I Stopped

To Photograph the Sky

Last night I was the featured reader at the First Friday Poetry read of the Dallas Poets Community. It was the first time I have been the featured poet, and I was very nervous. I read poems from my Chapbook mostly and an Ode to My Teddy Bear, Mr. Teddy. Later today I think I might take some photos of my bear and perhaps I will post bear and poem tomorrow. My reading seemed to be well received, I need to practice reading, to become a bit more of a performer. I am improving, I no longer rush through in one breath, but I love when someone reads with expression, and I would like to develop that skill. As they say practice makes perfect. So I am going to try to go to more open mics to gain experience. The Dallas Poets Community is sponsoring a chapbook contest, I encourage all to think about sending in a manuscript, the chapbooks that are produced are done professionally and are quite beautiful. You can check out the guidelines at http://www.dallaspoets.org/.

The photo one from my last road trip, I drove into the street leading into my hotel about 8:30 and glanced up and saw this magnificent sky. I pulled over, opened up my trunk, grabbed my camera and starting shooting. A women taking a smoke break at another hotel walked over and asked me if I was reporter or a private detective. No I said, look up. She did. So we stood out there me and this perfect stranger watching the sky. After she finished her smoke, she went back across the street into her hotel, and I got back in my car. Drove Away.

Im taking today off. Charging depleted batteries. Celebrating my anniversary. The photos, ducks. Simply.

After Man

I am becoming boring. I get that. In some ways I embrace it. I find myself morphing into that woman, the one who embraces Mom Jeans,Ked Sneakers, and banded tops that's cover my mid line girth. I draw the line at embroidered tops with gingham trim and holiday dressing. Most days I wear my anklet bracelet, I love how it feels against my ankle, how this one singular thing makes me feel young and vibrant, despite the signs of aging in the mirror.

This week I was in the field, I worked 70 hours in 5 days, and I was being observed all week. I had a continual string of eyes following us, film crews, reporters, activists, industry, community, and government. There is something about being watched, being on display that is mentally and physically exhausting. I found that I was able to neutralize my very noisy brain, as if I had installed a magic breaker switch, and put into place a temporary shield to filter the randomness of my self. It wasn't until I came home that I began to process, as if the noisy brain was running full-steam in the background, taking notes on napkins, scribbling in the margins of grey matter, and nearly 48 hours later, safe in my own space I am still there reprocessing the weeks events.

I find that despite age and experience I still like people, people who belong and believe in the sense of community, people who fish their ponds, grow their own vegetables and make chow-chow with 10 different varieties of peppers. Young college graduates that are committed to the environment, artists who build sculptures out of driftwood. I remember watching the camera man film a sample team leaving a residence, how he was waiting for me to follow the crew out , how instead I walked behind the house. This one thought I had in my head, no-way is my fat ass going to be on national TV.

Photos of an abandoned church and road, the fog an effect of me breathing on the lens.

I am glad to be home, this morning I ordered three pair of pants from Lane Bryant, khaki, navy, and black and three Bohemian blouses. Perhaps a more palpable version of Mom Jeans, but no way am I getting rid of my Keds or my ankle bracelet.

Skyline from White Rock Lake

Here the ground cracks from over-exposure to the caressing rays of the sun. Water afraid of the stages of matter refuses God and the ground hungers for violent release, the flash of lighting, the harsh pelting sting of rain. After, only after. The arroyos swell with pride; courses through expectant beds water transforms. A scouring agent. After. I found a child's perfect plastic heart. I imagine unruly hair the color of the raven plaited into submission, tennis shoes scuffed from placing one foot atop the next, her body rocks gently, her strategy in minding Momma's edict to Be Still. In her hand she clutches a bracelet she strung from beads, all by herself.

Got Cliche?

I torture (it's my wicked and unruly sense of humor) a dear friend of mine (who will remain nameless and who has a physical aversion to cliche) with a steady dialogue of poetic cliches. Perhaps it is the southern vernacular that makes it so easy to drop bombs from my tongue, or perhaps it is simply that I have the gift of cliche or more likely it is that my own work suffers a bit from recyclable bits of obvious. In honor of the over-worn I am looking to compile a list of favorite poetic cliches. I am not sure what I will do with the list, perhaps a cento for my dear friend.

