Monday, November 25, 2019

Catching Scents

Ah, we've entered into the dark months, always a hard time for me. (I appreciate these months, but they're hard.) I came across this piece from about 20 years ago, about the end of winter and thought I'd share it.


I’ve been catching scents: crossing the parking lot at school when suddenly I smell the mud, just briefly, and then it’s gone again. I know that mud, I know that smell, I think, it’s the late winter smell that comes after several days of thawing, the ground soft underfoot, water coming up as you press the earth down. It comes with the sideways sweep of wind on your arms until suddenly you know, without knowing how, that maybe you won’t need to wear a sweater tomorrow, and you start watching the trees for budding. I look for the moss, delicate sharp flowerlets of bright green, no larger than a thumbtack. The grass is still brown, the soil looks dead, but bending closer under the cover of withered grass is the moss: luxurious, rampant, abundant, if oh so tiny. From here on in I know that spring is coming, even if it snows again. I live in this world, I am embedded in this world, I am the world, and even if I forget it sometimes the truth remains because, see, there’s a whiff of mud suddenly as I cross the parking lot at school.
            I hear the birds so clearly now. I woke up this morning thinking kids were playing on the street and it was the birds: loud, joking, calling their good-mornings to the sky and to each other.
            I went for a walk today through town, up by all the older houses and the cemetery. I was going along, in my own head, when I was struck by a rosebush in front of me. How else can I say it: the sight of the tangled branches, the thorns, the dried rose-hips stopped me as surely as if I’d been hit. All the many shades of brown in the new stems, now gray, lined, no longer thorned but weathered, crisp; the delicacy of the rose-hips purple-red-brown and tough, their hard shiny surface surrounded with a lace of leftover leaves. These had lasted the winter, the storms and the wind, the carelessness of people passing no longer looking now that the roses were gone. The roses told me: stop, and, slow down, and I did, I did, in time to see the tree limb weaving the air into being for me, in time to watch the rippling of water beneath my feet. I stopped and looked below the grate and saw the coursing of water two feet below me. There is water beneath my feet! I stood and listened to the water flowing by, on its own way, water tumbling over itself and joined by more and more water winding its way down the streets to the grate, to… I realized I didn’t know where the water went to after that. I left this for another day and continued walking, but before I had even gone five feet I was stopped by another call of water falling, running. Two grates! one on each side of the street, and I stood there and listened to the water running on both sides of me, running down, running down from everywhere, and now I could hear the plink, plink of water dripping onto slate below a tree and the faster fall of water in the gutters and drainpipes along the houses. Everywhere was water, water, and I stood in the middle of it all and listened.


Cheers -
SA

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

#FinishUrBookFall - Oct. Update


This year instead of NaNoWriMo I’m taking part in a new challenge, #FinishUrBookFall. Since the summer I’ve been alternating between two projects (described here) and at some point I realized that I maybe had enough material for the first to start thinking about it as a collection. Possibly a book? Certainly a chapbook. Then the #FinishUrBookFall challenge came along and I figured this would be a good way to focus my attention and really get some work done on this.

What can I say, I like challenges.

And it’s been working. I have more energy and direction around this project than I’ve had before, I’m seeing things come together. At the same time, of course, I’m visited by doubt. I’m repeating myself (ideas, themes, words) – I have nothing new or worthy to say – my writing is obvious, trite…

Then at the same time I read other people’s collections, ones that are meaningful to me, that have given me inspiration or encouragement, and I see ideas, themes, words repeated… only in their work I see it as resonance, or echoes, or other ways of describing the ways that coming back to something again & again strengthens it, or turns it, or fragments it in ways that allow you to put things back together in new and insightful ways. So maybe mine will be useful to someone else in the same way.

(Of course there are the works I read that are so virtuoso that there isn’t any expectation of approaching, I’m content to merely kneel at their feet…)

I was blessed to see Ada Limón recently at the poetry book club I go to (author of Bright Dead Things, The Carrying). Among the questions she answered were ones on how she forms her collections. So I was blessed not only with her presence overall but also with very specific notes on exactly what I’m curious about right now, resonating with thoughts I’ve had about this. Her process isn’t mine, of course, but I think it’s similar enough in ways that I can get guidance from her words.

