watermelon heaven

Now, if only I could craft my words as masterfully as this artist crafts his watermelons...

It never rains in Southern California

Dude, what are you talking about? It snowed.

valentine for my ex

Words

Oh, the words, the words,
the achingly
beautiful
inadequate
words.

--Terry Hertzler

Kooky Professors

Speaking of kooky poli sci professors and sitting in the front of class, I remember a favorite story from my days at CSUN years ago. My dad, see, was a poli sci prof while I was a coed there. I took two of his classes. Naturally. He was a great prof. No, really, he was. I can remember around registration time, you could hear whispers in the hallways of the poli sci department: Take Beller, he's the best. So, yes, I took his class. We secretly agreed to change my last name for the class, and none of the students knew my undercover identity.

Those were my triathlon days, and my boyfriend and I rode our bikes to campus. I swam at school. One semester I took Poli Sci 156, and swam before class. The chlorine from the pool always made my nose run terribly. It was so annoying, that watery distraction tickling my upper lip, as I would sit in rapt attention to Dr. Beller's colorfully animated lectures, sucking up his profound wisdom like a dry loofah.

At the end of every week, we would always take our suits home to wash the chlorine out. I always wrapped mine in my scratchy white gym towel, and carried it with me tied to my backpack until I got home. During one lecture, my runny nose was particularly pestilent. I was sniffling and snorting and it wasn't doing any good; the water was running like a busted faucet. It was so annoying. Still, I refused to budge from my front-row perch to escape to the hallway, where I might blow the chloriney liquid away for good. Unable to control the leaky Kohler that was my nose, I desperately grabbed my towel and wiped, thus averting a disastrous scene.

That was it. Silly me. Dr. Beller--Dad--in a great show of drama, stopped his lecture mid-sentence, his emphatically gesturing arms suddenly frozen. He made a dramatic, sweeping motion to turn and glare at me. "Good god!" he exclaimed incredulously. "Did you just wipe your nose with that towel?!"

I stared back at him, stunned, my face turning a hot shade of burgundy. The entire class gasped in unison, horrified. "Ohhh! Dr. Bellerrrrr!" they cried. How mean!

I got an "A" in class. And no, I didn't cheat. It was all scan-trons.

Honoring Women and Black History Month

In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens by Alice Walker is a collection of feminist essays, written very much about black women, but not exclusively -- it is about all women. Powerful is Walker's assertion of what poet Jean Toomer found when he walked through the South many years ago: "he discovered a curious thing: black women whose spirituality was so intense, so deep, so unconscious, that they were themselves unaware of the richness they held." This seems a curious statement, and yet somehow rings powerfully true.

Walker is a very thoughtful and insightful writer. There is so much packed into these essays, one doesn't even know where to begin. One theme is the enduring resilience and strength of women. Similar to Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own, Walker examines women's ability to become artists, in this case particularly, black women -- women who were denied, among other indignities, the means to learn to read and write, or express themselves in any way. "How was the creativity of the black woman kept alive," Walker asks, "year after year and century after century, when for most of the years black people have been in America, it was a punishable crime for a black person to read or write?" Walker refers to Phyllis Wheatley, a black slave of the middle 1700s, who was highly educated and wrote poetry, in reference to Virginia Woolf's essay; how was this slave able to become a writer if she not only had no money or a room of her own, but didn't even own herself? Walker continues with other examples of strong women, most notably her own mother, who ran away at 17 to marry, had eight children, did all the work at home plus labored alongside her husband in the fields.

The strength of women is inherited from their mothers, handed down the line unspoken. All of these women, says Walker, "our mothers and our grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see." This is the strength of women. Walker's works are a valuable contribution to the importance of women, regardless of race or color. In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens is a must-read for all.

We Real Cool

by Gwendolyn Brooks

THE POOL PLAYERS.

SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We

Left school. We

Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We

Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We

Die soon.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15433
Click this link and listen to Brooks herself read the poem; it's a great treat, and I say it's required listening.

