Coyotes in the Paper City

Abandoned Mill in The Paper City

An emblem of navigation. It is snowing so much. The flakes are big, large, marble sized sometimes. As if tall trees that we cannot see shake their branches at the sky, loosening the wet from weighing them down.

Two years ago today my mother passed. I don't remember if it was snowing that day. It happens to snow a lot when my sister and I visit her grave. I have never tested this in July, but I like to think it is true. 

I wonder, each year, if this is a personal day. A day of notification and memory. A day to make clear where I stand in the universe, where my boundaries lie. (The answer is yes, and sometimes.) I am so protective of things out east, my home. So proud of my working class upbringing when I am anywhere else. When I am here, it is shadowed by what is coined the Tofu Curtain. The tofu curtain is the Holyoke Mountain Range that separates the Pioneer Valley from the Springfield Metro area of Western Massachusetts, a place so filled with privilege it forgets itself. 

I miss the urban hustle of Carl Sandburg's city. The latino kids speaking Spanish on the train with the diamond earring bling, the Russian family who then boards, the Polish accents behind me, the black kids riding the red line from Uptown to the South Side and back again. Last week, riding the T through Boston, I told my friend Jen that subway trains make me feel human.

The day before St. Patrick's Day, I watched my sister run a six mile race through the Paper City, or Holyoke, during what is the second largest St. Patrick's Day celebration in the country. I had never actually been to Holyoke. Within minutes of arriving downtown, we were solicited drugs on the street corner. It didn't feel threatening, but a way of life. The buildings are boarded up in the Paper City. Not some. Not a handful. Most. All. Old factories on rivers. Buildings that once operated as apartment complexes. Auto shops. Paper mills. Everything. Yet, each year, 7,000 people sign up for this annual race. People pay $25.00 to run through Holyoke, past the drug dealers, abandoned houses, and shuttered mills. But I don't think Holyoke sees a penny of that money.

I felt more at ease on the streets of Holyoke than I sometimes do on the other side of that curtain. Here, in Northampton, the coyotes howl on Saturday nights and you can hear their cries for miles. I am afraid to step outside. I won't walk home through the woods without my headlamp and pocket knife. I am afraid of encountering bears. Three months ago I left Chicago for New England, a place I then called Mars. It still feels like Mars up here. 

Chicago is approximately 30 miles north, south and west, urban sprawl in all directions but east, but I bet Lake Michigan stretches that far. You can't see the other side. Which is Michigan if you look straight across: "The Upper Peninsula is a spare state / in case Michigan goes flat." Detroit is now state run. 

Maybe by summer Mars will feel like home again. Maybe I have to continue running up the hills of the Paper City to prove to myself there is a view from there. And that the view from the wrong side of the mountain is the view that I am looking for.

My mother didn't bore me into a state of luxury, but she taught me how to fight and what to fight for. I hope I get snarled up in the coyotes. I hope I howl with them all night long. I hope they help me tear through the wooden panels of the abandoned buildings. I hope they reach out their claws, hold the hand of the dying on the other side and say, 

"We are making paper again. We are planting you trees."

Blizzard Love

Colors!

Snowy walk.

Flight!

Cute!

Hungry Ghost Bread

For a future you.

I'm never sure of making plans for the New Year. Of saying, "I'm going to take you by the reigns and destroy you." But maybe it's because I think every day is a day for new beginnings. New awakenings. A much harder practice. I'm not saying I'm very good at it.

I am feeling reflective this morning, mounds of clothes and piles of things to contain, to box, to take or leave. I should be packing now, not writing, but things will get done. The point from here to there is so much clearer when you are not in between, searching, compiling, organizing, dismantling, arranging. I'll land in Northampton, Massachusetts in seven days with an air mattress and two suitcases full of clothes. I am shipping my bedding a week in advance so it will be there when I arrive.

I look forward to an empty room. I imagine a bed, a yoga mat, and a zafu. My belongings housed in a storage unit in Chicago for the time being, an indication of the split my mind seems to taking. One foot in and one foot back. Not ideal, I know, but one way.

I adopt a word each year in lieu of making resolutions. Resolutions are lists in journals that are good ideas. The memory of writing them is often there, but the contents missing.

For the New Year, I will hibernate. I will tuck myself up into a little den and I will meditate and I will read and I will write and I will process. And I will take care of myself. Radical self care.

Before I leave Chicago, I will read poetry at the Hopleaf on New Year's Day.

For a future you, from a past me—

With love from Mars.

From Mars, Post Chicago Blues

The biggest hearts break in December. I am sitting in a poet's house on the Northwest side of Chicago with two beautiful dogs as my companions. I am dog-sitting and have the quiet of books and the coldest days of winter by my side. The first days of winter by my side. It is sunny and not quite snowy and I am in my pajamas and drinking too much coffee again. Black.

