April | 2012 | circlemeetsline

Playing Chess

I rush into. I beg to take on more then I can or should handle. I don’t factor me in, just objective. I hate math. I never learned how to play chess.

We have a new kitten. Fitzgerald, but practically speaking Fitz. He’s fucking adorable. He also moans and meows all the time. I live in apartment building. I ask my neighbors to turn down music. This is another coincidence.

He is not Bear.

(I wonder about being a girl writing a poetry blog about her cats. I wouldn’t describe the situation that way, but one could.)

This is possible: to die immediately. To cease to exist just short of instantaneously. Also possible is to die too soon. And yes, to die peacefully.

I like that movie about Bobby Fischer with Jodie Foster but I hate chess. When I was younger, everyone assumed I’d play chess. But I never did.

(I am pretending this is about chess.)

If I told you I was terrible at pretending, would you agree? If I asked you who you were, would you tell me the story I’ve already imagined? Do you know there is a preexisting condition?

You probably play chess. You definitely don’t hate math. You have more patience than me, absolutely.

This is not about you. I’m…sorry.

April 29, 2012

Investigation: Collecting vs. Curating

Words that you don’t remember writing. She finds this all the time. These are sometimes nonsense and sometimes the truth.

If she is always investigating, there is no time. If you remove time, you have only the empty space you will continue to inhabit, until you do not.

To sit and have a conversation. To consider where here and there will settle, on her shoulders but within what space? Talking about walls, talking about ceilings, considering the air. Which settles as it will, then moves against.

If she is you then you’ve hit the wall. Does that require a turn, or turnaround? Have you figured for the difference?

If there is a story, are stories, in the invisible cuts, the very present memories, if there is a recurring idea that is a we.

(Collecting experiences is not the same things as curating them.)

If this is only for her, she is happy. But it can’t be, and she is not. If you only remember the sleep, if only reach, trying.

A window opens, again: There it sits, waiting for you on a bench in the space you feel most safe. In the space you existed before. In a space that exists outside of time, so that even when time is removed, the space stands, still. A blackboard, a schoolyard joke, a walk around the block, a lightness of being. An unremembered moment. A secret that sticks, still.

A window opens, again: A brushing, a quick investigating of a reality that can only exist middle of night, when you should be sleeping. How many should have been sleepings make up this story?

To consider settling. Settling, repeated over and over again. To make a list of the repeated words: circle, line, bench, basement, settle, home.

April 26, 2012

where the floor is

I hate that I am a fainter.

When I was 4, we took the pedal boat out on the lake. My little legs dangled in between my mom and my grandma, got tangled in the foot pedal. The pedal spun around in circles on my shin. I woke up on a bed in the country house. I don’t know if this is a real memory or a story-memory.

When I was 11, I stayed up all night at a sleepover party. Late the next morning I was in the shower at my house. I woke up on my parents’ bed. My mother found me on the bathroom floor and thought I was dead. All that blood and only three stitches. I have no memory of my head hitting the shower door.

When I was 13, I went to a concert on a weeknight. The next day, in school, I stood to sing in Chorus class. I tried to sit down. I knew. I woke up in a wheelchair on my way to the nurse’s office, the school nurse pushing me. “She went down like a ton of bricks.”

Vasovagal episode. Triggered by heat, exhaustion, hunger, blood.

Today I had my first post-op PT session. I am 28. I haven’t walked in 7 weeks. My foot does not know where the floor is. They keep saying this is normal. They keeping saying the scars look beautiful.

My body overreacting. It figures.

April 25, 2012

with sunlight/Forgiveness

is a word for replacing not to replace but substitute
a branch to stand the proud fence straight up/down

Road as invitation as impassible/impossible to pass
up and down those myths of improbability that was

Words as fences/are fences not as cages but question
the whole idea of cages and/as closure is impossible

It comes to pass that we replace past transgressions
with/in a calculated time, an invitation marked date

Becomes myth held down and drawn out perhaps not
straight or involving of lines replacing circles that are

im/possible to break out of so back to borders back
to time-frames the calendar and roots out a solution

(Previously published in There, Issue 4, 2008.)

April 24, 2012

surmountable/Feeling

too honest today. This is dangerous.

It’s funny, because I have no secrets. By the strict definition of secret – no one knowing – I have none.

None of no one knowing. That is true.

April has not in fact been cruel to me. Last year, I wrote that July was the cruelest month. (In my July poem.) I was sitting in the reading room at the Public Library. I was feeling very writerly. But I didn’t know about September.

And of course, there have been September poems before this September and after.

Tomorrow I will see my foot again. My new foot has hardware: two plates, small, and screws. Scars: two. A small, angry line on my shin from the graft. On my foot, E. says it’s really more like a river than a lightning bolt. I like rivers.

