Ana Verse

Marxist-capitalist flowers for believers

2008-09-01T13:49:00.000-07:00

The screamer gets the worm. I had given up men for dating; I had redoubled attention saved for women, who, it turned out, were all big drinkers or members of AA. I could put myself in with both strategies. I could admit that I had begged for money, but not over steak. I had pleaded to be paid to work – that was true. In the old days, it was understood that one got paid for paid work; in the new era, it wasn’t true. Work had come to mean something we as women did for cheap or free, something men did without breaking even; men were struggling to live, their bills in danger of not being paid, other expenses. Divorce was lining women’s pockets with men’s higher wages and turning liberals into misogynists: the name calling, alone, was an indictment of heterosexuality; the women, too, blamed women for giving up on or giving in to sex. Since I am not rich (though my boyfriend now is), I had decided to give my time freely, amply, to indulge in volunteerism, to lend whatever expertise I had to the gift economy. I had not thought that the women (except two of us) – acting no better than scratchy cats and whiny terriers – would interrupt my healthy strategy and demand etwas Geld from me. It was not hard to forget times we didn’t even meet due to my relative poverty, years of it, times I had worked but not been paid, times I had asked for “gas money” and jolted administrators younger than I to change not-for-profit policy for the next group. I had not asked outside my immediate family for assistance. That meant being a caregiver without resources in a down economy with a fallowed training for a “fiancé’s” family of young and old people, for a house I didn’t own, for an ideal still at work in this downslide: love – while my women friends courted and lived engaged with the sons of rich men. That b'cy alone took 10 years ...

It is the fourth time in a week a "friend" has asked to be paid for it. I had wanted to give a special gift -- a scarf in a favorite color, gold-toned earrings -- to friends who wanted cash, and not because she didn't own her own house or two, and not because she wouldn't soon or one day inherit, but because she had "cared" during a cancer scare or mopped up after a broken plan, while I, who own no house and running for free, had dared a union. Tuna rare, then.

How This Works

2008-08-19T21:40:00.000-07:00

Work is archived at Ana Verse since Jan. 2006. The earliest entries in real-time are a poem from 1983 and a photo from 1962. By referring to the index or using links to tagged genres, you may read along the lines of interest or view photos of the garden (which together make a narrative).

There are to date 261 entries, of which 224 are viewable & 37 listed as in draft form. If you wish to read the entire blog in the order it was written -- as a mixed-genre book -- it will help to know there are 12 display pages w/ 20 entries per page. I suggest reading the entries by the month.

Although I interspersed genres in ms. form before the internet, the weblog form has revolutionized this practice & created interesting questions about chronology not possible with print.

"Go, little book."

A few things I'd like to remember from Russia

2008-08-06T07:14:00.000-07:00

Peter the Great was 6'7".
St. Petersburg enjoys only 30 sunny days each year. We visited during three of them.
It stays light past 10 p.m. in July.
The Romanovs married German women.
The Romanovs married many women.
Serfs were freed by Czar Alexander two years before the American Emancipation Proclamation freed American slaves.
Bloody Sunday resulted from a peaceful protest by religious peasants.
One million died in Leningrad during the 900-day siege by the Nazis.
Peter the Great, who traveled with an entourage of 13 women, slayed his wife's lover and put his head in the square.
Lake Ladoga is the largest lake in Europe.
Onegin is the second largest lake in Europe.
Stalin secretly built a reservoir to give hydroelectric power to Moscow in 1941.
Kremlin means "fortress."
Great birch forests cover the landscape.
A ruble is a little less than a nickel.
Icons are painted on wood; frescoes are of stone.
Lacquer boxes are made of paper mache.
Vodka is taken very cold with pickles. Russian vodka is made of wheat and corn; Polish vodka is made of potatoes.
Czarina Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, had expensive taste in palaces. She devoted her life to parties and to her own beauty.
Amber is a pine resin not a stone.
Rasputin washed up in a river two days after his murder by royal conspirators with the breath still in his lungs.

St. Petersburg

2008-08-02T22:32:00.000-07:00

We landed in St. Petersburg on Thursday and for three days we toured castles and museums and ate in terrific restaurants. We began with Catherine's Palace, built for Elizabeth, and named for her mother, Catherine, Peter the Great's second wife. The castle is famous for its ballrooms. Later, we toured churches and more castles, in particular, Peterhof, the "Russian Versailles," famous for its fountains and gardens and views of Gulf of Finland. We visited a war memorial that commemorates the 900-day siege of Leningrad by the Nazis during which 1 million residents of the city died, most of starvation. We saw Swan Lake one evening. We spent most of a day at the incredible Hermitage museum with its spectacular collection of Impressionist paintings. We finished with a private party with Russian band in a palace once owned by Russia's wealthiest family.

