Getting Unstuck….

I might have used that title before, so this could be Part II.

I don’t know if it’s the regenerative process of Spring, or it’s a last-legs-stand like my dying Husky, Charlie, but I feel an ‘unsticking’.

I feel a freedom, a thumbing of my nose at a lot of things and people lately.  This might be rude, but I think over all….it’s a good thing.

How do we find the space and time to work unencumbered?  We shed influences  we have been burdened with:  influences we have burdened ourselves.  This could be habits, but it usually is activities or especially people.

A year ago I was embroiled in a fight with a man…not a ghost at the other end of email, because I had actually met him, but embroiled in a knock down, dragged out battle to answer and ‘be right’.  I can laugh at my behavior now because it was time wasting, energy wasting and pointless.  It just was a big pain in the ass and a detour to  what I really wanted to do. Write and write hard.  It took so much out of me that some things dried up, like poetry for about six months.  When you want to be a poet, this is a dangerous position to be in.  It wasn’t until this fall that I became ‘unstuck’ in the category.  The climb back on the poetry wagon was slow and arduous and I never thought I would make it.  I had to turn my thoughts to something that would regenerate me.  Nature does that, but there were other things I suppose.

Recently I have been thinking about some people in my life.  There are people who don’t necessarily ‘like’ what you write, but they are supportive because they understand this compulsion to create.  Then there are people who  could be soft, baked potato behind the eyes because not much registers.  Or perhaps they are so niggardly in their enthusiasm  they think it will impoverish them to give an opinion.   This is rare, but are these the people we want and need around us?  Editors take their pound of flesh but at least there  might be something given back…like a book contract.  Friends are not editors, and even if they think you are going to Hell….well, perhaps their first task is to light the way.

I have come to the conclusion  life is  short. Perhaps because I am growing older and don’t have the patience or time to squander on people who are marginal in my life.  People, and there are only a  few, who give nothing but do take up your time.  Negative people who would drag you down in their sad and meandering lives.  People who can’t make up their fucking minds about their own lives but would sit in the road and  demand you placate them in some  way.  I think they are massively bored with life.

I feel a sense of freedom because I have ‘used my words.’   I have, over the course of a few weeks, worked hard to free myself of guilt and continued concern for lives  outside mine and have few common points of interest except we breath the same air.

This is not to say I am consciously rude.  I just don’t spend time anymore and realize that in doing so…I have much more energy and time for the important things in life:  those I love and want to be around.  Critical influences, to be sure, you can’t get away from  in life, but supportive  positive, critical influences.

My creativity goes up.  My production goes up.  And I can turn my mind to the necessary refinement of that which is necessary.

I am nobodies Guardian Angel.  They are on their own in this life…and besides…it’s their life.  Each of us must make the most of it before they put the coins on our cold eyes.  Some are just coasting to Hell.

Lady Nyo

—–

ROOMS

In passing from room to room,

I close the door

And hear the lock click.

The abandoning of one space-

Hopeful promise of another.

—

In a middle passage between lovers

Transposing between them,

Haltingly, like a car

With a bad clutch,

I think how much easier it would be

If I could do like the rooms:

Enter, leave, close the door, and step out anew.

—-

But love is messy,

Memories, arguments, tears

Follow under the threshold and through the keyhole,

Become little green snakes that curl around my ankles

Tripping me up,

Tiny sharp fangs make me mindful

Of vague misgivings.

—-

Too, embers of a burnt out lust

Beyond ability to evoke the necessary fires

In body parts once shared with delight.

This pallid thing knows the route to my heart

Still uneasy, done in,

By guilt and remorse.

—-

Memory….

Raw materials of regret

Unfinished business,

Unspoken words,

A dream of a dance without music,

Fading touch, attention.

—

Yet still,

With nagging thoughts we were too hasty,

Too caught up in the rigor mortis of righteousness,

Too bound to the self, unbending–

Now makes  me turn back to that door

and fumble the lock.

—

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2009

“Take a Breather”

I was thinking of doing so, but then remembered there were a couple of things that would go against this.  Age for one.

I am getting older.  Not old/old, but old enough.  I think of what I want to do, and write is on the top of the list.  I am supported in this by my husband who only asks for paired socks, dinner and that I continue to write.

I add things to his  ‘wish list’, but I write now for my ‘profession’ or at least that is what I am trying to see this time  set aside as.

I am still piling up corrections on “The Zar Tales” but dear Bill has guests so I know he won’t be getting to them soon.  LOL!

THAT’s my breather.  Calling Mary in Ohio was another one as we gossiped and had a good time on the phone.  Email is fine, but a phone call is much more fun.  Especially with a long term girl friend.

It’s Spring, and the Spring Forward Festival is going to actually happen in Perkerson Park this Saturday.  It’s the brainchild of Vern, a great guy here, a social worker who goes back up to his farm and drives his deceased father’s tracker around and around  the fields.  That’s HIS breather.

Vern is a hoot.  Half country, half urban man with a lot of golden heart gilding his insides.  I have composed and will read the “Spring Forward” poem to open the Festival.  I will also be wearing a formal black kimono, with a pink under- kimono, and an obi sash that is a riotous mix of spring flowers and colors.  I am supposed to wear a crazy Spring/Easter Bonnet….but I think it would insult the kimono.  Perhaps I will go home and change into jeans and sheepskin boots and then wear the bonnet.

A less complicated cultural statement.  LOL~

It’s Spring, though it is dark and gray outside with a few snow flurries this morning, but I am turning my energies to “White Cranes of Heaven”.  It’s to be an all poetry venture, and I am curious.  I am curious to see all the poetry of the last 2 years at least in one place.

Over the year I have moved from erotica to more poetry.  Of course, sex still figures in my stories and novels….God Forbid that ever stops….LOL!….but I realize that striving for an erotic content in most writings is a bore…and not really a good thing.  I think thinking with our heads between our loins will limit our view of the world.  There is erotic poetry, and there is poetry that expresses other things….views.  I’m doing something different now, and I feel a sort of liberation.

I made the break from some sites where I learned a lot about the craft of writing…..but the sites were (rightfully so) limited mostly to erotica.  But a class is over in a few years…and you have to look up and outside and find other things to write about.

I feel a sense of freedom.  Liberation.  I have left an old stomping ground and I have made a precious handful of friends.  They are the core of ‘respected writers’ and a great influence and hell…just damn good friends.

Spring is a time of rebirth, and right now…..I feel a quickening.

Lady Nyo

Opening Poem for Spring Forward Festival

Hush! Listen!

Do you hear it?

It is the sound of Winter limping off,

Ice falling from desiccated limbs,

the rattle of old bones grown too brittle

To support  further existence.

—-

Look up!

Do you see the azure sky?

How clear and fresh with  promise!

—

Come!

Let’s go knock on doors,

Ring bells,

Call out to neighbors,

Gather our dogs,

And head into the soft, spongy

Grounds of Spring.

Let us marvel at the tight buds tipping  branches,

Tender greens that harken to a mysterious seasonal code.

Let us fill our lungs with fresh air,

Not stagnant with the too- close months of Winter,

But  a wind which blows away

The sadness and loneliness of our seasonal hibernation.

—

Let us welcome Spring, and spring forward

Into a season of rebirth, renewal and hope.

Let us welcome with upturned hearts and faces–

This great, promised turn of the Earth.

—

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2010