I have moved:

http://lastnightidreamti.wordpress.com/

Garden

I am standing in the garden of my childhood. It is so beautiful and peaceful, just like my life at the time. My Omi planted and tended this garden everyday of her life. A mid-afternoon rain shower drenches the garden and giant puddles fill up. I am there standing in my blue bathing suit, and I look up at the gray sky letting the drops fall on my face and in my hair. The air is war, not cold, and I jump around. The water is a few feet deep and is war like a swimming pool. I try to swim but it isn’t deep enough yet, maybe in a few hours. “Es regnet, es regnet, es macht die Erde nass, und. . . .“ I can never remember the end to this song. I jump around a few more times and run around. My Omi comes outside and laughs. She takes a photo of me, so I can always stand in the garden of my childhood.

Bonsai Story Tree

A version of I met her in 2004, but through the Bonsai Story Generator
http://www.critters.org/bonsai.html


There was a person sometimes, rather a picked flower, slowly wilting.
Before she breezed into each other.
We mused about our professors, discussing the halls of the tiny desks.
During the wind, wispy, brown hair in a person sometimes, rather a piece of the tiny desks.
During the beginning and bullshitting, giggling about the old days, the tiny desks.
During the halls of the tiny desks.
During the halls of the beautiful nymph.
Although we went to sail into our uncharted ...

air conditioner

When the air conditioner clicked off the smell of death began to seep out of the room like a snake through the cornfields. Slithering its way through the air, a man in Japan looked up, holding his cup of coffee half way and said, “she is dead.”

The children in the apartment below heard the click of the air conditioner go off as well. In this case I say children not because they were young, but because they were her children. They were all adults, and had children of their own, but lived in the flat below her. When the sound of the insistent buzzing went quiet they looked up at the ceiling, a quiet gasp, a moment of silence, of doom filled the apartment and they looked at each other with dread. They knew that one of them had to have the chore of checking up on her, but none of them wanted to visit the old women.

They didn’t know of her demise but they all remembered the last time she hobbled down the wooden stairs with her metal Wallgreen’s cane. She came to their door during dinnertime. With her cane she tapped at the door, with a tap tap echoing down the alley.

I met her in 2004

I met her in 2004, the year that Cecily graduate from college. I remember watching her in my thesis writing class. The first day she came in late, her hair blown in from the wind, wispy, brown hair in a crazy mess. There was something about her, that you couldn’t put your finger on, something ethereal that she carried with her in those days. With her books in her hands, she breezed into the small classroom and sat down in one of the tiny desks.

During the semester we got to know each other slightly better, sitting in the hallways before class gossiping about our professors, discussing the theories of anthropology, film, and bullshitting, giggling about the handsome teacher’s assistances that would troop to down the halls noses high. But we didn’t really get to know each other. I was always so mesmerized I forgot that she was a person sometimes, rather a mystical being that has some how managed to sail into our uncharted territory.

It was in graduate school that I really got to know Cecily, began to see the beginning and the end of the beautiful nymph. Although we weren’t in the same programs, we went to the same school. One day in the bathroom, we ran into each other. We mused about the old days, the halls of Berkeley, the professors, the theories, the teacher’s assistances. She was magical still, but like a picked flower, slowly wilting. Before she went in the stall, she handed me a piece of paper, with her number scribbled on it. “Call me,” She whispered, “I missed you.”

A few months later I was cleaning off my desk preparing to do some work on a twenty-page paper for my class when I came across her number again. Crumpled up and the ink had run, but her number was still legible. I remember her from that day in the bathroom. My friend was less like a nymph and more like a deer with her hair wet from the rain, plastered to her forehead, large brown eyes, and a meek face.

I picked up the phone. I had never talked to her outside of school. The thoughts tumbled through my mind. Did she really want me to call? Or did she give me her number out of pity? After a few seconds of debate I dialed the number and listened to the rings echo on the other side. I held my breath. The answering machine picked up. “Cecily here, leave a message.”

A few hours later, the phone rang and I heard her voice tiny on the other end. She sounded smaller than she did in person. “I didn’t think you would ever call.” I explained that I had lost her number. Maybe I had misplaced it or been too frightened to call her, but I didn’t tell her that. We chatted a while and arranged a coffee rendezvous’ for the next week.

At the coffee shop, I waited for Cecily while twisting my purses handles between my fingers. I didn’t know why I was so nervous. We had known each other for a long time, but never as one on one friend, always as acquaintances that pass by each other and say hi. When she came through the door late, I let a sigh out with the gust of wind. She sat down next to me with her coffee. Her face was tired. We talked. No giggling, just serious one on one talking. She told me, her mother had died last year, and her boyfriend had broken off her engagement. She was in the German program but she didn’t know anymore what her purpose was. “I feel like a leaf, just floating around where ever the wind takes me, with no direction.” She said softly. I asked how I could help and took a sip of the bitter coffee.

