happy mardi gras!!!!

Happy Mardi Gras!

It has been five years since I went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. And this time of year I always miss it and really want to be at the Café du Monde eating beignets and drinking café au lait and walking through the French Quarter following the spindly flourishes of balconies.

I love that I went, though, that I saw the complete and utter craziness that is New Orleans during Mardi Gras; I love that my mom and I were asked whether or not we were "saved" and if we "knew Jesus" by none other than a drunk clown in New Orleans. I love that we went past voodoo museums one moment and the next moment were strolling through the aristocratic elegance of Jackson Square with leaning treebranches and wheeling horse-carriages.

I love that I have a lot of family in Louisiana, that I don't know them that well, but that, when I went, they all seemed like close family even though I had never met them before and had never heard of a lot of them.

So every Mardi Gras I wear my bright flashy strings of beads that I got in New Orleans. Some were bought, some were thrown from parade floats, some were chosen carefully at an open market. Going about a little New England school with the bright Mardi Gras colors around my neck has always felt terribly fun, because everyone I met in Lousiana was truly a lot less uptight than New Englanders, and compared to them New Englanders don't know a whole lot about how to throw a party. I do love New England wholeheartedly, but there is a part of me that lingers a tiny bit in the deep South, even though I may look like a "damned Yankee".

I still can't believe, though, that such a big part of New Orleans is destroyed. I can't believe it at all. The French Quarter and Jackson Square are fine... but so much else of it is hurt so terribly. I did hear some remarks today that made me quite angry (even though I may not have shown it), because New Englanders can be stuck-up, and they do show it by saying stupid things. *sigh*

But, even last September, by mom and I said that of course New Orleans will have a Mardi Gras this year. It can't not have one. I suppose one has to go there to see how important it is, how much a part of the city's spirit it is. It's insane, garish, loud. It's an identity.

lies

Lying to myself - I must admit to it. I used to do it a lot more than I do now. In the insecure days of middle school and the first two years of high school I did it all the time - like most teenagers I told myself it was all right to change myself to fit in, that it was not all right to be different and such. But that's not what I want to talk about, because it was silly. What I want to talk about are the more subtle "lies".

I think the main lie that I tell myself is that I am impractical. I don't tell myself this so much as feel the thought lurking sometimes. A writer, an artist, an exuberant and joyful soul - these are the things I want to be. A lurking lie that I tell myself is that it might elude me because of a sometimes-lazy disposition, that I couldn't have what I want. That is a lie; it is an easy way around passion.

I've been thinking so much lately about what I want. I suppose another lie I've told myself is that it is okay to let others shape my life. Of course it's okay to let others help me; I'm only a child yet and can't do a lot of things on my own in the meanwhile. But I've lied to myself that it is all right to let others lead me in a direction that I'm not sure I want to take.

I've lied to myself that security and safety are the most important things. That I would be fine "settling", not pursuing my real desires but settling for something safer. I think that is the main lie I tell myself: that I don't want more than being fine. The truth is that I want so much more than "fineness"; I want amazingness. Not to wake up every morning reluctant but have a few good times during the day, but to wake up every morning full of excitement and joy for what I am going to do.

I think that I should really stop telling myself this last lie of "fineness" being okay. College is this year - my first big opportunity to pursue what I want, to have a space on my own to find out what I want, my first real chance to break out into life. I have to stop that lurking thought that complacent security might be better, because it won't be. I have to stop telling myself the lie that I am too afraid and mousy to do anything full and delicious.

I keep thinking of how beautiful it would be to have a creative career, doing something like jewelry-making or owning a portrait photography studio, and if I am going to try to write too, then I can't keep with the lie that I am too mild.