National Poetry Month: Open for Suggestions




April is National Poetry Month, and many of my friends and fellow poets are participating in a NaPoWri (which means write a poem a day for the month of April)' as has been my record of late, I started writing on April 1st, and dropped out on April 5th. Many of my friends are posting over at The Academy of American Poets Site and others on their blogs or via email or on-line poetry forums. The Dallas Poets Community is having a 20 year birthday-celebration and 14 hour poetry-thon Saturday April 10th from 9:00 am to 11:00 pm at Half Price Books (Northwest Highway and Central). I read for 15 minutes from 10:45-11:00 and host from 11:00 to 12:00, I am a bit nervous but likely will bluster through. I have decided to read a mix of established poets with a few of my own thrown in, so far I have picked two poems. Mark Strand's Eating Poetry, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's What the Heart of a Young Man Said to the Psalmist (One of my personal favorite poems, perhaps the first adult poem I --circa 7th grade); I am thinking I might read Mark Doty, Billy Collins, Marge Piercy, and Jack Gilbert--still deciding which ones, and I am open for suggestions. Of my own I will likely read Marrow, Red Planet, and What Breaks the Human Heart. We will see if I change my mind. Wishing everyone a wonderful month of Poetry.

Singularity

Just a picture and my signature noise. Random, chaotic and rather loosely connected (more likely unconnected-but allow me this small concession). I am writing again, unfamiliar and tentative, new shoes, unbroken leather, missing my telltale heel to toe scuffs. Nervous feet in perpetual motion.

Perspective

Desert Oasis

I find myself drawn to black and white images. The mystery in the not knowing, how my mind takes the images and colors it according to the emotion the image evokes. I become part of that image. Yet as I process photos I often find myself reluctant to commit to either media. I of the fickle heart. These photos taken along a desert stream, this location a natural oasis, the pond partially fed by a spring of ground water that wells up to the surface to grace the earth with life. Here in the deep south we would call this a "watering-hole" or a "swimming hole" a place to dip our feet and immerse our bodies, a reprieve from the long days of a hot summer. I learned the Pueblo name for water, their language is a oral language, communication colored with a myriad of sound/resonance/accent/consonance and the precise emphasis on syllable often changes meaning. My southern ear ignorant and my tongue unable to reproduce the subtleties and cadence of their beautiful language. I stood in the stream my boots temporarily changing the flow of the water and inhaled the breath of the desert. It sings. I listen. It is glorious.

I am home for the next month and then May will be road-warrior hell. June I hope to take a long vacation with my husband, and then I think I will be mostly home for the summer, and for that I am thankful. I want to swim in our "cement pond" and plant flowers in my garden, and hear the sound of teenagers as they sift through our home, and simply savor the life that we as a family have created. The good, the bad and the in-between. I applied for a new job this week. I am unsure how I feel about it as I love my current job, it is a good fit for me. The job would be a new challenge for me and would allow to spend more time with one project, instead of 5-10 that I shuffle continuously in my current position. The thing I love and hate about my current job is that it is constantly in flux, it changes from day to day, and is full of surprise. It was a good exercise for me to apply, as my resume was dated 1996 and it forced me to entertain the thought of taking on new challenges. Competition will be tough and I may not be the best person for the position and today I am unsure if I would take it if it was offered to me. I suspect tomorrow or the next day the pendulum will shift back and forth. This weekend is relax and garden. How damn cool beans is that.

Subtle Hues

I am feeling recharged and almost ready to tackle the next crazy three months. Perhaps by Monday I will be there, I am also feeling empowered about being able to meet the demanding schedule that will continue through the middle of May. I found that I am going to take a card from my husbands bag of tricks, I am already planning my next vacation, actually my next two vacations, one in mid-June when my daughter goes on mission trip and one with my daughter and Kim to New York City in August. It seems to make the crazy times a bit easier to handle when they are finite. I suspect I will accrue more comp time between now and June and perhaps that will allow me to take a few more weeks before the year is up. Perhaps I need to work into my planning a week off every 3 months for mental health. I started going through my poems this week, and it seems even in hibernation I wrote 62 poems from March to March, I am dusting them off. I am also dusting off my story, and my blog archives, compiling them into a book-for me. I realized as I went through them that this blog is as much a journal as a blog, and I think I would like my daughter to have a copy, so I am printing them out and putting them in a binder, there is nearly 400 pages. Imagine that. This photo of a tree in New Mexico, a tree that I am told that is hundreds of years old, one that has it's own oral history. I took about 20 photos of these tree, all from different vantages, this is just one of them, likely more to follow. I am groovy, I hope the same for you.

