balm on monday eve

I have a friend whose father is dying. As our moms met in lamaze class, she constitutes as my oldest friend. I was always scared of water when I was a child. In my childhood photo album is a photo I have always appreciated. Terrified me with a face scrunched into a single cry am held high in the air above the water by her dad’s strong arms. Arms made strong by exercise and conditioning for his cyclist’s regimen. My little kid arms tenaciously wrap around his neck like piranha swim in the water below, water into which he will not let me sink, broad smile stretching out over his face.

In the past few months since the prognosis came as cancer, when the doctors said inoperable, there have been a lot of lasts. Last family photo while he still looked like himself, so she can show her children what her family looked like. Preparation for a life in which he will not be a part. Tonight, she called, leaving a message that he’s getting worse, that it’s becoming more real. I know all about these small moments of real and then the switch back to unreal. She asks me to pray for him and I pray for these moments that will disappear too quickly. Pray for this long hello and this long goodbye. I wish this could all be revoked. Wish I had superhero power to heal. But who am I? And what is this? I am a candle burning in his honor tonight, man who loves fiercely, complicated father with a lifetime cut into months weeks days. I write this as balm to all who love, to love tenaciously in the time given, to not put off for tomorrow what could be said, could be balm for today.

I write for her spirit to submerge in a peace that sees the moments glimmer in spite of the waning light of day. Prayed that she would mirror back peace to his eyes fearful and not ready to close. Below is a poem I wrote for her several months ago, when time still had yet to unfold.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

how to say goodbye

fingers twist, steeple, roof

i don’t know

how to speak
or
how to make this better

instead i sit waiting for you
to die, candle-less vigil

of two. we watch our bridge
burn, eyes rimmed in red kohl.

we fight the medics, fight
for ten minutes more

as the shadow of death now lingers
smoking in the hallway. today

we see

through each other, our green eyed
mirror, gap surmounting those

spent years, polaroid snapshot of
your chariot burning, my steeple crashing.

glass half full kinda gal

It’s 11 p.m. on a Friday night. My 31 year old self is at home tethered to her computer. Revising poems is no small thing. Even the smallest tweak can be maddening. You want the cadence and the sense to all coexist happily. You want to be open to suggestion and know when to drop the eraser. It’s all a fine dance really. I can only imagine the damage and obsession I could give to the poems if given a week off, my mentor’s edits and time on my hands. A friend in New York and I recently talked about how boring we are- he wanting to work every Saturday on his book, me holed up on a weekend night mired in the work.

I want to revisit the word obsession because I think this is the fuel when in manuscript mode. You kind of have to be obsessed to get the job done as it ought. I am grateful for the artists in my life who remind me of that obsession with “getting it better, getting it closer to the core” that give creedence to this path I’ve chosen. I am grateful for the non-artists who let me partake in and see the other side of the coin like a county I visit from time to time and from which I can send postcards- all hand-drawn of course.

Next Friday, I am spending a day in Yuba City, California. This town was founded by Sikhs in 1910 and though they worked the land and built a railroad, they could not own any of it. Their wives were left behind in India, only to follow 40 years later. One of my favorite fiction writers, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, got her start as a poet and wrote the two poems I will be addressing in my senior panel. I had emailed her questions about them and was delighted to find her responses in my in-box this morning. Each of the poems is written from a different perspective: one male and the other female. The investigative journalist in me wants to go do research, wants to place myself in a space of dreaming without having. And this feels close to home really. But I’m a glass half full kinda gal. A gal who sees there are stories to be told, stories that need a storyteller and I just happen to have a pen in hand.

hero or foe

I spent the greater part of the evening toggling between work emails and poetry revisions. In the midst of disemboweling weak verse from the pencil scratches on the taped into my Moleskine revisions, I watched “Heroes.”

The theme of this season centers around “Villains” and what its intent seems to be drawing out is there is a bit of villain in each of us. It just matters on who you listen to, who you hang around and what you choose.

