tin can phones

sonnet sequence, part 1.

Dialogue excerpted from Jhumpa Lahiri's "Sexy," from her collection of short stories The Interpreter of Maladies:


Rohin [age 9-10ish, to Miranda, age 22 ]: you're sexy.

Miranda: What does that mean?

Rohin: I can't tell you.

Miranda: Why not?

Rohin: It's a secret.

Miranda: Tell me.

Rohin: It means loving someone you don't know.




We Think We Want

I.

I marry in my mind each man I meet--
orchestrate the stained-glass and the church bells--
color in our children's eyes, paint the street
on which our humble home will sit. Farewells
impossible. No binding's strong as this:
Eros born of mystery, distance. And so
each sweaty palm, passing glance, tooth-knock kiss
becomes a relic. Likewise, many know
my head-tilt, hipbone dip--but will never
hear my secrets. You, your indifference,
however, spoon-scrapes my calyx, severs
tongue, finger, heart strings one by one, and since
you teach me hunger, stranger, eat of me
and stay the you I don't want you to be.

posted by Nadyja Cree @ 1:27 AM 0 comments

eat your heart out, suchandsuch

ATTN: SELF LOATHERS
I am going to start carrying around a bag of
<------these and if I hear you engage in NEGATIVE SELF TALK, you will promptly be corked. Negative self talk (NST) includes, but is not limited to, phrases such as: "I'm a fucking loser," "I'm a dumbass," "I'm going to die alone," and "I'm ugly," as well as insecure queries such as "why don't I have a boy/girl friend," "why doesn't suchandsuch like me," and the ever popular "does this make me look fat." (Yes, I realize I skipped the quesiton marks; all the ?s and "s were irking me). Admittedly, I have abused this rhetoric as well, with varying degrees of irony and sarcasm, so there's no soap-boxing here, but I've just gotta say, it's TIME TO STOP WITH IT. For some reason there has been an influx of this talk directed at me lately, and all I have to say to the people whose mouths it has drained from is: you are fabulous! you are beautiful! you are loved! OKAY?!!? PS. I recognize that I deserve a swift smack in the mouth should I let slip one of these shibboliths after making it seem that I view myself as somehow exempt from the innate human tendency to edit, second guess, and criticize ourselves internally, even should we not utter a word. At least 50% of the time after I say something to someone, I go, "WHY DID I JUST SAY THAT?" in my head. But I feel like maybe if negative self talk wasn't so casually and often thrown around, that we might actually have these internal moments of insecurity less. Plus, it's just unbecoming.
Speaking of self loathing/self pity, here's one of the best poems out there on it. I found it while going through my old notebook from American Romanticism class.

It's By Stephen Crane (Lord love him. I just pretend he's not responsible for the catastrophe that is The Red Badge of Courage.) :

In the Desert

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter – bitter", he answered,
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

"Because it is bitter, / And becuase it is my heart" ??? HELL YES. I actually wrote this poem in permanent marker on the hanging wall mirror in me and BJ's old bedroom, and left it there for the cheerleaders I subletted to. Undoubtably an act of bitterness and self pity. I'm sure they took it down pronto.

And an even better poem, but only if you know the poet in person. This too, was found in the margins of the above mentioned notebook. I have NO idea what the context of it is, but it appears on the page containing notes on Poe's "Ligea," under the subject header "Ligea: Earth Angel Versus Rich Slut" :

Roses are red
Violets are blue
If I had a brick
I would throw it at you.

~Hugh Ingrasci

I honestly laughed out loud when I found that today. It's not a found-poem so to speak, but there was definately the found-poem thrill when I stumbled across it. I feel like I'm finding found-poems in snippets of text everywhere these days, so I'm culling a handful to post soon. If anyone has any, please send them to me, along with the source! Thank you!

posted by Nadyja Cree @ 2:25 PM 1 comments

I have done it again

So I came back. In fact, my relationship to this blog is frighteningly parallel to my relationships with people, especially these days. If you know me, you know I tend to cultivate and maintain very special relationships for x amount of time and then disappear for six months, a year, only to reappear with the smash-bang of a Mack truck out of the abyss. I think to a certain extent we're all like that; human relationships are by nature cyclical. But I seem to disappear and return more abruptly and less tactfully than most, and I think it's safe to say that my "flakiness" (as it was so called by a friend recently) is a bittersweet experience for all involved.

I have my own theories on the causes of this behavioral tendency (only child syndrome (I do technically have a brother, hence me using the term syndrome), my solitary habitation choice, trust issues, free-spiritedness, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH), but the real point that I'm trying to make is that I am ambivalent towards resurrecting the blog because I know the strong likelihood of me abandoning it, which will lead to the guilt complex about how I can't stay committed to anything. But I've returned to it nonetheless, and in order to make it feel less like a loved one I'm groveling and crawling back to and more like the literary/creative experience it was always intended to be, I have erased every last blog entry in it. Even "I contain Multitudes of Superfly." Which was more than a little painful. I lost poems, literary analyses, research, and random musings that I do not have stored in any other places, which--and I'm not going to lie or phrase this more eloquently--was not unlike "losing some part of myself," as they say. However, it forced me to legitimately start over, instead of pick up where I left off, because who I was last February (and my last posting was actually Valentine's Day, 2006) is not who I am now (praise it).

So after a year's hiatus from my life as a writer, critical reader, and researcher of my own volition (meaning, not related to school or paychecks), I'm giving the blog a second go in an attempt to be a more disciplined and consistent scholar, artist, human being, whathaveyou. Now I also must make the obligatory disclaimer that the intention of this blog is not simply masturbation, and admit that I already feel squeamish about the self-centeredness-without-appropriate-value of this here posting. It won't always be like this, I promise. I felt compelled to write some bullshit transition entry about my regrets and intentions regarding this blog and my relationships in general. So I'm back; that's it.

To change the subject slightly, I died in my dream last night. Which is actually supposed to symbolize re-birth/new beginnings (appropriate then, re: the blog itself), but which probably has more to do with a bizarre conversation I had last night on the ways I would most/least like to die/take my own life. My conclusions were the following: yes, going in my sleep would be best. I also wouldn't mind being mauled to death by a beast, preferably of the aquatic variety. And in regards to suicide--which I am morally opposed to and would never attempt--I would simply walk into the sea and swim until there was no turning back, a la the end of Kate Chopin's The Awakening. On the other hand, dehydration would be one of, if not the, least preferable way to go. In any case, in the dream I was climbing a fence and stumbled into a very Tim Burton-esque briar patch of sorts that was a conglomeration of both living, growing, thorny shrubbage and industrial-decay barbed wire and gigantic nails. I couldn't make my way through it to save my life, and I inevitbaly got all torn up until finally I realized that standing perfectly still was the only way to not bleed to death. At which point I realized I was already parched, and that dehydration would indeed be the end of me, and I strarted getting delerious, "blacking out," and knew I was dying, at which point I woke up in my jeans and my shoes--my bedroom lights on--and dying for a drink of water on account of my hangover.

And I've had fucking "Lady Lazarus" in my head all day becuase of all of the above. So I'll leave you with that.

Lady Lazarus

By Sylvia Plath

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it-----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?-----

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish soon they.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot-----
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first timeit happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell
I do it so if feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A Miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart---
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair on my clothes.
So, so Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

posted by Nadyja Cree @ 5:55 PM 0 comments