mixedmusic333's blog

6/30/08

I'd given it thought, the idea of quitting. I'd spent an entire hour of practice slouched backward, legs splayed, my head against the pegs and staring at the wall.

The wall. Now, that was an interesting thought. Wasn't that what I was experiencing? There’s something about slamming into a wall repeatedly that hurts...

This was normal, I assumed. It had to be. Dedicating myself this long had to mean more than this. In six years I'd never quit before, I'd never even wanted to. Did I really want to give up now?

My shoulders are bruised and the inside of my head is mangled--like someone’s been suffocating me too long...

I'd lost my direction, and with it I'd lost my drive. My sense of success had been battered, and I could hardly talk about it with anyone but myself. Myself! I was my own worst nightmare: my constant internal monologue threw insults at me, critiqued my every thought and motion.

I knew
fifteen minutes before
the entire state and
I knew
before the whole country and
I watched
men and women I've always watched
since I was born
not understand and I
saw it in their faces
what they didn't want
to see it coming. I
knew the minute I wrote it
down, I heard
an Amber Alert for the
first time today...
and I knew
fifteen minutes
before we were able to
say it out loud. I knew
they'd found her and
I knew she wasn't alive.

It makes me sick that
I knew to expect it
even on Sunday when there was
hope.

My initial reaction to watching the press conference held this afternoon and the announcement of the discovery of Brooke Bennett's remains.

It's really raw... but I need to get back to posting again because I miss it. I've been really-super-busy (and honestly kind of lazy) so I haven't written much in the last month. I'm hoping my excessive reading balances it out... comments are much appreciated.

This is meant to be slammed:

striding through the candy aisle--the
gas station is bathed in
illumination
almost
erotically and
a woman: she
dances brightly
before my eyes; she dangles
from a single thread of
my imagination:

smiling and striding in
step to a secret song she slides
by and listens to the deep
pounding of her
own
heart
beat, vibrations, as she moves
down the aisle bursting

with an array of sweetened
sugar and
chocolate designed just for
lovers-- you know the kind. (who
cling tightly to the other's
fingers at night in
the city park; they've just
finished an ice
cream
cone and the sleepers
on maple benches eye them
warily.)

the boy behind the

I wrote a short story once. I felt uncomfortable turning it in. But I did it anyway, because somehow it felt right, I needed it. That story completed my small collection of vignettes. An autobiography.

And I was wary. What would the teacher say? The one who loved everything I'd ever written, nominated me for the kinds of programs and conferences most people never hear about. I'd thrown my homosexuality down onto that paper and slapped him in the face with it.

School was almost over, and when he handed back our projects he held mine a second too long and smiled warmly.

"This is the best I've ever seen you write."

And he was pointing to that one, the one. I'd hated it so much.

"Saturdays" it was called. He'd written a whole sticky note full of praise and it saddened me I'll never show it to anyone else, because sometimes being honest is just too hard.

You have to understand
it was really the
drugs.

Okay.
It was also really
me.

But that conversation
was really me
on the drugs.
(And believe me you
would have laughed your ass
off if you'd seen
me on the Valium beforehand.)

I think I mentioned
something about the
other woman.
And most of what I said
was probably true.
Drugs talk funny but
generally they don't lie
either.

In fact, you can
still tell, I'm sure,
that I'm not all here
at the moment, with
two painkillers and
an antibiotic in
my system.

(If I tried to
get up I'd fall
over.)

When I'm fully
functioning I usually
do a better job with line
breaks but this isn't
much of a poem anyway.

I mentioned the
other woman and I
don't really know if that
was a
mistake
or not.

Probably not.

And I know we talked
about time.
But how do you take
time when there's nothing
to take time from in
the first place?

I don't know much
else. And I never

Should I find it sad
that this white cyber-
space
is no longer large
enough to contain my
implosions?

They've gotten worse
and I've gotten
worse and
damn it
even the dog is
sick again.

(I've written a letter but I'll never show you.)

If anything I've learned
poetry is only
prose more muddled
minus a little vocabulary. It
is
avoidance because too
much description can
cause an avalanche of
that's too much
you don't need this
here so why
don't we condense
it a bit but

if anything I've learned
you can't fit lives
into a shoebox;
they don't keep well
(unless you count
formaldehyde and
eventually that doesn't
matter either) and
there's always the
one letter you never
wanted to read again
or the picture
that's too big to fit.

But you've lost the scissors and you wouldn't have cut it anyway.

Your new-varnish
maple constitution
and slender shoulder-
to-hip curves translate
languages hidden beneath
charcoal black facades of
bland obscurity. You
and me and we throw them
feverishly back into the
walls and the floors
and the ceilings and ourselves
wondering at how the
languages never sting our eyes
and how so many few
speak them like
you and me and
we chuckle like the
wind sounds after rainy days
and we're in tune with
everyone
even if it's only
for sometimes one moment
that you make sense
to me and I
make sense to you
and we make sense with
each other.

