Mediocrity

While sipping a vanilla latte with soy milk steamed to 150 degrees in a sophisticated 60 percent recycled to-go cup with a philosophical quote by one of the greats printed on the side, I read the newspaper filled with stories about about people who live lives that contain remarkable happenings.
I love finding raisins amidst the soy nuts and cashews in my trail mix but I try to combine each one with a few nuts and seeds in my palm before pouring them into my mouth. This gives me an argument for trail mix rather than just raisins (which would be just too boring).
Such dilemmas make up the majority of interesting experiences in my life. It's a shame I have never seen a headline that reads, "Girl Strives for Equality between Raisins and Nuts: The Fight for True Trail Mix."

Me = Busy

I am so sorry to all (if any) that read my blog. I have been swamped lately so I have not been posting... as you can see. I have a bunch of essays and poems I have been working on in my journal that I will be adding ASAP. So sorry!!!

The Woman

I call her Agnes.

She is a strong woman with a bold face and long, soft, ash-colored hair. Her chin is broad and her eyes are sure. Rimless glasses act as her telescopes for the world. I feel as though she can see into my soul, she knows my thoughts and feelings, she sees everything I do and judges, but she is not judgemental - she is true. I sense a caring love from her like she knows my heart, my hopes, my fears, and she only wants to help me find my way. She uses a cane and walks with difficulty, I want to help her but I feel that I would taint her pride. Just because it is hard for her does not mean that she is unable to do it, she can and she will. I believe that she can fly, fly above us all filling us with strength through hope. Agnes is my fairy godmother, and she is a woman who rides the 100 West Busway Oakland city bus every morning at 8:13am.

We have never spoken.

by Jess

Crumbs of Memory

I sit on the bed with my dad. He has no face but I know he is my father. I haven't seen him since I was three years old. Once upon a time, he must have had a face, but it has faded along with every other memory of him. We are making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches using saltines as substitutes for bread. I take a bite and the cracker crumbles down my shirt landing in my lap. He smiles at me. I cannot see the smile but I can feel its presence. I know he is happy. I return the smile and we finish our mini sandwiches on paper plates making a lovable mess.

My mother tells me that this never happened. I have told her about this memory many times and she always insists on its implausibility.
"He was never home with you during the day, Jess. He was always working or drunk," she tells me.
I also could not possibly have been old enough to participate in the making of the sandwiches. He left us when I was three. Maybe I just watched him make the snack alone, or maybe it was my mother whom I shared the moment with. I have tried to rationalize it and I have heard my mother's truth multiple times yet the memory stays.

He is faceless but the vision in my mind is vivid. I taste the crackers, I feel them break, I sense his smile, I know he is my father. I may be lying to myself and to you but amidst all of the hatred and heartache this is the only memory I have of him and it is sweet. Can you really take that from me?

By Jess

From "How to Read a Poem" by Terry Eagleton

This book is a wonderful piece of literature and I think that anyone interested in Creative Writing in general should read it.
Anyways, the author uses wonderful analogies and metaphors to make his points. One of the examples he used in the chapter I was reading today about Formalists just made me completely happy and thoughtful and just amazing.

He said:
"The general idea, anyway, is clear: poetry is a kind of creative abnormality, an exhilarating illness of language - rather as, when we are actually ill and so cease to take our bodies for granted, we have an unwelcome opportunity to experience them afresh."

First of all, what a beautifully hopeful way of perceiving illness.
Second of all, this author is brilliant and is able to explain poetry in ways I never would have thought of on my own. He gives me a newly found appreciation for poetry as not only an art form but also a way of communication.

The Genius of Prof. Aziz

"to be a propagandist, you almost have to not believe it"

To All Those Who Say Write What You Know

I know something of desire. I know the blue spell of afternoon on his skin, the way a minute's kiss can absolve one hundred wasted days. The plain chance of bodies I've been willing to mistake for fate, like playing cards found facedown on the sidewalk. I know the words—the yes and the sorry and gone—that stand in for other things we can't say. The constellation of freckles on my left arm I am waiting for someone to read me like tarot. I know the aftermath of want.

by Kate Petersen
http://www.creativenonfiction.org/brevity

My Plea

Pulling. Pushing. Please someone, just hold.

photo by Jamie Stuart http://pilgrimphotography.blogspot.com/

Reliable Loves

I read all kinds of books – books of poetry, novels, essays, philosophical books, biographies – and they are never jealous of one another - they do not force anything upon me; I can use them when I need to and ignore them otherwise. They are my easy lovers; I can immerse myself in Yeats poems all night long and not owe them a thing in the morning (a bookworm’s version of a one night stand). Some of the relationships become more involved – Emerson and I are constant companions; he comforts me after a frustrating fight with a human or a long day of work. I curl up into bed and enjoy the word play of brilliant poets or lose my mind over the complications of Shakespearean plots. I am selfish. I drop, bend, write in, rip, and constantly drench these lovers in coffee – why do they stand by me? Books are loyal. They are selfless. They give you all they can with no restrictions, offering hours of consolation and ecstasy, expecting nothing in return.

by Jess

Blue

No clouds; I don't even want to see the sun, just a mass of uniform color. It stretches like a warm, tumble dried sheet across my vision to lay me down for a relaxing nap in the grass. Comforting, unknown, fascinating, there is so much beyond and within it that All are unaware of. Yet, it is sure, pure, and strong.

by Jess

RUNNING THROUGH THE DARK

By Jennifer Sinor

This morning while I was running, shoes smacking the pavement, Venus bright above the spine of the Bear Mountains, and my thoughts pinned to the day ahead, the meetings, the deadlines, the writing I would not do, a deer was hit by a car.

