MAKING INFINITE EVERYTHING I SEE

"...someone said that woman’s best work is that which is unseen by mortal eye...that this work is the steady uplifting and upholding of a higher standard of living; it is the reaching forward and upward, both for ourselves and others, towards a loftier life... Yes, it is hard. But, sisters, it is work that belongs to us. It is work that, if not done by us, will never be done at all. For man cannot do it - as far as the family is concerned...For as a rule, and it is a rule that has few exceptions, woman creates the atmosphere of the home."
Mrs. Julia C.R. Dorr, The Household, Vol. V, 1872

I originally went to look up women's beauty habits from back in the day and stumbled upon all the suffrage business again. I have gone through many changes in the past year pertaining to this and the way i regard it. What is most important is that I am getting closer to peace with myself even over things that aggravate me, this is what is superior and key [to my sanity]. Well put.

if you haven't already...go read this one through a few times. out loud.

..singest of summer in full-throated ease..
..O! for a draught of vintage! that hath been cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, tasting of flora and the country-green, dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South!..
..that i might drink, and leave the world unseen, and with thee fade away into the forest dim..
..to think is to be full of sorrow..
..already with thee! tender is the night..
..for many a time i have been half in love..
..forlorn! the very word is like a bell to toll me back from thee to my sole self!..
..was it a vision, or a waking dream?..

'The Camerons have some very pretty daughters, one of whom Frank had met at a dance. He put his guitar away under the bunk and began to bustle around.

"You got a flat-iron, Mrs. Rich?" he asked. "Can I borrow it? I got to press my pants."

I said, "Yes," and Ralph said, "Aren't you a little ambitious, young feller? It's fourteen miles from here to Camerons', and most of it's uphill. You can't walk that distance and back after supper."

Frank was suprised. "Oh, I wasn't planning on it. I'm just going to call her up. An' I ain't going to talk to no girl on the telephone with my pants looking like I'd slept in em'."

That remains to this day the yard-stick by which I measure all chivalry.'

today, for the first time in a long time, i no longer feel like i owe anyone anything.
do you know the lifting weight off the shoulders &chest of that?
it had quite literally taken me the entire summer and clear through this most recent bout of pms to be released. [sorry if tmi, too bad]

the whole summer from start to end has been heartbreak. even after the first real one to date. heartbreak on and on and on while i kept waiting for it to cease. not realizing that i had in fact been enlisting in the antics of other people and the heartbreak they caused each other and themselves...and inherently myself. i would say, in my defense, that it was my clouded head aka the acts of trying to reorganize my mind and my possessions. there was distraction...i was constantly looking around and running off to other places desperately attempting to enjoy myself. maybe that took the place of my 'rebound guy' and why it seemed i would so frequently come upon more heartbreak. there was no denial though. as i may have explained to you, i sat with the pain. i'm never one to deny it is there...that shit just does not work for me. it'll come rearing its pretty little fucked up head somewhere down the road for certain, if it is not tamed by company.

this is not to say that i am no longer a broken up woman inside...just the realization that the weight of owing anyone anything at all anymore unless i want to and they deserve it...is poof! gone.

whhhhhhhheeeeeewwwwwwwww

THE EXORCISTS

And I solemnly swear
on the chill of secrecy
that I know you not, this room never,
the swollen dress I wear,
nor the anonymous spoons that free me,
nor this calender nor the pulse we pare and cover.

For all these present,
before that wandering ghost,
that yellow moth of my summer bed,
I say: this small event
is not. So I prepare, am dosed
in ether and will not cry what stays unsaid.

I was brown with August,
the clapping waves at my thighs
and a storm riding into the cove. We swam
while the others beached and burst
for their boarded huts, their hale cries
shouting back to us and the hollow slam
of the dory against the float.
Black arms of thunder strapped
upon us; squalled out, we breathed in rain
and stroked past the boat.
We thrashed for shore as if we were trapped
in green and that suddenly inadequate stain

of lightning belling around
our skin. Bodies in air
we raced for the empty lobsterman-shack.
It was yellow inside, the sound
of the underwing of the sun. I swear,
I most solemnly swear, on all the bric-a-brac

of summer loves, I know
you not.




HER KIND

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
a woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.



-anne sexton-


i read these both last night and they seemed important.

You're a supplement, you're a salve
You're a bandage, pull it off
I can quit you cut it out
You're a patient, iron lung

You're a cast signed broken arm
You're an actor out of work
You're a liar and that's the truth
You're an extra, lost in the scene

You're a boxer in the ring
With brass knuckles underneath
You're the curses through my teeth
You're the laughter, you're the obscene

You're a supplement, you're a salve
You're a bandage, pull it off
I think I love you, I think I'm mad

You're a cast signed broken arm
You're an actor out of work
I think I love you, I think I'm mad

'It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that. Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls us. In the present case, what is it that has really happened? Someone has killed herself for love of you. I wish that I had ever had such an experience. It would have made me in love with love for the rest of my life. The people who have adored me - there have not been very many, but there have been some - have always insisted on living on, long after I had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me. They have become stout and tedious, and when I meet them they go in at once for reminiscences. That awful memory of woman! What a fearful thing it is! And what an utter intellectual stagnation it reveals! One should absorb the color of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar...Life has always poppies in her hands. Of course, now and then things linger.'

