Bowing to this Loud Feeling

After Meeting Skeleton Woman

She's a shaker of stones, this one. The original rattlesnake. So hot, she feels cold. So cold, she feels hot. Her language is a code, an amalgam of old words and gestures.

She floats on the dawn, breathes mist in the morning, shudders when she wakes, and howls. Her life, a wild freedom: she lives it in the deep. Awake, and alive where ocean serpents sleep, secured -- she, their secret.

Sometimes she loops back on herself. It feels like sliding down the mountain. It feels like release. She might slip off the planet. She welcomes the rush. Her knees are not brakes on the mountain, more than metaphor. The wind breathes her name.

Tiger striped yellow on black, creature in negative. She climbs on its back, rides air. Moored to the Earth by loose gravity, a magnet to hot flame.

Like steel, forged smooth, her bones. Coal-smoked eyes above a purple tongue, flicks sticky dew when mouth parts to laugh. Voice grained from pain. From guiding ships through wave and mist. From administering the rain.

Her bosom swells to sunset, heaves from enfolding sun in night till dawn. Her afterglow, a rainbow. Her precision, a beat.

For Renee

Drunk on Captain Morgan and Coke, Dances with Broomstick

You always braved the deep spells of my blackness
and looked into my eyes without flinching
your blue orbs fastened on what you saw there
fashioning with bold charcoal strokes
a smile from the grief that held me
captive, roots for this ivy in the corn fields
your long artist's fingers
brushing back, making straight
the remnants of what held me together
weaving onto the warp of me
a design that is held here still
a design made clearer with desert blowing
and heat
a design become finer with age.

We cackled and snorted like bawdy old women
recited Chaucer waving cigarettes
and would've made the dead wretch
blow a thonderdent in his grave.
We were poor, and floated on the morning,
as we waited for the familiar of night
to welcome us into our true skins
becoming tigresses after the moon rose,
stalking off, into the bright beam,
to hunt what eluded us
to pursue what we craved
We became one with the Earth
and we called her by name.

You listened to my bad poetry
my wretched theories about life
my constant analysis of what was wrong
with this planet as I tried to shed
it from me, like a chrysalis outgrown,
and you always believed I would someday
be a butterfly
you never mocked me for remaining a caterpillar.

On the most fundamental level
I am female and I am a tree
and you are roots that feed me,
making me green and wet and alive
like those eagles
we watched soaring over the corn fields
and forests, riding the invisible,
the currents of motion,
in deep, long-necked dives,
rising up again to challenge
the wind, coming up against it,
defending, maintaining position,
no altitude lost, nor progress made,
waiting for the proper updraft
to glide away on, and being a victim
of no one, fly on to new lands
and visions. If our dreams keep us hostage
pursuing us while we sleep
as nightmares, then we
will wage war with the predator,
for that, we know, is its name.

We were the steam-soaked preambles of potential,
now young women, strong and free,
not yet mothers, no longer maids, we
swoop on our own updrafts and heal
to transform
and become ourselves at last, finally.

Back to the Wall, Fangs Bared

Right. Last post had me bitching about lack of publishing opportunities in this area for a hip little filly like me. Now I am embarking on another mission.

Mission Get The Fuck Outta Here.

In order to be successful in this mission, I must be resourceful, creative, and persistent. I must have moxie, verve, and vast reserves of self-confidence. I must not give up even when certain people (who shall remain nameless) will not deign to respond to my queries. I must not allow my working class roots to trip me up. I must not be afraid. Because if you've ever watched (or read) The Children of Dune, you know that fear is the mindkiller. And really, I'm not afraid of anything except my own boogeymen. Stare 'em down, a few paces back, and charge.

Now I must ask, very nicely, if you, Compassionate Reader, will do me a favor. It's painless. Altruistic. And, though it won't get you laid, it might help you feel better about yourself for not commenting sooner. Please tell me:

Who is your favorite indie publisher?

Just type in the name and be off! That's it! Simple! Like drinking straight out of the milk jug! And no guilt! I won't care if that's all you say!

I've got my own list, but there are many out there. I'm researching them all through the Internet, but I need you to two cent me. I need help. There, I said it.

I specified independent publishers because I don't do corporate, mostly because corporate is always doing me. Without my consent. And near as I can tell, all major corporations do is amass wealth for the few while putting their feet to everyone else's necks. And that includes you. Unless you're wealthy. In which case, good for you. Wanna share with the rest of us?

Working-class feminist consciousness marching onward . . . .

Uh Uh

Finalmente, unas cosas:

Blogger sucks. It has locked me out for the past several weeks, claiming that I need to change my computer settings to allow cookies. I've checked. Cookies are allowed. I have changed the settings to block cookies, ask before accepting, and then back again to always allow cookies, but still, the damn thing has denied me access to my blog. Frustrating. I see my profile views are increasing (nobody commenting, though [you know who you are]), yet I've been unable to post anything relevant to my life since the failed Sangre de Cristo fiasco. Fuck.

