Misericordia

Lent has stilled the bell tongues of the town save for the carillon of the Catholics tolling the hour to the courthouse. Think not of the dark-robed there meting out a facsimile of justice.  Think of the choirs of geese on city park lake that do not force piety on one another;  they  settle on open water after hours on the flight-path over the Continental Divide.  The earth wakes and cares not whether the Penitentes smeared in lamb’s blood put up timber crosses in the Jemez.  The waters will swell and course and the body will surge and sing, burn and desire.

The soul dies if we are silenced, made to feel we cannot speak, cannot name what is—as seen with our very own eyes.  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the heavens, the Big Dipper each night  pour milk over the fields,  how Canis Major burns on, glazing  the mares’ backs with frozen light.  Someone is turning the earth over with a great fork so that air, light and water come to it to soften, split and raise the seed.

Mozart finished his requiem in indecipherable whispers.  He shut himself away to hear the callings he wrote down in a rain of black notes on parchment.  He couldn’t stop or silence himself.  Whitman the same, writing a woman waits for me, of waiting and surging manly love and we, we women are the takers and keepers of the seminal milk and we seek diligent assuagement of the inner flower. I need you. I hunger for you.  As it is Lent, I confess that I have often terrified myself away from being filled and released to my own torrent.

Here then is a sundered dream: the priest proffers the host to me and I open his robe and take the bread of love into my mouth.  He goes down on his knees, spilling forth the incarnate.  Later he finds me and spares me nothing, with his circling tongue and probing fingers.  I am the bread of life, he said;  she who comes to me will not hunger.

But broken promises—that we will no longer make war, that we will be changed, rage on as the billowing light of day.  Even when the sagacious geese that fly and call to each other mate in mid-air like a refueling, and all the unseen things writhe together in the dark privacy of the waking brown grass and the slugs make their light-filled orchid from the intertwining and strange elongated glands that then burst, so that each falls to the grass, spent.

Jenne’ Andrews

March 30, 2011

Copyright Jenne’ R. Andrews

I was sad tonight for myself, that I have closed down against love, made my heart a stone.  I know that you know what I mean.

Then I came upon the following poem of Walt Whitman’s at the Poetry archive, and I feel lifted up.

A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of
   the right man were lacking.

Sex contains all, bodies, souls,
Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations,
Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the
   seminal milk,
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the passions, loves,
   beauties, delights of the earth,
All the governments, judges, gods, follow'd persons of the
   earth,
These are contain'd in sex as parts of itself and justifications
   of itself.

Without shame the man I like knows and avows the
   deliciousness of his sex,
Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.

Now I will dismiss myself from impassive women,
I will go stay with her who waits for me, and with those
   women that are warm-blooded sufficient for me,
I see that they understand me and do not deny me,
I see that they are worthy of me, I will be the robust
   husband of those women.

They are not one jot less than I am,
They are tann'd in the face by shining suns and blowing
   winds,
Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength,
They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run,
   strike, retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves,
They are ultimate in their own right--they are calm, clear,
   well-possess'd of themselves.

I draw you close to me, you women,
I cannot let you go, I would do you good,
I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own
   sake, but for others' sakes,
Envelop'd in you sleep greater heroes and bards,
They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me. 

It is I, you women, I make my way,
I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable, but I love you,
I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,
I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for these
   States, I press with slow rude muscle,
I brace myself effectually, I listen to no entreaties,
I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long
   accumulated within me. 

Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,
In you I wrap a thousand onward years,
On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and
   America,
The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic
   girls, new artists, musicians, and singers,
The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn,
I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-
   spendings,
I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and
   you interpenetrate now,
I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as
   I count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now,
I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death,
   immortality, I plant so lovingly now.

Yesterday I watched French jets take out four Libyan tanks in the first maneuver  over the new no-fly zone, approved last week by the U.N.  About time the French stepped up.

But today it appears to have fallen upon the U.S. once again to do the hard, thankless, dangerous and forever equivocal work of “taking out” Ghadaffi’s resources.  I just saw a stat that we’ve dropped forty bombs.

As usual, polemicists around the world are trash-talking the U.S., saying it’s all about our lust for oil. And no one, especially those who have the balls to do this dirty work, wants civilian casualties.

