(yet)

I want to write about turning fifty but I don't think I have it in me. (yet).

november the fifteenth

I keep coming back to the idea that I should have been someone else. I should have been something else. a high school art teacher. a florist. an art director. a mail carrier. a librarian. anything and/or anyone but what and/or who I am now, which is a person writing a blog post on a monday morning, in between looking for part-time jobs and hustling for more freelance photography work and googling 'where to sell old gold chains from the eighties' and 'what to do with your life when you don't know what to do with your life'.

still

peak

it's hard to do anything else right now when the trees are doing things. when they are begging you to come outside, to stand underneath them and look up.

light bulbs

I am not exactly ready to talk about the woman who approached me at target last week. me, flustered and sweaty-faced after twenty ridiculous minutes in the dressing room (first time since the before times), two ridiculous sweaters in my cart, neither of which I had any intention of buying. I am not ready to talk about the little hand-written laminated notecard the woman showed me that said something about needing food for her babies. I am not ready to admit that I followed her to the baby food aisle, even though I knew this was a common scam. not ready to talk about how she dropped container after container of baby formula in my cart, nearly one hundred dollars' worth before I finally found my voice and offered to purchase her a gift card instead. I am not ready to talk about how angry she seemed at the thought of a gift card, how much this confused me, how it had me questioning the ethics of gift cards for people in need, wondering if I'd missed something. not ready to talk about how she decided she wanted cash instead, how I obediently followed her to the front of the store to the ATM, how the whole thing put me in a trance-like state, how it felt like I was watching the entire scene unfold from the rafters of target. 

I am not exactly ready to talk about how she just disappeared. how I wandered the store afterwards, in a daze, pretending, inexplicably, to talk on my phone. how I stood in the aisle with the light bulbs and called my mother. my mother, who has been dead for nine years now. not ready to discuss how the number is no longer in service, of course, but the recording still plays and right there, in front of the general electric 4-packs of soft whites and LED bulbs and incandescents, I whispered into the phone, mom? mom? are you there? 

I am not ready to talk about how, for a second, I thought she might answer.

how

spotted while I was walking home yesterday and then, the asking, the asking, the asking, and the singing in my brain, from the moment I bent down to pick up that card to the second I reached the front door--

how 

how

how

how is it already november 

how 

I did not write this

but I sure wish I had. today I share with you the very best thing I have read in a good while.

Elegy for the Last Bottle of Ranch

This is not a poem about willpower. Though I've been an After a handful of times. Laid on my side with barely a handful of flesh to offer up-- nothing for my lover to cup & didn't even have to suck in my gut. Just sat down in jeans-- without thinking. Do you want me to sigh & say, Those were the days. We both do. But I was unsatisfied then, too. Thought, Just a few more pounds. Almost there. More running nowhere, more core strength. How I balanced hands & knees on inflatable balls--like some skinny, circus elephant. Trained to please the crowd. Hours of concrete & cattle prod. & still I stood before the mirror, reshaping my form, wishing myself clay before the kiln. Like the day I decided to cut my own bangs. The thrill of the scissor's snap each time I evened out the line more & more until Dear God someone stop me please. Little fringe of hair, cheap stage curtains stuck in midair. How I tire of this performance. & yet I can't stop auditioning for the lead. Practicing after school for months. Doris Day's I Enjoy Being a Girl with a hairbrush for a mic. All hope & no irony & I never even made it to Try-Outs. Kept that little wish for myself. Meant for someone else. Let Someone Else be better than. Let her be this, be that. Be thin, be flat. & for once just let me enjoy being abundant, fecundate. A venus figurine made flesh. Let me toss the last bottle of ranch in the trash only because I've learned to make my own. Greek yogurt & a healthy dab of Duke's. Fresh dill & lemon & garlic. Better than store-bought. Who cares what's hidden in her valleys. Come try my mac & cheese, my spring pea risotto. Join me in the kitchen as I hand roll fettuccine. Let only dough be paper thin. I'll pour the red. Glass after glass for the ample-assed. See what I have tasted & tasted and not one goddamn drop of me was wasted.

Danielle DeTiberus

forever and always

I once heard a fellow instant photographer say it would be cheaper to smoke crack and collect diamonds than to shoot instant film. where is the lie? I spot no lie. an exaggeration maybe, but nary a lie.

still, I come back to instant film, again and again. I order a pack or two when I can afford it, load up the the SX-70 and shoot when it feels right. twice a year, in the spring and fall, I share my favorites in the beloved, long-running polaroid week pool over on ye olde flickr. submissions are limited to two polaroids per day, which means I put thought into what I choose to share. reader, I have grown to love this ritual.

above polaroids were submissions for fall polaroid week 2021, new orleans and portland strongly represented here, years 2017 and 2021, respectively. 

the truth is that I'd rather have polaroids than all the diamonds in the world.

