Thinking About Marc Chagall

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how to write about chagall? feels impossible to describe an unending dream of color, sky, moon, donkeys, chickens, man/woman sailing/flying through skies, love is so much of his world with flowers and everything magic, magical, to imagine, mystical, that feeling, when you pretend to be in the painting, who/what would you be? the tree? the violin? the rooster? the angel? the dancer? the sun? what/who? where will he take you? away, where have you been? inside his mind, your mind, our mind, our universe, marc chagall with a key, a brush, some paint, opens the door

My Favorite Writers/Poets

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mitch albom, jimmy santiago baca, sylvia boorstein, ray bradbury, raymond carver, pema chodron, ta-nehisi coates, pat conroy, e.e. cummings, emily dickinson, william faulkner, william finnegan, norman fischer, f. scott fitzgerald, nick flynn, natalie goldberg, richard grant, doris grumbach, thich nhat hahn, ernest hemingway, tony hoagland, zora neale hurston, jon kabat-zinn, mary karr, jane kenyon, ted kooser, stanley kunitz, anne lamont, li-young lee, philip levine, patrica lockwood, gabriel garcia marquez, peter matthiessen, frank mccourt, john mcphee, thomas merton, w.s. merwin, joseph millar, marianne moore, john muir, tim o’brien, sharon olds, mary oliver, pablo neruda, jd salinger, suzanne scanlon, shel silverstein, isaac bashevis singer, john steinbeck, wislawa szmborska, richard wilbur, c.k. williams, thomas wolfe, tobias wolff, richard wright

I Have Fleas

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i also have a borrowed walkman with one cassette, phish, rift, when you’re there, i sleep lengthwise, and when you’re gone, i sleep diagonal in my bed. july, 1993, and i’m in ojaca, honduras, you won’t find it on a map. i have fleas. listen to rift over and over again, itching in my sleeping bag, while looking for fleas by flashlight. 2am, i give up on sleeping because i have to be up at 4am to hitchhike back to gracias, a smallish town that is on a map. and you’d never believe it, but it was a great night, sometimes suffering is like that. PS-i don’t even really like phish

Writer as Quaker

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so much of life is waiting, for lunch, for the uber to arrive, for the plane to land, for night to begin, for graduation, you get the drift. and then there are quakers who wait to hear from god, sit in silence, just waiting. and this is me too, some days the words just arrive and I say, hello words, and we are happy together, one word emerging after the next. other days, i just read and read and stare and stare, sort of hoping that my fingers start typing something, but glad to be waiting. because, i don’t agree with tom petty, the waiting isn’t the hardest part, the waiting is everything.

Neruda and War Addiction

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somewhere in neruda’s memoir he speaks about addiction, war addiction and che guevara, ecstatic life on a constant journey toward death, craved knowing he might die, was going to die, unity with the greatest unknown, heaven maybe, or not, but on the way, violence, machine gun eruption, mortar explosions, deafening everything, all thought becoming sound, becoming silence, perhaps the final silence, and now, instead of fear, there is oneness, war, when we are really in it, makes us whole

A Rattlesnake Story

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the rattlesnake doesn’t care, has heard the stories about sucking out venom and survival, how the young can’t control the release of poison, sun is out, languid, or perhaps curled up as if, but no, the rattlesnake doesn’t care, sits there on the trail, the protagonist in your story, the one where you fear the fangs, as if that would actually happen, and it could, you claim, show everyone the video of that one man, his hand swollen, they are dangerous, see, i told you, but the rattlesnake doesn’t care, the ground is just the ground, dirt, rocks, summer heat on hillside home, your story is just your story, the rattlesnake doesn’t care, slithers away

20 One-Liners After Reading Joe Brainard

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Winter

Ice is more likely than snow.

Summer

Sun, sand, and shore, what you thought.

Writing

Is only part of what I am thinking.

Today

Will be like tomorrow, but different.

In the country

Deer cross roads and sometimes die.

Recipe

One part chocolate, one part graham cracker, one part marshmallow, add flame first.

That feeling

When you just know.

Ecuador

The place where a cow fell on me but missed.

Happiness

Is a good Beatles song or a warm puppy.

Money

Do pennies really matter anymore?

Lake

Powell, Crater, Radnor, Tahoe, Champlain

The Sky

Isn’t falling, although it sometimes feels that way.

Carrots

Taste best with hummus.

Modern Times

Everyone has the answer, no one has the answer.

Real life

When your tooth is being extracted.

Loyalty

Is canceling all of your plans.

Something to think about 

If you are really really quiet, you probably already know.

Virginia

I am always a young person here.

Human nature

To believe in the divine.

Stars

The phosphorescent paint in constellation stories.

21st Century Greek Scholar

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when studying the ancient greeks there are rules: the oracle knows, socrates questions, plato governs, and aristotle examines nature. when trying to be esoteric, mention more details: delphi, the agora, the republic, syllogism. and if that still doesn’t work, forget alexander the great’s library, dusty old books, like the histories of herodotus, instead, go to wikipedia and pretend.

passing algebra

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i memorized the quadratic equation, but always forgot to divide my answers by 2, this meant failing the class, which couldn’t happen, so i was introduced to a tutor, mr. marks and his dog pickle (dachshund), my new mathematical friends. i met with him most days in his basement apartment where his stomach growled and balding hair moved with the air from the space heater, but he knew algebra, had taught high school for decades, and had the patience of a man who didn’t talk to anyone all day. they always say, it was a miracle that i passed math, but my miracle had a name, it was mr. marks.

when i left terra linda high school

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drive the mustang top down to silbermann’s ice cream, marcels blue moon blasting, five years of teaching completed and they want yearbooks signed, the teenagers, my students. benevolent chaos, i feel like mickey mantle as they hand over pens and pencils for me to scribble words of love on a page. descriptions of what they added to class discussions, how much history they mastered, or their uncanny comprehension of richard wright. they surround me all afternoon, a human blanket, wrapping me in june kindness and melting mint chocolate chip.