i carry on in absentia
dialogues
monologues — rhetoric, socratic, analytic,
with — and for, people i once
knew,
had,
loved,
who i have lost or misplaced,
or
who have lost or misplaced me,
in some way,
Category: exposition
Mother’s Day: also a day for the children of mothers
motherhood and childhood are complex, complicated and heart-expanding, heart-breaking and heart-full journeys — but mostly elusive destinations, in our rose-colored or cracked rearview mirrors /
today is an exceptional day for revisiting motherhood, childhood and mother-child relationships //
Mothers’ Day, for many mothers and children often feels unbearable from physical loss or heavy with physical absence; it may be pregnant with disappointment, misunderstandings, unrealistic or unmet expectations; reminiscent of failures, judgment and estrangement;— or worse, it may be painful with the memory or ongoing experience of neglect, abuse, betrayal or disownment ///
these golden beings that we, mothers, carry and birth from our bodies and raise up with our arms and hearts into a world that is too often, dark and heavy /
mothers were once golden beings too //
mothers can be|come dark and heavy worlds too ///
Continue reading “Mother’s Day: also a day for the children of mothers”“smiles and cries”
coming into full being as a crone, one thing i have learned — and practice — is to not suppress my emotions or thoughts
whether in private, shared, or public space
but to feel or express them right then (with very rare exceptions) —
and to NOT control “my smiles and cries”
i spend a significant amount of time solo —largely, by choice,
so, when I feel immense grief or joy, or experience beauty or pain, humor or outrage,
i let my tears
or my teeth
or my uvula
or my tongue
or
my voice
be in the moment,
and this often manifests even if i am in a public space
i have become as uninhibited and honest — as a young child,
or — as someone on their death bed.
Continue reading ““smiles and cries””
a reader’s digest *almost-worthy* story
as i sit here on my deck on a beautiful, late August, Sunday morning in rural southwest Michigan reading an article about surviving a bear attack at Signal Mountain in Yellowstone in May 2024,
i am reminded that
one of my very favorite things as a kid was to visit my great grandmother and to sit in her rocking and folding lawn chair, all by myself on the tiny porch — of her modest, peach-colored stucco bungalow at 2229 West Oakdale Avenue in Chicago — because we didn’t have a porch, only a stoop at CHA’s Julia C. Lathrop Homes where i lived as a child (privacy, peace and quiet were rare there) and comb through her Reader’s Digest magazine collection for stories of wilderness experiences and encounters with wildlife — especially the ones with predators: sometimes, not everyone survived in those excerpted stories /
but the intense desire to experience the outdoors that those stories inspired in me was almost entirely extinguished when i went, *with zero experience* on a three day/two night camping-canoe trip along the Fox River for our 8th grade class graduation trip; me and another 13 year-old female classmate were paired together in a canoe in a group of 5-6 canoes / i went [un]prepared with a borrowed, indoor Barbie slumber party sleeping bag from one friend and my best friend Jill’s dad’s old army reservist mess kit — everything stuffed into a single, tripled black garbage bag to keep my “gear” dry in case we tipped and went into the water/ Jill couldn’t go herself because that winter she was suddenly stricken with Raynaud’s Syndrome and was quite sick from another, yet-undiagnosed autoimmune disease /
my classmates and i slept outside on the ground without a tent and woke covered dew and very cold both mornings (while the adults occupied two very dry and warm pup tents) // we peed (and presumably, some of us also pooped) into holes dug in the ground within earshot of our 13 & 14 year old [boy] classmates and male teachers // the only other girl on the trip got her period the first night and had to use a sock as a menstrual pad because none of the male teachers thought to come prepared in event for that routine bodily function — and apparently, none of our mothers suggested this to us or to them — or planned for it either //
around the campfire the first night, which was a Friday, our teachers told us in a very serious manner that the camp in the film Friday the 13th — “Camp Crystal Lake” — was actually based on a true story at nearby youth camp— we had, in fact, passed a road sign for “Crystal Lake” en route; while, i had not yet seen the film — but the others filled me in in great detail — and it no longer felt good or safe to be on the trip with them — even after the teachers’ retractions and promises that they were “just joking”.
