open up your eyes

“Wind swirls around the sand and ribs appear. There is musculature in dunes. And they are female. Sensuous curves–the small of a woman’s back. Breasts. Buttocks. Hips and pelvis. They are the natural shapes of Earth” (Williams 109).

When I read this description, I saw it. I don’t know how I never saw this before but sometimes I do not see the obvious. William’s use of language and metaphor kills me. She kills me in the nicest way possible because though my eyes are tired–from all of the reading I’ve been doing for this class and others–my mind is on fire with inner visions that I alone can see and am unable to describe. And Williams… truly it is a pleasure to read her words.

 Her metaphor of Mother Earth; I have never seen Mother Earth as a Woman. I have only see Mother Earth as Nature. I have never personified Mother Earth. (Is that even a correct phrasing?) I do not feel like thinking.

Anyways, Mother Earth wearing her desert mask is always changing. She is always shifting positions. Perhaps she does it to change her point of view or she is uncomfortable or she is traveling through the wind. An unseen spirit being carried along on particles of sand as though she’s riding a comet hurling towards her surface or something. I dunno. *shrugs. I just love this description and I love William’s writing style and I am tired so I am not writing anything else.

Poetry = Life

This is an excerpt from my draft:

Poetry

Poetry is when you first wake up in the morning and your eyelashes are stuck together. Poetry is when you see a bottle dodging rain bullets in a puddle as you wait at the bus stop. Poetry is smoking a clove on your porch, ankles crossed, while staring at the street. Poetry is the dried leaf that a random foot steps on. Poetry is when you allow music to take over your entire being, allowing the sounds to vibrate in your very bones. Poetry is a raccoon that’s looking through your trash. Poetry is oxygen. Poetry is when you cry from looking at the pain of a child who has scraped her knee. Poetry is when the fascists come to your house, march you a hundred feet into the woods and shoot your brains out. Poetry is poetry for the poet who eats, sleeps, dreams, breathes, cries, fucks, sweats and bleeds life.

Ondaatje…

I picked a good place to read this book: outside on the porch facing the sun in the morning. The air reminded me of when I would wake up in Florida: warm and fresh and had that feeling of future hotness in it. Except this is Albany and it isn’t going to get hot today.

Starting with page 17, Ondaatje made me so aware of time. Not that I am not usually, but seeing it in someone else’s writing is always interesting. He writes, “Half a page–and the morning is already ancient.” When I read this page, it flies by in an instant. While writing this page, it must have taken him some time for I get the sense that he started out writing in the morning and by the time he was finished… well, the morning was ancient. It makes me think of memoirs in general and how they capture time on pages, yet time moves on the pages because we as readers read them and while we read them time passes. Time fascinates me. So, yeah.

 This book in general gives off an interesting feel. Physically and spiritually. The cover, smooth, and using a color pallet which consists of green, orange, yellow, brown and black… The pages themselves are smooth and when I run my thumb on them there is a slight resistance to the smoothness. On page 25 he writes, “…of this long journey back–all those preparations for travel, the journey through Africa, the recent 7-hour train ride from Colombo to Jaffna…” the book itself throws me into this relam of wilderness. Nature. Warm/hot. Unknown. Land I have never seen. I mean, besides the cover depicting this and the little plants that start of each chapter’s first word, I think that Ondaatje brings this out of his book as well. Using literal terms or not.

The thoughts are grouped together, sentences are kind of abrupt, like he’s made a check list and added some details to the list later on, ”The era of grandparents. Philip Pndaatje was supposed to have the greatest colletion of wine glasses in the Orient; my other grandfather, Willy Fratiaen, dreamt of snakes. Both my grandmothers lived cautiously, at least until their husbands died” (41). (This probably isn’t the best example to use but it is what came to mind). Anyways, I like this writing style. I feel like I’m reading his thoughts and I feel like I’m reading/seeing how his thoughts transition from one thought to the next. Like, when you’re dreaming and how you’re speaking to a person and they change into someone else? This is what I get from his writing and it is most enjoyable.

