Miraculous

The music in the car on the way to the hospital was interesting. First, Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds”: “don’t worry/about a thing/cuz every little thing/ gonna be alright”. That was followed by Warren Zevon’s “Poor Poor Pitiful Me”. I have to admit I was feeling it, if just a little. But when we got to the O.R. prep room, they piped in music and Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” wafted through the quasi private beds in the prep room. This was my Dad’s favorite song. I was only a week away from the 30th anniversary of his death. There are no coincidences. I was not alone and I really wasn’t nervous, just anxious to get it done with, get it over. In the prep room the nurse asked me questions and had me get into a paper flimsy Johnny. “Can I leave the skivvies on?” wincing at the word “skivvies” – no one calls underwear skivvies these days. Bonehead. “Nice try!” the nurse responds, and I go commando tightening the Johnny around as tight as I could for some sort of privacy. Steve and Chris came after that and kept me company. It was great having them there, especially Steve. I know how much he hates hospitals but I also know how much it meant to Chris to have him there. Soon after that, Chris’ sister, Judy arrived and yes, we were now officially a “scene”. Can you imagine if my out of state family had driven up as they warned they might? I’d have been blacklisted from the hospital for sure. Across from me was a frail looking elderly woman, with blue-white hair. Her bony body was covered up beneath the blanket but I could see how the Johnny hung off her making her arms look like the clapper of a bell, flailing with all the space and the large roominess the Johnny provides. I think about the things we are taught as kids about modesty and propriety, and how this all disappears in a hospital. The old woman is chatting nervously but causally with an older middle aged man, presumably her son. I could almost see her trying to sell me chances to the next St. Anthony’s festival for her local church parish. She wore an oversized blue cap which clashed with her wrinkled alabaster skin. Next to her was a larger man who was being prepped for open heart surgery. He was extraordinarily hairy and since they were cracking his chest, they had to shave him. They pulled the privacy curtain around him and began. The droning continued for what had to be 15 minutes. Steve looked over to me and muffled a laugh. I knew what he was thinking. After a while, after we had all grown immune to the bee-like hum of the surgical razor, I heard the man being shaved exclaim in a dark, mocha baritone, “I think we’re starting a small brush fire here!” The whole O.R. prep room broke up with laughter. Steve almost lost it and I laughed out loud. My nurse also shook her head with a grin that scooped across her face. At least there would be laughter going into this. It occurred to me then how the lot that was assembled in this room were the beneficiaries of today’s magic. These men and women – doctors and nurses – were going to be lopping off organs, cracking open ribs, dipping their hands into the deepest innermost regions of human beings. I wondered if any of my soul would be lost, allowed to escape into the ether as I lay there inside out to the airborne world. I thought about how years ago, these same men and women would be tried for witchcraft, and magic and all sorts of savagery. Gathered in this room was the pinnacle of human medical need and medical technology and know how. Flying was once an interface of the unknown: it took a special sort of courage to fly across the continent. We now board flights hourly across the world with little more concern than whether or not our luggage will reach our planned destination. Likewise, these surgeons require a different sort of courage, but again, so much has been made mundane: it is the routine that belies the “hardness” of it. Maybe, I think, it is just another form of ritual that glides our way in the modern world. Soon the anesthesiologist stops by: he is a square man with a round shiny head, and seems incapable of wearing a smile. His job was to administer the epidural which took him two attempts after lots of pricking and having my shoulders and upper body held back by a smaller more pleasing appearing black man named Josh. I didn’t mind the square smile-less doctor missing the mark, though