100 Day Project

"If creativity is a habit, then the best creativity is the result of good work habits. They are the nuts and bolts of dreaming." -- Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit

Our local Arts and Culture Center is sponsoring a project for the community to become more involved in creative expression and encouraging everyone to participate. At lunch a couple weeks ago two of my friends mentioned that they were going to do a project and asked if I'd like to do one as well. I've given it some thought and have decided to make it a priority. The launch date is January 21st. And so I thought I'd share my journey.

My first decision was what to do. I decided that in order for me to fulfill my commitment it had to be something I like: Poetry. Then I figured that it couldn't feel like work. What I love most of all is sharing poetry. So every day for 100 days I am going to copy down a poem and I am going to share in a public space and document it. I have left it open so it could mean that I leave a copy of the poem on a chair in a waiting room and take a photo. Or it could mean if I am feeling brave that I stand up in the middle of a restaurant and read it out loud. The only constant is that it is the same poem for 100 days. I wonder how my relationship will develop with that poem over the course of time.

Now to find the right poem. I have a little over a week to find it. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Thursday Original Poem

This poem was inspired by a quote from a 17th century homemaker's journal after she bathed for the first time in a "showerbox."

I bore it well, after not having been wet all over in twenty-four years.

Showerbox

Stink when you have to

Fish oiled fingertips

Or musk- crammed fissures

Recline in socks that barely hide your fungussed-feet

And blink as flakes of wax wisp from your ears

Human bean

Being

Warm with life that murmurs forth in waves of muck

Burgeoning blisters of ulcers

Microorganisms upon your skin

Make colonies and picnic

In the yellow scabs behind the rose of your ears

Instead of warfare with soap, briny and burning

End your prudish parade

And join the filthy merrymaking

Anon

It's 4:00am, and I've been awake since 2:00am.  I'm not sure when or why this happens.  Maybe it's middle age?  Whatever the reason, I am grateful for it.  These quiet morning moments are some of the most peaceful, indulgent times.  I make myself a first bitter cup of coffee, write, grade or watch television and stave off the day.

In the gentle nearby sound of a train clanging, in the hum of my refrigerator, or the cat scratching at the door, I make myself a turtle safe in its shell and avoid the rush of responsibility and self-doubt each new day brings.

This is not a complaint but rather an epistle.

I am grateful for the opportunity to fall/fail,

Get back up,

Sometimes feel excited or proud. 

Brush off the bruises,

Hug my warm children,

Make fresh and public attempts at being worthy.

Oh, but the sweetness in the early morning.

Where anonymity lives.

by Juliet C. Bond

Friday Original Poem

My poem this week was never meant to be a poem.  It's more of a rant and I didn't write it.  But it's the most passionate and beautiful thing that I read all summer, so I am sharing it here.

As a little background, I will tell you that one of the orphans we hosted this summer was a particular challenge.  I still sport a large, yellowing bruise where he pinched me in an effort to shake loose and run recklessly towards Bryn Mawr Avenue.  And my gentle husband was the person who shouldered most of the physical retaliation that our new baby needed to exorcise after years of loss.  So it was out of character for my husband to fill with rage at a stranger and zoom down an alley blaring his horn at the man.  It was also one the loveliest things I've ever seen him do because it was a rage born of absolute, protective love for someone who desperately needs and deserves it.  My husband posted these words on Facebook that night.


Dear Man-Who-Self-Righteously-Marched-Toward-Our-Car-Telling-Us-to-Stop-Honking-Our-Horn,

I agree that the six year-old child honking the horn of our minivan non-stop was SUPER annoying. Trust me, I was standing right next to the car. 

And I'm sure it was disturbing your dinner, as you stated. Hell, it had been going on for five minutes, it was disturbing MY dinner, and I'd eaten an hour earlier.

And I realize that when I then tore down your alley blaring the horn myself that it must have really sent you through the roof (as noted by the impolite finger you displayed as you chased after our car.)

But as I was pulling the screaming child off my steering wheel, tears running down his face, I realized something. You might not have been just some entitled a-hole trying to impress your neighbors with some artisanal cheeses or Chilean Syrah or whatever--you may have been laid off today or being broken up with or losing your house to foreclosure. But this crying little boy lost his mother as an infant and his grandmother one year later and has been in a country for six weeks in which he understands maybe a dozen of our words. So although I believe we are all fighting the hard fight in our own lives all the time, yours and mine are not as hard as his.

Next time, he gets to honk the damn horn all he wants.

I love you, Kevin.

What Mommy Blogs and Forbes Have in Common

Last week, I came across a blog post that had gone viral.  The content was about how lame/loosery mommy blogs are.  Bashing mommy blogs is a popular activity on the net.  In fact, if you Google, “I hate mommy blogs,” you get an instant 2,010,000 results. 

This bothers me.

What a shame that women following the rules – becoming mothers, perfectly folding fitted sheets and cutting their kids pb&j’s into the shapes of happy dinosaurs – are also the butt of a national joke.  To me, this is just one more example of how being a woman is complex.  Misogynist attitudes can rear up in ghoulish smiles no matter what we wear, do for a living or write about. 

