June 27, 2008
45 Mercy Street
Anne Sexton
In my dream,
drilling into the marrow
of my entire bone,
my real dream,
I’m walking up and down Beacon Hill
searching for a street sign –
namely MERCY STREET.
Not there.
I try the Back Bay.
Not there.
Not there.
And yet I know the number.
45 Mercy Street.
I know the stained-glass window
of the foyer,
the three flights of the house
with its parquet floors.
I know the furniture and
mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,
the servants.
I know the cupboard of Spode
the boat of ice, solid silver,
where the butter sits in neat squares
like strange giant’s teeth
on the big mahogany table.
I know it well.
Not there.
Where did you go?
45 Mercy Street,
with great-grandmother
kneeling in her whale-bone corset
and praying gently but fiercely
to the wash basin,
at five A.M.
at noon
dozing in her wiggy rocker,
grandfather taking a nap in the pantry,
grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid,
and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower
on her forehead to cover the curl
of when she was good and when she was…
And where she was begat
and in a generation
the third she will beget,
me,
with the stranger’s seed blooming
into the flower called Horrid.
I walk in a yellow dress
and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes,
enough pills, my wallet, my keys,
and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five?
I walk. I walk.
I hold matches at street signs
for it is dark,
as dark as the leathery dead
and I have lost my green Ford,
my house in the suburbs,
two little kids
sucked up like pollen by the bee in me
and a husband
who has wiped off his eyes
in order not to see my inside out
and I am walking and looking
and this is no dream
just my oily life
where the people are alibis
and the street is unfindable for an
entire lifetime.
Pull the shades down –
I don’t care!
Bolt the door, mercy,
erase the number,
rip down the street sign,
what can it matter,
what can it matter to this cheapskate
who wants to own the past
that went out on a dead ship
and left me only with paper?
Not there.
I open my pocketbook,
as women do,
and fish swim back and forth
between the dollars and the lipstick.
I pick them out,
one by one
and throw them at the street signs,
and shoot my pocketbook
into the Charles River.
Next I pull the dream off
and slam into the cement wall
of the clumsy calendar
I live in,
my life,
and its hauled up
notebooks.
June 5, 2008
I make art for me and this art is a part of me. I can not tell you what my art is because doing that would be like you trying to describe to me the color blue. Take from it what you want and see whatever it is you will. The true power of art is using your imagination to figure out what it means to you. When someone says to me they see a fish and in my head I know it to be different, I smile.
Will his power
June 5, 2008It is scary how much I make sense when I write and how little I can clearly communicate verbally. I am slowly realizing my life belongs behind a keyboard.
It is so nice outside tonight, I wish it could stay like this all year long!
Do you think it to be horrible that I use the 
as the icon for a folder marked Inspiration?
May 28, 2008
The near-enemy of love is attachment. Attachment masquerades as love. It says, “I will love you if you will love me back.” It is a kind of “businessman’s” love. So we think, “I will love this person as long as he doesn’t change. I will love that thing if it will be the way I want it.” But this isn’t love at all–it is attachment. There is a big difference between love, which allows and honors and appreciates, and attachment, which grasps and demands and aims to possess. When attachment becomes confused with love, it actually separates us from another person. We feel we need this other person in order to be happy. This quality of attachment also leads us to offer love only toward certain people, excluding others.
–Joseph Goldstein
new hair
May 21, 2008
I keep cutting and cutting and cutting and cutting. Next time I think I will just shave my head.
Stakes is high
May 21, 2008I am just sitting her listening to some great music and trying to rationalize and get some perspective in my life. I will be 24 years old in August and have been in college for over 4 years now. The sad part is I only have half my credits done for an associates degree. I am in need of guidance when it comes to turning those credits into a degree. The good news is I am not in debt and I have been smart enough with my money to have school paid off if I choose to go that way. Actually, i am sure there is no other way to go about it. I must finish or be well on my way to finishing school in the next year or it is time to call it quits. I am also considering my physical position in this world. I have lived in this state all my life and I think a little relocation might do me some good. Bust me out of my environment and put me into some place not so comfortable. Every son must leave his fathers house, that sort of thing. I know I have said it about a hundred times, but I think this time it really is time. There is nothing here for me, just a dead end job that I hate. All of my friends have moved on to other things and better places. As much as I love it here, it feels like it is now my time.
I could go on and on with the bad shit going on right now in my life, but I think instead I will turn to some exciting things. In June I am planning a drive down to St. Louis to visit Dan and see his house. The drive is only about 8 hours and it would be great to see whats out west. I might just keep on going once I get there and see where I end up. Sometime in August or September I am trying to put together a trip to Alaska. I have been dreaming about going for quite some time now and I think if I don’t do it now, I never will. I am pretty sure I will be going on this Alaska trip by myself. It will be good for me to find out what kind of person I am and what exactly I can take. I don’t think I am going to find anyone with the time or guts to go with me. I guess if that is the way it has to be, then thats what will have to happen. More details on these trip ideas as they become available.
On another positive note I have resumed my exercises everyday(i am trying). I ran/walked 2 miles today with mostly running and not a lot of walking. When I first started a few weeks ago it was mostly walking. Small progress is being made, I must keep it up.
