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Everyone should read this. Again and again and again.


The Totality of Causes: Li-Young Lee and Tina Chang in Conversation


An excerpt from the conversation:

"I've been thinking about something for a long time, and I keep noticing that most human speech—if not all human speech—is made with the outgoing breath. This is the strange thing about presence and absence. When we breath in, our bodies are filled with nutrients and nourishment. Our blood is filled with oxygen, our skin gets flush; our bones get harder—they get compacted. Our muscles get toned and we feel very present when we're breathing in. The problem is, that when we're breathing in, we can't speak. So presence and silence have something to do with each other. 

 

The minute we start breathing out, we can talk; speech is made with the outgoing, exhaled breath. The problem that is poses, though, is that as we exhale, nutrients are leaving our bodies; our bones get softer, our muscles get flaccid, our skin starts to loosen. You could think of that as the dying breath. So as we breath out, we have less and less presence.

When we make verbal meaning, we use the dying breath. In fact, the more I say, the more my meaning is disclosed. Meaning grows in opposite ratio to presence or vitality. That's a weird thing. I don't know why God made us that way. 

It's a kind of paradigm for life, right? As we die, the meaning of our life gets disclosed. Maybe the paradigm for living is encoded or embedded in speech itself, and every time we speak we're enacting on a small-scale, microcosmic level the bigger scale of our lives. So that the less vitality we have, the more the meaning of our lives get disclosed."

Birds and Nests

I woke up this morning, my chest feeling heavy. It’s funny. I have carried this weight around for a while and though I have gotten quite used to it, sometimes I feel the weight as if it were new. As if, it were pressing down upon me to remind me in case I ever forget.

Let’s call this weight a bird. A big beautiful bird. A bird who meets other birds, squabbles with other birds, falls in love with other birds but you know, never quite sees me as a bird. I suppose I am this bird’s nest. Last night, this bird felt its own weight and seemed to be asking me why would I put up with this weight? Why don’t I shoo it away?

Why don’t I shoo this bird away?

I suppose it's because I am this bird’s nest. Where will it go if I shooed it away? 

It's weird how this started as a poem and then just wouldn't go anywhere I liked it to go. So I guess that's why it stays here instead of Tiny dancer. On an aside, I wonder if it's time to change the name of my poetry blog. Something like.. "Tiny Dances No More" or "Tiny Would Rather Sing" or "Tiny Would Like the World to Believe She Is Tiny Even Though She Is Not". I guess the last one is too long. Oh well. 

I suppose it's strange to have a randomly personal post come up in the middle. Not that I haven't posted my rants or allowed glimpses into my life in a more direct fashion, before. I haven't done it in a while. I guess I'm being obscure enough to satisfy myself and keep you wondering. Ha.

Li-Young Lee

Black Petal

I never claimed night fathered me.
that was my dead brother talking in his sleep. 
I keep him under my pillow, a dear wish

that colors my laughing and crying.

I never said the wind, remembering nothing,
leaves so many rooms unaccounted for, 
continual farewell must ransom
the unmistakable fragrance
our human days afford.

It was my brother, little candle in the pulpit,
reading out loud to all of earth
from the book of night.

He died too young to learn his name.
Now he answers to Vacant Boat,
Burning Wing, My Black Petal.


Ask him who his mother is. He'll declare the birds
have eaten the path home, but each of us
joins night's ongoing story
wherever night overtakes him,
the heart astonished to find belonging
and thanks answering thanks. 


Ask if he's hungry or thirsty,
he'll say he's the bread come to pass
and draw you a map
to the twelve secret hips of honey.

Does someone want to know the way to spring?
He'll remind you

the flower was never meant to survive
the fruit's triumph.

He says an apple's most secret cargo
is the enduring odor of a human childhood,
our mother's linen pressed and stored, our father's voice

walking through the rooms.

He says he's forgiven our sister
for playing dead and making him cry
those afternoons we were left alone in the house.

And when clocks frighten me with their long hair,

and when I spy the wind's numerous hands
in the orchard unfastening
first the petals from the buds,
then the perfume from the flesh,

my dead brother ministers to me. His voice
weighs nothing
but the far years between

stars in their massive dying,

and I grow quiet hearing
how many of both of our tomorrows
lie waiting inside it to be born.

Because you're still asking me that question.

