Still art within glass

Stunning – this lit me up

NEW BLOG!

Hey all,

Finally my website is about done. The new blog is up and running, so I’m moving over there.

http://www.rachelvb.com/my-blog/

Hope to see you there!

Bad dog

I saw a lawyer picking his wedgie on his way to court.

I drove behind a NY car with a big placard in the back window that said “bad dog” and had a picture of a pit bull. And then the driver made an illegal U-turn in the middle of main street. And I honked and said “bad dog.”

When I went to buy doughnuts the woman behind the counter kept calling me “hon” which people do around here – even if you are older than them – I wasn’t older than her this time, but she kept calling me “hon” and I sort of hated it. I ain’t your “hon” sprinkles or no.

snowsnowsnow and new year’s shoes

I was just whispering/ into her mouth

The trees, now, are trees
I’m seeing myself seeing.
I’ll always deny that I
kissed her.
I was just whispering
into her mouth
-Stephen Dunn/Slant

This arrived in the mail yesterday from a certain wonderpoet Rebecca. Thanks again, Dear. Had I not know it was coming it would have been very mysterious indeed. No return address, no signature – just a few musical note stickers and a faint postmark of Seattle, WA. Perhaps we should all send postcards with poems on them to random addresses around the country – maybe people would start to read poetry again? Maybe next time I’m at the post office I’ll buy a lot a lot of stamps.

Have I won a Pulitzer yet?

You could be a poet
You just don’t know it

WHAT ARE YOU PLOWING?!!!

There is a man outside snow-blowing China. At least that’s what it sounds like as he’s certainly gone over his allotted snow-blowing time. We got 5 inches buddy, use a shovel, it might be good for you. I find it funny that people around here have snow-blowers. It really doesn’t snow THAT much. I mean we might get one big storm in the winter, but otherwise it’s dust. You could blow it off the sidewalk! (I used an exclamation point…dammit)

I’m blaming my distraction on him – totally on him. I won’t tell him that I’d been sitting here for an hour staring at my poem trying to bridge it, weave it, make the damn thing work and just when I thought I’d opened the door to let my mind step into the words, something pulled me out again: the taste of my coffee, the apps I’m downloading on my stupid ipod that for some reason I brought into the room with me. I’m playing my mom in “words with friends” – basically scrabble, but if I say that they’ll get sued – and she’s kicking my ass so far.

The snow last night was beautiful and silent. The drop of tiny crystals that lit up the dark. I love how snow absorbs whatever light it can and as it falls and collects (this guys is killing me – I think he’s moved on to plowing Russia). Maybe I’ll just shovel snow instead.

Thanks

I feel anxious and bored at the same time. Unsure of what to write today if anything. There’s always something to say, but deciding if we want to say it or not is another question. Yesterday I talked to my bestie about writers being loners, solitary beings and I believed it believed it believed it with my bones. And that’s how I want it, how it should be. She’s a guest faculty member at an MFA program here and all the other guest faculty writers are snooty, uptight, my ‘writing cock’ is bigger than your ‘writing cock’ sort of thing. And I realized I never ever ever want to be a part of something like that.

This blog and the other blogs that I traverse through the day are gifts – are true communities where people are not shot down for their ideas, ideas are welcomed. There is no one better or smarter or more creative because we are all ALL of those things in our own ways and they are all accepted. And I thank all of you for giving me such a space of my own – in my solitary room – that at many times is so full of your wonderful energy it makes me feel not alone and alone at the same time. And what a wonderful thing that is. A writer’s dream.

A day with the boys

I’m hanging with the boys today. We are making 2 batches of beer and chowder while it snows outside. I’m going to get to say bad words and scratch my butt and burp and tell dirty jokes. It’s fun being a boy for a day and forgetting that in the morning you were crying like a girl for more reasons than you’d like to explain, but no other reason than you feel too much and feelings build up on the rooftops, the steps, the sidewalks like they do outside.

