Trisha’s posterous

Four years.

I was supposed to do so much more in these past four years.

I'm scared these days.

March 12, 2005

Warm.  Sunny. Temperate.  Birds twittering.  Almost sounds like purring.

Breezy.

Cracked an egg into a bowl this morning, and two yolks came out.

March 13, 2005

Cooler this morning.  Gray.  Cherry blossoms whirring. 

A bee found warmth on the white Chinese paper lantern hanging in our front porch area which is shut off by windows and French doors.  I love these doors, that glass room out there, a kind of uninspiring arboreum.

Last night at the Alix Goolden Performance Hall, at approximately 8:30pm, an eighty-six-year-old woman named Beth Empy, dressed in a pretty red skirt and black lace embroidered jacket, stopped  part way through her piano recital in her rendition of Claude de  Buchin's Arabesque number 4, and had to start all over again.

At 8:45pm, I turned my head and found myself eye-locked with a young round-faced brown-haired boy (about ten years old).  The boy had been looking at me.

A young oriental girl (maybe five years old) with short black hair repeatedly leaned too far over the railing on the second floor balcony above.

At approximately 9:05pm, a teenage boy with long red hair and an old soul accidentally dropped his programme from over the second floor railing.  It fluttered to the stage below.  I wasn't entirely convinced it was an accident, and I thought it might be the boy's attempt at altering the course of his destiny in some small way, the way the fluttering programme also altered mine.

https://www.ifaw.org/ifaw_canada_english/donate_now/zimbabwe_elephant.php?msource=DR091019003#x

I eventually got it, how to drive standard I mean, but I am not one of those people who picked it up easily.

Panicked and stalled the car through three, yes three, red lights, at the busiest intersection in W.L. that summer, nearly burned out the clutch, smoke billowing from under the hood, big mother truckers and pickups lined up all around, honking, yelling at me.  (This busiest intersection in the town with a minimal population happens to be on a hill and at the crux where highway vehicles and semis and so forth all intersect, choosing their mutual directions.

I was direction-less. 

My friend, Suzanne. was in the car with me, laughing hysterically.  I said, 'Suzanne, you HAVE to get us out of here...you drive!" 

She said, "Nooooo way....I'm not getting out of this car now," perhaps fearing for her life, the truckers and so on.

I finally gunned it, left two long long tire skids diagonally through the intersection, swung left and over the crest of the hill onto the highway road that leads to the airport, and to the Cariboo Fire Center, where I worked as a gopher slash groundskeeper, sometimes transporting fire fighters to various small towns in the north, picking them up from fire sites (forestry I mean) after the guys had worked 12-hour shifts.  (Hence, this is why I had to learn to drive standard, in order to get that cozy job working for the BC Ministry of Forests on a summer student work term, getting paid $18 per hour for moving the grass on big John Deer Lawnmowers, up and down in long easy columns of the airport field (when the bombers weren't in).  Getting paid double-time for after-hours on-call shifts when multiple fires broke out, usually (you may be interested to know) due to mass thunder storms and lightening strikes.

Well, lightening.

Thunder doesn't set things on fire.

Except in your heart.

I broke the mower blade three times, yes, three times (bad things happen in threes?) on the field that summer, didn't see the big rocks.

Yeah, except in your heart.

I am full into Swine Flu now.  I have almost all of the symptoms at this point (self-diagnosed).  I mean, it's a no-brainer.  I wouldn't wish this on anyone.

I have also only slept about 4-5 hours in three days, which I believe may be the result of side-effects from a new medication I'm on (Ziprasidone slash Zeldox), which sometimes results in tremor and feelings of confusion, dizziness etc.

Here's my dilemma, which is why I've scheduled another appointment (ten days early) to see Dr. P today at 11am-ish.

I have been having acute paranoia, for real (pardon the paradox) ie; paranoia is by definition a reaction to the 'unreal,' isn't it?  Generally speaking?

