Thresholds

I feel like we're in a threshold time.  Will we look back on these days as the beginning of the Israel-Iran war?  Will we look at May 2018 as the beginning of a de-nuclearized Korean peninsula?  Will this be the beginning of a new intifada?

I think of all of the poetry of liminal spaces, especially of Yeats' "The Second Coming."  Are we seeing the rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem?

This morning I wrote these lines:

In the afternoon, over cups
of cooling tea, we think of our ancestors,
the ones who could have told
our fortunes with those tea leaves
or a glimpse at our palms.
Embassies move, and the world burns.

And then I wrote up my idea that I thought might be poem or might be short story, the idea of the FEMA interview and what's kept us from full recovery from our Hurricane Irma damages.  It works well as a poem, with each possible multiple choice answer growing more complex.


This post is unfinished, but I'll publish it anyway.  I lost Internet connection as I was writing.  But I like the fragment that is here.

Poetry Tuesday: Existentialism and Mid-Life Comforts

My spouse has spent the last 6 months teaching Philosophy classes again for the first time in 20 some odd years.  Some days he comes home, and I can tell what he's been teaching, as he asks, "What does all of this matter?  What is the meaning of our tiny human lives?"

It's interesting to have these existentialist conversations at midlife.  In some ways, it feels like we've fallen through a hole in time--after all, as young students at a liberal arts college, we fell in love while having these kinds of conversations, since he was a Philosophy major, and I was an English major.  That sentence probably tells you all you need to know about the kinds of people we were and the types of humans we have become.

But back then, we were trying to figure out what to do with our adult lives, which seemed to stretch out to infinity.  These days, we feel that time is short, and we need to make sure we're not wasting our lives.  At least, on good days that's the mindset that motivates these questions.  On bad days, it feels like we're battling a huge tidal wave of darkness that will swallow us all up, regardless of our efforts.

These thoughts put me in mind of a poem that I wrote years ago, but I still think it holds up well.


Desert Dreams


We face midlife with Prufrock.
Midlife, that endless wait for Godot,
who might show up early or not at all.
Existentialism succors only the young.

And so, we, too, come to realize
what Eliot knew. At the last,
liturgy offers a consolation,
Compline a kind of comfort,
with its contrast to the sudden violence
of sunset. We remember the verses learned
by rote, repeat them to calm
our quaking, media-addled nerves.

Prophetic whispers surface from the sediment
of our days, a muddy
bit from Isaiah or the Psalms,
instructing us to comfort, comfort ye my people.
A voice crying in the wilderness
of our arid hearts, our desert dreams.  

An Evening with David Brooks

Last night was a perfect night.  I had gotten tickets to see David Brooks.  The first e-mail seemed to say they would cost money--not the requirement to buy a book, which I could be OK with, but a ticket purchase.  I hesitated.  My dad told me what a great speaker Brooks is and said I should go. He had paid to see Brooks speak at the Smithsonian and said it was worth every penny.

When a follow up e-mail came, I clicked on the link to buy tickets.  But they were free!  So that was the first thing that made the night delightful.  Did I just misread the first e-mail?  Did they not have enough people buy tickets and so they gave them away?

Anyway, the thought that we got free tickets made me so happy.  What didn't make me happy was the thought of getting to downtown Miami.  Someone asked me once why we don't do more in Miami, and that's my answer--we can never be sure what the traffic will be.  Last night, we left 2 hours before the event began.

Last night it was heavy, but it kept moving, even when we were only going 25 mph.  We found the Miami Dade College campus easily and parked the car.  We walked around the campus to figure out where we'd be, and then we went into a restaurant, DRB 180.  They had a great happy hour menu, so we made our dinner out of that food:  sliders with blue cheese, fries, and an amazing grilled cheese sandwich with bacon. 

How have I not thought to put bacon on grilled cheese before?

It was a wonderful meal, and then we were off to the Chapman Center.  We got there early because I didn't want to have to stand through the presentation, but I needn't have worried.  There were plenty of seats.

So, we watched the people.  I'm assuming that most of us were in the 50-70 age range, mostly white, probably fairly affluent/middle class.   I thought it was interesting that most of the men looked fairly similar, while the women varied differently:  a wide range of hair styles and colors, many different make-up styles, lots of types of glasses and handbags, and a wide variety of clothes, most of them non-form-fitting.  Not many high high heels--which is strange for a Miami event.