After that coffee meeting we began meeting every week for coffee. She would talk and I would listen. And then sometimes we would switch roles. The chit-chat wasn’t always depressing, but our friendship brought us closer, she became more earthly, more sullen, and I became stronger and slowly we fell in love with each other.

In the Blue Room

“by emptying people’s minds
and filling their cores,”



In the blue room time stutters.
I sit here on the green and yellow sofa,
holding my hand out to catch the time,
before it slips by.

The rain falls outside,
Reminds of us of the dismal day.
The time stops a second and also listens to the rain,
Ignoring the fact that I am trying to rein it in.

This room is an odd color.
Not a bright blue,
or a dark blue,
rather close the blue of robin’s eggs.

Still, baby blue is too light,
mix one part drizzly day,
and there you have it.

When I sit here in the blue room,
listen to the rain, and watch the flowing
patterns of water that reflect onto the wall,
I feel as if I were underwater.

The blue room is a lonely room.

I am the only one who visits it.
I am the only one who knows of this secret place.

I can feel the time flow over my mind like the rain on the window pane.
Outside the lady bancia feels week under the pressures of the world.
I too feel weak, but I seek my solace and peace in this water-blue secret.

On the window sill, sit the photos of happier times.
The pictures capture moments of glee and gayness,
forever captive beneath the glass frames.
How is it that I can not reach that happiness?

When I look at these frozen memories,
I feel pain.
My own raindrops fall to the ground.
I am the only one who can stand looking at these painful pieces of hope and despair.
My mother, my father, my husband all avoid this room.
Perhaps the preserved happiness is too much to bear.


Down the hall I hear my mother call.
I am not here.
I beg time to stop and hold me its captive too.
But my fickle friend ignores me
I hear the footsteps of my mother come down the hall.

She calls my name.

morning

I woke up from the dream gasping for breath, taking in big gulps of air as if I had never breathed before. I felt the air fill my lungs, my rib cage stretched, my chest muscles aching. I don’t remember what my dream was about, it seemed so clear and vast in while in my presence, but now it was slipping away. No matter. I looked around a little, looking at the light stream through the blinds creating stripes on the wall. Closing my eyes. I take a deep breath filling my lungs. Slowly I let the air out, imagining how my body turns the oxygen into carbon dioxide. Next to me, he slept soundly, not realizing that the world continued with out him.

Ode to Celan

Corona
Paul Celan (translated by Michael Hamburger)

Autunm eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:
then time returns to the shell.

In the mirror it's Sunday,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.

My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we exchange dark words,
we love each other like poppy and recollection,
we sleep like wine in the conches,
like the sea in the moon's blood ray.

We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from
the street:
it is time they knew!
It is time the stone made an effort to flower,
time unrest had a beating heart.
It is time it were time.

It is time.






Corona
Paul Celan

Aus der Hand frißt der Herbst mir sein Blatt: wir sind Freunde.
Wir schälen die Zeit aus den Nüssen und lehren sie gehn:
die Zeit kehrt zurück in die Schale.

Im Spiegel ist Sonntag,
im Traum wird geschlafen,
der Mund redet wahr.

Mein Aug steigt hinab zum Geschlecht der Geliebten:
wir sehen uns an,
wir sagen uns Dunkles,
wir lieben einander wie Mohn und Gedächtnis,
wir schlafen wie Wein in den Muscheln,
wie das Meer im Blutstrahl des Mondes.

Wir stehen umschlungen im Fenster, sie sehen uns zu von der Straße:
es ist Zeit, daß man weiß!
Es ist Zeit, daß der Stein sich zu blühen bequemt,
daß der Unrast ein Herz schlägt.
Es ist Zeit, das es Zeit wird.

Es ist Zeit.

Leonore

I’m sitting here in the dark right night listing to the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the clock on our far wall with nothing much else to do but play wow, watch the fog roll, or latment the passing of another day. So instead I felt like writing you an email.

Once I got an email from this random person. It was titled “eye drops and sunshine.” It was this personal letter written from this person, I think from Maryland, to a person named Leonore. The way it was written the style and beauty all made me kind of sad by the end of the email that I wasn’t the Leonore to which the email belonged. I wrote back the person and explained the mistake, hoping they would find they “right” Leonore soon.

Maybe someday I will be the right Leonore