My poem, "By Boat," was just accepted for issue 17 of Chantarelle's Notebook. Thanks editors! You can check it out in August.
Yaay
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Colonization
I was reading The New Yorker this morning and noticed an article on Equatorial Guinea. Apparently, it's the only country in the world resistant to recession at the moment due to the fact that it's a giant oil pit. It's the only former Spanish colony in Africa, and an absolutely tiny, martial-law, country with less than a million people. The reason the article stuck out to me so much is because a few weeks ago I was reading the Forbes "most dangerous countries" list (Somalia #1) and practically all of them were former colonies-- and the number 1 most "oh my god I'll never go there!" country was a former British colony. Well, we all know how those turn out. A country is raped for its resources, people are pitted against each other and exploited by the foreign power, then the power takes off and the country is left in social, governmental, and environmental ruin. If it weren't for the pot of dinosaur soup under E.G., they would be in crisis too.
But all is not well in Paradise. The country was taken control of by Teodoro Obiang Nguema thirty years ago in a coup, and apparently is constantly under threat of more seizures, including a past one by a British Eton-graduate named Simon Man, now in prison. The country is also rife with human rights infringements and the like... so it's not such an unusual former colony after all.
It's amazing how history repeats itself. Pakistan and India, Somalia and Rwanda... countries destroyed by the fat man's want for more.
But all is not well in Paradise. The country was taken control of by Teodoro Obiang Nguema thirty years ago in a coup, and apparently is constantly under threat of more seizures, including a past one by a British Eton-graduate named Simon Man, now in prison. The country is also rife with human rights infringements and the like... so it's not such an unusual former colony after all.
It's amazing how history repeats itself. Pakistan and India, Somalia and Rwanda... countries destroyed by the fat man's want for more.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Hors de Prix
Last night I saw a film called Hors de Prix, or in English it would be called Priceless. It was basically a slightly better than average French chick flick. Perhaps because it was in French it seemed better than usual, but I really enjoyed it, possibly because it was one of those films that manages to make high-class prostitution look amusing and a decent albeit bizarre way to earn a living. I honestly think that Audrey Tautou is the new Audrey Hepburn. Just as dazzling, graceful, and endearing. The film was an awful lot like Breakfast at Tiffany's too.
Our street is full of trees with dark red leaves. There is little to do and I'm not sure where we're going next. Scotland is a new possibility. I think if it were warmer outside I wouldn't be so restless. Everything seems to have a terrible price lately-- food, compromises, entertainment. There is a Swap Shop in town where the barter system is the way forward. In the current depression Ireland has embraced Socialism, which is fine with me. Better than the way Britain has embraced Fascism.
Chandelier
As the bulbs burn out
one by one in the broken
chandelier, the cloth
wallet curls its lips,
our socks gather holes
like new lovers embracing
and unraveling, and I feel
guilty eating between meals.
Our street is full of trees with dark red leaves. There is little to do and I'm not sure where we're going next. Scotland is a new possibility. I think if it were warmer outside I wouldn't be so restless. Everything seems to have a terrible price lately-- food, compromises, entertainment. There is a Swap Shop in town where the barter system is the way forward. In the current depression Ireland has embraced Socialism, which is fine with me. Better than the way Britain has embraced Fascism.
Chandelier
As the bulbs burn out
one by one in the broken
chandelier, the cloth
wallet curls its lips,
our socks gather holes
like new lovers embracing
and unraveling, and I feel
guilty eating between meals.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
praying on red rugs
This is one of my favourite poems ever. It's by Adonis, translated from Arabic by Khaled Mattawa, and it appeared in the New Yorker a few years ago. Absolutely enchanting.
Celebrating Childhood
Even the wind wishes
to become a cart
pulled by butterflies.
I remember madness:
leaning for the first time
on the mind’s pillow,
I was talking to my body.
My body was an idea
I wrote in red.
Red was the sun’s most beautiful throne
and all the other colors
prayed on red rugs.
Night is another candle.
In every branch an arm,
a message carried in space,
echoed by the body of the wind.
The sun insists on dressing itself in fog
when it meets me:
am I being scolded by the light?
Oh, my past days,
they used to walk in their sleep
and I used to lean on them.
Love and dreams are two parentheses.
Between them I place my body
and discover the world.
Many times
I saw the air fly with two grass feet
and the road dance with feet made of air.
My wishes are flowers
staining my body.
I was wounded early,
and early I learned
that wounds made me.
I still follow the child
who walks inside me.
Now he stands at a stairway made of light
searching for a corner to rest in,
and to read the face of night.
If the moon were a house,
my feet would refuse to touch its doorstep.
