November 8, 2009
Song-Poem: “inlikeness”
So, getting a bit more adventurous with the garageband. Here’s a new one, with another one baking in the oven—>check back soon for that wordling.
For now, “inlikeness”
November 6, 2009
Poem-Song!
I made music! ha. Though, I am new to the little music making biz…and I had to write down in my molskin book the chord progression, if that’s what you’d even call it, so I could type it into my keypad.
some of the lyrics are taken from my recent poem-essay.
Creepy sounding, eh?
I think that works?
November 5, 2009
Note to self: Underestimate the worldliness of things
How John 3:6 stood up across the room and waved its hands.
THIS IS WHERE ALL CAPS COMES IN.
JOHN 3:6
I texted the man I’ve never met: “what do you think of this?” –the fact that it came to me, stood up from across the room, chanted.
He said:
“I think it points away from the
illusion of this world”
I tried to write a poem about wrapping ones body in yew leaves.
“She was accustomed to beat her tender body, from the soles of her feet up to her chest, using sharp twigs and even the prickly branches of the yew tree.”
Other people take shades and lift them, at other times, pull new, dazzling shades over the body and twirl.
IF CAPS WERE NEEDED I’D USE THEM HERE. ADDED WITH A COUPLE !!
Riding in the car, back when I was 12 or so, my mother said “Honey, you’ll find that in life, you’ll end up with only a handful of close friends.”
This was because I was not popular, or the other girls made fun of my obsession with horses, and said I smelled like a trash can, and dressed like one, too.
NOW, I AM STILL THAT GIRL, BUT RELATIVELY SPINNING ON MY OWN MOON-LANDING.
I HAVE COYOTES THAT SING OUT. THE DESERT HAS LEFT FOOTPRINTS IN MY HALLWAY.
When I can’t write, I remember Spain.
Walking toward the Generalife, something took hold of my shoe and bit it. A vine of sorts, or a canary ghost that wanted, again, to fly. Instead, it lodged itself in my throat and I was left speechless for weeks. Something was stolen, then, in the round table belly of that garden. A way to work with things in order to tell their true shape-shifter name.
YES. I WOULD WRAP THISTLES AROUND MY WAIST FOR YOU.
I left this on the bathroom stall in the form of a flyer. I came back two hours later and someone wrote, in blue ink:
Could I video-tape you doing this?
Certainly. I scratched back.
Something tells me these conversations are imaginary. An illusion for illusions sake.
REALLY, I’D UNDERESTIMATE MY TOLERANCE FOR PAIN
FOR ECSTATIC REASONS.
The river told me to sleep, and God would speak to me then.
So, under the most moderate moon, I told myself to let myself in the water, let myself in the water-shed, let myself in the shedless water-skin, let myself in the infinite watering.
She let herself drift into a conscious state of unknowing, where unknown to herself she undid her blouse and thought her body a land understood by it’s crop. Thus, she wrapped herself in thistles and yew-leaves, telling the top-soil to off itself in the glorious wind.
Nothing stays here.
AGAIN, IN CAPS: NOTHING STAYS HERE
but, of course, my love for things that eat their mates for survival.
That eat their own skin, at times, to escape the hunter.
The fox or wild dog will eat through bone to beat man to the forest.
Once, I stood by the pool and told my mother that I didn’t know whose voice was coming out of my mouth.
Everyone experiences feeling unreal, Shannon.
NO. AN ALIEN ABDUCTION IS IMMINENT. DO NOT TELL ME OTHERWISE.
God told Adam to name the animals. And so the spirit of the boy was still in him. In him, the spirit of all the animals and then some.
What happened next, no one will tell you, but the yew leaves might.
THEY MIGHT TELL YOU IF YOU PIERCE YOURSELF DAY IN, DAY OUT.
I imagine you.
NOW I AM IMAGINING YOU
listening to the radio and hurting for something beyond the next plain.
Mathematically, an equation would go here to describe how, if a fourth dimension existed, your life would be going into a funnel of sorts, and your body would be mine, and understand: THE MIND ALREADY KNOWS THIS.
But screw calculus.
I mentioned I was thinking of you.
I AM thinking of you. Simultaneously, I’m understanding that nothing I could say could make people any less dull or full of themselves.
Because, I’m the chief of humanity. I’m God when I concentrate on my hands.
ALL CAPS WOULD BE USED HERE TO TELL YOU I’M FINISHED THINKING ABOUT FOURTH DIMENSION.
Note to self: kill whatever varmint is eating holes in the fourth dimension.
Walking toward the Generalife, a love for all things snaked from it’s darkness and shook at the site of the sunlight.
Why are you here, I asked.
For you, it said.
November 2, 2009
Wandering in a Zoo
Working on my manuscripts and while there’s a part of me that’s excited to see everything coming together, it is a much harder process than I expected.
