Poem for Pixels

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Why don’t you call?

Instead, I get a spring flurry of notes,
electronic molting without
the downy warmth of a voice.

Each shapely hieroglyph hangs
on the warm and singing screen
waiting to be misinterpreted.

The voice isn’t that great of a friend either.
Sure, I can hear a note of fear
or desire, but really,
how does that compare with the orchestra of
the face? I was suspicious of the phone
and embraced e-mail, quicker than love letters,
yet providing time for obsessing and crafting a reply
until my lover wrote.

He can always find a way to say less.

from 1996, but still relevent

a lake

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I spent a day with a friend who is feeling hard emotions. His life is becoming his next life, but it isn’t that next life yet. It’s the inbetweens.

We are new friends. I still feel nervous I’m saying dumb stuff. Sometimes I’m not sure where my hands go. Sometimes I don’t know if we are friends;  if we are something more or something less. I don’t ask those questions, just like I don’t pick up baby birds when I find them.  

 

Clearly this is a lie.

 

His silence would be a rebuke except it was completely transparent, clear and deep. It was  a lake, and while I could also see into it I was reflected by it as well.

It could see his my face tight with control, soft with surrender, as he I realized every thought I’d he’s had about my his future was wrong.

I didn’t know if the new future would be better, but I knew it’d be hard. When you think you have a life figured, and it becomes clear you don’t and you’ll have to start over from scratch, dream new dreams. It’s work. Back to the drawing board. Back to the imagining board.

Back.

It was mourning the future you dreamed. It was about feeling guilty in feeling hope the next future might be better. The knowledge that the last dream was starting to suck and if you had the courage you might have started over but you didn’t and then fate made you start over and next one could be better but it could also suck.  It was emotions so intertwined you couldn’t separate them into anything recognizable anymore. you can’t separate a glass of water when you pour it into a lake.

I walked with his silence. I babbled into it. I hugged it. I ate it. I’m still tasting it.

Salty.

Not a lake, then.

A sea.

The End of the World

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I was in line with a woman to buy Christmas dinner. We had both waited a very very long time to be served by the butcher, and now were waiting to pay. She was huffing and complaining about the wait, the people out-of-town, work, etc. She said, doesn’t it get to you? All I could say was:

I am so grateful to have family to be with this year. I’m so grateful to have a daughter to clean up after and feed. I don’t mind waiting, because I’m buying food so I can make my family happy. And since Connecticut, I’m so grateful I can’t really feel to mad at any little thing like this. Line, no line, I’ve got my daughter. So I don’t mind.

She said she was talking to her son who didn’t want to go to school this morning because he was afraid. Of something might happen. And she told him he could stay home, if he really was so scared. But he had a report to turn in, and he felt responsible. And she was proud of him. And we agreed, each of us with one precious kid, that the child was what mattered. That we can go home and hug that kid, that is everything.

You know, you can be in a line and hate it, or be in a line and not mind it. The experience is yours, not the situation.

I said, well the world didn’t end today. And added, it was never the apocalypse. Mayans just have 4 thousand-year eras, and it ended today, like new years eve.

And she said maybe we are ending an era too. and maybe the next one won’t have things like what happened in it.

And she paid for her stew meat, and said happy holidays and was gone.

I hope she’s right.

The Rape

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When I was a kid, and living in Des Moines, the old woman across the street was raped. I was in fifth grade, so probably ten years old, and ran with a pack of boys and girls who migrated up and down the street freely and unwatched by our parents. The neighborhood was “in transition” whatever that meant. It was affordable to my law school parents, and we lived next door to a rare black family. Apparently there had been property value conversations when they had moved in. They were clearly wealthier and more respectable than anyone on our block, and my parents, hippies to the bitter end, had discussed it at the dinner table in tones of outrage. My dad probably took the homeowner’s side briefly in the argument; they would do that as law students. They discussed and argued everything, as far as I can tell the only thing that kept us from learning much about the world was boredom with adult topics.

I can remember going outside the house that day, and seeing police on our street. There were cars outside, and cops going up and down the narrow wooden staircase that led to the old woman’s apartment in the back. It was an unusual sight. Even though we knew there was danger lurking around us in our neighborhood where muggings and robberies sometimes happened, we all thought our block was safe. We kids knew every corner of it, every mulberry tree, every back alley. And later, in the twilight as we played statue and tag and caught fireflies, we discussed it.