One day
a student strode along
like always
squinting because she
didn't have her glasses.
The hallway was empty
and so was her
mind but she had a
sneaking suspicion the
storage closet at
the end of the language
wing wasn't.

She passed it
three times and was
sure she heard
noises and so being
foolish she gripped the handle
and pulled backward
with one hundred fifteen
pounds and a few over-sized
textbooks.

The door never opened
and it still hasn't.
The sounds never stopped
and they still don't.

That closet sounds so much
like someone whispering
that the student can't
ever tell if they want to
come out or not.

Somehow this struck her as ironic.

And she didn't quite know
what to do in terms
of the closet at the end
of the language wing so

she thought she'd maybe write a poem about it.

there's something uncomfortable
about the way
our fridge hums in
the kitchen after
nine and the echos
bounce off the
clock and me and everything.
like a sleeping
white giant keeping
one eye
open
covered in graffiti.

There’s something about slamming
into a wall repeatedly that
hurts. My shoulders are bruised
and the inside of my head is
mangled like someone’s been
suffocating me too long. I’m
slamming into this wall to
get out, or maybe I’m trying to
stay in. Maybe I’ve done
it a thousand times before and can’t
know how to do
anything else; I’ll do it infinitely,
this slamming, forever
plus some. Sometimes I can’t
tell.

There’s something about the
word “infinity” that’s daunting. Infinity
is as high as we go;
children seem to be the only
to do the unthinkable
in that
intense moment of
childlike passion where the
one child says to another,
“Infinity and
one!”

If infinity is a cycle, I’ve got
to break it. If infinity is
the sagging clothesline in the
backyard, I’ve got to
straighten it. Or if infinity is
something else, it needs
to be nothing because

I’m tired and I’m beat and I’m
not sure why. My vision’s been
slanted lately, but
maybe that’s not just
me.

I’m not generally a follower,
but in all honesty,
I’ve been losing time
lately.

I need it back.

I’ve been spending more time
as a guest lately,
and less time as myself.

And I need it back…

So this isn’t saying
goodbye, really, because

It’s not like that.
Not exactly.

I'm taking a break for a while.

(This is probably not exactly surprising since I seem to be following a pattern. I doubt I'm gone for good, however. Autumn holds great promise and YWP has been--and continues to be--amazing.)

See you all on the flip side,
MM

Metaphors are
a bother; I'm
running out of new
ones. But
nothing I say
sounds quite as nice
in plain English.

I. Research

“… Beyond that, I think that the tipping point is a way of making sense of the world, because I'm not sure that the world always makes as much sense to us as we would hope.” -Malcolm Gladwell

The term Tipping point describes a point at which a slow gradual change becomes irreversible and then proceeds with gathering pace. It is derived from the metaphor of a rigid solid object being tilted to a point where it begins to topple. (Wikipedia)

THE TIPPING POINT IS:
• That one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once.

II. The House

Tipping Point = a minority population becomes a certain percentage, reaches a certain point, and “normal” leaves. (White Flight)

“Well… do people have tipping points?”

They could. If everyone has a tipping point, and then a blow out.

“Blow out? Like what? Do you mean like a tragedy then?”

Well, no—

“Romeo and Juliet sort of thing? Oedipus? Or like when supernovas just… go?”

More like finding a better place. Then the real tragedy there might be the definition of “better”. Similar to The House on Mango Street, actually. So, back to the book…

I’m scribbling. I’m not listening. Why has so much seemed ironic lately? In my notebook:

Ascendancy Story
- tipping point- a metaphor?
- blow out

If the ascendancy story is the way up, the tipping point is the middle. Ascendancy is rising above, so obviously tipping is rising after. How does he know the blow out is a better place? Do we have a choice? What if better isn’t worth it?

"Maybe we'll go
to the violin shop
tomorrow."

He's trying to
connect with
me.

"I'd really
love to see you
get that
cello soon."

I wonder if
he just feels
bad.

I don't know what
to tell him so
I say,

I love you, Dad.

He reaches over and
pats my knee. "I
love you too."

He called the car
next to us
queer
today. Just a slip up
and now he'll
spend the rest of
the ride trying to make
it up to me.

I wish he understood.
The words
aren't what I care
about anyway.

breathing
sometimes gets to be
boring; when I
try to change the
pattern the
air runs out.

I slid them off
her face and she told
me, "They're for just
lining things up."

I thought,
is it really that
easy? Put on
a pair of lenses
and suddenly people
make sense (when their
faces are in the
right places and the
bookcases aren't
crooked). Is this
how to find perspective?

I didn't say it
out loud but
I placed the glasses
on my own nose and
was dismayed to
find everything just as
blurry as I'd left
it.

She watched me.

"They're not
for vision." She
said.