...and then i think, no one on the internet wants to hear that shit. no one gives two fucks about why he doesn't miss me and if he does then...

every day i have spent back in california has been full of another friendly face. another drink. another moment of telling myself 'be right here, right now.' another person feeling offended i have not returned their call, showed up at their door, taken them up on their great offer. they must not understand, because i hardly do myself. i think the ones i have been sitting near and talking with have been the ones that, superficially or not, make me feel safe. a few not so much, and then i run back home to hermit until i feel brave again.

at this moment i still wonder to him, what was it about her? but i know. and that makes me regard him less. that worries me. when i am around him i feel that we are the best dressed, not in the literal brand name hundreds of dollars way. just the i can actually look like a class act in a 20 dollar outfit and you couldnt if you tried kind of way, but no pity. i think it is in how we hold ourselves. the most out/soft spoken if we would chose to speak. the most grand. just, better than you. but i would never say it and i would never hold it against someone else. it makes me feel like we're the childless mother &father to children surrounding us wherever we may turn. but allowing oneself to feel that way in the company of another is a dangerous, dangerous thing. especially for me. especially right now. i have been thinking that most of life is filled with dangerous things that we chose to engage in or not depending on our moods and how brave we feel.

so i ran back home yesterday, went to bed when it was light out and slept for 13 straight hours. i unpacked all of my big black trash bags to the tune of my love and the hack that is ryan adams, very loud. some things feel like they dont fit anymore. some i just didnt like this morning. those things stayed in bags and are now in the trash. i still dont have enough room. my biggest regret is leaving my bicycle in the fucking desert. i am going to make that meal that my old coworker taught me and just have water. i am going to go to berkeley and then up the coast this weekend with a dear lady friend of mine and talk only about important things; as it always is with her. and feel safe and beautiful and take deep breaths of ocean air. sounds like a plan.

i wish i had a million bucks. i wish i could move into a place that was alllll mine. that i could buy it and it would be down to the corners exactly the place i wanted. and i could fill it with all of my things and have people come over to oogle and then that they would leave at the end of the night.

word to the wise; i'm pretty fucked up right now so stop taking everything personally and we might get along better, if at all.

yours,
lkp

Excerpt from leather bound soul keeper- winter 07'
Today is the first day I have ever left California. (well I went on a cruise once) Damn California centrism! I am flying over countless mountains, covered in snow and frozen, vast lakes. Uninhibited land. Who knows what state I am passing over. I haven't flown in years. I had no idea how much I love it. The land is never ending. Looking down from here everything is just so unpredictable. Some kind of beauty when you least expect it. Here is some of what I'm reading:
"I keep telling myself what I really like are music, books, certain land and sea scapes. The way the light falls across them., diffusion of light through a gate; light itself...I suppose I'm still afraid of the dark."
"Am I sick in lack of joy..and joyful in lack of joy..and sick in sickness of joy??"
Note to self: Obtain this! ->
"I am separate. I close my eyes in divinity and pain. I blink in solemnity and un-solemn joy. I smile at myself in my movements. Walking, I step higher in carefullness..I fill space with myself. I see the secret and distinct patterns of smoke from my mouth. I am without care part of all. Distinct. I am separate from gloom and beauty. I see all."
I am still flying. I just wanted to note the idea of running from the sun. The farther we fly the shadow from the slant of the sun on the mountains grows. By the time I arrive it will be dark. I will have lost time. I will surely get my winter fix. LKP

to thine own self be true.

A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.

A few things for thought..

"We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who's right and who's wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us and we do it with political systems, with all kinds of things that we don't like about our associates or our society. It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better. Blame others. Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground.

Positive thinking supported by affirmations will achieve success in anything. This is based on the concept that Thought Creates. Therefore, as one begins focusing attention and consciousness on the positive, on the "half-filled" glass of water, reality starts shifting and materializing the positive intentions and aspects of life. Humans have a responsibility to take part in positive, creative activity and to work to heal ourselves, each other and the planet."

So, this week I've been consumed with planning summer excursions.

Pinecrest Lake, CA - I am SO looking forward to frozen lemonade slushees and curly fries on the beach with a cooler full of beer. Hiking around that lake fully equipped with a grand packed picnic lunch, and midday swim. Kayaking with my dear friend mary jane and co. The cabin my family has stayed at for years with a huge 'overlooking the forest' deck, downstairs pool table and fully stocked fridge. MMM MMM MMM