The House

The House

Monday, November 4, 2013

a house is not just a building.....

 The house kept needing repair. I was as if a spirit in the place kept creating excuses for the two of them to be thrown together. At first it only happened once in a while, a leaky gas line, a faucet, painting to be done, a cracked window. Then in a quick succession a host of maladies; squirrels in the attic, blown fuses, a dead 50 year old water heater, a toilet leak.
 Each time something went wrong they had to discuss it and more details about eachother were revealed. The conversations getting longer and more intimate. They didn't know the house was causing them to fall in love. The house needed love in it, so; like a child playing matchmaker it forced them inside its small walls by bringing attention to itself. A house without love will chase off those who won't or can't. Remain cold, let bugs in, leak, throw up noxious gases from the pipes. It won't respond to repair if there is no love. Quick fixes failing like quick sex.
 Some houses are haunted by fear and pain, tiny whisper like yelling, odors, deep sobbing on the edge of hearing. This house was haunted by love and committment, solid footsteps, endearments, tears of joy and laughter. It had an air of longing and a need to care.
 He grew up there and somehow, living in a household with two people who loved for more than fifty years sharing it with children not their own. Such love may seem luck or providence not single mindedness and generosity of spirit.
 She had never felt so comfortable in a house, especially a rental. To be in a safe loving full home seem a dream unattainable.
 The house knew better. It didn't belong to anyone in the normal sense. Houses never do. Loaning itself to the occupants for a few months or decades. Living  ageless  slowly measured. After 80 years it had settled into being a sacred space to contain emotion and meld with each new occupant drawing in more love. It had already lived twice as much as both of them put together. Known more of forever than either would. It knew how to be warm and blend in with the natural of every bush, ivey and tiny wildlife. It had a charming decay of brick and wood as it returned to the earth. The house wasn't just a shelter to use, but a benevolent witness to life. Slowly energized, infused by the hearts of those who trusted its protection. Taking on a permanemt nature to attract more of the same.
 One house continually filled with infidelity, abuse, screaming and neglect will attract more of the same dramas. Another will always seem to have gaggles of kids, friends around all the time, with lush overgrown gardens. Some never have more than a lonely occupant, dead yards and lonely solitary animals. Some abodes haunted by loss and the walls are ringing with grief long after living family members are moved on, love and laughter filling others.
 The White House, governor's mansions, the shed where Thoreau wrote, where Woody Guthrie was born. Graceland. The local mansion everyone knows about. That first place away from Mom's place. Home away from home. Home sweet home. A house is not a home.....The place you dread to go to, are homesick for. The houses lost to fire, flood and economic disasters. Why did they tear down that lovely little place on the corner? God's house got to full and they needed more parking lot?
 People settle into homes along with the foundations. We liken our lives to well built homes. Built like a brick out house. Like talking to the walls. Lights on, nobody home. The door is always open. Bats in the attic. References to body and psychi.
 People without love get older faster. Feel the cold more, smile less. They too, can become full of cobwebs, dampness, shades drawn without air.
 The house was a lesson in love for those who sensed it.It withstood tempest and the moods of mother nature. Consistent in its shelter, calmness and without judgment. A place to breathe freely, speak freely dance naked from bath to bed. A keeper of epic dreams, tiny thoughts and infinity of dinners, lunches, breakfasts and late night tea. A resevoir of private moments to be treasured in its secret ear.
 It was amazing how a quick chat on how to get the house repaired would escalate into the lack of committment in modern relationship. How little things like toilet seats being left up or using his razor become the distraction for the real problems of lack of respect and intimacy.
 She wasn't the type men dreamed of, not his type. He was so insular no wonder he was alone, unable to find the key to a self made prison. There wasn't anything exotic about her, no great beauty. Plain and small, verging on mousy with a face that didn't invoke thoughts of ruby lips and passion.
 He was tall with a mix of chiseled aryan good looks and country softness. Blond hair, blue eyes with thin lips that belayed a hidden sensuality. Beat up and scarred inside and out. The house knew every hidden thought and deed from childhood.
 Forced to bump into eachother, murmuring quick nervous excuse me's around a friendly discussion over coffee as he collected the rent. Should they brave the taboo of landlord-tenant? Go to a movie, drink a beer and share one electric melted kiss. Avoid eachother if they can till the house cracked somewhere or leaked. Then maybe he would overcome nameless fear and she her pride. Maybe even find themselves devouring eachothers mouths in frustration, touching feet all night because this could be the last body to be warm with in the night. Him inside her wrapping tight around him as the house settled around them both.
 When they thought they were alone holding on to hope. They were watched by the soul of the house. Their hearts light gathered to itself to attract the next people it would take in and need.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Poets Position Paper

