Mother's Day, Part I

     Jesus helps my mother do her hair.  


    Has for years.  He's her personal Lord and Savior, oh sure, but he's also her bouffant-of-glory wingman.  Do you think I'm blaspheming?  Then you don't understand the crucial connection between a Texan woman and her hair.  


    But Jesus does.  And so, as she told me, He's by her side every morning as she wields her curling iron and some Aqua Net, careful not to spray it too near the attendant lit cigarette.  Mom smokes in the house.  Of course she does.


     "I don't have as much hair as I used to. I have to pray every morning to get it to do anything.  Jesus helps me."  Again, this I understand.  Hair "does" things, or it should.  In Texas, hair is a verb.


     Mother's Day has me thinking about Mom and about a few of the women who have been mothers to me, including my stepmom, who will get her own entry next, and the indescribable Auntie Em.  But today I got off the phone with Mom, who recently came home after a 4 week stint in a "skilled nursing facility" from a broken hip. For a woman who has had Crohn's disease for 30 years and has recently beaten cancer, the broken hip should have been the end of her.  Instead, she was released after a month with the doctors shaking their heads:  "You're some kind of miracle.  We just don't understand it."


     What they don't understand is her fierce resilience.  Mom chalks this up to astrology.  (And yes, Jesus and the horoscope co-exist very nicely on Planet Mom, thankyouverymuch).  Like myself, she is a Leo in western astrology, a Horse according to the Chinese.  Of course, she is a Water Horse and I'm a Fire Horse, so you can imagine the fun around our house when I was a teenager.  Anyway, whenever moments of strength are required, she draws either upon her Leonine heritage ("We're Leos.  What others call arrogance is just our natural superiority") or, when that fails, Scarlett O'Hara, her role model.  Don't get me started on the myriad times she slips into a fake Georgian drawl to assert some kind of faux Southern strength.  I remind her she's a Texan and to put back the twang.  We channel Elizabeth Taylor from Giant, toast Scarlett's pluck if not her accent, and return to praising our sun sign and the Son of God, who, Mom reminds me, "Is always there.  Don't forget it.  And don't feel like you can only pray on Sunday.  Pray when you're doing your hair.  Jesus understands."  


     When Mom was diagnosed with oral cancer a couple of years ago, it scared me but came as no surprise.  She started smoking in her "Mad Men" college days when the doctor told her it would help with her asthma.  "He said I needed to cough more to loosen up the lungs.  Of course, he was wrong, but what did we know?" she asked, drawing on a Marlboro Light as we discussed the big topics--God, mortality, hair-- sipping green beer on St. Patrick's Day at the American Legion.  The room was already starting to cloud over with a nicotine haze.  It was late afternoon, "Wheel of Fortune" was on TV, stepdad Ed was cranky because he wanted to watch "Gunsmoke" reruns. 


    "Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the smoking might have led to the cancer?" I asked, trying not to sound accusatory.


   Utter dismay crossed her face.  "What, child?  Of course not!  Smoking causes lung cancer. I have oral cancer.  Not the same thing at all."


   Um.


    "So do you think you oughta try quitting now?" 


     "Are you kidding?!  For God's sake, I have CANCER!  I'm way too stressed out to stop smoking now!"  


     Never underestimate the power of denial.   And sure enough, after surgery, Mom was fine.  Then the broken hip.  A month later, Mom is fine.  Her hair is thinner; it won't tease up like it used to in the picture above, but she does it everyday.  It's not vanity.  It is resilience.  It is resistance.  It is never giving up the good fight.  This week I'm thinking about these eccentric sorts of strength and thanking Jesus for any amount of it that came down the pipeline to me or to my own kids.  I love you, Mom.

Poem In Your Pocket Day

ARRIVAL AT THE WALDORF

Home from Guatemala, back at the Waldorf.

This arrival in the wild country of the soul,

All approaches gone, being completely there,

Where the wild poem is a substitute

For the woman one loves or ought to love

   Happy Poem in Your Pocket Day!  Since 2002, poets have been celebrating a day when we can carry a poem, or just a few lines of verse, around in our pockets and share them with friends or leave scraps of them lying around on park benches, restaurant tables or even bathroom sinks like the nerdy litterbugs we are.  I have a problem with this day though.  Remember the line from Jaws, "We're gonna need a bigger boat?"  Well, I need bigger pockets.  And a lot more of 'em.  

