The Dreams of Artemisia

Days like today have been referred to as many different things by many different women:

Sensuous Sulking. (Sarah Ban Breathnach)
Sacred Puttering. (Ban Breathnach, Alexandra Stoddard)
Playing Hooky. (Girlfriends)
Mental Health Days. (er, Everyone)
Self-Seductions. (Anne Johnson)

Personally, I prefer the term Sensuous Sulking.  A sulk begins when you sit down, balk, and refuse to go on.  The world will spin without you; the cosmos will not implode.  However, if you don't take a day for yourself, you may very well implode silently and then explode violently upon anyone near.

It took a combination of the flu, a horrible work-week, rising family tensions, and a surprise-period for me to sit down.  I began the first day huddled in comforters in my one piece of living-room furniture.  I'd spent the night before alternately sobbing and berating myself for my "general stupidity", and so that morning I nursed a steaming cup of St. John's Wort tea.  In the floor, my dog Zoey happily played with a rawhide bone.  My mother dropped off bottles of orange juice, boxes, bags, and tins of medicine, and took Zoey for her morning walk.

I stayed buried under the comforters in my faded silk nightgown.  Eventually, I began Aristotle's Poetics.  And then I finished all of the book and ate a lunch of pasta and potatoe rounds (blatant, carb-laden, comfort food).

I began work on She: The Tale of a Part-Time Poet.  Three chapters and hours of research later, I set aside the laptop and began reading Starhawk's The Spiral Dance.  Flashcard reviews, a four-hour nap, and an almost impercetible lightening of my mood followed.

Today my week-long bout of the flu neared its end.  I could have forced my body out of bed at five o'clock and struggled to work.  But I did what all women should do when the mere thought of getting out of bed sours the entire day from the start: I played hooky, I sulked, I pouted and puttered.  And I knew it was well-needed when I couldn't even bring myself to feel bad about wasting so much time in pure sleep and laziness.

These are the days when you spend a full hour playing with highlighting, shadowing, and tinting pictures.  These are the days when you can devour pages and pages of unnecessary books and fill up an entire spiral-bound notebook with quotes and notes.  These are the days when you cuddle with a furry animal and fall asleep on the floor with them.  When you precociously title all future plans, photo albums, and journal entries in Latin.  When you invent a "new" tarot spread.  When you plan your dog's Halloween outfit out completely, find a new online magazine, and websites where you can translate any phrase into nightingale song.  For every minute of time you "waste", you seem to gain an ounce of sanity.

Anne Johnson refers to these days, or hours, or even moments, as "private babe time":

"...private babe time should be the crazy stuff that can trigger a Really? I can do that? response.  How about 'watching four pretaped episodes of The Nanny back to back; doing your housework in a crocheted bikini, an apron, and a raspberry-colored beret; teaching yourself to two-step with a broom; speaking Italian to your plants; or taking Polaroids of your breasts for future generations to admire?...You are not crazy...You are, hopefully, charming the pant soff yourself." -- quoted in Romancing the Ordinary (Ban Breathnach)
 

Dressed like a black widow who's dressed to kill.

Sometimes I just want to run away and start all over again--anonymously.  Disappear--submerged in anonymity.  Re-invent myself without preconceived perceptions. 

Do you ever feel that way as you sit there tonight?

There is no place safe and no safe place to put my head
When you can feel the world shake from the words that I said.

(Calling All Angels;Train)

Dressed to kill with my Very Black Cherry hair.

In the clear thin hours of the morning I get the most vivid urges.  I concoct plans to practice guitar regularly and begin each morning with an exercise from Dental Floss for the Mind.  I sing deep-throated to country songs I shouldn't remember; songs I heard as a three- and four-year old as I ran shirtless, like my dad and brother, under the sagging Southern sun.

