of ducks and chickens, hoops and hoopla

" Y O U R   L U C K   I S   A B O U T   T O   C H A N G E "

 (a fortune cookie) 

Ominous inscrutable Chinese news

to get just before Christmas,

considering my reasonable health,

marriage spicy as moo-goo-gai-pan,

career running like a not-too-old Chevrolet.

Not bad, considering what can go wrong:

the bony finger of Uncle Sam

might point out my husband,

my own national guard,

and set him in Afghanistan;

my boss could take a personal interest;

the pain in my left knee could spread to my right.

Still, as the old year tips into the new,

I insist on the infant hope, gooing and kicking

his legs in the air. I won't give in

to the dark, the sub-zero weather, the fog,

or even the neighbors' Nativity.

Their four-year-old has arranged

his whole legion of dinosaurs

so they, too, worship the child,

joining the cow and sheep. Or else,

ultimate mortals, they've come to eat

ox and camel, Mary and Joseph,

then savor the newborn babe.

–Susan Elizabeth Howe
  
˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜  ˜ 

When leaving on vacation there is one moment in particular that I look forward to, a moment takes place just after I've returned from our trip and settled back into our home. Being away bestows a brief window through which I can see my life from a broader perspective. Like returning to a pair of well-worn shoes, you see them anew—despite their scuffs you remember how much you adore them. I love that.

When we returned from our trip to California, unfortunately, I didn't get much of this. We got in so late at night that once we'd wrestled everyone and everything into and out of the taxi and then into our apartment, we washed our grimy faces and fell fast asleep. I floated around on the edges of our life for a few days. And then it hit me, I wasn't plunging back into our life because didn't want to face all the work associated with the little Waldorf school we'd started. There were all sorts of problems cropping up, both annoying and serious, and I had less than an ounce of energy for it. The school was not just absorbing all of my extra time, filling my days with urgency and anxiety, but also stealing all the moments when I usually allow my brain to rest—the rest from which my energy and creativity spring.

And then at the same time, my husband suddenly started talking about moving. Blink, blink. Since we moved to this neighborhood he's held a moratorium on the subject, saying the idea caused him too much stress. All my dreaming of yards with vegetable gardens and chicken coops was tucked away in some part of the brain. And, as is very typical of the two of us, while I was just opening the gates of my mind to let some of these bleary-eyed desires out of their cages, Charles was plunging forward with plans (albeit of the two-year-sort) for a move. Let just say that Charles is the guy on the horse out in front yelling "Charge!" and I am the lady perched on a stone wall, thinking about it all for a good while before I even begin to chose which ducks to put in a row.

So where does this leave on on this Wednesday? In a messy office, with an almost-two-year-old singing sleepless in her crib, with Christmas cards still unsent, a school to run, and a mind filled with what seems like too many possibilities. I can say this: if we are going to move from this neighborhood in a few years, the hassles associated with moving this school forward through the hoops and hoopla of the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene may be a good deal more than I can bear. Maybe I want to enjoy the remaining years living in Manhattan instead of hiding out in my office, answering emails and making phone calls.

Meanwhile, I'm just perched here on my stone wall, waiting for the right ducks, watching my husband wrestling the bull by its horns. Something like that.

{  p o e t r y   w e d n e s d a y  }

photo friday: summer, at its end

Brooklyn, NYC waterfront with tiny Statue of Liberty in the distance. July 2012 © Amber Schley Iragui

The Jersey shore at dusk, with cousins, Spring Lake. August 2012 © Amber Schley Iragui

A Horseshoe crab shell, Forest Beach, Cape Cod, MA. July 2012 © Amber Schley Iragui

Brooklyn, NYC River Cafe driveway, in bloom. July 2012 © Amber Schley Iragui

The Breakers on the Ocean, Spring Lake, NJ, after sundown. August 2012 © Amber Schley Iragui

vacation, again

O N   V I S I T I N G   A   B O R R O W E D   C O U N T R Y   H O U S E   I N   A R C A D I A
By A. E. Stallings

To leave the city
Always takes a quarrel. Without warning,
Rancors that have gathered half the morning
Like things to pack, or a migraine, or a cloud,
Are suddenly allowed
To strike. They strike the same place twice.
We start by straining to be nice,
Then say something shitty.

Isn't it funny
How it's what has to happen
To make the unseen ivory gates swing open,
The rite we must perform so we can leave?
Always we must grieve
Our botched happiness: we goad
Each other till we pull to the hard shoulder of the road,
Yielding to tears inadequate as money.

But if instead
of turning back, we drive into the day,
We forget the things we didn't say.
The silence fills with row on row
Of vines or olive trees. The radio
Hums to itself. We make our way between
Saronic blue and hills of glaucous green
And thread

Beyond the legend of the map
Through footnote towns along the coast
That boast
Ruins of no account—a column
More woebegone than solemn—
Men watching soccer at two cafés
And half-built lots where dingy sheep still graze.
Climbing into the lap

Of the mountains now, we wind
Around blind, centrifugal turns.
The sun's great warship sinks and burns.
And where the roads without a sign are crossed,
We (inevitably) get lost.
Yet to be lost here
Still feels like being somewhere,
And we find

When we arrive and park,
No one minds that we are late—
There is no one to wait—
Only a bed to make, a suitcase to unpack.
The earth has turned her back
On one yellow middling star
To consider lights more various and far.
The shaggy mountains hulk in the dark

Or loom
Like slow, titanic waves. the cries
of owls dilate the shadows. Weird harmonics rise
From the valley's distant glow, where coal
Extracted from the lignite mines must roll
On acres of conveyor belts that sing
The Pythagorean music of a string.
A huge grey plume

Of smoke or steam
Towers like the ghost of a monstrous flame
Or giant tree among the trees. And it is all the same—
The power plant, the forest, the night,
The manmade light.
We are engulfed in an immense
Ancient indifference
That does not sleep or dream.

Call it Nature if you will,
Though everything that is is natural—
The lignite-bearing earth, the factory,
A darkness taller than the sky—
This out-of-doors that wins us our release
And temporary peace—
Not because it is pristine or pretty,
But because it has no pity or self-pity.

Published in Poetry, June 2007, pp 211-213.

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We leave again tomorrow morning for a short vacation in Spring Lake, NJ with my in-laws. I am not ready to go, I cannot make myself pack. I am panicking about things that need to be done here. Fretting over nannies again, school schedules, budgets, unanswered emails, trying to get the little school we're starting on its feet.

This is the familiar state of being in-between things. Of not knowing, and so dreading, the next thing. The ideal me, who I imagine smiling—ready and prepared—versus the real me, who is balking at the amount of things I imagine I need to do to be ready and prepared. Lord! I could travel with a few less things. I didn't read a page of Jung's fat Symbols of Transformation that I packed along with us to the Cape. Target is everywhere well-stocked with diapers, wipes, crayons, my favorite shampoos; with anything I could possibly need. Just pack my phone charger and some clothes, wear the same sandals every day. Really, Amber!

Every hour I must weigh out the priorities over again. Remember what can be left undone, like the raisins on the floor under the table. It is a privilege to have so much I have I do not need. There is no danger of starvation or privation. There is just inconvenience, which is anything but disaster. 

And trust that the nanny situation will work out, our school will begin running with or without all ten children, I will have those average days again where I drink coffee, check email, and do design work. And I will look back on these days with gratitude—for sand in the bed, rocks collected by small hands on the window sills, and the memory of time spent with family in the salty air.