“It’s only in the autumn where I can take breaths that make me want to take more breaths . . . But I will always enjoy the grey solemn solitude of this season that grows darker and colder, day by day.” ~ Henry Rollins, from Solipsist

“The Birch Wood” (1903, oil on canvas)
by Gustav Klimt

---

“a dream of creatures
with autumn coloured faces
their bodies vent to earth
falling under the spell
of the spinning world” ~ Anja Huwe, from “Autumn”

Sunday afternoon. Cloudy and cooler, 58 degrees.

Last night I had a Harry Potter dream, sort of. I was going back to school, but I wasn’t on any of the rolls because I had failed two classes the semester before. I was hoping to fake my way through. Then suddenly, spells and wand work were required, and I was performing abysmally, unable to remember even basic spells, and Hermione was actually one of my main nemeses from high school, and she was aligned with someone else, and I was left to my own devices, trying to remember things besides accio and stuff, and I had boils on my chest, and I created an itching powder (directly related, I’m sure, to the fact that yesterday I had to take two baths (am and pm) and soak in colloidal oatmeal for nervous itching) and smeared it across everyone’s lockers so that everyone was affected, and then I realized too late that I had also affected allies, and I had that recurring dream part in which one of my classes was never finished because the professor just stopped teaching four weeks before the end and called it a day, and we were wondering if we were responsible for what wasn’t covered, and I realized, too, that I had none of my special grid notebooks for class, nor any of my preferred pens, and I awoke with, you guessed it, a headache . . .

“Moonlight and Birches” (1916-17)
by Tom Thomson

And yesterday I had this moment in which I paused to consider whether or not I had truly read To Kill a Mockingbird, or if it was one of those titles that I had read so much about that I imagined actually reading the book.

This is what happens when I have to spend too much time on the phone arguing with people over basic things like health insurance coverage. My mind reverts to a pseudo-fugue state in an attempt to shut down, not deal with too much.

“This October like November,
That August like a hundred thousand hours,
And that September,
A hundred thousand dragging sunlit days,
And half October like a thousand years . . .” ~ Ford Madox Ford, from “In October 1914 [Antwerp]”

I wrote another poem earlier today. I don’t know where these poems are coming from, only that they are coming. I don’t claim to be a prolific or particularly wonderful poet, though at one time in my life that was all that I ever wanted to be: a published poet, a name associated with poetry, a person known for her words as poems.

“Birch Wood” (1897, oil on canvas)
Antonín Slavíček

As with many things in my life, I did not do what I needed to do to make this happen. I did not believe in myself enough, something I am well aware I have done throughout most of the days of my life. Believing takes effort. Doing takes effort. Effort takes effort.

Do you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you had followed your very first dream, the dream of your life that first spoke to you, the dream that made you sit up and recognize that you were in fact a person, with dreams and desires, and yes, possibilities? My first dream was to be a poet, and truthfully, I remember the exact moment I said to myself that this was what I wanted to be when I grew up: I was in the first grade in London, and I had just won my first poetry contest for a rather short and sweet poem about the seasons.

And then I ran into that English teacher in the seventh grade who took one look at what I had written and told me that it was not a poem because it did not go da-duh, da-duh, da-duh, and I believed him even though I knew better. And then I had that American literature professor as an undergraduate who told me that the only female poet of worth was Emily Dickinson, and I did not believe him because I had read other women, but I let him silence me.

“Mute Autumn odors. The
starflower, unbroken, passed
between home and chasm through
your memory.
A strange lostness was
palpably present, almost
you would
have lived.” ~ Paul Celan, from “Die Niemandsrose,” (No one’s rose), trans. Michael Hamburger

The dreams of lives I thought I might have:

• Journalist for a large city paper (this I did not pursue because of love, not that he did not want me to but because I forgot to care)
• Photojournalist traveling the world (never even tried)
• State politician (at the time, this seemed like a great goal to have, and then, not)
• Editor for a large corporation (I came close, but then I decided that my daughter needed her grandparents, and so I moved)
• English professor at a liberal arts college (Where is the MFA or the PhD that would have allowed me to try for this?)
• Published author of criminal mysteries (I have no excuses)

“Birches” (1908-10)
by Antonin Golovin

And then these, lesser things, that I have imagined I could do if I just took the time:

• Sew a large quilt, one that could be handed down generation after generation
• Have a large rose garden, filled with many varieties and scents
• Learn to bake a wedding cake
• Make my own soaps and salves and scrubs

My life of what-ifs is one long list of should and might, and my biggest hindrance has only ever been myself.