Watch out for bad cheese

I slept like poo last night, that’s right poo. My throat started to hurt again because my boyfriend caught some venus fly disease on the airplane and brought it home and I became so grumpy that I might get sick again that I ate nachos with maybe some questionable cheese and took 6 vitamins and pills and in the middle of the night I kept dreaming of stacking boxes, of aligning lines. I felt I was working. Mostly what I do during the day is a puzzle – fitting stories together and photos together with the one grand centerpiece that we may/or may not get to be creative with. But mostly it’s stacking boxes and that’s what I was dreaming about. That and the bad cheese. And my friend’s husband getting upset with me because we invite people to stay at our house when they are moving across the country. Apparently that’s not OK to invite people to stay at our house while they move across the country. I don’t even think anyone has stayed at our house while they’ve moved across the country, I don’t even know of anyone who’s moved across the country recently.

That was my final straw though, I wouldn’t hear any more from him. It was night time and we were standing in the yard and I turned to walk away and yelled “I’m sorry I love your children!” And threw a purple glittery helmet I was wearing at him across the yard. Shooting star!!!

But I’m going home! Close enough to home to call it home. LBC in less than a month and I can’t stand it – it’s a dream.

California I’m coming home – in a month

Upstate

An open ladder of tracks
fades into eventual sky.
Any other place the sky is just a sky
here it is always a horizon
beyond gray waters, gray eyes,
a soft dripping sound of more,
the drip of a faucet.

Our hands touch like petals of skin on skin
We lift them up on strings together,
lift our feet over hurdles of iron
while small change jingles between us.

Cool air’s lips, the sun light and cold.
Beside the tracks an abandoned white bucket
oozes rain.
I’m too afraid to look
at what’s someone’s dumped inside.
The truth is
we can’t ever end up here –
Upstate
– as if down or over makes any difference –
it’s the heavy state at all.
IBM’s skeleton looms as a black kite,
streets laid like the legs of a woman full of runs to the bone.
What’s laid is laid and easy to follow
Deer follow.
Hunters follow the tracks.
I don’t want either.

The whistle unravels,
the train a slate heavy moan moving slow upon us
like a day next year on the calendar.
Our bodies perch in the rocks
like small wooden birds he’s carved. God has a funny way
of playing with toys.
Only when his machine is close enough do we move closer
in defiance.

“Can you imagine being under the wheels,” you say
and then something about Russian children dying
that I don’t catch.

The air pulses up
lifting my skirt skin
hum and vibration
a gallop of steam
a pump and a pump and a pump in me
as if I could chisel a wing free.

“I love you,” you say to me,
“Because the things that mean something to you
mean something to me.”

We watch, still holding hands, the moan pass,
the last touch of a fingertip.
We came and he went,
the clouds rolling low in the Eastern sky
as if we’re under the wheels anyway.

The grumpy barista

I held my coffee through the dark, U-ed around the banister, found the landing in the deepest black, the occasional car passing on the road outside shedding light through the curtain. I did it all without seeing where I was going. How much of what we do is just a bodily memory of having done it before? Knowing the exact spot on the wall of the light switch – how do we know in the dark exactly where the spot on the wall is? Or the first step? Or the second? Or the abrupt right turn?

Some days just the waking up makes you grumpy. It’s the dreams faults, the cars on the road, the sick boyfriend snoring, the cat stealing your covers. Last night I dreamt I went to starbucks and a women working there was so chipper to the customers because that was part of her job, but I showed up and under her breath I could hear her say how much she hated all the people and the customers and the fucking cream. And I was the one listening to the things people say when they think no one can hear them. I was there listening. And I told her I wouldn’t tell anyone and we became friends.

Who else do I write about if not you?

Revise

I’m trying to revise a new poem, but my mind keeps wandering off and I can’t concentrate and my computer is staring at me telling me to check all the portals, the internet portals, to distract myself further. I know you’re supposed to sit with things when you are stuck, but I’m feeling this one out, I’m chewing it around in myself right now and I’m not sure how it’s supposed to taste or what form its going to take and so we need space from each other. We need to dip in and then dip out of each other.

I’m wearily putting my hand out and she’s wearily putting her hand out and when we touch it much too uncomfortable. And not she’s awkwardly sitting there with arrows and scratches and notes like I’ve just defaced her, done a really stand-up (not) makeover job like the women at the counter do. I’ve heard sometimes that those women only do half of your face – that’s just mean. And then they make you pay for the other half or if you don’t I suppose you’re walking around the mall like Two-Face.

