Category Archives: writing

Voyeurs are Artists (in southern California)

There, a girl,
thin, in a light black sweater,
green suit bottoms,
legs bare.

She forms
an “O” with her body.
Her arms twisted comfortably,
her head tilted
in
to
her subject.

A shutter clicking
soft
against the backdrop of
waves, and
she
moves into another contortion,
into another
frame of
photographic art.

We, in southern California,
are artists
covered in sand.

Finding an Old Master: Leaves of Grass (The Deathbed Edition from 1900)

One of the coolest books I’ve ever held in my arms, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass from 1900, publisher David McCay. Found when going through my grandparents’ and great aunt’s things. How many have felt that same spark when holding it. Sigh.

Finding an Old Master

The smell of dust, dirt,
years of basement trappings
wafts to my nose
and surprises my brain.
The book heavy in my arms,
the spine aches
when I turn the pages.
It is old but prescient.

With its age it realizes
many things–
among them
a collection of dewy sighs
and fingerprints, some ghostly,
settle into my own
and together us pioneers
continue the story.

Off to Jamaica….see you tuesday

Getting up early tomorrow for my first trip to Jamaica! I just finished one of my patented “last minute and I have no idea what I just packed” packing jobs. This is what I have done for every single trip I’ve ever been on and I love the stress of it all! Staying up late into the night, I try on different outfits, spill lotions into tiny containers, listen to some good tunes, and work on burning off that nervous energy that comes from upcoming travel…. I’ve done this whether it’s four nights on an island or a business trip or two weeks in Europe! It’s a fool-proof method because you don’t second guess yourself, which I find is all too common with packing in advance haha. Anyways, this means no updates till Tuesday. You’ll just have to peek back through the archives and see if you can discover ones you may have missed the first go around… and when you do, be sure to leave a comment 🙂 I’ll be bringing some sunshine back! Ciao!

Upon Reading Nabokov’s "An Invitation to a Beheading"

I know I know—
Yet there are these
Times when the imaginary
Characters seem to have complexities
Beyond their capabilities,
When the sky
Seems to have shades of meaning
Invisible to the ordinary eye.

That other self says, I know I know—
It is the shadow that throws
My will to live against the wall
And watches it drip off like a smashed
Spider clinging to the web after death;
It is a puffed prison warden who says
To sit still and listen and that soon enoug
It will all be over, justice served.

I must know this; I can feel the cold breath—yet,
The lessons in the book say,
Stand up. Just simply stand up and
Leave.

Edits

For a night, I was God.
With a glass of red in one hand and
a pen in the other, I sat on my bed
and reread the last few years of my life.

I was stranger among my own thoughts,
a voeuyer into a life I no longer knew.

All my private mistakes laid out
in scribbled frantic strokes, but clear.
I sipped the wine, drank it down. I read and read;
I scratched out. Everything painful was delightfully
marked through over and over and over.
Every sin covered in black ink and gone.

first post

It’s hard to know where to begin. The blank slate is always intimidating whether it be a journal or a new blog! Maybe I’ll just start sharing. That might be the best way to get this old ball rolling. Poems, thoughts, ideas, observations… that’s what you can expect here. Details of life. I hope you enjoy.