I was in the process of digging through all the piles of files I have, as the wannabe writer I collect papers full of ideas, thought, cryptic scribbling's. If I were inclined I would drag them around in shopping bags and in my pockets as we all have often seen here and there, but these piles of papers and files are to precious to me. I would probably go berserk if I lost one of my paper thoughts.

I have  such a persons purple file of poems. I dear fellow, bi-polar after a nervous breakdown. Mr. D. was driven over that brilliant white hot edge of mental illness by the Penn Square banking blow-out. Few in the state of Oklahoma were un-touched by that lead up to the savings and loan robbery.

Mr. D. came from a well known legal family, well respected, but like so many of the high society of many places, Mr. D was a shameful blot. He crumbled under the weight of the loss of everything including his wife and two sons to the greed of bankers. Apparently his legal family couldn't or wouldn't help him and into that "dark night" he went, alone.

Mr. D. had a creative response to the inequity of the world, once he realized his being "touched" by greed and power, driven to madness was not his fault and that healing could come in time, but how never to be "forced to bow" to the hyper-masculinity called commerce?

Poetry. I found Mr. D.'s poems, the ones he gave me to record for his sons. He liked my voice and knew my extensive work in theatre and oral interpretation. I was flattered. I had read many and discussed at length his work of clarity that can only come from the fracturing of the mind as it pulls itself together.

White men are killing themselves in droves in this country. I know why, which I will go into at another time...but Mr. D. fought it, expressed it, the madness in the method called manhood. Patriarchy chewed my friend up and spit him out, and like some heroic sci-fi character pulled himself from the ooze and wrote and wrote and wrote; in between cigarettes and coffee.

by W.H.Durbin

          Some Man

     I stand erect
     Amidst the Universe
     In all else
     It is I...immense
     I step
     planets set axes
     My eyes fix
     stars find bearing
     In all else
     It is I....immense
     Before there even was.....
     My first breath blew.

          In Praise of the Mechanic and the Poet

     The touch of a Poet's hand is soft.
     Leaving the calloused hand twist the rusty bolt.
     A poet's joy - to touch only lightly this stubborn rod,
     then extol in stanza its sure fix.
     Yet, our world is cold and hard - Its great
     Steely Bolts demand and cry out for a crucial turning
     _ and finds a poet's timid hand wanting
     and inept.
     So I sing praise for the hardened hands -
     strong in the world -  That deny the screwed
     and set way of some Eye or Stove Bolt.
     I sing praise of knuckles - - cut and red
     and so cold so wrench any man's will.
     There is not a more courageous unyielding than here.
     This I know - for those were the hands of
     my wife's good father.
     And too, the hands of this poet before he bolted
     from their cause -  to take up the turn
     of the phrase and the twist of a meaning -
     in cause of his gentler yet more
     binding pen.

            A Poem of No Consequence

     How we treat the powerless - those with
     never redress nor remedy
     That is the only measure of our humanity
     When, in their abjection there can be no objection
     When our allowance is absolute and they not of
     any manner of retribute.
     When we may do as we will - what is it we will do?
     Only you and he - and the insane man's torment
     will be unknown at its completion, to only reposit in
     your conscience and his heart -
     what is it we will do?
     Strike the homeless man in solitude but cast
     him favors when civil eyes are upon us?
     When the Moron is outside of this whole world,
     his desperate tendrils severed from any future
     reprisals - How is it we would do him?
     that is the true measure of our humanity!
     For the one - hanging out upon the ledge,
     if only one will first call him to his death, then
      all may join in and demand his oblivion!
     With the water's tension broken, - insanity
     ripples through this hydrophobic crowd.
     when we may do as we will - what is it we will do?

I was in awe of Bill's strength, his humor and sharp wit born of the shards of a fragmented, glass like mind. Still am in awe as I read his poems and wish I could read more. He must have inspired me to write, we shared the love of poetry like no other friend I have had before or since. And I found my words, a lost paper nestled among his .

     by Diane Clare

          Love comes to life
                  When vision opens her eyes to see
                  possibility flower
          From constraints seed of
                  potential denied.

