October 18, 2010
I have a confession to make – I’m done with this particular blog.
I’ve made a few others. You should check them out.
http://jazfusion.tumblr.com <– My random-what-have-you-mostly-pictures blog
http://namejobbye.wordpress.com <– My updated-infrequently-but-still-going-to-try gaming blog
http://www.pathetic.org/library/6751 <– My poetry (mostly recent stuff)
June 29, 2010
Icarus dreamed to fly
on feathers and wax,
the brave fool.
And braver still, his
pagan voodoo and
amber prison;
Fingertips spread wide
as the flames burned.
I’ve dreamed of the quiet
before the fall. Of icy depths
and emerald fire.
Fingertips spread wide
as the waves drown.
Temptation, I know you.
The sea has swallowed my
wings and I am the straw
that lashed the beast’s back -
a whore, a sin,
a
woman.
6/29/10
May 19, 2010
Here is my Pampers Dry Max story. I know this has been getting a lot of press lately, and I’d like to be able to shed some light on this situation.
I like to think I’m a normal and reasonable mother. Let’s face it, in today’s world disposable diapers are the norm. I feel bad for the environment. I really do. Cloth diapers aren’t exactly feasible for me since I don’t have a washer and dryer; I go to the laundromat. There is one on the first floor of my apartment building, but it’s $1.75 per wash and $1.75 per dry. Considering my son urinates just about every hour…well, you can do the math. For the sake of my sanity, I use disposables and I don’t feel (too) much guilt. There; I’ve justified myself to you. (more…)
May 19, 2010
For those of you who don’t know, I have a son. He is three. And I love him very much. He is also the most cutest, beautiful, talented little three year old you’ll ever have the pleasure of meeting. Which you probably won’t, because you know, you’re reading this on the internet.
I am fortunate enough to be able to stay home with him. And I frequently update my FaceBook with the little things he says during the day. Funny things like, “MOMMY! I NEED SAUSAGES!” and “Ladybug is in my rocket. Space is night-night”. He is also ridiculously good at drawing happy faces on his Magna Doodle, which he does often. But sometimes he draws ladybugs. We also do other geeky crafts, masterpieces that include watercolors and crayons and pipe cleaners and glitter glue and googly eyes, but he only ever creates these masterpieces on his Magna Doodle.
My husband is an artist, and a damn good one, if I do say so myself. My son asks him to draw things daily; all the things he loves: stop signs, train tracks, Sonic the Hedgehog, ladybugs, happy faces, vacuums, fans, our fifteen fishes, Victor our cockatiel, etc. I can only assume that he has picked up some sort of drawing process in watching my husband. I draw and paint, but you know, I kind of suck at it.
Anyway, drawing is his favorite past-time. It’s his standby when we’re doing pretty much anything that doesn’t directly involve his attention. Yesterday I was reading to him aloud as he drew. A few pages into the story, he exclaims, “POOTY!”, which I took to mean he farted. I excused him, and he quickly corrected me, saying, “No, Mommy! POOTY!” and he tapped the magna doodle with his stylus. I looked over his shoulder and saw it was a circle with some dots in the middle. I gave him a puzzled expression, but he looked at me, face beaming, and said again, “Pooty!” and then giggled about it. I then realized what he was trying to tell me: he drew a fart.
And that, dear readers, is why my son is so awesome. He might draw me ladybugs or happy faces, but drawing me farts…well, that’s just the wind beneath my wings.
~JazFusion
May 14, 2010
I’m writing a book. It will not be a very good book. In fact, it probably won’t ever be finished. Life is funny that way.
I read books. I’m always reading. Sometimes I tear through books, and my husband wonders how I can ever digest the story. Sometimes the 200 or 300 pages I read a day isn’t enough. Sometimes, at around 3 a.m., I’ll hold the book tightly to my chest and think, “I’ve read this before”. Of course, I haven’t. It’s not a defunct form of déjà vu, and I am no prophet. It is not simply that I don’t remember reading the words. In fact, I rather tend to remember in almost explicit detail each book I have read. Even as a child. I frequently scan through book stores for those books I have read. They delighted me so, and I wish to pass that on to my son. No, I think to myself: “I know this”. It’s a feeling I have sometimes. As a writer, I feel a lot. Not to assume one isn’t human; we all are. But as a writer, we give voices to those certain emotions, however subtle they are.
