Kuriosities

1st draft 26-11-07

Guitar
by K.

please forgive me.
these clumsy attempts at love
are not at all what i wanted
going in.

these naive fingers-
awkward as adolescents
rushing in, furtive, fumbling
too slow, too fast
all wrong

do you know how
much i want to make you
cry out? how i need
you to bend to me?

in dreams i close my eyes
and cradle you, my fingers
skim your contours, read
you like braille – sound the one
note where you buried
your heart.

copyright 2007 Kuriosities.com, all rights reserved, may not be reprinted without permission
 

(more…)

Gin; a girl’s first love
by K.

above all else
it is his scent she loves -
this particular mix of
sweat and fierce loyalty, so
tangible it fills her head like warm cotton
when she is alone, with only the night
before her, it is this
that she wraps herself in,
this the nest she sleeps in;
the memory of her cheek against his
neck,  breathing deeply…

copyright 2007 Kuriosities.com, all rights reserved, may not be reprinted without permission from author

If I were to be introduced to you for the first time, after meeting your eyes and finding what lay there, I may let my gaze fall discreetly to your neck… I don’t mean to, and I know that this may seem strange, but the neck is often where a piece of the soul is held. I am looking at your jewelry – the pieces you wear closest to your heart like a secret. It may tell me nothing – but so often it is a clue to a beautiful and intimate story.

Right now a brilliant citrine graces my neck – wrapped in silver and knotted on a leather thong. To me, it is the sun. It is life, purity of spirit. It is the dream of happiness, of lightening my anxiety, of keeping the suffocation of a long winter at bay. It is a wish, delicately balanced, poised to leap…

I have  started to think about medallions and if I were to choose one, what would mine hold? I am not a Catholic, or any religion actually. My childhood was churchless , and my prayers were only poems spoken to myself. My alter can be a parkbench, my spiritual adviser a small child, or the love in a dog’s eye. So I let my mind wander… and was blessed with an image of a pomegranate – a section of leathery skin cut away to reveal the blood red seeds inside, And I saw the medallion it would make so clearly…oxidised darkly in sterling silver – a tiny deep garnet nestled in the depths.

Which made me think of pomegranates themselves – their textures, the round leathery weight of them, their taste – so bittersoursweet. But moreover their symbolism, and why I would choose such a symbol for myself right now. That when brought to task, my subconscious delivered this strange fruit …

Pomegranates have always meant Persephone to me – a journey to the darker aspects of the soul – of sensuality, power and submission, mystery, shadows – longings…a sinking into oneself, a surrender, deep introspection, an inventory of the soul, a winter coming on…

I suspect it may also have something to do with my thoughts on Lou, and the person that she was, and on muses in general. Of being adored – and the duality of attraction and repulsion, invitation and rejection that can ensue. That particular tension of longing and denial. I’m letting it simmer to see what it tells me.

Strangely enough, when G came home from the store today – a pomegranate was the first thing my hand connected with when it reached int the grocery bag. I pulled it forth in a mix of delight and surprise, exclaiming “How did you know!?” , which of course he hadn’t known really, and yet some part of him knew to buy a pomegranate today, when we never have them.

So… some sketches of pomegranates, and a draft of poems in process….:

three seeds
or was it four? caught
between my teeth, each one
a valentine bursting, your dark juices
staining my lips.

the taste of you lingers
on my tongue…

Persephone

pt. 1 -falling-

the price for one flower
plucked by my own hands-
the clouds yielded for one brief
moment to the sun, parted their voluptuous folds
to shiver a small kiss across it’s innocent
petals – their goosebumps pulling
my eye, commanding my fingers
take.

how could I know what
earthquakes would ensue, fingers
grasp the bending stalk, heavy with longing
the earth open beneath my toes, falling,
the heady scent of spent flowers, the flesh
crushed in alarm, the damp loam
pressed in my nostrils, how could I
know that the earth’s embrace was only a
shadow of what would
come

(. . .)

three dots
and the space that surounds them
deceptively hollow, sit crouched
close to the line
waiting
for me to fill in the blanks

three dots
were made
for waiting and
wrong ideas, they can
wait here forever,

suspending the sentence

until the cows come home
and the herd is at pasture
filling their heavy sides with lush green grass
as i wait alone

three dots
hold everything you did not say
between them, they trail off into the night
their morse code tapping
on my skull, a water torture
of punctuation

three dots
stepping stones to a
place i cannot travel
 

OMG…you have to be a tenacious soul to teach yourself to play the guitar…because what nobody tells you at the beginning is:

• a) it’s hard, and really frustrating, and clumsy and you’ll feel really stupid and
• b) it hurts like *^%#%&$#!! My left hand fingers are swollen and red, and complaining miserably, and yes, I am also complaining

But…that being said, I am also liking it, and am committed to the process. I am stubborn when I need to be, and I think that will serve me well until I have built up some hefty callouses. If I can make it through karate training, (which is considerably harder and scarier at times than even this guitar, especially when you are a good 6-12″ shorter than everybody else), I can play guitar.

