brentriley

nine years

This year marks 9 years of this blog. Most of my early entries were lost, but I eventually found many of them in txt files scattered all over my hard drive. I've been trying to reconstruct them in word documents, pasting together their timelines. They were never really about a time or place. Reading them again is strange. Maybe I had the same voyeuristic satisfaction writing them as I would peering through the bushes of the park at night. People aren't there to understand you, they're there to consume what you have to offer which is really not much at all. But I've met some of my closest friends in those bushes so I would do it again, all that writing again. Those friends were worth it.

It felt so intimate reading other blogs, all the ones I wanted were hidden eighteen clicks deep. I didn't want random links or long opinions about what they heard a friend say to another friend. Those frustrated me because they kept me away from what I really wanted. I wanted the juicy meat of the heart served up on my screen. Memories and confessions. I liked those dark caves about the desperate cravings of a meth addict in recovery, a cutter upset her boyfriend no longer reacted to it, men fucked by Puerto Ricans repeating papi papi papi softly in their ears, the woman with cervical problems who liked to be bound with rope and wrote beautifully about it. I was at home those nights, clicking from one entry to another, hot on the trail of something I could only get there.

old mary

It snowed today and I stayed home to watch the inauguration. Listening to Elizabeth Alexander's poem during the ceremony, made me think about poetry again. What it can do, make us stop and really listen, imagine what it means. There's no right or wrong to it. It seems like poetry doesn't matter much anymore to most people. Is it written only for other poets in MFA programs? I opened Gwendolyn Brooks again and typed out her poem "Old Mary" and taped it to my wall.

Old Mary
My last defense
Is the present tense

It little hurts me now to know
I shall not go

Cathedral-hunting in Spain
Nor cherrying in Michigan or Maine

we don't call 911

Friday night, I hung back and watched the crowd at the museum reception. Mostly rich people who support the museum with lots of money. I tried to chat with a couple of the people there but when they sense you don't belong to the club they lose interest. I talked to my coworker's sister the whole evening. We groaned about the crowd and then she told me stories about growing up in the south, full of those classic eccentric southern characters. Neighbors with a pet cheetah, gin soaked spinster aunties in big dusty houses who collected pistols and shotguns placed with pride next to the alarm clock on the bedside table. Crotchety uncles who post threatening signs at the gate warning intruders we don't call 911. They shoot to kill and don't mind saying so. I kind of lost track of the snotty people around us. Later, after all the snacks and drinks were gone, we wandered outside into the dark and I headed home.

goals

I like the time people call dusk but I hate the word. It sounds brown and smells faintly gross like patchouli. Now it's dark and I should close the windows so people taking their trash to the dumpster don't see my walking around half naked. This weekend I flipped through my notebook and noticed over the summer I tried to write some goals. I should rip these pages out now. Actually I should rip every page out. I never write goals or have a plan but not doing so makes me aimless. Nothing much gets done other than reading books and watching movies. Making a bowl of oatmeal or a tuna sandwich is not accomplishing anything other than dinner. So I started to jot down easy things to finish like scrub the bathtub, fold my clothes, get up when my alarm goes off. I always intended to move on to other more sustained things like write a story or knit my niece a blanket, volunteer to help people. Someone tried to get me to call people on the phone for Obama. That sounded like torture although I think Obama is hot. Anyways, I realize my goals look like a third grader's. So to prove I did something other than clean the bathtub in September, I'll list the books I read and how I liked them (*** = great)

Aquariums of Pyongyang by Kang Choi-Hwan ***
Rogue Regime: King Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea by Jasper Becker **
Old Men at Midnight by Chaim Potok ***
Light Fell by Evan Fallenberg ***
Beaufort by Ron Leshem **
The Romance Reader by Pearl Abraham *
The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer **
Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell (no star)
A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas **
In Silence: Why We Pray by Daniel Soto ***
Last Minute Knitted Gifts ***
Afterlife by Paul Monette ***
The Same Embrace by Michael Lowenthal **
Hungry Planet ***
The Bible (Genesis, Exodus)

lost in translation

he says, "i thought you'd call when you woke up." night before last, we had spent the night together, talking softly in the dark, the sheets pulled up halfway. he smelled faintly like perfume, but i couldn't tell one way or the other. his back was smooth, curved snug against me. he talked too much as i was drifting asleep. i couldn't concentrate on what he was asking. he was making complicated plans for the future and all i wanted was sleep so i finally said let's just sleep ok? i think he was awake the rest of the night. the next morning, i shrugged and said "i hate plans, let's just see what happens."  but that just caused confusion. everything was lost in translation.

that was august and now it's september. the air is cooler, the windows open all day and night. my neighbor is out front playing catch with a friend, easy and relaxed, talking about college football and last weekend's cookout. his long lean body and skinny arms reaching high up for the ball in the air. he misses and laughs. it's all good, he shouts as he runs after it.