I don’t think it’s about the oil, however convenient it is to cast the U.S. as so greedy we would use the Libyan crisis to force a hidden agenda.   I think it’s about coming to the assistance of people making a bid for freedom, many of whom the Libyan regime has already wiped out.  Time will tell.

In other news: Obama & company in Brazil.  Michelle Obama and her daughters looked fabulous.  Melea was tugging at the clingy hem of her dress deplaning Air Force One.  Cute.

I’ve been thinking about how Obama has withstood the bashings and now bears up under numerous crises, seemingly cool as a cucumber.  I’m proud of him; I continue to admire and respect him.

No one would question anything about his legitimacy if he weren’t black.  Is that not glaringly and pathetically obvious at this point.  Anyone who believes the Huckabees, Limbaughs and Becks of the world– the Palins, the Bachmans, needs to have a CAT scan.

My happy:  a number of people are reading Nightfall in Verona as I put up a new chapter each day.  What happens when three hippie chicks rendevous in Frankfurt and buy a VW bus?  Read my blogged memoir to find out, and many thanks!

Dear Reader:  This is a permanent post for the moment– hah– scroll down for the latest post here.  Meanwhile, I’ve decided that Nightfall in Verona deserves a readership and so I’ve posted it; it launched yesterday at its very own site here.

I had numerous kudos on the first few chapters from poets & friends on Facebook including Jim Moore, Phebe Hanson and Zetta Brown, my editor at LL Publications, and after hours of peering at the template designer in Blogger, I think it looks great and is easy to read.  Join me on my journey– I’ll be posting a chapter a day.  As with all blogs you can scroll down and leave a comment!   Publication in hard copy form pending.  xxxj

How hilarious is this:  I just ran across an advert for an Italian writing retreat this summer– salt rose to my tongue, tears sprang to my eyes, as I read the following:

“Imagine the volume of writing you could produce if you gave yourself two weeks at a traditional Tuscan farm, were fed three meals a day by talented chefs, and drank wine to your heart’s content.

When you wake every morning to birdsong in a forested organic estate and live in an empowering community of fellow writers, you can make headway on even the most daunting creative project.

• One-on-one manuscript guidance
• Enlivening group critiques
• Hatha yoga
• Pranayama breathwork
• Delicious healthy food
• Creative writing discussion and exercises”

In 1973 as my followers may remember, to recover from a nervous breakdown over a relationship gone very wrong,  I went on a spur of the moment writing jaunt from Frankfurt to the toe of the boot of Italy.  I got to drive a VW bus through a blizzard in the Alps, dance the night away in about fifty discos, see three operas at the Arena di Verona, travel by train down the coast for three weeks in the arms of a testosterone-loaded Italian lover,  drink wine, vermouth, latte di mandorla to my heart’s content– swim in the Strait of Messina, listen to Mozart on a jukebox in the exquisite coastal village of Scylla, camp on Corsica over the Mediterranean.  Lucky me–I also got to experience having a period in southern Italy where there were no tampons, come down with a bladder infection, deal with a bout of dysentery and instruct my lover in the art of digital manipulation in a nerve-wracking series of private moments, in his language.  All of this was possible thanks to my all-loving and all-forgiving friends Caroline and Julia Marshall, who took me to Europe on their dime.

I’ve written a memoir about it, Nightfall in Verona,  a chapter of which is listed here on the blog on the banner. Caroline and Doug think the book is fabulous, but the last agent I sent it to said it had a wandering feel– duh– it’s about a trip– and I’ll probably self-publish it through my new imprint Orfea Books, having had it to the teeth with the old school route to fame and stardom.

I hadn’t thought of the trip itself as a writing retreat– but it was, obviously, as I’ve been writing about it for thirty-eight years!  I was twenty-five, we went in’73, and this is 2011– I think.  I’ve tried to find my old love in diligent online searching and am on the verge of writing a “letter to Juliet” having discovered that since I was in Reggio Calabria, the Mafia has murdered nearly 1000 people in that very town.

As for drinking wine to my heart’s content now, if I did that I wouldn’t write a line, probably; I would have to be taken to the  nearest detox after wetting my pants and falling into the ocean, possibly having disrobed in front of my yoga teacher in the process.  I’m just sayin’… I’ve since discovered that drinking makes me w-a-a-a-y too crazy and I try not to do it.

