Penney Knightly Writes

Kenyon Review - a rejection.

2012-01-29T05:31:00.000-08:00

About a month ago, I received another rejection from The Kenyon Review for a particularly heart-rending piece of poetry on my part as author. Though, I thought it was a kind rejection note, and it not leave me with pangs in my chest as I read it - so possibly I'm getting better with this whole frustration-tolerance thing.

I was mostly pleased with myself for being able to submit it, for facing that well. And for taking the rejection with grave and not some sort of a breakdown. I've certainly some a long way emotionally within the last few years.

I even have some connections to some poets now, in some loose form: Brent Pallas, Martha Silano, Kate Buckley, and Amy Sprague. Isn't that cool?

Slowly, I'm moving along, still writing, and still submitting. What a happy thing.

No More Mary Poppins

2011-11-10T09:29:00.000-08:00

Am still revising and editing some work. I have such a blacklog of work that hasn't been sorted through or polished (years and years of it) that I have plenty of work to do without producing more at the moment.

...

I did read an interesting article about Mary Oliver, and her new work, yesterday, it's worth reading: http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/poetry/fr/wakeEarly.htm

I agree with the article writer completely - the Mary Poppins motif doesn't work for modern society. Everything is going to crap. You can't paint over it, and wish it wasn't.

That's why I think my poetry has an audience when I get it out there. It's definitely not about painting over the rough stuff, that's for sure.

"I" in Poetry, via Rachel Zucker

2011-10-02T01:23:00.000-07:00

I can't get enough of this woman. She is brilliance on fire:

Confessionalography: A GNAT (Grossly Non-Academic Talk) on "I" in Poetry
by Rachel Zucker

Poets have always used personal experience as subject matter for poems, but the emphasis on self, the effect of using "I" and the reader's expectation of the authenticity of personal information has shifted and changed over time. Shakespeare used the pronoun "I" and sometimes it was him and sometimes it probably wasn't. The Romantics wrote "personal poems," and their readers caught on to the fact that even when poets were writing about nature they were really writing about themselves. These Romantic selves wandered around the heath and through abbeys at times lonely like clouds, at other times punch drunk on the splendor of everything. Walt Whitman also wandered around proclaiming and expounding, while employing an "I" as big as the cosmos, as irrepressible as an avalanche. Then came T. S. Eliot, who wanted poetry to escape from personality and emotion. He probably didn't put much stock in the fact that one really important goal of a poem, according to Frank O'Hara, is to convince someone to have sex with you. After a while, American poets rebelled against Eliot. W.D. Snodgrass, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, and Allen Ginsberg started to use personal information in a way that woke everyone up. The critic M. L. Rosenthal described this poetry as "confessional," and people spent a lot of time arguing about who was or wasn't confessional, and what really made a poem "confessional."

Being "confessional" had something to do with breaking taboos, suffering, and claiming that the "self" of the poem was not "a speaker" but was actually the poet. It was a catchy name—"confessional poetry"—and it also meant that high school students didn't have to spend as much time looking for symbols in poems and could, with no training at all, write really bad poems that helped them "express" themselves. Of course, there were a few problems. For one, was this poetry really radically new? A century earlier, Emily Dickinson had written searingly personal poems—poems in which the disclosure of self is so raw and painful you can almost feel her skin come off—and Allen Ginsberg's "I" sounds a whole lot like Walt Whitman's "I." Yet, people felt that these "confessional" poems were unlike anything ever written before, though no one could say exactly how they were different, and the poets themselves made this more difficult because no one wanted to be counted in or left out.

The second problem was that everyone remembers Mother saying "no one likes a whiner!" which was annoying until you're in the presence of a true whiner and realize that Mother was right. Bad confessional poetry was even worse than bad Romantic poetry, and just as poets used to be scared of sounding academic and ivory tower, now they were scared of sounding too much like New Age mantra-posters or 12-steppers or people in asylums. Also, if people are only focused on the content of the poems, what happens to form and craft and language? What about using language not simply as a vehicle for subject matter, but as a supernal medium in and of itself?

Afterwards and meanwhile, some people wrote Language poetry and tried to empty the signs of meaning and talk about "speech acts." With their collages and their games and their abstractions, they were struggling with language so intimately that this was a kind of suffering as well, a deep suffering, but most readers couldn't see this, couldn't feel this because it sounded so damn intellectualized and abstract, and where had all the people gone? Where were the subjects not just the nouns?

Now it seemed that poets were no longer self-absorbed, neurotic analysands, and had instead become high-functioning Autistics in the midst of a cognitive-behavioral therapy session. And readers wanted to know, "Goddammit, where had all the human beings gone and what happened to love and sex and emotion and drugs?" And young poets (dare this author say especially young women poets) started wondering, "Wait a second, why can't I say "I"? Shakespeare did!" And then came Elipticism, Post-Language, Lyric, New Narrativity, Post-post Modern (look these up to little avail and at your own peril) until poets, or shall I simply say "I," began to struggle with how to write a poetry that is truthful and about the self and uses "I," a poetry that admits that things happen and people happen and emotions are real and important, if not essential components of Art, and that the body (MY BODY) is involved, inextricable from language. At the same time, "I" has DOUBT and IDEAS and SKEPTICISM and ATHEISM, and so it is no longer so easy to write about the body and love and sex and belief without acknowledging that "I" is complicit, that people have killed each other over such matters, and that the struggle to be both personal and political and honest and convincing is no small or minor matter. And then we have the history of Confessional Poetry as a specific movement or group of poets, the effects of language as propaganda and beauty, as a threshold to ethnic cleansing, and maybe I don't really want to kill myself and maybe even though I admit that I love Sharon Olds for her courage and candor and bloody show, I still don't want to be put in her party, her group, her post-confessional or neo-confessional prototype because I also believe in privacy, because surgery is not an act of intimacy. It's not easy to make useful objects that are also finely woven especially when clothes are so cheap nowadays and the looms are intimidating.

Short quiz to determine whether or not you are a confessional poet:

1. Are you Robert Lowell?
2. Do you feel, like Whitman, that you are a part of the world?
3. Do you feel that your circumstances, sufferings or joys make you distinct, separate, unusual?
4. Do you dislike the poetry of Robert Lowell?
5. Are you an American?
6. Has anyone ever accused you of being self-absorbed?
7. Do you feel it is ethical to reveal personal material about your spouse, family, friends or enemies?
8. Do you feel it is unethical to pretend to be someone other—either worse or better—than you actually are; in other words, is it unethical to present a fictional self with the sheen of accuracy?
9. Do you believe that poetry should transform the mundane, the real, the banal into something spiritual, transcendent, ephemeral or do you feel that poetry should report reality which is already excruciatingly transcendent and strange and incongruous?
10. Have you ever committed suicide?

Scoring: Give yourself one point for every "yes." Give yourself an extra 1,000 if you answered "yes" to question #1.
If you scored over 1,000 then you ARE a CONFESSIONAL POET.
If you scored between 1-1000 you might or might not be a CONFESSIONAL POET and should write to M.L. Rosenthal for guidance.

Some thoughts about the current climate: Tenets of, let's call it, Confessionalistic Poetry

1. Autobiographical poetry doesn't exist. If it did exist it would be the pure reportage of a poet's biographical information set down as verse. The closest thing we have to autobiographical poetry is the blog-in-verse but even blogs are subject to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

2. Let us call the use of stories and "facts" from a poet's life "autobiographicality." Autobiographicality demands, expects, and pre-imagines an audience; it is social even when it describes the anti-social. When the Autobiographicalistic poet finds his own information so utterly fascinating that he falls in love with the story of his own life, the result is an ode or elegy to the self. The poem looks like the infinitely repeating reflection in the corner of a mirrored dressing room.

