ineffable

this post has been in the making for several days now; i keep coming back to the saved draft to add something else. i suppose that means we've had a productive week! i'm sitting at our coffee shop, i promised myself i'd get it together, and you have no idea how hard it is to write when your significant other is sitting right next to you. or maybe you do. either way. do you need to be alone when you write?

i was writing as i walked here, about the old houses and huge porches, the perfect windows and picnic tables and the house with the butternut squashes on the porch that have been sitting there for months. i passed a house with a picnic table instead of a lawn, a lot of really fat squirrels, and empty chairs splattered with paint. yes, i can write and walk. it's very messy.

so, what have we been up to?
well, yesterday one of my friends/classmates and i went and got some coffee (for her, tea for me) and wandered down to a very small and very packed used book store in town. the man who owns it is incredibly knowledgable. you could imagine hoarders, only with books, and he knows where everything is. i'm not sure how long he's been here, but he's got shelves to the ceiling full of books, and then stacks as tall as me in front of those shelves so that unearthing a solicited book requires digging out out from behind the masses. he knows what's back there, though. his books are more expensive than i've seen elsewhere (his prices are slightly more than john king in detroit), and you can only fit single file down each aisle (makes for snuggly book browsing), and his "desk" in the front is a little nest of book stacks with a hollow space in the middle for him to stand. he's got a drawer of cash somewhere in there, and a beat up yellow notepad where he keeps track of his sales/does math. we found a bird song book, and a signed copy (first UK edition) of Written on the Body by jeanette winterson. we then went to the bead store (there's a bead store in ypsi!) and the woman who works there (does she own it?) taught me how to make the wire for the bead with a headpin, and then gave me her tools. a two hour class in five minutes, plus the tools to do it? i am a lucky mama. it was a wonderful day, finished up with the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe (it was on tv, but we don't have cable, so we rented it instead and now i'm so anxious to watch the other movies in the series. believe it or not, i've never read narnia) and knitting.

today i missed the post office closing by 42 minutes (oops) and went out for more linoleum carving tools and jewelry supplies. i came home with just a few lino blocks and some earring findings. and now we're back at the mug, sipping some more white peony tea, savoring the last few moments of 2011.

here are a few notes from the last several days:

- i borrowed a certain movie from the library, and when i went to renew my materials it was not listed in my account. i looked it up in the library's system and it shows as "on shelf." i asked clay if i should call them and let them know that it is, in fact, on *my* shelf...he said it's no big deal. so, here it is, sitting in a bed of lies told to the dear city of ypsilanti. if you had plans to watch "tying the knot," you'll have to come over. i'm not giving it up yet.

- i couldn't sleep the other night, and after tossing and turning for a few hours i finally gave up, got some cookies from the kitchen, and curled up with Lighthousekeeping, also by jeanette winterson. i finished the whole thing. it was incredible. when i woke up the next morning (far too early for not having gone to bed until 3am), i found the bookshelf of jeff buckley at the time of his death, and it made me think about what books of my own i'd want to be on a list like that - what books were most memorable and influential in my life, my story? what would my bookshelf tell you? the winterson one would be there, and now i'm aching to see the innards of a lighthouse coupled with the time and capacity to tell my own story. the books says there are no concrete stories. and i think maybe, no concrete beings, until we are fossils and then we are just stopped, just caught and suspended in time.

i tried finding a few more of winterson's books at the library, and lo and behold they are mostly found in sci-fi. i've always been a self-proclaimed realistic-fiction person, but this road of interest lost in romance and disbelief in true love (at least in the way we obsess over it - is finding true love really the ultimate life goal?) makes the clips on the backs of most books almost nauseating. i don't want to slip into someone's broken fetish, someone's troubled home. with the exception of steinbeck because i've got a book on my to-read list that i'm going to find at the library later, i'm dreaming of a different world.

- i finished a cowl i was knitting.

- i bought a new bathmat.

- i've thought about a dream-list: a stand mixer, a desk from IKEA (I'd even be okay with this), a septum piercing, a finished tattoo, a pottery class, a big cozy chair for the living room (minus one of the couches), a rug for grace's room

- lately we've been going to a catholic church here and i'm really intrigued by iconography and ritual, particularly surrounding mary. mary, the mother of a son who was not her own. grace is not my own; grace is given and i am her keeper, her caretaker - i provide, but she is not my own. i am a vessel, too. have you heard of the series, the hidden world of girls, on npr? i've caught clips of it while driving, but i haven't listened to the entire series yet.

