| Poetry Exercise |
[Oct. 21st, 2009|12:14 pm] |
In my class, one of our exercises was to go to a cafe or a bar or somewhere loud and busy and try to write a description of our surroundings while being open to any interruption and writing it down - overheard speech, music, etc... The idea being to open yourself up more to what the Outside... Here's mine, really unedited and unpunctuated. Written on the subway:
Chugging rhythm a whispered S fat man sleeping on my shoulder legs as always spread too wide that is not like her Cindy calculate the miles I'm waiting no assistance medical wet subway floor black with white speckles I know umbrellas shaking a quiet man at peace stands stoically I know when you're not feeling well stand clear striped soggy scarves the extra boxes are here local train behind us shiny portable music glimmering hope shaking beige gloves empty after the first days use in months he's always here throwing things away stuff you can't find the train can't decide express or local she's a livewire we'll get off at 14th street slowed down watch our parents he's changed a lot becoming very forgetful two donuts what happened to that strawberry donut dad you just ate it three short-haired women in glasses middle-aged best friends like middle school when friends were always the same shape and size flying past crushed faces thought this was their train their way to move on nobody does have a false face two red umbrellas I didn't know them 12 years sexual harassment is a crime thin and trim and tan this is us. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 26th, 2009|12:47 pm] |
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In an e-mail to me, a friend wrote: "you've always been a little too ethereal for a standard issue work place". I think this is the loveliest compliment I've received in a while. |
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| Airstream Dream |
[Aug. 21st, 2009|12:47 pm] |
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I handle wet clumps of laundry, tugging it from the resisting metal ring. I fold wrinkled piles of sheets, crinkled pillowcases. I clean the kitty litter, wiping away stinky streaks of yellow, sweeping stray pieces of sand. I chop olives, tomatoes, and parsley, boil water for pasta. Each small chore that will have to be redone over and over. I stand tired in the kitchen, and my mind strays 2,000 miles away. An airstream trailer reflecting the light of the full moon over a stretch of New Mexico night. A room so small in a quiet place. These years, I have learned how to take care of me. How often I need to clean to survive, to be comfortable. How to cook just enough for one, how to pack it all up and begin again every year or so. I am so afraid that I will lose this new, that by breaking the pattern I will break something, that I’m not good enough for this and that’s why I was alone for so long. I want this shared space, this man at my side. I just don’t know how to keep the airstream dream alive. |
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| The slow rhythms of an Italian train... |
[Jul. 29th, 2009|01:25 pm] |
A train cinches a mountain’s waist, rusty brown wrapping around summer green, rhythms soothing in their rickety uncalm. Sunlight through transparent leaves, the train inching its way toward its destination. I yet again failed to look at the arrival time when choosing my train and have wound up taking the über-local, cutting through small peasant towns that I have never heard of. I am the only foreigner on the train, the rest of them having chosen a more express route to Napoli through Roma Termini. Smoke lingers just above my bench-style seat, in sight of the sign that reads ‘Vietato Fumare’. I wave it away, back towards the soldier it belongs to, as my walkman starts to jam. The batteries must be dying – it’s playing a U2 verse too slowly, Bono’s falsetto lowered to an eerie and monstrous tone. After some fumbling, I give up, putting away the headphones and sliding open the window to alleviate the stifling heat. The train curves through vines of what look like yellow wisteria blossoms, the scent coming in reminding me distantly of Virginia honeysuckle.
When the four-car train stops, our car gains two passengers: a modestly dressed middle-aged woman and an elderly nun in a grey habit. The younger woman heads immediately to the window, shutting it forcefully, muttering something in a heavy dialetto about how the draft will make us all sick. I long to disagree, but am already too familiar with this cultural difference (having slept in the un air-conditioned apartments of friends where all of the blinds and windows are kept closed, even at night). I sigh, pulling out my train itinerary to fan myself. It does nothing, and I remain drenched in sweat.
The nun speaks to me in a very formal Italian, asks where I am from and where I am headed. She says that she is very impressed that I am travelling around Italy by myself, that I am comfortable travelling alone. Unlike other Italians from small towns that I have met, she does not seem to judge me for it, for being a woman alone in a foreign country. She is full of curiosity about America and my impressions of Italy. Like many other Italians I have met, she displays surprise and delight that a foreigner would be at all interested in learning Italian. The beauty of the language must escape those who were born into it.