“oh it is the autumn light
that brings everything back in one hand
the light again of beginnings
the amber appearing as amber” ~ W. S. Merwin, from “September Plowing”

“Autumn. Birches” (1899, oil on cardboard)
by Isaac Levitan

I offer no excuses, no explanations. I am far too tired to make the effort.

And yet the poems, the sequences of words keep coming, too fast to be finessed well, a tumble of words and thoughts, and I am unused to this creative wellspring, not having seen its likes in years, decades, and I wonder why, why now, why when I gave up on the poems years ago.

Anyway, I wrote another poem today, and once again, I’m sharing, even though it is a first draft, even though it is rough, because the need to put this out here is stronger than my need to hide, so here is today’s:

---

 

In the bedroom

smells of my husband’s homemade soup
drift down the hall from the kitchen
he is cooking this for me,
his personal salve for my wounds
his quiet prayer for my wellness
in a few hours I will blow steam across the surface of the deep bowl
across the sunken bodies of the fulsome vegetables
let the liquid slip across my tongue
taste him in the broth:

hot enough to scorch my soul,
strong enough to feed my heart
thick enough to bind my rent spirit
copious enough to recall my father’s love
bitter enough to remind me of death
with just a dusting of grace

L. Liwag (November 9, 2014)

                   

Music by Lewis Watson, “Stay”

                   

Afterwards

Suddenly
everything feels afterwards,
stoic and inevitable,
my eyes ringed with the grease of rumor and complicity,
my hands eager to hold any agreeable infatuation
that might otherwise slip away.
Suddenly
it’s evening and the lights up and
down the street appear hopeful,
even magnanimous,
swollen as they are with ancient grievances
and souring schemes. The sky,
however,
appears unwelcoming,
and aloof, eager to surrender
its indifference to our suffering.
Speaking of suffering,
the houses—our sober, recalcitrant houses—
are swollen with dreams that have grown opaque with age,
hoarding as they do truths
untranslatable into auspicious beliefs.
Meanwhile,
our loneliness,
upon which so many laws are based,
continues to consume everything.
Suddenly,
regardless of what the gods say,
the present remains uninhabitable,
the past unforgiving of the harm it’s seen,
while
the future remains translucent
and unambiguous
in its desire to elude us.

~ Philip Schultz

“If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.” ~ Henry Rollins

“Sapphires and Amethysts” (1925, oil on canvas)
by Jonas Lie*

                   

“I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.” ~ Richard Siken

Saturday afternoon. Hazy, hot, and humid. Liquid air.

Wow, such a week. Brett started fall semester on Monday, which meant a brand new schedule, one in which he has to be on campus by 9 a.m. on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays. That’s 9 in the morning. I don’t do 9 in the morning, at least, not very well, and especially not well after the dogs have gotten me up several times during the night.

“The Cove” (nd, oil on canvas)
by Jonas Lie

And of course, in between, I’m still going over to help Lex. Mike is on the night shift, and everyone’s schedules are very out of sync, most especially mine, and it’s taking its toll.

When I awoke earlier to let the dogs out, I found that my legs hurt all the way down to the soles of my feet. No lie. It may be from all of the running I was doing in my dream in which I was trying to get away from lions, then tigers. I had gone to Japan with a group of girls from school, and we had a hotel suite right on the beach. We could see Mt. Fuji from our balcony, but I realized that I had left my camera at home. As we were looking out over the beach, I noticed two lions at the shoreline, and then when I looked down, I saw three white dogs evenly spaced in the water. I realized that the lions saw the dogs at the same time I did, and one of the lions jumped in the water and swam towards the dogs.

