Monday, March 07, 2011
un-koothu
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Party, Pythons
N drove us home--we should go back and retrieve the Mini from his house on "the only hill in Ohio" sometime today.
Although, there's not much of "today" left; I got out of bed at 2:30. Big A had taken the kids out to breakfast and then haircuts, leaving me free to finish reading my book in bed, take a shower, and yearn for my family. (Usually they're around so much, I never get to yearn.)
I haven't seen Big A since early this morning when we woke up with match-y nightmares. Big A's was about a python that had spawned a baby python on his alarm clock on the nightstand. Mine was about a big, rubbery, lipstick-y mouth called an "a-poco-lips." Get it? Get it? My subconscious makes jokes that are as stoopid as my awake jokes are!
_
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Wake up call
Friday, February 04, 2011
Martian sends
My mind clutches a phrase, rubbing it raw in its sweaty fist. I'm awake now and realize that this nugget-- "ColdMartin Locksheen"--is merely an unappetizing and useless amalgam of NPR, Pandora, and Jezebel.com.
Odd the way this mind grabs the surprise appearance of Coldplay, a.k.a. Chris Martin, on the Phoenix station on Pandora, news of tech giant Lockheed Martin's U.S. Army contract, and Charlie (son of Martin) Sheen(anigans) to produce some Palin-esque puffery.
Although this is the closest I've come to deciphering how a poem happens--starting out with a phrase that surely expands through all the hours of rote existence.
_
Monday, January 24, 2011
A Monday (Spring, 2011)
These dreams are like demons
Where ice breeds fibrous
Before you were born
You were an ocean.
Here, everyone is moving
Their apologies like smoke
Still under the new road
An older one flows.
_
Friday, January 14, 2011
Living January
Is to dream
of one blade of sea
on the far
side of a sandbox
Is to think skin
is no boundary
to waves
volatile as time
Is to plant
footprints and undress
prophecies too
delicate to translate
Thursday, January 13, 2011
New appointee?
Big A: I was going to look at Haitian protest posters to design an introductory diagnostic for the postcolonial course.
Me: Ohh… (wishing I had thought of it first)
And I got my wish, because Big A seems to have some awesome pedagogical ideas--but only in *my* dreams :).
_
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Passage
You help us all into the box.
It is shaped like a coffin.
We are to leave for Mars.
They say
That Earth will be uninhabitable.
We are to lie inside
this box,
that is like a coffin,
for three days.
It takes that long to get to Mars.
For five hours I try
to teach the children
to say,“uninhabitable.”
Their mouths fail to shape this noisy word.
I think about the
impossibility
of keeping
the two-year-old quiet
or still.
Three days.
I think of the improbability
of saving the child with Asthma.
I say,
I’ll stay
here on earth with our children.
Underneath sacrifice,
Artifice.
The anxious place
of silence
in my deep
and small space.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Asides
In a dream
I took
(my husband)
(to)
your apartment
looking for
proof
of
(a different) life
all the pictures
you had
were of your brother
But you’d saved
(a colony of chittering mice
for) me
_
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Actually, intellect
Well, you've always been good at crushing on elderly intellectuals.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
The 25 things meme
1. Culturally, I've always been something of an outsider/diasporan all my life. Even when i was an Indian living in India, i was of the Telegu diaspora in a Tamizh state.
2. I've been engaged twice as many times as i've been married. And i've been married more than once.
3. I used to be terrified of the paranormal. Then one night (which in my melodramatic, adolescent state i no doubt termed "a dark night of my soul") i faced my terrors down in the dark with a stray wolf for company, and some unexpected, nearly drunk college kids in the parking lot at the bottom of the hill.
4. Before anorexia was widely diagnosed in India, i was anorexic for three years out of a sense of exacerbated solidarity with the human condition in general and famine in Africa in particular. I started to put on weight again out of vanity. This is counter to most anorectic case histories and incredibly bathetic.
5. I don't think i really understand that i can control my monetary status. When i have it, i spend it; when i don't have it, i don't. I have been well to do and i have been fairly poor. I cannot imagine being wealthy.
6. My sister is my rock. We share a shorthand of memory and linguistics. And unconditional love.
7. My parents claim that they never find any but their own kids (that's me and my sister) cute, sweet, virtuous, etc. On the contrary, I haven't met a kid i didn't find fascinating.
8. I have memories of my dad helping my mom wax off her underarm hair, but my parents deny this. But i remember the horrible chemical smell.
9. My earliest recurrent dream since i was around three involves me running down a flight of stairs holding in my hand a spindle that grows as it rolls around in my hand. I'm not frightened by this dream, mostly repulsed. I began wondering recently given the phallic nature of the dream symbols if some adult male had exposed himself to me when i was a child.