I wish I could say enough about Joss Whedon. One day I'm going to write a piece deserving enough of him but right now, I think you should watch this video. Also, this is in protest of the new 'Buffy' movie. No Joss in a Buffy movie. Really? How wrong is that? This my protest. Joss, I love you.

e. e. cummings

 I carry your heart

I carry your heart with me(I carry it in
my heart)I am never without it(anywhere
I go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
I fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)I want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart(I carry it in my heart)

Edwin Morgan

Strawberries

There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates
laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air

in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you

let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills

let the storm wash the plates

Love:

I get up and dance like a lunatic ...

...because of these guys:

1. Empire of The Sun: Walking on a Dream.

2. Stars: The Night Starts Here.

3. The Smiths: There Is a Light that Never Goes Out.

4. Chairlift: Bruises.

5. Ben Lee: Catch My Disease.

6. The Virgins: Rich Girls.

7. Rilo Kiley: Silver Lining.  

8. The Knife: Silent Shout

9. Mylo: Zenophile

Songs that leap

You know how when you're listening to a song and then suddenly a moment leaps out and makes perfect sense? And you can't explain why, but you fall in love with the entire song just for that one moment? And that when that moment arrives you feel like you're at home-even understood? Moments like these always make me feel an instant connection with the songwriters and I feel that happy connectivity where I can believe that we are all made from one single star that spiraled somewhere For me these moments often come in the guise of the lyrics of a song. They don't come by very often but when they do they are much loved. I am usually resistant to talking about them but today I think I'd like to put them down. And I have already made it clear that I love talking about things I love.

(Disclaimer: The songs are not listed in order of preference)

1)Nick Drake: Really. Is anyone surprised that his song will be on this list? He's beautiful. I think it takes some amount of heartbreak and loneliness to understand him. Though when I read about him I feel like he was born that way. I think I used to look at him as some wounded, jaded butterfly-almost as a specimen that I found too beautiful to take in. But I held my arms out long ago, and his butterfly wings beat now, lightly in my head, heart -everywhere.

Song: At The Chime of a City Clock

        

        And at the beat of the city drum

        See how your friends come in twos;

        Or threes or more.

        For the sound of a busy place

        Is fine for a pretty face       

        Who knows what a face is for.

Can you tell me what a face is for?

2) Sufjan Stevens: Sufjan is an artist. I rarely feel that way about musicians. His work is art. And faced with it I always feel that chocked feeling in my throat where I'm so certain of the worth of something that it scares me. I feel like I am on the brink of of losing my mind and he's taking me with him. Good art does that. When you can't verbalize or intellectualize it. It just is. And as you can see my struggle is with doing this to his music his words. There is violence in this attempt but deserving I think. A short summary of the song is needed. John Wayne Gacy was a famous serial killer. But no it's not his recounting of the person that John Wayne Gacy, Jr was, that was startling, but his quiet reveal about himself:

Song: John Wayne Gacy, Jr.

         "And in my best behavior

         I am really just like him

         Look beneath the floorboards

         For the secrets I have hid"

And in the end, when he sighs quietly. I catch my breath.

3) The Shins: I have written about The Past and Pending way too many times. And for me the entire song is a moment. I love each and every moment in that song. It's a standalone in that sense. So I thought I'd pick one of the first songs I heard of The Shins. The song just packs a punch in the opening lines. For the longest time I would listen only to the beginning.

Song: Caring is Creepy

    

       "I think I'll go home and mull this over 

       Before I cram it down my throat
       At long last it's crashed, its colossal mass
       Has broken up into bits in my moat." 

I feel it, I feel it- in my gut.

4) Antje Duvekot: Antje Duvekot has this way of drawing images in very short sentences. It's the way I have always tried to write. I tend to prefer reading poems that are written similarly. In fact I am trying to develop a taste for poems that have a sentence that runs for more than two verses because I do feel like I am missing out sometimes. But I digress. Coming back to her music, there is something unapologetically dark about it. And I love that. Again, this is the first song hers that I had heard.

Song: Erin

        

         "Oh my hand I will stand

         as the world turns around me

         Lock the door to the yard

         Where the wind is bound

         Take all my fragile anchors away" 

Bound wind.

5) The Antlers: Admittedly I have heard only one album of theirs (Hospice) but do I need a bigger reason than this album to love them? I don't think so. This is such a painful album to listen to because it's so raw. People say that so often about things. I always think of an open wound smarting every time it is touched. I stay in a permanent wince when I hear this song. 

