hey look! i'm a picasso!
“Nothing could be sadder, than a glass of wine, all alone.” — Solomon Burke, Cry To Me
Beg to differ honey, but i’ll miss your music…
Solomon Burke, Cry To Me
Apr 10 2009
The Egg Moon & The Deer-Woman
The Firebird Does Not Learn
She is an egg and every shadowed glance,
every silent forest destroys her.
She is newborn and the shark-tooth grit
of the earth clings to her wet eyes.
She is in flames, the jeweled fire
that everyone remembers,
and then, what she had not foreseen,
She is burned and not consumed.
Burned. She feels her feathers
knit together. Burned. It hurts her
to heal. She is still.
She dreams of the next dawn,
a darkness, a nest of ash.
~ Kate Horowitz
::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::
Tonight was the full moon. The 9th of April. The Pink Moon. The Egg Moon. Even the word April sounds like rain; it spittles from the mouth with the open promise, the gathering of air for the “A” and the plosive “pr” ending with the tongue lap of “l” at the back of the teeth. Water held back, pressed behind the dam. But that rain, as the rhyme goes, the April showers hold the promise of May flowers. Considering the wild rains Portland tends to get on the regular, i would wager that despite a couple of stellar 70 degree days that visited us early in the week, there is still a good bit of watery April left and that will require some patience. Next full moon – The Milk Moon. The Flower Moon.
Luckily, the flowers are already showing their pretty faces in the garden; purple and pink hyacinth carries on the air like a honeysuckle perfume, the camellia trees in my yard bloom bright red, some mottled with white stripes, the yellow, white and violet crocus and buttery daffodils are plenty, and the tulips have unfurled their emerald green bunny ears, though the buds are still closed tight as peapods, so many meditative eyelids, dreaming something deep and colorful. A flurry of cherry tree blossoms drift into the yard; heavy Spring wind casting a false snow, a white mimicry of Winter’s last stand.
While wandering the perimeter of the house, i found a lonely patch of trillium, a trifold of green heart leaves lifting up triangular white flowers, a basket of stars, everywhere in 3s. i’ll add a photo of that soon . . .
But that’s the best part of Spring – everything coming back from Winter’s sleep, seemingly, from the dead: the flowers, the trees, the animals, the goddess Eostre, Jesus. Me.
I’ve been feeling better, i’m cooking more and enjoying all the smell and tastes and textures of food. Something happened last full moon, some strong anxietal force moved through me. Some part of me died a little, something, someone else resurrected. It was what i asked for, and lately, as i am sleeping more soundly, it is a common and powerful theme when i dream. Death, rebirth, fire, water, flying, wings, feathers, hands in the earth, digging and digging, biting and scratching my way through.
Two nights ago i dreamed i stood in a huge backyard, a large farmhouse behind me. It wasn’t quite an open field as it was fenced off. The grasses were tall in places and something straw-colored was moving through the area towards me. But all i could see were its dark eyes and furry antlers. It seemed to be part moose or reindeer and masculine – it was so large, but as it drew closer, it became softer, graceful, almost feminine despite the large antlers on its head to indicate male. It was more a Mule deer, a buck.
We both approached each other cautiously and as the deer stood still before me, it morphed into a woman. It occurred to me that i should invite her for dinner; a big party was being thrown by extended family, though it was no family i knew of and no occasion i could name. When i introduced my new friend to the men in the family, they leered a bit, patted at her long legs and lap asking why she was so quiet. I explained that she was foreign and didn’t speak the language, so the deer-woman just smiled softly at them and looked strangely at me. i grew anxious as we visited because i felt that at any moment, her glamour would break and she would morph back into the powerful, antlered creature that would bound through the room, kick over furniture and dishes and smash through the back door to escape. The thought plagued me so heavily i pleaded with my eyes to the deer-woman and indicated with my head that we should go back outside. She nodded and followed me.
Once we were outside, she became the buck again and wandered out into the forest where i followed her/him. A bright shock of sunlight stunned the deer and it turned on me, knocked me over, bleating, snorting and biting at my neck. It was part murder, part mating. The world went dark in a swirl of tree canopy, pearl grey sky and clouds of shattered eggshell.
