I was listening to the commercial on television with CNN talking about their past news casts. One of them was some special on "what it means to be Black in America. I started writing this after hearing that commercial this morning. (please forgive the constant appearance of ellipses. I have fought with Myspace's program to input this as it should be lineated...inputing this here took longer than the poem took to write.)

What it means to be Black in America.....

.. ..

That someday, sometime, when you maybe least expect it....

someone will use “that word”.  You will wonder how long....

that word has been in their vocabulary, how many times....

they have used it, and towards whom (other than you, there, right now). ....

 You will wonder what it is about you that caused them to use ....

that word towards you—not that Black is a secret, but you don’t think of....

 it when you are,  you just are-- like the mole on your right cheek, the ....

way your left eye sleeps slightly but is only noticed when someone takes a ....

picture of you.....

.. ..

What is means is that when someone drives by

with the Confederate flag pasted on the....

back of their truck—one of real fabric striking even more of a cord than ....

a plastic sticker in a window, and a bumper sticker laying somewhere....

In between the real flag and the sticker—....

Your heart skips a beat—lost and remembered, seeing the stories of....

Your uncles before your mind’s eye, wondering “is that really who is inside....

that vehicle”? ....

You are both stopped at the red of the traffic light, and there is nothing else ....

To do but look across—other than looking ahead—and so you both do.  I think....

Of how normal he looks; and what is he thinking?

Just...one...more... Make it funky! -- remember, this was the late 70s.

I can't resist. Another one. An instrumental

I can't stand it. Just found another of my fav songs by this band...the horns and the percussion and the way Pauline uses her voice... Pardon the 70s jazz funk groove if it bothers you, but I still know all the words to these songs and every lick and kick. Some things stick to me like Dead Sea mud :-)

I've been busy, sowing seeds. Nothing cures the doldrums of winter weather like playing in the dirt indoors.

I've run out of milk and juice jugs so I'm at a standstill until I get brave enough to dig for more in our nasty basement (I always collect the year's empties after transplanting and put 'em in a big garbage bag so I can either recycle or reuse them at the drop of a hat).
But this is what I have outside in their jugs now: 

Astrantia major-hybrida Ruby Cloud  ....

 Pulsatilla vulgaris Red Cloak  ....

 Digitalis purpurea Candy Mountain  ....

 Digitalis ferruginea  ....

 Delphinium Pacific Hybrids ....

 Iberis Umbellata-Candytuft ....

 Silene armeria (Caryophyllaceae)- Catchfly ....

 Campanula medium Canterbury Bells Mixed seeds ....

 Papaver bracteatum (labeled as Himalyan Poppy) ....

 Papaver rhoeas Shirley Poppy ....

 Papaver nudicaule Iceland Poppy ....

 Papaver rhoeas Corn Poppy

 Papaver rhoeas Red Poppy  ....

 Nemophila maculata (Hydrophyllaceae) Five Spot ....

 Gaillardia-Razzle Dazzle ....

 Gaillardia-Burgundy ....

 Rudbeckia- Becky Mixed ....

 Rudbeckia Hirta Cherokee Sunset ....

 Rudbeckia Hirta Gloriosa Daisy ....

 Scabiosa caucasia House Novelty Mixed 

 Digitalis parviflora Chocolate ....

 Delphinium Pacific Hybrids Mixed (2nd cont)  ....

 Delphinium Summer Blues  ....

 Lychnis chalceldonia Maltese Cross  ....

 Lobelia Cardinalis- Cardinal Flower  ....

 Monarda didyma Bee Balm Red Shades  ....

 Coreopsis Sunray  ....

 Echinacea White Swan  ....

 Scarlet Ohara Hollyhocks  ....

 Euphorbia marginata Kilimanjaro Spurge ....

 Verbascum bombyciferum "Arctic Summer"  ....

 Verbascum phoeniceum hybrids  ....

 Hibiscus   ....

 Candytuft "Giant Hyacinth"  ....

 Euphorbia marginata  ....

 Cupids Dart ....

 Aquilegia "Firecracker" (in memory of Benny)

 Lupine "Band of Nobles" ....

