"Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous." ~Anais Nin

29 November 2017

Poetry Wednesday #63

I'm bringing back Poetry Wednesday!  For a while anyway.  The next several weeks will feature poems I wrote in middle and high school for my creative writing classes.  Some of these are really quite good.
This next poem I wrote for the boy I was "dating" my freshman year of high school.  Yes, the same boy I mentioned ever so briefly in the previous Poetry Wednesday.  I gave him my virginity and used him as my inspiration for this poem.

I don't know how I feel about that.  You'll understand once you read the poem.  It's . . . Well . . . 

I'm not sure I liked that boy very much.

~AJ












                Jon
Young girls in pigtails
Small reptilian creatures
Dead metal poles lying on the pained expressions
          of little boys

Healing a timely death
Just to go through it again
Powdered jellyfish in the form of Jesus Christ

Blue-haired women
Settling at a hard life's end
Living one more hour for old lovers' memory

Mud covered prick in a basket
Hungry cat eating the flesh of its master
Roses in an open grave covering the stench of the
           living for the dead

Armageddon and dry martinis
Starving children that could be fat
The rich toasting the depletion of the poor

Words lying sleeplessly on a paper doll's head
A loaded semi-automatic pistol floating dreamily in the air
The dangerous and holocaustal attitudes of opposing forces

A psychopath of 18 years
Graduating into cold reality
Destined to some day rule the world

Death, the beautiful lady,
Creeping closer to oblivion
Screams to hold on to the wounded

24 November 2017

Getting Moving

I like how he looks like he has somewhere to be.
photo by Angell Williams, via Flickr
I didn't sleep last night.  This was mostly due to the fact that I lapsed into a Thanksgiving brunch (because, yes, my family had brunch this year) coma a little after 1 o'clock PM which lasted until about 8:30, totally fucking up my sleeping schedule.  I wasn't tired again until 6:30 this morning, and since I have to work tomorrow and so need to sleep tonight, was not a fucking option.  I'm feeling a little bit pissy, a little bit lethargic, and only marginally homicidal.  Kinda like a big cat at a zoo who's not sure whether to pace or sprawl, and who, yeah, will eat you, but only if you're stupid enough to come near it.  Like, delivery, man, that's all I have the energy to deal with today.

But my brain still works.  Mostly.  I'm a little loopy from lack of sleep, but not severely so.

So, last night, somewhere between marathoning the first 28 episodes of InuYasha and watching the entire 1995 miniseries of Pride and Prejudice—man, I need to reread that book—I made the decision to eschew the internet in the month of December because I need to.  Get.  Things.  Done next year, and it's doing me no good sitting around here waiting for the calendar to turn.  I need to start to get things done now, and my over-reliance on the internet is hindering that. 

Actually, I'm going to try to stay away from all screens.  I have to use a computer for work, but that's barely any time at all.  And I will need to check my bank balance and schedule my bill payments on the 1st of December, but, again, barely any time.  The trick will be keeping myself from checking the blogs and websites that I now do on a regular basis.  Well, that, and keeping off my phone.

My plans for next year require—which I'm not ready to get into just yet; I'm still feeling like I'll jinx myself if I do—involve a considerable amount of planning that I need to get on if I'm going to hit the ground doing like I want.  Along with, I can actually get started on doing some of the things that I know I want to get done, which would put me ahead and increase my chances of success.  Probably.

And I need to succeed.  Even if it's just modestly.  I literally need that success.  It's a huge gamble.  A huge, huge gamble.  One I'm not keen on taking, but the circumstances of my life have forced my hand, so gamble I must.  But I have to do everything I can to move the odds in my favor.  Which includes making desperate bargains with disreputable folk.   Because, you see, my very life is on the line and the conventional route isn't working–hasn't for years.  I'm out of options.

Gods!  It's scary and awful and I don't want to do it.  But I also do.  I want it more than my next breath.  Even if it makes me feel sick down low in my belly.

Anyway...

How will my internet-free month affect you guys?  It won't really.  I've got several scheduled posts to take you into the middle of December.  I doubt you'd know of my absence if I hadn't told you just now.

I guess I just wanted to say goodbye for now.  I'm going to be working on getting shit done.