I applied for a job that was way beneath my skills and aptitude a couple weeks ago, had my interview last Wednesday, and felt, you know, pretty good about it. Mostly. It was a painless interview, the least stressful one I've ever endured, and seeing as it was for the company Doug works for (a company that claims to be a family company) and my qualifications were above and beyond what the position required (not to mention that I believe I, once again, knew more about the English language, editing, and composition than the man interviewing me), I figured I would get the job. But I didn't feel like I was going to be offered it after the interview. I drove home from Sedona feeling good, but not because I believed I had necessarily secured the job. The man didn't even ask me questions about myself, my skills, my character, my goals. Nuthin'. He just babbled on and on about the job and what my duties would be. I asked some key questions about the position and why they weren't hooked up with InDesign, which led him to become rather defensive about their current software and the fact that Macs are not used by anyone in the office, including designers. After having dressed myself like a professional (no jeans and T-shirt!), I did what you're supposed to do in an interview, and I even laughed when appropriate. The interview concluded with him bidding me to tell Doug hi for him, because Doug was a great guy. I even sent him a follow-up thank you via Apple I-Card (whatcha think, salt in the wound?), with a polite, though amusing, message.

It turns out Doug has never even spoken with him before. Lack of sincerity strikes again!

Then Friday, after trying to distract myself from the anxiety I felt about whether or not I would be starting an 8 to 5 on Monday by reading a letter in The Believer about, essentially, classism in literature (although the writer was woefully ignorant of this subtext), I received a telephone call from said interviewer. I was not expecting a telephone call. I figured he'd email me if I hadn't made the cut, which was unlikely, despite the nagging feeling in my gut, right? But no o o o o o o o. He got stuck on asking for me by name:

"Is this, uh. . . ." (voice trailing off, uncomfortable silence).

"Jaimie? Yes, speaking."

"Right. Jaimie. This is Jon. We've filled the position."

"Oh. Well. I'm glad you've found a good fit for the position."

"I'm really sorry. It was great to meet you."

"Nice meeting you as well. Not a problem."

(click)

I was so humiliated by the rejection that I immediately began crying after I hung up. There are not many jobs around here that have anything to do with publishing, and while proofreading ads for the newspaper industry is not my first choice, it was, at least, in line with my skills. I know I would have been intolerably bored, and he made an issue of telling me that no one was to ever mess with the wording of ads, even if they were grammatically incorrect or semantically skewed. So there would have been no room for any creativity. It would have meant commuting two hours every day. It would have meant crappy health insurance, which would have been supplemented by my paycheck, better than nothing, but still. It would have been steady work.

My copyrighting job for the never-before-mentioned Web site has been completed. I finished the final review of Eyes of Sedona a couple weeks ago. There are no more freelance projects coming my way, mainly because I've decided making regular paychecks is key now that I have a car, and the only way to save money to get the fuck out of Dodge is to do whatever mediocre work I can find that doesn't totally insult my sense of ethics and professionalism. Translated, this means that I haven't lined up any more freelance work. I'm sending writing samples to a new magazine that's starting up in Taos, New Mexico, on Monday. And wading through the long list of resort jobs and receptionist positions in order to find something moderately in line with my skills. Fuck and hell.



Speaking of hell, it's not excrutiatingly hot here anymore.

Speaking of here, I found another scorpion last night. The little stinging beastie was scuttling across the floor, taunting my cat, the mighty Scorpion Killer. She's a good little predator, fearless. I suppose she lives with a Scorpio. Why would she fear that which I am likened unto?

Thanks, slum lords! No more walking around the apartment barefoot for me.


Books I'm reading:

The Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols
The Woman with the Alabaster Jar by Margaret Starbird
The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

And I'm still trying to finish the last 59 pages of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig.

In the queue:

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
Joan of Arc by Mark Twain
Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston


# # #


The good news is that I will be tutoring my next door neighbor's five-year-old daughter in reading and writing starting Monday. Her step-father charges her $6/hr (whatthefuck?) to tutor her little munchkin. She's a bright child and very creative. I had given her some fingerpaints I'd purchased for another munchkin I never saw again to give them to, along with a couple of children's books I'd picked up during the past few years, and you could just watch her imagination churning. Her mom works long hours and doesn't have the time to help her get her homework done (a first grader with homework?), although she does read to her at night before bed (which seems more key than giving a first grader homework). I assured her mom that I'd be happy to tutor her for free and that I was qualified, given my tutoring work in the library system and during high school. It'll keep my perspective anchored on possibility and innocence to interact with a child regularly and help her discover the amazing world of reading, the lands you can visit by just turning pages. I'd be hopelessly devoured without those realms.

But you knew that already, right?