In Memory of My Feelings- Frank O'Hara

My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent
and he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets.
He has several likenesses, like stars and years, like numerals.

My quietness has a number of naked selves,
so many pistols I have borrowed to protect myselves
from creatures who too readily recognize my weapons
and have murder in their heart!
though in winter
they are warm as roses, in the desert
taste of chilled anisette.
At times, withdrawn,
I rise into the cool skies
and gaze on at the imponderable world with the simple identification
of my colleagues, the mountains. Manfred climbs to my nape,
speaks, but I do not hear him,
I’m too blue.
An elephant takes up his trumpet,
money flutters from the windows of cries, silk stretching its mirror
across shoulder blades. A gun is “fired.”
One of me rushes
to window #13 and one of me raises his whip and one of me
flutters up from the center of the track amidst the pink flamingoes,
and underneath their hooves as they round the last turn my lips
are scarred and brown, brushed by tails, masked in dirt’s lust,
definition, open mouths gasping for the cries of the bettors for the lungs
of earth.
So many of my transparencies could not resist the race!
Terror in earth, dried mushrooms, pink feathers, tickets,
a flaking moon drifting across the muddied teeth,
the imperceptible moan of covered breathing,
love of the serpent!
I am underneath its leaves as the hunter crackles and pants
and bursts, as the barrage balloon drifts behind a cloud
and animal death whips out its flashlight,
whistling
and slipping the glove off the trigger hand. The serpent’s eyes
redden at sight of those thorny fingernails, he is so smooth!
My transparent selves
flail about like vipers in a pail, writhing and hissing
without panic, with a certain justice of response
and presently the aquiline serpent comes to resemble the Medusa.

Adieu

Saying goodbye is an inevitable part of the journey. This is not without reason. Goodbyes are so hard--you don't know how much emotion to show, what to say in those last moments. You are torn between navigating grey emotional area and honoring the present. Sometimes goodbyes are silent cognitive tips of the hat to one another. Sometimes they are curt and rushed because of a welling tear. Sometimes they aren't realized until you remember the last time you saw their face when you casually waved goodbye. Sometimes they are full of tears, and deep belly giggles; the kind when you have to get out of the car multiple times and run into their arms, squeezing and soaking up each others energy. 

I have said many goodbyes these past weeks. I bid farewell to my family, to college-life, my apartment, the rolling Missoula belly-trails I trampled life-miles on, silly thirsty-thursdays, lenient schedules full of yoga-workshops, infinite intriguing reading assignments and hour long runs. Today, I said goodbye to my two dear friends. And I've recognized how much I have changed even in the time of my knowing them; also, how my relationships have facilitated a 'settling' into myself. And although I am anxious as to what the future holds, I must remember that the good ones never get away. 

It feels like a whole life is ending and in reality that is true--because you never come back the same person after the world shakes up your soul-bones. I've found that anticipating that deep change is like a drug; it heightens your senses to the blessings around you. And I've learned to not fear change or goodbyes because the ones who really matter morph right along with you, flourishing in themselves. And when you meet again as Whole Beings, you can reflect on the progress and celebrate how life always rings round. The night before I left for NZ as a 16 year old, I went to the movies with Mom and my sisters--there is a quote from that movie, Benjamin Button that has always stuck with me, 

"We have to lose the ones that we love--how else would we know how important they are to us?"

And it is poetic in that all endings sprout new beginnings. We can't hold on forever, but have to adapt--transform our relationships and keep on growing. Holding on engenders pain. We must surrender to the flux of change embrace the new while honoring the necessity of the old. Slowly building blocks, priming for a celebration of the glorious present self. Change is scary, but stagnation is scarier. 

One Day They'll Bury Me

One day they’ll bury me.

Fires rage, every possession, every material memory, buried in flames.

Every worry, every joy, every attachment, every thought- will be bruised in a thaw of memory, buried in fresh grass.

So why do we spend our time grinding over the menial things? I want to be liberated from the petty.
 Break free from the immature drama- the fucking satire of this old shiva.

I bow to the divinity within me, the soul who lights the match and writes her name in sparkler tails

     engulfed by night to feed the stars.

