September 2007 - judigoldberg

09/01

I thought you didn’t want kids.
I didn’t and, turns out I had one. Not that I was his father.
Not that you were.
But, his son will be my grandchild. I will be a grandfather.
It changes things.
Yes. It turned out ok, though.
I guess it did, then.
I’m not sure I will ever forgive you for not telling me.
I know. I don’t remember why I didn’t, but it made perfect sense at the time.
Everyone did the best they could.
You didn’t want kids.
I thought I didn’t, but no one asked. Someone should have asked.

09/02

At the top of the mountain I found the wind, echoes of things I couldn’t see, silence, nobody, and nothing. I found mostly nothing. And me. Sitting on my bike. Drinking water, quenching a thirst under a hot sun. The wind blew my hair back. It came to me I have been exploring the facets and splendor of relinquishment. Learning the truth of doing nothing is not the same as doing nothing. It is a stillness I’m learning sitting at my mother’s side doing nothing and doing nothing and not being afraid. Or anxious. Or uncomfortable. Being. Loving. Listening. Relinquishing.

09/03

I think there comes a time when one is old enough to tell her truth without caveat. Without regret. Or with a regret that gives way to amendment. Atonement that allows a rewriting that forbears the necessity of making the same mistake again. And again.
And one is unbound. Loosed.
A sheath drops away. One I didn’t know I had. Didn’t know I’d needed.
I no longer seem to be holding the other pole. No longer exercise understanding, seek to understand, in quite that way. I am saying what I see, as I see it. Take it or leave it.

09/04

he described me as blunt by which he meant among other things making no beans about it and then immediately back tracked in case he’d offended me as if being blunt were offensive, well I said certainly not for those of us who are! The trick of course I said is being gracious and allowing the other an out the knowing of which and acting on it being a sign not so much of age as experience.
ahso, it’s not a matter of acting ones age but ones experience.
to wit it’s not age difference but the conjugation of experience

09/05

And what about you?
What about me?
What’s in it for you? Everything. I’m doing exactly what I want, just the way I want, with just the attachments I want; all tied up and not at all. No role allotments.
But you and Amos and...
Ah so you don’t know everything either. It’s not the doing, not the others, that’re the undoing, it’s the over time not breathing life anymore into loving. I am his one and only. Always have been. Always will be. And this is always how it was destined to be. Let me tell you a story.

09/06

ah, time I was going to say to him to quit being a savior, having already said it’s time to stop taking care of every one, wanting to say now that then he could be come a wizard which is more fun though not less responsibility but of a different ilk, which is to say one no longer needs to know everything only what one sees...which is less for him to know right now than me: guardian, ambassador mediator?

and so he asked: it’s not the short run they’re concerned about, it’s the not holding to at the skirmish

09/07

7 cups debauch in bluegreens and browns absent pleasure, waste, reckless, consequences of carelessness of plenty. overage abundance rainbows future possibility choice hope youthful exuberance.

And both are true. Therein is the nugget. Addressing the moment that can’t be known except in the moment.

I am not loyal. Not by a longshot.

The secret to our relationship: He trusts me enough to take me places I have no right to be, and I trust him enough to go with him. And versa vice. On all four corners. And personal responsibility for knowing the job was dangerous when we took it.

09/08

-...you see why I love her he said, I do, we had answered in unison. He wondered how we knew which one he meant. We never asked. Well I never asked. But I know, at that moment, each of us assumed he was speaking to us about the other. Friends first. Not that I’ve liked all of them. But he doesn’t particularly like all my friends either.
-Oh for god sake! It’s not the same thing.
-Why is that?
-They’re not other men!
-They could be other women!
-You know what I mean!
-Do you?
-What?!
-Know what you mean?

09/09

I wondered if you’d come back. Only half-expected you.
Not sure why I came.
Of course.
Amos and I...
No, Amos and I worked it out a long time ago. If you must, speak to Gracie. You’re her other woman–he’s her dawg, not mine! Beyond that, we’ve always had other interests...
Is that what you call them?
...more to the point is you and Sol.
Maggie started to say something. And stopped.
Sophie put her hands in her lap.
Maggie took the clasp out of her hair. No, she said. I’m not sure that’s more to the point at all.

09/10

I wonder if his time on the barren plain is in the public domain, speaking of brinks and the place where grit is a person’s mark. The place where one wins or loses. Alone. No we about it ironically enough since the way there is always accompanied.

I read my poetry at our poetry reading evening. It embodies my revolution.