Regarding the walks, the swims– ah, to dream of it.  I’ve lost most of my mobility, just discovered I have a herniated disc in addition to post-traumatic arthrosis of the right knee so that I drag a shepherd’s crook of  a right leg through life– I’m somewhat agoraphobic, rarely sleep, and am writing four hours a day in my subsidized apartment, already on permanent vacation until the curtain falls– still in boring Fort Collins until and unless I move back to the Southwest or manage to get an RV down to Mexico without getting killed.

But what a fabulous idea.  The idea of returning to Italy, to Scylla and dwelling in one of the adorable flats battered by the sea absolutely sends me.  I wouldn’t want to be too lonely– I’d have to commission a lover– probably a retired fisherman who didn’t talk too much, particularly not in the Calabrian dialect I don’t understand very well,  and just wanted to fuck like old goats, float around on air mattresses in the surf,  and make fresh pasta sauce from i pomadori rossi, the wild tomatoes.

What’s a dream for?  Wild tomato here.  xxxj

Four a.m. here and absolutely miserable and ready to admit that I actually do not want to continue the insane crowded subway ride it is to compete for placement in magazines, et cetera.  I did all of that– for years.  I want and need to live and write for me, my own pleasure.  I will publish myself through Orfea Books.  If I sell a few copies, great.  But I have absolutely no tolerance for the game, the clawing up the ladder,  the ass-kissing required.  Moreover, one must protect one’s voice, or we’ll all sound like each other.  I will continue to post stunning work at La Parola Vivace.  Do visit me there.

I remember how misty we all got in high school when we sang our country’s patriotic hymns and the National Anthem.  I was a Fort Collins High School Lambkin “booster” with a pull-over sweater and short skirt striped in purple and gold, and I had pompoms that when not in use would grace the mirror of my dresser.  I was all about the team, God and country back then. Being an American woman was a part of my sense of personal destiny.

I got misty this morning over beautiful America for the first time in years.  I live in one of the most beautiful regions of our country–the Rocky Mountains– in Northern Colorado, an area termed as the “Front Range”,  meaning the prairie that rolls away to the border from the nearest tier.  On my way in and out of town, only two miles from the historic center, I can see gorgeous Long’s Peak, her diamond facets– always a heart-stopping sight.

Today, a short while ago,  I got misty again when I watched Discovery land live on MSNBC.  It was enthralling to watch and hear live video from the cockpit, and to bear witness to a text book landing of the mother ship, the foremost shuttle on her last run.

Suddenly for a moment I was proud to be an American again and I didn’t think of our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, nor our predecessor shames of Viet Nam and the singularly hard to imagine or remember, our dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Japan.  What a sight to behold: the glorious silver eagle, her parachute tail-feathers breaking her glide over the tarmac.

Abruptly, the news of how we might take to the air over Libya resumed.  There is fresh news that Gaddafy is bombing insurgent strongholds, pinning the people in.  He rages on, on state television from Tripoli– all of this in a language incomprehensible to most of us.

I have not taken the part of Muslims very often on my blog, because I have defended our right to be wounded in the wake of 9-11 and the right to be wary.  But all over the Middle East people are crying out for freedom.

America has always responded to that cry– imperfectly and often in the face of condemnation by many nations.  At this moment Obama is meeting with the Joint Chiefs to explore our options.

I have always descried the role of this country as intervenor, especially in the Bush years.  But I believe that when people are being slaughtered anywhere, we need to step up– not to protect our oil interests, but to serve as liberators.  Call me naive, but I believe in those distinctions.

This was our role in the German occupation of France; it is why so many of our own died at Normandy and all over Europe.  Other countries settle back on their haunches and turn a blind eye.  We are unable to, for good or ill.

Good-bye, beauteous sky-farer, Discovery.  Thank you to the courageous Americans who have braved the frontiers of the ether, those who will fall today in Afghanistan for their principles and a tenuous and often untenable purpose, and those who may take to the air on behalf of the oppressed, for all of us.

Here without further do is a reprisal of the interview with myself I posted last year– for grins, good will, just plain fun.  Enjoy!

