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…

Pocketfuls.

A Native American ceramic pot, a guide to jellybeans, sweatpants. These are a few of the gifts my sweet traveling husband has brought back to me because he doesn’t like coming home empty-handed from business trips. He travels to small college towns and his schedule is crammed with meetings, so with little time to browse, he usually ends up finding something in the university bookstore or the airport. I appreciate the gifts (the sweatpants have become my go-to item on cold, sick, or PMS days) but I appreciate the thought behind them even more. Still, we made a joint decision to put a moratorium on the trinket purchases; I know he loves me and I don’t need a lavender spice rub (lavender on meat?) to tell me so. A few months ago, though, S put a moratorium on the moratorium and returned from a trip with a present.

The university bookstore is following the trend of many college bookstores today, and is transferring their book sales to an online distributor. The university book store will no longer sell books. What will they sell, I asked S. Granola bars and teddy bears apparently. I’m dumbfounded, and the gift is bittersweet. Every book in the store (there were few left by the time S got there) was reduced to one dollar. I’m not sure if I should be celebrating or mourning this bargain. S lugged home eight books of poetry- he bought almost every book of poetry that was left. I was familiar with a few of the names, but the work was all new to me. So I’ve been digging through them, finding some gems and discovering the work of poets I probably would never have taken the time to explore. All for 8 bucks. The best gift, though, is the man who will scour deserted and forlorn book racks to find gems for his wife.

Another gift came via email yesterday when a friend emailed to ask for poetry book recommendations. She wants to buy her husband his first book of poetry and is not sure where to start. I was delighted to be able to help and to be included in a small way in the celebration of their love. It thrills me to know that people are talking about poetry and the discussion is leaking out of the blog forum into our daily lives. Last week I had lunch with my dear friend M. Same time, same place, same drinks, same meal (except M stepped to the wild side and ordered fish tacos instead of her usual). We gabbed and laughed, and even talked about a poem I posted a few weeks ago. I love how poetry clears a pathway to topics that might not typically be discussed. A poem is successful at the point where it stops being just about the poet, and becomes about the reader as well. A poem is a meeting place between writer and reader, and when the poem is shared with others the meeting place becomes a community, a gathering, a shelter from solitude.

And a final gift this morning: my mother came by this morning and gave me a book. My mom took an early retirement after my brother had his bi-lateral lung transplant. After retirement and after my brother’s recuperation, my mother devoted herself to pursuing interests she never had the time for, such as art and dance. The thing about my mother is that she succeeds at whatever she devotes herself to, so she became a successful artist and dancer. But recently she has been wanting to work again. So she put her suit back on and got herself a job. And all of this to say: she’s been going through old work books and materials and found an anthology of poetry about leadership which she surprised me with this morning. I’ve been leafing through it and I already adore it.  It has some poems I’ve never read before as well as some of my most beloved; but I especially appreciate it because each poem was submitted by a community leader as a piece which carries them and which they carry in their daily lives and work. Poetry put into action, read daily, used daily by teachers, administrators, mental health workers, congresswomen, pastors, mothers, you and me. Find a poem you love and put it in your pocket, then put a poem in someone else’s pocket.

I don’t think I’ve asked you yet: what’s your favorite poem?

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Today’s poem is one of the poems in the anthology. Today’s poem is because you do not know, and will never know, your own diameter.

The Diameter of the Bomb by Yehuda Amichai

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters….

34.

This is how I celebrated 34 years of this life…

Los Feliz/a neighborhood in Los Angeles named for a land grant owner/feliz in Spanish means happy/can’t hear the name without thinking of happiness/coffee free birthday upgrade/blue sky afternoon for lunch with loves/pickle plate because i love my salty/mexican coke in glass bottle and hoegaarden/a bookstore worth loving/dinner with mother father brother angel S/laughinglaughinglaughing/have you ever tried to get your family to all fit on one chair for a picture/funny face pictures/kisses from S/story from the angel/presents/phonecallsmessagescards from friends near and far/facebook wishes peppered the day with exclamation points/crap maybe I’m not the loner I’ve always considered myself to be/sunshine and rain: love pouring down on me/(fuck you 37)/wrote: my birthday felt like a memorial/but so much better because I am alive to feel the love.

