Tag: lorraine

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I stayed out past one in the morning and now it’s Monday

I stayed out past one in the morning and now it’s Monday. I consider

cooking a paired-down version of pasta primavera this evening but

have no peas, asparagus or pasta. Plus I’m in the office today. I stayed

out past my ability to converse, nodding my head, full of love. Anselm

apologizes for keeping me out so late, but I’m not embittered, just past

language into unreasoning feeling. The Strait of Harmuz blockade

continues and Trump said if it was up to him, he would “keep the oil”

in Iran. All objects are equally objects, but not all objects are equally

real, the point being that a good theory supposedly has to draw 

distinctions between different kinds of beings, but a philosophical

theory should begin by excluding nothing, says Graham Harman.

I was out too late and I’m finding it hard to think about the agency 

of my noodle soup. Must my noodle soup have agency to be real?

My staff I.D. from twelve years ago of me looking tired and angry

in my asymmetrical haircut. Which of us is more real? I see the appeal

of ranking realness–some parts of my life feel more material than others.

Frankly, I am unfeigned about most things. This is why I will never

be cool. If I did heroin, I would die. It’s why I suffer after my late nights.

One of my yoga teachers warned me about overheating, but I usually

don’t worry about that until summer. Still, this morning I woke with hives

on my face. There is too much of the God of War in me, but I’m

replacing my life with an account of its effects–that is one thing

a poem can do, be. My life is both more than its components and

less than its current actions. The poet Lorraine who currently

types these words in her office at the University of Maryland

while wearing mascara is far too specific to be the Lorraine

who will leave D.C. next week, and she can remove the mascara

whenever she wants. Atoms swerve through the void, and swirl.

My third-grade crush became by senior year boyfriend, and he

appears in my most apocalyptic dreams as his 17-year old self.

I don’t know to what degree I can continue to work today. The crappy

light in this office and subpar coffee, but everything is constantly

changing. I think about getting a new bookshelf for my studio.

Everything is contingent. A poem and a life are more interesting

for what they do, not what they are. I don’t care what Monday is,

but I know what it’s doing to me. I’m not sure what it means

for the world to be purely immanent, but I don’t think transcendence

is by default oppressive. I mean, I know this is all there is, that

the inhibiting features of this world are both element and action,

not one or the other. There are no distinct boundaries, no cut-offs.

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I appreciate the weather

I appreciate the weather, I appreciate your time and I appreciate

that you’re pretty chill, that you won’t conflate this yawn

with an actual commentary on whatever it is you’re saying.

I can’t rollerskate. I wake up at dawn rolled between covers

and my two children. That moment when your child discovers

they like dancing and listening to music, like laying in the dark

alone with headphones on. The hawk hovers for a moment,

then flies on. The beauty of car parks at sunset. I embark

on an adventure to put things away. This concept of place

that keeps returning to kick my ass, as if every place weren’t

many places and many trajectories. I brace myself for a day

that’s already past with its own weird grace, the grace inherent

in any space of time. Trevor says Levi Strauss’ concept of the

mytheme is impressive and bogus. What if the Sermon 

on the mount was in a valley? It definitely wasn’t in a cave,

I say, but that too is undetermined. Brain ways move much

slower than the speed of light. I smile at a random person

because she smiles at me. She is not a robot, she is not AI

or a deep fake in the large language model race which worsens

with every capitalist incentive. I don’t deny using Chat GPT

to ideate. I am compromised. I am not implying anything,

I’m saying it. I have never seen a lapwing. My brother

Bryan says I should go back to China. No more two-day train

rides across the country sitting next to bags of garlic, before

I was a mother, I mean before I grew two babies and two extra

organs to feed them in my womb. That’s what a placenta is.

I complain about work but I am lucky, have attained the kind

of employment I used to dream about, but not the hacienda

I still dream about. I’m always a little surprised to wake up

In Washington, D.C., which is not the TV version of America

The TV version of Washington, D.C. is usually Baltimore. Coco

picks buttercups and I put them in a small vase. The esoterica

of gardeners is something I aspire to. Although it is Friday,

I know no way of improving the world, except to be kind,

love my enemies, etc., which I mostly do. It’s easy to love hard 

to like. I never visited my father in Bombay but I should have.