I have been in a lot of pain since November. A roaring monster intestinal reproductive knot to the lower right side of my pelvic bone/abdomen/hip/muscle (undefined). The pulsing has subsided thanks to acupuncture, rest, and hot tubs, but I don't trust it to bicycle or run. I don't trust it to the care of others or the wreckage it's caused.

As I approach the saddest months of the year, I cannot exercise and I move to Massachusetts in two weeks. The anticipation of the most joyous hearts upon my arrival. Maybe that's why I am moving back. That dark underbelly of my history and the goodness of shadowy ferns tucked deep within damp soil and rolling hills of grit and a younger girl's wanderlust.

It occurs to me there will be birch trees again.

Poetry and journaling have replaced endorphins as I simplify my life. It's a funny thing, writing. This afternoon I can't imagine the poetic because I'm stuck somewhere in the middle of a place, a transience that's difficult to map. Maybe I will become sassier again. Maybe I will stick up for myself more. Maybe I will find a love that flows freely in both directions. Maybe I will hibernate. 

Maybe I will find the calm of the Connecticut under the Northampton footbridge. The summer things that are not Chicago summer things. Trips to New York City. Trips to Maine. Trips to my mother's grave I am never quite comfortable with. I still have not found a way in such close proximity.

But I will find a way.

There is a poem by Matthew Rohrer called "From Mars." It is published in his collection Destroyer and Preserver. It is terribly sad but it is terribly true. We do think of each other.

Somewhere.

On January 30th I will see Kishi Bashi in concert in the same place I saw the books many years ago. With friends I have known for even more years ago.

Be good to them always.

the beauty of the world which is soon to perish \ has two edges

One year and one half ago I registered to donate blood to the American Red Cross to help those affected by the tsunami that devastated Japan. The next morning, I received news of the worst possible personal family disaster I could imagine. I could not donate blood that week because I had to be present with my family on an emotional micro level I had never had before. A testament that tragedy comes both big and small and that prioritizing need often attaches itself to a place that feels closest to home.

I am registered to donate blood at 11:15am on Halloween. I am donating blood because I am so far away from the east coast and because I can. I am donating blood because New York and New Jersey need all the help they can get. I am donating blood because everyone I know is safe but not everyone they know is safe. And that is an extension. A ripple.

Greenwich Village

Tragedy is not a disconnect, it is an interconnect. It is what makes us human. It is what makes us survivors and warriors and helpers and givers. 

People will joke about the apocalypse. I am tempted to joke that by donating blood on Halloween I am supporting a morbid zombie subculture. Maybe I am. But that morbid zombie subculture is what is going to lift Manhattan from the waters. It is what will pull people together to rebuild infrastructure and bring food and fresh water and clean clothes to those who need them.

One of my first poetry mentors published a collection called I Want This World (Tupelo Press, 2001). That is the refrain that comes to mind as I type. 

There is a poem in the collection about borders. It is about Mexico and Texas and immigration and disconnect and interconnect. And about how the borders of states and the borders of boroughs are not all that different, or thin after all.

Please donate, or help in any way you can.  

BORDERS
by Margaret Szumowski

Resacas cut deep into the earth, 
their slow, dark waters.
Peach trees bloom in February, 
summer fruit red and sweet.
Toads sing in water buckets outside the house,
and I am drowned in the very heat
I want to love. 

This is Brownsville,
where trees flame and the sun
beats blood-red through palms.
My first night somebody 
gets knocked across my table
in a bar-fight. When I look
for work, they're afraid

I might have something to do
with that big strike up north
"We don't want no unions here."
Forests can swallow
so many secrets, but here
the land is open, save a few spindly palms.

Early in the morning I see jack rabbits
gallop, pink ears flap.
Blue-black snakes crawl the road.
Wherever not mowed down by cars,

morning glories leap
on the beach. The warm gulf.
I could let myself bath naked
under a purple sky if I didn't fear
the blue jellyfish.

The Rio Grande is just a trickle here,
but on the other side I feel different.
Here are the villas with their glass-topped walls.
Here are the men pushing carts,
orange and yellow fruit, big jars
of pink, green, purple juices. 
Everyone savors fruit on this hot day, 
but in Garcia's the Americans
keep watch on the bridge,
drink Tecate with lime, eat nachos. 
They've escaped something 
but they don't know what. 
They've loaded up on booze, jalapeños, 
Mexican wedding shirts and florid
leather purses. They worry about
being kidnapped. I go deeper
into Matamoros, get lost quickly.
Everywhere people tell me 
what I'm looking for is just 
two blocks away.

