From dissonance to consonance

Today I looked up resolution in the dictionary. And by dictionary, I mean the Internet.  (Sidebar: I do actually own a physical dictionary. I never use it. Thinking about this kind of  makes me sad. Not sad enough to go get it.)

According the Random  House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary (no, really), resolution has 13 definitions. Here are the expected ones: “a formal expression of intent made,” “a determination.”  Here are the ones that really tugged at me: “reduction to a simpler form; conversion” or “a progression from a dissonance to a consonance.” I don’t know if consonance always means simplicity but I think it implies focus and intentionality and clarity. I don’t think the world is going to stop being a loud and dissonant place. But I would very much like to be a constant kind of consonant.

With that in mind, here are my resolutions. Some of them are specific intentions, some of them are meant to edge my life closer to consonance…

1. Do something good for my body every single day.

2. Write my dissertation.

3. Learn to ask for things when I need them.

4.  Publish something.

5. Go to the dentist.

6. Give more freely (money, time, things, talents, forgiveness, love, gentleness, patience, self-care).

7. Renew my passport and take Kyle somewhere.

8. Drink more water than coffee.

9. Get another tattoo.

10. Return to blogging.

11. Visit Rose La Rose’s grave.

12. Become my own cheerleader.

13. Make home feel safer and simpler.

14. Get back on stage.

15. Keep growing out my hair.

16. Maintain order in inbox.

17. Suck it up already and do a poetry open mic.

18. Be a tourist.

19. Be a local.

20. Run a 5K.

21. See The Book of Mormon tour.

22. Teach something new.

23. Return to blogging.

24. Finish the symposium successfully.

25. Read books that have nothing to do with my dissertation.

26. Make a new friend at MATC.

27. Learn to make a latte.

28. Go to the beach.

29. Write more letters.

30. Pray.

I’d love to know…what’s on your list this year?

I did not realize that I liked Garrison Keillor

I am a big fan of poetry anthologies. Maybe this makes me a lazy reader. Perhaps if I was a real poetry-lover, I would have read so widely that I would just know and recall the perfect poem to read when I feel feelings and want to read other people feel feelings on the printed page. Because that’s why I read poetry. I read fiction to escape but I read poetry to dwell. I like collected works of moody geniuses like Dylan Thomas and Anne Sexton. I feel as though they are flavors I indulge. I might wake up and feel like I need a Walt Whitman to get me going or a Frank O’Hara to cleanse the emotional palate.  But I like anthologies, particularly the topically organized ones. Caroline Kennedy’s She Walks In Beauty is excellent (even though it is in the company of other hilariously gendered collections like The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: Poems for Men). I mostly share Kennedy’s taste in poets and, while I sort of totally doubt that they are all strictly Woman Poems, much of the material resonates with my own life experiences as, you guessed it, a woman. I like the ones I can flip to by theme.

And that’s why I picked up Good Poems for Hard Times. I was hesitant. I had an undeserved bias against Garrison Keillor because I have, at times, found his radio program seriously irritating. I have even said that I hated Garrison Keillor. I take it back. I’m really sorry, Garrison Keillor. It turns out that I was wrong about you. You sir…are a gentleman and a scholar and also a great curator of poems. It turns out that this is a skill for which you are actually known professionally. So this is my public apology to you for judging you based solely on some radio dramas you performed that I did not enjoy as a child.

I highly recommend this volume for your worst days, or your best…because the best day and the worst day probably aren’t that far apart except for the one to two terrible or wonderful things that happen to make a day what it is. I’m sharing a small excerpt from one poem in the book and maybe it will mean something to you the way it did to me when I read it tonight.

“[Wisdom] which also knows it magnifies the Lord,

defying the demon, being the only release,

oddly enough, from fear, being its own reward,

which is also wise, is faith, is hope, is peace,

is tender mercy, over and over again,

until, at last, is love, is love. Amen.”

- from “Job (Job 28:28)” by William Baer

The Kind of Heartbreak You Pay For

Some achey-breaky stuff I’m loving right now:

This song. “In the dark of this place, there's the glow of your face. There's the dust on the screen of this broken machine. And I can't help but feel that I've made some mistake but I let it go.”¹ It’s a deeply honest prayer. And one that resonates for me.

I was reading at Coffee Shop Formerly Known as Caribou today and laughed so loudly and suddenly that the lady at the next table leaned over to ask what I was reading. Two pages later, I had to take off my fogged up glasses to sob. It’s a sneaky read that lures you in with its hilariously honest narrator and then knifes you in the gut. "My father drops the mitt in the grass and pulls me into a tight hug, exactly like he never did before the stroke. [...] He steps back, keeping his hands on my shoulders. I wonder how old he thinks I am today. 'Where's Hailey?' he says. That narrows it down a bit. I turn away so he won't see the searing pain that momentarily melts my features. In the world he woke up in today, he loves me and Hailey's still alive, and it's like I'm standing outside in the rain, peering through the window and wishing I could come in from the cold and warm my chilled bones at the fire of his dementia. 'She'll be along soon,' I say."²

You know you’ve made it when they ask you to give a TED Talk. Recently heard Amanda Palmer’s talk on NPR: “The Art of Asking.” I’m a weeper by nature but I dare you not to tear up a little bit when she talks about her time as a street performer:  “And my eyes would say, 'Thank you. I see you.' And their eyes would say, 'Nobody ever sees me. Thank you.'"³ Gah.

End Notes

1. Koenig, Ezra, and Rostam Batmanglij. "Ya Hey." Rec. 2011-2013. Modern Vampires of the City. Vampire Weekend. Rostam Batmanglij, Ariel Rechtshaid, 2013. CD.
2. Tropper, Jonathan. How to Talk to a Widower. New York: Bantam Books. 2007. Print.
3. Palmer, Amanda. "The Art of Asking." Lecture. TEDTalks. 1 Mar. 2013. YouTube. Web. 6 July 2013.

"Do you know how to get home from here?"

The other night I was walking through a store. It was getting late and I was getting that kind of weird, lonely feeling I get when it gets dark outside. I'm not so great with the dark.

I stopped to stare at these supercutewedgesthatarereallyinrightnow, the ones that come in that weird peachy crayola color that fashion bloggers have started calling "nude" - we'll ignore both the inherent white privilege in declaring a peachy shade of Caucasian The Color of Nudity and also that my own experience of nudeness does not involve anything close to that color but sure. 

I hadn't realized how dark it had gotten outside or that I might not be the only person in the world who hates feeling lost when I heard a small, worried voice. 

"Mooommm?" 

He was probably seven. Six, maybe. His eyes were large (or maybe they just seemed large because he looked so panicky). 

"Mom?" He was running a little to catch up with her as she headed for the registers.

"Mmhmm..." she said, not looking at him, or at anything in particular.

"Um, do you know how to get home from here?"

Her eyes darted down at him and he grabbed her hand.

"Yeah, honey," she said.

"Okay."

I kept walking, trying hard not to bring my hand up to feel the squeeze inside my chest cavity. 

Maybe that's why I really hate the dark. Maybe I just always thought I'd get to this point on my life-map where being an adult would stop being deeply, deeply terrifying. Somewhere along the line - and I honestly can't remember when this happened - someone determined that I was legally capable of driving my car without calling home every hour and paying my bills and deciding if I was going to eat ice cream for dinner and finding my own way home in the dark. I guess I just haven't gotten over that tiny panic that I'm not old enough to be doing this, that I don't really know how to get home from anywhere, at all.