The Morass of Self-Doubt

Self-doubt spreads like kudzu. Let it in and it will cover and take over every corner of your body. It will invade your gestures, and control how you view your environment.

I used to think that if I was genuinely having fun, others would want to play too. I'll be 42 next month, and I'm not so sure that's always true now. (I spent a lot of time alone on the playground as a kid, making up stories in a dirt pile. It was genuine fun for me.)

Sometimes I'm just having fun alone. It's just me, and that's ok. This is as true for the writing parts of my life as it is for the hoop dance parts. What makes me giggle as I write it might not make the reader giggle, but I write it anyway. I have to remind myself over and over that it's alright to wear shorts with fringe on them, bleach my hair, go to a burlesque class, sing a sound poem on the elevator, wear a top hat to the grocery store, leave a painting in the woods for a stranger or a bear to find, and that it isn't some sort of mid-life crises.

Do enough people "like" what I'm doing? That smile on my husband's face - does he think I've lost my mind, or is he enjoying the show? Oh that horrible little voice inside me that says that people are laughing at me behind my back! It feels like all the worst parts of education.

Am I sorry I didn't discover that I have a body that dances earlier in my life? Yes. When I was younger my muscles were suppler and I had more energy, but when I was younger I was also wrapped in kudzu.

Right now, I'm happy that I discovered that I have a body that works with my mind at any point in my life. My forays into hoop dance have inspired others to try it. This is good.

So this post is a big screw you to strangling vines of self-doubt. If I feel like wearing shorts with fringe on them and hooping it up on the dance floor, I'm going to do it, with relish and abandon.

Destroyer

I praise the beast who gave me boots,
spirit strong,
eyes that thawed winter with absolute,
fenced-in song.
Together we stamped the damp ground
with our names. I am astounded.
So stable,
unable
to hide the animal I’ve found.

- Jennifer Hill

This is a Ronsardian Ode. It's a French stanza form, syllabic (decasyllabic and tetrasyllabic lines), rhyming, with nine line stanzas. Mine is short. I realize this poem isn't going to win me any vegan friends.

Praise for What Floats to the Surface

I don't care that your poem was published in Huckleberry Pie Review, or that you've won that prestigious award that turns every other writer's eyes into thumbtacks. I don't care that you live with your four cats and husband on an island. It doesn't matter that someone once described your writing as "the deft hand of minimalism." What matters is that you wrote a phrase in a poem that still floats to the surface of my memory as I press my foot into the ground of my backyard to check for 60 foot sinkholes. I don't own any of this land, this bland madness of snows.

The Chillmonster Rhymes with Truck

It's not that I resort to unprofessional tones when it's only nine degrees outside. Really. It's only nine degrees outside and I feel the dread hand of a ghost brush along my back in the quiet of the bookstore. The cold slips under the backdoor, or from the basement, or is wheezed through a window gap.

I did not just use a word that rhymes with truck as I felt the chillmonster grasp the wedge of skin exposed from my sweater's lazy rumple. Yesterday I had a fruit salad for breakfast (not made by me, what luxury on a weekday!) and the chunk of real peach I bit into sent a spineshiver tone of summer through my body. Lawnchairs, sun on skin, dirty feet -- the parade that marches out slush and stagnacy. I'm ready.

A Pleasant Cure

A friend replied to a recent email of mine: "The list of authors I have not read never ceases to embarrass and amaze me. However, there is a very pleasant cure for such things."

I agree. At fancy and not-so-fancy dinner parties with literary, intellectual, highly-educated types, I find myself struggling to remember the plots of novels I've read, the names of the authors who wrote them, and the titles of poems that moved me. I remember a phrase, but I can't quote it perfectly. I remember the feeling or color I got from reading a poem, novel, story, or excellent phrase, which is much harder to quote. I can recall whether what made me laugh or cry was on a right-facing or left-facing page, at the top or the bottom, in the book where I read it (my husband also has this quirk of memory).