- i have a yoga punch card that expires at the end of january and i've used it maybe twice. that's 18 more classes that we've paid for (with groupon, but still) and not nearly enough time or motivation to use them. this is bothering me.

- every time i read this blog, i immediately need to go to the thrift store.

- i will grow my hair out to look like this.

- printmaking pictures that i like (one, two)

what are your new years resolutions? i've been quietly composing a list in my head, and thus far i have this:
-do more housework
-stay home more (i've got a real bad habit of running unnecessary errands - like, i go buy craft supplies or get a book from the library that i "need to have right now," only to put it on the shelf for weeks)
-knit something more complicated than a scarf or hat
-apply to grad school (this one isn't really a resolution, because apps are due by jan 21-ish). to be fair, maybe i should include graduate. almost done.
-re-read madeline l'engle's series
-tour a lighthouse, with grace
-go camping with grace
-make yogurt
-buy an ipad/netbook/something small and portable
-make soap
-drive less, walk/bike more
-downsize the bookshelf. i have a lot of books i don't want/didn't like/haven't read.
-read the books on my shelf that i own but have not read.

ofrendas/offerings/break

source - a friend of mine in spain posted a photo of this scene on facebook and it immediately caught my eye. maybe it is the bright colors, or maybe the less-victorian-pristine, more-cubist appearance of the figures that made this nativity (belén) seem so welcoming. probably also why i love the strong lines of byzantine iconography. so visceral.

check out the note in this photo - someone saw the nativity in a cup of coffee

sheep

i am spending the day knitting away, coping with the 23rd day of each month in which i wake up to blood and the reminder that i am, in fact, woman with a life-giving space inside of my body (honor, honor). maybe life-giving isn't the word i want. i am a vessel, for many things. i am also a consumer of ibuprofin.

i would love to have this in my house

maybe some magnetic catholic paper dolls? the holy family set lets you put a shawl on mary that makes her pregnant again.

i love this image too; the plain, unadorned devotion and affection between mother and child.

a few photos from this set

one

two

three


what else is on my mind?
this dress, for new years. which is silly, because i will probably be in something comfortable and snuggling with the kiddo.

she's been drawing a lot. thinking about getting this book.

grace's drawings - the top "--A--" appears a lot on the top of her pages; she says the dash reminds you to pause and look at the picture. well, there you go -- a 4 year old's proper use of the em dash.

a peek at a finished present

books i picked up (one from amazon and the other from the library)

what i am currently reading

also, check out the postcard my friends made with the christmas photos i took for them:

i also made naan the other night. recipe here. i pan-fried them instead of baking, it worked perfectly.

then/now

there are little chairs in my house. i am stretched out on the borrowed couch, drinking our coffee from our press. i turned on the bright eyes christmas album. there are little chairs in my house, tiny toys, baby dolls, small pajamas...there is a little girl asleep in my bed. sometimes she is a ghost of my childhood, crying heavy tears about bedtime and pressing her little belly into my back as we migrate across the bed until soon, she's taking up all of the space. i forgot to turn on the christmas lights.

she says there are three things she likes to do when she can't sleep: 1) draw. 2) stare at the christmas lights. 3) stare at the christmas tree. none of which actually help her go back to sleep.

i live for mornings. i live for being the first one awake, for slow sips of coffee and the tummy aches that surely follow. i have piles of projects around me that need to be finished for christmas. there is a little chair behind me, from her table in her room.

last night i wanted to dissipate, i wanted to evaporate into the kitchen air. instead, i stood there like a lonely, hollow tree and complained that there was nobody to call at two in the morning, that there was nobody to sit on my couch and make something with me (something i didn't have to teach them to do). there is no friend who wakes up at 6am with me, no friend to match my bedhead, no friend to flip on dora while we catch up on facebook while our babies watch television. there is no friend i can share the pains of being a partner/mom/student/person with, though there are a lot of pieces, a lot of people who pour themselves into some of the boxes. some of you know what it is like to parent, some of you know what it is like to be a single parent. some of you know what it is like to be swimming in a sea of papers. some of you like the quiet. i went to the mall at 8:30 last night, because i wanted a sparkly shirt for christmas or maybe i just wanted to be out. i didn't find one, and wandering the mall during late holiday hours was eerie because i carried with me all of my exhaustion, right in my arms. i bought grace new underwear, and somebody else's kid puked on the floor.

