What microbial thoughts
reside in the seams of each day,
overlooked and fertile,
driven by a force more primal than will?
As a child, my mother taught me
how to crack open the bones
that lent her hearty soups flavor.
The smooth, gray, curving armor of each rib
split easily from end to end,
its splintered edges offering up
the soft marrow residing within,
the medulla ossium ruba,
an interstitial secret
bringing warmth to our daily needs.
The same warmth pulses
within the recesses of the darkest nadir,
the deep of the Mariana.
Her fissures are the conduit,
umbilical cord to our molten Heart that sustains
and attests, "Revelation comes in not a flood,
but a trickle."
Wednesday afternoon -
these days are preset, each hour
molded by the heavy hand of intent.
Interwoven are the minutes,
mere and precious, between purposes,
between points, undefined,
when suddenly
I am in the primordial state myself,
thoughts teeming and subliming,
luxuriating in the richness of free-form,
until the rift
closes up again.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Season Poems
Season Poem 1: Fall
Some days in autumn,
the season is tugged along by
strong gusts whose fingers catch in the foliage,
and loosen leaves that have ripened to a rich red,
or yellow like the soft peel of an apple,
speckled like an egg
on tempestuous afternoons,
clouds roam across the celestial plain,
the herd kicking up a soft flurry that touches down
on our faces, heavier than mist
morning arrives in the gritty leftovers of a storm.
With the rhythmic cadence
of a cat's tongue against milk,
wandering sandals
slap the ground's grainy detritus
onto dry soles
in search of a daily coffee
the slate of the sky reflects each
slick slab of asphalt that
daily collects another layer of the shedding season,
a tessellation
of the reds,
apple peel yellows,
and the specked eggs
that march on until November.
Season Poem 2: Fracture
There is a time of stripping away,
when we get to see
the structure underneath.
In spring,
the spine of each leaf
lengthens
and bisects, lengthens
a bit more,
and continues to split
and elongate at a snail's pace
until it is broad like an open palm
and ridged like a coastline.
In fall,
the retreating crawl
of lush coverage
reveals the spidery lattice from which
life sprang,
months ago -
knobby fingers are hardy as
veins in an infinite cycle,
begetting capillaries,
always birthed from arteries,
thicker than water swirling
in a subtly numbered,
dedicated loop.
I can't say
it doesn't bring me to tears
to see nature's ellipsis camouflaged
against the cloak of each season,
as summer beats slow,
lub-dub shuffle drags long,
like tree branch shadows
at noon in winter.
Some days in autumn,
the season is tugged along by
strong gusts whose fingers catch in the foliage,
and loosen leaves that have ripened to a rich red,
or yellow like the soft peel of an apple,
speckled like an egg
on tempestuous afternoons,
clouds roam across the celestial plain,
the herd kicking up a soft flurry that touches down
on our faces, heavier than mist
morning arrives in the gritty leftovers of a storm.
With the rhythmic cadence
of a cat's tongue against milk,
wandering sandals
slap the ground's grainy detritus
onto dry soles
in search of a daily coffee
the slate of the sky reflects each
slick slab of asphalt that
daily collects another layer of the shedding season,
a tessellation
of the reds,
apple peel yellows,
and the specked eggs
that march on until November.
Season Poem 2: Fracture
There is a time of stripping away,
when we get to see
the structure underneath.
In spring,
the spine of each leaf
lengthens
and bisects, lengthens
a bit more,
and continues to split
and elongate at a snail's pace
until it is broad like an open palm
and ridged like a coastline.
In fall,
the retreating crawl
of lush coverage
reveals the spidery lattice from which
life sprang,
months ago -
knobby fingers are hardy as
veins in an infinite cycle,
begetting capillaries,
always birthed from arteries,
thicker than water swirling
in a subtly numbered,
dedicated loop.
