Picture Perfect

 

Over the past few weeks, I've been going through photos, art, and memorobilia that I want to put on my walls. Most everything is up, but there are a few things that are pending framing. I've always wished I was a more natural artist. I'd love to become a better oil or watercolor painter. But that would take some definite practice. And I have a hard time focusing my energy, even when it's something I'd really like to learn to do. Therefore, I collect art done by my friends. I'm proud of my live-in gallery. Ever piece has significant meaning attached.

Then there are the photographs, most of which I've taken. They're always me and a friend or group of friends. At a concert, school function, road trip. There's always a story around them.

And I have my scrapbooks. Three large 3" binders (so far) filled with plastic sheet protectors holding everything from receipts to bulletins to gum wrappers. Flat media that are proof of presence at movies, musicals, or restaurant.

These three things are my physical memories. Because sometimes I feel like the woman in The Notebook—the past is already fading. And I need a way to remember. This is also why I have kept my planners from the past six years, buy and write in my books instead of checking them out at the library, and never delete or trash anything I've written, finished or not.

Recently I bought a camera. It's a very small Canon Elph 300 HS. It's not as easy to get the shots I get with my Nikon D40. But it's smaller than my iPhone. And I don't like lugging an SLR around. I've already missed way too many important moments because of that. And I'm kicking myself for not doing it early.

Nevertheless, my photo collection is extremely large. And as I browsed looking for ones to print out, I was smiling the whole time. Even at the photos of a friend and I whom I had just been on the phone with, prematurely ending because of annoyance on both our ends at each other.

Few of the photos had something negative attached. You don't usually snap a lens to commemorate a fight, disappointment, defeat. Instead, you aim to capture joy, friendship, life.

I wish we had more photographs. And I wish we could always be as happy as we look in them.

In the same breath, easy friendships are great. That is the aim, right? But just because you have to fight to keep something good doesn't mean that thing is bad. Friendships, even good ones, aren't always picture perfect. I've learned that several times.

We've made it through much worse places. I expect little things like this to come up.

I just wonder.

If this will always be us. If one of us will break first. If it's still worth what it does to you and me.

The Word That is a Prayer

"The Word That is a Prayer" by Ellery Akers

One thing you know when you say it:
all over the earth people are saying it with you;
a child blurting it out as the seizures take her,
a woman reciting it on a cot in a hospital.
What if you take a cab through the Tenderloin:
at a street light, a man in a wool cap,
yarn unraveling across his face, knocks at the window;
he says, Please.
By the time you hear what he's saying,
the light changes, the cab pulls away,
and you don't go back, though you know
someone just prayed to you the way you pray.
Please: a word so short
it could get lost in the air
as it floats up to God like the feather it is,
knocking and knocking, and finally
falling back to earth as rain,
as pellets of ice, soaking a black branch,
collecting in drains, leaching into the ground,
and you walk in that weather every day.

Better Than a Hallelujah

Beautiful words, melody, idea—everything.



"Better Than a Hallelujah" by Chapin Hartford and Sarah Hart
Performed by Amy Grant

(Verse 1)
God loves a lullaby
In a mother's tears in the dead of night
Better than a Hallelujah sometimes.

God loves a drunkard's cry,
The soldiers plea not to let him die
Better than a Hallelujah sometimes.

(Chorus)
We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah

(Verse 2)
The woman holding on for life,
The dying man giving up the fight
Are better than a Hallelujah sometimes

The tears of shame for what's been done,
The silence when the words won't come
Are better than a Hallelujah sometimes.

(Chorus)
We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah

(Bridge)
Better than a church bell ringing,
Better than a choir singing out, singing out.

(Chorus)
We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah

Memoirs and the Muse

 

"A moment of silence, please, for the lost art of shutting up."

From the illustration and the above opening line, I knew this NYT article was going to be interesting (enjoy it while you can still see it for free). In a nutshell (although you will miss much of the cynical humor if you don't read it for yourself), Neil Genzlinger rants about the saturation of memoirs being published. 

His points:

1) "That you had parents and a childhood does not of itself qualify you to write a memoir."

2) "An ordeal, served up without perspective or perceptiveness, is merely an ordeal."

3) "If you’re jumping on a bandwagon, make sure you have better credentials than the people already on it."

4) "If you still must write a memoir, consider making yourself the least important character in it."

