Let’s talk about our feelings.

{whoosh}

That’s the sound of men rushing out of the room. Almost ten years of marriage and I’ve finally learned the quickest and surest way to find alone time: What are you thinking about, darling husband? Tell me what you’re feeling.

So. Feelings. Other than the bone-crunching desire to slice off the penises of Penn State powers-that-be.

Nervousness. Hi-ho, hi-ho it’s back to clinic I go in a few days. I’m working through  my nerves with deep breathing calming images denial lavender tea a few good books.

If writing is one of the great pleasures and necessities of my life, reading is the place where it all began.

My family once road-tripped through the US. I spent the entire  vacation curled up in the back of the wood-paneled station wagon with a pile of books. My mom and dad begged me to look out the window. I insisted I was looking out of a window.

My beloved fifth grade teacher would go to the public library and handpick books she thought we’d love. I’ll never forget the feelings of excitement and pleasure on the days she came into class holding her canvas tote bags filled to the brim with hardcover selections. I’m sure the bags were heavy and I’m sure she worried about library fines, but she gave us that joy every two weeks.

Poet and writer Edward Hirsch does a good job explaining the feelings I have for reading:

Reading has been a deeply liberating experience for me. Like many of us, I feel as if it has given me most of my interior life and delivered me to myself. It has also taken me to extraordinary places where I otherwise never would have traveled. 

I’m also feeling fortunate. I’m lucky to have the virtual company of a circle of women who share these consuming passions with me. About two weeks ago,  I received a letter and a gray bracelet in the mail from Teri. The bracelet is stamped with three letters: FTF. Finish the fucker. This bracelet is gas in my tank, sun on my seeds, a little love incubator for my literary hatchlings. The bracelet is rumored to have magical powers which I can solemnly attest to…since receiving this gift I’ve had two more pieces accepted for publication! Forgive the exclamation point and know that details (and links!) are forthcoming. Finish the fucker, indeed.

A few days after I received the charmed bracelet, I opened my mailbox to find a manila envelope from MSB. Inside of the envelope was a book of poetry by a poet whose work was completely unfamiliar to me. I leaf through his pages and find myself submerged in another world, feeling grateful for another “window” to look out of and grateful to know someone who sees a treasure chest between two paper covers and thinks of me. Even better, MSB’s gift came with a card made out of one of her black and white photographs. Two loaves of salt-dusted baguettes. I feel nourished.

As if all of this isn’t enough, I kid you not, today my magical mailbox contained another gift. (Yes, I’m feeling sort of embarrassed by this shower of love). This recent gift puts a bit of a tangle in my secret admirer theories. Last time I received a book in the mail, I had no idea who sent it but I thought I had a hunch. To this day the secret admirer remains a mystery. But this time (evil laughter), though the gift was sent practically anonymously, I know for sure who sent it.  Days like today make me turn my gaze skyward, not in lament but in disbelief that I should be the recipient of so much love and blessing. My heart buzzes, not just for the joy of a new book which I can’t wait to dig into, but for the heart with which it was sent and the heart who sent it. Thank you.

And now I’ll let you go with a book recommendation:  The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. Not only is Teri a wizard who knows how to concoct bracelet spells, she also knows how to pick a damn good book. I love it. I’m not quite done with it because I’m sipping slowly. I don’t want it to end. I allow myself a few pages, a little nip, every day. When I hold it I feel like I’m holding hands with a long-lost friend. It’s woven out of history, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Trotsky, Mexico, food, cooking, class warfare, art lovers, book lovers, screaming monkeys, guns, intellect, heart, a love letter that made me cry, friendship, longhand communication, an aspiring writer, broken hearts, and love sweet love. I’m a spinning top, giddy in love with this new book.

Ah, feelings.

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Today’s poem is for reading.

Dostoevsky by Charles Bukowski

against the wall, the firing squad ready…

Joie de vivre.

When I left the movie theater on Sunday, I felt like a flute of champagne: fizzed, giddy, and ready to spill. I’d been given a few unexpected hours to myself– my in-laws were in town and S took his parents and the angel to see our local, underwhelming sights (mall, beach). I was glad for those hours because it was an opportunity to get Stuff done: errands, a scroll-length grocery list, laundry, and a closet patiently waiting for over a year to be cleaned.

I drove to the library and returned a few books. Item number 1, check. Then I had a sudden crazy thought: I don’t want to spend my day doing errands. I don’t want to spend my day trying to keep life neat, orderly, and manageable for us so I can say at the end of the day look how much I got done…my place at our table is justified. I wanted to throw the list out the window and go to the movies. And that’s exactly what I did.

The movie I selected was Midnight in Paris and I relished every second. A struggling writer! In Paris! Exhibiting antisocial tendencies! Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Elliott all in one movie? Yes. Forgive my momentary lapse into Siskel and Ebertland, but it was a rollicking, frolicking, delightful few hours. So cheerful was the mood in the theater that when the woman sitting a few seats away from me creeped by to get to the restroom, she touched my knee as she passed and we shared a conspiratorial grin. Gertrude Stein, played by Kathy Bates, reminds us that the job of an artist is to help people forget their mortality. If this is true, then Woody Allen is back in my good graces because less than ten minutes into the film, I’d completely forgotten my tremor and angst. Thank you, Woody, for a job well done; for the giggles, chuckles, and grins. Thanks for the writing advice, the argument against nostalgia, and Owen Wilson’s nose.

