Notherpoet

A fun variation on a theme, of particular interest to poetry-readers:

2009-08-28T13:47:00.000-04:00

A fun variation on a theme, of particular interest to poetry-readers:

Using only POEM titles from ONE POET, ONE BOOK, answer these questions. Pass it on to 12 people you like. You can't use the poet I used. Do not repeat a title. Repost as "My Life According to _____________." (fill in the poet's name) **Don't forget to send it back to me!!

From Shel Silverstein's FALLING UP:

Are you a male or female?
The Voice

Describe yourself:
Writer Waiting

How do you feel:
Tell Me

Describe where you currently live:
Headless Town

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
No Grown-Ups

Your favorite form of transportation:
Alphabalance

What's the weather like:
Red Flowers For You

Favorite time of day:
Somethin' New

Your relationships:
Poison-Tester

Your fear:
Mummy

What is the best advice you have to give:
Falling up

If you could change your name, you would change it to:
Tongue Sticker-Outer

My soul's present condition:
Folks Inside

Last updated 35 weeks ago.

2009-08-28T13:18:00.001-04:00

Doubles, Triples, Infinities.

I envy Whitman's ability to not lose rhythm when within states of contradiction.
With time to garden but the ground too wet, with time being 12:21 pm
it's too early for any poison. So contradiction it is. Have at me. I will try to keep up.

I've noticed my reflexes have improved since I've begun playing viloin again. Not just my body, but my thoughts too. Oh, like I need those to ricochet around my head any quicker.

I think it may have something to do with being required to anticipate every next note. You have to be a mere mental step ahead of your body, but not so much so that it's noticed when the sound you produce is interpreted by the listener. Same with writing. Both, playing music and writing unite your past and present to create a future. Now there's a trinity I can live with. Such a state of one.

Keep Warm

2008-12-26T04:18:00.000-05:00

12-25-08

Keep Warm

Let's all look at the big picture. Because I started this with one particular person in mind but suddenly my list of who I hoped would read this looked like those pictures you see of Santa with his long list of names on paper unrolling, and I realized it's meant for every one of us.

Please though, be forgiving. It's 3:49 am and although I'm mighty tired, me believing that we are here for one another's benefit is the only real hope I have -- so although this isn't as fleshed out as I'd like, I'm posting. And although I may sound preachy -- yes, no, maybe, I don't know -- believing we are here for one another's benefit is the only real faith I have.

***

Maybe it's like an addiction in that you don't give it up based on others' suggestions that you do so. "It" being a negative perception of yourself that you can't shake. "It" being that you see rejection as failure. Rejection is not failure; rejection has as much to do with the "editor" as it does with the writer. This goes for all relationships.

You don't give up the negative perception, you don't quit the self-loathing -- not because you don't want to, of course you want to believe you are beautiful/handsome AND smart AND good -- but because YOU are the only one who can make you believe it for certain. Like giving up cigarettes, or any other "substance" we know is not good for us or has control of us, we can only quit when WE decide we've had enough, and we really have to want to quit more than we want the comfort of what is killing us. We have to want to choose life, but we have to first realize that we are dying -- and that we are fully responsible for that act.

Loving yourself is like that. Once you realize that NOT loving yourself is killing you, you can learn to survive by loving yourself, but to love yourself you have to respect yourself and to respect yourself you have to demand that others respect you as well as do things that others (whom you, yourself respect) find respectable. Gah. That's an incredible amount of expectation.

If you abuse someone, that is not loving, and doing so allows them to retalitate, to disrespect you in return, with, in their mind, good reason, because you've disrespected them.

If someone abuses you and you allow it, that, too causes them to lose respect for you. So even if you are not the type of person to retaliate, if you are, instead the type of person who tolerates abuse from others, you still lose because you'll continue to be mistreated no matter how tolerant or forgiving you are. No one respects someone who doesn't respect themselves enough to command respect, at all times, from others. Even if it means being unpopular. Even if it means going "unloved" because really it does not. It means you are loving yourself by accepting no less than any other human being deserves.

If you are abused or are in an abusive relationship, whether it be with yourself or with someone else, stop it. If you can't stop it, get out. You may not have the life you thought you were going to have. That doesn't matter. You'll have a life that you cherish. You'll have a life you're happy to open your eyes for in the morning (okay, you'll have bad days too, but you get the gist). If you don't stop others from mistreating you, and believe me, mistreatment can be as subtle as snide, condescending remarks or as in-your-face as a fist, if YOU don't decide that you want happiness, you won't have it. And unhappiness will become a habit. It will begin to feel like an old familiar coat you don't want to throw out because it conforms to your body so well. You are so used to it.

Everyone will see how worn out you are, like the coat, but you won't notice until you are no longer warm.

I know, loving yourself is not as easy as buying a new coat. You've found that out by now, I'm sure. You've tried all the consolation prizes. There are none. You've discovered where the real love begins. With your own action.

Pretty Cozy

2008-12-19T02:51:00.001-05:00

I feel lucky that for me poetry releases the demons (where will they go now?). Writing what eats at me. Demons. Well, this particular one, anyway.

Oh, and I know. I'm asking questions again. I can't escape myself.
On second thought, me and me, we're pretty cozy. I think I'll stay.

Christmas Tree in the Background, 2008

I think there is no you for me.
And if there is no you for me
to praise, I'll revere, instead, the land,
water, weather and every human hand
that worked to move this food to our table.

But if there is no you for me to pray to –
no force or lack of force to hold
accountable for misfortune’s consequence --
who will be my God? And what
should I replace you with?

Who should my intent be aimed toward
if there is no you?
What can I appease? How shall I
entice goodwill to bestow itself
on lowly me and my neighbors

who ask that I pray them into wellness
when they are ill.
If you aren’t there to hear?
Here to hear?

And if there is no you then
there is no him
either. So who is starving babies there
wherever I am not
while we're here filming baby's first
birthday cake?

Room at the Inn.

2008-12-17T00:36:00.001-05:00

Room at the Inn. 12-16-08

Even though I am no longer a practicing Christian, even though terminology would classify me as an agnostic-atheist, every December I unwrap my nativity scene and display it where anyone who enters my home can see it.

What does this mean? And likewise, what does it mean that I've left my Virgin Mary, mother-of-God statue on the lawn where I placed it when it was given to me twelve years ago when we moved in? Hypocrite.

What does it mean that I thought I could let the wild rose bramble and honeysuckle vine and Rose of Sharon obscure it from view as a rebellious act -- but that after a little while, I couldn't carry my rebellious act through. Or wouldn't.

Wouldn't obscure that image, that portrayal, that representation of a woman who for all intents and purposes had absolutely no choice but to accept her fate and be forever painted as the "Madonna of the Streets." A pregnant virgin. An oxymoron. A prostitute? Raped? Abused? Just a silly horny girl with no form of birth control to resort to? Who WAS this Mary?

And who was this Joseph hero, this man who came to her aid, who saved her honor, maybe even more possibly, her very life and the life of her unborn child? What was in it for him? He certainly couldn't have predicted the love that would reign down on him in exchange for his devotion and belief in Mary.

To symbolically defy all the Casey Anthony's and Susan Smiths' and Andrea Yates' of the world, all those who do not cherish their children, all those who do not cherish women simply because they are women, to symbolically refuse the ideology of all the sexist men who think women are disposable little earworms, for all the young children whose brains aren't developed enough to recognize the sacrifices their parents make for their sakes, for me -- so that I can continue to speak my mind openly without fear of retribution (manners help) and so that I can remember to honor my own mother, and hers, and hers, I leave that statue.

And every year I display the trumpet-blowing angel, the wise men, the camel, the donkey, the lamb, the boy, the shepherd, the mother, the father, the newborn. For what reason? To honor humanity. To honor our humanity in an always difficult world. To show honor to those, especially, who do not fit into our subjective social ideals. To honor our ability to seek out, to surround ourselves with and to live peacefully among trumpet-blowing angels, wise men, and all the creatures of the earth. To honor our sensibility to aid others and to accept aid; to let others in, and to honor the humility that comes with knowing that others will love us and help us, despite our differences.

Five Sexist Trends the Advertising World Just Can't Shake

2008-12-16T13:04:00.001-05:00

Yes, exactly.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Five Sexist Trends the Advertising World Just Can't Shake

2008-12-16T13:03:00.001-05:00

The thing is, not everyone thinks as you or I or even the next person does. While some people have shy and modest personalities, other people are exhibitionists at heart. It's not as if these women have no other means to pay their mortgages or rent, right? Millions of women do it every month, and they are not models. So not only are these women earning great sums of money, those who enjoy attention or exhibitionism are having that need filled, as well.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Five Sexist Trends the Advertising World Just Can't Shake

2008-12-16T12:55:00.001-05:00

I agree with this and many of the other more liberal posts regarding this issue. I am not "into bondage" but it doesn't mean I can't understand it, in theory. I have never been inside a strip club but the existence of these establishments doesn't bother me. I don't know why sexual expression has such negative connotations to some people, or why it frightens and/or disgusts them to the extent it does. I would rather my son see a hot sex scene in a movie than someone getting his face torn off.

I remember finding my dad's Playboy and Hustler magazines under the hamper in the bathroom. I was probably only nine or so, but thrilled, enthralled. I had never seen such female beauty. I'm a female, not gay, but there was a beauty in those women much like that found in the works of great sculptors.

All this fuss over cleavage and skin. All these people who crave homogeneity, as long as what we are homogenized into is what they decide we should be.

But they don't think that.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Long time coming.

2008-12-14T23:22:00.000-05:00

Bad to be good.

2008-12-11T19:57:00.002-05:00

The book is always better than the movie, right? Well, let's hope the movie does the novel justice. But I do kind of doubt it will. So would you be bad to be good?

Old Poem, Newly Recorded

2008-12-08T02:15:00.000-05:00

Me, reading poem published in Mudfish.

Sad song is all.

2008-11-25T21:25:00.001-05:00

Consequence, not Karma. Core and not condition.

2008-11-21T13:37:00.001-05:00

Consequence, not Karma. Core and not condition.