22 November 2017

Poetry Wednesday #62

I'm bringing back Poetry Wednesday!  For a while anyway.  The next several weeks will feature poems I wrote in middle and high school for my creative writing classes.  Some of these are really quite good.
By Miguel Carrillo Villarreal [CC BY-SA 4.0],
via Wikimedia Commons
The following poem I know I wrote my freshman year of high school, because I wrote it for the first girl I had a crush on.  Laura.

Now, I mostly prefer men, but every so often a woman will come along who is just . . . breathtaking.  Laura was such a girl.  And she was lovely.

I went to an arts school for middle school and my freshman year of high school.  One I sorely missed after my family moved to the Kansas suburbs.  My school focus was writing and drama. I was confident and knew my own beauty in a way I haven't since, but the different arts didn't mix much, and Laura was both a dancer and a year ahead of me.

I never even talked to her.  Just watched her from afar.  I didn't have the courage, or the awareness, I guess.  Besides, I was dating a really cute boy.  Still, even though I haven't thought about her in decades–barely remembered her until I found this poem–I wish I had talked to her in high school.
~AJ


. . . For Laura

   Soft golden ribbons
Floating 
             Falling
                            Flying
Sweetly seductive             dancing
About heavenly shoulders—
      beautiful face
lighten a room
a soft glow of fire
Laughing eyes
Cat-like curves and angles

Grace in motion
      No restraints
Freedom at its finest

20 November 2017

A Future That Will Never Be

I'll add a picture when I'm back on a computer and not with winging it with a Kindle Fire and a prayer.

I wrote earlier about how I wasn't hired for the much better and more interesting position of Programming Librarian at my library.  It sucks.  It really does.  But them's the breaks.  It's fine.  Not only have I gotten used to rejection over the years, but I was expecting it.  I've said before that I'm not well liked at my library, and it's true.  And it's not that they (my bosses and suchlike) don't like me for personality reasons or because I either don't do my work or do it poorly.  No, I'm just overlooked most of the time. 

That's fine too, the overlooking of Amber.  I don't need anyone to hold my hand or pat my head and tell me what a good girl I am.  I enjoy working without supervision.  I like creating and completing my own projects, making my own rules.  The lack of acknowledgments can be irksome, but I'm terrible at selling myself and I know that, so I've come to terms.  That's one of the reasons why I've not been able to find a job.  It bugs me but I'm not that willing to change.  I hate to admit this, but I don't want it enough.

Don't get me wrong, I'd be excellent at it.  Passionate, driven, energetic, creative.  I like projects and that position would be nothing but projects.  We're renovating a new building and the new site has a huge, park-like side yard.  It also has a ton of meeting space and study rooms and the like.  AND a great maker space, complete with a recording studio.

I have this dream of a series of interconnected, intergenerational, and interdepartmental programs spanning years.  Programs that cement the library as a hub of the community, bring in money in the form of grants and fundraisers and maybe even advertisements, though we'd have to be careful with that last one because the library is not a place to sell things – the services should be kept free. 

My dream included a monthly or semimonthly podcast examining the people and the history of the community; library publishes books of short stories, biographies, poetry, etc by our patrons (and done for our programs); a community garden and seed library; plays staged in our park in the summertime possibly in conjunction with the high schools and colleges around town; we could have a farm animal programs and get people to bring their horses and the smaller, more petting zoo appropriate animals; we could do a story corps type thing where people record interviews with their loved ones; we could have a wall of art by local artists for sale and for display.  We could do a thousand thousand things that I have up in my brain, but we can't.  At least, we can't do my things, because I didn't get the job and I'm not going to do anymore programming, not after this spring and I've finished with the programming I already said I'd do.

It's not petty, or not entirely.  It's more a matter of labor and being paid for it.  I'm part time, hourly and doing a ton of work off books for the library with the planning, preparations, and implementation of these programs.  I don't work enough hours to have enough time to do this at work, at least not and still do what I was hired to do.  Needs must, and I'm very against any unpaid labor.  I am worth something, you know?  I deserve to be paid for my labor.  Even if I sometimes give it away for free because I'm excited about something or I'm trying something out, or I think it'll pay off in the long run.

