Lucid Morning

Monday, Monday...but today it is seeming more than ok. There is sun beaming into the loft and I managed to wake up and even get up at 6:15 AM rather than my usual sluggish 7-ish. (Thank you Drew for the push that prevented me from hitting Snooze.) There's a vase of 18 red roses + white daisies on Drew's sewing table, flowers left at church yesterday by the birthday honoree who didn't want to come back for them but didn't want them to go to waste. Bold fat deep red sculpted blooms, as common as...roses, and yet: a reminder of grandeur too. 

My mom is here with her friend Neil until tomorrow morning. We've done Detroit Film Theatre, Belle Isle Conservatory / perennial garden / Nature Center, driven through Boston-Edison, Indian Village, Lafayette Park...the strange fascinating variety of this ever-transforming place. I am lucky to be here, I feel, and lucky too to have a mom who's still alive and, perhaps even more importantly, still moving/changing/growing in the world. And able to be open to life in ways that surprise me. And so. I am grateful.

Ahh and now. The idea was to get up early so I could blog for half an hour, at least, but alas. It is already 8am. Time for the downriver commute. Downtown trucks, looming empty warehouses, the Del Ray ghost town curve, the River Rouge Ecorse stretch of tiny bars and liquor stores and the gorgeous span of water on the left. Then to create a shape and plan for the next few weeks of deadlines. But truly, I am grateful for that too.

Harp of God, Kinky Twist/Tyzillions, Blue Heart

Oh yeah, that list....

So: way too many posts ago, but also not enough posts ago because I should have written way more posts by now, I ended with the optimistic, "Tomorrow, a list!" That is, a list of ways to push past old regrets so that I can be a better person for myself and those around me in a creative, productive present. I think I've been avoiding the task because I'd subconsciously decided the list had to be the end-all and be-all Solution For Everything Ultimate Self-Improvement List. Which clearly has gotten me nowhere. So, finally, I am writing a quick, partial, late-night version of The List, so that I can know I have done it and moved forward. And maybe it will actually do some good.

OK. Here goes.

1) Keep running. Literally, that is, not metaphorically. I've been running regularly again for the first time in years and my body is grateful for it. My jeans even fit a tiny bit better. I'm a better person when I run, less edgy, less unecessarily intense, more clear-headed. Plus I simply feel better the way exercising people do. So. Yeah. Keep running.

2) Keep writing. Every day. This blog plus other ways. Keep the cobwebs out of my head, no blame anything or anyone around me for my not writing, and most importantly, of course, duh, maybe produce something worth reading and/or publishing. Which can only be a good thing. 

3) Keep working on the play or screenplay project I started a few weeks ago when a bizarre fever brought me a story idea in the shower. Even if it evolves slowly, which it most likely will as all my projects do, work on it and allow it to be worthwhile. 

4) Keep getting rid of stuff. And the stuff I do have, take better care of.

5) Apply to a bunch of writing colonies this year with project #3, get accepted to one, and go.

6) Write in a genre I've never written in before. Fiction, most likely. Let #3 be fiction if it needs to be. Try it that way.

7) Volunteer for something I really really care about. Allow it to matter.

8) Write pieces about Detroit, find ways to publish them. 

9) Write at least a poem a week. I miss poems.

10) Map out writing projects I want to complete in the next 10 years. (Another list).

11) Cook more from scratch, enjoy it as a creative process.

12) Grow things.

13) Speak my mind more easily, simply. In an open non-defensive way.

14) Find more ways to have true bonding time with my partner. Even if it's just finding fun/collaborative ways to do housework, organize the living space, etc. But also, outdoor things, short trips for no reason other than the pleasure of the trip. Things like that.

15) Get to LA to visit my friends, finally, and also to NYC at least once.

16) Plan trip to Scotland/England w/my mom.

17) Read more news about hard things I don't necessarily want to look at but know I need to be aware of.

18) Take the dog to dog parks!

19) Allow my boldness to flourish. In a non-foolish way.

 20) Always seek and pursue the greatest number and greatest quality of options for positive change. The best ways to be of use in the world.

OK, thank you for indulging me. It'll help as I move forward. The next post will be more about things happening around me, less about things happening inside me. But I needed this right now. So. Thank you, dear reader, or possibly readers? Thank you.

haiku

consequential

october presses

january; march pushes 

may to a full stop.

Stuck.

Wish I had brainspace for an entry tonight. Wish i'd had an entry, period, in the past 6 days.

Not quite all here right now, at least not in the writing sense. 

I hate complaints, victim trips, negativity; my aversion to excuses runs deeper.  So I'll quit wasting words on this. I'll leave it, watch Star Trek, do the dishes, go to bed. Tomorrow: another chance to write.  

Morning in a French Orbit

Dark coffee in the rough clay rooster mug, my dad's old paisley bathrobe, a whole pink grapefruit in an orange bowl, strawberry cream yogurt, sun. 

The light here is gentle and direct.