The train pulls to a stop in a small mountain town, and the nun thanks me for the conversation as she gets up to leave. She wishes me well on my journey, and I express the same to her. As she pulls open the car door and nods to me with a warm smile, a welcome breeze floods the train. I watch her walk slowly along the platform until she reaches a small group of her sisters, and I watch them grasp hands as the train pulls away. Letting the slow rhythm of the train soothe me, I fall asleep to the soft green curves of mountains, the Italian language weaving itself into my dreams. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 16th, 2009|04:39 pm] |
afternoon tea and a handful of walnuts to the tune of lucinda williams. spent the afternoon driving the late night virginia roads of my mind, reliving nights some 15 years ago, all thanks to a soundtrack that kept playing on pandora that took me back to the full moon's light over curving roads, Virginia woods, back when i brimmed with hope for everything and everyone, myself included, in the days when sleep was always far from my mind. |
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| Brooklyn Rooftops |
[May. 26th, 2009|02:13 pm] |
One of the glorious things about the warmer weather is that it gives me and M. more space. Our tiny, cramped Brooklyn apartment gains another floor - our roof deck. The rooftop is shared between the top four apartments in our building, and each apartment has its own designated portion. Most of the roof is just plain tar, but M. built a really nice finished roofdeck on our portion. It's really wonderful - there is a view of the Manhattan skyline, the Statue of Liberty (tiny, off in the distance), nice cozy deck chairs with cushions, and M.'s favorite toy, a sparkling new grill. Let me tell you, if I had known how many dinners I wouldn't have to cook, I would have made him buy one ages ago. So not only do we now have extra space, but I have extra time to myself as well. Time to rescue a dying succulent that had been absorbing all of the negative energy in my office, time to pot basil, oregano and mint plants, time to try to grow chives, parsley and dill from seed. Time to take a film class - Gendering Italian Cinema! Anyway, there was a lot of rooftime this weekend. Background music provided by the out-of-tune hippies a few buildings down, watching night descend on the city as Christmas lights brighten up other rooftops. |
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| April... |
[Apr. 15th, 2009|10:41 am] |
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April in New York has been gloomy and grey, wintry mornings complete with January's coat. Forsythia blooms bright and hopeful on the side of Brooklyn's traffic-clogged streets, a few daffodils scattered around her skirts. I'm running on empty, too many months of work, transitions, and the only escapes since September being family-focused, and thus not really escapes. So, Saturday I leave for St. Barth's, to the so called France in the Caribbean, for some well-needed rest, sun, and pain au chocolat. I cannot wait and am willing to brave the 15 minute flight from St. Maarten to St. Barth's to land on the shortest runway in the world if it means there is rest and sunlight at the end of it. |
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| The language of poetry |
[Feb. 2nd, 2009|05:04 pm] |
I’m trying to keep my poetry reading mind sharp for my upcoming workshop on the prose poem. I was reading Naomi Shihab Nye the other night when M. walked in and said hello. I didn’t respond immediately because my brain was wrapped around the task of grasping the meaning of a line, and so he spoke again thinking I had not heard him. When I pulled away from my book, I explained that reading poetry can often be like reading in a language that isn’t yours. It requires that extra concentration to capture the different levels of meaning. We talked about poems for a while. He told me that because he doesn’t have any background in poetry, he doesn’t quite know where the emphasis is when he reads it. He understand more if he hears it read aloud. This is so interesting to me, as I am the exact opposite. At readings, I always wish I had printed copies so that I could grasp more of the piece. I miss so much if it is just read to me.
M. asked me to read a poem. I scanned the spines of my books and thought about what to read to him. There are so many poems that move me, but I realized on Saturday that the ones that have stood out over the years aren’t the light and lovely ones. More often, I am drawn to more somber poetry. Like Audre Lorde’s “Power”, about the poet’s angry and distraught reaction to the death of a 10 year-old child who was shot by a police officer. This was one of the first poems that showed me what poetic language could really do. Then there was Pablo Neruda’s “Explico algunas cosas” that I read in a Spanish lit class in college. I immediately wept at his beautifully simple and heartbreaking description of the Spanish Civil War. I am reminded by something I saw on Elizabeth Alexander’s (the inaugural poet) website “Poetry is not meant to cheer; rather, poetry challenges, and moves us towards transformation. Language distilled and artfully arranged shifts our experience of the words – and the worldviews – we live in.”
