this is a little overdue but, i must say, when this year started, i was losing faith that each year was going to be better than the last. i have serious thanks that i give in my mind to all the serious things, and:

i'm thankful for the time i toppled over in yoga class because it means that i'm not complacent in my practice.  i'm thankful for best friends who endure my complaints about cold showers while traipsing across Costa Rica sans navigation system or map. i'm thankful for the dancing, for the sore feet and joints for that means we gorged on delicious tandas while we could. i'm thankful for the sweat that i also so abhor, which means i'm working hard and healthy. i'm thankful for guys who re-rack their weights in the weight room so that i can bench the measly bar. i'm thankful for the ocean in its various forms, both too treacherous to surf and too beautiful to breach. i'm thankful for getting muddy at dog parks. i'm thankful for losing weight, because it's the only good side effect of sadness. i'm thankful for gaining weight, because it means i am happy and have more than enough to eat. i'm thankful for football season, because it means i have a good excuse to eat jalapeno chips and nachos.i'm thankful for butter biscuits from Specs, and also Crown from Specs. i'm thankful for hip hop music and line dances, i'm thankful for the electric slide and the wobble. i'm thankful for soy substitutes. i'm thankful for the ability to pursue my dreams. i'm thankful for the existential crises because it means that i've reached a point where many of my goals have been reached and i simply need to reach further. i'm thankful for the long nights that give way to growing up and learning more. i'm thankful for having the luxury of doing nothing and anything. i'm thankful for my Christmas gift last year, a Kindle, because even though i thought i'd never succumb to e-Readers, the Kindle has single-handedly helped me find my way back to reading. i'm thankful for reconnection. i'm thankful for having things i feel passionate about. i'm thankful for being able to finally eat meals on my own, and having enjoyed it so much that i even look for reasons and times to eat alone. i'm thankful for dark knights. i'm thankful for being able to fall asleep. i'm thankful for the nightmares that make waking up to real life seem like a fairy tale.

Now That I Am in Madrid and Can Think
Frank O’Hara

I think of you
and the continents brilliant and arid
and the slender heart you are sharing my share of with the American air
as the lungs I have felt sonorously subside slowly greet each morning
and your brown lashes flutter revealing two perfect dawns colored by New York

see a vast bridge stretching to the humbled outskirts with only you
                  standing on the edge of the purple like an only tree
and in Toledo the olive groves’ soft blue look at the hills with silver
                  like glasses like and old ladies hair
it’s well known that God and I don’t get along together
it’s just a view of the brass works for me, I don’t care about the Moors
seen through you the great works of death, you are greater

you are smiling, you are emptying the world so we can be alone together.

Adrienne Rich, from an interview with Bill Moyers:



MOYERS: Then you go on to say, "I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language/guessing at some words while others keep you reading. .." Something like this happens to me when I read a poem: One minute I'm puzzling over some word or image, but the next line carries me forward beyond my misunderstanding into another realm of discovery.
RICH : Yes, and I had in mind an even more literal case as well--someone reading a poem in American English the way I would read a poem in Spanish or French or some other language that I know slightly, or used to know better, but of which I have forgotten a lot of the vocabulary, guessing at some words, yet struggling, and carried on by something in that poem. But what is that? And why do I want to know what it is? I want to know because whatever it is in my poem that keeps you reading is some kind of bond or filament between us, something that I've been able to put there that speaks even to this other person, whose language this is not.

MOYERS : How important is your audience when you are actually writing the poem? Do you picture the audience?
RICH : I write for whoever might read. I recently saw a very interesting distinction made by the African Canadian writer Marlene Nourbese Philip. She speaks of the difference between community, audience, and market. I believe that I write for a community. Obviously, I write for a community of other poets, people whom I know, people with whom I have already connected in some way, but I also write for whoever will constitute a new and expanded community audience.


MOYERS: So you did have the audience in mind, even though you couldn't picture the particular reader or listener?
RICH : I made up some readers and listeners, but I also remembered and recognized actual people, as a fiction writer might, in that section and throughout the poem. The poem is full of voices: they're not all my voice, they're not all women's voices, some of them are men's voices, but, yes, I certainly had an audience in mind. The distinction between community, audience, and market is a really important distinction for an artist of any kind. There is a community of those whose work and whose lives you respect and love and cherish, a community that gives you the strength to create, to push boundaries, to take risks, a community that perhaps challenges you to do all that.
There is an audience of those unknown to you but whom your words are going to reach. You can't know them in advance, but you can hope for them, desire them. Market, on the other hand, is all about packaging and buying and selling, and the corresponding group would be the consumer. I don't want my poetry to be consumed in that sense. I do want it to be used.

it seemed normal, even likely at the time. this hope.

(petals falling though it wasn't windy,
sunny though it wasn't warm,
pollen though i couldn't smell it,
sky though we couldn't reach it,
light though it wasn't blinding,
tree though it was more flower,
powerlines though barely showing,

spring, though this hope was not really of any season)

new york city

(original post on flickr)

i could have written this from my history. my history could have written this.

Kept Burning and Distant by Linda Gregg

You return when you feel like it,
like rain.  And like rain you are tender,
with the rain’s inept tenderness.
A passion so general I could be anywhere.
You carry me out into the wet air.
You lay me down on the leaves
and the strong thing is not the sex
but waking up alone under the trees after.

“I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.
Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end.
Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
There is only one serious question. And that is:
Who knows how to make love stay?
Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.
Answer me that and I will ease your mind about the beginning and the end of time.
Answer me that and I will reveal to you the purpose of the moon.

-Tom Robbins, from Still Life With Woodpecker


(Thank you, Eddie)

Looking for meaning in or cause of my plateau:

In geology and earth science, a plateau ( /pləˈtoʊ/ or /ˈplætoʊ/; plural plateaus or rarely plateaux), also called a high plain or tableland, is an area of highland, usually consisting of relatively flat terrain.

Plateaus can be formed by a number of processes, including upwelling of volcanic magma, extrusion of lava, and erosion by water and glaciers. Magma rises from the mantle causing the ground to swell upward, in this way large, flat areas of rock are uplifted. Plateaus can also be built up by lava spreading outward from cracks and weak areas in the crust. Plateaus can also be formed by the erosional processes of glaciers on mountain ranges, leaving them sitting between the mountain ranges. Water can also erode mountains and other landforms down into plateaus.

In my experience, the people who become writers are the ones who keep writing through the yards of silence and the years of discouragement… Allow yourself to be uncertain, but don’t let your uncertainty turn to despair. It can be wonderful to write when you’re sad and full of the dark bouquet of doubt, but misery leads itself to silence and one must get out of bed every morning and prepare for the great celebration of one’s own imagination, even if it doesn't happen that day.

- Dean Young