It's my first morning alone in Detroit. (Or was, when I began this entry.) Morning alone is a test of a place, of the homeness of it, I think. Detroit, oddly, seems to be getting an A. I feel peace here I never felt in the mountains, comfort looking out on rooftops that I never felt gazing at Appalachian treetops. A feel for the city that makes me want to wander, find people, know who they are. 

Two psychics - vastly different people living in vastly different places with vastly different approaches to their work -- have remarked, unprompted, that Detroit feels like home to me.  They can't explain it. I can't either, exactly, but I agree. I feel guilty for it, almost, or even embarrassed - but I feel it.

I feel at home in France, too, and in French Canada, and speaking French. Maybe that explains it. Those who familiar with the history of New France can skip the next couple of paragraphs, but for those of us who are unversed, here's a quick glimpse of the motor city origins, grace à nos amis at wikipedia:

Detroit was named by French officer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, a controversial adventurer, trader, and “visionary” who (secretly) shipped off from Paris to escape punishment for unknown crimes, arriving in Canada in 1683 at age 25. After changing his name from Antoine Laumet to sieur Antoine de Lamothe-Cadillac to claim nobility and protect his identity, he founded and named Fort Ponchartrain du Détroit in 1701. Détroit, literally translated as "strait," is short for “le détroit du lac Érie,”  the narrow passage that links Lake Erie and Huron, now known as the Detroit River. 

Then man credited for noticing the "ideal spot for a settlement" on the North bank of the strait is Father Hennepin, a member of the Franciscan Recollect order (Les Récollets, credited with brewing the first beer in New France in 1620). One of the four missionaries sent by the Récollets to New France in 1675 at the request of Louis XIV, Hennepin sailed with La Salle on the great lakes and later described the vast territories of the new continent in three books that were largely debunked by later historians. Hennepin has been immortalized in place names all over North America, and in "The Hennepin Avenue Bridge," the final track on the 2006 album 13 by Brian Setzer. (Did I mention I was using wikipedia?)

Back to Detroit, where the British lopped off the accent aigu after gaining control during the French and Indian War (1760). Ottowa leader Chief Pontiac laid siege to the Fort of Detroit in Pontiac's Rebellion three years later, but was as unsuccessful as his namesake, the auto line that gave birth to such classics as the Star Chief, the Bonneville, and the GTO, but was recently deleted from GM's repertoire like an outdated accent mark.

The British kept control of the city until it passed to the US in 1796 as part of the Jay Treaty. This treaty, which also laid the groundwork for a decade of largely peaceful trade between the US and British-controlled Canada, was motivated, like so many diplomatic agreements, by fear of a political rival. In 1791, the first coalition of the French Revolutionary Wars had thrown France into chaos while the rest of Europe watched, unnerved and unsure of how best to exploit the situation – or at the very least how to protect their interests from its potentially destructive reach. Britain found one solution in the Jay Treaty, which, as wikipedia describes it, was formed to “improve relations with the US to keep the US from falling into the French orbit”.

Centuries later, I, an  American of somewhat British descent, seem to have yielded to the very danger the Jay Treaty was designed to prevent. Ever since tasting the delight of the word “hippopotame” in my mouth in fourth grade, I have been falling into a French orbit, and that orbit has, oddly, led me to Detroit. Where I feel at home. It could be, as they say on the West Coast, a "past life thing"...maybe I landed to New France 3 centuries ago and followed the ballsy Cadillac to that auspicious spot on the North shore of the strait. Previous incarnations aside, there is a trace, however faint, of Frenchness in the air...and maybe that's enough for me.

On a less personal (and quite possibly more interesting) note: it seems fitting that, for more than a century, the success and failure of this city - a place "discovered" by an ambitious missionary who wrote fake descriptions of the glorious new continent, and settled by a law-dodging adventurer who invented a fictional identity for himself (only to serve 5 years in the Bastille when he returned to France decades later and reverted to his birth name in order to claim his inheritance) - has been inextricably bound with the success and failure of an industry built on the American art of self-reinvention. 

But that's the subject of another blog, n'est-ce pas?

Till then...

shades of regret

I got a newsletter today from a women's writing retreat where I spent 3 weeks what feels like 20 years ago but was actually 7. Which is still a pretty long time. Long enough to have lost the relationships that were alternately binding me and tempting me at the time - and to have lost more after that; to have left the consuming arts nonprofit job I had at the time that was so hard to let go for those 3 weeks; to have lost a parent and a grandparent and my reproductive organs (not a great loss considering the alternative, as the cause was ovarian cancer); to have moved across the country to North Carolina and then partway back across the country to Michigan; to have nearly forgotten the play I was writing there with such intense fervor. And also long enough, I hope, to have learned something along the way, to have stretched a few muscles I didn't even quite know I had 7 years ago. I've progressed in some way and I'm grateful for that.

