you

I like the pronoun 'you'--ambiguously hovering between specific, general, plural, singular. I can double back on myself in its comforting anonymity: no, I can say, I didn't mean 'you,' I meant 'you, reader,' (Reader, I married him), or you-general. And maybe all the while I do mean you: specific. You, the kid who left a blood orange at my seat in poetry class. You, the printmaker. You, boy of my childhood. You, the girl with the bird dog legs. You in your striped sweater, making a cake with me. You. It's sneaky, this short word; even linguistically--the /y/ (yuh) gliding the tongue across the soft palette into the release of /u/ (oo), only one place of articulation away from /i/ (ee): a whisper.

So--who are you? I know you are from Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Japan, Argentina, Ecuador, Egypt, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Ireland. In the U.S., you come from all over--Miami, Chicago, Portland, New York, Atlanta, Tempe, Annapolis. In the U.K., you're from Leeds, London, Southampton, Isle of Man, Birmingham, Hull, Edinburgh, Barking. That public 'where' is all I have a right to know, and I respect your right to tell me nothing about yourself and to go on reading. That's the contract here--I've chosen parts of my life and my thoughts to make public. But I'd like to know about you, what you do, what you're interested in, why you're here (and here is a big, big place--not just 'here' on my site, but here in general, even), what you're looking for, what you love. Recommend me a book or a song or a movie. Tell me something that made you happy or hurt you. Tell me a joke. Tell me where you write, if you do, and I'll read it, too. I want to know more about 'you'--where you is both general and specific.

just sweetness

When I go home I want to make cupcakes and frost them in pretty colors, with sprinkles and flowers and candles, and have a tea party. Cai can come, and Iain, and Adity, and Eva, and Robin, and Alex-le-chat (and Heather, if she could, and since this is my imagining, she can), and Matt, and Michael, and Yue, and Emilse--and Mauro, and Shahab and his family, and Kezia and Rory, too. I'd like it to be evening and I'd like there to be little lights in the trees, and the light of the candles. And music--singing--and Adity reading chapters from Alice in Wonderland, and poems. And we would all be together in the yard at 6A.

And I want to go to the store for staple foods for my new house, using the bag I made tonight for groceries, and the CO-OP one I got when I lived in Venice, and come home to two of my favorite economists, laugh with them, put things away, and cook with them. And hang my laundry out to dry in the late afternoon sunlight.

And late at night I'd like to hear a pebble at the street-facing window, and I'd like to sit in my high-up nest of a room with you and talk about everything and nothing by the glow of those same tiny lights, and fall asleep under the quilt I made of old kimonos, and wake up in the morning to a mug of tea you've made just-right. And go to my desk and sit down and write. And know you're there, even when you're not in the room.

And later, I'll show you what I've made, and you can show me. In the room where I've hung my prints and paintings and pictures, an old gilt mirror Kezia gave me; where I've set the desks in front of the windows and fixed the action on my guitar, where we've aired laundry and read one another poems. And we'll go downstairs (where there are wonders: economists; goldfish, maybe; a record-player; bread being made). And outside it will be one of those perfect English afternoons with just enough light and warmth left in it for us to take the bus downtown and look at pretty things in the shops--and then start home.

on doing more

I think the biggest difficulty creative work poses to me is the potential that's inherent in it. I'm talking about the thing that continually generates ideas, makes connections, gets me interested in new things and keeps me wanting to make. This is a paradox, of course, since that potential is the fuel for creative work as well.

The 'could'--as in, I could make a new bag for myself, and it could be the most perfect bag ever; or I could go and work on my manuscript; or I could read some Derrida or any of the other books on my worktable, and then write what would assuredly be a brilliant addition to my dissertation; or I could make a drawing--usually comes when I'm at a peak in the energy/creativity/mood swing barometer. And on the good days, it's a spur to do something, which is useful and healthy for me. It can prompt new work, new ideas.

On the bad days, 'could' is an overwhelming word. Things I know I love and want to do--my desires--start to feel like pressures. I feel all my interests vying for time, I lose my ability to prioritize (and, with it, my routine, usually). I overthink and overdesign projects without getting them off the ground. The end result is often a headache and a petulant hour or two reading craft blogs.

I'm trying to be more aware of my own tendency to let possibility overwhelm me--to keep the fact that the things I do are really a privilege (how many people can say they read and write for a living, and in their spare time make some drawings and sew the occasional skirt?) in mind and to remember that this is a life I've chosen with my eyes open. I'm learning how order helps (and hinders) my work and how to use it better--thank you, Google calendar. I'm trying to remember that 'could' means just that--potential, not requirement. And when those voices that say do everything! do it now! start up, I want to remember that even then I have a choice--and that often, for me, choosing to do less--and do it in a thoughtful, holistic, deliberate way--is healthier and more productive than bending the the compulsion to always do more.

english

On the train from Nottingham to London on July 1, I looked out over the roofs of house and couldn't keep from crying. I don't know what England is but I knew then how much I would miss it. I feel rooted there. Like I've grown into it. There's been so much moving around for me in the past few years I didn't even realise how vagrant I'd become until I was leaving this adopted country--that feels more like 'home' than the city I grew up in, at this point.