I have to say, he reached new levels of pain with each prick of the needles. I did mind that the guy never cracked a smile. Maybe he was new. Maybe he was nervous. I’d heard most anesthesiologists were hoots! Comes from the fact that maybe they’d partaken of some of the nitrous they seemed to be able to get their licensed hands on. No, a sense of humor makes us better at what we do, I believe and even if it doesn’t? it helps us fake it until we make it much smoother. It was smart, however, to get the epidural in correctly right from the start. This was my instinct, as I figured this was going to control the pain – along with every other bodily function below my waist for the next few days – it had to be right. The prep room was a flurry of activity. I saw Dr.”C” only once, dressed smartly in a black turtleneck and black pea coat. I remember his outfit because the dark colored outfit contrasted brilliantly with his sliver hair and white, taut trim beard. He came in to crack a few jokes (“The left kidney right?” – it was the right he was too remove – to which I responded, “okay, is that MY right or YOUR right?” He autographed my RIGHT flank, to indicate where he would cut, and then he disappeared to get dressed for surgery. Soon they wheeled me in. I gave Chris and Judy and Steve hugs and kisses and I just saw hands moving all around me. No one even acknowledged my presence in the room. Then, out of nowhere, a clear mask came over my nose and mouth and I was gone. I slept a dreamless sleep. It was like a moonless, starless night. Nothing. I was hoping for some good dreams. My first vision was the clock and I was trying to do the math in my head. I knew I had gone in sometime after noon and I was trying to read the clock, then compute the math. Was it done? Or did I horribly and accidentally wake up in the middle of the operation? Dr. “C” was standing in front of me shouting, “IT WAS CANCER! WE GOT IT” and me feebly giving him the thumbs up, then in my typically idiosyncratically way, thinking, “Do you suppose he thought I meant the “thumbs up” as though I was saying, ‘Yay, Cancer!’?” Even with allthat anesthesia, my mind just wouldn’t cut me any slack. I swear, I’m hopeless. I stopped worrying what Dr. “C” might think about my “political stance on cancer”, and fell back to sleep but not before asking for my family. I was at least conscious enough to ask that correctly. The procedure took a little longer than anticipated, but only because they had misplaced the film (which I had actually brought with me to prevent this very thing from happening). Also, the cancer was deeper than he had estimated from the film. He went back twice to scoop out more and more kidney until he could be sure he was dealing with clean tissue. He did frozen sections on each scoop until he had what he felt was a clean section – about 1/3 of my right kidney altogether. The cancer was gone and I felt like packed cotton: tight, bound, and really no pain. There was an IV in my right arm. All that kept playing through my head was: “The cancer is gone! The Cancer is gone!” But for how long? I am reminded of that Lakota Sioux line: “Sometimes I go about pitying myself, and all the while I am being carried on great wings across the sky.” That’s what I feel like right now. At this moment, I am just one small idiot not blessed, but acutely aware that I am at one point of a cycle that can sometimes be not so forgiving, and not seem so “spiritual”. Will I feel as grateful and humble when the other side of that wheel comes around? I have done nothing to either deserve getting this cancer, nor have I done a thing that warranted its random finding and eventual cure. I am a fool if I think otherwise. I grip the ropes tighter, enjoy the now, and am aware of the wheel making its way around. Give me the grace to bear with that, when it comes, as abundantly as I have been given this grace, here today. That is all I ask. Einstein once said: “There are two ways to view the world: as if everything in it is a miracle, or as if everything is not a miracle.” I have chosen the former. And even if this cancer comes back, and I am fighting again, won’t that be miraculous? And when I am asked to face the struggle that is the condition of mankind, won’t that be wonderous? God, please just give me the strength to remember this. And if you are my friends, I expect nothing else but for you to remind me of this.

