Mini Memoir revisited

My three siblings and I, all born a year apart, put our pillows in the freezer on summer nights.
Free from school, we would stay up past our bedtime
jumping on the king size trampoline bed in my parent's room.
There was a window unit that blew cold ac into the room
until it became an oasis within the hot house.
After a bath, my mother would weave my wet hair into a french braid down my back.
I wore my dad's billowy t-shirts to bed,
but some nights after the beach,  just my swimsuit,
dragging sand into my sheets with me.
I spent much of the summertime  playing at Upham Beach
until the sky bled fuchsia onto a flat Gulf of Mexico.
I think I have loved Upham Beach since before I was born
on the twenty seventh day in June, 1989.
No matter how far I wander,
that warm water is closer to me than my skin.

Cathedral

She is slight, my sister,
with a dancer’s waist and shoulders.
Her back is a moon beneath her sweater.
She and her friends embrace strong and quick,
then line up at the bar for class.

An observation window sits above the white dance room, their sanctuary.
The teacher speaks in one-two-three’s infused with French
and the pianist is invisible.
“As well as you can today,” she says.
“minute by minute.”

My sister commands the vessel of her body
with raw, red heels and a mind like a knife.
Spectators group at the window
floating above the studio, above the streets of Boston.
I think of tourists visiting mosques and cathedrals,
hoping to take away a portion of beauty for themselves.

There is beauty to every person.
Some, however,
are a light in the dark. They need no adornment.
The color and structure of their hair, teeth, skin
are all their own and are perfect. They are
temple and art and music
and they give
so you do not have to take.

Mini-memoir

When I was seven lightning struck the brick road in front of my house. Yellow caution tape surrounded the hole and my mom told me not to go near. When I did, the bricks gave way under my feet. My arms caught the ground, suspending my body above the dark sewer system. Stunned, I pulled myself out and slipped into our house through the side door. I jumped, fully clothed, into the shower in my dad's half bathroom to clean the mud off my body before anyone saw.My dad's father had our house built when it was time for him to raise a family. He worked for Florida Power, and I've been told my block is the last to keep electricity in the event of a natural disaster. My grandma told me that no one really lived in St. Petersburg until air conditioning was invented. This made me feel like I had a heat resilience super power since my family's house didn't have central heat and air until I was ten. On summer nights my three siblings and I, all born a year apart, would put our pillows in the freezer. We stayed up wearing billowy shirts, jumping around on the trampoline bed in my parents' room, which became an oasis when when they turned on the a.c. unit in their window. That cold, along with the braid my mother would pleat down my hair after a bath, are some of the most poignant sensations of my childhood. I felt a certain ownership of summer because I was born in June. My family didn't have a pool, but we made use of those owned by friends or waterfront hotels. At night I would fall asleep in my bed still wearing my bathing suit so I could wake up and go right back to a pool or Upham beach. Two places I have been since my first week of life are church and Upham beach. The warm gulf water was as close to me as my skin and when I moved to Baltimore for college I looked for a place to swim for months. I didn't find one, but the ocean never left my sleep; it is the only reoccurring dream my subconscious has held on to.

Self Portrait

I am
the golden month of June,
a girl called Blue,
stars burning in my belly,
two stepping to
a rap-tap staccato
of dog toenails
on sidewalk,
bags always packed
drifting between
home and where
I think I should be.
Scurrying,
image capturing,
painting and hoping
my muse will descend,
my life blood, my dopamine,
the mysterious elliptical fish
emerging.

Poems of Establishing Identity and Transitioning into Adulthood (Written January - April 2009)

Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," verse 22:
"sea of stretch'd ground-swells,
sea of breathing broad and convulsive breaths
...I am integral with you, I too am one phase
and of all phases."
_____________

I've made my home on the ocean floor.
I stitched up seaweed with my own nimble fingertips.
I pushed cupped hands against clay
until walls rose.
They softly pushed back
and instead formed me.
_____________

I had a dream I lived on an island.
Water pried open my eyes.
_____________

God is my neighbor.
He and I rocking chair-talk
on the back porch.
Boards squeak.
Breezes and mosquitos
come in
the tide
goes out.
_____________

My favorite part of the day is washing my brushes and
sprawling my throbbing body
across the mattress.
I thank God.
Singing flows through the pipes overhead.
My oil paintings come alive,
little gummy people, all of them me.
I recall the girl in my poetry class
with the crooked mouth
and how beautifully she speaks.
______________

Snow Day
When I prayed for the world to stop
just for one day
so
I could exhale,
I didn't think
it actually would.
___________

soft
one thing at a
time little one
_____________

Nobody likes the
concept of
surrender-
until they learn
that it means
rest. And
even then
it's hard to
grasp.