   Truth be told, I don't carry poems around anywhere but in my head, and even then only a few.  I've inherited this tendency from my father, 6'4" hunter/Bassmaster/ties-his-own-flies-to-flyfish/Texan.  But after a glass of whiskey or two, he might just regale you with "The Cremation of Sam McGee," all 13 stanzas of it, give or take a few.  It is a mystical event to behold.

  More truth be told, I didn't even know about Poem in Your Pocket Day until That Neil Guy sent me an update on Facebook. What kind of poet am I?  Oh, the same kind that, many years ago, road in the Houston Art Car parade with Neil and a bunch of our good friends in a Trailer Full O' Poets, all of us on a flat-bed reading aloud to the crowd from separately chosen books of verse.  Neil read poems from Warmed by Love by Leonard Nimoy (and you thought he was just Spock. Ha!) featuring that classic, "Old Fashioned Spaceman." ("Rocket ships / Are exciting / But so are roses / On a birthday" ).  I chose to shout him down from the trailer with the greatest hits of Rod McKuen because I was in my deeply ironic phase (compared to my somewhat ironic phase now).  There were many of us hollerin' poetry to the crowd who looked alternately perplexed and delighted. C'mon people. You can't take your poetry too seriously.

  But sometimes you can't help it.  Sometimes you're at IHOP and he just doesn't love you anymore.  It was 100 years ago, I was living in Texas, and I was tormented.  I loved Mr. Wonderful more than Mr. Wonderful loved me.  I needed to study for a modern poetry class, so I took my books and wounded heart out to breakfast.  There among the Belgian waffles and that blessed brown coffee carafe I stumbled quite accidentally upon a little known poem by Wallace Stevens called "Arrival at the Waldorf."  Mr. Wonderful frequently traveled to Guatemala, so the first line of the poem (see above) immediately caught my eye.  By line 2, I was hooked. "The wild country of the soul...."  Aw hell yeah.  Line 3:  Stevens ain't messin' around.  This isn't about approaching, saying the right thing, wearing the right tie, obeying the correct dictates.  The wild country of the soul demands pure being, just being there.

   Take a breath.  Take a bite of Belgian waffle. Gulp coffee.  Carry on.

   Stanza 2:  "Where the wild poem is a substitute/"  And here the line enjambs, that is, it breaks and carries over to the next line. Ya gotta pause a second.  So the first time I read this, I thought, "Ok, I like the idea of a wild poem.  Nothin' wrong with that.  It's probably a substitute for something crappy like the IRS 1040 Long Form.  Or broccoli.  But noooooo.  The wild poems subs in for the woman one loves...or OUGHT TO LOVE.  Oh how this thrilled my younger self.  

     Still does.

    I'll take a page outta James Joyce to defend my answer on this one.  We all love a wild poem whether that is a good song our a fancy bridge we're building or a skyscraper we're designing or a meal we're cooking.  Our "art," our "work" is incredibly important and sustaining.  You get no argument from me.  But as the man who wrote Ulysses and Finnegans Wake knew, the ultimate answer, if you must settle on one, is the courageous, heart-rending physicality of Molly's "Yes." 

   

    So I memorized that poem sitting there in the iHOP and have carried it with me ever since.  There's more to it than I've printed here.  Its last line, "after that alien, point-blank, green and actual Guatemala" brings me back to earth every time I veer to far into my own head.

   Other poems in my pocket?  I need a bigger boat.   Lines from poets swirl in my memory: 

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

lady through whose profound and fragile lips

the sweet small clumsy feet of April came

into the ragged meadow of my soul

I ate the day
Deliberately, that its tang
Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb. 

that just to watch them is to feel again that hitching in the groin, that fill-
         ing of the heart,
the old, sore heart, the battered, foundered, faithful heart, snorting again, 

        stamping in its stall. 

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

...determined to save the only life you could save.

It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Come up to me, love,

Out of the river, or I will

Come down to you.