The Future Enters Us-- Rilke

 

It seems to me that all our sadnesses are moments of tension that we feel as paralysis because we can no longer experience our banished feelings. Because we are along with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us, because we feel momentarily abandoned by what we've believed and grown accustomed to; because we can't keep standing as the ground shifts under our feet. That is why the sadness passes over like a wave. The new presence inside us, that which has come to us, has entered our heart, has found its way to its innermost chamber and is no longer even there--it is already in our blood. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be persuaded that nothing happened, and yet something has changed inside us, as a house changes when a guest comes into it. We cannot say who has entered we may never even know, but there are many indications that the future enters us in just this way, to transform itself within us long before it happens. That is why it is so important to be alone and attentive when you are sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than any loud and accidental point of time which occurs, as it were, from the outside.

---August 12, 1904--Letters to a Young Poet

Stranded in an Escher Sketch

 

To exit, there is no sum

As Beethoven’s ossicles—

A caged pendulum

It’s not the notes— it’s the space—

Where barnacles thrive, thrashing—

All the more in lack of a tide

It’s not the tune— it’s the harmony—

Concert static where trebles headcase—

One desolate pine to sync with the base

It’s not the angle— it’s the symmetry—

Where single steps wax, another ellipse—

Piled high, as nibbled nail strips

White noise swallows symphonies

Eroding convex and concave, impregnate—

Lofty sound waves

Another Earth

 

 What if there was a parallel universe—a Milky Way mirroring our very own beyond a black hole. What if there was another Earth, exactly synchronized with our own: the same cities, the same environmental catastrophes, the same people. What if there was another YOU in that parallel universe. 

If you had the chance to have a conversation with your parallel self, what would you ask? What would you ask your‘self’ and what sorts of observations would you make? 

In reality we do this everyday—a constant chatter going on in our brains.

“Did I say that right? Don’t forget to water the aloe: Am I fat? I wonder if he’s angry with me.”

The incessant conversation—and what if our instinctual replies are in fact a telepathic tennis game with the parallel self? What if your mind is connected through the reciprocal fabric of the cosmos and the everyday cognitive script is truly your parallel self-replying. So when one question comes up, the other responds and divine inspiration, déjàvu, and intuition are all an illusion of the feedback from the other self’s experience. Without one another, your lives would be incomplete.

 Your parallel self is the unconscious, the divine sensation we all bathe in from time to time—that there is something beyond this beautiful life, a spiritual energy, like Xhosa beadwork, weaving us all together. Fate, destiny, time, are all projections of the parallel universe--for with every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is how I will come to think of relationships—embedded and intertwined are the energies, despite distance and time. We can feel one anothers’ presence affecting lifespace through the divine parallel tapestry of life.

Nascence of a Memoir

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I guess I could start at the beginning, which is a very good place to start (an existential lesson from The Sound of Music). I was born in Aurora Colorado, April 1, 1992 at St. Mary’s or St. James….one of em. I am the third female in a house full of estrogen, with two elder sisters and an independent mother. Needless to say, Dad needed our male akita, Yoshi to tip the hormone scale a bit.

I was born early on a Tuesday morning, Mom says this is why I was such a grouch in the morning. At the time, Dad was a ‘green’ optometrist and had just gotten a job back in Colorado. During the day he would work, Mom would stay home with the two youngins, Chelsea and Brittany; when dad got off work he would meet Mom at the bus stop to perform ‘the handoff’ as they describe it and she would continue to her night classes in pursuit of getting her law degree. Was she also a Denny’s waitress at the time? With time, these stories seem to mix and harden like waxy acrylic paint, while the colors aren’t pure, they are all the more beautiful. Mom went into labor the night before, in her Constitutional Law class. The next week, she was back in class, preparing for the Bar. So this was the state of things, I was born into a schedule and naturally took my place, toddling behind the troops. Learning vicariously through my family who never seemed to sit down, there was always a job to do, an errand to run, a jazz class to drive to or soccer game to catch.

