Meditation on Brown

It's April brown. It's cabin-crazy, Sunday brown

and we haven't seen the sun

for seasons. We'd rather see brown

than be blue, and so we are driving

the gravel-sparse county, not knowing

where we're going. We feel the pull of it.

It's caution that turns our music down

and makes us realize our stories

have no end or beginning.

It surrounds us: ditch and patchwork fields:

the straw and the clod, the fissure and crack

of a wet wound healed and reopened. We ride

parallel the slope and climb. We tic off time

in terms of sand and loam and clay unbaked.

We witness slide, the silt, and off-kilter hills.

Run off makes for unplanned ponds.

The feathers of ducks are the only green thing.

Otherwise, it's dead grass

in the unfenced yards of people who

know no neighbors. If they planted flowers,

they planted them long ago. Wild bulbs

make their maybe promises of crocus,

hyacinth, daffodil. The house on the hill

is a fortress, whose fence opens out to field.

This dirt is machine worked

or hand sifted by winter that knew no

letting up. Don't shoot the messenger.

Winter is a precursor to that thing

we've been waiting for. I'm sure Spring

is tucked somewhere out here

past the city limits signs. Bless its softness.

Bless the sometimes disappearance of snowflakes.

Bless the impressionistic tracks

and the roads still closed to traffic

that doesn't exist. Bless the paw print

and the hoof beaten sod, the dust we grind

into the welcome mat. Bless the boots

drying outside the door, bless the cat

who chatters at squirrels. Bless the cold

linoleum. Bless the steeping cup of tea,

and the hands making prayer hands around it.

Bless the returned lovers trading heat

and hoping winter will soon be over

under this familiar white blanket.

Memento

Isn't every kitchen yellow? And doesn't everyone have a radio sitting on that room's version of a mantle? It was there like clockwork, like whatever saying explains reliability. The day began and ended with that leather box. KRLC 1350 and coffee, call-in classifieds while sitting around the table eating weekday Shredded Wheat and toast more butter than bread or weekend feasts of meat and eggs served sunny side up and dark with the grease she cooked them in.We were unapologetically country. She whistled mainly, but occasionally I heard the rasp of her voice working its way over a choice line. Hank and Waylon and Willie offered advice for living, and I took it. You can't be a daddy's girl with no daddy, but thankfully there was always grandma and the country. Then cancer and its own gravel roads: radiation with its tattoo scars and peeled skin, the pain pump, hospice and that final January day. I'm not sure if music was playing when I cooked the food she couldn't eat. Grease was its own medicine we'd pretend and she'd move it around on the plate as if spreading it out was taking it into her body. There was no sound at all those nights I watched as she moved her lips, speaking to no one I could see. When she could no longer drink, I learned to wet her tongue with the sponges they gave me which reminded me of childhood lollipops. There was no soundtrack then, only my dog sleeping beneath her bed and crying coming from other rooms. I can remember when I thought it morbid that she had it all planned out: flying over the farm, my uncle and her friend tend to her land once more in this different way. But things don't always go as planned. Sometimes young die before old, friendships grow cold, and a plane becomes a hand. Sky becomes the distance from hip to winter-killed grass. What songs were humming through my head then, holding ashes with more bone than I'd imagined? What songs were echoing through a house being emptied of all she'd ever owned? What songs were contained in that tough leather that I took when told I could pick 3 things to remember her by?

Ethnography

It's perfect timing that the little stranger has accompanied her daddy to class this day when I introduce ethnography. It's about why do we do the things we do. We'll study one bird to have something to say about the flock. Earlier, this little bird piped up. As I turned my back to write on the board, I heard, "Are you the wicked witch of the West? 'Cause that's what my daddy says." Her honesty is perfect and my cheeks burn beneath it. Her father dances a jig. He's danced before in a discussion about the power of words. We'd read an essay encouraging women to think themselves queens in a world where rappers pronounce them ho's and bitches. He compared those words to nigger at which point the static roared and I couldn't hear. When he was done, he apologized to the one black student in the room and the discussion resumed as if they were collectively trying to bury a body. There are days when they say what I could never teach, when the lesson isn't written in the plans. Then and now, I feel helpless. I want to erase it from the air, where it hangs long after they've left. I think witch stings a little but it doesn't burn like nigger must. It's not skin. I go on: Susan Orlean brought us "The American Man at Age 10," and I model technique on his daughter who has spent the hour doodling. She is 6. She likes 'ghetti best for dinner. Yellow is her favorite color. I ask, "Who is your favorite person in the world?" thinking she will say it's her dad, but she says "dog" instead and the students laugh and soon the air is lighter. At the end of the hour, the students leave with whatever they gather. I'm erasing when I feel the smallest pressure around my thigh. She is hugging me. She says, "You aren't really a witch at all."I'm left spinning, circling the way my dog does when he's trying to find the soft spot of a hard floor. My dog is, indeed, the world's best person because he doesn't speak but knows the certain number of rotations that makes the slumber easier. Whether my lesson plans hit or miss escapes him. He doesn't have time. He lives even in sleep: running limbs, the whimper, the always satisfied sigh.

Idaho Springtime

Partially bragging, I tell him three decades
might as well be a lifetime. I say I know
these roads like the back of my hand.
The truth is, I never get used to
not knowing margin from text. Where
does the road end and ditch begin?
And what about this wildness
that earlier said "Spring," yet the fields
aren't made of soil but sky,
and there's no horizon. Earlier,
I might have pointed to a hawk
atop a speed limit sign
or the farmhouse where border collie
runs herd, nipping at the heels of
his two horses who run like there's no
fence line to be pressed against. These
are my mile markers those mornings
after coffee disappears and the daily bread
is packed in a cooler. I bless his day,
kiss him clean of the sins we practice nightly,
this fine art of loving without saying
that word. This language of snow is so
fickle. He's wearing shorts
because the sun was shining earlier.
Now, the heater hums, and we bask
while forging the tracks that say we are
here, and thankfully, nearly there.

Big Ups

Lately, there have been glimpses of summer. I swear I'm not imagining it. I wore a t-shirt today...and a long-sleeved shirt...and a fleece vest...and a coat. And even though the wind fingered its way down through each and every layer like some handsy pervert, I felt the pleasure of the sun on my cheeks. My inner Veruca Salt was saying, "But Daddy, I WANT it!"

The trouble is, nicer weather brings anxiety. I rue my hibernate-in-winter tendencies. Sure, at the time, it feels good to hole up in a warm place. At the time, I feel no shame huddling under blankets like a grandma.

Add to that, my boyfriend perfected the art of hot chocolate. We've become, in fact, hot chocolate connoisseurs. Over the winter months, he has served up cocoa in all its sexy variations. It's been a kama sutra of chocolate hotness, as it were. Never was it made up of water. Once it was made with chocolate soy milk. Mainly it was made with cow milk, which I remembered, after a long stint of vegetarianism and anti-dairy, was good, even though I sometimes had to fight the mental thought of it tasting "cow-y," as if I was sucking at the cow's udder. I shuddered at the very thought of it, but that thought was fleeting.

I think I lost all judgment because of the accoutrements: the powdery marshmallows (much like the blue diamonds, yellow moons, green clovers, and red hearts in a box of Lucky Charms), the real marshmallows, the marshmallow fluff. This was the boxed, packet-o-cocoa but elevated to elixir status. Food of the Gods status. Youth serum.

Those were halcyon days. Alas, most good things cannot last. It began to unravel (as did I) as my boyfriend and I traveled back home after our weekly grocery shopping trip. The drive runs parallel to a path where people RUN and BIKE and wear tank tops and short shorts, and their arms aren't flappy like mine. Their thighs would not best be described as thunderous. In short, they are fit. I found myself thinking out loud about riding my bike along that path. This led to my boyfriend talking about joining the gym.

Before I knew it, I was crying. I was crying for the devil-may-care winter days when it's okay to carb load when there's no marathon in sight. I was crying for the formerly fit self who used to run five miles a day. I was crying because I have been paying for a year for a gym membership I've rarely used (I considered it a fat tax). I was crying because I knew the party was over. The fat lady had sung. I was crying because the fat lady (a.k.a. Aretha Franklin) is no longer fat.

As my poor befuddled boyfriend groped for the origin of my sadness, I found myself saying that it had to stop. It was a funeral of sorts. I was crying and unpacking the groceries we'd bought and mourning the purchases. Bye bye pesto and smoked mozarella potato chips. Bye bye deli cheese. Bye bye grease. Bye bye delicious coffee creamer that has absolutely no cream in it.

We didn't have our cocoa night cap that evening. The mood was somber. In the same manner that the Zen master wonders if one can hear the sound of one hand clapping, I wondered if I could cook and still eat.

So it begins. Soon, one cocoa-less night will lead to another, and before I know it, I won't miss it. Maybe. Let's not get crazy. I'm aiming for baby steps. I just have to keep reminding myself that eating healthier always leads to exercising, and those things lead to sleeker Wendy. And sleeker Wendy is sexier Wendy, the Wendy who seems to build herself up each winter only to whittle away at herself in Spring. I wouldn't say it's like the phoenix who rises out of the ashes--it's more psychosis than symbolic.

But oh I do love the rising. The rising is incremental. In so rising, there will be many days when I am not enough: not thin, no model, not statuesque. But then it happens. The curves begin to disappear from where they shouldn't be, thus emphasizing the curves in the correct places. The sun whispers to my skin, and my skin listens. I burn. I bronze, which is kind of statuesque. I shed my clothing like a snake sheds its skin. Mentally, of course. Mentally.

Mentally, I am the woman who walks past constructions sites and brings about wolf whistles and non-politically correct sexist pig commentary, which I, in fact, dig. In actuality, I really only want one construction worker thinking I'm hot, and so I'll shed winter mindset, one day at a time, sweet Jesus (or because my boyfriend is an atheist who does not want people to say, "God bless you" when he sneezes, he should insert "Good luck" here).

Tomorrow I'm taking up a friend on her offer. She teaches kick-boxing. On my second official day of spring break, when there's no earthly reason to get up early, I will be clearing the dancing sugar plums from my head by playing kicky punchy. And I will walk my dog which will hopefully turn to running with my dog.

The Ipod is ready. Fresh batteries? Check. Motivational music? Check. And I won't be alone. Black Keys are coming along. Michael Franti will be there. Shaggy will be there, singing "my" praises:


"BIG UP" - SHAGGY
Now this one dedicates to all the women that I please just big up for themself
Them the man them know say that the flush a bomb extra buff and rough
Shagsman and Rayvon is one new brand 'bout to become number one
Watch this

[Rayvon]
And you fi
Big up, big up
All of the women them big up, big up
All of the girl them big up, big up
All of the women them big up, big up
Whooey

See me go
Watch it go cop
Teaching it please stand up, please
Viva Apache full of pure make-up
When she walk pon street a whole heap of man big them up
Big up, big up
Gal you're fat and you're buff

[SHAGGY]
Gal you're fat and you're buff, expensive and rough
A put your hand inna the air and just big up
Gal if you're fat and you're buff, I know your comfort
Put your hand inna the air and just big up
Gal if you're fat and you're buff, another virgin bluff
Well put your hand inna the air and just big up
Gal if you're fat and you're buff and you're buffer or dapper
Put your hand inna the air and just big up

Say wa
Jump and skin out 'cause you know I say a sexy
Shout it out 'cause a you have the vinery
Bawl it out you big thing and healthy
We brought you up a man we called so leave I man me
Your hair style man it look well fancy
Tell the all of them say you have your man a ready
Your face a look like fi vow a night monkey
Hid no pain, top just like Apache
Come, come take it from the one named Shaggy
Tell the world you big thing and healthy

Fat and you're buff, expensive and rough
Well put your hand inna the air and just big up
Gal if you're fat and you're buff, I know your comfort
Put your hand inna the air and just big up
Gal if you're fat and you're buff and you're buffer or dapper
Put your hand inna the air and just big up

Well I don't want no man tell me woman no nice, ey
And I don't want no man tell me woman no sweet, eey
Don't want no man tell me woman no nice, woman no nice
Don't want no man tell me woman no sweet, ey

Well you fi
Big up, big up, now your poom-poom shorts
Big up, big up, now your body lick shirt
Big up, big up, now your catwoman-suit
Big up, big up, mini-skirt look cute

So me say Brooklyn man helped me big them up
And a Manville man helped me big them up
And a New York man helped me big them up
And Flatbush man say helped me big them up

And a big up yourself because you're fat and you're buff, gal (Big up)
Tell them say that you're fat and you're buff, gal (Big up)
Tell them you are the god of buff, gal (Big up)
Tell them you're expensive and rough, gal (Big up)
Tell them say that a you confess, gal (Big up)
Tell them say you're the virgin bluff

Fat and you're buff, expensive and rough
Well put your hand inna the air and just big up
Gal if you're fat and you're buff, I know your comfort
Put your hand inna the air and just big up
Gal if you're fat and you're buff and you're buffer or dapper
Put your hand inna the air and just sight, aha

Watch it go cop
Teaching it please stand up, please
Viva Apache full of pure make-up
When she walk pon street a whole heap of man big them up
Big up, big up, big up
Because you're fat and you're buff

Shagsman girl man she fat and she buff
Rayvon gal man she fat and she buff

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, ey
And me don't want no man say I fi work Angela
Oooh, oooh
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, ey
And me don't know King Kong, what if she know him, ya
Oooh

Big up, big up, now your poom-poom shorts
Big up, big up, now your body lick shirt
Big up, big up, now your catwoman-suit
Big up, big up, whooey

Raw Materials

raw [rɔː]

adjetivo

1. crudo(a) (food, silk); sin refinar (sugar); en bruto (statistics)

• to be raw -> estar crudo(a) (meat, vegetables)
• raw materials -> materias (f pl) primas
• raw recruit -> recluta (m) novato

2. agrietado(a) (skin)

• to get a raw deal (sentido figurado) -> ser tratado(a) injustamente
• to touch a raw nerve (sentido figurado) -> dar en lo más vivo

3. crudo(a) (weather, wind)

The Artist as a Young Woman

I'm talking about little Frida--she
of la casa azul she
of the unibrow she
of the disappearing leg she
before she was the "ribbon around the bomb."
She was once just a girl rubbing elbows
with revolutionaries she
pre"naive" art. She
not yet the eye of the storm she
not yet ground zero or the trailer house where
the most damage is done she
before she was Mrs. Diego i.e. shadow she
not yet his fuck you very much muse she
not yet a wife yet a lover to many. She
before she was an accident she
not yet the broken one she
when the womb might still hold she
pre bed ridden she
when mirrors weren't a friend she
who might have wielded a scalpel
instead of a brush she
who could swim in colorful skirts
not to hide her uneven legs but because
they were pretty. This was before she
parted her hair perfectly before she
sprouted flowers before she
courted parrots and black cats
of skulls and ripe fruit. This was before she
was the hunted the easy prey when she
wore her heart inside her blouse when she
hadn't yet cultivated a green thumb,
the ability to groomed jungles. I mean she
who painted monkeys which were not symbols
of lust but merely cute she
who drew stick trees and unicorns like
any other she. This was before the perpetual
self portrait before the ball and chain
before chasing the pain. This was youth
before she had five rings if we gauge a life
the way we measure a tree's growth. The she
not a half century, almost. She at life's entrance
and not in the end writing in a diary
hoping the exit was joyful. I mean she
who was too young to hope she'd never return.
I mean the she whose mouth
would be too small for too many pills.
I mean the she whose bed was messy
and filled with dreams still and not
whose death bed became
a tourist attraction.

--W

My History of Fire

What qualifies me to talk about it? Perhaps it is the fear of it--a fear I have for no good reason. If only my fears were reasonable. There weren't any childhood fires. That's not exactly true. If memory serves, there were conflagrations, but they weren't of the actual sort. Let's just say, I never got burned.

Sure I played with it. Who wouldn't? It's so beautiful, burning like anger, burning like hunger. Burning like. Burning like.

Burning like a burning, if you know what I mean.

