The City Limits by A. R. Ammons

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.

Loving you less, Edna St. Vincent Millay

Loving you less than life, a little less

Than bitter-sweet upon a broken wall

Or bush-wood smoke in autumn, I confess

I cannot swear I love you not at all.

For there is that about you in this light--

A yellow darkness, sinister of rain--

Which sturdily recalls my stubborn sight

To dwell on you, and dwell on you again.

And I am made aware of many a week

I shall consume, remembering in what way

Your brown hair grows about your brow and cheek,

And what divine absurdities you say:

Till all the world, and I, and surely you,

Will know I love you, whether or not I do.

edna again

And do you think that love itself, Living in such an ugly house, Can prosper long? We meet and part; Our talk is all of heres and nows, Our conduct likewise; in no act Is any future, any past; Under our sly, unspoken pact, I KNOW with whom I saw you last, But I say nothing; and you know At six-fifteen to whom I go— Can even love be treated so? I KNOW, but I do not insist, Having stealth and tact, thought not enough, What hour your eye is on your wrist. No wild appeal, no mild rebuff Deflates the hour, leaves the wine flat— Yet if YOU drop the picked-up book To intercept my clockward look— Tell me, can love go on like that? Even the bored, insulted heart, That signed so long and tight a lease, Can BREAK it CONTRACT, slump in peace.

modern declaration by edna st. vincent millay

MODERN DECLARATION

I, having loved ever since I was a child a few

      things, never having wavered
In these affections; never through shyness in the

      houses of the rich or in the presence of clergy-

      men having denied these loves;
Never when worked upon by cynics like chiroprac-

      tors having grunted or clicked a vertebra to

      the discredit of those loves;

Never when anxious to land a job having diminished

      them by a conniving smile; or when befuddled

      by drink
Jeered at them through heartache or lazily fondled

      the fingers of their alert enemies; declare

That I shall love you always.

No matter what party is in power;

No matter what temporarily expedient combination

      of allied interests wins the war;
Shall love you always.

why can't I be good?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S3U_lHWR9M

lyrics:

Why can't I be good
Why can't I act like a man
Why can't I be good
And do what other men can
Why can't I be good
Make something of this life
If I can't be a god
Let me be more than a wife

Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good

I don't want to be weak
I want to be strong
Not a fat happy weakling
With two useless arms
A mouth that keeps moving
With nothing to say
An eternal baby
Who never moved away

Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good

I'd like to look in the mirror
With a feeling of pride
Instead of seeing a reflection
Of failure a crime
I don't want to turn away
To make sure I cannot see
I don't want to hold my ears
When I think about me

Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good

I want to be like the wind
When it uproots a tree
Carries it across an ocean
To plant in a valley
I want to be like the sun
That makes it flourish and grow
I don't want to be
What I am anymore

Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good

I was thinking of some kind of whacked out syncopation
That would help improve this song
Some knock 'em down rhythm
That would help it move along
Some rhyme of pure perfection
A beat so hard and strong
If I can't get it right this time
Will a next time come along

Why can't I be good
why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good

insight into crazy

Twice in recent weeks I have gotten into stupid arguments at the bus stop, the one right on my corner.

There is a Peets Coffee at the corner of Shattuck & Kittredge. In front of the coffeeshop are two large benches, forming a 't', then the bus shelter, then the street.  The sidewalk is very wide. There are many posts and lampposts. There are no smoking signs on every posts, on the doors of each business, on each bench and on the bus shelter.  Smokers seem to think the benches were put there to create a public smoking lounge.

There is a local ordnance against smoking with 25 feet of any door or window. It is also against the law to smoke within 25 feet of any bus shelter. So it is illegal to smoke in the nice little plaza formed by the two benches.

These are comfortable benches, too.  It's a nice little public spot.

And smokers very often hang out there.  It's only a handful of people who smoke there. There can't be many because the smokers look familiar to me.  I see the same people smoking there.

In the two years I have lived here, I have often asked smokers to stop smoking, pointing to the no smoking signs and asking them to obey the law and respect my lungs.  Some of them will put out their smokes. Some will get up and move down the block until I get on the bus.

And a few ignore me.

I have actually tried to wave down passing police cars to ask them to give the smokers tickets.

This is not just my anti-smoking campaign.  The smoking den on this corner bothers many.

Twice since Xmas I have asked people to stop smoking and someone else, someone not smoking, has gotten involved and told me to mind my own business.

And, each time, I have pointed out that if someone smoking is none of my business, then my telling someone not to smoke is not the business of the person yelling at me.