Since it was late at night, I chose something a little less intense for his first reading.
( what I am asking you for when I ask you for breakfast ) |
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| Day 5 |
[Dec. 22nd, 2008|02:11 pm] |
Today, the happiness would have to be my most delicious lunch from Massawa, an Ethiopian/Eritrean restaurant. Chickpeas with ginger, a lovely golden spiced mixture of potatoes, carrots, peppers and broccoli, and amazing collard greens with garlic. Perfect for a day like today, when the wind is an icy burn on my skin and I can't quite get warm. |
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| Days 3 and 4 |
[Dec. 22nd, 2008|09:56 am] |
3: I spent the afternoon with my father at the Metropolitan Opera's matinee performance of Massenet's Thais starring a Christian Lacroix-clad Renee Fleming. What a lovely way to spend a chilly Saturday afternoon, warm and cozy and listening to beautiful music. The violin solo in the middle was so stunning that the soloist took his own curtain call. Then I nursed my favorite cocktail (a Ponce de Leon: Calavados, orange bitters and tonic) while having dinner at Cafe Des Artistes.
4: Wore my flannel pajamas until 5pm, had some down time for the first time in forever (which I mostly spent unpacking). M and I got our first Christmas tree, a lovely fat balsam tree from Quebec (delivered by a sweet young resident of Montreal who happily took some home-baked cookies as a tip). Last night, I went to sleep with the mingling scents of balsam and chocolate-chip cookies. |
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| Day 2 (of Happy Postings) |
[Dec. 19th, 2008|09:41 am] |
Courtesy of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) boomtownrat, I discovered that U2 are releasing their new album on Monday, March 2nd. Hooray! This is the best news I've heard all week. Forgot to mention, if you have a chance to check out U2 3D, if it is still in theaters, it is amazing. Saw it at the IMAX and it was an incredibly intense concert experience. |
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| Black Vinyl |
[Oct. 28th, 2008|12:35 pm] |
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Why is it harder than I thought to find tight, shiny black vinyl pants in New York City that actually fit me? |
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| Chocolate Chip Cookies |
[Oct. 28th, 2008|11:42 am] |
These are, of yet, the best chocolate chip cookies to come out of my oven. I can't quite explain how good they are, but if you're into baking, I recommend trying them. I found the recipe here
I tweaked it a tiny bit: I used pastry flour instead of all-purpose flour, all brown sugar instead of a mix of white and brown (I'd recently read that this makes cookies tastier), I added two teaspoons of vanilla instead of 1 1/2, and I sprinkled a little sea salt on top of the cookies while they were baking. Also, I always use organic butter, eggs, flour and sugars. And I only bake with seasalt. I also used Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips instead of chunks. Also, don't worry if you don't have a mixer - I don't. I wasn't patient enough to let the dough chill an hour, I think I only made it a half hour. |
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| Baking |
[Oct. 19th, 2008|05:18 pm] |
I am suddenly quite addicted to baking. In the past couple of weeks, I have made cardamom chocolate chip cookies, whole wheat apple muffins, chocolate spice cookies, iced pumpkin cookies and chocolate cookies with chocolate chips and a chocolate peppermint glaze (a Nigella recipe). I am trying to stop myself from baking pear ginger muffins and cowboy cookies today. It's not that I'm craving baked goods - I don't actually eat very much of what I make. I bring the baked goods to Mike, work, my neighbors upstairs. I find the process quite meditative and relaxing, and I feel accomplished when there's suddenly a plate of a finished product in front of me. It's not like the other messiness of life, unfinished projects in my apartment, confusion and indecision with living situations and the real estate market and whether or not I will be in New York in a year. It's not like my writing, something I've been doing a lot more of since June (because of my fiction and poetry workshops) but without a lot of satisfaction in the final (if there can be such a definitive term) product. Even if I am happy with and proud of a piece I submit to my workshop, ten women ten years younger than I dissect it and take out every piece that matters to me and I am left feeling like an outsider who doesn't belong in their little intellectual club.
Baking is different. There is absolutely a spiritual side of it. I love the process, the slowness of it, the patience, feeling the dough on my hands. I don't have electric mixers, and I only have about a foot of counterspace in my small NY apartment (meaning the bowl of the flour, cocoa and baking powder sits resting on my TV while I combine sugars, eggs and butter on the counter). My oven is half the size of a normal oven. And somehow, still, I love it.
