I Am the Work

Watching you stretch, I saw
in that simple, basic behavior all
the many yous that have stretched:

the tiny child,
the scampering girl,
the inward adolescent,
the young woman exulting in her body,
the mother after a long day,
the artist, the writer up from her desk—

all different and all the same and together
in the same energy, the same stretch.

Karen Armstrong has written a number of fascinating treatises on the spiritual in human history—the nature and purpose of religion itself. In her newest she looks at how God has been changed by our modern world, and how this new God seems to serve so many people so poorly that they’ve eschewed him/her/it.

I like Karen Armstrong, mostly because she brings so much reasoned and questioning intelligence to a topic that has far too many bleaters. Here is the long version of the blurb I wrote for Daedalus, based mostly on the publisher’s own: [Read more →]

In the 60s the space race and the UFO craze were in full swing, and aside from their sleek coolness—obviously space ships but able to fly around easily in the air (and sometimes even the water) and full of intriguing, mysterious gadgets—flying saucers were the key to fearsome powers and fantastic places.

I still like flying saucers—even though I’m way past “believing” in them—though now it’s partly nostalgic. Among my favorites [Read more →]

I never read to her
—the patch under her skin
—the terror
—the birdlike cries.
I write of her now,
but she will never know.

But I do what I can,
help in the only way I know how,
to assuage her mortality.

For any who might actually be reading this blog (and you both know who you are): you can now add your comments without registering for the site. So please do.

Love n kisses.

After a blurb I wrote for Daedalus Books, I had some ideas about the story:

 ”In translucent paintings with swirling textures of tresses and brambles, the Brothers Grimm story of Rapunzel is retold here for readers up to 8. Taken by a witch in revenge for the theft of a few lettuces, Rapunzel is kept prisoner in a tall, doorless tower, and must let down her hair for the witch to climb up. When a prince hears Rapunzel’s sad song, he too climbs up her hair, and they fall in love. But the witch casts them both down, and they spend years trying to find each other again.” [Read more →]

In honor of a friend who recently brought up an Interesting Topic, I offer this from my notebook of unfinished stories:

07-06-09: A book of photographs suddenly, shockingly re-orients a man into a past life. He recognizes it immediately—can not only name the people and places in the photos but knows their voices, their laughs—but the sense is overwhelming and it takes him some time to come to terms with it. [Read more →]

…about a young woman who always told the children she was babysitting that she turned into a mermaid at night, and they believed her.

What if one little boy went on believing her, even after he had grown and she told him it was all a game? What if he loved her and believed in her so strongly that to him she was indeed that magical creature? What sort of transformative power would that kind of love and faith have on her … particularly if life had not been kind to her and her own beliefs were gone?

I was supposed to be working yesterday but my mind would not focus on book blurbs. It wanted to think about Heather’s art projects, it wanted to think about stories I am writing, it wanted to think about boys and girls.

One poem started to flow out, about how a boy with a girl riding on his back becomes a curious creature with two legs walking, two legs dangling and kicking for balance, two arms holding and two arms flying, two heads bumping into each other. It became more erotic as it went along:

Her Weight on My Back (excerpt)

This strange and normal beast

Has four eyes turned inward to regard itself,

Two mouths that speak to itself

—and then press together to breathe into itself

and taste itself—

Two breasts that it caresses and holds

and feels held and caressed,

Four hips that press together

pushing into one

Then I had a think about Laura Ingalls Wilder—maybe because I had blurbed a big box set of her nine Little House books. When my kids were little, their mother brought out her Little House books to read to them, and I was introduced to Laura Ingalls, the character.

Not long after, I made a birthday gift to Corinne out of some books about the Ingalls’ and Wilders’ family histories—illustrated biographies that support some of the events in the stories, heirloom objects, etc.—and framed a photo of Laura and her sisters as though it were a family photo (I worked in a frame shop then). The items came from the museum trust installed on the Wilder family property in Mansfield, Missouri, which sells quite a number of books by and about the Ingalls/Wilder clan.

Laura and her stories and history became part of the family lore then, and I became increasingly interested in her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, who was a front-cover feature writer for some of the notable magazines of the 1930s & 40s. More specifically, I was interested in their relationship, particularly given how worldly and polished Rose became, though she was an only child with close ties to her parents. Many suspect that she heavily edited her mother’s stories, almost to the point of ghostwriting. But she insisted they were her mother’s, and I’m sure, given their relationship, that there was much back-and-forth. (Heather and I sometimes have a similar writing partnership).

Sorry, this is turning into a book!

Skipping more or less to the end: at some point I realized that, despite the fact that I’ve read both women’s work and felt the kinship an author bestows on his or her reader, in real life, who I am and the choices I’ve made in my life might not have sat well with these sturdy farm-bred folk. Corinne identified with Laura to a fair extent, and it was easy to imagine my leaving her would have led my friends Laura and Rose to side with her against me. Silly of course, but at the time those thoughts were born, I was much more vulnerable to that sort of think. Anyway, all of this was bubbling around in my head and came out in a poem about what one would say to one’s author-friends, and if the real-world person would be anything like her page personality. These are my favorite lines:

Wilder (excerpt)

What electrical blood passed between these queens

who finished each other’s sentences?

What small talk made up their lunches

while thousands read the daughter,

and millions read the mother?

Yesterday also happened to be Corinne’s birthday, again. It’s one of those days I wish I didn’t remember anymore but it’s too ingrained. I think when I can finally not push her away as an enemy and simply accept her as another part of the one we all are, I will have truly achieved something.

I blurbed books through lunch to make up for my lapse.  :–)

The two cultural artifacts of the title resonate with my time of fractured living—the still, dry, blanched season when love fractured my soul and I shattered my life.

There is a muted palette of non-colors from this time, when flowers were only branches and children were impossibly fragile, sunlight was only filtered and windows were bare, and the foundations of my life were only coffee cups and old toys. Everything fluxed, meaning was mutable, and bonds were tenuous at best.

This is when I learned that only what we invest in is real, and only to the depth to which we invest in it. It’s been almost 14 years, now.