And women are just as likely to distance themselves from what society sees as "female" talents.  In fact, we might be even more eager to roll our collective eyes at the writer who devotes a post per week on tips to get your toddler to sleep, because it makes us feel smarter or more important than her. 

Come on.

Women are awesome.  Just check out the example of one mommy blogger who turned her talent into a successful moneymaking enterprise.  And when she ended up with an inbox full of hate mail, she launched a separate site fully devoted to featuring cherry-picked examples of her haters, surrounded by oodles of income generating advertisements.  Heather Armstrong at Dooce.com proved that a mommy blog could actually land a woman on the list of Forbes’s list of most influential women in the media.

So hey - let’s celebrate whatever women are good at, whether it’s jaw-dropping Halloween decorations or becoming one of the 4.2 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.  Why should skills and interests that fall into the traditionally domestic realm be regarded with such disdain?  It can take months to paint and decorate a bedroom, hours to create a mouth watering pan of salted caramel brownies and years to figure out how to perfectly fold those fitted sheets.  Personally, I’m still working on that one.  It's really freaking hard.  But after a month of caring for six kids - feeding them, keeping them clean, reading countless books and singing endless songs to them, washing 3,000 dishes, slapping together at least 100 sandwiches and, cleaning my house... 

Every.  Single.  Day.

I felt proud of myself.

At the end of the day, my body ached as if I'd run a full marathon.  But my soul glowed as if I'd won that marathon!  I made children smile and laugh.  I filled their sweet tummies and connected with my husband over how gorgeous it was when Tomas urged the elderly bus lady at Old Country Buffet to sit with us and enjoy a bowl of soft serve.  Across two languages and countless countries, a six-year-old Latvian boy and a hard-working, Mexican woman shared a smile.  She didn't sit with us but she did reach into her pocket and slip me a coupon for a free meal next time we came in.  This was a moment to breathe in, a sentimental exchange that you might find illuminated with care by a domestic goddess, on a mommy blog.

Ode to A Domestic Goddess

Her home, clean walls with snow-white painted baseboards 

Smells like a host of buttery apple pies baking 

Right now

This makes me want to sink into the pretty couch pillows and beg

Take care of me

The lack of lint on her rugs, the way a hand-knit afghan is gently

(But artfully)

Tossed across the back of a flowered chair

All whisper the words

Nurture

Lullaby

Embrace

Hers is the home we love to visit

The meal we swoon over and savor as it slides against the soft pallet of our tongues

Let's take our collective hands from their throats

And celebrate the Nigellas

Thursday Post

An update of sorts...

Little Natures

Apples, they grab them from the kitchen before I have the chance to wash the wax from their skins.  Tomass cries without tears.  He buries his head in my stomach, moaning, rolling against the warmth of my soft body.  Then, he runs away laughing.  Something or someone has damaged this baby, scratched and battered in places unformed.  Toms nurtures him, proudly carries a plate of white rolls to the table, chooses giant tiger slippers at the zoo and wears them as he walks three blocks to get gelato with the other children.  He is a fair-haired fortune, so skinny his heartbeat shows.  Mairite is the oldest.  Still mysterious, tall and straight boned.  Like my own daughter, she flocks to girlfriends, titters, pretty pink-hues and music.  At the zoo, she drapes her arms around my shoulders but won’t share her covers with the baby.  We are three days in and they all call me “Mom.”  Save me, save us all.  

In loving, we give pieces of ourselves away that can never be recovered, plucked and held out in hesitant offerings.  Hobble ourselves in some human effort to wade through little natures.  Maybe now, I should learn to pray.

Friday Original Poem : Guest Poet, Kathy Cannon Wiechman

Kathy Cannon Wiechman

 Juliet and I met Kathy at a Highlights Foundation workshop. Kathy is one of those writers that I wish I could be. She is dedicated, prolific and gives the best hugs. A couple years ago when I switched gears and started to focus on poetry, Kathy mentioned that her mother was a published poet. Kathy also told me that poetry wasn't for her. But this week she posted on Swagger Writers about how she had made a break through into free verse. Of course I asked to see the poem.

I am so honored and please to host her poem. Thank you, Kathy, for being brave and writing beautiful poetry.

THE BUTTERFLY

By Kathy Cannon Wiechman

The tiny butterfly,

Whose wings flap a rhythm

On the sonogram monitor,

Etches a memory

Of a heartbeat, a life.

Gender and name still unanswered

Among a lifetime of questions.

The mother’s eyes shine

With the blossoming promise,

As delicate stirrings

In the swell of her middle

Herald a future of love.

Baby boy Anthony James

Has his name etched in stone

In the Garden of Angels,

The butterfly’s wings cold and still.

His mother’s eyes swell with tears

As she places delicate blossoms,

That will wilt in the sunshine,

Wilt like the promise.

Arms aching to hold him

Fold across her empty middle,

While the air is stirred only

By her unanswered “Why?”