Lo and behold

July 2010.

For those of you who might still stumble upon this ghost town of a blog, I haven’t stopped writing, but I have moved. Remember, this is called La Vie en Route. Life on the go (& if I have my druthers, I’m a go kind of girl)…

Follow me over to La Vie en Route for poetry, recipes versed in story and art.

Or stay here &

watch the skeletons of hay bales dance in the wind,
wind knock on the saloon door hanging just by hinge
wait for that high noon that is slow to come

Can you tell I want to see True Grit?

Under a Waxing Crescent

Crickets.

It’s what you might have heard from me if you check this blog regularly. I have been so tired and fraught with matters that have left my inspiration to cook zippered shut in a bag shoved in the corner of my room. Proverbially speaking of course.

See, my dad died a little over two months ago.

And with that came eating, not eating. Crying, not crying. All spanning moments tracing into hours that have now brought me into month two. So perhaps this might explain the absence. I have been funneling any sort of energetic spurt to write into composing threnodies or letters. And then finding myself sleeping, sleep-walking, trying to eke out the semblance of what I remember myself to be like before the sky was rent in two. I can be pretty good at pretending (even fooling myself) into being what I need to be in the moment. I have put myself (mostly) in the hands of other people to make me food, to try and nourish my belly, while I hunger and thirst for the solid ground to anchor me. Some nights involve chocolate and others swimming. It’s amazing how grief has its own appetite and it’s the one I feed out of priority.

For a week, I just wanted to lie still. For a month, I did not want to leave my house. But the living go on living.

So the focus these days is simple survival. Move, don’t move. Cry, don’t cry. And the flurry of discordant emotions will continue playing roulette. Photos and recipes to come later as they are wont to do.

let’s get social

Who doesn’t like a good story and when I mean a story, I mean a person. You’ve heard “don’t judge a book by its cover” and while the genesis of this phrase may have started with a book, let’s just say more often than not it’s intended for people.

Journalism, waitressing, coffee barista, even librarian- the only similarity shared in these hats of the past was people. My blood starts flowing faster it seems, heart speeds up when I think about an opportunity to connect. I’ve been thinking a lot about words like “connection” and “community” lately. Where I think they may boil down for me is delight and opportunity of the online meeting the necessity of the offline. Perhaps the point is that one begets the other or at the very least informs the other.

Poetry can be like that too. A person writes a poem. The poem meanders into the hands of another person, who then ascribes their own ideas and value onto the poem. And the poem outlasts both of them, possibly touching countless other hands or nudging into other ears and eyes.

Narrative poetry // photographic poetry- it all belongs to the people.

Beside myself in a concrete jungle

And so it begins. A girl affectionate for cities and all their clash of overlap gets to work in the city. A love story begins to unfurl.

I knew I have a thing for cities. And I knew that San Francisco captured my attention in its unapologetic way years ago. But working in the city is so much different than just living in the city.

My body feels the earthquake tremors. My body scuttles along sidewalks at a furtive pace, knowing I have 20 minutes to get where I need to go without a second to lose. My body memorizes the divets on street corners, telling my feet when to cross.

Somehow, it seems as though bits and bobs of the New York I cherish are mine here, in San Francisco, hometown of my own making.

I can’t begin to underscore the exhiliration enough. The joy of waiting at the bus stop or better yet hanging onto the metal pole, body jammed next to other tuna bodies. And somehow I fall in love all over again. The world becomes new and the familiar shellacked with gleam.

Part of this newfound world is time not spent behind a wheel 30 minutes one-way and 30 the other. Instead, a book spine is cracked open in my hands. I have finished two books in one hectic week and find myself like a cup brimming over, find myself grateful and trying not to smile at each person I pass.

On feathered things

Some big changes are afoot. One such change is no longer being employed at the company that almost captured a decade of my life. It’s good to calibrate and sometimes re-calibrate along the journey. I remember graduating from school and thinking I would be overseas in six months. Eight years later, this is not where I would have expected myself, let alone, expected myself to be happy.

Have you ever been prone to give up? Equal parts dreamer and realist, depending on the moment and the day, I walk that tightrope of belief and disbelief. Lately, or more specifically 2008 on, I have encountered many people around me giving up. Hands in the air. Stamped resumes filling in-boxes. The recession has definitely played a part in that buzz kill. Complacency founded in fear cripples more than it builds up. And so, hope can either be the bird that chirps the unknown mystery inside of you aloud or the feathered thing flying into the room that must be shot.