I wanted to try to rescue the dogs, but my roommates talked me out of it. I watched in horror as the lion devoured each dog. Then the lion came into our hotel room. We ran to the hotel office, which was in a separate building, and that’s when the dream got really weird. One lion became attached to me. Simultaneously wanting to sit next to me and attack me. I think that one of the dogs must have been trying to awaken me at this point. From there, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to flee by climbing roofs and pipes, but the lions had learned how to jump straight up. As I was fleeing, I was trying to get the lions away from the hotel which had turned into an elementary school. At one point there were tigers and a panther and electric lines.

I never did get my photograph of Mt. Fuji.

“if i can only recount
the story of my life
right out of my body
flames will grow” ~ Jalal al-Din Rumi

That was my night, or rather, my late morning.

“Out to Sea” (1924, oil on canvas)
by Jonas Lie

Alexis had wanted me to watch Olivia for a bit today while she went to a neighbor’s cookout and Mike slept, but I just had to pass. I am feeling completely drained today, and the thought of putting on real clothes and leaving the house just overwhelms me and makes me hurt more.

Corey should be arriving in Antigua any day now. He was in Ascension last weekend. We talked briefly, but I didn’t want to talk for too long as our phone bill already has an extra $300 in telephone calls on it. I can sense that he is down, which could be from his birthday or could be from being away from home when so many things have happened in his absence. I’m not really sure. I’m actually trying not to pay attention to the date or the days as it makes his absence a bit easier to handle.

Anyway, when he gets home he can enjoy watching the new seasons of “Grimm” and “Dr. Who,” both of which I have recorded for him and am foregoing watching until he is home (well, at least “Grimm”). I know that I will be unable to avoid watching “Dr. Who” as I’ve been waiting for this new season for soooo long. You would have to be a Whovian to really understand the madness inherent in such dedication to a show.

“They wished to flower,
and flowering is being beautiful:
but we wish to ripen,
and that means being dark and taking pains.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I was going to say that I will try to resist from getting too political in the coming weeks, but with the DNC coming up next week, it will probably be hard. I do apologize to those of you who have no real interest in my rantings about politics and politicians, but they all just make it so easy. Part of me truly wishes that we had more of a campaign season like the UK’s, which only lasts a few weeks.

“Off on the Breeze” (nd, oil on canvas)
by Jonas Lie

These weeks and weeks of ads, exaggerations, and outright lies really get to me. I find myself talking back to the television more than usual. That being said, I had planned to do a real post last night, but I lost the first section when I went to save and was redirected to login, which peeved me to no end, so I decided to watch television for a bit and then post. And then . . . holy cow, the empty chair and Clint Eastwood—it was beautifully comedic and somewhat sad at the same time. I have always loved the squinty-eyed Eastwood, loved all of his spaghetti Westerns, but nothing beats his performance at the RNC.

Hence, I posted the footage as Jon Stewart presented it. I mean really. Does anything beat an academy-award actor having a dialogue with a chair? Surreal. And yet, too real. But Eastwood’s performance was only beaten by Stewart’s commentary, which was almost poetic in its incision. As Brett reminds me, it’s kind of sad that the most honest political reporting is on Comedy Central.

“Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again . . .” ~ Frank O’Hara, from “Mayakovsky”

So a little bit of good news. I picked up the frames that I ordered at Wal Mart a few weeks ago, and quell surprise! I still like them. Now I just have to wait for Corey to get paid so that I can actually order the glasses and sunglasses. I am still waffling about the contact lenses.

“Maine Seascape” (ca 1920’s, oil on canvas)
by Jonas Lie

I know that I went on and on about how wonderful it was to have contacts that I could actually see with, but after wearing them for a few days, I had to face the harsh reality: Yes, I can see wonderfully when they are in, but my near vision, such as reading labels, it compromised. I am fortunate for an individual of my age, shall we say, in that I have no problems whatsoever in reading close up. I do not use glasses for reading, for using the computer, when I’m in the kitchen. I don’t need them.