And then it was time for David Brooks.  My dad was right--he's a marvelous speaker.

If you've heard recent interviews with him, you already know the thesis of the book:  that we live in a culture that values what we put on our resumes--which is not necessarily what we'd want people to remember us in eulogies at our funerals.  We live in a culture where there's lots of talk about economics and politics, but not much about how and why to be a good person.  And so, Brooks has contributed to that conversation.

Brooks was funny, especially at the beginning, where he described his own journey.  He's smart and clearly done his reading--but the intellectual material was nicely balanced with stories of other people who mastered the art of being virtuous.  He had a sheaf of papers on the podium, but he never looked like he was reading.

All too soon, it was over and time to go home.  The trip back was easy--never a sure thing, with all the road construction. 

I feel like I used to go to author presentations more often.  Perhaps I did, or perhaps I'm not remembering long stretches of time between outings.

Still, I'd like to do more.  We have lots of opportunities here, and I need to take more advantage of them--especially when they're free.

I need more perfect nights out like last night.

The Lessons of Palm/Passion Sunday for Modern Creatives/All of Us

Today churches across Christendom will celebrate Palm Sunday, the day when Jesus rides triumphantly into Jerusalem.  Of course, the same crowd that cheers for Jesus will just a few days later be screaming for his death.  Many churches will cover the whole Holy Week story today:  Palm Sunday has become Passion Sunday. 

 This morning I woke up thinking about what the Palm/Passion Sunday story has to say to us as poets and writers.  As humans, we are susceptible to the desire for praise.  We don't feel like our work is important unless someone else says it is.  In some ways, this tendency is good.  We need the checks and balances of brains that aren't our own.  I've written many a harsh things in my younger years, much to my later regret.  How I wish I had listened to other voices that encouraged me to temper my tone.

But taken to its extreme, this need for praise can be damaging.  We stop believing in ourselves and our worth and the worth of our work unless someone important tells us that we're great.  And quickly, we start to determine which praise counts and which doesn't:  this journal is worth our time, that one isn't.  If we can't be published by the top 10 presses, we won't bother.  If my book doesn't sell x amount of copies, it's not worth it.  The danger is that we'll become paralyzed by all of this.  I'm all for shooting for the top.  I'll send my manuscript to W.W. Norton or Knopf.  But if they say no, I don't want to stop there.

The Palm/Passion story also reminds us of the fleeting nature of fame.  Don't get me wrong:  if I'm chosen to be Poet Laureate, I'll do as good a job as I'm capable of doing.  But I'll start every day by reminding myself that the fame is likely temporary.  The important thing remains:  the work.

The Palm/Passion story reminds us that we're characters in a larger narrative (as does the Passover story, which people across the world will be hearing this week too, both in Jewish traditions and some Christian traditions).  We will find ourselves in great danger if we start to believe it's all about us, personally. 

No, there are larger forces at work.  To put it in poetry and Scouting terms:  I'm put here to do my best writing, but also, to leave the poetry campsite better than I found it. 

How do I do that?  I work to promote not only myself, but other worthy poets, I work to make sure that the next generations know about the rewards of poetry, I envision the kind of world we would have if poetry was valued, and I work/play to make that possible.  I also work to have a balanced, integrated life:  my work in poetry cannot be allowed to eclipse other important work:  the social justice work, the care of my family and friends, my relationship with the Divine, the other creative work I do, the self-care that must be the foundation of it all.

I find many values to being part of a religious tradition, but the constant reminder of the larger vision, the larger mission, is one of the most valuable to me.  The world tells me that many things are important:  fame, money, famous/rich people, a big house, a swell car, loads of stuff.  My religious tradition reminds me of the moth-eaten nature of these things that the world would have me believe is important.  My religious tradition reminds me of the importance of the larger vision.  And happily, my religious tradition is expansive enough that my creative work can be part of that larger vision.

Old Books and Contributor Copies

So, here's my pressing question for all of you who have been paid in contributor copies.  How long do you keep them?

I've been keeping 1 copy of each, or at least that was my plan.  But now I wonder if I should keep them at all.

You might say, "Why keep them?  Aren't they online?"  Well, no, not all of them.  Do any of them have historic value?  I doubt it, although many of the journals have ceased publication.  They might be mildly interesting to future scholars, but I doubt it.