Now, it's not worth it for me.  Now, I'll just focus on doing my job really, really well and managing my money and some of my own projects that with a little skill and a lot of luck will afford me a living.  The big thing is, these projects will be mine and no one else's.

I know I've been down on my luck lately, what with not being able to find a job, but I think that may be because I've been following other people's plans for me.  I never wanted any of this.  I'm chasing a dream that was never mine because other people convinced me that mine was impossible.  Shit, I'm done listening to other people.  The boring future of the really good, but completely unfulfilled librarian died as it was born.  I'm going to try to live for me and my dreams for myself.  Maybe then I'll actually be living rather than being stuck in this fucking limbo like I have for the past 15 years.

Farewell to the future that never will be from a girl who never was.

15 November 2017

Poetry Wednesday #61

I'm bringing back Poetry Wednesday!  For a while anyway.  The next several weeks will feature poems I wrote in middle and high school for my creative writing classes.  Some of these are really quite good.
by A Vahanvaty from Dubai, UAE (Creepy Doll, Barnaul, Russia) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
This poem I actually have a date on: May 3, 1996.  So I would have been either a sophomore or senior in high school (I skipped my junior year).  It was originally typed on a typewriter, believe it or not!  There's a note at the beginning that reads, "inspiration-- short story "Miriam" by Truman Capote" It makes sense.  That creepy little tale was a favorite of mine.  Again, I'll try to recreate the formatting here.~AJ

       Miriam

Left alone

     Husband dead, gone. . . an old woman

Who doesn't realize that she is

     Lonely

     Beautiful young girl

          With almost white hair

And large eyes

Knowing, knowing

     Old eyes

Knowing, knowing

And pretty silk dresses

"What's your name, girl?"     "Miriam."

14 November 2017

Hollow

By Oleg Alexandrov [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons
I pulled a Tarot card today and it was The Tower.  Not a very good sign, right?  The Tower has actually been coming up again and again in my readings for myself.  I've got this Tarot app on my kindle and it comes up there too.  It seems to be a theme in my life right now.  I'd say it's probably been a theme for a couple of years now, actually.

Generally, The Tower represents sudden, catastrophic, and unwelcome change.  It is a card of destruction, yes?  And a card of warning.  Yet, my life is so horribly the same.  Always.  For years now.  There is no change.  There has been no change.  My efforts to force change have come to naught.  My life is is stagnant, foul and rotting.  What the rot touches, it destroys, and it has touched everything.  Over the last several years, I've watched as everything in my life has been eaten away.  Nothing has been spared: not a hope, not a dream.  Everything withers and falls away.

Today I got the "you're not good enough to hire for this position" call from my workplace.  I was up for a recently opened full time position—one in which I would have been brilliant.  I interviewed and was rejected.  The rejection wasn't a surprise.  After six years of being searching for a full time job, I go into interviews (when I get them) fully expecting to be rejected for the job.  I mean, the hope is there, but I'm no longer surprised by the rejection.  Though this particular rejection was truly unsurprising because yesterday my boss asked me to cover a shift at the of December.  She wouldn't have done that if I'd gotten the job.  Deductive reasoning.

The Tower, representing catastrophe, has been my constant companion for years and years now.  So long now that catastrophe, though still traumatic, is no longer sudden for me.  It's no longer unexpected.  Everything I touch, everything I care about, everything I hope for shrinks from me.  It's like it knows that my touch is toxic and will cause it to rot and wither.  I had hoped–not having a lover, not having a husband or children, nor the prospect of such–that I could have a satisfying career.  I do not have a satisfying career.  It's been six–almost seven–years and I do not have even the beginnings of a satisfying career.  I no longer believe that is going to happen for me.  I don't think it's meant to be.  At least not in the library.

Perhaps I am not meant to have a job.  But then how will I survive?  Right now, with the meager wages I bring in from my part time job, I have to be supported by my parents.  Without them I can't afford food or shelter.  Even with them I can't afford myself. 