Some “kid,” as he was described by one who really was a kid, had broken into her apartment. Another said it was someone who delivered groceries. Someone else said he’d come to her door with a knife. Everyone knew the same thing. He’d raped her. He’d stolen her money. He’s run away. She was in her sixties. And He’s stolen twenty-eight dollars. Both seemed equally impossible. Who rapes a woman in her sixties? Who chances jail for 28 dollars? and we went back to playing in a world that made no sense at all.

But at dinner my dad said what we had said, how strange it was. And my mother said “Rape is not about sex. It’s an act of violence.” She was burning with anger. My dad did not take the rapist’s side. Not even as an exercise. Not when my mother’s eyes glowed like that.

Later I saw the old woman, briefly. She was back from the hospital, carrying bags of groceries up her back stairs. I watched her closely. She looked incredibly old to me then, though now my mother is the same age. She had white-yellow hair, and a long camelhair coat, and a purple and yellow bruise around an eye. No one would have accused her of aging well. No one would make catcalls to her as she walked by a construction site. She was invisible with age, or I would have thought.

She moved away at the end of the month. Some students moved it. I forgot about her.

But I’ve been thinking about her lately, as politicians discuss rape. She was too old to conceive, so the question of her carrying to term was not one she had to deal with. If the politicians thought of her, when they thought of rape, they would think of rape differently. The politicians wouldn’t think of young women scantily clad off to clubs where they can be misunderstood when they say “no”; they’d think of their mothers and wives.

I also burn with anger like my mother did. I picture the politicians up late at night, reading the “good parts” of the bible, like Judges 5:30 ‘Have they not found and divided the spoil?— A womb or two for every man; spoil of dyed materials for Sisera, spoil of dyed materials embroidered, two pieces of dyed work embroidered for the neck as spoil?” or Deuteronomy 20:10-14 “And when the Lord your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourselves. And you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you.” And perhaps they think the womb of a woman is the right of every man. And I shudder.

Rape is an act of violence with a portable weapon. and just because that weapon can be used for love or to get children, at the moment it is only a weapon. When a person is beaten to death with a rolling-pin, no one thinks it’s an act of baking gone wrong.

If a pregnancy results, no matter what you think that means about life, it doesn’t change the act was rape. It was not a method of conception. These are not the days of Judges 21:10 when there was fear the tribe might die out. Rape is nothing but another way to beat a woman into submission, to terrorize another human being, a prove to yourself you have power when you are a small, wicked thing. It is a beat-down with a particular weapon on a particular body part. But it’s still a beating.

Only the language of crime should be used when discussing it. Only a tone of and utter immovable intolerance should be used.

Please vote today. Please make sure we remove anyone who thinks there is any excuse ever to treat a woman like spoils of war, like a piece of cloth or livestock.

Please stand firm and unbending for all the women. We need you.

Hallow’d Eve

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Halloween isn’t supposed to be complicated. It isn’t known for family drama. It isn’t known for political reformation like Thanksgiving. It’s the easy, gateway holiday. This year was the first year it fell on a day my ex-husband normally has my daughter.
I didn’t think he’d care about it. He’s from France. They don’t really do Halloween there. It hasn’t caught on. But he has friends here in American that do. His friends have one of those houses you see on your block that is completely transformed on October 29th. The house is full of people the 31st. The house is tidy November first. And he wanted our daughter to enjoy it.I wanted to walk from house to house watching people admire her costume. I wanted to remind her to say thank you. My parents had done that for me.

Compromise is survival trait when you are divorced. So is adapting to shifting circumstances. We sent a series of restrained emails. We queried the contested child. It led us to agree on her splitting her time between trick or treating with me and attending the party. We calculated the amount of driving and handing off and potential drama. we settled on her trick-or-treating with me first. After I’d drive her over.

One key problem arose. She didn’t have a costume at my house. Well, she didn’t have the costume she expected to wear. Our house is lousy with costumes; she goes to the Farmer’s Market as a Pirate and the car wash as a ninja. As well, she could be an elf or a princess or a mermaid or a asian princess in a kimono. Just not a fox. Fox was at Pappa’s house. She disappeared into her bedroom. I took the pumpkin out to the front yard to disembowel it.

And there among the Styrofoam tombstones appeared the miracle. A snowy white elf with green wings and and pale white arms and legs, and a crown of flowers. She had mashed up a mix and invented herself.

All the driving is worth it. All the emails are worth it. She’s worth it.