So when I went to make formula for Olivia while I was wearing the news lenses, and I realized that I couldn’t really see the lines on the bottle, not distinctly, I was dismayed. I could pump up that vision by wearing a pair of reading glasses, I suppose, but then, what would be the point in wearing multi-focal lenses? I don’t need nor want reading glasses. I have nothing against them except that I don’t need them.

So do I order contacts so that I have them on hand when/if Corey and I go out, and I don’t want to wear glasses? Probably, but I really hate that my eyes have gotten to this point, whatever point that is. And I know that I’ll never have vision correction surgery as I am just way too scared when it comes to anyone messing with my eyeballs.

Whatever . . .

“All the means of action—the shapeless masses—the materials—lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into the transparent crystal, bright and clear.

That fire is genius.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In this past week, I have composed the beginnings of a poem and the beginnings of a story in my mind. Wonderful, you say?

“Boats at the Pier” (nd, oil on canvas)
by Jonas Lie

Not really as I did not bother to write either of them down. Have no record of them, and hence, no memory. Haven’t the vaguest what either of them were about. I know that one poem came to me after driving Brett to school, but I cannot remember the context, and I know that the story came to me after a dream, but again, that’s all that I remember.

So much for my big plans to do anything with anything.

I stopped in a discount store last weekend looking for one thing. As I was walking down the book aisle, because of course, if there is a book aisle, I have to traverse it even if I’m looking for antifreeze, a title jumped at me, something about contacting literary agents. It was insanely cheap, and I put the book in my cart, but then, I couldn’t find the one thing that I was looking for, so I left the cart with the book sitting in an aisle, and I walked out of the store.

Now consider: Does this make any sense to you? I found a very affordable book listing literary agents and what their specialties, a book from 2011, for under eight dollars, and I did not purchase it. Wat it because I can find this same information on the Internet? No. That’s not the reason. I actually talked myself out of buying this book because what was the point in standing in line when I couldn’t find antifreeze? But which was really more important in the grand scheme: the antifreeze (which I really needed immediately) or the book (which I could actually use to do something with my writing)?

Obviously, I opted for antifreeze, and for the life of me, I have no idea as to why. Genius, thy name is not mine.

“I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.” ~ Franz Kafka, from his Diaries

Whenever I come across a song or poem that I want to post, but it seems too familiar, I do a search on key terms within my old posts to make sure that I’m not repeating myself, which is how I came across a post from this past spring that really brought me up short. The post is from April 29 and features a picture from my friend over at Titirangi Storyteller. Why do I mention this? Only because of this: When I reread it, I felt disembodied.

“Fishing Boats at Sunrise” (nd, oil on canvas)
by Jonas Lie

Who had written these words? Where did they come from?

You see, I really felt like I hadn’t written it, couldn’t have written it, could not have possibly said these things in this way. It was just too . . . well, too lyrical, for want of a better word.

I hate it when that happens, hate it and love it when I surprise myself like that. Hate it when I realize that perhaps I really can write, and then hate it more when I think that that’s how I write sometimes, but I do nothing with it. Hate it when I sense that those words are within me, yet I do not let them out most of the time. You have no idea how painful it is to realize that somewhere inside are poems and stories, and yet, they only surface occasionally.

Or is it that I only let them surface occasionally? Or do I not work hard enough at letting them surface? Or am I just lazy? These are the kinds of things on which I obsess, the kinds of things that make me crazy and give me headaches. Between this and the literary agents book, I’ve worked myself into a conundrum: Why do I do the things that I do? No, really. Why?

Why? Why? Why?

More later. Peace.

*All images by Norwegian-born American painter Jonas Lie (1880-1940), known for his New England seascapes and American landscapes.

Music by Cass McCombs, “Harmonia”

                   

Between Going and Coming

Between going and staying
the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can’t be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.

~ Octavio Paz

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” ~ Albert Einstein

Neosurrealism Art: “Mindscape* by George Grie*

                   

“Get out of my mind
Get out of my head . . . ” ~ from “Night Terrors,” by Static-X

This particular post was supposed to go up on Wednesday, October 13, supposed being the operative word. Obviously, that was not possible, so here it is now.

