fall picnic including thick green algae

we went to this park and had a fall picnic  a few weeks ago; it's the park behind the des moines art center with the andy goldsworthy sculptures

finn said today: mom, did you know, every day, in the sky, it is the same sun, again and again, not a new one, the same sun every day?

also. around halloween time he told me that a crescent moon is a dead person's leg sticking up out of the grave--it's them kicking their leg up to form a crescent.  crescent moon.

.  

h

everything/ brain of des moines

---------------------------------------

I was always aware of a possible silence falling
like the cover of a tomb and engulfing me forever.

The silence overruns the room and I am afraid to hear
my heart beating; this danger coming from inside-
only a continual flow of words can push it aside,
if not control it.

Listen to chaos, waterfall, the Marne locks--
Beethoven, a river that carries rocks and trees,
the thunder rolling by.

--Louise Bourgeois

(::::::;;i found that bit on the blog lemonhound!::)

today, walking, we found andy goldsworthy's "three cairns" and i am in love although i did not have the camera so did not take this photo but stole it from a site:

a cairn is a memorial made of stones, a way to mark a place of significance.  as i mentioned, i am in love.  how can i do that?  

here' s another, stolen from somewhere:

story of something finn suddenly said

Finn said suddenly as we were eating lunch: I think when we're in Des Moines we're in a brain.  I said, Really?  What do you mean?  Finn said, Des Moines is in Iowa City's brain.  Iowa City is below Des Moines.  Really? (laughing) Actually it's in someone inside Iowa City's brain.  It's in Lauren's brain!  So where is Iowa City then?  It's in Des Moines' brain!



how to dance (kid's poem)

cry with your belly.
laugh with your legs.
blossom your arms.
jump with your ears. 
let your body be everything.
let the stars come in.


story of the dreams i've been having

one dream in which i am trying to get a job at ace hardware and it is not working out.  one dream in which my cat gives birth to many black and white kittens and i must protect them and they run all over, chaos.  one dream in which peter suddenly has to go to russia again. one dream in which mitt romney is at the coffee shop where we are and i sort of dumbfoundedly shake his hand but peter runs away, and mitt romney chases him trying to shake his hand.  no! no! 

beginning of renn's poem

how do our souls get in?
they fly past our brothers.
they come out of clouds. 
mystery is the kindness therein.
in this story a cloud gathers all of its arrows.
in this story a rock forms from a marigold,
a baby from a canoe.
in this story is his calm, the calm with which he came here,
as if he were a seedpod.
a circle without fear.

a line i love from frost:

Earth's the best place for love.

what i think

i am a human being i start at the top of the stairs and i weave down, weave space.  all of these things are happening to a human being.  my fingers have held shapes and everything i have held and been and even at times knowing love, changing and trying:::::::::::changing and trying::::::::::::::::; changing and trying and exploring::::::::::and then thinking and hoping ::::::::::::::out of love comes Earth

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rainbow over our house:

the boy who builds worlds:

some blue lanterns:

and since i did just get back from amherst i will leave with this emily dickinson poem:

#822

This Consciousness that is aware
 Of Neighbors and the Sun
Will be the one aware of Death
and that itself alone

Is traversing the interval
Experience between
And  most profound experiment
Appointed unto Men-

How adequate unto itself
Its properties shall be
Itself unto itself and none
Shall make discovery.

Adventure must unto itself
The Soul condemned to be--
Attached by a single Hound
Its own identity.

moon pie, blueberry bread, and letter pie

today, finnegan dictated several of his recipes to me that i thought i should share with you.

here goes, pretty much word for word:::::::::::;

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MOON PIE

ingredients:

junk

bird legs

cantaloupe

moons, sliced up

statues

plates

dumpsters

fences

swings

carrots

forks

cottage cheese

salmon

to make:

put more moons in. then you put cookbooks in. put hot dogs in. punch it. stir it. put sugar in, put candy in, and flowers in, and now more moons in, and then grass in, then trees in. cook it and then toast it. let it rise for awhile, and then eat it outside so it doesn't drip on you. it tastes as good as cereal.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BLUEBERRY BREAD

ingredients:

sugar

broken clocks

apples

river water

garbage

windows

moons

leaves

ranch dressing

milk

eggs

round blueberries

syrup

feathers

paper

dinosaur tails

to make:

toast the bread a long time, let it rise a long time, let it cook a long time, then you eat it. and you know what it tastes like, mom? apple pie.