The fairy in the graveyard

Watching dreams

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When I was little, I had night terrors. The first dream i can remember was cookie monster swinging on the bedroom drapes to “get me.” I had other dreams as well; ordinary nightmares and good dreams so vivid I’d wake up in the morning both exhausted and exhilarated. But as soon as I was old enough to read books without pictures, I began researching ways to get rid of the bad dreams. That led me down a path of life-long research. When I found something interesting, I’d usually try it on my most convenient subject: myself. My adventures in self-experimentation have led to some effective ways to defuse the fear left from a bad dream (though no way to avoid them) as well as multiple dream diaries, transcendental meditation and learning how to lucid dream. For what it’s worth, if you keep a regular dream journal you can remember five, six, ten or more dreams. I stopped because I didn’t have time to write them all down each morning and to be honest, they aren’t typically very interesting. We all think dreams are fascinating, but when you start remembering all of them you realize you spend a lot of time dreaming about setting the table and very few Bond-style plots show up. I think it must be only the really juicy ones that wake us most of the time

Oddly (or obviously?) I also suffer from semi-regular insomnia. Getting to sleep, and worse, staying asleep has been an ongoing problem. I have come up with many tricks over the years. For awhile I would image I would cut off parts of my body, from the toes upward, and throw each part down a bottomless dark well. This was actually quite soothing, as the discarded parts couldn’t wiggle anymore and keep me up. I’m sure there is a shrink out there rubbing his hands together in glee right now. I came up with a better technique in college. I went to sleep every night to the same movie when I didn’t have insomnia. Then when I couldn’t I’d put the movie on and fall right to sleep.

The movie?

“The Big Sleep.”.

As of late, though I still use the palov technique here and there, most nights I play a new game. I call it watching dreams. First you lay down comfortably, and quiet your body. Next you must quiet your brain. As they say in yoga, don’t beat yourself up about it if you start worrying about work or such, just dismiss the thoughts as they show up.

Once your mind is quiet comes the good part, though admittedly it is a little tricky to acheive. If you keep your eyes closed, but watch, your brain will start showing you images. And if you stay passive, they will start knitting together into little poems of imagery. Not much plot usually, but a steam engine will become bluebells in a waterfall then a dog asks you the time. They are compelling and sometimes pretty like surrealism paintings can be. Be careful, if you try to make them make sense you’ll wake up.

Around this moment, if you haven’t been diligent you’ll be asleep. And so it’s a fine cure for insomnia. It only works if your conscious mind won’t be silenced. Then pop in the movie.

But if you like dreams and if you can be miraculously gentle in keeping in one part of your mind in the world and the other part watching your unconscious quietly, you may be able to watch the dreams for some time. I find if I do it napping in the sun, I can stay wakeful enough to note down some interesting bits and prolong the dream state. But mostly I do it as I fall asleep. I do it for the sheer pleasure of the strange art my undermind makes.

The First Door

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There was a door at the bottom of the staircase in the first house I can remember living in. It was an old house, “destined to be torn down” my mother would say as she drew winnie-the-pooh on my bedroom wall.
It was a white door, with a window in the top half. Outside, you could see the branches of a tree that had grown next to it, and squirrels would come up and look in the window. My earliest memory is my father holding me up to watch the squirrels. Squirrel we’d cry! As if it was a lemur or elephant: an exotic treat.

This door never opened. On the outside, it led to a four foot drop. Maybe there were stairs there once, but not in the time I lived there. I can recall having a Dennis the Menace Visits the Winchester Mystery House comic I read over and over again, a nd I’d imagine maybe our house was built by this strange woman too, this door was there to confuse ghosts and keep us safe. I never felt so safe as I did in that old house, doomed to be there some day.

I ran by that door down the stairs at Christmas, to discover the present I didn’t think I’d get, had showed up. Long afternoons I laid a blanket out in front of the door, arranged all the stuffed animals around and dance to Beatles, Peter, Paul and Mary and Free to be You and Me. The door, never to be opened, watched.

And when we moved away, I hoped we might finally open the door, and look down into the thistles and tall weeds that grew at its foot amidst the ruble of the stairs. But it was painted shut. Is a door a door that never opens? Or is anything that might take you somewhere else a door?


Travel Notes

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Japan. Nijo castle.
I never saw a place that not only said no photos but no sketching. The wall paintings are lovely. It’s really the opposite of a western castle, empty as possible. I can only imagine how cold it was in winter.