Song: Epilogue

         

          .. And like before you've got no interest

         in the life you live when you're awake

        Your dreams still follow storylines, like

        fictions you would make" 

I chose the epilogue but the rest of the story is just as compelling.

       

I hope I can make this a regular thing. 

Ely Shipley

Boy with Flowers
My aunt loved me, asked me:
will you be the flower
girl at my wedding? But I’m not
a girl, I argued, and she persuaded me:
you’ll get to throw rose petals
onto the aisle, walk before me, both of us
crushing them beneath our feet, my gown
dragging over them. I agreed. I wanted
nothing but chivalry.
At the church, my mother and I
waited in the small room. She brushed
my aunt’s hair until the dress arrived.
Isn’t it beautiful? And I agreed until they tried
to put me in it. I’d seen my father
and uncle earlier, standing in a circle
of other men, smoke hovering over their heads, a halo
and their voices kind, quiet, and deep. I told my aunt—
I want to wear a suit like them! She promised
if I wore the dress I could wear anything
I wanted after: army pants, a sheriff
badge, cowboy hat, and pistols. My mother shot her
a look in the mirror where we posed, both of them
angelic in white, and me not yet
dressed. Today I wake from another dream
in which I have a beard, no breasts,
and am about to go skinny-dipping
on a foreign beach with four other men.
I’m afraid to undress, won’t take off my shorts,
so they gab me, one at each ankle, the other two
by each wrist. I am a starfish hardening.
The sun hovers above, a hot
mirror where I search for my reflection.
I close my eyes. It’s too intense. The light
where my lover is tracing fingertips
around two long incisions in my chest. Each sewn tight
with stitches, each naked stem, flaring with thorns.

Georgia O'Keefe

Playlist IV

I'm not going to say much. I'll let the music and the videos speak for themselves. I would like to add that the Angus and Julia Stone video is my favourite. And that Skinny Love has no official video but I am obsessed with this song so I had to put it up.

Okay that's all!

Kabir

"There is dew
on these poems in the morning,
and at night a cool breeze may rise from them.

In the winter they are blankets, in the summer a place to swim.

I like talking to you like this. Have you moved
a step closer?

Soon we may be
kissing."

Mayda Del Valle

I Love this woman:

To All The Boys I have Loved Before

I love her passion. There's like this incredible drive that propels her into your head and her words resonate like a drum long after she finishes talking. And when she takes that final breath after she says "And I will wait for a man to come along that can give me the truth of how much he can really love me" you realise that the world had been still, for a moment.

The Gift

And this one is just beautiful. Is it her words? Or something she puts into it that moves it beyond ordinary language? And, does she ever take a breath?

"Some days I feel geometric so my poems go off on tangents"- brilliant.

And how beautiful is she??

Playlist III

1. Days I Had With You- Kings of Convenience

2. Magnificent Seventies- American Analog Set

3. I Want You( She's so Heavy)- The Beatles

4. Josefin The Writer- Olney Clark

5. Cinder and Smoke- Iron & Wine

7. The Day Before The Day-Dido

8. Riverman- Nick Drake

9. Fruit Tree- Nick Drake

10. Killing All The Flies- Mogwai

11. Ohio- Damien Jurado

12. Werewolf- CocoRosie

13. Elevator Love Letter- Stars

Such a beautiful video:

Josefin The Writer- Olney Clark (Directed by Hanae Seida)

Blogging and some reflecting.

So I do a lot of blog surfing and I mean a lot. Some blogs are just crappy and (heh) I get some twisted pleasure in dismissing them. Some are just oh my god so good, that everything I write here seems trite and forced. So I figure it's a good trade. Okay but to elaborate.. I find that a lot of people expose themselves on their blog and I used to find it so weird. I recently came across an old classmate's blog and I was shocked to learn how depressed she was. She had always seemed annoyingly chirpy and just full of zest. She was always bouncing down the hallway with her ponytail bobbing behind her. I remember getting seriously annoyed with all the happiness. I guess something seemed so wrong about it even then. But on her blog she sounds incredibly lonely and sad. It's not so shocking that people hide who they are or how they feel but what's shocking to me is that her blog is right up there on her Facebook profile. It's for everybody to see. I wonder why people do that-hide in one circumstance and yell for attention in another. It seems so pathetic.