When i woke, it was the woman again beside me, waiting for me to rise. My sense was that i was dead, but undead. Not quite vampire, but stony, pale and cold. i was able to move fast, to levitate, to fly and could bring someone with me, transferring the powerful ability to them, with them, so long as they linked hands or an arm with me.
The deer-woman had someone with her now, and i had a faceless someone with me. The four of us flew around until we came upon a memorial site. A grave with no body. A decorative brass commemorative plaque. With my name on it. But it was not my current married name. It was my maiden name: Andrea Jackman. i wiped dirt away from the plaque, collected cigarette butts and trash thoughtlessly discarded in the grass surrounding it and threw these things away. i felt sadness, but also, realized, it was not truly myself that was lost or dead, but a previous incarnation of self.
This lead me to seek out the mythology of the deer, the stag, ways to interpret the dream. Some of it i knew, but some of what i found amazed me in my own psyche’s ability to deliver the message.
It begins even in Neolithic Cave art where the depiction of people for hunting or shamanistic practice, dress in deer hide and wear antlers. In Classical times, the ‘Stag God’ was paramount to the Scythians and other peoples across the Eurasian steppes. To the Hungarians (my ethnic background) there is a great horned doe, which shone in multicolour lights and its antlers glittered from light.
There is the Spring renewal, the chase after the stag is a hunt for the return of the sun, searching for its light and heat which during Winter is taken away by the stag. The girls of the legend are the does, the daughters of light (Leukepius in Greek), who return the light and fertility of the sun. For that reason they have names which indicate “light, white, burning” Dula=Gyula,Gyul…, Sar=gold, light, stag. Bular or Bugur=stag in Turkic.
Ancient Norse mythology tells how 4 stags run in the branches of the ash and browse the foliage of the world-tree Yggdrasil, eating away the buds (hours), blossoms (days) and branches (seasons). Their names are: Dain, Dvalin, Duneyr, Durathor and are thought to represent the four winds.
In Greek mythology, it is the Keryneian stag, a fantastic beast with golden horns and brass hooves sacred to the huntress-goddess Artemis who turned herself into a white hind (female deer) to avoid being violated by two giants.
The deer is also a central religious image for Buddhism. Buddha is often pictured with a deer, and legend tells how he first preached in a deer park. The deer image itself representing innocence and a return to the wilderness.
In Celtic mythology, the deer is a magical creature, able to move between the worlds and many tales have humans transformed into deer. For example, St. Patrick was said to have transformed himself and his companions into deer in order to escape a trap laid by a pagan king. Cernunnos, the Celtic Horned God, was depicted with the antlers of a stag; he is said to be a god of fertility and plenty, and to be the Lord of the Beasts. According to some, his antlers symbolize a radiation of heavenly light. Images of stags were supposedly used to symbolise Cernunnos in non-human form. In the Welsh tale of Culhwch and Olwen, the stag is one of the oldest animals in the world, along with the blackbird, the owl, the eagle and the salmon.
In some parts of Asia, deer are considered to be conductors of soul and thus the robes of shamans are usually made out of deerskin. Likewise, many Native Americans believed deer and other animals with forked horns and antlers represented forked or double nature. When the Cherokee travelled during harsh winter weather, they rubbed their feet in warm ashes and sang a song to acquire powers for the four animals whose feet never were frost bitten – opossum, wolf, fox and deer. To the Pawnee, the deer is a guide to the light of the Sun. The Panche Indians of Colombia believe that human souls pass into the bodies of deer after death and therefore eating the flesh of deer is forbidden to them. In ancient Mexico, deer were sometimes depicted carrying the Sun (similar to the ancient Steppe myth and the Scythians).
The antlers of the stag are compared to tree-branches (the world-tree Yggdrasil) and since they are shed and re-grown every year represent fertility, rejuvenation and rebirth. Carl Jung noted that “the stag is an allegory of Christ because legend attributes to it the capacity for self-renewal … In alchemy, Mercurius is allegorized as the stag because the stag can renew itself.”