I currently have about 20 in close to final form, or if not finished, at least ready for other eyes, and another 20 or so in larval form. Not everything will go in so yes, I think chapbook is the right answer. Though I’ve also been wondering about what is missing, what needs still to be written, so who knows… I think perhaps quite a lot. It looks like I will come to the end of #FinishUrBookFall and see I have at least another year’s writing in front of me, let alone revision. But that’s okay. Already this exercise of thinking about putting together a book has led to good questions and new determination. And I find the more I write the more endurance I have for it, the more drive I have. The more ideas. The more I want to study as well…

Sometimes it feels my body can’t contain all I want to do. I remember this feeling from other times in my life and back then I got overwhelmed, more than once… I know better now how to ride it out, the rhythm of pushing forward and then, maybe not quite pulling back but allowing myself not to push for a while. To rest in the other rhythms of my life, the other things that need doing. It helps also that I’m working with all of me these days too, in fact, that’s the only way I could do this.

So onward I go!
S.A.

Thursday, October 3, 2019

Committing to Poetry at Age 47


On the one hand it’s daunting, how little I know about the craft of writing poetry, or even of reading it. I go to these workshops and people speak with such knowledge, sometimes clearly pulling on years of study. Oodles of poets, of theory, of schools of thought. Of their own experience. I’m reading Robert Haas’s book on form and when I do understand what is being talked about it’s clear how much can go into it. Every word, every line. Antecedents and parallels and responses to other people’s work. And I’m stumbling through, a workshop here, book club there, reading an essay about form or craft here and there, there’s so much I don’t know and never can catch up to. And it’s really daunting.

…And at the same time I’m so glad I didn’t have that kind of education, I think I would have gotten myself twisted up and turned away, frozen completely, unable to go on. I’m glad I wrote a lot that wasn’t poetry but somewhat adjacent to it, read a lot just because. I feel I have developed, or am well on my way to developing, my own style – punctuation, line length, rhythm, etc. And I think it would have been a lot harder if I’d been taking classes or doing lots of workshops, trying to take in a hundred pieces of advice. Why? Because I did not stand solid in myself and would have wanted too much to find my way through others’ paths. But I feel solid in myself as a writer now, thanks to hundreds of blog posts and tens of devotions and even tweets, as I try to distill thoughts into 280 characters that don’t offend my ear. And also through my failures: attempting to write/draw children’s books or comics, and then novels. Only to come back to poems, again and again.

I recently received some excellent critical feedback of a few of them – and I can take it now, in a way I couldn’t have five, ten years ago, or even six months ago. It means a lot that I can take it in – disagree in places – and am strong enough in myself for it. This is only possible now that I am living closer to my true self to begin with. I think I might be ready now to take an actual class or commit to a workshop series at some point.

I’m currently working on two projects. The first is a collection of contemporary poems, spanning the last 20 years and set in the U.S. On nature & fear & the city & wonder & the work of figuring things out. Then the second is a new work, set in Bavaria, of a witch and his dragon, or a dragon and xyr witch. I wanted to try my hand at a longer narrative framework with fantastical elements and this is where I was led… It feels way beyond my abilities at the moment but it will also take years to write, I imagine, and I’ll learn what I need to along the way.

Poetically yours,
S.A.

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Crocodile & Cat

So this is a wee bit of something I don't know how to characterize - not a story, exactly, not a poem either, akin to a devotion but not something I'd write for work. But I'm fond of it and thought it should be out there (it originally had a home in my masters thesis).