Down-Time



We took the week off. It is Thursday and today is the first day I did not check my work email-it seems I had to wean myself from my day-job. Mike and I took a mini vacation to Winstar World Casino (the house won) and puttered around the house, exploring places around town and coupledom. Our daughter has two more years before she goes to college (knock-wood, cross your fingers, all prayers taken) and this was our first glimpse of empty-nest. It was wonderful-though I began to miss her just about the time she came home (5-days). I am not yet ready for the empty-nest but I am no longer afraid that Mike and I will not have anything left to talk about when Rach is no longer the main focus of our daily life. We, I believe will transition beautifully to talking about our cats, our garden and our lives. Perhaps even be able to take little trips here and there; and simply enjoy each other. I drug Mike out to several stores looking for the perfect pens for my doodles. I am still having difficulty in finding the right tool, this doodle a combination of a calligraphy pen set (0.8 and 1.3 mm) and a refillable gel rollerball(0.7 mm); neither is perfect. I like the fluidity of the calligraphy pen and the control of the rollerball. I also find I like the thinner lines but have issues when needing to color in large areas with the pens beginning to tear the paper. I am using drawing paper; however the caligraphy pens tend to cause it to lint, so next trip to Michael's I am going to spend some time on the paper aisle.

This week marked a year long hiatus in submitting poetry for publication (other than my chapbook); a hiatus that evolved out of a busy schedule and a conscious decision to refocus my energies on my family and job. Initially it was not intentional it was coincidental; however as the months rolled on and I tried and failed to break out of my poetic hibernation I decided to embrace this hiatus. To take a step back and to re-evaluate. Even though I did not actively pursue publication, I did write a bit here and there and I am in the process of pulling all of my poems together from the last year to actually see what I have of any merit. Once it is dusted off, I shall see what if anything I will do with it. I am feeling a need to reconnect with my words. I have a draft novel started and not finished that haunts my dreams, the characters still vibrant and alive in the recesses of my gray matter. I have two draft chapbooks and an outline for full-length collection buried somewhere in my archived Word files. I am officially breaking my hiatus but for now I am unsure in what shape and form it will evolve, perhaps a bit like my doodles, a series of the loosely connected or more likely in the largely unconnected.

I spent the weekend hunkered in enjoying my daughter and husband, simply being immersed in the fabric of my own time and place. It was exactly what was needed. I am still behind in all things on most all fronts and beyond swamped at work. I spent the week in New Mexico and found myself out in the middle of the desert one night at 11:00 pm and was gifted with the most incredible view of the heavens undistorted by light. The stars brilliant against the fabric of night as if each star was personally hung for my eyes alone. I wish somehow I could capture with my camera these prisms-- strewn against the black. I found myself searching for Big and Little Bear, connecting the dippers seeking Polaris. On-top of the Mesa I felt I could simply reach out and gather the stars to me and for that instant I was connected in the stream of what I perceive as universe. I find that the desert grounds me in a way few places do, perhaps it is the sense of openness, the resilience of life that manifests itself despite the harsh environment.

This is the last week of work before we go on vacation, our vacation largely unplanned other than we are going to simply enjoy each other and spend time alone. I think we are going to head out see what evolves. I told Michael my only requirement was that I want to see stars. Easy.

This is Persia. Persia makes me smile. I felt like smiling today.

It is the unseen worlds that fascinate, the world that breathes outside my linited perception. I celebrate these prisms of color that reveal themselves through my ingnorance of shutter speed the absence of an appropriate filter.