My mind feels like mush.
Meanwhile, I’m taking photos to satisfy my need to create. However, I still look forward to the day I have another blog of wordlings to post.
I went to the Bronx Zoo today with my friend D and her son.I got some critters on camera!
October 29, 2009
Photos of A, in the library
A and I spent Monday afternoon in one of those private rooms in the library, taking photos. I also got a couple of her outside. It is so wonderful to have someone willing to take time to let you shoot them (with a camera!) 
Words have been silent of late. Working on putting together what will hopefully be three full mixed-genre manuscripts by Spring / graduation. Here’s hoping I can then publish them! 
Meanwhile, here I sit with my egg sandwich, contemplating what happened to me this morning in a meeting with my philosophy professor. She recommended I read A. H. Almaas, physicist-turned-mystic. You know when you meet someone and you know you were supposed to meet them? That’s how I feel about her. Though I in no way need to take an extra course, let alone in philosophy, I know there’s a reason hiding somewhere.
And, panicked as I may feel for not having written anything of substance in days, I am trying to see this time as a period of “putting-together.”
Though, I feel I may have something to say about silence, soon.
Here’s some shots from Monday:
October 20, 2009
Dear, Damn I Miss the Cactus
Dear,
I couldn’t write so I clipped metal paperclips in various places over my body. Think of the monks that used to find bits of pebble and stone to put in their shoes. Things like that. People walk by and wonder why I look the way I do, or why there are bald spots on my head, why grouplings of hair, like stranded bouquets, lie around in the library, waiting to grow. I don’t know much about monks, but if they didn’t shave their heads, they may have pulled out every last one of them. Maybe visions, maybe light tunnels.
My uncle believes in aliens. I thought I’d grow wild if I spun in a field, dizzy for believing in something lightyears away. There was a schizophrenic once who said God could see us via the rays of the sun, and the sun had spoken a language to him since he was born. Do all children wake, hearing moon-whispers? Man in the moon, build me a boat, cast me down the river Jordan, that sorta thing.
So I must look ridiculous with metal clips stuck to me, clamped on like ducklings. Hold still long enough and each one is discernable. Maybe like the sun, speaking in a language, through my body, a kind of ecstacy.
Someone asked me, maybe it was in my head, maybe they were real, why I’d pinch myself ten times over.
Wanted to revisit the cactus field, I’d say. Or stray from being lonely.
There was a man, today, walking a street, thinking he could taste my body. I said this out loud, but maybe to no one, maybe an ant or a mouse who took a hole in the wall for morning prayers.
Anyway, this man, thought he loved the heals of my feet, or an image of me in Spain, talking to one of the locals about real estate, after ordering a dish consisting mainly of olives, wearing a new pair of stockings. He thought about teeth and a cathedral, Mass and the stockings together.
I wouldn’t consider myself completely over the idea. And the mouse, saying his prayers, knows this.
What are you doing with the paper clips? he asks.
I got them out to pinch myself, I said.
Why would you do that? He asks, picking up one to try on.
Better than pulling my hair out, I said.
Six dozen, half the other. OUCH! How can you do that? he said.
If you get a lotta skin, it’s not so bad.
Under the weight of what the dinner party tries to lift, a loneliness vibrates like a whirlwind through a desert. And cacti can hold secrets like God-hasn’t-split-the-great-grain-wood.
So, the man in my head. Do you remember my lists? Gather together. The ant and the mouse, the walk and Spain’s sun-rays.
An image pushes through. Like each pinch, a ducking clamped to a bit of me, their beaks devout.
I bet if monks picked pebbles as lovingly as God, there would be visions or light rays in dreams so unbelievable, no one would need pain to ground their body to earth.
The dinner party wouldn’t carry the weight, each other’s loneliness, and the man in my head, you remember him? He would be the one fastening the clips when I couldn’t write.
Hold still, he’d say. Another five prayer beads.
Look at the ant and the mouse, I’d say. So devout. So sad they can’t sing.
Anyway, I wanted to revisit the cactus, the filed where, if I fell, the earth-knives would do all they could to make me forget, watching the sun set dirty and God-damn, I miss you.
October 19, 2009
after little sleep
Rejoice in the leaves and sunshine, in dark under mushroom bellies where a lull drags on and minutes stick to things, when all the body wants is to know itself, know it will not be forgotten; rejoice in love-hangers, suit-cases full, in sorrow deserts, silent’s dwelling ground–rejoice in-between–this is what a flock of imaginary birds said to me, ruffling my hair–I thought of You.
October 15, 2009
25 Rotations
It is my birthday! I finally got a Sarah Lawrence Sweatshirt as a present! I’ve wanted one since I arrived last year.
Now, time to wander NYC in the cold, thinking of things to write down.
On another note, I just keep looking at this photo I took of my friend, Megan, in August. Something about it. Thought I’d share:
