Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (New Spain, 1648-1695)

En perseguirme, mundo, ¿que interesas?
¿En que te ofendo, cuando solo intento
poner bellezas en mi entendimiento
y no mi entendimiento en las bellezas?

Yo no estimo tesoros ni riquezas;
y asi, siempre me causa mas contento
poner riquezas en mi pensamiento
que no mi pensamiento en las riquezas.

Y no estimo hermosura que, vencida,
es despojo civil de las edades,
ni riqueza me agrada fementida,

teniendo por mejor, en mis verdades,
consumir vanidades de la vida
que consumir la vida en vanidades

after a long cry/I feel.

Winter in Gold River
by Catie Rosemurgy

Pretty girl. The weather has knocked her down again

and given her to the lake to wear as a skin.

Why am I always being the weather?
There were days in the winter

when her smile was so lovely I felt

the breathing of my own goodness,

though it remained fetal and separate.

I was a scavenger who survives

with a sling and stones, but whose god

nonetheless invents the first small bright bird.

And it was like flight to bring food to her lips

with a skeletal hand. But now she will always

be naked and sad. She will be what happens

to lake water that is loved and is also

shallow enough. The thickening, the slowing,

the black blood of it, the check opened

to reveal the inevitable heart attack.

God, the silence of the chamber

we watch from. What happens to water

that isn't loved? It undergoes processes.

It freezes beside traffic.

But the reaching out to all sides at once,

the wet closing of what was open?
That is a beautiful woman.

So of course I stand and stare, never able

to pinpoint the exact moment I killed her.

And another thing.

"The poet and the dreamer are distinct. Diverse, sheer opposite, antipodes. One pours out a balm upon the world, the other vexes it."

FROM John Keats' "The Fall of Hyperion"

----

In his dream, the speaker visits Moneta, the goddess of memory. He swears he's a poet. Oh, and she swears he's wrong.

(I will never be a poet).

----

There are two kinds of chaos: commotion, yes, but also the void. Today concluded with a sinking feeling of the latter. And I know this sadness is temporary, but the realization doesn't seem to be helping, because it's temporary-ness that's making me sad in the first place.

How am I supposed to 'vex' it when my agency's conditional--out of (my) control?

sunday--

1. My first time at the Episcopal Church in Athens, with Ms. Kelley McArthur and farm friends. I was incredibly impressed.
2. Philosophical ponderings/general orneriness with Mr. Kelly Latimore (who gifted me the beautiful book of Chilean poetry and prose, pictured above).
3. Chit-chats with Ms. Morky Magic.
   
4. Skype with my music-making-soul-brother, who is going somewhere big; just you see.
5. Thesis. Thesis. Thesis.
6. Arcade Fire. Arcade Fire. Arcade Fire.
7. ice cream sandwiches.

(a good day)
-----
EL VERDADERO PROBLEMA
de la Filosofía.
(Nicanor Parra)

es quién lava los platos
nada del otro mundo
Dios
la verdad
el transcurso del tiempo
claro que sí
pero primero quién lava los platos

el que quiera lavarlos que los lave
chao pescao
y tan enemigos como ante

(THE GREAT ENIGMA/ of philosophy/ is who's going to wash the dishes/ it isn't life after death/ God/ Truth/ the passage of time/ [these things] of course/ but first who's going to wash the dishes
he who wants to wash them, let him wash them/ later alligator/ and true enemies forever).

flashes of melancholy (and the Middle Ages).

John Keats wanted his grave to read: here lies one whose name was writ in water.

[They didn't honor it].

Learned the etymology of melancholy the other day. Turns, out--

In the Middle Ages, bodies were thought to be made of humors, right? Well, when certain humors were in abundance--or sparse--one was said to have relational illness.
Melancholy was one of those humors.
Melancholia was the humoral illness.

One with 'excess' melancholy was clinically deemed: high-strung, but remarkably creative; simultaneously insane and genius.

It's a love/hate relationship--The Poet's and Melancholy's--like something un-catchable that catches you. What is prescriptive mental normalcy, anyways? Is intellectual genius inevitably so isolating that one who has it cannot help but feel crazy? disconnected? I think that is sad. I'm no intellectual genius (and I vow to not be as broody as John Keats), but sometimes I feel crazy, too. Yeah, sometimes I feel crazy, too.

When I was a super-little tyke (like, too young to remember--so super-little), the Dr. gave me some 'test,' and told my mother I had an acute form of Attention Defecate Disorder. He tried to put me on Ritalin, and maybe that's good and well for some people, but personally, I think it was kind of fucked up that he suggested it. Luckily for me, my mom thought so too, wrote the thing off as "one man's opinion" and kept me undrugged-- never even mentioning the incident to me until about a year ago. And maybe I'll go through life losing things more often than most people, and maybe my mind'll be full of flashes, and my stories will go through all these anecdotal turns before they make their points, but what's wrong with that? I'm Joyful and my relationships run deep, and I do well professionally/academically/ etc. etc. Why fix what's not broken in the head?

I, for one, am glad Keats was Melancholy. (And for the record; he was too)

flashes of melancholy (and the Middle Ages) by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Inspired by Dr. Brandy Fraley--lecture on John Keats and his Circle.

"if I could go back-ways" get you no-ways fast.

Sometimes, funny things haunt me--like shoe strings; sometimes shoe strings haunt me. Like Cat Steven's Trouble haunts me. Like Gumby and putt-putt golfing haunt me.

Sometimes, I am afraid of losing faces. Other people's faces. I can always recognize them. I never forget. But I can't close my eyes and create the isolated image. And somehow I feel like this is losing. This is losing faces.

Sometimes I remember belonging to the Communion of Saints. Before my experience of agency complicated my understanding of fatalism. Before the two became incongruous. I remember when doubt was more consolable. When faith was easier. And sometimes I swear I still do belong. Sometimes, when I think or feel or love strongly enough, I swear I hear echos from all around that are not my own. And I know. I know it's the Community of Saints.

Sometimes poetry is laughable. And sometimes poetry is laughing at me. (For not believing in masks// For self sacrifice// For causes).

Sometimes I laugh at myself.

Sometimes oatmeal makes everything better.

But most of the time it takes more. More than oatmeal. More than peppermint and honey. More than immersion in a safe place with safe things-- until contentment and discontentment become simultaneously and increasingly necessary; the former at an immediate, personal level; the latter at a macro-political level.

"No amount of 'if-I-could-go-back-ways' gets you back-ways," they say.
And I say: Oh, God, where are my boxes?



no-ways fast. by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Holiday

"For my sister who sometimes needs to take time to grieve with the world. Don't forget what a beautiful place it is. With love from Frances, Christmas 2010."

[photo: cousins Maize (head-bopping), Zoe (leap-frogging), and Oliver (mohawk-rocking);
they are part of my beautiful place]

Wait- Galway Kinnell

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: the enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asked to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

--

Maybe faith is just an active--it cannot be passive--acceptance of others' love, and the hope that, despite all the darkness, we share enough goodness between each other to keep on//fight for.

Merry Christmas.