It’s all still scabbed over, and of course you cannot see the thing’s truth while the scabs are still scabbing over.

Danger is relative. Danger is usually

April 23, 2012

Not Exactly Poems

A grad thesis is 100 pages of poetry that are bound together (at cost) and sit in a corner of a library at an institution of higher learning. My grad thesis is thousands of miles from here.

(Not just literally.)

When the weather is uniquely New York, I miss California desperately.

When I lived in California, I talked about missing the weather in New York incessantly.

(Weather was a theme in my thesis. Sitting in a car in the rain.)

Other themes: East Coast West Coast benches basements pushing buttons corners and what gathers there cataloguing truth digging truth boxing truth bird we are

Another theme: Home

I will not be circling back today. Today is all line.

April 20, 2012

some songs

There are some songs I cannot listen to because they taste like California.

When I graduated the eighth grade I was voted Most Likely to Be Famous. Even at 13, I looked askance at a promise that this poetry could be that. Ten years later, I was getting an MFA out on the West coast as far from eighth grade as possible but still with the poetry. And now – I look askance at all promises now, but also know it’s primary, the poetry.

A story is always a line. A story can be a circle. Everything is a conscious choice here.

If you cannot lie, you will end up believing what you say aloud. If you say it to yourself, you’ll be able to lie. Aloud there is resonance. If I were sounding this out loud, I’d have more of you listening.

If you cannot lie, you will have trouble. But there are some songs that I need to hear no matter where I have run off to: never is a promise in my life suite: judy blue eyes moon river circle game mama you’ve been on my mind it’s only a paper moon

you will. you? will. you? will. you? will.

Of course I was going to love a circling question. Of course I would need an answer.

April 19, 2012

She’s a Primitive Girl

The writing about is the writing and the thinking about writing is just another enemy of the writing. Spending hours thinking stories, thinking sentences. That wasn’t the point of this. I try to mostly always have a point of some sort. And keep promises. Deadlines.

I’m listening pretty much exclusively to the new Shins album, Port of Morrow, and M. Ward’s new album, A Wasteland Companion. (I try to mostly always impress upon people how important music is about me.) Later, E. points out that some themes in my writing are the same as some themes in Conor’s lyrics. I point out that my themes haven’t changed much since elementary school and I didn’t find Conor until college. I win.

(I am good at that. Winning.)

I found Conor because of a most important. But it doesn’t matter now, does it. I made it mine. Anyway, it isn’t what you think. I don’t wait anymore for forgiveness (yes I do). I don’t forgive, but it isn’t the same. It never is with me. Anyway.

I don’t care about only what can I see, only what can I touch. (I am considering turning off the comments here. Does my writing brain want comments? )

There is a problem with the memories circling. That’s one point. That it will be July again and I will write that poem. It is always July again, I write. I mark time obsessively: May isn’t what it used to be. Leaving the comfortable blue, leaving that possible line. And September. A death. Almost eight months.

I should start early with this. All I want to say today is: It happened. The death happened and it was everything gone again but so much worse this time. And I will keep telling to myself because I can’t see, can’t touch, can’t verify in the only way that will ever matter. I will be forever telling everyone everything because of what I can’t do. What I can’t have. I will instead create a story (later; another day).

Last point: Haven’t had a left foot in 6 weeks. Bones fusing. When don’t foundations shake? When isn’t it faulty? I did live in California. I do know earthquake. If only surgery was everything. And I looked at the scars finally at my last appointment. Like tattoos I didn’t choose. Like stories I won’t tell. Like a fault line in my foundation that is now visible.

Stuck. My least favorite, the no-choice. And so, I stole the opportunity. Because I can be selfish. Yes, I have gotten far enough in 8 months to know that. To know that being selfish for the writing is also about the writing is also the writing.

And all the meadows wide —

April 9, 2012

Post, the First

Already talked about circles. About lines. About moving forward and only forward. Already but not ready; ambling. Just.

There is a theoretical and an actual point somewhere, even if it’s a circle. Because it has to be, or I would stop. Or is the point to cease.

That’s not a question. Because if it’s a fragment, you can hold it in your hand whereas the question will scuttle around. Just. Out of reach.

A question might be about fair. Slip into cliché because otherwise it’s stuck. Tell your story because it can only be yours: it is the only original idea you will ever have.

Someone said to me back then, “Write out what you want to write, and then you will be able to write it” and I was confused. The writing about was the writing.

Tenuous connections can still exist. Validity and solidity are not synonyms, although they sound nice together.

Look back. Don’t look back. Is it really a choice, what you’ve already decided just by turning, just by circling. If you hover.

Original story: I am always most ready for the next disaster.

circlemeetsline

Month: April, 2012

April 30, 2012