Found.

Another innocent tree has died because of me. You see, I had a ridiculous inane absurd challenging burst of inspiration: compose a poem by utilizing the search terms that lead people to my blog. A found poem. It seemed like a great idea at first but it’s difficult to attempt a finely wrought creation with phrases like “girls gone wild”, “wild and freaky spring break”, and “sex statistics 2011″. It’s interesting to observe how people stumble upon my blog. I’ve written here before about blog stats, traffic, and the way these relate to sex  but it never ceases to amaze me that apparently, the majority of traffic to my blog comes from sex fiends and perverts. Not you, though. Of course not you.

So back to the sacrificial tree. I wrote and crumpled about 50 sheets of paper, but instead of alleyooping the crinkled-chip legal pad sheets straight into the purgatory of the recycling bin, I decided to uncrumple a few of the ideas and share some of my failed attempts with you (actual search terms are in italics)…

The most solid attempt was the poem about the older couple at the movies: they’re waiting to see Midnight in Paris, shoulders touching, her hair is smooth and gray (cat gray, pebble gray), she holds the tub of popcorn with the potholder of her cold palm; all of it– the hair, the wrinkled hands in the tub of buttery popcorn, the touching, his frequent need to get up and pee– all of it, a celebration of surviving. Found poem, strike 1.

Next attempt was the poem about a young couple divorcing: the husband leaves to go fishing for the first time while she tends to their young son who is sick with a sinus infection for five days, the bactrim isn’t helping, her life feels like a zoo frenzy but what do you pack for a day at the zoo she wonders (the first aid kit is useless with injury of the body and of the heart), no answers in reply to questions, the couple is apart, scared, and angry, standing on opposite sides of the fault line. Clearly, this is strike 2.

I had some fun with the poem about  the couple that meets on spring break: she has sex with various men (Chuck, Charles, Stanley) and then one night she meets Frank. There’s a dark moon, a deep sea, and she’s prettier without her glasses. She tries to help him with the condom and he yells calm down, I f’in got this. A wild and freaky spring break indeed. Strike 3 for me, for Frank, and for the girl who is prettier without her glasses (she came home from Spring Break with an STD).

It’s easy to see that found poetry is not my forte. So why am I playing with the found poem this week? Because I’m a little bit lost. A little dried out. A little unsure and a little doubtful. I need to take a couple of weeks to uncrumple myself and smooth my creases. I  have some projects at home to take care of, some doctors appointments, and some decisions to make. I will also be strengthening my poetry muscle in a workshop with a poet, Kim Addonizio, who I have long loved. I received an email from Kim on July 4th weekend letting me know I had been accepted to join her workshop. I have read her work, appreciated it, studied it (especially this book of poems); and there I was, exchanging emails with Kim like no big thing. The holiday’s zoom snap crack of fireworks matched my buzzing heart.

I’ll be back here in a few weeks, as soon as my “wild and freaky” summer break ends. In the meantime I hope you find delight in the most unexpected places and treasures in your trash heaps; I hope you stumble your way to unplanned adventures and fill your pockets with stories to tell.

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Today’s Poem is for the many nights we’ve lain here like this.

The Numbers by Kim Addonizio

How many nights have I lain here like this,  feverish with plans,

with fears, with the last sentence someone spoke, still trying to finish…

Awkward conversations.

Awkward is such a perfect word. It looks awkward; it feels awkward. Whenever i write it, I’m certain I’ve misspelled it. I peer at it and wonder, did I spell you wrong again? The answer is always no, it is simply on the page in all its awkward glory.

Now for an awkward segue into our main topic….

A few days ago, I spent a couple hours of my morning listening to a lovely presentation about ovaries, uteruses (uteri?), fallopian tubes, hormones, vaginas, urethras, and penises (penii?). This is the annual euphemistically titled Mother/Daughter Chat held at my daughter’s school for fourth and fifth graders. The Chat is a presentation to prepare girls (and boys in another room with their fathers) for the onslaught of changes that occur during puberty. At the very least it opens the door to discussion and lets the kids know that these things can be discussed without anyone keeling over from mortification.

While no one will keel over from intense mortification, everyone might wobble and stammer a bit. The first hour of the meeting was awkward. There was evident discomfort and embarrassed giggles from both the girls and the mothers. After a while though, the presenter managed to make everyone feel at ease and questions from the girls began flying like paper airplanes. Tampons! Mood swings!

Unplanned pregnancy:

Presenter- What made you ask that question, Janey? Was it something you saw on tv?

Janey- No, it happened to my mommy.

No question was off-limits. Well, with one exception: the presenter told the mothers in advance that any question regarding sex would defer back to the parents because talk about sex was not allowed and the word sex was to be avoided. Hmmm. That makes things a bit more difficult to explain and understand. The presenter explained that in order for a pregnancy to occur, one egg and one sperm must unite. But how do they unite, asked one girl who was understandably mystified by this missing piece of the mysterious puzzle. Great question, and that’s something you should definitely ask your mom tonight at home. Although I know that not all the mothers there agree with me, I think this piece of information should have been answered in a simple, age-appropriate, straight-forward way instead of shrouding the word (and the act) in a burqa-like sense of mystery. If we’re able to discuss the human body in an open and comfortable manner, shouldn’t we be able to discuss the way human bodies are created in this same way?