I really would have thought that I had better manual dexterity – what with all the precision jewelry work and whatnot – but apparently ummmm not. Ah well….practice, practice, practice. What else are Canadian winters for anyways? (Well, there is that too. )

But I figure I will fill the time that I would normally be out riding Lyrical, with practice. So at about 6 hrs or so a week, I hope I will actually be able to play something by spring. I am not used to not being good at something right away. I know, that sounds bleh, but usually I get the hang of things pretty quickly. I am not so sure that this will be the case this time. In fact, I am pretty sure that it will not. If anybody has any tips, I’d be glad to hear them!

I have been playing around with We’re going to be friends by the White Stripes. I love that song, and so far I am getting the first part down not so badly.  Just gotta get those fingers used to moving! I’m also trying to practice a few chords, but finding those difficult as they HURT. And maybe everybody finds them hard, but I think my tiny hands do not make it any easier.

Exciting news in our little island town today – new neighbours. Hurray! And they are from Montreal – even better. I couldn’t wait to get the heck away from Montreal when we moved out here…but after you settle in, and you start to slow down to the rural life, and get into a groove…you realise that there is nobody here to talk to. I mean nobody. For miles. Which is truly great, it is, and yet truly horrible all at the same time.

I like to be alone. I’ve never been the kind that does well with small talk, and parties with people I don’t know make me uncomfortable. I actually need to be alone most of the time, or I get anxious. I get too tuned into what everybody else is feeling and wanting that I get tangled in where my feelings leave off and theirs begin, and vice versa. ha – limbic system in overdrive all the time. I’m getting better at tuning it out, better at distancing and not letting myself get swept away in other people’s drama, pain, or agendas, but far from being a master…so I thought that being out here a million miles from urban life would kind of cure that for me. Simplify things – bring me back to myself and allow me to be happy again. And so far, so good  – except I guess I never really counted on how very lonely it is here. I guess I was hoping for at least some kind of ability to socialise every now and then…. which was very wrong, it turns out.

The local people call us CFA’s (come from away) – and honestly the culture is just so different, I sometimes feel like I am from a different universe altogether, and can understand why they have a label for people who are not from the island. I mean, the men can’t even seem to talk to me without turning a million shades of red and looking at their feet, and the women are not exactly overly welcoming – pretty guarded. Some people are friendly enough to chat with, say at the store or school. But that is about where it ends. Everybody has extended family, and friends that they have know since childhood – there is not much room for outsiders. 

Anyways, this guy pulled up in a van today and hopped out and introduced himself. He’s about our age, and just moved in with his girlfriend who is a lawyer. Super nice and friendly, and very Montreal, and seemed smart and you could actually talk to him (and he made eye contact and didn’t blush or stammer)… I forgot what that was actually like. I am hoping that his girlfriend is nice, and please, please, please not boring….Anyways…I don’t want to get my hopes up too much…because the likelihood of finding the perfect friend in this corner of the world is like winning the Lotto 6/49.

What I would do for a good friend right now though. You know the kind that you can have tea with, and just laugh all afternoon because you barely even have to talk, you just get each other. The kind that you love, and you know that they love you too – they just do. The kind that you can trust. The kind that you would go anywhere to help them even in the wee hours of the morning if they needed you, and you know they would do it for you. The kind that you can not see for a couple of weeks, and then just pick up where you left off. I really, really miss having friends like that…and the prospects here do not seem too great…maybe an imaginary one would fit the bill?

Anyways…I apologise for the confessional and the bleh-ish blog- I’ll get back to the previously scheduled program of a more witty and imaginative K tomorrow. Maybe I will have dreamed up an imaginary friend by then to share with you.Should it be a he or she? What will they look like? What will they do for a living, other than be my friend? Hmmmm…..