Another Caveat: The events are related below may or may not have happened in the order presented. Author’s short-term memory is fried, so recall is a wee bit hazy.

Neosurrealism Art: "Insomnia or Nocturnal Awakening" by George Grie

Things that go bump in the night . . .

I have promised Corey that I will never again make light of the time I thought Mexicans were living in the walls of our house (Remember? The post op time during which I was having vivid aural and visual hallucinations? If I remember correctly, I smelled things too. I wonder if that’s called smelly hallucinations . . . But I digress.) 

The night after the emergency room visit, which was Saturday, September 25, my mom began to have hallucinations. The EMT’s had given her morphine in the ambulance, and she was given morphine while in the ER. We were sent home with a script for Flexeril (a muscle relaxer) and the mildest dose of Percoset (a pain reliever).

I should probably qualify here: My mother has no tolerance for drugs, unlike me, who, having had chronic conditions most of my life can get a shot of Demerol and Phenergan and go to a restaurant and eat a hot fudge sundae (something that really happened). Such is not the case with mommy dearest.

At first, I thought that she was just discombobulated from the extended ER stay and having her time-table turned upside down. She called me into the bedroom and told me that someone was in the hallway. I told her that no, no one was there, and turned on the light in the hall to show her. When I looked more closely, I saw that her pupils were huge. Mom was high.

A few minutes later, she shouted my name. I ran into the room, only for her to tell me that rats were climbing on the closet door. (Rats: Corey’s least favorite thing in the world; he should have had to deal with this particular hallucination). I turned on the overhead light, and put my hand on the closet door. She screamed. I opened the door and showed her that nothing was there.

Then she told me that the rats had run into the bag that was hanging on the closet knob (a red, shiny gift bag that my mother keeps a whole lot of whatever in). I took the bag and ran out of the room with it. I told her no more rats. She went back to sleep.

About an hour later she declared that someone was breaking into the house. Then she was certain that the cat was on top of her (he was outside). This continued all night.

Okay. So I’m making fun now. Trust me, it was very unfunny as it unfolded.

“I have nightmares about hell, where all I do is add up numbers and try to have conversations with people like you.” ~ Jim Butcher

Neosurrealism Art: "City Ruins" by Natiz Agayev

In the morning, my mother tried to make sense of what had happened. I explained to her that she still had a lot of pain medicine in her system, and told her that hallucinations can happen as a result of certain medications. I told her about my own hallucinations, and that seemed to make her feel better, or at least she pretended that it did.

Sunday night the hallucinations began again. This time, my mother tried to get out of bed to go somewhere, and as a result, she fell again. It was 5 a.m., and there was no way that I could get her back into bed on my own, so I had to call Corey. Between the two of us, we maneuvered my limp, petrified mother back into bed. As we were doing so, she told me that she had heard something snap. I didn’t know if it was part of the hallucination or if something had really happened—as in the snap of a bone breaking.

First thing Monday morning, I called the orthopaedist’s office, spoke to a nurse, and got the first available appointment, which was on Tuesday. The appointment on Tuesday was a fiasco as we were seen by Dr. X, one of the senior partners in the practice, who told my mother (before viewing the ER x-rays) that she needed to be exercising her foot. He was very officious and condescending, which always brings out the worst in me.

When that particular doctor took a look at her x-ray, he came back in and said that he wanted his parter, Dr. Y to get a second opinion on whether or not an operation was needed. I rolled my mother to yet another exam room, where we waited for two hours, only to be told that Dr. Y was running two hours behind and couldn’t possibly see my mother. Could we come back the next day?

Guess what happened then . . . Go on, guess . . .

So I lost it and told the nurse that they obviously did not understand the situation: my mother had fallen again; she was in constant pain and hallucinating. Dr. X increased the level of the Percoset and we set up an appointment for Thursday with Dr. X’s son, a surgeon.

Another day of trying to keep my mother in bed and trying to keep her from hurting herself while trying not to lose what was left of my mind in the process. It was grand.