St. Petersburg, population 5 million, with its canal system and many rivers has been compared to Venice and is one of the world's most beautiful cities.

Lake Ladoga

2008-07-24T22:05:00.002-07:00

Europe's largest lake is our sailing "medium" for today. Later this afternoon, after our Russian class and a film about the czars, we'll reach the Valaam Archipelago where there is a monastery that was destroyed twice by the Swedes when it was located at the border with Sweden. It has been at its present location since the 14th c.

Yesterday we spent the entire day at a resort called Mandrogi. The distance between Mandrogi and Valaam is about 134 miles. There is a vodka museum at Mandrogi. We were all invited to taste four types of vodka -- I tasted two. The first type of vodka was cranberry, and it looked like syrup. I didn't like it. The second type was for colds -- honey and pepper vodka. Someone in our group bought a bottle called "Five Lakes" and served it to us at our cocktail hour on the ship. He had heard from Russians that this type of vodka was among the best.

Shopping in Mandrogi was a little more expensive than we had been accustomed to on the trip so far, but the craftsmen were there in the shops to show us their work and answer questions. Painted wooden dishes, lacquer boxes, linens and wools, bead and leather work -- these were some of the crafted items we saw being created firsthand.

We sail for St. Petersburg tonight and will reach the city by tomorrow morning.

Volga

2008-07-24T22:05:00.001-07:00

We've been sailing since Thursday. This is Sunday morning. We've stopped for walking & bus tours in two towns. Mostly, we are visiting Russian orthodox churches and monasteries. Yesterday I asked our guide, Alexander, whether the Russian people were actually religious or were the churches mostly for posterity and tourism. He said that about ten per cent of the Russian population worships regularly, another twenty to forty per cent are atheists, and the rest are believers who do not keep up a religious practice.

Back on the ship, we had a Russian lesson, and our by now customary series of multi-course meals. The vodka called "Imperial" -- I'm told by the Serbian bartender -- is almost as good as Beluga at half the price. Russian cigarettes cost 8 or 10 rubles or about 40 cents per pack, but other things are expensive -- such as a cup of coffee at the luxury hotel in Moscow which costs about $12.

We are at sea in a reservoir built by Stalin in the early 1940s to supply hydroelectric power to Moscow. The great reservoir displaced 700 villages when it was built. It fills the natural river basin of many Russian rivers, including the Volga and the Sheksna. Also, we have passed through a string of locks that lift to the ship to higher elevations.

Moscow

2008-07-24T22:05:00.000-07:00

The feeling was bittersweet when we left the city to board our ship in the canal. Most of us had not visited Moscow before, but we all felt the city was beautiful, full of museums and monuments, statues of political figures and great writers, and we wondered if we'd ever make it back to this amazing city. In the morning we visited a museum of 18th & 19th c. art and toured the city by bus followed by a fabulous lunch at the Pushkin restaurant. The restaurant seemed very old to us, but is actually only ten years old and has been artificially aged to seem like a relic. The city is teeming with restoration specialists. We then visited a convent where Russian royal daughters spent their lives since no suitable husbands could have been found for them and a cemetery where famous Russians are buried. Then we shopped a bit for amber and fabric before boarding our ship. Once on board, there was an orientation, reception, and gala dinner on the sundeck. This morning we'll hear a lecture about U.S.-Russian relations and later this afternoon,we'll tour the churches of the city, Uglich. I don't understand a word of Russian, or I should say, I only understand one word: nyet. The alphabet is so foreign as to block understanding and create lingusitic isolation. Fortunately, most people speak at least some English. I understand German, too, and our fellow travelers on the ship are a group from Switzerland.

