My 'What the hell!?' series is going along quickly

I am surprised by how many thoughts I have are exactly right for setting down in some way in my small book. It is also surprisingly upsetting. One leads on to another one. I didn't expect so many variations of shock, horror, sadness, anger, and plain fury. Will I burst into tears in the street? I have in the far and distant past, so I know it is entirely possible.

Last year I considered doing what I am doing now. It is turning out differently though and I am not tackling the topics I referred to in that post. They need to stay in their box for now. I don't even dream about them. I know they are in the past and can stay there for as long as necessary.

Go for it if you are considering writing some poems. Store (hide) them where only a fellow writer would look for them...

This has taken ages to work out

Someone on the ModPo facebook group asked me 'what is your religion?' I have written my reply taking from the 23rd until today. I'm quite surprised that I was able to do it, I thought I'd give up and rely on a one word answer. This is the sort of thing which comes up in our poetry discussions.

To come back to my religion...I was brought up Catholic in London, but went to a Church of England secondary school. I think this was a deliberate choice by my mother. I moved to the Church of England while at university and living abroad, a common thing. Then quickly decided the evangelical approach didn't respect individuals, just regarded them as targets for conversion. Eventually moved to the Quakers and hold on to my disagreements with the word God, and all other dogma. Silence and speaking from people's actual views is all I can tolerate now! So I'm probably not Christian any more, but it's the only religion I have reactions to and a familiarity with. I love the music, hymns, psalms and chants, Christmas carols and Handel's Messiah etc, so can't get away from it. When I visit my parents I sit with them and say all the words, get covered with incense, take communion and do a good impression of being a believer! And I get to hold onto my mother's arm which is lovely 

Feeling adored

The cat next door lies her lovely head on my right arm, purrs and tucks her left paw next to me. Every time she interacts with me it is different, yet it is always the same set of endless variations on being physically with me. Her nose is nearly inside my small book of "What the hell!?" poems, but not so close that her sleeping breaths shift the pages. I am typing left handed so I don't disturb her.

I must have been thinking too loudly because she just flicked her right ear at me.

I should be asleep

After 2 parties in one day, here is a first episode of a series about home education.

Raised by Wolves

Watch it quickly before the week is up.

I don't feel like a wolf, but maybe home ed mothers have pretty sharp teeth after all.

All dimensions of angry

Since my great aunt died at 98 earlier this month I have been experiencing surprising versions of anger.

At one point I was incensed by the English Language. Why did I have to know it, live my life via this medium, be defined by it and by my accent when uttering it? What choice did I have about it and how could I get it out of my head?

That sort of complaint is a bit like the ant shaking its tiny fist at the mountain it is standing on.

My mind surprised me again this afternoon by revealing that I am envious of and implacably opposed to the Earth and the Sun. How dare they have so much longer lives than me? I may be a physical product of them and be entirely dependent upon their thought-free, neutral, literally heartless selves, but I am appalled at the fragility of living creatures' minds and destinies compared to these vast chemical lumps which we are part of.

..stranger stars by far than ever shone in our night sky..

Do you recognise this?

It is from the intro to the first episode of the Clangers. I was at a party tonight. One of the topics which brought squeals of joy and delight from everyone was reminiscing about this.

Try it!

First Poetry Series

I have decided to use the phrase 'What the hell?!' as a starting point for a series of poems. Each one will have that as its title. I am not planning to share them, but I want to share the process as this is quite unexpected.

It is a phrase one of T's friends used a lot several years ago, so I have fond memories of that time in being a mother of teenagers when nothing they said bothered me much. Or is that my amnesia kicking in?

Since having this idea I have done over half a dozen. It is surprisingly liberating and the title applies to all manner of thoughts. I did several while spending time with Moore and Bacon this morning and a few just now sitting here.

To ployon - autonomous education again

Ancient Greek anyone? I found myself offering to teach H the first line in my Ancient Greek book when we were last out and about in our garden under the huge moon in the late evening. Since the answer was 'No', I quickly told him those first words and that they meant 'The boat'.

It all started when we were talking about the planets, stars, the sun and photons. Qi had told him about the great length of time the photons take to get to the surface of the sun. We mused over the inscrutable nature of light and I tried to point out a planet. Saying it was at 1 o'clock in relation to the moon didn't help. Pointing out Orion without a laser beam was difficult too.

Would you like it if I told you that I have started both my paragraphs with quotes from ModPo texts. I just got another one in there. This is where common texts turn into in-jokes and get irritating to outsiders.