Minding my own business.
Then I'm not.
And sometimes (this is where it gets tricky) it's better that way.

Standing in line at Sam's Club. We're all waiting our turn. Everyone is always in a hurry, me included. Someone almost always waiting for me to show. Always something expected. It's okay. I must like it. Cliche, I know, but giving does feel good.

The woman in front of me is almost finished. I'm pre-writing a check while I wait. I don't even notice who's behind me until a girl with a double-sized stocked-to-the-hilt flat-bed comes up and asks a man, who reaches his cart (parked behind me and a little to the right) at the same time she pulls hers into line, if he is, in fact, in line. She wasn't mean, just not sure. He obviously got to the line and forgot to get laundry detergent and maybe something else, because he's rushing back with two items in each hand. He moved his cart to the side, probably because he wasn't sure if he would make it back in time to not hold up the line. So they both get to the spot at the same time. His cart-load is much smaller than hers, and she doesn't seem to mind if he IS in front of her, but before he even gets a chance to answer, the almighty commander of who gets-to-go, the cashier, says to him, in a very loud and condescending voice "THERE'S NO HOLDING YOUR PLACE IN LINE!"

The man responds very calmly, "I wasn't holding my place. If I was holding my place I would have had someone stand here for me."

So I turn around, and say to him (because the cashier so obviously tried to embarrass him) "...Plus, you got back before your turn came up. Look, I haven't even gone yet. I would have watched your cart for you. And I turned to the cashier and said, "I've done that a few times: forgotten something. My cart was too heavy to take all the way back to the aisle, so I just leave the cart and run back." (Most people really don't mind because if you're not back in time, they'll just go ahead of you, no harm done.) So she says to both of us, "Well, you should see the fights that break out over this." And we say "Really? What a shame, over something so small..." and the guy finishes with, "and especially considering the music playing, how can anyone want to fight?" And I laugh, because it's Christmas music. Haha. Right, how can anyone fight over a place in line while Christmas music is playing.? (He WAS being ironic, but also sarcastic. Not sure she got that).

So then he asks what I'm baking. And I say I have a restaurant. And he says, "Oh, here, let me give you my card" and he adds, "but you have to sign it in front of me." And I suspiciously ask "I have to sign it? What kind of card is it?" and he says, its a PBA card. And the cashier says "What kind of card IS it? And he says it's a PBA card. And he turns to me and he says, "If you ever get into trouble, just pull out this card."
I told you, I don't believe in Karma. But I do believe in consequence.

Sometimes, I guess it pays to look out for one another. And not because some kind of reward will ensue, but because it feels good to not let other people get bullied. In this case, though, I have to admit, it felt good twice.

Phonies and other such sort of fancy hats

2008-11-02T01:49:00.001-04:00

"What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff -- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."

-- J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield

"This fall I think you're riding for -- it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started."

-- J.D. Salinger's Mr. Antolini, to Holden

"...you're going to start getting closer and closer -- that is, if you want to, and if you look for it and wait for it -- to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them -- if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."

-- J.D. Salinger's Mr. Antolini, to Holden

I am going to admit that I'm not as well-read in fiction as I am in fact or in poetry. I haven't always had the time to read large chunks of fiction on a regular basis, though I did read large amounts of literature for college as well as huge amounts of other materials. After taking care of Austin, going to school, working up to three jobs at a time, having then recovering from brain surgery, and finally opening the restaurant with Joe -- well it didn't leave me much time to do more than get a book in edgewise here and there. I've read a lot of the classics and a lot of philosophers, though not nearly as many as I should have by my age.

Lately I've been catching up and I can't believe how exciting it is, although at the same time I can remember that before Austin was born and I had only me to look out for, I'd stay up all night just to finish a book.

I finally read Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice, the annotated version. I wish I'd read it a long time ago. No, don't bother with the movie. It skips too much. You have to read the book. You must, especially if you're female, read the book. Oh, please do.

I'd like also to recommend J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher In The Rye" if you haven't read it already. It's been on my stack of "books to read next" for the past year, but here's the thing: I don't know if I loved it for it's own sake, or if I loved it because of how well it tied in with the movie I watched Wednesday night: Chapter 27, "A film about Mark David Chapman in the days leading up to the infamous murder of Beatle John Lennon" (1) starring a pimply-faced, plumper-than-I'm-used-to-seeing Jared Ledo as David Chapman. After the movie I knew I had to read the book immediately. After which I said to myself, "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." And I felt kind of sick for a minute, thinking about John Lennon's death. Outside the context of the book, the movie isn't much more than a documentary. But within the context of the book, the movie is utterly creepy.

The book, published in 1951, "remains widely read; as of 2004, the novel was selling about 250,000 copies per year, with total worldwide sales over 65 million." (1) I wonder if it would have seemed as creepy a read had I not seen the movie before reading it. I'm certain I still would have loved the way Salinger handled the character's contradictory, digressive and progressively more and more depressing nature.

I'm not crazy, but mood swings, I know.

So I wondered, given his nature, how many people self-professed "yellow" Holden would have really kept from running off that cliff. Being the catcher in the rye, and ALL. And was he really in the shower during the incident? And what were the other 19 times? I love when a book makes me wonder about a character as if it were a person. And I love that great books, in general, remind me that I'm on the very end of time line -- the very end -- the next segment of which has yet to happen and so does not exist. And that we are all children, never knowing where the edge of the cliff is, where, the window.

(1) Wikipedia

SPEAKING OF SLOW BURNING FUSES

2008-10-03T10:55:00.003-04:00

I already have plenty of this....

Anyone who's had some basic science and is globally and politically aware as well as musically and lyrically inclined will see that this video is absolutely and perfectly suited for Radiohead's brilliant song.

YOU KNEW IT COULDN'T LAST

2008-09-23T01:21:00.002-04:00

Ironically, I should be studying Earth Science, not writing this...

2008-09-23T01:02:00.001-04:00

Ironically, I should be studying Earth Science, not writing this...

Someone offers an opinion or states their belief in a thing, out loud.
Then, it is open.

Then it is an open thought. It is, in a sense, a palpable thing that is now in my presence. And I choose my reaction. How do I respond? Often I'll ask what led to the belief or why the opinion is held.

This is nothing new. And yet, it is. Being "entitled" to hold and express our opinions is an American ideal we were born into in a way that Americans one hundred years ago or more were not. In a way that Americans only eighty years ago, were not.

Sometimes it's difficult to maneuver through all the different conversations that take place every day without realizing, at some point during the dialogue, that it is impossible to continue because the person you are speaking to isn't living in the same reality you are living in.

Not only is the person living a different story in a different book, it's an entirely different set of encyclopedias and dictionaries.

Two things. Two things I hadn't thought about in a long time because they no longer exist in my reality. Blessing myself in order to protect myself, and believing that actions are sins.

Last week after some satirical (but not mean-spirited) remarks between co-workers about a customer, one of them said "quick, bless yourself." And I said "Oh, blessing yourself for protection. I had forgotten about that."

I had forgotten that gesture being performed, and I'd especially forgotten it being performed as a gesture to ward off punishment.

That simple command made me realize that the reality I live in is not the same reality that the other person lives in.

Likewise, today, discussing gender preference and marriage with someone, I realized that we did not share the same reality and that there was no point in continuing the conversation.

Although she opened. She opened enough to tell but not enough to listen.
She opened long enough to say but not to hear. She closed back up.

She closed up when she said, in all sincerity, with all the heart she thought she was disclosing as being open, that she couldn't judge "their sin" (speaking of same-gender relationships) as being any worse than anyone else's. Her exact words were "Who's to say that their sin is any worse than mine when I call someone a bitch? It's not for me to judge." She really believed she was taking the high and righteous road. She really believed she was being "forgiving of sin."

It stopped me in my tracks.

It stopped me because not only do I believe that "being gay" is not a sin -- it reminded me that I haven't thought about the word sin in a long time. And I wondered: why? How did I forget that word and how did I forget that people still believe in it as if it is something that exists, but exists separate from them? As if it exists like a parasite (which scientists kind of believe, but they call it insanity, not sin -- and that's another topic, let's stay here for now). As if actions were parasites that have somehow attached themselves to us and if we just pray hard enough, long enough, strong enough, loud enough, often enough, if we just pray to our god the "sin" will be washed away, we'll be cleansed of the parasite.

I realized today that sin hasn't existed in my world for quite some time now.

It is not a sin to call someone a bitch.
It is not a sin to murder someone, it is murder. It is mean and heartless and savage, maybe, but it is an action. It is enacted. It is not a sin -- a something from beyond that can be removed by some greater power not us.

And it is certainly not a "sin" to "be gay."

The fact that this person could even equate someone's choice of whom to love/hang out with/sleep with etc. with the notion of sin -- stealing, for instance -- makes me sick.

And it is, in a way, a little frightening: So many people, so many people pointing toward an open pit of fire that I just don't see. Not a metaphorical fire. It's like standing next to someone who swears there's an ocean in front of you when all you can see are mountains or miles of desert.

When I heard the word "sin" it felt ancient.

Here where I am, there are only humans, doing. There aren't any angels guiding. There are people with consciences who are willing to sacrifice their own needs for the needs of others. There aren't any spirits listening to me and I am not going to be punished in some life after this life. My choices are mine, limited by my universe and what it contains.

But there is another universe. It is contained in my universe, or mine is contained in that one but they are not one in the same. I hope they are not one in the same. How can it be that our world is one, but our ideals divide it? How can it be that it is one but our words undo that reality?

In her universe there will be another world after she is finished with this one.
In her world there is sin and there is forgiveness and she is told what to believe sin is.
When someone asks something she's never considered you can see fear enter her eyes as they widen but just as quickly they narrow and you know the thought only entered half-way. You see it was dismissed. You see her dismiss it and you hear her close the entire conversation because in her world there is a god who intends that we abide by certain rules. In her world there is a god who intends.

In mine, I and others have intentions and actions and reactions and emotions and rationalizations.

In my world there is only this world. It has a past and a present. It may have a future, I don't propose to know. I have now. The next instant might not even happen. My heart or head could burst. My lungs could decide to stop. I will, one day, fail. Without doubt.

