self portrait as the woman obsessed with a dead man

from the archives...this was "finished", i believe, in the fall of 2001. almost 5 years later, and it seems more "about" my life now than it did even then. i have long felt that my poems were almost predictive; soothsayers in their own right. i suppose this buttresses my theory.

MARK ROTHKO CALLS AT ONE A.M.

Mark Rothko, I have been trying hard to stop
loving you. I have been thinking of the world
in every shade but yours,
I have been hanging Andy Warhol
on the wall and saying there’s nothing behind
it...I just pass my hands over the surfaces of things.

Still, a wash of Bordeaux on the sheets in the morning
when I wake up, heavy to my feet; how I know
you have been here again: your color on the linens,
the ceiling splitting like the heads of gods and your brain
matter dripping out, the sheets where you slept darkening,
darkening.

Last night, as I was trying to conjure you from the
shadows you left on the pillow,
you called. Said I need to ask you to do something
very important--I need you to do me this one favor.

I thought maybe you were drunk again and wanted to get married.

You wanted the scores for Monday Night Football.

Said you were a little drunk, a bottle of St-Estèphe.

The scores cross the screen and you have lost,
Mark Rothko, and finally I fall back
stretching the chiarascuro of the blankets
flat, your gesture smoothed out.

I even paint them black.

But Mark Rothko, every morning Andy Warhol sees
my fingers strangled in the bedclothes and says your name,
says pentimento, from the Italian meaning
repentance, meaning I am sorry, Mark Rothko, you could
not love me, meaning I paint over your pattern,
but you reappear.

america!

check out this random blog i found a few minutes ago.

it reminds me a bit of the allen ginsberg poem "america".

i have a distinct, imagined news-reel-like image running in my brain right now, of a disgruntled (foreign?) man shouting these posts out at crowds of oblivious americans. much like the overzealous religious preacher man of wells hall fame (at michigan state). [aside: the wells hall man once told me i was "headed for hell, ma'am" on my way to calculus class. ]

i'm going to keep pushing the random button; i'll keep you all informed of my findings.

10-4.

little miss wittrock

almost 15 months now; today she began saying "me", as in "for me" when pointing to things she wanted; and "mine", when she saw her dinner.

evie read me the newspaper today, then shredded it across the entire living room. once again, proof that she is half jeremy and half me.

she's also taken to touching my chest and saying mine, and doing the same to jeremy; something he's been teaching her since she was an infant. it's precious to see evie, especially when she feels uncertain, tap one of us on the chest as if to show anyone around that she's got one of us there to take care of her. *sigh*

nine somewhat random facts about me...

1. i've been the same height since i was 13

2. i have a "widow's peak" on my "part", which makes it difficult to have anything but hippie-hair. so help me, i am trying!

3. my daughter's name means "light, the bringer of good news". (which sounds like it belongs on the score for 'the planets')

4. i hate warm raisins

5. i have dreams about/starring famous people on a regular basis (last night i had a dream about dana reeve)

6. i quit smoking on my birthday, and for the most part, i don't miss it.

7. it is hard for me to relax in the car--i'm pretty terrified of it!

8. i can crack my sternum bone, something i couldn't ever do until i was pregnant. creepy...

9. i like being awake at eight am more than at 2 am. who knew?

vegan firefighters--what?

in today's new york times (have i told you lately that i love you, new york times sunday edition?) there's a fun little write-up about a team of firefighters who are vegans. even better, they're out of a station in austin, texas. be honest, your first thought was that vegan firefighters could only exist in california or oregon. it's alright, i won't tell.

anyhow, it's nice to see that it's becoming a little more widely accepted to be conscious of what you eat, and it's effects on your body now and in the future. for those of you interested, the vegan-team has even posted an array of yummy recipies, here.

as long as we're on the subject, TLC is premiering a show soon called "honey, we're killing the kids". from what i gather, it's about children, their eating habits (which i am sure are horrid) and the enabling behaviors of their parents.