I bought a Lonely Planet India and outlined a monsoon-season

appropriate itinerary, but I was disinclined to rely too much on

my father’s charity. Now I wish for more of it. If I played chess,

I would only get to check mate by accident or error, even though

I was in the honors society in high school, which was thirty years

ago, when my impropriety was minimal. I like to talk about

being ungovernable but it’s not true. I’m a part of the gears,

same as you. A devout non-believer who doesn’t need to chill

the fuck out. I am responsive. Look, we’ve all tilted at windmills 

and hoped beyond hope. Reading Don Quixote is one way 

to develop a solid vocabulary in Spanish. Trevor did it once.

The buttercups are wilted despite the vase and water. Should

buttercups be picked? Lawns should not be mowed but instead

should grow full of flowering weeds. My bead collection is mostly

old prayer beads. Bones and stones, no falsehoods, no trying.

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I should have taken more photos

I should have taken more photos, should have written more details

down; I should not have responded to that particular slack

message, should have tried to tip the scales in favor of good, told tales

to make the tipped scales stick. I bounce back from nothing, track

my so-called progress at getting braver, getting more pronounced

at articulating my needs. Do my children articulate their needs?

They do. Usually with a yell or a whine. I long for unannounced 

company and for the non-edible weeds to grow less thickly.

The garden cetipedes do their thing, but I don’t really know

what that means. I grow more impatient but better at ignoring

my impatience, age has bestowed upon me some self-control.

I don’t know what I should expect of my children. I sign

a lease for a new studio, watch videos about pulling up carpet

and finishing subflooring. I feel like there are a million

hidden meanings in every interaction and I ignore most of them.

The Wednesday farmer’s market is open again and it shouldn’t

be a political statement to say you oppose killing civilians.

Today’s quote from Trump is “I don’t care about that,” where

“that” is enriched uranium in Iran. My opinions get me

nowhere useful, and I’m often against what’s useful. Mike

sends a picture of graffiti in Seattle that talks about making space

for joy and we joke about space for okayness. The untruthful

assertion that joy is where it’s at. Desmond asked me to read

a draft and I edited out so much. Could barely read the poem.

The crucial information was totally inappropriate. I scratch

the scratch until it bleeds and wonder, is this a form of stimming?

I wonder about my ovum, about the ho-hum daily okayness,

my ability to detach. I am brimming with neither confidence

nor detail. I save those for my poems. I find it difficult

to articulate a clear thought at work, and when I do, it renders

me unable to listen to anyone. This is obviously significant.

I have wanted to be an old man in suspenders, have wanted a thought

worth having. Thought. Worth. Having. What is the opposite of that?

That’s what’s in my head, in the poem. None of my thoughts are

mine, but they come to me from whatever trajectory or side of the table

they’re on. My side, your side. Left brain, right brain, no brain.

That’s what Cure for Paranoia sings. So. No brain. No thought. Just the

accumulative meaning of experience, or language, or time. Whatever.

The cogitative capacities of poets have not been overrated. I think

my country actively distrusts poets, and by my country I really

mean the government of this country and maybe most but not all

of the people. The land trusts us. The sky, too. I am trying to fill

out the form about my child, who may need accommodations,

and I think of all the accommodations that would have helped

me through college. If someone had put me on Ritalin earlier,

I might have been able to keep a job. I might have suffered

a little less. Out of malice, I imagine hanging a poitier on all

our living room windows. Like the excessive curtains in my aunt’s house.

No, I haven’t recovered from my last romance, but I have

discovered that recovery is irrelevant. As a lover, I’m destined

to go on loving inappropriately. Forever, I hope. Let me never

get over anything. Let it all pile up. The days, the confessions,

the keepsakes. So that only an archeology can sort them out.