I'd tell you what the paranoia was but I'm too embarrassed.  Well, okay.  At one point, around 4am, I thought I heard a knock on the door, was frozen in my bed, shaking, certain that whoever it was was here to break in, hurt me and my rabbits.  I wanted to go see to make sure my rabbits were safe, but I was paralyzed with fear.  (I attribute this bit of paranoia (or was it? hence the nature of paranoia) to the recent break-in of the suite adjacent to mine.  I keep having nightmares that someone is going to hurt my rabbits.

Well, no one was at the door.  I finally tiptoed and looked.  Heart pounding.

So, one of the more serious symptoms of swine flu. however, is also confusion.

Do I attribute my new found confusion to swine flu, or is it a side-effect of the new medication?  Or, am I just losing my mind?

There's still that lump on my ovary.

I don't know what to believe is real, real symptoms, or more specifically, I don't know what to attribute the real symptoms to, because the symptoms are irrefutable. 

I'm not imagining those.

Anyone out there who's reading this who has swine flu right now, I hope you feel better soon.

Love from, me.

Anyway...

Here is a link to one of the most stupidly stupid things I've ever in my life seen.

The 'heads' have inspired controversy.

There's a video here you can watch too.

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local/story/Presidential-Chia-Pet-Sprouts-Controversy/iPUB7dzkgkWxOQEqqy2Hsw.cspx?rss=703

The tapping of keys is driving me crazy.  (the tapping was driving me crazy before I checked my gmail).  But now the tapping of keys makes me want to scream, I'm trembling with irritation, a big hand scraping its fingernails across the chalkboard in the back of my head, vibrating so that my teeth are now itching too.  If I had a bone, I would clamp down on it, bite so hard my teeth and jaw would hurt, so hard my teeth would become loosened.  (I have already worn the enamel off my teeth.  I can no longer tolerate hot and cold on my teeth.  This is due in part to years of past and more recent puking of my guts out, and all those years of drinking copious lemon drinks with Dextromethorphan in them).

I want to punch holes in walls, break glass, no, smash the fuck out of a window or windshield.  Stab the walls with the big knife.  I've done it before.  You just don't understanding.  My reaction is rage, pure rage.

So I dropped a couple of classes at the university some time ago.  I got an email today from accounting that says because I missed the drop date by 1 fucking day, I am being charged half the tuition (for classes I only for a microsecond intended on taking).  So they say I owe them $500.  Some fucker named Tory has advised me accordingly.  I just advised Tory of what I think about that.

(I will write an article for every newspaper from here to Toronto advising of this bullshit, if I have to).

Something has to give.  (Oh my god the typing the tapping is driving me insaaaane....Are my gums bleeding?? I hate hate hate this noise, the bright lights everywhere, the constant assault...I mean ASSAULT...on my senses....there's no way, noooo way, other people, as in, the general masses, the average person....experiences the intensity of this kind of assault...just the basic daily sound and spectrum of a day...it kills me, it makes breathing hard, it makes me want to disappear into a coma, a stupor, those lemony drinks...those lovely Pinot noirs...)...Dr. P once asked 'what I got out of taking it."  Well this is it...imagine something that could dull the mayhem, if only for a few minutes.  I don't talk about the mayhem.  I focus (in group and individual appointments, which DO need to be more frequent, and longer each time, more intensive...I just so bloody need it, it's killing me, the space between, the waiting to feel connected to....anyyyythinnnng..)...I focus instead on inane details, the things that I least want to talk about, the cover stories, you know...how I'm feeling...have I been living a healthy lifestyle, how is my family, have I been talking to my husband etc...when the truth is I want to convey the overwhelming agony of everything...the violent emotional shifts, the screaming in my head...the un-fucking-believable tyranny of being alive so much of the time.

I am so angry.

Nothing is working out.  Have I brought this on myself?  Well, yes, all of it...the student loan payments overdue, credit cards ditto, losing my mind, the hospitalization and the stigma of that that will now be with me forever...it's my responsibility....but please oh my god please, will just one fucking thing be easy????  I feel like biting down, cutting, screaming...I feel so fucked over.  I have to numb this somehow....this day, this week, what, this month? is ruined.

I believe in the process of writing poetry, as well as the importance of the finished poem, if it can ever be finished, as in, complete.