I now owe $58000 in student loans.  It keeps going up.  I'm on an income based repayment plan and can only afford the $30/month I pay them now.  If I had to pay the entire amount I wouldn't have money for gas.  I clear maybe $1000/month.  Maybe.  Of that, $300 goes to car payments, $300 goes to paying off my credit card, $100 goes to car insurance, $100 goes to health/dental insurance, $50 to gas so I can get to work, and the remaining goes to miscellaneous expenses such as food, phone, the occasional hang out with one of the few friends I have left, car maintenance, or any one of a thousand incidentals.  No wonder I have panic attacks.

I made a grave error when I went to graduate school.  It's one I can't fix, one I have to live with, but how?  How?

I have to figure that out.  I have to find a way to make money outside of a regular job.  I have some tentative plans for next year.  Plans I sorely need to flesh out and put in action.  It's a gamble, what I have in mind.  A huge gamble.  High risk, and a maybe okay reward—the likelihood of a high reward is so low as to be nonexistent.  I am afraid.  I am so afraid.  I can't afford to fail.  I am literally gambling with my life.  Like, if this doesn't pay out, I don't see myself surviving.  Not for very long, anyway.

Gods!  It sounds dramatic, but I don't mean it as such.  I'm just . . . operating without a safety net, and my plans–tentative as they are–require cutting my last lifeline.  If I don't learn to fly before hitting the ground, well, SPLAT.

11 November 2017

I will remember – Three Poems for Armistice Day, 2017

General Lipošćak visits 26th infantry regiment of Royal Croatian Home Guard on the Eastern front, 1917.
[Public Domain]
I am keeping my tradition of posting poetry to honor the war dead on Armistice Day, but I'm also switching it up a bit.  Instead of posting just one poem, I'm posting three: one from a British poet, one from a German, and one that I just like that doesn't really have anything to do with war.

This first poem is by British WWI poet Wilfred Owen–one of my favorite Twentieth Century poets.  He died mere days before the Armistice was called. ~AJ


Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began tor trudge.
Men marched asleep.  Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod.  All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!–An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime–
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, chocking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

__________________________________________
This next poem is by German playwright Ernst Toller.  He survived the war, though not unchanged.  And he didn't survive long.  He was exiled from Germany in 1933 when the Nazis came to power.  In 1939, after learning that his brother and sister had been sent to a concentration camp–did I mention they were Jewish—he hung himself.  

Spring

In spring I go to war
To sing or to die.
What do I care for my own troubles?
Today I shatter them, laughing in pieces.

Oh, Brothers, know that young spring came
In a whirlwind.
Quickly throw off tired grief
And follow her in a host.

I have never felt so strongly
How much I love you, Oh, Germany,
As the magic of spring surrounds you
Amidst the bustle of war.

__________________________________________
The final poem was written by Antun Branko Šimić, a Croation poet who, as far as I can tell, had nothing to do with the war.  He did, however, write extensively about death.  Šimić lived a total of 26 years, from 1898 to 1925 when he died of tuberculosis.  I'm going to post both the translated and untranslated poem below. 

Warning                                  Opomena

Man, be careful                                Čovječe pazi
not to walk small                             da ne ideš malen
under the stars.                                ispod zvijezda!
                                                             Pusti
May your whole body                    da cijelog tebe prode
be filled with                                    blaga svjetlost zvijezda!
the dim light of the stars!  
                                                              Da ni za čim ne žališ
To have no regrets                          kad se budeš zadnjim pogledima
when with the last glance               rastajo od zvijezda!
you part with the stars!                   Na svom koncu
                                                             mjesto u prah
In your final hour                            prijedi sav u zvijezde!
instead of dust
pass whole to the stars!

            –translated by Božica Cvjetković

I wish very much that I knew enough Croatian to translate the poem above myself, but I don't.  Truth?  I literally only know one word of Croatian that I'm sure of: teta/tetka or aunt (depending on whether it's your father's sister or your mother's sister).  It's on my list to learn more.   

Enjoy another picture of General Anton Lipošćak.  I don't think he's an ancestor of mine, though we share a last name and are both Croats.  But even that much is kind of cool.  Here in the States, it's a rather uncommon last name–everyone who carries it is related in at least a distant way.  I don't know how it is in Europe.

General Lipošćak served in the Austro-Hungarian Army in World War One.  He even had a unit named after him, Gruppe Lipošćak.  He died in 1924 at the age of 61.