Death is another topic that most of us do not like to discuss or think about. Whenever I’m sick enough to go in-patient, a nurse or staff member will invariably ask if I have a living will. Every time I’m asked this (and it happens numerous times with each hospital stay) I feel slapped in the face. How dare you, I think.  Deep down I realize that they’re correct to ask, but first I must wade through the feelings that there is no way it will happen and there’s no need to discuss it right now. It’s almost as if talking about it will make it happen. And that’s exactly the reasoning behind the ban on the dreaded s-e-x word during the chat: talk about it and it will happen. Perhaps, though, we’d be wise to challenge ourselves and our comfort levels because sex and death are a natural part of life, inextricably linked. We’re not ready for our babies to go through puberty, we’re certainly not ready for them to be sexually active, and of course, we’re not ready to die. But change is the way life flows.

Since I already dragged you with blushing cheeks through the pimpled landscape of puberty, let’s extend this discomfort for a moment longer and talk about dying. I’d like to ask you to ponder your death for just a moment. In order to consider our dying, we must first become aware of how very alive we are in this moment and the constant work our organs do to keep us that way; pumping blood, circulating oxygen, filtering waste, absorbing nutrients. Even the organs that aren’t functioning particularly well (of which I have several) are still working hard. Our organs serve us well while we’re living and moving through this world but the earth doesn’t need them as fertilizer; so maybe, just maybe, we don’t want to take them with us. Please consider becoming an organ donor.

Have the discussion about organ donation with yourself and with your family, because if you do decide to donate your organs, your family needs to know your wishes. Please take a look here for further info, common misconceptions, and FAQs (but you must register with the state you currently reside in). Hopefully, you’ll be on this earth for many years making sweet love til the cows come home. But one day your body will (I guarantee it) decide that it is finished. This becomes the time to share the love, your deep love for life, by letting someone else have one more chance. Our bodies are miraculous and complicated: use it while you got it, then pass it on.

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Today’s Poem:

Living in the Body by Joyce Sutphen

Body is something you need in order to stay

on this planet and you only get one…

Sex, statistics, and synchronicity.

Some websites allow their owners to see extremely detailed statistics of who visits their site, including the location of the visitor, the domain name, and how long each visit lasts. My blog only provides very basic stats including total number of views, which links get clicked, and which web searches bring readers to the blog. The stats focus on key words: the words that help readers find my blog, the links on my blog that get clicked most frequently, and the most popular posts. It all comes down to the clicks. I suppose the rationale behind this is that I will use the information to tailor my writing and pepper my posts with the words that entice readers to visit my tiny cottage in the internet woods. A witch waiting for Hansel and Gretel, and instead of luring the innocents with a candy house, readers are lured with strategically placed code words: Angelina Jolie talks about her panties!

It took me a while to understand how this works. A few posts ago, before I realized the power of certain magic words, I titled a post “Most Effective Aphrodisiacs“.  I’ve now learned that there are quite a few people out there looking for the most effective aphrodisiacs. Most of the searches that spit up a link to my blog are related to cystic fibrosis.  How many people run Google searches for “poetry you can’t live without”? I’ll bet it’s significantly fewer than the number who search for “wild and freaky spring break”, which is the search term that curiously led an unwitting soul to my laced up, literary little blog. I lure you here with promises of something wild and freaky, and then, once you’re here, I tie you to a chair and torture you with endless talk about death, poetry, and lung infection.

I think about this a lot; the trail of crumbs that lead us to that next fact of our lives, the perfect accident, the strange coincidence, the synchronicities that stand up like waving flags on the landscape of a life. On any given day, we process enormous amounts of information from many different sources: words, sounds, numbers, colors, people, places, sensations. Out of the millions of floating motes of information we filter daily, only a fraction will prick us from the inside, causing us to sit up a little straighter and pay attention. And, as it turns out, WordPress is onto something: the “clicks” matter a lot.

When something clicks inside, when something tells us “I need to know more about this person” or “I need to check this out” or “I need to see where this might take me”, it’s an internal shift in awareness that leads to possibility. It’s different elements coming together at just the right moment to create an explosion, an explosion that burns a hole onto the blank paper sheet of life as we know it, opening an entirely new universe to our view. An explosion like that is what helped me find my way to the CF community. In my next post, I’ll  talk about the explosion that led me to search for the CF community, and some of the experiences I’ve had so far exploring it. And I promise, there will be no talk of girls in catholic school uniforms.

(to be continued)

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I love a perfect accident.

Today’s Poem: (click on link to read poem in its entirety)

People Like Us by Robert Bly

There are more like us. All over the world.

There are confused people, who can’t remember..