Portland: where Autumn, too, has arrived

I arrived yesterday, and I was immediately impressed with Portland when the first three restrooms I used all had the eco-friendly, water-conserving dual flush system on the toilets. A small, perhaps random and bizarre detail, but one that I think speaks a great deal to the character of the city, and perhaps myself. After picking up my economy rental car, I wandered around downtown Portland until it was time to meet Kim and her friends for happy hour at a swanky hotel rooftop bar. The view was incredible. And, I apparently “lucked out” in terms of the weather. It was cool but not cold… brisk. And the sky was cloudless. In fact, I lamented the fact that I had left my sunglasses in the car the moment I stepped onto the large patio area. Departure, aside from boasting of its excellent panoramic views of the city and river, had incredible ambiance. The décor was trendy yet sophisticated, the waitresses wore super fashion-forward eggplant-colored dresses, and the crowd in general was very posh… not really what I was expecting to find in Portland. Friends of mine who have recently visited the city reported that Portland isn’t really one for promoting fashion, but my first night in town told a completely different story. The girls I met (Kim’s friends: Jen, Deb, Rachelle, and Sarah) were all dressed in high style. In fact, I had fashion inspiration from all of their unique and individualized outfits. After dinner, Kim and I went back to her house in Burlingame, where Kip, her husband, and Cruz, their darling 17-month-old son, welcomed me. Cruz was supposed to be asleep, but when we arrived at the house around 8:30, the crib was more his jungle gym than sleep zone… so Kim and I went in to say hello. Aside from the lovely hospitality, Kim and Kip’s house is the kind you want to snuggle into. There were old hardcover books EVERYWHERE. I thumbed through books that were so old, I couldn’t even find the date of publication. If not for some of the inscriptions, I would have been unable to guess the dates. The books had gorgeous pages with patterned colorful designs on the opening pages. They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore. Sonnets from the Portuguese and Pride and Prejudice were my favorite finds. Kim showed me her wedding photos, which were stunning… they looked like a movie-star couple. After one more glass of wine and a tour of the house, which had an air dehumidifier (a crazy notion to a SoCal girl), we went to bed around midnight.

When I woke, Kim prepared a hearty breakfast, I chased Cruz around a bit, and then I was off to explore Portland. I walked along the Park Blocks for my morning, and then headed down to the Pearl District, where I wandered about art galleries, shops, cafes, and one of my favorites, Powell Bookstore—any literature lover’s haven. Then, to rejuvenate myself from hours of strolling, I happened to stumble across an Italian restaurant that, despite the few old men drinking coffee at a single table and the young barista tending to the morning duties, I was sure they were closed. However, the minute I saw the name, Piazza Italia, I recognized it—Rachelle’s recommendation for great Italian food. I assessed the situation more carefully, and against my better judgment and hesitation to entering a restaurant that was clearly not yet open to the public for lunch and was definitely not a coffee shop, I ventured in. I sat alone at a table near the window and ordered a cup of black coffee (a real treat for this tea drinker). The owners and their son, the barista, were speaking Italian. The men at the table across the restaurant were speaking English. I noticed one had a copy of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and I hoped that perhaps they were there as part of a book club or something. Piazza Italia has televisions showing Italian channels, so I had a chance to practice my deciphering skills; PI has jerseys from professional soccer teams hanging from the ceilings and an impressive wine wall along the exposed brick (another thing I love about Portland because it seems to be the backbone of every building); PI has a deli area with Italian meats (prosciutto, mortadella, salami, bologna… you name it) and freshly baked Italian rolls and loaves. One of the men says to the barista, “We were thinking about your beautiful sister,” to which the barista replies in his gorgeous Italian accent, “Yes, you think too much about my beautiful sister.” I smiled. It was a rare moment for me. I had plenty of work to do, and yet I didn’t pull anything from my backpack. I just sat and listened to the television reporting American news in Italian. I listened to the chatter of the men. I watched the passersby. I sipped my coffee without any distraction to remove me from the present moment. It was incredible… something I should do more often.

