Jc's Musings

Finally

2009-01-02T13:44:00.002-05:00

I have lost the need to convince you.
Now, I can breathe, and be who I am. Who I know myself to be.
Perhaps, at some point, you will know too.

In an attempt to express a feeling…

2008-11-24T16:10:00.009-05:00

The touch of a hand stirs a desire within.
Wetness cloaks the surface as the depth of the soul is penetrated.
Feet on the floor, the sneezing ceases and we gasp to catch our breath while reaching forward to find balance.

I WANT POETRY

2008-09-22T00:14:00.002-04:00

I want poetry.

I long
to marvel at lines I have written on paper.
Stories and tales that flow,
like rivers lapping shores.
Bird's wings
full,
s t r e t c h i n g...

Moon glow on water.
Skirts at knees.

Sandals and toes freshly painted,
chilled wine,
ice cubes,
and laughter.

Wheels spinning on bicycles,
playing cards in tires,
scratches and scabs on knees.

Girls flirting.
Boys spitting.
Pianos.

Out of tune ballerinas,
baseballs hitting
bats,
flying out of caves
caught in hair.

Water dripping.
Waves crashing
Fresh bread,
out of the oven with butter and sugar and cut flowers.

Mint juleps.
Funny jokes.
Kick,
ball.

Kids running in packs,
down hallways up staircases.
Batons
banging on metal lockers...

Poetry.
f r e e s m y m i n d
Cleans the cobwebs from my brain my soul my longing for touch for love for wind on my skin...

The twinge,
of a singe hair being pulled from my leg,
and silence.

Cold water from a glass
no ice,
just clean, cold water.

Refreshing
and
good.

2008-08-21T00:50:00.005-04:00

Realize that
when it all becomes too much,
it's possible to stop thinking, and do one thing.

Realize that
no one person can make sense of it all.
Nor is one person responsible for it all.

Realize that
the burden of living can be re-imagined
when one person remembers to breathe.

Realize that
ecstasy is a thought away.

Realize that
for all people
dreams are attainable.

Realize.

2008-06-02T17:16:00.004-04:00

How does one go about looking at things that they don't want to see? What happens once those things are looked at? Does the thing change? Does the looker change?

I lost sight in one of my eyes this winter. I don't know why. My homeopathic practitioner told me that my emotional divide manifested itself in my vision. She advised me to stay present in the eyes with heart-felt feeling.

It has been brought to my attention through meditation that I have a pattern of closing my eyes to things that I don't want to see. It's a clever pattern that seemingly leaves me available to fulfill the more pressing duties of my life.

I have begun to wonder how it is that I prioritize what is most pressing in my life and where my heart weighs in on the process.

2008-04-29T00:28:00.004-04:00

Be Here Now, by Eckhart Tolle. It seems that I have been reading this book forever. And so it should go with "a guide to Spiritual Enlightenment". But today I am impatient. Do you ever sit in your bathtub, without water? Today I tried to imagine myself as completely good, and full of grace and love. It made for a wonderful nap-- in my bed, not the tub.

Sometimes life gets so busy with thought. And the thought is just round and round the same thing. What would happen if the thoughts were of grace and love and perfection in the moment as it is. I feel that I need a reminder: beads or a locket that chimes to remind me of the perfection that is my essence of being. And yours too.

Today I heard a beautiful song of admiration of another person. It seems that it's important to find admiration of self from within, but it is appealing to be admired by another. Who do you admire? Do you tell them of your admiration? Perhaps the thoughts that circulate in our selves would be kinder if we expressed more admiration of others...

2008-03-28T13:31:00.001-04:00

Daily News: If you think your guy has never been with a prostitute, think again.

2008-03-28T11:56:00.003-04:00

An Article from Women to Women newsletter: Rediscovering Your Body

Babeland: Finding the Right Vibrator

bell hooks-- Communion: The Female Search for Love

2008-03-19T22:15:00.002-04:00

Judy Garland: Smile

2008-03-19T21:56:00.001-04:00

Snow: Red Hot Chile Peppers

2008-03-02T01:31:00.002-05:00

2008-02-26T19:51:00.002-05:00

Seeing Pink: An article posted on the New Demographic, written by Jason Sperber.