Kathy, this is the worst time of day, nearing five, gloom
ubiquitous as harm, work shifts changing. And our lives
are on the line. Until we die our lives are on the mend.
I’ll drive home when I finish this, over the pass that’s closed
to all but a few, that to us was always open, good days
years ago when our bodies were in motion and the road rolled out
below us like our days. Call me again when the tears build
big inside you, because you were my lover and you matter,

++++++

These are only a few of mine.  Do you have a few you carry around, too?

   

   

"At Least it Requires Awe..."

     Du-oh!  We're already 12 days into National Poetry Month and I haven't said a word about it yet.  My lofty ambition is to post something everyday this month related to my favorite art form, unless napping is an art form.

     Today I was ordering books for a fall course on British poetry and trying to decide who to include on the syllabus.  Leafing through Derek Walcott's Collected Poems, I remembered a crazy night many years ago shouting some of these poems out of a car window as the Dudette drove us down an empty Texas highway. We needed protection, a talisman, something to ward off the evil spirits of what we feared might be wide open spaces and tiny, closed minds.  So, like a lunatic, I start reading aloud.  First, just in the car, then with the windows rolled down, then hollerin' and carryin' on, declaiming Walcott's words to our amusement and to the certain dread of surrounding cattle and the occasional bewildered farmer.

  Poetry makes people weird.

  Not that Walcott is weird at all.  Oh, far from it.  He's a Caribbean poet, Nobel Prize winner, and the author of such lines as, "Things do not explode, / they fail, they fade" in a poem aptly titled "Endings."  That one always gets me.

  In "Volcano" he suggests that one could give up writing and become the ideal reader of the great writers instead:  "At least it requires awe / which has been lost to our time."  And then he delivers his one-two punch:

so many people have seen everything,
so many people can predict,
so many refuse to enter the silence
of victory, the indolence
that burns at the core,
so many are no more than
erect ash, like the cigar,
so many take thunder for granted.
How common is the lightning,
how lost the leviathans
we no longer look for!
There were giants in those days.
In those days they made good cigars.
I must read more carefully.

  I used to hand out this poem on the first day of any class so the little tykes might actually read (much less carefully). "How lost the leviathans we no longer look for!"  Now there's a line. 

  However, if you want to be blown away, run, don't walk, to your nearest Google and read "Love After Love."  It. Will. Rock. Your. World.  It's a leviathan, a talisman.  It is the silence of victory itself.  Money-back guarantee.

This Day of Eggs

  


Happy Easter everyone!  It's a glorious Day of Eggs here in the 'Ham.  

   Since, as Picasso said, "Bad artists copy. Good artists steal," I have stolen the title of today's blog from BFF Cintra Wilson.  Yes, I'm name-dropping here, but I'm fixin' to name-drop Jesus, so just hang on to your hats.

   My dear friend from high school, Donald (a.k.a The Señor because we took Spanish together) posted words of wisdom on the Facebook regarding Easter.  I'm one of those annoying people who want holidays to mean something.  Yeah, blah blah blah eat a lotta food.  Usually candy is involved whether it's trick-or-treating or candy canes or chocolate bunnies, but what is the deeper, cool-like-Anne-Lamott-cool story behind holidays that can make them fresh again?  Usually these questions receive an eye-roll from some, a Cadbury egg stuffed in my mouth from others.  Things could be worse.

  So, The Señor says this:

  "Whether you are Christian or not, you have to appreciate the essence of today.  When you are down and out, finding your spirit brings about renewal and new life.  It's why we love rags-to-riches stories, dramatic comebacks, and last second reversals for victory.  It's the story of all of us.... Surviving loss and finding renewal."

   Gracias, Señor.  That works for me.  Those words alone are enough to chew on, but then I got a little lagniappe in church with the boys this morning.  We're reading the resurrection story from the book of John, and a small detail catches my eye.  Our preacher makes great points about the importance of hope (I dig that) and how Jesus first appeared to a woman (I really dig that), and then we get to this:

   "[Simon Peter] saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself."  (John 20: 6-7)

  What an odd narrative point.  The research I found about this says little more than Peter, unlike the other disciples, ventures into the tomb and sees that it is empty, hence resurrection. 

  Ok, fine. I get it.  But here's the Big Question no one asks: Who folded the linens?   Who "rolled up in a place by itself" the cloth that had been on Jesus' head?  Who is the maid?  I'm not being blasphemous here.  I am struck by this detail.  Did Christ, in the biggest moment of his life, take time carefully to re-wind what must have been many feet of bloody linen, and if so, why?  

