By the Pen

Everything in me, including the muddled feeling I get when trying to work on this current story tells me that it does not want to be written now. I wanted three stories to go together to make a whole one. I thought I knew exactly how it should go. But often a story knows of its own how it's supposed to go, and I have to listen to it. I will stop forcing this story long enough to hear what I'm supposed to do next.

Creation

There is this story on my mind. I want to write it, but lately I am sketching out maps and sculpting the story. Creation happens in multiple ways.

Revelation

While in a trance at church this morning I discovered that in my last life I was a gay hairdresser named Jean-Paul who was all the rage in Manhattan during the late 70's. But I died of a drug overdose in 1976, passing out in the middle of performing the Funky Chicken at Studio 54.

So here I am.

History Lesson

Today's bitch of the week is Anne Boleyn, mother of Queen Elizabeth I and second wife to King Henry VIII

In the early part of the sixteenth century, Anne Boleyn stopped at nothing to marry King Henry VIII and seize the power of his wife and current queen, Catherine of Aragon. After having persuaded Henry to commit an act of bigamy in marrying her, move against the papacy and cast out his own wife while disinheriting her daughter, Anne was coronated queen of England.

While Catherine of Aragon lay dying, she sent a letter to Henry telling the husband who had abandoned her that she loved and forgave him and longed only to see his face once again, but when Catherine died, Anne dressed in yellow and threw a parade.

Less than a year later, Anne Boleyn was beheaded in the Tower of London and replaced by yet another femme fetale, her maid, Jane Seymour.

Serves the bitch right!

On Saturday

I confessed to being consumed with a need for purpose. Having accomplished a few small things i am surprised that I am not content. I want more and more and I want to count for something. I am always haunted by the need to do something needful.

Witch's Blood

I realized that I had not answered one of your questions, which was probably the most important one: how do you write? Almost as soon as I'd written that I realized that I hadn't told you, and it gave me a whole weekend to think about it.

First now, you must be slightly off because you must be possessed by your people. That's what works. Nothing else will.

I sculpted from the time I was seven until I was nineteen. Then it just stopped. It was gone. I tried to bring it back, but it didn't come back. And then, after I had written A very poor story can come, but a good one comes when the writer is possessed. Most people are afraid to be too possessed, to live in their imaginations too much. There is a mystic belief that our creations create us and that we ourselves create God being his creation. I adhere to this. The Zen Buddhist say that everything that is, is, meaning nothing is fake, so I wholeheartedly know my imagination is real, and useful. I think this is the biggest hindrance to a writer. We block ourselves from imagination and attempt to live in "the real world" meaning, some world that someone else has imagined for us. But there are many worlds we can imagine for ourselves.

Before this gets long I will cut it, but say that what ones puts in her imagination is a powerful shaper. I grew up on British television and the British novel, especial fantasy. I grew up on Lewis and Tolkien, and then Dick King Smythe and Susan Cooper. The secret, to me, is that I always write as a fantasists. Tolkein said that "Faery" was the whole world when we ourselves are enchanted, and so Jamnia and Izmir are really fantasy places. I grew up on children's fantasy, and I try to tell grown up stories as if I were telling them to children: only children who can read about sex and drugs and doubt and what the not.

Helen, in your own native country you have a great wealth of true story and great storytellers to delve into. I just saw the film Beautiful Thing again, and came away impressed by something we can't get in the States: a portrayal of life which is honest and lyrical all at once. Americans feel funny about being American. What I mean is, we do not have the sense of history you do. Our land is just as old. All land, but we are new in it. We live, rather, in the shadow of a dream made by New York on one side and Hollywood on the other, having a slight problem with self honesty. So American stories tend to come out warped and full of special effects or sarcasm that isn't funny. I generally stay away from this.

A few years ago when I set out to seriously write out our lives in the middle of America I couldn't find them. These stories hadn't been told. There were stories about the East Coast and West Coast, about the South. But not about the rest of us, which is most of us. If there ever were, people were living on farms in the middle of cornfields with windmills turning in the distance.

Foolishness.

And then, when I began watching British films and reading English novels again I was surprised. There WE WERE. For better or worse, this was the life I knew. Northwest Ohio is more like Manchester than Manhattan and this part of Indiana is closer to Liverpool than LA.
Jamnia, and my life had gone through some of it's greatest changes, major upheavals, there I was, suddenly sculpting again.

This is what art is like. I may dream of a character. I might see him on a bus, or he might take my order at a restaurant. Then I am haunted by him. I wonder what he is doing. He begins to tell me. I take up a pen and write as him. It is like love, but more than love. I put him or her or a whole town or scenario away, knowing one day they will come up. The visit, now and again while I bathe, or while I make toast, in the middle of a class, while fooling around at the computer. And then, at last, I am writing them. Often I have written a story, thrown it away and then, years later, picked it up again. The writing comes in so many ways. It is a natural force. It is a whirlwind.
Often I think that it is my religion more than anything else.