No, my larger issue is why to keep them at all.  Once, it gave me pleasure to see them sitting on the shelf.  But now I'm moving to a smaller house, and I have less room.  I'm casting a critical eye on everything, and much of it will not be coming to the new house.

Once, before I had many publications, I thought I would go back periodically to look at my work published in journals.  I do not do that.  Once a year or two, I double-check a date on the list that I keep of every poem published.

Once, before I had many publications, I wondered if I would need to present the publications as proof.  I thought about jobs I might have that might want to see my publications.  I thought about job applications.  So far, no one has ever asked me to bring in the physical journals.

I will probably load them all into a box, label the box, and stash it--where?  My office at school makes the most sense--at least until June 2014, when we are moving to new offices.

Now, onto the next question:  what to do with antique-esque books?  They're not old enough to be truly valuable.  They don't all have sentimental value.  It's mildly interesting to see my grandfather's anthology of
British Literature that he used when he was an undergrad--but should I keep it for another few decades?  And then what will happen to it?

And then, there are the antique-esque books that I've just picked up along the way.  I can't remember where they're from, but I can't quite bring myself to throw them away.

I wrote to my friend who does interesting book-art kind of things with old books.  If she'll take them, I'll mail them.

Yes, I was once appalled at the idea of destroying old books for an art project.  Now, it seems a better fate than the landfill.  Many of the books I have aren't even valuable as books anymore--the information is outdated and often wrong.  Maybe they can have a second life, a more long-lasting life, as part of an art project.

The Apocalypse Gal at a Meeting about THE NUMBERS

In my current job, as department chair of General Education (think Liberal Arts, not pre-College catch-up classes) at a college, I go to at least one meeting a quarter where we talk about the numbers:  new student enrollment, continuing student enrollment, average registered credit, where we hoped our numbers would be, where they are, where they were a year ago. 

We're a for-profit school, but I suspect all schools are having similar conversations.  We also talked about the plummeting stock price at our recent numbers meeting.  We talked about the recent episode of Rock Center.  We talked about recent media/legislator obsessions, like the housing collapse, and current media/legislator obsessions like the high levels of debt taken on by college students.  The person in charge of the meeting asked, "What do you think will be next?"

No one answered.  "Really, I'd like to know," the meeting facilitator asked.  "What do you think will be next?"

Just a few hours before, I'd read this story with its graphic demonstration about the amazing pace of Arctic ice melt in July.  So, I piped up.  "If the Arctic sea ice really is melting fast enough to cause more glaciers to break apart, we'll be talking about sea level rise."

Nervous laughter.  Or did people think I was joking?  I said, "Look up the rate of Arctic ice melt just for the month of July, which is happening at a much faster rate than anyone thought it would.  When we're all under water, actual water, we won't be worrying about student debt."

Click.  It was on to the next slide of the PowerPoint presentation.

Nothing changes the topic faster than talk of melting Arctic ice.  Just call me Cassandra.

I jotted down a note for a poem:  Cassandra Considers Continuing Enrollment and Calving Glaciers.

Those of you who have been reading this blog know that I've been thinking about global warming for some time now, and that Bill McKibben's article in Rolling Stone spells out the end of the Holocene Era in terrifying scientific detail.  I truly do think that in 5-20 years, we'll look back and say, "I can't believe we worried about that ______________ which seems so insignificant now that we've wrecked the planet."

You can fill in that blank in so many ways:  housing prices, fuel prices, the national debt, wildfires, the loss of jobs, drought.  Those issues will seem so manageable, compared to what we're likely facing.

Are We All Archivists Now?

Kelli's recent post about poets and the importance of archiving our lives made me think about a book I just finished reading, Dana Spiotta's Stone Arabia.  It's a book that I started out loving, but in the end, it wasn't the book I hoped it would be.

There's a lot to like about this book.  It's an interesting look into the lives of aging musicians and siblings at midlife.  But I most enjoyed its exploration of what it means to narrate our lives, to be our own archivists, to catalogue all our creative work--and to make a creative work out of the cataloguing itself.

Nik, the aging musician, began cataloguing his work early on.  Along the way, he creates both real and fake narratives, which leads us to question what the truth of his life is.  His motto is "Self-curate or disappear" (page 2).  Much of his work is done the old-fashioned way, by hand.