10. I used to have really thick hair and a maid used to help me wash it twice a week. My husband thinks this is hilariously privileged.
11. My mother told me once that even if God himself told her so, she wouldn't believe that my dad could have an affair. I was so impressed by the trust she had in my dad. Until she added, "He really hates to spend money."
12. My father claims that the most beautiful women he has ever seen are his wife and daughters. He's not right, of course; but he's not fibbing about how he really believes it.
13. I want to be able to raise my kids to be happy, loving, confident people who will make a difference in the world.
14. When i was little, unsolicited soothsayers told me that (a) my son would be as beautiful as the young Lord Murugan [true] (b) that he would change the world. [i hope.] They didn't say anything about my daughter. But i know she's beautiful and hope she changes the world too.
15. I would be happy if my daughter chose to be lesbian. I think that heterosexual unions come with embedded hierarchical differences that are difficult to negotiate and impossible to overcome.
16. I used to be a near omnivore. I've eaten goat's hooves and tongue and i *enjoyed* eating goat's brains (egh!!) as a kid. Now i'm on the road to veganism. (O chocolate, why must you have dairy in it?) (And while we are at it, why is there no good soy cheese?)
17. I worry at any putative (or imaginary) harm that may befall my babies. If i had one superpower, it would be to make it so all the kids in the world were fed, healthy, and happy.
19. I can listen to my parents' stories all day and all night. And i can argue with their politics all day and all night too. When i visit my parents i like to climb into the space between them and listen to stories of their childhood.
20. The level of marital discourse between me and A is infinitely infantile. I cannot imagine either of us living without the other. I can cry thinking about how much *he* would cry if something were to happen to me.
21. I seem to have incredible good fortune in landing awesome mothers-in-law.
22. I went through two or three paperbacks a day as a kid. I read de Sade, Joe Orton, and a lot of Martin Amis when i was thirteen. It was in hardback and my parents didn't investigate. Now, thoroughly grown up, I sometimes still read Enid Blytons.
23. I'm confused by why it is "thoroughfare" and not "through-fare" when clearly it refers to passing through and not to being thorough.
24. Are we there yet?
25. When i yell, "family conference" it usually involves everyone piling into bed to snuggle.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
I thought i would dream about the dead bird
My mom: Did Big A dispose of the bird?Yes.Oracle Mom: I think that means you've just rid yourself of any danger stalking Baby.I'll take it.FTW Mom: Also, remember that your first house sparrow didn't actually nest or hatch in the house. It wanted to, you chased it away, and you still had a baby.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
He dreams of lesbians
Saturday, July 19, 2008
I have an Obama dream
I had a dream about Obama, says I.
Big A pounces: was it a sex dream?
Kind of--I didn’t have sex with him, but my friend T was trying to get him to have sex with her younger sister N. Oh, and also, we were all at the big seaside hotel and no one seemed to recognize him as the presidential candidate at all, except for politically savvy me. What I really liked was that he had two balconies: reportedly one reserved for looking at the sea and the other one for drying his towels--very bright man that. Vote!
_
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Fried Eyeball
Big A gave me some Erythromycin goop that helped immediately and thanks to percocets I’ve been having dreams with incredible parades of long-ago, long-lost friends.
Friday Update: Saw the doctor who says I’m ok, won’t go blind, and don’t even need glasses yet. (sigh on that last one : / )
Friday night update: Awesome how the body heals--the burn mark on my eyeball has completely disappeared! Still *bleeping* hurts everywhere else though.
_
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Happy Husband Day
So when I crawled back into bed at 9 (a.m.! Don’t judge!) to wake Big A, I told him about it, and declared today Happy Husband Day. He was super sleepy, but nevertheless mildly pleased, and he then started making lame-o, low-key requests such as-- “I want five more minutes of sleep,” “I wish my phone was charged” etc., until I had to spell it out for him.
Ummm, Hello? It’s Happy Husband Day. Kinda like Happy Birth-Day. So i'm pretty certain it’s actually MY day, ok? Then I gave him the list: Cake, party, presents...
He was asleep before I got to the messenger bag I really, seriously, desperately need. (Know this: An outsize Canal Street knock-off Balenciaga will give you shoulder pain. I lived and learned. Hopefully, you've learned without pain of your own.)
_
Thursday, January 04, 2007
AlternaWriting
The novel is pretty precious--after all it’s by the same Frances Hodgson Burnett who wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy. But there's plenty of dross of a cultural nature that i found extremely interesting--the titular character comes from India (she’s the daughter of a British colonial officer) and there’s an Indian butler, Ram Dass, who has a fair amount of agency in the latter half of the novel.