I'm not totally ashamed by my shortcomings in reading. There is a very pleasant cure for such things, as my friend said. One of my favorite writers is E.B. White.

Books of E.B. White I have not yet read:

The Lady is Cold - Poems by E.B.W. (1929)
The Trumpet of the Swan (1970)

Books of E.B. White I have partially read:

Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do (1929, with James Thurber)
Here Is New York (1949)

Books of E.B. White I have read completely:

Essays of E.B. White (1977)
One Man's Meat (1942)
Stuart Little (1945)
Charlotte's Web (1952)
The Second Tree From The Corner (1954)
The Elements of Style (with William Strunk, Jr.) (1959, republished 1972, 1979, 1999, 2005)

I have a biography of E.B. White that I haven't even touched. There's a collection of his essays and poems that I didn't cite in my partial list because I can't remember the title of it. I've read a short piece of his simply titled "Note" in a 1950 New Yorker magazine (upper right of right-facing page) that reflects on a forgotten actor in a restaurant.

In Charlotte's Web, Wilbur says:

"What do you mean less than nothing? I don't think there is any such thing as less than nothing. Nothing is absolutely the limit of nothingness. It's the lowest you can go. It's the end of the line. How can something be less than nothing? If there were something that was less than nothing, then nothing would not be nothing, it would be something - even though it's just a very little bit of something. But if nothing is nothing, then nothing has nothing that is less than it is."

This appears on the lower portion of a right-facing page in the edition that I own. In fancy conversations about books I admit I feel like nothing, but I do know that my combined reading experiences account for something. I consider myself lucky to have days filled with books that I can pull from shelves and sink into, or lazily peruse. I hope it is alright that I can't quote verbatim, that I forget author names, plots, and titles. When a writer makes me laugh out loud, or connects me to another writer, or gives me an "aha!" moment that connects me to the larger world (not just the world of letters), I feel appreciative and warmed by the light of genius.

New Year

The stapler forced to hold everything together
with its metal teeth finds out later the lion’s maw
of staple remover rends it. My bare foot
discovers the bracket shaped discard.
Always, the hungry hum of the paper shredder,
the scissor’s ample and clean cuts,
pens bleed maps onto my fingers
that I can’t wash off, and the receipt spike –
oh, how it lives to gore! Paperclips
hold permanent yoga poses.

I press a stamp of approval down hard,
also a delinquent stamp, neither declaration
ever changes. Both grin their red grins.
Only the date stamp laughs –
Wrong year.

I notch a fingernail into the gear
for its last number, edge it forward.
How behind I was. How behind.
How could I forget?

Christmas Eve Meditation

Good morning. It's December 24th, and it is 5:32 a.m. I am sitting here in this chair. It's a tough and sturdy chair, a chair of penitence and patience. It is dark outside, still. When I walked the dog, the sharp edge of the air jabbed itself inside my coat and grazed my collarbone. No stars. The wind composes music with the chimes, the dog snores from his pillow. I am wearing one of the many pairs of glasses I own - the brown oval frames with the loose right arm. I keep them in the blue flower pot with my arsenal of pens and one u-shaped bobbypin.

There is a clamshell on my desk that has "Quiet, Please," written in script on it in black Sharpie marker. To my right is a painting of the beach that I bought for my daughter as a Christmas gift. I haven't wrapped it yet. I have other gifts to wrap as well, yes. To my left is the door where a draught slinks in from the bottom. The coffeepot just beeped off. I'm trying to drink all of the coffee I made before anyone else wakes, because I put cinnamon in it and I'm the only one in the house who likes that.

I should be writing, but I am just sitting here in the mostly dark, thinking. My hair has a tangle in the back that feels like felt. When I run a comb of fingers through it they catch, and I use my thumb and forefinger to wiggle the matted strands loose. That tangle is always there. I like it. It is like time, or the sea, or the sky. Maybe a mouse nest or the mouse itself. It is a mess that is mine alone and I wear it everyday, even on holidays.