Still, when I sit and scribble pen on paper (I tend to revert to that antiquated scrawling of verse when I write poetry, because type, phantom letters appearing on a monitor, it all feels sterile, almost insulting to the poem), whether in my backyard or downtown or at the library, wherever, I am struck at times with the futility of it, 'this one poem,' you know?  But built into the futility of 'one poem' is that poem's originality, and the one poet's singular point of view, so in that sense the one poem becomes monumental by virtue of its originality and singularity.

The poem (not a particular poem but the concept of 'poem' itself) is a metaphor divinity, if you will, grace.  The poem is equal to the spark of existence (of being alive, immaculate conception, idea, the Platonic form). 

A first kiss.

Loss of virginity, that moment.

The technicolor world afterwards, that night, wandering around the dormitory courtyard at 2am, in the pouring rain, big fat gold leaves pasted across the cobblestone, a mosaic, Renaissance, big fat gold leaves choking the gutters.

That instance, that spark, of being forever altered.

That's immaculate. 

That's the poem.

All themes are old themes.  But poetry reinvents.

My poems, this first in the series I have been struggling with, are lacking heart.  I realized that the rhythm is there, the form is falling into line, I get where I'm trying to go, the poem is clever, but I'm nowhere in there; my point of view lacks relevance because I am (as I always am, in life and in writing) creating poetry so fucking clever that I am able to lost in the kybosh of myself, my clever clever mind.

I am Dr. Seuss.  I am green eggs and ham.  I am I am.

I always forget to say what I mean, to write what I mean to say.

I keep forgetting to write poetry by virtue of my desire to write a poem.

Going downtown to write some more.

This is my beckoning to the universe to find a way, to not feel so interminably alone and stupid, so irrelevant, in order to get to the poem that is me.

I walked a lot, took in my surroundings on foot and at at eye-level, kept noticing things on the bus, and everywhere.

I'm going to start up this journal again and include the entries here as well. 

My journal is pale green with darker green vines and leaves on it, kind of like wall paper; my journal has texture.

Is it neurotic to make one e-space journal coalesce with a real-space wallpaper journal?  Will the result be atomic?

Here's an entry, the first I wrote in the journal a few years ago:

February 26, 2005

At the corner of Fort and Richmond, I saw a blind woman standing with her seeing eye dog.  The dog had one paw off the curb, just at the line of traffic."

But my computer suddenly jammed, (seriously jammed), a bunch of white code came up and nothing else, and made a high-pitched trill, the inner inflection (the assonance of want, that is, awwww), and continued that way, instilling my little living room with an awful kind of unfulfilled wanting, unrequited desire, longing.  That seemed about right.  The sound in my living room, although hard on the ears, irritating really, perfectly matched how I have been feeling.

Wanting.

I have lived so long, forever wanting.  I have been a perfect emotional capitalist. 

Zen Buddhism, a book my sister gave me years ago called, 'Zen Keys,' by Tich Naht Hahn, changed me.  That book was one of those you take with you, its bits of wisdom, the doors you passed through, the rooms you found you didn't know exist.  My little beginner's guide to Zen thinking.

They say, 'If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha,' the inherent notion here being (I think) that as long as you are wanting to find God, you are separate from God and divine peace.  I believe this peace to be 'contentment,' Jane Eyre via Charlotte Bronte whispering in my ear, 'Just be content, and nothing more.'

So, kill the Buddha.  "It is the fool who points at the moon," and says, moon.

If you have a damaged sense of identity (and I do), if you are fragmented, empty, core-less, (and I am), you will not easily meet the Buddha to kill the Buddha, and therein enter into that divine grace that paradoxically cannot be found by finding it, and yet, it exists.  You will not easily kill the Buddha because you cannot define the subject and object of yourself, and thus, kill these too, in order to enter into that divine grace that paradoxically cannot be found by finding it, and yet, it also exists.

How can we fill the emptiness?

I contemplated all this after I unplugged my trilling wanting web book (and removed the battery too), in my quiet living room, which was suddenly stilled, that current of electricity snuffed out, unplugged, web book closed for good.

