xi. slumbai

i am a failure as a blogger. even though i will continue to think this, i will not write of it again.

this afternoon i saw a matinee of 'slumdog millionaire.' a far cry from danny boyle's 'trainspotting,' although equally superb. it reminded me of the worst aspects of india, the barefoot children with gold nose-rings and filthy smears across their faces, needy yet cunning eyes, and cupped palms with dirty fingernails that poke at your hips or tug on your tunic, keeping you surrounded as you attempt to push past them down the ghats or across the street. for as brief a time as i spent there, it is this india, the india of brothels full of children, of feces and excrement, crowding sweat, pickpocketing, drug-addled, dreadlocked europeans, and smoke, diesel, and garbage rotting in the sun, that will not leave me. a little girl called me her butterly auntie, and another painted my nails at her father's tea stall. all of the children were so eager to be touched.

earlier this year i read mehta's "maximum city," about mumbai, and the film contained one such burning man as is mentioned therein, lit on fire during the hindu/muslim riots of the early nineties. today i saw him erupt and stumble down the street, unaided, unsalvageable.

and somewhere among all of this, there is room for the corporeal reality--not our phantasms--of the gods, brilliant in their colors, vindictive in their righting of wrongs, cyclical in their quest for creation and destruction, creative in their amalgamations of inhuman bodies. they are, and are not, of us. ganesh has guarded my many passings to and fro, to and fro, yet what liminality, what interference of the divine, will allow me to truly cross over?

x. inertia

my days are unsettled. i needed peace, solitude, slowness, after the whirlwind tour to visit family; but now i am nearly alone in my house and it is silent, cavernous, creaking with the cold. i feel the draft from my unprotected windows, carrying in swirls of frigid air that settle on my desk, on my floorboards. shards of ice crawl up the panes, onto the walls, into my feet and rigid fingers. i have a list of things to accomplish, two pages long, that flutters as i brush past it. i curl up and attempt to read. i know something is wrong when i am not interested in magazines, books, news items, words. i stare listlessly out the window, watching the sunshine's reflection on the snow. it beckons me with its falsehood, for not a shard of warmth exists in the golden light. i sip stale tea and wonder how long i can maintain this purposelessness; neither do i want responsibility to return. i cannot reach three-hundred words. my eyes are blank discs hiding dark matter with frozen synapses. i am inertia, becoming more entrenched in my seat and shuddering frame with each visible breath that crosses my chapped lips.

ix. two thousand nine

people are not quite this crazy where i come from. there was that new year's where T imbibed god knows what in the empty farmhouse, then almost burned down a field until the county fire department appeared. otherwise things are pretty tame, folks fill their fireplaces when it's fifty degrees outside, and liquor can only be bought south of the railroad tracks. not so in north dakota. we arrived at the cabin bundled up in the car, with cold toes and frozen pizzas hanging out in the back of the truck. everyone was standing by the hobo fire outside, their fronts illuminated with a goblin-like glow. it was two degrees fahrenheit. beers froze in the bottles if not gulped fast enough. we added layers and joined them, glassy eyes peeking out below caps and hoods and bulky carhart coveralls and ski attire. one of the older generation passed around redeye, also known as wedding whisky, which tastes of black licorice and leaves a burn on your lips. i sipped red wine during the brief interludes indoors. then it was close to midnight, so a few of us gathered in the garage, some smoking grape cigars, to unwrap bottle rockets and sparklers that were crammed into a sawed-off barrel. well over a hundred firecrackers bouqueted in anticipation of release. outside the sparklers were lit, we prepared to duck as needed, and the booms started. a shower of divine light accompanied by acrid smoke blocked the clear, cruel sky. i coughed and retired indoors. sleep came soon after, on blankets on the floor in a corner shared with mummified crickets and tired carpet. the morning brought tequila shots and classic rock radio before departure, my snow boots well coated and smoke-filled outerware reeking of the new year.

viii. steve almond

dear steve almond,

you don't know me, but i saw you recently at a reading. the somerville writers' festival was held about a month ago, and you read quickly and then had to leave because your wife was about to go into labor. if i were her, i would be mad you agreed to read at the festival too. but that's not why i'm writing. i was moved by your letter excerpts*, as most were funny, others heartrendingly poignant, and all echoed something i might write myself, which i found most intriguing. so i went to the library, which you will be pleased to know has ALL of your books. and to think i'd never even heard of you. i selected "not that you asked," your book of personal essays, because that's what i like to write, and i hoped it might contain some of the letters you read. it didn't, but i was moved by your homage to vonnegut. i wonder if there's a writer who has had that amount of influence in my life: perhaps lisa carver, whom i have met, or cornel west and wendell berry, whom i have heard speak, or otherwise only the deceased--flannery o'connor, hannah arendt, peter kropotkin, thomas merton, salinger (who, alright, is not dead, but equally inaccessible). i made a zine once and used quotes from vonnegut, who was a fighter until the end. so, unlike you, i do not have grandparents who were communists, but i do come from good country people, and find that i am equally concerned with freedom and truth. so thanks for your words (your essay on the multiple deaths of josephine made me laugh out loud) and keep writing, and reading, and i hope you find another teaching post. you've got two babies to care for now.