Now me, I feel like I've always been consistently dark and depressed. I keep thinking how it's pretty obvious who I am. I am not going to make the effort to get to know you if I don't want to. It's pretty simple. I'll just make sure I'm weird enough so you wouldn't be shocked if you spoke to me. Okay I don't look weird but I wasn't ever friendly or overly talkative, guffawing at what everybody said. I would practically run out of the department. I mean I made it pretty clear that I didn't mind not fitting in. I don't think anybody would be surprised if they knew how dark I was. I remember this annoying girl(god I sound terrible!) grabbed my Dali notebook in which I was happily sketching one day and started reading as if it was her god given right to. And I had some pretty heavy stuff in there. I got so angry. I just couldn't be polite about that intrusion and I made it pretty obvious. I just find it really funny that I choose to expose myself over here.

I wonder about the kind of people who read my blog and what message I must be sending out to them. I've been closely analysing my posts( wow I need a life!) and I realised I shy away from exposing myself directly. It's in the I-think-I''m so-witty-comments and the self deprecating humour that I'm most naked. And I wonder if people look any closer? Or do they chuckle or *sigh* at the tired humour and then move on? (See? Did it again. *Sigh* It's like a disease) But anyway, I figured I should allow myself a little more license, be a little naive and yes allow myself to be excited/depressed about life and just spread myself all over this blog for the amusement and disdain of the readers. I mean, I wonder who I'm fooling with all this unnecessary humour anyway? So I decided I'm going to do a lot more "personal posts". Anybody else's amusement or disdain is their business-it's their property, I can't do much to prevent it.

The Shins

THE PAST AND PENDING
As someone sets light to the first fire of autumn
We settle down to cut ourselves apart.
Cough and twitch from the news on your face
And some foreign candle burning in your eyes

Held to the past too aware of the pending
Chill as the dawn breaks and finds us up for sale.
Enter the fog another low road descending
Away from the cold lust, you house and summertime.

Blind to the last cursed affair pistols and countless eyes
A trail of white blood betrays the reckless route your craft is running
Feed till the sun turns into wood dousing an ancient torch
Loiter the whole day through and lose yourself in lines dissecting love.

Your name on my cast and my notes on your stay
Offer me little but doting on a crime.
We've turned every stone and for all our inventions
In matters of love loss, we've no recourse at all.

Blind to the last cursed affair pistols and countless eyes
A trail of white blood betrays the reckless route your craft is running
Feed till the sun turns into wood dousing an ancient torch
Loiter the whole day through and lose yourself in lines dissecting love.

********************************

I couldn't resist.

Play list II

* This is in no order.
** Please read the post below if you don't want to be confused.
** *I tend to write way too much.
****Also overuse disclaimers. Okay done.

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out by The Smiths
My obsession with The Smiths begins and ends with this song. As far as love songs go it doesn’t get any better than this one. It is a dark, moody song that grabs you the first time you listen to it. I am not sure whether it is to everybody’s tastes though; lyrics like “To die by your side is a heavenly way to die” may not make most of us sigh with heartfelt delight. But it has to be these lyrics set against the almost pop-ish music that makes me like it so much. There is a desperation, a pathetic plea in this song that most of us may not want to admit feeling. Listen to this song for Morrissey’s uncompromising lyrics, his melancholic voice filled with conviction and for the memory it evokes in you: when you were in love, foolishly enough to go off driving with that person by your side.

Song For You by Alexi Murdoch
Alexi Murdoch is one of those artists who's very non invasive. He is not one of the most compelling artists. Very understated, he takes you not by surprise, but there is quiet wonder as you realise you love his calm unhurried avowal of love and pain. Song for You is one of those songs dedicated to all kinds of relationships, as well as the struggle it is to remain in one. But it is the calm after the storm( to spout a cliche), that point when you realise that all the things that make up the conflict and struggle in a relationship can be worthwhile when suffered together. But even this is too intense an explanation for a song and an artist who seems to take nothing too seriously. There is no desperation here, only lovely intention.

"So I'm trying to put it right
Cause I want to love you with my heart
All this trying has made me tight
And I dont know even where to start

Maybe thats a start"

At My Most Beautiful by R.E.M.
Gosh I wish I could talk about why I love this song so much but I can't. But I'll say this: any song that makes stalking sound beautiful and desirable will always be high up on my list. This song always finds a way to make me smile. And it mentions eyelashes-a really underrated body part (I feel) when it comes to professsing love.