Good morning. It's December 24th, and it is 5:52 a.m.

I Still Do

for Kenneth Patchen

It takes a great deal of love to give a damn.
Be rebellious. Do more than kiss a cheek – punch
the button of the heart’s elevator. Become a battering ram.
It takes a great deal of love to give a damn.
Point to where the pain is, call yourself alive, a dram
of care in your blossomed fist, a cup of blood clenched.
Be rebellious. Do more than kiss a cheek.

- Jennifer Hill

The Base Price of Going Blonde

On a semi-lark, I walked into a hair salon to have my hair colored. I wanted to try blonde. It's on my list of "100 Dreams." I've never been blonde and thought I would like to try it.

I found myself flipping through a large book of hairstyles, and found one or two examples that looked right. A stylist with white, fastidious hair and his collar buttoned asked, "Now, what do you want?" He was flat-lipped in his delivery. I told him I wanted to try blonde and his jaw dropped. His co-worker, who was crossing off appointments in a book on the counter, cocked her head and smiled in a way that said "crazy."

"It's on my list of 100 Dreams," I smiled. A short, plump man with a walk like a pigeon said, "Your Bucket List." I corrected him. "No, a list of 100 Dreams. The word bucket implies something I'm not ready for yet."

My stylist introduced himself to me as he sat me in the chair. His name was unique and reminiscent of high school English classes. He walked in the back and produced a large gateway folded book filled with little loops of hair in different colors. Each loop was marked above with a number. He held the book up to my head and said, "You look like a 6. Well, maybe a 5." I got a lecture against going blonde. "You know you can't put color on color and go lighter, right?" He ran a hand through my hair. "And with all of this, it's going to be a base price of $150. Then there's color and cut."

He talked me down off the ledge of blonde, and onto the concrete sidewalk of brunette. Together, browsing the Book of Loops, we chose a brown that matched the summer lightened ends of my hair. Fine.

In the time that passed we discussed teaching, poetry, the War of the Roses, Prince. We shared our mutual distaste for certain Christmas carols. He shared a story about an 11-year old girl who came in wanting a "scene" hairstyle for a big event. "I wouldn't do it. She was pre-pubescent. It would damage her hair. I said 'Honey, life isn't about things. It's about people, knowledge, and experiences.' So I just straightened her hair and she was happy."

My hair was piled on top of my head and covered and goo while he cut the hair of three other clients. Iridescent snowflakes twirled above our heads, advertising "Cut, color and style from $59.95 and up." A couple of older women got some extra hairspray applied to their holiday teases.

As my stylist washed my hair, he chatted with someone across the room. "God brings certain people into your life for a reason," he said. His fingernails scritched my scalp. From my angle I could see right up his nose. Fastidious there too. All of his buttons were completely and neatly threaded through their holes. Years of experience lined his face. He taught high school English for thirty years, he told me, "and then they offered me an early retirement. Of course I took it!" Now he cuts the hair of women who try to make rash decisions.

As he cut my hair, I asked for bangs. "No. You don't want bangs. You told me you pull your hair back a lot. Do you want to be like a 16-year old, pushing your hair out of your eyes, and looking out at people from a curtain of bangs? No."

We talked about Lord Byron's real name as he dried my hair. "You know, only one person I've asked knew the answer. It really tripped up my students. I asked a lady working in customer service at Price Chopper. She got it right away. You never know. There's this lady, in her 50's, working at the grocery store who knows Lord Byron's real name."

I failed his quiz, but now I know.

The short pigeon walker complimented my stylist's work. "She was a 6, and we just took her to a 5!" he laughed.

My hair looked neater, and a little lighter, if not all that different. Possibly redder? It wasn't what I asked for, but then, life isn't all about what you want. I put my coat on and walked to the counter to pay for the experience, the new person in my life, and the knowledge that I was given. I tipped generously.