Enter Emily Dickinson’s poem “254″. In it, she introduces “hope” as the “thing with feathers”. I can almost hear each of the stanzas as music: 1: major keys, bright, sunny // 2: minor keys introduced, an extended sweep across a soprano violin contrasts the crash and boom of deep piano keys // 3: violin pizzicato to the finality of chords held on a half note.

I wonder that hope is not something easily held onto. It’s much easier to let go of it because sometimes its surface is chilled and other times hot sand. How does hope play out in today’s world as a gritty counterpart to its childish reputation? Hope costs and the cost of hope deferred, as a proverb has said, “makes the heart sick.” This begs the question, “is hope worth it?” As life is meant to be lived in full hue, hope is the necessary void sometimes lacking from our lives. It gives the outline to the right now by separating it from what could be. Hope requires tenacity and a firmness of spirit which belies the lightness of the word itself.

Moving into a new position and a new year of life, I’m choosing a new lease on life: one imbued with hope.

254
Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers-
That perches in the soul-
And sings the tune without the words-
And never stops- at all-

And sweetest- in the Gale- is heard-
And sore must be the storm-
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm-

I’ve heard it in the chillest land-
And on the strangest Sea-
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb- of Me.

Artist to Artist

I appreciate how struggle and suffering are the chisel to the marble so to speak- or they can be hammer to chisel. The story of Grant Achatz is well known in culinary circles. Chef creates new restaurant experience, Alinea in Chicago, for Americans, wins accolades and recognition from peers only to find out he has cancer of the mouth. His tongue, an instrument to his knife and pen cannot for a time taste anything. It has been said before and is a good comparison of Beethoven hearing music in his head much like Achatz tasted in his head. His story is one that like many others made me root for him, pray for him, desire to see him pull through stronger. Earlier this year, he posted a book proposal he’s written for a book he was shopping around on “The Atlantic Monthly”. I am invigorated by engaging art for my art and smiled when I came across his thoughts:

“Everything that I see, hear, and feel, I relate to food. When I go to a movie and watch the cinematography, I ask myself why the director chose that lighting, those colors, that setting and then I imagine scenarios where we light Alinea in a similar fashion or dress a waiter in an unusual outfit to mirror the food, or create a mood with similar dialogue.”

He goes on to say that most of the ideas are not used, but I love how he evaluates the art around him with an appraiser’s eye of how it can teach him, illuminate opportunities for further fusion of experience. So how have you been engaging the art around you into your art?

Seeing the Light

I have a bit of a tendency toward thinking about the morbid. As I type this, my black lacquered nails tap the keys furiously.

This morning I found out that a friend is in very critical condition. I’m thinking about death and about losing two legs and how the unconscious self recognizes the shearing off of self.

This all started with reading Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Rilke’s “Requiem for a Friend”. Upon reading this poem for the first time, I felt such a deep resonance with its direct addresses, its wanting to speak of the usually unspeakable. There is an intimacy and childlike pleading that occurs within its confines that plucks me like a string. Its beauty is tragic in a loss that feels without bottom. I am taking my time re-reading it and want to invest the time to get into the poet’s perspective of life after several months of not having that person in it. What does the five month mark look like? The 12 year mark?

As my father put it so eloquently, you get to a point where death is seen as a positive option. When you’re young, there is an interesting dichotomy of reckless immortality mingled with the delicacy of not being fully formed yet. You think or know you will get a chance to experience everything that is ours to enjoy before the final closing of the eyes. You think.

Poetry speaks to those unknowns; it blankets the chill of the uncertain by giving voice to the scary truths and possibilities that for some echo in the deepest chambers and for others are on the cusp of the line of vision, dictating how their steps play out.

This translates to how faith works itself out, for me personally. I have a quote by Lesslie Newbigin on my desk that drives it home for me:

“I do not want to suggest that faith is easy. There are black hours when faith seems to die, when illusions seem true and the truth seems an illusion. But I know that they will pass, not because I have a firm grasp of Him, but because He has His grip on me and I know that I cannot evade Him. He is the living Lord, who was dead and is alive forevermore and has the keys of death and hell. I believe in Him: I can do no other.”

And so the best that I can come up with is to live in the potential of the day. To drill down in the poetry we need to fully realize this life. Rilke included.

A change a comin’

I have 80% decided to publish a one-time journal. 80% rather than 100% because I am still in the exploration phase and analysis phase, but I have an idea, a poetry comrade who’s interested in helping and a gnawing curiosity that is pushing this nearer to closing the 20% gap. Stay tuned.

Bad Habits Put to Bed

With the arrival of June is the stark realization that half the year is gone. Never to be seen again. And what do I have to show for it? Deepening love for one character of a guy and a lot of travels (minus a now defunct trip next week to NYC).