I Love Art

So, I have this prof, see, for my art history class. I'll call him Dr. D. He's crazy. He's passionate. He teaches art history, political science, and western civ. Go figure. I couldn't imagine taking his poli sci class. He speaks in riddles and metaphor, and when he wants you to write down a word he repeats it exactly three times, his voice rising one octave on each repetition. Like this: "art, art, ARRRT!" It's a lyrical melody I know by heart now. He gestures wildly with his arms, and beats on his chest when he wants to make a point. He gets so feverish as he flails that he knocks his papers or books, or whatever is in front of him, on the floor at least once every class period. I heard his textbooks only last one semester.

He gets in your face. He challenges you with weird questions. He gets so excited he spits. Bummer, because I like to sit in the front. One day he brought donuts for the class, two big greasy-pink boxes. At the end of the lecture he asked if anyone wanted the last three donuts: "I didn't spit on them, I promise," he said. "Well, only once." We roared, only because we knew it was true.

One of his favorite paintings is "The Scream," by Edvard Munch. He likes to open the text, hold it up in front of him, and smack the page where the painting he is discussing is located. One day he did that, he grabbed some poor coed's text off her desk in a moment of passion and, holding it to his chest, smacked the pages until they were crumpled. The poor girl. Yeah, he forgot to give her book back, too. Dr. D gets so excited, he yells, usually directly at one student. No one seems to know quite how to react, and yet he is loved--adored--by his groupies. He takes his groupies, anyone who wants to go, on field trips to see art exhibits and concerts. I'm signed up to go this Saturday.

No one took the three donuts.

Sylvia Plath reads Lady Lazarus

Lady Lazarus

by Sylvia Plath

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it--
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?--

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot--
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart--
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash--
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

23-29 October 1962
(Scroll to the bottom of the page to hear Plath herself read the poem -- it's wonderful!

Any More

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

--Sylvia Plath
first stanza of "Daddy"

random, random

My mother, of course, told me I had a fear of success.

A Cackling Witch

My sister tells me I laugh like a cackling witch. Which really sucks, because I like to laugh. My brother tells me I'm too "sensitive." Which sucks because I really like people, and I really like to be social, and I really like to laugh. My other brother doesn't even talk to me. Did you know that I'm an introvert? Surprising, huh? I'm such a chatty cathy sometimes. But it's true; I took the Myers-Briggs three times, it came out the same way: INFJ; INFJ; INFJ.

So I finally figured out that I don't have to hate myself anymore just because I'm too sensitive. And I still sound like a witch.

I Hate Sonnets

a working draft...

Sonnet for Rosetta

So proud, dear cousin, you were a Burton.
Sagacious, you changed; anew, a LeNoire.

You countered, embraced, a life of hurtin'.

Like Joan of Arc, you battled in a war,

As actor, as sage, as patient teacher.
The burning wrongs, your young eyes, a pity;

Your home, Hell's Kitchen: an angry preacher,

For an innocent soul, in New York City.

Your mother, she died on a dirty floor,

Such anguish. Paltry words, with such a punch:

A hospital, Harlem: No blacks past the door;

Biting words, yours: Darkest raisin in the bunch.

But you broke the color bar, this: your berth

said The New York Times, when you left this earth.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E4DC1338F933A15750C0A9649C8B63&scp=1&sq=rosetta%20lenoire&st=cse

My idea

of a delicious evening: hunkered down in bed, impregnably protected by my fortress of mismatched pillows, the low background rumbling of CNN to remind me I am not alone, a good glass of red, and my candy, my delicious candy. What kind of candy do I like to eat? Books.