Contrarian

This morning I was described as a light switch that is wired the wrong way. On when I should be off, off when I should be on. It's accurate. The older I get, the more contrary I become. I'm either the only light on in the house, or the only room that's dark. I'm up by 5 a.m. when everyone else is snoozily snoozing, cranky and unreasonable by 7:30 p.m. and in bed by ten while the rest of the family laughs at a movie or reads.

Sometimes my contrariness is automatic and without restraint. If you want quiet, I'll crunch my popcorn. If you want to sit, I need attention. Please talk to me. You like bread? It will kill you, you know. Make you fat. You will rise like a loaf. A wad will catch in your throat and you'll choke. You shouldn't eat bread. Bread is bad.

I say things and I hear them come out of my mouth, and then they are in the room and I can't catch them. They are filthy marionettes freed of their strings. Watch them thrust and gyrate with their creepy hinged hips!

I can be reasonable, but I can also justify my crankitude as being far more fun. I think that sometimes my unreasonable nature leads to good things a reasonable nature would not.

Well, it is either right to think that or not. Talk to me at 7:30 tonight. I may have a decision on it, or a puppet for you.

In 30 Minutes and 10 Minutes and a Lifetime

The local newspaper urged me the other day to "Take a Minute and Reconsider Your Time." The article advertised a new book titled, "168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think” (Portfolio, $25.95), by Laura Vanderkam. I skimmed it, I'll admit. It was an article of advertisement, but I gathered two interesting nuggets of information that make me want to find the book. (I doubt I'll pay $25.95 for it, since I tend to take more than a minute to consider my pocketbook. I'll wait for the paperback.)

Ms. Vanderkam suggests list making. I come from a family of list makers. We like to plan. I plan, and lose the list, go about my day, find the list later, and am secretly pleased that I remembered to do two things on the list. My sister plans, scratches off, and plans again. My mother makes lists in the morning for her daily schedule. My daughter has kept lists since she was a child, a few of them reading something like this:

1. Wake up
2. Brush teeth
3. Put pants on cat
4. Eat breakfast

You get the idea. We like to keep track, or at least feel like we have some control over our lives. Lists help us feel more comfortable in a confuddling world.

One of Ms. Vanderkam's list suggestions was this -- write a list of things you can accomplish in thirty minutes, and another list of things you can accomplish in ten minutes. I scratched out a two-column list in my morning journal pages of all the things I thought I could do in thirty minutes and ten minutes on that day. The tasks totaled six and a half hours. Compartmentalized like that, it seemed do-able. Sure.

Like an explorer with a detailed map, I set off on my first 30 minute task of the day: pack and ship books. Yes, it takes thirty minutes. Packing and shipping books means a trip to the studio, a fumbling for packing material, grumbling, printing out of receipts, and then a trip to the post office, and more grumbling. I managed that and two other items on my list, and then the phone rang.

A friend was dying. That wasn't on my list at all. My compartmentalized day blurred:

1. Listencryhugholdhandkissonforeheadlistenmore

The next day, I tried Ms. Vanderkam's other list-making strategy; to make a list of 100 Dreams. Do I have time to even dream the dreams? I couldn't stop wondering if I wasting time making the list when I could be out doing one of the items on the list. It was more difficult than I thought. Ms. V's list of 100 Dreams included "Do a wine tour in Argentina” and “Maintain a stash of Trader Joe’s dark-chocolate-covered caramels.”

It's hard to really care about a stash of caramels. I want to get better at listening. That's on my list of dreams. I'd like to sing more, direct a play, learn to make croissant dough, knit something other than a tangle.

I started my list of 100 Dreams in the back of a notebook I keep for the notes on other people's lives. I drank a coffee, ate some melon, twirled my hair, and came up with 38 dreams. Then the day called out to me. I took a minute to reconsider my time, and I'm not sure if I have more time than I think, or less. What I do know is this -- we all have very little control, and the family cat does not like to wear pants.

