Notes from the train to Chicago

1. I remember how Tori told me that she worked at a place called Wahoo Fish Taco
when she lived in Denver.

2. "Be glad that you know me."

3. The man at the train snack bar called me a movie star. What did I do, I wonder.

4. I found the grrls art book in a manilla envelope when I cleaned my room--how useful.
Thank you Stuart Dybek.

5. I read a passage that was an interview between Lee Krasner and a little known African American female painter, whose work sample I liked better than Krasner's.

6. The goal of this trip is to see with new eyes.

7. I remember the book "A Gift of Magic"--about a girl who had ESP.

8. Is it unwise to consider grad school? Have I been following my heart more than my head? What about learning web design? Will the scars ever go away?

9. It is possilbe to burrow so far into yourself that a feeling of vertigo ensues when you try to face reality.

10. C told me, "No one is your friend."

11. X rewards herself with tv. B makes sweetbreads. J takes daytrips on her bike.
My neighbor sings at night.

12. I remember the movie Wings of Desire.

13. A little girl in a pink coat keeps walking up and down the train aisle.

14. The teabag artist. Not Joe B.

15. As a high school senior I admired Fiona Apple, who made a video for mtv when she was eighteen.

16. In the interview, the popular musician said she used to sing in DC bars for senators and their mistresses. She had long hair like Arwen from Lord of the Rings.

17. T comes into the restaurant to look at C.

18. When I get off the train, I will go with Rich and Andrea to a family restaurant called Jedi's Garden.

19. I plan to visit the contemporary museum of art.

20. I knew a girl who was a poet in high school. She wrote a poem for a boy who died. The poem ended, "What will we do when we have forgotten how to dance?"

It has been twelve days since I quit smoking.

Why do I allow other people to affect my mood?
Is that why Georgia O'Keeffe planted herself in the middle of the desert? What did I LIKE about society today?

I liked the three pieces of nigiri sushi I ate at Sushi.com for brain food. They came with a tiny salad and yummy garlic dressing and miso soup. The sushi was too expensive though.

I liked dropping off my application for UM's MFA program
at the Rackham Graduate Building. I never noticed how beautiful it is before--marble floors, richly colored carpets, large echoing ceilings, sweeping stairways. Nooks and crannies galore and the famous auditorium where I saw Lawrence Kasdan give a speech about the making of
The Big Chill...

I am reminded of the summer before I left for Munich and how poignant the time at Owen House. It was the first time ever that I had my own room, but I was only a college sophomore so there was nothing in it. Just some oil paintings I found in the attic, pastel drawings of my own, and empty wine bottles. My hair was strawberry blonde then.

Katie had lived for two months in London, where she worked as some kind of data entry girl and drank beer for dinner. When she came back she lived three blocks away at Stevens. She told me she was going to stay the whole summer, but she was sick of being hungry and sick of being poor.

"See my face?" She asked me one day, walking home from the library. "It's flawless."

It was flawless, except she always wore the brightest red lipstick she could find, and it was always smeared all over her front teeth.

*

What am I DOING here?


*

"O To Be a Dragon"

If I, like Solomon...
could have my wish--

my wish... O to be a dragon,
a symbol of the power of Heaven--of silkworm
size or immense; at times invisible.
Felicitous phenomenon!

--M. Moore


*

Here is the link to the Alice Notley web recording I mentioned earlier. She begins, "You had effectively drugged me."

http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/gpp2002/notley.html

*

I'm going to fill out another application for editing jobs at The University of Chicago now.

*

I better look into this some more:

http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/subst/fx/help/payor-faq.html/ref=zm_pb_h_01/104-2326162-5952765#what-is-this

Stolen Title


"Thought I’d been through this
In 1919—"

Barcelona, Tokyo, Paris
Johannesburg—

"On the crest of a hill for all to see
God planted a Scarlet Maple Tree"

A zinc moon breaks
On small waves.

"Now she seems to be sand
Under his shoe
There’s nothing I can do"

My humans can’t see
Their own
Finite bodies
From the vantage of
The milky way

And what is the point
if the song is not
composed in joy?