I sit up as the hours roll by making notes in cook-books that use ingredients I've never heard and can barely afford, dreaming of the day when I can throw a great little something together from practically anything.  Marking off items in red Sharpie in The Wish List; putting pins on a Rand McNally map of the world; and, writing long schedules on how I am going to turn my productivity back on as if it is a light switch.  (The only way I've been able to keep going with such little sleep is by spraying shots of Kickers Energy Spray.  It tastes awful, though, so I avoiding taking it until I stumble towards work, running always just-on-time-barely-there-but-still-there.) 

The dishes pile up and overflow the sink until I can't ignore it anymore and wake up thirty minutes earlier to clean the sink, wipe off the counters, and find myself in a happy little cleaning spree.  Then I look up at the clock; it's time to go; and I still need to get dressed! Even on my way to work in the same outfit I wore last night (it was all still together on the floor with matching bangles and flats, you see) I tell myself I will sketch scenes in my slowly-disintegrating sketchbook as soon as work is over and definitely jot down all the amazing events in the too-often neglected journal.

Then I turn my phone back on and either go somewhere or desperately try to take a nap first.

I wanted this.  All my life I have wanted to be busy and out enjoying some kind of night-life as often as possible.  Yes, I know that I can say no.  But:

I want to say yes.  Yes to my friends, yes to going out, yes to vegging out with Heroes DVDs. 
I want to say yes.  Yes to sleep, yes to being awake by the grace of Red Bull and a prayer, yes to walking in the dream-time.
I want to say yes
I want to say yes.
I want to say yes.
When it is over, I want to have said yes.

To every opportunity,
To every despair and emotion,
To every bit of life's marrow,
To every possible experience
To being a human,
I want to have said yes.

I want a reason for the way things have to be,
So I am going to say yes until the world stops spinning.
So I am going to call all the angels and tell them to say yes.
So I am going to call you and scream yes.
I want to say yes,
I want to say yes,
I want to say yes.
I want a reason so I am going to say yes.

I need a sign to let me know they're here
Cause my TV set keeps it all from being clear.
So I am going to say yes until the day I die.
So I am going to say yes until it can no longer be un-clear.
So I am going to say yes to all the angels.
I want to say yes,
I want to say yes,
I want to say yes.
I need a sign so I am going to say yes.
 
Now I call all you angels. Now I call all you angels.
Now--Come.  And be welcome in my circle.

Serendipity.

Such a beautiful word.

Aliya just called.  I'm off to tug the cowgirl boots on, over my dance-induced blood blisters, and walk through the sunset, brew up some sharp green tea, and get in trouble.

And we'll walk the paths that the Old Ones walked
And we'll dance the dances they taught us
And we'll sing the songs the Old Ones sang
For the magick now has caught us

I'm sitting in the beautiful apartment, perilously close to bored.  You see, this has been my week (without even including the friends who call at two, three, four in the morning and talk rather drunkenly; the extended conversations with my mother; or, all the errands I must run):

Monday -- OFF; made Chihuahua and Chocolate Lab cupcakes most of the day and went window shopping with Sarah
Tuesday -- WORK; walked to and through downtown with Aliya; met with William for a few hours at the apartment
Wednesday -- WORK; had dinner with some of my mother's family; went walking downtown; watched the opening episodes of Heroes with Aliya
Thursday -- WORK; dressed up as Emily Dickinson (all in white with lace slips and ruffled shirts) and went contra dancing with Aliya at the Old Farmer's Ball; watched more Heroes
Friday -- WORK; did hours of belly-dancing at the Pritchard Park Drum Circle; walked for almost an hour, there and back, in order to go to a housewarming party for one of Aliya's coworkers
Saturday -- WORK; signed up for Zydeco dance lessons; attended a music and spoken word show at the Firestorm Cafe & Books; fell asleep standing up around two AM before I had to walk back to my car and drive home

Today I wanted to chill out and release my inner child at the Spring Carnival, with my shorts and cowgirl boots on and ready.  However, the friend that I went with didn't eat properly to be out in the sun and heat and moving, so she ended up sick and droopy.  My boyfriend seems as if he rarely wants to do anything.  I asked him to come out with us today and he did show up--the first time the two of us have been out of my house in almost a month.  He proceeded to stand around and occasionally watch.  Only some moments of the carnival, when Sarah and I were alone and giggly, were good.  Now what should I do, alone in this house as the sun sets on Sunday?  Wish I lived in a larger city, where most places didn't close at 6 pm on Sundays?   No, I'll find something productive or exciting after finishing this post.