The Human who is Human because she is Naked

Mary Karr is quite the author. Her voice is strong, loud, blunt, direct and in your face. She doesn’t fluff anyone’s pillows and I feel like if she were to apologize it would be an apology to the people who can’t handle her writing. I feel like if someone were to come up to her and say, “Your book sucked” that she would shrug and thank them for reading it. She is what she is and she tells everyone.

 

It’s refreshing to read an author who writes like this because everyone knows that life isn’t a bag of jellybeans. One scene that captured my attention was from p. 114,

 

“I spied a huge cabbage-head jellyfish on the sand. It was a dull white color. It looked like a free-floating brain knocked out of somebody’s skull… This was the perfect weapon to chase Lecia with, jellyfish being somehow like roaches in their ability to make her squeal…”

 

The image that I have in my head is so vivid and I view this entire scene as a silent movie from the fifties (even though this was in the 60s) shown on a projector. My father has shown me such films and it’s quite amusing to watch. The only part of this scene that I found amusing was Karr’s wanting to torture/gross her sister into answering her. I know I’ve done it to my own sister so… *shrugs. Anyways, I view this scene as a silent film and I can see the beach, I can see Lecia standing in the waves and I can see Mary finding the cabaggae sized jellyfish and smiling because she’s found a way to make her sister listening to her. Karr’s scene writing is really strong and vivid and I like this a lot because with some past authors I’ve read [of course I can’t think of any at the moment] I’ve had scenes in my head but they are vague; they aren’t as in focus as her scenes are.

 

The jellyfish scene also makes me think of how naked Karr is in her book. Jellyfish are pretty much clear and one can see through them. They hide nothing. Karr does this continuously throughout her memoir. She really is a brilliant writer.

 

Despite this, I found that I wasn’t really crazy about the book. I think it’s a great piece of writing and I’m definitely glad we read this book but. something doesn’t click. Something about this book doesn’t make me love it. I don’t know why and I find it somewhat odd because I enjoy writing that is blunt and direct and when the author points out her own faults as easy as breathing and accepts them, pretty much saying, this is me and I am human. And she is. She’s so human and it’s fantastic. I love that. I love how human she is. I might be contradicting myself at this point so I say… the end.

Indifferent.

Though I am enjoying Karr’s writing, I have to say I’m not really into it or in Love with it. I enjoy her bluntness, her ability to use descriptions, her side comments, and some of her memories… but over all I think her alright. *shrugs.

What makes a book extremely appealing to some people but eh to others? I wish I knew. It would certainly be interesting.

Anyways, one particular part of her life I enjoyed because I could relate to it was her writing of her and the neighborhood kids. Somewhere in chapter three I want to say… about how she was cut out of the “herd”and such. I wasn’t cut out of the herd that I grew up with but her memories of spending time with the kids and being close reminded me of spending most of my summer with my sister, brother and neighbors playing whoopi (a cooler version of kickball), swimming, riding bikes (we pretended we were a gang or on patrol a lot), playing manhunt (which wasn’t even manhunt but because it was in the dark we called it manhunt), going on picnics and eating and throwing lots of goldfish… Good times, great oldies. I like when authors stir my thoughts and bring up memories I haven’t thought of in awhile. Be they good or bad. It is what it is.

50′s Housewife

Yesterday I worked at Borders. We’ve had a sale on calendars for the past few weeks, each one is a dollar. Needless to say, we sold a lot of calendars. Still, there are hundreds left. I know this personally since my manager asked me to reshelve and organize them. Sounds simple but it actually took me quite awhile because I was moving the calendars from one side of a bookcase to another. The bookcases are at least six feet tall, and ten feet wide.