Nik's neice wants to create a documentary, and part of the book shows this process.  It's much more boring to read about her filming than to read about Nik's elaborate album covers, his liner notes, his interviews with fake reporters--he even elaborately illustrates and decorates the paper that he uses to wrap the items that he mails.

I wonder if Spiotta does this on purpose, this making of the hand-made more alluring than the making of the film.  I say this because the end of the book made me feel that Spiotta had run out of steam and just wanted to bring the narrative to a close.  I was very unsatisfied with the ending, although it did work in its own way.

Along the way Spiotta gives the reader an interesting window into the rock and roll world of the late 70's.  The main character Denise reflects about the subversiveness of the Sex Pistols: "No one except us girls understood how subversive Johnny Rotten's anti-sex stance really was.  So obnoxiously and unanswerably defiant, the perfect retort to any concern:  It's boring." (page 162, emphasis in original) and  "One other truly subversive thing about the Sex Pistols and the British punks:  bad teeth.  Bad smells, bad teeth, bad skin--this was the real stuff of rebellion.  It didn't last long as an aesthetic.  But wasn't it amazing for a moment?"(page 170).

The sadness of the book is that no matter how defiant we are in our wayward youth, we all must face aging.  This book shows an aging parent in the full throws of dementia, with some interesting observations about the holding hands that  calms the agitated parent:  "We started out with all this body intimacy when I was a baby and then a child . . .  .  We were back to the intimacy of our two bodies." (page 187).

Here's one of my favorite lines from the book:  "He pursued a lifetime of abuse that could only come from a warped relationship with the future" (page 33).  And of course, even that kind of coping, the excess drug and alcohol abuse, won't save us.

But will self-archiving save us?  The book doesn't wrestle with that question, not explicitly.  I suspect that it's a question that haunts most artists, just the way it haunts the musician in this book.

Underwear Bombs and Lost Colonies, Lost Edens

My brain is full of strange thoughts today--so, for those of you who like an orderly essay with a thesis statement and 3 main points--well, those people probably stopped reading this blog a long time ago.

I had a strange dream, so my brain has been making intriguing associations, even as I sleep.  I dreamed I was in my grandmother's apartment, which wasn't any apartment she'd had in waking life.  I was visiting for Christmas, and I didn't realize/remember she had died until I went into a seldom used bathroom to see an art installation that my parents had created in the bathtub out of her Christmas linens and decorations she had made during her life.

I'm trying not to spend too much mental energy on what it means. In my waking life, I am all too aware that my grandmother is dead.  Sigh.

I'm also feeling oddly fascinated by underwear bombs, a fascination that would have horrified my grandmother, who would not have approved of a public discussion of underwear.  If you were an underwear bomber, would you buy something new and special for the mission?  Would you wear an old, ratty piece of underwear because why waste something nice or new on a bombing mission?  In my daily life, when underclothing chafes, I find myself wondering about bomb design and how it impacts the way the underwear fits.

I also find myself wondering about these bomb designers who spend so much creative and intellectual energy on such a destructive object.  Is it evidence of creativity gone wrong?  Could that energy have been redirected at some point along the way?

Ah, the eternal questions:  how would our world be different if more people worked for good than for evil?  And how to convince more of us to apply our creative energies to building up the world, instead of blowing it up?

I loved Hannah Stephenson's poem today.  What interesting connections she makes:  ribs of all kinds, Adam, Eve, original sin.  A delight!

I also found inspiration by Beth's post on images of the Annunciation.  The earlier paintings show the angel Gabriel with rainbow-colored wings.  Later images take the color out of the wings.  I wonder if anyone has written about this.  I wonder if rainbow wings were common or if Beth chose them because they were so uncommon.

In all my thoughts of angels, I never considered wing color.  Hmm.

I'm also fascinated by this story that looks at patches on a map to try to solve the mystery of the Lost Colony of 1587.  I have this line that may find its way into a poem:  "The Lost Colony lies beneath a golf course." 

For those of you who didn't have the same childhood obsessions as I did, the story of the Lost Colony may not have haunted your imaginations.  But I was stunned and still am.  How can a group of settlers just disappear?  What did that word "Croatoan" mean?  If the colonists fled in terror, how did they have time to carve that word on a tree?