Really, maybe that is the biggest lie, right there: my self-perception. I percieve myself often as small and wispy and a bit frail. It's a gimmick to avoid facing any hard work. There it is: a lie, the lie, the one that holds me back.

hearing voices

I've realized lately that I would really like to hush up the voices in my head. No, I'm not crazy [in some respects :P]; I mean the voices of others' opinions about what I should do, what my goals should be, where I should go to college to get where I want to be. I want to remove from my thoughts the voices of teachers who think I must go to a prestigious college and chase after a prestigious job. And I want to mute the voices who say that it doesn't matter where I go to college. I would like to just have an interval in which all my thoughts about the subject are solely my own, because I don't really know what I, only I, want.

And I can't even know, perhaps I shouldn't even write about it, yet, because I won't know until the end of March or beginning of April all the colleges to which I've been accepted. So far I've gotten into three and am waiting on two - the two being my number one choices. I've been so fiery and adamant about wanting to go to the latter two, which have good reputations as Fancy New England Liberal Arts Schools, which I've visited and liked, where the professors seemed in love with their subjects. The other three, the ones to which I've already been accepted, are not fancy, are just 'regular'. I'll just be talking in circles until I get those letters in March.

But I would really like to know what I want. I've had some inklings and glimpses. I don't really want a prestigious job, to be an editor, or a publisher, or a curator. I want to do something very artsy and happy and original and unique. I don't want to ever live in a city; I want to live in the country. And... learn. And trip toward wisdom. And make everything beautiful.

I am trying to push out the voice of prestige, of glory-lust. I've been very in-lust for glory and prestige in the past but now I realize that it isn't what I really want, it is in fact something standing in the way of what I really want. I don't want to settle for anything out of fear - but I don't want to chase prestige thinking that it is the only way to make anything last.

I'm trying at pushing all the voices out. I know that the owners of many of the voices only speak up because they really care, but sometimes the conflicting opinions wear on me and confuse me until I don't know what I want for myself under it all.

vermonnnnt!

Mogglety (oh dear): I'm sorry. I haven't started on your challenge yet. X__x But vacation has been very sunny and decidedly non-gothic. I WILL WRITE IT. Perhaps when I must return and sit in math class then I'll feel like writing a gothic story! Meanwhile, one day of the vacation follows.





On Tuesday I went for the day with my parents to Vermont. It was wonderful. I think it is one of the most beautiful states - certainly one of the most beautiful that I have seen - literally all winding roads through densely forested hills and mountains, overlooking patchwork valleys. It's a pure and friendly sort of place.

Last summer I went with my parents and two family friends from New Mexico to Vermont for three days, but it felt quite a bit longer because we ended up in two, three, or four new towns every day and explored a lot of the state. It was especially amazing when we went far up north into the Green Mountains, lush and verdant in midsummer, on thin ribbony roads almost swallowed by the hills, and drove for hours through pure country.

Since the summer I hadn't been to Vermont. This time we didn't go far north, but remained in the southern part of the state. We were, however, on the same roads that we travelled last summer, and it was interesting and wonderful to see the same hills and forests that I last saw bursting with green in their winter appearance - spindly and rickety branches, tops brushing the changeable sky.

We left in the morning and got breakfast for the road at a coffee place down the street. As we passed through a village and entered the Rhode Island countryside I ate a croissant and looked out the window at frozen ponds and woods. I gazed at lovely, kind-looking country houses and wondered about the people who live there and wondered if their children love to explore the woods as I would if I lived there.

The morning drive through the country was lovely, musical. I was disappointed to emerge onto the wide highway, feeling like I had left a sort of sanctuary. On the highway we passed bigger towns that made me long to find countryside again and hide by cottages. Eventually we did enter countryside again, in Massachusetts, toward the Berkshires (hilly and beautiful northern Massachusetts).

We left the highway and entered a small town, whose main street had at least three churches - I love those classic white New England churches - and went down one of its narrow roads, past more houses about which I loved to dream. These houses' back yards were fields that stretch uninterrupted to the mountainous hills and woods therein - magically. I saw a little girl with a broom going across a little pool of ice in her yard and thought that it would be enchanting to have those mountains right behind one's house, and forests to explore.

