Saturday, August 28, 2004

from The Art of Happiness
by His Holiness The Dalai Lama

p193:

Settling comfortably into his chair one morning, the Dalai Lama explained the value of leading a balanced life.

"The practice of Dharma, real spiritual practice, is in some sense like a voltage stabilizer. The function of the stabilizer is to prevent irregular power surges and instead give you a stable and constant sense of power."

"I think you need to understand the source or basis of extreme behavior. Take for example the pursuit of material goods--shelter, furniture, clothing, and so on. On one hand, poverty can be seen as a sort of extreme and we have every right to strive to overcome this and assure our physical comfort. On the other hand, too much luxury, pursuing excessive wealth is another extreme. Our ultimate aim in seeking more wealth is a sense of satisfaction, of happiness. But the very basis of seeking more is a feeling of not having enough, a feeling of discontentment. That feeling of discontentment, of wanting more and more and more, doesn't arise from the inherent desirability of the objects we are seeking but rather from our own mental state."

"So, I think that by deliberately broadening our outlook we can often overcome the kind of extreme thinking that leads to such negative consequences."

With this thought, the Dalai Lama slipped his rosary around his wrist, patted my hand amiably, and rose to end the discussion.

Friday, August 27, 2004

An Interview with Francesco Clemente Inspired By
Helen
by Francesco Clemente
in the new issue of Black Book

FC: What do you think?
Renee: (silent with jealousy)
FC: Well?
Renee: Do you want to go dancing with me?
FC: Renee Zepeda and Francesco Clemente dancing?
Renee: Why not?
FC: I don't know.
Renee: I guess I could see what Robert DeNiro is up to.
FC: Yes.
Renee: What did you and Helena talk about?
FC: She's memorizing the human anatomy so she told me where to find the Medulla.
Renee: Did you know that is the name of Bjork's new album?
FC: Of course.
Renee: What do you think Helena is doing right now?
FC: She's probably getting ready to go dancing... Are you sad? Why does that make you sad?
Renee: Why did you draw Helena?
FC: She seems so mysterious & wise & innocent. She intrigues me.

*

See photographs of Helena & Clemente here:
http://www.bias.net/byronmappgallery/orazio.htm

Monday, August 23, 2004

Letter Home

Sunday, August 22, 2004

Dear,

There are all of these lonely people in Borders on a Thursday night. It makes me wonder why they are Here. I know why I’M here—I’m here because my legs need a rest from peddling my bike. I’m not lonely, just lacking a person to cuddle.

Today I learned that lack of a car is considered a setback on the same level as being a woman, or growing up in a rural area, or in a one-parent family. I never realized that a car could make so much difference.

I wonder what the poet Anne Carson would say about having a car. I just read her latest poem “Gnosticism” in 2004’s Best American Poetry and I was about to read Anselm Berrigan’s piece, when I realized that I was standing in the middle of the aisle, juggling the book, my bag, and two bottles of juice. So I sat down.

I like the line in Carson’s poem that goes: First line has to make your brain race that’s how Homer does it, / that’s how Frank O’Hara does it, why... and I also like: at the moment in the interminable dinner when Coetzee basking/ icily across from you at the faculty table is all at once/ there like a fox in a glare, asking/ And what are your interests?

It is so baffling and amusing to me that academics can’t get along like nice little boys and girls, but act instead like wild bears circling each other snarling before they can sit down and share the honey… I read Coetzee’s book In the Heart of the Country. It took place in South Africa and dealt with the patriarchy and colonialism. I didn’t particularly like the book because I didn’t think Magda, the principal female character, was written in a believable way.

I'm looking at a rendering of Dickinson painted on the wall above my head in a green cape and a red corset with an angry Winona Ryder expression on her face. She is the only female figure among a whole wall of figures.