Until then I intend to maneuver through. If I'm tactful I may survive the conversations. If I'm very very quiet I might avoid them, all together. But if I'm very very quiet I might also undo the work of those who made it possible for me to take part in open dialogue.

She may not mind not having one. She may even continue to put an end to discussions by stating that her god's rule is the ultimate rule, and she follows it, without question.

I don't.

I do, however, mind not having dialogue.

So this.

2008-09-21T01:05:00.000-04:00

You Knew It Couldn't Last

From Roger Freedman of the Facebook group "1,000 Strong Against John McCain"

2008-09-14T16:17:00.002-04:00

From Roger Freedman of the Facebook group "1,000,000 Strong Against John McCain":

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....(hope I'm not offending anyone)

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different.
"
* If you grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, you're a quintessential American story.

* If your name is Barack, you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

* If you name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

* If you graduate from Harvard law School, you are unstable.

* If you attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system, while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

* If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, *much* clearer now.

Response to a friend's post

2008-09-13T14:34:00.001-04:00

on the Democrats and how we need to get tougher:

I'm not sure where I stand on how much of a hard-ass Barack needs to be to win this although my husband and I were talking about it last night and he totally agrees that because the Dems always take the high road, we lose, and we need to play as dirty as the Republicans do to win this.

I'm a silly idealist hippie who believes truth and justice will prevail -- but I guess the past eight years show how naive I really am. The above poster brings up a good point in the "We'd rather be right than win" but unfortunately AND fortunately that's what separates us from the more conservative Republicans who too often, it seems, look at politics as if it was a football game and my team vs. their team. Obama is trying to change that and Ray is right -- McCain's basically plagiarized everything Obama said in his acceptance speech.

Let me say in Obama's offense: maybe that "pig with lipstick" was scripted in and he has begun to play rough. Someone even suggested his saying "old fish wrapped in paper" was a reference to McCain.

Palin makes me want to vomit. She is everything I'm against.
I wondered if that ticket wins, should I just take a bottle of something (cyanide perhaps?) and end it all now?

But seriously - for all those who say Obama can't/won't? Please, be quiet. The universe hears you. Say out loud and often this instead: Barack will win. We will rise up together and he will win. I have waited my entire life for this change. Since the third grade when I was told not to tell my grandma that the boy I had a crush on was "colored" I've been waiting. Since the tenth grade when I was forbidden to see Danny. Since my 18th birthday when I was disowned for dating and later marrying Jay. No, I wasn't a white girl looking for attention. I had grown up with these people and never saw the division until I was told to. By then it was too late, I'd already decided I was the type of person who would always judge people based on their actions and deeds, not their intentions or the faces they put on or the skin or gender they were born into.

Here's my hope: that all the dems will rise up together, that the independents will, for once, help instead of hinder us (and maybe one day we can pay them back in deed/action by actually giving them a voice, as well the dems and repubs), that people will vote on issues rather than race/gender (although I DO understand both the need for women and for black men to break ceilings, believe me) and that finally -- and this may sound like an odd one -- but I hope that all those people who are husbands and wives or in relationships or who are sons and daughters and sisters and brothers -- all those people who feel like they can't vote for a black president based on skin color and social pressures from their immediate sources -- go ahead, shake your heads no, no, no....lie to everyone in your family if you have to...say you'll never vote Barama. But then, once inside that little curtain, go ahead. Say to yourself "They'll never know" and vote for who you know can lead this country. Have some courage. Ask: What if?

Oh, and how to reach those who don't care? That's always been the greatest challenge a teacher faces...

Who knows, maybe even this little bit we do, will help.

Don't Let The Milk Floats Ride Your Mind

2008-09-12T14:21:00.001-04:00

Don't Let the milk floats ride your mind...

A milk float in Liverpool city centre, June 2005

As They Say, "Let The Games Begin"

2008-09-10T22:24:00.000-04:00

Not One For The Kiddies

2008-09-10T21:48:00.003-04:00

I just wanted to share a response to a good friend's satirical (?) blog in which he mentions not knowing who to vote for so maybe he should just vote on looks like we Americans are said to do :

I get what you're saying about duh uh
mericans voting for either the-beauty-pageant-queen-and-her-uncle-Ray ticket or the But-he's-so-well-spoken-all-the-white-women-want-to-secretly-fuck-him-and-your-uncle-Ray ticket (Not that they want to fuck your uncle Ray, mind you, or hers, for that matter).

Here's just one, just one of the things I'd like to ask people to consider: If your 13 year old daughter gets violently raped (or your niece or sister or cousin) should she be denied the morning-after pill so that should she become impregnated as result of this horrendous act she will be forced to carry the baby full term and deliver it? EVEN if an ultrasound is done and it is determined that the baby is deformed? Sarah Palin would have the thirteen year old give birth to this baby. So then I guess my next question would be, is Sarah Palin going to make sure the rapist sends child support from prison? Or is she personally going to support every incest/rape-produced/deformed unwanted child that is born in America? Or are we? Does that mean the health care we've all been promised will incur the cost of caring for these deformed or unwanted fetuses that that the government will force women to carry to full-term? These are the things I care about. And why didn't her daughter use a condom? Duh. If not for the unwanted pregnancy then at the very least to prevent disease....and I don't mean this as a personal attack. I mean: what is the Alaskan school system allowed to teach concerning sex-ed? THESE are just some of the the things I want people to ask themselves. Then go vote.

Skin color. Gender. Who cares. Animal metaphors, whatever.
Liar. Thief. Truth-twister. Hypocrite.
Inspirational. Forward-looking. Hopeful. Revolutionary.
For me there's no question.

Besides, you know I dig black as as well as white, though I do prefer men. (In that "I want to fuck your uncle Ray way"). So for me Obama-Biden. Hmmm. That's a damn good fuck, I mean ticket!
ML

Insignificant Synchronicities somehow still feel significant

2008-09-07T23:40:00.001-04:00

Insignificant Synchronicities somehow still feel significant, although I can never determine specifically why. (Say 5x fast!)

Last night I found a few minutes to do something that had been in my mind-file for quite some time now. It was of little significance and for my own personal enjoyment: to look up a term used as a lyric in one of my favorite songs and finally maybe make sense of it. The phrase I researched, and could find only a slight amount of information on -- was "ghost horse." I did find what I was looking for, eventually.

This morning, when I got to work, the first thing I did was go to my "spot" out front where I do all my paperwork, computing, banking, etc. -- and there on top of the counter were two pieces of framed artwork that a friend brought by earlier, before I arrived. One of the pieces was a three-photo collection of what else? Ghost Horses.

Spooky.

Poetry Open Mic

2008-09-01T23:16:00.000-04:00

Do Something

2008-09-01T23:05:00.000-04:00

From Move On - You know whether or not you want to read this.

2008-09-01T04:40:00.001-04:00

May I add? Can anyone say "Marie Osmond?" Beauty pageant queen? Five kids? Please.
It's like saying that after two years of running our humble corner restaurant I can take on every restaurant in Las Vegas AND Atlantic City...only...it's worse. Because she has access to bombs and armies. And decisions that involve YOU!

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: PV
Date: Aug 31, 2008 6:21 PM

Dear MoveOn member, Yesterday was John McCain's 72nd birthday. If elected, he'd be the oldest president ever inaugurated. And after months of slamming Barack Obama for "inexperience," here's who John McCain has chosen to be one heartbeat away from the presidency: a right-wing religious conservative with no foreign policy experience, who until recently was mayor of a town of 9,000 people.
Huh?
Who is Sarah Palin? Here's some basic background:

She was elected Alaska's governor a little over a year and a half ago. Her previous office was mayor of Wasilla, a small town outside Anchorage. She has no foreign policy experience.1

Palin is strongly anti-choice, opposing abortion even in the case of rape or incest.2

She supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000. 3

Palin thinks creationism should be taught in public schools.4

She's doesn't think humans are the cause of climate change.5

She's solidly in line with John McCain's "Big Oil first" energy policy. She's pushed hard for more oil drilling and says renewables won't be ready for years. She also sued the Bush administration for listing polar bears as an endangered species—she was worried it would interfere with more oil drilling in Alaska.6
How closely did John McCain vet this choice? He met Sarah Palin once at a meeting. They spoke a second time, last Sunday, when he called her about being vice-president. Then he offered her the position.7
This is information the American people need to see. Please take a moment to forward this email to your friends and family.
We also asked Alaska MoveOn members what the rest of us should know about their governor. The response was striking. Here's a sample:

She is really just a mayor from a small town outside Anchorage who has been a governor for only 1.5 years, and has ZERO national and international experience. I shudder to think that she could be the person taking that 3AM call on the White House hotline, and the one who could potentially be charged with leading the US in the volatile international scene that exists today. —Rose M., Fairbanks, AK

She is VERY, VERY conservative, and far from perfect. She's a hunter and fisherwoman, but votes against the environment again and again. She ran on ethics reform, but is currently under investigation for several charges involving hiring and firing of state officials. She has NO experience beyond Alaska. —Christine B., Denali Park, AK

As an Alaskan and a feminist, I am beyond words at this announcement. Palin is not a feminist, and she is not the reformer she claims to be. —Karen L., Anchorage, AK

Alaskans, collectively, are just as stunned as the rest of the nation. She is doing well running our State, but is totally inexperienced on the national level, and very much unequipped to run the nation, if it came to that. She is as far right as one can get, which has already been communicated on the news. In our office of thirty employees (dems, republicans, and nonpartisans), not one person feels she is ready for the V.P. position.—Sherry C., Anchorage, AK

She's vehemently anti-choice and doesn't care about protecting our natural resources, even though she has worked as a fisherman. McCain chose her to pick up the Hillary voters, but Palin is no Hillary. —Marina L., Juneau, AK

I think she's far too inexperienced to be in this position. I'm all for a woman in the White House, but not one who hasn't done anything to deserve it. There are far many other women who have worked their way up and have much more experience that would have been better choices. This is a patronizing decision on John McCain's part- and insulting to females everywhere that he would assume he'll get our vote by putting "A Woman" in that position.—Jennifer M., Anchorage, AK