Inside

Three months
going on for
still i want more of you
still i never tire of you
i want to take you face
in my hands
bring you to the place
i lay my head
place you on the bed
slip inside of you...

Dream

I dreamed that I was lying in my bed,
and you were there with me.
Hungry,
you took out the feast, the bread and the wine
chocolate,
Valentine candy from the day before
and I was your plate
you licked me up and down
and could not be sated

After Valentine

Tonight I burnt my useless wands. All of life is magic. I wake up in such a mood. I want to say so much. I want to pray for so much, and there are no words for it. The Spirit will simply have to suffice. There is so much love in me. Love for a would be lover, love for friends, love for friendly people, love for the folks coming into my life. There is even love for the people I pity who are so goddamned sad, and cold. There is such a longing. I want it all to be alright. Somehow I know it will be. I say a prayer for that, weave a spell for the happiness of the world. Somewhere, somehow, I am part of that happiness.

I am so in love with life. I love the rain that falls and the weather warming up. I love the seminarian laughing as I run across the street with the change of the red light. I love chocolates with truffle sauce in their center and good wine and cigarettes and coffee. I love sleeping. I would love fucking if I had someone to fuck, so instead I love the people who get to fuck all the time. I love time... as much as I fear it. The world is full of fear and the fear is full of grace. If there weren't grace and love the world couldn't go around.

For Saint Valentine's Day

haven’t you had enough
all his bullshit and all his stuff
you give and give and he never
says he loves you
he can never say thank you
you understand? i hope you do
you can get down on your knees and pray
get down on your knees and say hail marys
and pick him berries and squeeze the grapes for his wine
or you can get on your knees and suck his balls
until he comes all over the walls
and still--


he won’t love you

this is me when i love you
you’re like my mother
i could be nursed by you
you’re like my little sister and i would nurture you
or you’re like the significant other
and i’m like the lusty brother
and i could just fuck you

Lent

Another Lent had begun, but i'm more different than ever. This is a time of questions. There are so many things I've taken for granted.

This is the second year in a row I went to Ash Wednesday Mass at my parish, Saint James Episcopal, and not Sacred Heart. I stood at the lectern reading the first lesson from the book of the prophet Joel, "Rend your hearts and not your garments..." We kneel as the ashes are crossed on our foreheads. We kneel to receive the chalice. The chalice, the dish of bread, the dishes of ashes: these are all the same, but I am not. We are not. And so they don't mean the same things.

Lent strikes at the heart of the faith I have practiced all my life. But it feels like many lives and many faiths and this year I want to know what it means now. What does it mean to repent? What does it mean to sin? What is mercy? What is dying? What is rising? I don't think God will give only one answer, if he should give any answer at all. God gives questions. Questions are his friends.

And still

Two months, eight weeks

is that fifty days... no, sixty, sixty plus
since I've seen you
and still I think of you
still I remember you
and wish for you
and wish you remember me.

This morning, I woke in the soft covers of my
bed, aching
and wondering if you wondered about me

Fire

Rage is good. Fire is good. We need to rub the fuel together and let it burn.

But I have learned we also need to learn to control it, to hone it, to channel it and to even know when it's best to let that flame go down to a steady ember.

Once we have learned to build the fire, then we need to know how to tend it, to keep us and everyone around us warm. Or else it will go out of control and consume everything around us.

Benediction

Holy Mother, in whom we live, move and have our being, from you all things emerge, and unto you all things return...Open our hearts this blessed day, Touch our bodies and our minds. Walk with us through the gates of power, in shadow and starlight, in fire meeting earth, in wind on the ocean and the sweet kiss of life.
Blessed be our journey.

T. Thorn Coyle


It was merely curiosity,
there are so many of those.

Are you there,
were you there?

turns to will you be there?
hope you are there!
You must be there.

My love surpasses obsession
becomes revolution and resistance.

These new questions?

How soft is your skin?
What lies within?
Are you lips sweet to kiss?

everyone should have a love
like this!

Need

For a while now I've been trying to say why I write, now that this writing is coming to fruition, why I am so urgent about being published, about not putting down the pen. But I have not had the words merely because I have not had the rage.

There is a different kind of rage than the small minded anger that fuels us for a season. There is an inherited, urgent rage when one sees that something must be done, and that it is left to us to do that something. Or, at least, part of the something. So, I read the prophets who raged on before me. Most of them women, many of them women of color who know there is much left to be done.

I write to record what other erase when I speak, to rewrite the stories others have miswritten about me, about you. To become more intimate with myself and you.

