens was an insurance executive all his life. That’s my mantra. Our foremost poet of the imagination had a 9-5, M-F, calculating risk, shoring up against the unknown. Probably talked more than a few sweaty pensioners down off the ledge. Then went home at night to write gloriousness and gloriousity like “Sunday Morning.”
I’m reading Sarah Arvio’s _Visits from the Seventh_, in which some lines jumped out to comfort me:
“No, the landscape doesn’t determine us:/joy will also flow from mud or rubble.”
In theory. In practice I sat for three hours in the office freezing my tits off until the heat kicked in. And as I wrote in an earlier post, I loathe the cold. HATE. I would rather have a desk full of maggots.
During my lunch hour I passed a window display in which infant onesies were emblazoned with sayings such as “boob man.” Is it me or is that just gross? This is why seven-year-olds worship pop tarts like Britney and Christina. We’re sexualizing them in the cradle. The kid who wears the “boob man” onesie might as well have a little baby cigar, gold tooth, and platform shoes with fish swimming in them, because he’ll never be able to relate to a woman as more than commerce, imbibing that kind of objectification with his mama’s milk.
Didn’t I try just yesterday to lighten up? Isn’t this exactly why people say feminists have no sense of humor?
Yes it is. Exactly why. Because if you don’t participate in your own objectification, you are a bad sport, not one of the guys, and therefore not an enlightened and powerful woman.
Ariel Levy wrote a great book about that, called _Female Chauvinist Pigs_.
Tony Hoagland is reading at Poet’s House tomorrow. Woo hoo! He has been one of my heroes ever since I read his essay about the intoxicating presence of meanness in poetry. He’s the only person I can think of who speaks of meanness as an endorphin.
This is the kind of day that makes me want to huff bleach.
An unexpected day off! The office was closed on account of no heat or electricity. Apparently there was a fire on the street, the basement of the building was flooded…not sure exactly what happened.
What I did with the free time:
1. Read Stephen Dunn’s book of essays.
They made me think for a long time about sincerity vs. artifice. Most of the time I am almost painfully sincere, which according to Dunn makes me a “half-person.” I couldn’t agree more. I’d love to lighten up, only I don’t know how. But I also love to lie, which I do on a regular basis to either make my life easier or make it more interesting. I tell pointless lies to strangers when they ask me what my name is, what I do, etc. It’s my way of trying on other lives. Dunn is enlarging my negative capability by leaps and bounds. A man after my own heart, one of his quotes in the book is: I hate good taste.
2. Watched the Adam Sandler vehicle “50 First Dates” in an effort to stop thinking so much.
Still trying to decide whether the premise is piggish and insulting. Can you love someone who has no capacity to make new memories? Because I am trying to gloss over pleasant little conundrums such as this one, I don’t have the answer.
3. Went to the gym.
Lots of hairy men in speedo bathing suits there during the afternoon. Who knew?
4. Invented a curried pumpkin chickpea soup with watercress.
Went a little nuts with the Thai chili paste, but otherwise suprisingly not as sweet as I’d feared it would be. The chickpea puree, coconut milk, curry powder, and cilantro made it savory enough.
5. Read some new (to me) online literary magazines, such as Sweet Fancy Moses.
6. Mocked Rod for his capacity to sit through a B-movie bomb such as Oasis of the Zombies.
7. Talked to each of my sisters and enumerated some of the ways in which our parents are insane.
8. Planned an expedition to Copacabana for this upcoming weekend. Mission: Get Rod excited to learn how to salsa dance.
9. Sent in my withdrawal forms to Pratt.
Already I am mourning all those lovely librarian jobs I’ll never have. Especially when I remember that there might not be heat in our building tomorrow. I would have made a great cataloger.
10. Examined how we (as a species) might possibly program computers to be able to proofread and copyedit the language used in text messaging, as I firmly believe that we will be using said language for all of our communication within the next twenty years.
I just found out that in texting, “book” equals “cool.” Man, that’s book!