William said he would come over later.  I'm just...bored.  Boredom, for me, is a dangerous thing.  It leads to acts of perversion and flashes of insane behavior, which make for great stories years and years later.

I met some beautiful people this week, and even today, chatted with some funny guys who worked and traveled with the Carnival.  On Friday Sarah and I had a great conversation with a street musician, who played on a cane flute that he made and sold in order to support himself and his constant companion, a beautifully taken care of dalmation whose name meant "my pretty girl".  I danced with the most beautiful young man on Thursday, whose hair fell down past his shoulders and whose brown eyes were soft.  Our hips were too close for courtesy but our smiles were certainly genuine.  On Friday a tall and gorgeous black man called out to me across the drum circle with his smile and laughter, and danced with me most of the night.  During breathers we talked about divorces, relationships, jobs, my dancing and the tropical burgundy hair.

You can take my body baby
But leave my heart alone

This Wednesday zydeco dance lessons start at a studio in downtown Asheville, just down the street, I think, from Firestorm Cafe.  The lessons run through June, and after that I'll start using zydeco flourishes during contra dancing or I'll find some zydeco dances.  It looks like such fun.  On Tuesday evenings I've made study group plans in order to take the National Certification for massage therapy as soon as possible.  Thursday nights I will continue to practice my contra dancing outdoors at the Old Farmer's Ball.  Friday evenings until late, late at night I'll sweat and throb to drums.

This week I may end up working six days since the schedule wasn't communicated properly to everyone.  Which is fine with me; goddess knows I need the money.  But...wasn't life supposed to slow down a bit after school?

Carpe nocturn, quam mininum credulo postero.  (I should tattoo that somewhere.)

I am only young once.  Live fast, die hard, refuse regrets.

Aztec feathers
Felt fedora
The smell of the avocado wind
I have a million memories
Not a single regret
So many places that I've been.

-- Pink Dolphins of the Amazon, Michael on Fire

At last I am alone.  I moved last Friday to a new apartment complex, and I now reside in a beige 560 sq. foot box with lots of glass windows.  By Monday I had finished unpacking, and had covered large chunks of the walls with green bamboo shoots, blue teapots, purple Italian cafes, orange camels and yellow giraffes.  I went to work full-time on Tuesday, even though I was fighting off a constant headache and fatigue.  Yesterday my voice went away and I can't speak above a whisper at the moment, so I am taking an involuntary sick day.

Sunlight is just beginning to pour through the kitchen window, highlighting the teapots and cookbooks placed in the windowsill.  A Beatles CD is playing on repeat, and I'm lounging in a comfortable trumpet skirt and beaded Moroccan top.  I am about to start the water boiling to make breakfast--spiral pasta with white sauce, fresh brocolli heads, flaky chicken, and plenty of Romano cheese sprinkled on top.  While that's boiling I am looking at the sauciness of each room of the apartment.

To walk through each room of the apartment is to take a trip to just a few of the quirky crannies of my mind.  In the living room are rows of black bookshelves pushed together and spilling out books, Haitian gourdes, elephants and a sphinx statue.  They sit underneath three Italian cafe paintings and a black rose attached to the wall beside them.  An altar is placed right next to the wall of windows, and then another, much taller bookcase that holds the Britannica is angled in the corner.  A small coffee table holds Chinese fortune sticks, a small Zen Garden, and Cast puzzles on top, while the shelving underneath stores musical supplies, Jeeves and Wooster and LOTR DVDs, poker, CDs, and plenty of magazines.  Underneath the gigantic photograph of a path through a bamboo forest are my three swords, flute, guitar, and some bean bag chairs.