…

Pat and I watched a documentary last night about street art. Exit Through The Gift Shop. It was pretty cool for the first part – all these artists going out in the dark and “defacing” buildings and bridges and streets. It was a whole underground art revolution thing and then they sort of started getting famous. They kept putting up more and more images all over Los Angeles, all over the world and the more people saw them, the more they got curious, the more the idea spread.

Shepard Fairey

Like “Obey,” by Shepard Fairey. It’s Andre the Giant’s face. Why he did it – who knows – he liked the face. Now of course, Fairey is being sued by the Associated Press for his Obama Hope poster. They say he stole the image of Obama.

But the most famous street artist in the movie was Banksy. He’s very ellusive and secretive and before this weird French guy started looking for him to film him, he never had his work or his process or anything about him filmed. The whole movie his voice was distorted and his image black-out. He was the real one with something to say about the world. His art was social commentary.

In 2005, he created nine pieces on the Israeli West Bank Barrier. These are only two, but pretty incredible.

It’s unclear by the end of the documentary if the actual movie is a parody of the higher art world – the media involvement, what becomes popular art and how. There are rumors that Banksy himself made the movie to show how easily pop culture can be manipulated. Perhaps
he had the last laugh after all.

But I respect what Banksy has done – gotten his self-image out of the way for his art. He lets the art speak for itself. And that’s the whole point, isn’t it?

Now, maybe, I can go back to my poem…

Tiny teacup

When I think of the publishing world, I think of myself sailing across the ocean in a tiny teacup with an umbrella broken at the joints as a sail. And I get nervous and unsure and my armpits start to sweat. There’s so many of us, there’s so many of us, there’s so many of us.

Mushaboom, Feist – if only my toast could fly

My Moon My Man, Feist – this also makes me happy

1234, Feist – this makes me happy

Step up

I was running a high last night. Driving through the dark, cranking the music up, feeling as if dreams are so fragile I need to cradle them like an egg inside me. Some are just not ready to come out yet, some need to be tended before they are released. And what a giddy feeling secret dreams are to carry. Everything seemed to be in its place – the poems I need to create, the love I need to hold, the lights guiding planes to the runway that blinked blinked blinked above me as if beckoning. I felt then, I was driving to my future.

“It’s about as close to perfection as anything you’ve ever written.” And now I’ve reset the bar for myself. Now, I’ll ride the feeling for a day because small victories when writing are no small thing at all. And I’ll sit on my step for a while, play with the stones, look through the cracks, but eventually I’ll stand, stretch my legs and take another step up, eventually I’ll want to get better again.

Tending the fire

Finishing a poem is the best high in the world. Something happens in your entire body – you can feel fingers  working, molding, creating. You can feel a warmth being created under you and you’re tending and poking and rearranging the logs to the fire of this poem.

You know it’s good when you’re reading it aloud to yourself to get it right and your cat comes walking up at the sound of your voice and looks at you and smiles. And she’ll come sit on your lap and pretend to fall asleep, but you’ll start reading again to get the words right and she’ll look back and you at the sound of your voice and she’ll smile again. She’ll look at you and smile.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !

Why do some poets put so many exclamation points in their poems? Like every line or every stanza? It’s like the life-size blow up Snowman in a sleigh being pulled by a polar bear I saw on someone’s roof yesterday. Sometimes, it’s just too much to be put in my poetry.

2nd as good as the first

Yesterday was 55 degrees. Today it’s 50. What is it about sunshine, about warm weather that changes people so? People roll down their windows, take their coats off, become more open. I saw a girl with her hands through her sun roof, her fingers wiggling like worms coming out of hibernation. And then I saw a woman with her dog in the back seat and he was chewing on the longest stick – it went all the way to the back window and his black mouth was chomping away, perfectly content. I thought ‘That is love.’ Letting your dog take his stick in the car with him to chew it all up in the back seat. Love comes out in the warmth, in the sun.