Aida at the Amato Opera comes with hints of danger. Such a big cast, all in peril of plummeting into the orchestra pit because the stage is the size of a cracker box. The Metropolitan Opera House carries no such spice of the actors’ imminent mortality because of its opulent dimensions. The cast are free to frolic, transmitting secrets at the top of their highly technically trained lungs.
The last time I attended a performance at Amato I was probably seventeen and at the height of goth. I recall it pained me considerably to have to pass CBGB’s and its punks on parade with my flagrantly Italian parents, scrubbed and shining, decked in their bourgeois best, bellowing (as they always did–in the supermarket, in church) with cheerful abandon their excitement about the opera. I skulked along behind (as I always did–in school, at my part-time job) like an ambulatory bundle of black rags, all racoon eyes and Sioxsie Sioux hair.
Therefore it was beyond strange to be attending Amato of my own volition, tricked out in the same fuschia lipstick favored by my grandmother, and with my husband. A spouse is such a grown-up accessory for a woman to own.
At Amato, the seated patrons enjoy the cozy proximity of a gerbil cage and its attendant necessity to stow one’s limbs skin on skin with a stranger’s (or really stocking to pants leg, during winter). My pulse started climbing immediately. I could smell the sickening floral of a woman’s perfume from two rows away. I will never understand why some women want to smell like they are already embalmed. Much as I imagine such women are mystified by my desire to smell like a joint of meat rubbed with cinnamon, cloves, and other spices.
The couple sitting behind us was vastly entertaining from the moment they entered the building: She in a cropped rabbit fur jacket, dusty green velvet high heels, and a tatty black cotton jersey halter dress (sans bra, which makes her a HOOR in my mother’s Queens, NY, parlance). He wearing the benighted expression of a husky furniture mover cradling a Ming dynasty vase and terrified of breaking it.
Their conversation (or her monologue, nervously punctuated with his grunts of assent, whichever you prefer) intimated that they must have been friends for years before she finally allowed his evident worship to take a more physical form. It was clear that theirs was a relationship of mutual admiration: They both admired her immensely.
As the opera lasted for more than three hours, it included two intermissions, during which Rod and I were treated to an assload of her voluble opinions. If all of us are walking around with captions over our heads, hers definitely read “High Art.” She actually said, and this is verbatim: “I’m simply fixated with Beowulf lately.” It was at that point that I had to be forcibly restrained from reaching around to pinch her in the neck.
Another gem was: “Oh, don’t talk to me about Broadway. Broadway is the KFC of musical entertainment. It’s like they give you a big bib to wear so you can just slather all over yourself.”
Or how about this one: “Opera is the convergence of all the arts in one place: staging, music, acting, sculpture, literature. And the Amato is just so much more real than the Met. This is how it used to be in the seventeenth century.”
Rod and I nearly got twin hernias trying not to yelp with laughter when she mispronounced “Die Fleidermaus.”
In truth, I saw more than a little of myself in this young woman. The me who hides behind art and theories about art. The me who accumulates art like armor. My reaction to her, part horror and part amusement, is akin to why I cannot read more than five pages of any Chuck Klosterman book: Part of me wants to shriek, We are not completely defined by the stuff we like, by such externals! We just aren’t. Sooner or later we must, at least in part, be defined by our naked, unvarnished, unguarded response to experience.
(She says vehemently, all the while recognizing that it was her time spent in surgery over the summer where they made her remove her piercings that convinced her to get another tattoo, as she absolutely cannot go through the world inadequately armored with just her own skin.)
The Amato is usually hit or miss with regard to the quality of the voices. I am by no means a trained singer, so I can’t evaluate whether the singers are good. I just know what I enjoy, and how their singing affects me. The man who was playing Aida’s father made the tears leap to my eyes from the moment he opened his mouth. I felt privileged to have that ravishing music he made washing over me, and kept gulping to catch my breath. Therefore it puzzled me enormously to witness members of the chorus standing right next to his glorious singing, all the while staring vapidly into space, evidently compiling grocery lists in their heads, not one whit more affected by his performance than they would have been watching newspapers blow down a sidewalk.