Matthew 11:28
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
_____________

Each Friday
I harvest
A fresh crop
of paintings,
plucking them
from my studio wall.
_____________

I see an association between
living in nature and music
versus
living in the city and art.

One is truth, on is one step removed from the truth -
a reproduction of the thing, and not the thing itself.

When you play a note,
it only claims to be
that note - a song on that instrument, in that live time.

Apainting points to somewhere, something else.
It references. It is rarely self-referential in the way that music is.
Music can point elsewhere, of course,
but the sound it makes, in the air, in real time,
is nothing but itself.

Just like a primary color, like pure pigment. Like a tree.
It is the original, it cannot be reproduced or it will be less.
The city only references nature, God made structures...
a painting refrences a tree,
but it will never be the tree
the way that wood and bark and leaves are a tree, or
the vibrations of a C minor through the air are
a C minor.
______________

Seeing is much more abstract than looking.
Looking begins and ends with the tangible, the visual,
but seeing goes beyond to include
an understanding of the unseen, the intangible.
A portrait could be just
paint arranged on a canvas to look like a face,
or it could feel alive with the sitter's unseen qualities.
______________

Art has taught me secrets
that I want to whisper to you
wide eyed and huddled
under a glowing blanket.
You won't believe it, but,
everything tht's inside of you-
it's in me too.
______________

No one would say that all art is alike,
but I would defend that all art
from one creator
has essential sameness.
Yeats' poems,
Beethoven's symphonies,
Speilburg's films,
Valentino's dresses.
Mac's computers,
Michelangelo's figures,
Chicago's pizzas,
Ailey's choreography,
Bruce Mau's designs,
even my siblings and I-
What is essential in each of these bodies of work
is the same,
because they share a maker.
That is how I know you.
I just look at what is essential, inherent
to me
and it is similar in you
because we share a Maker.
______________

When I know myself
I know you
(and when you know yourself
you know me.)
How did I come to know
what I really am?
How do I know
what a piece of art truly is?
I ask the artist, the maker, the Creator.
______________

I know you worry about what comes next,
I do too.
I know you dream about
going back to December 5th or February 20th,
yeah,
I miss him too.
I know you have a hard time believing
that you are beautiful,
I do too.
______________

Sometimes you have to hear things
spoken
to believe them.
So I say to him
"You are beautiful."
______________

I have a God that loves me
and a boy that holds me.
My bed hugs me,
the three console me,
whispering, "beauty, beauty."
______________

I choose you
every morning I wake up
with sleep heavy on my eyelashes.
______________

Medieval woodcuts
describe gluttony
with a cup
and lust
with a kiss.
What is the serving size
for kisses?
______________

The same thing happens to
my body
when I think about you
that happens to my tongue
when I think about citrus.
______________

I want to get a hold of you
I want
to
get
a
hold
of
you
I want to
grab hold
of you
I
want
you.
______________

I am interested in language,
but only know English.
I am passionate about travel,
but I haven't been far...
______________

Being a good student
just means
that you go home
and do your homework
at night.
______________

Is knowledge something you drop into
when gravity kicks in
and takes away the slack
and you bounce heavy in your harness
at the end of a rope?
______________

In Baltimore, 60% is passing.
The standards are so low.
Young child of Baltimore
City Schools,
you chant "I rise,"
one classroom over,
but how?
______________

I am sorry professor
I couldn't finish the readings you assigned.
I had to play my ukulele
the way you have to go to
the funeral of a family member
or the dentist
or your best friend's wedding
and then I had to
write about it.
______________

I sharpen pencils.
I write poems.
I want to
say
something.

Stephanie's Daily Affirmations

Scrawled this down after a recent conversation with Jon.
Put the scrap of paper on the back of my door.

They may particularly strike a chord with fellow college graduates trying to figure out how to do life now.


"Take it one step at a time.

Be here.

It is enough, so enjoy it.

Appreciate what you've done and what you are doing.

And never forget, the point of it all is to love people."


More daily affirmations

Returning

Getting to South Africa took 

many papers.

Today they are in the trash.

My bedroom has changed little since 

leaving and

the house 

is quiet.

I don't know how I like my tea anymore.

Where can I go to remember myself?

The church, the mall,

a book, a meal, 

my studio, my music,

running down the road?

Instead of myself, 

I find new life 

sprouting from 

return to old ritual:

pen to page, 

paint to canvas, 

knife to carrots and cucumbers, 

the walk down the driveway in the morning

where Americans are

the most important 

war casualties to be announced.