The living room flows right into the kitchen with no interruptions.  A short bar is the only division between the rooms, and on the living room side I have placed two of these Jetsons-style barstools.  Some more of the black creeps through in the utensils and picture frames placed in the kitchen.  However, the majority of the kitchen is made up in a red and white 1950s style.  The canisters, toaster, spoon rest, napkin holder, oversized salt and pepper shakers, and microwave are all a vibrant shade of solid red.  Most of the towels and the hot plates are red and white checked.  A red paisley apron with white rickrack trim hangs on the wall.  All I need to step into that kitchen is a set of pearls.

To walk into the bathroom is to go even further back in time.  All of the antique gloves I've collected on spread out on the bathroom counter: ivory wedding gloves with flower closures, lace visiting gloves that my grandmother used as new wife, fingerless purple lace gloves, and brown riding gloves that extend almost to my elbow.  In between are teacups on matching saucers that are, at a minimum, as old as the 1940s.  In the mirrored cabinet three rows of therapeutic grade essential oils compete for space with cobalt blue glass bottles of oils, lotions, biofreeze, and muscle balm that are necessary for my work as a massage therapist.  Clusters of roses are scattered on the shower curtain, a plush white oval rug is trimmed in rows of crocheted green cotton, and the three towels draped over the rack are pure white with four rows of ruffles on each.

In my bedroom I've splurged on Egyptian cotton sheet sets in ivory and sandstone.  The comforter is also Egyptian cotton, and reversible between the two colors.  In a few weeks I will have at least half a dozen vibrant pillows that my friends are making and that I am purchasing from World Market to brighten up the admittedly staid colors.  The pillows are red and purple, purple and yellow, tan embroidered with sea green and bright blue, orange, gold, and black with multicolored photographs stamped on it.

Because of space I have had to place my desk close to my bed, where a white 1970s frog with bulging green eyes and a gaping mouth holds all my pens and pencils.  One drawer is filled with notebooks, another with art supplies, one with decorative papers, and the last one with stamping supplies.  Another teacup, this one with orange, red and yellow flowers, has snuck onto the top of a white crocheted doily beside the frog.  Above the desk I've placed another, very tall photograph of a black elephant drinking water during a deep orange sunset.  On the adjoing wall, facing my bed, is the long photograph of a man riding a camel against the same deep orange sunset.  On the remaining wall there is little space for anything, because of the two large windows, but I have squeezed in a tapestry that hangs from a wooden rod--it is made of black cloth with a gold sequined elephant stitched onto it.

The Beatles CD has just begun Penny Lane and I almost done listening to it on repeat.  The pasta is boiling rapidly and the brocolli needs to be chopped.  I would rather be alone with my own quirks and over-abundance colors than ever live with another person again.

I cannot post--procrastinate--on livejournal until I finish my ethics paper.

I cannot.

It is beautiful to be effortlessly awake in the early hours of the morning.

I have a million memores, Not a single regret, So many places that I've been

-- The Pink Dolphins of the Amazon, Michael On Fire

Massive fail on the 365 Days project--although I did take pictures on Sunday!  The first time in over a month.  I also uploaded the last few stragglers from March to Flickr.

Almost as massive a fail on the 1001 Resolutions project.  I haven't specifically worked on anything.  The least I could do tonight would be to memorize last month's poem and pick a new one for April.

This week is Spring Break, and I've spent it working at my store full-time.  Tomorrow will be my only day off, so I could write out the new poem then.  The hard part will be figuring out what April feels like to me.  Here, in North Carolina, it has rained almost continously.  The world is gray and sleepy.

Tomorrow night I have dinner with two of my friends at the Texas Roadhouse.  I also need to stop by another friend's house and water her plants.  That's it for obligations.

What on earth shall I do?

I've taken control back over my budget and finances.  This month I payed all my bills in one go this week, planned the weeks I would pay off my ridiculously high credit card bill, and purchased my muscle flashcards and study guide for the National Certification Exam for massage therapists.  It put a hefty dent in my bank account, but I am no longer concerned with my roommate's feelings, and so the apartment-living issue has been resolved and I am not worried about paying the bills alone over the summer.

