What I Learned From Gertrude Stein

There is no aphorism to describe how I'm feeling these days. There is no need to sum life up in abbreviated bits of wisdom. The way I see it- if you don't have time to follow all the circuitous routes that life and it's truths must take then you don't have time to breath. Sometimes you just have to get there when you get there. Sometimes you just have talk until you find the right words. Or walk until you find the right path.

There have been people in my life who didn't have time to wait. To wait for that epiphany of light to shake itself free from the convoluted way my brain sometimes arrives at the conjunction where language and my mind agree with each other. I have been known to interrupt myself a thousand times with parenthetical observations before finally getting there. There, where the meat is. Perhaps that's what attracts me to poetry; the challenge to get to the very core of elusive axis where human experience and emotion meet up in sharp clear points.

I'm going to interrupt myself here to say that one of the most shaping reading experiences in my life (and there have been many) was reading "Alice B. Toklas" when I was eleven years old which was right after I realized that I didn't believe in god as god was told in the bible. I didn't get everything I read in that book. What I remember the most was Gertrude Stein's unblushing use of incredibly rambling parentheticals that would string on for miles so that you completely forgot you were in one until it ended and you had to pick up her thread of conversation before she ran off with herself in her love of words and story. I loved how like real conversation her writing was. People interrupt themselves all the time in real life.

It freed me to write in a way that reflected how the mind is really moving and how refreshing it can be to follow streams of conversation that ramble and rush and turn and sometimes get very very quiet all at once in the middle of a cacophony of noise. I loved Gertrude Stein more for her use of parentheticals than I did for the interesting lesbian life she lived with Alice B. Toklas and all those painters they befriended.

Another thing that's floating around in my head (apparently desirous of being said out loud) is that I am allergic to the expression "making love". If ever you hear me refer to sex as "making love" then you will know that I am done with this mortal coil and am but a shell of myself, nothing but a vegetable with a brain. Ready to move on to where angels flap around with big feathery wings and naked asses saying things like "God Bless Us Every One"...my own personal version of hell in which all sweet and cuddly things make my skin itch uncontrollably for all eternity and I try to remove it but there's always more and there's always someone whispering in my ear "Isn't making loooooove beautiful?" and I want to claw my way out of myself.

Life is circuitous. Love is circuitous. Snaking in and out of focus. In and out of reach.

I often bite the hands that feed me. Like a feral person with narrow limits of social cognizance. No, you won't ever see it except in flashes when it comes like lightening and strikes your hand bringing the blood and the surprise. I described myself today as prickly. I was not lying. I am so prickly I constantly stab myself with my own thorns. I feel shame when I do it to those I love. I feel shame when I do it to those whom I like tremendously. I feel no shame when I do it to those who step on smaller creatures with their dirty shoes.

Reflexive actions. The stabbing of personal thorns. Reflexive actions. Turning inward to one's baby and flooding it with all the nutritive love the soul can bear to hold at once. Feeding and feeding and feeding the baby hunger. Reflexive actions. Healing wounds with light and quiet.

I am not bitter anymore. I'm done with bitter. I have come across some threshold like a bride enters into her new life. Like a reverend looks out at a new flock full of raised curious faces. "What have we here?" life is saying through my mended heart. "What will come of this thread and this needle you have sewn over the tears?" A new chapter. A new bend in the road. A new stream to cross.

I can hear you right now. In this minute I can hear you thinking, sighing, breathing, crying, living, drinking, knowing, laughing, criticizing, loving, and healing.

If I could breath for you I would give you my breath. If I could give you my needle and thread to mend your own wounds, I would. If I could say the precise words you need to hear right now to help you feel understood, loved, and connected I would shout them out across the distance.

We are all in this world together. I hope we dream together too.