Once, I asked some teenagers to stop smoking.  Lately, lots of traveling teens have been hanging out at this corner to panhandle.  I think 'traveling' teens tend to congregate over on Telegraph, near people's park. And it seems to me that there are more teen beggars on the streets of Berkeley since San Francisco voters passed a law making it illegal to sit on the sidewalk or lie on the sidewalk but that might be my imagination.

The begging teens bug me.  They are usually in small packs, often have dogs and always seem to be smoking cigarettes. It is hard for me to believe anyone gives kids money 'for food' when the kids obviously spend money on cigarettes.

Anyway.  A couple weeks ago, I asked a couple kids who were smoking near the bus stop to stop smoking. One kid looked around, after I had pointed out there within ten feet of where we stood there were at least ten no smoking signs, and said plaintively, "Where am I supposed to smoke?"

"No here," I said with a shrug.  There really isn't anywhere outdoors in downtown Berkeley where it is legal to smoke because smoking is not allowed within twenty five feet of doors and windows.  This is a downtown retail area. There really isn't anywhere on any sidewalk downtown that is not within a door or window.  Alongside my building, there are a couple stretched with no doors for awhile but there are windows to homes on the second floor that are less than twenty five feet above the sidewalk. 

There is a park in front of city hall, a couple block away, where there are no doors and windows.

I wasn't here when the no smoking near doors and windows law was passed but I venture to guess that the intent of this law is to make it difficult for smokers to be able to smoke near any place there might be other humans nearby.

Whatever.

The smoking scoff laws who smoke on my corner even though they know they aren't supposed to don't care about my right to not have their cigarette smoke in my lungs so I have little tolerance for their 'right' to smoke.  I have made a policy decision that every time I see smokers smoking at my bus stop, I will ask them to stop.  I am polite.  I am right. Am I getting involved in something that is not my business? Some might say so. To such someones, I say that my lungs inhaling someone else's secondhand smoke, coupled with the fact that the law is on my side, gives me standing to object.

When I asked the kids to stop smoking, they didn't put their smokes out but they moved to the edge of the sidewalk and as far from the bus stop as they could go and still be on the sidewalk.

And then an old man started yelling at me to mind my business.

echo canyon

I live on the sixth, top floor of an apartment building, my bedroom overlooking a central, interior courtyard. The courtyard is an echo chamber. People talking in hushed voices can be heard in my sixth floor apartment, with my windows closed.  Music blasting invades. Loud drunks are very loud.

The party room is adjacent to the courtyard. It is supposed to be closed at 10 p.m. but people often rent it and run over. And then drunks spill outside.

Tonight, there are also loud noisy boys with scooters, running around, shouting happily, playing and having a nice time. It is 11:30 p.m. If the shared resource is supposed to shut down at 10 p.m., which is in compliance with local noise ordnances that ban noise that intrudes upon adjacent residential space after 10 p.m. So it's not just me. It is, literally, a community standard.

This noise unsettles me. The courtyard is noisy much of the time. The windows are soundproofed. If people want to blast their stereos and keep the windows closed, I don't hear it. But if they keep their windows open, I do, even with mine closed lots of the times.  Someone else's loud music, not remotely similar to my taste, wears me down.  I sit here and feel assaulted, like I live in a noise bomb instead of a home.

I know all the rules.  I don't allow myself to be bothered until 10 p.m. But then, I am in the right and as the noisy evening continues, the noise wears on me more and more.

I am turning into a crank, a crabapple, a grump. 

I am persuaded

I am persuaded that there is such a thing as reincarnation. I kinda hope I am wrong.  I hope this life is it.  I don't want another one.  But if there is reincarnation, or some kind of accounting system, or if this is not an unconditionally loving universe, it  probably lowers my score to off myself. I am resolved. I am going to gut out this lifetime without any more attempts.  But if I can hate myself dead, I think I might.

I have one child. She's 28 now.  She hasn't talked to me since 2000.  We did not fight. She was an adolescent. She wanted me to spend money on her that I would not always spend, but I spent a lot of money on her that I should not have. She used to complain that I never took her to Europe. Would she still love me if I had? Or if I had taken her on a beach vacation in bleak midwinter? Cause that's about all I held back from her.  I didn't beat her.  I wasn't abusive.  I made a couple mistakes. I slapped her a couple times.  Would two slaps cost other people their kid? I don't think it was the slaps and they were just slaps. Wrong, flawed, imperfect acts but not brutality. Just wrong. That wasn't it. She left me for darker reasons.

getting into gratitude for 2010

Right now, the main thing I am grateful for about 2010 is that it is over.