i've said it a million times--being pregnant was the best wake-up call for me, healthwise (and otherwise). i learned to eat correctly, instead of succumbing to the "eating for two" myth and gaining 70 pounds. i think i was a little underweight before getting preggers, but was pretty strict about what i ate from that point on. (as a fetus-bearer, you get only 300 extra calories a day, so you have to make them count.) i think that by the end of my pregnancy, i had gained all of 27 pounds, and probably 5 of that was the last month or so. evie was over eight pounds at birth, though, and very healthy, so my plan worked. (three cheers for peanut butter!)

i have to say, we've got to be smarter about what we eat. we'll blow money on getting the best cell phone, laptop, etc., but not spend the little extra for organic dairy/produce...we'll get our kids all the prepackaged crap they can handle, and then wonder why they are 40 lbs. too heavy at age 10. i saw a child and his mother at kroger a few weeks ago, spending 250 dollars on pre-packaged foods and snacks, and both looked like they were headed for diabetes. it makes me sad. so maybe this TLC show will make a little headway.

extra credit: read diane wakoski's poems, "the fear of fat children", and "greed: part 13", both in the butcher's apron. at evie's baby shower, diane told me that : children don't need sugar and the evening news, they need poetry and challenging lessons.

ok, stepping down from the ivory tower.

banana = orange, apple, kiwi...

the scientific explanation for evie calling her bowl of oranges "banana", here. now, if i only knew why she also insisted upon eating the orange rind?

so it goes

here's a list of the vonnegut i've read:

slaughterhouse-5
breakfast of champions
cat's cradle
welcome to the monkeyhouse (about 1/2-2/3)
god bless you, mr. rosewater
god bless you, dr. kevorkian
mother night
slapstick

american idol

if ron silliman can write about project runway, i suppose i can write about american idol.

is there anyone else who wonders how the hell some of these "singers" can be regarded as talented? i'm thinking of this kid bucky, who seems to be the next lead singer of a lynard skynard cover band; that gnome-ish kevin, a.k.a. "chicken little"; and any number of contestants from seasons past.

this is why i like simon cowell--rather than boost the over-inflated egos of these kids, who were told they were the best by too many people over the years who muct have been simply trying to be polite, he tells his best version of the unbiased, unmotivated truth. of course, it seems rather rude, given that the "polite" responses were nothing more than "feel good" statements designed to protect these (awful!) kids from feeling badly about themselves.

why do you have to feel badly, anyhow? i know i cannot sing. i also cannot speak in any accent. so i do not try, except in the privacy of my own shower or home, and i most certainly do not attempt it in public, expect good reviews, and then insult anyone who tells me otherwise!

i find the whole thing rather absurd, and frustrating. but of course i watch, because mandisa has a phenomenal voice.

on a side note, paula abdul is looking (and acting) more and more like someone with a substance abuse problem. her mannerisms are becoming more childish, she insists that everyone is "brilliant" (and is the worst offender among the judges as far as being an enabler of talentless singers) and i really wonder what could cause her, as was the case on tuesday, to be unable to open her eyes all the way, and look upwards or even straight ahead.

hmm.

silly blogger exercise

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 161.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

Book: Decreation, Anne Carson


Sentence : This is the condition called ekstasis, literally "standing outside oneself," a condition regarded by the Greeks as typical of mad persons, geniuses and lovers, and ascribed to poets by Aristotle.