We are seated in my living room; I have asked to be interviewed at dawn, when I am at my sharpest– a few hours of rest, some coffee, my brain in gear from watching Morning Joe and Shaun White’s stunning gold medal pull-off, Lindsey Vaughn’s downhill run despite her bruised thigh, wipe-outs and snide pokes at male figure skating. Our man in black the other night all alone on the ice did look Tinkerbell-ish, but…go Team USA, “medalling” is tres fabu-luth…

The interviewer seems to be a sensitive, open person; she comes in and sits in my white wicker rocker.  She welcomes a cup of coffee with cream and sugar, setting it on the table beside her.  She gets out a yellow pad and uncaps a pen.

“I guess I’ll start with the obvious question.  What drives you to get up and write at this hour?”

“Desperation.”

She looks startled.  ”What do you mean?”

“If I write something each day, it means that I have at least a few of my oars in the water.”

She looks at me somewhat apprehensively.

I try again.  I have noticed that the male pundits on cable typically preface every comment with “Look…”

“Look.  After years of trying to be many other things and do other things, I have to face that I’m a writer.  I write because I can’t help it. If I don’t write, I get depressed, and then I blow off the entire day.”

“Can you talk a little more about what it is about writing… is this therapy?”

“Sure.  It’s therapy in a way, but mostly, it’s a matter of a compulsion to articulate things.”

“What kinds of things.”

“How things are.”

“You know, you’re not giving me much.  I need specifics, if you want me to work up your story and post it on my site at They WriteThey BlurtThey Break Wind.com,  so people will read you.”

I start over.  ”Sorry.  I hang with someone who talks monosyllabically a lot.  He’s into using as few words as possible at any given moment, even though he’s a writer too.”

Anyway, I write because I love language, I love making something out of language.  I love to paint a picture with words, tell a great  story or write a poem that tells it like it is: I love to write passionately and precisely; my latest poems are very emotional but contained somehow; the form forces me to be definite.  I’m writing memoir too, vignettes, unearthing memories now tinged hopefully with humor, showing…hopefully, because it’s important to write truths– the pathos of the past but that over time what seem like ordinary experiences turn out to be extraordinary and that within each narrative there is a seed of redemption; in writing the piece I claim the things that happened and make them mine…they offset what has been a rather bleak life the last few years.”

She is writing furiously now.  ”May I have some more coffee?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s talk about where you think you’re going.”

“Well, into an early grave, if I don’t write.”

“Can you be more specific.”

“I mean that in the past two months it’s as if I am waking up after a quarter of a century straying from making art.   Just call me Jen van Winkle.   I mean, I kept writing but at some point I lost my confidence, I stopped caring about it and me and I put all my energies into caretaking….”

She looks confused.

“Caretaking. Caregiver’s Stress is actually in the DSM IV.  You may not know that it’s a real problem for a lot of women; it’s why some women get so mad that they shoot people.    Anyway,   I am in many ways the product of my generation and my mother’s generation.  When feminism came along many women artists and writers answered the call to be more than housewives.  I tried, and I was never actually a housewife, but I blundered into relationships and moved into farm houses and got lots of creatures so that I was on duty and nurturing all the time.”

“Why?”

“When I lived alone in the city and tried just to be writer and just to take care of me, it was too lonely.  I couldn’t spend hours alone in an apartment looking out at the sky now and then, writing and writing.  I needed people.  I went to bars.  I drank a lot and discovered I was a real entertainer.  I became a party girl.  What I’m doing now is just an extension of how I would go over to people’s houses and guzzle their wine and tell stories about my various encounters and my crazy family for hours.”

“But you published; you have written that your career took off during your city years.”

“That’s true, in and around my escapism and self-medicating, it did.”

“So what happened.  How did you come to leave the city, how did it affect your work.”

Well, it was the spring of ’78 and my father had died, a relationship was in the ditch, my job came to an end– the money ran out– I think I was tired.  I think I just thought, well, I’ll go home to the West for awhile.  I got back, and there was a lot to do.  And, I gave myself a very grueling physical life, cooking, raising animals, living in the country.  I didn’t know how to set limits on how much of myself I gave to these things.  I’m not sure I know how to balance these things now.  Like I said, caregiver’s distress.”

“Children?”

“No children. l Tried many times.  I have a fibroid or something…it’s been there for years.  It showed up on a vaginal ultrasound, like a tenth planet, right in my uterus.  Ever had one of those?”

She clears her throat.  ”I bet your relationships gave you interesting material.  Marriage?”

