Aimee Herman's Blog, page 38

day 25: pose.

I know that when I do this pose, I feel like I am giving my thoughts permission to drip out of me and then when I am ready to emerge out of��downward facing dog, I can see the puddle of words and cracked worries beside me. Then, I sop them up with imaginary paper towel and walk away.

I have been trying to fall in love with yoga for a long time and I think we are just still getting to know each other (again). Sometimes, it is best to wait before making such grand announcements. While my body presses into these��poses, I feel like my bones are making poetry. My breaths are filling up the room just like I imagine my words take up a page. These poses are medicinal and contemplative and forgiving.

I am working toward finding my way back in.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, downward facing dog, pose, yoga, yoga poetry

day 24: someone else’s words

Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It’s made up of all those who’ve consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners ��� I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous “I don’t know.”

���Wis��awa Szymborska from her Nobel Lecture: “The Poet and the World,” 1996
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Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", inspiration, poet, poetry, Wislawa Szymborska

day 23: vitamins

These days have begun to stretch. They have begun to��expand��as though new bones have sewed themselves to the sun, dangling like elongated bells, alerting us that after all this grey shiver, there will be warmth again.

The humans grow more fur to keep themselves warm. They cover themselves in wool and thermal in order to combat the winter freeze.

Recently, I have been advised to ingest more Vitamin D. The sun grows shy in the winter, or perhaps this season permits the sun to go on holiday. It exists, but in far less moments. Gunmetal grey and taupe grey and cadet grey and silver replace cornflower blue and tufts blue and cerulean blue and azure.

When the sun arrives,��my friend��tells me, walk outside. Even if it is so cold your fingers forget how to curl. Leave your sunglasses behind [I don’t own any] and allow your corneas to inhale the vitamins. On days when the sun forgets to wake,��you must take Vitamin D.”

But must I take a pill?��I query. Ar there foods I can eat, which are full of this?

We are all vitamins,��she insists.��We are made up of all sorts of chemicals. Outside, the sun is best, but sometimes you need to swallow what your body craves, even if it is difficult to digest.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, energy, poetry, sun, vitamin D, Winter, Winter solstice, winter's effects on body

day 22: blink.

It was a day unlike Sunday, but it was Thursday. Everyone’s knees gathered the fumes of dandelions and coughed-up dreams. There was an unspoken incantation in the air because no one was blinking. Eyes did not grow dry nor weak from remaining open; instead, nothing was missed. Everything was seen– from the foil-tipped wings of a dove flying nearby to the drip of supper sauce in the corner of a pigeon’s mouth. The humans saw the weather shift from cold to��colder. Hands held other hands, instead of handheld contraptions. Love was contagious because it was��noticed;��it was felt. There were roses popping up like blades of grass. Various sized petals and colors like ocean’s blue and sunflower yellow. The humans left the flowers��alone, but watched them. Watched them get bigger or smaller or wilt or go wild. One human picked one. A flower which had yet to be named. It was not scientific, nor was it invited. But it smelled of two a.m. wake-up from current lover when pressed between fingers. It smelled of wheat grass and cloud juice. It remained alive long enough to last until eyes finally grew dehydrated and forced itself into a blink. Then, the open-close rotation continued and repeated until suddenly things went missing. Flowers became blurs of color and animals roamed without any more mention. It was just a day.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", blinking, dreams, love, magic, notice what you notice, poem, to go without blinking

day 21: someone else’s words

“The plural body…Which body? We have several. I have a digestive body, I have a nauseated body, a third body which is migrainous, and so on: sensual, muscular (writer’s cramp), humoral, and especially:��emotive: which is moved, stirred, depressed, or exalted or intimidated, without anything of the sort being apparent. Further, I am captivated to the point of fascination by the socialized body, the mythological body, the artificial body, and the prostituted body. And beyond these public (public, literary) written bodies, I have, I may say, two local bodies: a Parisian (alert, tired) and a country body (rested, heavy). �� �� — Roland Barthes (“Barthes by Barthes”)

**

And I have two bodies (of local and faraway descent): Brooklyn (tagged, stooped, with exposed brick) and water-logged body (dripping, see-through but deeper than feet or eyes can measure) — AH.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", Barthes by Barthes, body, queer body, Roland Barthes

day 20: alphabet

The Greeks called trees��alphabets.��Each one was a step closer toward a meaning. They scraped and dug toward the many layers of flesh behind the wood and sap.

A�� is for axis. How the tree is identified.

T ��is for the thickness of each trunk, which alerts the one who views it how long it has been around.

S ��is for sunburn; trees are sensitive too.

“Of all the tree letters, the palm is loveliest. And of writing, profuse and distinct as the burst of its fronds, it possesses the major effect: falling down.” �� ��–Roland Barthes (“Barthes by Barthes”)

Even in its massive sturdiness. Even when a tree is accompanied by hundreds just like it in a place called forest or preserved park. Even when the strongest of humans tries to chop it down, the tree remains….even when it falls.

How?��

Listen to the alphabet of the trees; they are the best teachers out there. They are the ones who remain even when hunted or burnt.

If you lose��your speech, go follow the trail of roots. They will guide you toward remaining.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", alphabets, Barthes by Barthes, language, poem, remaining, resilience, Roland Barthes, tree, words, writing

Day 19: connect

Reunion with your past.

Complete the sentence of a memory, but do not add on. This is defined as closure.