So Governor Palin is a staunch anti-choice religious conservative. She's a global warming denier who shares John McCain's commitment to Big Oil. And she's dramatically inexperienced.
In picking Sarah Palin, John McCain has made the religious right very happy. And he's made a very dangerous decision for our country.
In the next few days, many Americans will be wondering what McCain's vice-presidential choice means. Please pass this information along to your friends and family.
Thanks for all you do.
–Ilyse, Noah, Justin, Karin and the rest of the team
Sources:

1. "Sarah Palin," Wikipedia, Accessed August 29, 2008
http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Sarah_Palin
2. "McCain Selects Anti-Choice Sarah Palin as Running Mate," NARAL Pro-Choice America, August 29, 2008
http://www. moveon. org/r?r=17515&id=13661-1528778-FLomsQx&t=1
3. "Sarah Palin, Buchananite," The Nation, August 29, 2008
http://www. moveon. org/r?r=17736&id=13661-1528778-FLomsQx&t=2

4. "'Creation science' enters the race," Anchorage Daily News, October 27, 2006
http://www. moveon. org/r?r=17737&id=13661-1528778-FLomsQx&t=3
5. "Palin buys climate denial PR spin—ignores science," Huffington Post, August 29, 2008
http://www. moveon. org/r?r=17517&id=13661-1528778-FLomsQx&t=4
6. "McCain VP Pick Completes Shift to Bush Energy Policy," Sierra Club, August 29, 2008
http://www. moveon. org/r?r=17518&id=13661-1528778-FLomsQx&t=5
"Choice of Palin Promises Failed Energy Policies of the Past," League of Conservation Voters, August 29, 2008
http://www. moveon. org/r?r=17519&id=13661-1528778-FLomsQx&t=6
"Protecting polar bears gets in way of drilling for oil, says governor," The Times of London, May 23, 2008
http://www. moveon. org/r?r=17520&id=13661-1528778-FLomsQx&t=7
7 "McCain met Palin once before yesterday," MSNBC, August 29, 2008
http://www. moveon. org/r?r=21119&id=13661-1528778-FLomsQx&t=8
Want to support our work? We're entirely funded by our 3.2 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.

In case you missed it or want to see it again...

2008-08-30T16:54:00.001-04:00

Poetry Feature

2008-07-29T18:10:00.000-04:00

Marylisa DeDomenicis at Pratt's Hill of Beans followed by open mic.

Thursday, July 31, 7:00 p.m.

6106 Black Horse Pike Suite B-4
Egg Harbor Township, NJ 08234
(609) 407-9500 (Pratt's)
609-816-5589 (Raymond Tyler, Host)

Miss obsessed with death.

2008-07-29T18:09:00.000-04:00

I can't believe July is an inch from over.

And I can't believe I wasn't more excited than I was about seeing Bruce with the East Street Band on Sunday night.

I got the tickets for Joe for Christmas. Well, for us. We saw him solo, in an acoustic setting with about 3,500 other people a few years ago but because they were recording he requested no clapping, no dancing, no singing along. It was rather eerie, for a concert, but it was Bruce, so we played along and were certainly entertained, to say the least. Just quietly so. Anyway, ever since then, Joe's told me I haven't had the true Bruce experience until I've seen him in a large arena with the E Street Band and a roaring crowd. He'd already seen them twice that way (Jersey Boy).

So after a thunderstorm that even Bruce described as being "of biblical proportions" we inched along at 25 miles an hour in Sunday night tourist traffic with everyone else who had to wait for the storm to pass to get on the road. Bruce was late, too, so we only missed a few minutes.

There is no short and sweet of it.

I was nine when my dad first started collecting Bruce records. (Yes, that's right, records.) He was the first artist whose lyrics intrigued me. I remember waiting for his albums just so I could read the words that went along with the music, which was more narratively lyrical than any other musician's work I'd yet known. I modeled one of my first serious poems (read: not about a boy I thought was cute) after his style of writing and I guess I considered myself a poet from that moment on.

Still, that was so long ago that I thought I was over him, you know?

Not.

If one of those planes that kept flying overhead during the concert had dropped a bomb I would have died in a state of euphoria. We have to go some way. I've decided that's how I want to go. In the middle of some concert with 55,000 people singing along with the band - then poof! Nothing. I can't imagine a better way. No one would have to worry about where to sprinkle my ashes or if green burials are legal where I live.

I only wish my dad could have been there, too.

Show began at 8:37 p.m.

Setlist: 

1 Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out  
2. Radio Nowhere  
3. Lonesome Day
4. No Surrender  
5. Adam Raised a Cain  
6. Spirit in the Night
7. Summertime Blues  (As the song started, Bruce took signs with requests on them from the audience).
8. Brilliant Disguise  (Nice duo with Patti Scialfa).
9. Atlantic City  
10. Growin' Up (request by a 10-year, old named Rosie)  
11. Janey Don't You Lose Heart (a sign held up by the person standing in the pit) 
12. I'll Work for Your Love (by request)  
13. Youngstown  (Awesome guitar work here by Nils Lofgren). 
14. Murder Incorporated  (and awesome guitar work here by Bruce and Steve Van Zandt).  
15. The Promised Land  
16. Livin' in the Future  
17. Mary's Place  
18. Workin' on the Highway
19. Tunnel of Love  (With Patti Scialfa - this was sexy). 
20. The Rising  
21. Last to Die
22. Long Walk Home
23. Badlands !!

Encores:

24. Girls in Their Summer Clothes
25. Jungleland
26. Born to Run
27. Bobby Jean  
28. Dancing in the Dark
29. American Land
30. Rosalita

Show ended at 11:49 p.m.

Exactly

2008-07-22T00:02:00.001-04:00

For Provenance

2008-07-07T23:32:00.001-04:00

For Provenance

You wouldn't have known it from the way my mother dressed me, but I was a bit of a tom-boy when young, always rough-housing with the boys, playing football, skateboarding down giant hills (from the top of Mead Street down to Hankock!), dirt-bike riding etc. Some of my favorite places to be were in the fields and wooded areas under downed trees or climbing hills and scouting the local coal fields. Not to mention the local "watering holes," reservoirs, dams, lakes etc.

My mommy dressed me pretty and taught me how to behave, but my daddy had a need for speed and a love of nature that was too contagious to tame.

Maybe this is why I've never moved to the city, though it's been calling me all my life. I'd miss my yard too much. It's a lot of all I've ever wanted.

84 and counting

The squirrels always steal the cherries before they've had a chance to ripen. The peaches are divine, usually healthy - I don't spray. And the plums are perfect, but the tree doesn't bear every year; not sure why, may be just a matter of cross-pollination. Just a little dust on the roses and food for all. Last year I used bat dung. Mmm.

When we first moved in, besides the trees, there were two lilac bushes, three azaleas, the honeysuckle, ivy, a few tulips and the Hibiscus. There were also 6 weeds that had grown into tall trees with tap-roots at least 6 feet deep that had to be dug up. The weeds are almost always more aggressive and vigorous than what's been intentionally planted.

Here's what's in our yard now (that is, the bank's yard); I may have forgotten a few things, and I didn't list all the trees:

Grape Hyacinths, Muscari Armeniacum
Tulips, various
Dutch Iris, Purple Sensation (naturalizing)
Daffodil, Narcissi, Mount Hood (White, naturalizing)
Daffodil, Large Cupped Carlton (Yellow)
Scarlet Meidiland Rose (Meikrotal, clusters, 3)
Red Meidiland Rose (Meineble, yellow center)
Floribunda Rose, Iceberg (White)
Hybrid Tea Rose, Garden Party (peach)
Hybrid Tea Rose, Kordes Perfecta (coral)
Hybrid Tea Rose, Heirloom (magenta, fragrant)
Rosa x, "Nearly Wild Rose" (pink)
Bourbon Rose, Zepherine Drouhin (1868, antique climber)
Rose "Meicoublan" White Meidiland (groundcover)
Rhododendron Roseum Elegans (Purple)
Azalea Satsuki Hybrid, Gumpo White (2)
Azalea, Girard's Crimson (2)
Azalea, pink, vintage (2)
Lilacs, purple, Syringa Vulgaris (2)
Wild Yellow Honeysuckle, Lonicera semprvirens (2)
Red Tatarian Honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica)
Echinacea (Purple Coneflower, perennial, also drops new seeds!)
Coreopsis (tall, reseeding)
Daylillies, Hemerocalle (Naturalizing)
Daylillies, Hemerocalle, Azucena Anteada (Crimson Pirate)
Thyme, Silver, Thymus vulgaris "Argenteus" (perennial, can be divided)
Winter Thyme, Thymus Hyemalis (perennial, can be divided)
Oregano (perennial, can be divided)
Russian Sage, Perovskia atriplicifolia (perennial)
Lamb's Ears, Stachys Byzantina (S. lanata, spreads)
Silver Lavender Cotton (Santolina incana "Nana")
Showy Pink Primrose, Oenothera Speciosa
Lilly-of-the-Valley, Convallaria majalis
Myrtle, Vinca Minor (spreading evergreen groundcover, purple blooms)
Ajuga reptans, Carpet Bugle (semi-evergreen spreading)
Weigela florida "Pink Princess (pink blooming shrub)
Flowering Quince, Texas Scarlet (3)
Crape Myrtle (3)
Purpleleaf Plum (Prunus Thundercloud, Plum tree)
Bing Cherry, Cerezo Enano "Bing" (Dwarf cherry tree)
Thornless Red Everbearing Raspberry
Hydrangea, Hyd. macrophylla "Glory Blue"
Barberry, Berberis thunbergii, Royal Burgundy (8-10)
Juniper, Sea Green (7)
Green Beauty Boxwood (Hedge)
Arborvitae, Thuja occidentalis "Globosa" (4?)
Dense Yew, Taxus x media "Densiformis"
Dwarf Juniper, Procumbens "Nana"
Spiny Greek Juniper, Juniperus excelsa "Stricta"
Dwarf Japanese Barberry (3), Crimson Pygmy
Winter Gem Boxwood
Euonymus, Emerald Gaiety (6)
Willowleaf Holly (Hedge)
Flowering Quince, Cameo
German Iris, Purple
Iris, Burgundy
Iris, Yellow and Purple
Clematis, Peveril Pearl (pink)
Clematis, white
Purpleleaf Sand Cherry
Lavender, Munstead Lavandula
Dianthus, Floral Lace violet
Dianthus, Picotee
Fountain Grass, Pennistetum Alopecuroides
Maiden Grass, Miscantus "Gracillimus"
Salvia, Blue Queen
Lemon Balm, Melissa Officinalis
Spearmint
Peach Tree
Yew, Dark Green Spreading
Dwarf Mugho Pine, Pinus mugo pumilio
Mums, various
Juniper, Andorra
Cosmos (annual)
Impatiens (annual)
Liatrus spicata, Blazing Star
Phlox paniculata, Summer Phlox
Hibiscus syriacus, Rose of Sharon, Rose Mallow
Ivy
Barberry
Centranthus ruber, Red Valerian
Pink Primrose, Primula
Lathyrus, Sweet Pea
Lest I forget them: Dandelions, Chickweed, Virginia creeper and other various weeds

Before I sat down, I thought to myself: I think I'll make a list of what's bloomed/blooming/planted in my yard.
When I finished, I was amazed. It doesn't seem like that much...
I hope someone loves it when I'm gone.