Some of the more unintentionally hilarious moments: Aida’s dress blowing up to reveal hockey-strength protective kneepads on her knees (she does a lot of falling to her knees before monarchy, as she’s an Ethiopian slave). Also: the tenor, the object of the dueling divas’ affection, was a fiftyish, jowly man sporting at least B-cup knockers and lurid pinky-tan nylons that bagged at the knees. Those tights distracted me almost completely from his voice, which resembled nothing so much as the air being let out of a strangled helium balloon. But then, I’m not such a fan of tenors. I don’t even like to hear Pavarotti sing.
When Anthony Amato, the owner and conductor, came beaming out of the pit at intermission, I wished that I could love what I do for a living. His transparent ardor made me sorry for myself, workwise.
All in all, the Amato rocks pretty hard. Lately I’m finding that opera is the punk rock of the classical world, in its posturing, its showmanship, its improbability. It’s a bitter pill having to admit that my parents were onto something great.
I’d like to address that business of “opera is all the arts converging in one place.” Couldn’t the same be said of almost any art form that you love and practice? I feel that way about poetry. I use elements of each of the art forms when I’m revising poems. I glean ideas about form from studying the architecture of a building. Or something about light and shadow when admiring sculpture. Any artist is a thieving little bird, using both dross and scraps of gold to build a little nest.
Still reading Stephen Dunn’s _Walking Light_. His essays “Complaint, Complicity, Outrage, and Composition,” and “A History of My Silence” gave me some important insights into point of view, voice, and tone.
This idea of complicity in particular is one that I struggled with in grad school–well, probably for my whole life. My own mother used to lament, “You’re so definite about everything. How can you have such strong opinions at eight years old?”
Indeed. And how can you escape the tyranny of your own mind long enough to try on other voices, other senses, other outlooks? If you are a Libra, you do this instinctively. For me it is an effort when I’m shaping an argument on the page. A useful key, Dunn explained in his essays, is complicity. “If we’re not (as poets) going to be complicitous in what we find wrong and abhorrent, then we had better find ways to measure and evaluate experience that uniquely draw more attention to the subject than to ourselves.”
I think this is what Keats meant when he said “poets must abolish the ‘I’.” It’s about transmuting the pain of experience so that you can shape it from beyond your personal response to it. Being able to bear witness in that way helps you make the experience translate universally.
I also loved his ideas about inspiration, particularly how there is often more than one inspiration that goes into making a poem. There is the original one, but then the one that comes from revising. Often it is a word or phrase, or a rhythm, that propels the poem into a revelation and therefore another level of inspiration. This supports the argument for revision.
The Beat method of “first thought, best thought” is one that I have never enjoyed. I am a compulsive revisionist. The trick is not to revise the life out of the work.
In other news:
The PATH train still sucks (we went carousing in Jersey City last night b/c my sisters and their beaus were there).
The advantage to drinking in a relatively empty cigar bar in Jersey City is that you can teach your younger sisters some key belly dance moves in the bathroom, under the pitiless glare of fluorescent lights. In the process you show them that it is possible to have both back fat AND self esteem.
Rod’s fave food: tater tots. Once when we were first dating he sweetly offered to cook dinner…and served a heaping tray of tater tots, with ketchup in one corner of the tray, representing the vegetables. He has always prided himself (sometimes vehemently) on *not* being a foodie.
Therefore, it is incredibly hilarious to me that for our date tonight he cooked me prosciutto and provolone tortellini (which he procured from the Amish market) in a butter lemon sauce, lovingly dusted with grated parmesan and cracked pepper. On the side, steamed broccoli rabe.
We’re going to the Amato opera house on the Bowery to see Aida. I don’t think Rod’s ever seen an opera before. I was routinely forced to attend the opera when I was growing up, and I am having a severe identity crisis lately because I have been jonesing for opera.