3. Autobiographicality is often exculpatory and can be therapeutic; narrative is an anodyne for existential despair. Telling your life story helps you unburden, repent, and see the self as woven into narrative. Autobiographicality is therefore narcissistic and self-preservative. This is not necessarily bad. It is okay, for example, for poets to stay alive. It is important, however, to remember that staying alive through writing is not the same as "expressing" yourself. If we were rigorous in reserving the self-reflexive use of the verb "to express" to describe a lactating woman in the process of manually "expressing" milk from her breasts, we would realize that most poets, no matter how autobiographicalistic, are not expressing themselves. Breast milk expressed into the sink or onto a washcloth runs down the drain or is invisibly absorbed, whereas telling and certainly writing are their own containers. Poetry has staying power (as Paul Valery said: "Poetry is language that doesn't die for having lived"); expression disappears into memory.

4. Autobiographicality, even when inspired by narcissism, is often enjoyed by the reader/listener. First of all, people like hearing about other people's lives. Tabloids, E! Hollywood specials, biographies, and pornography all pander to our natural voyeurism. But, unlike these other forms of commercial art, autobiographicality in poetry is a show of respect for the reader, a kind of humility not just humanity-on-display. Think of it as the difference between how a storyteller makes eye contact with the audience and how an actor pretends the audience isn't there. The autobiographicalistic poet is aware of the audience and doesn't pretend otherwise.

5. Autobiographicality often reminds the audience of poetry's social mission. The stories of self gain oppressive power when kept taboo. Telling "the truth" about life is liberation from this oppression. The stories of childbirth, of boredom, of sexuality, etc., need to be told and can be told powerfully in poems.

6. Let us now define another poetry, I'll call it "Confessionalistic," a silly sounding term I use only in order to distinguish this poetry from the school of poetry previously called Confessional. Confessionalistic poetry may include Confessional poetry but is not limited to any particular era or group of poets.

7. Confessionalistic poetry is not a "school" or type, but is rather a degree or tonality. Confessionalistic poems include moments of Autobiographicality but also have qualities and aspirations that not all Autobiographicalistic poems have. Autobiographicality is a subset of Confessionalistic poetry. Not all Autobiographicalistic poems are Confessionalistic. In fact, Autobiographicality can often be used to mask the lack of self-reflection that Confessionalistic poetry demands.

8. What then does Confessionalistic poetry have that Autobiographicality lacks? Confessionalistic poetry reaches for the universal. It attempts to transcend the personal, the particular, not because it is embarrassed by the particulars, and the personal, but because, ultimately, Confessionalistic poetry uses the bits and elements of story in the service of larger subjects, subjects that are not limited to particularities of the poet's life. This is not to say that the self becomes symbolic as it did in Romantic poetry, but, rather, that the self is always overcome, overwhelmed, disturbed.

9. There needs to be risk. Confessionalistic poetry is more risky than Autobiographicality. Autobiographicality, no matter how disturbing in content, is always the story of a life, of what happened, of circumstance and event. Confessionalistic poetry is the splitting open of self, a minor chord before and without resolution. A shopping list read aloud, even with gusto, with style, is not Confessionalistic, even if you intend to buy parmesan, pull-ups, and heroin. The risk in a poem that relies heavily on Autobiographicality is usually a risk of content. Privacy, reputation, and decency, may all be risked by the Autobiographicalistic poet. But the Confessionalistic poet risks more; she is willing to undermine the boundaries of self. Often, she is writing at the frayed edge of the genre in the busy interstitial space between neurons.

10. As we are pulled downstream by these swirling "isms" and "alistics," I offer, as a piece of floating drift-wood, Jorie Graham's poem "Imperialism." Graham's poem is made of personal detail, a mosaic of scenes and stories presented in the mode of autobiographical truth. A husband and wife, illuminated by a kerosene lamp, exchange cruelties. But the poem is not about the husband and wife. It is not even about how narrative comes to colonize these real people, the Brentwood chair, the linoleum, the poet, the stories the poet wants to tell or how ideas come to colonize the self. Narrative is nothing without them, these details and people, these subjects who sit and try to nail point of view into the world, but the poem reaches for a force that is more powerful than narrative. The poem tells a story the poet cannot tell. A story about the river Ganges. It is a story (river) full of bodies, knives, newborn calves, utensils, genitals, even the ashes of the recently cremated. The story is about the catastrophe of knowing the world and about the impossibility of trying to get clean in thick muddy water. The poet only manages to tell the part of the story about a man washing a white umbrella in that brown river. What the poem is really about you will have to decide for yourself. I will say only that it is clear that the umbrella, the marriage, the poet, the linoleum, the river, the Mother, the "irrelevant" body of the Mother, are not symbolic but real, autobiographical. It is also and equally clear that this poem, while it uses bits of personal detail and elements of story is not about the poet's life. The poem is not about anything she is using to make the poem.

11. Now I will use a ridiculous analogy that I will later disavow and vociferously swear was inserted here by the editors of this publication: Romantic poetry is the lightness of a soufflé about to fall. Autobiographical Poetry is a raw egg with or without salmonella. Autobiographicality is a hard boiled egg with or without a beginning art student in the background practicing chiaroscuro. Confessional Poetry is a hard boiled egg with a serrated knife lodged in its center and a tiny tear drop of blood on the knife's handle. Confessionalistic poetry is half a deviled egg, with no sign of the other half except a thin snow drift of paprika on the white plate.

12. Many poems I would consider Confessionalistic sound and function nothing at all like Jorie Graham's work. Some Confessionalistic poems (Frank O'Hara's work comes to mind) appear to reveal the self accidentally. The content may not explicitly deal with matters of self and self-disclosure, but the effect of writing the poem is profoundly revealing. The autobiographicalistic poet may call himself a dirty name, but will ultimately reveal less than what the handwriting (or signature meters) of a Confessionalistic poet may expose.

13. Whereas Autobiographicality is most often declamatory, Confessionalistic poetry has a wide range of volumes. It can sound like the self overheard or can be almost silent: the sound of the walk of a man who has spent his life in the cavalry.

14. "I" is capitalized because it is not only a name, but because it is also an idea and now, perhaps a movement, like Romanticism. I is the name I call myself, and I is also the idea of self. As such, Confessionalistic poets attempt to engage the public interest, the public truth through material that always involves private experience.

15. The backlash against self-indulgence led to a disavowal of the personal, the needlessly profane, the sensational. But it is important to remember that we learn—nipple in mouth—through sensation and all our ideas are formed from shapes and colors and textures and urgent feelings. Without the personal, without visceral knowledge, without empathy, we are (and I mean this literally) anti-social fundamentalist murderers.

16. There is no need to fear the personal or the Confessional. For one thing, it is unavoidable. For another thing, it is all you have. Penultimately, it can save you. Lastly, you can never really, fully, and honestly tell the truth about your own life because a) you don't know the truth b) there is no one truth and c) you are always telling, and telling the truth is very different from the truth. Think of it this way: If you take your clothes off you are naked but are not a Nude, and certainly not a nude painting. The poem, no matter how bare, is a Nude, and never really naked. That said, you need to take your clothes off to know what your skin really feels like.