2008-06-27T12:22:00.001-04:00

The dialogue in my head, lately, ricochets. That's not the same as being scatter-brained, instants of losing incidents, incidents of losing instants.

Thoughts aren't lost, but like a silver ball that bounces off tiny pillars wrapped with wires that send out signals to a larger machine that keeps track, my thoughts bounce off of one another. I can feel myself trying to keep track of the ball, trying to move the ball toward the pillars without "tilting" the larger machine, throwing it off balance, losing the points I've racked up toward winning another game, or simply sustaining.

To control the ball without over-controlling the ball.

The game, I guess, it the thinking game. There is a difference though, my pillars, my thoughts, my silver ball of a brain that ricochets from thought to thought and must be kept from falling to the bottom of a slanted surface where it will be lost, is contained in a space restrained only by the limits of my time here, and it remains un-walled until my time here is done. Not only does it remain unrestrained, bound only by my death, which it hasn't met and cannot predict, there are new thoughts forming constantly and they in turn create opportunities for my brain to make new connections.

So my brain is this ever expanding game that I partake in but am not wholly in control of, although I like to believe that I am. There is momentum that builds in thoughts I try to steer, to maneuver. When I try to write them down they continue to move, to ricochet. I have some say in how they move from the mind to the page to the mind again. (They are never still.) I have some influence, I create some force, but I mostly follow the ricochet of the ball.

Narcissist

2008-06-22T22:41:00.005-04:00

Not Jelly

2008-06-22T21:41:00.004-04:00

Based on Friday night's concert turn-out it appears to be true: "Pearl Jam* has outlasted many of its alternative rock contemporaries." I'd like to add, after agreeing, that they've also managed to "keep up" with the best of all artists, no matter the genre. I'm no music critic, so I won't. I'll just report that the crowd at Camden was younger than I expected and that made me happy for Pearl Jam. I'm not even sure if there was anyone there over 35 (except maybe me) but we were on the hill, so maybe an older crowd was seated down below the lawn?

The concert was part of my cousin Bernie's vacation: "A seven Pearl Jam concerts in nine days" road trip, and although I resisted at first, I gave in finally and went. I mean seriously -- is there anyone who doesn't like Pearl Jam? Well, maybe, but I'm not one of those people. I was trying to be a good citizen by not over-indulging since I have seen them once already, and under similar circumstances. But he insisted (read: he and Joel split the ticket) and then I had NO excuse! So thank you guys, so much! And Bernie, I agree: If I were to die right now I'd die happy. Not that I'm looking to go (believe me) but if I did -- it could be said that I couldn't have loved my life more. Thank you for being a part of that. Oh, and you too, Bob G. of poem a day fame.

Back to Pearl Jam. They were perfect. And they actually jammed. Have you ever entered the sound of a guitar? I did, last night. Something inside you merges with what the band releases and you feel the merge as you enter into each other. They feel it too, the band, as they enter you. If they didn't they couldn't be there, or wouldn't be for long.

I've posted pictures -- also given graciously by Bernie and Joel. I did take the pictures of the row of young men pissing against the doors of the "job-johnnies" (I think that's what Bernie called them) after the concert, and of the dashboard and also of Bernie and Joel together. I couldn't help taking a shot of the row of guys. Really. There were guys peeing everywhere. Not Bernie or Joel, though.

One thing I found interesting: deflated balloons that had previously been inflated with nitrous oxide and sucked into the lungs of their purchasers littered the parking lot along with broken beer bottles and bags of trash. I hadn't noticed the balloons earlier. Thank you Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum. But after the concert, and probably because the parking log was sparse and the alcohol had mostly worn off -- I noticed the balloons and the men with the tanks who were surrounded with people who were paying $5 per balloon (or 5 for $20) -- and being the sheltered person I am, (oh but I am learning things all the time) I asked and learned. All I can say is that the last time I had anesthesia -- and for that matter -- every time -- something inside me went automatic-pilot and I began to recite the "Act of Contrition." I suppose I'm too afraid to die to do anything too toxic to my body. However, lest I be a hypocrite, I have to add -- I'm not judging their high and admit that this spiced rum? It's another drug all together and one I may trade vodka for. Well, not forever. But I think it might be a nice alternative!

Well, this was the setlist as posted by the Jambox website, and seems right to me:

Pre-Set

You've Got To Hide Your Love Away

Main Set

Severed Hand
Brain Of J.
Animal
Dissident
Low Light
Down
Nothing As It Seems
Green Disease
Love Boat Captain
Corduroy
Even Flow
Thin Air
Daughter (tag: War)
Insignificance
W.M.A.
Do The Evolution
Better Man
Whipping
Why Go

(Encore 1)

Lukin
Comatose
Given To Fly
Rearviewmirror

(Encore 2)

Footsteps
Once
Alive
Baba O'Riley

*Pearl Jam is an American rock band that formed in Seattle, Washington in 1990. Since its inception, the band's line-up has included Eddie Vedder (lead vocals, guitar), Jeff Ament (bass guitar), Stone Gossard (rhythm guitar), and Mike McCready (lead guitar). The band's current drummer is Matt Cameron, formerly of Soundgarden, who has been with the band since 1998.
Formed after the demise of Ament and Gossard's previous band Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam broke into the mainstream with its debut album Ten. One of the key bands of the grunge movement in the early 1990s, Pearl Jam was criticized early on—most notably by Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain—as being a corporate cash-in on the alternative rock explosion. However, over the course of the band's career its members became noted for their refusal to adhere to traditional music industry practices; including refusing to make music videos and engaging in a much-publicized boycott of Ticketmaster. In 2006, Rolling Stone described the band as having "spent much of the past decade deliberately tearing apart their own fame."[1]
Since its inception, the band has sold 30 million records in the U.S.,[2] and an estimated 60 million albums worldwide.[3][4] Pearl Jam has outlasted many of its contemporaries from the alternative rock breakthrough of the early 1990s, and is considered one of the most influential bands of the decade,[5] and "the most popular American rock & roll band of the '90s".[6]

Think Locally (You can still Fuck Globally)

2008-06-16T18:18:00.000-04:00

Another Example Of How What's Local Isn't, Really.

"This time you're more potent. My nostrils burn and flare. Your fire
deposits smear the air so that everything I see is blurred, unclear."

I woke up yesterday to the smell of burning cedar. At first the smell was inviting and I considered that someone close by was having a Saturday BBQ, although I must admit I thought it was a bit early. After about an hour the smell got stronger and I could tell it was the result of more than a BBQ, that there must be a fire somewhere close by.

By eleven a.m. I was gloved and shoveled, ready to work in the gardens, but after a half hour my nostrils were burning. Everything was covered in a haze of smoke that I tried to ignore but finally decided wasn't healthy to be breathing in. I assumed today when I read the newspaper that I'd be informed of the fire's origin. I was.

The smoke didn't come from where I and hundreds of other local residents thought it came from. It wasn't "local" but the result of two southern wildfires on wildfire refuges in North Carolina and Virginia, approximately three hundred miles away.

If the air was too heavy here, to breathe, then it must be nearly impossible for those who live closer to the fires to remain there. I hope everything for them works out. Tonight I've got roses, honeysuckle, rain, ocean, and the sweet vanilla scent of some shrub I don't know the name of gusting bursts of perfume in through the window. It's not me, it's life that's bi-polar.

2008-06-15T21:46:00.002-04:00

Toad The Wet Sprocket at The Trocadero in Philadelphia, June 11, 2008. I waited fifteen years for this!

I Can Be Happy

2008-06-15T20:49:00.001-04:00

I Can Be Happy

If I say I'm blessed then I presume a god exists who believes I deserve a better life than someone who is less fortunate than I am.

If I say I'm lucky then I deny myself the satisfaction of accomplishment after (and during!) the labor I partake in. So what should I say? I'm glad? I'm touched? It's been difficult but rewarding? Yawn. That I know it can all be gone in an instant? Yes, I know that. But for now maybe I should just say that I am so very happy (as in as happy as I can be, being human with the immense ability to know and to feel the extreme range of emotions we are able to feel).

I don't know why -- maybe because of the surgery and because of how difficult and isolating it was for me -- I thought my life was somehow already decided: that I'd already met all the people I would meet, made all the friends I would make, loved all the people I would love.

Not true.

Although I go silent for two days, or more, although I have no desire to speak, I witness. And when I return I return exhilarated by the unpredictability as well as the familiarity of life.

The people I work with are tremendous. Really. We were like a machine today. A few snags here and there, but we were all tossing the ball -- keeping it up in the air.