Thailand. Wat Pho.
Sitting in a courtyard in wat pho surrounded by buddhas its hot and quiet but there is a breeze coming up. I can hear singing and praying. Tomorrow is the new year. Despite the sea of people out there, singing, eating, building sand castles in this courtyard I am almost alone. Only a few stragglers come through. I have room to make some peace in me.
Why am i alway rushing? where to?

Thailand, gas station outside of Bangkok
We like to see monks do ordinary thing, play with water in songkran, light a cigarette, because we suspect them of not being human. Of having some great secret link to the divine. When they act like us, we feel relieved. Maybe that link is available to us too. or for the bitter souls, maybe they aint so goddam special

The Judge

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Thinking this morning about some of the people I love/have loved, I realize I’m drawn to narcissists. I wondered why; the streak of selfish behavior should put me right off. But the narcissist never judges you. Mostly because they are only vaguely aware of you. But it is very freeing to not be judged. You can make mistakes, say dumb stuff, forget things and never get shamed for it.

I think i will try to find people in my future who also do not judge, but because they accept; not just the attention, not just the company but becase they accept the complete person I am. We are all package deals without substitutions. I’ve had more than one relationship fall apart when the other persn wanted to chinese menu me.

I think we love people more because the faults are those we can live with than the fine qualities people have. Everyone has fine qualities, but not eveyone has faults I can live with. Apparently I’ll take nacissism over judging. But Narcissism has a slow poisonus effect; eventually you realize the person will keep taking as much you give wihtut feeling much need to return it, this turns into slow resentment and eventually hte,a nd may lead you t ehavior that makes you turn that hate on yourself as well.

So along wihth the judge, who I remove from my life, goes the self-centered. A dear freind of mine once peeled all the people from his life while dimished joy rather than increased it. Perhaps I shall follow his lead. It will be painful, but I’m not Mother Teresa. Im just trying to live my own life.

I held a Twitter Vigil for Ray Bradbury

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Here is the text (in case twitter can’t be trusted)

Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
My vigil is done. I miss Ray Bradbury like I miss my grandfather. He lived a long good life but I still wish I’d hear from him now and again

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
If you don’t love what you do, you’d better find something else to love. Otherwise, you don’t have a reason for living. ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“It takes writing a billion bad words before you get to the good ones.” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“Why would you clone people when you can go to bed with them and make a baby? C’mon, it’s stupid.” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“The things that you do should be things that you love, and things that you love should be things that you do.” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
Three rules to live by: Get your work done. If that doesn’t work shut up and drink your gin, and when all else fails, run like hell Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“You’re either in love with what you do, or you’re not in love.” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“I’m interested in having fun with ideas, throwing them up in the air like confetti and then running under them.” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“I like to cry. After I cry hard it’s like it’s morning again and I’m starting the day over.” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“I found you can’t wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else.” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
You know that time travel cliche where they step on a butterfly and the future is changed? Bradbury. A Sound of Thunder

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
@inkblurt He taught me never to be ashamed to be passionate.

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
” But no man’s a hero to himself. I’ve lived with me a lifetime” Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
@inkblurt For me less a hero than a guru. He taught me how to revel in tall grass, how to imagine witches in the woods, how to love my folks

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“You’ll find out it’s little savors and little things that count more than big ones.” Ray Bradbury, who is quite right

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
@inkblurt I think I’m holding an twitter kaddish for him. He is as much of me as the scar on my back and the way I pronounce orange.

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“No person ever died that had a family.” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
Dude, there is a paperback for a penny! Do it! The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“What are the best things and the worst things in your life, and when are you going to get around to whispering or shouting them?” Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
To be honest, he was almost more a horror writer: Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.” Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“I’ll hold on to the world tight some day. I’ve got one finger on it now; that’s a beginning.” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
Another fine choice: horror, magic, love. Always love. The October Country by Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas. ” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness.” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
If you don’t like “sci-fi” read this one: Dandelion wine by Ray Bradbury http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0552082767?ie=UTF8&tag=eleganthack&linkCode=shr&camp=213733&creative=393177&creativeASIN=0552082767&qid=1339003050&ref_=sr_1_9&s=books&sr=1-9

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage. ” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science, the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction. Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“So few want to be rebels anymore. And out of those few, most, like myself, scare easily.” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“I have two rules in life – to hell with it, whatever it is, and get your work done.” ― Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
My stream is going to be like this most of the day. I miss him. Bradbury made my childhood possible to survive. Possible to enjoy, even.

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn.” ― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
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6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy.” Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out. Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for.” Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
” When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.” ” – Ray Bradbury

6 Jun Christina Wodtke ‏@cwodtke
“I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. ― Ray Bradbury