Update: trying to get back into the habit

 

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A certain kind of Southern fall is upon us with slightly cold mornings and nights. The days are often still too hot for a sweater. Over this past weekend, I was out playing pool with some friends at night, and it felt nice wearing my hat and sweater. I was hopelessly giddy. “I’m in my fall mode,” I said, knowing the temperature would probably go back to being hot the next day. Also, I don’t always play pool but when I do, I swear I’m not terrible.

 

 

A girl like me searching for a quiet moment in Astoria Park.

Ever since I got back from NYC, it’s been harder to get back into writing regularly on here. Although, I started editing my poems and looking for places to pitch my articles, I still feel distracted. My mind seems a little more cluttered, since I got back. The constant flow of people, and the need to go out and do something left me feeling empty. This feeling is also attributed to the constant news updates regarding our collective national drama. I mean you want to be informed, but not so preoccupied.

With so many things going on when I visited, there was hardly any time for sitting down and contemplating. Sometimes you really have to isolate yourself if you want to get any work done. I’ve realized, it’s harder to get back into the habit of writing when you’ve abandoned it. You often go days without jotting your thoughts, and they start piling up and you don’t know what you’ve done, or your thoughts in that particular moment. Things fade when they were never reflected upon in the first place.

Stumbled upon this cool alleyway in the lower east side.

When I landed into LaGuardia Airport and walked off to take the local bus to my house, I was immediately met with an onslaught of confused people, who didn’t know how buy Metrocards for the M60 bus. Sadly, I was one them. I was suddenly a tourist coming to visit. “You mean you can’t buy a Metrocard from the machines?” I asked a guy. “Yea, you have to go back inside the airport to get one if you don’t all ready have one.” I remembered then that you had to insert your Metrocard to get a ticket in order to board the bus, and I also remembered how stupid this was.

I decided to sit down in Union Square Park for a bit and look at the landscape of people passing by.

My neighborhood isn’t the noisiest, though on some nights walking by the N train in Astoria, it was suddenly livelier than usual. I noticed some new bars and restaurants, and there was even a lounge, a place for casual dancing on Ditmars Blvd with its name written in neon pink letters. Had I been a freshman in college, perhaps I would have welcomed a site like this. One night walking back home I noticed, smoke encircling customers sitting by the bar with neon pink lights. It was clear the establishment was going for a club atmosphere even within the small confines. It was a bit outlandish, and not remotely associated with the quaintness of Ditmars. I found comfort in my family, the cats and a quiet garden to sooth the busyness of the outside world. It also didn’t help that on my first night back I found myself in Hell’s Kitchen for a friend’s birthday party. It was a chaotic welcome to my old city. Granted, I was happy to see my friend, and the view of the rooftop lounge made up for the commute.

I stopped by to see this lady on a sunny day, and discovered how extensive the creative process was to sculpt and build her.

I had some wonderful days in NYC, visiting the MET and getting lost with my sister, hanging out at a bar in Woodside with my favorite couple, seeing One World Trade Center for the first time, including the Oculus (transportation hub) which was probably dreamed up after a Sci-fi movie, visiting the east village with friends, and thinking I was too old for this place, sitting by the staircase in Grand Central, wandering around my favorite bookstore—Strand, taking the ferry to see Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty with my family (I know it’s touristy, but all this time living in New York, I never visited), a surprise stop in the Queens Museum with a friend from college, hanging out by Prospect Park, getting a tour of a Red Hook brewery from an old friend, and showing my partner around my city. On one of those nights, I also went to a poetry reading at the New School.

Surprise visit to the Queens Museum exhibition on my last day, brought the trip full circle.

I miss the array of activities one can find in NYC. There’s a wider possibility of outcomes, but the same can be said for New Orleans, although here, the land stretches out farther.

 

Why Portrait of June?

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I decided to change my site name some weeks ago to match my Instagram. I wanted to condense everything into the same name and make the domain mine. I continue to have a personal site, where you’ll see my portfolio with links, photographs and other info. Bear with me while I fill it up. But even if I don’t want to admit it, Portrait of June marks a new point. For years I’ve been struggling to write consistently, usually going on and off for months, but always returning to it. Most recently I published two pieces outside of my site. I want to submit more work, but I feel a certain monotony about doing the same activity. I realize that once I come back to a piece of writing I’ve been putting off, everything tends to unfold, and what lay hidden is now flourishing. But the hardest thing is going back to it.

Perhaps it’s time to truly get out there and embrace the idea of June (I get that the month of June is over, but June is more than just a month, it’s a way of being). It’s when you’re riding your bike and the heat is quick to catch you, but you escape with the wind as the traffic light changes. It’s also when a surprise afternoon drizzle rescues you from the relentless heat, you wonder if it will become any thing more than that and you peddle home quickly. It’s a beginning that doesn’t overwhelm us so fast, but is nonetheless here, in full bloom for all to see. There’s a promise to June unlike the spring months when we were still waiting, revving up or just getting out of our cocoon. There is a sense of awakening and being fully out there, and knowing how to fly with our new set of wings. Escape if you must, but make it grand.

 

 

Morning Reflection: Facing me is an empty page

Morning Sun. Edward Hopper. 1952.

I dread the idea of beginning, like a heavy hand grasping my throat. My hands freeze, and my thoughts sputter at the inclination of words on paper. I continue that initial moment. There is hesitation. Still, I see no better time to begin and get swept by what may write itself out. At first it’s apart from me, foreign; I’m simply writing for the sake of practice.  I ask myself constantly, do I want to do this? Then why do I lack the will to sit back? There is no perfect place. Yet I have rejected every possible space or way to write, morning or evening. “It’s too late to jot down.” “In its passing, it left nothing, except a shallow taste.” When matters of interest or inquiry go on existing without being written down, they rot. I think about those moments I let slip into disappearance, into oblivion.  I see now, there is a quarrel I have yet to resolve. Those moments refuse to be dismissed by the lack of writing. Tiny feelings and inquiries come back and ask for revision, and for once, to be finally written down.

Wildness

"For the sad truth was that poets didn't drive, and even when they traveled on foot, they didn't always know where they were going." —Paul Auster, Timbuktu (pp 142)

For most of last week my body was visited by strange ailments, some of physical lengths and others marked by emotional queries. They distorted the time of day. I was the girl with pins in her stomach.

But I don’t suppose I’ll let my fears and the emotions of my mind win out the rest of this month. If we let that happen, we forget that reality is perceived; it can either exist or cease to become permanent.  The real strength of character may come from the ability to control and organize our thoughts, moving from irrational to logical, finally to a place made for you.

While driving in the fog the other day, I realized how flat and permanent reality appeared on the road: the straight white lights from ongoing cars, the misty fog and the early winter darkness. Fear was running before I took off– made aware by dreams of spiral roads, shaky turns, crashes, fumes and faulty breaks. It happens every time I dream of driving; either I’m immobile and the car moves by itself or the accelerator and the breaks are missing. How silly it is to fall under the feeling of dreams.  Once moving, and the accelerator finding its place under my foot, I glided through the fog, making fear impermanent and the drive a continuum instead of divided in parts.

There is no easy way, and as any person climbing into a new boat, it takes many wild days to understand a new experience. How does one take off so elegantly? There are the stops and goes even when you are grounded. The doubts, and the reemergence of energy; it is the up and down motion of a child learning how to stand up. There is the question of inspiration. And then the arrival of silence when you don’t want to write a word, and to force yourself would be insincere. I should wait until my eyes are led to a new thought. There will be first tries, mistakes, rejections, fears and bitter endings, but there is always a time to start again, to push the wheel until you find that words come easily.