I love working where I get a say in what's fair and can look out for my co-workers, not let them get bullied, not allow any one of them to take on too much on their own. There are a lot of good people in the world, still. Did you know that? Oh, our little tempers flare here and there, and yeah yeah yeah we're all in it for ourselves -- I've heard all that too -- but I don't believe it's entirely true. We're not all in it for ourselves. We're all just hoping to have a slice.

When I was younger and didn't know much about the misery in the world that existed beyond my immediate arena I thought "the great thing about happiness (remember? I am so very happy): the happiness pie doesn't run out. It's like Jesus' loaves of bread, his fish and wine. There is an unending supply and no one has to worry they'll be denied." Like I said, I was young and very optimistic. Of course it can run out. It's running out all over the world. But I can be happy here where I am while I look after and am looked after by others. Reaching out and reaching into as many hearts as I can. I can be happy that I can. And am.

Or Like A New Car That's Smooth On Tight Curves

2008-06-06T03:04:00.002-04:00

Now to work off the cost.

Like I was saying... I was thinking

that if I couldn't get my violin to sound at least as sweet as Regina Spektor sounds singing, that it wasn't worth playing. And since I wasn't going to quit playing, that meant only one thing: upgrade the instrument. So I did. Now I feel like I was using a phillips head screwdriver (is phillips head trademarked, I wonder? Apostrophe, no apostrophe? Capital P? No capital? Oh well) on a flat one-slatted screw head. I guess what holds true of tools holds true of instruments, as well: that "the right tool makes all of the difference." I actually don't suck. At all. And I finally have a violin that doesn't "play" but sings. It's amazingly responsive to my fingering and my bowing and it's lighter and narrower than my last violin so it's easier for me to navigate and maneuver. I can reach the g-string without contorting my arm (!) and glide to 5th position without a snag. Wow. Not to mention, the sound is gorgeous.

This is why I work.

So I can play.

Gratitude

2008-06-06T03:03:00.001-04:00

Gratitude

My co-workers and I were talking about Bipolar Disorder today and I mentioned that I was cyclothymic (the lowest rung on the BP to Schizophrenia ladder). I said something about my doctor telling me I have to make sure I sleep in order to prevent bouts of manic-depressive episodes, otherwise I become mean, and they said "Mean? You? Mean?"

I just wanted to say, that felt very nice.
Although life can be difficult, it can also be very touching.

Oh, and speaking of sleep, as you can see, it's nearly 3 a.m.
Don't worry, I promise I'll be nice. Tomorrow I get to sleep in!

More Spectacular Than Jenna's Wedding

2008-05-11T20:09:00.002-04:00

More spectacular than Jenna's wedding:

If you want to get close, get there early.

Overheard last night, to my right, one of three girls:
We should hang with those guys. We should hang with them. Do you think they'll move back here to hang with us?

Her friend:
Move back here to watch Regina? I think you overestimate the power of your beauty...

To my left, girl:
Let's move up. Lets just squeeze through.

To my left, guy with girl:
Naw, I don't think so.

Girl:
C'mon. Look -- that guy just did.

Guy:
That guy's with someone up there already. He just went to get them drinks.

Girl:
So. We could pretend to be with other people, you know, I'll just go up and pretend someone else is my boyfriend.

Guy:
Wow. You've changed.

Girl:
What do you mean? I've changed? How have I changed?

Guy:
Well, you've had one drink and now? You're just nasty.

For entertainment purposes only. Don't think too deeply.

2008-04-11T12:08:00.002-04:00

Steer Clear

2008-03-11T13:58:00.001-04:00

Those crazy kids.

Today blondie with his ear gauge and various tattoos, his too baggy pants hung low on his skinny hips, barely, comes in, sits down at the counter. Blondie at the counter pulls a large white pill from his shoe and slips it past his lip, sips his coffee. He knows I'm watching. I'm facing him. He's got a cell phone to his ear.

Yesterday blondie offered one of the restaurant servers a Percocet for $8. She scoffed at him and told him she could get them for $5.

Blondie the peddler sits perpendicular to the cook who is definitely an ex-junkie. As was one of the servers who only lasted a few days and who is now back in jail, as was another server who is now simply fired. The cook is coming dangerously close to losing his job, as well. He suddenly flat-lined about six weeks ago and has gotten progressively worse. He may simply be over-medicated, but it's difficult to tell.

I tried, for seven years, to maintain a friendship with someone who "uses regularly" (she smokes, her husband snorts) but she is about to go into the hospital for the third time in a year, (her lungs have collapsed, she's had a heart attack and a brain hemorrhage) and honestly? I can't take the drama, the up and down of it all, the disappointment. She's killing herself and I can't stop her. Of course I can't. She will be dead soon, probably. So I've been staying away from her. I've removed myself from her life because I won't live her lie and because if I distance myself now I'll be hard enough to dismiss the pain later, if she does die. Or at least partially dismiss the pain.

I lost my best childhood friend to speed and the abusive man who supplied it to her.

I wonder what it is that separates the drug abuser from the recreational drug user. How much pain must people be in that they would need to numb themselves so deeply, shield themselves so fully, so constantly. How much more sensitive than me must they be that the urge to escape the skins they are in, the need to be free of some circumstance, of some history, becomes the primary urge, pretends to protect them.

Or are people just so bored that they want to escape what feels to them like the ordinariness of the world? Is there lack? There is genetic predisposition coupled with everything. Is there a need for inspiration?

When I was seventeen, boredom, availability, and friendship led me to swallow a black beauty. That and "krank" were the strongest speeds available to high school students at the time. Ridalin hadn't been invented, Heroin was for Rock stars, and coke and crack weren't on the menu until I attended college. I was a sheltered child.

After my friend and I swallowed those glossy black capsules, we walked around a bit, then we sat down against an entrance wall at our high school (a local hang out), and I nearly chewed my entire thumb nail off. The split down the middle has nearly healed, but it's still all bumps and ridges. Later that night, I threw up. I didn't take another hit, ever. I never wanted to feel that way again and I couldn't understand why anyone else would want to.

After my brain surgery I was prescribed phenobarb, a barbiturate, as well as valium. I had never tried "downers" as a teen, and when I did take them, because I had to, I hated them. Again, I couldn't understand why anyone would want to feel so disconnected from the world, to mute their senses, to need to move so slowly or not at all.

First, for pain and because over-stimulation to my brain could cause me to seizure, and because I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome following the craniotomy, I was "on and off" a total of 27 different medicines over the course of ten years. The pain of light and of sound was enormous at first, and is sometimes still with me, but it's not nearly as intrusive or as lasting as it was, once. Still, sometimes, even the silence scrapes against the underside of my skin. It's a pain I find hard to explain.

One of the medicines I took over the course of those ten years made me feel like I was living in an aquarium. There was the constant hum of everything in the background, always on, and when I moved it felt as though I was pushing my body through water.

One of the medicines I was prescribed simply knocked me out for two-and-a-half days. I could barely stay awake long enough to eat and couldn't pull my body up from the bed. I also had night terrors. Needless to say, I stopped taking that one immediately.

I reacted to most of the anti-seizure medicines I was prescribed "paradoxically" which meant that instead of calming my brain down they caused it to speed up. I would wake up every morning panicked for no reason: my heart racing, my body quivering, and a fist up under my gut as if something terrible had just or was just about to happen.

Another of the medicines made it seem as though the walls and floors and ceiling had lost their angles and were all slipping together to form one plane.

Experiences like these made me realize how much of our perception is provided by our own brains and not necessarily real circumstance. As philosophical as I already felt I was, I became even more so when I saw first-hand that my truth, my vision, was my own. Although it may seem to me that others experience what I experience, we have in the end only our own versions and interpretations of things and the interpretations that others experience and are willing to share with us through storytelling and other various arts.

Last night another friend of mine, not the one mentioned above -- died as result of "complications stemming from pneumonia and emphysema". She was "a smoker" -- not of crack -- not of Ginsberg's dope -- but of the cigarettes he so despised.

I can see why. They and alcohol are the only two legal drugs available to anyone who tries to give up other vices. Alcohol isn't addictive to everyone. But from what I can see, EVERYONE I know who smokes cigarettes is an addict. I was one. I know I can't ever ever ever pick up a cigarette and "have just one". My stupid body would probably become orgasmic with the nicotine rush and I'd expect that rush every time...but eventually I would need more and more nicotine to reach that "high" and so I'd be smoking two packs a day in two months, no doubt. Soon I'd begin to feel myself dying again as I felt I was when I decided I needed to quit.

It's been ten years since then.

Oh the nine mile bicycle rides! Oh the two-hour boogie-boarding sessions in the ocean! Oh sweet breath and clear singing voice! And stable mood! And energy!

And thanks, too: my fear of death, my love for life -- which have kept me clean of other deadly things.

As for Blondie, I'm going to pretend I'm a character in a movie. Our place fills up with cops a few times a week, at least. He's bound to notice THAT sooner or later. If he stays and tries to peddle his wares anyway, then I think I'll imagine he's working undercover.

Either way I better tell the servers there to steer clear....

The Last Thing

2008-03-11T12:26:00.002-04:00

My friend of twenty years, Shirley Lake, died Sunday night of complications stemming from pneumonia and emphysema. We were leaving comments on one another's blog pages just two weeks ago. Last week she was admitted into the hospital, couldn't breathe on her own and remained unconscious until her death.

These pages we make, these journals we leave behind, these pictures we post -- they won't be thrown away but will live on in cyberspace. Our shrines.

Ever since my brain surgery what's embedded in my mind is that the last thing we say might be the last thing we say.

So I just wanted to remind you all of that.

Coincidence

2008-02-28T20:49:00.000-05:00

No Kidding.

Last night I blogged/journaled about my dad's message to me, my "apparition" of him, my more careful driving as a result of the message to "watch my back" and my further looking for a possible metaphor in the incident/delirious episode...

Today I got rear-ended by two teenaged boys talking on a cell phone while pulling out of Wa-Wa.

I love my life. I really do.

Odd Journey

2008-02-27T00:47:00.003-05:00

It wasn't a dream: my father in the back seat of the car -- a sense as I turned and he said I should watch my back.