We don’t write letters anymore…Letters used to be a place to confess one’s deepest emotions, seduce our lovers, cement friendships, express ideas and open the path to new thought. But we do not take the time to write them out anymore. This is sad to me – for so many reasons…

I have been reading about Lou Andreas-Salome and Ranier Maria Rilke (as I mentioned before). The book that I have been reading is very intriguing, but it has left me cold in some ways. I want to know Lou, not just the clinical details of her life. I want to know her heart. I want to find her, and step inside. Finding her in this book is not an easy task, I can tell that she is hiding somewhere between the words, like a secret. But I’m not sure which words.

How can one woman have enticed so many of the greatest thinkers. What did they find when they looked in Lou’s eyes? Did they see themselves reflected back, only kinder, more fierce, more intelligent? What was the magic of Lou? Nietzsche stated that she was the most evil among women, but that sounds suspiciously like the sour grapes of a spurned lover to me. I imagine that Lou’s heart could swell and overflow with compassion – that she had a keen knack for limbic resonance. That her great understanding made her more valuable than anything else in their world. “Mirror, mirror on the wall… ”

So now I am in search of her own words, of which, most luckily, there are many. Letters upon letters that she wrote back and forth with the likes of Rilke, Nietzsche, Freud. Books of letters. Little pieces of Lou to put together into a portrait. Many different Lou’s to ponder, to adore, to fear, to know.

I am so glad that there are letters to read. What will future generations know about our great artists? Our songsmiths, our painters, our poets? Will they be left with the transience of leftover text messages, cybercodes to translate. What exactly did she mean when she texted ODTAA BTWITIAILWY BWDIK? Was she sincere? 

And what a rare pleasure, a box of letters. The texture of paper carefully selected. Perhaps they still smell of the writer – a hint of grapefruit or musk. The indulgence of holding them close to your face to see if you can find the scent. Holding the paper by the edges. Carefully folding and tucking them back away, for another time, when the embrace of a dear friend is needed, but far away…

As a little girl I would play in my grandmother’s bedroom, and would quietly, with great reverence pull the box of letters from the dormer closet. There were hundreds of letters, still in their carefully opened envelopes, filed neatly by date. I never read them. They were private, and even a small child can sense the importance of this. But they were beautiful to me. I would take them out one by one and run my fingers over the envelopes, trace the stamps and seals, and then just as carefully return them to their spot. Hundreds of letters my grandfather wrote to her during the war.  I don’t know what happened to the box. I asked my mother about it once, but the answer was evasive. I suspect they were thrown out…I wish I had them still. I wish I could touch them and feel my grandparents nestled between the pages.

I was thinking about Lou while I was soaking in the bath last night. The water smelled like papayas, and it made me nostalgic. I felt a poem brewing, felt it stirring deep in my belly the way these thing do when they are getting ready to be born. I can’t let them come before I am ready, or thy fly away like so many sparks into the night sky, never to be captured again. So I got out of the tub earlier than I wanted – my back was in knots and I had wanted to soak… got dressed and listened to the words. Anyways, what resulted was a letter of sorts to Lou.

we don’t write letters anymore 
by K.  

 Lou, I have been searching
for you all night, and cannot find you
I must confess I have come to this -
turning stones in the hayfield
holding my breath for clues
but have only turned up the
fragile bones of salamanders, the
scurrying of insects rushing
from the light.

It is dark, Lou, and
I am alone out here. Only
the cows are talking in their low
languid tongue, and I do not
understand them. I’m
afraid that what they say about you
is true.

 Lou, it’s late now
and I’m cold. The lamplight that
surrounds me like a fiery cocoon
will run out of fuel. Sooner,
rather than later,
I’m afraid.

I hope that it does.
I hope that it does.  

Copyright 2007 Kuriosities.com, all rights reserved, may not be reprinted without permission of the author

holding my breath
by K.

 I ran 2000 miles to the edge of the sea
without pause or care to watch the road’s
ribbon unraveling behind. Or to see you
at the end of it pulling threads.

What was important
was the salt, was to sink my longing
into the clinging red sands, was to shake you from me
cast you into the fathomless waters
like a small round stone.

and there i stood four years
eyes fixating on green hills of a distant shore
ankle deep and bitter,
begging the feckless tides to take you

 and yet you return
again and again, washed up by the waves
crashing down before me, threatening
to pull me under.

copyright 2007 Kuriosities.com, all rights reserved, may not be reprinted without permission

I don’t know if you could call me an optimist or not. I’m pretty clear on the risks involved in reality…and most days my feet are firmly rooted in the red soil of this strange little island in the sea. It would take stronger than gale force winds to sway me (depending, of course, on my current weather – some days more predictable than others – some days when I say it is going to shine, you had better not forget your umbrella and galoshes). But… there is more than a drop of the idealist in my soul. I am hopeful, would be a good descriptive phrase. Perhaps a phrase of introduction….”Hallo, I am K, and I am also Hopeful.”( yes, with a capital H.)