           Love comes to life
                   When desire, feeling the pain
                   of fear's contractions
            Bears down on courage
                    and gives birth to passion.

           Love comes to life
                    When dreams, having known only
                    sleepless nights pacing
                    dark corridors of despair
           Begin to dance in the decadence
                    of peaceful slumber

            Love comes to life
                    When inspiration wakes devotion
                     in the dewy sweetness of dawn
            and work becomes prayer

            Love comes to life
                      When sacred marries profane
                      Ordinary no longer exists.
                   



    
    

Friday, March 22, 2013

Born Brave


Born Brave?

    young girls
                  to old women

Silenced
             Ignored
                         Afraid?

       Angry like no man has ever seen or felt.

            Old women
                        carry it on their hips
    Festers in joints
           spews out gray hair
                                   festoons from their eyes

Born Brave?
          against disappearing in front of the world
                 not seeing each other
                        Cheshire cats all mouth, eyes, hands
crippled into uselessness
              Anger covers old women like bruises
Bullets from old women's mouths fly
            would there were no war

        If only
              saggy sexless old women were no threat

Born Brave? to be an old woman

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Occupy the Mind

I don't know why anyone worries about what is written on the internet for all the world to see, when no one actually sees this stuff. Unless of course I were to try to "hawk" it perhaps, sell it, post it on every site I go to? WTF for? My Mom would say; "you wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you realized how seldom they do."
I have never been good at selling myself it seems, which is to say make myself valuable. I am a poor consumer and a worse seller. I am to post one more about Occupy and its ability to empower others, and perhaps for that matter all protest movements, grass roots and activism does. It is pain staking, time consuming and gives little remuneration unless you are rich with a foundation or something you can head. This last weekend Michael Brune, the Pres. of the Sierra Club tied himself to the fence of the White House along with 47 others to protest the keystone pipeline, and help bring climate into the forefront. The first time anyone officially with the Sierra Club has been part of a protest in its 150 years. Now, tell me Occupy had nothing to do with that? Sierra Club is now something I get join, not the kaffee Klatch it was for so long. We know that many of the civil rights, environmental and gay liberation movements acquired their inspiration from people before them. Most of my inspiration is from literature, movies and books. Usually not real flesh and blood people. Even the "real" live folks on television who do amazing things aren't quite real. Pictures and voices on the screen I have become more familiar with than the people in this town. Amy Goodman, Keith Olberman, Gabby Giffords and Chris Hayes. Some who spoke truth to power, some who survived the violent results of the misguided and confused by the powers that be, some who carry a legacy of activism. Pictures of bodies of now faceless people dying for freedom from tyranny still to this day long after I had dreamed such things would not be necessary.
Occupy is alive and out there, working doing being. Every once in a while someone on the television will refer to it as something that made them think, act and question. They compare actions being taken to Occupy and then I find from twitter they were in the thick of it. I get invites to actions every month from Occupy Denver. Occupy the SEC is on UP with Chris Hayes at least once a month. I know it has empowered many to finally come out of their left leaning closets. To speak out for peace, fairness and dignity. I wear my occupy button around and have found a few feel free to say something quietly in support of the ideals even though they can't with their co-workers or families. It reminds me of the folks who would come into my little pagan celtic store and admit to being naturalists, wicca or simply free thinkers and always say how they couldn't share it with virtually anyone else. Perhaps I was able to do a little good by being someone they felt safe with and not an outcast for just two minutes. I watched The Soloist last night and toward the end a doctor tells the newsman that being someone's friend changes their brain chemistry. That reached me. I have tried to be a friend to others, but I don't feel anyone has been my friend, cared enough to know me well, encourage me, be present for me, realy learn something together. For the most part no one has had my best interest at heart.
In this culture it seems one is only friends if they can get something out of you with as little effort as possible. This culture of me, myself and I that not only runs business which runs govt. but churches as well, crept into the New Age movement as well to its detriment.
It seems to me Occupy carries forward the notions of the transcendentalists of the 19th century which became the roots of the movments that followed by labor, women, freedman, American Indian cultures.
"Apathy, complacency, passitivity, moral cowardice..these were the social results of the expedient materialism against which the Transcendentalists unfurled the banner of moral law"   Civil Disobedience edited by Sherman Paul.