What We Do

Several nights a week I take a supporting role in an ongoing play. I work with ten to twelve fellow actors and at about five o'clock we put on our false faces and take to the stage. I am given the role of the starving college student, but usually the single mother who just needs enough money for diapers takes the lead - anything to captivate the audience. It is important to keep them happy (for they put the money in our pockets) and this is when the true role playing begins. I laugh giddily at mediocre jokes, flirt with members of the opposite sex whom I wouldn't otherwise glance at, and most importantly, I pretend to love my job. We serve the food and chisel away at the dried unwanted cheese and sauce, while always holding that smile! Keep the drinks filled, the restaurant at a comfortable temperature, and my guests believing I was born and raised only to meet their every need. Now maybe, just maybe, I will reach my goal. Then, the moment of truth: is it ten, fifteen, or twenty percent? Ten Dollars! Ten dollars left for me, only me (well, and a certain percentage for the state) and the check was only twenty-five! This is my Oscar moment. A little tear runs down my cheek and I give my thanks to the bartender, cooks, and all who helped to make this moment possible. The night comes to an end, I sweep up some bread crumbs and smashed pasta while trying not to notice the burning stench of garlic on my clothes or the film of olive oil seeping into my pores. As the curtains close, I take off my mask and costume and rediscover myself. This is all just part of the business, honey.

by Jess

To

Be calm.
Be sure.
Love strong.
Live well.
Have hope.
Give peace.
You are.
I am.
We can.
Go Forth.

by Jess

The Fine Art of Sighing

You feel a gradual welling up of pleasure, or boredom, or melancholy. Whatever the emotion, it's more abundant than you ever dreamed. You can no more contain it than your hands can cup a lake. And so you surrender and suck the air. Your esophagus opens, diaphragm expands. Poised at the crest of an exhalation, your body is about to be unburdened, second by second, cell by cell. A kettle hisses. A balloon deflates. Your shoulders fall like two ripe pears, muscles slack at last.

My mother stared out the kitchen window, ashes from her cigarette dribbling into the sink. She'd turned her back on the rest of the house, guarding her own solitude. I'd tiptoe across the lino-leum and make my lunch without making a sound. Sometimes I saw her back expand, then heard her let loose one plummeting note, a sigh so long and weary it might have been her last. Beyond our backyard, above telephone poles and apartment buildings, rose the brown horizon of the city; across it glided an occasional bird, or the blimp that advertised Goodyear tires. She might have been drifting into the distance, or lamenting her separation from it. She might have been wishing she were somewhere else, or wishing she could be happy where she was, a middle-aged housewife dreaming at her sink.

My father's sighs were more melodic. What began as a somber sigh could abruptly change pitch, turn gusty and loose, and suggest by its very transformation that what begins in sorrow might end in relief. He could prolong the rounded vowel of OY, or let it ricochet like a echo, as if he were shouting in a tunnel or a cave. Where my mother sighed from ineffable sadness, my father sighed at simple things: the coldness of a drink, the softness of a pillow, or an itch that my mother, following the frantic map of his words, finally found on his back and scratched.

A friend of mine once mentioned that I was given to long and ponderous sighs. Once I became aware of this habit, I heard my father's sighs in my own and knew for a moment his small satisfactions. At other times, I felt my mother's restlessness and wished I could leave my body with my breath, or be happy in the body my breath left behind.

It's a reflex and a legacy, this soulful species of breathing. Listen closely: My ancestors lungs are pumping like bellows, men towing boats along the banks of the Volga, women lugging baskets of rye bread and pike. At the end of each day, they lift their weary arms in a toast; as thanks for the heat and sting of vodka, their a-h-h's condense in the cold Russian air.

At any given moment, there must be thousands of people sighing. A man in Milwaukee heaves and shivers and blesses the head of the second wife who's not too shy to lick his toes. A judge in Munich groans with pleasure after tasting again the silky bratwurst she ate as a child. Every day, meaningful sighs are expelled from schoolchildren, driving instructors, forensic experts, certified public accountants, and dental hygienists, just to name a few. The sighs of widows and widowers alone must account for a significant portion of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. Every time a girdle is removed, a foot is submerged in a tub of warm water, or a restroom is reached on a desolate road . . . you'd think the sheer velocity of it would create mistrals, siroccos, hurricanes; arrows should be swarming over satellite maps, weathermen talking a mile a minute, ties flapping from their necks like flags.

Before I learned that Venetian prisoners were led across it to their execution, I imagined that the Bridge of Sighs was a feat of invisible engineering, a structure vaulting above the earth, the girders and trusses, the stay ropes and cables, the counterweights and safety rails connecting one human breath to the next.

By Bernard Cooper