Dear Writing It Up In the Garden Castaways

We sit here on the cusp of a holiday respite and it is December. Despite what Eliot wrote, April cannot even begin to hold a candle to December in the type of cruelty months can dole out. I am a week away from major surgery and while I am aware this is only a bit riskier than, say, driving without my seat belt - well, okay, maybe it is a bit higher risk than this – my superstitions still get the best of me sometimes. Thirty years ago, nearly to the day, my father died in December, at age 48 – my age. Two years ago – again, very nearly to the day, I suffered a heart attack. And then of course, there is the anniversary of John Lennon’s death, which I am still struggling to come to terms with. I am remembering my father tonight and there are strange spirits moving in the air. I don’t mean to give in to hyperbole or melodrama, but tonight, I just want to say something to the group – something that should be said, because none of us knows what tomorrow may bring. Yes, I called us the “castaways” because it occurred to me how much like castaways we really are. We all started this journey on a 3-hour tour seeking God-only-knows-what and we find ourselves here, deposited on the shores of this airy and warm Victorian home in Northampton, Massachusetts. Driving home from work tonight my mind raced making connections it had no business making. Elizabeth, of course, would be all Mary Ann – she is as sweet as any country Kansas farm girl – real or fictional. But then so would Gail and Nerissa, who also have some decidedly “Professor-like” qualities, being so smart and steadfast. There is no question that we would have Daniel as our “Skipper”. His writing voice commands respect; it demonstrates knowledge of where to go and what to do. Merideth and Tommy are like those cannibals that came from neighboring islands from time to time, banging coconut shell drums to make music and offer to whisk us away, only to have their plans foiled at the last minute when the evening ends and the group must retire for the evening to the “other world”. John, of course, would have to be “Lovey” – not for any real reason except the thought of it is so surreal, it just fits with his writing style. Charette – or as I prefer to think of her, the “Monet of Narrative” – would have to be the glamorous “Ginger”, though I have serious doubts that Ginger could ever push a noun against a verb the way Charette does. And I would dearly like to proclaim Tom Duffy as sweet as any “Marry Ann” though I suspect he might move away from me slightly in the circle. Beside, he has some definite “Professor” tendencies also, Then of course, there is me. I am the hapless “Gilligan”, sitting here week after week in my goofy red cons, hatching plans in my head which believe me, really do make sense in my head, until I verbalize the ideas, and I get these sideways looks, the way the RCA Victor’s dog’s head is tilted listening to his master's voice from an old victrola. No doubt about it, we are Castaways. We are purposefully marooned here each week to feed whatever it is that makes us need to write. Sometimes, when K-Fucked radio is turned up loud in my head, I hate my writing. I think how to the untrained eye we must seem like just a bunch of crazies sitting in a circle, sucking on tea and cookies, engaging in a self delusional form of mass masturbation of the most indulgent nature. This of course, makes me think of that Woody Allen line “don’t knock masturbation, it’s sex with the person I love the most.” But it’s not really like that. Not really. That’s just the K-Fucked radio talking. Look at Cody, the dog. You know how he barks when you enter the room? He just wants to be noticed and I find that so honest I have to lean over and just pet him. I mean, he barks just to get attention. Maybe I should start that practice. It’s much simpler than all the Machiavellian plots I devise to accomplish the same goal. And in the end, that’s all writing is about too, isn’t it? We are all born in isolation and living is that expression outward to making contact. We are all here, barking like Cody, to be noticed. And somehow, this is a comforting thought. Good old Cody. When I go back to the “real world”, I realize what a haven we have created here and the partly it’s because none of us really knows how it was done. Oh yes, there are lots of reasons, but like the best things in life, I am finding, these things just are, and we discover them, like stumbling over our shoes under our bed in the night. We don't create them. Just as when the “Gilligan’s Island” castaways found themselves out of place in the real world when they finally did get rescued (do you remember watching that special episode?) I suspect each of us finds ourselves just a bit out of sorts Friday mornings. So what I mean to say is that none of us knows what the tide will wash up on our shores tomorrow, so this is why we keep at it. Tonight I am thinking of my dad, thinking of how much worse it could be, counting my blessings like a farmer counts his harvest in the fall. Still, I find myself sticking my one foot in that door of “but why me?” just a little. Some things just aren’t right, and this is one of them. I’m not afraid of dying, not that I believe I will die (pain is a whole other question however!) I am tyrannically afraid of not telling those around me how important they are in my life It’s something I’ve had to work at, this overwhelming force which prevents what is inside me from filling the four corners of the night sky. So here, with utter abandon, and complete foolishness I want you all to know – those here now and those who have built their little palm huts in the past and have moved on - how privileged I am to share this island with each of you. How your writing and sparkle have made my days pass with less sturm und drang; how, in the words of Peter to Jesus in one of the Gospels during the transfiguration, “it is good to be here.” Verily, I say. And while maybe our writing has not been catalogued with ISBN numbers, nor reviewed by any scholarly rag, and no one has asked me for that book tour quite yet, what we do is important. What we have found is the very thing we all seek in everything we do: we have found family. So how about we give up a hug and split a cocoanut? Authors Note:Thanks to everyone in this group and any others. Happy Season to all! Fah who foraze! Dah who doraze! Welcome, Christmas! Fah who rahmus! Welcome, Christmas! Dah who dahmus Christmas Day, Will always be Just as long, As we have we - Dr. Suess

Loose Ends

There are the loose ends That are the details of a life Frayed in chaos They are tears that are Really just promises; You watch bewildered one garment Start to unravel. Until You learn how It’s these tattered loose ends Which make the new garment: The sound of a baby, New constellations, Revitalized courage And the strongest kind of love. Dec 2004 For Charrette and her family (To Infinity and Beyond!)

unclean

It’s been three months since he was there-- Since anyone was there, And the smell of my own body still nauseates me. The fingerprints Fading from purple to yellow Were gone after a few weeks, But it’s still here: Filth through my pores Screams in my blood. I’ve tried Load after load, bed sheets and underwear Scalding water My skin.