Enough Said

Solitude




I am delinquent in all things, in all phases in my life, work has been pushed to the top of my priority list, for now for at least a little bit longer, it is simply how it is. The work has been good, actually the work has been fantastic, a real sense of being able to make a small difference, the ability to work on projects that have meaning, and a fantastic group of peers working together in a collaborative spirit. It has however has me traveling more than I would like, travel seems to be feast and famine in the work that I do, I am either in the field constantly ( the parking shuttle driver knows my name) or stuck in the office for months ( a twilight zone sort of place a cross between the Office and Just Shoot Me). Ideally I would like to travel a couple of days a couple times a month, every month-but of late it has been travel part of every week, I am looking forward to the long dry spell. I miss my husband and daughter when I am gone, a sense of not being connected in the day to day mechanics of our life. Yet I often enjoy the quiet down time I carve out at the end of a travel day, the time where it is just me, myself and I. By nature I am an extrovert and find great energy and purpose in being with people, but as I age I find that I also need a bit of Brenda time. I am learning to carve out quiet time at home, to find time to enjoy the noise of my own mind. Last week we had record snow here in Texas, 12 inches in 24 hours, our world was covered in a thick blanket. I laid down in my front yard and made a snow angel, make snow ice cream for my daughter and her friends and I took a long walk with camera. The photo taken at the edge of a Frisbee golf field. With God's grace I find myself mostly groovy.

Doodle Art and the Art of Balance



It seems a long time since I did anything purely creative, wrote a poem, took time to photograph the world, or simply do one of my doodles. This one a true doodle as I was in a 3hr training class that was a near postal experience, a new computer orientation class about being a mobile workforce and introducing new increased security protocols (roughly translated means all advanced controls locked making the term "mobile workforce" a oxymoron for us road warriors). Score one this week for the marriage between the Art of Bureaucracy and Technology. Brenda zero. I spent the first three days of the week in Orlando and can honestly say after two trips to Orlando I have not yet seen any of Florida, my first trip was spent entirely in the surreal world of Disney and this week in a conference center with faux lagoons and a row of palm trees. And rain, don't forget the rain. I did however get to see my friends from other offices and the inside of the hotel bar, where the bartender had come up with a whole series of Environmental Themed Drinks the Global Warming and the Climate Change-I stuck to glass of wine, however several of my group imbibed in the Global Warming. The rest of us used our imaginative skills to come up with ideas for other possible environmentally themed drinks, such as the Oil Spill (perhaps something with fruit that would form globules in the drink and be almost impossible to get off the glass) and the LNAPL (something with perhaps Grand Marnier that floats to the top like gasoline) and the DNAPL (here we became stuck-trying to think of a liquor that would sink to the bottom).

The City of Richardson photo contest closed and none of my photos placed, I was really disappointed, as I thought that one of mine had a real chance. I am going to lick my wounds and perhaps enter a few of my photos in the work yearly contest. Work has been hectic but fantastic, I was accepted in a leadership development program, the jury is still out if this is a good thing. I have been doing the same sort of work for nearly 25 years. It has evolved through many changes, re-inventions and initiatives. The basic premise remains the same and honestly some of the initiatives feel a bit like deja'vu ( this may be because I am somewhat a cynic), but after 25 years I still love what I do and for that I feel eternally grateful. I started a 30 day poetry challenge yesterday (which means if I make 10 days I will call it a win) as I am finding it harder and harder to get to the place where the poetry grows. Perhaps it is because I am out of practice, or perhaps it is because work has been so hectic that at the end of the day my brain is a bit mushy and I simply want to vegetate. I am trying to recalibrate my scale, so that I can find time for all of the pieces in my life. I am groovy and happy, but still I miss the words, we shall see how I do.