It is amazing to have a plan.  The date of graduation, the time to take the National Certification, purchase a massage chair, pay it off while working at my current consignment store job, and then the move on to a more satisfying and profitable career-of-sorts.

The sheer act of creating a plan and writing it solidly on paper, in firm black ink on college ruled paper, was enough to bring me out of my unproductive funk yesterday.  I am ready to take control.

This morning I drew the angel card "simplicity".  It fit with the two new library books, Choosing Simplicity and Radical Simplicity.  I also feel like, with all the drama and chaos surrounding my friends, I need to be a balancing force in their lives.  Simple.  The space in which to breathe and be.

I carry a set of five daily devotions in my purse--for the morning, noontime, sunset, before sleeping, and at meals.  I forget the original author of these lines from my noontime devotion:

let me out and let me in,
and let me see, and let me be
a window--maybe broken--but through wich
a bit of air and sunlight comes

Just a quick note to let everyone know I've got a new facebook page.

(look up robin sharlena holmes in asheville)

I laugh--often--when I look back at old journal and LJ entries.  There wouldn't be nearly as much amusement or frustration if I could just see into the future.

Yes, for the first few days of March I did very well on my mission101 resolutions; specifically, taking a picture every day.  And then life got crazy.  I'm staying up until between one and three in the morning, sleeping at four-thirty in the afternoon before getting up to go to dances or parties or just to hang out with W. or listen to rock music and dance like there's no tomorrow.

Then, life became slightly twisted.  I found out my room-mate was pregnant, and she's bailing on the apartment within two to three months--well before the lease is up in September.

*sigh*

I had really hoped this place would be a home.  I haven't had a home in over two years--in my world, by the way, home is defined as the place you automatically think of going to after work or school, the place you go to naturally when there's nothing dramatic happening.  Its the place you don't even think about being grateful for, because it is so automatic and natural to park your car there and open the door, reluctantly do the dishes, take out the trash, have a good cry, kiss someone special.

Still.  Now I have to find another place for at least half the price of this one--because I can barely afford my half of this downtown house--by summertime, or force my hormonal, currently throwing up into the toilet, roommate to leave the apartment but be okay with her or her father (the cosigner) paying the bills and rent still.

Plus my car's slowly falling apart.

Life is pretty good, though, especially when I don't think about the future.  Instead, I think about the resume consults I'm doing on the side, the babysitting, the dances and the drinking and the hazy happiness of being in the present; about my new ankle weights, the latest copy of Mary Janes Farm, and my splurge on three gorgeous, gigantic pieces of photography for the about-to-be-sickeningly-bare apartment.

I am in the mood to create.  I will craft something tonight.

Maybe. 

Provided Life allows it.

Queen-Anne's-Lace
by William Carlos William

Her body is not so white as
anemone petals nor so smooth--nor
so remote a thing.  It is a field
of the wild carrot taking
the field by force; the grass
does not raise above it.
Here is no question of whiteness,
white as can be, with a purple mole
at the center of each flower.
Each flower is a hand's span
of her whiteness.  Wherever
his hand has lain there is
a tiny purple blemish.  Each part
is a blossom under his touch
to which the fibres of her being
stem one by one, each to its end,
until the whole field is a
white desire, empty, a single stem,
a cluster, flower by flower,
a pious wish to whiteness gone over--
or nothing.

March is going to be my month of new beginnings.

Primarily, I am getting back on track with my mission101 resolutions.  During all of last month, I only snapped one picture for the 365 days project on Flickr.  Today I posted that picture to Flickr, along with the one I snapped this evening.

Today I gave W. a deep tissue seated chair massage, in practice for the hands-on midterm in massage class tomorrow.  Provided, of course, that school is not snowed out tonight.  It went from 63 degrees on Friday, to rainstorms on Saturday, to 6 inches of snow today.