This morning we put the hammock up for the day and swung my friend’s kids back and forth and back. We dug for worms and couldn’t find any brave enough to face the winter. BUT IT’S WARM TODAY! WHERE ARE YOU, WORMS?

We sang at the top of our lungs and danced around the house in our pajamas and wore strange hats. And their mom slept in the guest bed last night – cozy new flannel sheets and tons of blankets and her own sanctuary, she didn’t even mind the street noise outside because she slept a straight 10 hours and didn’t wake up once. She hasn’t slept a straight 10 hours in 2 or 3 years with the kids running back and forth between beds.

The bunnies were out. We had coffee and French Toast with sourdough bread because that’s the only way to make it – sourdough and cinnamon. We sat around the wobbly dinning room table and C- said “I’ve heard of an old wives tale that says whatever you spent new year’s day doing, you’ll do for the rest of the year.”

I said, hmmm I cleaned a lot. That sounds about right. And I guess I’d have to spent the rest of the year with you guys. God, what a draaaaaag. wink wink. What a drag.

…

And I found boots today! My size and everything and 60% off. Oh the places they’ll take me with my poet boots not far behind. They’ll take me to pick up Pat tonight at the airport and I’ll feel content for now with my family back. Which is more than enough. Much more.

My true loves

Born in the Oklahoma City Stockyards at a bootwonderland known as “Langston’s”

The first day of many

Yesterday was long. I don’t feel like writing all the details. I went to bed at 2:30 am in the fresh year of 2011. I watched the ball drop at some good friends’ house where they treated us like kings with all the food: Fresh figs and brie and bread, shrimp cocktail, bruschetta, scallops and shrimp in a tomato concasse, stuffed mushrooms, chicken pâté which I tried and will never try again – not so much because of how it tasted, but because of what it is. And for dinner! Lobster tail, pot roast stuffed with spinach and shitake mushrooms, garlic mashed potatoes and carrots simmered in white wine and thyme.

Someone also brought a bottle of Dom Perignon they received as a gift and while it was tasty I’m not sure why someone would pay $140 for a bottle of champagne. No matter, I didn’t buy it and I feel more fancy for drinking it. It was a wonderful time and the only thing missing was my Pat Pat who is breathing in as much fresh Montana/Idaho air as he can and I hope he brings some home for me.

….

My boots – well I suppose I’ll be wearing the old ones until the literally fall off my feet. I saw some great ones – tall and strong and soft leather – it was like picking a horse for breeding or picking a horse, the fastest horse, the most beautiful horse, the black horse with studs. The boots were all of those beautiful earth colors that horses are when they turn gold in the sunlight.

Sadly – my feet are the most average-sized feet on the planet and every one had already bought my fabulous boots, all the fabulous boots that I liked. And they were 50% off which was perfect for me. Someone should have told them i was coming. The quest continues…

I did however get some short boots that I’m calling my poet boots because they are black and lace up, come to the ankle and you’re not quite sure if these boots could march off to war and kick squirrels or lounge on cool tables drinking cool drinks smoking cool smokes. That’s what poets do, don’t they – kick squirrels and smoke cool smokes? I wouldn’t know.

Meanwhile I have to clean my whole house for company tonight – my very favorite people minus two or five others of my very favorite people are coming over. We are making Mexican from this beautiful (not a Mexican like an actual Mexican – Mexican food) cook book I bought her for Christmas. And we’ll watch football and drink beers and EAT! and her son will probably chase the cat and ask me why I don’t have any toys at my house and stomp on the floor because he likes to hear the echo of the basement downstairs and her 7 year old daughter will probably act like she’s 30 and ask me how work is going and grab me another beer and then say something so profound to wrap up the night her mother and I will be crying. And I hope Sophia and her mom are planning on spending the night – that was the plan – because I bought new flannel sheets and the house will be all clean and we’ll eat junk food and watch ‘Little House on the Prairie’ and wonder why little girls weren’t really allowed to play baseball and in the creek with frogs. I turned out all right.

Why I love Target

Cat litter
mascara
Motor Oil
75% off Wrapping paper
Flannel Sheets
‘Thank You’ Cards