Anyways, I was on my knees, sorting the calendars into piles and this tall, old man whose face was covered in wrinkles and glasses happened to notice me and said with a huge grin on his face: You should only be on your knees only in church and for your husband. I think he thought he was being funny. Frankly, I was amazed that such a comment came out of his mouth. 

I looked at his wife who was standing there, hands clasped in front of her and I got the opinion that she’s a very quiet and soft spoken person. I felt sorry for her because she’s married to an idiot whose opinion of women is probably along the lines of that they’re only good for cooking, cleaning, birthing children, pleasuring husbands, staying silent and looking pretty.

 What a dumbass.

Poetry

I love poetry. I feel as though it’s a separate language from our native tongue. The combination of words together, I feel like it’s more expressive at times than writing a short story or a book. Not that either are not expressive, but still. I think the shorter the piece is and the more you can say… it’s kind of incredible. An expression that comes to mind is how you can do more with less and I think poetry does this. I find poetry peaceful and a type of freedom that I can’t get anywhere else. Oh the power of words. Sometimes I feel I can express myself better through poetry than if I spoke about myself matter of fact. *shrugs. This was written January 16th, 2007:

 

“When in Doubt, Consult Nietzsche. Or Truth.”

This word

Lies

In the eye

Of the individual

Who is blinded by

Illusions,

Metaphors,

And masks.

The drive

to survive

Means to lie

Because deception

Is much more comforting

When you pretend

To be ignorant.

Trust is a security

A luxury,

For those of us

Who need to feel safe.

But do you need to feel safe

To be alive

When you only need

To tell a lie

To get by—

In life?

 

The end.

 

I feel like this says so much more in this short space then if I were to go into great detail and explain, and then lose myself in the explanation of how I feel, becoming repeative and losing the overall meaning. But poetry… I dunno. It’s beautiful.

 

The Passion(s) of Michele.

3 Things I love to do:

Read. Check out Arts and Letters Daily for ideas, criticism and debates… This is what I call sexy.

Poetry. I love to write poetry. Check out Poetry.org for poetry, poems and biographies.

Learn. Looking for a blog on learning is rather vague so I chose Existentialism as a topic. Check out Existentialism Philosophy to learn more.  

 

 The end.

This is a test on linking. I shall link to… Youtube. To make a word link to the page you wish to view, go to code and click the link button while the word is highlighted. Copy the address into the link box and Ta-da! The magic that is blog.

Inerests.

Dadaism. Emma Goldman. Poetry. Three areas that I find highly intriguing.

Dadaism. If you have ever made a collage, you have experienced Dadaism for the Dada created the collage. It was in response to World War I because it had scarred the people and the land physically and emotionally and they wanted to express their outrage at society for allowing such a chaotic and determental event to occur. A friend of mine who used to go here is obsessed with Dadaism and I always found it both intriguing and odd, because I never understood it. I’m learning about it now, in one of my classes, Modern Poetry, and it’s become my latest obsession. The link I chose is a brief and satisfactory overview of the Dada. I spent a little while searching for a good summary of it and I believe that this link lives up to that.  

About a year ago I saw Dahr Jamail speak at St. Joe’s about his experiences in Iraq. There were pins in the back and the pin that caught my eye said, “The most violent element in society is ignorance,” Emma Goldman. It’s one of the truest statements I’ve ever read. This led me to wonder, who was Emma Goldman? So, I looked her up and found out that she was an anarchist, a feminist, a voice for the people…etc.  She was  an early advocate of free speech, birth control, women’s equality and independence, and union organization. For more information I suggest reading her autobiography Living My Life. The Blog site I chose is quite exceptional. It’s short biography of her and is meant to draw the viewer into her world. For the viewers who do want more of Goldman, this blog gives links for more indepth information.

And finally, poetry. I’ve been obsessed with poetry for years and this site gives out exercises a poet can complete. The way the site is set up also caught my attention, the title itself: letters on colored squares, separated from each other, creating words. I suppose the aura of the title: it being friendly, creative…, that caught my eye and made me want to read more.

 The end.