Days One & Two

2008-07-22T21:12:00.000-07:00

At JFK I met the Yale alumni representative, Nori, and we traveled together to Frankfurt, where I had not been since I was 18 -- had not been in Europe at all since then -- and where I ate Frankfurters at 5 a.m. local time. After our breakfast, we boarded the plane for Moscow. We arrived a few hours later to a sweltering heat. There was no air conditioning in the airport. Our local guide met our plane, rounded a few of us up, and directed us to a v an that took us to our hotel. The hotel -- Le Royal Meridien -- is situated across the street from the gate to Red Square. The views are spectacular, as are the rooms and the service. We met as a group last night -- many of us were jet lagged, but we did our best to keep up the conversation over dinner -- Chicken Kiev at an area restaurant. The women sauntering the street and in the undergrounds are fashion model-look alikes. They wear high heels and walk over cobblestones. It's no wonder Paris designers take inspiration from them. At dinner I met a woman poet from Colombia, a woman scientist from Turkey, and another woman whose brother-in-law is a well-known Russian actor. There are New Yorkers and Southerners, but almost everyone is a Yale graduate. For breakfast I ate herring, sturgeon, salmon, and trout. I felt I had not tasted these fish until then. The flavor is incredible. This morning we tour Red Square, the Kremlin, and State Armory Museum. Tomorrow we leave for another day trip before boarding our boat, the M.S. Volga Dream, to begin our week-long voyage on that river.

How to Reach Me

2008-07-18T02:45:00.000-07:00

Waterways of Russia
July 21 to August 3, 2008

Yale Educational Travel
Association of Yale Alumni

Hotel National Le Meridien
July 22 to 24 (2 nights)
15/1, bld. 1 ul. Mokhovaya
125009 Moscow, Russian Federation
Phone: 011-7-495-258-7100
Fax: 011-7-495-258-7100

M.S. Volga Dream
July 24 to 31 (7 nights)
Phone/Fax: 011-7-906-750-2011
Email: info@volgadream.com

Please note: the ship may not receive incoming calls while cruising.

Kempinksi Hotel Moika 22
July 31 to August 3 (3 nights)
Address:
Moika River Embankment 22
191186 St. Petersburg, Russian Federation
Phone: 011-7-812-335-9111
Fax: 011-7-812-335-9190

If you encounter difficulty reaching the ship or hotel or your party, please call Thomas P. Gohagan & Company at (800) 922-3088 for assistance.

Dreams-in-progress

2008-05-26T20:41:00.000-07:00

I noticed that on nicotine patch I dreamt of celebrities and sex. These were men who knew me in the dreams, but whom I hadn't met in life. All of them were extremely famous, except Dan Fogerty, who used to be more famous, and who kissed me like a teenager. Redford came in a limo. With Dylan the embrace was of friendship for my real friend, Jack. A team of reggae journalists played, and an unknown man came for me after work in a kilt.

Perhaps it's due to Wellbutrin – who knows? -- that I dream now of celebrities whom I have met and who might argue against it, their own fame, as a false claim, one that means -- no one besides poets and students, colleagues and friends knows them, a familiarity related to but unlike widespread fame.

I walked into a party. Men I'd heard of were there, and more than "heard of," whose intimate veiled thoughts revealed in pages of risky avant garde literature I had read. I was wearing new shoes that were a half size too small. My feet had grown from pounding the pavement looking like someone. The homelessness had broken open in me without interrupting shelteredness.

I had slept with a dry head in a soft bed, alone. It was as if I had always slept that way. I might have resorted to holding a stuffed animal. There was a reason for this celibacy, but it was not religion or disease. It was society. I had exceeded a limit placed on all of us -- how many hands we are to hold before picking the hand we most wish to hold for life. I had thought it was a numeral, but it was a resonance, one that happens early then recurs.

I hit upon it with a musician, a famous man married for decades, a soul already spoken for, enough. I was poor (despite my shelter), and I had learned that "poor" is different from "broke," which didn't apply to all poor people. "Broke” described the nouveau poor. And "clarity" I suggested we use when "enough" had been reached.

I dreamt in three dreams that we were at a poetry reading and at two AA meetings. In the second dream of the meetings, the married musician suggested that I read seafaring novels to help the alcoholic I had next met. The alcoholic had rejected AA as brainwashing. Enough, enough, enough, but it wasn’t yet enough: clarity in action.

In the earlier dream about the meetings –- the rooms change –- I am bottomless under the table and must cross the room to find pants. My fat shows, fat that wasn’t there when he met me, vantage he would not have seen.

In the dream of the poet, there is a wide sweeping lawn, and we flirt, but it is or is not the same thing, and we have no words for it: “legislation,” “negotiation,” “foundation.” I collide with him on a hill and knock him over. I recircle the hill to see him, but by then he is busy.

Earlier, not ten years of it, I had walked into Keillor's bookstore, and the word "clarity" was written across a banner under the ceiling. Enough, I was thinking, but the furtive position of one seeking clarity or enough, quietly or alone, was barely enough when I couldn't see those brown eyes or pass a guess.