I have to admit, I love it the category the poets are lumped into. It reminds me of Kerouac, the "mad to burn" Roman-candle people; leave it to the Greeks to decide that anyone with any type of passion must be mad! To paraphrase Doc Holliday in Tombstone, "Very Dionysian."

hobbit feet!

the proof is in the pudding--just like her daddy, at least when it comes to the dirty feet.

adorable, no?

on the third day

day three of no smoking.

the headaches started last night--kind of like having some type of cleaver jammed into the right ride of my "crown" area, then wiggled back and forth.

picture someone hitting the cleaver with a hammer. lovely.

so--no real urges to smoke, etc., just trying to make the head stop hurting. more liquids, not helping so much. motrin, ineffective.

maybe a nap later...

new haircut (thanks mom and dad!)

this is my birthday present--cut and styled this morning by the best i've ever seen, ms. stephanie giammarco.

love it love it love it...

i just looked at the photos and realized how haggard/monkey-ish i look. maybe the next step is a really good nap, vitamins, and exercise. more water wouldn't hurt. oh well, one at a time!

composition no.2

(mulitmedia collage
non-toxic water based paints, cotton swab on construction paper
luz evangelina vasquez giroux y wittrock con madre

portrait of the artist as a young girl

evie in the process of the making of the art. she may have enjoyed in more had she not been 1.) falling down tired 2.) teething 3.) angry about the taste of the paint, which she tried more than once. ha--nothing like wiping paint off a tiny, outstretched tongue.

beware the ides of march

from "the writer's almanac":

Today is the "Ides of March." In the Roman Calendar, each month had three division days: kalends, nones and ides. For months that had thirty-one days, the ides occurred on the fifteenth of the month.

Julius Caesar was assassinated on the ides of March in 44 B.C. A group of Roman senators led by Cassius and Brutus thought Caesar was becoming arrogant and tyrannical, and they devised a plot to assassinate him at a senate meeting on March 15. Many of the conspirators were close friends of Caesar, including Brutus. At the meeting, the group of senators circled around Caesar and pretended to submit a petition. Suddenly, one of them grabbed Caesar's robe and yanked it off his neck, which was the signal to begin the attack. All of the conspirators were hiding daggers, and they each stabbed him as he staggered across the floor.

what an uplifting event to have associated with my birthday! that, and i also share a birthday with fabio. ha!

happy birthday to me....

the day is almost here

in honor of my 26th birthday, i have decided to quit smoking.

i no longer have the mythical/aesthetic attachment to smoking i felt a few years ago, and of course, a few years ago, i was not nearly the person i am now.

so, today is the last day. i'm going out the way i went in, smoking parliament lights; and i'm relieved to feel comfortable making this choice.

to commemorate the occasion, my old poem about the romantic attachment to smoking:

WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE ASKED ME TO QUIT SMOKING

Part One

Because in every picture of Mark Rothko, he is
smoking--he is smoking with a daughter
on his knee, he is smoking looking nine feet high
at a mural panel, he is smoking over the studio sink
in the moments before he dies. You know of him
only what you have seen in my home--the stack
of books which reaches my knees in the corner
near the bed, my knee where for the last six weeks blood
has been settling into a bruise. I tell you I know
he painted something its color once; I even show
you: Untitled, 1960.

Part Two

Because when I was a child, spiraling around the backyard
singing that song of the Red Death my father taught me, ashes,
ashes, we all fall down, he smoked on the back porch steps,
waving his fingers through the curls of Basic Ultra Light
smoke, scolding me to keep my hands out of the flat amber
ash tray; and even now, I can’t help but dip my fingers into
it, tracing small rectangles on the insides of my wrists, forearms,
thinking of the last series of Rothkos--the dark mouth exhaling
into a breath of gray.

Part Three

Because it was my perfect New York moment--standing
outside of the old studio at 222 Bowery Street, smoking
a scarlet papered cigarette from the golden box of Fantasia
Naturals, wrists and fingers curling around the iron gates
at the entrance. I want to call you and tell you that the
gates must be ancient, but have never rusted--they’ve ashed.

Part Four

Because I didn’t remember Abuelito smoking Camel filters
until my father showed me the picture. In it, I am
a child, I am so small that I am a stub of a child looking up
at him, his elbow resting on the kitchen sink, wrist bent
above the ashtray. I must have loved the red of its burn.
And even now, I look up, the picture hanging
at the ceiling, my father saying, “He used to be a chimney”,
thinking that if I exhale now, he will scatter.