England--it is Victorian trainsheds and stations with gingerbread edging, light in the afternoon when half the sky is slatey and there's light coming across it making things shine. Being offered tea. Sainsburys--I know it's silly to love a grocery store, but I do. Terrace houses with their roofs all in a row, and chimney pots. Plants growing out of buildings (whole streets of bricked up houses in Liverpool). It's a certain feeling in pop music. Young girls who look too young to be trying to look so tough. The word 'sea' where I'd say 'ocean.' Allotments. "All right?" as a greeting. Men calling me darling and sweetheart and love and duck; women calling me love and darling, my love. The peculiarities of accent. It's music festivals and train rides. Feeling comfortable on the Underground. Snails as long as my thumb I sing to when no one is looking. The sky is so big in England. And there are things like fish pie (not a pie! and it's good!) and sandwiches in packages, and more cups of tea.

England is where I am learning to be comfortable singing. And thinking. And opening. I think I love England because I've learned to love so many people there (and learned how beloved I am by them). If I can write my history of England it will have to begin as a history of this kind of love.

*

If you've been reading this since back when I used to make things that you could hold onto--clothes and so on--you might remember this fabric I printed two summers ago. I have two panels left and I'll mail one to you if you leave me a comment on this post relating somehow to poetry. I'll pick two names randomly on Saturday (the 19th). Please make sure there's a way for me to contact you!

The fabric is hand-printed cotton. It has been heat-set, but should still be washed with care in cold water. Because of how I printed it, there will be little variations in the ink. The panels are about 15"x32". The image is a folkloric scene of birds, goats, rabbits, squirrels, and plants.

--

One of my favorite poems (I posted it about two years ago this time of year):

A Portrait in Nine Lines

E. Ethelbert Miller

I want to hold your face in my hands
just for its laughter. I love your hat.
I was standing in a bookstore when
you turned the corner. Page after page
reminds me of your arms. The wind
sits in a park reading a book of your
poems. Is today your birthday? Yes
is such an easy word to say. I know.
This is the portrait of you I love.

'yes, yes'

"...to say yes is to bind oneself to the future, to further confirmation in a second yes, which promises to keep the memory of the first yes and confirm it, to repeat it. When we say yes, we do not know yet if we have said yes" (Caputo, John D. The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion, 65).

"A yes always renders thanks to this danger [the 'menace of forgetting']...." (Derrida, Jacques. A Number of Yes, 132-33).

The Postcard.

indices, archives, libraries

When I was doing my undergraduate I began to develop (well, I didn't know that's what I was doing at the time, but it was) the research method I use now, which is three parts randomness and one part extremely good luck. I walk into a library, get myself familiar with the classification system, and wander through the rows of shelves until I see something interesting. This method does have its problems: for one, it means that I tend to be overwhelmed with information, sometimes to the point of feeling really awful because I'm too interested in too many things! But its strength is the connections is allows (forces) me to draw between ideas, disciplines, objects, and ways of thinking.

I remember going into the library on campus and wanting to find a book--a sort of magic index--that would contain and anticipate everything I'd ever be interested in: red silk ribbons next to the history of medicine next to botanical illustration next to print ephemera next to practical sewing next to Derrida. And everything would be linked to everything.

Turns out that index is the university, or maybe the people there and the university, or maybe the whole world, everything referring to something else. So my method is working for me--I'm developing my own index, one where improvisational music production does link up with love. Where memory, poesis, and desire are on the same page as Japanese craft books and natural-colored linen.

There's at least one person I can think of who would not be surprised by this--he pointed out my tendency to contradict myself (joyfully and wholeheartedly) early on in our friendship. He's also the person who got me thinking about indices and archives and libraries. All this is about systems of classification, which, in the end, are personal--even the ones we take for granted, like the Dewey Decimal System (not, I was shocked [shocked!] to find out, in use everywhere in the whole wide world), or color names, or kinds of weather.