Afterwards I braved the slushy roads to take Sarah and W. to the Olive Garden.  Did my laundry at Sarah's and then inched my way back home in my golden Camry.  Despite the weather I have been in the mood for spring-cleaning.  Straightened up the house as if it was a new religion, wiped down the floors, re-organized my kitchen cabinets, took up the floor rugs/tapestries, took down all fall / winter decorations.  The house feels stripped bare; it is just as ready as I am for a new beginning, a fresh look.

Tonight I need to: study for a test in medical terminology; read W.'s novel-in-progress; work on a presentation on polarity for massage class; write out my plans and rituals for the upcoming full moon; read Chapter 6 ("The Debate over Utilitarianism") in The Elements of Moral Philosophy; and, begin work on my paper for the philosophy class.

The thesis question I've approached is this: "Is the ethical status of polyamory and monogamy dependent on their perceived viabilty and stability?"

However, before I reluctantly begin on that list, I am going to recite January and February's poems (Maud and An Atlas of the Difficult World).  Then I am going to pick out a spring-ish poem for March, write and recite it.

This is the month of new beginnings.

This is February's poem, rather belatedly posted:

XIII (Dedications)

from An Atlas of the Difficult World
by Adrienne Rich

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour.  I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a gray day in early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plain's enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet.  I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running up the stairs
towards a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age.  I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn between
bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothign else left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

list no. 1

-- dyed my hair tropical burgundy (i.e., dark purple)
-- found out my best real-life friend has had HPV for over two years, undiagnosed
-- don't like being around my happy roommate and her boyfriend all the time at the house!

list no. 2

-- am at peace with work and money issues
-- am bored to tears with school
-- am happy with W
-- am alive

notation

-- this is the most productive thing I've done in days

I've started dating again. Oh yes, I've done my fair share of hanging out with men since my "divorce" last January, but always with the mutual knowledge that our relationship wouldn't last longer than a week or so.  This new man, W, is very nice.  He says nice things; he dresses nice; he works hard; he studies for school; he is slightly distant but still sweet; he is nice.  (A far cry from those men that expected me always to pay for myself, and to show up looking like the perfect cross between angel and whore.)

I hope it doesn't crash and burn.  It is too soon, still, since my ex-husband R. happened, for me to suffer another failure with any kind of equanimity.

Even if this isn't love--and right now it certainly is not--I just want to stay on the ride a little longer.  Make it to the top of the Ferris Wheel this time, and know that life can be beautiful for a few minutes.

What a week and a half.  To add to the self-pitying woes of the last post, I am now embroiled in room-mate drama as a result of our ridiculously expensive utilty bills ($200 water bill, anyone?).  So, on Tuesday night, I left for a few days to go stay at my good friend Sarah's house.  It seemed like a much healthier option, since I could feel my blood pressure rising with each minute I stayed at my own apartment. 

I stopped in at Blockbuster--merrily disregarding the snowstorm and 200+ accidents reported in Asheville--to get a movie.  Came out of the parking lot and promptly got into a car accident. Which will doubtless go down to the insurance companies as my fault.

Sigh.

As if there wasn't enough issues with money.  The following day, after coming back from the police department, Sarah and I ordered in pizza.  (Can you tell I was becoming slightly paranoid about driving at that point?)  I took the pizzas from the delivery person, turned to walk down the hill, and fell on the ice.  On my elbows.  Talk about painful!

And finally, this morning I woke up to a panicked text message from my room-mate.  In the 0-degree weather, she left to spend the night with her boyfriend.  She left without leaving any water dripping or the heat running, and returned this morning to find that the bloody pipes had frozen.

Granted, I am cheap about the bills.  But I am also filled with enough practicality to admit that, in weather this cold, it will save money in the long run to turn the heat on.

Sigh.

If there is a God in Heaven, he must be chuckling. 

On the plus side, I feel much better emotionally.  I haven't mopped around the house in two whole days!   After coming back to the apartment this morning, I went on a cleaning whirlstorm, throwing out/recycling a small truckload of papers.  Filled out more Internet sweepstakes, attempted to submit a job application (one hour later: it failed to send), cleaned out my car and threw away more papers, ate breakfast, read P.G. Wodehouse.

