In the Garden

These days my poems come strangely and awkwardly, like a teenager into their lengthened limbs. 

In the Garden

My hands covered in dirt till the soil, reaching

growing downward like roots. You question the foundations

of my faith – that which I have built myself upon

as I plant carrots and beets. I smile upward as the sun

strokes my hair and back. Its warmth comforts and envelops

my little leaves spiraling out from my stem. Your raincloud,

refreshing, quenches my thirst and feeds my willowy limbs.

Only as the sun reappears do you find me in bloom.

Expanding

I managed to scrounge up a bit of poetry from my writings and notes for all of you lovely people before I have the longest Thursday ever (10 1/2 hours in Hong Kong, 15 hour plane ride, 5 hour layover, 2 hour flight and still 2 1/2 hours left in Thursday - that's what happens when you fly from the future into the past). 

Expanding

Sentences, language – they fill your mouth today

and every day, relentless. You pick them apart one

by one, taking their meaning new places, stretching

and pulling, then putting them back together

on your assembly line.

Pushing my limits

I just got Blogger to start working again. It's been having some loading issues that have been stopping me from posting. I don't even know what that's all about. 


The last few days have been pretty full. My husband's birthday was Monday and we decided to do a hike in Hong Kong. We underestimated the hike by quite a bit and found ourselves up a certain creek without a certain paddle to help us. It ended up being a 4 hour hike up and down set of mountain peaks. There were three main peaks, the highest of which was over 800 meters high (and we pretty much started at sea level). NUTS STUFF. I've never done anything that difficult in my life. Ever. 


We did make it to the world's largest sitting Buddha at the end of it all. It was a lovely afternoon. It's good that we could still enjoy it after four hours of hiking and what turned out to be some pretty bad sunburns. 


I did learn something about myself. There was no way of getting out of there once we'd gotten in, except to turn back or go forward. There were a few times where I felt like giving up, but since there's no other real option but moving on, there was no giving up to be had. It was a tough struggle for both of us. I can barely move today and we're both nursing the sunburn on our arms, but we did it. I wasn't sure I could do it. I really wasn't. There was a high ridge that we thought was the last, but when we arrived at the top we realized we were only just over halfway through. I had already had to stop and have two significant resting periods to deal with my breathing. I didn't think my body could handle it, but I pushed myself to a new psychological and physical limit. I was overly ambitious in picking a hike I knew my husband would enjoy and most of the planning sites did not indicate the length of this hike. Maps can be deceiving. 


Things I learned:
- Approximately 1280m of vertical climbing is A LOT.
- My husband and I make a good team. 
- I can push my body through a lot more than I realize if I can pace myself. 


That last one is huge. I've been an asthmatic since I was a child. I couldn't run the mile and I get winded climbing to the fifth floor of our building to get into the apartment. We climbed about 5km worth of distance (not including the vertical). It was a long, hard slog of a hike. But we did it. 


I gotta say - I impressed myself. 

Getting My Write On and Proud of It

This week's RemembeRED was to write about something that you're proud of.


I've got to say, the things that I've done on this blog - my little bits of writing and art - are things I am proud of. 


In college, I had an abusive boyfriend that I stuck with for way too long. I developed severe depression and went almost two years before I sought any professional help (which didn't really help, but there you are). I had always been a writer, just as I had always been a reader. I really started coming into some better poetry just as I got into college, but then the depression and the suppressing of emotions and experiences. It was all I could do to hang on for the ride.


Needless to say, my writing dried up. Even when I tried to use it as a creative and therapeutic outlet, nothing came. I used to joke with my (genius, novel-writing) roommate that I had the longest bout of writer's block in the history of man: four years. 


It hasn't been until recently that I've found my way back to writing. Two years ago, I started kicking around an idea for a novel, but nothing much has come of it - a little world building and some random notes and doodles. It wasn't until March, after reading the writing/literary blog of a friend of mine that I started really pushing myself to write and express. I may have started the ball rolling a few months earlier, but pushing myself to write everyday and post to the blog a few times a week has really gotten me expressing in a way I haven't in years. Not only that, but it's taken me back to a way of seeing the world that I haven't in a long time. It's nice to start to see things with an artist's eye again. Pushing to express and finding new creativity where I suspected that it might have dried up forever is something I am proud of. I am proud to have pushed and found myself capable of getting there again. 


Fruits of my labors:
Found in the Sea off Cape Artemision, ca. 1920
Thai Fare
Vapid Aphrodite
Heaven Bent
Orphic Mission

On Feeling Guilty

When we do something wrong, we often feel guilt.


From the American Heritage Dictionary:


(gĭlt)  n.

