tuckova

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Dear Poland, 

CAN I HELP YOU WITH SOMETHING? SERIOUSLY WHAT.

Love,

Anne

breaking the girl

In search of a poem that I had mostly memorized in 1990 but was a little hazy on, lo! these many (23? sheesh) years later, I went digging through a box of paper that will either fascinate or terrify whoever goes through my stuff after I die. Here are poems I liked, torn out of the New Yorker in this case, or often photocopied or even copied by hand from books. Notes I took during poetry readings when I used to go, and even some fliers I made for readings of my own. The best reading I ever did was with Scott Soriano, who put a steak on his face and squirted blood out of it while reciting a poem that was a revision of Howl, but about Carls Jr., this was 1989 I guess. Most performance art seems kind of a disappointment to me after that. 

What else was in that box, Anne? Oh, children, gather round and see. Here are poems that a friend wrote, and songs. I haven't talked to him since he left Prague, that was 1995 I guess, but I can still sing one of the songs and every year I tell the joke I first heard from him, that Jan Hus was a man with a lot at stake. Also poems by my former insane roommate, no longer my roommate and probably even no longer insane. Poems by people I took classes with. No letters, because those are in another box around here somewhere. 

So many things by other people. I can't bear to toss it (and anyway it's just this one box) because even though the smell of the mimeograph machine has faded from them, my memory of exactly how I felt the first time I read some of these poems stays fresh, and I am transported back to sixteen, or twenty-six. 

And things I wrote as well. Mostly poetry. Oh, so young and earnest! My love was a tree, you guys, and also a glass of water. Already with the metaphors, and THAT earnest. And also one letter I wrote that I made a copy of for myself, stored separately from the other letters. It is three pages long, and tearstained, and so absolutely naked with pain that I want to get that girl a blanket and cover her. It has the range of a great battle, from the personal to the general, from Greek mythology to Red Hot Chili Peppers lyrics, except it is clear that I was mostly fighting with myself, as the object of my affection had long since left me. I sat there this afternoon, with these pages in my hands, thinking: should I throw this out? Because this does not really go with how I see myself now, and it is so painful to remember this that it is almost embarrassing. Back when I used to find it easier to tell the whole truth than to hold it in, even if it sliced me open on the way out. 

I mean: now, I want to finish something, and I know I can just just sit very still until you go. It's to the point where sometimes I hear the words before you say them, and I smile and say lightly that it was my fault anyway, sorry, and my teeth clamp over my tongue before I can say another word, and I wave goodbye and I don't look back until I know you're not looking. No more tearstained outpourings from this corner, no more bleeding the truth. So now I remember why I keep the letter, and fold it back into the box, as gently as I wish someone had been with me, put a lid on it, put it back in a quiet safe place. 

momentary pastures

Walking through the park at night with the mist gently folding over everything, thick at the river and the deeper trees, thin along the path we stepped off. Disembodied voices calling to wandering dogs, lost friends, missed connections. Teenagers entwined on a bench, and further on two scruffy men with a paper bag of something fiery between them, the shared communion of their downfall. Everything is about undoing, belts and buttons and lives; about breaking, hearts and bottles and promises. I wanted to whisper into your ear that you didn't have to lie to me, wishing to set you free of the habit. But once one lie is out the rest come so much easier, don't they, and you've already told the first one. 

Fall Song by Mary Oliver

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

the leaves have never looked as good as now they're going to die

Hey so it's fall, my favorite season when I can get it. Last year was summer and then it rained for a week and it was windy and all the trees went from green to bare, like strippers who don't know that the tease is at least half of the point. I mourned the lack of transition, and it made me grumpy(ier than usual) for the winter. 

This year lacked the Indian summer we were promised, but still: fall is falling. The leaves on fire, yellow and red, and crunching nicely underfoot most days (though not this morning, as it rained last night). The morning wants hats and gloves already, but by afternoon most of us carry them around if there's a little sunshine. Trying to grab the last bits of vitamin D, like the last drops of syrup in the bottle. Sweet, sweet, and disappearing. In the evening our speech is puffs of smoke on the clear cold air. 

 So I'm happy. I do like a season, it's one of the best parts of living here. A transition. A sense of movement. Like a new year every few months. 

What else?