I did not

found written in my moleskine, january 10, 2021:

I did not squander today

though it felt like I did

I woke up at eight, then coffee

put myself together

showed up for the first virtual book club

felt vulnerable for an hour

fixed myself a real breakfast

something something quiche, cara cara orange

showed up for virtual church

talked, even though I didn't know folks

then, communion

baked a batch of cinnamon rolls

tried to wake ezra up before noon

reveled in the pretend fire

that can be turned on with a remote control the size of a pack of gum

cat napped on the couch

showed up for another zoom

books with my friend joel--

joel from england

called ava, made plans

bundled up, walked to the library

noticed things--

birds

cigarette

sunlight

face mask

returned two books, picked up one

the complete collected poems of lucille clifton 1965-2010

walked home, noticed things--

birds 

cigarette

sunlight

face mask

came home to that almost lovely

fake fire

that lives in the fireplace 

collapsed on the couch

contemplated writing

pulled together dinner instead

read poems by rita dove instead

dozed off while

the makeshift casserole

warmed in the oven

cleaned the kitchen

tried to listen to a rebecca solnit book

realized I might not be

an audio book person

made a mental note to remember

something she said about 

how present you are when you are lost

helped ezra with his essay

then, dinner

then, couch

then, book

then, cleaning

then, the feeling that inevitably comes 

at the end of the day

that squandered feeling

dear self

write down the things you want to remember. scribble them down on pieces of paper, scraps of whatever is around, whatever you have. write the moments down, no matter how small they seem. fold them up and put them in an envelope or stuff them in a jar or cigar box or whatever you have. let it be messy. let it not be this precious thing, but this necessary, practical thing you do as often as you brush your teeth. 

revisit whenever you need to but mostly when the world is too much. dump them all out on the floor and read them one by one. the world will still be too much but you will be sitting there in a pile of paper magic.

november the sixth

there are times when it feels like all the words have already been written and all the photographs taken. it feels sometimes like we are drowning in stories and documentation. the good news, I think, is that the lovely place where we all overlap is no longer a sliver, but an ocean.

november the fifth

tonight, we walked down to the end of our street to find a southern sky on fire. and we wondered if we should run back to the house, get in the car and drive to where there weren't so many trees, where the sky was wide open. it'll be gone before we even figure out where to go, he said. better to stand still, watch it here, right now. 

right here is good, I said. right now is perfect.

untitled

things worth celebrating--

stories that live in found chair arrangements and also, the people who love them.

steal this idea

  

I saw a woman dressed as her grandmother's sewing tin for halloween the other day. I saw it on the internet, of course. oversized spools and thimbles and pin cushions glued to her sweatshirt, the lid of a giant cardboard cookie tin on her arm like a shield. 

and now all I can think about is the old cookie tin my grandma kept in the linen closet, the pink one filled with buttons that sat next to a chorus of old jelly jars. all I can think about is how much I loved that tin, how I'd dump those buttons out on the bed like halloween candy and swirl them around with my tiny hands, over and over.

and now-- now all I can think about is my next halloween party. how I will glue a thousand candy colored buttons to an old sweatshirt and craft a giant cookie tin lid out of cardboard that I will carry around like a giant shield. I will tell my people to come dressed as a favorite childhood memory and they will maybe fight me on it but in the end, they will do it because deep down, they know it is a golden idea.

serenity now

I fall asleep to the sounds of seinfeld most nights. seinfeld on my phone, which I place face down on my nightstand, dreaded blue light be damned. I can still hear jerry's voice, though and the ever muffled voices of elaine and kramer and george. after sleepy time yoga and sleepy time breathing and sleepy time tea and sleepy time everything and then thirty, maybe forty-five minutes of what is called "deep sleep mindful meditation'" (in which I am promised a deep, boneless sleep), I am usually still wiiiiide awake, eyes like silver dollars. 

sometimes I can see the moon from my side of the bed, in the top right corner of the window, though just a sliver of it. sometimes I close my eyes and mentally walk through every house I've ever lived in, starting with the chocolate brown split-level in southern illinois where I once accidentally set the entryway wall on fire while pretending to cast spells on no one in particular. I slept well in that house. but I was six. 

I have always been able to sleep anywhere, anytime, until now. now, I require a magic mattress, a frigid room, an elaborate night time routine and the muted sounds of a nineties television show. the truth is that seinfeld seems to flatten things, and in the flattening, I find sleep. not deep, boneless sleep but, sleep. and admittedly, some wildly seinfeldian flavored dreams. but, I'll take it. I'll take it.