Then we went to a motorcycle shop. Random? But we had seen a sign on the road for a Harley Davidson shop and my dad, who loves motorcycles, had to go. So we went in and walked round a bit, then we saw displayed hundreds and hundreds of gleaming, shining trophies. My mom asked who they belonged to and the man who worked there said, "Oh, that's Al."

Then we met Al. He came out and told us about how he raced motorcycles in "endurance races" and talked about his last race, a winter race in Connecticut where it had been five degrees Fahrenheit out and he had ridden over ice and snow. He is 62 and joked about how he had beaten the 25-year-old kids who had also been in the race and whenever he got excited he did a little jig or clapped or something. He talked with a Maine accent and made fun of me for being a prissy vegetarian after noticing my "vegan" boots. And he told us about all his races and competitions, how he travelled all over the world: Switzerland, Italy! He talked about a race on the island of Elba - yes, the one to which Napoleon was exiled! He said that the motorcyclists sped down the little roads and were cheered by islanders drinking tiny cups of espresso at outdoor cafes. Then he showed us the motorcycles that he races with, and showed us the tires they use for crossing the frozen tundra(!) in northern Europe, huge tires with inches-long studs. He talked with my parents about how arrogant Americans tend to be, how friendly the people he met all over the world were, and bid my parents come back so they could talk about "world things".

Then, it was on to Vermont. We went to a small and beautiful town called Chester, where the houses are fairytale gingerbread Victorians, and the wooded hills rise up all around. Our destination was a restaurant called "Raspberries and Tyme" (yes, no h) which had been recommended by relatives, but when we got to the restaurant - housed in an orange, yellow and green Victorian house - it was closed. We were disappointed, but then we went down the street to another place called the "Moon Dog Café" and I had an exquisite homemade veggie burger and for dessert a ginger scone with ginger whipped cream. It was a very Vermont-ish place, seeing as Vermont-ers are known for being hippie-ish and love things like organic foods and such [which is great because that is what I like too]. The walls were bright pink and orange and the windows had colorful translucent curtains, and the people who worked there were very nice and happy-seeming.

After we left the cafe, we went a few houses down to a vintage clothes store, filled with racks of old dresses and things. I got a full-length swishy red skirt with buttons up the side. We went to a bookstore, small and lovely, and walked around for a while. My parents, who have a knack for making friends with strangers, talked to the owner of the bookstore and I came over eventually and said a few things too. She was lovely, the kind of lady who looks like she belongs owning a bookstore in a small Vermont country town. She talked a little about her daughters who live in New York City and about the authors who come to the bookstore sometimes.

Eventually, we went a little way to another small town, and went to the Vermont Country Store, which is a rambling wooden place, filled with toys and sweaters and soap and cheese and cider and a thousand other things homemade in Vermont. It's a great place to play in but we had to hurry up a bit as the store was closing within the half hour.

When we left, we stopped at a ledge overlooking a frozen lake to take pictures at dusk. Then we left the town. My mom and I had a great urge to go to Hannaford, which is a lovely grocery store in Vermont, and so we went to one in another town and had a great deal of fun going through the aisles buying things like Ben & Jerry's yogurt and muffins and cider. We laughed a lot and went outside, where night had fallen. We had a classic on-the-road dinner of yogurt and muffins and granola and started home.

to any readers

YOU!!!!! Who are reading this, presently. LEAVE A COMMENT and give me a WRITING CHALLENGE asking me to write about anything you want. Pick something. It can be deeply personal or anything. Do it. :)

And a wee aside to a certain MOGGET - your comment on the religion entry was much surprising. xD And it was incredibly hilarious to find it!!!!

novels and poems oh my

Since I have been writing a lot lately I have been thinking about [guess what?!] forms of writing. I post poems on here because poems are what I write when I have an idea that I want to get down without devoting myself to a story. When there is an image with no plot, with nothing happening to it, a moment.