i came home and talked for a long time about what it is like to be in a relationship while belonging to a small church. when you're somebody's girlfriend, and that somebody is the son of a very involved family, the whole world is watching you breathe. everyone is trailing you like a shadow, everyone is recording your every move, making sure you're doing everything exactly right, exactly pure, exactly holy. you know what that makes you do? it makes you hide. it makes you find dark places where his parents won't find you. it makes you create this veil of responsibility that grows more opaque as the days pass you by and then you find yourselves behind it, curled up in a tiny dorm room bed to sleep, burrowed in a nest of guilt because you're breaking the rules by letting your bodies touch through your pajamas. everyone was watching. we were one without ever having slept together. we were one in a way that i have never been able to replicate. we were one in prayer and our own sort of ragged hope and hunger. we were one before i really knew what it was like to be one with anybody.

he met my daughter years later when my hair was blue and long and i sat outside an ice cream shop with my breasts hanging out, my baby drank herself to sleep. we pushed her in a swing. i wondered if maybe she was actually his, maybe i was the next mary and he was god, maybe she didn't come from sex at all. it was supposed to be us, right? married at twenty-two, with blonde babies and strong walls.

the upside to everyone watching was the inevitable presence of community and mentorship, in it's strange sort of pervasive way. and here is where i rest in memory, wondering how to trace my steps back to this place in which there was always someone there who knew the very deepest parts of you - probably because you prayed together, in a circle, holding hands. when we pray "our father," at the church we've been going to, i am powerless and frozen except for my grace who won't hold my hand anyway. i think if a stranger touched my hand, i'd flood the sanctuary with years of restrained tears. there was always someone to talk to, someone to pull aside into a quiet room to help you remember the proper ways to live. there are pieces of myself in the old church carpet, where we sat on the floor and begged for god to be near. my reflection must still be in the nursery window where i imagined the way our lives would unfold as i held someone else's baby.

and so i keep a list in my head of the problems i have with the church, the gates i've closed and the cracks that keep me from going back: i believe that heaven and hell are conceptual, not actual places: peace versus perpetual unresolve. i believe that sexual orientation is unimportant. i believe in the celebration of people, the body, and the wisdom and knowledge we possess to make choices. i believe in ritual and tradition in that they are spiritual practices. i do not believe in the practice of prayer as an attempt to persuade god to "reveal himself." i do not believe in the need to ask for salvation, or baptism as a means of acknowledging that choice. i do not believe that salvation is a choice, though i do believe that living an intentional, holy life is a conscious practice and therefore that impulsivity and carelessness are harmful ways to live (so, maybe this is where i can begin to define "sin").

here we are, in the morning, many years later. there are kid things in my living room, and an emotional four year old on my shoulder watching frosty melt on tv. i have a partner who at the very least, knows the songs we used to sing at church and the rules young christians are expected to live by. he knows what commitment and companionship mean to him, and he waits patiently for me to figure these things out for myself. he listens intently as i walk through memories, he unravels the panic that clouds my head when i'm suddenly debilitated by the presence of certain things and the absence of others. this year was a year of choice, but it was also a year of critical thought. next year will be a year of generation.

love the ones you love and serve them well

she is four and a half and i still can't get enough of her sleepy face, no more sweet smelling breath and snores, still can't stop touching her hair, twisting it in my fingers until she yells at me to stop. when she was a baby, i spent endless hours thinking about the kind of mother i would be - intuitive, conscious, gentle, smooth. i dreamt of how to cushion vulnerability (mine and hers), about how to harvest proper traits. i think now about an altar in the hallway, a sanctuary for re-centering, more for me than for her. a place to kneel and rest my head, a place to remind me to always count to three silently before exploding. i don't consider, anymore, how to be "in tune" with my child. i don't try and listen between breaths and dare myself to match her needs with my wants and the ever-irreconcilable space between child and parent, we are, after all, separate beings (now). i keep turning inward, wondering what kind of place i am making, what kind of life i am teaching (instead of who i am to her, who i am, who i am). i must care for the soul, and i thought this as i sang old church songs to her in bed through tears because she breaks, she can't sleep, she says over and over that red is not her favorite color, and i want to wrap my arms around her as if they were big and thick and warm, instead of bony and awkward and small. i wish i was a bear, i thought, a big mama bear in a cave, and i'd hang up every lantern from the cupboard. i wish i could rest my head against hers and help her to see that the dark is not a scary thing. i pull myself in, waiting for quiet moments and clear air, to find there what i need to keep going. it is ember, a burning stone in my gut, that i draw my reason from.