As I've gone through my boxes, I've taken photos of some documents I don't need to keep but don't want to forget--things that connect, somehow, to what I'm doing and where I'm going. I've begun a sort of archive of them. The process of categorizing information and sorting documents is another way of learning how I think about networks between objects and ideas.

love letters

'One day/ I throw away all my love letters/ without noticing'

I'm going through boxes stored in my parents' garage. Finding all kinds of things I had forgotten (and, mostly, giving them away or recycling them, in the case of papers, without second thoughts). But I did find, in boxes and packets held together with decaying rubber bands, many, many love letters--from a high school boyfriend, from my college boyfriend, from the boy I dated the first year of graduate school (who began writing to me when I was a junior in high school), and from the printmaker (most of these written on the backs of proofs, or on Rives BFK).

Was I completely blind? I don't remember being amazed by how well-loved I was, at the time. I can't believe the love and kindness I found in these letters--and the humor, the tenderness, and the sweetness. I hope I was aware. I hope I was as sweet to them.

I guess I was a little surprised that I didn't feel regret as I read the letters and went through the tiny gifts I'd kept with them--a New York subway token, a tiny mirror made in an architecture lab, packets of lemon juice. I felt glad I'd had these boys and men to teach me about relationships and friendship. I felt really aware, too, that despite their goodness, and despite the importance of my relationships with them, I'd made the right choice when I needed to move on. Anaïs Nin: And then the day came/ when the risk/ it took to remain tight/ in a bud/ was more painful/ than the risk/ it took/ to blossom.

There could have been no 'blossoming' without such kind care in the first place. I put the boxes of letters back in the garage for now.

Derrida on love

"This love means an affirmative desire towards the Other--to respect the Other, to pay attention to the Other, not to destroy the otherness of the Other--and this is the preliminary affirmation, even if afterwards because of this love, you ask questions. There is some negativity in deconstruction. I wouldn't deny this. You have to criticise, to ask questions, to challenge and sometimes to oppose. What I have said is that in the final instance, deconstruction is not negative although negativity is no doubt at work. Now, in order to criticise, to negate, to deny, you have first to say 'yes'. When you address the Other, even if it is to oppose the Other, you make a sort of promise--that is, to address the Other as Other, not to reduce the otherness of the Other, and to take into account the singularity of the Other. That's an irreducible affirmation, it's the original ethics, if you want. So from that point of view, there is an ethics of deconstruction. Not in the usual sense, but there is an affirmation. You know, I often use a quote from Rosensweig or even from Levinas which says that the 'yes' is not a word like others, that even if you do not pronounce the word, there is a 'yes' implicit in every language, even if you multiply the 'no', there is a 'yes'. And this is even the case with Heidegger. You know Heidegger, for a long time, for years and years kept saying that thinking started with questioning, that questioning (fragen) is the dignity of thinking. And then one day, without contradicting this statement, he said 'yes, but there is something even more originary than questioning, than this piety of thinking,' and it is what he called zusage, which means to acquiesce, to accept, to say 'yes', to affirm. So this zusage is not only prior to questioning, but it is supposed by any questioning. To ask a question, you must first tell the Other that I am speaking to you. Even to oppose or challenge the Other, you must say 'at least I speak to you', 'I say yes to our being in common together'. So this is what I meant by love, this reaffirmation of the affirmation."

(From here. Emphasis mine.)

manifesto

I love the life I've chosen. I'm proud of it, if I may be allowed to be proud of it for a moment. I'm happy with the ways I've learned to love people and take care of them. I'm aware often of my heart getting bigger and of feeling more capable of care and love.

I feel awed by the luck I've had--all the lucky breaks, from my MFA (acceptance, classmates, advisers), to my book, to getting the job in France, to coming to England. And the luck that preceded that--the luck of having a family who love one another; of growing up in a church that puts love first, as well; of being surrounded by books and music and art and possibility. I know not everyone has this (or wants it, maybe. I can't presume to know what anyone else might want).

I'm thankful for my parents, who showed me from when I was tiny that making things myself was freeing and joy-giving. I'm convinced my imagination and creativity are my best assets--for myself, as I can keep myself entertained and interested in almost anything, and for the people around me, too.

Of everything, what I'd like to do with my life is make the kind of luck I've had available to the people I come in contact with. I'm trying to be more and more open. Where openness stands for love, I suppose. More loving. Luck and love (again); for me, they're bound up together.

It's not Pollyanna. I know bad stuff happens. I think I've gone through some of that (although when I think comparatively, I still find the word 'lucky' fits). I know there's hard stuff still to come, too--that's the way life is. It's that I'd rather, as much as I can, take the hard times and make them useful for this loving. I'm aiming away from bitterness.

Sometimes I feel like I only write a few things, over and over: 'yes,' 'lucky,' 'love.' Well, I suppose those are good things to repeat, if repetition's bound to happen anyhow. I hope you don't mind reading them.

on the list of things I don't need to hear again

"Ladies and gentlemen, the vibration you're feeling is engine failure. We're going to be heading back into Cleveland."

Yikes.

Whew.