good things.

1. good things still happen.

Brookie.

"With rushing winds and gloomy skies

The dark and stubborn Winter dies:

Far off, unseen, Spring faintly cries,

Bidding her earliest child arise;

March!"

Bayard Taylor, "March"

  

  

(We would like to go outside, please.)

2. Good things still happen.

Just when I'd consigned myself to be a shriveled up loser forever, the theatre gods magnanimously cast me in The Secret Garden.

And just when I'd decided to go to bed until graduation (or, more likely, much later) because my brain doesn't work and I'm tired and I've (for lack of a gentler term) screwed up my college education (and everything else), the research paper gods told me I won second place in a prestigious essay contest.

AND DESPITE THAT I still decided that I'm never going to be a writer and no one wants me to be a writer and my life is, for all intents and purposes, over. But then the publication gods said that a Women's Studies journal wants my Mormon feminist rant paper that I wove together with my soul.

I am humbled and so happy about these good things. 

Just a few days ago a dear friend told me that I was "about to turn a beautiful, beautiful corner." I so wanted to believe her. I should have.

And now it's time to turn back and tell everyone I love the same thing-- to help them find their corners. I have been way too sad lately to be anything but selfish, selfish, selfish. 

But there's time to change. Because good things still happen.

Love, light, and singing the most beautiful songs every night at rehearsal/ starting to write words again because I AM a writer, dagnabbit,

Banana

it gets cold then warm

then cold again.

brookie and I spent the long weekend with her lovely old camera.

  


I've always figured February had something against me. Something about the word "doldrums" that seems to epitomize the very generally grey feeling that wraps its tentacles around the month and anyone living in it and refuses to let go. Can't you feel it? It told me to come home and go back to bed today, so I obeyed. And then to take a bath and then to go back to bed again. Oh February, you naughty, restless thing.
 And this mostly snowless winter has suddenly become a snowy one. And then springy and warm. And then snowy again.

I wrote a poem about it [or about the evasive something inside me that just wanted to be written about] a couple Sundays ago. Enjoy.

snow falls
deathly quiet--
doesn't anyone else want to scream?

the window protects us
from the chaotic wash of white,
and inside we talk of God.

I am so alone in here.
I am so cold in here.
But I see Him out there--
tickling the trees til the branches break.

Those who listen do so on
hand palms,
heads loll in lethargic worship
and God blows past in silence.

Where does He live in Winter?
We see Him risen so effortlessly in Spring--
in Daffodils and Blades of Grass,
in the resurrected sun that cradles
our newborn love.

Can we find Him in the
hard sky, solid ground, blank dawn?
Where does He live when all life
is gone?

Does He sleep in the silent snow?

We wait to awaken.
We listen with dull ears and
frosty hearts;
We shut the door til Spring.

Sunsets in cars.

And we: spectators, always, everywhere,

facing all this, never the beyond.

It overfills us. We arrange it. It falls apart.

We arrange it again, and fall apart ourselves.

Who has turned us around like this, so that

whatever we do, we find ourselves in the attitude

of someone going away?

Just as that person

on the last hill, which shows him his whole valley

one last time, turns, stops, lingers--,

so we live, forever taking our leave.

-Rilke

from The Eighth Elegy

 

love, late morning poetry, and last weeks of summer,

Banana

p.s. I am now a working woman. Feel free to praise me.

Kate wrote me a haiku

and I liked it:

spritely musician

red lips and knitting needles

pour me some tea, please.

I love you, Kate.

My wonderful roommate.

Kate-o potato,

The lady so great-o.

Kate and Brookie and the Homecoming Parade.

 Love, oreo milkshakes, and groller bears,
Banana

Farewell to Green



[Scenic Alpine Loop in Provo Canyon]



Autumn is my favorite season.

I can feel it slipping away, though, and all the pumpkins on my porch are starting to rot.

Bother.

