Subjective Saturdays
The Bear
By: Robert Frost
The bear puts both arms around the tree above her
And draws it down as if it were a lover
And its choke cherries lips to kiss good-bye,
Then lets it snap back upright in the sky.
Her next step rocks a boulder on the wall
(She’s making her cross-country in the fall).
Her great weight creaks the barbed-wire in its staples
As she flings over and off down through the maples,
Leaving on one wire tooth a lock of hair.
Such is the uncaged progress of the bear.
The world has room to make a bear feel free;
The universe seems cramped to you and me.
Man acts more like the poor bear in a cage
That all day fights a nervous inward rage,
He paces back and forth and never rests
The toe-nail click and shuffle of his feet,
The telescope at one end of his beat,
And at the other end the microscope,
Two instruments of nearly equal hope,
Or if he rests from scientific tread,
‘Tis only to sit back and sway his head
Through ninety odd degrees of arc, it seems,
Between two metaphysical extremes.
He sits back on his fundamental butt
With lifted snout and eyes (if any) shut,
(He almost looks religious but he’s not),
And back and forth he sways from cheek to cheek,
At one extreme agreeing with one Greek,
At the other agreeing with another Greek
Which may be though, but only so to speak.
A baggy figure, equally pathetic
When sedentary and when peripatetic.
Dead disco. Dead fun. Dead rock and roll.
I’ve forgotten all about the wind and the trees.
The old land smells different.
They say animals migrate home to die, away from the pack. What if I’ve brought the pack to die too?
“You’re nobody till somebody kills you.” -Notorious B.I.G.
Back Home
Good morning North Carolina.
Four days, 3,600 miles. I can’t believe we made it last night, rolling in at 1am, miserable, sore, delirious, with two cats and a dog also miserablesoredelirious and my red car handling road black along both sides like racing streaks. The bugs I’ve collected are a vast array of dead ones.
I feel sad and happy both, always, but more than any feelings I am looking directly ahead, always.
There is no use looking at Portland and thinking about what could have been. I did a lot with my short time there: worked with the company I wanted, self-published material, got engaged, and PREGNANT, found jobs that sustained my lifestyle, built one with my all.in.one man, met some amazing people, all in five months.
There is no use looking at North Carolina and thinking about anything other than my growing baby with a pumping heart. The goals have changed, completely. Everything is already changed and I have never been more ready. In fact, I was always just waiting for the excuse.
In this state, I’m going to write the world I want.
I’m taking David Mack’s advice and turning pro.
In Portland, my goal was to publish. Here, it’s to flourish.
Subjective Saturday’s
Excerpt from Kabuki: The Alchemy
By: David Mack
“I come to realize that writing is like physical exercise. What counts is how
much you can do after you think you are done. Then the real challenge begins. If you push through the barriers of your comfort zone, you hit a second wind. It is mostly just showing up that counts.
Sometimes it is painful. You may want to do something else. And you can think of infinite reasons to stop. I discover “the power of positive doing”. Positive thinking is great. It is a nice first step. But if you don’t do the “positive doing” it only takes you so far.
…the War of Art [by] Pressfield [says]: ‘Most of us have 2 lives. The life we live and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands resistance.’
Pressfield explains that the only way to combat resistance of something you must do is to put in the time and due diligence daily. Consider yourself a pro beforehand.
The pro knows that if you do the work, the muse will show up. You don’t wait for the muse to show up first.
Someone asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. ‘I write only when inspiration strikes’ he replied. ‘fortunately it strikes every morning at 9:00 sharp.’
There is a secret that real writers know and wannabe writers don’t and that secret is this: it’s not the writing that is hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.
I turn pro.
You imagine what you want to be and you act as if you are that. Ghandi said ‘be the change you want to see in the world.’ If I want to create I must treat it with the respect and dedication that a pro would. Do it every day the best I can. I don’t know if it is any good or not right now. I don’t have perspective for that at this time. All I know is that for this day I have overcome the worst parts of me. I have overcome resistance.
Now I understand The War of Art.”
Yawn
Tonight might be a totally sleepless one.
I keep staring out the window at the sky.
