I'm AWAKE and WATCHING YOU WORLD!

 

I haven't posted in a while. After the events of Jan 6,  I was horrified and speechless. 

After a few heat pump posts, and a lot of silence,  I’ve been thinking - that I’d like to make a post here every day until my death. Seems unlikely. 

Nonetheless - I’m going to start.

I declare this blog open and active again!

Poem A Week No 1 - At your funeral mass

At your funeral mass
Poem for Peter S. & for Elaine, Sharon, Dan & Nate

.
I am not listening to the priest
not looking towards the altar.
Not saying the words.
I stand up, sit down
when told, but no
song no words come forth at all,
no call and response.
I listen to the resonant soprano singing,
the echo of it in the empty space above.
I look sidelong, avoid the casket in the center isle
hidden under a white cloth and a symbol
that means nothing to me now.
I try to look right through the
vivid stained glass scenes.
I notice the intense blue
red, green, not the figures
or the stories they portray.
I wish instead I could see the sky
or a river, the sea or a mountain
a tree bright in the daylight
beyond those windows.
Or you on the lake in your sail boat
with your boys, family, friends
and your ready nonchalant smile.

This poem is for the exhusband of a good friend who's unexpected death caused a lot of stock taking. First of the group to fall as they say. It's not that we were particularly close - it's that he is my age I guess and I remember him from his hey day. The photo is from someone else's facebook post. I hope they don't mind. 

April 2016 Poem A Day #29 Grief Hazard

Grief Hazard

Boxes neatly packed
stacked in closets
under tables
stowed in odd spots
boxes unlabeled but for
a single word: Mom.
.
I packed them last year
numb not knowing
what to do
I packed for days, hid
this and that away
carefully wrapped,
and now
.
I wonder
what memories hide
in each, if I look....

maybe not right now.

April 2016 Poem A Day #20 - How I learned to say no

Prompt is write a poem about something not said

HOW I LEARNED TO SAY NO
.

Will you do x
Will you do Y
Will you do z
She never said yes
but never said no
and did all three....

April 2016 Poem A Day #11 Defensive

Defensive

Little crab has backed into a corner.
The backwards days are over.
Side-to-side is not an option.
.
Little crab waggles eye stalks,
blinks, raises claws,
ready to go forward.
Go forward or bust.

April 2016 Poem A Day #10 Hopeful Signs

Hopeful Signs

Peek out of the cloud
eyes right, eyes left
sniff the air for clues
If I begin, when I begin
what to do.
.
The paperwork is mostly done
a mountain of it
and now hope like
clarity beginning to form
as the clouds part a little
the rain lets up
a few green shoots emerge

April 2016 Poem A Day #9 Hiding Out For A While

Hiding Out For A While

Home is where you are safe
where you can be alone
without despair
.
Where you know
which windows will let in the sun
what cabinet holds the tea
.
Home where the familiar hides
you from change
at least for now

April 2016 Poem A Day #8 Scribbling

Scribbling

A curvy thingy here
a figure eight there
a thin line a thick line
some wavy stuff crossing a page
little dots underneath
dots and xs
switch pens
 another envelope
the cover of a magazine
next to the comics in the daily paper
make transparent boxes 3D
climb out of them
with flowers
with shooting stars

Things can change so suddenly

Thinks sure took a turn since April. Not with the program even yet though I guess I will eventually be okay.

In May, we found out Mom was at the end stage of one of her conditions. Only 19 days later, under the gentile  in home care of hospice, she died just the way she had wanted to go - at home. Not many get that wish. It was the hardest, saddest month of my life and June was a close second to it.

We didn't have a service right off. To accommodate various folks who wanted to attended but had some problems with timing, Mom's graveside memorial service wasn't for another month, finally held in the middle of June.  It was a service full of difficult poems, thoughtful metaphor, woven together by Master Integral Coach Reggie Marra who officiated. My cousin Jim did a really stellar job on the eulogy, commemorating Mom, not as she was most recently - but as she was in her hey day.  And then there was music by fellow poet and songwritter, Shijin member, former director of the CT Folk Festival - Alice Anne Harwood Sherill. Amazing Grace and Simple Gifts. I cried and cried.

I am doing okay. Finding out what I have to do. Frankly when nobody is around my face is still stuck in deadpan - even when I am not feeling badly - it seems to be the underlying condition for now. I take little steps. I carry little boxes. I breathe in. I breathe out. One foot follows the other. And so it goes.