They are taken by dust
carrying me to the air of seasons.
I walk,
one hand in the air,
the other in dreams.
A star is also
a pebble in the fields of space.
He alone
who is joined to the horizon
can build new roads.
What shall I say to the body I abandoned
in the rubble of the house
in which I was born?
No one can narrate my childhood
except those stars that flicker above it
and leave footprints
on the evening’s path.
My childhood is still
being born in the cupped palms of a light
whose name I do not know
and who names me.
Out of that river he made a mirror
and asked it about his sorrow.
He made rain out of his grief
and imitated the clouds.
Your childhood was a village.
You will never cross its boundaries
no matter how far you go.
His days are lakes,
his memories floating bodies.
You who are descending
from the mountains of the past,
how can you climb them again,
and why?
Time is a door
I cannot open.
My magic is worn,
my chants asleep.
I was born in a village,
small and secretive like a womb.
I never left it.
I love the ocean, not the shores.
Celebrating Childhood
Even the wind wishes
to become a cart
pulled by butterflies.
I remember madness:
leaning for the first time
on the mind’s pillow,
I was talking to my body.
My body was an idea
I wrote in red.
Red was the sun’s most beautiful throne
and all the other colors
prayed on red rugs.
Night is another candle.
In every branch an arm,
a message carried in space,
echoed by the body of the wind.
The sun insists on dressing itself in fog
when it meets me:
am I being scolded by the light?
Oh, my past days,
they used to walk in their sleep
and I used to lean on them.
Love and dreams are two parentheses.
Between them I place my body
and discover the world.
Many times
I saw the air fly with two grass feet
and the road dance with feet made of air.
My wishes are flowers
staining my body.
I was wounded early,
and early I learned
that wounds made me.
I still follow the child
who walks inside me.
Now he stands at a stairway made of light
searching for a corner to rest in,
and to read the face of night.
If the moon were a house,
my feet would refuse to touch its doorstep.
They are taken by dust
carrying me to the air of seasons.
I walk,
one hand in the air,
the other in dreams.
A star is also
a pebble in the fields of space.
He alone
who is joined to the horizon
can build new roads.
What shall I say to the body I abandoned
in the rubble of the house
in which I was born?
No one can narrate my childhood
except those stars that flicker above it
and leave footprints
on the evening’s path.
My childhood is still
being born in the cupped palms of a light
whose name I do not know
and who names me.
Out of that river he made a mirror
and asked it about his sorrow.
He made rain out of his grief
and imitated the clouds.
Your childhood was a village.
You will never cross its boundaries
no matter how far you go.
His days are lakes,
his memories floating bodies.
You who are descending
from the mountains of the past,
how can you climb them again,
and why?
Time is a door
I cannot open.
My magic is worn,
my chants asleep.
I was born in a village,
small and secretive like a womb.
I never left it.
I love the ocean, not the shores.
Big Toe Review, "Mutiny"
One of my flash pieces, "Mutiny," came out today in Big Toe Review. Read it here, if you like! More of my work should be trickling through that particular journal in the next few months. It's a groovy publication, definitely worth reading.
Today I luxuriated in the backyard sunlight, then in bed. We were contemplating a walk but it's raining now. Big surprise. Actually the big surprise was rushing to answer the door in my bikini and getting the ESB man a little too excited. I thought it was Len back from his piano lesson. Whoops....
Today I luxuriated in the backyard sunlight, then in bed. We were contemplating a walk but it's raining now. Big surprise. Actually the big surprise was rushing to answer the door in my bikini and getting the ESB man a little too excited. I thought it was Len back from his piano lesson. Whoops....
Monday, June 15, 2009
First Book
Yaay! I finished The White Caravan for real this time and sent it to Autumn House Press this morning. I first wrote TWC as my honors thesis, but I've been writing loads of new stuff since and I finally created the book that I actually wanted to write. I cut a lot of old stuff out, put a lot of new stuff in, and now I have 53 pages worth of poetry. Now it's just a matter of a publisher liking it.
In a lot of ways I'm appreciating this amazingly long stint of unemployment and abject poverty. If I weren't unemployed, or if I had enough money to go to grad school, maybe I wouldn't have had the free time to write my first book during my first year out of college. The economy works in mysterious ways....
Plus, the volunteer agency got back to me and I have my first day of training down a dodgy alley beside my favourite pub on Wednesday. Talk about luck! I'm so excited.
Going around Cork by myself is something I haven't done since my UCC days (see Free Stylin') and I have a few rules to keep myself in check now:
1. Ireland apparently cannot handle any glimpse of my clevage or thighs. Dress modestly, no matter how difficult it is or how unaccommodating my wardrobe might be.