The Coolness of the Moon

The moon is pissed. I know because he stopped me outside my house tonight. He hung there like a smile, slung back, low, relaxed and so cool. He wore dark rimmed spectacles, burly mutton chop sideburns, poured low rise, hip hugging black pleather pants, while balancing a cigarette with a tremble on his lips. The smoke swirled past his torn RANCID t-shirt and circled Orion’s belt. “Yo, dude. ‘Sup?” he says to me. Dude? He is cool, there’s no denying that. He is low in the eastern sky, a crescent on his way to a new moon. He would barely get up off the horizon tonight and he was just feeling like a raw scab. He stretches back, draws a few puffs on the cigarette and waits for me to answer. Then he tells me why he’s pissed. He’s tired of the sun being so everything. It rises, it sets. It’s the sun, no changes, no “phases”. He verbally creates air quotes by emphasizing the word “phases”. He’s sick of the sun being the center of everything. Maybe he would just spin off and start his own solar system. When I explain this is not possible, that there are laws of physics, there is inertia to consider, he just spits. He doesn’t care. He knows people. He has friends. Take Saturn, for instance. Some traveling asteroid comes swinging along, knocks her up and before you know it, it’s wham-bam-thankee-maam there are a dozen moons. “She’s such a slut,” he says. “Saturn?” I ask. “Yeah, and she’s always has to show off the bling-bling.” “The rings?” I ask. “Yeah. Still those guys are my buddies. They would so totally follow me.” I try to leave, but the moon will have none of that. He’s so pissed, his color even looks odd. More yellow than white tonight. He rants about the clouds, how they just cover for that slacker sun; how he’s often off chasing rainbows or things, and no one even knows. And all he does is give people cancer and start forest fires, destroy crops and create droughts. Still, everyone “ooohs” and “aahhhhs” whenever the sun enters or leaves the day. If the moon had arms, I am certain he would be waving them about now. He’s tired of depending on sunlight for his presence. On some days of the month, he hides to show up that big show off, but it’s hard to hide, so he has to show his face again. “And look at this face!” the moon says exasperated. “Tell me if I don’t look like a thirteen year old in a chocolate factory!” It is the marks. It’s not easy getting dates with a face like this, he tells me. I know. I can relate. I tell him some things that I hate about the sun: how you can never really look at it. How it's always too bright and it always gets in the way when driving – especially east and west. The moon takes a deep breath and seems at ease. He tells me to stay cool and have fun at the party. He is heading to a bodacious game of cranium with the Seven Sisters who really know how to party. He tells me about how when they drink too much they always try to start up a round of “strip-twister”. He tells me to get moving, I’ll be late. I thank him and leave. The moon is coolness personified. The sun is a pretentious metrosexual always flaunting his knowledge of wines and the most gauche places to shop. But the moon drinks his beer with no glass and no twist off top either. The moon would never be caught drinking a Lite beer. The sun gets all the press, but the moon is where everything happens; where the hidden comes out, only to be chased away again by the sun’s daylight brashness. The moon is pissed tonight. Better stay clear if you see him. I’m off to my party, but man, is he ever cool. M C Biegner 2004

Group Card

dear josh

dear josh, your absence has outlasted your presence in my life. what i remember now is only the space, the silence. love is a memory i re-enact because there's nothing else to say anymore, and i have to account somehow for the marks the love left behind. i wonder where you are sometimes, even though i like to think i've stopped being interested in the answer, i guess because some long-silent part of me still expects the knowledge to rise up from somewhere secret. i wonder where you are even though i can't really imagine it--i only ever see you in the places that you've been before, even though it's been years since you've seen them. i wonder what there is to miss anymore, since you faded so gradually that it took a while to notice you were leaving, since there was enough left to put my heart into--your writing on the back of a photo, that hat you used to wear, those letters that never told me anything but meant everything. i wonder when these things stopped being you. i wonder what you'd be like if you'd stayed. i wonder what i'd be like if you'd never left, what i am like since you have. what i miss doesn't even exist anymore, probably couldn't, but the absence stays with me, like a scar my body grew into, like a line carved into a doorframe at the height i used to be. i wonder what would happen if we started to say your name again, if we stood for a while in the absence instead of turning from it, a door no one meant to open, a feeling no one meant to have. i wonder what would happen if i let go of the regret. i wonder if it's even possible, if it's even mine. i wonder if the regret is really yours, something you left behind for me to find and carry around in case you ever wanted it back. i wonder if i will be faithful when there's no faith left. i wonder if the hope is for you or for me, if the grief is for what i might have been without this pain, rather than for its source. i wonder if you miss me. i wonder if you will. i wonder if i love you, i wonder if goodbye.