Before my daughter was born, I knew what kind of father I wanted to be for her. My babygrrl was going to be raised to be a fierce, strong woman of color. I was going to make her iron-on onesies emblazoned with portraits of Yuri Kochiyama, Angela Davis, and Frida Kahlo. Her toybox would be filled with both dolls of color, preferably made by either anti-corporate crafters or small indie companies, and things traditionally coded as “boy” like trucks and cars and tools. Both toy guns and Barbie would be equally verboten in our home, and her closet would be a pink-free zone. I knew the constricting, restricting and damaging messages the world would soon bombard her with about race and gender, and dammit if I wasn’t going to all I could inside our home to inoculate her against them.

To read the full article: Anti-Racist Partent

Adrienne Rich

2008-02-21T13:00:00.003-05:00

the woman who cherished
her suffering is dead. I am her descendant.
I love the scar-tissue she handed on to me
but I want to go on from here with you
fighting the temptation to make a career of pain.

A note to Self

2008-02-16T22:13:00.015-05:00

Lately I have been thinking... as much as I mindfully live a life that is not in line with the "way that life should be according to T.V. and Vanity Fair," I do sometimes struggle with the deeply embedded ideas about how it is that life "should be" that come from the before mentioned sources.

Valentine's Day, as needed as it may be in our Society: a day to appreciate and shower those that we love with appreciation... it's also a day to measure one's life with images repeated again and again in movies, and holiday cards, and generational icons: Mr and Mrs Wilder; the President and First Lady; your lucky friend that found the love of her life.

What is a single girl to do with herself in the midst of supporting-girlfriends, and male friends that she can sometimes be intimate with and more often, just sleep in the sacrificial dead-arm-under-her-body-position. What, you don't have that guy in your life? Let me tell you that I don't know a lot, but I do know that that guy is a good friend to have: confusing; but good.

To be personal- this is after all, my personal blog-- tonight I skipped a surprise party to stay home alone and drink cocktails, try on the never worn part of my closet-- complete with alternating lip colors-- to dance in front of the mirror and write in my blog... I have a GREAT fear that The Cool Police are going to come in and evict me from the City that Never Sleeps for staying home alone on a Saturday night. But the point of this self-involved, rambling post is to state this:

sometimes it is important to skim off the idealized cream of "what your life should look like" to render the silt of what is truly "the way it happens that your life is good".

I want to embrace what I have in my life that is wonderful. I have the components of "the way life should be" disbursed in various friendships and opportunities. Yes, I do have those parts. But why is it still difficult to embrace the components as a whole?

I miss my Maine friends today. As I dance and change clothes in my apartment today, I want to be with them... and yet, I don't want to be back to where I was before. Change is difficult, and after a few cocktails, I forget why it was/is that I want change...

Guilt be Gone

2008-02-12T12:29:00.000-05:00

A needle pulling thread.
A cat that is not dead.
A beauty that is a child.

Each morning she wakes with guilt.
It is a fog that sticks to her skin and penetrates her bones: it makes her curves huge; her day impossible.
Maybe a hand will trace her thin hip bone: a distraction; the cramp in her loin dissolved in Sex.

It's not the action of the new that leaves the residue.
Something old is in her bones; they creak though she oils them with laughter and visits with masters.

Guilt be gone.
Leave my bones.
Let me be free and full of the zest that is my essence, my gift, my true nature.

Make it so.

Annie Lennox: Little Bird

2008-01-29T13:02:00.000-05:00

I look up to the little bird
That glides across the sky
He sings the clearest melody
It makes me want to cry
It makes me want to sit right down
And cry cry cry

I walk along the city streets
So dark with rage and fear
And i...
I wish that I could be that bird
And fly away from here
I wish I had the wings to fly away from here

But my my I feel so low
My my where do I go?
My my what do I know?
My my we reap what we sow
They always said that you knew best
But this little birds fallen out of that nest now
Ive got a feeling that it might have been blessed
So Ive just got to put these wings to test

For I am just a troubled soul
Whos weighted...
Weighted to the ground
Give me the strength to carry on
Till I can lay this burden down
Give me the strength to lay this burden down
Down down yea
Give me the strength to lay it down

But my my I feel so low
My my where do I go?
My my what do I know?
My my we reap what we sow
They always said that you knew best
But this little birds fallen out of that nest now
Ive got a feeling that it might have been blessed
So Ive just got to put these wings to test

2008-01-29T12:30:00.000-05:00

I haven't written in so long. It's as though there are no words in me: no new thoughts in my brain; no movement.

