anna katrina's blog

anything i can get my hands on

Saturn-goya

Saturn

after Goya

Last night I drank the coffeetable–

twenty dollars here, an armchair there,

soon I'll be eating whole dressers, credenzas,

arms and legs like limbs that dangled

over the bed in a memory of naked bodies,

anything I can get my hands on,

anything we brought together

to make this place our place;

I'll consume the house.

Teresa Leo

the I that I am now will still carry/ the you that you were then

After Twelve Months, Someone Tells Me It's Time to Join the Living

And I have, or will, I'm not sure which,

but who's to say how many weeks or months

are called for, because I've been there,

deeply there, with you, without you,

winding through the red rock cliffs, say, 

in Arizona, a one-laner, all dirt and no guard rail,

driving, perhaps recklessly, the urge 

to take my eyes off the road for a second,

strong, look over the edge, stronger,

or at least the passenger seat,

empty of course, and so if that's the best 

I can do, to drive and hug the inside edges

of the road and not look down so be it--

I am going somewhere, the desert maybe,

and when I get off this road,

the I that I am now will still carry

the you that you were then,

or maybe you will carry me:

a hawk gliding over the cliffs

with something in its claws,

just in my periphery,

and though I want to know

if the thing that's clutched so tightly,

so randomly, so in fact lovingly,

is dead or alive, there is no need

beyond the need to say this,

because it will not be able 

to unbind itself, it will not shake loose.

I imagine its last thoughts,

if it is capable of thinking,

would be of what it's like to be airborne,

without the constraints of gravity,

free of the thing that fixes us here,

because maybe it's exactly the thing

we can't release that keeps us

on this side, among the living.

Teresa Leo

five years is a long time

i was looking through some emails from five years ago, almost to the day: one from me--a horrible, uncomfortable, heartbreaking affair telling people about moms. the rest were responses from my friends, which surprisingly turned this seemingly auto-torturous affair around...

"for all the people always wandering in and out of your house, and for all you crazy sacramento kids she had to deal with, she always seemed so remarkably calm and easy-going."

"i only met your mother a few times, but she seemed like a wonderful person. it's funny, but the thing i most remember is the she had this sly humor. loving it all, but jeez, always with a house full of people. i always thought, anna's family is very wonderful..."

and, of course, from the inimitable kevin arnold:

"I join you in the simultaneous mourning and celebration of hip hop momma's life.I don't know

if I ever told you, or if you could tell, how much I was really amazed by her. Your mom was--and is now eternally!--so great, sincere, wise, and hilarious."

the thing that i love about these words is that they all ring so true. these three people met moms at very different times in my life and had different amounts of exposure to her, but they seem to know her like we all knew her: the calm in the middle of our crazy, bringing us so much laughter and wisdom and love. and i know all of those words sound like things you could say about anybody--especially after hearing they just died--but the truth of it is so plain and clean and sincere.

i wrote today that i am everything i am because of her. and i started thinking about all the people she took into our home who have an inkling of what that feels like: all our cousins and friends and partners who were privileged enough to know her love and have that love shape them forever... what a legacy. we all learned how to be family, how to share, how to forgive, how to tolerate, how to accept, how to enjoy life and each other--all these things, in the most graceful way possible thanks to her. and though we may not always do it as well as she did, we at least know how to do it right. 

i remember telling kuya king once how lucky we were that our mom just happened to be the kindest, loveliest, and most admirable woman we have ever met--how honored we should feel that this is the woman who raised us. i've discovered that this is not a common sentiment in this modern american life and feel even more grateful and humbled by this lineage. and... as hard as this is for me to say--because i would do anything and everything in the world to have her guiding us the rest of the way--i feel blessed to have had her as long as we did. 

now i, like my brothers and my sister, feel something akin to what sandra cisneros described like this: "since my mom died i feel like i'm walking around the universe with only one shoe." forever disoriented, forever askew. always something missing even at the fullest moments of my life. and as painful as that is, i'm glad that what i quoted at her memorial will hold true for the rest of our lives: 

"Nothing makes up for the absence of someone whom we love, and it would be wrong to find a substitute; we must simply hold out and see it through. That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time it is a great consolation, for the gap, as long as it remains unfulfilled, preserves the bonds between us. It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap. God doesn't fill it, but on the contrary, keeps it empty and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other."

even more than this truth, i've found something really transformative has happened as a result of that mama-shaped hole in me. i've found that my heart is more tender--more prone to her tendencies of gentleness and patience and understanding. less of a firecracker (not not a firecracker--just less of one). this void makes me look that much harder for her--her beauty, her grace, her strength--inside and outside of me. and my life is richer for it.

i'll leave you with one more thing that i want to reveal as my guiding principle as long as i've been conscious of having one. something that i think of everyday and i encourage all of us to do to get through this long stretch of life without her in front of us:

"Only connect! That was the whole sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect." 

we need each other. all the time. so let's all stay connected. all the time. 

after all, it's what moms would have wanted. 

all my love.

ak.

if we could learn to learn from pain

from farren. thank you for helping me give this feeling words this year.

five is a long time to go without a mama.

Splitting

1.