The Voices in My Head

Three of us took aim and fired. One of us killed him. It's a beautiful life, believe me. He said, "Look, you don't have anybody and I don't have anybody. Do you want to go out sometime?" It wasn't an easy life. We had nothing. You try to make your own fun and all, but I was the only one without a father. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about her. I guess my children turned out alright. We had milk delivery every day. I used to watch the carriage with the horse come up the street. I would go out and walk for miles, just to be away from the house, to get away from her. I didn't know my father. He never talked to me. I learned about him from reading history books. One of us killed him, we don't know who. I gave him a cigarette. My life? It was filled with ordinary things.

A quiver of words

This is the field where we fly our kites. Birds question us. This is the field, right here. See? It has a dip in it, and a sawed off piece of rusted pipe. Wild mustard. This is the cul de sac that you hate walking in, but we walk there anyway after dinner every night. We watch the seasons change by the decorations on our neighbors doors. This is the alleyway where you kissed me. The brick of the bank wall is rough. This is the sidewalk where you carried me piggyback, and this is the street you crossed. The bus driver smiled to see you carrying me, to see our smiles. This is the sky where you sometimes fly, thousands of miles above me. This is the paper airplane I made for you. See how the wind lifts it like a kite, a bird. This is the arrow that the sun sets on fire to blaze away from us.

The Twenty-Five Most Used Words in Novels

I'm only just beginning my fall down the rabbit hole of The Readies, by Bob Brown, but I'm in awe of his playfulness, fervor and intelligence. The Readies was written in 1930. Brown was way ahead of his time. I'll leave it at that. You can do your own research.

Yesterday my brain twitched on this tidbit of fascinating information shared in The Readies: According to statisticians, in a novel of 80,000 words the following twenty-five are used the number of times indicated:

The: 5,848
Of: 3,198
And: 2,624
To: 2,339
A: 1,696
In: 1,693
That: 1,076
It: 973
Is: 970
I: 924
For: 828
Be: 677
Was: 671
As: 626
You: 620
With: 582
He: 544
On: 514
At: 498
Have: 494
By: 480
Not: 471
This: 458
Are: 434
We: 423
GRAND TOTAL: 29,661

Only 50,339 to go and you've finished your novel! What I wonder is how this list has changed over the course of eighty years. There's a distinct lack of feminine pronouns. Then I wondered - could a novel be written without these words? They do comprise more than a third of the novel. Hm. I wonder if I could write anything without those words? I managed this bit of strangled prose:

Valentine glitter winks, sparkles from her closet shelf. Hearts collide against Halloween – no - they collude. Winter’s coats hunch over hangers, bamboozled. Her daughter’s paper ghosts fold into halves, then quarters, pressed flat under years. Ornaments wrapped, tissue coddled, become babies. She sighs, unwraps joy. What does everyone else save? Another season. Another holiday. Laughter scotch-tapes itself, wallpapers their rooms. Closets emptied, they smile.

Oh how I love a good challenge! The words I found myself wanting to use the most were: as, of, with. Some of the poet's tools for detail work. I recalled my list of prepositions, once recited while standing at the side of my 8th grade school desk: "about, above, across, after, against ..."

It's surprising to me that "are" is used 434 times, but "be" gets and ranking of 677, and "is" racks up 970 uses. I guess the past is the past, present tense is where it's at, and the future, well, according to the New York Times,Bob Brown saw it clearly.*


* I don't totally agree with the New York Times correlation between what Brown imagined and the Kindle. I believe he was thinking more in terms of cinema. Words as characters onscreen.

Alphabeticharacters

Lowercase a is shy, demure. Uppercase K wears steel-toed boots. Exclamation mark wants to bugger every sentence ending, so lowercase s and e are really nervous all the time. T carries an umbrella wherever she goes no matter the weather, h is tired of everyone sitting on his lap, and Q went on Weight-Watchers and joined a gym, but no one noticed. V mocks everyone and falls over on his side to show how great he is. X likes to hang out with uppercase K in dark alleys. Lowercase w was once dragged into a scuffle with lowercase x who was only trying to be more like his brother. The fermata is totally out of place, but lingers anyway. R lives on the street, b turned 40 last month and checks herself in every reflective surface, and uppercase F never pays his bills on time. M loves everyone, especially w, who she's had a crush on since Kindergarten. She wishes there were less than nine letters between them, and shivers when cats meow, when people feel warm, and when comics burst with wham! Lowercase m isn't very happy with exclamation mark right now, but exclamation mark loooooves the comics. Where is O? Always in love, and O and o blow bubbles all day. They are really out of their heads with joy and glory, or maybe have lost it altogether. The vowels gather in a secret meeting, attempt to oust o and O, but they look so cute together, confused and surprised at the same time. Y is pissed that she's only sometimes a vowel, and hasn't been informed of this meeting, so she wedges herself in wherever she can, including nature's broken branches. "Sometimes Y, my ass ..." she mutters.

Grateful for a Rot House of a Stew of Thought

We were both smiling, but neither of us was feeling happy. We had to smile. It was required of us to beam, to glow, to prattle nonsense through the lemon wedges of our mouths. Then my friend revealed her acidity. "I'm fueled by rage," she hissed through her grin. I felt the same way. We were playing the part of goddesses. We had to be beautiful, happy, serene. We were pissed.

I'm a strong believer in feeling the rage, the funk, the whatever it is you are feeling just to get through it. Sometimes I poke a finger into my wound just to see if it's healing or not and to feel the pain.

The past couple of days I've been in a funk. A nasty mood. A foul place for thinking. A rot house of a stew slopped into a muck and mire. I can make all the positive affirmations I want, write about all the things I'm grateful for, and still the crank continues. Why? Because I'm not acknowledging what is bothering me when I do those things. I am thinking all around it, above it, and below it to get away from the negativity.

I don't believe that if you are positive all the time, you can will away the bad. Smiling helps me, sure, reminding myself of what I am grateful for is excellent, but if I feel angry, I ride it out. I do my best to figure it out. If a friend is sad, I ask her what is the matter, I don't hand her a platitude. Sometimes I forget to do this for myself. Why wouldn't I ask myself what the matter is in order to explore it? You can't force away sadness or anger with a stubborn grin.

Without the negative, there can be no genuine positive. Without feeling what you honestly feel, you'll never figure out who you really are. You'll be a mocking mask slapped onto a cardboard cutout. You'll be greeting card verse.

What's bothered me these past few days? Well, I wrote it out, I rode it out, I talked it out, and now I know two things: I feel better today, and I don't believe in a "fake it til you make it," philosophy. I don't think I knew that about myself before.

A Playlet on Doubt

Sheep are pretty brave, actually. They are fallen clouds. They leap even though their legs are stubby, they are generous with their coats, and they don't worry about wolves. The connotation of being like a sheep is negative. Being a sheep is playing the part of the follower - the insipid, luckless doofus who grazes the fields, happy to be herded wherever nudged or prodded. The brain of a writer plays the part of both the sheep and the wolf.

Doubt, that insidious wolf, creeps in everywhere in the writing process, plotting against the sheep.

He first appears lurking around the Seedling of the Idea:

The Sheep:
Incoming great idea! You have to try this! Sit down and write.

The Wolf:
No one has ever done this before. Too risky. No one will get it.

Later, he skulks in the grasses and high weeds of the Process of Writing:

The Sheep:
Well, this isn't too bad. A little harder to navigate than I thought, but kind of fun, even.

The Wolf:
Absurdist. No one will get it.

Finally, he growls and wiggles his ass for a lunge at the First Draft:

The Sheep:
Sharing is good. Get it off your desk. Let someone else read it. You finished! Yay!

The Wolf:
Whoop-de-doo. Your readers are never going to get it. It's not even what you imagined it would be.

How do I want this playlet to end? I'm not sure it ever does, but if I had my druthers ...

The Sheep:
I'm going to end this play once and for all.

The Sheep binds up the Wolf, shaves off all his fur, felts it in the washing machine, and knits herself a sweater.

The Wolf:
I'm cold!

The Sheep:
Ha ha ha! What nice fur you have!

Where a Shell Belongs

Shells are teachers, and we put them in the bathroom. Right now there are two Ziploc baggies of shells on our kitchen counter. They hold their beachy breath and wait for us to open them. It seems unfair that they go from the sea to the back of the toilet in a bowl that was made in a pottery class.

Last week two friends and I found ourselves on the beach in the late afternoon, up to our waists in the ocean water. We planned to go for a swim, but the ocean had other ideas. It was serving up all sorts of shells - shards and whole. Standing meant getting the soles of our feet stabbed, our ankles and calves pummeled with the ocean's teeth. Oh, what lovely teeth the ocean has! Instead of swimming, we started collecting, or trying to collect, what was being served to us.

At first, I tried the "spot and grab" method. A beautiful shell would glimmer under the water, the wave would pass over it, I'd reach down, and voila! It was gone, pulled in by the undertow. After a few disappointing tries with this method I switched to the "blind scoop." The wave passed over, I scooped up whatever I could in two hands, and then sifted through for goodies. I found beautiful, tiny bits of seaglass and perfectly smoothed stones this way that I wouldn't have found otherwise.

Wendy noticed our different collecting methods. She had the "spot and grab," Anne pressed herself down into the water against the thrash of waves to seek out whatever she could find, and I continued with my blind scooping. We all stole something from the ocean.

I thought about how when writing something large, you try all of these methods. There's the initial idea - the spot and grab, and then the blind scoop, and finally you press yourself into the project, against all the waves and salt and potential jellyfish. I'm still in the blind scoop mode with a project I'm working on, and will be happy to submerge myself in its last pages. The ocean reminded me to be patient - to let go of that beautiful idea because it is already washed away and replaced by other ideas. It reminded in a fatherly way. It roared, "Look, look, you numbskull! Look at what you've already picked up in your hands!"

These shells belong in the ocean, not in a baggie, not on the back of the toilet. But here they are, all landlocked - on my desk.

Poememory

A poem is composed of words, not of ideas. A poem should come to you, you should not come to it. Be a tiger, not a rabbit. Don't fold laundry. Don't list your prestigious awards. And for heaven's sake, don't be witless.

Two books on writing and reading are on my morning reading schedule -- Ezra Pound's "ABC of Reading," and William Packard's "The Art of Poetry Writing." Reading both at the same time is enough to give a writer a complex. Reading about writing and reading makes me not want to write. But I do anyway. I respond.

Yesterday, just for the joy of it, I memorized a poem by Vasko Popa. There is no book you can read, no workshop you can take, that can replace the wonder of writing or reading a poem. Memorizing a poem reminds me of why I write. A poem is composed of words that form ideas, that wash empty spaces with emotion, that open entire landscapes. It's exciting to me to memorize the molecules of someone's thoughts. Depending on the poem, it can feel naughtier than opening a letter or a diary. The joy comes in sharing the music of those lines with anyone at any time. I have memorized the poem "by heart," as we say, but really it's "by mind and heart." The words become part of my pulse, part of my synapses.

I have mixed feelings about Poetry Out Loud, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation's high school level contest for poetry recitation. The program has gained popularity over the past few years. Stakes are high. There's a hefty scholarship on the line. Students who move through the ranks memorize several poems, each one of a different time period. Recitations are judged on physical presence, voice and articulation, dramatic appropriateness, level of difficulty, evidence of understanding, and overall performance. An accuracy judge follows the text to make sure the reciter doesn't miss a word. They also act as the prompter if a kid "goes up on a line."

I've judged this contest at various levels and have been stunned by the level of understanding some of the contestants have of the poems they chose to memorize. I've also been one of our regional competition's organizers and felt overwhelmed by the level of administration needed to run a contest like this. One one hand, the students are learning poems that probably would not have learned in school otherwise (there's a paucity of poetry in school). On the other hand, there is little to no follow-through from memorization and appreciation of those poems to writing poems of their own.

The prize of memorizing a poem, of understanding the poem, is just that. You have a poem inside of you forever. A twenty thousand dollar scholarship is great, sure, but money has a way of disappearing. Poems have a way of rumbling around inside of you foreverly.

The Wedding Dance Floor

I'm not sure how many weddings I've attended in my lifetime. Twenty? Thirty? Maybe not that many. One thing I am sure of is that I have seen a little girl in a puffy dress at every wedding. She circles the empty dance floor alone with her arms out until she is dizzy and then she falls, exhausted and giddy. I think I can count my lifetime in dizzy, circling wedding floor toddlers. It is surely better than counting out one's lifetime in root canals, or in tax payments.

This weekend we attended the wedding of some dear friends. It was a memorable reception. Fondant robots topped the wedding cake. Articulated metal toy robots, chattering teeth, tiny bowling pins, dinosaurs, and noisemakers waited in clusters at each table for the guests to play and make introductions. An Elvis impersonator shimmied and gyrated the reception into action. A photobooth was available for guests to ham it up and leave a strip of smiles for the bride and groom, and take one away for themselves. I think a few regular restaurant patrons might have taken the opportunity to have their photos taken as well. That will be fun years from now for the bride and groom ... "Who's this?"

This was a relaxed and fun wedding reception, held in the open room of a local restaurant. The heads of moose, elk, deer, and a few whole animals (foxes), looked down at us in judgment. "Let me get this straight. You kill me, stuff me, and make me spend eternity watching you dine and dance?" Disco lights animated their frozen stares.

During faster music, kids four and under imitated what they see on MTV videos without care of who was watching. Loose arms gangsta flapped, bodies turned on the floor, legs kicked up, and those still on the floor elasticized their way back up into a vertical position. A three year old girl really listened to the music and let her body move to the melody, not the beat. Her parents didn't try to alter what she was doing at all, they let her be herself.

Adults who don't know what to do with themselves but who want to dance will try a few different techniques. I have seen these at every wedding reception I've ever attended. I've also used some of these strategies myself.

Survival Strategies on the Wedding Reception Dance Floor

1. Grab a kid and dance.
Smaller kids you can pick up and hold, spin around, and do a pretend, over-exaggerated Tango. With larger kids, you can hold their hands and sway. They will break away from you to dance with other kids.

2. Mock a dance move.
You're dancing in a safety cluster of friends, and you start an offbeat version of John Travolta's point to the sky, point to the floor. Make it obvious you're just "joking around."

3. Dance a waltz with a friend during a rap song.
This is a take on the second survival strategy.

4. Do the Charlie Brown. Or the Lawnmower.
Always a crowd pleaser. For more ideas, Ze Frank has a tutorial.

5. Be yourself.
This is the hardest. Watch the little kids and remember what it was like to not care what you looked like. Now move as who you really are. If you dance who you are, the little kids will dance with you. Maybe.

The bride danced with her sister the other night. A glorious, uninhibited, raucous whelping on the dance floor. Their happy dance was infused with years of history that no one could touch. As the bride's dress burned white in spinning and her sister twirled around her, I missed my own sister who is thousands of miles away. I remembered how we danced at my wedding. Years of impenetrable history. Together our bodies made a geometry. With her, I am myself. I am three years old, spinning with my arms out.

My husband danced with me and it wasn't just a slow turn to the right. He led me, our noses touched, and we closed our eyes. My feet finally felt right in high heels. If I can't spin myself dizzy in a puffy dress, I'll count my lifetime in nose touching dances with the love of my life.