I like poems. I like to write them because they are terribly fun and incredibly, I think, free. I think of a poem as a space in which I can twist words and language and rhythm into whatever form [or formless vapor] I want! And they are lovely, and very striking sometimes when a poet manages to get that thing just right. I love how words can conjure images with sounds and associations, and how images can capture something for a small space, over and over again whenever the poem is read over.

But poems aren't my main goal. I like books. I like big long intricate books. I read a gazillion more books than poems. Yes, I like to read poems. A book of poems by my favorite poet is right next to me presently - Leaves of Grass. But my "main goal" is books. I want to be a novelist.

I have had more practice with poetry than with fictional prose. But I think the practice in poetry is just as well as practice in novel-writing. The prose I love best is just a kind of poetry without line breaks and meter. And poetic imagery is a defining element of a novel!

I love my dear novelish Waverly and its main character Eliza and they are probably more important to me than poecy. But then, why don't I write more stories? write more of Waverly the novel? Because it is such a commitment to write a story, it must be carefully done, more than a poem, because a paragraph is a more difficult medium than a stanza with which to portray something specific. Poems are easy where stories are hard.

antihero

I have an ancestor who, like a few of my ancestors, lived in Louisiana during the Civil War. This relation, though, unlike many of his neighbors, did not want to fight for the Confederacy. So, he hid in his chimney. Literally; I'm serious; he hid in his chimney to avoid fighting. True story. One can hardly get more antiheroic than that, can one?

But really, that very uncourageous act did leave a legacy. Because my ancestor chickened out of the Civil War, I get a terribly funny story to tell. And being of a somewhat literary turn I see that the courageous ancestor is quite clearly the protagonist of the story - and that the word protagonist is commonly seen as synonymous with the word hero.

And I can go a bit further and say that some of my ancestors were Confederates, but others were Yankees. Did they fight against each other? Who won - who was the hero? Which side was "them", the antagonists, and which was "us", the protagonists?

The only thing to do is conclude that heroism really is subjective, and that it could be true that heroes do not create their stories, but that the stories make the heroes.

beliefs

One of my obsessions is something rather interesting - perhaps unexpected. Religion. Honestly I'm obsessed and in love with religion. Weird, perhaps. I sincerely doubt that I come across as a fervent doctrinist or anything. And if you ask me what religion I am I won't be able to tell you because I don't know - or I do know but it doesn't have a name. I am fascinated by religious traditions, by rituals, festivals, offerings, names of gods and goddesses, scriptures and poems...

There was one period where I briefly tried to be a devout Christian. Maybe about two months, three at the most, in tenth grade, I was fifteen. And a funny counterpoint! - about a year later, when I was sixteen, in eleventh grade, I was seriously considering 'converting' to some form of Paganism. It's a funny little blurb to tell but represents how I've swung here and there about religion.

My last two major research papers at school were both on religion: one on Christianity and its viewpoint on evolution (this year) and one on the rise of Neopaganism (last year). The more interesting one was the latter and when I was thinking about the religion I learned a whole lot and still keep a fervent interest in it - but have decided not to call myself by the name of any one religion. I used to - and still do sometimes - wonder if having a specific title for my beliefs, a doctrine, a group of others who believe the same, would make it easier to hold on to a faith. But at this point right now I wouldn't feel right labeling myself as any particular religion. It would be more convenient of course (heh), as now I am obliged to answer "Miscellaneous" when someone asks what religion I am.

My basic foundation has turned out to be a sort of transcendentalism, but less epic and more fairylike and dreamy. I celebrate Christmas wholeheartedly but also do quite a reverent celebration on Summer Solstice. My faith is sometimes vague, sometimes sharp, a mixture of different things, but it's okay.