2. No going down dodgy alley ways with strangers unless it's for my volunteer training.
3. No interacting with hairdressing students, or possibly students of any kind (just to be on the safe side.)
4. Always wear enormous sunglasses.
5. Remember which way the cars are coming. The opposite of America.
6. Only buy hot port at The Corner House.
All very important rules. It shocks me though, the first one. I forget the way predominantly Catholic countries can be. No offense to Catholicism, but skin is not dealt with so well in places like Ireland, Italy, etc. I'd say especially Ireland. I forget this constantly. And then I get really dirty things screamed at me out of windows for wearing something that in the States would get a "Nice dress, beautiful," at best. Normally I'm a great traveller and can blend in everywhere, but it's hard when you've actually moved to a new place and have to change things in a more permanent way. When in Cork....
In a lot of ways I'm appreciating this amazingly long stint of unemployment and abject poverty. If I weren't unemployed, or if I had enough money to go to grad school, maybe I wouldn't have had the free time to write my first book during my first year out of college. The economy works in mysterious ways....
Plus, the volunteer agency got back to me and I have my first day of training down a dodgy alley beside my favourite pub on Wednesday. Talk about luck! I'm so excited.
Going around Cork by myself is something I haven't done since my UCC days (see Free Stylin') and I have a few rules to keep myself in check now:
1. Ireland apparently cannot handle any glimpse of my clevage or thighs. Dress modestly, no matter how difficult it is or how unaccommodating my wardrobe might be.
2. No going down dodgy alley ways with strangers unless it's for my volunteer training.
3. No interacting with hairdressing students, or possibly students of any kind (just to be on the safe side.)
4. Always wear enormous sunglasses.
5. Remember which way the cars are coming. The opposite of America.
6. Only buy hot port at The Corner House.
All very important rules. It shocks me though, the first one. I forget the way predominantly Catholic countries can be. No offense to Catholicism, but skin is not dealt with so well in places like Ireland, Italy, etc. I'd say especially Ireland. I forget this constantly. And then I get really dirty things screamed at me out of windows for wearing something that in the States would get a "Nice dress, beautiful," at best. Normally I'm a great traveller and can blend in everywhere, but it's hard when you've actually moved to a new place and have to change things in a more permanent way. When in Cork....
Friday, June 12, 2009
Topiary
Yesterday I was gardening in the yard of the house we are taking care of, and I noticed I let the spiral & sphere topiary garden go to seed. So out came the blunt, rusted garden shears and I was cutting away, trying desperately not to destroy the unnatural shapes they were teased into in the first place. As I was hacking I got to thinking who says things have to be this way? I was feeling guilty slashing away at the plant's progress, ruling that it had to grow this way and not that. People get that sort of training all the time and it is maddening-- the impossibilty of standards are always begin thrown at us through commercials and publications. Isn't airbrushing a photo of a bikini-clad woman in a magazine the same thing? No, your thighs can't touch. I don't care if it's unnatural. And the more I snipped the more I began thinking about the ways I "snip" myself. Shaving my bikini line, hiding my split ends with copious amounts of sesame oil, even spending a few hours baking topless in the back garden's sunlight. None of these things are good for me-- they don't improve my health. Shaving gives me cuts and upset follicles, the ends of my hair are dead anyway, and tanning is just a step toward skin cancer. I mean, I'm dark enough naturally, and who really gives a damn how copper my skin can be?
The first time I went to Paris I was 17 and shocked to see the very strict grooming that nature received. The trees in the Jardin des Tuileries are chiseled into leafy boxes so the air is filled with these symmetrical building blocks stuck on the end of a long trunk. Conversely, the metro signs are wrought from tendrils of iron curling around art nouveau letters like grape vines. Art mimicking nature and nature mimicking art. Bizarre, I thought. But now I see it as a straight-forward admittance of human nature: to dominate nature completely, even the nature of the self.
I'm not sure this is healthy all the time. Actually, I feel comfortable saying that most of the time it's not healthy at all. The topiary is finished, but I am still thinking.
The first time I went to Paris I was 17 and shocked to see the very strict grooming that nature received. The trees in the Jardin des Tuileries are chiseled into leafy boxes so the air is filled with these symmetrical building blocks stuck on the end of a long trunk. Conversely, the metro signs are wrought from tendrils of iron curling around art nouveau letters like grape vines. Art mimicking nature and nature mimicking art. Bizarre, I thought. But now I see it as a straight-forward admittance of human nature: to dominate nature completely, even the nature of the self.
I'm not sure this is healthy all the time. Actually, I feel comfortable saying that most of the time it's not healthy at all. The topiary is finished, but I am still thinking.
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