17. Take your clothes off.

2011-10-01T23:53:00.001-07:00

It Is In Everything, Even Tomatoes

He says he doesn't like tomatoes with broken seals,
they are damaged, ruined, less flavorful.

I think of me, bent over the bed,
full of seams, and in need of stitching,
full of pins, and in need of mending,
there are holes in holes, where the seams were
they are torn apart like a broken homeland,
just as ravaged as the rest of me,

there is no orifice unopened,
I am open as a water valve;

things leave with it,

I was made for things coming.

Is Shirley Jackson A Great American Writer?

2010-07-18T06:12:00.000-07:00

A great article praising Shirley Jackson, and asking the question: Is she a Great American writer?

http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/index.html?story=/books/laura_miller/2010/07/14/shirley_jackson

E-book Formatting and Poetry

2010-07-18T06:02:00.001-07:00

Interesting article about e-book formatting and poetry. It seems like we just can't get a "business break."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/14/poetry-and-ebooks-will-po_n_645677.html

Trauma and Writing

2010-07-10T16:22:00.000-07:00

This note popped up on my new install of Writer's Cafe. (If you don't have Writer's Cafe, you should check it out. It's a fantastic little program that enables you to keep a journal, keep notes, save pictures, and generates writing prompts and too many other cool things. The limited version of it is free: http://www.writerscafe.co.uk/download.htm)

I thought this writing tip it offered was an appropriate one for me.

How To Deal With Exhaustion, Stress and Trauma

Sometimes you have to face it, it just isn't going to happen. You cannot
write. It's a physically impossibility. If you are ill or have suffered a
major life stress you will not be able to write and you should not force
yourself. Writing is a draining if exhilarating experience - think of it as
a mental sport and yourself as an intellectual athlete. It follows, then,
that big life stuff will get in the way.

But then again writing is a wonderful way to deal with the trauma that life
throws at us. Just don't expect to be able to do it.

If you are moved to write because of your circumstances then write, because it will help. But
there is no obligation.

If you are finding it hard to find time and energy to write, the important
thing to do is not to blame yourself for failing. Just comfort yourself with
the thought that you will return to it in time, when the circumstances are
better, when you feel healthier and more relaxed. And remember, there is a
lot that can be done by not even picking up a notebook, by merely living
observantly and being open to possibilities. You can note down any ideas you
have and work on them in your head until the time is right.

Redirection of Energy

2010-01-27T07:48:00.000-08:00

In the writing world of my life: I was recently rejected at Ploughshares once again.

In the healing from sexual abuse world, it's better to go here. (Because that's where all of my energy is going these days.) WARNING: It's pretty graphic. http://thehealingbook.blogspot.com

Poetry - From 10/7/09

2009-10-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

Lament For My Co-Workers

He said, I don't know why they don't just scream,
just roll up into a ball and claw the walls when they're with you,
I don't know how you do it, being in that room with the media minds;
can they not see your brain is split like a psychiatric kid on candy?

I do not have the answer to why
they tolerate the girl who cannot make eye contact
and fills a room with nothing to say, who kills the air
and electrifies every imperfection that's wrong with men,

she's the reason our husbands tuck in with our children,
she's the reason our fathers start into our daughters,
she's the reason our brothers bang on the outsides of us;

young woman, with hair of too many colors,
with eyes too dull to notice,

you are all the thorns of a rose
without the flower, in this patch.

______________________

This morning I conducted a baptism.
In that small square space I slid off skin that's aged
dead since the start, and started thinking of that time you were
in my mouth with a rag, saying Father, Son, Holy Ghost.

Those sins, they washed away, but there were only a few of them, then.
They were like frosting, they were like decoration above the flavor,
and something about tasting you, and a murky Mississippi that couldn't carry another stain, made me realize

every day I would have to rub myself to bone,
say Stay A Little While Longer
instead of three dead Gods,
because there was only one, and the one
was I.

Poetry - From 10/1/09

2009-10-02T15:50:00.001-07:00

You cannot always have access to the soul
and days like this where sleep and solitude are not what's needed
I find that I curl like a turtle
into the core of myself
and rock down to the bottom, to the beginning, to the inside,
in a way that my mother never ever did,

past the crying, and the holding, and waking, and dying,
and getting up and doing it all over again,

past Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
and the thoughts of staying,
and of never coming back,

I rock like a mother to me,
I go back and forth like a gypsy
in my mind, and that broken organ
that does no more movement.

Poetry - 9/29/2009

2009-10-01T17:09:00.000-07:00

Giving

Giving myself, scooping myself up
to others with more hands than I have,
being the dumb who lets the runners run me
as I let my soul drop like a bomb, like a rock
in a muddy brook, like a failure,

see: codependent,

see: webbed between too many with not enough,

see: me go like a hobo to the millionaire
and then have him ask for his money.

Maintenance

I have a need for corners around me, a nice big room
with which to breathe like a dragon and take off skin and bone
if it is the thing that is to be done.

I like the type of small-grin, sappy, studious type
that sits in corners and doesn't mind when I move,
I like the type who curls his mind but not his brow
when I bounce back and forth in my mind like a loon,
like a crazed female on imagination,

I enjoy the air between my legs, the salt of self staying to me,
the ring of my voice hardly leaving my throat,

the jab of outside is making me ill,
I need the run of this inside;

clean cycle.

Before Being Butterfly

Four o'clock, up like I've never been down,
down on the inside like I've never been up, and a tight, tight toss
of last night's food and last life's woe;

I am stuck here like a caterpillar in the cocoon.

Today's Poem

2009-09-20T09:06:00.000-07:00

More Romantic

Take the end of my nails,
the skin of my bones, softest of soul that I am,

I am,

stuff it in a bottle like those fake kittens
and send me out to sea like a love note,
send me out so someone can catch me,

so someone can catch me,
like the flu,

only,

more romantic.

Simon's Getting His Face Fixed

2009-09-20T07:44:00.000-07:00

Simon's getting his face fixed, at least that's what he told her last night.

She tried to remove his decision with red wine but the unpleasantness of the situation didn't go away. He was jolly this morning, asked for bacon and eggs and a side of orange juice spiked; something that he hadn't asked for since the accident.

She, however, was not jolly this morning. Her feet clapped slowly against the tile floor and her head felt like some young child had just been given a drum set for the first time. She felt dry and hollow, brittle, even, on the inside. She thought about taking up bulimia again about twenty-seven times, "I could lose some weight before he saw me again. Maybe enough to keep him."

That car wreck did him a good one. It took some vision away, some muscular mobility. Some days, she had to help feed him, because there was only so much his twisted, cute face could manage.

He wasn't so threatening after that. He wasn't like a man. He was, a stick, or what do they call it? Vegetable?

She didn't have to worry about his pecker, either. He was without drive. He couldn't make himself go with a girl. A dysfunction caused by psychological blockage. He didn't say much, either.

But getting better, that might change that for him. There was that old girl friend of his, Candy, Cindy, I'll-Blow-You-Right-Here-Right-Now, he'd want her. That job with the state four-hundred miles away, he'd want that, too. Oh, and that stack of pornography in his closet, he'd go straight for it.

He'd want those things and more.

He would drink, he would feel like a human, he would gripe and complain, he'd say she wasn't good enough.

He would see right off how fat she was, he'd go to be with Candy, or Cindy, or Caroline, she forget her name. He'd never be back here.

She scrambled the eggs and they sizzled in the pain. They took shape as she split them, the warmth turned them clear, white, and then a bright yellow. She imagined them to be Simon, going from nothing to something. He'd be all bright and yellow, too. Hell, he'd practically be a happy, bobbing sunflower.