__________________________________________________________________

LETTER PIE

ingredients:

e

g

k

fire

i

sugar

statues

stickers

chairs

milk

potatoes

salmon

eels

snakes

r

p

two more gs

fs

cushions

to make:

stir it up. pat it. we need some water in. don't forget the jellyfish! toilet paper. more cushions and lightbulbs. put peanut butter cookies in, a lot. then you put sugar in and candy canes! toast it, let it rise, let it splash, let it spray, let it get bigger, put toys in, put wires in, cook it and it tastes like greens.

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what really happened this week

we did make this discovery: a trail that is a ten minute walk from our house! and it goes all around the city, along the river, up and over. . . it makes me happy and now i dream of biking, biking, all around this place, day-long bike trips here or there:::::::::::::::::::::
and we saw some yard beauties along the way:::::::
also this week finn made a flag with his uncle, something he has been talking about doing. yes, for some reason, he really wanted his own flag (oh and he was allowed to borrow and spaceship as well, and a headband was created:::::::::


we have gone a bit nuts here if you can't tell, too poor to do much, waiting for first paychecks, and waiting for the fall schedule to begin (and it starts tomorrow!)--but in the long hours of playing by himself, finn has been doing some cool things, like making spiderwebs:::::::

and we did make bread too--

and drank tea with it~

and walked to our nearby park::::

for swimming/ splashing!

and lastly i did manage to do some of that reading. here's mary ruefle talking about fear and failure, from the essay "On Fear". . . it was appropriate for me to read and think about, let me tell you. (lately i think about those two terribles, my fears and failures, quite often, too much) anyway here it is:

"The impulse toward order is born of fear and desire, and the impulse toward chaos is born of the same. The British psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott believed artists were people driven by the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.

(. . .)In Epicurean atomic theory, "the world functions because from the outset there is lack of balance." The French novelist Georges Perec, devoted to mathematical literary forms--he wrote a novel without the letter e in it--speaks of anti-constraints within a world of restraints. He quotes the painter Paul Klee: "Genius is 'an error in the system.' " . . .The world functions because of fear, because of the error, the ant-constraint, the anti-perfect, the anti-balance. We stumble. We fall.

We fail. And so desire to progress, to become better poets, to eradicate disease, to become better people, to perfect that which is perpetually imperfect. The biblical "fall" is just such an anti-constraint. The apple was fear. (And remember, fear is knowledge, according to Nietzsche.) The apple set the world in motion by forcing Adam and Eve to migrate out of the Perfect. "Fear is to recognize ourselves," said the philosopher. . . "

breaking news : humility, space, glue, clouds over lakes

humility in space story

finn and i made woods for ellie last week: glue and fabric.

this is our new house, a big solid space-house:

as i mentioned i might do, i started a grateful notebook:
hung things in new rooms:

and i felt the sudden sense that humility was, and always had been, like a wind breaking across your face and especially your mouth as you are trying really hard to breathe in and not lose saliva (and i liked it, if i could only invite it)::

there have been walks around grey's lake, a good walking place, look at those clouds, look at that boy:

double seahorse still life in new bedroom:
owl, curtain:

space! have i mentioned it?i do have a new attic room for to write in and listen to records in and play guitar in and hang up yoko ono posters, in!:::::::;

here is where i was beginning to get the attic studio ready (a before picture):

oh, here are the animals that play in the woods we made for ellie, finn + glue and voila:

space! humility! the acts of teaching and writing and being! all, as usual, on my mind (this is the after):::

iowa state fair/ hopeful august experiment

::::::last week we went to opening day at the state fair, supposedly the best state fair! (i myself did grow up near the illinois state fair grounds.. .)::::::::::;anyway, we saw the sheep getting :judged?: and of course a cow and we ate the fair food, and finn rode  rides, including the motorcycle carousel type thing::::and there was also the miniature electric train museum::::all in all, a fine fair day--

also, it is august, so i, right now have::::::::;

  A Modest Proposal for Myself!