You are a flexing, tender shoot of bamboo, at times bending softly in the wind, back and forth, thudding gently against the shoot next to you; Bear grass and lemon grass yielding with you.  Other times you are a rigid shoot, mid summer, whipping back and forth, knocking in the middle, clapping upon collision, nearly breaking.

You and I, we are a neurotic mess; no God, no Buddha, no contentment or peace.

We will not find God in alcohol or drugs, in running highs, or in the buzz that comes from starvation. 

We will not find God in Wal-Mart or in a bottle of new and improved Febreeze.

My two high school winters; one for 11, one for 12.

My two high school winters were not pretty.  No snowflakes or crystals falling from trees.  No brilliant winter sky.

Those winters were long wooden planks painted white. 

Two stones.

Two frozen puddles in two empty parking lots.

 Two lonely shopping carts.

No violet blue hues.  No splintered light through the trees.  Ember-less.  Smoke-less.

Two stale angel food cakes left out on the counter too long. 

A T-bone under the snow, waiting to be found, waiting for spring.  A crow's wing under the snow, waiting for flight, waiting for spring.

The hardened icing of the angel food cakes.

No softened fold of snowbanks.  No pale light on the underside of the curl.  No powder lifted from branches, from the eaves of houses. 

My two high school winters were hockey rinks; one in Cranbrook, the other in Trail.

Piss in ice; two solid yellow puddles. 

Boys spelling their names in the snow.  Bradley D.  Rob (Neidermeyer).

No glint.

No scent of pine or sap.  Birch tree bark stripped and curled on the forest floor.  Ugly trees.  Two dead forests adjacent to each other, but each seeing nothing.

All was bare.

Hurt.

Frost bite.

A tongue frozen to a chain link fence.

My two high school winters were solid, immovable, compact. 

Snow globes without the snow. 

My two snow-less globes pressed against each other, the tick of glass as they met in the middle.  Snow globe wanting snow globe.

Two keys frozen under the outdoor skating rink in the fire hall lot.

Magic was dead.  Magic never existed. 

Those two winters were chamber-less.

I was speaking crow.

What happened to the 100th balloon?

I'd like to think I am that balloon, but maybe you are, or maybe we both are in different skies.

"If I could find a souvenir just to prove the world was here."

Several years ago, Leigh and I in L'Hon Fleure, France.  All we ate in France were saucices (spp?)   I forget how to spell gourmet hot dog in French.  So all we ate were French hot dogs, except that one night back in Paris when we went to a restaurant, where Leigh ordered duck but insisted it was chicken.  I loved those saucices, those long skinny hot dogs stuffed with fromage and covered in sauce, tomatoes and onions, then grilled.  They cost less than a couple of euros (they were cheap).  They were sort of to die for.  We ate our saucices with two beers on the boardwalk of L'Hon Fleure's inner harbour, watching hoards of people walk around the bay, stopping in restaurants and shops with quaint awnings, all different colours of buildings, a beautiful little village that lifted me that day out of the mire, absolved me of spending three days in Florence locked in the hotel room getting drunk on German beer, and watching reruns of The Facts of Life in Italian.  I've told that story so many times.  I went to Florence and didn't see it.  Regretable.  What can I say?  Anyway, at the end of our day in L'Hon Fleure, we found an old church, walked through it.  I wanted to light a candle and even pray for something.  But I didn't.  The last time I really prayed in that kind of churchly way was when I was twelve or so.  Outside the church, in the courtyard, a boy stood there holding a bouquet of dozens of red balloons (99? Je ne s'ais pas, mais, peut-etre, oui?).  He was soon going to release them all, that was clear.  And we waited, for ten minutes, then twenty, and at the halfhour mark we walked away.  I wanted to stay longer, but we walked away.  I would have waited forever and a day.  I would have sat on the church steps until the stars came out over Normandy.  And strolling down the hill, I looked up again, hoping, and there it was, one, only one red balloon floating away in the sky, the one balloon that got away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9whehyybLqU&NR=1 (German version)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14IRDDnEPR4 (English version)

PS.

(I wish I had Nena's ass).