"The beauty of the world which is soon to perish

has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, 
cutting the heart asunder."

-Virginia Woolf

For the Sake of Science

I just want this little piece published somewhere. 

The Body – Thyroid
Your Thyroid is a butterfly-shaped, brownish-reddish gland located in the front of your neck, just above the collarbone. It is seated atop the trachea, or windpipe, and just below the Adam’s apple. The thyroid is part of the endocrine system, which is responsible for producing, releasing, and regulating hormones in the body.

Attached to the outside of your thyroid are four, smaller glands called parathyroid glands. These glands are specifically responsible for bone growth and the development of the brain and nervous system. To either side of your thyroid, you will find your jugular vein and carotid artery. These veins and arteries are connected to smaller, branch-like veins and arteries that help carry the hormones released from your thyroid into your bloodstream and to the organs and tissues located throughout your body.

With the help of your pituitary gland, a pea-sized gland located at the base of the brain, your thyroid releases hormones that help regulate your body’s metabolism and burn energy. When your thyroid produces too much or too little hormone, the pituitary gland steps in and sends a signal for the thyroid to slow down or speed up hormone production as necessary. Your thyroid and your pituitary gland are both monitored by what is sometimes referred to as a “master” gland, or the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is located at the base of the brain, not far from the pituitary gland, and produces hormones that control body temperature, hunger, mood, sex drive, sleep, and thirst.

As a three-way system of hormonal management, the thyroid releases a necessary amount of hormones into your body based on signals sent from both the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus, which helps to regulate your weight, your energy levels, and your metabolism.
 
Sources
1. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002380.htm
2. http://vsearch.nlm.nih.gov/vivisimo/cgi-bin/query- meta?v%3Aproject=medlineplus&query=thyroid&x=0&y=0
3. www.thyroid.org/patients/brochures/FunctionTests_brochure.pdf
4. http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/pituitary-tumor/overview.html 
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyroid 

Light From The Bay

Rose Garden, Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, CA

For seven days I spent in the San Francisco Bay Area. I had posted about it earlier this week but hadn't quite captured the sentiment. I had placed visual and creative content in its absence, but I want to tackle some of that experience in depth.

I worry that a lot of my content these days contains remnants of my mother, and I wonder if and when it is appropriate to shed the enormous amount of attention, or what I perceive as attention in her direction. 

My mother's name is Rose, and that I found myself in a rose garden at the end of my travels was an enormous shower of light at the end of a retreat that was already brimming with warmth. 

When I arrived in San Francisco the week prior, I encountered a public art exhibition in the airport that displayed industrial sewing machines: Threading the Needle: Sewing in the Machine Age. My mother was a seamstress and when she died I was left with an old Singer from a New England textile factory. A black, glowering, beautiful, stubborn thing. 

San Francisco at age 30 felt like being wrapped by a giant hug from my mother. Maybe one I hadn't received since I was a little girl, and that must be what grace feels like. What being watched over feels like, and understanding that being watched over doesn't mean there is no shadow. It means being better equipped at understanding shadow; perhaps being more forgiving of shadow.

The other lights of my trip were my dear friends Randy, JB, Jon, and Jesse B. New friends and old friends in a big giant city in a district called the Inner Sunset. There were eucalyptus trees everywhere. Like being in a Vicks factory of timber. A northerner at heart, I could do to soften the winters of oceans with year-round sunshine. 

During my trip, I encountered Diego Rivera's "The Flower Carrier" at SFMOMA. It is one of the most poignant art pieces I have come across and may have replaced "Paris Street, Rainy Day" as one of my favorite paintings. For my dear friend Eric in Austin, a quiet nod to Rothko's "No. 14, 1960." Still a sucker for Moderism, the Museum's collection is impressive. 

Resonances of home abound, I biked the Golden Gate Bridge on my birthday, ate oysters on a half-shell, sat zazen at the San Francisco Zen Center, and got mugged by the San Francisco transit authority. This is why travel is important. It triggers memory and helps re-invent it.  

The poem I initially posted on this blog can be found here. It is called "Aubade in Autumn" by Peter Everwine. It reminds me of San Francisco, how the evenings feel like fall, and how I miss my mother. It is a birdsong. 

Thank you to everyone on my 30th birthday for sending me a birdsong. 

Transcription From the U.S. Department of Labor

I am 29 and stepped out of the Illinois Department of Human Services office this morning. I lost my second job in the nonprofit sector in June. This time in the arts. I applied for a Link Card. I felt like Lucinda Williams, my mother, and one version of the woman I want to be. I do not have children. I want to have children, but NPR’s segment “Call Me Maybe When Your School Loan is Paid in Full” tells me I will never get married. 