This close to Easter, my mind is swirling with birth, bunnies, blossoms, eggs, animals, the moon, the sun, Christology, oh and sure, i’ve some room for chocolate in there, too. After all, it is the sweet delectables, the luscious plenty, the little gifts, and the small rewards that make such great love and transformation possible. But was my dream telling me to lay off the Twilight series by conjuring a vampire deer? Was i truly dead? Rutting? No – i’d like to think it’s the change on the horizon, the promise of sun, a great white fire i am still chasing after in the woods. Some promise borne out of rain, softening the edges, washing away the ashes, waiting for me to rise from a bed of flowers and turn my head up to the clouds of shattered eggshell to see the robin blue sky.
Aug 12 2006
Post-apocalyptic war zone, somewhere other than Earth . . .
::: ::: ::: :::
i’ve been dreaming a lot of airplanes,
about falling into the ocean,
about the end of life as we know it.
about release.
this is a continuation on the previous blog theme . . .
::: ::: ::: :::
Post-apocalyptic war zone, somewhere other than Earth . . .
We are going into the stalls again,
It is testing time.
Will we live?
We have grown wise of protection.
We fare better now.
Chairs block the opening beneath the door
to guard against shrapnel.
Flack blankets.
Bathtombs.
Open arenas for concert events.
Now for animal corralling.
We are the soft-skinned animals
gone thick.
Children huddle around me.
Their eyes soak through my pants.
Blood-let cheeks, tearful, snotty,
earth-caked,
motherless,
afraid.
My skin is cold.
The siren sounds, the explosion comes.
The announcement is made
My name is squawked over gray horns — I win the lottery
and they begin biting my ankles and flesh to kill me.
They want what I will have.
I am the mother they could not kill
before they were born into death.
The lottery is random even here.
My ticket out for me and my friends,
family and traveling companions.
I can buy them passage out of this realm.
One always refuses to leave.
One is always numb from routine abuse.
We sit in a circle:
In our hands, gold cards like airplane tickets.
We bring up the silent song.
and our energies gather above our heads.
pulling up like luminous strands of cloud,
taut, gathered strings
without the tether of delicate balloons,
the blue-lit tendrils,
the stinging coattails of jellyfish
We go out into the world.
~ Andrea E. Janda
Aug 10 2006
Exquisite Cognomen or "How to Name Our Pain"
i am not politically inclined to comment.
i am not so easily terrified by ‘terror.’
i avoid most news to maximize joy.
but i have some thoughts on these things,
in grand universal brush strokes . . .
::: ::: ::: :::
Exquisite Cognomen or “How to Name Our Pain”
In the world, there is forever fever:
We read the signs,
blazing in historic orange.
We straddle our majestic fates,
ride our caution horses up to the edge,
and prepare ourselves to be known,
We drop our weapons in the dust,
and unveil with the other prairie dogs — a global disrobal.
We read too much tar for no pleasure,
while we patch ourselves up with nicotine band-aids.
We let the talking heads scare us into the show,
We become cancerous clowns in the tumor circus.
We cannot duck and cover in the Alcoholocaust.
We cannot stay dry in the headswim of worry
and forward motion.
Compartmentalization leads to:
rubix cubicles,
paralyzed prizes,
spastic plastic,
and Tupperware death,
All the ever meanwhile,
Howling sweet exultations
and consuming quietly our consummations
so that we may die pure
and be saved by our cleverly patented,
widely acknowledged,
billions served,
guaranteed
one-hundred thousand mile drive chain
Luxury Christ.
When we hunker down
And cast our last breath under the elective curtain,
when they unearth our sterile bones,
will they say they truly understood what fine
encyclopedic creatures we were ?
Will we leave bones?
Bones for wolves to make soup,
for women to make breastplates,
and for men to make cages to keep their wolves
and women warriors in.
They may see the hinted drop stitchwork,
the soft, green loop to crochet the new world from,
but will they want such a pattern to follow?
