Time with Strangers, Away from Home, No Cold Compresses
Sometimes, things collude.
--
The leaves on the tree outide my apartment, overlooking my small screened-in porch, are a serious, dusted red.
--
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky --
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.
The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness --
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.
-- from "The Moon and the Yew Tree" by SYlvia Plath
--
Laura has an incredible knack for making mix cds. I think I'd like to live, for now, in the interstice between track #2 and #3: "Telephone Call from Istanbul" by Tom Waits and "Cabaret Hoover" by Ben Charest.
Margarita shakers. Gold-lit windows with the shadows of dancers, seen from outside, below. Formal but rough clothes in fall. Actually, all the sharp-toothedness underneath formality, strict adherence to form. A tight, small poem. Jazz. Tight lips, lying smiles. The threat of spies, whether national or personal. Large steering wheels, turned over cigarette smoke; the smell of recent, aggressive sex on vinyl; the lure of South America; a penchant for vibraphone; cornfield- or hedgerow-lined roads; real, real darkness outside the car. Thought in voice-over.
--
No, the serpent did not
Seduce Eve to eat the apple.
All that's simply
Corruption of the facts.
Adam ate the apple.
Eve ate Adam.
The serpent ate Eve.
This is the dark intestine.
The serpent, meanwhile,
Sleeps his meal off in Paradise --
Smiling to hear
God's querolous calling.
-- "Theology" by Ted Hughes
--
Evidently, I mark easily. Right now, there's a 5x5 bruise on the inside of my left thigh. Grip--marks under what would be my biceps. A small dime-sized India bruise on my left ankle. A hard-shelled scab on my left shin, a yellowing corona around it -- this one, from the visit of a steel-toed boot.
There are so many ways for these to arrive here. But evidently my skin is ready, open, telling.
I think this is because I am curious.
--
Take 1. Sylvia's hairband -- that ribbon of red that carries her through depression and the cold Cambridge winter, that symbol of life and lust and need -- is ripped from her blonded hair.
Take 2. Her silver earrings are yanked off. Pain. She cries out. The earrings are taken as a trophy. The Christmas tree that was Sylvia is bare, denuded ... waiting to be felled.
But -- and here the camera comes in close, a hundred pairs of eyes stare in disbelief -- this red-lipped woman has still her mouth as a weapon in the struggle to the death. And she approaches her adversary as a vampire -- through the scarlet lips, the sharp teeth reach his cheek and bite -- and as the blood trickles down they pull apart, dazed by the intensity of the fight, the absolute nonexistence of anyone else on this island, this pool of spotlight they have so quickly made for themselves. They turn sheepish and make their way back into the crowd.
Sylvia has drawn blood.
--from Sylvia and Ted by Emma Tennant
--
Spiritually speaking, I have no truck with a god or gods. I am not that trusting a person, to leave my welfare up to some invisible's grace. And if there's no trust, they certainly aren't going to tell me what to do.
Instead, I believe in the courage, integrity, and imagination of others. And I have reverence for those qualities, the acts, and relations that come from them. A little democracy of the curiously specific, the specifically curious. This is what I give my spirit to. It is a culturally political spirituality.
Still, the shadow of a fundamentalist upbringing is a long one. This is why, I think, my sexual relationships can be Old Testament.
But I believe in testing the spirit and its little tangible symbols.
--
I believe Sylvia Plath wrote in such a way as to both tempt and defy her future and past therapists.
--
The houses the three pigs built are symbolic of man's progress in history: from a lean-to shack to a wooden house, finally to a house of solid brick. Internally, the pigs' actions show progress from the dominated personality to the superego-influenced but essentially ego-controlled personality.
...
Only the third and oldest pig has learned to behave in accordance with the reality principle: he is able to postpone his desire to play, and instead acts in line with his ability to foresee what may happen in the future. He is even able to predict correctly the behavior of the wolf- the enemy, or stranger within, which tries to seduce and trap us; and therefore the third pig is able to defeat powers both strongest and more ferocious than he is. The wild and destructive wolf stands for all asocial, unconscious, devouring powers against which one must learn to protect oneself, and which one can defeat through the strength of one's ego.
-- discussion of "The Three Little Pigs" from The Uses of Enchantment, The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by Bruno Bettelheim
--
When I was young, living on the farm, I was obsessed with animals. I read every article in our World Book Encyclopedia that was about an animal. After that, I read every article about mythology.
In college, I did my first composition paper on the use of animals in the poetry of Ted Hughes. Hughes wrote to place humans back within the context of the necessarily violent animal.
--
The first haunted house I went to was with my mother and younger brother Jeremy. I was five and he was four. The haunted house was church-sponsored and in an abandoned school building. The first room we went into was completely dark except for one, dim light. You had to feel your way around the walls to find your way out. We started.
Once we worked our way halfway around the room, a fuzzed figure growled and moved through the lights and breathed quietly in the shadows of the corner. We hollered. Then he started circling us and grunting. My mom moved quickly around the perimeter and found an old refrigerator box on its side. You had to get on your knees and crawl through to the next room.
She pushed my brother down and started him through, then got in herself, reaching for my hand behind her. As I got on my knees, the wolfman lay his claw at the top of my neck and dragged it all the way down my back and let it grip a bit at my belt.
I shot up and screamed bloody hell: Get me out of here, NOW! Turn the lights on! They did. And I was humiliated as we walked through all the light-exposed sections of the unfinished haunted house. I knew the whole time it wasn't real, but even so, what was imagined always scared me just as much.
--
The movie Sylvia -- with Gwyneth Paltrow -- out-and-out sucked. When I saw it, though, I remembered the scenes from when she and Ted first met, first got together. The Cambridge parties, the scary and fresh domesticity, the time on the sea.