I can't say
it doesn't bring me to tears
to see nature's ellipsis camouflaged
against the cloak of each season,
as summer beats slow,
lub-dub shuffle drags long,
like tree branch shadows
at noon in winter.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Identity in a New Land
Hot on the heels of the busiest three months I've had in a while, I'm finally taking a huge - HUGE - breather and escaping to the Pacific Northwest with the hubby. YES, two months after tying the knot, we are finally going on our honeymoon!! For the first time in a long while, we are really getting a chance to spend some together outside of the shroud of familiarity in which we've wrapped ourselves...no kitties (sorry, Grundton & Nicholas), no Philly students, no stifling summer sweat of the east coast - hell, even the beer is different up here.
Actually, lots of things are different. There is an undefined, unsettled quality about experiencing a city like Seattle when you've just come from a place as stereotyped and easily labeled in the collective American mind as Philadelphia. My subjective, uninformed impression of Seattle is limited to a few key facts - rainy, near Canada, setting of Frasier, and birthplace of Starbucks and grunge - that are limited in their connotative reach, paling in comparison to the public impression of Philadelphia as dangerous, rough around the edges, blue-collar, and unrefined. Granted, Chris and I spent a handful of hours in a limited part of the city, after an exhausting day that began at 4:30am eastern time and ended with a three-hour time difference; nonetheless, as powerful as first impressions are, I certainly came away from our first day in Seattle distinctly lacking one.
Atop the Space Needle yesterday afternoon, the presence of the groups of teens loitering around Seattle Center prompted a discussion about identity that Chris and I had left off over a year ago, at a time when I was struggling with my own religious identity (or rather, nonreligious identity, as I had previously identified as atheist). The process of learning relies on the honing of extremes - we take in the rules of the world first by polarizing complex ideas, and only as they become more familiar to us do we learn the exceptions that add nuance to our understanding, in effect creating more finely-grained bifurcations of what we take in. I believe that the process of self-discovery follows this pattern. As tweens and teens we take on oversized personalities and try on the costumed labels created by society to see what fits. We clumsily turn outward to begin that attempt at finding ourselves, leading to those cringe-worthy phenomena (and lucrative commercial niches) like black lipstick, spiked chokers, and, on the other side of the hill, pink polo shirts with the collars popped and plaid shorts (both unisex looks, natch). As we mature, the identities we try on become less clownish, but I still believe there is a very fine line at which we stop looking to external dictates to tell us who we are, and actually start examining fully inward. Truly, I think this is a difficult journey requiring a lot of self-awareness and courage, and as weak creatures as we are, no doubt there are many who are never able to fully get to cross this line in their lifetimes.
(To be continued...)
Actually, lots of things are different. There is an undefined, unsettled quality about experiencing a city like Seattle when you've just come from a place as stereotyped and easily labeled in the collective American mind as Philadelphia. My subjective, uninformed impression of Seattle is limited to a few key facts - rainy, near Canada, setting of Frasier, and birthplace of Starbucks and grunge - that are limited in their connotative reach, paling in comparison to the public impression of Philadelphia as dangerous, rough around the edges, blue-collar, and unrefined. Granted, Chris and I spent a handful of hours in a limited part of the city, after an exhausting day that began at 4:30am eastern time and ended with a three-hour time difference; nonetheless, as powerful as first impressions are, I certainly came away from our first day in Seattle distinctly lacking one.
Atop the Space Needle yesterday afternoon, the presence of the groups of teens loitering around Seattle Center prompted a discussion about identity that Chris and I had left off over a year ago, at a time when I was struggling with my own religious identity (or rather, nonreligious identity, as I had previously identified as atheist). The process of learning relies on the honing of extremes - we take in the rules of the world first by polarizing complex ideas, and only as they become more familiar to us do we learn the exceptions that add nuance to our understanding, in effect creating more finely-grained bifurcations of what we take in. I believe that the process of self-discovery follows this pattern. As tweens and teens we take on oversized personalities and try on the costumed labels created by society to see what fits. We clumsily turn outward to begin that attempt at finding ourselves, leading to those cringe-worthy phenomena (and lucrative commercial niches) like black lipstick, spiked chokers, and, on the other side of the hill, pink polo shirts with the collars popped and plaid shorts (both unisex looks, natch). As we mature, the identities we try on become less clownish, but I still believe there is a very fine line at which we stop looking to external dictates to tell us who we are, and actually start examining fully inward. Truly, I think this is a difficult journey requiring a lot of self-awareness and courage, and as weak creatures as we are, no doubt there are many who are never able to fully get to cross this line in their lifetimes.