The winter is a time of stillness. Things go dead on the top, and are at rest underneath. I smelled the rotting stench and turned my nose away, slowly. Things are beginning to stir on the inside: green shoots are beginning to break the surface.

I am a woman of the Spring: Persephone is my soul mate.

The Sirens: Franz Kafka

2008-01-20T12:39:00.000-05:00

These are the seductive voices of the night; The Sirens, too, sang that way. It would be doing them an injustice to think that they wanted to seduce; they know they had claws and sterile wombs, and they lamented this aloud. They could not help it if their laments sounded so beautiful.

Closer to Fine: Indigo Girls

2008-01-06T18:52:00.001-05:00

I'm trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
And the best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously
Its only life after all
Yeah

Well darkness has a hunger thats insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it
I'm crawling on your shores

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
(the less I seek my source)
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

And I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a b-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind
Got my paper and I was free

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
(the less I seek my source)
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

I stopped by the bar at 3 a.m.
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
And I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as Id been the night before
And I went in seeking clarity.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
Yeah we go to the doctor, we go to the mountains
We look to the children, we drink from the fountains
Yeah we go to the bible, we go through the workout
We read up on revival and we stand up for the lookout
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
(the less I seek my source)
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

Arrival

2007-11-29T22:56:00.000-05:00

I get to choose
to floss my teeth
to cut my hair
to pay my bills on time.

I get to choose
to call my Mom
to blame my Dad
to remember the good years or the bad.

I get to choose
who to be
where to live
how to love.

As I am here now, it feels good to know, that I get to choose.

things said that stuck

2007-11-21T02:01:00.000-05:00

"speaking of love.
i am ready for love (romantically)
and seeing as that may not happen for some time
i am very lucky to have great friends
(YOU) that i love and that love me. oh so lucky!" taken from an email from a friend.

What a wonderful thing to say. And how insightful... I've been thinking about the love thing for a while now myself. Romantic love is great; I've had it. Intimate love with friends and family is great too. And, in my experience, ever-lasting... and necessary to have before stepping out into romantic love.

"it seems that my clothes are falling apart more quickly than I can replenish them." part of a conversation with a friend.

What if the falling apart of clothes is a metaphor for the disintegration of the way that one considers himself as viewed by others.

2007-10-08T12:40:00.000-04:00

There is something inside me that wants to be out
words fail to reach the spot
the elusive itch that can't be scratched

something makes my skin itch
red and blotchy
see me! scratch me if you can

tears roll
fists long to make contact
in waves my body trembles

Where is the rash in nature
the squirrel poses on benches in the park
the pigeon stands fast at the feast on the sidewalk
the ocean brings the treasure of glass to shore

once I dated a man that wanted to photograph the rash on my arms
was it to bear witness to my pain
or to reveal the beauty of an itch that can't be scratched.

2007-10-05T06:09:00.000-04:00

Downtown 6 Train

With her back to me
she stands against the pole.
Black straps: a bra visible through fall cashmere.

Her legs
-- all the way up--
the width of my bicep:
long, straight, strong
like the pole on which she leans.

She is gone now
her stop, Union Square.
The visual of her legs remain with me.

I bet that she has been called a tall drink of water.
The pleats of her varsity skirt would have layed flat against her
as she was lifted to the top of the half time pyramid.

Her hip bones must pinch into the skin of her lover.

2007-09-24T23:53:00.000-04:00

How can I tell if I am holding you responsible for the crime I myself have committed
or have had committed against me
or am tempted to commit.

Perhaps this is the reason that grudges are so corrosive to the human soul.
An act gone unresolved is like a perennial flower: it grows roots and crowns below the surface that allow it to be dormant through seasons; when the conditions are prime the grudge blooms again.