i keep coming back to the concept of choice as a paralyzing reminder of everything we don't have, everything we're missing out on, and how we have to live outside of those lines; how can you know, that something else isn't going to make you happier? brighter? completely and wholly something different? maybe i wouldn't have tried on 50 coats today if there were only two. only two! can you imagine? and the two would have to be long and warm, because at least the sleeves could be cut or rolled and we're not warm enough in the winter, anyway, in our fashionable jackets looking nice while we trek through snow. can i save her from that? probably not. see that thing over there? i don't have it. i need it. it doesn't matter that there are a hundred of them at home. i don't have that one. just like i don't have a black and gold striped shirt for christmas eve, or a wrap sweater, or a girlfriend or a man who writes me letters or good cheese in the kitchen. i have plenty, but plenty is nothing when there are a thousand others begging for my hand. maybe this is what christina rossetti was getting at with goblin market.

she snores again and this time wakes herself up. she looks at me with wide eyes, huge middles, she can't sleep in her own room because she knows she's missing something out here (even if that something is nothing more than me sitting here on the couch with yarn). i can't make her stay in there, can i? close the door to stifle the cries? and yet, while she is the center of my world, she is also not the governing force. i am learning to take care of myself.

source

we did it!

painting in green, sunday afternoon

red - last december

painting - last december

catching him with his book stuck behind his waistband - last fall

unedited, leaves - last fall

the library - last year

the semester is over. grades will be posted next week. i survived 15 credit hours, a mountain of illnesses, moving, many accomplishments, new jobs, and a plan for the remainder of my undergraduate education. this is the first year that i haven't filled my break with a job - my job runs with the school year, now. i am spending some time this morning, convincing myself that this break is well-deserved; that the countless hours put in (my day isn't over at 5pm when class gets out) merits three whole weeks of rest. i'm so happy (and relieved) that i could cry. i feel like i am walking around with a well of tears behind my eyes ready to burst at any moment. i did it. we did it.

so, i've got a list:
ypsi flea (sunday)
impression 5 (a really awesome kid's museum in lansing)
snow globes
tackling the big bag of yarn in my closet
hosting a naked lady party? the box under my desk is overflowing
lights at the toledo zoo, and the toledo art museum/glass house
wayne county light fest
make sugar scrubs and chai concentrate for christmas presents
printmaking
visiting with friends and family, but particularly a certain friend i've yet to meet in person, and my sister who gets in on christmas eve!

and of course, an ambitious list of books to read: on goodreads, because with no work and no school, we're down to our last few dollars until mid-january and books are free.

i also discovered an exhibit in chicago titled "write now: artists and letterforms." thank god it's there through april - i imagine this might be useful for my senior thesis, in terms of text functions and what craft can learn from composition (and vice versa). more and more, i feel like my focus is shifting towards narratives and their presence in various texts - academic, personal, image, art. in terms of community literacy, writing as a process and writing to learn, there are narratives present. these narratives are both a personal and social history, as preserved in some sort of thing that either looks like or functions as a text.

these little guys are waiting for their snow globes

from my phone: impromptu printmaking this week, for ypsi flea and for christmas.

the christmas tree. grace has been decorating it all week.

happy break!!!

The End

My nose is stuffy. So stuffy, that my ears are buzzing. Not too stuffy, apparently, to smell the wonder that is buttery popcorn filling the 2nd floor of Pray Harrold. And thus, I simply cannot be expected to work on my paper. Popcorn. Want. Now. Wait...I don't even really like popcorn. I don't like to eat it. Smelling it is another story. I am delirious. Unhinged. This morning I thought I lost a very important (read: Very Important) paper. Turns out it was in my folder all along. Coffee makes my stomach hurt. I can't hear.

This morning I woke up and plugged in the Christmas lights that are draped around the living room window. I pulled the blanket back up for a few more minutes and then forced myself to get up and heat up the kettle for coffee. I think I spent another 20 minutes trying to catch up on my blogs, and then I got sidetracked by the Block Printing group on flickr. Check it out.

one

four

a little set

ashley sent this to me in the mail for christmas, along with these birch stilts for grace!