things i've done in churches

i. inside it is nothing like new york in august. the sounds of traffic are turned away at the vestibule like false penitents, the heat and air and light made chaste with a sprinkling of holy water. the pews are filled with people who want to be there and people who just walked by, people with nowhere else to go and somewhere else to be. without noticing they shed their skins when they walk through the door, letting the pain out to breathe. they will be healed here. at the altar stand the supplicants, turned to face all the closed and open hearts, dwarfed by the room's ascent to ward heaven. the space is too vast, too vacant with god to be filled by their dreaming. the task is impossible, essential. but soon the air begins to swell with the chord change, the heartbreak. it quickens and stirs like a tide just woken. urgent, the strengthening cadence pushes against the limits of the vacancy it's filled, bursts through like a heart broken by too much joy, makes everything that's still come to life, wakens every pain from its secret home. the brokenness and the humanness are what sanctify the sanctuary. when the music stops, so does the silence. ii. the church is open until ten o clock at night and so she goes there looking for an answer, moving alone through the darkness, anointed with cool night air. the church is dark and probably empty, and she tests the knob before pulling the heavy outer door and slipping inside. the space seems still, and in it, her heart loosens, unfolds. she will pray in the darkness, where no one but god will see. but inside the sanctuary, someone is already frozen in grief or in sorrow, kneeling in the godlight that falls on the altar. her face is unfamiliar, but her desperation is not. the small sound of the door falling closed is enough to break the silence, and the girl on the altar wakes up then, turns from the light into the darkness, is gone before she can cover her eyes to keep from seeing her private pain, to apologize for interrupting. she can't pray either, now that the solitude is gone, isn't sure she knew how in the first place. she leaves the demons at the altar and turns toward home. iii. what might also be sacred: the knife seaming the flesh of the mango, its teeth drawing the sticky sweetness toward the wound the foam rising to the top of the coffee brewed in silent early darkness the tremor of the hand in the moment between striking the match and lighting the flame waking up to rest in the space between sleep and consciousness the space between each heartbeat filled with blood and love

13 corners

13 corners we live in a culture where 13 is an unlucky number but it's always been my grandmother's lucky one and i've always believed more of her superstitions anyway i may not call this luck but i am fortunate and blessed here in this house brimming with the prosperity of this fall harvest with voices giving and receiving with water and life in every room i've rediscovered that 16-year-old poet at home in that palo alto alley watched over by saint michael and all the old souls who had heard and read so much more but never what she brought to that corner there are many more corners more alleys more springs more old and young souls to give and receive by teresa wong, 11.7.04

Downtown by Michael Biegner

Downtown His hands were like broken concrete yet they wrapped the pole of the subway car tightly. It was almost a year ago that the towers fell; when the plume shuttled uptown and the dust tossed itself willy-nilly over lower Manhattan. It was almost a year ago, when shards of paper representing lives flew like souls across the Hudson into Brooklyn, signifying all that was left. McNab took the “F” train downtown every day to get to his job. He got on at Kew Gardens and he always wore his construction helmet backwards. After the collapse, they slapped one of those American flags on the backs of all the guys’ helmets. McNab wore his so the flag faced forward. McNab was a rigger and had been for years. He’d been working downtown since the collapse. He was a slight man, but wore his work belt, heavy boots and thick gloves which gave him monstrous girth. At Jackson Heights the crowds in the train pushed out against the bodies lined up waiting to board; there was a panicked effort to catch the number 7 train to Flushing. McNab pulled back in the car. He never sat. He always preferred to give up his seat. At the Roosevelt Avenue station the train performed its purge and binge of riders. Marisol always stepped on here. Same spot on the platform. Same car. McNab always instinctively turned his head discreetly toward his outstretched arm, trying to catch his own body odor. Marisol was a slight pretty Puerto Rican woman with thick red lips who wore too much makeup. She rode until Rockefeller Center where she always smoothed her pants or skirt, gathered her things, just before she would rise and stand by the train door. As Marisol went by she always brushed against McNab’s gruff toil smeared body. He breathed in her perfume, and marveled at her rich black hair. Marisol always read; her dark almond eyes peered over her newspaper appeared like question marks to McNab. If she ever suspected that McNab watched her, she never let on. These were two dancers among many on all the cars that hurtled through the tunnels under New York. When the train descended under the East River, McNab felt his ears “pop”. The lights would go out momentarily and he could only see the shadow of Marisol’s head against the tunnel lights through the car window. Together they rocked and lurched, evident for that half hour that they were subject to the same laws of physics. When Marisol’s stop arrived, McNab made a deal with himself to follow her out, to talk to her and strike up a conversation. He planned it from Roosevelt Island. When the door opened, he saw himself follow her. He felt his body want to move. As the doors closed, the chimes seemed to berate his lack of initiative. “Tomorrow”, he would mutter and then begin the negotiations all over again. The doors closed, as the great beast dumped McNab off at West 4th Street where he would walk the rest of the way. There was still rubble to clear.