 Lupine (collected seed) ....

 Sweet William   ....

 Ascelpias Tuberosa  ....

 Foxglove "Foxy" dwarf  ....

 Everlasting Pea - Lathyrus latifolius-"White Pearl" ....

 Chrysanthemum  "Coconut Ice"

I definitely have a "red theme" going this year, since I looked at the garden last year and noticed everything was purple or yellow or pink. There wasn't enough red. So this year, I'm sowing seeds for any red perennial I can find. White was the other thing I didn't have enough of in the yard throughout the growing season.
I'm up to 44 varieties and a few less containers than that-- because I sowed two to three of some types in one container...less jugs to deal with in the Spring. But I'm not done yet. Still waiting for seeds from Gardens North, and just got an order from Richters. I'm going for very particular things this year, so I don't expect to go over 200 varieties/containers. Hopefully, I won't go over 150. Got my fingers crossed-- because more containers mean more transplanting, during the end of the semester when it's paper-writing time
 

I LOVE my piano!!
Dave the tuner (who he will be known as from now on as "the tuner guy") came on Friday to check out the piano and took the innards (the unit with the hammers and springs) back with him to resurface some of the hammers and fix some of the broken springs that made some of the keys "dead".
He came late yesterday afternoon and did the actual tuning.
It sounds gorgeous! It is exactly the sound I wanted in a piano, with mid-tone, good highs and lows and none of that tinny-ness that spinets have.

I have to pinch myself in the morning now, to realize that I have a piano in my house that I can go and play anytime I feel like it.
Of course, right now, it's a lot of getting reacquainted and getting what little chops I had back...then it will be trying to get better than I ever was. It's all in my head. If I hear it, I can play it. I just have to sit and be patient and work it out.

It's just so nice to have.

Now I have to get my guitar fixed. I still haven't glued that little part in...and I need new strings. I don't know if I'd be able to get it done myself before school starts. I haven't played the thing regularly in a long while and I haven't had anything done to it since I bought it. Probably needs to have the neck reset or something in addition to needing that little thingy inside glued. But if anyone screws up my baby Alvarez, I will have to kill them. So I'm afraid to give it to anyone I don't know well or at all...not because I want to kill someone I know well, but because I would trust someone I know better than someone I don't.

Other than the piano thing, I've been painting. It's such a relief. I finished a painting of pears. It still needs a few touch ups, but I may just leave it alone, just because it's so nice to think of actually finishing something this year. I didn't finish a single painting last year, not one that was an intentional effort. So I have another still life set up that I'm going to start on today. This is going to be the "real painting", one that isn't just meant to get the kinks out. And I have a goal of finishing it before school starts.

I also put together the stretcher bars for my "big canvas"(38 x54 or something like that). With just the frame there, without the fabric stretched over it, I'm gawking at it wondering what the hell am I going to paint on that? I'm also perseverating over how much more paint it will take to cover it (cost of paint...gulp. But it will be cheaper than getting the piano tuned, much cheaper, I'm sure).  But I'll put the canvas together and gesso it, just so I can gawk at it for a long while until the gawk turns into a gaze and many passing glances...that's how I'll realize what needs to go on it.

Reading. I've realized that the way they force people to read in college can make a bunch of non-readers. If I didn't love books and reading so much, this past semester would have made me never want to pick up a book again.

But the minute I pick up Tripmaster Monkey, I start laughing. Two seconds, just into one line of the book, anywhere in the book, I crack up laughing. No book made me laugh that hard since Zadie Smith's White Teeth (the latter of which I read after having a surgery, and had to hold pillows to my stomach while I read the book so I wouldn't burst the staples in my belly while laughing).

What I've been really reading lately is Walter Benjamin's essay, "On Language as Such and on the Language of Man", the early poems of Denise Levertov, and  The Last of the Avant-Garde by David Lehman (it's about the New York School of Poets which includes native Rochestarian John Ashberry and crazy, intuitive, instigating man, Frank O'Hara).