Perhaps I need to figure out a way to make this a small business - even just start selling grad students cookies on the cheap from my desk at work. |
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| Good things about living in New York |
[Oct. 7th, 2008|12:01 pm] |
One marvelous thing about living in New York is the deliciousness of the apples from the farmer's market. On Thursdays, I buy a huge bag of honeycrisp apples to last through the week. Right now, they are perfectly crisp, a tad sweet and a tad tart all at the same time. And they make lovely peanut butter apple sandwiches (today's lunch, on sunflower seed bread from the Polish market). I need to find a good baking recipe that involves apples (sadly, it can't be a pie - I have less than a foot of counterspace). I remember making amazing apple muffins in a home ec class in 7th grade - might give that a try.
I love the autumn air, the chill from open windows, the cold bathroom tile in the mornings that makes me yearn for slippers. These are beautiful days to walk through Riverside Park on lunch breaks, watching dogwalkers with their canine collections, scolding nannies with double strollers, Columbia students jogging past. The leaves haven't begun to change in New York City yet - I think the city is always slow to change, but it's in the air.
Had a lovely weekend at home. Entertained my long-time friend T on Friday - with burritos delivered from Long Island City. We watched an excellent documentary called Turmoil about the political issues in Venezuela over the last twenty years. Afterwards, we watched Labyrinth. Back when Jennifer Connelly really couldn't act and David Bowie wore ridiculous tight pants. Saturday, I baked chocolate-chip cardamom cookies. M and I watched Casino Royale (I hadn't seen it yet) and had grilled kielbasa from the excellent Polish butcher around the corner, as well as cauliflower goat cheese gratin with bacon. Sunday, more baking, sitting quietly leafing through ten books of poetry, and then a Bleak House marathon and a yummy pasta with fresh spinach and tomato sauce. I am completely addicted to Bleak House, I imagine I'll finish it by tomorrow.
This weekend, a wedding in Virginia farm country. |
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| Supreme Court Decisions |
[Oct. 2nd, 2008|03:49 pm] |
As was demonstrated in an interview with Katie Couric, Sarah Palin is unable to name any U.S. Supreme Court Case other than Roe v. Wade.
The Rules: Post info about ONE U.S. Supreme Court decision, modern or historic, to your LJ. (Any decision, as long as it's not Roe v. Wade.) For those who see this on your f-list, take the meme to your own LJ to spread the fun.
I had to present a Supreme Court case to my high school AP Government class, and I chose DURO V. REINA (1990). I was intensely interested in Native American tribes and government, and had read a lot about jurisdictional issues. From Wikipedia:
"In Duro v. Reina, 495 U.S. 676 (1990), the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that Indian tribes could not prosecute Indians who were members of other tribes for crimes committed by those nonmember Indians on their reservations. The decision was not well received by the tribes, because it defanged their criminal codes by depriving them of the power to enforce them against anyone except their own members. In response, Congress amended a section of the Indian Civil Rights Act, 25 U.S.C. § 1301, to include the power to "exercise criminal jurisdiction over all Indians" as one of the powers of self-government."
For more, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duro_v._Reina |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 2nd, 2008|10:47 am] |
In Sanskrit, there is no way of saying “thank you” or “sorry”.
Sometimes, this can be an interesting place to work. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 4th, 2008|12:34 pm] |
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cicadas crack open their crunchy shells with a sound that tastes like late summer. their seeming bodies lie scattered over remnants of long lost pine needles, red with august’s rust, prodded by the curious fingers of children. or rather one child, always alone, outside in a world where she learns her own language. of the bark of great pines too wide for ten of her to hug, of these brittle brown skeletons translucent as the foggy lenses of her cheap child’s sunglasses. |
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| Poetry |
[Aug. 29th, 2008|09:01 am] |
I submitted poetry samples to apply for an Intermediate Poetry Workshop here at Columbia earlier in the week. The Creative Writing department called yesterday and said that the professor who read my samples recommended me for the Advanced Poetry Workshop. It is so marvelous to get good news every now and then, particularly during a really hard week. And how awesome, since I didn't even apply for advanced! Now it's time to study poetry terminology all weekend. |
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