A few highlights…

A poetry section not relegated to the dark corner in the back.

Pickle plate at Umami. Mmmm salty!

Refreshment.

The token insane lady. Insanely happy.

I felt loved.

How fun indeed.

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Although I hope to harass you indefinitely with mind dribbles and “today’s poem”s, today’s poem is the poem I’d give you if this birthday would be my last.

Moose In the Morning, Northern Maine by Mona van Duyn

At six a.m. the log cabins

nose an immense cow-pie of mist

that lies on the lake…

Noan

Bibliomancy. Oh, how I love this word. Before last week I didn’t even know it existed. I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember, but thanks to Noan I now know that what I’ve been doing has a name.

I’ve written about Noan here before. She is my Robin Hood; she regularly leaves treasures for me to find at the entrance of my lonely cottage. In the short time I’ve known her, I’ve already learned so much. Most importantly, I’ve learned that you can feel friendship with someone whose face you’ve never seen and whose voice you’ve never heard. In reply to one of my posts last week,  Noan sent me a piece she’d written for a writing class. I loved it and I asked her if she’d be willing to let me share it–share her–with all of you. It’s with great pleasure that I introduce my first official guest post writer: Noan Cleary.

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Bibliomancy: the use of books in divination

It was spring of 1999, and I was on the search for a surgeon.  My younger daughter, Elizabeth, was seven years old at the time.  Elizabeth has cystic fibrosis and that year she needed sinus surgery, and she needed it as soon as possible.   I had an appointment that afternoon with one of the surgeons recommended by Elizabeth’s doctors, but unfortunately the appointment did not go well.   This surgeon, I learned, was not the type of doctor that answered questions.  When my husband called to see how it went all I could think to say was: What is the difference between God and a surgeon?  God doesn’t think he is a surgeon.

I drove home from the appointment feeling rather beaten down and slightly weepy.  Fortunately – because this type of physician-induced miasma was becoming familiar to me- I knew just what I needed.  I needed a good book.  More specifically, I needed that focused relaxation I feel only when my head is buried deep in a book.  It came to mind that Anne Lamott had a new book out, and since I pass a bookstore on the way home I decided I would stop and treat myself to the guilty pleasure of a full-price, hardcover, chain-store book purchase.  You can imagine my profound disappointment when the bored young clerk at the bookstore informed me, Oh, we don’t have that book in stock.   I searched the store for an alternative purchase, but no other book felt right, and I left empty-handed.

Arriving home, I immersed myself in the nightly tasks of dinner preparation and homework tutoring.  I was up to my elbows in long division and marinara sauce when I heard a voice say, Anne Lamott, and looked up to find Rosie O’Donnell on our TV screen.  Anne Lamott, Rosie announced, is going to be with us tomorrow to talk about her new book, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts On Faith.   How funny, I thought; I never remember seeing an author on the Rosie O’Donnell show before.  I’m going to have to keep looking for that book, I thought to myself.

The following day I succeeded in tracking down a copy of Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, and that evening I settled in bed and began to read.  It had been over an hour, and I was just beginning to feel sleepy when I read something that caused me to sit up and take notice:

 On an otherwise ordinary night at the end of September, some friends came over to watch the lunar eclipse, friends whose two-year-old daughter Olivia had been diagnosed nine months earlier with cystic fibrosis.  I know that sometimes these friends feel that they have been expelled from the ordinary world they lived in before and that they are now citizens of the Land of the Fucked.  They must live with the fact that their younger daughter has this disease that fills its victim’s lungs with thick sludge that harbors infections.  Two-week hospital stays for nonstop IV antibiotics are common.  Adulthood is rare.

 What surprised me most about this passage was just seeing the words cystic fibrosis on the page.  I had never come across any mention of a child with CF in any book I’d ever read.  I thought to myself: pay attention.  And I kept reading.

 We stood outside for a while longer, talking about this last flare-up, how frightened she’d felt, how tired.  And I didn’t know what to say at first, watching Olivia go chasing the big kids, coughing.  Except that we, their friends, all know the rains and the wind will come and they will be cold – oh, god, will they be cold.  But then we will come too, I said; we will have been building this barn all along, and so there will always be shelter.