**********

The crocodile called out to the cat. He was in the river, the cat on the bank, slowly walking, lifting one paw up and putting it down. “You walk carefully,” said the crocodile.
            “With each step I pray.”
            “To whom do you pray?” asked the crocodile.
            “To the god that made me.”
            The moon watched them pass beneath her and breathed out to the stars. The air was cool and bright. The crocodile sank under the water and watched fish dart in front of him. He came up and called to the cat.
            “Cat, what does your god say?”
            The cat pulled his feet beneath him and sat, eyes closed. His whiskers stretched in the moonlight, he lifted his chin to the moonbreeze. “It is all our god, yours and mine.”
            The crocodile ducked under water, embarrassed. The cat sat. The moon watched.
Under water, the crocodile rested his chin in the mud and counted reeds. At fifty he came up, saw the cat, and went back under. He counted frogs. That took longer. At fifty he came up. The cat’s eyes were closed and he said, “It is god who made that water and these reeds and those frogs. You were born of mud, I was born of dust.” The crocodile sank under and counted his teeth, ten times over. When he came up, the cat had tucked his paws under and slept.
The crocodile crept up the bank and lowered his head to the cat. His breath tickled the grass. His eyes were gold. The cat opened his eyes. His eyes were gold. The cat said, “Tell me.”
The crocodile closed his eyes. “What do I say?” he asked.
The cat closed his eyes. “I give thanks for the sun and the rain. I praise the sweet smell of the mud. I dance to the moon and I sing to the wind. When the wind is still, I hum to the earth. I enjoy the frogs. I chant to the trees. All this is god, and I am glad.” He opened his eyes. “What do you do?” he asked.
The crocodile sank low. “I count,” he said.
“What do you count?”
“I count the waterbugs,” he said. “I count the currents. I count the hippos and the frogs and the reeds.” The cat closed his eyes. “I count the raindrops. I count the stones. I count the winds.” The cat sat up and stretched his ears. “I count,” the crocodile said.
“The egret,” the cat said, “names things. She sings these in her sleep.”
“The elephant dreams,” he said, “and whispers these to the ibex.”
He said, “The ibex listens.”
The crocodile raised his chin to the wind. “It is good to pray,” he said.
“It is good to pray,” the cat agreed.
The crocodile slid down to the river and under the water. The cat stood up, stretched his tail, and walked, lifting one foot up and putting it down.

**********

Devotedly yours,
S.A.

Friday, June 28, 2019

So What’s Been Going On With You Anyway?


Hey y’all. There’s been a lot going on in my personal life over the last year, and I haven’t been sure how to talk about it here, or if I even wanted to. Or if it even made sense to keep this blog going.

Eventually, though, I decided I wanted to at least keep this space, so, with a little revision, here we are.

Running
No running right now! Years of ignoring my core, while still partaking in intense physical activity (and probably aggravated by my scoliosis) have led to muscle imbalance and weakness and from there to a chronic knee injury. I’m taking the time right now to really focus on rehab and some other health issues with the goal of being able to return to running and swimming.

Writing
I’ve set aside the novels. They were useful at the time – as a way to keep writing when writing poetry felt too raw/vulnerable, as a way to work through some things I couldn’t look at head-on,  and to prove to myself I could. But poetry is my real love.

There’s a common adage in ministry that you should only do it if you really, really, really, really can’t do anything else. Because why else take up something so challenging and with so little reward. I think the same thing is true of poetry – it’s a calling.

I was trying to articulate for a friend how poetry feels intimately connected to spirit for me and so why making a commitment to it is about more than just words on a page. Here's what I came up with:

That poetry is the medium I live in, breathe with, swim through. Medium as in both as the substance that surrounds me - that sustains and heals and invigorates me - and as the material that I work with.

I’ve been writing new work and revisiting all of my previous writing. There’s not much yet that I feel is complete, or that I’ve gotten enough feedback on to want to share widely (still looking for a poetry buddy!), but I’ll might start posting some work here over the next few months.

Body & Spirit
Longtime readers (don’t know if I have any left!) may see I’ve cleaned up a lot of old posts. Mostly ones to do with goal-setting, or with food/weight-loss. This is probably a surprise given how much time I’ve spent on such posts! But I’ve never found long-term goals to be that useful, as you’ve seen from my inability to keep to them. Short-term goals, yes. Mid-term priorities, for sure. Long-term vision, absolutely.

A lot of those posts were also about me trying to figure out “what should I do with my life” – but I’m feeling pretty clear about that now, thanks very much.
As for the food/weight-loss posts, I’m sure I’ll write more at some point about my eating disorder. (For example, I’ve been interested to learn that there is a higher incidence of eating disorders among the transgender population, particularly among trans masc people.) But in reviewing what I’d written, I can see how far I’ve come since then, and I didn’t want to perpetuate old thinking that proved unhelpful at best and harmful at worst. So while there may be a few references to struggling with food (especially around marathon training), I’ve tried to remove any other specific references.

And that’s it for now! If you found me from Twitter, that’s where I’m most active. If not from there, you’re probably family / friend / longtime reader, drop me a note here if you want to connect.

Peace,
S.A.