Brittany, the second eldest, had a slight speech impediment at the time of my birth. Mom and Dad thought she might be mute for the first few years of her life because she didn’t make a peep, but when she did, my lord did she make up for lost time. Doctors thought that because of this lapse, it would take her some time to pronounce her ‘L’s and ‘R’s correctly. Obviously me and Chelsea (the eldest) had our fun with the family videotapes when we got older. In the video of them bringing me home, Brittany kept talking to the camera, exclaiming, “Baby Kendo’s home! This is ou’ home baby Kendo!” The name stuck.

It is interesting, to reflect one’s childhood. I can never seem to distinguish memories that have been fed to me through years of reminiscence from genuine recollections. Funny thing about memory, it is selective, we choose to recall or repress certain things. Many memories are a fallacy, perhaps some have leapt off old photographs in mere creative inspiration to take their place amongst other baubles in my library of recollections. Memories seem to mash into each other. Turning over into one and the same, like a stew that you add seasoning upon seasoning until they steep together and turn into one unbelievable concoction, where you wouldn’t be able to name one single ingredient because they all complement the whole. I would like to say I can recall my earliest memories, but in calling forth one they all seem to eagerly pull my sleeves, poking, proding me, all wanting equal attention. So I suppose I could start with a collection of memories, memories who all raise their hands at the same time and I must play ‘popcorn’ as the writer. Let this be my disclaimer, these are the many voices of ‘child kendall’ which demand my attention and expression. Like ghosts who hang around just so their story can be told, friendly ghosts though.

On Aristotle

In a nutshell, you are one responsible mother fucker. For every bad habit, for every inkling, every virtue or vice you are responsible for because at one point you had a choice whether or not to participate in one act which may have resulted in a perpetuation of acts. I like how Aristotle is honest about not giving us all the answers. He recognizes that humans are flawed and sometimes, you just need moral luck to become virtuous. I wonder if Aristotle considers himself lucky. He contradicts himself to an extent. He argues that humans choose everything that we do but in a sense we also are born into particular circumstances; we cant choose who we are raised by, what school our parents put ourselves in, our gender, our physical appearance which no doubt affirms the development of certain social characteristics. I wonder what Aristotle’s vices were. He preaches that the virtuous man will just ‘know’ how to act based on his proper moral conditioning and experience. It is like a top chef on ‘Chopped’, he gets three random ass ingredients and knows exactly what to do with them or at least ‘make it work.’ God I love FoodNetwork show references, so many lessons of life to be learned in the pressured creation of multidimensional courses

Poetic Catharsis

My wordy purgatory

locks poems in slate

cells and feeds

them a full bodied

diction diet.

A sphinx

guards them

at the bridge

I must cross

between anima

and animus.

Behind me,

chimera ideas

bare their teeth

and compete for

figurative flavor.

On the twine rail,

splintered words

dive for my palms

and itch beyond

nail’s depth.

With curious blinks

and ethereal tone

she tests, “How do you

find one cicada

amidst the chorus?”

I pause,

mist droplets

luge off my brow

in a race

to evaporate.

Rapids whisper

below personal

and collective

unconscious.

Say everything,

censor nothing

for threads of inspiration

to permeate the mortar.

Stomping their hooves,

I remind antsy ideas

that poems are extracted

 in patience.

 “I write the melody.”

With stoic lips she replies,

“Today, the poem

dies.”

Graphite Penchant

 

When I was in elementary school, I used to write the names of every crush under my desk in pencil, in case I wanted to go back and erase it later. It was almost like my own hushed voodoo. The thought was, in confirming this reverie in graphite I was also planting the idea in his pre-pubescent brain—how early the plotting begins.

             I would tell no one of my track record. I would deny and stall until I got some sign of reassurance that he liked me too. Of course this like gnawing on an over-due hangnail, arduous and futile. Yet there is something to be said of allowing skittish penchants to run their course without action. What is said of children is erroneous; I daresay I possessed a patience with love far superior to my current disposition.

             Now I write all over my heart in sharpie and spill frivolous fantasies to each and every lady friend—they sigh in concord. Maybe my 5^th grade brain had it right all along; it would be advantageous to let sentiments steep and if they are worthy, record the feelings with erasable inscriptions.