I find his take interesting, mostly. Some points I agree with. But not this one:

"There was a time when you had to earn the right to draft a memoir, by accomplishing something noteworthy or having an extremely unusual experience or being such a brilliant writer that you could turn relatively ordinary occur­rences into a snapshot of a broader historical moment. Anyone who didn’t fit one of those categories was obliged to keep quiet. Unremarkable lives went unremarked upon, the way God intended."

Writing is often cathartic act. I feel like anyone who feels like they have a story to tell should tell it (let the publishers decide who is "worthy" of being paid for it). But I do agree with his closing point:

"If you didn’t feel you were discovering something as you wrote your memoir, don’t publish it."

I found this particularly interesting as I'm considering how some of my own journey would be in book form. Lots to consider on that one.

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On another note, Radiolab had an interesting podcast (thanks, Heather) that explores situations where you are pitted against yourself. Also, Elizabeth Gilbert ("Eat, Pray, Love" author) talks about creativity and inspiration. It's neat stuff, worth the time investment.

We Were Emergencies

"We Were Emergencies" by Buddy Wakefield

A poet
can stick anything into the fog and make it look like a ghost.
But tonight let us not become tragedies.
We are not funeral homes
with propane tanks in our windows
lookin' like cemeteries.
Cemeteries are just the Earth's way of not letting go.
Let go.
Tonight, Poets, let's turn our wrists so far backwards
the razor blades in our pencil tips
can't get a good angle on all that beauty inside.
Step into this
with your airplane parts
and repeat after me with your heart:
I no longer need you to fuck me as hard as I hate myself.
Make love to me
like you know I am better than the worst thing I ever did.
Go slow.
I'm new to this
but  I have seen nearly every city from a rooftop without jumping.
I have realized the moon did not have to be full for us to love it.
We are not tragedies
stranded here beneath it.

If my heart really broke every time I fell from love
I'd be able to offer you confetti by now
but hearts don't break, y'all,
they bruise and get better.
We were never tragedies.
We were emergencies.
You call 9-1-1.
Tell them I'm havin' a fantastic time.

How To Be a Poet

"How To Be a Poet" by Wendell Berry

i   

Make a place to sit down.   

Sit down. Be quiet.   

You must depend upon   

affection, reading, knowledge,   

skill—more of each   

than you have—inspiration,   

work, growing older, patience,   

for patience joins time   

to eternity. Any readers   

who like your poems,   

doubt their judgment.   

ii   

Breathe with unconditional breath   

the unconditioned air.   

Shun electric wire.   

Communicate slowly. Live   

a three-dimensioned life;   

stay away from screens.   

Stay away from anything   

that obscures the place it is in.   

There are no unsacred places;   

there are only sacred places   

and desecrated places.   

iii   

Accept what comes from silence.   

Make the best you can of it.   

Of the little words that come   

out of the silence, like prayers   

prayed back to the one who prays,   

make a poem that does not disturb   

the silence from which it came.

Picasso

The intro from "American Life in Poetry" read, "The great Spanish artist Pablo Picasso said that, in his subjects, he kept the joy of discovery, the pleasure of the unexpected."

I like this poem, but I don't necessarily like how the em dashes and line breaks are done. Agree? If not, help me see why this it makes sense.

"Picasso" by Tim Nolan

How can we believe he did it—
every day—for all those years?

We remember how the musicians
gathered for him—and the prostitutes

arranged themselves the way he wanted—
and even the helmeted monkeys

with their little toy car cerebella—
posed—and the fish on the plate—

remained after he ate the fish—
Bones—What do we do with this

life?—except announce: Joy.
Joy. Joy—from the lead—

to the oil—to the stretch of bright
canvas—stretched—to the end of it all.

Union Square

I am head over heals for this poem. As much as I love free verse and slam, pieces like this remind me the unmatchable power of structured rhyme and rhythm.

"Union Square" by Sara Teasdale

With the man I love who loves me not,
      I walked in the street-lamps' flare;
We watched the world go home that night
      In a flood through Union Square.

I leaned to catch the words he said
      That were light as a snowflake falling;
Ah well that he never leaned to hear
      The words my heart was calling.

And on we walked and on we walked
      Past the fiery lights of the picture shows —
Where the girls with thirsty eyes go by
      On the errand each man knows.

And on we walked and on we walked,
      At the door at last we said good-bye;
I knew by his smile he had not heard
      My heart's unuttered cry.

With the man I love who loves me not
      I walked in the street-lamps' flare —
But oh, the girls who ask for love
      In the lights of Union Square.