more tony to end the year

Reasons to Survive November
Tony Hoagland

November like a train wreck –
as if a locomotive made of cold
had hurtled out of Canada
and crashed into a million trees,
flaming the leaves, setting the woods on fire.

The sky is a thick, cold gauze –
but there’s a soup special at the Waffle House downtown,
and the Jack Parsons show is up at the museum,
full of luminous red barns.

– Or maybe I’ll visit beautiful Donna,
the kickboxing queen from Santa Fe,
and roll around in her foldout bed.

I know there are some people out there
who think I am supposed to end up
in a room by myself

with a gun and a bottle full of hate,
a locked door and my slack mouth open
like a disconnected phone.

But I hate those people back
from the core of my donkey soul
and the hatred makes me strong
and my survival is their failure,

and my happiness would kill them
so I shove joy like a knife
into my own heart over and over

and I force myself toward pleasure,
and I love this November life
where I run like a train
deeper and deeper
into the land of my enemies.

Personal by Tony Hoagland

Don’t take it personal, they said;

but I did, I took it all quite personal—

the breeze and the river and the color of the fields;

the price of grapefruit and stamps,

the wet hair of women in the rain—

And I cursed what hurt me

and I praised what gave me joy,

the most simple-minded of possible responses.

The government reminded me of my father,

with its deafness and its laws,

and the weather reminded me of my mom,

with her tropical squalls.

Enjoy it while you can, they said of Happiness

Think first, they said of Talk

Get over it, they said

at the School of Broken Hearts

but I couldn’t and I didn’t and I don’t

believe in the clean break;

I believe in the compound fracture

served with a sauce of dirty regret,

I believe in saying it all

and taking it all back

and saying it again for good measure

while the air fills up with I’m-Sorries

like wheeling birds

and the trees look seasick in the wind.

Oh life! Can you blame me

for making a scene?

You were that yellow caboose, the moon

disappearing over a ridge of cloud.

I was the dog, chained in some fool’s backyard;

barking and barking:

trying to convince everything else

to take it personal too.

A job well done.

So I am facebook stalking all the people I miss from school and I come upon an album of a close acquaintance, not a close friend, but an acquaintance who is just shy of knowing me well enough to get a letter from me. This album is full of pictures of her and her sister. They are vacationing, and in their photographs they dance, make faces, make art, sing and laugh. They have an aura, a beautiful, timeless, unmarred aura, and occasionally their parents appear and they too are aware of this aura that their daughters eminate. It is an awareness manifested in the wise, content warm that they eminate, basking in a job well done.

I want to raise daughters like this. Who are not strangers to sadness, danger, fear; but are true friends who look for beauty in the most mundane place and who—thought they have experienced pain and grief—take unadulterated joy in walking down a country lane.

Trends of Dressing Responsibly

A dear friend of mine is getting married in the fall. The word unique is overused but it applies to her—with her vintage sapphire engagement ring and history of remaking every piece of clothing she owns. I got to spend a morning with her a few days ago(which rarely happens since she lives in Chicago), and it happened to be the morning she was ordering her wedding dress. I was slightly surprised that this friend of all people was going to buy a wedding dress, visions of sequins began to dance menacingly in my head as she told me about the process. My fears were allayed however when she explained to me that she has become interested in buying clothing she can wear for decades—clothes that will last and are of the quality and texture that can be combined with all sorts of things. Now how do you buy a white wedding dress that you can wear for years? Well you buy from Ivey Abitz of course, a clothing creator who offers clothing of a not quite vintage variety and displays pieces in an old fashioned online look book. My friend then outlined a new philosophy she was developing about clothing and how she dressed herself. In a world where a responsible consumer ethic is sorely lacking and even thrifting still is supporting the industry through recycling, she has sought out clothing makers who work out of a dressing philosophy that values quality, fair wages/prices and is environmentally freindly. While I am not prepared to pay the $200-600 for a clothing item, as an unemployed student, I am intrigued by the idea of sustainable fabric production and the classic lines offered by this innovative designer.

Rejecting legal marriage

Well, this is not what I intended to post first, but its intriguing nonetheless. I am not particularly interested in this woman's story, though it is a powerful one. But rather my attention is caught by the mentioning of "nonpartisan" in the the last paragraph. It seems that to belong to a party undermines ones opinion as one instantly makes her identity synonymus with media figure heads.
Also of note it the issue of no-fault divorce and its implications in the gay-rights/civil unions/sanctity of marriage debates. A group of us have been discussing of late the idea of revoking the state's power to grant marriage licenses and returning the power of marriage to the religious domain. It the pro-offered model civil unions are obtain by anyone who wants them while marriage returns the the role of religious sacrament administrated by a church, temple etc. Here we make legal contract a separate function. One can have a civil union (a legal document entailing spousal rights, including the hotly debated power of attorney), a marriage (religious vows), both, or neither. I am personally interested in the idea of only obtaining a religious marriage as a statement of autonomy from a moralistic state. At present our family structure its a terrible melting pot of church and state, and the whole debate about gay rights would be much simplified if we could give every legal resident the equal right to civilly unite themselves with any other legal resident. Which makes me wonder, why haven't members of the gay community started drawing up private contracts giving one another power of attorney etc? While this would not alleviate issues of taxation and insurance, perhaps it could mitigate the circumstances in a post-Prop 8 world?

First Go-Around

Alright. I am embarking on this new project with a sense of readiness and a small twinge of apprehension (I am inherently distrustful of technology—yes, the luddites and i are quite congenial). it bugs me when people give too much weight to a situation, but here, as I begin this new place of exploration, i feel weight is due—so bear with me as i make a few miscellaneous remarks.
Basically, I am now so dependent on my computer that my trusty black books, which until presently held my musings, have become too numerous to keep lugging around in addition to my new addiction: the macbook. Henceforth, I will be trying to recreate in digital and public form that which was once physical and private. I am not sure how this translation will turn out or if my project will be successful but for the forseeable future this will be a place of collection, reflection and discussion.