Here Comes the Corny

I'm addicted to Free Will Astrology by Rob Brezsny. My horoscope for the week had this mantra/prayer, I love it exactly what my weary heart needed:

I love everything about me
I love my uncanny beauty and my bewildering pain
I love my hungry soul and my wounded longing
I love my flaws, my fears, and my scary frontiers

I will never forsake, betray, or deceive myself
I will always adore, forgive, and believe in myself
I will never refuse, abandon, or scorn myself
I will always amuse, delight, and redeem myself

Way Back When

Remember when holes in sweaters weren't fashionable, when market work revolved around Polaroids, when photo shoots required film, when being married was simple? I know two divergent paths of thought but still related. Marriage these days feels like a shredded sweater, its on trend to show the holes and snags, post-post-modern.

I read something this morning that referenced Isadora Duncan and it took me a minute to say the name in my head. It felt like walking down the street and bumping into a dear friend you've lost touch with. There's the initial awkwardness of not really recognizing the person and then there's the swell of emotions--the feeling of loss attaches itself to the exchange. The void creeps up: so much has happened, good and bad, and yet this person you once held dear, is so far removed that they can not understand who you are. Even worse you almost do not recognize who they have become. Housed in the discomfort, there's a whisper, a melancholy complaint. "I was once so big in your life and now you do not know me... how did I get to this abandoned place? How am I so insignificant?"

Isadora Duncan was a dancer, a pioneer of Modern dance. She wore gauzy fabrics that caught the light and showed off her form, they gave her performances an ethereal, fairy-like vibe. There's a story about Ms. Duncan. When I heard it I knew that she and I would be friends for life. It's one of those stories that affected me in ways I still don't understand. It goes like this: during a show to a very puritanical crowd, she became so impassioned and transported by the dance, she lost herself completely. The performance got a standing ovation. Ms. Duncan, still possessed by the muse, proceeded to rip the top of her gauzy dress off and scandalously expose her breasts. That's when the booing ensued. Still in a trance, but slightly jarred, she defended her movement and expressed great dismay at the audiences inability to see her body, not as a sexualized object, but as the masterful machine of motion that it was at that moment and during the dance. I don't know if the story is true, I chose to believe that it is. Not to be dramatic, but my soul rests on a perch constructed by this story. Every element is everything I am. There's dance, there's the loss of self to passion, there's a righteous indifference to the chains of puritanical thought, there's sexy clothes and a woman's body that exists beyond the confines of all that is sentimental.

I'm so glad to have her back in my life. I don't think we ever really lost touch.

We live in a world surrounded by masterful lies that are intended as guides to a happy life. So forgive my current disaffection with the movies. I've spent endless hours watching movies that have lulled me into a passive dream. And in this state of unconsciousness I'm waiting on "the man" that will complete my every fantasy. Huh? These days I just keep picking candidates that can rip me to shreds and destroy any romantic fantasy I have built up. Just a thought: aren't romantic-comedies the girlie equivalent of porn?

Happy Valentine's Day!

Even if you're solo the party is in your heart, love's in your head and the beat plays in your soul.

Embrace the cheesy, gooey pink of this hallmark holiday.

xoxo
ak

I do not fall in love easily
Just hard and always with the curve of his back
the scent of skin, the way I feel in his arms.

The men I love do not love me back
sometimes they make me better
most times a little worse.

With each passing touch I hope that
I am stronger
not
harder.
I like the feeling of my soft against his.

I do not desire anything these days.

Rope

It's such a funny thing rope. I've been thinking about rope a lot lately--this object with two faces. If you find yourself in a hole, a sturdy piece of rope in the hands of a solid friend is salvation. Makes you glad your friend isn't in the hole with you and how handy for the said friend to be walking by with the perfect tool for getting you out of the hole? But then there's the dark side to rope: it can be used to bind hands to feet or worse wrapped round one's neck--results, not so good.

These days I'm looking for rope in the helpful-tool-variety. Getting myself out of a hole, back onto some stable footing with good friends, good food, good music and good times. Pray, pray, pray for me.

Pictures above: Jay-Z tuxed up: dapper rapper takes over Carnegie Hall stage; mac-n-cheese with St. Louis ribs; Bea with a little reminder--"get on the bus!"; Butcher Bar, Astoria.

and here's my "Rope" poem...

The body was first discovered lying

listless--hogtied on a swampy patch of grass.

Ants milled about as if human flesh were nothing more than an ivory picnic blanket.

Helpless.

“As long as I lay there, as long as I do not stir

The scene remains serene—artful.”

I fight to rid myself of this twine

I give the rope breath and power over me

My struggle tightens its grip on wrists, on ankles

Abrasive like a serrated edge

it slices through skin and hardens slowly with my blood

Exposed, vulnerable, ashamed I

focus solely on the obstructed and jagged movements of: hands, arms, legs bent and distorted

They are not mine; they trap me.

Rope—rough, twisted fibers—has broken beyond the thin layers of skin on my wrist. If I did not struggle there would merely be a slight discomfort—but I choose to fight because I am helpless, hogtied and chained to life and an insatiable desire to not?

To submit.

naked and hogtied

abrasions and eviscerated skin

my wrists

There is no pleasure in this restriction

And I can’t think my way out of it.

One thought recurs:

If  my wrists were smaller, if my ankles thinner

I could remove myself from this knotty prison.