Officiated another wedding last night! It was fun, beautiful and sweet. This morning I woke up thinking about how much weddings are about community. Just the whole idea that when things go wrong, our friends and family can really be there to help us. Not everyone can for every need, but we rely on our peeps for their different strengths right? I had the notion though, as I lie there thinking, that when we share celebrations and happy times with our friends, they share in our sorrows and difficult times.
I am reminded of the poem "Solitude" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox that I used to fixate on as a morose young adult. There is a line in the poem that goes something like this, "...laugh and the whole world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone...."
Well, I think she is wrong. I think that if all you do is project and look for others to share in your sorrow you will find yourself alone. Turn that around though and if you actively seek to share your joy, to invite others to celebrate with you, they will weep with you when the occasion calls for it.
Ella, share your joy with others first and they will share your sorrows.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Meow
I am going to be EXHAUSTED today. I am working the overnight Friday to Saturday shift at work and I could not sleep last night! It's been a while since I've only had 5 hours of toss and turn sleep. I stayed up watching "Howl" last night. It was so motivating to me that I had to update one of my blogs midway through the movie.
I absolutely was pushed by the scenes in which James Franco, as Ginsberg, describes his writing process. I do not in any way wish to compare myself with Ginsberg, but I've never heard a better description of what it feels like to produce prose. "I saw windows and thought 'eyes' and I felt 'dun, da, dun, da.....' so that's the way it should be..." (Not an exact quote.) The push and abdominal need to spit out authenticity, through words, through descriptive auditory paintings - I can feel this. I can feel a corporeal response to that - as if my body rather than my mind agrees with him. In a grunting, hands pushing a plough, feet digging in kind of way. A delicate at times, other times guttural, "unh" "this is me, this is my inside out." It is as if you are slowly, beautifully and grotesquely, inch by inch, from your toes up, pulling your insides up through your gut and out of your mouth to examine, to share, to both shed light on them and to protect them. To declare them safe, valid and real. As if the are not real until they are seen, the very solitary experience of them not enough.
That said, like "Leaves of Grass" I have a feeling that "Howl", if I read it, would feel overly masculine to me. Whitman, while the pure relishing of earth and form resonates with me, has always felt distantly male. I don't know a female voice for this same genre, for this same cry to be seen, to see ones self, to self-validate at the same time you are making an argument that you are valid without question and in prose. In a hazy, half poetic, half drunken or drugged, or elated lyrical way.
My little half asleep, sleep deprived, morning meow.
I absolutely was pushed by the scenes in which James Franco, as Ginsberg, describes his writing process. I do not in any way wish to compare myself with Ginsberg, but I've never heard a better description of what it feels like to produce prose. "I saw windows and thought 'eyes' and I felt 'dun, da, dun, da.....' so that's the way it should be..." (Not an exact quote.) The push and abdominal need to spit out authenticity, through words, through descriptive auditory paintings - I can feel this. I can feel a corporeal response to that - as if my body rather than my mind agrees with him. In a grunting, hands pushing a plough, feet digging in kind of way. A delicate at times, other times guttural, "unh" "this is me, this is my inside out." It is as if you are slowly, beautifully and grotesquely, inch by inch, from your toes up, pulling your insides up through your gut and out of your mouth to examine, to share, to both shed light on them and to protect them. To declare them safe, valid and real. As if the are not real until they are seen, the very solitary experience of them not enough.
That said, like "Leaves of Grass" I have a feeling that "Howl", if I read it, would feel overly masculine to me. Whitman, while the pure relishing of earth and form resonates with me, has always felt distantly male. I don't know a female voice for this same genre, for this same cry to be seen, to see ones self, to self-validate at the same time you are making an argument that you are valid without question and in prose. In a hazy, half poetic, half drunken or drugged, or elated lyrical way.
My little half asleep, sleep deprived, morning meow.
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