I read that ending two or three times, slightly puzzled.  I would love to say that I found it illuminating, or at the very least satisfying.  But I did not.   I did not at the time want to hear about shelter from the damn storm.  I just wanted the storm to end.  I wanted a sign that better weather was on its way.  But I paid attention because in some twinkle-twinkle-ding-dong kind of way I felt like the universe was trying to send me a message.  Since that day, I have pulled Traveling Mercies off the shelf numerous times and re-read that ending, and it is only now, twelve years later, that I realize it told me exactly what I needed to hear.   

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Thank you, Noan. You have been my source of bibliomancy quite often lately, offering little chunks you’ve gathered from books and life to help me divine my own way and find shelter from the storm.

Noan chose today’s poem: (click link to read entire poem)

Late Ripeness by Czeslaw Milosz

Not soon, as late as the approach of my

ninetieth year,

I felt a door opening in me and I entered…

Relaxation, in a kajillion easy steps.

This is the path I took to get to Relaxation:

.

First, a confession. I had planned, after returning from the getaway, that I’d post some pictures captioned with a few key thoughts on how to relax. A neat and tidy ten steps and you too can be as relaxed as I am. This makes the egotistical assumption that a) I was able to achieve a state of relaxation, and b) I have something to teach you about relaxation.

Let’s get something straight: I’m not the one to teach anyone anything about relaxation techniques. For this very reason, I had to fire myself from my position as a yoga instructor (another story for a future post). Lately I’ve become the most tightly wound, least relaxed person I know. I cry and/or shriek at the blink of an eye, and I never ever run out of things to worry about it. I am an obsessive worrier (this is where my mind feels most at ease), and I’m also a perfectionist. This is a lethal, hair pulling combination when you have CF, because there is always something new for me to worry about, and because I will never, ever come close to any sort of perfection. Perfect combination for a shit storm of anxiety.

So consider yourself warned: don’t come to me for relaxation techniques.

The vacation didn’t start out well when S fell fully clothed into a body of water a moment before leaving for the trip. Even though it was an accident, and a funny one too, I took it as an omen. I was already nervous because my dear friend had emailed the night before to let me know that she was feeling a cold coming on and wanted to give me fair warning. I was so appreciative of the advanced notice which gave me an opportunity to make a decision. Most people aren’t interested in keeping their germs to themselves, only bothering to mention the cold post-sneeze, after the wet nosespray or explosive cough cloud of germs renders the “Oh did I mention I’m sick” somewhat useless. I was distraught. My mind’s broken record went something like this:

we’ve been planning this for months

i’ve been working on regaining my health for months

i don’t want to live in a bubble

i don’t want to make a stupid choice that will potentially send me to the hospital

i don’t want to miss this trip

i need to be with my friends

i need to think of my heath first

we can reschedule for a better time

will there ever be a “better” time?

why oh why do i need to even make these decisions and take these things into consideration??

The trip happened, and happened well, but not without a few rug burns on the way courtesy of my devoted companion, CF. CF made an issue out of a total non-issue. It made me doubt myself and my decisions, it made a few of my dearest friends doubt me too. It made me want to curl up in my bed and never leave. All this over something that should be so simple and relaxing.  Vacations are fun, right? Well, when you can’t stop thinking about all the meds and equipment that must be packed, or what happens if a med gets forgotten, or what happens if treatments get skipped when the strictly adhered daily routine flies out the window, or the possibility of getting sick either during or after the trip, or simply getting worn out because of the trip…that hammock swaying in  the breeze, bookended by two palms, seems a lot more trouble than it’s worth. On vacation, you don’t get hit on the head by the shoe falling, you get hit on the head by a coconut. Two different paths to the same destination: sick and screwed.

Relaxation takes work, forethought, and planning. Even though there were countless reasons not to relax, I was finally able to let down my shoulders a bit, stretch my toes in the sun glazed air, and even take a few deep breaths. And those moments made me realize that even if I do get plonked by a falling coconut and end up in the hospital with an exacerbation, the getting there feels a lot sweeter when I’ve just come back from a vacation.

I want to share some of that sweetness with you: (hover on picture for caption)

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Dedicated to L and R, for overlooking the many reasons it is difficult to be my friend, and especially for giving me so many sweet moments to savor, like peaches from the best peach tree.

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

From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches…