Element
snow white turning
has the twinkle ever
been for nothing
more than
to leave
a loving
artifact
to make
a deathless
hen,
whose faith outpaced
her season’s augury
this fruit is sticky
stretchy,
furious
its nectar possessed
of Lethean ambience
my arms are glittering
swans, my pillows
pur de lait, my eyes
are royal-blooded
blue navé, my dreams
are dialogues
of dolphins
how can she
believe the verbs
you writ, when all
you tender-left
were winterscape, or
sidereal tongue-
traps, of snowmen
that psychedelic night,
she sapped the wine
and stole the spade
howl-lit, she went
digging
in mud of your
decaying spring
for word-eaten
bodies
to meet
the gristled
marrow
to touch and leave
fingerprints
melting
on tongue
rose red grows
from a hollow bone
while moon-
shot belladonna
is kissing cousins
with bull-horned
hemlock, reckless
and honest
//
la poule noire sans doute
raven-wise, reposed
with shoulders drawn
her plumage welded closed
to element, like armor
buffeted by claps
and blows, beset
by quaggy flows, she was
more resolute than rain
roosters inamorato pecked
and disapprobed
her cocky, warlike ‘no’s
still Grace was stone, unmoved
fortress of mother earth
her body wholly was
the boulder fastly rolled
to staunch a secret planet
O chickening unheard
verb terminal
undead-end metaphor
catastrophe obscura
that hid, against her bald-
plucked breast, the titt-
tittering bavardage
des enfants geomantiques
//
frothy //
labor
the rain is heavy
sopping slapping shattering
goldfish dimension
water bristling
the cats in barbed corners
are hiding, hissing
nobody
shares shelter
in the emergency
i am under roof
imagining
a lazy woman
//
still
on the sawah
reeds resonate
as harmonies
inchoate
discord ebbs
and flows like
isothermal shadows
or disagreements
overheard from
a neighbor’s
tv show
the invectives
of detectives
sound like seagulls
hungry, jostling
for scraps
at the surface
of ocean
and
counter-
ocean
as hemispheric
currents under-
go reversals
as whale song
catalyzes
schools of squid
singing,
it does
not end
the answer
is still
( blowing
in the
wind )
//
selamat purnama 🌕
dreamcatching
is your weaving procrastination or
bare art to chart the tempest of my heart
make me be making you become our all
is it wisdom when you step away from wood
the holding firm of it, its firmament
but temperamentally gossips with birds
is it deception that you tangle, home
of spider-silk as wordy work, anchored
by glittering images that come to know me
no pristine landscape catches stellar wings
earth shakes the boughs of quaking sun
scattering us as gibbering bats from ashes
airborne we’re hunting fireflies between
a melting Luna’s effulgent ice cream
dodging light-threaded night and Venus rising
i am assemblage channeled to be none
you are motion, savior of fitful sleep
the rhythmic tide unravelling its mooring
draw deeply down where one is one is one
fly home again wherefrom wind-woven sea
embroiders iridescent migrations
//
Wasalamu’alaikum 🌖✨
souchong
by golden-limned
salt-watery night
//
how to watch the Eta Aquariids meteor shower
behold
pendulous drape
of cosmic cat
uncoil
the breath
where bodhisattva
sat
orangutan
persuaded
chimpanzee
let’s be
moving targets
together
baby
//
thanks for the heads up @Miraz💫
bristled in the wave //
nothing loves better than a tree
nothing loves better than a tree
drawing to itself poetry
consider its unfolding smile
when i admire for a while
the glow expressive moods create
as poetic pupils dilate
how do you seem to be so still
yet so alive, how do you mean
to be speechless and yet so wise
to show the world in mystic green
to grow so lush without disguise
you clear exhaustion from my eyes
your branches make a lattice ceiling
new leaf-buds tender hearts of spring
deep roots tap elemental healing
dense foliage shelters birds that sing
your memory is gentler song
plain counterpoint when i’ve done wrong
you fear not, by your strength serene
a standing stone of forest dream
i hold your trunk i climb your branches
i rake your leaves into big piles
you always give me second chances
my poems for you, still off by miles
//
friendly stranger //
atmospheric passage //
salt on skin //
Writing about “hereness” //
“If not in America, maybe it’s a little alright. But if in America, it’s not alright at all”, said E. We were looking at this Naomi Klein article on “end times fascism”, specifically the propaganda photo with tattooed prisoners. I said yes, pretty much. We noted the irony. He said he remembered similar propaganda photos from Suharto’s regime. Those guys look like Blih, I said. Tattoos and all. He’s our closest Bali family and one of my protectors. That means if anything ever happened to my husband, I would call Blih first. I would usually abbreviate his name, but that isn’t his name, although it’s the only thing we call him. Blih is Balinese for Brother, and he is a brother.
Back to Klein’s article, she does maybe the best work accounting for “what’s happening” that I’ve read, encompassing the mood and seemingly-conflicting realities of it. (Tech billionaire TESCREAL and apocalyptic Christian prepper cultures coming into alignment as xenophobic bunker-building fascism.) But she also manages to be somewhat uplifting, or maybe that’s not the right word. It’s a nice piece. She mentions the Yiddish concept of “Doiykat, or ‘hereness’”, as a possible antidote to the surrender of Earth inherent in an apocalyptic mindset. Although I find her elaboration a little flimsy (maybe too abstract?), I like the suggestion and appreciate the reminder, especially having recently spent so much time contemplating a vehicle of travel.
Spend too much time on chariots and you might lose a sense of “hereness”.
As a recent expat/immigrant (almost 6 years), at first I wondered if I had been under-emphasizing “hereness” in my thoughts, feelings, or writing. Maybe it doesn’t come naturally for me? Have I been too online? But then I began to list examples and think of ways that I write about it. (This is my interpretation of the word, not that of a Jewish tradition.) For me, “hereness” is the work of embodiment, including yoga asana, as well as prayer, veganism and fasting. Islam is an embodiment practice. Also, my marriage. Marriage is an embodiment practice too.
Then my “hereness” work is to figure out life as an always-somewhat-stranger “here”. On a community level, I try to do as little harm as I can (spending money in responsible ways etc). To support local governance and cultural organizing, we donate as much as seems right to several kampungs, including Mosques here and in Java. But not so much as to draw weird attention or throw anything off. We socialize, including with neighbors, they come over for lunar ceremonies on the full and new moons. I’m working on language, although I haven’t been studious about it. The more socializing we do, the faster it comes along.
My sense of “hereness” also comes through the non-human world, the animals, plants, rocks and dirt, weather, and all of these other things that I do indeed write about. The driving, lol. Almost every category in the archives is a nod to “hereness”. “Hereness” would also come through a feeling of home (there are different versions of this e.g. from house work, from husband, from cats, chickens, etc., from the plants in the garden, from our accumulating memories) and of figuring out how to be myself here. You aren’t at home if you can’t be yourself. It’s all work in progress.
I’m a Cancer, I come with armor and pincers, (also Scorpio rising, lol), but we are in no way bunker-builders. (Well, we’ve contemplated a small one, if we ever live in Java, but that’s for an active volcano, which is a totally different kind of bunker.) Our protection will be in the community connections we’ve made, or we’ll have no protection. It’s that simple. There’s a community philosophy in Indonesia called “gotong royong”, which means people are always helping out their neighbors. Having seen it in action, I find it comforting. In turn, we actively keep our eyes and ears open for ways to “help out” in the village. My husband explains this as preparing, in case something ever happens to him, if he’s gone. But it’s good preparation in case of any kind of emergency.
My “hereness” will always be a little weird or deviant because I’m an expat/immigrant and I rely on E as a cultural mediator. But it’s still often on display. This makes me glad, and a little relieved, because I am indebted to it. I’d like my blog to have a strong sense of “hereness”.
Myself here isn’t the same as myself was there, and the selves of the blog can go off-and-around sometimes, but all of this is written by Elizabeth, of her body and of Earth. There is a body and a planet behind all of this wordiness without which it wouldn’t be what it is. The point of “hereness” is perhaps not to be uplifting, but to be grounding. The ground is an important thing to cultivate.
It’s excruciating to imagine Earth as past-tense. It is literally the worst, the most terrible vision, and it does require an antidote. This beautiful one, where I feel the sky on my face, this place of friendship and delight, is my only planet. I remember myself here. I have no doubt I would forget myself on Mars.
a chariot is
reply to Isthmian I, via Phaedrus 227β
//
a chariot is artifact entombed
beneath packed sediment
an imprint on the earth
of acts not of the earth
sightless as solitude
lifeless as time itself
rotting perpetual
vehicle disposed
it falls apart
a chariot is
impervious
to crying
a chariot is a paragraph
about ancient technology
symbols illuminated by
old photos from museums
shaded settings in relief
straight lines on pregnant-bellied vases
fragments of singed and tattered verse
reasons described almost
as spatial motion re-constructed
of kingships and bloodline races
past endings to beginnings of
gods animals and man
words used as tools
each one to fix and justify
as evidentiary groping at
a world of human things
we still don’t know
a chariot is an easy gift
against a multitude
of horses
the machines we used to get
from place of rest to planet mars were splendid
magnificent creatures in their own
golden-
ratioed
grammars
and dragons that took hold of drivers' eyes
they thought the wind but caught to ride
a flaming sword instead between her thighs
maidens of modern mythologies arrived
on cliffside edges wearing white
translucent coats
arousal com-
partmentalized
to celebrate new body parts cognized
the jewel-tones of her lacquered toes
the scent of ozone taste
of toxic fizz behind
her sucking nose
her mouth disclosed
she swallows apples licks
a rose the absolute
glory hallelujah
ravenous grows
vulva exposed for clicks
each flick a seed she sows
from echoes loaded lead
her rainbows red as victory
she was the counting down to blasting off
she was four hundred thousand horses yoked
by arc of axel angel burnt tendrils
smoke billows over rocky rough terrain
past battlefields and nations past
her recent childhood and
arsenic smile
their eyes went to
her nippled curves and angles
her thorough flexibility
her starry nights and spangles
her lashes cruelly clawed
her pussies pawed
and oh how they
to her with her and of
her came
as realism
inscribed by god
rendered maidens un-made
oiled python sheen of ageless skin
she was the beauty left in violence
they were materials for war
sapphire eyes emerald or amethyst
you chose the crystal the correction and
the facets for
some child in Africa
was orphaned by each armored scale to feed
her un-weaned toddler burger meat
( at least the blacks buried
and did not eat
their very
fathers
a chariot is
from-dust-
arisen life transcribed )
annunciations posted inter-angel
a holy home a web apart
filters of pale ethereality
content implicitly divorced
from earth’s divided continent
baptismal diamantine written
laws skinlessly conceived that we
may find and hold as work of art
your child’s hunger as forgiven
a chariot is
already cleansed of blood it is
excerpted rage it is
brave forms we made
from partial purpose or
how to make pure
a brilliant woman true to life
but honestly a whore
a chariot is what you drive to get
to work your nightmares harnessed by
engines of piston pretenses
at likely sentences
a chariot is nothingness herself
but full of manliness
the games we play when we
make love in light of day
driving endlessly divine
at origins as orifices flying
a chariot is
a summary
of dying
//
selamat purnama 🌕
Empty glass.
Dogways. //
Crone wonder. //
For most of my adolescence, it was my dream to study the ocean, and life in the ocean, as a marine biologist. I was obsessed with coral reefs, the infinite variety of life in them, sea turtles, all of the dolphins and orcas and whales, but especially humpback whales.
Anyway the reason I’m telling you this is because I just found The Voyage of the Mimi on youtube. I think I was in fifth grade when we watched this as a class, one (or if we were very lucky, two) episodes a day. I was already completely into my marine biology phase, I had even been to Woods Hole, (with my scientist father), so watching VotM wasn’t a conversion experience. However it was a rare opportunity for me to sit in school (this was after we moved, soon after I switched from Montessori to public school) and be totally and willingly preached to about something I was “very seriously” into.
And so a moment – a wave – of nostalgia, for a possible other of myself, if I had kept with the marine biology and become a seafaring researcher. (There are reasons why I changed interests and ambitions, I suppress those for a moment.) It really could have, and perhaps should have happened. I went on special school trips and took internships, studying and surveying a few beaches and reefs. It was my dream to be, perhaps, the Jane Goodall (or Dian Fossey, or Biruté Galdikas) of the sea. Could I have been happy doing that?
Would I be happy doing that now? The wistfulness of questions like these, probing gently for regrets, wondering about the paths not taken. How real they were. If the impossibility had been an illusion, a fata morgana, or if the illusion is what drew me away, to concentrate on other things.
The problem was and always will be, I didn’t want to study the ocean as a scientist. I’ve never been much for details and facts, or rather, for stopping at details and facts. I loved for example looking at sea urchin embryos underneath a microscope, but I didn’t want to answer to a laboratory, or write grant proposals or articles. Well, I didn’t even want a job. I wanted a religion, but real. I wanted to bathe in the details and rub them all over me. I wanted to love the ocean, and fall in love with it, again and again, constantly, and worship it. For a while, science was a ritual of my devotion.
Then there was my childhood eco-activism. If it counts as activism, lol. From fourth to eleventh grade, I was constantly researching ecology and environmental issues for school projects. I gave multiple presentations, for example, on “global warming”. I founded at least two iterations of a marine biology club. I was an official member of countless national eco charities, (it’s where I funnelled all my babysitting money), and I had “adopted” several whales, as well as a sea turtle and a gorilla. We were a diverse family. Posters and photographs of animals papered the walls of my bedroom, the biggest of course was a giant poster of a breaching humpback whale, with its calf. And in this moment of writing, I realize that humpback whale was a savior figure, for my childhood self.
Over the two times I went to Woods Hole, I had enough saved-up babysitting money to buy two necklace pendants from the sea-themed souvenir jewelry shop. I agonized over decisions like this. The first one I bought was the tail of a humpback whale. The second one was a crab. Silver-plated talismans of my oceanic familiars.
(Bonus remembering. Before I loved the ocean, I loved unicorns. That worship didn’t take place as science or activism. Unicorn worship was stories and fairytales and secret gardens of the imagination. It was fantasizing about books with beautifully illustrated covers, then finally getting my hands on those books, and reading them under the blankets with a pen light that I “stole” from my dad. There were so many books, but some that I associate with my unicorn phase were The Secret Garden and The Little Princess, which were not about unicorns, but for me they share the vibe, and The Unicorn Treasury. For some reason, I remember waiting what felt like forever for that book, with intense longing.)
These were my safe places and my struggles for justice, icons in silver and lavender, sea-greens, turquoise, and blues, crusty navies and misty greys, intimate communications with untamed spirits, or bracing inquiry at the unstable surfaces of yet-to-be imagined depths. Where I went to find worlds that were real and meaningful, and perhaps, not subject to the arbitrary cruelties of every other mundane thing.
So I was watching Voyage of the Mimi, which is a dear cultural relic, even if it is very blurry. (It was funded by the Department of Education, bless them. The music is great, especially at the end credits, well, it gets better as it goes.) I was remembering those early passions, and also realizing, with some surprise – this feels vindicating, every time it happens – that important things that are here now have been here from the beginning.
On bad or weird days, looking back, it can feel like I’m surveying a lifetime of dead ends, burnt bridges, failure and rejection and loss. Those struggles seem unending and purposeless. It’s easy to beat myself up over every instance when I failed to fit others' expectations of me, or when I had to part ways with my own expectations of myself. When I gave up on things I thought I wanted because I realized that they weren’t real.
On better days, I wonder at what a survivor she was. How heroically she listened to herself, and protected herself, even when I wasn’t paying attention. And I am amazed to see that life has been a circle, always coming back home again. Often by way of my wildest dreams.
So I call that crone wonder.
//
her place, her body,