Caroline Bergvall's VIA

Tracie Morris Africa(n) and with Val Jeanty

Gertrude Stein's Portrait of Picasso - video in French about her writing, art collection

Silent night

I found myself on a dark road singing along to Silent Night on the way to the station to pick up T after another welcome back from university pub night. It is strange to be looking at the non-existent conductor's eyes as I am driving along. Choir singing is so exact, the breath held right over the lines if there is no comma, the endings all made together and the words held right up and ahead of me, so I barely move my eyes from the lines to looking at the others.

My Christmas present to readers:

1. Take a walk around Kettles Yard in Cambridge and around the beautiful words:

http://usefulorbeautiful.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/way-of-life-kettles-yard.html

2. Take some inspirations from my 'New Things I Love 2013' Christmas card sheet:

New Things I Love - 2013

..Under Albany - Ron Silliman

..Setting up my grandfather's chair and my current reading to make a quiet corner 

..Day of Prayer at East Hagbourne Church - in spite of my questioning ways

..J and S's wedding

..Listening to the Proms all summer, reading and surfing at the same time, realising which orchestra I prefer - BBC National Orchestra of Wales

..Going to the OxArch open sessions run at the Ashmolean - old axe heads and flints

..Holding our own 2500? year old flint hand tool from the garden flower bed

..Joining in Ks writing group

..Saying hallo to the Gandhi Summer School group at the Abbey Sutton Courtenay

..Visiting B's community weekend at Brazier's Park

..C's architectural bonfire at Brazier's Park

..Having D and P plus family to stay - fun full house

..Getting to Wallingford Bunk Fest for the first time ever - I love being outdoors

.."Get Out" from the film score of "Leaving Las Vegas", sung by Maggie Nichols, search for "Mike Figgis - Get Out" on Google

.."Falile Se Kastelanke" song, last heard when I was 7, by Ansambl Dalmacija, ignore the corny video on YouTube though!

..Reading my own blog posts for fun!

...Writing 3 A4 pages each day as part of the Artist's Way

..Gertrude Stein - Would He Like It If I Told Him - live recording

..Being in the chorus for the village production of  'Joseph'

..Staying in a hotel round the corner from A and I's - then breakfast with them

..Trying out the new 24 buses in London - going down the back stairs like old times

..Getting back into the village pub singing group - I never knew I'd love belting out Paranoid by Black Sabbath! The 6 guitarists enjoy playing with each other so much.

..Visiting the London Library again after a very long time - walking inside the stacks

..Darting into MOMA Oxford before my Arabic class - all that space and whiteness

..Getting my Certificate of Completion for the ModPo class - I worked so hard for it

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Christmas Project: pick an older relative and do a written portrait of them on an A4 sheet of paper. 

Send to me for an exhibition here if you wish to share. I have done mine already, a series of questions addressed to my grandfather's grandmother. They say more about me than about her, but that's ok. It's a sort of conversation.

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Open Invitation to everyone: please consider joining ModPo this coming September 2014. 

It is a 10 week online course on Modern and Contemporary American Poetry run by Prof Al Filreis of the Kelly Writers House, part of the University of Pennsylvania. It had 37,000 people taking part at various intensities this year. Roughly half come from outside the USA and many have English as a second language. It is inspiring.

https://www.coursera.org/course/modernpoetry

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I wish you a Joyful Christmas and a Wonderful New Year

Срећан Божић = Strechan Bosich = Happy Christmas in Serbian

Next batch of 5 blogs

http://sloopie72.wordpress.com/

http://talkingleavesblog.wordpress.com/

http://solsticemama-nell.blogspot.co.uk/

http://bloggingdickinson.blogspot.co.uk/

http://houseofaimless.wordpress.com/

ModPo classmates...home education....more classmates...

'..the insouciant armadillo..'

by Denise Levertov

Come into animal presence
No man is so guileless as
the serpent. The lonely white
rabbit on the roof is a star
twitching its ears at the rain.
The llama intricately
folding its hind legs to be seated
not disdains but mildly
disregards human approval.
What joy when the insouciant
armadillo glances at us and doesn't
quicken his trotting
across the track and into the palm brush.
What is this joy? That no animal
falters, but knows what it must do?
That the snake has no blemish,
that the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings
in white star-silence? The llama
rests in dignity, the armadillo
has some intention to pursue in the palm-forest.
Those who were sacred have remained so,
holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence
of bronze, only the sight that saw it
faltered and turned from it.
An old joy returns in holy presence.