Yesterday Sarah and I folding several origami frogs, paper boats, and pigs, and then proceeded to write a...rather crack-ish...story about our frogs Elvis and Stanley.  For the first time in over a week, I felt just decent enough to snap a picture for the 365 days project.  Although in my case, it will be the 355 day project.  I also realized it was February, and time to pick a new monthly poem to memorize.

After trading chair massages with a second-year massage student later, I'll probably return with the new poem.  Maybe I'll even find my sanity along with way.

What a horrible week.  Essentially, I'm in work-limbo.  I don't know what days I'll be working until the night before--and I've been reduced from an already tight three days a week to one day.  Its uncertain whether dealing with school three days a week or the economy will make me crack first.

Regardless, the lack of work since last Tuesday has put me in a depression.  I've no motivation left.  I haven't taken any self-pictures for the 365 days project since last Tuesday (!); I only had twenty pages left to go in Herodotus' History, but I haven't been remotely inclined to pick it back up; and, the pile of clothes on my bedroom floor is starting to get truly monstrous.

Good night.

I can cross--or sort of cross--several goals off my list:

8.  Re-open a savings account. -- I re-opened it on Monday, January 5th, 2009.  Every paycheck on Friday I'll simply take out $7 and transfer it from checking to savings.  Hopefully the money won't even be missed.
40.  Put the shoeboxes of pictures my Grandmother has in a good photo album; make sure they’re labeled. -- I completed that on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009.  Incidentally, those two shoeboxes held 300 pictures.  I dearly want to post a picture of the album online, because it is really rather beautiful.
80.  Give blood every eight weeks. [1/16] -- Begun on Monday, January 5th, 2009.  Aside from the sickening butterflies, it went well, and I'm actually looking forward to going back.

Must fly now.  Sorry for the brevity--school computers!

From Maud: A Monodrama by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.


XXII

 I.

Come into the garden, Maud,
   For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
   I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
   And the musk of the rose is blown.

 

II.

For a breeze of morning moves,
   And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
   On a bed of daffodil sky,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
   To faint in his light, and to die.

 

III.

All night have the roses heard
   The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirr’d
   To the dancers dancing in tune;
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
   And a hush with the setting moon.

 

IV.

I said to the lily, ‘There is but one
   With whom she has heart to be gay.
When will the dancers leave her alone?
   She is weary of dance and play.’
Now half to the setting moon are gone,
   And half to the rising day;
Low on the sand and loud on the stone
   The last wheel echoes away.

 

V.

I said to the rose, ‘The brief night goes
   In babble and revel and wine.
O young lord-lover, what sighs are those,
   For one that will never be thine?
But mine, but mine,’ so I sware to the rose,
   ‘For ever and ever, mine.’

 

VI.

And the soul of the rose went into my blood,
   As the music clash’d in the hall;
And long by the garden lake I stood,
   For I heard your rivulet fall
From the lake to the meadow and on to the wood,
   Our wood, that is dearer than all;

 

VII.

From the meadow your walks have left so sweet
   That whenever a March-wind sighs
He sets the jewel-print of your feet
   In violets blue as your eyes,
To the woody hollows in which we meet
   And the valleys of Paradise.

 

VIII.

The slender acacia would not shake
   One long milk-bloom on the tree;
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake
   As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;
But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
   Knowing your promise to me;
The lilies and roses were all awake,
   They sigh’d for the dawn and thee.

 

IX.

Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
   Come hither, the dances are done,
In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,
   Queen lily and rose in one;
Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls,
   To the flowers, and be their sun.

 

X.

There has fallen a splendid tear
   From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
   She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, ‘She is near, she is near;’
   And the white rose weeps, ‘She is late;’
The larkspur listens, ‘I hear, I hear;’
   And the lily whispers, ‘I wait.’

 

XI.

She is coming, my own, my sweet;
   Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
   Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
   Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
   And blossom in purple and red.