sincerely,
ann crews melton

*for the inquisitive reader: steve almond resigned from boston college when they invited condoleezza rice to speak at commencement, after which he received hundreds of emails from right-wing nut jobs, to which he responded publicly at the reading. they included lots of references to his balls, and condi's balls, and hellfire, and expletives unfit to reproduce here.

vii. warmth

it begins as a searing point of light. as the coils tighten their tender fingers around the dark matter, i can no longer see. still, i sense the dark wings fluttering, carrying their echoes of anxiety, abandoned responsibility, thin air, and stunted growth. i cringe at the mournful chiming of the christmas bells. gifts, well-intended, lie leaden on my chest and strain my brittle fingers. the one i love lifts me from the gloom for but awhile, but then we argue, stutter and regret displaced cruel words.

it doesn't have to be like this. the cold does not comfort, the fireplace echoes emptily in the chill dark. the shadows of cattle and wildlife stare back from the night, their cold enormous eyes barely illuminated by the superficial exterior bulbs, lining roofs and warding off strangers. at this time, and always, it is only the familiar we hold dear.

and what of the light, that pinpoint gripping, searing, severing and stifling thoughts and stillborn kind words? the shards reach eyelids, cheekbone, neck, twisting in severity with the clanging of the bells. this pain is inherited. i carry it with the weight of our women, the coming heaviness and tears of childbirth, the pin pricks turned to burning prods that acknowledge no origin. they, as my body, have always been a part of me. i long for wholeness and reconciliation, not release. i can no more escape the pinpricks of light than i can cease to exist. the tendrils keep their grip firmly, unyielding. i try to breathe, eyes closed, seeing nothing, but feeling for the first time a gentle warmth near my hand. i hold hands with it and do not move, do not speak, as a single tear rolls toward my pillow.

vi. sidewalks

this morning i sloshed through the muddled streets of boston, where filth and oil and rainwater rolled down like an everflowing stream. my toes escaped unscathed, thanks to salt-ridden boots, and beneath my black umbrella i dodged the gazes of the curious and the disenfranchised. stepping precisely around cigarette butts, wayward candy wrappers and dunkin' donuts "happy holiddays" cups, i jetéd over the swirls of muck accumulating at each curb. my feet hurried forward without a clear path, touching no one.

i think of the trails i have traversed, from the path through the hedgerow that led to tesco's, me in vegan steel-toed boots with a backpack anticipating soy yogurt, dry pasta and a boldly labelled bottle marked "vodka." a lost wes anderson prop. we tromped together over the dying november grass, down a mile of sidewalk that passed the graffiti wrought by dave's eager hand. later the boots would carry me through the streets of newcastle and london, calling for bush and blair to consider the children who were not their own; who might in fact belong to no one.

there was no sidewalk in benares. the streets, full of cow manure, trampled marigolds and human excrement, quickly turned to dust from lack of rain. never barefoot, i envisioned wanton bacteria covertly invading my sandals. i could easily die here. at night, after sitar concerts or philosophy lectures, i left the meeting house to walk home, unwisely, alone, a tall pale ghost with a distinctly feminine shadow. there were no women in the preternaturally dark streets. beady eyes of street vendors hovered over flames, warming their pots of tea. as my sandals stumbled over the dusty path, i saw myself attacked, violated, robbed, or worse, fed into the ganges like men into the laughing jaws of kali. still, i prayed to her, mother of destruction and creation, dark wild goddess, protect me from my own ignorance.

v. godmother of punk

the pixies are the cause for some debate in empire records, if you remember, between ethan embry and that other guy. i first heard the pixies on a mix tape from C, my high school artist boyfriend. he collected songs that scared me--so intense in their professions of love and lust that i turned my cheek away from his eager lips. he backed off and made me a punk mix tape, which was mostly sonic youth and patti smith and other people i'd never heard of and did not appreciate until much later, when the tape played only squeaks and rumpled metallic rotations that soon ceased altogether. such is the ephemeral nature of high school love.

my sister married her high school boyfriend, after years of long distance car trips back and forth between texas colleges, passing miles and miles of pasture and outlet malls. now they own a house and two cars but no pets, other than the feral bunnies that leave spherical droppings in the yard. i expect i'll be an aunt soon, but i'm not sure i'm old enough to babysit helpless creatures that might, just a little bit, look like me.

speaking of getting older, i appreciate being born at the darkest time of the year. i am full of mystery, while the rest of creation is full of light. my horoscope says sagittarians should not to go to beijing or london as we would constantly feel watched, only i remember belfast as being much worse regarding surveillance and helicopters. sarah palin told alaskans to shoot wolves from helicopters, as if helicopters are readily available. maybe they are. i've never been to alaska but i'd love to go, back to the darkness from which i am born. there is a rilke poem about that, once written in chalk on my ceiling.