Dear John

2008-05-13T23:48:00.000-07:00

I think it's pathetic, given my training in the short story, that I can't think of a story! I went to Soho today. Is that a story? I wanted to go inside Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, Giorgio Armani, Eileen Fisher, the others, but Tony didn't care to shop or watch me shop. At Oilily he found the "man couch," so named by the woman who worked there, and sat down. It was a beautiful day after yesterday's cold rain. We took a cab to an Italian place named for two men. Jimmy was one. Danny and Jimmy's, something like that. I said to Tony, who avoids the internet and thinks Facebook is a suspect way to spend an hour, that I was trying to think of a story to tell you. Later, we were walking, and I thought we'd been pick pocketed while being trailed too closely by a young blind man -- I thought he wasn't really blind -- but I was happily mistaken -- though that doesn't make sense -- and then embarrassed because I had placed a blind person in such a light.

Poem by Linde Brocato

2008-04-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

MEMORANDUM

Re: The thing that must be remembered
Date: September 11, 2001

Poetry wants to be written
it’s there in the web of things
the veins in the leaf
the metal frame
it will out, like a story
which wants to be told
set loose

Poetry works to be written
it hums within the day
energy waiting to be transformed
kinetic to potential
rhyme lifted into steel
stored stone by stone
that waits and sings

Those stones sing and wait
even if the wait ends in a fall
transformed again
doors and windows, bodies and stones
unbuilding themselves
steel unframed and flying

Then poetry aches to be written
tumbling stone and shard
uncounted things, uncountable pages
corresponding to the course of life
sing and sigh and sift to the ground
Things that must be remembered
things that must be done
because lives must be remembered
and deaths

Poetry wants to be written
Even in the black ink of loss
even that dark song
is there beneath the integral web
of things

(March 2002)

Blog Reader Appreciation Day

2008-04-15T13:32:00.000-07:00

April 16, 2008

The Madonna Option: Write a post thanking your readers for putting up with your foibles, mistakes, and eccentricities (a list) and being loyal to you (your blog) no matter what.

Foibles, mistakes and eccentricities:

A. Always
B. Begging
C. Clarinet
D. Daring
E. Effort
F. Forgiveness
G. Gratitude
H. Wearing hats too much
I. Ingenuity
J. Jesus-talk
K. Kindness
L. Love
M. Miles without a map
N. Nuisance
O. Openness
P. Politics
Q. Quizzicalness
R. Remembering
S. Safety
T. Texas
U. University
V. Veils
W. Wax
X. Xenophoria
Y. Yes
Z. Zig zagging

Yet readers might enjoy reading it. Thanks to the reader!

Take it or leave it

2008-03-31T07:48:00.000-07:00

Everything is not a disease. Even if you hyphenate it, and suggest that everything is or leads to dis-ease, it isn't accurate. I have decided that I look for others who can (in their adult maturities) "take it or leave it." A man who can take a drink or not take a drink, at will, or who can attend or not attend an AA meeting, who may feel a duty to it, but who can distance himself from the cultish aspects of "the program," and not need it, either. Who has self-determination with or without it, with or without that drink or those six drinks, who pays in hangover, not in housing and divorce, a moderate perhaps. Alcohol is not a disease. It is a beverage and solvent. Prune juice is not a disease. It is a beverage and solvent. Wanting your old boyfriend to come back to you is not a disease; it is a decision. Wanting to go to your church is a goal, a position, a decision. Voting for Obama is not a disease; it is a viewpoint, a set of wishes. Walking in the rain is not a disease. Sustaining damage might be a disease. This is as innocent as contracting cancer, which is a disease. The disease caused by sustaining damage is trauma; the body reacts. The mind is part of the body. The body is part of the mind. The self is part of the mind. The heart is part of the body. The heart-body-mind live inside the decisions. The decisions are adjustable. I am tired of hearing that everything is a disease. It is a repudiation of religion that produces that error. To be self-representing, one might repudiate religion without abandoning science. Love is a decision.

Grandfather, George A. Bogle (1892-1962)

2008-03-01T02:19:00.000-08:00

The time has come (to talk politics)

2008-02-29T13:00:00.000-08:00

Dear E. and all.

I'm sorry I didn't write back to E.'s real letter as I've been busy, and spent Valentine's day at an aunt's wake in Boston. Then one thing and another came up. Thank you for writing fully on it.

Obama does have charisma, but that usually only makes me suspicious of a man. Seriously. As Bertold Brecht said, Woe to the country that needs Geniuses and Prophets!