08 November 2017

Poetry Wednesday #60

I'm bringing back Poetry Wednesday!  For a while anyway.  The next several weeks will feature poems I wrote in middle and high school for my creative writing classes.  Some of these are really quite good.
Edward Crawford returns a tear gas canister fired by police who were trying to disperse protesters in Ferguson, Mo.
 Aug. 13, 2014. Robert Cohen / St. Louis Post-Dispatch via Zuma Press
This is such an iconic image.  The strength of that man at that moment.
I want to say the following poem was actually written before high school.  I think in 7th or 8th grade. This would have been in 1993 maybe, '94?  I know it was after the '92 LA Riots, but only a year or two.  This was actually a really exciting find for me because I remember the first several lines, but not the rest and it's driven me crazy for decades!  It was originally written by hand on notebook paper, and I will try to recreate the vagaries of my handwriting and strange capitalization in my transcription below–it means something, you know? Anyway, enjoy. ~AJ


Lifetimes of Lifetimes
covered in STEEL
don't Believe
What they say is real
Life is Life
and widows cry
Who are you
to do and die
What is lost
can never be found
ALL is buried
deep underground
where the worms
wiggle and eat and crawl
The sons of daughters
Fall and Fall
Lost within her
deep despair
Old women pull
the young one's hair
Death is Death
and will live on
Until the coming
Of the sun's bright dawn
Nothing matters
and time moves on
that is the way
the world works.

02 November 2017

To Forfeit and Disperse; To Pursue and Connect

Utagawa Kuniyoshi [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
This totally came up when I googled "too much stuff."
Next year is going to be a busy year for me.  I'm already in the planning stages.  More than, actually, as I'm due to start one of my 2018 projects new long soon (like within the next three days), and another shortly after.  Since the majority of both projects—I'm thinking long term here—will fall within 2018, I'm counting them as part of that year's project.  I'm taking a page from Ivy Bromius' book and breaking all of my goals into smaller actionable tasks that will ultimately help me accomplish my big goals.  I'm hoping this'll make it easier for me to stay on target, so to speak.  I bought a fancy fucking planner that is supposed to help me do all that.

Let's hope it works.

One of the things I'm considering, and have mostly decided to do, is getting rid of all my stuff.  Well, most of it anyway.  That is a huge project, one that means going through boxes packed in the basement, and looking at almost everything I've ever owned then deciding whether to keep, sell, donate, or toss.  Then arranging yard sales, ebay, and craigslist in the spring and summer, getting a donation truck to show up, throwing out everything that doesn't fit, and organizing the rest of it.  It'll be worth it, but I've a feeling it'll also be exhausting.  I mean, I own upwards of 1000 books (rough estimate) alone.  Not to mention all the other crap I've collected through the years, or what my mom kept from my childhood.

I think it may be easier to make a list of what I don't want to get rid of, to be honest. 

Anyway, I'll have to see if I can fit it in.  Getting rid of all my stuff.  Yikes!

My other projects are more personal, focusing on health, wealth, and, well, magic.  Right now, I'm going to hold them all close to the chest as they're sensitive and neither fully realized nor formed.  And I'm feeling superstitious.  There's a lot of learning, breaking down, and planning involved between now and launch day.  And as for the projects I've either already started or am due to start soon?  Well, I'm feeling superstitious with those too.  There's something inside me warning that if I talk about them before they're further underway–or even completed and successful–that I won't ever get them done.  So you don't get to know what I'm doing/have planned.  At least not right now.

Though, I will say, that one of the things I did today involved looking over my budget and deciding that I have enough expendable cash to become a Rune Soup premium member.  It's something I've wanted to do since Gordon launched the program, but for some reason I kept talking myself out of it.  "Can't afford it," I'd say, "I'm in debt to my eyeballs."  One of which is very true and the other only relatively.  My debt hasn't gone away, but I can prioritize some things over other, and if it gets to be to much I can quit. 

I suppose that's a big part of what this upcoming year will be about for me: prioritizing what I really want to do, then setting things in motion to get it done.

I'll keep you apprized of my progress—even if I don't give you the specifics of what I'm doing.

That's all for now.  I'll write again soon.