After coffee, I walked over to YoYo Yogi, a yoga studio that is my kind of studio—no mirrors, the kind of place that values the spiritual side of yoga. I then drove over to NW 23^rd Avenue, where I enjoyed a glass of red wine (Vajra Rosso) and beet salad with Portland chevre at Kim’s recommendation, Papa Haydn. After spending the rest of the day walking around the area, I departed for the three-hour drive to Bend, where the Greenstone’s had dinner waiting.

The drive to Bend was absolutely stunning. Once I was on highway 22, I noticed that the roads were wet. This puzzled me. Not a cloud in sight. Certainly no sprinklers… it was the middle of unadulterated nature. Then I saw the hovering above the steadily flowing river, which ran along the road nearly the entire way with only a break for the lake, was a thick mist or a fog or billowing of moisture. The trees were all different colors, there weren’t houses for miles and miles, and the views of the Bachelor flooded the distance around every turn. Autumn was in full swing, and it made me sad that California keeps pushing off my favorite season.

As I pulled onto the gravel road leading to their house, Arielle and Lily came running out the front door and barreling down the driveway to greet me. It was the best part of my day, and let me just say, this was a damn fine day. More to come on my adventures in Bend.

Thoughts on Poetry

I always try to write during moments of inspiration. And this is one. Claremont Graduate University recently hosted its 20^th annual Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards ceremony. The day before the ceremony, there were three poetry panels, featuring previous Tufts winners as well as the two current winners. Though the panelists all threaded wonderful, poignant words of wisdom through their dialogue with one another and the audience, there are a few phrases and concepts that I hope stay with me always, and so I share it here in case they might speak to you as well.

The first is that writing poetry is not necessarily a thing that comes from talent; rather, according to our Tufts poets, it is a craft that, like any other skill, must be cultivated. As an aspiring writer, this idea brings me much hope. Their promise is this: if I can just make the time to sit my butt down to study poetry and write, I might be able to produce something of value… or at least something not terrible. But, in order to counterbalance any unrealistic fantasy I might possess about becoming a poet someday, I immediately recall the words of my dearly beloved John Keats, who said, “If Poetry comes not as naturally as Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.” With that, my Tufts-induced illusions of becoming a poet are again dashed. Is it obvious why I am inclined to trust the words of Keats more than those of the others? The truth is, I need to stop allowing Keats’ words to prevent me from writing. Poetry, plain and simple, does not come as naturally to me as leaves to a tree. But I won't let that stop me. I also need to stop letting my fear—that my academic, scholarly voice is sucking the life out of my creative one—keep me from writing. My promise to myself is that I will devote a large amount of summer break time to writing. I will work to cultivate my craft because I don’t want to think the same thing of myself as I think of Keats, where I mourn all the things I might have produced, if only.

The second comes from Katherine Larson, the 2012 Kate Tufts Discovery Award Winner. She said that she is more engaged with the world when she is writing. This concept is exceptionally attractive to me because I believe myself to be someone who strives to actively, intentionally participate in life and the world. Larson’s words are yet another motivator to get me writing creatively again. On that note, Timothy Donnelly, the 2012 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award Winner, said that there are two things he hates: laziness and blarney-ness. When he said this, my inner voice cried out a resounding “YES!” I hate indolence and bull-shit talk, too! But what he was really getting at is the importance of living a meaningful life, and how this way of being impacts the way he sees the world and, therefore, the way he writes. Larson’s comment is the yin to Donnelly’s yang. The two concepts work together: if one strives to live a meaningful life, one produces good poetry; if one writes poetry, one engages more fully with the world, thus creating a more meaningful life. I will work to cultivate my craft because I care deeply about living a meaningful existence.

The third is to take advantage of the valuable influence of great writers. All of the Tufts poets mentioned their love affair with reading, and, when asked about their education, they discussed it more in terms of their independent reading and less in regard to their formal university education. When I was writing my Master’s thesis, I wrote out on enormous poster paper the three Elizabeth Bishop poems I was studying. There was something magical about seeing the poems hanging in my hallway everyday. I noticed something new each time I walked by—the placement of a colon, the rhyme of the last two lines, the stanza breaks, the unique word choices. Each thing came to symbolize something more. The poems were speaking to me because I gave them a permanent presence in my everyday life. I will write out again a handful of the best poems I know and hang them on my walls. I will work to cultivate my craft because I have the help of the masters at my disposal. I trust that they will speak to me; I trust in their power.