We who all succumbed to communal self-butchery and burnings.
With the burden of our knowledge,
clinging to our near-death faces
though we wake in the night,
suffering insomniacs,
bloated and blue,
— information gorge syndrome —
well coax the current thickening lump and swallow,
and fall back against another chainlink, razorwire
skinless sleep.
Well, for now, caustic dreamers
of blameless, paranoid, age-defying landscapes,
let us multi-task our spiritual trash,
complicate the workable and fertile into fiscal orgasms,
and reduce our grand and beautiful ideas to slogans and acronyms
that suggest other equally unplugged words.
Let us muck around in newfound dark,
continue our acid intercourse,
bring our weary and our winded before our glittering
revolutionary hearth.
But we ask that you ask your loved ones to cover their nettles,
so we cannot trace the frightening highway back to the ocean,
or the forest,
or the desert,
so we do not name the extraneous scar across the trellis of a thousand nations,
so we will not offend our impressionable guests
at dinner date death,
so we cannot recognize our very same,
unrefined pain.
How do we not weep when we know our name is like a dirge,
strangled from threadbare angels.
The earth groans under our weight,
impregnated again and again with a stifling humanity,
eggs rolling off the edge of the earthen table
set by Columbus —
tiny, hopeful, rudiment vessels,
unpacking the cargo of the daunting future
while crushing the orange partitions of the past.
~ Andrea E. Janda
Apr 13 2006
learning to fly
::: ::: ::: :::
As the sparrow in her wandering,
As the swallow in her flying,
So the curse that is causeless
alighteth not.
~ Proverbs 26:2
::: ::: ::: :::
Olivia called me while driving and said, “i’m at a red light, thinking of you.”
And in my little self-absorbed funk i quipped, “Why,” and snickered, “because my signs say STOP?”
“No, because it’s RED,” she laughed.
A few dream cycles ago, the reddest of thoughts wended their way through the white matter that is my brain in a state of sleep, and i awoke, emitting pink smoke and in a haze from the most fantastic visions. my signs lately, they stop other things, they cut them off, they shine dark red warning light into my face: a submarine submerging, a whore advertising, a dark room for developing images, distant galaxies red-shifting, moving away from each other and then the signs switch and i turn right and the color begs me to go, go be green, be verdant, to grow. to GO! and i do.
i dreamt i was taking a shower in a brightly lit bathroom with a huge window in the shower stall. on the wall outside of the shower, where a medicine cabinet or mirror should hang was instead, a large vent recessed deeply into the wall, slatted for ventilation, as in a factory. i could hear birds chirping, chattering, squawking, and scratching around inside. it sounded like nest building, like an argument, like a rusty gate swinging in a storm.
a small blackish bird got loose and slid between one of the slats and out into the bathroom where i stood naked in the light. it was brightly yet darkly colored, iridescent like a Raven yet smaller, like a grackle. In Norse mythology the god Odin (for which i named my cat) kept a pair of ravens called Hugin (thought) and Munin (remembrance). Even Odin himself would occasionally shapeshift, becoming a raven. But his pets, they took flight in the morning and scaled the earth, asking questions and begging secrets of people, even of the dead before returning to the shoulder or the throne to whisper all they had seen and heard into the ear of their master.
The raven symbolizes solitude, gratitude, affection, wisdom, light, hope, longevity, death, and fertility. In alchemy, it represents change and the advanced soul dying to this world. Conversely, the grackle is typically a sign of Spring, perhaps of re-birth, the dark keel-shaped tail sailing in just before the Robin’s red-breasted return. But this bird was smaller and something about it was both sweet yet sinister. i bent down to push my finger against its chest to scoop it onto the ledge of my finger and it pecked me lightly. The grackle is an omnivore, which means it will eat almost everything that doesnt eat it first, so i thought it might take my finger off, but instead, it turned its head sideways at me and glared then clamped down onto me with its talons before flying out the window. Was i dying to this world or was i becoming new?