I saw Le Miserable the musical, and although I had read it and watched the previous versions the concepts of compassionate morals vs. duty as morality struck home more today than at any time in  my life.
"But what remedy did an individual have when government was not coordiate with justice, when it made on the unwilling partner in its evils?" I would re-write Thoreau's Civil Disobedience and replace corporations with the word government.  We benignly buy our toilet paper, plastic chairs and phones from the behemoth Wal Mart trying to survive on cheap while people lose decent livelihoods here and abroad are virtual slaves. We become complicit.
"In the WEEK Thoreau acknowledged that where evil was concerned he could not follow the passivity advocated in the Hindu scriptures; ....Thoreau preferred to courageously assault evil rather than to starve it out. Not the Brahmin who "never thought to be a brother of mankind", but Christ, he said, was "the prince of Reformers and Radicals." Christ who said "resist not evil; but overcome  evil with good."
Conservative Christians do not understand the liberalness of Christs teachings. At lease twice I have heard of severe fundamentalist preachers having epiphany's of love and come to this understanding and then lose their very large and powerful followings for not preaching fear and shame.
It isn't so much government or corporations as it is the hungry people who run them. Hungry for power, attention and to feed their starving immature egos. They too, the "evil" ones spoken of by the Thoreau (being a PK he used the language he grew up with) are only trying to survive and do some sort of good and get gratification. They feed a hole in their souls that will never be filled. (What level of Dante's Inferno was that?)
Revolution and change  never happen the way we think they will, from the people we thought they would, and always takes longer than it should. We are not living in times of good vs. evil. we are living in the culmination of the struggle between two utopian visions. One of a monied, powered, educated (in their minds) elite that run the world better over the "great unwashed masses" who never quite understand how things really are or could be. The other where there are only communities that share everything, husband the resources, no one gets to much or too little. No rich, no heirarchy, community with committment and trust. Even the most malevolent rulers think they are doing good for the "people", even the most benign utopian societys fall apart in power trips. Both visions fall prey to eat or be eaten, control of the vision whether it applies or not to the people or circumstances at hand.
Everyone always has grand ideas about how things should be carried out yet very few recognize that key moment when they can actually step up and do whatever is presented them in the moment. Those rare moments when we can be willing, overcome fear and say or actually do something to find a third way, the middle path. I sometimes feel humanity is tearing the proverbial baby to pieces in our fight over what is best for all. All our fighting over ideology will be moot if we don't pull our collective heads out of our asses and recognize the calamity of environment that is occuring. Whether it is natural cycles or human driven, climate change is here and we are not prepared at all. I believe that we will not in time, as history shows disasters, bloodshed, and chaos come first before change and then the change for good must be fought over and over and protected from without and from within. Dreams of a utopia where women have all the babies they want, men can conquer nature and make lots of riches, where all of us live in harmony in community, with birth control and organic everything will not happen. Not now. We will be too busy trying to survive and that includes the filthy rich. Money and power won't help. Impart skills upon your children to read the weather, grow and make things that are usefull, teach them to get along with others. The young people know this instinctively. I see them working in community, trying to help eachother, seeing the mistakes of their elders. Occupy gave me such hope for the future if we have one, they are creating the re-evolution. I did what I could. Truth and being willing to find out all the facts, question motives, don't blame yourself for believing lies, and assume someone lies mostly out of shame and guilt. Alex de touqueville said; "History is a race between chaos and education" I can only control what I know by being willing to be wrong and learn better. The only thing I can say for myself is I am vindicated in my views by the fact of so many are waking up to the greed that is killing us and our planet. People thought I was crazy and now I am not alone in that divine madness.
My sense of drive, the nagging in the back of my soul that says: "Do Something!" must be my sensing the change that is coming. My need to be relevant, purposefull, helpfull, a gatekeeper, change agent, or usefull, of value is very much human nature.  My nature. I can only do a small part, so tiny to be insignificant alone, but Occupy has allowed me to speak my truth without fear of being ostricized, that would happen anyway. Occupy lifts my spirit and love for my fellow human being when it was all but gone. The pain I feel for humanity tells me my love of people still lives as well in spite of my isolation and fatigue.
My friends and I would dissect the issues of the day and I would call it "saving the world over coffee". Our little kaffee klatch would spend hours trying to figure things out, ferrett out the truth (without the internet) and hope we could put our words into action. Make a difference. I wrote a poem that sort of speaks to this:

                        Are you the voice in someone elses head?
                        Ramblings thoughts grand pronouncements
                        constant
                        diatribes of negative cheering
                        fading in and out in bits and pieces

                        We believe no one can hear our thoughts
                         they are being heard
                         driving us all mad
                         our own thoughts lost to us
                         because of the shouting in yours

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Occupy whatever

In an attempt to stay relevant in my own life I have been writing about Occupy. I will turn fifty five on Friday and find myself thinking of death. Looking at my life as a wannabe participant, trying to be a part of something all my life. I look at my things and wonder why I have them. I might miss the colors on my walls, the creamer collection, my magic the gathering cards. I can't stand where I live. All the friends I made in the first few years moved away. All of them. I should have left as well. I have never been around such mean spirited, backwards ignorant lifeless people ever, anywhere. This place has no redeeming qualities. At first we thought we would hike and climb, have a little house in the mountains that could be a safe haven when the climate goes haywire for good.
That is another thing that depresses me. Since I was fourteen I have known we are heating the planet up and nothing has been done. I remember fantasizing about floating cars, wind power and perhaps power from the sun. I also dreamed of peace and what we have is a nightmare of imperialism and war unending. I see already, before we are out of the quagmire's of Iraq and Afghanistan there are articles talking about "tensions" in the pacific. My goddess! The religious ideologues married to greed and wealth, the left dragging its feet pretending to be the eternal victim. My daughter told me not to be afraid of people, and I said I am not afraid, I am sick and tired. Mostly tired.
I have done nothing to make the world a better place. I thought I would. I am arguing whether I should try to keep up a license in mental health after ten years of not finding work in my field. I don't see the purpose in it. No one even reads my blog. For me its like a note in a bottle floating, worthless along with all the bits of plastic.
Occupy made me feel hopeful, but now that it is marginalized and pushed to the side I am feeling cut off, and it went into the closet before I could get a chance to really be a part. The Occupy Wall Street film is at Sundance this week. I can't go. I helped fund it. Park City is to far and I am to poor. I hope I get to see it eventually from Netflix or on Link t.v.
Occupy Sandy has done more for the survivors of Hurricane Sandy than any group and has only been mentioned once on the national news. Strike Debt is marching on, buying up debts for penny's on the dollar and forgiving the debtors. While I sit in a state of house arrest, debtors prison with a mortgage that was padded so heavily with crap I will die before I pay it off. A lien from Jefferson Capital on a bogus bloated credit card debt. Hiding from fucking collection agents who yell bang and are slime for perpetuating the vampire squid who robbed and pillaged us all and continue to do so. Obama has lain with dogs and the fleas of green backed bankers clings to his administration with the help of the far right bought and paid for lackeys in the tea party republican caucus.
I see no reason to try to work toward any goals, write a book, or keep my license, not even any reason to exercise. Why when all I have heard all my life is that I am a liberal slacker, welfare queen, evil humanist, old lady sucking off society because I feel so beat down by it all. How much do they think people can take? I raised kids, went to school, paid my bills, tried to be a good citizen, not a drunk, druggie or slut. A good person, trying to be a better person.
Occasionally I get ideas, poetry, art or simply to dance. Acting was important to me for so long. I watch the movies and know I should have gone to Hollywood. I could have found a niche to fill. Clever and talented, willing and a good listener. I told my friend Mark Holt, go for god sake school will wait. I told another young red headed man the same at a party and he did and I see him in movies and television all the time. I couldn't go. I had a little girl. Felt I had to take a more conservative route even if my mom complained I needed to do something that would make money. By the time I realised theatre was a dead end for me, mostly because of politics and poverty, I got my masters and I still haven't made a decent living. I am worth more dead than alive in social security to my family.
I will only get around 700 a month when I am old because women get cheated so horribly in wages and value. If I live so long. I will have to live with a daughter or in my truck or a trailer in the woods. I could be like one of those men I see with grizzled beards, weighted down by an old back pack, wrapped in blankets walking from nowhere to nowhere. Only I will have long white hair and a grizzled face and hands. Always slightly dirty. I can't see any future for me at 55. In three years my youngest will be gone to her life hopefully attaining her dreams better than I did and I will be left in this house day after day looking at the few things I made and have wondering...wandering...waning...wan...wanting....waiting