  There are four accounts of Jesus' resurrection that, of course, complicate the question. Matthew describes an angel guarding the tomb.  No one ever goes in.  Mark describes a "young man" in the tomb who might be an angel.  He talks to the women, but there is no mention of any burial garments.  Luke says "Peter saw the linen clothes by themselves," but no mention that anything was folded because Luke moves straight on to the "amazed" at the resurrection part.  And who can blame him?

   But John feels the need to paint a little scenery.  Linens over here; cloth on Jesus' head over there. (Side note: The King James version calls the cloth a "napkin," but that just seems silly.)  Maybe the "young man" in Mark's account cleaned up a bit before the women showed up, but we don't know this.  Taking John's account on its own terms, we find an empty tomb and, well, a lack of mess.

   There's a message here, I think.

   

   I want to think that Jesus did the folding.  It's not that I need to believe in an OCD, Martha Stewart kind of Savior in the same way that Ricky Bobby needs to believe in "8 lb. 6 oz. new born infant Jesus" or Cal Naughton requires his Jesus to be "in a tuxedo shirt because it says I want to be formal but I'm here to party."  Rather, I like the idea that maybe part of the Easter message is Hey, rebirth is messy.  Sometimes our first instinct is to get our bearings and clean up the joint.  I know when I feel overwhelmed, the first thing I do is wash dishes.  Despite His divinity, surely the same man who felt apprehension in the Garden of Gethsemane felt a little overwhelmed at just, um, coming back to life.  He knew it was gonna happen, but still....

   And He must have known how the we'd react.  The tomb is empty.  If the body were stolen, the linens would be gone.  If the linens were strewn all over the place, it might look more like a scene from Quentin Tarantino.  Taking in an empty tomb is shocking enough.  That little touch, that tiny tidbit of folding considers anyone who might notice such things, or anyone who would want to keep the linens but not want to have to deal with dried blood and decay.

  We take care of each other.  In the raw wake of survival we don't have to live in disorder and disarray.  I imagine Jesus, as crazy as this sounds, thanking the things that held his body during his death, then folding them, placing them, and moving on to the next beautiful thing.  We need to honor the things that hold us together and honor the ones who look for us.  

  I'm going to think of this next year when we the little ones are looking for eggs, and at the end of the day when we fold up our Easter best until next year.  I may be reading it all wrong, but it's a nice thought.

   

     

Passenger Alert

"Every poem breaks a silence that has to be overcome."  So wrote my literary mother, Adrienne Rich, who died this week.


Maybe it's true that every blog can do the same, and so I return inspired to the blogosphere, where I once dipped a toe for a while a few years ago.  My first entry then, as now, explained where I came up with the title of this blog.  For some of you, this will ring a bell.  


One of my favorite stories comes from the Dude.  Seems the Dude (a.k.a. Mike Levine) was riding the El in Chicago a few years ago, and the train broke down. Commuters were confused. Connections were missed. Chaos ensued. A voice came over the PA system and tried to restore order. Unfortunately, the only sound everyone heard was some version of Charlie Brown's teacher: "Waaa waa wuh wahh wahh."

More chaos. More mayhem. "Is this our stop?" "Are we on the brown line?" "How long will it take to fix this train?" "Este tren esta loco!"

Then, with the force of a deus ex machina, the voice of the train conductor emerged out of the darkness in booming clarity:

"Passengers, let me break it down for you." 

A silence fell over the crowd.  With a sigh of patient precision, the conductor spelled it all out.  The nature of the malfunction was clarified. Order was restored.  People stepped off the train almost single file and smiling as if choreographed.

I have always loved this story. I love the idea of a weary, hot voice emerging from the periphery and offering one of life's most precious gifts: clarity. Where is this voice when I'm in the throws of a major decision? Why can't this voice boom from nowhere in my classroom some days when the students are dense and the teacher is tired?  Where is that man when even the choice between red or white wine seems too much to shoulder?

So, in honor of that valiant conductor, I hereby name this blog. 
Dear readers, where and when I can, I will break it down for you as best as I know how.