Lately we move the bed every night for the sheer joy of changing things, but this position feels wrong or something. I’ve read every book beside me, watched every sliver of TV, played every video game. I’ve watched that White Stripes video with Kate Moss over and over.
After being constantly exhausted I’m suddenly restless.
I think I may never be happy, but according to Kabuki: The Alchemy, this pursuit is a doomed one and instead we should be buddhas. At one point I could see this, too but I am a natural stress ball. I swirl around inside waiting for something to obsess over and then I swirl around that until it works into clay and then I plant stress seeds and they grow into stress trees and my unborn tries to survive under the roots.
Everyone is asleep, this whole apartment is breathing loudly and I can even hear the night breathing.
I am the only witness.
When I imagine witnesses, I also think of survivors, and when I imagine that term that’s supposed to mean hope and life, I immediately find it’s polar opposite. No one will survive, unless it is all a matter of surviving through ones children and in that case some of us will. My father has, and my mother will, but soul-speaking we are bright flashes of deep-sea light. Rightright?
I can’t wriiiiiiiiite.
I thought on the plane that I was breaking through, but I was just vicious pissed and I wrote out of my pulsing fingertips. I find that’s when it has to happen, I guess.
If you’re bored you’re boring.
All ego, Ama. OMG.
All stress. Unhappiness.
Unrest under black windows.
Maurizio Anzeri
Maurizio was born in Italy but he moved to london where he is currently living and producing his artworks. His practice consist in sewing directly on photographs, usually vintage, in order to create an elaborate pattern which is intended not only to garnish the figures but also to reveal an interpreted version of their personal feelings under a modernized point of view. Maurizio already had solo exhibition in Italy, UK and switzerland.
Heels
Bliss and Pain are the same
when they hit the swollen
pit of the stomach
i dream my dangers with
earth-spike landscapes-
what i’d give to dive off a cliff
killing my characters
over and over
if it weren’t for you, dull stretch
wretch, sleepless muscle tissue
i’d walk the noose, loose,
toy with scissor tip- lip a poisontip-
to scale the wall
you’ve saved your father
Odysseus
you-body that is
MY fucking body
a heart on my arm
a bitch in my lap,
at my side.
Queen
Sleep is the beautiful depth of the day.
I spend 15 of the 24 with my whole body covered in watery dream.
Today on the couch I closed my eyes and wrapped my hands around queen serum in a glass bottle. I tried to cook it into my meal but I burnt the kitchen down and screamed and screamed until thousands of people showed up trying to grab it from my hands and i fought them off with my fists.
Rook
Home for a while.
Writing recoup.
Emotional recoup and relax.
Definitely necessary North Carolina love like homemade chicken noodle and mashed potato dinner last night, to sleeping with cable tv on (oh the luxury!), to waking up to apple bran muffins and hot tea.
Especially now that I’m likely to stress over every little pain, pull, tear, cramp, symptom, it’s good to have my mother around telling me she didn’t even have an ultrasound, ever.
I am expecting!!
It’s true.
I can’t prepare for the worst, the what-if’s, the first trimester blues which I’ve realized are prevalent in a society of technology what with the easy access on my cell phone to the thousands of women who haven’t made it through these three months, and the way I can type a few words on facebook and the whole world knows, who would then have to un-know were anything bad to happen. The nerves that come with those evil words, “worst, bad, blues” have gotten me so down and anxious when the truth is I AM. I HAVE. It is good. I should enjoy it because right now i have it.
This morning I remembered there has never been a part of me I’ve left closed. I have always opened- and written about it all, the good the bad, and this should be no different. I could stay quiet until I am “safe” but that’s all false security anyway.
Que sera sera.
So we have a growing piece of our puzzle.
It feels so surreal.
Fatigue.
I have a secret.
I hold it, I wait for everyone to come to me.
I wait and I hold it.
Today, like every other day, I’m exhausted from waiting.
It’s gray outside, a sign of February, a reminder I am across the country, two whole driving days away from my mother who’s in bed, from my brothers.
The blood from the source.
I won’t feel better until I’m behind the wheel, my whole life packed into a two seater, my man, and the deserted United States, the rocky mountains and nomanslands where there’s no water and no gasoline.
