Stay open to the wonders of the world
According to George Saunders, a work of art “has to surprise its audience, which it can do only if it has legitimately surprised its creator.”
When I read that, I realized I’m not creating art. Not by a long shot. I spend heaps of time bound up, worried, self-flagellating, fighting waves of lassitude and more than a little self-loathing. I worry about my “audience,” remembering — and flinching every time I do so — the essay I read on Medium about how no one wants to read a journal entry.
Dinosaur Peak
Yesterday, shortly before 3 p.m., B. and I escaped the confines of the house and headed for the mountain. We made our way up 35th Avenue, then Redwood Road, over the ridge called Skyline, and down the other side. We passed the stables, then more stables. We passed the turnoff to Moraga. We continued on.
B. said, “Did we miss it? I don’t remember it being this far.”
I said, “No, I always think that too. It’s farther than you think.”
We passed two or three different entrances to Anthony Chabot Regional Park, including the park’s campground. We passed the…
A poem inspired by Joy Harjo
DESP
COMPAR 0.001 REIT
CUSIP 29444U700
“Need the cost basis…”
The accountant’s words
raise fear in me.
They slide off,
find no purchase.
I can’t
grasp them.
They are senseless,
of course.
But more than that.
They hurt, they burn
me.
I have no idea,
of course,
what she’s saying.
I resist knowing.
I resist “language”
such as this.
I guard against it.
I am afraid
of infection.
Is it contagious?
I want to know.
Like my desk, the desk where I “go to work,” to my work-a-day, salaried job, the job that has nothing, whatever, to do with me…
Pain is often the cost to access our inner selves
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
12:08 p.m.
Caffe Chiave
Piedmont Avenue
Oakland, CA, USA, earth
The cappuccino before me cost $4.
That’s the price of admission for a blonde, slatted wood chair pulled to the edge of a tiny table with a green, faux-marble top.
It rained heavily yesterday and all through the night. The green canvas awning above me rustles, then ripples, then whips, caught in the grips of a strong gust. The pressure of my pen holds down the pages of my journal, which dance and pull like a strong trout on the line.
The cappuccino is a good…
Tove Ditlevsen’s wish as a youth
I’m reading The Copenhagen Trilogy, and just captivated, like everyone else who’s encountered this book. Ditlevsen’s extraordinary writing leaps off the page, taking the reader pell-mell through her life. Nothing is too trivial to include, and she suffuses everything she experiences with meaning and emotion. I’m on p. 154, where, as a youth, Ditlevsen longs for “a room with a bed, a table and a chair, with a typewriter, or a pad of paper and a pencil, nothing more. Well, yes — a door I could lock.”
It made me think. I, too, have always longed for such a room…
How diversity makes us all richer
This morning, B. told me that an actor in “the hungry games” is also in one of the Jane Eyre movies (or mini-series’) we’re slated to watch. That made me smile, as all of his language tics do. Last week, he said, “We are nerve racks. All humans are nerve racks.” A couple of weeks ago, he said he was going to plant lollipop seeds in the side yard. It took a while, but I eventually figured out he meant poppy seeds. Or, one of my favorites: “fucking egg” when he means “fucking-A”. And let’s not forget “Feather Jacket.” Feather…
How anything and everything reflects your inner state
I fired the gardener. Again.
Every year, it is the same. The garden goes absolutely crazy, covered in weeds up to my hip, ropy jasmine and grape vines clambering over nearby trees and shrubs. The creeping thyme between the flagstones gets overtaken and choked out. The roses droop, weighed down by spent, grey-petaled blooms. The orange and lemon trees grow peaked, their leaves thin and mottled.
The fig, however, is all ablaze with life in any season. Now, for example, though its sleek grey branches are devoid of leaves, the tips of each of those branches bulges like a woman…
A story about Shintoism
When I was a little girl, I was afraid of the stick monster. Every night, I heard him, clomping with the blunt end of his stick down the darkened sidewalk across the street from our house. I’d peer out the window, focusing hard, trying to discern through the thick, black night the image I knew was there. A stick, a bundle of sticks, a ghostly grey being hunched over a stick, somehow threatening me.
I called for my father, when he was home from sea. He’d sit at the foot of my bed and keep me company for a while…
Another poem about addiction
What greater duality is there but here,
and not here.
Breathing,
and not breathing.
The possibility of seeing the one you love,
and never seeing them again?
It encompasses light and dark,
life and death,
breath and stillness,
possibility and the closure of possibility.
It’s growth, change, hope
versus stasis. It’s hope
versus the obliteration of hope.
It’s Ruby’s life before February 7th,
and after.
It’s Ruby before February 7th,
and after.
It’s the Ruby of the Christmas party
several years ago,
standing in the doorway between
my kitchen and the hallway,
when she said,
“I know we share that……
A poem about a dog, and time, and love
Daisy deposits herself
with a sigh
on the spot beside the stove
that she likes.
She is here because I am.
She rests her snout upon
her right paw, slightly offset
so that her mouth
meets the floor.
Her eyes are closed, or nearly.
Heat radiates from
the side of the stove,
which I hope soothes
her old hips.
She limps every morning now
and eyes the steps
down to the yard
with trepidation.
After some
hesitation, she sort of tumbles
down the stairs, letting
her front paws navigate
while her back legs
helplessly pedal
the air behind her.
I…
Christiana White
Writer, copywriter, editor, and word lover. Subscribe to my newsletter at christywhite.substack.com