The New York School of Poets are of interest to me because:

1. Ashberry's poetry is densely beautiful, real and weird and hard to understand yet easy to feel. I never know exactly what he is saying, not even in the slightest, but the WAY he says it enraptures.

2. Frank O'Hara was the impetus and the center of the group, not for his artistic effort as much as for his ability to hold the group together and help them see their continutity as a group. And, I like his poetry, a lot.

3. There were painters involved in the group, and painting was a part of their collaborative effort. Larry Rivers started out as a musician, continued as painter, ended as a poet and writer of stuff. His loosely auto-biographical autobiography is on my list for one of the next things to read.

Where all this reading is taking me? I don't know. I just read what I'm drawn to and see what it builds in me.
One thing I've realized over this break from school. My life is ruled by JFK. No. Not that one.
J-Jesus
F-Freud
K-Kierkegaard
That came to me one morning...that those have probably been the three most influencial people on my thought life, from the time I was a little kid. Freud and Kierkegaard entered in my early teens, but the sentiment was always there, at least from the time I was like maybe 10 years old. Just a bit of stupid trivia on me. Probably better off left unsaid.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I have been absent from here for a while. First it was school, other stressors-- like renovating-- and then that stupid day I dislike so much.

Economic landslides, the election of Obama, lamenting that I couldn't do any painting and very very little writing really had me in a hole.

I have a few weeks off for winter break and I'm trying to push the reset button on myself. This has been a very rough year.

Christmas was difficult to navigate, but navigated successfully. It was difficult as not only do I always have horrible memories of Christmases past with family, but this was the first year Bennie was not a part of the present day celebrations. He would always either be at my SILs house or about to arrive or about to leave, while we were there (or in and out the door several times in the course of the evening).

I know Bennie is one of the reasons I let my garden go to the weeds this year.

I was glad for the early snow, to cover the garden I didn't have the energy or desire to deal with. I anticipated the snow from back in August. I was ready for it. Cover it all, put it out of my mind; put the year 2008 to rest. It was too hard of a year.

Something special happened last week though, something I have waited 43 years for: I got a piano. It's a Winter, New York from around 1930 or 1940...maybe newer. Cost me $200 bucks. After looking at enough of them,--both new and old-- over the past year, I knew this was the one when I saw it, and touched it.

This piano is such a heavy "sign".  It is like marking the end of something and the beginning of something else.

See, I wanted a piano for Christmas, back when I was somewhere between 4-6 years old. I asked for one. My mother wanted us to get one. My sister was even excited about getting one. I said, with all sincerity, "If you get me a piano, you don't have to get me anything for Christmas ever again".  I know how the words of children get minimized, aren't taken seriously. I guess mine weren't. My father bought a color television instead-- a television I often got yelled at for watching too much. 

So despite showing talent on the instrument from the time I was four, despite the teachers sending back note after note that I couldn't go further with lessons without a piano-- and the teachers being delighted as I flew through 6 different lesson books in four months, expecting that I would go further-- my father (god of the house) purchased a color television that he was rarely ever home to watch.

This was my childhood. Notes went home about my writing, notes went home about my drawing, notes went home about the music. My parents never had the energy or the unity between them to keep up. Their lives together were too angst-ridden and drama-driven to be able to pay attention to anything else.

I did remember one cool thing a few weeks ago. My mother used to drop me off at the church on Saturdays where I would go and play the piano there for a few hours. Then she'd pick me up. I remember it was something she was never hesitant to do. My guess now is that she tried to give me my wish in a way that she could, on her own.

When I became an adult, I learned to take care of myself in these things. But I never got a piano before because I didn't have the living situation permanent enough to make it feasible.

And now, even though we are still working on the house, and there isn't much room in here, it seemed like it was time. Everything fell together. The piano is actually smaller than most, though with all 88 keys. Tomorrow I call to have someone come out to tune it, and fix a couple of the keys that stick.

And then? Probably remind myself of some of the songs I had written on piano when I was a kid, try to bring them back from memory. And probably write new songs as well.

I know my mother would be very happy right now. She knew the only way for me to be true to myself was to separate myself from her and my father. Now they aren't here, and I am...me and a piano.