nature, incredible you, teach us we are not invincible,
show us airplanes are not taxis,
ground them to clear the air because
our lives depend on you, nature.
covid number 19.
March 10, 2020
March 7, 2020
Grief
I assume you are good, grief
I'm in the habit to assume most things
most every day
without thought to the quality of being
in each handoff
almost every day
grief, I assume you are good
needy you cling as though to prove
I cannot wrestle or shirk you away
remain as you will, grief
through the morning plan to be in the garden
early to explore
Shoots the lost one never saw in person
but influence! indeed, with electronic media
at our spoils, we showed and showed
every time I cut open an Avacado
there's a pip rooting in a glass of water
up in Michigan
where am I from or do I belong doesn't matter
I am not living where friends thought right for me
except I am not where I am needed
I fled, remember? Bang a low chord
I fled because everyone backed away or no one could hear me
or the assumption was unavailable to me at home
Grief, you point that out to me
but of your many talons
to assume I was ever unfeeling,
I remain in a state of disbelief
raking leaves, removing debris
and planting sunflower seeds because of course
through disbelief, I want to embrace
never to let the bubble burst
to experience the frank realization
when grief dissipates
above a day spreading long, flat, unending
to be let go of
I'm in the habit to assume most things
most every day
without thought to the quality of being
in each handoff
almost every day
grief, I assume you are good
needy you cling as though to prove
I cannot wrestle or shirk you away
remain as you will, grief
through the morning plan to be in the garden
early to explore
Shoots the lost one never saw in person
but influence! indeed, with electronic media
at our spoils, we showed and showed
every time I cut open an Avacado
there's a pip rooting in a glass of water
up in Michigan
where am I from or do I belong doesn't matter
I am not living where friends thought right for me
except I am not where I am needed
I fled, remember? Bang a low chord
I fled because everyone backed away or no one could hear me
or the assumption was unavailable to me at home
Grief, you point that out to me
but of your many talons
to assume I was ever unfeeling,
I remain in a state of disbelief
raking leaves, removing debris
and planting sunflower seeds because of course
through disbelief, I want to embrace
never to let the bubble burst
to experience the frank realization
when grief dissipates
above a day spreading long, flat, unending
to be let go of
February 19, 2020
Go Fund Me Campaign for Eric Ulmer
https://www.gofundme.com/f/eric-ulmer-family-fund?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=m_pd+share-sheet
My youngest cousin passed away today and a good friend of the family has set up a Go Fund Me site to encourage contribution to paying for the funeral. Thank you for what you can give.
My youngest cousin passed away today and a good friend of the family has set up a Go Fund Me site to encourage contribution to paying for the funeral. Thank you for what you can give.
February 14, 2020
now that it's friday
the saddest news comes. my cousin, aged all of 41, father of three, husband, is in hospice. please don't send me a word or a wink, but do to his wife, three daughters, his mother, mother in law and grandmother in law. and please do not drink too much. there's one liver in you and no matter if you eat local and don't eat meat, alcohol can take you down. it's done just that here.
February 9, 2020
The Conversation to Kill Opportunity
It never happened, at least not to me, except a brilliant psychotherapist I was only profoundly fortunate to see as a client, he once asked me: Gina, what is it you would like to become? He asked as a profession. What, when you grow up, would you like to be? How would you prefer to earn yourself a living?
No one passed my mother's friends kneeling down to have a closer look at my mug and stating, "she is going to break some hearts!" had ever inquired of me to become any particular thing.
I hid, I wrote, I played piano to thorough distraction (was that my first and only love?), I danced, I sang b-sides, I rescued birds, stole tadpoles, and I swam. No one said: Gina, you should focus on maths, science, humanities, medicine, become a nurse, social worker, vet, teacher, welder. NOTHING. Not a single word. Not one conversation.
I made a BIG mistake of searching for that conversation to answer me back: who am I, LOOK where I come from, what the fuck can I possibly become?
Only in the united states can you search around to return to it and land in the belly of higher education. I did that, and with a profound oops, what a dummy. It's a trap. For instance, where else would you study to complete two degrees to come out doing for a living what you must to repay the devil for opening its doors? Yes, I will loan you $ so you can complete two university degrees because one is not enough. That's the US Department of Education speaking directly to the idiots who had no direction whatsoever. Such as was me.
The point of the trap is you have to repay this "I am not your parents" lender. Therefore, you accept the job that presents itself to you to land in a position you might as well have done without the massive expense you need to repay to influence you to accept it in the first place. Huh? It's a scrambling way to reveal you end up not at all working at what you're best at because 1. you were never asked what you would like to be 2. lacked any real input on what you might want to study (improve my writing, really?), 3. having faced a world at home and abroad that at most had to say you are not my responsibility 4. and, you end up working at a job that you wouldn't sell to your favorite enemy: you are a form filler-outer.