I was reminded of how exciting it is to get dressed up and be completely surrounded by strangers.
--
The leaves on the tree outide my apartment, overlooking my small screened-in porch, are a serious, dusted red.
--
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky --
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.
The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness --
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.
-- from "The Moon and the Yew Tree" by SYlvia Plath
--
Laura has an incredible knack for making mix cds. I think I'd like to live, for now, in the interstice between track #2 and #3: "Telephone Call from Istanbul" by Tom Waits and "Cabaret Hoover" by Ben Charest.
Margarita shakers. Gold-lit windows with the shadows of dancers, seen from outside, below. Formal but rough clothes in fall. Actually, all the sharp-toothedness underneath formality, strict adherence to form. A tight, small poem. Jazz. Tight lips, lying smiles. The threat of spies, whether national or personal. Large steering wheels, turned over cigarette smoke; the smell of recent, aggressive sex on vinyl; the lure of South America; a penchant for vibraphone; cornfield- or hedgerow-lined roads; real, real darkness outside the car. Thought in voice-over.
--
No, the serpent did not
Seduce Eve to eat the apple.
All that's simply
Corruption of the facts.
Adam ate the apple.
Eve ate Adam.
The serpent ate Eve.
This is the dark intestine.
The serpent, meanwhile,
Sleeps his meal off in Paradise --
Smiling to hear
God's querolous calling.
-- "Theology" by Ted Hughes
--
Evidently, I mark easily. Right now, there's a 5x5 bruise on the inside of my left thigh. Grip--marks under what would be my biceps. A small dime-sized India bruise on my left ankle. A hard-shelled scab on my left shin, a yellowing corona around it -- this one, from the visit of a steel-toed boot.
There are so many ways for these to arrive here. But evidently my skin is ready, open, telling.
I think this is because I am curious.
--
Take 1. Sylvia's hairband -- that ribbon of red that carries her through depression and the cold Cambridge winter, that symbol of life and lust and need -- is ripped from her blonded hair.
Take 2. Her silver earrings are yanked off. Pain. She cries out. The earrings are taken as a trophy. The Christmas tree that was Sylvia is bare, denuded ... waiting to be felled.
But -- and here the camera comes in close, a hundred pairs of eyes stare in disbelief -- this red-lipped woman has still her mouth as a weapon in the struggle to the death. And she approaches her adversary as a vampire -- through the scarlet lips, the sharp teeth reach his cheek and bite -- and as the blood trickles down they pull apart, dazed by the intensity of the fight, the absolute nonexistence of anyone else on this island, this pool of spotlight they have so quickly made for themselves. They turn sheepish and make their way back into the crowd.
Sylvia has drawn blood.
--from Sylvia and Ted by Emma Tennant
--
Spiritually speaking, I have no truck with a god or gods. I am not that trusting a person, to leave my welfare up to some invisible's grace. And if there's no trust, they certainly aren't going to tell me what to do.
Instead, I believe in the courage, integrity, and imagination of others. And I have reverence for those qualities, the acts, and relations that come from them. A little democracy of the curiously specific, the specifically curious. This is what I give my spirit to. It is a culturally political spirituality.
Still, the shadow of a fundamentalist upbringing is a long one. This is why, I think, my sexual relationships can be Old Testament.
But I believe in testing the spirit and its little tangible symbols.
--
I believe Sylvia Plath wrote in such a way as to both tempt and defy her future and past therapists.
--
The houses the three pigs built are symbolic of man's progress in history: from a lean-to shack to a wooden house, finally to a house of solid brick. Internally, the pigs' actions show progress from the dominated personality to the superego-influenced but essentially ego-controlled personality.
...
Only the third and oldest pig has learned to behave in accordance with the reality principle: he is able to postpone his desire to play, and instead acts in line with his ability to foresee what may happen in the future. He is even able to predict correctly the behavior of the wolf- the enemy, or stranger within, which tries to seduce and trap us; and therefore the third pig is able to defeat powers both strongest and more ferocious than he is. The wild and destructive wolf stands for all asocial, unconscious, devouring powers against which one must learn to protect oneself, and which one can defeat through the strength of one's ego.
-- discussion of "The Three Little Pigs" from The Uses of Enchantment, The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by Bruno Bettelheim
--
When I was young, living on the farm, I was obsessed with animals. I read every article in our World Book Encyclopedia that was about an animal. After that, I read every article about mythology.
In college, I did my first composition paper on the use of animals in the poetry of Ted Hughes. Hughes wrote to place humans back within the context of the necessarily violent animal.
--
The first haunted house I went to was with my mother and younger brother Jeremy. I was five and he was four. The haunted house was church-sponsored and in an abandoned school building. The first room we went into was completely dark except for one, dim light. You had to feel your way around the walls to find your way out. We started.
Once we worked our way halfway around the room, a fuzzed figure growled and moved through the lights and breathed quietly in the shadows of the corner. We hollered. Then he started circling us and grunting. My mom moved quickly around the perimeter and found an old refrigerator box on its side. You had to get on your knees and crawl through to the next room.
She pushed my brother down and started him through, then got in herself, reaching for my hand behind her. As I got on my knees, the wolfman lay his claw at the top of my neck and dragged it all the way down my back and let it grip a bit at my belt.
I shot up and screamed bloody hell: Get me out of here, NOW! Turn the lights on! They did. And I was humiliated as we walked through all the light-exposed sections of the unfinished haunted house. I knew the whole time it wasn't real, but even so, what was imagined always scared me just as much.
--
The movie Sylvia -- with Gwyneth Paltrow -- out-and-out sucked. When I saw it, though, I remembered the scenes from when she and Ted first met, first got together. The Cambridge parties, the scary and fresh domesticity, the time on the sea.
I was reminded of how exciting it is to get dressed up and be completely surrounded by strangers.