Continue reading “a reader’s digest *almost-worthy* story”Easter
a version of this foto essay was first published
April 2019
Spring is life.
A mother rabbit birthed at least three bunnies in a niche of the house – enclosed on three sides with only a northern mossy exposure – mostly safe and hidden from owls, hawks and coyotes. They nibble on young dandelion and clover leaves. They are joy.
My one and only baby’s very first Easter and Spring. A surprise of daffodils under a white oak tree at our first house and home on Grace Street in Chicago. Mother, son, full of grace.
I don’t know where the stuffed white rabbit with pink, acrylic eyes and pink, satin ears came from — exactly. But I’ve had it forever, before memory, so I pretend that it was presented to the baby girl born in late October, just before Halloween. Or gifted to the baby girl on her first Easter. Or won for the toddler girl at her first carnival.
Before I was a mother to a boy, I — an only child — was a teenaged auntie to a beautiful boy named +Tony+ [Giovanni Anthony Martinez] born in Spring 1986. I learned from him that I might become a mother to a son one day even though I was sure I was meant only to be a mother to a daughter. And that, was a wonderful revelation.
Continue reading “Easter”
an open letter on a 65°f primary election day in Michigan | day 145 of Israel’s acute genocide of the Palestinian People
good afternoon:
i feel like i should have started my heirloom tomato and chiltepin seeds on New Year’s Eve, but i haven’t even ordered or sorted seeds yet;
that I should’ve picked up a bottle of mineral facial sunscreen and given myself a pedicure yesterday;
that the swimsuits overwhelming retail spaces are not for spring breakers and resort goers but for anyone headed to North Avenue Beach in Chicago or Silver Beach in Michigan today;
and that i wish i didn’t know that the Thwaites Glacier is hanging on by fewer and weaker pinning points;
do you respect or even revere military service? i know many of you certainly do/
Continue reading “an open letter on a 65°f primary election day in Michigan | day 145 of Israel’s acute genocide of the Palestinian People”the last meal of a woman
the last meal that She cooked for herself
was in the late afternoon of the 18th of September the Year of Our Hearts, 2023
that same evening
She would spend the last night together alone with her only child, her son, in Their house on Adams Street
he had already stopped at Chik-fil-A
– or Quesabroso? for his dinner
he, sixteen forever, for Her, not even licensed for a year yet
She thought, then said aloud to him
“pasta. i want some pasta.”
and so She very slowly set about
choosing saucepans, boiling water,
sautéing a little ground beef with a bit of diced onion, and minced garlic from a giant container from Costco,
adding in a half jar of Rao’s Original, some dried herbs — nothing too spicy or fancy now,
cooking her favorite gluten-free rigatoni,
or was it penne, mostaccioli?
She ate, rinsed the pots, loaded and ran the dishwasher, put the combined leftovers in her fridge
and at dinner time the very next day,
She told her oldest and dearest friend about it
her friend listened, and watched Her plate, reheat, and sit down to eat those leftovers — She wanting to do all that for Herself, still
She taking the smallest and most intentional bites possible,
every delicate swallow and cough amplified in the too-big-for-two, unusually quiet house, the parade of Her friends and visitors gone until tomorrow
“i’m not supposed to drink with these meds, but lemme have just one lil’ sip of your wine”
Continue reading “the last meal of a woman”“The crew compartment’s breaking up”
John Roderick wrote the above line and repeats it seven times(!) in his song, “The Commander Thinks Aloud”— about the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster that happened February 1, 2003
and, if I’m not careful, I will start to cry during the first verse
The Commander Thinks Aloud
Boys and girls in cars
Dogs and birds on lawns
From here I can touch the sun
Put your jackets on
I feel we're being born
The Tropic of Capricorn is below
We stall above the pole
Still your face is young
As we feel our weight return
A trail of shooting stars
The horses call the storm
Because the air contains the Charge
The radio is on
And Houston knows the score
Can you feel it, we're almost home
The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)
The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)
The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)
The crew compartment's breaking up
This is all I wanted to bring home to you
Songwriter: John Roderick, The Long Winters
The Commander Thinks Aloud lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Rough Trade Publishing
this song — since the very first time i (belatedly) heard and learned about it on the Song Exploder podcast in 2016 — became an instant melancholic metaphor-lamentation for me, even while retaining it’s very visceral and intended meaning —
at first, for the climate chaos we face on our communal spaceship — Spaceship Earth,
as in, “hey, do you realize we’re floating in space?” — then, why are we [deliberately] destroying the crew compartment?