That's correct, you heard me right. Books are my candy, and I eat them up; I gobble them. My happiest moments are when I am gazing dreamily at my TBR pile, which is perched atop my wobbly antique nightstand. (That's to-be-read pile, for you un-bookish-geeks.) On the floor below me sits another wonderful pile, seven hundred dollars worth of textbooks for my current load of 19 units -- yet unread, but beautiful to look at. On my thrift-store antique table-cum-desk is yet another pile: Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, Flannery O'Connor: The Complete Short Stories... the list is voluminous. The important part is that the mere sight of all these wonderful tomes and bibliothecae fills my belly with felicitous contentment and euphoric gladness.

Currently on my TBR pile include the new issues of The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Harper's, and a pile o' books: Black, White and Jewish by Rebecca Walker, No Disrespect by Sister Souljah, Lost Lake: Stories by Mark Slouka, Permanent Visitors (Iowa Short Fiction Award) by Kevin Moffett (a signed copy!), and The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. Great writers, all. Tonight I am alternating between two books that I can't get enough of. First is The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I already noted in my post two days ago that Sylvia is one of my favorite poets, and why I'm reading The Bell Jar. So if you wanna know, then go read the post. The other book I am reading is The Healing Art of Pet Parenthood, by Nadine M. Rosin. Another amazing book, by a very intuitive writer and fellow pet-lover. The problem with this book is that I can't get through more than a few pages at a time before I'm bawling so frightfully that my eyes are too swollen to read another line. I just miss my dear sweet Lindie so much. Hopefully this book will help me heal and move to my next chapter, sans Lindie. I'll let you know when I finish the book.

This is when it's time to go refill my wine glass, take a pee break, and then start the process all over again. Excuse me, think I'll go read.

The race is on, yo.

Change

Now that the Obamas are
in the White
House, is it still
White?

Now that Barack Hussein Obama is the 44th President of the United States, I am listening to an awful lot of chatter about race. Why are we still discussing this matter? This really bothers me. I hear that there is a huge jump in racist death threats against our president. What the fuck, people? As a person who is bi-racial, or multi-racial, or mostly a member of the human race, I for one am tired of this shit. Wanna know what I'm tired of? I'm tired of this ignorant hate. I'm tired of black-versus-white. I'm tired of ignorant assholes who think I'm a white girl like them. I'm tired of getting elbowed in the ribs and I'm especially tired of getting let in on the joke. Wanna know what I think? I hope Obama is the first of 44 consecutive Black Presidents. Here is the beginning of a poem. Change, people, change. I'm done with this shit.

Red, White, and Blue

Red-and-white-and-blue
lights flickered in the dark room,
from the old t.v. set,
and the rhetorical buzz droned on
as we both sat and watched,
each in our own private thoughts.

pickaninnies in the White House
my friend said straightfaced,
and took a swig of her
Natural Light beer
then crushed it with her hand
as she reached for another.

crazy like a loon

"I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."

from The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath is one of my favorite poets. The brilliance of her poetry is blinding in a very unsettling way; it's as if she has caught me naked in the vastness of my parched, cracked desert, sitting spread-eagle, under a cloudlessly hot indigo sky. As I struggle to write a collection of short stories, stories which I hope will eventually become the wellspring of a memoir, I am starting her novel, The Bell Jar, for inspiration. I like to read powerful books, no, I require powerful books, when I need a nudge.

I am new at all this; I haven't a clue what I'm doing. I am writing this memoir because I need to write it; I need an exorcism. Maybe what I write will be shit, I don't know. Or maybe I'll be the next Sylvia Plath.

Sylvia scares me. Which is exactly why I am so enchantingly lured, into her dark and intensely pulsating embrace. I hope that what I read will prod my brain to remember, to feel what I long ago embalmed in the bowels of my soul. I am at a loss to find the memories that have poisoned the very red of my marrow. Perhaps it is too late. Perhaps the demons of my pain have already killed me. Perhaps I will be unable to purge this fetid miasma from my belly. Perhaps I am indeed, nothing more than a still and empty hole in the eye of the tornado that I have created.

Wow

“For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.”

- President Barack Obama, January 20, 2009

Can you feel it?