The writing has not been in hibernation, but in a state of germination. It’s as if waking from the haze of academia is just taking its sweet time. You know those kids who would cry when they left home and call their parents every single day from camp? I never was one of those kids. Instead, when I returned home, I would pine away alone in my room mourning the cacophony of sound, kids and activity that now gave way to silence. And while post-graduation has been no malaise, I have allowed the other parts of my life to begin eating away at the time that for two years was obsessively inhabited by poetry.

But no more.

I had this quirky last minute opportunity to go to France in a part-work / part-leisure excursion. Some people have places that evoke a spiritual connection for them and France has been it for me for some time. The circumstances around this trip happened so quickly and came together so well that I couldn’t help but see and wonder what His design might be or what He wanted to convey to me.

Enter waking up at 4 a.m. No jetlag roused my sleeping form into the vertical position. A poem (or two) did. And they came so quickly. Urgently, as if tiny eggs hatching to produce the small vibrant creatures of poetry. I felt a rush in being back in my right mind again. Living with “poetry mind” calls a certain mindfulness to replace the typical zooming through life that is my modus operandi. And this is where France typically is my biggest reminder to slow down. Sip the wine, so to speak, rather than the slurp.

I took some ridiculously long walks in Paris, through the light rain and felt at home in the San Francisco-like climate. While listening to an original score of electronica music with grey skies framing the beauty, I walked with camera in hand, letting the road take me forward. My self-direction for the 2 days in Paris consisted of taking my time, not rushing, getting a little lost if need be and soaking in the touristy spots (which I would often counter is so unlike me) but I’d never had THAT Paris experience, so it worked out well. And amazingly I never got lost. We fear the failure of the almost perfect experience, which I think sometimes tends to cause the inertia of not trying at all. By allowing myself freedom, I discovered haunts over the course of my jaunt that would have remained hidden. A question for you, “Do you ever feel like you’re living your life too safely? OR Do you ever feel you’re living your life for someone else?”

My reading companion during the Paris leg, “Art and Fear” is a must for any working artist (or struggling one). Written by a photographer and a painter, they talk about the issues that drive artists to create and the things that keep them from creating. It continued the unraveling epiphany for me. God and I walk. It’s what we do to connect and I felt His presence very strongly over my little forays in Paris and Cannes. It felt good to feel Him again as the winter seems to be finally closing. But this next season, who knows what it will bring? It does not appear like anything I’ve ever encountered with Him before, but does not dissipate His proximity. As grey skies roil above, the questions come and not from a place of incertitude.

Artistically, since my return from France, I have continued writing poetry and other projects. This time, working on a book review and considering a new project that will keep me busy for some time to come.

Though New York is eluding me right now, as a friend said, “You always have Paris.” And a few orangettes from Fauchon tucked away for a rainy day.

Bridge to Hope

My friend Todd committed suicide November 17, 2005. He and I met volunteering at a coffeehouse for homeless street kids what feels like an eon ago. He sparkled and could make any kid feel at ease. A few of us including Pam and Darren raised money for suicide prevention a few months after by walking 18 miles in the Out of the Darkness walk. It was a small effort on our part but somehow helped us remember him and honor him.

Thursday night was the Maundy Thursday service at church. This commemorates the Last Supper Jesus spent with his disciples. We ate soup and hunks of bread. We sang songs and read passages from the Bible. There’s this one point in the main passage preached from John that says Jesus in the fullness of His understanding of who He was, full of power wrapped a towel around his waist and proceeded to wash the feet of the disciples. It seemed a good time to me to go home and watch my current Netflix that had been waiting for the right time.

“The Bridge” chronicles the lives of several people who commit suicide by flinging themselves off the Golden Gate Bridge. It also discusses the allure that this bridge painted International Orange has for those wanting to end their lives. This documentary feels at moments like a re-enactment. But that’s the thing, the shock of it, as well as the tentative walking across the bridge multiple times plays a trick on the brain accustomed to violence in movies or television. Instead what you’re seeing is the last moments of these peoples’ lives. What you’re hearing is the perspectives of the people around them trying to trace the road leading to the Golden Gate.

Again, I was burdened with the weight of inexistence toppling that of existence. Thinking about Jesus knowing He was going to die and praying into his moments before arrest. Grateful that He chose to go through with a death that was nothing if not painful. If not solitary. Because only through this could death lose its sting. Life beyond life.

Recently, the same friends, Pam and Darren gave birth to a baby boy named Samuel Todd…