and
for our lives — for the simplicity that is both stolen and lost
in the daily struggle — of and against exploitation, repression and oppression; in the daily drama of our dis/mis/mal contentment; in the daily, unnecessary grasping, striving, amassing and hoarding — whether for – or of, wealth, land, power, influence, reputation, career, fame, control or privilege —
or, in orbiting the Earth in a shuttle or space station or landing on the Moon in a spacecraft — when we could’ve just been human beings caretaking of this Eden and of each other.
and personally,
Continue reading ““The crew compartment’s breaking up””oh, june
oh, june
she crushes me
these roses warmed in her Sun
today, tomorrow, and yesterday, at least
it’s not enough
to see them, touch them,
smell them, now
i want to swallow them down warm
into my heart
and keep them forever
stop praying for what you want
the birds’ choir
is a mockery outside my window, eight different species on the sill — eight — for gods’ sake!
these days when the
Sun’s arc is long
and the soil is warming for the season — and permanently
i am in my bed with lead bones
annoyed that i woke up again, and guilty with an ungratefulness about it
my steady lament is sung out loud — but still unheard
i counted my mistakes like sheep, to sleep again
they didn’t wander away though
they stay close to their shepherd, always
they say Death comes in threes and that’s true
but it still hasn’t chosen me
instead, conscripting two complacent men, known to me, thirty-six, fifty three, in one week’s time — why?
while i’m out here volunteering for the cause
it cruelly searches elsewhere to complete their trio
of course i’m still fucking here!
the gods won’t give you what you pray for!
courage, love, fidelity, life, death
they’re full of motherfuckery
they know exactly what i — and what you, want most — of all
so they sent these birds here to taunt me
so they keep me here to taunt you
life support: the breath of words
We write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers.
We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.
We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it.
We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth.
We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely… If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write because our culture has no use for it.
When I don’t write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.“
~ Anaïs Nin
Dream Gerund: being
Arte Digitora derived from the poems: “On Doing” & “Dream Gerund”
On Doing
I have a compulsion to do.
But sometimes/often just want recline.
And the softness [and] of being. Pulled tight into a cocoon & the doing hushed out of me and filled with prairie definitions.
My untold untyped Great/lake fantasies.
Fallen grass tufts and waterproof boot slosh and plant names and hours of dendrochronology with fantas/tical idealized notions of rubbing and human collision, of being.
July nothingness would be a dream come true I close my eyes to it and do and do and do.
~ juggernaut
On July 19, 2022, upon noting the correspondence between the words “doing”, “being” and “dream” in the above poem and the published poem “Dream Gerund” both written by the same poet — I created a digital derivative work – works which I now refer to by the neologism that I conceived:
the falls
in the rearview mirror
i see it was a gift
an impromptu roadside picnic
a rendezvous along a fast-flowing river
we slip into a raft, built for two, gently floating,
taking turns describing what we see, feel/who we are/
entering rapids, our hearts racing, ceaseless throbbing/
then paddling furiously, having to steer/
and suddenly, the fear
nearsighted, you caught a life ring, rescuing yourself on a familiar and safe shore/
i stayed aboard and roared toward the falls
alone,
extending the ride, the adventure, the hope of it, all/
forcefully plummeting and suddenly submerged into dark and powerful waters
because,
Continue reading “the falls”
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 