Can't say enough good things about Regional Hospice and Home Care. I couldn't have lived through May without them. Hugs to everyone.

Beginning 2 new paintings, then dropping the class

Started a painting class in January. I was full of hope and foolishness I guess, but I am a person of vague goals and missteps.  I lasted four classes followed by several weeks of being snowed out or in. During that time I started two large paintings which  are NOT finished and may look very different in years to come.

Once I got the second one going, it became obvious to me that getting two wet canvas back and forth twice a week in my little Fiesta was untenable. I can't leave them elsewhere because I am a slow painter and need to live with what I am working on.

So I withdrew. Heavy Sigh. I really like the old WCSU painting studio on White St. much better than the new one in the Visual and Performing Studio building which feels cramped and sterile. I do miss the advice of the instructor though Marjorie Portnow who is very helpful and I know I missed much by leaving. Besides the artistic feedback, she has a technical tips to offer. For example there is some use for Murphy's oil soap when brush cleaning, and that one tip has helped immensely.

The first canvas, at the right, is partially derivative from a portion of Seurat's The Circus, at least composition wise. I liked the grandstand lines and the bareback rider. It needed something so first there was a large clown to the right, then a ringmaster now a smaller running clown lower right which I really dislike as the body is awkwardly drawn for reasons of line rather than anatomy. And so the poor awkward clown may disappear.  (has disappeared and been replaced with a giant clown head) Again. Colors will change to, dots may reappear.

The second is above. It borrows the form of the grandstands but nothing else. Not sure where either is going. We shall see.

Walking away from religious belief - my story

I grew up as a quasi- Episcopalian, sang in the junior choir. When I was 14, I was invited by a classmate to a baptist vacation bible school where I got “SAVED” i.e. born again as they say. I was an over-imaginative and socially alienated teen, happy to hear somebody loved me.... And when I say over imaginative, I was the sort, who as a child of three or four years old, had conversations with an imaginary species of “pookiebell,” a sort of small fairy creature that tended the ferns. It wasn't so much delusion as a strong creative streak that needed guidance.

In my teenage loneliness I conjured a deep emotional connection to Jesus and to god as I imagined their love for me. And this was the attraction.  I started going to a baptist church, and felt accepted there, and began writing christian folk songs. This belief conveniently kept me from having to make the usual teenage decisions about sex and drugs, gave me a ready-made group of people who were supposed to care about me and another far more  authoritative imaginary presence to talk to. After high school, I went to Philadelphia College of Bible as a music student. (Subsequent name changes include Philadelphia Biblical University. and now Cairn University)

The first chink in the old armor came one day when I was out passing out "Jesus Saves" booklets in Rittenhouse Square. I met a Hindu man and we spent some three and a half hours trying to convert each other.. My mind churned. We couldn't both be right, one of us had to be wrong, I thought. But he was every bit as sincere and devout as I was, knew his own holy books just as well...

The summer I got a job as a camp counselor at a religious “ranch” I was brought up short again when a fellow counselor told all the children that their mommies and daddies would burn in hell unless they came to believe. The terrible anguish of these children, who assumed the words of that counselor to be literal, immediate truth - starkly framed the barbarism inherent in the concept of hell.  It was the beginning of the end of fundamental evangelical Christianity for me. I no longer could believe in this version of god. Despite this, I returned to college in the fall - I needed to figure out what to do instead, how to change direction.

After one more year (three total) at bible collage, going through the motions, trying to understand - I dropped out and became an avid non-christian, interested in whatever I could read about religion(s). For many years I told the census takers I was a pantheist, a pagan, a  heathen. For a short while I I was into a sort of new age mumbo-jumboism & reincarnation,  and then dabbled in home-styled American buddhism & insight meditation. My religious opinions were further fleshed out by six years working for churches as a mezzo-soprano, including four years working for a Roman catholic church. I was a non-christian, quasi-atheist at the time, and my immediate musical bosses knew it.

Over the years I have done a lot of thinking about religion and it's creator - the human mind. At the core of each religion, there is always a set of people called mystics. When you read about their experiences they are remarkably similar even in religions that call each other heretics and infidels. I think the similarity is because a “mystical experience” is a brain-state that can happen to anyone who's brain chemistry gets bent in a particular way. It is a state accessible through mediation practice BUT it is a physical phenomenon, not a revelation of a god or gods and not a product of any supernatural process. Religious states of communion, thankfulness or “oneness” that often accompany prayer or meditation are also brain-based and beautiful even apart the common religious labels applied to them. They are natural states of the human brain.