1. 1. The fact of being responsible for the commission of an offense. See synonyms at blame.
   2. Law. The fact of having been found to have violated a criminal law; legal culpability.
   3. Responsibility for a mistake or error.
2. 1. Remorseful awareness of having done something wrong.
   2. Self-reproach for supposed inadequacy or wrongdoing.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/guilt#ixzz1KmK8WLRz


The dictionary gives us the two different meanings of guilt: 1) moral responsibility and 2) the feeling of self-reproach that we feel after a wrongdoing. The thing about these definitions is that there is a WORLD of difference between the two. Being morally responsible for something is not always a bad thing, but guilt is used to describe the specific moral responsibility for some wrongdoing. So guilty people - they are the ones that have actually committed wrongdoings. We're square there, but the psychological state of guilt is where the real problems lay:


Guilt is a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes—accurately or not—that he or she has violated a moral standard, and bears significant responsibility for that violation.

"Guilt." Encyclopedia of Psychology. 2nd ed. Ed. Bonnie R. Strickland. Gale Group, Inc., 2001. eNotes.com. 2006. 31 December 2007


The self-reproach version of guilt is not always felt by those who are morally responsible for the wrong. Also, self-reproach is often felt by those who have not deviated from a moral standard, but perhaps merely a particular person or group's SOCIAL standard. It is not morally wrong to wear white after labor day, but a fashionista might claim this to be a cardinal sin.The confusion of some guilt-feeling parties is that they have broken a moral code. Sometimes social matters do yield morally charged situations:  


For example, it may be in poor taste and not socially appropriate for me to tell someone that I don't like their haircut or that I am so bluntly honest with them in general, but that does not constitute me as a morally bad person. If I am saying such things with the intention to cause them mental or emotional harm, THEN I am a morally guilty person, but not for merely being honest with a person. 


Now, the party that feels wronged (and not just by their hairstylist) may view me as a guilty party - I am "to blame" for their poor attitude or sadness. It would be quite rude of me to have told them how crappy their haircut was, which might be worthy of an apology. I am assuming that I did not intend this person harm, and therefore upon realization that I did cause them harm, I might go through the appropriate guilt sequence (my action caused them harm, I am morally against the mental, emotional, and physical harming of others, therefore I am and feel guilty of causing such harm and need to make amends). That being said, harm was not intended but was caused. Consequences have actions - understand that good intentions do not absolve you from responsibility.




Real problems come in with true conflation of  expectations/social standards that do not have moral force. I think many people feel guilt over behavior that is not particularly a matter of morals, so much as social behavior and manipulation. The fashionista example was one, but a reaction of resentment and vengefulness on the part of the "wronged" party often results in the feeling of guilt beyond the call of morality.


For example, it may be in poor taste for me to tell someone that their method of washing dishes is ineffective. I might have been trying to help them improve their method in order to promote my acquiring clean dishes in a timely fashion. The dishwasher might take offence to this. Rather than having been caused emotional or mental harm, this person has instead taken damage to their ego (they were a dishwasher for many years in a fine dining establishment! how dare I suggest that using bleach was better than just soap for things that have held raw meat! they know how to clean the damn dishes - the nerve!)


Now, the party feels wronged. One could argue that I HAVE emotionally damaged this person in that their feelings were hurt and I should go through the above sequence of guilt and amends-making. Good. We're square.


BUT (you knew there would be a but) this does not require me to feel guilty every time this person washes dishes, pointing out how appropriately they were handled and cleaned from now until the day I die. That feeling of guilt does not come doing moral wrong - it comes from being punished or the fear of being punished cruelly and unusually for one (or very few) altercations. Killing someone might make you suspect for life, but a comment about dish washing or any other trivial matter such as this should be dealt with and dismissed. 


In fact, I'd like to posit that the dealing out of incommensurate punishment on the part of the "wronged party" constitutes a wrongdoing. They are behaving in a way that intentionally inflicts harm on another party - which is morally wrong. 


The point is that the person who is continuing to be punished and made to feel guilt ought not to feel guilty. The psychological presence of the guilt feeling does not indicate that a moral wrong has been done in this situation. This makes guilt a particular and nefarious feeling to deal with.


The moral of the story, here, is to be aware of yourself: own up to moral responsibility and feel remorse for that guilt, but know that feeling guilty is not always the same as being morally responsible. Protect yourself from the emotional damage of inappropriate guilt-feeling and punishment.

Dear Life

This week's Red Writing Hood prompt (one of them) was to write a letter to your character's fear. I have a fictional character I've been writing for a while in a fantasy setting who is human but has an unnaturally and somewhat unusually long life.

Dear Life,

To most, you are just that – something held dearly. It seems strange, but the longer I go on, the more I get the feeling that you hold onto me. Too long have I walked this earth, the lives of three women, end on end, and too many generations to count or remember. Death is not your opposite, but humans cling to you to avoid it. It is not death I seek, but rather the resting end of you. It is not even that you have been bad to me and I am wishing the torture would end. No, it is the weariness of a traveler who has walked too far on a road that has no end in sight I seek to escape.

Even if I expire along that road traveled so long, I fear that the priests, shamans and mages might be right. If you do not simply end at death, if you are eternal in some other form after all of this time I have spent here, then there is no rest to come. Everlasting life sounds so good to them. It comforts them as the go to sleep at night, that there is no reason to fear death for it all goes on afterward. How can they not be weary? How can they not want that same sleep that they go into after such a long day of mundane tasks? I watch others go about their daily lives. They work to gain something for themselves in their short time on this earth and age faster than they wish, all the while shunning the wisdom they have gained and ignoring the exhaustion that comes upon them until the surrounding vigorous youth forces them to see – you force them to see. And then the strangest thing of all – they cling to that your youth as though their decrepit bodies could ever again achieve such activity in you again. They fall apart trying to live beyond their means, but all in the comfort that they will see youth in everlasting life.  Is that all a human can crave? To never end the busyness, the going and the doing?

Am I even still human? After going on like this for so long, I do not think I know anymore. I do not want as these humans that surround me want. I hunger for food and drink, but I hunger more for rest to come, for some sight of the end of the road, even if it lay at a cliff on the ocean. If that be the case, I shall make my bed in the sea as did the eternal being, with the rocks as my pillows and the seaweed as my cover. If I must see you again at the end of that road, then you shall only see me in despair.

            My one hope is that you and I will truly expire together at the end of all this.

Your grudgingly obedient,

Tanith

This pov is fairly early on in the development of this character. Ever the romantic, I revive her human connections and she realizes she can still empathize - that she still is human.

Comments welcome.

Here and Now

I was reading at The Yawp about an ekphrasis project (poetry inspired by images in this case) and thought it sounded like a great idea. I did a free write at Sans Serif about the picture before I started writing. I'll be pulling some of my ideas from that free write for this poem. 


Here's the image I started out with:

(Photo from "Getting Pregnant Over 40 - Is it possible?" http://www.squidoo.com/get-pregnant-over-40  Copyright © 2011, Squidoo, LLC and respective copyright owners)

With a free write under my belt, I sat down to write a poem. I'm not sure it's quite there yet, but here's (at least) a first draft:

Here and Now

Our minds dwell on future and past

Where will we leave our footprints

behind? Where have they gone before?

A child lies restless in the belly of a woman

who is on her path to starting a family.

The child tosses and turns, the mother thinks

“Where will he go – a mover like this?

Will he be a doctor or lawyer or teacher?

Where have I been? Here and there.

And now I am going to be a mother.”

She smiles to herself at the future path

laid before her, brick by brick 

in her mind.

This woman is already a mother.

Her child inside her is already her child.

He is living, experiencing her care,

her movements, her strange food desires,

her inhale, her exhale – he takes her breath.

Placing a foot behind her belly button,

he presses – Know I am here. She knows.

Tickling toes that she will soon see bare,

she hums to herself and to him – 

living in the moment.

Comments welcome.

Heaven Bent

P&W prompt number 8 for me (as usual thanks to Angelspeak):


Choose a cliched phrase (“fit as a fiddle,” “think out of the box,” “running on empty,” etc.) and turn it around. Use the new meaning created by this reversal to fuel a poetic meditation.


I decided to use the phrase "Hell-bent for leather" which is sometimes shortened to "Hell-bent", meaning to be going very fast. I changed the phrase to "Heaven-bent" and slowed it down a bit.

Heaven Bent

He walked the trail upward ahead of me

taking the landscape one pace at a time, 

slowing his stride imperceptibly to give me

the chance to catch up as I panted behind

"Why do you always pick the highest

climb you can find on the trail?" I asked,

wondering if I would get any reply this time

 mentally counting the hundreds before

Patiently he climbed, taking time to breathe,

time to live and experience each moment 

of the unhurried ascent, early afternoon sun 

shining around his blonde locks like a halo 

Puffing to catch up where I'd fallen back

I scrambled up a yet steeper, shorter path

only to stumble and scrape both knees 

with a tight wince, but not a sound escaping

A solid hand reached out to help - I took it

gratefully after my rash moment, pain subsiding

the steady calm of him capturing me completely 

"From up there we can touch the heavens."

Comments welcome.

Alarm Sounding

Today I addressed another P&W prompt (picked up from Angelspeak). 

Write a sonnet, a fourteen-line poem made up, typically, of three stanzas of four lines, and a fourth of two lines, or a couplet. Use the following rhyme scheme: In each of the first three stanzas, rhyme the first and third lines and the second and fourth lines (a, b, a, b, c, d, c, d, e, f, e, f); and rhyme the lines of the couplet (g, g). For a traditional example, see Shakespeare’s ”From you have I been absent in the spring….”For a contemporary example, see Denis Johnson’s ”Heat.”

For the record, I really dislike this prompt. Sonnets – what a pain in the butt. Really. I spent more than a hour counting and recounting feet of poetry on my fingers while trying to think of rhymes that didn’t sound silly. I’m not sure I succeeded. I will, no doubt, re-write this poem to capture something much better in the near future. (Note – this reads better if you add a brief caesura after the word stillness of line 5.)

Alarm Sounding

The silent snowy hills of arctic light

are full of trees immeas’rable in worth

The summer days leave so few hours of night

or living things to walk upon this earth.

Through stillness now suddenly emerges

the sound of living earth, it tears and rends

Earth shattering, through stone and rock surges

a force that more than mother natures bends.

The cry – the breaking of an arctic shelf

a severing of earth sounds the alarm

a crime on nature in and of itself

a thing it seems no living thing could harm

A crime that we should kill the wilderness

by living lives that venture to excess.

Comments are welcome, as always.

A family recipe

Today's post is another prompt a la The Red Dress Club RemembeRED series: 

"I once told a friend that i love her posts because I read with my nose, and she has the unique ability to describe the olfactory sense perfectly.

Sounds can do the same thing. Have you ever heard a song and suddenly you were swept back to a time in your life you had pushed to the back of your memory?

For many of us a scent or a sound can bring back a rush of remembraces.

This week, your memoir prompt assignment is to think of a sound or a smell that reminds you of something from your past and write a post about that memory. Don't forget to incorporate the sound/smell of your choosing!"

So here's my response - just a quick short one today!

A Family Recipe

I stood at the unfamiliar stove, sifting through the available spices and ingredients.

All dried and they're not all here... why can't I find normal spices in Hong Kong?

Chopped onions already making my eyes water with their acrid odor, I cracked the tinned tomatoes and a sharp tinny smell assaulted my nose. Not like at home...

Cool granite with a warm wooden cutting board hold the trophies of my horn of plenty. Mason jars full of bright, sweet-smelling Romas with their bite of once-fresh basil, intensified by the canning salt that touches the palette when tasted. 

My husband stands with a fragrant glass of Merlot in hand, breathing in the barrel from which it was delivered, philosophizing with my father and sneaking a tomato from the jar. I rap his hand with the back of a wooden spoon before turning back to the stove.

The sharpness of the onions fade from the air as they fold together with the spicy tang of the garlic in the searing pan. Olive oil takes on a new bouquet as the sauteing root vegetables are brightened with a dash of Riesling - the cloying sweetness steaming into my face with the alcohol that leaves me heady.

My mother and grandmother move about the kitchen, making some sweet-concoction of their own for dessert - delicate breezes of sugar and vanilla waft by as they pass.

Adding tomatoes from jars, a crackling of fresh ground pepper gives the sweet-smelling sauce a sudden savory scent that is augmented by the pungently grassy aroma of fresh cut parsley. 

Adding fresh, doughy pasta to the boiling water to my left lets off yeasty, floury bubbles as it begins to simmer. 

The longer the sauce cooks and the less we can all find something to occupy our hands, the closer we all drift to the stove, eventually becoming the people who watch the water boil and sneaking a spoon into the sauce when possible. 

I woke up from the daydream to the smell of tinny tomatoes and onions, sharp as knives in my eyes now.

And this is why it’s so hard to produce a family recipe.

Conference Killer - A rough poem

I was recently at a philosophy conference, when a poem struck me. After listening to one gloriously presented lecture, a second lecturer took the spotlight. Well... the rest is in the poem.


Conference Killer

The battlefield set - pitting academic against academic

In a conference, competition: who will win the day?

One skillful warrior completes his task,

the crowd eager to continue the fight

A second must be given his chance

awkwardly he sits reading, his notes becoming crumpled

as he foams at the mouth with excitement

not stopping to wipe away the spittle,

weapon wildly wielded: the mind has learned, the tongue has not

slurring well thought words with a foreign sound

Inertia gone, the crows loses interest

their eyes roaming the room like prowling cats

avoiding mutual acknowledgement of boredom

others politely look attentive, leaning forward in their seats

willing themselves to not be revealed, a yawn giving them away

Few have the endurance to outlast the incomprehensible

the lecturer surfaces from his berserking on the field

the sole survivor in the slaughter of interest

Yes, I know it's rough, but I'm having a hard time moving on it. And I'm not kidding about the spittle. The second stanza is almost reporting. Of course, so is the third. Anyways. There is some writing for the day.