Romanticizing ex-lovers only elongates the haunt. Connect with what still lingers and then find your way through and back into the present.

Your past is a stomping ground. That dive bar you used to frequent with the best fries and local beer. You always forget about the time that man grabbed you or how about the time you got sick from that burger you ate from there. Your memory leaves out the details of what went wrong. When it comes to your past’s memories, do not overstay your welcome.

Reconnect, but only to create a punctuation mark to an affair. Do not linger. It is not only disrespectful to the present, but your future.

If you must, choose a date circled in your calendar from several years earlier when you spent sixteen hours alone, covered in soil and fumes of campfire. Remember the howl of mayflies and panoramic slideshow of constellations at night. Remember you read poetry to the hidden wildlife. You roasted marshmallows and fell asleep to the whistling wind.

There are bits of past that deserve a rerun; these are the moments that you can bring into your present and stitch into your future. These are the moments that do not plague you. Instead, they become a reminder of all that you are capable of being.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", love, memory, moving forward, past, reconnect, reunion

day 18: read

You are significantly overwhelmed at bookstores. You cannot believe every title is alphabetized and has its own section. You realize you are slightly jealous that every spine’d story has a place to be. A��home. You wonder if maybe you have chapter envy.

Every time you visit a bookstore you cry. This is not mentioned for pity; it is a fact marked by the salt which drips down your face each time you walk out.��You have a library card which is meant to curb your desire to spend money. And yet, you find yourself purchasing the books you borrow because you want them closer to you. You want them to live��beside you. You wonder if the only reason you became a writer was to have an exclusive pass to these shelves. You fantasize about being alphabetized and which writers would live to the left and right of you.

You go on a three week cleanse that lasts one week and in this time, you give up dairy, gluten, meat, alcohol and coffee. You get your protein from books: Thomas Page McBee, Vera Pavlova, Rebecca Gay. Your tongue has grown loose and sleepy from all the pages it has licked, but you no longer feel indigestion after a meal. Instead, you feel like you’ve learned something.

When you meet someone new and they invite you to their home, you study their bookcases. You learn more about them by the titles and organization of their books than you have from weeks/months/years of knowing them. You fall in love with a human who organizes by color; there was that one who shelved by size; you remain loyal to the one who did not alphabetize but permitted you to search out their order.

There was that time– let’s call it yesterday– when you had a difficult time leaving a bookshop with empty hands. You feel lonely when you do not have a book to get lost in. These characters, their stories become��yours.

Read. The words are always there, even when you think you are alone. Words surround us just like air. And if there is ever a time you are somewhere without any text,��speak and spread out your language like the most exquisite song you’ve ever heard.

Tomorrow, you will start carrying around an extra book to give away. This is for that moment you lock eyes with someone who has nothing better to do than swipe their finger back and forth on their fancy phone. Blow someone’s mind with Bukowski or Baldwin. You’ll never need an outlet or internet access to read. Just turn the page and get lost.

(I’ll meet you there.)

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", book lover, books, love of words, poet, read, words, writing

day 17: persist.

���I have brushed my teeth./��This day and I are even.��� �� ����� Vera Pavlova

You were absent that day.

You were absent that day there was a filmstrip on how to get through all this.

You were absent that day they taught about blood, bodies, growth spurts and persistence.

You were absent that day they explained how to survive an internalized attack.

You missed out on a presentation on safe oxygen intake.

You never learned how to properly handle��life.

You often forget to wash your hands because no one advised you on this.

You haven’t owned a hairbrush in over a decade. You have more knots on your head than historical dates memorized and there was that time you were kissed and they could not remove their finger from your tangle.

You only look both ways when crossing a street if there is something that catches your attention��both ways. You forget about stop signs and traffic lights because,��again, you were absent that day.

You were absent that day they talked about appetite reduction and strength training and the appropriate presentation of genders. You���ve experimented with dresses and hair barrettes. You still do not know how to wear lipstick. Must I remind you,��you were absent that day.

You were absent that day they handed out invitations. And your address was never correctly marked and they misspelled your name.

You were told it was epic. You were told that filmstrip addressed every topic you always wondered about. There was no Internet back then; you could not google the answers.

The next day everyone was quoting it. You were absent; have you forgotten? So you stood, silently cradling the wall with your hips and curved spine. You tried to memorize the summaries but everyone spoke too softly to be remembered.

You had stomach flu or a test the next day, one of which caused you to be absent.

The one and only day you remain home during school hours is the one and only day they taught it.

There was no make-up day to watch it.

Some say that filmstrip no longer exists.

Some tease that it never did and that day you were absent was nothing special; you are just looking for a reason to understand not knowing.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", gender, persistence, poem, sex, Vera Pavlova

day 16: dream.

You dream you are a fountain with water the color of birds and hunger. The air whispers abstracts of books you’ve forgotten to read. You are visited by a former love interest with palms full of saffron and��Gabriel Garc��a M��rquez magic. Your breath tastes of overripe bananas and nettle. You crave seaweed and sonnets. There are no walls, only doors with windows for knobs, so you cannot leave, but you can see out. See through. There is wood. Seven spiders wearing rouge and running shoes. There is emptiness. Or, a��feeling of it. You hunger for dashes. You thirst for��chandeliers��and train tracks. None of this makes sense and yet, suddenly there is clarity.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", books, dream translation, dreams, memory, poem