Carving linoleum has always been difficult for me. I'm wondering if I either a) need to heat it first, or b) need different tools (I'm using a Speedball cutter). Given the plethora of products on their page, I'm thinking it's the latter. giftideacoughcoughcough. I wonder if the linoleum I bought there is an older version (it was the only kind they had several months back).

What else have I been doing today? Debating generic-singular pronouns. Thoughts on "they?" I think I want to be Grammar Girl for Halloween next year. I've also been quietly pondering the difference between gendered careers/clothing/various other applications as tools of control/demarcation rather than as a consequence of physique. See "If I Were a Man," by Charlotte Gilman Perkins.

mass

I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while.

(mary oliver - from "dogfish")

but i didn't want it to go away. i wanted to cup it in my hands, like the water he said i held too tightly, the water i tried to spin into yarn.

 confessional

in the garage light musty confessional, i bring my
basket of frightened chicks
and a lace bra hung from my wrist
i come to tell you that i have a hollow band, i am an
empty bride.
an illusion, a silk and linen wrapped prize
i am rings made of wood on his hand.
i'll pour my tea onto the window ledge and call through the
iron shutters, i can smell the red velour carpet and the padded
vinyl backs of chairs, i can taste the spring air
heavy with dew.
i don't want anything from you anymore, and yet
i cannot uncurl my fingers
always a metaphor about holding on. 

once it was shown with a fist (like this)
and i could see the sky oozing out between his fingers,
"you hold things like this," he said, "you try to hold the ocean in your hand."
and then he opened his virgin palm.
i know what the sticky sweat on his forehead tastes like, i
used to sleep in his blue jacket
"you hold things too tightly," he said, and we swore marriage, but his parents said we were too young
like good church kids, we wanted to hurry up and get married so we could hurry up and do it, hurry up and make babies that loved jesus. 

once, it was shown with tears and years later over dinner i
find myself woven through his stories, i don't want anything from
him anymore, and yet i cannot uncurl my fingers to make room for
this one, the sleep-bringer and moon eyes,
i kneel at the confessional and wait for the stitches to fall out. 

the one with water pooled in his palm, he comes in my dreams and we hide from our families in houses i've never been in so that we can be together, naked. once, i dreamt i was wearing only my bathing suit, but usually we never get very far before someone interrupts us.  

i used to know what it was like to be one body with a man,
because he curled around me and his skin was soft.
we were one before we knew what it was like to really be one with anyone, we were one in the eyes of god because we prayed together and held hands. 

i wonder if it does more for me to say we were never married, or if telling people that we got divorced would make me sound older and respectable. 

i confess to holding on. i confess to holding my ground when my insides were spilling out onto the carpet.
i beg the shop light, star light to forgive us, to take the chicks and the lace bra off my arm, drop them into the well, and dress me new. i confess to loving past the hand that cups my breast. 

 5/2011

she saw the baptismal pool this morning, i should have let her touch it. i should have let her dip her hands in and watch the water drip from her fingertips, i should have let her splash.

i never wanted my past to go away. in my dreams, i run to it. i run to marriage and tradition. i run to the crunching of leaves beneath his feet. i slip into the breakdown on a rainy night on the road to somewhere, ready to peel the years that had gone by into a pile of unwanted clothing at my ankles. i gathered myself, though, i gathered the wrinkled mess at my feet and pulled it back together. i gave birth. i named her grace. i learned what that word meant and i learned its absence. i learned its struggle and i learned its way, i learned its place under the rug when we all had faces to keep. 

i was alive, then. i was alive in light of the hands that prayed together, in the notes we wrote and the promises we made. we lived in words.

we live now, in routine that is sometimes habit, in tiny light bulbs and belly breaths. the past is a cave inside my heart, a chamber in which i could rest for a hundred years.

we are nobody's slaves. we are not saved by merit nor by prayer. why does the bell ring? maybe to call forth the ghosts, to awaken the dirt beneath this year's frost. there is too much worry about outward expressions and appearances. too many times have i been asked, "are you humble? moral? right?" to you, i stay buried, choked by sorrow over the loss of a soul.

i didn't want it to go away. this morning, we walked up the steps and said hello. through prayer, we pulsed our way along. i did not speak. i read the music. i let her draw in a notebook while she sat on the kneeler like i used to do. i tried to take a picture. maybe i left our bodies behind for a while, there, slipping back into dreams and an insurmountable past that i wish would be revived. and so, we breathe.