“One year, to a psychology major five years my junior. I met him while I was in a psych ward.  He was a mental health assistant.  He came and sat with me and held my hand and two weeks later, quit his job and moved in with me.”

“Amazing.  Written about that?”

“Not yet.  Notes.  I’ve gotten to the part where before he popped the question I found him in bed with someone else, rammed his car up onto a hump of snow, got out of my car and put a snow shovel through her front window and baptised him with brandy when he came out of her room naked.  He proposed the very next morning.  But, yeah,  one year.  I wasn’t cut out for marriage.”

“How do you know that?”

“Well, I think I just gave you a big fat clue.  But you should interview him.  He’ll tell you why in a very short sentence.  I guess I feel confined, on duty, under pressure to live up to somebody’s expectations.  I mean, I always thought I’d get married… and I did, but ultimately I see now that I just don’t do well sharing the same space with someone..or they don’t do well sharing the same space with me, either way. “

“So what about now?  what are you working on.”

“Well.  I have lots of things I’m “working” on…there’s just not much time.”

“Hold it.  Why not.”

“Well, I’m pretty worn down, used up, from hard things.  I’ve written about them and I’m not going to post all of them here, and I hope to bring out a book of memoir, we’re all like lemmings leaping into the sargasso of our personal pasts, hoping that they’re interesting, trying to write memoir.  I’m trying to figure out the memoir boom.  Anyway, so I’m working on memoir by writting vignettes, pieces.  It’s not quite right to call them vignettes because they’re autobiographical.  Nobody knows what to call such things. They’re just compulsive pieces of writing all about your self, but at least I’m writing again.  That’s what I tell myself.”

“I suppose “blog posts” doesn’t do them justice.”

I give her a sharp look.  ”Sometimes.  But generally, I don’t think so, in my case…. I find that I like posting engaging, evocative pieces…. people are being very kind and supportive and I need that right now, after thinking for so long, in spite of the validation I had when young, that I’d lost it, my edge, that I wasn’t a writer anymore.”

“Wow.  So, you’re writing memoir, and it sounds like you think, even though lots of Americans live into their eighties and nineties now, that..you’re kind of in the twilight of your life…”

“Right. And a novel.  I started working on a novel.  Everybody wants to write a novel and have a ‘debut’ novel and at 61 going on 30 in real-time, I do too.  I want to take the world by storm and write something really good.  But I think my debut is going to be my finale and I will leave behind a very small ‘”oeuvre.’”

“Don’t you love that word?  It’s so elegant, and you pronounce it so beautifully.  I suppose you know French?

“Nope.  I know some words.  I know Spanish…I’ve actually made love in Spanish…and in Italian… I know how to say, ‘It’s dry there.  Put a little olive oil there.– e’ seco ancor, olio di olivi, prego..grazie, bravo.”

“Do you have an idea for a novel?”

“I do.”

“What is it.”

I lean forward.  ”Well..look:  you know I did a Google search yesterday to see if anybody had written about this the way I hope to…but it’s about a bunch of whores on the American frontier who get tired of living on their backs and decide to steal a bunch of horses and drive them all the way to …

“Really?  You know, that sounds a lot like a spin-off of Lonesome Dove, when the ex- Texas Ranger  Woodrow Call decides to take cattle to Montana Territory….”

“Yeah. You really can’t help being derivative these days.  Everything worth reading has been written already, practically… But you’re right, it is a spin-off.  I started thinking about how Lonesome Dove is all about the power and mobility of men– except for one woman character and she holds down a ranch, but one of the characters is a prostitute and she is portrayed as so fragile and vulnerable…enough already– I bet the women of the mining camps and prairie towns who survived by turning tricks were actually pretty strong.  They were just practical.  They found a niche market.”

“Nice. “ The interviewer is musing, reviewing her notes.  ”Is this your serious work?”

“Well, it’s serious, yes, I would say that if you plan on writing something for as long as it takes to write it, you’re serious….  I should really be thinking about surgery on my deformed, improperly healed broken leg, even perhaps launching a lawsuit over the whole mess, but that depresses me.  It doesn’t depress me to write about whores in rebellion in the male-dominated Southwest… I hope to write one or two pages a day and see where it goes. “

“Have you started?

“Sort of.  I have a character in mind….”

“What about a title?  Got a title?”

“Glad you asked.  Westward the Ho’s.”