231 .JAGGED EDGES

From the Archive (June 2006) I can’t remember who said “Youth will go but passion and freedom will have to be reconquered each day of your life,” but I have been thinking about that line a lot lately.

So many things vie for our time, threaten to reduce us to strangers spasming at the stoplight as we worry about the next commitment we must reach on time because of some artifical frame that we have allowed our need for a salary to place around our true selves.

It is too damn easy to get wrapped up in crap like this and forget to live your life, forget to even notice that beautiful goldfinch right there in the tree beside you.

Work is consuming nearly all of my time right now and would be a twenty-four-hour job if I allowed it to be.

This isn’t surprising, given that it’s the end of the fiscal year—a normal June, really—but I am trying very hard to retain my passion, to hold onto the poet in the midst of my overcommitments and changing job landscape and arrogant yet oh-so-lousy new boss and her disappointing new administration (and did I mention that she has no idea how to perform my job yet keeps trying to micromanage me anyway?).

Mainly, this is very bad news because I must stay here another year before I am vested and have benefits for life upon retirement.

Danishgrrl says I am burned to a crisp and has suggested an impromptu cookout with friends till she can whisk me off to the beach for a long luxurious weekend.

Hope this helps.

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Nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design.—Harry Crews

So did anyone else hear that naval-gazing poet Billy Collins read on NPR last night?

Jezzzuslawd that man is self-absorbed! He read a precious little poem about poetry (with a capital P) that was basically a bunch of masturbatory self-congratulatory lines that didn’t amount to anything, and then Terry Gross practically peed her pants congratulating him.

Ugh.

I guess I need to remember that poet laureates are not chosen from poets’ poets.

As for me, I want to slap the pompous man in the name of O’Hara and Broumas and all the new and innovative poets writing meaningful lines today.

Meanwhile, the New York Times is running a series of articles on how genes move and change, written by the amazingly hot smartypants evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson and wow what a picture of her they have posted! It’s almost enough to make me subscribe to Times Select instead of reading my electronic freebie.

Not much time to read right now though—although I am following the impact of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Rolling Stone article on how the Republicans deliberately stole the election in Ohio.

This is, what, the fourth report to verify this horrifying reality, but has the story been broadcast by the mainstream media

(who, for that matter, still haven’t reported that Gore actually won in Florid.)?

There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark when Americans have to listen to the BBC to find out about the demise of our democratic principles.

LISTENING TO: the wheels go round and round (I really love to watch them roll)

READING: Sartre’s Existentialism and Human Emotions

SANG IN SHOWER: Kasey Chambers’ “Pony”: When I grow up I want a baby. I’m going to name it after Ralph Stanley...

BEST-OF SPAM: Anything to please your woman (uh huh)

201. I AM A COMMON WOMAN. . .

...There are a lot more just like me
Holding the whole damn world together,
Day by day, week by week.

Turn to your neighbor;
Look in her face.
You can read it in her eyes:
We all are common women,
As common as bread,
And will rise, will rise.
—Mary Beth Elliot/Joan Simcoe’s song “Common Woman”

From the Archives (March 2006) This afternoon, we held a reception for an employee who retires next week. Our fearless leader applauded her “quiet contribution” (at the rate of $26,000 annually after 30 years of service), praised her diligence and attention to detail, then presented her with a gift certificate to a big-box office supply store before we partook of reception fare together.

I’m glad we honored her publicly, glad she retired with full benefits after dedicating so many years of her life to this place, but couldn’t help but remind myself that this same fearless leader told me to get rid of her just four years ago.

(I’m cocky, so replied Why don’t you tell me how much money you need instead [big boy] and let me find it for you?)

So perhaps readers will understand why the edges of my parched lips curled into an uncontrollable snarl when Fearless Leader shook the hand of a woman who will retire having no idea how hard I had to work to save her position and benefits just a few short years ago.

Everybody knows that the deal is rotten. Old Black Joe’s still picking cotton for your ribbons and bows. Everybody knows.

What’s that Percy Bysshe Shelley line:

The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature

Today I need some poetry so, okay, I’ll end with a poem:

MY HEART

I’m not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don’t prefer one “strain” to another.
I’d have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind. I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar.
(...) and my heart—
you can’t plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open.
—Frank O’Hara