Apparently, I have a atheistic and naturalistic view which excludes divinities as well as the supernatural.. Naturalists see no evidence for the supernatural, and no need for it either as all things, both interior and exterior, arise from the natural physical world. I am also a secular humanist. Secular humanists think that human beings should, without a god or a religion, try to live the best life they can using the power of reason to realize their unique abilities and thereby contribute to the good of society, mankind in general and to the life and history of the planet.

- Mar Walker

Box-o-phobia

Sometimes I feel like I am caught in a box. There are certain aspects of my life that I cannot change right now and I fully accept that and embrace that fact. But something somewhere in my world needs to change to ward off the building comatose stagnation in my personal air..
.
My immediate reaction has been to change things that can be changed until I feel that I am out of the box. So lately, I have been changing my blog names and url addresses in a Kaleidoscopic manner. That hasn't really been satisfactory - though I am pleased with the results. Other things may begin changing as well. Everything I am involved with is up in the air with me at the moment.

NaPoWriMo #16 - two glazed, coffee light and sweet

two glazed, coffee light and sweet

My sleep churned with daymares
when I worked midnights
in the donut shop on White Street.
I remember the smell of donuts in the fryer
the heavy clinging scent of fat,
vanilla custard, chocolate and coffee brewing.

Donut dough filled my sneaker treads
confectioner's sugar in my hair
I had to choose a future:
going back to bible college
and pretending I still believed in hell,
or starting up a life without belief.

I remember the baker's brother
ordering breakfast at the counter,
dark curls, muscled forearms
a sculptured nose, his smiling lips
poised on the rim of a coffee mug,
as the flush of red perked in my cheeks.

-------

THE PROMPT: was to recall a smell and free write from the memory. This is a memory from 1972. Actually I later married the baker's brother. Now he is married to someone else. And good for her.
THIS WHOLE MEMORY REMINDS ME OF SOMETHING ELSE THAT HAPPENED WHILE I WAS WORKING THERE. OMY I need to write a post on that story.....

NaPoWriMo #9 - Survivor's Epilogue

Survivor's Epilogue

We persist like sentinel chimneys
teetering  alone when the house has burned.

Hazmat walkers sift pumice and ashes on the fringe,
sort remnants, ask questions, circumnavigate the wounds.

We sip coffee bitters all night, startle easily, but do
the next task, massage our bruises in silence.

A jug of rain,  a pail of tears cannot wash this.
Through coming years, we bloom

like mower-schooled violets in the lawn
heads tucked, eyes open.

-- Mar Walker

NOTE: I  only used nine words from prompt rather than 12. -- down to eight now that I changed the title (I also misspelled Epilogue originally. Coffee bitters was the flavor, silence was the sound. the lawn violets image was was from a previous poem I tried to write that didn't work out...  I took the photo six or seven years ago in New Milford, CT. I have changed the title three times. who knows what it will end up....

The PROMPT:

"Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to: Use at least twelve words from this list: flap, winter, torch, pail, jug, strum, lever, massage, octopus, marionette, stow, pumice, rug, jam, limp, campfire, startle, wattle, bruise, chimney, tome, talon, fringe, walker; Include something that tastes terrible; Include some part (from a few words to several lines) of a previous poem that didn’t quite pan out; and Include a sound that makes you happy."

Who are you? Self-definition amid turbulent circumstance

How we define our selves to our selves - this question and this question alone lies at the heart of surviving changes brought on by job loss, foreclosure and turbulent circumstance.

Up to this point you have made meaning in your life with a certain set of thoughts, with a certain focus. But when you lose your job and your home - in a chaotic economy - that focus has to change.

When you lose your job, your home, you also lose contact with colleagues and associates that were bound up in those locations. Your respected place in the scheme of things, in your career, and as a bread-winner and homeowner disappear all in one shot. If these past things are gone - and if they never return - "who am I now?"

To survive, long-answered questions need to be revisited; long-held assumptions need to be re-examined.

Are you really only worth the support your provided to family, the income you generated for your company? Are you more than external titles and an inventory of purchased goods? Are you worth something, as a simple unemployed, foreclosed upon individual? Do you have value as one unique human character in a world cast of billions?

In other words do human beings have any intrinsic worth? If they do, then you do. Can a human being (you) have worth based on what is inside them rather than on what external titles and goods they posses? Certainly we do...