In the book "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel, Pi Patel is a boy who is a Muslim, a Christian, and a Hindu at the same time. When the leaders of each of these religions berate him and tell him that he has to choose only one, he says, "I just want to love God!" I loved that book for its portrayal of religion. I adored the passages when Pi described the textures, the feelings, of different religions, how he called orange "a nice Hindu color" and green a more Muslim shade.

Like Pi in the book, I'm obsessed with religion in general, with different faiths. Often I can't even see how they contradict each other when stripped to the basics. I read another great quote in Elie Wiesel's autobiography "All Rivers Run to the Sea", where a Christian and a Jew were talking about how the basic difference between their religions was of course whether or not the Messiah had come already. The Christian said that Christians believe the Messiah came once but is going to come again, and so the Jew (a rabbi) said that when the Messiah comes, the rabbi would just go over and whisper in the Messiah's ear, "Have you been here before?" And the rabbi said that he would not tell anyone the answer.

I've thought a lot that if I were not going to major in English and/or History in college I would dive into Philosophy and Theology as a major. But, heh, though I know English is not usually classified as a "practical" major, Theology is even less "practical" because I have no idea what I would do with such a degree. It's something I would really love to study just for its own sake, really.

lemon-light

It is noon. A dusty wide-eyed child is afraid.
Ribbons float the weight of a parade along –
each corner flushed with canary-sound

The fluttery eyes now hide, when they perceive
heavy-handed swirls, garnishes of alabaster specks!
The flashes romp and rove, circling through the view
of the small sun-shivered child, who blinks and squints
when shading opens up to sunlight;
(it glints so fiercely, mid-July.)

But then the back-road calls so sweetly-soft,
a porch-light memory returns (gently, this time),
while dandelion fireflies
follow themselves, past noontide into night.

a criticism?

So the real Creative Writing class started today. As one of my readers knows, I was twitching and exacerbating throughout the whole class, impatient for my turn to present a poem for the first time this year. I was thinking of how funny it was that exactly one year ago in the same course I was huddling in a corner afraid of being called on to read, but now I am practically jumping out of my seat yelling "PICK ME! PICK MEEE!!!"

Ooooh, it is going to be a good class. There are more people in the class this year than last year who have decided & firm opinions and will express them whenever the chance arises. Chelsea gave me a decided criticism and at first I wasn't sure about it - because I am known for hating & fearing criticism. But I am glad that she did give her critique in the class and later we talked about our poems at lunch.

I thought about it - she suggested that I make the symbols less cryptic basically. At first I thought no! because I love my dear brood of cryptic metaphors. And am afraid of blank obviousness in poetry because it is so boring to me. But I wonder if it is possible to overdo metaphor? I don't know. I love making things cryptic because it makes the poems MORE FUN. Instead of just being done with them in one scan, the reader has to make a little devotion to them. And crypticism gives so much more opportunity for twisting language, which is basically my love. I really dislike things in literature to be stated plainly, especially in poetry, because it is so boring. No scope for imagination.

But there was a very important point in the suggestion. Sometimes [as classmates doubtless know] I make things so cryptic that they are hardly comprehensible at all to the reader - maybe. But I like reading something and not being able to explain it but understanding it in a way that requires no words, and I like writing to produce a reaction like that too. People [ex., mogg today] tell me that after reading a poem of mine they feel that way and I am very very glad of that because it's exactly the thing I'm going for.

I can tell this is going to be a semester where many criticisms will probably happen. I must simply realize that a criticism, which I have thought in past, is not a poisoned arrow aimed straight at my heart at all but is most of the time rather a kind suggestion, especially like today, when the critique was given by a friend. Often my imagination runs away with me and I imagine that I am all set, that my style of writing is not still full of errors and missteps, but to take criticism I must realize that as a writer I am in fact only at the beginning, really.

