7 mar 2013

S @ Tadpole navigating @ Staff of Life market

yoga is beginning to loosen me up

My Mother

She admitted another

doctor loved her.

Her thyroid man —

appointments in New York City.

She wore her best

black wool Empire waist

lipstick & pearls.

Where would they have trysted?

She denied it.

I liked to imagine

the out-of-the-way bar

dry martinis

rings from their cigarettes.

John Wieners [pic by Jerome Mallmann]

from John Wieners's Selected Poems: 1958-1984, Black Sparrow, 1998:

A poem for record players

The scene changes

Five hours later and

I come into a room

where a clock ticks.

I find a pillow to

muffle the sounds I make.

I am engaged in taking away

from God his sound.

The pigeons somewhere

above me, the cough

a man makes down the hall,

the flap of wings

below me, the squeak

of sparrows in the alley.

The scratches I itch

on my scalp, the landing

of birds under the bay

window out my window.

All dull detals

I can only describe to you,

but which are here and

I hear and shall never

give up again, shall carry

with me over the streets

of this seacoast city,

forever; oh, clack your

metal wings, god, you are

mine now in the morning.

I have you by the ears

in the exhaust pipes of

a thousand cars gunning

their motors turning over

all over town.

Some day I will make a list of the presses without which we would not have such poetry (Black Sparrow, New Directions, etc.).

Vanessa Veselka [pic by Kyle Johnson]

from Vanessa Veselka’s Zazen, Red Lemonade, 2011:

“Why do you say it’s the war?”

“Because that’s what’s driving everything right now.”

“Yeah, but when I talk about the war people act like I’m delusional and just trying to ruin their 70s t-shirt glitter decal fantasy march.”

She laughed and shook her head.

“That’s because you talk about the war all like it’s already happening. It’s not happening for most people. Some of us, yes, but not for everyone.”

“Because they’re fucking desensitized automatons that reproduce through violence?”

“People are on their own learning curve and outrage is a personal thing. We’re short on it already.”

She pulled a box off a shelf.

“And,” she said, “when people do figure it out, they need something on the other end that they can be part of.”

Guernica: 

Where does that contrarian, stubborn streak in you come from? [from Melissa Seley's interview of Vanessa Veselka]

Vanessa Veselka: 

Oh, God. Well, I had this thing happen over and over when I was a kid. When I was thirty-five someone finally explained it to me when they saw it. I had experiences from the first grade on where a teacher or somebody would get upset with me and get more and more agitated around me. I did not understand what it was about me that was so upsetting. I have a lot of annoying characteristics, but it wasn’t that simple. I began to understand later in life that in a situation with someone of authority, they frequently think I’m not respecting their authority when I actually don’t even see it. I’m authority blind. I’ve learned to go, “Oh, they’re in a position of authority and they think I’m intentionally being rude about it. I don’t mean that at all.” I’m somebody with authority Asperger’s. I’ve had to learn social cues. Like, “Oh, they need my face to look softer. They need me to look down more. I need to preface my sentences with, ‘Perhaps we could look at it this way . . .’” . . .

Della’s question is: Can you sit still on fire? When you don’t agree with all of the options provided, when you’re not willing to be complicit, when you’re not okay with what’s going on around you, can you sit still on fire? Can you be there and be fully present to everything when it’s not right and be alive? Della’s crisis is a crisis of withholding. She had this idea that she hasn’t given her consent to the world to be the way it is, and because of that, she’s negotiating whether she’s in or out. . . .

I learned to live in my own head. I learned to follow intuition and more than anything, I learned what was important to me. As pompous as it sounds, freedom means more to me than anything (except maybe kindness), and I know exactly what I’ll give up to get or keep it. That’s important when you’re writing and bringing work to an industry that assumes its authority is absolute. What I got from those years was a clear sense of what the deal was: I don’t have to agree and you don’t have to like it. I don’t have to listen to you if it goes against my instincts and you don’t have to give me your money. It’s a reasonable deal on all sides.