So my tribute to fall is a little overdue, perhaps, but here it is. In the form of a poem my little brother, Ethan (who just turned 9 last week) wrote. It is surprisingly wise:

[The assignment was to write a fall-themed poem with each line starting with a letter of "FALL." But he had more to say, so he expanded it to say "FALLING"]

Farewell to green

And good-morning colors 

Let's have some fun

Let's jump in piles

It's fall alright

Now it's time to say goodbye

Goodbye fall

And here's a poem by me, slightly less wise, but brought about entirely by a walk to school on a beautiful fall day.



[magic picnic in Sundance]



Today         10/18/10

I will skip class to read Robert Frost

In a halo of yellow leaves,

slightly shivering in the early light

 of what promises to be

A golden afternoon.

It’s just that sort of day.

Today I’ll remove my soft leather 

moccasins

and my dark denim jeans, molded

precisely to the shape of my hips

and thighs.

They’ll flutter to the ground

like a piece of gently torn tissue paper-

two flapping legs.



My braided hair will untwist itself,

 pins shooting out like

porcupine quills

and

falling slowly to the earth

as waxy red leaves.

Off will fly my cable knit cardigan

(the color of forget-me-nots),

 Followed eagerly by scarf,

earrings,

blouse,

bra.

Today I’ll stand, naked and glowing,

In the pale autumn sun.

Just me and Robert.

And everyone who passes

 Will wonder-
 At the transcendent orb of metaphor

And olive skin (steadily growing pinker)

 That bounds between the branches

And bursts into the sky-

 A shower of amber beams. Rivulets

Of light.

Everyone will wonder, as the drops

cascade from their noses,

but soon they will see (they can’t help but see)

that it’s just that sort of day.

 Today they will see

and free

me.

It’s just that sort of day.

Goodbye fall,

Banana

I'm not saying this is good...

...but I wrote a poem.

And I'm going to share it.

It's called "By the Fountain" because I wrote it by a fountain on a magically stormy day that was dripping with this inexplicable feeling of...significance.

And so I sat down and wrote a poem just as the drops fell to meet me.

And the thunder said hello.

By the Fountain  10/4/10

The sky seems so present

that the earth slips away

and the conquering clouds crowd in.

and the solitary people rush in

to clasp eyes and levy the distance

between

with unuttered hellos.

and the impatient thunder bellows

to be released

from its prison of professionalism.

The air feels so heavy

that the eyes, they drop

and splash off the bold face of possiblity.

ping, ping, ping.

We clatter inside to escape

the noisey adventure of feeling.

And without,

it begins to rain.

love.

banana.

wind

it whisks all things away
just like Charlie Chaplin's hat-
Everything but my solid resolution
to go Nowhere and be Nothing.

even the heavy wooden Door
isn't immune-
it bangs in Warning;
distant drums of ancient warriors.

it violates Marilyn
just in time for the cameras;
it waltzes with the weathervane
and conducts a cataclysmic wind chime Chorus.

it howls in Agony-
or perhaps just to frighten
the small girl afraid of Ghosts;
the young woman afraid of open Doors.

Oh hey, it's me!

Okay.
So I think it would be really cool to have a study. You know, like fathers always have in British novels.
That way, when unwanted visitors come to call the kids can say,

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry, but mother is rather occupied in her study!"

Alright, I realize that was a poorly disguised way of sneaking around the fact that this little blog has been in something of a state of dilapidation. I get it. But I just don't want to get all whiney again about how I've been so bored and depressed and confused and lonely and, really, ungrateful this semester.

I've been such a baby!

But that's all behind me now. I realized one dreary February mid-morning (at the end of a long string of similarly dreary mid-mornings) as I lay on the floor next to a large plate of spaghetti, mourning my existence, that something really needed to change. 

And that something was (and is) me.

So, here I am, ready to start anew. I'm home in Spokane Valley, Washington at this familiar old faux granite desk with eight hours of not much to do and a lot of homesickness and heartsickness for people and places (at the moment a little place like Jerusalem comes to mind, followed closely behind by Hawaii. Dancing around them are dearly beloved [still living] who I just can't seem to keep my hands on long enough) swimming around my psyche.

But here's the good news: I'm going to make something of myself. I mean it. These last few months of wallowing in Utah have been quite enough, and I'm ready to be curious, engaging, passionate, adventurous Banana once more. It's nice to remember who you are.