I think one thing about the 30’s that I am finding refreshing is a sense that I don’t have to “try” to be anything other than what I am: Unapologetic to my convention friends planning to dance until they have to work the convention the next day; able to turn down an invite to dinner, in place of me, my journal of taped in revisions and a slab of haddock on a plate.

Boston, what am I supposed to learn from you? City of intellects, city of thugs?

So much remains a question mark- keeping score through its snaking like a river. River that will wash away the frozen minutes, the misspent hours, the telltale start of something on its way to excellence in place of the inert now, the reckoning of the present with the future. Hero, foe, all I ask is to speak aloud, “yes” each day and to inhale this mystery’s unfolding.

On the road

I’m writing this at a checkered table deep in the Hudson Valley. Though darkness has swept over the house, today held moments of intense beauty. We drove up and down the winding backroads of the Woodstock area passing trees on fire in oranges and reds, yellows and greens holding onto the last shreds of summer. As one in love with autumn, I enjoyed watching the leaves physically changing color and listening to their rustle as they finally sighed, falling from their branches. I learned names of small birds- titmouse, Carolina wren, hairy woodpeckers and baby cardinals as we watched them peck at the feeder filled with peanuts- as we worked in the kitchen on laptops. I befriended a chipmunk and in the car today we saw a black bear loping along the side of the road until he found a tree stump and climbed up staring out at us. I beheld a monarch butterfly perched atop the petals of butterfly flowers closing its wings, opening them.

What this reminds me of: During college I spent a summer in the South of France, lazily walking the streets at the end of a long day in class, at lunch, now “licking the windows” on my afternoon strolls. When our study abroad program ended, a few of us set out for Italy. A deep forlorn valley formed when I left France. In spite of the beauty of Italy- and it was beautiful, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t get France out of my mind. I had left France, voracious for more. And the more couldn’t be filled by the Duomo, by Michelangelo, by gelato, by the weathered streets and cheery fountains in Italy.

A sense of doom lodged itself in me at Chelsea Pier yesterday as the sun was setting. No longer could I walk the length of the pier to Union Square, taking in the people, iPod in ear. No longer could I hop on and off the subway train at 11 p.m. thronged with people awake, wide eyed, thirsty for the night. Instead the sun set over Jersey City and a recognition of leaving entered every open orifice. I accounted it as a lack of rest, a need for some private time but today awoke to find it hanging over me like mist. This veil of longing for a city that is not mine but that somehow is everyone’s.

San Diego Declassified

I had two friends in college named Kris and Josh. As roommates and fellow musicians, they were a fun pair, but I think the thing I loved most about them was their spirit of whimsy. Kris would happen to mention on a Monday that they’d flown to Chicago the weekend prior, “just because” they wanted to see the new exhibit at the Art Institute. I loved that sense of wind blowing and ability to go.

There are times when being an adult is exhilirating. Saturday was one of them. Earlier the previous week, I decided to hop an airplane destined for San Diego leaving SF at the tune of 10 p.m. at night. With a comp day under my belt, a visit owed to my dear friend Min and the lovely people at PI to meet, I made the flight. In the meantime, I hung out with Min. Sunday was spent walking the beach and drinking pina coladas, then watching a movie. Monday I traipsed around SDSU and met with poets who were likeminded and passionate about their craft along with an entire day of poetry revisions. I was writing myself into a revision by the end of the day. Squeezing in a stop at the local fro-yo store (because you KNOW tart plain yogurt with fresh raspberries is music to my tongue) I took a long walk with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. Below are a few photos of the excursion. What did you do this past weekend and when was the last time you took an impulsive trip?

Sunday afternoon indulgence

Sunday afternoon indulgence

Originally uploaded by indieaz

Let’s all have some ice cream, shall we?

I’m watching you

I’m watching you

Originally uploaded by indieaz

Min

Mindy

Originally uploaded by indieaz

See the wave machine in the background. One day we will become world class pseudo-surfers!

Rent-a-bike

Rent-a-bike at Mission Beach

Originally uploaded by indieaz

at Mission Beach