Yes, once again, my thoughts turn to the earliest English colonists.  I also think of my own habit of thinking that if I could just move to a new location/job/house, my whole life would change for the better.  I would have been one of those colonists who fled England, only to realize, much too late, that it's hard to immigrate to a new land.

Perhaps it's this disappointment of the dream of a new/better life that leads people to design underwear bombs.  But some of us build bombs, while others of us say, "Well, this colony didn't work, but I bet if I just started over again, at a better settlement site, I'd be able to create a new Eden."  Even more of us just moulder in place.  Why?

Wenceslas Square or Tiananmen Square?

It's been an interesting few days, in terms of deaths and thinking about words and ideas and truth.  I've been intrigued by all the people in North Korea mourning the death of their "dear leader."  I know that in a totalitarian regime much of that emotion is fake, but still, the newscaster breaking down into tears?  Was that emotion fake?  Did the newscaster just not know about the atrocities committed by the dear leader?  Did the newscaster know that a gun was offstage ready to shoot, if the proper emotions weren't shown?

What a difference in leadership style Vaclav Havel offered with his insistence on the truth and how to live life, even if one must tolerate totalitarianism.  I've been wondering if the difference  was because Havel was a playwright.  If we elected a poet into high office, would we get a different governing style?

It reminds me of an exercise I used to do with my students.  I've always told my students that they should plan what they would do in leadership positions, because they may very well find themselves there some day, and it might be sooner than they think. I tell them about Nelson Mandela, and that the reason that he was prepared to be president of South Africa was that he spent all that time in jail (more years than most of my students have been alive) planning for what he would do if he took over the country. He didn't nurse anger or bitterness. No, he planned, along with his compatriots, who were jailed with them.


Then I give them a copy of an interview (in the fabulous book We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews) with Jello Biafra which has this challenge: "It's time to start thinking, 'What do I do if I suddenly find myself in charge?'" (page 46 of the first edition). Many of my students find this idea to be a wonderful writing prompt, even as they're doubtful that they would ever be allowed to be in charge of a national government.

As I watch the latest wranglings by the House, I can't imagine that our government could get much worse.  But then I think about totalitarian regimes, and I remember, oh yes, there's something much worse that ineffectiveness. 

Anne Applebaum wrote a great essay about Havel for today's The Washington Post.  She writes:

"In this essay (‘The Power of the Powerless’), Havel didn’t talk about marches or demonstrations. Instead, he asked the inhabitants of totalitarian countries to 'live in truth': that is, to go about their daily lives as if the regime did not exist, to the extent that was possible in societies where the state ran all businesses and all schools, owned most of the property and banned free speech and free press. By the late 1980s, 'living in truth' was widely practiced across central Europe. The first time I went to Poland in 1987, I stayed with friends. According to the law, I was supposed to register my presence in a private home with the police. 'We don’t do that,' my friends told me. 'We don’t believe the police have the right to know who stays with us.' I didn’t register — and because thousands of other people didn’t either, that law became unenforceable.


But Havel proposed more than mere civil disobedience. He also argued in favor of what we would now call civil society, urging the inhabitants of totalitarian states to found small institutions — musical groups, sporting groups, literary groups — that would develop the 'independent life of society' and prevent their members from being totally controlled from above. This, too, was widely practiced, in Prague’s famous underground philosophy seminars, in the illegal printing presses all across the communist world, in Poland’s independent 'Flying University,' and, most successfully, in Poland’s independent trade unions."

What a great vision--to inspire the people to live as if the life they wanted had already arrived.  It's what I believe we find in the best religious traditions, which tell us that we don't have to wait for Heaven to begin to create the Kingdom of God--it's already underway, and we can take part.  It's an exciting new--yet ancient--development in contemporary theology.  Books like N. T. Wright's Surprised by Hope or Brian D. McLaren's The Secret Message of Jesus or Rob Bell's Love Wins argue that Jesus didn't come to get us to Heaven, but to show us that we could begin living like we're in Heaven right now, before we die.

Even if we're uncomfortable with these ideas in the political arena or the theological arena, they might make sense in other areas of our lives.  What if we lived our work lives as if we've already got the great job?  What if we lived our writing lives as if we already were the kind of writers we wanted to be?  We might waste less time in feeling jealous or inadequate or any of those other emotions that so often wreck us.