Jealous Guy by John Lennon
Actually, something about this song always makes me a little uncomfortable. I have never been able to figure out why. I love how the simple piano and Lennon's slightly nasal voice meld together. And the lyrics: how much more straightforward and simple can they get? "I was feeling insecure, you might not love me anymore". I love how apologetic he is for hurting her (no prizes for guessing who!*sigh*) "I didn't mean to hurt you, I'm sorry that I made you cry... I'm just a jealous guy" but at the same time how he doesn't apologise for who he is. He is after all just a jealous guy. A simple song that excuses possessiveness-quite perfect for most of us!

Same Stars by Sawgrass (now James Moore Harris)
So I got this song from S a couple of days ago and it's all I can listen to. Please keep a lookout for this guy-James Harris Moore He is amazing and I am a little in love with him- as anyone would be after listening to his songs. This one in particular, is really sweet and just won't let go of your brain.

Something by The Beatles
Okay having this song on my list can be a cliché but to tell you the truth I haven’t always loved it. It has made its mark only recently. My favourite fact about this song, George Harrison wrote it. I think that makes me like it even more. Harrison’s always been tragically underrated. But that has also been his selling point. Widely known as the underrated and under estimated Beatle he has gathered fans for this reason as much as for his song writing capabilities. A well known joke about this song is that Frank Sinatra called it the best Lennon/Mcartney composition written. Coming to why this song is on my list, again I will refer to the Harrison-esque quality of all his songs. He lends a mystical character to whatever he writes. Okay maybe that is too obvious but you always feel the presence of something greater when you listen to his songs. As if he is a channel for some greater message. In "Something" he tackles that unknown quality in a person that makes us fall in love. So go his lyrics "Something in the way she moves, attracts me like no other lover, Something in the way she woos me" It is that indefinable all important something. He takes it to a level that connects us to the Universe and to all other beings who know this "something".

Dearest by Buddy Holly
Oh gosh how sweet and lovely this song is. It is a letter, a poem, a note stuck in your bag to put a smile on your face. From the first time I heard him sing "Dearest" in that reedy quavery voice I have loved Buddy Holly and will continue to do so.

Wonderwall by Ryan Adams
Okay I know this song is originally by Oasis but come on! I don't think anyone who has heard this version will remember who Oasis is. Adams invests emotion into this song and takes it to a place that is darker. I've always felt like the original sounded a little whinny and frankly a little bored with itself. Not this one.

The Past and Pending by The Shins
This is my favourite song of The Shins. I know most people are crazy about New Slang or Caring is Creepy but this song always reminds me of so many idle evenings, many of which I spent on my terrace watching the sky. It is a love song and it's not. It's about so much more. It is looking at some big picture that we often fail to see. I remember being on that terrace and often getting a flash, some insight into everything and then losing it tragically, a second later. I court that feeling more than anything else, more than love even and that's why I love this song.

Okay so that's it. Special mention for "The One I love" and "Casimir Pulaski Day " by Sufjan Stevens; Pink Bullets by The Shins; Scarborough Fair by Simon and Garfunkel; "Girl" by The Beatles, Too many by The Beatles Okay maybe I should do a part 2.

J.V. Cunningham

TO MY WIFE

And does the heart grow old? You know
In the indiscriminate green
Of summer or in earliest snow
A landscape is another scene,


Inchoate and anonymous,
And every rock and bush and drift
As our affections alter us
Will alter with the season’s shift.


So love by love we come at last,
As through the exclusions of a rhyme,
Or the exactions of a past,
To the simplicity of time,


The antiquity of grace, where yet
We live in terror and delight
With love as quiet as regret
And love like anger in the night

******
Poems like this make me believe that something of love can be captured.

New year?

The new year always brings with it the question- well what's new? Truth is-nothing is. I was sick this new year like the year before last and the year before that (someone is clealry trying to tell me something, I'm just not sure what that is) I had initially decided I would start the new year blog post with resolutions and good intentions and all kinds of crap we say and do to make ourselves feel better about what is actually a depressing milestone, but I think after years of trying (ok not so much) I have come to the slightly delayed conclusion that all these parties and celebrations have begun to pale. I watched the news segment-lights exploding everywhere as people screamed the countdown and I just felt a little amused. They'll do it the next year and the year after that and the year after that.. and so on. I felt wonderfully cynical in my old DU sweatshirt about being a little miss know it all. But the truth is, life is depressing and there is no fun in knowing anything at all.