L'esprit de l'escalier

Mind and Body pass each other on the stairs. Mind pauses, a little winded, well not really because Mind doesn't breathe, that's more Body's thing, but anyway. Mind wants to have a look around, a reflective moment. Mind says: Hey be careful down there. Body just looks back at Mind wordlessly; Body doesn't talk much. 

Mind says: Down there? Where I was? It's crazy. I was so innocent. I didn't have any perspective. Like from here I can look down and see where I've been? But down there, I couldn't. Body nods and looks down the stairs, and thinks of falling. Body looks up the stairs, where Mind is going, remembering. Body knows that it used to be able to touch its head with its foot in two or three different directions. Body did ballet, Body was graceful and flexible. Body had all the time in the world.

Mind says: I used to think I was nothing, you know? And anybody who told me that I was nothing, I thought they were smart for seeing the truth. I used to think it was important that I was smart, and tried so hard to be clever and witty and knowledgeable, and if anybody said I was stupid it crushed me. Body is thinking about dancing, the crush of bodies, sweaty limbs tangled. Crushed in someone's arms. It's been a while, but Body remembers. Body knows this is not the kind of being crushed that Mind is talking about. Mind says: I was crushed, as if the external validation of my intellect was more important than the thoughts I had. Hey are you listening? Body is thinking about being crushed at the foot of the stairs, which seems more probable.

Mind says: It's very interesting at this point on the stairs, you know, in the middle. Where I can see how far I've gone and how far I have to go. I used to think back a few stairs ago that I had the best perspective but now I know that this is the best. Now I can see things clearly. Mind says: I used to stumble around at the bottom because I couldn't even see to the top, I thought I could but I couldn't, but now I can see everything, I'm sure. Body sees a lot too, and also knows that some of the stairs are longer than others, that Body took a stair's length for granted recently and fell, bruised, weeping. Body sees that it can't count on itself anymore, that Body is no longer graceful and flexible, and there are stairs ahead that creak and groan even more than Body's knees do, these days, and Body is a little afraid about that.

Mind says: Well anyway nice talking at you. Miles to go and whatnot. Mind is exceedingly cheerful. Mind thinks it can go miles. Body nods, numbly, grips the banister, slides out a cautious toe. Takes the next step. 

no pain no pain

Oh, geez, I know! It just flies sometimes, and then there you are looking at the same blog post for two weeks, wondering if it's about you, and there's been nothing to distract you. Poor duck.

The sun is shining today, so even though it is brutally cold I am disinclined to kill anybody. SO FAR. 

I've been getting a massage at least once a month this year, trying to find the best massage in Brno. Mostly I book them through slevomat, which is like groupon, figuring that even if it's not great at least it's cheap. And sometimes that means it's not great -- I've had some lame skin massages (like: nice? but... it's not my skin that hurts). I've listened to a lot of plinky-plunky music, including the Benedictine monks singing Metalica (or something like that) and Hawaiian Christian music. It's always the fusion music that has me in giggles, and the massage person is all, "Does it tickle?" and I'm "No, no, not at all, huffle snort." Some people are pretty strict about their time but not mine (one woman who didn't know I was in the waiting room so started about 10 min late but finished on time, welcome to non-repeating business). I've had some good ones that I went back to who were... not as good, which is weird because I'd expect your work to be better for somebody paying full price, but my experience hasn't supported that.

Today I had a guy who was mostly blind, and I think he may have been an actual sadist, because WHOA it hurt. It hurt so much that I, Anne, lover of moderate pain, was nearly off the board twice, and not by conscious movement, but by an instinctive need to get away from YEOUCH. To add to the comedy potential of flipping over a massage table, my response to pain is often to laugh, and so there we were, naked American on a table alternately laughing and mewling, and blind man in a white suit, laughing maniacally as he drove his thumb straight through my iliotibial band and into my thigh bone, and I would have said to stop except I couldn't stop clenching my teeth and finally the pain melted and my foot went to sleep for about 10 seconds and then everything felt fine. Four hours later and I'm still figuring out what he did, exactly -- everything feels sore and quite fabulous. $15 massage, my friends. 

Anyway so that's how I've been. And super busy with work. See if I'd had more time I might have written something about laughing at pain, but today is not that day.