Also, I guess that I was subconsciously hooked (!SPOILER AHEAD!) to the plight of the motherless child who suddenly loses her beloved and doting father to illness. Because at some point in the night these words emerged:
Now although you may believe that Sara’s father had died and perished in the forests of India, in truth, he was biding his time in order to re-enter his beloved daughter’s life at an opportune moment. Only the contemplation of her jubilance allowed him to rein in his impulse to present himself to her at once.And so the next day, I continued with the rest of the novel quite optimistically.
Until I reached the end of the book and the child's father, kind of obstinately, stayed dead.
And then I realized that I must have dreamt that buoyant passage.
I wonder how much of my reading I habitually morph into a shape that is more agreeable to me without realizing it at all.
_____________________________________________
Although my subconscious is continually playing wordy tricks on me, I’m somewhat mollified by the passable imitation of Burnett that it accomplished.
_
Thursday, October 26, 2006
“Have A Nice Say”
And I was coolly persuading him to give it away. Not that it was horrible or anything, it was just another ordinary tee--but somehow, in my dream, i had intuited that it was a gift from someone in his 'Past'.
As I awoke, my dream deciphered itself in my head. Big A and his college g/f have remained good friends since they broke up like ten years ago. And the slogan in my dream is a play on her name, which features the letters “A,” “N,” “I,” “S,” and “A” prominently .
Everything fell into place.
My first feeling was horror that deep down I might harbor harsh feelings about someone who is very likeable and about whom i've heard some awfully nice things.
After that passed, however, it‘s been plain awestruck admiration for the brilliant wordplay in my subconscious :).
___
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Dream a Little Dream of Pandolins
High-school boys don’t do a thing for me anymore. And I’m too cool to giggle and too zen to hyperventilate.
But I’m still shy.
Of high-school boys.
I’m sure of myself with everyone else, including the college freshmen that were in high school right before they landed in one of the 101 courses that I teach. But stripped of my authority, my position at the head of the class, I’m afraid that they won’t recognize my non high-school status and that they’ll say or do something inappropriate. Like the time I briefly talked to a student in the library and the high-school posse he was showing around started to tease him, until he proclaimed with exasperated bashfulness, “She’s my teacher, ya morons.” Another reason to love teaching--for the immunity from innuendo.
It all came back when I had to make a short trip to the local high school yesterday.
And it returned last night in this dream I had:
I’m standing in the twilight on a windy mountain peak with a young person who introduces himself to me as “Gestuktwolf.”
Then he fixes me with an evaluative eye and asks me if I didn’t think that was a good name for a “pandolin,” which in my dream, I immediately recognize as vampire argot for 'rogue vampire'. He continues to look at me speculatively, trying to gauge my reaction to his admission of vampirism, and I’m trying to disguise my mounting terror, because of course, as everyone knows from horror movies, once you’ve revealed your fear, you’re done. : )
Then Gestuktwolf tosses his head the way world-weary teenagers do and says, a little remorsefully--heck, I don’t know why I play it like that.
Standing next to us is an elderly priestly/bounty hunter-type man who is thoroughly amused by the whole exchange--my fear, Gestuckt‘s posturing…he looks at me and breaks out a smile and a crazy electrical storm breaks out around the three of us.
____________
Sunday, July 02, 2006
On Being a Snuggle Slut (in my dreams)
I was alright about it--not thrilled, not upset, not sad. Then one night after work when I’m turning out the lights, the cityscape springs up all lit up outside the windows and I can see Big A's silhouette moving from building to building bringing darkness and screams with him--he’s committing some sort of crime but in a Scarlet Pimpernel kinda way, for a good cause. It's a cause that i strongly believe in also, but I'm worried about his safety and I walk into the bedroom all mopey aaaaaaaaand...
Jon Stewart is in bed (this is the only time I remember ever having dreamt about a celebrity). He asks me if I can’t fall asleep---I shake my head and look at him ruefully, and he says--well, what shall we do about that?
At that point I realize that in the dream I’m awfully preggers--
And JS smiles that sweet, shy smile and puts out his arms and makes me comfortable and snuggles me to sleep in an extremely matter-of-fact way, much as if he were offering me a seat on the subway.
He's a very kind guy, apparently :).
ordinary magic
all my winged things: birds, words always seem to happen only in momentous mystery their maps ghostly with emptiness layered in unknown and ...
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Friends and old neighbors shutting it down in honor of John Crawford. _
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I have the feeling that I’m going to succumb to the season and put out a list of resolutions soon. Just wanted to establish this heads up th...
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At had us pose for this pic up at Aunt R's place on Lake Huron so he could put it up in his dorm. "Don't tur...