Hillary does not have charisma, needless to say. And the truth is, I've never believed she was electable, so I don't know how I've ended up in the position I'm in. But in the past year(s) of her running, I've had to wonder why does she elicit so much enmity? Is it because she doesn't have charisma? (How could she have charisma? I remember when Vogue did the cover on her; the interviewer was looking for a newspaper in her office and asked Hillary's assistant what papers she read. The assistant explained that Ms. Clinton did not read newspapers. She read position papers from our government and others. I've never forgotten it, and I find it wholly believable.) Maybe it's because of those position papers, or maybe she doesn't have a persona that is interested in charm. What does it mean to be uninterested in charm, anyway? She married charm and knows about its dark undercurrents. (I've been reading a lot of poetics theory lately and it is well established that the death of the author is a good thing, like the death of an entrepreneurial authority full of quaint romantic values like "genius" and "charisma.") (Has Hillary been postmodern all this time and we never knew?)

Yesterday morning I woke up remembering my friend Andre's words about 9/11. It was the next month, and we were having breakfast at a cafe around the corner from my house, which was around the corner from the towers, and we were talking about the towers, of course. We didn't talk about anything else for months, it seems! He was raised in Soviet Russia, and is an architect and a professor, just our age, and he said, "We won't know what these towers meant -- maybe ever. Our children will know, but we won't, not really."

I thought that was so wise! And I still like it I certainly had a quite fixed idea of what the attack meant from the very beginning, but I was willing then and I'm still willing -- even happy to believe I'm wrong, and (what's more) that I can't be right, I'm too close to be right. But lots of people walked around like I did, dazed, taking the whole thing personally, whether they were on Wall Street or in Vermont, California, Peru.

So yesterday I thought (hoped) that must be how it is with Hillary. I've been rendered stupid on the subject by some proximity -- a proximity which isn't real at all! I just can't understand why she was so thoroughly rejected (and demeaned) by all the world's mouthpieces. Ten years from now I'll look back on her campaign and say, What the hell was that all about? Of course, I think I know -- I think she's complicated, I think she's a Clinton, I think she's taken politics too seriously. (Whatever the hell that means.) (Well, it means that she hasn't been able to play at politics, like you sense Bill did, and like you sense GWB did -- until the towers, the war going on and on -- and like Obama has come to look.) But I'll never believe that this damn thing isn't riddled with misogyny.

I've been thinking about when Diana died. Diana, princess of Wales! I can't recall if it was just after mother died or just before, but I was flabbergasted by the outpouring of insane identification from every magazine-reading chick in the country. Black, white, green, yellow, everybody was devastated about her. As if Diana represented some part of them, the princess inside who had been hounded through the French tunnels with a handsome billionaire boyfriend, and died. Oh the tears. Oh the drama. Psychologists had to write article after article about why Diana was so important, about why we connected so deeply to her.

And now we have an American woman who helped organize migrant workers forty years ago, registered Hispanics in the Rio Grande valley to vote, who worked for Civil Rights and for the ACLU and graduated at the top of her class then went to Yale Law -- the law school which has always had the reputation for churning out the best professors and philosophers of law, not the best practitioners -- a woman cheated on and humiliated by her husband whom she rightly saw, back in 1969, would be the president of the US -- but nobody identifies with this woman. Nobody cries when she works her ass off to make a health care plan that will work, to run for three years -- maybe she's been running for all 7 years she's been in the senate. Maureen Dowd, a self-hating misogynist if there ever was one, writes columns that repeatedly refer to her ankle size. If anyone was ever hounded by the press, it's Hillary Clinton, She made one crack about not staying home to bake cookies and she's been crucified ever since. Her hair has been a topic of much conversation since the 80's. (I've had about 45 colors since then.) I'm sure that some nights lately she wishes Rush Limbaugh and Dowd would go ahead and drive her into a nice thick wall and put an end to it all.

A day before the New York elections, a group of feminists including Katha Pollitt came out for Obama. I have been speechless ever since, and unable to write you back. Seriously. Every day I want to write the letter -- I had the stuff below in the drafts file in my computer -- and every day I could not. My husband of course voted for Obama, like almost everyone else I know in town. And still I'm walking around like I have personally been attacked, certain that the whole damned thing smells like misogyny, like our system's powerful hatred for a strong woman, our system preferring women who think they're just like Diana. Keep them thinking that way, racking up the credit cards, driving their SUV's. Our world loving the women eager to faint before Obama's Camelot talk.

A president like the Beatles, great. I just hope he's John or George -- Or Martin, maybe he's Martin.

I enclose the bit from Robin Morgan that I originally wanted you to read, and something a Republican friend sent about Obama in N.O.