Meredith's Lullabye for the Country

Come in, close the door tight behind you I can't do much but it's a start I can't promise there's not demons out there But you're safe here inside my heart Let your guard fall down around you I'll give you open hands and dashboard light We'll get up and fight again tomorrow Rest here in my arms tonight I've seen all that they've put up against you But you're not doing this alone Here between the end and the beginning Is the place where I can call you home Let your guard fall down arounnd you I'll give you open hands and dashboard light We'll get up and fight again tomorrow Rest here in my arms tonight I'll smooth your brow with my calloused fingers Untangle all your stomach's knots My arms are stronger than you'd give them credit Let your bruises heal and I'll keep watch Let your guard fall down around you I'll give you open hands and dashboard light We'll get up and fight again tomorrow Rest here in my arms tonight. Meredith Killough

Someday My Apartment

Okay, you have to picture a Disney character singing this... SOMEDAY MY APARTMENT Someday I'll have an apartment in the shitty part of town I'll see trash and broken bottles whenever I look down There will be lots of locks on the doors Cracks in the floor for the mice In that shitty apartment complex Won't that be nice? I'll eat Ramen three times a day Chef Boyardee straight from the can With a six-pack of generic beer Won't it be grand? Someday I'll have me a boyfriend who I'll meet in a seedy bar He'll make me pay for my own drinks then grope me in his car And maybe we'll have a baby We can't afford to feed Wouldn't it be wonderful? Wouldn't it, indeed. Life would never be boring Even walking down the street Knowing I could see a drive-by shooting I'd feel so complete In that shitty apartment In that crappy neighborhood It hasn't happened yet But I know inside my heart Yes, I know inside my heart it could. Gwynne Watkins

The Sage

The Sage – Melissa Eva Miller Was the sage left there for me? Tucked in a tight bundle of pungent leaves at the bottom of the basket with the other odds and ends. A little reminder that all is not right with my world; maybe just not completely balanced. Like the way the tea packet marked “joy” refused to open until I bit it hard and forced it to rip. But isn’t that what faith is? A bit of a struggle here and there to help calm the exuberance that threatens to bubble over in the blood and spill out wastefully? “So,” the sage tells me, leaving a velvety residue in the whorls of my fingertips, “That’s the fun of it, baby. And just think, you’ll do this for the rest of your life … just like I have in the hands of the faithful all over the world.” The sage sighs, letting off a tiny plume of omniscience. “Faith is all about figuring it all out and then realizing you left one shoe on a porch somewhere along the way.” “Well,” I tell the sage, “I can take it. Next time I see through something clearly, I won’t be surprised when I blink and the pane is replaced with a wavering piece of hand-made glass that I can’t make heads or tails of.” The sage chuckles a puff of fragrant smoke. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about, baby. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

The Desert

Desert – Melissa Eva Miller That space lit my desert’s light tries to find a space to sit quietly, say its grace. Dropped in from without could one find a trace that would then overcome the seeker; myself understood. I have faith one such traveler would come back weary, burned with lathe to spin me learned. One such man would write pages about what he discovered, would plan to reveal me uncovered. Would they believe or would they lift fists with jealous fury and conceive these chronicles to bury? Lest my dunes be let out to dust over their minds and runes once quiet suddenly shout. For now dear traveler take heed I wish to keep my desert here within my heart’s seed. My face will hide it well instead of reveal too much or still a brew to quell.