My body opens over San Francisco like the day-

light raining down         each pore crying the change of light

I am not with her       I have been waking off and on

all night to that pain     not simply absence but

the presence of the past      destructive

to living here and now       Yet if I could instruct

myself, if we could learn to learn from pain

even as it grasps at us         if the mind, the mind that lives

in this body could refuse        to let itself be crushed

in that grasp       it would loosen       Pain would have to stand

off from me and listen      its dark breath still on me

but the mind could begin to speak to pain

and pain would have to answer:

                                                                                     We are older now

-adrienne rich

How to win a gal's heart in less than five hours

This list will probably only be useful to you if you are a seven-year-old boy.

1. Within minutes of meeting, grab hold of her hand, tentatively at first, then with increasing confidence.

2. Ask her to sit on the "hamhock" with you. Then ask her to play telephone. When she says it will be very difficult to play with only two, introduce shadow puppet penguins into the mix. 

3. Take her to a room with a bunk bed. Climb the ladder to the top bunk and ask her if she wants to lie down and look at some drawings pinned to the ceiling. This will feel a little bit like the awkward scene in "The Ice Storm." She will ignore this because you are so cute and innocent. And because you are seven.

4. When she is getting ready to leave, hold her tight and refuse to let go. Run two fingers along the inside of her wrist... instant heart melt.

5. When your dad finally makes you let go, he will cheer "yay!" triumphantly. With your hands on your waist, scold him in her presence with "Don't go 'yay' when I have to let go of someone I love!" 

She will be yours forever.

and you, kindness itself

"What would be worst of all..."

What would be worst of all

Would be to be lost from you

As in a dream it often is--

--In a crowd, or a forest, or [some] national disaster--

The laws of chance to

Horrible, horrible

Knowing that you were looking for me

Not able to stand still & wait--

And you, kindness itself, helping the refugee,

Taking the other /lost/ to the people

                       they loved

Amusing them

And you and I missing each other

I have no home          neither have you

I feel we best prepare some scene like

                                this

-Elizabeth Bishop

Happy Birthday Mama

i am trying to love you less

Crush

Maybe my limbs are made
mostly for decoration,
like the way I feel about
persimmons. You can't
really eat them. Or you
wouldn't want to. If you grab
the soft skin with your fist
it somehow feels funny,
like you've been here
before and uncomfortable,
too, like you'd rather
squish it between your teeth
impatiently, before spitting
the soft parts back up
to linger on the tongue like
burnt sugar or guilt.
For starters, it was all
an accident, you cut
the right branch
and a sort of light
woke up underneath,
and the inedible fruit
grew dark and needy.
Think crucial hanging.
Think crayon orange.
There is one low, leaning
heart-shaped globe left
and dearest, can you
tell, I am trying
to love you less.

-Ada Limon

I found this in this week's New Yorker. And for the record, persimmons are my favorite fruit.

every tenderness I have ever known...

Ludwig Van Beethoven's Return to Vienna

Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, 

or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me.... 
The Heiligenstadt Testament 

Three miles from my adopted city 
lies a village where I came to peace. 
The world there was a calm place, 
even the great Danube no more 
than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscape 
by a girl's careless hand. Into this stillness 

I had been ordered to recover. 
The hills were gold with late summer; 
my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen, 
situated upstairs in the back of a cottage 
at the end of the Herrengasse. 
From my window I could see onto the courtyard 
where a linden tree twined skyward — 
leafy umbilicus canted toward light, 
warped in the very act of yearning — 
and I would feed on the sun as if that alone 
would dismantle the silence around me. 

At first I raged. Then music raged in me,
rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough 
to ease the roiling. I would stop 
to light a lamp, and whatever I'd missed — 
larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd's 
home-toward-evening song — rushed in, and I 
would rage again. 

I am by nature a conflagration; 
I would rather leap 
than sit and be looked at. 
So when my proud city spread 
her gypsy skirts, I reentered, 
burning towards her greater, constant light. 

Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly— I tell you, 
every tenderness I have ever known 
has been nothing 
but thwarted violence, an ache 
so permanent and deep, the lightest touch 
awakens it. . . . It is impossible 

to care enough. I have returned 
with a second Symphony 
and 15 Piano Variations 
which I've named Prometheus, 
after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god 
who knew the worst sin is to take 
what cannot be given back. 

I smile and bow, and the world is loud. 
And though I dare not lean in to shout 
Can't you see that I'm deaf? — 
I also cannot stop listening.

-Rita Dove

This was in my mailbox from poets.org today. I'm so glad this poem found its way to me in such a random manner.

You have taken the world I was

TAG

THIS

Insatiable April, trees in place,

in their scraped-out place,

their standing.

Standing way.

Their red branch areas,

green shoot areas (shock),

river, that one.

I surprised a goose and she hissed.

I walk and walk with cold hands.

Back at the house it is filled with longing,

nothing to carry longing away.

I look back over my life.

I try to find analogies.

There are none.

I have longed for people before, I have loved people before.

Not like this.

It was not this.

Give me a world, you have taken the world I was.

YOUR

("unalterable")

Actually not. Feigned leap into--

river glimpsed through bare

[waiting]

[some noun] for how thought breaks up around you not here

your clothes not wet in this deep mirror--

what Holderlin calls die Tageszeichen, signs

                                    scored into the soul by the god of each day

your answer scars, I still don't know--

years from now, these

notations in the address book, this frantic hand.

-Anne Carson

I miss you mama.

sarah palin

NOT my new bicycle.