The hot, scalding splatter of bacon practically made her scream as it jumped onto her skin. She took it out of the pan, its edges black, and assembled the breakfast onto the plate. Two bacon pieces parallel to each other on the left-hand side, two eggs sunny-side up on the right.

She filled the tall glass with vodka then adding the orange juice, and took a sip for toxicity. She held back from spitting in it.

"Who did he think he was, drinking vodka in the morning, and being all happy about leaving me? What gave him the right to fix himself and leave me broken and behind? I wouldn't be good enough for him then, I wasn't good enough now, but after this, he wouldn't have to stay! Some skinny blond thing would scoop him up, nurse him back to health by working his love stick up and down! Up and down! The little whore."

She gripped the fork, the plate, and the glass, and stomped her way to his room. The television got louder and louder as she approached.

He was in bed, yellow pillows tucked under his neck and back. He was propped up like a little china doll. He had the tiny lamp on that his mother gave him when she died last year, it had beaded stuff on it.

She thought it was trashy.

"Here you are, all beautiful. You've brought my breakfast." He motioned his arms open, very slowly, and his lips twitched in an unnatural way when he smiled.

She slid the bib around his neck, rocked his body upright so he eat even more comfortably, and placed the plate in his lap, and the drink near the lamp, onto a coaster.

"Thank you so much, for this. I appreciate your work. You know, when I get better, we'll go out and have meals. You won't have to cook anymore. We can say, to hell with cooking, lets go get steak!" His face curled up, and his lip twitched again. His eyes shined brightly. He wasn't looking downward today. He was happy about the procedure he would soon take part in.

"They say they’re gonna put some skin from other places -- no, not that place, you dirty woman, and reconstruct it. They have photos of how I used to look, they're gonna recreate it as best they can. Facial hair and everything."

She felt like throwing up. Facial hair? She didn't like facial hair. It reminded her of something; her father when he got too playful, when she couldn't get away, and he pulled up on --

" -- Costs you, me, nothing. Some fine agency has forked the dough. I think the company is involved somehow, but they don't tell me anything anymore. I'm outta the loop, even though I watch the news. I have trouble hearing certain frequencies in that ear, I think." He laughed at himself.

He thought she was listening, but the words came to her and stopped.
Sometimes, she gets this way, and I have to wake her up.

She perked up immediately, and only barely remembered the memory of her father with the facial hair, too rough.

"Would you be so kind as to fetch some of my prescriptions out of the cupboard?"

She nodded and walked out to the kitchen. Her mind was blank. She barely remembered the instruction. "What did he want? Prescription?" She repeated "Prescription. Prescription. Prescription. What does that mean?"

Her hands flew widely through the cupboards, boxes, little boxes, plastic containers, it all looked so confusing.

She felt as if she wasn't herself, she felt as if someone else was with her.

She saw her arm grab a bottle, open it into her hand, and run to the bedroom. She was shaking, her body was in pain, and her mind was running. She practically threw the pills at him, and fled the room.

"Facial hair. Facial hair. Rubbing. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts."

She could hear him laughing, and the television was making the appropriate noises in the background. The clink and clank of his fork against the plate was audible.

"Rubbing. Rubbing. Rubb --" she kept repeating, looking for connections, over and over.

I tried to suppress the thoughts. Finally, I had to shut her off.

Down the hall and to the right, I walked into her bedroom, and pulled the suitcase out from under the bed. I grabbed the nightgown she liked, and the nightgown I liked, one white, and the other fiery red with a v-neck scoop, socks for her, nylons for me. The bland package of blue, pink, white, assortment of makeup she wore on occasion, and the red, black, brown, assortment I had practically used up.

I grabbed the small bound book she used for a journal which consisted of childish scribbles that she liked to fantasize about and consider as art, and the box of jewelery from the vanity table.

I took the hair-binding contraption she wore out of my hair, and stuffed it a pack. In a few short minutes, I had gathered together everything I had wanted.

I threw the bag over my shoulder, walked into his room and turned off the television. News casters stopped their endless yammering and the house was quiet.

He was gone, stretched out on his bed like a cat. His tortured face looked quite peaceful. Light shone in from outside. He looked like he was taking a mid-morning nap.

"We just can't be afraid of men anymore, you see? Poor Simon, I wish you could have been an exception. I kind of liked you."

That House, This House

2009-05-21T07:14:00.000-07:00

Four towns later, on a lettered block
instead of a named; it's the tenth in the sequence,
it's the one after the "I."

Do you spot the tall, tall tailoring,
with the warp of years running along the sides
and the missing shingles and the two, two-toned too pale?

Do you see the flowers
humming in the day, hugging in the night
and how they shine to subdue and play off
the horrors that still haunt in my head two floors above,

where at two I know of being none, maybe even negative one,
and how in two I've gone backward and forward twenty

and have felt my mother at her imagined best and real worst.

In this time I wear curls, ribbons, makeup, sadness:

by this clock I go to all hours,
in this reality I am not where I am;

only where "I used to," "arriving,"
"seeing," "stretching" - time,

and only where I did not leave me.

On Writing, and "Author Magic"

2009-05-19T07:22:00.000-07:00

On the subject of writing, I have submitted a few things to some contests and publications, some of which I should be hearing back from in a few months. But I've been in an online writing group of the last 6 years off and on, and so I've been working on the craft. Mostly, I write poetry. Sometimes, I'll do a short story, but it's rare. I have nearly 1000 poems I think over the course of my "Writing Career" and there's more to come!

As far as I can figure, it's my calling, so I've slowly been building confidence and have been working for the end goal of being published, and making money at it. Because, I'm convinced after reading published poets that I have something original to offer - and I think people read what I write and feel at home - because I can express the human condition better than anything they've ever encountered.

Poetry is surprising in that way. If you're doing it right as an author, you can make the reader feel like they're talking to a friend or having a conversation, and by the end of it you've gotten under all the filters and the reader is left feeling "read," as if someone just peered into their soul. Or, the reader sees something they've never seen before, and the knowledge becomes a part of their personality forever - they will never be able to think about the world in the same way ever again.

It's a revealing, not a telling. There's more impact - because it doesn't feel like it's getting to you, and it's underestimated - and then, BAM! you wonder what hit you. You feel depleted, or encouraged, or sad, or angry,

you feel like you can relate, like you see something other people don't, like you have a universal secret.

Little Knowns About Thoreau

2009-05-18T09:44:00.000-07:00

I received this in my e-mail box this morning. It's from the wonderful people at Delanceyplace.com:

For Americans, Thoreau has come to represent self-sufficient man living peacefully in the wilderness and communing with untrammeled nature, even though the hut he lived in for two years was only a few blocks from the city of Concord, and he took his dirty laundry home for his mother to wash. The Thoreau we now imagine is a priest of solitude and an icon of the modern-day green movement ...

"But here's another Thoreau. Here's a Thoreau who lives in town, in the center city of Concord, which, while not quite the size of a city, even though it wants to be, is a large town. Here is the Thoreau who is born in town and except for a few trips to the Maine and Massachusetts coast, except for a little less than a year in New York City, lives his entire life in his town. ... He comes back [from college at Harvard] to his hometown to discover that there are no jobs, a recession. He goes on the road, to Maine, and he can't find any jobs there either. Thoreau also returns to discover that Ralph Waldo Emerson - the most exciting intellectual and the most renowned intellectual reformer in America - is a neighbor. ... Thoreau moves to Emerson's house, takes care of Emerson's children, his carpentry, his yard work, his gardening, all the while doing other chores for other people around the village, the Transcendental handyman. Thoreau tries poetry, then essay writing, then edits the Transcendentalists' magazine, the Dial. In none of these endeavors does he manage to make much in the way of money. ... He moves to New York, tries to establish himself as a successful freelance writer, but gets homesick and returns early to Concord.