(To be continued...)
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Supermoon, Hello & Goodbye, and other Spring Things
The arrival of spring has nothing to do with the date on a calendar - it is a weekend that entices you to emerge from your winter-worn niches with great exuberance, with the treat of good humor that promises to beget more good humor. Last year it came the first weekend of March, and I still remember that Sunday, how Chris and I drove up from Maryland after visiting my mom. Our winter coats were laid over the backseats of the car, and we zoomed up 95 feeling such lightness, having shed the weight of winter from our minds and our own bodies.
Perhaps in anticipation of this feeling, for the last month or so Chris and I have been looking for a new place to live in Philadelphia. We were ready to emerge from our five-year hibernation, on City Avenue, in this apartment that's absorbed that many years of growth, change, clutter, and routine, feeling as much physical wear as that restless, gnawing sense of sameness. We looked forward to starting our married life in a new place - somewhere bigger for the cats (for Grundton to explore, and for Nicholas to hide from Grundton's shenanigans), and embedded in the city, not just by longitude and latitude, but by elevation as well.
I liked apartment hunting! Although sifting through craigslist postings got tedious at times, I enjoyed harnessing the excitement of envisioning a new life, and molding that vision to the places that seemed (even if only on paper) like a good fit. We whittled down bookmarked postings to a handful of places that we saw in person... On the "likely" end was a 3-level rowhome a few blocks away from Johnny Brenda's, with the 3rd floor being a "penthouse" master bedroom. The owners had really given the place a lift - installed surround sound, built-in bookshelves/entertainment center, added a chandelier to the kitchen, etc. We also debated a place in Art Museum that had a really gorgeous redone kitchen and living room, with a new fireplace, floating stairs, and a sunlit backyard. On the bottom of our list was a trinity home in Washington Square West that we dubbed "the creepy house". Photographs of the home were quite alluring, with exposed brick walls and a wide, slightly convex 3rd floor bedroom window, as was its proximity to about four different cupcake shoppes with impressive window displays. Then we toured the place, and realized it was cramped, a total fixer-upper (broken window panes, among other things), and totally creepy. I guess these "trinity" homes mean they're 3 floors tightly stacked atop one another...the stairs to each floor are a set of steep, rickety, and narrow spiralling wooden steps that pose a Mt.-Everestian feat for any person who's had one too many drinks. I imagined Chris, after a night of drinking, slipping on the stairs, knocking himself out, and wedging his unconscious body in that narrow spiral staircase, entrapping my own feeble self on the third floor with no way out.
Finally, last weekend we found a place in Northern Liberties that I really fell in love with right away. It had plenty of space, was in a great location, and had lots of the criteria we were looking for (spacious kitchen for Chris to do his cooking in comfort, hardwood floors that didn't absorb kitty messes the way carpets do, lots of storage space for our crap, etc.). After checking it out a second time yesterday and negotiating on the rent, we signed papers (woohoo!!) and celebrated by walking four blocks next to North Bowl and getting lunch at Dos Segundos. We'll start moving our stuff out gradually, but the big move will likely come in May after the wedding is no longer a priority.
Of course, no big change - even a happy one - is without giving something up. Leaving apartment 1115 in Executive House means saying goodbye to some pretty sweet things as well as things that just have become a part of our lives, like being regulars at neighborhood restaurants where the staff knows us (Shangri-La, Ginza, Primavera, Sangkee), having a plethora of nearby parks and lush neighborhoods for frisbee-tossing and Saturday morning strolls, and most of all, our 20-foot balcony and its accompanying view of the Philly skyline and (sometimes even better) different sky moods:
(dawn in January) 
(impending storm in May)
(after a storm in late summer)
(Supermoon last night)
Of course, it also means saying goodbye to sharing a building with college students (hearing the tail end of an elevator conversation that ended in "smelled like vagina" does not happen when with real adults), having to deal with driving on Lancaster any time I'm heading into West Philly (3-mile-an-hour trolleys, ungodly traffic, fresh potholes daily, the intersection at 52nd that is pure hell), and the omnipresent roving groups of giggling, suburban teens ("oh my god, I can't believe he said that!"). I can live with saying goodbye to all of that.
I'm looking forward to shedding all of winter's weight in the next few short months. Stay tuned for more updates on the wedding, moving, and life!
Perhaps in anticipation of this feeling, for the last month or so Chris and I have been looking for a new place to live in Philadelphia. We were ready to emerge from our five-year hibernation, on City Avenue, in this apartment that's absorbed that many years of growth, change, clutter, and routine, feeling as much physical wear as that restless, gnawing sense of sameness. We looked forward to starting our married life in a new place - somewhere bigger for the cats (for Grundton to explore, and for Nicholas to hide from Grundton's shenanigans), and embedded in the city, not just by longitude and latitude, but by elevation as well.
I liked apartment hunting! Although sifting through craigslist postings got tedious at times, I enjoyed harnessing the excitement of envisioning a new life, and molding that vision to the places that seemed (even if only on paper) like a good fit. We whittled down bookmarked postings to a handful of places that we saw in person... On the "likely" end was a 3-level rowhome a few blocks away from Johnny Brenda's, with the 3rd floor being a "penthouse" master bedroom. The owners had really given the place a lift - installed surround sound, built-in bookshelves/entertainment center, added a chandelier to the kitchen, etc. We also debated a place in Art Museum that had a really gorgeous redone kitchen and living room, with a new fireplace, floating stairs, and a sunlit backyard. On the bottom of our list was a trinity home in Washington Square West that we dubbed "the creepy house". Photographs of the home were quite alluring, with exposed brick walls and a wide, slightly convex 3rd floor bedroom window, as was its proximity to about four different cupcake shoppes with impressive window displays. Then we toured the place, and realized it was cramped, a total fixer-upper (broken window panes, among other things), and totally creepy. I guess these "trinity" homes mean they're 3 floors tightly stacked atop one another...the stairs to each floor are a set of steep, rickety, and narrow spiralling wooden steps that pose a Mt.-Everestian feat for any person who's had one too many drinks. I imagined Chris, after a night of drinking, slipping on the stairs, knocking himself out, and wedging his unconscious body in that narrow spiral staircase, entrapping my own feeble self on the third floor with no way out.
Finally, last weekend we found a place in Northern Liberties that I really fell in love with right away. It had plenty of space, was in a great location, and had lots of the criteria we were looking for (spacious kitchen for Chris to do his cooking in comfort, hardwood floors that didn't absorb kitty messes the way carpets do, lots of storage space for our crap, etc.). After checking it out a second time yesterday and negotiating on the rent, we signed papers (woohoo!!) and celebrated by walking four blocks next to North Bowl and getting lunch at Dos Segundos. We'll start moving our stuff out gradually, but the big move will likely come in May after the wedding is no longer a priority.
Of course, no big change - even a happy one - is without giving something up. Leaving apartment 1115 in Executive House means saying goodbye to some pretty sweet things as well as things that just have become a part of our lives, like being regulars at neighborhood restaurants where the staff knows us (Shangri-La, Ginza, Primavera, Sangkee), having a plethora of nearby parks and lush neighborhoods for frisbee-tossing and Saturday morning strolls, and most of all, our 20-foot balcony and its accompanying view of the Philly skyline and (sometimes even better) different sky moods:
(dawn in January) 
(impending storm in May)
(after a storm in late summer)
(Supermoon last night)Of course, it also means saying goodbye to sharing a building with college students (hearing the tail end of an elevator conversation that ended in "smelled like vagina" does not happen when with real adults), having to deal with driving on Lancaster any time I'm heading into West Philly (3-mile-an-hour trolleys, ungodly traffic, fresh potholes daily, the intersection at 52nd that is pure hell), and the omnipresent roving groups of giggling, suburban teens ("oh my god, I can't believe he said that!"). I can live with saying goodbye to all of that.
I'm looking forward to shedding all of winter's weight in the next few short months. Stay tuned for more updates on the wedding, moving, and life!
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Are you there, Freud? It's me, Amy
This is the dream I had last night. Why my brain made me dream this, I don't know. Here's the dream:
*cue chimes and wavy, distorted dream transition sequence*
I am walking down the street. A car going in the opposite direction pulls up next to me. The driver leans over and asks, "Excuse me - where are the Gilman steps?"
I pause and think. Ah, yes, I know where they are. I point ahead, in the direction that the driver came from. "It's over this way - I'm heading near there right now. If you actually make a U-y right now and want to drive along with me, I can lead you over there." I beam and feel warm and fuzzy. What a good person I am! Just like the kind of person I am when I'm awake. *smile*
The driver agrees. He pulls past me to make a nice, wide U-turn. My back is turned as I wait for him.
I turn back around and urge the driver onward. I suddenly notice that he is now no longer in a car but in a wheelchair. The other side of the street that he's U-turned onto is no longer a smooth stretch of asphalt, but heavily under construction as a gradually descending set of concrete steps. Still incomplete, in the place of the middle set of steps is a rocky, dark, yawning chasm that has yet to be filled. The man is rolling himself down the steps, per my instruction, oblivious to the gaping hole awaiting him.
I panic as I process this new scenery and connect the dots of cause and effect. Oh. God. "STOP!!" I start screaming - "Don't go any --!!"
TOO LATE.
The poor man doesn't hear me in time. As the last step disappears under him, wheelchair and all, he plummets into the chasm and dies. Shock grabs a hold of me and I turn in utter horror, unable to watch. Simultaneously, the weighty reality of guilt rushes in, and I'm paralyzed with the realization that I was the proximal cause of an innocent man's death.
*cue chimes and wavy, distorted dream transition sequence*
WHAT IN THE FUCK IS MY BRAIN TRYING TO DO TO ME?? THIS IS TRAUMATIZING! THIS IS REALLY FUCKING TRAUMATIZING!! In the middle of a busy work week, in the midst of planning a wedding, I do NOT need to wake up first thing in the morning with the blood of an innocent human being on my hands, dream or not. I am really fucking mad at my subconscious - where does it think up this sick shit?!? This is really a sick joke.
And what pisses me off is that I can't do anything to get back at it. This is really the truest form of guerrilla warfare - while my big lumbering consciousness is asleep, the subconsciousness emerges from the mist like a pack of poop-flinging chimpanzees and forces me to watch a human being - a CRIPPLED human being, no less - fall into a giant hole in the earth and die. Read this definition of "guerrilla warfare" from Wikipedia and tell me that's NOT what my brain is doing to me (emphases my own):
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians (or "irregulars") used military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and less-mobile traditional army, or strike a vulnerable target, and withdraw almost immediately.
MMMMHHMMM.
To add insult to injury, the dream continues like this:
*resume dream sequence*
...and I'm paralyzed with the realization that I was the proximal cause of an innocent man's death. As I begin sobbing, shaking, and otherwise turning into a soppy, goopy emotional mess, two figures emerge out of the air. It's President Truman and Anonymous, Non-Descript Old-Timey President from early American history (you know, they all kind of looked the same), except since there were no photographs of presidents before Polk in 1845, the Old-Timey President appears to me as a cartoon character.
President Truman and Old-Timey Cartoon President proceed to comfort me, rubbing my shoulders and cooing soothing words in my ear, that Wheelchair Man's death wasn't my fault, accidents happen, etc. etc. Gradually, I'm swayed by their words. The dream concludes with my arms around their shoulders, hollering, "Hey, Chris! Can you get a photo of me with the presidents?"
*end dream sequence*
So my brain causes me to murder a man, begin to suffer the moral consequences, and then just tries to smooth everything over with a comical presidential pardon. NO!! It doesn't get let off the hook that easily!! Fucking little imp.
The last time I got pissed off at my brain when I woke up, it had made me dream about making out with Michael Scott. I woke up disgusted and confused.
I remain disgusted, confused, and angry to this day.
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