Sometimes I held the magnifying glass. Other times, I was the ant feeling the heat.

Most of the time, however, I played it safe. I kept it contained. In the stomach pit. In the fireplace. A letter charred and sifting to the sink's bottom.

But we don't always burn our letters in sinks. Sometimes you need a forest. Tender tinder of trees, swaying, and a breeze to help it along.

That's not my story.

In order, here's what I knew to be true: Pine pitch chews like gum. You can't wield the axe; you can only look at the axe. It's your job to stack. Don't bother a sliver; it will work its way out eventually. On the mantle, there's a starburst clock that radiates its own heat. The Sunday paper may be thick, but it's the daily doings that catch best. If it isn't old enough, it will smoke. Pull the damper out, or it will smoke. You can buy powder that teases a rainbow from fire. When the electricity goes out, the fire is the only God you pray to. Chimneys eat smoke and send it skyward, so long as it burns clean. The smoke will break from the house like an SOS. There are things that look like smoke but aren't, like the queen bee and her minions who abandoned their meadow boxes. The fire smelled like honey for awile. The volunteer fire department will burn the chicken coop down and then fight it for the practice.

And then you grow up.

Fires are few and inbetween. You live your days in front of a furnace. Forced air heat. Forced.
You romanticize it. In your mind, the campfire blazes, and every ember pop is an opportunity. You think you love the one who can build a good fire. The skies grow dark every summer. You can't breathe. You're told not to go outside. You are in a valley, and you are fully engulfed with the idea of being swept away by fire. But the fires are burning miles away. The lingo is acres, helicopters, buckets, retardant...and then it's gone.

The fires you know now are the stuff of 6 o'clock news. They are neat. The fires fit tidy between sports and weather. Hardly anyone ever dies. You light candles with an apparatus that may as well be a third arm. It keeps the flame far from you. Fire comes in a jar, sits obediantly on the wick, and sizzles out when you're sloppy with the bath water. You don't know when you felt a burn last, and because the mind likes it and knows it more than the skin, you fear it.

Your heart beats faster when something on the burner begins to smoke. The alarm sounds, and you beat it with your open palm and scream, "Shut it! Shut it! Shut it!" How do you extinguish it? Salt? Throw a towel over it? Water? Water and oil don't mix. Don't give it air. Yet it's over before you need to choose. It's always over before your knowledge is tested.

And what of that fear that makes you go back and check over and over the burner that is always
never on?

--W

Maya Angelou said anger is fire.

Winston Churchill invoked fire when he said anything that attempted to fly should be set on fire.

Thomas Jefferson used fire as a means of talking about war and being tenacious about defending ourselves: "If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it."

Benjamin Franklin realized that what makes a home is "food and fire for the mind as well as the body."

He also found fire a necessity in terms of finding a life partner: "Never take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in."

"Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself," said Mark Twain.

"As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words. " --William Shakespeare.

Mae West said, "A man can be short and dumpy and getting bald but if he has fire, women will like him. "

"Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice." --Robert Frost

George Washington said, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."


"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience. " --George Washington

Napoleon knew of trial by fire. He said, "When soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one rank in my eyes."

Emily Dickinson used fire as a means of describing poetry: "If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

T.S. Eliot knows that history and its ghosts speak louder than the living: "The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living."

"We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it. " --Tennessee Williams

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, "Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

"To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark." --Victor Hugo

Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. "

"Every idea is an incitement... Eloquence may set fire to reason. " --Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. " Jorge Luis Borges

"Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell," said Joan Crawford


"So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us." --Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard

"To cause the face to appear in a mass of flame make use of the following: mix together thoroughly petroleum, lard, mutton tallow and quick lime. Distill this over a charcoal fire, and the liquid which results can be burned on the face without harm." --Harry Houdini

"Eating coals of fire has always been one of the sensational feats of the Fire Kings, as it is quite generally known that charcoal burns with an extremely intense heat." --Harry Houdini

"Fire has always been and, seemingly, will always remain, the most terrible of the elements." --Harry Houdini

"I'm cautious about using fire. It can become theatrical. I am interested in the heat, not the flames." --Andy Goldsworthy