"When he comes home, he decides to build himself a little house on the pond on the edge of town, about forty New York City blocks from the village center on a woodlot owned by Emerson - a woodlot that is not so much woods, in the sense that we think of woods today, as it is a place where Emerson cuts the trees that each day heat his house as he writes away. Thoreau's friends visit - his neighbors and family come to the pond for picnics or to stop by for the watermelon party that Thoreau throws every year. ... Above all, he cherishes his manly self-sufficiency, even though he carried his dirty laundry to Concord for his mother to wash. ...

"Thoreau takes seven years to write and rewrite and rewrite his next book, Walden, his best-known work in America and, along with his essay on civil disobedience, one of the most famous works of American literature in the world. ... To call Thoreau a nature writer is more than limiting, given the way that we tend to think about nature writing; Thoreau writes about the whole world, and he writes of Walden Pond so as to change the world. ... Walden is a work that intended to revive America, a communal work that is forever pigeonholed as a reclusive one. And what is perhaps most surprising is that it's a comedy; it's an economic satire draped in the language of nature and farming and the self-help books of the day that shows the mass of economic men to be a bunch of unwitting saps. With some disdain, Nathaniel Hawthorne referred to his Concord friend as 'a humorist.'

"Walden didn't sell. It didn't do as badly as Thoreau's first book, but it was no huge hit. Thus, after Walden, Thoreau takes on writing as a kind of full-time avocation, working in his family's pencil factory, doing odd jobs while selling the occasional travel piece. He is a singer and a dancer. He plays the flute and likes to take his friends on moonlit walks and, despite his reputation, rarely seems to have gone on a camping trip alone. He is also a surveyor, helping house builders build, farmers settle their disputes. When people think of Thoreau, do they imagine all the time he spent in court, testifying to land boundaries?

"He dies at forty-four. ... He dies at home. His aunt asks him if he has made peace with God. He tells her he did not know that they had quarreled."

Robert Sullivan, The Thoreau You Don't Know, HarperCollins, Copyright 2009 by Robert Sullivan, pp. 4-9

Rejections, Smajeckons!

2009-05-18T09:00:00.001-07:00

2 Rejections this week. There's still two contests out there that I've heard no word back from yet. Seems like I'm not finding my niche yet, but that's okay.

Still on the hunt for a publisher.

At least they were nice about it:

Dear Penny Knightly,

Thank you again for submitting to 2River. I enjoyed reading your poems
but I'm unable to use them in the 13.4 (Summer 2009) issue of The
2River View. I hope you'll consider submitting new poems for a later
issue of 2RV.

Best--
Richard Long

...

Still pushing! At least, I'm pushing now. Good, good progress.

...

Here's a woman I can proudly link to: http://www.beingblock.com/writing.html

Gold Star Time!

2009-05-06T00:14:00.000-07:00

I just sent out another set of poems for publishing consideration. Hooray.

I decided I get a gold star for the recent pushes I've been doing in the writing department.

Yay, me! More on deck for tomorrow. But I'm satisfied for today. Time for bed, and maybe another stretch toward publication tomorrow.

On Writer's Block, some Observations, Ideas:

2009-05-04T09:18:00.000-07:00

1. Watch about half an hour of a movie everyday.
It helps to generate a lot of ideas and see from different perspectives. It's a visual way of getting information. (And what you don't understand you can look up further, which gives you more information!)

2. Listen to music very softly in the background (barely audible) while writing, which engages your right brain and will make connections for you.

3. Do "Word Mapping" or "Word Webs" (by handwriting it, not on the computer) when you have a particular topic in mind. Just let your brain do what it does naturally, making connections and dumping the information that it has onto paper.

4. Keep a journal on hand at all times, take notes of what you see, what you find interesting, or an idea you have. Write down you're inspired or curious about something, then come back to it later.

5. Keep a running list of topics you have written on, would to like to write about, topics you find interesting, or mysterious.

6. Ask yourself child-like questions of wonder. Such as, "Why is the sky blue?" "How did the days of the week get their name?" "Who were all the presidents of the United States?"

7. Draw what you're feeling with colors on paper, then try to interpret the symbolism in what you see., then write about you, or another character.

8. Write about an intense emotion: about something extremely happy, or extremely infuriating.

9. Type with your non-dominant hand for one minute. It will get your right brain to pay attention if you're naturally right-handed, and your left-brain language center engages if you're naturally left-handed.

10. Do word association. Think of a word, for example "conflict." What comes to my mind is "fighting," "avoid," "frightening," "fury," "butting heads," "disharmony," "destruction," etc. This will help you feel feelings, providing you with motivation, and freeing up your brain to work out patterns on characters, or setting the mood for what you write.

11. Go to an art gallery. The images will work around in your brain. Plus, you'll be calmer by the time you leave, and your body will relieved of stress hormones. Your mind will be clear to begin writing, and hopefully, inspired.

An Experiment In Writing: A Hope!

2009-05-04T09:05:00.000-07:00

I sent out another set of poems to another magazine last night. The set is pretty abuse-related and kind of intense. The publication doesn't pay money, so I'm not really at some kind of a loss if it doesn't work out, but their new and small and may be willing to take more risks - and may see some potential, may see it as marketable, whereas years ago I don't think the material was.

I'm mostly doing it test the climate, and see where I need to make my moves to make the writing work - because most of my writings are themed on abuse, and I think if I could get the material out there it would help a lot of people.

... We'll see what becomes of it.

In another month I should hear about the other two submissions that are hanging out there. (One being a 15,000 dollar fellowship. Egads!)

It's all very exciting. I'm happy that I'm feeling healthy mentally and physically enough to do it - I was worried that I wouldn't have the energy for a while, but alas, 'tis not so!

...I am a bouncy little ball of happy. The first time since I was born, I think. !!!

Life By Poetry 101

2009-03-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

Courage is a poem by Anne Sexton,
Anxiety is a poem by DH Lawrence,
Grief is a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

These things learned by words, my heart making reality
first from verse and then to me
the rising, flying, climbing, crumbling character of courage,
the shaking, stirring, swirling, paranoid-workings of anxiety,
the heavy, hardened, holding of grief.

I carried them everywhere, them all,
took poems and papers, stuck them to the wall
of my room, and inhaled and exhaled and spoke and shouted their songs:

I learned death from Sylvia when I was 14,
I learned love from Ted when I was 18,

feeling friendships far gone, yet formed.

So many dead
for the feelings they felt fully-swallowed them,

swallowed them

like a child in a storm,
like love to the lonely,

like their words to a hungry, helpless heart.

Progress is My Favorite Thing To Do

2009-03-18T10:47:00.000-07:00

I did some drawing over the weekend, and scanned some older ones in. I like them and think they're fun. I don't think they're particularly well done, but they sure do make me happy.

Art therapy is good for the recovery process, and seems to be helping.

In other news, I sent poems off to the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, and am working on sending off another set to Agni later today. A submission to Ploughshares in currently being read.

Big step for me, but it seems like I'm on a roll, and have some new self-esteem and momentum, so I'm running with it.

