napowrimo #17: missing something

dying has turned into a metaphor of trains for her

she holds my mother's hand 

at the edge of the bed

squeezes 

insisting that we be careful getting tickets

to Prague

the trains get crowded after Prague

she says

we'll probably be separated in 

the station

we'll have to count on being able to 

find each other on the other side

very seriously, she explains the 

fare will be covered and drifts

off into sleep again

Napowrimo #16: a t-rex and a thesaurus

Les pierres de la terre touchent mes pieds

La touche de mon enfance :

Pas doucement, ils me donnent

La fortitude de la solitude

napowrimo # 15: Instead of

Tired old love

instead of finding things easier at the end of a long talk

the same problems stand in front of us as though a sphinx

paws folded casually layering the threat of claws the difference 

is now that we've wrapped them in conversation we find the 

riddles more personable even friendly but no less impossible 

instead of solving them we marry them to us we take them to 

bed with us carry them like suitcases of souvenirs like saddle

bags of provisions we eat them for sustenance we wrap them

around our wounds we curl up in them against the night we

hold them to us like tender lovers we hold them against each

other like gravest enemies who kiss vengeance each morning

tarot

Tarot is something I always thought was kind of silly, but it turns out that if you approach it in a particular way, all it does is tell you what you already know.  But it catches you when you're ready for it.  

So this precarious situation that I'm in... according to tarot, I can either choose one or the other, or I can choose to have both, but I have to do it.  There has to be action.  There has to be direct choice.  Even though that's what I've been doing anyway, it helps to know that what I've already figured out is the truth of the situation.  I'm moving in the direction of having both, and it's only if I have to choose that I will be conflicted.  One is vaguely better than the other, but it means giving up so much that I've invested in for the last few months.  I can't say I'd make that choice either way without long-lasting regret.

This is definitely a true story right now.  There have been some moments in the last couple of weeks where I've really struggled with this.  Part of  it has been figuring out what it is that I want and then beyond that, it's been talking to the people who can make that happen, and really talking to them about what is possible from their angle.  Right now, everything's up in the air, but in a positive way.  And I had to be proactive to get things to this point, so it feels like harvest to have it moving in any kind of positive direction at all..

Alright, enough vagaries for now.

I have had a distinct lack of motivation for the last two days.  I originally typed that it has been four days, but time gets stretched out here, so everything takes less time than it seems.  In any case, I have so much work to do before Manda flies out on friday because I want to spend the whole weekend having fun with her.  We'll see what happens.  I plan on getting a lot done in the next few days.  I have 26 pages of essaying left to write this semester, not including a 10 page draft to do a final of and that 12 of the 26 pages will need to be edited in a second draft also (that is to say, once they are written at all).  

Scheduling is pretty much finalised for next semester.  I am sure of four courses I'll be taking:

Principles of Economics

Great Ideas in Physics

Islamic Law

French: Conversation and Composition.

In terms of the fifth class that I plan to take, I have several options.  Because when we had our last registration period I still thought I was majoring in IA, I signed up for a US Foreign Policy class that's pretty hard to get into.  I could also take a sociology course on the middle east or an elective.  Or keep the USFP course.  We'll see.  

Bonne Nuit à Tous 

napowrimo #14: road trip

stuck at a toll booth crossing the 

Golden Gate Bridge

grandpa rolled down the glass

on the Mercury and

bumped the windowlock with his elbow

and the rain and cold poured 

over the protection of his arm 

draping skin over bone barely covered in flesh.

the car crammed with the proof of his patriarchy

suddenly became loud with complaints

of the biting damp and

cold air sweeping of the january bay.

confused, he can't figure out the buttons

on the control panel and

drives ten under, swerving against

the chaotic cacophony 

unsure what is in his ears and what is in his mind.

that is the first moment,

eight years old, 

I understood getting old 

means growing into alone. 

napowrimo # 13: read write words

reality

impugns the complacence of perspective

just in the way that the first dive shatters the singularity

of a pool's surface

napowrimo # 12: where do you come from?