Now that is not to say that I am without moods. That I never have been known to forget where the last place I put my hope was. Did I lose it while shopping? Did I leave it on the bench when I sat down next to the sour faced woman who was berating her child with the beautiful eyes? Does she have it now? (wouldn’t that be  nice though?)

But somehow hope always comes back. I find it like the $20 bill in last winter’s coat pocket – and a celebration ensues. What a find! What a miraculous thing that this hope hid out the whole summer in such a dark safe place, and here it is just when the cold wind is ready to set in and turn me blue right down to my bones!

And sometimes I trust it to the wrong places for safekeeping, and it comes back dinged up and tarnished and needs some work to restore it. But sometimes, the patina makes everything more beautiful…sometimes old battered things are far sweeter than the shiny new ones. What good is a brand new toy that you never take out of the box? I guess you could sell it on ebay? I think that would be a shifty deal, money in exchange for hope. And what would you set the reserve at? And what if it was a knock-off, not the real deal, what if it was false?

Nah, I’ll just use mine thanks, and just trust that it won’t break altogether. And if it does – I’ll figure out a way to fix it. I’m good at fixing broken things, like hearts, and horses. And if I can’t do it myself – and this is where the optimism fits in I suppose – I’ll bet that somebody else can. And I’ll bet that I will find them at just the right time. Things work like that, they really do.

I am excited about it all- about all these mysteries. All of the things that are to be learned. There isn’t enough time to discover them all – but I’ll do my best. I’ll try.

So, I was thinking today about art, and artists of all kinds, and mainly about Inspiration. And where that comes from? Where do you find it? You surely can’t buy that on Ebay. Look it up though, maybe you can, you’d be amazed at what you can find there these days. But what I was thinking is that it is strange – specifically that interviews with artists are strange. That somebody will ask a musician who inspired them the most, who influenced their music? And you will usually get “the list”.  A list of other musicians who are perhaps similar in style or topic or some such thing. Maybe an alignment of souls? Inspiration has been known to work that way for sure…but what I was thinking – was wouldn’t it be neat if you asked a popular musician who most inspired him to play, and he said “Monet”. Or “Walt Whitman.” I would like to hear a painting, to feel the rhythm and melody of a very good poem. What if he said instead – “My heart told me to play music when I saw that the little girl with the beautiful eyes had found the lost hope of a stranger on the bench in the mall. That’s when I knew the song was in me – and it has been playing through me ever since.” 

And my inspiration? Right now it is coming from music. But I am writing, and drawing, and carving wax and shaping silver and gold out of what that music is saying to my soul….

That is what is inspiring me – that and riding Lyrical (the most magical of all rosey grey ponies) across the fields of this strange red island at breakneck speeds and laughing, and being a child again – free of worry on the back of a pony. If you have ever had a dream where you could fly…that is what Lyrical is…exhilaration on four hooves. In fact, everybody should have a pony. If they did (and now this is just something I feel in my heart – no scientific studies have been completed or any such thing, but) my hunch is that it would be a happy world indeed.

Somebody wrote a song about that feeling once, and now I know what he’s singing about….

 And if I had a boat
I’d go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I’d ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat 

Well, I don’t have a boat, but I sure do have a pony… and I ride her on the edge of the sea, so that is almost as lovely.

And unrelated, but one from me that’s been mulling around….maybe the start of something else, I’ll let it sit a while and see what it does. 

the marks we leave behind 
by K.

i felt your footsteps fall
on this red earth – knew the vibration
through the sole
of my own foot. the air
shimmered, even 

the potato blossoms
stopped growing and perked up
to listen. 

copyright 2007 Kuriosities.com, all rights reserved, may not be reprinted without permission from the author

Safety and Vulnerability  
by K  

I have tread here before
though winds have blown the dust of my footprints
eroded the valleys of my passage
and new grasses, and small trees have taken root
the message the wind carries still whispers
the same.
 

and if I were to lead you here
the quiet spaces where the breath escapes
then gently fills, renews
if I were to lead you here, this landscape
where my soul tangles in the bare branches
is carried like a ribbon on the breeze
what mark would you bring?

How deep would your toes reach
to place themselves in these sands
how careful would they gage their landing?
And could the hieroglyphics of their departure
map my way back to where you stand?

Copyright 2007, Kuriosities.com, all rights reserved