In Another Time it Slept 8

My paternal grandmother at 97 years old is having to move to a nursing home. This makes my heart sad as I hoped that one day she would sit down in her rocker and simply take a nap and never wake up. My grandmother is a very independent women who at 16 married a man 25 years her senior, raised 5 children and was widowed at 48. She never remarried. I remember asking her once why and she said "Brendar Sue I just like being the boss of myself". My grandmother always surrounded herself with photos of her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and even a few great-great children. Four of her five children joined the Armed Services and her children and grandchildren were scattered about the world. These photos sent by her children often the only visual connection for a period of years. I remember as a child coming to visit her between duty stations and looking at the photos of aunts, uncles and cousins. A sense of family forming through the color of eyes, or the shape of the nose or a shit-ass grin. Often she would pull out the older photos, those of our ancestors, her mother, father, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles many of these photos from the early 1900's, sepia images of women in white blouses and long skirts, the photos often taken in a somber pose, as if smiling was out of fashion in the portrait business of 1910. I found myself picking out doubles to my sisters and cousins, one with Sherri's nose, and my blue eyes, trying to identify the Cherokee great-great grandmother whose genes manifest themselves in the string of dark haired dark eyes McGee's amidst all of us blue eyed-blond Nixon's. My grandmother, my father, my sister Judi, my cousin Tony, my nephew Jason, and daughter Rachael all bare the mark of that gene. This sense of family of history so strong that often it felt cellular, a form of genetic magnetism, a pull between like genes. Even now I feel the call of family history so strong, as if I have a unfinished duty to these ancestors, as if perhaps I should be taking notes, writing it all down. My Aunnie (pronounced-A-knee) has been cleaning my grandmothers house, and recently sent me some photos that my grandmother had collected over the years. Mostly those of my sisters and I. I am in the the process of scanning them, this photo is myself, my sister Sherri, my sister Judi, my cousin Theresa (Sissy) and my aunt Debbie (my moms youngest sister) taken the summer we returned from Alaska (1974). The camper and truck in the background is the one we drove from Fairbanks to Ft. Worth, one that surfaces even now in my dreams. In my dreams I own this camper as an adult, but it is unchanged from 1974, and I am both adult and child in these dreams, as if somewhere in my psyche this camper represents a line between child and adult. In my dreams it still has harvest gold and brown plaid cushions, and we still drink hot chocolate out of brown plastic solo cup holders ( a modern version of a 70's classic), the main difference in the dreams and my memories, is that I am in flux, I am both my parents daughter, and my daughters mother. We are all there, Daddy, Momma, my husband, my daughter, my sisters and their families, all of our generations contained within the confines of a Coachmen camper. It is good magic.

It has been a long couple of weeks and I am for one am thankful that they have passed, my shingles are healed with twinges of residual pain but all in all I am mostly groovy. My day job is that of environmental scientist and I spent the last two weeks preparing for a high profile public meeting. Now that this work crunch has passed I find myself wanting to take a few play days. Play hooky, stay home, read a book, nest, write, photograph and cook. I love to cook, yesterday I made eggplant Parmesan for the first time, a recipe I found on Food Network, that was quite yummy. My best friend Trish came over and she and I sat in the kitchen while I diced, chopped, crushed and grated; we talked and drank coffee. Lots of talk and copious amount of coffee with the aroma of french roast, fresh garlic and onions being sauteed in olive oils. I experienced a sense of deja'vu, of being a child in the kitchen with my mother as she cooked, simply talking, telling her of my day. How connected I felt to her those few minutes each day, how she would ask me to taste and then how she add more salt or pepper (always more pepper). Sometimes I would help her chop or dice, mostly I made desserts. I remember making chocolate cakes and cookies from cocoa and butter, using a flour sifter, I loved it when the ingredient list in the cookbook matched what was in the cupboard. A cross between explorer and prospector. I had a real thrill yesterday as I was looking for recipes for Eggplant Parmesan and I realized that I had in my cupboard everything I needed. A good feeling to know that you have everything you need. The photo taken from the cab of my Dads truck somewhere between Anchorage and Seward summer of 2007.

And who marked this X in the sky, and I saw before me a series of X's as if the finger of God traced the sky in a Deity game of tic-tac-toe. I let go of my inhibitions and reveled in this mans contraption that so effortlessly signifies man's defiant stance against gravity. These things that bind us to this earth. In my day-dreams the censors are quarantined. These clouds form an alternate landscape. I imagine myself bird or cat, or some species yet imagined. My skin is rough as a reptiles, my eyelashes cow-like, my muscles flex and I crouch and wait underneath an orange glow on the horizon. Perhaps a trick of light, reflection of a setting sun, yet I find myself thinking of a world with two suns and I smile.

A Penny for Your Thoughts

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It has been a long week and I for one am glad for the long weekend. I am recovering from the Shingles, and think by this time next week I will be completely recovered. Yesterday was the first day I went without prescribed pain medicines in two weeks ( I did take 2 ibuprofen) and I felt I reached a turning point. My back itches like hell, and pain comes and go; but the chronic pain is mostly gone. I spent the week in Little Rock teaching a class, a fantastic teaching experience as I had a very small class and excited and interested students. I love when that happens. I have finally narrowed down the photos I am going to enter into the Richardson Photo contest, and I am going to order the prints this weekend a few odd choices for me, as I am entering a few shots of people, which is something I rarely do. I would like to enter 5 -10 photos in the contest, the limit is two per category, the categories can be found on the City of Richardson Website. I am thinking on the above photos, I would love the perspectives of others, let me know what you think, either leave me a comment here, on Facebook or email me at girlnixon@gmail.com.