In an endeavor to recieve further opinion, I am curious to know what my [two] readers think. Is my style too cryptic? And is its excessive secrecy a good or bad thing or somewhere in between? Feel free to expound on your points. :D

apotheosis

Another response to Hillman's Hero Challenge! I had another idea... I love how, in Creative Writing Class season, I always write. I always write throughout the whole year, but usually only do it when the mood or a specific inspiration strikes insistently. But in Creative Writing Season, I think about writing all the time, and I even sit down without much of an idea and then start a poem just like that.

Whenever I write a poem, I think it's weird that I write so many poems. I'm supposed to be trying to be a novelist. But poems are easier to write for me, in ways, because to me they have to follow far fewer rules than stories do. But here's a poem. :D





There – the fine-drawn veil-cloak. A figure steps between
the curtains’ quick conjoining. The billow now
does hide the forming legend; and from the silky brume can now derive
the myth, an image: perhaps a gold Apollo; in night Endymion.

But here – a yellow poppy plays the part of Justice Favored
pinned to the piper-chaplain’s costume, almond-brown.
In-tune to the light and airy presence of a first-month festival,
the newborn tales trace I, a humble servant, Almandine.

Play upon my riven spinet, hold the ambry’s chamber-keys;
Look once through this hollow window, see the pane so lined
with hopes and honors even I can scarce detect at night;
then step away.

The glass here shows the task, an idling of the hours:
to rend a leaf of parchment from the long and worn
famed Lay of august deeds, and whittle through the course,
throw my wordy secret into the covered folds.

I cobble soft the chance, the curvature’s sole meaning
of Someone’s tall trim figure halving the dusty road;
He marveled wisty at the blade still trapped in tourmaline,
and moved aside to let the trammeling oxen pass.

I play my raveling cinders when the flame subsides.
But Justice Favored, clutched by the hand of a spring girl,
causes her small rosy lids to flutter softly, when
the piper dances by in robes of almond-tinted cambric.

To-morrow, his fluting jumps and flourishes
will happen upon a reverent night, and ‘round
the dashing dally of the flames, the tastes of heroes’ legends,
the lovely hearts will sit, clothed whole in hatching safety –
they will bravely tell the finest dance Not Yet.

While Great Men humbly vary their professions four-square
away from each sole neighbor, to cover all the hungry stage,
Know, that in the records of the siege on Tasks Undone,
there endures no inking record of the still-concealed secret,
a small pale poppy-flower, a speck in the sun of a high wooly wind,
caught wondering in the hold of a blue-eyed child.

Wait, stay.

I tell the stories by the hearth, but know not any reason.
The storyteller’s strength and safety are both relative:
I cradle lucent lilting river-water, and in Fortunate air
make known the larking Secret, and the slight and pearly guise
through which the Searching flows and hides.

monologue quandary

In second semester of junior year last year, one of the best classes of high school happened. "Creative Writing." It was the class in which I stopped being shyly afraid to say my opinion, etc. This semester, the last semester of high school - I am taking the class again. The same course title, the same teacher, and the same friends (plus more) are in the class. It is the beginning of the semester so we have not yet gotten to the really fun stuff. But one thing we did have to do last week was to write a monologue on a certain subject - a monologue for inclusion in a play-thing that the teacher of the class is putting on in May.

Yesterday he asked if anyone would be interested in acting in the play-thing, in reading his own monologue. Eventually I raised my hand and said "very small possibility." Basically because I didn't want anyone but me performing my monologue. :P Later I thought more about it (of course, that always happens) though, and realized:

A weird and little-known fact: I came to my high school in ninth grade because of its excellent theatre program. Imagining myself performing onstage. Thinking I could act.