I have a high credit rating. I know how to manage money, but at a deficit. When my mother died last year, I found approximately fifteen credit cards in a file drawer. Most of them were for clothing catalogs from the 80's. My debt is mainly from bereavement travel, flowers for funerals, a joint credit account that maxed, education, and medical costs.  

I am a writer. I have applied to 8 MFA programs in 2 years. I have been wait-listed to one of the top writing programs in the country and offered residency to the school's low-res pilot program at an annual cost of $22,000. There is no funding for this program.

When I researched grants for artists, I was kindly notified by the U.S. Department of Education on behalf of the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Program that the previously distributed national grant for low-income artists is no longer available. The fellowship may never be available again.

This is the country in which we live. 

Every two weeks I certify for unemployment benefits. I have no medical insurance. I have appeared twice on American Public Media's Marketplace as a commentator for my generation's search for jobs in this economy.

There are no jobs in this economy. Or, if there are jobs, there are 12.7 million people who need them. This does not include undocumented persons or the homeless.

I live in a three-bedroom apartment in the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago with two talented ladies and a four-year-old Shih-Tzu named Harvey. We are in our late 20's and early 30's. Our landlady is a retired teaching artist and our yard is like a New England faery forest or something from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. There are fiddlehead ferns painted on my bedroom wall.

My friendships are my trusted accompaniments, my family is my foundation–my memory and my reminder–and the modest attention I receive for my writing is my indicator.

What I want is the freedom of feminism and the domestic luxury of rearing children. I want the debt ceiling to reverse roles with my dreams.  

I have been listening to Josh Ritter. There is a line in the song "Galahad" that goes, "I gotta carry you to heaven and despite what you'd imagine I have trouble bearing heavy things aloft." 

If this is the way I feel about my student loans and my credit card debt, I can't imagine how it feels for those of us who are in more debt than I. Those of us who have children. Those of us who have homes foreclosed or soaring medical bills and pre-existing conditions.

Don't take out a loan for an MFA. Don’t be one of 12.7 million people crumpling under the weight of what they owe. 

Dream bigger. Dream of being a mother-woman. Dream of the serene landscape of a Midwestern sunrise, of writing hours, and a soft life.

And don’t raise the debt ceiling for your dreams.

Turn up your speakers, play the saddest Lucinda Williams song you know, wear your highest heels, and blast open a skylight. 

Statement for Literature In Elementary School Setting

It is essential to present literature to children in an elementary school setting - nay, in any setting. Literature, at its most poignant, presents human nature at its rawest, most colloquial. It mirrors culture at its best, or worst, and can be a distinct portrayal of its time. It builds crucial critical thinking skills and demonstrates a fantastical outlet by teaching children to open the door to possibility and diversity by emphasizing not only what is, but what could be. It fosters dreaming. And if there is one thing kids do best it is dream. What better way to encourage dreaming than by building a foundation of possibility - then validating that possibility’s place in the world?

Peter and Wendy
Illustration F.D. Bedford

Performance Etiquette

The Interview

On Saturday, June 30th at 1:30 p.m. I will be performing in Collaboraction Theater Company's 12th Annual Sketchbook Festival: Reincarnate in THE INTERVIEW.

In the vein of Neo-Futurism and Live Lit Storytelling, I am honored to be on the stage again. The performance is unscripted and the acting mind is one of emptying and clarity. What I may bring to the table is a Buddhist's composure, a sassy etiquette, a poet's critique, and an open heart.

I believe this type of performance breaks boundaries and breaks the theater's fourth wall by being unabashedly honest. As a writer, I thrive on presenting shock that is rooted from a place that resembles home. My intent is not to trigger, but to muckrake and, more so, to present a commonality, a compassion, and an understanding in the human condition.

We are after all, humans. And if we can reach into ourselves and find truth and have courage to share it - why wouldn't we?

I hope my truth resonates with yours.

"THE INTERVIEW [by Lawrence Bridges, directed by Ian Forester] is an unscripted theatrical experience that breaks new ground in documentary theater. Mr. Bridges, a seasoned experimental documentary and feature film director, has crafted a set of instructions for a solo performer, which prompt an unexpectedly personal and spontaneous theatrical experience. As the actor responds with stories and personal accounts to these previously unheard instructions, the play unfolds along a hidden arc, resulting in an unforgettable encounter between audience and performer. Since THE INTERVIEW can be done only once by a performer, no two shows will ever be the same. Part theater and part social experiment, THE INTERVIEW promises to be a funny, poignant, and thought-provoking examination of the human condition."