Anti-depressants and sleeping pills seem to be helping a lot, and a visit with a new psychiatrist on Thursday should prove to be even more encouraging. Panic attacks have not been as intense, and less frequent, flashbacks have diminished, too. Anxiety has gone down a lot with anti-anxiety medication. Endometriosis pain has diminished quite a bit, but is still present - there's three more months of treatment, so there's plenty of time for it to work out.

Overall, things are better than they ever have been, and I feel like I'm learning about myself everyday - not just being panicked, scared, and terrorized into behaving a certain way.

I'll end here - Here are some of the pictures I've done:

Two More in the Notebook

2008-12-07T23:43:00.000-08:00

The Musts of Making

Grab the jars and bottles,
cups, and cans, too,
if we cannot make up for it with flowers
a pad, a paper, crayons, will do.

Give me scissors, stamps, stencils,
I will build a world
I do not yet have

all it takes
is a wanting, a wishing, watercolor,
welcoming
wine.

________

I am not in this room
I am brain, barely
a hand, making marks
on paper,

a body is too much, I think,
and too much work to keep.

Can I have the writing part
and the part of me that weeps?

Writing: 4 Poems For The Day

2008-12-07T23:03:00.000-08:00

Got some writing done at the laundromat. Apparently, it's been cooking in my brain for the last week. Nothing really that great, but there's some interesting images, some new experimentation with formatting and presentation, and some new subjects, if I remember correctly.

Busy

My head is too heavy

I feel as if I am carrying a lion on my neck,
I feel like there is a circus happening, a juggling, a plate spinning, can-can dancing,
trapeze artist - jumping poodles, ring dancing,

twirlers, ups
downers,

all-arounders

a regular sword-swallowing party, breathing fire:

a lady alone in the corner
shoves herself into a box,

I want to be her.

Instead.

______________________

Block

Pulse?
Check.

Temperature?
Correct.

Pen and paper out,
mind, erect-

I think not.

And that is when the fear frames around my eyes

and my heart does a thud, thud, jump

my mind, has hunger pains.

______________________

little black bag
he carried you better
than he carried

me,

one day on my back
dark, cold, winter room:
season of dead things,
you made me full of fire, fear,

a fear you
wrapped around two wrists,
you called it
a gift.

I screamed for a long time
maybe days, maybe
I never stopped

and you said
you loved me, but
it wasn't because I was naked.

______________________

I am shocked,
sometimes
flowers come out of my brain
and I run around frantically
looking for a vase to keep them fresh,
but not one time
do I seem to have had one.

When I look at my thighs, I see
scrubbed porcelain, once dirty, now new
enough
is the word I use when negative
comes like a rolling of fog:

it hides the bank,
it hides the bank,
ships go under from rocks

I spend my nights
staring at sunflowers, straining
to steal their light,
to stow it away,

into
me.

The Masked Bandits Strike Again!

2008-12-01T03:03:00.000-08:00

Earlier tonight, before supper, four little furry friends came onto my porch begging for food, then we let them invade the house.

They're just tiny little raccoons looking for yum yums. It's not their first visit, once before we gave them chocolate chip cookies, and another time rye bread, today they got an impromptu special: hotdog buns.

A Small Health Report

2008-11-26T18:27:00.000-08:00

I just took a look at the topics that I write about most often. I comes down to: expression, poetry, happiness, being me.

What a happy thought.

Went to the doctor for annual girl part lookup today, and there was a lot of sensation happening. My back has been on fire for the last few days and there seems to be a heaviness in my abdomen. The doc recommended an x-ray while she meets with another doc to see about the next course of action to take, which I did today.

Still waiting and seeing about finding the problem.

No worries, yet.

Back At It - Hello, Words. I Missed You.

2008-11-12T00:57:00.000-08:00

How about these poems for tonight's work? I must have hit a vein, gotten a theme, and out it came: (I wonder if any of it will make sense to anyone but me?)

_____________________________________

I had a good conversation, one over drink,
and even though you were two-hundreds miles away
I sat down and spoke my mind to you. I ran on and on
about the pains, the inner workings, the parts
that I don't get to see for years at a time, and all at once
they rushed to meet you.

I get to thinking there's a magic, there's a chant, there must be
a meeting of the world versus myself, and the agreement is
"when she thinks she has got herself all marked with lines and graphs,
send out a shape that doesn't fit, show her she tells truths better
to people other than herself."

For the rest of tonight I will marvel over the information you got out me
without having to threaten, curse, or cut,

all you did was say, "how are you?"

and I turned to page 1,
and started reading myself, to you,

out loud.

On Wanting to Be Someone Else

There's a funny kind of moment where I have your skin, carry your heart,
and hold your words in me like a native,

sometimes, only sometimes,
I can make your tongue work and your vocabulary.

Sometimes, if I blink, I become.

When I cry, I moisten you,
during the night I keep myself awake being you,

and in the ocean where I keep my dark
I can swim, and swim, and swim,

(and drown, and wake up,
and drown, and wake up,
and do it all

all again, all again)

and come over to the land

like one of the girls in the mermaid tales,

and I keep saying I want to be you, I want to be you,
I want to

walk on the land, no sand,
no slippage and falling into softness,

rock, rock, is what I need.

Solid. Solid.

And if I say it enough, it will be.
It will be,

It will be.

But in the ocean where I keep my passion because
it has no where else to go

I know
I cannot; low
I fall and slow, slow,
I am down like the rock I wanted

so heavy, so proud, so full
of matter

that doesn't matter,

that doesn't float.

On Making Hard Decisions

If I bite you, I lose five years.

If I love you, I have to gain a new life and push away twenty years in a few minutes so I can touch your body, so I can stroke your male need, so you can see femininity at work and not be discouraged with the lot of us.

If I hold my tongue, I get more than an argument won, a box of hurt, and days with you holding your chest and thinking "She is no different from."

If I kiss you, I get a flash of hatred, a hunger to make blood happen,
and a kind word from you that is heavier than it all.

If I am I, if I am my choice,
I get to keep everything I am, everything
I ever will be, and everything you're raising me up to know,

moment one, point,
two, point,

1587663, point.

My Poems Are On the Loose!

2008-11-06T01:25:00.000-08:00

I submitted six poems to an online literary journal I picked up from a Elizabeth on the Bridge. (She's such a sweetie.)

This is my first submission. I have swirly things in my stomach. (Or is it indigestion?)

Here's the place I sent them off to: http://poetrysz.blogspot.com/

Seems like they have some work that's similar to my style and my current themes. I think maybe I've find a good place to start building some confidence, and then keep hammering from there.

But time will tell, and so will the readers of the submissions.

Still, a huge leap. I'm proud of me.

Eliminating the Possibilities

2008-11-05T23:41:00.000-08:00

Went to see the doctor again today. She's pretty sure it's endometriosis. We're possibly heading to another city to see another doctor tomorrow if I cannot get the appointment I'm hoping for here in town.

I'm in quite a bit of pain and it seems to be traveling along, getting more extensive.

It's completely sucked out my energy the last few days.

I'm looking forward to getting this issue fixed so I can get back to writing, thinking, moving, and doing, again.

The Tuesday Morning Muse Strikes Again!

2008-11-04T01:12:00.000-08:00

Turns out I came up with some writing after all. Clever me.

Upon Seeing the Picture of The Ex

About every two days you come up like a ghost, or a frozen hand poking out of the snow, and say "I was here, you are here, we are here."