As a freshman I was far too timid and unsure to try. In tenth grade I struck out into the world of Prout Theatre. I took an acting class as an elective and auditioned for the fall play - an audition in which I was bland and unnotable, pretty much - and auditioned for the spring musical - an audition for which I practiced to the point of starting to lose my voice and then sung in front of the director in horrible warbling tones, no doubt making an idiot of myself. No, really, it was bad. I meekly "helped" with costumes [i.e., wandered around backstage mostly not knowing what I was doing] for that play (Fiddler on the Roof). The extent of my Prout Theatre experience was that in the program of a small play put on in February of junior year, "A Thurber Carnival", my name appeared in the program next to the title "Assistant to the Director" and "Costumes". But really what I mostly did in that play was slink around with a squeaky voice, again, with no idea what I was supposed to be doing.

But. I came to my school for its theatre. Since I came, I have ceased wanting to become an actress, realized that most of the time I can't carry much of a tune, and learnt new things about what I really do want to do. But. Here I have right in my hand a finale to a spectacular senior year. Right there. It's so easy. Here I have a chance to be on that stage one time, not before the curtain rises as a meek and scuttling backstage-hand, but after the curtain has long been up as an "actress". Weird, huh? That it should just fall like that? If I make an idiot of myself, hey, I'm graduating in less than a month from when the play happens. The parents and students in the audience won't need to care. So what if my teacher said the Attorney General was coming to the play? When am I going to have to face the opinion of the Attorney General? Basically I'm free. And four good friends have also volunteered to appear in the play and read their monologues so I wouldn't even have to be alone.

I'd be terrified. But I'd be free. One experience for free.

There is one problem though completely separate from the issue of acting on-stage. It's the monologue itself - the one I wrote. The teacher must have thought that it was good because he read it to the class along with some of his own and some other students' [i know i know, which one? mine was #4 :P]. The content of the monologue I wrote is pretty personal - not necessarily to me, but to my family. Not as in revealing Deep Dark Dreadful Family Secrets, but just that, I don't think my family would want some things in the third paragraph to be revealed to the student body of Prout, the student body's parents, the teachers, and the Attorney General. Basically I can't do it - even if I'm not completely sure that it wouldn't be all right to let the monologue out, the fact that I have any suspicion that it might be uncomfortable for my family is a suspicion that must stop me from performing (or having anyone perform) the monologue as it is now. Yes, it was read to my Creative Writing class - without the author's name attached to it. That was just six or seven good friends of mine - and eight or nine other students - and one teacher. A 600-seat auditiorium is a different matter.

So I guess the only thing I can do is talk to the teacher about it, and change the monologue. We were allowed to either write from our own experience, or invent a fictional character and make him speak. I'll have to make it more fictional, I guess. Keep my basic opinion and tone portrayed in the monologue, but change stories, invent things. Somehow it probably won't seem as dear to me then.

moth-wing valour

This is my [odd] response to Dr Hillman's hero challenge. Thank goodness I thought of something strange because I had been worried for a second.

Comment?, my two readers. I know who you are!






In the pale gathering of window-glass, spindly light-webs of here and there
form themselves between the hall’s three shadows:
a weary sea-chest, haggard amber lamp and tall thin
                          mannequin.
She, the shawled and locketed grey
                          Madam
Passes alone through the doorway,
her spry young dressmaker hands touched with
                          rain,
and so made to wear a spidery countenance.
Her white winter fingers alight, and clasp
a leaf, a trace, time’s hidden paper, on the sea-chest.
           The eye-lit She begins a rickety examination;
                   She sits her on the sea-chest, under the amber lamp.
The mute and waifish mannequin holds watch.