A sidewinder reminder, I was invited to the Princeton this that or the other of professional who’s who, as if. I told her today, no tv interview for me. The sideline is fine. Writing is better than being a writer.

09/11

One step at a time. No speeches. No explanations. Clean lines. I’m not reverent about The Press. Nor irreverent I must remember. Ebb and flow of change. In and out of breath and tide. The edge of the world is fluid. Recital more than concert. It’s the passion that I am serious about. Not a particular outcome. The two of them drove me nuts. Too many details. That said, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it–I overextended. One ‘event’ a year. I need the guild to be more active. Writing is better than being a writer. There.

09/12

paragraph indentations, font size for guild touchstones on the back cover, placement of page numbers, overall order, not contributors or final edits though past the safe things to argue about was a geography now that I think about it, a moveable brink having to do with not so much import, it’s all important all adding up to the necessary aesthetic, but with the degree to which a sense of self and personal integrity gets tied into it ah yes and the being taken seriously or the perception of being taken seriously and then the inverse relationship of taking oneself seriously

09/13

out in the water again today, only there hearing the water lap at my board, scanning the horizon for the tell of a wave the before the during the after the not yet the fooled you the oh fuck the just right and off I go or the miss and water down my wetsuit out in the water today not to be cajoled or seduced out of my depth out of my zone, still a white water tramp bigger is okay but after the fact leave the breaking wave for the line up out in the water today only there

09/14

I pushed too hard. He mistook the idea for a particular action. For a particular outcome. I thought to apologize but that would queer it after all it was he–though it had come to me full blown in a round about way that he not so much needed as would benefit from some thing more unknown–who’d said I went out with this wild woman! She was wild. Too wild it turns out. I thought to apologize but in fact I didn’t really push too hard at all. Going past comfort is such a pain in the ass. So damned uncomfortable.

09/15

Vol 5 in print. I come to wonder at the piece the part and parcel I (we) missed -- the stress discomfort growing pains ah yes the pain that though seeming to come from and be attributable to everyone and everywhere else emanates from the work itself, is for each and multiplied by three indeed the pain of the labor no matter what we might do, is the giving birth to on the one hand and is the dying of on the other–what greater agony and ecstacy is there–I’ve come through intact but not unscathed. What a waste that would have been.

09/16

it’s a Sunday afternoon precursor to fall’s actual press sun still warm days still long enough but roofs are being shored up gutters cleaned out “bulbs are in” and summer’s intended projects not yet started yesterday are all of a sudden half-done the neighborhood is full of industry

while yesterday we did ourselves, I did myself, proud or in full glory as writer editor publisher not to mention jewish heiress princess goddess with ambience wise woman foe we are present and accounted for flyers madly flying off the table and books too, yes

09/17

She’ll be like her mother acting the part of liking to get something, a user of even herself, always removed. He always to be the used. Not knowing why others who like him–which becomes a caring about him, a not yet willing to consign him to his fate–want nothing else. It’s the nothing else that baffles them. The thin air of the pleasure. Of one minute becoming the next. Of links. Of tomorrow. He believes he loves her. She doesn’t really care. Ah, the yelling and screaming was not because she’d gotten pregnant but not knowing if it was his.

09/18

58 now. Don’t feel older, just more experienced--

Walking to make sense of it, it dawned on me all of the walking down the beach watching birds dive sudden that in the matter of ‘making sense of’ something we’ve got it inside out or back to front or right to left or that before this. The sense is already made. It is instead a matter of discernment, of flushing out of giving words to something already sensed and otherwise called intuition. A knowing of something as if we’re not supposed to and we use our language to dissemble our feeling.

09/19

I put the topaz on the other day and the my neighborhood went into a frenzy

live wires fell down and started a fire bringing the highway patrol and the sheriff and the ambulance and fire trucks and three strange pit bulls walked down our street sauntered into the next door front yard and killed the cat sleeping there and my mother unable to properly manage the bolus of food in her mouth was choking as if to death starting anew the should we what should we why shouldn’t we conversations about intervening as if we might save her life

09/20

She lived from one end of a minute to the other. One after another. Full of roaring around. Full of a particular to her free fall. No turning back. Watching the pelicans dive I am aware of the arrogance of believing I knew her. I know only my knowing of her. Knew only my knowing of her. Mother. Make of it what you will, she was my mother. I was her daughter. We made so little of that. As if it weren’t the case. Watching the pelicans dive, I recall neither did she struggle against her nature; not her nature.