I started out the year estranged from someone I sincerely thought was an important friend. As recently as Nov 24th, he told me I was one of the most important people in his life.  He sold me.  He sounded way sincere, his voice emotion-laden, his voice catches with his posed earnestness. A tear in each eye more than once. A great show.

Then on December 22, he told me that he was downgrading me from friend to acquaintance.

He told me other lies on Nov 24th which was, get this, supposed to be our first conflict resolution meeting.  I thought the focus was on resolution, on positivity, on the fact that we cared enough about one another to work on the friendship. But he was faking.

I don't understand why people lie to one another when I don't see a gain for the liar.  There was gain for him to tell me the truth.  If he didn't want to be my friend, all he had to do was say so. Which he finally did, three days before Christmas.

That sucked.

Lots of good things happened in 2010.  The quality of light in Berkeley is very beautiful.  I look out my window every day, upon awakening. Each day, every day, I fall in love with the light.  I love the colors in the sky.  I love the way the light changes the colors on the tan stucco walls of my building and how the light changes the lightly tinted windows.  I love how the shadows change all day. There is a rounded tower cross the courtyard that is outside my bedroom window. When I open my eyes each day, I see that tower, note the angle of the shadows thrown down from the sun and I tell the time.  It is a sundial. Often, I think of olden time sundials, like you might find in the downtown plaza of an old community.  I think these sundials were in Middle Eastern, desert countries, with men and women milling around the down center, some produce vendors, horses, carts, music, clanging. Men and women in robes.  I don't know any real details about real sun dials. Is that something I saw in movies or read about and were they in Africa?  I guess I think Middle East because I think the Egyptian culture got very evolved very early, comparatively speaking. But then, so did Rome. Sundials in Rome?

Whatever. Sundials in Berkeley.

After I guess the time, I stir, check the clock to evaluate my guess.

I look at the light outside my window at other times of day.  I have lived here almost two years now and I am in love with the light.  My view has the other sides of my building in the foreground, with sky above and beyond, and patches of the Berkeley hills.  I try to remember to note the green of the hills. Sometimes I imagine I take something in when I appreciate that green, cause I'm not just appreciate green trees, I am imagining bugs, birds, dirt, squirrels, rustling, cats, dogs, ants, breeze, wind, flowers, leaves of flowers, leaves of trees rustling more, sometimes a snake, cars, shade, swings. These things are over there in the hills.  I like to take them in.

I have not fallen in love with a pool in Berkeley like I did in Mountain View.  There are buildings alongside my new pool. These building cast shadows.  The shadow infringe on the sense of endless sky I got in the pool in Mountain View. The MV pool was in a park, no buildings, except a one story locker room set back from the pool. In the water, all you saw was sky, ground, grass, trees. In that pool, I often felt like I was in a bowl of jello, rocked in the moving planet, rocked in space.  I often felt myself, a tiny dot in that jiggling, rocking, gentle hold.  Once in a while, not too many times, it seemed like my heart beat in rhythm with that rocking, and I felt myself a part of the earth moving. I felt held.  I haven't had that yet in Berkeley.

I can see the Golden Gate from outside my front door.  I try to see the sunset once in awhile. It is such a privileged view.

Sometimes, riding BART over to the city -- here in the bay area, 'the city' is San Francisco, even though I have to travel through the city of Oakland to get to 'the city', even though San Jose is a very big ciy, the only city here is 'the city' -- Sometimes on BART, when I see the bay, the golden gate, the sun dappling the surface of the bay and I want to gesture to fellow passengers, remark on the beauty. Then I remember I am a geek and everyone else takes these things for granted.  Or else I am the only geek that is dazzled by seeing Mt. Tamalpais or Alacatraz. What's the big deal, they are always there! But that's just it, they are always there.  It makes me happy to notice.

Lately, I don't seem to notice people.  I have been hurt all year, trying to pretend I wasn't. But I am not pretending now.  Right now, I am so hurt I can't leave my apartment. When I do go out, I feel assaulted by the presence of people.  I know I am sick right now because I don't want to be near people because it hurts.

I am very unhappy. 2010 wasn't good.  I love the light out my window. That's all I've got. Get into gratitude for that, I guess.

where is my flying car?

A couple years ago on New Year's Day, I stopped at my local Starbucks and, while the kid behind the counter got my coffee, I remarked that the year 2008 sounded like the future, like I should have come outside that day and seen a futuristic world.  I silently rebuked myself for being weird with the barista, but he said "Yeah, I know what you mean. It's like 'where's my flying car?'

So maybe I am not as weird as I keep thinking.