The Captain

The Captain And the Captain and passengers are dressed to the nines, Ignoring the bells and calls to pull in the lines. With a smile and a nod the Captain waves off the commotion, And we all sail onward through the turbulent ocean. We put on our gowns, tuxedoes and shoes, And stepped up the gangplank for this four year cruise. Over half went willingly and wanted to go, the rest ‘cause we had to and thus it is so. The crew plays cards and passes a bottle of rum. One eye on the helm and one eye on the fun. They don’t notice gas gauges on low and the compass that’s broken, Or the map room on fire, quietly smoking. We fill up our glasses from the champagne fountain. And iceburgs in the distance tower like mountains. We could see the dockworkers if we gave it a chance, But the band calls again to get out and dance. Then another game of shuffleboard needs to be played, And another trip taken to the all night buffet. So there’s no time to stop and feel the ocean, Rolling deep below with discontent motion. And the Captain and passengers are dressed to the nines, Ignoring the bells and calls to pull in the lines With a smile and a nod the Captain waves off the commotion And we all sail onward through the turbulent ocean. Truth my truth my truth don’t be silent now I’m listening finally just for you Before, I admit it I let you hide Knowing you were there quiet, ready, poised to speak And as long as we’re being honest Sometimes I even kicked you deep behind those shapes of fear And there I left you crumpled at the feet of jealosy, envy and my need to be liked that just seemed larger at the time And on my really bad days I boxed you in. The worst abuse really, to have floor, ceiling and walls of what-I-think-I-should-be keeping you from daylight. I don’t blame you for your silence I would be silent too after being treated like that So this is my apology for what it is worth I’m hoping you’ll remember this and rise up anyway my truth my truth By Gayle Huntress

Birding in Babylon

Birding in Babylon My salvation is beauty’s kiss -- It approaches me like a windy spiral of foppish leaves' dancing denial. It leaves me with wonkish truths Which bolster me with deepened roots. For Mesopotamia, now midnight soot, Has acquiesced beneath the boot; From humankind this snake has grown Hoping to consume its own body, from start to end and head to tail Where human life first burst forth, now it flails. As it was in the beginning, Is now and ever shall be; A world of endless suffering; Saved from pagan idolatry; Carved from empire’s ideology; Inflated by ambition’s puffery. I seek what is invisible Like birding in Babylon, an indivisible faith in delicate things: Feathers and song, and iridescent wings; perched on fetid branches rest these drops of color sporting costumes that dress war’s dolor. It scours me pure like sandstorm grit. It seeps like ink into my vision, I am shorn and weakened like noble Sampson; by a willow warbler’s lyric face Or the fecund insistence of a fruit fly’s grace, These are things that make Peace known, If Wisdom is my head, then beauty is my bone. Michael Biegner 2004

a post-election prayer

Dear God, Give us the words. May ink spill beauty onto notebooks and napkins everywhere, as blood ceases to be shed. Rather, let our blood reclaim its symbol of Life flowing with passionate fury. Let delicate melodies infiltrate the air hung heavy and hopeless. Let us write a Revolution.

