The Starting – episode 2

Hahaha. Look at the date. Then look at the date of my last post. What in the HELL is wrong with me. Wait, there’s nothing wrong here…I just wrote my fourth post for my once-a-year-blog. Haha. But seriously folks. Here is the sad reality. I had good intentions. And that was all. I had no follow through. You know what happened in 2013? My son grew about 6 inches. We went on a 2 week road trip . We went to Kansas twice. I took the train with 3 girlfriends to Kansas. I taught school. I won he Viola award. Barry built a studio in out back yard. I did an artist’s residency. My family met in Park City for Thanksgiving. And the list goes on, baby. And I got nothing. No stories written down. No dates. No pictures. It’s time for a poem. And then, it’s time to improve the follow through. Here’s to 2014, and to writing it down.

 

The Vanishings

Stephen Dunn 

 

One day it will vanish,

how you felt when you were overwhelmed

by her, soaping each other in the shower,

or when you heard the news

of his death, there in the T-Bone diner

on Queens Boulevard amid the shouts

of short-order cooks, Armenian, oblivious.

One day one thing and then a dear other

will blur and though they won’t be lost

they won’t mean as much,

that motorcycle ride on the dirt road

to the deserted beach near Cadiz,

the Guardia mistaking you for a drug-runner,

his machine gun in your belly—

already history now, merely your history,

which means everything to you.

You strain to bring back

your mother’s face and full body

before her illness, the arc and tenor

of family dinners, the mysteries

of radio, and Charlie Collins,

eight years old, inviting you

to his house to see the largest turd

that had ever come from him, unflushed.

One day there’ll be almost nothing

except what you’ve written down,

then only what you’ve written down well,

then little of that.

The march on Washington in ’68

where you hoped to change the world

and meet beautiful, sensitive women

is choreography now, cops on horses,

everyone backing off, stepping forward.

The exam you stole and put back unseen

has become one of your stories,

overtold, tainted with charm.

All of it, anyway, will go the way of icebergs

come summer, the small chunks floating

in the Adriatic until they’re only water,

pure, and someone taking sad pride

that he can swim in it, numbly.

For you, though, loss, almost painless,

that Senior Prom at the Latin Quarter—

Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan, and you

just interested in your date’s cleavage

and staying out all night at Jones Beach,

the small dune fires fueled by driftwood.

You can’t remember a riff or a song,

and your date’s a woman now, married,

has had sex as you have

some few thousand times, good sex

and forgettable sex, even boring sex,

oh you never could have imagined

back then with the waves crashing

what the body could erase.

It’s vanishing as you speak, the soul-grit,

the story-fodder,

everything you retrieve is your past,

everything you let go

goes to memory’s out-box, open on all sides,

in cahoots with thin air.

The jobs you didn’t get vanish like scabs.

Her good-bye, causing the phone to slip

from your hand, doesn’t hurt anymore,

too much doesn’t hurt anymore,

not even that hint of your father, ghost-thumping

on your roof in Spain, hurts anymore.

You understand and therefore hate

because you hate the passivity of understanding

that your worst rage and finest

private gesture will flatten and collapse

into history, become invisible

like defeats inside houses. Then something happens

(it is happening) which won’t vanish fast enough,

your voice fails, chokes to silence;

hurt (how could you have forgotten?) hurts.

Every other truth in the world, out of respect,

slides over, makes room for its superior.

 

2013 – the starting

I had a dream last night that I had cancer. It wasn’t any big deal. I just told everyone I had cancer. The next day (in the dream) I read in the paper that cancer had been cured. I woke up this morning feeling a little frightened about the dream; I mean, who knows what the body tells us when we sleep, but somehow also comforted by the fact that cancer had been cured. Once I had a dream that I was in a plane and the plane started to spiral downward. In the dream I said to myself, “I’m going to live through this.”

It’s the first part of January 2013. I started this blog last March, because my son’s voice cracked. I had spent 5 years writing a blog, One Year of Opus, and I didn’t realize it at the time but it became a wonderful diary/history of my life during those years. A chronical of the time I spent with my mom while she died, the ending of a really shitty relationship, and also a glimpse at my son growing up. I want to do that again. My son, Jay, now 14 (15 in 4 days) is in high school. Changing, growing, becoming the adult he will have to live with for the rest of his life. I want to write this for him. To see where he was, and where I was, and where he came from. I will write sporadically, and with heart. I cared so much if other people read my other blog, and this time I don’t even know if I’ll mention it to anyone. I want to say…… no recipes here, no drivel, no craft making or book reviews but, hahaha, there will be all of that and more. I’d give anything to read about y own life when I was younger, written from another perspective. I’d give anything to read about my mother’s life, at any point about any topic or thought. This is mostly for Jay, and a little for me. Some where in a video camera is a 30 minute video I made one day while Jay was at school and Barry was at work. It’s just me, dancing and talking and folding laundry. It’s for my grandkids, who I may never know. I was 38 when Jay was born, and he may not have kids until he’s 40. So I wanted to be who I am now, for the future people who may want to know what I was like.

So, here it starts, really. I think I can do this. I hope I keep up with it. I have to.

Part of starting a new blog was coming up with a new name. One Year of Opus was perfect for that other blog. It was where I was and what I was doing. It’s really the reason I had to start a new blog….that time was over.

Wonder…..A feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.

Bumble…..Move or act in an awkward or confused manner. Speak in a confused or indistinct way. Buzz or hum, as in a bee.

I made wonder bumble up. I wanted a word all my own, and I love what these two words mean and how they’re so human and in many ways, so me. I am constantly grateful and appreciative, and in total wonderment about all the greatness around me. And I have a hard time talking. I can never get across what I want when I talk. When I write, I have more success. I am wondering and bumbling along.

Voice breaks

Here I am starting a new blog. And here’s the reason; my son’s voice broke for the first time tonight. March 20th, 2012. Fourteen years old. For the last few months I’ve been waiting to start a new blog. I wrote my old blog, One Year of Opus, for 4 years. Four great years of writing STUFF. Life. Just life stuff. I had it put into a book a few months ago too. And when it arrived in the mail, I sat and read it for hours, All kinds of life facts. All kinds of things I would have forgotten had I not written it down. And tonight, I realized that moment in the kitchen, between eating Gillispie maple sausage from Newton, Kansas, and making gooey butter cookies, when my son’s voice broke for the first time, would disappear if I didn’t capture it, here on the page. So, I begin again.