I'm also keenly aware that for every revolution that goes well, like the one orchestrated by Havel, there are others that are squashed, like the Chinese protesters in Tiananmen Square.  Still, it's fear of the machine guns (real and figurative) that keeps us from our full potential.

Wenceslas Square or Tiananmen Square?  The Kim Jong Ils of the world hope that the memory of Tiananmen Square will leave us quaking in fear.  The Vaclav Havels and Archbishop Romeros and Dorothy Days and Nelson Mandelas and Emma Goldmans and Archbishop Tutus of the world inspire us to keep our eyes on the possibilities of other squares and happier endings.

Facebook vs. Blogs: Epistemological Questions for your Sunday

I've been thinking about Jeannine Hall Gailey's blog posting where she talks about why she likes blogs more than Facebook: "Facebook is like seeing a bunch of people at a party; a blog is like going for coffee with someone you're really interested in."

I see her analysis as exactly right, but with one caveat. Facebook has allowed me to keep in touch with lots of people with whom I'd lost touch through the years (and yes, it's still probably more like a party than like coffee). At one point, I would have sung the praises of e-mail, because people will write e-mails, but not write/mail letters the old fashioned way. But these days, I've noticed that I keep in touch via e-mail with an even smaller number of people each year.

Facebook allows us to stay in touch, even when we only have time to write a sentence or two. I'll confess that some (most?) of my daily activities don't warrant a full e-mail. I don't want to write a long e-mail about how my life hasn't changed. I'm also interested in how people will choose that one nugget from the day to create the update. I'd expect poets to be good at this, but so are non-poets. It seems there's a poetry exercise in here somewhere.

I've loved blogs because I feel like I'm getting to know people, especially once I got bold enough to write comments and start my own blog. But now I'm also getting to know people through Facebook. When I first started my Facebook account, I thought that I'd only respond to Friend requests from people I had actually known. But I'm glad that I eventually gave in and BeFriended people whom I hadn't actually known in person. Just yesterday, I had 2 poems accepted in a journal that had a call for submissions from South Florida poets; I knew about that call for submissions because of a new Facebook friendship with a poet whom I've never met in real life.

Now I'm curious about whether or not these online friendships with people I've never met in person would survive a real-life encounter. I suspect they would. I think of the Miami Book Fair, and the fact that my house is only a county away, a thirty mile drive if the traffic is tame that day. I wonder about the wisdom of inviting these online poet friends with books coming out this year to send their press packets to the Miami Book Fair, and to look me up for coffee. That's not exactly an act of bravery. Could I be brave enough to say, "I'm near the major airports. I'll pick you up. You'll have a friendly face at the end of your plane ride." Could I be really brave? Could I say, "I have a guest room. Stay with me if you can't afford a hotel."

Here, too, is a difference between blogging and Facebook. With a blogger (the kind who writes a real post, as opposed to a collection of links, at least several times a week), I feel like I know people well enough to make some of those offers. I feel sure enough that those bloggers aren't secret, serial killers. It would take some kind of commitment to start a blog on the off chance that your serial killer plans would come to fruition. With Facebook, I'm not as sure that I know these new Friends whom I've never met in person.

Of course, I'm fairly new to Facebook, and I don't read/post there as regularly. Maybe in a few years, I'll change my mind.

And my inner Philosopher just needs to ask, "Do we ever really know anyone?" I think that I know these people I went to school with decades ago, but do I? They could have changed rather radically too. Or do we change that radically? Is there some essential Kristin-ness that was there when I was 9, there when I was 19, there when I approached the middle years of my life, that time and circumstance will never strip away?

O.K., I'll stop now. It's a nice normal Sunday in most of the nation: no blizzards howling in until tonight, no scary storms, perhaps the sun is even peeking through. Back to your coffee and breakfast foods. Back to the Sunday papers, which for the most part, won't trouble you with these epistemological and ontological questions (and big words that you have to look up! big words which perhaps I didn't even use properly! except that I did, because I doublechecked with my husband, who has an MA in Philosophy).

Enjoy your Sunday, whether you spend it reading blogs and/or Facebook, dreaming of the Miami Book Fair, wrestling with philosophical questions, or pondering theology, which once was a Sunday staple.