I feel better having gotten some of this out. God bless America, babe,
love, Alexis

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alexis Quinlan"
To: "E."; "Kate Parrish"
; "Victoria Jones"
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 9:19 PM
Subject: the time has come

to talk politics.

I've been sort of upset about Hillary and unsure about Obama. I can't help feeling that if Obama were the descendent of slaves there's no way he'd be in this position -- we can only stand him because he won't ever throw slavery/lynching at white America. I also can't help but think that 90% of Hillary's problem is misogyny. Peter voted for Obama, as did many of our friends. I voted for Hill, of course. I'd have done it with a little more pride if I'd read this article by Robin Morgan ahead of time.

Check it out as it is full of amazing comparisons and insight.

http://www.womensmediacenter.com/ex/020108.html

love, A

Ann Bogle (c) 2008 by Beez Johnson

2008-02-29T09:23:00.000-08:00

Power & Control v. Equality

2008-02-27T13:01:00.000-08:00

V = Violence
E = Equality

1V. Using Intimidation

Making partner (ex-) afraid by using looks, actions, gestures; smashing things; destroying property; abusing pets; displaying weapons

v.

1E. Non-threatening Behavior

Talking & acting so that s/he feels safe and comfortable expressing herself and doing things

.....................................................................................

2V. Using Emotional Abuse

Putting partner (ex-) down; manipulation; name calling; making the partner think s/he is crazy; playing mind games; humiliation; creating feelings of guilt

v.

2E. Respect

Listening to her non-judgmentally; being emotionally affirming and understanding; valuing opinions

.....................................................................................

3V. Using Isolation

Controlling what partner (ex-) does, sees, talks to, reads, where s/he goes; limiting outside involvement; using jealousy to justify actions

v.

3E. Trust and Support

Supporting her goals in life; respecting her rights to her own feelings, friends, activities and opinions

.....................................................................................

4V. Minimizing, Denying, and Blaming

Making light of the abuse and not taking concerns about abuse seriously; saying the abuse didn't happen; shifting responsibility for abusive behavior

v.

4E. Honesty and Accountability

Accepting responsibility for self; acknowledging past use of violence; admitting being wrong; communicating openly and truthfully

.....................................................................................

5V. Using Children

Creating guilty feelings about the children; using the children to relay messages; using visitation to harass the partner (ex-); threatening to take the children away

v.

5E. Responsible Parenting

Sharing parental responsibilities; being a positive non-violent role model for the children

.....................................................................................

6V. Using Privilege

Treating partner (ex-) like a servant; making all the big decisions; acting like the 'master of the castle'; being the one to define men's and women's roles; rigid gender roles

v.

6E. Shared Responsibility

Mutually agreeing on a fair distribution of work; making family decisions together

.....................................................................................

7V. Using Economic Abuse

Preventing the partner (ex-) from getting or keeping a job; making partner (ex-) ask for money; allocating an allowance; taking partner's (ex's) money; not informing or limiting access to family income

v.

7E. Economic Partnership

Making money decisions together; making sure both partners benefit from financial arrangements

.....................................................................................

8V. Using Coercion & Threats

Making &/or carrying out threats; threatening to leave, to commit suicide, to report partner (ex-) to welfare; making partner (ex-) drop charges, do illegal things

v.

8E. Negotiation & Fairness

Seeking mutually satisyfing resolutions to conflict; accepting change; being willing to compromise

.....................................................................................

This list is adapted from two wheels (pie charts) distributed by:

Domestic Abuse Intervention Project
Duluth, Minnesota

Fortunes in cookies, 2007

2008-02-15T06:43:00.000-08:00

"One should always be in love." -- Oscar Wilde
(at Palomino after wedding dress shopping in Minneapolis, 2/17/08)

Fortunes gathered from cookies since last year:

Success won't taste so good, without failure as appetizers.
Your career is moving more and more towards service to others.
Your present plans are going to succeed.
Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you may diet.
Do onto others as you wish others to do onto you.
Your goal will be reached very soon.
Your courage is like a kite; big wind raises it higher.
The only rose without a thorn is friendship.
Someone is looking up to you. Don't let that person down.
You will be extremely successful in business.
A good deed will make you feel good.
You find beauty in ordinary things. Do not lose this ability.
You are courteous, diplomatic and affable and find happiness in serving others.
You are a gentleman of outstanding wisdom.
When you speak honestly and openly, others truly listen to you.
You will receive fantastic support from someone who truly believes in you.
When one must, one can.
Business trips bring excellent results, especially for sales.
A clean conscience is a soft pillow.
Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.
A small incident will develop to your advantage.
Your worries will vanish if you face them bravely.
Be careful and systematic in your business arrangements.
No real excellence can be separated from right living.
People will find it difficult to resist your propositions.
Happier days are definitely ahead for you. Struggle has ended.
A big fortune will descend upon you this year.

Bliss

2008-02-14T00:08:00.000-08:00

From Robin Reagler's blog:

She Was Really Saying Something

... I mentioned last week that I wanted to throw a blog party, carnival, or harmonic convergence. Here's the idea. It's easy and quick. If everyone does it, it might be a lot of fun.

I'm not big on weddings. Never had one, except for this little bit of blogging. For the rest of the week, if you're game, follow this theme. You can post a photo, memory, poem, music, or a combination. Try to surprise us.

Tuesday 2/12 -- Something old

2/12 is the birthday of my favorite old lover, which sounds as if I mean he is old, but by which I mean our love affair is older. He asked me, please, not to refer to him on my blog as my "ex-boyfriend." I shall never be your ex-boyfriend, he said, but am your loving-friend.

Wednesday 2/13 -- Something new

212 is to be my new area code. 2/13 is the birthday of a beautiful man I met last year. He is not my old lover nor my new one. My new one is my old one. His old one -- her -- left a year ago. A year ago, the beautiful man was my new one, new then.

Thursday 2/14 -- Something borrowed

I borrowed a lot of money in my day & repaid it in paper wads and time. But let's not forget that I repaid much of it in hard-earned money, too.

Friday 2/15 -- Something blue

My engagement ring, a sapphire, see below (inset). I have become a mute woman since he gave it to me on January 15. Love is a very decent word when. We.

January was in New York

2008-02-01T11:46:00.000-08:00

Here I have been in New York for five weeks. Today it's raining. In Minnesota it doesn't rain in February. Here the women walk by wearing black boots to the knee. For weeks, I shopped stores in Minnesota looking for the perfect tall boot. I found them, but it took effort. I looked out the window there and saw evergreens and birdfeeders and the cat. I look out the window here on E. 10th St., and it's as good as looking at the pages of a fashion magazine. There are, many of them, NYU students. The women's legs are pencil-thin! The dogs are family members. The taxis whisk by, as today, kicking up rain behind their tires.

Yesterday we heard from "the Doctor," our name for our good friend, Marty, in Denver. I hadn't talked to Marty in more than ten years, but once we were on the telephone, it was like today that yesterday was. He has married and has a beautiful little boy. We expressed mutual happiness for one another. We carried on a three-way phone call with T. Marty is happy to be teaching and to be a dad. I am happy because my depression, suffered years ago, following our experience in Houston, has abated. The absence of depression is, like happiness, palpable. We read poetry out loud and a scene from a new play Marty has written. Marty called T. the "new Ashbery." We praised each other lavishly and justly and noted still missing Houston after all this time.

Tomorrow I'll go to the AWP bookfair & then join AQ & Robin for supper. I can almost not wait!

Sunday Salon Reading

2008-01-15T08:05:00.000-08:00

New York City
January 20

Named by New York Press as The Best Writer You’ve Never Heard of But Should Go Read Right Now, Ellis Avery is a Sunday Salon veteran and the author of a first novel called THE TEAHOUSE FIRE. Recently out in paperback from Riverhead Books, THE TEAHOUSE FIRE won two awards last year and is being translated into six languages. Ellis lives in Manhattan and teaches creative writing at Columbia.

Carol Novack is a former criminal defense/constitutional lawyer, an occasional instructor in lyrical fiction writing, and the publisher of Mad Hatters’ Review. She’s also a former grant recipient, and the author of a chapbook of poetry, a play, and several collaborative projects. Carol’s been featured in many reading series in NYC and elsewhere. Recent writings in print may or will be found in journals including American Letters & Commentary, Fiction International, First Intensity, Gargoyle, Journal of Experimental Fiction, Knock, LIT, Notre Dame Review, and in the anthology, Online Writings The Best of the First Years. Links to online publications are accessible via Carol’s blog.

Nicole Fix lives, writes and plays softball in Brooklyn. In 2006, she was awarded a scholarship to attend the SLS Kenya Writers’ Conference. Her screenplay Toy Fair and short story "Fish" were finalists for The Chesterfield Writer’s Film Project Fellowship. As a producer with Page 73 Productions, she has presented the critically acclaimed show and Pulitzer finalist Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue. She is currently working on her first novel and will be traveling to Eastern Europe and Israel to complete research.

Ann Bogle’s short stories have appeared in The Quarterly, Fiction International, Gulf Coast, Washington Review, Black Ice, Big Bridge, Submodern Fiction, among other journals. Her prose poem chapbook, XAM: Paragraph Series was published by Xexoxial Editions in 2005.

When & where do you meet?
You'll find heady prose on tap at the cozy Stain Bar in Williamsburg every third Sunday of the month at 7 p.m. Check the homepage for the latest times.

How do I get there?
Take the L to Grand, then go 1 block west. Stain Bar is located at 766 Grand Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211. Bar opens at 5 p.m. Call Krista at 718.387.7840 if lost.

The Quarterly

2007-12-27T09:59:00.000-08:00

Letter from Gordon Lish

2007-12-25T09:26:00.000-08:00

In the spring of 1987, on April 3, a month before my 25th birthday, Gordon Lish accepted my first published short story, "Chinese," for The Quarterly. I had already changed the title to "Chinese" from "Table-Talk" in the hope of using "Table-Talk" as the title of a short story collection. He subsequently accepted two more short stories, "Fairness" (one I had originally called "Hieroglyphics" and "Domesticity") and "Hors-d'oeuvre." In the course of a year, we wrote notes to each other about contracts for the short stories, proofs of them, and editing suggestions. I was already writing like a minimalist, so editing suggestions were rather minimal, too. Then, in the letter below, which must have followed a sudden, plaintive burst from me -- and which might be in one of the banker's boxes in my office; his to me are in a blue-dot file marked "Lish, Gordon" -- he writes that he would not be interested in publishing a book of mine.

25 April 88

Dear Ann,

I'm at your service, but what to do? Sure, I'll read, but my guess is that I am only going to see two or three entries that would make for a book I'd do. But always happy to counsel if that is the thing you want. Damn shame you wasted time schooling yourself as you did, for I am guessing that you would have profited rather considerably from time in my classes--if only in the context that you would have ridded yourself of these doubts, wantings, keenings. You are never going to survive as an artist if you are not entirely self-sustaining. I am even understating the matter--by a lot.

As for the small prose here [rev. as "Almanac"], it is its weakness that makes me say no, not its brevity. If you keep watching Q, you will see prose fictions as short--I believe several show up in Q10.

Look, Ann, you are breaking my heart. Call me if it will help any to shoot the breeze. I am always tickled to meet with you if you come to NY. Please know that my heart and mind are wide open to you. As for making it with me with your writing, the solution is simple: get the work as strong as it is in you to get it--and make certain that the surface writing could not be more exactingly made.

This was a shitty letter. No time--and nothing to say, really, to the matter before us, given that your shrei was too general for me to mount a useful statement in reply.

Be well, feel good, thrive,

Gordon Lish

P.S. My God, Christa Wolf! Does take me back.

Happiness in love

2007-12-10T22:26:00.000-08:00

The wedding was to have been at the spout, at the fish mouth of the fountain, where the ice had stopped its tumble from the bubbler, that in summer entertained the old & the children and caused the others to look for pennies in their pockets & wallets, pennies to cast to the feet of nudes of the seas, the women, the young men, the voices of unity. The parish priest or the pastor gives the order of service, and the man, the groom, a handsome daredevil of rectitude -- gives his hand to the woman, the bride, the statuesque caregiver of whispers. G. had had this in mind the entire time, s/he asked how does this, wearing white mink for winter, before supper. Given savings. The running arm of love of one man for one woman who saves him, each day mattering a little more than the next; each day mattering a little more than the last. Each day mattering more than the thirst. How in this loving matter only loving matters. The man, the woman, the footpath. The lovers heard early in the morning at their water. Pouring water for coffee from the tap. Arrived graciously, cautiously, warily, safely to this nest. There was talk of love on the phone. It was an easy conversation. The love was a bumper crop. The love was coming out noodles through the receiver. He loved her more than he had ever loved anyone. His happiness was complete. She let him more than she had ever let anyone love her. The happiness was a tablecloth for a picnic; the happiness was the carpet in the hallway; the happiness was the wall behind the painting; the happiness was the sky behind the cloud; the happiness was the seating in the Volvo; the happiness was the carrier, the weekend, the chimes. The happiness was not among the people or the women, who couldn't see it, couldn't be clear about it or without it, who without being there to witness it, were in it, without being there for it, whose own happiness was phrased in book order, she, whose happiness was a seal within eternity, in the Wednesdays of life.