Recently I saw you in a picture someone sent along hoping
it would warm my heart up, but
the only thing I noticed was your mouth
it was upside down

and you looked like you had been carrying too many sad things in you.
You looked like you were heavy and haunted

you looked like you weren't running with blood anymore
you looked like a faint image of a person

one that was missing many essential organs
and on the verge of losing himself forever.

To Vincent

One day she stopped, it all ended at the bottom of a banister
and I don't think her lips were open, because poetry would still be seeping out of her corpse.

Someone called her a tramp, a poor excuse for feminity, I say
she's a woman of man(y) tastes and cannot stop at one bite.

How do you think she knew the world so well, and how do you think
she could tell you the secrets in the souls of trees?

It was in the heat, with the fire going that the passion lit her like a lamp
and she was so bright
truth lined up for her to get it down.

Monday Synopsis on a Tuesday

2008-11-03T23:53:00.000-08:00

Health Scenario: Worse Case

I spent a good portion of my day trying to get an appointment for my pain to no avail, sleeping, and doing research to get a better idea of what may be happening in my body. If it's endometriosis, then it's in the advanced stages, because I'm pretty sure there's an ovarian growth since it's enlarged, which worries me some. I'd rather it be endometriosis than cancer. I just hope that that if endo is the case that I get to keep some pieces and will able to have children.

I really want 1/2 me and 1/2 someone else running around someday.

I can feel myself going numb about the subject, though. That's a worse scenario, not being able to have children. Still, I have to prepare for it in my head if the time comes to take that action and accept the loss.

Still, too soon to tell.

...

Becoming Human

I had a good session today. I got angry and started pounding on the table, knocked some things over and got empowered. No, I'm not an idiot. Yes, I'm intelligent, competent, and a capable. I am a woman, powerful and intelligent. The new "WIP" model. It's part of the not treating myself like shit, loving myself, and being kind to myself philosophy. So far, it's a bit rough around the edges and I have to remind myself that it will get better with time and practice. Soon I'll be learning business things, running my life, and taking control, and feeling like a human being. I'm so close. I still have some pushing to do, but it's all looking up. I'm not fighting depression or darkness anymore, now I'm fighting some self-pity habits and the permission that I have been giving myself to be incompetent and irresponsible.

No more with that behavior. It's all about facing fears.

Gotta walk the tightrope and be courageous. It'll be worth it.

No one gets a thing from standing back and watching others do the moving and the shaking.

Good progress is happening. I love the way I'm turning out.

One day at a time.

...

Writing / Coming Home to Me - Sexual Abuse Recovery Site - Progress

No writing yet today. I didn't even get the sexual abuse site up like I had planned. I was all motivated to make it happen and I ran out of steam. I had to take a three-hour nap and get a break from the pain in the middle of the day. That threw me off, and so I have it on a stack to do tomorrow.

Turns out I have more articles and links saved than I had thought. It's going to be a great site. I might even be able to generate some revenue with it. There's nothing like it on the net, I've researched for about two years now. It's going to be a great service. It's the culmination of all I've experienced - every incident in detail that I can recall - and every good lesson I've learned from various self-help books, and from articles and information collected from the library and the internet.

It's going to be incredible. I hope others will find it helpful. That's the whole reason I'm doing it anyway. Some part of me just has to share. Just has to help dug others out of the pit they're in as best as I can.

On the Wonders of the World and Happiness = Millay's Renascence

2008-11-03T00:35:00.000-08:00

 All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see;
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.

Offerings to the Wrong God

2008-11-03T00:13:00.000-08:00

This one woke me up in the middle of the night, and I got it down immediately.

There is so much material there, I think, in the things they came up with.

One with a ceramic snowman,
another, Chinese food, another
with an ornamented frame too bold to hold the people inside the glass,

the people kept slipping out -

there were at least four of them I didn't know for frown or smile.

And they fixed their worlds with thin strips of paper making offerings to Christmas, their stomachs, and their memories,

they gave to themselves when they said
"I bought this for you."

Current Happiness Report. Vol I of Many to Arrive

2008-11-02T23:28:00.000-08:00

On Learning, On the Path to Being The Future Me

There's been some serious growing going on within the last few days.

I had quite an episode yesterday trying to teach me how to think. We played psychiatrist vs. patient for a while and I came up with startling discoveries and some reasons for my strange behavior. Turns out a lifetime of my father standing over me saying "You're a dumb ass, stupid bitch of a female and you never get anything right," accounted for why I was crying and was unable to come home with the right amount of plastic to cover the table for my plants when I brought them in for the winter.

After talking it out, I had no trouble coming up with something that would work today when I went to the nearest hardware store. I stood in line longer than it took for me to find what I needed, and when I got home I brought my plants in and got everything setup just the way I wanted it - in fact, it was better than I could have imagined.

Now I have a jungle in my room and I'm growing tomatoes and spinach all-year round. Yum.

So, today was a good day.

I felt like jumping up and down after getting that accomplished all by myself.

...

On My Current Physical Health

I experienced some new sensations today in my body. The pain is starting to happen in my lower back on my left hand side and where my left ovary is, too. Tomorrow I have to call the gynecologist - hopefully they will have me in there by Wednesday. I don't really want to say the big "C" word yet, but the symptoms are pointing that way and the pain is getting worse even after four more days of bladder infection clean-up pills.

I don't know what's going on in there, but I'm starting to become more concerned. This has gone on for some time, at least a month now with me having taken opiates, Ibuprofen on a daily basis, and bladder pills. And there was pain two weeks before that even got started.

I hope not ovarian cancer. I hope. I hope.

...

Exciting New Places to Come

In other news, we may be moving to the Bay Area. I might be living 30 minutes away from San Francisco. That would be a good place to be with our new business, and a good place for inspiration and to start up a serious writing career, too.

It all sounds like a happiness to me. In fact, I'm the happiest I've ever been in my entire life.

I'm back to writing and reading, and loving, and that's no small feat.

Incredible things are happening in my life, and I'm making good choices, working hard, and pressing onward - I'm making them happen for me.

A year ago I couldn't say more than "yes" or "no" to someone and could only nod my head for communication. I was so low and so out of touch with reality. Now I'm climbing my way up and don't have any more self-destructive behaviors. It's wonderful.

I love the new me.

Rape - Collage

2008-10-30T02:45:00.000-07:00

I put a simple collage together about rape - some of the images are mine, some are not.

I briefly experimented with a free collage program I found that it seems to be non-fussy. I think it may come in handy with the sexual abuse website I'm writing up shortly.

I'm impressed with it. Which is a rarity with software.

The Emotion Report: Day 2 of Week, and Counting

2008-10-30T01:24:00.000-07:00

I have been feeling pretty low the last few days with the pain in my side and having an evil cold/cough/ something-from-hell sickness - but it's going away, and I have coughed up a lung yet. I keep waiting for a red dot to show up in my handkerchief - you know, like it does for people in the movies.

But that's highly unlikely and I'm not worried anyway.

I did lots of writing today, though. I bit of blogging research, I read some blogs, and got some poems out of my head and into my writing journal. Today the poems consisted of abuse issues again, except it wasn't particularly violent in nature, just mostly about remarking about the disturbing dreams I've had lately and the strange mood I was in today. I got awfully drunk on some dessert wine, ran out of the house in my bathrobe and started screaming and talking to people. I even vaguely recall sitting out on my porch feeling the cold coastal ocean air and talking to someone that wasn't there. Maybe it was to my ex, maybe my mother, maybe my family, I'm pretty sure at some point I was saying sorry to God and crying.