"Come into animal presence" by Denise Levertov, from Poems: 1960-1967. © New Directions, 1983. Reprinted by permission.

I stood and watched 2 reindeer breathing today. Their big sides went up and down. It is odd to be able to stand for as long as I wanted, watching them trapped in a fenced area in the centre of the town.

On the way back from London a few days ago I caught a brief glimpse of a huge pale brown owl on a branch on the other side of the road. It was free and immobile. I was rushing past, yet there it was.

I have read something useful at last

First my brother told me to look at a shop sign in Earl's Court. I was able to confirm that the English did indeed match the Arabic, though I hadn't expected the plural of shops to be mini-mart, but I guess that is pretty realistic.

Then, more revealingly, I discovered that Arab Spring is totally different, it is Arab Uprisings = al intifadat arabiya. No wonder people don't like the almost party atmosphere of the term Arab Spring. I actually read the words and got it, before clicking on translate to double check.

Born on the road to exile

I found out that my great aunt Milica (Militza) was born while the family was escaping from Belgrade to Salonika in Greece in 1915, in the middle of WW1. They had to stop so my great grand mother could have her 2nd child, the first was my grandmother, who was a toddler at that point. What a story! It makes Christmas look tame.

Our crib has a disco ball

H has been the one who is asking for me to get the decorations out at midnight or later, so it has taken a few days to have the discussion during the day. We took box after box of stuff down from the attic. We plopped it all down in the middle of the drawing room floor.

I feel totally unChristmassy this year, most unlike me. So I sat in a chair and watched H choose and decide. It's amazing to see someone else do the fossicking around to pick the right coloured baubles and have that intent look as they carefully hang the things around the tree.

Finally H gave me the crib and asked me to do that, so I perked up. It is the bit I like the best, romantic version of a pretty awkward situation. I'd be in divorce mode at travelling for a stupid census. I sorted out my kings, incorporated some totally unmatching animal life into the scene too, and finished it off with adding a green sparkly disco ball inside the stable. If I were Mary, I'd be entranced/marginally less angry at seeing that personal touch!

Breathtaking

I hope it is ok for me to transcribe and type out this snippet from a video I have been watching.

Pierre Joris was talking about the poetry of Paul Celan. The talk was given on 3rd December 2013, last Tuesday.

"...you do not learn to use the language. Language uses you. You enter language. Language was there before. When you die, language goes on. So you are only in there for a given moment. Language is always there up and beyond you."

Wow. When he said that the room went all quiet. That was the most breathtaking moment of the whole talk.

Did I really do that?

We are looking at Tender Buttons, A Frightful Release, by Gertrude Stein.

A FRIGHTFUL RELEASE. A bag which was left and not only taken but turned away was not found. The place was shown to be very like the last time. A piece was not exchanged, not a bit of it, a piece was left over. The rest was mismanaged..

My comment is:

"For some reason A Frightful Release makes me think of left luggage offices at railway stations. I had a huge row in public at one once, not something I am known for. I wanted to leave a bag full of my text books from university for my mother to collect soon and the man refused, due to security concerns. I dumped the bag on the ground and simply left it there in a total strop! My mother arrived later and collected it."

Can you see what I see?

This bright painting instantly made me think of a reversed 'لا' ie 'la'. Comment if you see it too.

https://twitter.com/Eva_Seb/status/408973023891693568/photo/1

I'm doing this instead of homework...

Early Dec 2013 new blog finds

http://threecuriousboys.wordpress.com/ Home ed, of course

http://scribblerbean.com/ ModPo, of course!

http://screamofconsciousnessetc.blogspot.in/ Also ModPo

Chanelling Silliman's Albany and Lyn Hejinian's My Life

I am in the middle of trying to create my Christmas A4 sheet to go in all my Christmas cards. I decided to just type out statement after statement on a text edit file, to print off, cut into lines and arrange artistically as in previous years.

I have just realised that it is just right as it is, so I shall cherish the unexpected result of my frustrations and use it like that. Thanks ModPo. You are great.

At the same time Anthony Risser's link to someone reading John Donne poems out loud on the Empty Plinth is playing in my ears. As T says: "Good times."

If you get one of my sheets remember it is just the good bits and was a tool I made up to deal with bad stuff. Do not be fooled by the wonderfulness. Just saying.