Ask the ink scrawled on the page. Tell the dusky riddling light.
A candle on the sea-chest burns now – the paper filled with faded ink
                          burns.
The sparking cadence flickers, starving –
            An ancient autumn leaf ends early in spring,
                  and her wise old dressmaker’s hands conceal in ash
                           the all-held walloping of stains and splotches.
That old clumsy clamorous catch now fades.
No young hands, prying, curious and blithe, can now catalogue
             the sanctity of paper on a sea-chest
                     under the amber light –
Forging a concealment, the dame resuscitates
                          knowledge
              with its own ignorance, and keeps
Sacred something lost. Ah –
Those mannequins
             will never read
                      any of the webby scroll, the tangled try
The future – mythical Posterity – will never know
the thing, the element, someone will have wanted
                          to forget
When the grey and white spindly
                          Madam
sets a straw-fire to that seceding Past,
and saves an offering for the spry scatter-Light.

one word

WOW. :D

confessional poetry

THE INTELLECTUAL. One time – it is but once a year - if the sky is rosy and the dawn is fresh
(Fresh a fool’s confessor, you know) I take my fortune down a cane’s white side so early
To church. If the day is washed in bantered clime, and the belfry’s swallow-light a pale cream,
I make my coffee better light brown. Cast my bell-dove shadow to that far way out-of-world (a tie so ordinary).
But after so recanting, all I really want to see is
That hat (well it is Mrs. McCreeley's hat), stolid flat straw waving feathers since
the coffee was a water-taste, no cream. Same I sit in Edge-of-world to watch
The flouncing warbled colors from the curled-past headpiece, the crown, the coronation -
Not a thing begins, the hymns fill out in voices all ambrosial, and I don't have a single
philosophical thought about millinery. The pink ruffles and ruffled swan's-down rise up.
Sole occurrence, a feat: Every so often, I smile when she asks me, "So do you like this new

PASTOR?" So in that moment watch his only secret: does the hymnal book run old enough
For the seashells in the window and the bulrushed half-light yellow on the tea-breath panes?
Saints it is too much – a touch so hushed - and yet no one understands; butterfly and sandy rain, and one moment
If the strand is washing, the salty seagrass squalling, shore in lather halving the screen,
That I cannot turn the cross-shed waterwheel has more to hand than Scripture, lo the white-yellow half-light,
faintly old in grey of rain, swept still, bandied, webbed and twain, feels as a page does: brittle.
I am that vesper with no words - all my thoughts are out of Same - but a sermon salient follows my lips.
In the moment over, anyway, when the waterwheel did not turn, sentences were willow-leaves to understand

IT. The same weather full of jasper inkling shells clatters ‘cross the shore; the in-tide scampers tiny vestries.
They say naught, only the maker’s most: “Whirled half-a-way, tript Sunday, verity: a-brightly sail-made
With the sky in blue galoshes, tomorrow.” The shells scamper and the bath waits. Meanwhile present a

THEATRICAL. Low the fallow curtain, the characters present their vines: caricatures that fall to the trapeze.
Before the wide-brimmed hat existed there was something I don't know in the middle of laughter.
Sole as their players, they are so much with such consistency that I cannot think to say
A single thing that that known

COMPANY had said, "But it's so soaring lovely,
You never knew it like I did." Surely the good

SCHOLAR could tell us what it is. But he is safe in somewhere, and he drinks his coffee light brown
Because he will not tell the chairman "I have taken to the church,"
As he would never tell some blue galoshes that a sky was wrapping round them, ten past three.
(Not like he would know it, even. Will doubles a happening: he has not been a child these past five half-minutes.)
But that hat is such a relic, he thinks. It is so juvenile, yet the flounces, yet the stares - it is practically

VICTORIAN, really. And things, he thinks, are best looked at by the trials, in the one sole right proportion,
For distance seems too horrible, examination – terrifying. In the small grass, caterpillars, the Antipodes
Make up the illumination aria. Digressing say, “His letters are so elegant, he cannot think to talk about them,”
Until all the swirls go rambling out to be but
typewriter-keys on hat-racks, catching themselves on the rickety vines
Midst that truth of the universe spiraling down: hats box themselves once in a minute,
Just a half-minute quarter past three, store-close whirligig, sometimes with those stoic ribbons grabbing -
The truth does give his letters precision; but then it could always go back to that

INTELLECTUAL, who is ashamed of having one philosophical thought
about
millinery.