The Death Rattle

Yesterday, in the wee hours of Thursday morning, my hard drive crashed. The Death Rattle had begun Sunday night, when Tom and I came home to a horrific noise that sounded not unlike a supernova in its last millennia, I would imagine. We stared at the screen. It was frozen on an AOL news report on George W. Bush, and the little cursor was spinning around in a misleading rainbow circle, which signifies trouble to Mac OS X users. I restarted the computer and nothing happened except the noise got louder. "Oh my God," I said, the way people in the twenty first century do when confronted with this problem. "I haven't backed up The Big Idea in days! Everything I love is on this computer! My life is on this computer! All my emails, all your emails to me! The beginnings of our courtship! The iPhotos I've been taking of Amelia and Emmett and Reese; the photos of us kissing! The photos of the Adirondacks! My mixes!" I gasped. "My Ultimate Bob Dylan mix! I'll never be able to recreate it! Not to mention all my own new songs, which I will be able to recreate, but still. What a pain." Tom rubbed my shoulders empathetically, and I spent a sleepless night thinking about what a fool I was and how now I'd need to buy a new computer and how it could be worse, and people in hurricanes had lost a lot more--it could have been my Martin guitar!-- and people in Iraq had lost even more than the people in hurricanes and I was a rich spoiled brat for even being sad about my lost works of ART! OF ART! I am an artist and these works are like my children! I will never recover from this loss! Once, I wrote a funny story; I was in tenth grade and it was a spoof on the Odyssey, and my English teacher, Barbara Shapiro read it out loud and said I was a genius. I lost it two months later and forgot everything about it expect one line from a song Odysseus wrote at the end, to the Goddess Athena: O, great goddess with gray eyes like the owl Penelope has drenched me, please hand me a towel. That's the worst thing I've ever lost. It's twenty-two years, and I'm still not done grieving that loss. How will I recover from the loss of everything on my hard drive? I won't. Be quiet! No one cares about your stupid works of art! PEOPLE ARE STARVING ALL OVER THE WORLD! GET A REAL JOB!!!!! That's about how it went in my head. Then I got up Monday and turned the computer on and lo! Familiar desktop, familiar everything. The Big Idea restored. All was well. I promptly emailed a copy of it to myself and to Paradise Copies to print out to give to my editor and went on my merry way. Did I back anything up? Why should I? No more death rattle! Until Thursday morning. Tom shook me awake. "Sweetie, your computer's making that sound again." I stumbled into my office and turned off the computer and slept soundly, knowing that Death Rattle does not mean actual death. I was wrong. This time when I tried to boot it up, it flashed an icon of an empty folder and a Picasso like face, moronic in its mockery of me, the lazy non-backer-upper who didn't listen to Patty, Jeff, Sheila, Tom, Katryna, my parents, my high school history teacher and my psychic. I got out my glow in the dark plastic angel and wound it up. Nothing. I took the poor thing to some Mac people in town whom I trust and they kept it all day, performing feats of derring do to no avail. "It's kaput," said Manuel the Mac Guy. "You can send the hard drive to California to this company that might be able to retrieve some of your data, but they'll charge you $800 whether or not they get anything back for you." Fortunately, I had only lost two days of writing: Tuesday and Wednesday. Unfortunately, these were two primo days for The Big Idea: I'd written the scene when Rhodie hits bottom in Alaska after being chased by a red truck a la Deliverance. I'd written the scene where Rita quotes Shakespeare and shakes her head in disapproval over the increasing religiosity of her three children. I'd written the second to last chapter of the novel. And I'd written little tidbits throughout the 427 page ms. that were funny and irretrievable to my memory except that I remember they were funny. I spent yesterday and today mining my memory and rewriting, and I'm sure some of what I recovered the old fashioned way was better and some was worse and mostly it's all fine, and it’s true, this is much better than someone dying or getting sick or people getting divorced or your child being called names by the other kids in school. What I really miss are the photos. Also the emails. Also the sense that all is well in the world. My friend Sheila wrote me that this had happened to her and that she was comforted by the thought that losing things helps us to recognize how little we actually need to be okay, and that sometimes those of us who spend our lives in front of the computer might do well to look up every now and then and recognize there is more to the world than what we have created in our own little worlds. And I HAVE created a world in my computer. I have my comforting, changing screen saver of photos of family, loved ones, scenes from all over the country that make my heart sing and remind me where I've been. I listen to a constant stream of music from my iTunes. I keep in touch with friends, colleagues, writing students, my editors and agents, family through email. And even this, this blog, what is this if not an online, virtual way of performing? Even though it's been suggested that an acoustic guitar might be superior to a computer, I actually maintain that the advent of computers and emails and this virtual community you are a part of --simply because you're reading this-- has increased compassion, awareness and creativity in our world, not decreased it. One more thing: as I was driving around western MA today, admiring the leaves, feeling the same sadness watching them fall as I feel about my lost darlings on the hard drive, I saw a bumper sticker that said, "Good planets are hard to find." And I got to thinking about environmentalists, and environmentalism. It seems obvious to me that humans can create toxic substances that could literally poison the planet. That is, at least, a possibility. One of the most common (conservative) arguments from those opposed to "the environmentalists" is derision: "You all are a bunch of Chicken Littles, running around saying, 'the sky is falling, the sky is falling.' You overreact. You are fearful. Calm down." These same people tend to be the ones who are into Homeland Security, who think the world will be safer from terrorism if we maintain a position of Red Alert in respect to anyone who might seem like a terrorist, namely (these days) people who look like they might come from the Middle East. And to these people, I say, "You are a bunch of Chicken Littles. You are overreacting. Calm down." So most of us have fear, but why is it that we have fear of different things? What makes one kid grow up to fear destruction of the planet at the hands of polluters and another grows up to fear destruction of the planet at the hands of terrorists? Why is it that when Katryna is afraid she procrastinates and wants to curl up and go to sleep, but when I am afraid I want to race around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to do as much as I can to control my situation, throwing money I don't have at computer technicians and thinking that going out for dinner to a really fancy expensive meal will solve all my problems? I don't know. But I do know that I am going to take my digital camera out tomorrow and take pictures of me and Tom and Katryna and Amelia and Dave in the glorious fall foliage before it becomes, as our friend Bill says, “Stick Season.” I am going to make a new Ultimate Bob Dylan mix. I am going to finish a draft of The Big Idea. I am going to back everything up to CDs. And I’m going to try to trust that all these things we lose are replaced in some form or another; that we are meant to grieve our losses-even elections, even baseball games- so we can be compassionate towards others who have lost.