He was the color of late January rain mixed with early February snow, ghostly, the color of bathtub steam. A blirp on my screen. A non-happening, a blur in my vision coupled with a mind quick to figure -- and mine so full of him he couldn't not be the first explanation my mind met. I wanted him so to be there instead of dead.

But "Watch my back?" Where in my head did those words climb up out from? "Watch my back?" was never my father's chant except maybe once when he taught me how to drive.

So now I'm waiting. I tell myself I don't believe in messages from the dead. I tell myself that watching my back is going to solve something when I least expect it but I'm pretty sure I don't know how to watch my back. I've been paying special attention to my driving, though, that's for sure.

And I'm looking for the metaphor.

Wish I'd been there.

2008-02-20T21:25:00.002-05:00

Wish I'd been there: http://www.maniacworld.com/frozen-in-grand-central-station.html

Negative Capability

2008-02-13T22:14:00.002-05:00

A friend's blog post made me think of Keats and his "Negative Capability" quote.

------------
Wikipedia reports:

"Negative capability is a theory of the poet John Keats, expressed in his letter to George and Thomas Keats dated Sunday, 21 December 1817.

"I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."

Keats believed that great people (especially poets) have the ability to accept that not everything can be resolved. Keats was a Romantic and believed that the truths found in the imagination access holy authority. Such authority cannot otherwise be understood, and thus he writes of "uncertainties." This "being in uncertaint[y]" is a place between the mundane, ready reality and the multiple potentials of a more fully understood existence."
--Wikipedia
------------

It IS scary to feel what doesn't bring us joy. What if we don't come back from that place? We wonder, and so yes, we try to avoid feeling and live in fear of sadness. But I do truly believe that it is impossible. I think we feel more than we even know. And that we need ALL that we feel, to some degree, the way everything else in the universe needs what it needs to survive and is equipped. We are all equipped. That we are also all imperfectly equipped makes us never really know when we'll slip. I think we just have to accept both failure and success knowing there is no rest between the two, that they/we are constantly in Keat's state of Negative capability (uncertainties, mysteries, doubts) because even though the clock appears to pause for us to read it, time doesn't stop.

It is, after all, Flu Season

2008-02-12T16:20:00.000-05:00

Vertigo

Vertigo turns you inside out like
an inwardly curled flower falling back
into the seed it was but even the seed
in wind has support, a boundary, is
bound by. You -- without a spine
because your head mis-tells it's so - it's so
like walls falling in but without any ground
to fall down to so the falling doesn't end.
To cope with vertigo you become
tiny stone and you hope the wind doesn't blow.

Written/Spoken Word

2008-02-08T22:33:00.000-05:00

Written/Spoken Word

Writing the word down, or speaking it, it becomes enormous. Suddenly you can see, on the page, all its connotations, and you feel your own assumptions about whatever that word is, or the group of words you've written. And you begin to question your assumptions, and then the word. You begin to question the world that invented the word, the universe in which the word exists. You want it to exist in a way that you designate. It has to be exact. It has to translate into the meaning you intend. It's a sickness, this. Absorbs you, or tries. But it is not the kind of sickness that kills you. Not one that seeps from your pores and dampens your sheets and head with its fever. No, you are soaked in this sickness like Rilke was soaked in his sickness. Like Poe. Dickinson. Rich. You breathe under the water that writing is. You do not drown, you swim through. You breathe better under writing. You breathe deep and enormous and you expand.

I have a voice!

2008-01-15T00:15:00.000-05:00

I now have a music page. You can hear me read a poem, and I'll be adding more later. Still feeling a little shy about it but I promise my readings will get more spirited.

Go! Listen! I have a voice! I have a voice!

www.myspace.com/maryliswdedomenicis

I really like this guy.

2007-12-31T02:44:00.001-05:00

http://illdoctrine.com/

The Haves and Have Nots

2007-12-31T02:30:00.000-05:00

The Haves and Have-Nots...

Last minute gift shopping at the mall I try to avoid, I tried to avoid spending any money on myself today, but the White Barn Candle Shop with it's 75% off sale lured me over and in so that soon I was rummaging through a bin, searching for a vanilla scented plug in diffuser refill for a diffuser I bought there over a year ago but have been too thrifty to replace. The two-pack refill costs $12.50. So since they were on sale for a mere $5, I thought I might treat myself to one.

While I methodically moved box after box aside, not finding any vanilla refills, a couple, maybe twenty years older than I am, pulled 16 of the refills they needed from the bin and then exchanged polite conversation with another woman about how they have 17 diffusers just on the first floor of their house which are plugged in all year, and they've never had any trouble with them. The couple then walked to the back of the store and found more of their desired scent so that the last number of two-pack refills I saw them load into their shopping basket equaled 25. 25! Even at only $5 a piece, that's $133.75 (with tax). The box says these things last 6-8 weeks. So if each one lasts for two months, that means they have to buy 3x25 refills a year (I'm assuming the remaining 8 were for the upstairs?) That's $401.25 a year, IF they buy them only while they are on sale for $5 instead of their usual price of $12.50.

I know this is all very boring. I'm just saying that I keep forgetting the difference between the haves and have nots is NOT that one class can barely pay their heating bill and the other one can. It's that one class can barely pay their heating bills and the other class can give a shit in four different bathrooms and then cover it up with a pretty scent.

As I Lay Me Down To Sleep

2007-12-29T10:41:00.000-05:00

As I Lay Me Down To Sleep

Last night, head spasms. The unpredictable
unrhythmic head tics and jolts of breath
I try to steady but can't. Felt it come on me
early. Took my medicine. It didn't grow
any wider. I didn't try to fight it. It only
took half an hour for the tics to stop,
for my breath to settle back down into my chest.
Now today. Let's get through it without my body
spazzing on me, okay? Okay brain? My heart
is fine. It's my brain. It's so crowded in there.

I dream, I strain.

2007-12-28T23:43:00.000-05:00

"All the time I dream I dream of Manhattan
or I dream of home. I strain. I leave, I go,
they leave, they go. " ML

I dreamed I pedaled my bike up the mountainside to the top of the hill where I could see Philadelphia's sky-line towering in the distance. I turned back and looked down on my hometown which was far off in the valley below and then looked again at the sky-line. I thought about a girl I know who is moving to that city and I thought "Well, at least her mother can see her from here." I thought it thinking that she would be safer and her mother would be more content. I thought it thinking that I cannot see my son from where I am.

I dreamed my husband had lovers so I had to leave him and had no where to go but to my mother's home. In the dream, as I realized that I had to leave my own home, I imagined the conversation I would have with my mother and how she would respond to my request. I imagined her sitting at a round table drinking a hot beverage and reading a newspaper near a window where sunlight warmed her shoulders. "Of course" she responded. "This will always be your home."

I woke wondering what if I tell my children that I am their home but then I have no home to offer? What then? What then?

I didn't wonder about my husband's loyalty, but I remembered the disloyalty of my first husband, and although I no longer love him, that hurt still twinges. The possibility of disloyalty, in all its forms -- it twinges.

Everything around me is in motion. People are constantly moving from place to place, leaving, returning. On days after nights like these, when I dream of places and the strain to remain or to leave them, I understand the desire to "die at home." And the dreams, in themselves, linger inside me long after I've woken. On days after nights like these I like to entertain myself with ideas of reincarnation, although I have no "beliefs" about what comes after death, I have fun playing with the stories that conceptualize a soul or something like a soul that may be recycled or even shared. I mostly just think that we humans are more sensitive to our surroundings than we realize.

One day someone is going to discover something very important.

Censorship In Art At The Restaurant

2007-12-11T01:16:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone. I'm not a "Bad Penny Poet" though I do offer a venue and enjoy participating. Betty seems to have the best solution I've heard so far: to set time aside at the end of the evening and to hold the uncensored readings only after giving those who'd rather not listen to the pornography -- THAT IS NOT POETRY -- a chance to leave.

Really, if I was that interested in someone's sexual fantasies, I'd go back to seventh grade. There is a huge difference between literature/poetry/visual art/comedy/music et al that is sexual (I, myself have many sexual poems, as well as some artwork) and writing that is pure description of someone's sexual escapades and fantasies, devoid of any real artistic involvement/movement.

I believe that as artists it is impossible for us to ignore what offends us, and that we have a responsibility (those of us who choose to have one) to sometimes offend others -- but when we do, we make certain choices in designing the work that we present. Art without design or intent is not art. Even in our artistic accidents we can identify design. If an "artist's" only desire is to get a hard-on at my expense, I'm not participating.

You see? "Hard-on," in the proper context, may startle just a bit. But I designed it that way. To move you, your mind. Not to move you into my bed.

I am almost certain, from what I've seen, that none of the poets who've attended the open mic nights are what anyone would consider "prudish." They -- I -- we -- can however, distinguish art from smut.

I'll deal art, but not the other.

Thanks for letting me be heard.
Marylisa

A him... to ponder

2007-11-26T00:31:00.000-05:00

Joe's assistant in the kitchen has been "clean" for about a year now. He lives at a half-way house within walking distance of the restaurant, hates it, lives with 14 or so other guys and has been looking for a place of his own. He's been working with us since June.

Before the half-way house he spent a year in rehab in Scranton, PA (might as well be W-B, it's so close). One of our customers, a correctional institute officer, recently remarked that he looks like he may have done time. Just out of the blue....

Anyway, I guess I just don't know what to expect, if anything, because I truly have no idea of what he's going through. When I asked him what he was addicted to, he said "everything" and gave his arm a tap, you know. So I don't know if that means crack or heroin or if they're both the same thing or if he meant both.

He's got a 22 year old son in college, a mom he sees at least once a week, and an ex-wife he's still hung up on, though they've been divorced for 20 years. He said he was always strung out so ruined the marriage.

He's quiet and rigid, never asks much or interacts....I said to him the other day, I guess we'll never see you with a lampshade on your head (trying to break tension cause he's sooo stoney sometimes -- it actually feels like an accomplishment if we get him to smile) and he said, not as long as I'm not drinking...

Oh, and he's got a giant scar across his head from a motorcycle accident which he says didn't really mess up his brain....hmmmmm.