And yet. I've lost something too. The impulse that took me to the retreat in the first place, that pushed me to apply even in the midst of being so busy and worn out with work that I had a crying fit the day I dropped the application in the mail. That helped me believe I had a reason to go there, something to say, a role in the world that included my writing in a way beyond marketing copy and grant applications. I was frought with fear and insecurity the whole time I was there, plagued by the useless but persistent anxiety that I Didn't Deserve It - but I still pushed myself to write most of a play in 3 weeks. Now I'm an alumna and I get the newsletters reflecting the glorious progress the place has made in the past few years right after returning from the brink of financial disaster and a purgatory of programmatic confusion. I'm delighted to see the progress they've made but can't help thinking, every time I get a letter, "If I applied now, I couldn't get in." This feeling is made all the more piquant by the knowledge that one of my exes is the executive director, responsible for the turnaround.

There are ways to move beyond this. I know. Tomorrow: a list.

Joblife

I received my first request for an interview today, after applying for what feels like 1800 jobs but is probably closer to 12. 

I am grateful and glad to have something to work toward besides another cover letter and another load of laundry, and impressed by the place that has requested to interview me. They provide an incredible amount of services to people in need in Wayne County - in every community except Detroit. Which is odd and interesting and a bit sad. But also understandable: there are so many people in need in the rest of the county. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that those who are in need in Detroit are getting anything near the support they need. Anyway, I'm interested in the job. And I hope, that if they consider me, they will also consider paying more than the wage listed in their online description. I came here committing to earning a better living and need to keep that promise to myself.

I went to Eastern Market this morning for the first time. Loved it. A sense of realness, industry, commerce, people outside, being alive. Different languages and accents. It's been there since 1891, serves restaurants as much as it serves the public. The open market area with its grand arched brick buildings is enclosed by a layer of wine and spice and antique stores and coney island diners, which are encircled by a meatpacking district that is still a meatpacking district, not a yuppie clubland like the one in new york. I bought roasted and sallted cashews, a wedge of cotswold, a plastic tub of green olives stuffed with almonds from a small mediterranean shop where the owner talked me out of five more dollars for a ball of goat cheese rolled in spices and a small chunk of halvah, that A, my guide on the journey pronounced "freaking GREAT" - her first time sampling the rich flaky stuff. Dark chocolate bars at a discount in my favorite shop, a deli-meets-dry goods store full of exactly what i want to eat. These were bought with my partner in mind. He writes sermons on Saturday night and delivers them Sunday morning. Chocolate helps.

After the market, a stop at Clark Park in Mexicantown where a Detroit human services organization (the equivalent of the one mentioned above for the city?) hosted their 3rd annual Dia de los Ninos/Dia de los Llibros celebration. Full of families and kids receiving free Spanish language and bilingual books. A young, cute, very college-educated-seeming woman sang songs in Spanish and played guitar and was surprisingly not annoying in any way. The incredibly talented inner city kids from Mosaic Youth Theatre were about to perform next. 

It's good to see a neighborhood that full of life on a cloudy Saturday afternoon. Especially when the cause is reading.

And now Rufus Wainwright is singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and I am full of thoughts about what next and how and what is best and where and why I should choose what...and I must sleep. For now I must sleep.

Here I am.

Bonjour Détroit, bonjour you strange and complicated town, bonjour to the first ice cream truck i've seen in years tooting its little pied-piper horn, bonjour to the pink mosaic jaguar being lowered into place outside the high school, bonjour open windows and salvation army runs, bonjour bright red cardinal perched on the church roof,  on this, the first truly warm day of spring, 24th April, 2009.  

4/24/2009 - the digits add up to 10, which reduces to 1. A good numerology. In tarot, the major arcana, 1 is the magician. The creative one. The maker of things. A good reminder on this day.

It is three months to the day exactly, today, since I left NC to arrive in Detroit. I had been sure it was six till right now. Or at least four. So - three is good. Makes me feel less behind.

Time is on my mind these days.

Two days ago was my sixth-month birthday. I'll be 40 on October 22. I try not to ascribe much meaning to 40 - I hate the women's-magazine "Look great after 40" mentality, but: still: it's a landmark. Hard to ignore. Hard not to feel kicked in the pants, a bit, by the knowledge that I've been on the earth 40 years. And so. I do.

 And I'm also aware, more than ever, I think, of how deeply subjective time and space can be. Three months feels like six when you're adjusting and stretching muscles you'd almost forgotten you had: the ones used in the improvisation required to sustain a relationship that is more than friendship, more than work, but not just romance and not quite family. A thousand-square foot loft feels like a studio apartment when two people find keep getting stuck in half-hearted attempts to contain their physical Stuff till it acts out like a neglected child. ("But I'm right here, covering your every surface! Tripping you on your way to the bathroom! Depressing you with my very presence! Why won't you pay attention to ME?") 

An arrival in  a completely new city and radically different life feels like a suspension in time when one brings a workload from the job that defined and even sometimes consumed the life one came from. So I took on 3 grants and a report from my previous employer, contract work that allowed me to start the new life without the terror of No Work and No Income, but that kept me tied to the place I had come from, and made it harder, for better or for worse, to shake off my attachment to that place. 

I mailed in my last assignment this week along with an invoice for the contract fee. 

And so now, the new work, the real work, begins.

Bonjour Détroit, bonjour blog, bonjour transition into something - and somewhere - and someone new.