09/21

She died at the end of her life. Or, will have died at the end of life. Before then we may have had to decide to put in a feeding tube, or not. How full of certainty we all were in the abstract about no feeding tubes for any of us. How full of knowing we are in the abstract, and unknowing just when we would in fact be called upon to know if nothing else what we don’t know. Watching the pelicans I was absolved of the need to intervene. She will die at the end of her life.

09/22

not inclined to intervene, inclined not to intervene. I left traces on the beach my feet heading that way and this walking toward the bay and turning round to see him dance with the wave. Not like a sign they erected a flag I’d been inclined to ask its meaning the occasion not obvious, but I was afraid of the answer. Farenheit 451 is not just about them and how could they believe that but about any given them and the discomfort on the occasion of a flag that demarcates that means something worth killing for. inclined sometimes to intervene

09/23

her displeasure is potent–to her too clearly, given her propensity to pass it along–I went somehow to fault at first reading ‘and more not right with w&a’

walked the beach at salmon creek yesterday the density of the far reaches resolutely outspanning any lingering young pup cooler than you attitude, I walked out an old woman bundled in layers and hoods returned a maiden skin and smile to the wind

I feel like our books have been manhandled she said but I’m working through it.
Good!
She laughed.

No great speeches needed. I too just need to know my heart.

09/24

loyal; united we stand; all for one, one for all;

If it had been my page number I wouldn’t have cared, me neither. It’s not the point she would have argued going for the principle of it not the personal of it, yet in not standing behind her she takes it personally, though it’s not; it’s one of her jobs, the credit is hers in full, my demure “but of course” is bound and tethered elsewhere–no shitbanjoes, shitbuckets undecorated, or shitwine, and lettuce bought already washed and torn, life is too short.

No great speeches needed. Just need my heart.

09/25

she called with a now familiar intensity and I get that it’s–like in the Thai language either to work or to play–either high tragedy or not, so when it was simply that someone had “cut her hair” I couldn’t muster the expected displeasure at the breakdown in protocol–assault and battery having done it without the family’s permission–and the wanton disregard of my standing notice not to fuck with her hair, on the heels of the rest it was just so–the principle notwithstanding–secondary

my not having heard anymore, up or down the food chain, of it suggests my sense was correct

09/26

I begin to realize left out of the equation is each our relationship to The Press, no small thing–the participle dangles with purpose. It could be said it was a crisis of faith. ?. In oneself, the edifice(s) created just to forestall such an event becoming, having become worn, rickety not with neglect but with use...entropy perhaps at play.
The language of leaving is one of change.
We are veering headlong in another direction. I am veering off in another direction, often the last to know.

We have laid our groundwork;
The Press, ours, is not simply of us.

09/27

chairs borrowed–as it turned out not enough but better than not enough people, the kids from the school marching with them in parade one after another bringing them to the car–and delivered the rest was now up to other wayward muses

at home there was a dozen roses, “Guerneville thanks you, and I love you”

nothing left to worry about I still wandered through that bend in the river though not stuck in a geography as one might be mired in habit I decided not to worry that, I meandered on– turning over I dragged up someone else’s soap opera

09/28

so I’m on a roll lying in bed the night before everything done that we could possibly do in preparation and content I close my eyes only to immediately begin worrying a host a myriad a panoply a buffet of possibility not yet trod; I’m reminded perfection is a trick a distraction a black hole a perfect waste of a good wish and take comfort in my belief that, ironically enough, striving for it by default queers it and of better character and value is courageous excellence
all that said I read eyes wide open until 4 AM, good morning!

09/29

The literary walk through downtown Guerneville will begin at 11AM on Main Street at Charizma, with readings by Pat Nolan and Gail King.

At 12PM, up the street at Memories That Linger, Mike Tuggle will read.

River Ranger & the Poets of Stumptown Radio Round-Up will begin reading at 1PM around the corner at Coffee Bazaar.

Then walk west on Main Street to River Reader for a 2PM reading by Reverend Bob Jones reading his “Stories and Poems of Life along the Lower Russian River.”

A reading by writers from PenHouseInk Guild, Dixie Lewis, Lynn Millar, and judi goldberg, will follow.

09/30

it did have a life of its own it did bring the magic to the forefront storefront it did desanctify demystify declass-ify poetry and did take the starch out of serious it did cross boundaries, it decontextualized all of us allowing that we are our myriad and that buying–being able to buy–warm winter socks and enjoying a good cup of coffee
and company is not less important or less self-satisfying or less sophisticated an endeavor

we were a throng threaded through our town, we were troubadours minstrels storytellers readers writers, then and now together, of good cheer, sewing good cheer