So this guy's obviously got some stories in him. Whenever I get courageous enough to ask him something personal, he answers, but he doesn't ever offer anything up spontaneously. Very regimented. Still addicted to nicotine.....and his hand shakes really badly sometimes.

I guess I'm just wondering if there are things I should be aware of or look out for, since he seems like he was "hard-core" (ugh with the labels!). I try to act like a hard-ass, but I'm pretty gullible, really. The fact that he still loves his wife and mom are reassuring -- it means he doesn't hate women, and with me being his employer and everything... especially after our first cook -- well, that fact helps me to not take his stoney exterior too personally. He's also on depression meds. Like I said, he's not afraid to share, but I don't like to pry too much. I oscillate between wanting to offer him a room to wishing he'd quit.....I'm so weird.

And I'm just now realizing as I write this and admit to myself I will probably never board out a room to a male (other than family) that I have been conditioned to fear men.
Now there's a hmmm to ponder...
hymn to ponder
him to ponder

Radiohead's music is as Joan Miro's Art

2007-11-10T07:15:00.000-05:00

Brilliant composers, both!

Not Naming Names

2007-11-08T00:52:00.000-05:00

Not naming names.

The first time I ever used the N word I was four. I was playing in the yard next door with the five year old girl who lived there, and whom I admired. I could barely wait to run home so that I could ask my mother what this new word meant. I remember the moment very clearly. I was barely inside the back door when I inquired, "Mommy, what is a Nigger?" I'll never forget the look of horror on my mom's face - then she composed herself, and very calmly told me what it meant, why it was used, and why I should never use it. "It means a dirty person -- like calling someone a pig....people call 'colored people' that word," she said, "but even the dictionary says it can be any person -- even a white person can be one. " She went on to explain how hurtful the word was to others, how cruel, and that I should never, ever use the word.

I try to be careful with language. I am not always perfect, I am sure, but I understand the connotations of language, I am aware that words connect and disconnect us. It's said that a picture is worth a thousand words; the opposite also holds: a word is worth a thousand pictures.

One word can drastically alter my perception of a person. Drastically. I guess I don't really expect than anyone should care about what my perception of them is, or that they should live their lives concerned with pleasing or displeasing me, because after all, who am I?

Who AM I?

Whoever I am, this language awareness and sensitivity that I have? I am not alone in it.

Mel Gibson. Michael Richards. The language of rap Music and Bill O'Reilly. They're all over the news. See also: South Park.

Two weeks ago I went to a an all day Poetry Festival hosted by a an active member of the local and Philadelphia literary communities, art communities, and music industries. He knows a few rappers, a lot of poets, has written professionally for our newspaper, The Atlantic City Press, and works to educate young people so that they might use knowledge instead of violence to fend off the horrors of the world as they feel their way through the bramble of reality that they must cut a path through to reach adulthood relatively unscathed. And life thereafter.

One of the events scheduled for the day was a panel discussion on the use of the "N" word. I was very excited about this, as a portion of my poetry addresses racial issues in general, and the use of the "N" word, in particular.

If you don't know my personal history, I can sum it up by saying that I married a black man and was disowned by my family for seven years. The man and I had a child together, then divorced. I loved him and it broke my heart to force myself to move on, but I did it and my heart mended. My family and I "reconciled."

Who am I? Nigger lover.

Words are very powerful.

Once, someone very close to me said to her son "the colors don't mix" when he asked her what her opinion was on mixed marriage. I love these people with all my heart.

Someone else very close to me left a beach recently because there were "big black boys" there and this made the person feel uncomfortable.

People are going to hate me for this blog.

But I hope not.

I replied to this person, "Big black boys -- you mean like Austin?" (my son).

Maybe that was wrong of me, but was it?

I love these people with all
that is left of
my heart.

Who am I if I remain silent? In my eyes? I am worthless.

Silence is the voice
of complicity.

Words are machetes.

And I'm pretty sure that these people I love love me and mean me no harm.

Once a friend's wife told me that she couldn't work in a beauty salon because she couldn't get used to the idea of washing a black person's hair. It skeeved her. I'm sure it dawned on her after the wine wore off (did it ever dawn on her?) that she was talking to ME. ME.

Who am I?

She then went on to explain that she picked nearly a hundred ticks from her dog the previous night.
But doesn't want to touch a black person's head.

I may be off track here, but I doubt it.

I was a coward. I was the "bigger" person. I could have embarrassed the woman, but I chose to remain silent. Shame on me.

After my divorce, when I began dating again, many of the guys I met who were "feeling me out" would ask "Do you date black men now?" "I date men," I would answer.

"All you are is all that you've been taught. And what you are comfortable with. What we are comfortable with is easier on us than change is, which is why we fall back into old habits or repeat things we've heard from others over and over like puppets. At least it seems that way until change occurs and we realize that sometimes the change brings us more comfort than we thought was possible before."

The above? It's what I tell myself about people every time I hear someone say something hurtful.

Just words.

Nigger. Kike. Jewbag. Spic. Fat. Stupid. Ugly.

The panel discussion on "The N Word" was interesting. One black woman whose son looked to be about ten, maybe eleven, said "he gets called it every day at school, but we haven't told him what it means."

She said, "Don't think that doesn't mean we haven't gone to the school about the matter, we have, but we haven't told him what the word means...." She said she didn't want to give the word any power.

I understand that she thinks she is protecting her child. But my own belief is that pretending a name does not exist is like pretending a place doesn't exist. Next thing you know someone you love goes into the wrong town and is hanging from a tree.

One of the panel members said that he didn't believe in censorship of any kind, and that sometimes, among one another (meaning blacks) the N word was okay.

I know, too, that there is a "movement" to take power away from the word by using it so much that it no longer sounds offensive. Maybe that will happen in forty years, I think, but when grown men tell their four year old daughters that it's okay if one of their teachers is black as long "as you don't marry one".....well, maybe in a few hundred years?

A few months ago a black man called his town's occupants "hicks." I found it offensive. He used it over and over until I finally told him that I was uncomfortable with that word in the same way I was uncomfortable with people using the N word.

I've had people say to me "You think about that stuff? Wow. You think about that stuff?"

At the poetry festival, a black writer called my red-headed friend a "blonde" when she did something (I don't even remember what it was now) a bit clumsily. Not everyone at the table heard the remark. But she did, and I did, and he did. Time just froze. For her and for me, anyway. He didn't even realize that he had slurred someone. Blonde jokes were so popular a few years back, and comedy is so hard to resist, especially in awkward situations, that he slipped right into behavior that reflects what he's been surrounded by: blonde jokes. He was actually trying to make her feel better about her mistake when he asked, "having a blonde moment?" She handled it with more grace and good humor than I could have thought quickly enough to muster in such a situation: She wrote a poem about the incident on the spot and then read it to him, getting him to re-examine his response. I'm going to have to ask her for a copy.

I am not the only one who thinks about this stuff. Many great writers have addressed the issue of language and it's power to sway and to persuade, to dominate, to kill.

(Speaking of domination, you do know, don't you -- that women couldn't vote until 1920 and blacks didn't really get to vote until the 1960's?).*

My red-headed friend and the panelist members at the poetry festival, as well as the Network news stations, are all thinking about the way we use language to describe "other".

Obviously, so are the writers of South Park. In "Le Petit Tourette" ?Cartman "discovers the joys of having Tourette's syndrome. Drunk with the power of saying whatever he wants without getting into trouble for it, Cartman lines up national TV coverage to take advantage of his new life with no filters."

If you don't understand that the characters on South Park are not to be emulated, that it is a brilliant political satire combining the most controversial or popular news with comedy to bring about social awareness through the art of entertainment (okay, not all of them, but many!) then you either shouldn't be watching it, or you should, so that you might learn something about the world outside your immediate "arena." Things like it's not really alright to use the words "Jewbag" "Cheap-Ass Jew" "Spic" or "Nigger." That these things resonate and have power over others in ways that you can 't even begin to imagine.

The world is changing. I keep thinking "soon all the bigots will be dead."
But I know I'm wrong. I'm not in denial. I'm humoring myself. They'll be here long after I'm gone.

But I'm here, now. And I can still speak. I just won't name names.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/home.html:

*In May, 1919, the necessary two-thirds vote in favor of the women suffrage amendment was finally mustered in Congress, and the proposed amendment was sent to the states for ratification. By July 1920, with a number of primarily southern states adamantly opposed to the amendment, it all came down to Tennessee. It appeared that the amendment might fail by one vote in the Tennessee house, but twenty-four-year-old Harry Burn surprised observers by casting the deciding vote for ratification. At the time of his vote, Burns had in his pocket a letter he had received from his mother urging him, "Don't forget to be a good boy" and "vote for suffrage." Women had finally won the vote.

http://www.ontheissues.org/askme/15th_amendment.htm:

In 1789, African-Americans were defined in the Constitution as 3/5 of a person for counting representation, and could not vote at all. (Constitution's Article 1, section 2, and elsewhere)
In 1865, following the Civil War, African-Americans were given the right to vote and the "3/5ths clause" was rescinded. (14th and 15th Amendment). The clause relevant to your question is the 15th Amendment, article 1: "The right... to vote shall not be denied or abridged... on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." (the "previous condition of servitude" meant that states couldn't deny the right to vote to those who had been slaves).
For 90 years thereafter, states did all sorts of things to abridge the right to vote for African-Americans. The main means were seemingly "objective" criteria like "literacy laws," which required that a person be able to read before they could register to vote. Since most African-Americans at the time were illiterate, that effectively prevented their voting. There were many cases before the Supreme Court, mostly in southern states, in which means of blocking the vote were removed.
The real change came during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, when the last of the racial restrictions were finally removed. Prior to the 1960s, the Supreme Court had determined that schools could be "separate but equal," which meant there were separate schools for African-Americans. During the 1960s, the Supreme Court enforced the desegregation of the schools on the grounds that "separate is inherently unequal."
Legally speaking, the right to vote came with the 15th amendment. But socially speaking, it took the Civil Rights movement to make it a reality.

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