Cleaning/ in the dark makes a surprise for later

is another line that would not occur to me, but did occur to Anne Carson. Julia would say that cleaning is a waste of time for busy women. I remember how my mother likes to clean, I secretly think sometimes, and how she sees it as exercise. Tell me Dear, what do you think of cleaning?

Anne Carson talks of dreaming of Wordsworth in her poem. Last night I dreamt that it was Christmastime and Ann Arbor looked like St. Petersburg and you and Codrescu were in a car filled with smoke from opium given to you from a small vase in a window of a store owned by Bulgarians. The owner recognized me as the writer who thought she was Simone Weil and said, “Who do you think you ARE?”

In my dream there was a murder with a golden gun and someone in my family died and the rest of the family was being interrogated on the top floors of a hotel with floor-to-ceiling windows. On my way up to meet them, I was in an elevator and the bellhop handed the golden gun to me, but I knew that I didn’t want to get my fingerprints on it. So I dropped the golden gun down the elevator shaft. When the detective told me they couldn’t find the gun, I told him exactly where it was.

Snow falling outside windows
of high-rise hotel;
snow globe inside.
*

Isn’t it funny the way you think famous people like Anne Carson or Winona Ryder are supposed to be able to fly or something? But when you meet them you realize that they’re just people with charisma. Not that Carson is that famous. The manager of this bookstore probably couldn’t tell me who she is. Simone Weil has something interesting to say about that: It is a mistake for the rich man to think he is something. The same for a poor man.

Music from the Mikado
over loud speakers.
Sinatra to follow. Voice of “god”?

Anne Carson:
The sublime is called a science of anxiety.

Why is it called that,
do you suppose?

Love,
Renee

PS. I just read Alice Notley’s poem called “State of the Union” in the same anthology. It was about strippers. It appeared that she was censoring herself because her sentences broke off in the middle, or stopped once enough of the sense was communicated, similar to the way Sophia Coppola abruptly ended the scenes in Lost in Translation, rather than following the scene to its conclusion… Notley also mentioned the president… Rather than think about assholes, I’ve noticed the way a thread bookmark attached to a journal can give the book a tail...

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Last weekend Andrea and I went to see The Manchurian Candidate.
Already I've managed to block out most of it from memory.
I remember Meryl Streep's glassy pink eyes...
Denzel Washington saying I'm not crazy. A vampirish doctor.

But I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about
Breakfast; omelettes, bagels, coffee with soy milk & brown sugar.
"As soon as you disengage from the computer, I 'll get up,"
Jason says. He smells like a baby's blanket.

I woke him up with the Waking Life soundtrack.
"Can I have this cd?" I asked him. "You can have Silvio Rodriguez."
"I already DO have Silvio Rodriguez."
"Good. I'll make you some coffee."

What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here.

*

Rain at a faster clip than a drizzle, wind through Treetown.
Last night: poetry I don't remember. Bubble tea & white lace.
Art History. Watts. Jokes about being a Catholic Jew.
A cashew.

How 7 kids committed suicide last year at MIT.
How we don't know about the ones who died at UofM.
How a 300 lb Hispanic man punched a white boy in the face
out of the blue (Chicago) last week.

Now I smell like a baby's blanket. A few of my favorite things:
Coffee & cigarettes, puppies, long hot showers,
bookstores, walks in the park, the Michigan theater,
the smell of rosemary on a man in the morning.

"Are you ready for some coffee darlin'?"
"Since when do you sound like John Wayne?"


Tuesday, August 03, 2004

from The Academy of AP--
H.D.:

Stars Wheel in Purple

Stars wheel in purple, yours is not so rare
as Hesperus, nor yet so great a star
as bright Aldeboran or Sirius,
nor yet the stained and brilliant one of War;

stars turn in purple, glorious to the sight;
yours is not gracious as the Pleiads are
nor as Orion's sapphires, luminous;

yet disenchanted, cold, imperious face,
when all the others blighted, reel and fall,
your star, steel-set, keeps lone and frigid tryst
to freighted ships, baffled in wind and blast.