somehow from contact with the bird i developed a curse. i was new by design but i brought death instead. any man i touched, any man i put my hands upon out of love would turn ashen and grey, then disintegrate, like burning incense. with one boy i learned i could touch him with my toes and so we held feet under the table during dinner, but when i got too comfortable, when i forgot myself, when i curled into the crook of his arm as we watched a movie, i placed my hand gently on the outside of his forearm thinking it wouldn’t harm him if i touched him through his clothing, through the sleeve of his maroon jacket. he turned to me, he grew stock still, his eyes grew wide as tears welled in my own. a wave of frightening, sure knowledge crashed over us as he turned a grey replica shape of himself, then fell into a soft pile of silver ashes below me.
i went to see a bruja, a Mexican witch and she drew a curse book from a dark drawer in a table. “You have the Blackbird’s Curse,” she told me. “You must trust and they will remain. You must love openly and it will pass. The bird will come to you again and you will be safe and your lovers safe from harm.”
do i mistrust so much i withhold emotions and never give myself away – both betraying and denying myself? or do i flay myself so wide open that i bleed a murder scene, make a mess of things until my lovers evaporate, leaving only a chalky outline? or will everything i touch simply dissolve while i am waiting to hear his call above all others? will i understand him when he calls, will i know him when his feathers brush my cheek or feel him when he finally reaches out and clutches me?
Apr 01 2005
tiny transformations
this was a slightly long day – nothing too taxing, just a lot of little errands. i was so proud of myself for waking at 8am to get a jump on the day. yeah – i know, 8am is everyone else’s report time whereas this is a miraculous feat for me. i showered, pulled my hair into a wet knot and i was out the door.
i stopped at the gas station for fuel ( holy shit is diesel expensive now) i parted the waters, made up of men, waded past the farmers, truckers, mechanics all snickering, hitching their pants, and leaning around the coffee station smelling of burnt caramel, evaporated coffee and faintly like broken radiators. i got myself a vanilla iced coffee thing to go with my Raspberry NutriGrain bar and headed into a sunny day. i needed to get to the MVA to take care of my tags, title, and registration for my new car.
it was a relatively painless process, and luckily, both of the attendants i dealt with actually smiled and were pleasant. it was a quick wait, i even ran into one of my wine distributor representatives to sit next to. And – i will now readily admit, i ordered and will have vanity plates that read:
RED ELF
and why not!?!? the name and monicker has become so much of who i am and identify myself as that it’s only fitting.
my local radio station, 103.1 WRNR pulled the best and most entertaining April Fool’s joke by changing their call letters and format. They became 103.1, W-O-M-B “you’re inside the womb.” They had great one-liners like “we’ll leave the toilet seat down for you” and “testosterone free-radio” and “we don’t dick around” and my favorite “radio for the breast of us!” and the format ROCKED – ALL females DJs, ALL female artists, ALL day long! it was brilliant! you wouldn’t believe the wide range of wonderful music i heard to float me through my day!
i went to work directly after the MVA and into a slammed lunch shift. busy enough for 3 servers to run around . . . i shot out of there for the 35 minute trip BACK HOME sometime after 2:30, so i could put the new tags on and drive the new car BACK into Annapolis to present to my insurance agency for photos and processing. i made it there with 5 minutes to spare before closing time.
then i went BACK TO WORK for round two, the dinner shift, but not before making a credit card payment in person for Tiffany, a work mate, also on a double shift with me. I did this so she could run her errands in the opposite direction during the lunch/dinner interim, she needed to deliver a catering order for the restaurant to make some extra cash, and i didn’t mind making the payment for her since i was going past Pier 1 Imports on my way back into town. i ended up bussing and hosting instead of waiting tables as it wasn’t too crazy busy. we sat around, the 3 of us, drinking chai tea (me) and cappuccinos (them) and doing a crossword until the first guests showed up well after 6pm.
