Am debating about changing the location of this blog (from blogger to wordpress for example).

Am pretty sure that said change would have a steep learning curve and would be time consuming.

Think I should write rather than design.

Feel free to weigh in with advice and opinions.

Hello! I haven't written on here in quite awhile. I also haven't painted, taken a photo, twisted metal into jewelry, or sown more than a button. It's hard to write. It's hard to be creative. There's so many other things that vie for my attention. Dishes to wash, stores to shop, sites to surf, tv to watch. Who wants to cocoon themselves away with the frustrating solitaire of creativity?

Well, I do. Sort of. Sometimes. I want to tell stories and produce things. I wish there were a way to turn of the critic inside my head. The one who is so hard to outrun. She is on my back and it's rare that the speed of my thinking drowns out her cackling.

Do you know what I think every writer should do? Read. An artist cannot go through the world blindfolded, how can an author not read? I don't understand that. Maybe I can justify this lack of produce as a time of fallow. A time to let crops grow. A time to gather material. Ah, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

Press publish. Shut self up. Produce produced.

hope

will you be..
..the leaf caught
...eyelash blown
....penny tossed
will you be the wish that comes true?

riding

I thread through traffic. Weaving past cars stalled by red lights, I keep the periphery of my vision open to pedestrians. Forever calculating the distance between myself and them. I hold my breath as little unguarded me slides through the colossal, bone-crunching, semi-trucks. Breathing with relief that my clenched fists weren't crushed between the bike's wide handlebars and their doors. Ah traffic. One of the partners in this dance. Is it a dance? A race? An all out war? It has the fluidity of a dance, the feeling of a race, and the body count of a war.

I could say I ride because it's convenient. Or because it's cheap. Some guess that I ride for the exercise, for stony calves and taught thighs. But really, I do it for this. For that rush of power and control I get when navigating my way from here to there. The giddy high of escaping the perils of New York streets in one piece. The purity of riding cleanses me. There is only so much room for my bull shit on a one-speed. Problems inside my head can't take the concentration I need for the road.

Sometimes I succumb to my desire for passive transportation. I am lured away from the pitted, crowded road by the promise of a few minutes to read, and the chance to let myself be taken instead of powering through. The truth of public transportation is always better than the fantasy. In real life there is rarely a cute guy on the subway (without a wedding ring). I'll give in to an ipod instead of using the time to read, and those five blocks between work and the bus stop feel ten times harder than any bike ride. Given the alternative is it any wonder that I choose the freedom of riding?

I never thought to own a bike before. I bought it because it was on sale and it's pink. It's not the most practical choice but it makes me laugh. I am amused by it's cartoon proportions and color, by it's complete and total disregard for what a bike is supposed to look like. I've become numb to the comments, both positive and negative. It's pink and garish, and sometimes I wonder if that's what saves me as I brave traffic.

I can depend on my bike. It waits outside the school doors, bearing the indignities of stillness. It's wrestled into a small elevator at least twice a day, twisting in ways that rival any contortionist. My bike carries my bags without complaint, no word of their heft or number. It accepts the scratches and lost screws of city life, bounces over potholes and skids through gravel. And through it all, all it asks is that I ride.

number 138

tears fall
like petals
off a dead flower

just one more mess
to clean
up

12/2006

Her skin is soft, petal thin, folded from years in the sun, receding to showcase her cornflower blue eyes and jutting cheekbones. She was my mother, for awhile. My brother's sister. She tells me I was the best thing to happen to him. And argues when I take the can from her warped hands to open it smoothly.

I’ve just realized that she loves me not because she has to, but because of who I am. This petite spitfire dressed in pastels and khaki, zooming about on her motorized scooter, shocking me with her humor, love, and acceptance.

She is always cold, and I am always warm. I wish I could cup my hand, scoop out some of my heat and leave it with her. I wish I could stay and keep walking her dog, and helping her fold sheets. I wish I could fall into the fields and the wide sky and leave the city behind. Just move the arm of the phonograph but keep the record spinning, no music just the whoosh-whoosh of time passing.

I left. I cried when the dog sulked by the door at the sight of suitcases. I went into airports I'd travelled through so many times before. I carried bags too heavy and breathed air over used. Now I am home wanting to be held and feeling all alone, stroking a wound freshly healed.

poor, unfortunate, souls

I'm sorry to have not published* anything in awhile. I've been working on things, but most of the time I leave the house before 9 and don't come back till 12 hours later. This leaves little time to unravel the web of my thinking and weave into something presentable.

It is no help that I've become increasingly critical of my writing as of late.** I consider mining old journals for material, but am scared of what I would find there. Some of those pages are from such painful times that I'm reticent to relieve them in the reading. I think of a friend's post regarding the emotional state of so-called "creative people". In it he relates in interaction with a woman who asks whether creative people are just tortured souls.

Well, I think some pain and anguish in one’s life provides for a heftier mouthful to chew on. Sustenance for the creative machine. Each genuine experience can provide energy and material for creative expression. Maybe the sad thing is that genuine experience is so often cloaked in the guise of pain.


*Blogger's term, not mine.
**I say increasingly, though truth be told I am always critical.

writing

Sometimes, I write things I can't quite grasp. I think, "One day I'll see what others see in this". I reassure myself it is not intellectual defect, or emotional blindness that makes them see brilliance in my self-perceived mediocrity.

Rather it is timing, my timing. Maybe the writing comes before the understanding, as the action comes before the memory, and the memory sparks the memoir. I may hate what I write today, and cherish it tomorrow.