mother built a house around us like

an embrace

father built the bank accounts and for years

loved like a satellite in wide orbit always anchored to his planet

grandma ruthie dammed up

the memory of the Depression with a million

plastic bags

grandma evie fled dust clouds and 

held us together with a thousand tiny diligent stitches

grandaddy came close to dying 

electricity hit the river he's always drowning in

grandpa's seen so much he asks for 

a bowl of new york when he means soup

because comfort is all he wants for

2 am quietude

I only have a few minutes left of battery on my computer but I wanted to take some time to check in.  I have had a really frightening and opening realisation in the last few months that really came to head in the last few days.  Such as it is, the revelation essentially entails that I don't really want to be studying International Affairs anymore.  I really resisted letting that in, but I had a very good talk with David about why it's important to study something for which you have deep affinity.  I have a sense that it's so hard to let go of something I've been so certain of for the last two years, that it feels a little bit like giving up.  But at the same time, it feels so good.  

I have so much freedom right now to explore topics that I've dreamed about exploring, like political economy, and it's really given me the opportunity to reassess what it is that I want to be doing.  That plan feels a little wobbly still, but I get the feeling that whatever I do will seem natural when I get there.  So, right now I'm considering Foreign Languages with a minor in Political Economy or Political Science (revitalising the administrative battle over languages) or self-designing a major in Middle Eastern Studies.  The Middle Eastern Studies thing has been something that I'm essentially doing anyway, but it's something I've shied away from because it has felt a little disingenuous.  But it doesn't anymore. I really looked at the classes I want to take and the language stuff, etc.  and it all kind of pans out into exactly that.  Either way, it entails an administrative battle.  If I feel that I ought to eschew one of those (not a likely occurrence) then I'll probably major in french and minor in political science or political economy.  Deep down, I just want to take a bunch of awesome classes that are generally related and call them some fancy title and call it a major.  Not going to happen, though so I'm thinking institutionally, but for the first time I have freedom to explore.  It's wonderful.  I might even treat myself to an English class.  

Happy Easter. Chag Sameach.  

napowrimo #11: Movies

Rachel Getting Married

Needing redemption keeps creeping 

little claws bared like tines for its own 

survival

into brain

leaving tiny lacerations for doubt to seep

Sound of a mother's hand hitting face

makes everything 

breakable

leaves moments like heirlooms

forever misplaced

nopowrimo number 10: found poem

she had said 

I'm tired of begging

God to overthrow my son, because all this

is like 

having the lights on all the time, sir, and 

she had said it with the same 

naturalness with which on one 

national holiday

she had made her way

through the guard of honor

with a basket of empty bottles and reached

the presidential limousine

that was leading the parade of celebration

in an uproar of ovations and martial music and storms of flowers

and she shoved 

the basket through the window and shouted

to her son that since you'll be passing right by 

take advantage and 

return these bottles to the store on the corner 

poor mother

from The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

nopowrimo number 9: Paradise

Hell-a banquet table 

spread with succulents

its inhabitants' arms 

since passing through the hair's breadth

between living and dying

have fused at the elbows

unbending

hands grapple for food that 

cannot reach mouths

tongues stretch

to taste the simple satisfaction they will never again enjoy

Paradise- a banquet table

spread with succulents 

its inhabitant's arms 

since passing through the hair's breadth

between living and dying

have fused at the elbows 

unbending

their arms 

discover to feed other mouths and so

taste the terminal satisfaction

in passing food to the lips of another

nopowrimo numbers 7: Nicknames and 8: Former Flame

Nicknames

He calls me ClairitinClear

in the commercial voice

I call him Joshypants

as limping revenge

Old Flame

Old flame, I wish you would 

burn yourself out

your tiresome reflection in the glass

has become

a too-bright star caught in the corner of my eye

I am ready to press still sulphured matches

to cold wicks

but my breath will not end your

refraction 

bacne

I am in blogger heaven. While sitting out in the sun working on a paper about PTSD, I overheard a woman probably in her mid forties say to her husband:  "it's so weird that you're getting hairier.  I guess that happens, though. When we get home, I'll shave your back.  I'm going to have to shave your back.  I'll stop and the dollar store on the way home and get supplies."

good job, lady.  I am within earshot and your husband probably doesn't want me to know about his back hair.  way to go.