 Be kind to others.
And be in time and space!
Actually really—

  Happiness Maps// ///Half-birthday Ten Day Experiment 
 August 14th through 24th 
(For on August 24th I will be thirty-five and a half) 

Nonetheless here I am in the storm of my brain
 A small hole here that you carve out of a map
 And peer through the map to the other side
 I will do experiments with maps in these ten days
 And remember those poems you assigned me last summer?—
Oh, I will work on those
I will be on a poem vacation, by which I mean,
These ten days are my vacation and my poems are taking me on vacation
I will be influenced by the collected poems of Laura Riding and I will indeed quote from that book in a few minutes here
 I will also be influenced by the book The Way of a Pilgrim and the pilgrim continues his way (which is, I am told by the front cover, “a classic of Russian spirituality”)
Also the book of Mary Ruefle’s collected lectures Madness, Rack, and Honey will undoubtedly be around And what else?
I will hopefully take a one day pilgrimage myself,
walking all day on the hiking-biking-woodsy trails that go all around this city of Des Moines (“some monks”) And really I hope to just keep having some days of exploring this city--
I will write down one thing I am grateful for at least every day perhaps along with my family—a grateful list, a journal—
And in lieu of a real vacation we will spend the day at some point on Saylorville Lake, at the beach—
And I will of course also be readying my syllabi for the teaching I shall be doing starting August 24th. . .
Oh, I hope to sing songs and learn one or two folk songs via tablature on the internets—
And all of this, and to share bits of it with you, on this blog!
 Obviously I am experimenting with happiness and my days and creations
and the thought of this, itself, makes me happy—
And the thought of hanging more things up around this new house,
Snuggling in and painting and drawing
 Trying deliberately to catch my bad thought cycles of anger /fear /shame / blame
—trying to catch them and nip them in the bud, at least re-direct them
Trying to set a daily intent of one small good thing
Each small thing—
Oh, Concentrate
Make my bed
Do nice things for those I love with no expectations
And you should know these thoughts today right here are very influenced and inspired by this list on apartment therapy right here :::::::::::

And influenced also by these ideas from the introduction to The Poems of Laura Riding:

 “Laura Riding understood, and said repeatedly, that there is only one way for the world to change, to become ‘better’, and that is for ourselves to change, individually, and to do so now, not in some tomorrow, our world being a multiple of ourselves, each. This is the principle governing her poetry, her work in its entirety, and her relationship with her fellows.”

 And this next thought from Laura Riding (in which she refers to her own “deliberate stepping out a high window in 1929 in the attempt to end what had become an impossible situation”)—made me think of you Melissa, what you said about how we have it all figured out in our poems, at least so it seems, even if really our lives are chaotic:

 “Standing in that room was a quick result—I left that room, by the window of course, and poems came with me. Or rather I went out with poems. I hope you will understand about poems. They are why I am telling this, because as life it reads all wrong but as poems all right.”

 And, lastly, again from Laura Riding:

 “Poetry bears in itself the message that it is the destiny of human beings to speak the meaning of being. . .”

the way things happen/ halt and crouch and pray and think

home story/ poem story i have moved so many times and i never wish to move again but i know i probably will. i can hardly face that thought. but i don't have to. right now: we are here. in des moines, iowa, living near the des moines river, near downtown and a bookstore called "plain talk" that serves coffee-- that i'm excited to check out but haven't yet, near the amazing union park, with a carousel and a rocketship playground that finn calls "my rocketship"; here, living in this city that has bike trails coming out its ears. seriously, i haven't itched for a bike like this in a long time; one could take daytrips around the city on these trails! and did i mention? finn has turned 4, suddenly, in this very town, the one we just moved to!? and i made him an explorer cape, and a whale, as requested. and this summer has been a blur of the amazing poet friends and readings and giving a lecture and wine on the porch and watching kids and trying not to go crazy and my book coming out and having no money and surviving and worrying and MOVIng, now, like usual, like usual. a blur, a literal blur. i have a home now though,wonderful home, and so grateful i am, and there're good feelings. i want to just halt and crouch and pray and think. that's what i've wanted to do for a while. i hope to post more now, to keep posting; i hope to get in healthy rhythms; i hope to enjoy this life and the moments in it; i hope to write in the attic like a madwoman, a goodwoman, a batwoman. i hope to write letters. be in friendships wholeheartedly. i shall stop eating sugar and walk. all of that talk. i still have it and i can say it and mean it, and, i mean, i can do it. only just in moments. and i will and i shall. new beginning, homes, poems, people, love. love, i mean, love, whirlwind friendship drench, ah, i can hardly take it, "To touch my person to someone else's is about as much as I can stand"--and practicing this: practicing courage (finding grit in me), friendship (finding where love is in me), love (finding out who i am as a friend to me), trust(patience, tenderness,careful care, kindness):: and dreaming/wondering about what time is. and also thinking about autumn, around the bend, after this hellish heat drought summer--i do love you, all the world, the green, the sun, i do. and i love autumn too. we're friends ain't we!?! (and here i rub your head with my head)