Floating: A Dream State

2007-09-24T23:07:00.000-04:00

My mouth is full of marbles
you nod your head as I speak
across the chasm I know that the words are garble.

Bubbles float to the surface of the bowl
the scales of the gold fish shimmer.

Do you think that coconut cooked in the toaster oven will remind us of Cloe's majestic aura before our Father fed her The bread?

a thought

2007-09-22T14:34:00.001-04:00

Start with you.

not to say that I am the source of The problems. It seems, however, that the way I treat myself should follow as the way I treat others, thus how I treat the planet.

More on this later... I have a catering job to do.

If You Love Something

2007-09-17T12:38:00.000-04:00

Set it free. If it comes back to you, it's yours. If not, it was never meant to be.

When in Maine for a pig roast last week my friend personalized my Caswell Farm Pig Roast cup with the letters to spell LOVE. Oh, so nice of him. I drank out of the cup all day and most of the night-- then I got drunk and left it behind somewhere on the property. Before bed I realized that I had lost my cup-- I felt sad. I knew that I would look around to find it during the Roast cleanup, and if not my cup, I would take home another to NYC, still thinking of the LOVE cup that was made for me.

Sunday evening-- still drunk-- preparing dinner and a fire for the handful of people that lingered to keep the party burning-- at a smolder-- my friend bounced with joy as she noticed that someone was drinking out of my cup. The V was rubbed off; the holder fondly called his discovered cup Po e (to him the L was a P). Out of all the people, all the places and all the cups, my cup came back to me.

Now the saying about setting love free... true, I didn't set it free like the poetic turning out of a lover; I got drunk and lost it. But, sometimes that happens in love too that the letting go is unintentional. This love stuff is fun to play around with. And yes, I did say play around as I have begun to appreciate the playful nature of love.

This last trip to Maine was a wonderful one for me. I was able to spend plenty of time with people that are so important to me. And they just kept presenting themselves: people that I have wanted to finish a conversation that started 5 years ago; a friend that is so deep in my heart that a long embrace was the only thing to make our connection visible; friends that became Perfection when dancing aside other friends in a corner of the barn.

Loving and leaving and rediscovering. Love is so many things: beautiful; hard to manage; fickle; intrusive; always present though sometimes difficult to recognize.

Love came back to me and I am grateful.

Direction

2007-08-26T22:52:00.000-04:00

"People without memory do not have that sense of inner reality. They do not have self-acceptance. They are lost, until their memories can be found. Remembering who you are, you can largley take yourself for granted-- you don't need to get up early in the morning, look in the mirror, and ask your reflection who you are in order to get on with the day" p 23 Intimacy and Solitutde: Stephanie Dowrick.

Patterns revealed in Solitude

2007-08-21T13:51:00.000-04:00

Sunday, Washington Square Park
kissing
music
batons
bicycles
Petals, strewn as a Pigeon flaps its Wings

First page of most recent Journal

2007-08-18T22:23:00.000-04:00

Bring light to the places that are dark.

Words that live inside the mind tend to make the spirit heavy.
Find a way to loosen the ideas that are yours alone.
The act of extrication will result in a lightness of being.

June 3, 2007

What if...

2007-08-16T17:30:00.000-04:00

the reason that people don't like to discuss things is that people know that things are as they were and as they always will be AND they don't think that they have the power to change those things.

What if people began to listen to people that are creating a new language that gives a voice to a new way of doing things...

Yesterday I went to a book reading by a woman that is transgendered, two days before the reading was by a woman that has been traveling to places that are being occupied by this war that "WE" are fighting. I am reading a book about the need to define and identify contemporary female heroes.

This stuff is all good. It is really good. This stuff is about women creating a language for change that is happening that allows for people to have a conversation about things.

Learning to Swim

2007-08-12T18:50:00.000-04:00

Feel free to take what you need;
be mindful of what is left for me.

I tread in deep water as I have been working up my stamina to stay buoyant far from shore;
the fatigue of muscles and lungs is the burden that keeps my head afloat.