The overall, larger impact of this experience and this inspiration is that I love having experiences in my life that reaffirm my path. I know it sounds super cliché and cheesy, but it is how I feel. Occasionally, I question whether or not I am moving in the right direction. And sometimes, when I really doubt my efforts, I look for some kind of reassurance. The Tufts poets, with perfect timing, gave me the nudge I needed, assuring me to keep going, assuring me of my path.

I have to emphatically say that I fell in love with Katherine Larson’s and Timothy Donnelly’s poetry. Larson’s Radial Symmetry has already made its way to my bookshelves, and Donnelly’s Cloud Corporation is en route to my house as I type.

And so I leave you with a bit of poetry from Larson. This is my favorite of her poems:

Solarium

The pomegranates are blurs of rouge

in the sky’s tarnished mirror.

The city, bleary with heat. Each day the eyes

of my cat assemble a more precocious gold.

We press our blackened flesh against a sky so bright. I hold

her in my arms at the fading windows.

We gaze together at nothing in particular,

down an avenue that leans so far her tawny eyes

Gutter out. In my laboratory, immortal cancer cells

divide and divide. The pomegranates

Are almost ripe. Some splintered open the way

all things fragment—into something fundamental.

Either everything’s sublime or nothing at all.

This is my favorite line from Larson’s poem “Love at Thirty-Two Degrees”:

Science—

beyond pheromones, hormones, aesthetics of bone,

every time I make love for love’s sake alone,

I betray you.

A Handful of Poems

I am currently taking a course entitled American Women Writers, and in the last few weeks, we have read a handful of great poetry, some of which I am meeting for the first time. The poems are funny (humor itself being an challenging endeavor for women writers to execute successfully makes the humor even more amusing), they are witty and clever, they are complex, and they are incredibly thought-provoking.  Enjoy!

The Pope’s Penis

by Sharon Olds

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate
clapper at the center of a bell.
It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a
halo of silver seaweed, the hair
swaying in the dark and the heat – and at night,
while his eyes sleep, it stands up
in praise of God.

Self-Exam

by Sharon Olds

They tell you it won’t make much sense, at first,

you will have to learn the terrain. They tell you this

at thirty, and fifty, and some are late

beginners, at last lying down and walking

the old earth of the breasts—the small,

cobbled, plowed field of one,

with a listening walking, and then the other—

fingertip-stepping, divining, north

to south, east to west, sectioning

the little fallen hills, sweeping

for mines. And the matter feels primordial,

unimaginable—dense,

cystic, phthistic, each breast like the innards

of a cell, its contents shifting and changing,

streambed gravel under walking feet, it

seems almost unpicturable, not

immemorial, but nearly un-

memorizable, but one marches,

slowly, through grave or fatal danger,

or no danger, one feels around in the

two tack-room drawers, ribs and

knots like leather bridles and plaited

harnesses and bits and reins,

one runs one’s hands through the mortal tackle

in a jumble, in the dark, indoors. Outside—

night, in which these glossy ones were

ridden to a froth of starlight, bareback.

Matins

By Louise Gluck

You want to know how I spend my time?

I walk the front lawn, pretending

to be weeding. You ought to know

I’m never weeding, on my knees, pulling

clumps of clover from the flower beds: in fact

I’m looking for courage, for some evidence

my life will change, though

it takes forever, checking

each clump for the symbolic

leaf, and soon the summer is ending, already

the leaves turning, always the sick trees

going first, the dying turning

brilliant yellow, while a few dark birds perform

their curfew of music. You want to see my hands?

As empty now as at the first note.

Or was the point always

to continue without a sign?

The Applicant

by Sylvia Plath

First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed

To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked
How about this suit –

Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

Delilah's Story

Five and a half years ago, Samson came into my life. It seemed to be a good idea to get him a playmate; however, due to tumultuous living arrangements over the years, it never quite worked out.

But now, fate aligned, and Samson has his playmate. Meet Delilah:

At first, Samson and Delilah were not such fans of one another. But after just a week, they are regular buddies and can't get enough of play time together. Samson is learning to be very gentle with her while she is still so small, and Delilah is learning how to be more bold during their playtime... her courage astonishes me most of the time. In general, their temperaments are very complimentary--she is very passive and sweet, which is a good combination for dominant Samson.  