I think it was our dear friend, Emily Dick, who gave the encouraging nudge a couple days ago:

Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn-
Indicative that suns go down;
The notice to the startled grass-
That darkness is about to pass.

Thank you all for pardoning the Banana, but she is back! And ready for the sunshine. 

p.s. I may or may not have attempted to adapt that Emily Dickenson poem into lyrics for a song I'm trying to write on the guitar. Heh. Umm... oh yeah! Maybe I should learn to play the guitar? One more for the list! I can do it now though because I'm through with sendentarily wallowing and am once more going to cultivate my talents. Right?

yeah.

Cut-up

So bestfriend Marybutton visited me this weekend and we did fun best friend things:
birthday party. IHOP. lots and lots of piano. books. hours of talking, deep and shallow. snuggling. sleeping in.

One of our favorite best friend things is to cut up things. And sometimes we write cut-up poems.

Here's how it happened: I took seven lines each from four random sources (Atonement, a New York Times article, my Jerusalem journal, and a collection of poems by Rilke) and attempted to compile them into a pleasant sounding, almost

coherent poem.

[Us at the Seattle Zoo, years ago]                                                                    The title was chosen at random by miss Mary.

Her Multitudes Await

She hovered on the peripheries.

The stitches were clumsy and irregular;

Gandhi, Monroe, Sinatra, Kennedy.

These indignant thoughts afflicted her.

Sitting on the summit, daylight creeping in

Endless ribbons, inventing new bows

How was she to know they meant nothing in fact?

They were the best of the best in their field.

I was so nervous, tracking every single second of the trip

But it’s something I can’t give up on.

I have been a stranger in a strange land,

And I never, never want to stop singing that.

I’m becoming something of a mosaic expert,

For beauty is nothing but the onset of terror we’re still just able to bear.

The man and the woman part

He speaks only the few words necessary.

Then both look fearfully at the piano,

Two ambulances were parked at the side of the road, their back doors open.

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it,

So I’m not certain who’s crying out.

You could see the handwriting on the wall

After a protest in East Jerusalem.

And in the end you still had the spirit to celebrate.

Yes, the springtimes needed you.

In the middle of December,

There was no time to ask them where they were being sent

I can feel direct deliverance,

For staying put is nowhere.

creativity, blueberry pancakes, and lots of giggles,

Banana

[Us at the Washington coast, years ago]

Ode to margin writers (and, of course, to Billy)

I love reading. I am a shameless book worm and I perfectly embodied the wikipedia definition of gawky nerd until I grew into my nobs a little. then again, I still do a little.
Well, I have a habit of reading with a pen in hand (and usually also a pencil behind the ear, perhaps an additional pen to sit on, given up for long lost).
I am a margin writer!! And proud of it.

this little smidge of beauty by my rhetorical lover, Billy Collins, honors me in this sense.
The last line is also the namesake of this little bloggie poo.
Thought I'd share.

Thanks, Bill. You're a real pal. You're a babe.

[thanks for the photo]

Marginalia - Billy Collins

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.
Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
who wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.
Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.
Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.
And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.
We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.
Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.
And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.
Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page
A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

Leaving

A somewhat melodramatic poem I wrote on the plane flight back from Hawaii. Part of a renewed effort to share what I write without dying of shame.

"Leaving"
I tried to give the island a goodbye kiss
but it melted at my touch.
An eight-month mirage,
dissolved in a minute.
and leaving nothing but a bit of sand in my ears to remind me.

I tried to hug the ocean,
cradle the sunset,
fill my lungs so full with the precious sunshine
that a little pocket might stay there forever-
Sweetening each breath with a bit of illumination.

But they each slipped through somehow.
dripped through my fingers,
poured through my memory,
then washed right over me.
The horizon turned black
and the waves went to sleep.
I want to go back.
but the sea would get one taste
and spit me right out.
"You don't belong here," it would say.
"Look at your pale skin,
your tired eyes,
your unrealized ambitions."
And so i would turn to leave,
nothing but the echo of the tide
and the dull roar of the engine
to lull me to sleep.
Whispering through my sandy ears
and bursting through my aching heart.Aloha Oe, my beautiful Island. I'll be back someday.