Scribbles on Paper

2007-08-12T02:39:00.000-04:00

Tears fall
Flowers grow
Girls mature to become women

7.17.07

2007-08-12T02:20:00.001-04:00

from my journal:

tell me that I am the smartest lady in the world-- that all of my ideas are perfectly formed with insight that will allow for conversation and change to follow. tell me that my toes are just the right length; that writing with my left hand is the perfect thing to do . tell me tales of successful people that came before me. make visible a path for me to follow with a destination that is fully supported by the positive provisions of my intellect. tell me that I deserve a throne and agree with me when I declare the Farm Pond my domain.

Letting go of the person you used to be: Lama Surya Das

2007-08-12T02:16:00.000-04:00

We cannot find the enlightenment we seek until we realize that we are all one; there is no 'other' (pg 20).

2007

2007-08-12T02:13:00.000-04:00

Poetry
is the tension between
loving
and
the fear of losing.

Sunday: December 5, 2004

2007-08-12T01:59:00.000-04:00

I am reaching the end of my limit
I am not certain that I can continue this any more
Bear the pain of looking from him to her to him...
Knowing that as three, the stare that they share will never be born.

Today, while he is at play, I lie on the bed and cry...
My body is shaking and I feel ill.
Am I a fool?
I feel as if I am a child.

How is it that I have allowed myself to become a detour on their path?
Has my life's journey not included enough wrath?
I am trying to do my best...
Just that, no less.

My skin is thin.
My veins are visible as the blood pumps toward my heart.
The organ in my chest plays songs of love, of blood of pain...
The chorus of my words, the span of my touch and the depth of my presence are being performed in vain.

I don't know if I can allow myself to be set to the side.
To be forced to exist in the margin of his love's divide...
To be kept in a cage like a bird:
wings clipped, my love not permitted to fly.

Indeed. Here I sit with the cat against the sunset
the day's finale spread pink across the sky
his scent on my lips
her image in my mind.

12.10.03

2007-08-12T01:51:00.000-04:00

Men trapped in cloaks of silence
eyes partly blinded.

It must be wrong: the thing that she is asking
it's not possible for a woman's thoughts to be so strong.
From what place does she find her reasons
they don't seem to meet what has gone on?

What am I to do when faced with this woman
she's not abiding by the rules?
I feel a crick in my neck
in my eyelids
water
forming
pools...

Quick: relaign.
I am the man here-- read the Sign.
What, you can't see it-- it's posted on the walls.
This place was built and approved by all.

Okay now
we acknowledge that you have read it.
Now go on about your day.

But maybe
while you are gone
I will think a little bit...

Perhaps this room could be remodeled?

Just don't come back too soon!
These walls have stood for quite some time
and without them I know that I will be cold.. and so will you!
Because, you see, these walls stand to protect us both
don't you agree.

3.12.04

2007-08-12T01:46:00.000-04:00

From experience I know...

soon the season will change
the fields will become green
and the earth will release a fragrance into the air that cannot be duplicated

the sun will rise early
warming the dirt and our bodies too
leaving us with darkness only after we have had our fill

we will become satiated again
lungs with air, minds with color
our essence will be free to explore all the crevices of this world

hang on.
take breaths.
be deliberate in motion.

from experience I know
that this time of gray will end
summer will arrive and allow us to be full of zest again.

10.30.03

2007-08-12T01:39:00.000-04:00

"I see dead people" is not my fear--
it's the reality of living that haunts me.

Fuck the dead! they are already gone--
it's the demons amongst us that cause the real harm.

Pour me a shot
Give me a line
do what it takes to help me to be blind

to the horrors that live within the people that fill--
this place called heaven
that's my living hell.

Monday: March 29, 2004

2007-08-12T01:29:00.000-04:00

I take my direction from the sun.

Today I woke with a shock at the beam of sun light penetrating my slumber
The position of my window refracts the sun just so
a ray reaches out to grab me conscious each morning.

"I am out,"
says the sun.
"So too should be you!"

I return to sleep...
though disturbed,
as the sun may have intended.
No more zzzs to be had on pillows of clouds,
instead thunder bolts tear through the stratum of my sanity.

I want to curse the sun that rises brilliant in the morn,
that takes full charge of the day.
I lust for the sun's tenacity
to focus its attention on each building, human life and tree.

Perhaps I should absorb the beam,
carry it with me through the day.
Let it serve as my mentor,
to give direction that will help to lead me along my way.