I came to my senses after having some food about an hour ago, and I have been writing ever since. I really should be in bed, though.

Bah to bed. I like sleep, I just hate having to go to sleep. Guess I'm restless. Actually, I'm sure I am most of the time.

Anyway - Good Job, Me - (Huge Success, I Cannot Overstate My Satisfaction)
I got some writing and some therapy done today. Ultimately, that's all that matters for right now until the Virtual Server business gets kicked in the bottom, and then that will be my main concern.

Writing = Healing = Therapy + Talking + Sleep + Crying = Emotionally-Balanced Me, until tomorrow.

Math for real people. Hah.

Things Are Looking Up!

2008-10-27T23:49:00.001-07:00

I plucked out some little bits of things while visiting the Bridge today. I don't have much to show from my vacation time over the last few weeks, but that doesn't mean I haven't been working, thinking, or that my brain hasn't been putting things together without me. I've changed quite a bit over the last week or so, and I can feel my brain pathways doing new things. It's pretty exciting.

I wonder what kind of work I will be pushing out in the near future? For now, there's still some abuse issues out on the table because it's been discussed during vacation some, and because there are some memories that have been coming back. I am more equipped to deal with the memories now than I used to be, so I'm not taking it like such a big blow anymore, which is a relief to me. It still hurts, though. And it still costs me a lot of resources just to be aware of it, and to carry it. It takes some more to resolve it - but I think I can do most of that on my own now.

Anyway, I'm still writing, and I will pick up another notepad so I can resume handwritten journal writing, too.

Good things happening. Lots of personal growth in exciting new ways that I would have never thought would have been possible for me a few weeks ago. Looks like I've got an supporting upward spiral going, and that's what I've been trying to get for two years now.

Depression hasn't been an issue at all within the last month. I've been in good spirits, have been writing, and am working on being more outspoken, being aggressive and not passive.

Things are looking up - with writing and personal growth.

I am a very happy person right now. Things are sliding into place after a long time of hard, hard work for myself and for my family and friends.

My Preferred Method of Maintenance

2008-10-24T23:06:00.000-07:00

Friday, October 24, 2004

I had a bit of alcohol and did some writing, then I sort of burned out. I didn't really come out with anything brilliant or exciting, but lots of good things came out. It's funny how even when I'm on vacation for three days in a foreign city, there is more I catch besides the atmosphere. My brain makes associations, somethings are similar enough to other times that feelings get passed over from then. I stayed in a hotel while in SF, not a strange thought, not even a abnormal. In fact, it's to be expected when being in a place far from home, but it got me thinking about the last time that I was in a hotel with someone.

The last time I was in a hotel with someone was with R about this time of year two years ago.

Lots of things happened that I don't remember, but some of the things I do. Mostly I recall being scared, angry, frustrated, excited, and dirty all at the same time. Thinking about the time I spent with him made me very sad whenever I stopped to think about it. So, I kept trying to keep moving. It's only now when I'm home, writing, and have slowed down, that I can digest it in any sort of sane way.

I had some bad dreams - well, not really bad dreams - but any dream that has a parent in it, especially, or someone from my previous lifetime gets me all worked up. I see such clear images of them in the dream that I have trouble shaking it off throughout the day. It kind of stops everything when that happens. I get to reliving things, seeing, and feeling things, and it's all connected. It's all very powerful. It has quite an impact once the ball gets rolling, and I have a hard time trying to stop it.

It's good to sit down and write a bit. I have been feeling tired and edgy on the inside and writing helps clear that up. I get to cleanse my craw a little bit, and let my true self talk. Other people here don't want to hear about situations with him, they don't want to hear the backlash, and it's something that I don't need to concern them with since they have their own issues, and it's something that I don't think would help me much if I did. Writing is a good outlet for discovering new feelings and for being honest - also for feeling things raw and when their fresh before they get sculpted to something I have/can/choose/manipulate to integrate or discard into my identity and public personality.

Writing, I am what I know, what I see, what I feel, and what I question.

Lots of those things I cannot be in the world, and they will not have it, and it's not proper.

So, I do it with words, I do it with words on the page specifically.

I do it for myself. Sometimes, I connect with someone and that does me a lot of good and makes me happy.

But, I have an intelligent self-interest. This is my preferred method of maintenance.

Just A Few Numbers Off (Thoughts On An Old Room)

2008-10-24T22:47:00.000-07:00

For a night or so I was in a hotel
there were walls and smells, a bellboy,
a person that came up and down with me on every floor
and a room number that I memorized with ease.

There was a bed, a bathroom, and a dresser, a closet,
and paintings that were the same in every room,
one with a distorted piano, another
with cats that were square and were not cats at all,
in fact,
I think it was made by someone that could not draw cats
or who was fascinated with a square
and dressed it up and any color,
and dressed it up with any animal.

One wall was green, three yellow,
and I thought and thought about the reasoning-
who makes the decision of this place? This appearance?

I spent three nights thinking about the hotel I shared with you,
we had two beds, far too large for the pair of our bony souls,
and my screams were too big for our room, too,

you didn't let me get out of my dress
you tore me out of it, you didn't bother with the zipper,
down I went and then was gone as you used your black bag
with the pantyhose around my arms and the stopper
around my mouth,

you would have thought I was a criminal, but instead I was your love,
I touched parts of you, and did things in the dark I hardly recall,

I think of undergarments coming off, moans and groans, inabilities to scream
and the abundance of hot, boiling tears coming down,

I recall the holding session afterward,
I recall in the morning I was wearing your white shirt, chest exposed
and red marks on various limbs.

I recall your relaxed sigh, your sound of triumph,

I relived you while I was miles away,
I thought of you a thousand times a night,

and now I'm years away from you and you still stay with me,

I still feel you
from San Francisco,
two years,
and three men later.

(After San Francisco)

2008-10-24T22:42:00.000-07:00

For the first time in my life I realize
that the world is bigger than four square blocks
and that there is more to the place
than a corner grocery mart and a gas station
that I go and visit every week or so.

I come to feel that there is more
that what I've seen,

I counted twenty shops on one block
with words I didn't know and items in stores,
foreign, with lines and marks,
ups and downs and prints
that my brain forced
and came up with parts, with fragments,
I came out not knowing the whole of things.

I came out feeling the world in my skin.
I came out feeling like an incomplete quilt.

I carry it now, with me,

it's tucked in a place for safe keeping,
it is a new world I have begun building in my brain,

the snap and crackle of the old breaking away
the bright, new growth of humanity
coming up like baby plants
and there is green and life,
all made from the light of my knowledge,

I have become all nations
in one short trip
of three days.

A Not-So-Fancy Introduction

2008-10-24T22:35:00.000-07:00

I am making this as to be yet another place that I can come to and write; a compilation of random thoughts, blog material, journal entries, poetry, and maybe if I'm ambitious, some drawings.

It's a test, let's see how it goes.

In the Morning

2008-10-16T22:30:00.000-07:00

In the morning I will wake up,
remind myself that I am me,
see some images of my father and my mother
in the mirror, and if I'm not careful
it will make my heart stop
and I'll forget to breathe.
I will revert back to being two, or three,
when they were Gods, and I was led
by false words, broken actions,
and uninvited hands.

Luckily, I do not have brown eyes,

so when it's really hard for me to tell
if I am them, or I am I
and the tears come out, some being two decades old,
I can say, "I do not have your eyes,"
and that will be my protection against having lived
in their walls for a winter twenty years too long.