It's too easy, blaming all on the white man or white feminists or society or on our parents. What we say and what we do ultimately comes back to us, so let us own our responsibility, place it in our hands and carry it with dignity and strength. no one's going to do my shitwork, I pick up after myself.

-- Gloria Anzaldua

Witch's Blood

Words upon words form stories and stories are the links of memories. We begin and end in our stories and our roots stretch deep as the stories we are told. Our futures are as infinite as the stories we invent to prophecy them. That is why it is so important to write, and so vital to retain memory. We are only as good as our memories.

Words Live

I click over for just a moment to learn more about Anzaldua. She just died last year, and I didn't know she was alive until yesterday. But her voice sends me raging. She is so alive in me. She is alive write now. This is the power of words. This is why we must not give up writing.

I have to write because if I don't write what I see then no one else will. I have nothing to lose by writing what I see. This is why people of color must write because we can because we have much less to lose.

Mouth

To paraphrase Gloria Anzaldua; I write because every time I open my mouth, there is someone coming behind me to erase every word I say. I have heard some authors speak of writing giving one immortality. I don't believe this is why people of color write. We write for now, out of a simple need to have life write now, at this moment.

Important

I haven't written anything in here worthwhile for some time. What will I write now? Will I write about writing? Yes, about how it is difficult work, but necessary. About how I feel illegitimate writing? Even now, as I type i think, What are you are you writing? What are you saying? What is this?

I think, this time last year I was writing things and people were responding. Buit I haven't had the time to write much of anything. So little response, and I haven't had the need.

I am full of writing. Writing for classes, writing books, writing e-mails to my publishers. I am mad with writing, but I suspect, not with the necessary writing.

I am writing here right now, at this moment, because I think I would scream if I didn't. Often I have felt like I am about to scream unless I can write, like I will die if I don't, like these words are absolutely important.

Imbolc

Tonight I light the candles and begin the chants. It is Imbolc again. I celebrate by putting up last year's post. It's a good way of looking back, and as I go forward, looking behind becomes crucial...

I can grow
despite what you know
you might not recognize me tomorrow
yes, I can change, inspite of all they say
become something strange
and beautiful
like joy!
like joy !
-- Liz Phair

I think I heard that there’s gonna be rain today. The sky is a deep grey like a thick blanket and the white of the snow is dulled by the absense of light. I don’t mine because for the first time in a long time it is actually warm. The fact that I would call 37 degrees warm points to just how could it has been. Second day in the season of Imbolc and I can feel the breath of Kore as she ascends up from the land of the dead. After a long season living below amongst the shadows the goddess begins her return.

I know the feeling.

Sometimes the mythology of the faiths before resonate more with me than Christian myth. I am not sure what others call “religious faith” or religious truth, but to me it is what you recognize, what resonates with you. In a few weeks Lent will begin again. I’ve only known of a Roman Lent, never experienced it as an Episcopalian. For six weeks the generally offering up of things we didn’t really need in the first place, heavier than usual Catholic guilt trips, drummed of tears and emotion for the death of Jesus on Good Friday, and then a quick and speedy resurrection we don’t know what to do with. Three days in the tomb, and it the three days don’t even last three full days. Easter comes, we eat chocolate, and after this no one really knows how to apply this to real life.

The season of Imbolc is different. Death and resurrection are not once and for all things. They come and they go, and resurrection is not an easy task, it is a long, seven week one. There is repentance, but there is little guilt. Guilt must serve a purpose. Acknowledged, it is time to put it away. Not put away, it only enslaves, or else it makes us callous. We learn to live with it while not choosing to change. The repentance does not come before the death and resurrection. It begins at the moment of resurrection, the moment when the Queen of the Dead in the underworld is given her cosmic green light, and begins her ascent back to the land of light.

Repentance, starting over again, waking up... that’s a slow process. Repentance IS the resurrection.

Mercy

This morning, as I'm dressing to say the morning prayer, I hear about our old friend, the Catholic Church. A gay couple has sent their child to a Catholic school and this has become, of course, an issue.

And old priest is talking about how if something isn't done, then the matter will go the Vatican. He says, the Church has great compassion for gays provided they look upon their homosexuality as a defect and a cross, not as a way of happiness. As long as these two men do not acknowledge each other and, better, if they should split up, that church will accept them with open arms. Says this old priest, they must decide if they are Catholic or homosexual first.

But Roman Catholics are not the only Catholics, and as I shake my head over this bit of hatred I am reminded of it. And we Anglican Catholics have our own hatreds and hardnesses that we dress up in holiness. When I hear these doctrines of demons and gospels of hatred spewed out by poisonous old men, I immediately begin to say William Laud's prayer, as good now for an Anglican as it was four hundred years ago.



Gracious Father, we pray for thy holy Catholic church. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy son our Savior. Amen.