The Picture of Dorian Gray

I have just finished reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, and doing so inspired a few other things... reading the letters he wrote to Douglas, reading Douglas' poems, reading Wilde's poem written while imprisoned in Reading, looking at photographs of the two lovers (in addition to photographs of Wilde's wife and child), and reading about the infamous trial.  

In addition, I have read some criticism on Wilde, specifically in the context of homosexuality.  In her fascinating article entitled "Decadence, Homosexuality, and Feminism," Elaine Showalter writes, "The Wilde trial 'crystallized the homosexual emancipation movement'" (172).  What has been especially interesting to me is that before reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, my professor encouraged us to dog-ear the homoerotic passages. And yet, my book contains not a single dog-ear. Yes, there was one blatantly sexualized scene wherein Basil puts in his mouth the end of a large, wooden paint brush, but other than that, I in all sincerity did not detect any homoerotic passages. Now, the disclaimer here is this: I know the behavior of men toward one another was quite different at the time Wilde wrote this book. If these behaviors were to take place today, certainly I would be a dog-earring fool. However, this line of reasoning does inspire another kind of explanation. Am I so jaded by the proliferation of blatant homoerotic behaviors in our society today that I am now unable to recognize the subtleties that once existed? It is an interesting question, and something that I will enjoy discussing in our class conversation this afternoon.  

Aside from the homosexual nature of Wilde as an artist and a person, and aside from the homoerotic passages in The Picture of Dorian Gray, I find Wilde to be, as ever, hilarious, witty, clever, and absolutely delightful in all ways. Reading the horrible account of Dorian Gray was made light due to the snarky epigrammatic expressions that appeared throughout the text. For that, Mr. Wilde, I can remember quite clearly why I, too, kissed your grave with all the passion I could afford.  

Ponder of the Day: The Mind, Yoga, and Stillness

Well, it's been awhile since I was here last, but, due to a recent flood of readings about "cultivation" today, I feel a bit guilty about how long I've been away. I suppose that certain words, like "cultivation" and "liberation" and "freedom" are speaking loudly to me because they resonate with an area of focus I have been devoting some time to cultivating. I have been thinking about mental activity (such redundancy, I know) and how to tame such an unwieldy force in my life. Yes, I am victim to an overly active mind, much to my own detriment. I over-think many things, and I have been practicing the silencing or stilling of that mind for about six months now. I think I am starting to get the hang of it, and yet, it seems to be a daily challenge. But today was a source of renewed inspiration, which naturally made me want to share, here.

To contextualize, I recently started my PhD work at Claremont Graduate University, and one of the courses I am taking is in religion, entitled "Yoga and Ultimate Reality." Yes, the yogi in me was desperate to enroll.  My professor has introduced me to some fascinating books and articles and ideas regarding Indian philosophy, Hindu culture, and yogic practice, some of which I would like to share. However, in order for us to be on the same page, I would like you suspend any notions that you may have about yoga. Most of us in the Western world associate yoga with a way of maintaining physical fitness; however, yoga is much deeper than poses and exercise. So if you decide to keep reading, I suggest temporarily letting go of whatever preconceived notions you may have about yoga, and instead, let your thoughts be open to a perhaps new or rededicated way of thinking about yoga.

The book is Yoga: Discipline of Freedom, attributed to Patanjali and translated by Barbara Stoler Miller.

"The aim of yoga is to eliminate the control that material nature exerts over the human spirit, to rediscover through introspective practice what the poet T.S. Eliot called the 'still point of the turning world.' This is a state of perfect equilibrium and absolute spiritual calm, an interior refuge in the chaos of worldly existence.  In the view of Patanjali, yogic practice can break habitual ways of thinking and acting that bind one to the corruptions of everyday life" (1).

"Cultivation of mental tranquility is crucial to reversing the accumulation of psychological fetters, for only when thought is tranquil can one realize one's spiritual nature" (17).