--It’s too quiet in here.
--We’ll play Led Zeppelin for you next time.

"I wish death
But not just yet

I wish blue sky in the afternoon
Bigger windows & a panorama- light"

I wish for synchronicity
With the cycles of the earth

I wish truth

I wish greater cooperation
between women & men

I wish love
Without shame

Now when I think of love
I think of a hummingbird
Of a man, become warm
and blush

And even I
watch in awe
as he uses a frog
to catch a fish

“But these are spoiled children!”
said the woman
with a French accent.

“Serial enablers,”
said a man in back.

“Damn the eight o’clocks!”

“Follow the leader!”

Navaho codemakers
We demure

I wish understanding
Before dissolution into chaos

"She always sang there to purify
Not the desert always pure
But me of my corrupt furor"

I too wish an alternate form of justice

"I have come far enough
From where I was not before
To have seen the things
Looking in at me through the open door"

Approaching an anthem
why do I think of Yeats:

"Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute to minute they live;
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?"

What did the chief of police say?
“I’m brave—I hold up in danger.”

What did the musician sing?

"Cut the kids in half
Cut the kids in half
Cut the kids in half

The lights are on but nobody's at home
Everybody wants to be a
Everyone wants to be a friend
Nobody wants to be a slave
Walking walking walking..."

What did Georgia say?
What did Gaea say?

Do what you will, man.
I will be here
When you are gone.

Look what I found! Maureen Owen online at


http://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/owen/owen.htm


and this poem


"Always the word "love" written in vanishing ink....vanishing
or
Edith wharton is missing"

for E.B.


Turning the page we witness how another survives.
She takes the circular staircase to the weathervane
& that puts her right on top of the view
the nightly ritual of standing in the front doorway
breath pumping into the flat dark We are staring
at a sky the color of a Parrot tulip staring back
eyeball to eyeball jagged star to jagged star perfect
bead to perfect bead maybe low clean fog or
wet-washed air Orion Big Dipper venus mars?
The door a thick slab of hard wood chipped painted &
repainted strata of each layer marking an idea in
progress.

"I really am fine" she wrote "I went to Africa last
June to see the Mountain Gorilla of Dwonda I am very
happy" it's love at the base of it all love stops
the heart goes on but love stops Stops Stop
it! love! Stop it!

I read Frank O'Hara at work tonight--
from "Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul:

the only thing to do is simply continue
is that simple
yes, it is simple because it is the only thing to do
can you do it
yes, you can because it is the only thing to do
blue light over the Bois du Boulogne it continues
the Seine continues
the Louvre stays open it continues it hardly closes at all
the Bar Americain continues to be French
de Gaulle continues to be Algerian as does Camus
and so do I (sometimes I think I'm "in love" with painting)
and surely the Piscine Deligny continues to have water in it
and the Flore continues to have tables and newspapers and people under them
and surely we shall not continue to be unhappy
we shall be happy
but we shall continue to be ourselves everything continues to be possible
Rene Char, Pierre Reverdy, Samuel Beckett it is possible isn't it
I love Reverdy for saying yes, though I don't believe it

from Saturday, September 6, 2003:
Leelanau Peninsula, Lake Michigan


There are many seagulls standing on boulders
stuck out in the low water
facing toward the sun. All of them
facing toward the sun, but me
facing toward the deepest blue
of the deeper water.

What idea in that water?

The sky is cloudless
yet grey. The figures are yellow and blue.
White caps over there
breaking over the very thin peninsula.

Algae at my feet
sways with the lap current.
Wind at my back.

Algae makes water seem lime colored, then 20 feet away:
cerulean... 20 miles away: blue
as the stripes on the flag.

Open the book:
"Under the seams runs the pain."

Rather be a lake and feel no pain?

"I try to think of the respectable parts
of a person."

Two figures
and the duck
who swoops
past them.

Everyone out to meet the water
like the final scene in La Dolce Vita.

For now:
try to embrace the world
rather than find things to reject about it.

"Write a song; I'll sing along.
So you will know that you are sane.
You're on top of the world again!"

*

I came to this water over a field of medium sized rocks.

I came to this water to think.

No ideas but in things.