during the nite a VERY big kitty came to the door of the restaurant. mind you – we are like a small house, in fact – people used to live there. this cat was like a Maine Coon: big, tabby/tiger like, fluffy with pointed ears. he was really sweet, rolling around on the porch, totally approachable, rubbing against the legs of all the guests entering and trying to slip past them to get inside. that’s all i needed was to chase a big cat through the dining room. we made friends and i petted him for awhile and he sat watching me through the door for a good 20 minutes before wandering on. he wasn’t starving, and i think he may actually belong to someone.
i hung around until 9, then stopped by a Ruth’s. she got a new computer and needed help setting up her email. we talked about the party she threw for her recently deceased mother . . . a big family gathering for remembrance that included a bonfire, good food, and spreading of her ashes on the California beach and into the ocean. Ruth is older than i am, i suppose i would put her near 60 or just beyond. Her mother had been missing out of her mind, Alzheimer’s for quite some time and was failing, and so her passing was a relief. i wish everyone dealt with death the way she does. when her mother died, she brought the box of ashes into the restaurant, as i was curious about the after-container. “Mom – meet the girls,” she said to Sally and i. “Hi, mom,” we chimed. “She always wanted to come here,”Ruth remarked. “And now she has,” i smiled. as i left Ruth to her newly established email and her headache owing to allergies, the light drizzle i had left before, suddenly became a good rainstorm.
in my infinite wisdom, i decided to go grocery shopping.
Everyone there near closing time ducked in to grab just one or a few things. margerine. a flat of strawberries. some milk and eggs. a frozen dinner. And you had the derelicts from the nearby laundromat hitting up the cashiers for rolls of quarters since the machines were out. Then my favorite – the randomly stoned Friday nite boys, the monkey pack, wandering around with Cheetos and Gatorade and Red Bull and Snickers bars, jumping on each others backs like horses, playing assgrab and leap frog and pull your pants down so everyone can see your balls. Some of them singing (more at howling) from the remote aisles, the lyrics to “End Of The Road: by Boyz II Men. fucking people . . .
Everyone had a few things, but me – i decided to do a big list right in the middle of things and everyone who queued up behind me saw my conveyer belt full, remarked things like “oh shit” and “nuh-uh” as they wandered over to the Self-Checkout lanes. This pleased the young, pretty cashier, who shared a devious smile with me and vowed to take her time, as i would be her last customer before the store closed.
i had been craving Szchezuan food, some spicy stirfry. (or so i thought . . .) i considered take-out, but then got ambitious. i had thawed some chicken in the fridge the nite before, came home with armfulls of plastic bags to the hungry cats climbing the walls, fed them, put things away and fired up the wok. i rinsed my perfumy jasmine rice, diced chicken, tossed the veggies and brown sauce, threw in the peanuts and by the time i was done, i was so tired, so uninspired that i scooped out a cup of rice, put a pat of butter and salt & pepper on it and called it dinner, wrapping up the rest and putting it into the fridge. have you ever cooked a meal and then decided not to eat it or have something else entirely?!?!? i just did . . .
i ate the rice and then opted for a salami sandwich with mustard and muenster cheese, sliced dill pickle and kettle chips. i began chinese and then went italian deli!
what the fuck is WRONG with me?!?!?
in other thoughts . . . after having this long hair for so many years, waking with it in my mouth sometimes, having the cat curled up in it (or me laying on it) so i can’t readily move, washing it, clarifying, deep conditioning, brushing, natural drying, babying it, fussing with color, loving it, hating it, having it stick to my face in the rain, tickle me under my bra strap, hang in his face, in my food, mostly tied back for work and wandering and cooking, i have decided . . .
to cut it.
short.
again.
probably chin length and then color it something bold and bright for Spring. i want easy, breezy and light. i used to wear a pixie, short as Sharon Stone – but i won’t be going THAT drastic this time around. so Tuesday. . . i lose the curtains. this may require a new ID, just for a bit of change, though i am not one to change things often. especially my personal decoration.
i have worn the same silver moonstone necklace since i bought it in Chicago 13 years ago. i take it off to polish it now and again. Same silver moonstone earrings for about 7 years, and the same silver rings with moonstone and labradorite for about 5 years, with exception to the latest ring addition brought back from the British Virgin Islands.