Here’s a poem I wrote about that:
Oh! Mio Babbino Caro
It’s happened, as I knew it would:
I crave opera.
I hunger for it the way orphaned owls
snuggle with a feathered glove.
I, who sprayed my mother with the sink hose
as she drilled me on the plot of La Traviata.
Is a lust for opera genetic? I used to worry,
girded with studded leather bracelets.
All I know is, one day I woke
aching for those notes beyond high C,
as if my spine were too small
and coloratura the rack of sweet relief.
Is it because English
has the squirmy texture of plant cells,
and Italian is the vector that can free
what’s thrashing in me, pollen hot?
I sneered at the family divas,
snored through Barber of Seville,
grumped at Pagliacci for Sunday brunch.
Now I browse librettos at the library
sweaty as a flasher in a playground.
In other news: One of my neighbors was slowly, carefully, deliberately playing “London Bridges” on the harmonica today. I love living in New York.
Mardi Gras is this week. It’s stunning to see footage of the celebration interspersed with scenes of utter devastation in New Orleans. I definitely feel festive this week, dizzy with the release of getting my free time back.
Even though I’m a pagan, I was raised Catholic (essentially an ecstatic religion, at its roots) and I still celebrate the season of Lent, after a fashion. Every year on Ash Wednesday I read T. S. Eliot’s poem of the same name, and I love to meditate on deprivation.
You know what I think? It doesn’t work if it’s imposed from the outside. It’s got to come from some internal prompt. We know instinctively when to cut back, and why. Everyone follows seasons of growth and pruning. Personally, I let myself go hog wild whenever I want to. Then I have no problem maintaining moderation afterward. For example, if you eat half a jar of Nutella in one sitting, I promise you that you will not touch the stuff for at least a month. It’s very simple: better living through excess.
I have accepted an invitation to speak to a class of Unitarian children about Wicca. I spoke at this particular church once before, and it was great fun. I got a bunch of junior high school students to cast a circle and raise power through chanting. Their teacher couldn’t believe they actually participated. But you know how that is: You’ll play along for the visitor to a class, but not for the person who is the authority figure every day.
Someone asked me once why I thought Wicca was a more viable religion than any other. What made Wicca more valid, he wanted to know. And I told him that witchcraft isn’t more or less legitimate than other faiths. It’s just fun, that’s all. What’s more, it’s the religion of poetry.
I tried doing without religion, and I was unhappy. I need regular reminders to praise creation, otherwise I lapse into grumbling on a daily basis. I crave ritual, spectacle, incense and beautiful satin altar cloths and drumbeats and candles and flowers. The enchantment of words woven into the air.
I wish there were more community in Wicca, though. If you ask ten different witches what their religion means to them, you get ten different answers. This is terrific if you don’t want any mediator between you and your divinity. Not so great if you want to coordinate an event of a hundred witches.
Also, there is really only one rule in Wicca: Do what you want as long as you don’t hurt yourself or anyone else. You’d think that would be simple to follow, but it’s been my experience that some people have so little empathy, they need guidelines from the outside to make them behave in a compassionate manner. You’d think fewer rules would result in more tolerance, but in fact I believe the opposite happens: People become extremely attached to their personal way of doing things.
For instance, I’ve had people correct me when I’m in the middle of invoking the elements because I wasn’t doing it the way they thought I should be doing it. Totally cutting off my mojo and they don’t think a thing about it! And then I had to stop and get all huffy and be like you know, okay, I wasn’t invoking the element of water from the West. That’s because I don’t have a fucking compass on me and I don’t know which way West is. Does it actually matter so much? You don’t think I have enough magic in me to call in all the dryads up in here if I want to? Don’t you know that if I missed dogma like “You have to invoke water from the West” I’d still be a Catholic?
I hope that for the future of Wicca we can achieve more consensus. I would like to see a time when there is actually a huge temple in New York City where I can go to worship.