It reminds me of Primo Levi's stories, what I get to do. The minister of noses.
The nearest I came to know, for all the effort I put forward (working full time, attending university full time, caring for a mentally ill mother), what I wanted to do, I was told firmly by a department you don't want to TEACH. In that statement, I was being told I wasn't worth the argument to get a little support, just a wee bit, bean-counting it was, and while I was white, I lacked a dick in my pants. That same person who told me I didn't want to teach bonked my dickless pants out.
Nearly took my own life because of that, in the PTSD manner in which I was functioning, and that I lost what I was convinced I had loved the most: writing. How could I have lost a thing of such significant meaning when no one really thought I could write? It was more, Please do not write to me about your miserable childhood that I had drummed into me in the years before making the mistake of attending university. In fact, it was in graduate school, I came only as close as one memoir event. One. So I learned to not write about my crappy start. Thank you!
My ego lately is impressive. It is fighting to receive not recognition for me but RESPECT. It is trying to permit me the deep breathing required of me to leverage the correct wording to communicate not FUCK YOU I HATE YOUR GUTS to instead say what I do not know.
Several years ago now, I'd had a moment on the campus of the University of Michigan (what an accomplishment, right?) wherein leaning against the crisp outside air, I sensed a solid form. The realization there somewhere by Angel Hall was one institution for another. I felt lucky right then and there, in a snap, in a blink. Something lies ahead. Come what may. Form filler outer. Fuck you.
Thank you for not reading, seeing, commenting, knowing.
No one passed my mother's friends kneeling down to have a closer look at my mug and stating, "she is going to break some hearts!" had ever inquired of me to become any particular thing.
I hid, I wrote, I played piano to thorough distraction (was that my first and only love?), I danced, I sang b-sides, I rescued birds, stole tadpoles, and I swam. No one said: Gina, you should focus on maths, science, humanities, medicine, become a nurse, social worker, vet, teacher, welder. NOTHING. Not a single word. Not one conversation.
I made a BIG mistake of searching for that conversation to answer me back: who am I, LOOK where I come from, what the fuck can I possibly become?
Only in the united states can you search around to return to it and land in the belly of higher education. I did that, and with a profound oops, what a dummy. It's a trap. For instance, where else would you study to complete two degrees to come out doing for a living what you must to repay the devil for opening its doors? Yes, I will loan you $ so you can complete two university degrees because one is not enough. That's the US Department of Education speaking directly to the idiots who had no direction whatsoever. Such as was me.
The point of the trap is you have to repay this "I am not your parents" lender. Therefore, you accept the job that presents itself to you to land in a position you might as well have done without the massive expense you need to repay to influence you to accept it in the first place. Huh? It's a scrambling way to reveal you end up not at all working at what you're best at because 1. you were never asked what you would like to be 2. lacked any real input on what you might want to study (improve my writing, really?), 3. having faced a world at home and abroad that at most had to say you are not my responsibility 4. and, you end up working at a job that you wouldn't sell to your favorite enemy: you are a form filler-outer.
It reminds me of Primo Levi's stories, what I get to do. The minister of noses.
The nearest I came to know, for all the effort I put forward (working full time, attending university full time, caring for a mentally ill mother), what I wanted to do, I was told firmly by a department you don't want to TEACH. In that statement, I was being told I wasn't worth the argument to get a little support, just a wee bit, bean-counting it was, and while I was white, I lacked a dick in my pants. That same person who told me I didn't want to teach bonked my dickless pants out.
Nearly took my own life because of that, in the PTSD manner in which I was functioning, and that I lost what I was convinced I had loved the most: writing. How could I have lost a thing of such significant meaning when no one really thought I could write? It was more, Please do not write to me about your miserable childhood that I had drummed into me in the years before making the mistake of attending university. In fact, it was in graduate school, I came only as close as one memoir event. One. So I learned to not write about my crappy start. Thank you!
My ego lately is impressive. It is fighting to receive not recognition for me but RESPECT. It is trying to permit me the deep breathing required of me to leverage the correct wording to communicate not FUCK YOU I HATE YOUR GUTS to instead say what I do not know.
Several years ago now, I'd had a moment on the campus of the University of Michigan (what an accomplishment, right?) wherein leaning against the crisp outside air, I sensed a solid form. The realization there somewhere by Angel Hall was one institution for another. I felt lucky right then and there, in a snap, in a blink. Something lies ahead. Come what may. Form filler outer. Fuck you.
Thank you for not reading, seeing, commenting, knowing.
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