even this “new” car i just bought is just a more perfect rendition of my other car – just a far superior transmission and suspension (which i really feel when i drive, more power and comfort). jeez – i currently own and insure TWO Mercedes . . . how do i afford my rock-and-roll lifestyle?
like i said – i am not one to change things often, but lately, i can barely commit to a meal and having recently (finally) seen Super Size Me i am reminded again of the importance of good food, of healthy choices for change, of exercise, and how i need to rescue my Yoga mat from becoming an oversized cat toy and scratch post.
in the meantime, i believe an evil chocolate chip macadamia nut cookie will fix me up for bed.
after some well-needed, well deserved sleep – i’ll start the transformation tomorrow . . .
Feb 07 2005
icyclic
:::
“After all –
What were you really looking for?
and i wonder when will i learn.
Blue isn’t red everybody knows this
and i wonder when will i learn
Guess i was in Deeper than
i thought i was if i have enough love
for the both of us . . . ”
Strange by Tori Amos
:::
the snow is almost completely melted,
but the air conditioner nearly died with
frozen lungs – coils, weeping down the wall.
i woke from nitemares of her, hot tears
on my cheek this morning, icicles dripping
from the rooftops, pattering, the feet of
following cats, behind, in front curling
like those mysterious numbers – unknown
unforeseen consequence, the heat of pain
melts the chill of fear.
an accomplished mathematician and a brilliant
physicist who saw sinister messages in Shakespearian
sonnets, visions of certain hell, doomed patterns and
curves in the language put him into his car, drove him
to a dark bridge where he jumped into the icy bay.
our tormented friend lifted the veil, saw Spring too soon
and wished to be reborn, the water carried him away.
something strange is out there in the frozen grass, the
grass that stands stock still straight up like inverted
exclamation points, silver punctuation – something up
there in the icicles pointing down, witchy accusatory
white-blue fingers, snapping off, truncated memories
touching my skin where it is neither welcome nor warm.
ice is strange – how it preserves what dies for food,
what dies to give new life, meat, red, chilled down to
blue – that something there, imbedded, i cannot dig it out,
not with claws, not until the spring thaws what is still
beneath, what is still inside – then i will be grateful for
the release and as i look outside, as the wooden planks
bloat, thirsty for water, showing their dark skin again,
and i walk safely, and the snowdrops bow their heads
in the garden and the snow is almost completely melted.
~ Andrea E. Janda
Oct 18 2003
soon, i promise . . .
my dear deviants
of sweet repore . . .
forgive me for
my tardy thank yous
i have read you all
and have been trying to
keep it light.
this week has been awful 
we lost a four-year old
member of my family
under suspicious circumstances.
i dislike my journals
to bleed personal
difficult information
but there is something
so very very wrong
about a tiny coffin.
i believe in life
of all things
especially
the small
and defenseless.
Aug 03 2003
falling stars
my grandmother died.
i am in Detroit trying to soothe my mother
and i am charged with the writing
and delivering of the eulogy.
they wanted me to sing,
but i’m not certain i would perform anything
other than shudders and the choking back of tears.
best that i speak of light things
and celebrate her life.
if any of you have any advice
or well-wishing or thoughts on eulogies
and funerals, please share them with me.
my grandmother was Protestant,
but never really attended church
she believed in a higher power – god per se
but did not want to be buried with a rosary
or delivered into a church before burial,
so i will be speaking of her at a funeral home.
we bury her on Wednesday.
she was 81.
when people lose someone older in their family
sometimes, the thoughts and emotions are disconnected
— they forget that the person was ever young.
my grandmother was a tough woman, sometimes cruel
but it was also in her home i spent the first 9 months of my life
she saw me even before my own father who was at sea
and in her hallway was a long mirror i always loved
and would push myself against to stand.
i left fingerprints there as an infant
and when my mother and i left to our first home
my grandmother refused to wash those prints off the mirror
for nearly a year.
Irene Paull is her name, and she was a good woman
strong with a deep capacity for memory and tenderness.
