dwelling

Libra Horoscope for week of January 1, 2009

"God calls you to the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet," wrote Frederick Buechner. You're free to ignore that call, of course. You can pretend that you don't really know what brings you deep gladness, and you can act as if the world's deep hunger is of no concern to you. But if you hope to be proud of the life you have lived when, many years from now, you shed your mortal coil, I advise you to at least experiment with using Buechner's formula as a working hypothesis. The coming year will be en excellent time to do just that.


Don't know about the god part, but I like the thought of next year/tomorrow being about experimentation, about collaboration, about constructing hypothesis, about work.
There's an urgency now too that needs attention. And possibility, always!

onward

Spin

Whenever we are trying to recover a recollection, to call up

some period of our history, we become conscious of an act

sui generis by which we detach ourselves from the present

in order to replace ourselves, first, in the past in general,

then, in a certain region of the past--a work of adjustment,

something like the focusing of a camera.

~Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory

The new year is fast here and looking forward 

I look back. About detachment,

I don't know.More often I step back 

and, yes, that's what I've been up to. 

There's a web, all spun, knotted even. 

Yes, I see with clarity -- that's what it's about.

Bergson's idea of adjustment and memory 

does feel right as I consider the coming year. 

Other projects on the list for 2009, yes, 

and always, read more, write more, 

be more present. 

  

felice navidad

There's a certain Slant of light,

Winter Afternoons--

That oppresses, like the Heft

of Cathedral Tunes--

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us--

We can find no scar,

But internal difference,

Where the Meanings, are--

None may teach it--Any--

Tis the Seal Despair--

An imperial affliction

Sent us of the Air--

When it comes, the Landcape listens--

Shadows --hold their breath--

When it goes, 'tis like the Distance

on the Look of Death--

-- Emily Dickinson

solstice

More snow, more overcast, more cold.  I have vacuumed and done laundry and other nesting activities, which are other things one does after several days of snowy weather. I even re-arranged my nests, the ones I have found on walks etc over the years, lined them up and took a family photo, they are so beautiful and messy. It's dark here even in the afternoon and I'm learning again.

Snowdrops

Louise Gluck

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know

what despair is; then

winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,

earth suppressing me. I didn't expect

to waken again, to feel

in damp earth my body

able to respond again, remembering

after so long how to open again

in the cold light

of earliest spring -- 

afraid, yes, but among you again

crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world. 

first snowfall

Galatea Resurrects #11 is out.  There's lots to peruse.

And you can read my review

of Kate Greenstreet's chapbook,

This is Why I Hurt You.

It's snowing here in the east. And a snow day is a reading day. I'm reading Talking Hands by Margalit Fox. It's non-fiction --about a remote village of Bedouins in Israel where the residents have over centuries developed their own sign language. I've just started, looking forward to getting into the details of how this indigenous language was constructed, how gesture/image and "word" go hand in hand, so to speak.  I continue to think and read about the way image-making informs language-making -- and vice versa. We talk with our hands, our bodies, whether we're deaf or not.  Though it's not signing, our gestures are used to emphasize and illustrate our words, as we scribe the air. I'd love to make a poem that could be translated into sign language and then re-translated and then even painted or sung or danced.

Skate away

Herbie Hancock and Joni Mitchell. Very different from the original. I love her smoky voice as much as I love the younger, fluid voice.

train dance

chaiya chaiya (Dil Se) 

dance to the light of the moon

check it out

equinox

my poem & photo at postal poetry!

talk talk

It's been fun to post videos. There are tons out there of course, though I wish there were a better way to search and sort. Dr. Atomic opened this fall to acclaim. I've not seen it. One review commented on the thinness of his libretto. Still, the "conversation" between music and word, not to mention history.