Until yesterday, I’d never tossed a carefully written To-Do list out the window (well, actually, I tucked it in my purse for later). I had never brushed the crumbs of responsibility off my hands with such recklessness. I had never, in all my life, gone to see a movie in the theater by myself. The grocery store will wait! I cried, pounding the steering wheel with a gleeful fist. It felt good to be wild, but I was also a bit disturbed by how timid my idea of carefree abandon has become: popcorn and diet coke at a matinee.

I need to shake things up a bit, to unfurl that tightly coiled devotion to domestic order. I need to pour the thick finger-licking sauce of insouciance on the structure of my days. Maybe I’ll leave the beds unmade one of these days, even if the thought of disheveled beds is simultaneously unsettling and thrilling. Maybe I’ll swizzle-stick the evening by serving dinner at the wild and wacky hour of 8 p.m. I know; this is crazy talk and I should restrain myself before the situation gets out of control. But it might be too late to stop the tornado…I sense a laundry strike, red hair, and a tattoo coming on.

 Which act of daring/abandon/irresponsibility have you recently committed? Which small act of liberation will set you free this summer?

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Bukowski is a model citizen when learning how to track mudprints through tidy and proper days.

Today’s Poem: (click link to read entirely)

My Doom Smiles at Me by Charles Bukowski

there’s no other way:

8 or 10 poems a

night.

in the sink

behind me are dishes…

Lemon scented nightmares.

I hate housework. You make the beds, you wash the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again. -Joan Rivers

A few nights ago,  I fell asleep with one hand on S’s newly defined chest (thanks P90X) and the other hand clutching the pillow with a giant fistful of aggression.

Maybe it was all the images and radiation coming out of Japan.

Maybe it was watching Piece of Work with S for the past two nights. Dirty mouths, dirty jokes, and dirty aging. Joan Rivers is hysterical. Literally. She makes us laugh to tears, and she has a manic need bordering on hysteria to remain in the spotlight, loved by her audiences until her dying breath. It’s excruciating and fascinating to watch Rivers fold and unfold like worn paper, and the images are as disturbing as her plastic surgery.

Maybe it’s the feeling I always have of standing outside of the inner circle. Given two wheels, I’m always the third; the spare tire on an 18 wheeler. I can’t figure out my perpetual sense of otherness, my nose always pressed to the window of a warm bakery of belonging.

Maybe it was a friend telling me that I’m spreading the panic and fear a little too thickly around here lately. I took in the feedback but it went straight to my heart. Because I’m not just panicky and afraid, I’m also sensitive. A winning trifecta.

These were the images and feelings that tucked me into bed that night, and I had nightmares all night long. Violent, turbulent nightmares that inspired the cliched toss, turn, and wrestle with the sheet. Upon waking, I was dazed and shaken. I think the dog was shaken by my tremorous night too, because when I let her out in the morning, she gave me a worried look. But what do I know, I’m sensitive,  so I’m probably just reading too much into it. It’s just as likely she wanted me to hurry up with her damn breakfast of champions.

I can only recall a single nightmare, which featured a violent, physical fight with another woman. She looked like a combination of a female currently in my life, and a lady truck driver with thick, tanned forearms, offensive lipstick, and gold jewelry. Perhaps my inner female Charles Bukowski coming out to play. Let’s call her Charlee.

The images remain vivid: my house is strung with criss-crossed clotheslines like spiderwebs, clothespins clipping perfectly matched socks, hanging like Chinese lanterns. I’m angry because Charlee has brought someone to live in my house- a chick with dark curly hair who’s hiding in my bedroom and yells “surprise” when I go upstairs. She gives off a friendly foreign exhange student vibe, but I’m livid that now I’ll have one more responsibility to take care of. Charlee and I start shrieking at each other–I’m talking pulsing vein in the neck yelling- and we end up on the stairs pulling hair, kicking, and pushing. Typical girl fight.

The volume continues to rise and Charlee starts cursing at me: “You marathon runner! Marathon runner!”. This is the worst she comes up with, and instead of quizzically cocking my head to the side as I would in rational daylight, her words infuriate me. So I respond by calling her a, well, it’s like the word “can’t” but with a u instead of an a. No apostrophe. “You cant! You cant! You cant!“.

Anyone know a good analyst?  So much material in that one little dream, loamy and writhing with earthworms. It won’t cost me $150 on the couch to figure out that Charlee’s epithet of choice is a stinging reminder and a painful mocking of things I’ve wanted to do, but couldn’t and can’t, because of CF. Cant- there’s that dirty little word again.

I wonder how Joan Rivers would analyze this dream. In her 900 years of living, she’s gained some wisdom, and might have a suggestion or two to share. Learn how to punch, is the first thing she’d say. She’d suggest taking a break from laundry, or better yet, tell me to hire a maid.  There’s no such thing as too much Xanax, she’d confide, urging me to secure a prescription immediately. And then she’d divulge her best housekeeping gem, a secret she’s used for years. The most effective way to scrub the nightmares to the bone, sweep the monsters into morning sun, and offer warm, honeyed milk to the wild, worry jumbled nights, is to use all those little shits to make others smile, laugh, release a tear or two, and forget their own nightmares, even if only momentarily. Works like a charm, much more useful than potpourri stashed in the underwear drawer.

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It’s like this.

Today’s Poem: (click on link to read entire poem)

Early Sunday Morning by Edward Hirsch

I used to mock my father and his chums…