Found Art

Hooray for random metaphor in grocery stores! Because flowers = poetry. Because poetry should be consumed. Because life is romantic (if we let it be that way). I like that this is in the Safeway in Wheaton, MD. It strikes me by surprise every time I see it. I would love to see a whole store filled with poetry signs like this. In the bakery: Poetry in the making. In the meat department: Raw Poetry or Poetry and Beef. In the greeting card section: Poetry for all occasions. Yes!

Linked and Built Together

I've just begun to read Nancy Horan's "Loving Frank," a novel about the love affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney. It's beautiful, but haunting and tragic, and with every page I further draw a personal connection. Today, I was reading on the metro ride home, and the line that stopped me most was, "Truth against the world." I read it over and over and said it out loud and made it my facebook status. I want to know what it means to me, I'm curious. In the context of the story line, it meant we must believe in our individual truths when the outside world embellishes our lives.

In a lot of ways, the story line in "Loving Frank" reminds me of Erica Jong's "Fear of Flying:" running away to a foreign country with a lover in order to discover oneself, and the discoveries one makes because of love affairs. Being deep within a woman's psyche we learn the sacrifices humans make to move forward, to reach discovery, but within those sacrifices, the deep hurt that is found and the blackness to the discoveries made.

When looking up, "Truth against the world," I fell upon this Frank Lloyd Wright quote, and it made me feel as if I am meant to be studying the man further as if I will continue to discover through his words and work (especially appropriate as I have been temping as a receptionist at an architect firm lately).

If you would see how interwoven it is in the warp and woof of civilization ... go at night-fall to the top of one of the down-town steel giants and you may see how in the image of material man, at once his glory and his menace, is this thing we call a city. There beneath you is the monster, stretching acre upon acre into the far distance. High over head hangs the stagnant pall of its fetid breath, reddened with light from myriad eyes endlessly, everywhere blinking. Thousands of acres of cellular tissue, the city’s flesh outspreads layer upon layer, enmeshed by an intricate network of veins and arteries radiating...

I have scaled these city walls

At the end of the work day today someone was whistling this song in the office. I couldn't see who it was, but the moment stayed with me as I walked to the metro. The whistling reverberated in my thoughts the same as it had sounded as it traveled through the cubicles. I imagined it to be the cleaning man who earlier in the afternoon waved to me in the elevator video camera or one of the architects thinking of the end of the day--in a dreamy mode, pressing their lips together.

On the walk to the way to Dupont Circle, over and over I sang to myself, "These city walls. These city walls." As a writer or artist, don't we all live for these moments? When symbolism is created unknowingly. When real life becomes like a scene from a movie or novel. For me, this is the reason to re-create real life moments: to put down in words what I imagine or experience for others.

Working in the city and living in the suburbs, I have a limited understanding of the "city walls" of Washington D.C. But with each passing moment, I take in the people surrounding, passersby as inspiration.

I love being in a place that feels brand new to me. A place where my observational levels are heightened. A place that inspires me to capture each moment I experience and turn it into poetry, even if the poetry is only in my mind. Even if it hasn't formed itself into stanzas, line breaks, rhythm. And to be reminded that art is made by art. That living and small moments that turn into ideas are the meaning behind art. To know that we all are searching for the perfect line and to be okay with admitting, "but I still haven't found what I'm looking for."

Today's Focus: Energy: The Ability to Do

Energy: The ability to do.

Poetry Cartoons! Yes!

All I need is somewhere I can feel the grass beneath my feet

Belle & Sebastian are my go-to for inspiration. Their lyrics never fail to take me into a lovely world, one with daydreams and reality that meld together, cloud-like.

The following two songs are by far my favorite and are on the endless playlist in my head especially as of late as we move into the summer season.

Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John
(From Write about Love)

What a waste I could have been your lover
What a waste I could have been your friend
Perfect love is like the blossom that fades so quick
When it’s blowing up a storm in may

Travel south until your skin gets warmer
Travel south until your skin turns brown
Put a language in your head and live on a train
And then come back to the one you love

Yeah, you’re great, you’re just part
Of this lifetime of dreaming
That extends to the heart
Of this long summer feeling

Quiet night you see the tvs glowing
Quiet night you hear the walls are awake
Me and you are getting out of the party crowd
Can I see what’s underneath your bed?

Can I stay until the milkman’s working
Can I stay until the café awakes
Do you hate me in the light, did you get a fright
When you looked across from where you lay?

Yeah you’re great, you’re just part
Of this lifetime of dreaming
That extends to the heart
Of this long summer feeling
All the history of boys
I invent in my head

Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John

What a waste I could have been your lover
What a waste I could have been your friend



Asleep on a Sunbeam
(From Dear Catastrophe Waitress)

When the half light makes for a clearer view
Sleep a little more if you want to
But restlessness has seized me now, it’s true
I could watch the dreams flicker in your eyes
Lying here asleep on a sunbeam
I wonder if you realise you fascinate me so

Think about a new destination
If you think you need inspiration
Roll out the map and mark it with a pin
I will follow every direction
Just lace up your shoes while I’m fetching a sleeping bag, a tent...
Another summer’s passing by
All I need is somewhere I feel the grass beneath my feet
A walk on sand, a fire I can warm my hands
My joy will be complete

I thought about a new destination
I’m never short of new inspiration
Roll out the map and mark it with a gin
Made my plans to conquer the country
I’m waiting for you to get out of your situation
With your job and with your life

All I need is somewhere I feel the grass beneath my feet
A walk on sand
A fire, I can warm my hands
My joy will be complete.

(What a cute little character at the beginning of this video! She, within herself, is inspiring!)

Advice and Insight

Yesterday I went for a walk in the sunshine with my cousin Marc. We talked about horror movies while we meandered down the sidewalk, and as we were nearing home, I took notice to a sign in the neighbor's front yard. I stopped and took a picture of the "End These Wars" sign, and he asked if I'd noticed the others in the yards we'd passed. Somehow I hadn't observed them. After taking the picture, I stood in front of the sign and thought of the words as advice and not as a demand.

As a writer, as a human, I am always looking for advice, but knowing what to do with it doesn't come easy. I collect in the way of stacking magazine clippings, I file away what others give me. "You should do this, you should read this, you should check this out." Suggestions are therapeutic, they take the stress off discovering on your own, directing yourself. Being co-dependent in certain elements of life can be beautiful, for me unavoidable. I know I cannot live alone with my creativity. I know I cannot be alone in my beliefs.

Recently, a beautiful friend of mine suggested an article to me. After reading it I felt, powered, charged, and as if I wanted more: The Urgent Matter of Books reminds one it's okay to sit on your ass and read as long as you stand up and share afterwards. Lidia Yuknavitch's article made me think about the whole process of reading and writing, how there must be a balance between the solitude of both processes and the community found through each.

What would we do without the advice and insight literature gives us?

Recently, I have been thinking of my favorite Brazilian writer, Clarice Lispector. As I neared the end of my grad program, I realized how much of an influence she has in both my writing and how after I read and studied her, I gained a new way of looking at the world. This perception is one that lies in an incredibly internal place. Some words from her:

"Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought. . . . life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence." (The Passion According to GH)

"For at the hour of death you became a celebrated film star, it is a moment of glory for everyone, when the choral music scales the top notes." (The Hour of the Star)

"The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices." (The Passion According to GH)