Gotta love New England

I'm so excited! I've been avoiding the news this week because I got overloaded on tragedy, so I missed the good news that New Hampshire has legalized civil unions for same-sex couples! Yay! It's one more step in the direction of the acknowledgement, respect, and dignity that everyone deserves.

Since I grew up in the Episcopal church, this article was particularly wonderful.

Talk about efficiency

I am in love with most things Indian. It's been over six years since I returned from visiting my aunt's family in Mumbai, and while the detailed memories are fading, my feelings of fascinated affection and appreciation remain.

I am really busy these days planning my lovely lesbian wedding, AND taking some time off from school (having fun & relaxing takes time, too).

So, instead of sharing my own random thoughts, I want to share this article.

I wish I could get lunch this way!

Unusual Beauty

If I had kids, this is one of those stories I'd tell them dozens of times, until they rolled their eyes: I had an art teacher and he changed my life. He turned my ideas of color inside out, and my ideas of subject matter upside down. He took my art history class on a field trip to a junkyard. He showed slides of graffiti he'd found inside abandoned buildings. He taught at my small private school for four years, long enough to shock some parents and just long enough to affect me forever....

Read the full story on Minds Island.

Irony In Experience

I have yet to explicate here the theory I developed after reading John Cage’s lectures: that reading a published text to oneself is a performance that can never be replicated because the environment is continually acting upon the reader, thus influencing the reader’s experience of the text in that moment…. Well, now I have. That’s basically the theory. I’ll give you some examples from my own life later.

The point is, I just had a very ironic experience of said theory. I was sitting at my work computer during my lunch break, reading an essay about Language Poetry (or, writing in “Open Forms”). The argument goes that Open Forms invite readers to create the meaning of the text along with the author. The author ceases to be an absolute authority in the making of meaning. Personally, I love this idea, even though some people shirk at “experimental” art, calling it the most elitist of all forms. But initially hard to understand in a traditional way isn’t the same as elitist.

Anyway, here I am reading about how to write in ways that don’t constrict readers, and in walks a woman who wants me to hang some posters for her festival. She says, “Ok, how many posters do you guys want?” I say, “I think two would be enough.” “Well,” she tells me, “you usually take three, two for the door and one for somewhere else.” “Well,” I reply, “I guess we’ll take three!”

I couldn’t help laughing to myself. She asked the most closed question possible! The universe is snickering.

A Voice for Peace

Wednesday night I heard a wonderfully life-affirming poetry reading by Naomi Shihab Nye... If you haven't read anything by her, you should. What a beautiful and caring person. She's the type who can have everyone waiting at an airport gate start talking to each other. She goes up to soldiers and engages them in warm conversation, then writes empassioned anti-war poems with the conviction of a mother who cares for the world so much it hurts.

Read more at Western MA Poetry Reviews.

The Bowl with Gold Teeth

Craving quiet and beauty, I walked up to the Smith College Art Museum this afternoon. I found there an exhibit of Japanese tea wares that spanned 500 years of history. The room was dimly lit and the tea bowls held silence in their curves. I remembered attending tea ceremonies in my adolescence (once at a neighbor’s house and once on a field trip). The care and precision involved were too much for this tall, awkward American. I still can’t imagine enjoying the bitter, frothy tea and turning the bowl just right—but as an outsider in a museum looking at the arrangements of dishes and effects, I could better appreciate the meticulous beauty of ritual.

With the little I know of Japanese culture, craft, and art, I expect all of it to be delicate and nearly perfect. So I was intrigued by an asymmetrical bowl displayed on one wall of the gallery. Brick-colored and rough as cement, its circular form squashed towards oval, it looked— frankly, ugly. The card on the wall said the bowl was about 400 years old and beloved for its imperfections. Some of its defects were intentional; others were an effect of time. The rough texture occurred because the potter decided not to refine the clay thoroughly, so grit rose to the surface when it was fired. Centuries of use resulted in a chipped rim that had been repaired in several places with gold lacquer. These shiny spots, the card said, made the bowl especially prized. I thought: it’s a bowl with gold teeth!

Now, what’s the poetic equivalent of not completely refining my words so that distinctive grit will rise to the surface?

And I Said To My Demons…

I love adjectives! I will use them as much as I want to! I will describe everything! My images will not speak for themselves, I will speak for them! I will not be an invisible author! I will show my hand! I will be known for my passionate and excitable adjectives, for my rich and deep associations, and for my heady and determined descriptions! I will also joyfully throw in some adverbs! And as for those zesty exclamation points, I will employ them liberally as well! So there!