"The goal of yogic transformation is realized in contemplative practice. The path to freedom consists of a gradual unwinding of misconceptions that allows for fresh perceptions... The way of yoga is not a simple, linear path. Rather, it is a complex method involving a radical change in the way we experience the world and conceive the process of knowing ourselves. It gives us techniques with which to analyze our own thought processes and finally to lay bare our true human identity" (25).

"The goal of yoga is to stop the thought processes so that the spirit can be free, isolated from the turmoil of thought from which it mistakenly takes its identity" (30).

"For Patanjali, the interior dimensions of yoga are impossible to attain unless one first pays attention to the body. Later traditions expand this aspect of yoga into a system of physically and spiritually efficacious postures, commonly known as hatha-yoga" (57).

So, beginning with the asanas (or postures/poses) is a start, but it is not enough.  More is waiting... will we discover it???

A Doozie

Years ago I read a novel by Max Frisch called I’m Not Stiller. The themes all circle around identity, and there is one scene that sticks out in my mind. The protagonist, Anatol, wanders down into a dark cave, where he encounters a man—a man who is himself. The two men wrestle until only one is left. Anatol emerges from the cave, having wrestled and defeated himself. He emerges the victor. 

One of the major issues I battled during my EMDR sessions had to do with a belief I held about myself—that I am not good enough to be loved. There are a lot of things from my past that play into this belief, and for the most part, I knew what those things were. In fact, I had spent many years of my life trying to sort them out and let them go. I didn’t want them as baggage in my life, and so I chose to release them. It wasn’t until January when I started to discover that this same narrative of “Not Good Enough” wasn’t nearly as resolved as I thought. On more than one occasion during counseling, I felt really down on myself. I left there feeling not good enough, specifically, not good enough for someone to choose over and over again to love me. This is the point when I decided to see Saranne and begin my work in EMDR. 

At the beginning and end of every session, Saranne asked me the following question: “How true is this statement for you: I feel good enough.” I would then rate the truth of that statement on a scale of one to ten, one being not true at all, ten being totally true. With each session, I found the rating was growing higher and higher. But the number wasn’t magically growing. It was growing because I was down in that cave, wrestling myself. I had to go down into the muck, uncover some of the old beliefs, rewire them, and then emerge victorious, free from those untrue, unproductive beliefs. 

I blogged my way through the EMDR sessions, but there is one thing I haven’t yet shared. The thing that made me reactive in my romantic relationship linked back to an incorrect belief that I continually invested in. It was the way I interpreted (or misinterpreted) a statement, which was something to the tune of this: I better be on good behavior or else he will leave me. But this interpretation was deeply flawed for many reasons. And this is why EMDR makes sense. The narrative I had on repeat in my head about not being good enough became embedded in my mind, in my subconscious, becoming a truth onto which I fervently held. So I was terrified of my bad behaviors because I believed I would be abandoned if I didn't check those misdeeds, also translated as this: I must be perfect all the time in order to be loved. Given the main issue I decided to see Saranne (my reactive behavior), I saw myself behaving badly all the time, thus, I was all-the-time afraid of abandonment and I believed I was not good enough to be loved. It sounded so silly when I actually said it aloud, but I had permitted myself to operate from this belief for at least six months. 

Now for some yoga to pull it all together. I came to Mosaic (my yoga studio) around the same time that I started seeing Saranne (January 2011), at a time when I felt broken, disheartened, and completely lacking faith in myself. One night, while I was waiting for class to begin, the girl in front of me positioned herself, and I mean deeply positioned herself, into a pose that is incredibly challenging for me (half pigeon). At first, my mind thought, “Gosh, she’s so much better than me. I totally suck at that pose. I need to practice more.” And then, I stopped myself. That very moment, I promised to not let my yoga practice be another place where I am hard on myself. And I’ve done a pretty good job at keeping that promise, I think. In yoga, I practice loving myself, which served as a great supplement to my work with Saranne. In EMDR, I was breaking myself down; in yoga, I was building myself back up. So at Mosaic, I took the broken pieces and began to reform them, turning what was broken into something new and beautiful. 

My journey led me to a path of learning to heal myself, forgive myself, and love myself. And choosing love sometimes means doing something difficult. Sometimes choosing love means being willing to go down into that dark cave, deal with the parts of yourself that are harmful or unhealthy or destructive, and emerge anew.