Love, jet lag, and sorry no meter or rhyme scheme,
Anna

Whoopsie Daisies

I'm really....happy. (nearly unavoidable when in Hawaii) So... overcome with happiness, drunken with p.o.g. juice, and dead sure after weeks of deliberation, I accidentally decided to stay next semester. Maybe for the rest of my undergraduate education. (Perhaps for ever)

...Can ya blame me?


Career Day
Bakers are at their ovens,
painters at their easels.
Soldiers are at war,
and I am at peace.

Astronauts are in space,
playfully squirting toothpaste food at each other.
Burglars are in trouble,
but I am in love.

Contortionists are twisted,
accountants, I imagine, are bored.
waiters are tipped,
and I am balanced.

Mimes are silent,
I am singing.
Convicts are playing violent basketball in jumpsuits;
I am free. naked.

Suns are shining,
waves are crashing,
clouds are drifting,
and I am joyfully,
perfectly,
unmistakably unemployed.

Songs, sand, and nectarines,
Anna

Packing...again

I wrote this poem just about a year ago, leaving for college for the first time. And now, a year later, I feel just about the same way. So, I'm reiterating the point.

Packing
"I guess it's time!"
said my childhood playmates
as I laid them in cardboard graves
and wiped a tear from their sightless
plastic eyes.

"Time to grow up",
sighed the clip-on earrings,
the fun old gloves from Grammy's world,
when people still wore hats and time
moved more slowly.

"Knew it must come"
nodded my purple parasol wisely,
the battered remnants of a forgotten
trip to disneyland, my faded cursive name
silently nodding in agreement.

So many pages filled with doodles and dreams,
boxes of days and years,
countless laughs emitting dustily,
but lapsing inevitably into
mournful coughs.

Drawers of memories,
prodigal socks, hair ties, and buttons,
dust accummulation of ages,
annoying but endearing.

Isn't it funny how dust,
on a good day, makes you
sneeze.
But when "it's time," all
it does is make you cry?

You know you'll miss that
dust,
The splattered hot chocolate on the
wall, never quite cleaned up,
the books always on the
shelf, but never quite read.

"Yes, it's time"
gently urges my blankie,
the embodiment of 17 years' worth
of pleasant slumber,
something I can't quite give up and
am relieved that I don't have to.

Anna

The Best Poetry Ever Written by Four Sleepy Film-Goers

Sundance Poetry
A beautiful collection of elegantly written poems, Mad Libs style. Crafted by Anna Daines, and brought to life with the timeless adjectives, nouns and plural body parts of Kenny Adams, J. Thompson Dunn, and Austin Coleman. Yours today for only $67.95 (I take cash or check)

Rose Blanket

I burn to myself
on this desperate winter midget.
I remember a bed
when I could grind without potatoes.
I crash in the mirror
and wonder, "alas!
Who is this tooth decay?"


Follies of a Tortured Heart

John Deer cries at me
from across the unashamed room,
only a grand slam breakfast away,
but bananas apart.
Does he shake how I dance?
That he is my only pool stick?
That he cuts my mother?


Summer Calling

The pickle in the trees,
the children on the elephant-
I can nearly hear summer,
the tenacious lady of tatoo, scalping me.
Her bloodthirsty voice
and taunting doorknob,
beckoning me to ski her leg.


The Eyebrows Tell it All

I can see it in his philanges.
He caresses me.
He pokes me.
We fry along,
side by side,
separated only by our own sasquatch.
Yet I always thump
the compulsive hotrod in those philanges,
the aphid of closure and hair.


Yesterday

A day of clowns,
The dawning of a sexier wildebeest.
My pancreas beat wildy
and my tox were opened.
But the pole is dark,
The shank is gone!
Never again will the chicken undulate.


The Films
We went to groan
the aardvarks today.
The sun was soaring,
the children were singing.
The films rolled on in their horny baby.
hunting me of a
brighter roadkill.


A more extensive preview of the anthology upon request.

Trollies, records, and sketchy cartoons,
Anna