“With the truth so dull and depressing, the only working alternative is wild bursts of madness and filigree.” ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Neosurrealism Art: "Ice Age Premonition" by George Grie

On Wednesday, we returned to see Dr. X Jr., who turned out to be a very patient, kind doctor who listened to my mother’s long list of complaints. He ordered another x-ray (boy, was that fun), and then he told her that he really didn’t think that she needed an operation, that he wanted her to try a different brace, and he wrote a script for Demerol for the pain.

Don’t worry. I never gave her a Demerol. I had no desire to peel her from the ceiling.

We had an appointment to see Dr. X Jr. the following week to reassess. In the meantime, my mother told anyone who would listen that obviously none of them had ever had a broken bone, that none of them could possibly know what the pain was like because if they did, they would immediately put her in the hospital. I didn’t even try the logical approach of telling her that orthopedic surgeons knew a good deal about broken bones. She wouldn’t have listened anyway.

Luckily, Dr. X Jr.’s nurse was fabulous, and she wrote a script for a wheelchair, bedpan, and shower chair (by the way, only the wheelchair was approved by Medicare). We had borrowed a wheelchair from mom’s neighbor for the initial visits. The nurse wrote down her name and phone number so that I could call her the next day if I had any questions about the new brace.

Wow. Impressive.

By the way, did I mention that my mother wanted me to call an ambulance to take her to the doctor’s appointment? I explained that the ambulance was for emergencies. Her logic was that her pain was an emergency, and no one understood what she was going through, and why were there ambulances if you couldn’t use them . . .

I did try to arrange for private medical transport for the first doctor’s visit but was told that neither Medicare nor my mom’s supplemental insurance would cover the $200 fee. There was a long conversation with the insurance company in which I asked them if they would cover the fee to transport me when I threw my back out trying to get my mother into the car. I hung up.

Back to the story.

“I hope I end up a blithering idiot cursing the sun—hallucinating, screaming, giving obscene and inane lectures on street corners and public parks. People will walk by and say, ‘Look at that drooling idiot. What a basket case.'” ~ Henry Rollins

Neosurrealism Art: "The Cemetery of Umbrellas" by Stefano Bonazzi

We spent several more nights with imaginary visitors—human, animal, and something papery and shiny. Things on the ceiling, things on the walls, strangers lurking in the shadows. One night when Corey was using the fax machine, my mom thought that we were moving furniture.

The third doctor’s visit was in the Chesapeake office, which my mother just couldn’t understand (as in “why do we have to go so far away?” Clarification: Chesapeake is about 15 miles away, 15-25 minutes on the interstate, depending on time of day). Another x-ray, and Dr. X Jr. said the magic words to my mother, who by this point was determined to have an operation and go in the hospital. He said, “If it were my mother, I wouldn’t operate. I would let it heal with time.”

He told mom that the time that it would take to heal on its own versus the time to heal after the operation would be about the same, and with the operation, she would have to be on heavy-duty pain killers, which would mean more hallucinations. She was sold.

So here we are, doing the healing at home thing. The hallucinations have stopped because I’m not giving my mother any narcotics, only the muscle relaxer and extra strength Tylenol. She’s still a bit loopy: trying to tell me that she already took a pill that I hadn’t given her, and making declarations such as, “Tomorrow, I’m going to make (insert name) for dinner. We just kind of look at each other and say nothing.

The biggest accomplishment to date was the shower. It was a major operation, requiring advanced scouting and assessment, but we made it through relatively unscathed, with the exception of my clothing, which was as wet as her body.

But the point of this whole post was this: I now have a keen appreciation for exactly what Corey and my family went through when I was having my own hallucinations. It’s funny to me in retrospect because I find it outrageous, but now that I’ve been on the other side, I have made a vow to my long-suffering spouse that I will not longer take for granted what he went through during that week after my back operation.

And there you have it: my pledge in writing, or typing, or whatever.

More later on the ongoing saga. Peace.

Music by Cyann and Ben, “A Moment Nowhere”

*Neosurrealism art: Artistic genre combining elements of fantasy, surrealism, and 3D to form images  of dreams, fantasies, and subconscious mind visions using painting, digital art, and photography.