Reading Fangoria magazine’s book about the best obscure horror movies, hoping to reclaim the genre. There’s got to be some great scares out there, leaving aside all the tittie exploitation fright flicks. First stop: Alice Sweet Alice, starring Brooke Shields and plenty of gruesome Catholic imagery.
Saturn is the great malefic. It is also my ruling planet. I’ve been thinking a lot about limitations since I decided to quit Pratt. Limits are Saturn’s specialty, and I like to believe that boundaries are to living as poetic forms are to poetry. I am so enamored of sonnets because they are such strict, graceful poems. To be able to “sing in my chains like the sea,” as Dylan Thomas wrote, is my entire ambition in this life.
Also, did you know that when a poet specifically wants to make a point in a poem, he or she violates the rhythm of the meter? It is the asymmetry of the act that shines out in a line of poetry and makes a beacon of the word or phrase. This seems to me a terrific dictum to lurch along to your own stumpy music.
Always, I have kicked against limits. Most of the time I prefer simply not to acknowledge them. Once, when my Volvo stalled on the main street in Highland Park, New Jersey, during rush hour, I got out of the car and began to push it out of the road. By myself. Naturally, since I am not the Incredible Hulk, I got nowhere fast until someone stopped his car and helped me. But this anecodote serves to illustrate my total belief in my powers of accomplishment. It never fails to come as a nasty shock when my prowess falls short of the mark.
What is the flip side of limitation? Possibility. That word is pure magic. The speediest way for me to overcome a horrible mood is to enumerate possibilities of action, of feeling, of experience. I bask in that sense of limitless expansion (Rod is the opposite. Too much choice makes him break out in hives).
I keep thinking of something E.M. Forster wrote, about how after the age of thirty some closing of the gates of experience becomes necessary if we are going to develop and give to the world our own gift. That’s the best reason I can come up with for why I am not ready to devote time and energy to library science. I quit library school so I could devote time to writing, and to enjoying my life. Period. Why? Because I love writing more than anything else. Because I’m unhappy when I’m not doing it. Because I have spent too much of my life trying to achieve, and not enough time honoring my daydreams. Loitering on street corners raptly watching the sun shoot through the radiant drops plashing onto the sidewalk from the melting ice. Pulling silly faces at myself in the bathroom mirror at work. Striking up conversations with total strangers about their spangled espadrilles.
There are plenty of things I’d like to do: Play clarinet, learn Latin, brew a decent cup of matcha tea (still working on that one. perhaps the chasen is necessary, for my tea is awfully lumpy.). But I don’t necessarily want to *learn* how to do these things. If I could wake up tomorrow knowing how to speak Mandarin, I would adore that.
Anyway, it’s a weird feeling not to be nurturing one of my dreams to fruition, to be giving up on something I wanted. Especially since I spend eight hours a day doing something that neither inspires me nor even holds my interest. Today in a meeting we were told that excellence is not expected of us anymore. Production is the buzzword. Can you think of anything more depressing to say to a Capricorn than *take your excellence and stick it in your glory place?* Is Terry Gilliam filming this version of my life? Is Kafka writing the script?
I felt burdened by limits until I came home and watched “What the Bleep Do We Know?” I love books and movies that explain quantum physics for laypeople, much as I imagine those who can’t read very well love to hear Shakespeare read aloud and explained. This movie used principles of physics to corroborate what spiritual seers (and poets) have always said.
Here are some of my fave quotes:
The real trick to life is not to be in the know but to be in the mystery (that sounds exactly like Keats’s theory of negative capability)
What’s in us will create what’s outside of us.
Atoms are possibilities. Things are the possibilities of consciousness.
I don’t think you’re bad…or good. I think you’re God.
I am in such an advanced stage of PMS that every solitary hair on my head is pissing me off. This is why I shaved my head for so long. Oh, it was so peaceful having no hair. The only reason I don’t shave it all again is because growing it in is like experiencing a bad hair day that lasts for a year.