There is one writer in particular that I recently unearthed that has made me feel so. I remember my father speaking of him, once. My father read books, as well. Though not in so much a volume as my mother. It really is from her I found my love of reading. I read like my mother. Sometimes inside on the couch or perhaps outside during the day, when the mockingbirds leave their nests and the neighborhood dogs announce their entrances across the street. You can usually find us absorbed in some page or another, our brows furrowed in concentration, backs hunched beneath a solid oak and possibly twirling our hair.
My father, though. He was a philosopher. He never asked what I read, but why. It was important to him. Why? I like to think the marriage of my mother’s voracious reading and my father’s philosophy helped shaped my writing, even as a young girl. There are some who are drawn to writing, not as a moth to flame, but as a fly to a spider-web. We do not consciously choose to write; it is in our blood. Fate, as you would have it. You see, we writers, we fly. We fly fast and far, and sometimes along the way we hit an invisible thread: a web. Sometimes that web was spun by someone else. Sometimes we ourselves spin the web that will eventually catch other writers in its threads. But we always fly.
When I was two-and-a-half, my parents divorced. I didn’t know it at the time, for I lacked the vocabulary, but it fostered sorrow in me. That is not to say I blame my parents for this. As a mature adult, married and with a son, I readily understand the sacrifices each parent made for my behalf; and theirs, too. But it was a sad thing. My life became the fly that is cocooned in the spider’s trap, waiting to be eaten. Have you ever watched a spider? They do not feast on the prey they catch right away. They wait. Minutes, hours, days. It doesn’t matter to them. And all the while the little fly with the little wings stays wrapped in the spider’s threads, wriggling and writhing, trying to break the threads, but they are as strong as iron to the little fly. It doesn’t die right away. Soon enough, though, the spider will come along and suck the innards of that little fly and that will be the end of that. The little fly will have served a purpose, the spider’s belly will be full, and no one will notice the web along the side of the road by the fence in the garden. No one will ever know of the spider and the little fly. And most likely no one cares.
This is what it felt like to be me as a child. I held sorrow in my heart. I was the spider that cocooned my happiness. I held myself prisoner. I pinned my wings down so that I could not fly, thinking it was for the best. I was always to blame.
I can imagine when they made me: the sperm and the egg meeting for the first time. “Hello”, the sperm will say. But the egg, being rather finicky as there are millions of other sperm swimming nearer and only one of her, she will turn her nose up at the sperm and tell him to politely leave. He won’t, though. Like all XY chromosomes, he is stubborn and won’t take no for an answer. And so they’ll strike a deal. Sometimes, that deal isn’t the best and unfortunate things happen. But, in my case, I imagine the deal went something thus: “Let’s make a beautiful female. She will have dark brown hair and eyes. Puberty will come early to her, and she’ll have an hourglass figure and some of the largest breasts imaginable, but lots of stretch marks. Her hands and feet will be unnaturally large for her small height. She will have only two crooked teeth, and four crooked digits. Depression and anxiety will come as naturally as a smile to her, and her self-doubt won’t make it easy for her to make the best choices. She will cry as easily as she will become angered. She will become proficient in the liberal arts. And she will love horses, cats, chocolate and shoes”. I suppose it was an amusing prospect to the egg, and the deal was struck then and there. The egg swallowed the sperm, and thus I was born in the middle of summer, after roughly nine months of gestation.
Life is funny that way.
May 13, 2010
our time is borrowed in fragments
here on earth we have fooled
ourselves into believing we are
the pendulum of the universe; the
great axe that departs head from
shoulders in a steaming spray of
red fireworks.
we wage wars for fun, slaughter
innocence and lamb alike with
a cool monochrome demeanor
and let old die too soon.
5/13/10
May 13, 2010
Marriage is not about you and I.
We were rich before we were poor -
before the stigma of a white picket fence,
a squalling babe at my breast and a 401K.
We were free.
You would act the Robin Hood and
I the Maid Marian, laughing through
Sherwood Forest; the gold slipping
between our fingers as we made love
carelessly beneath the trees.
But you are no hero, and I am no maid.
The mornings hold no stories as we rise
from our bed to start the coffee, make the
breakfast, pack the children off to school
and let Nottingham sleep.
04/25/2010
May 13, 2010
I am creating art.
My eyes paint you as
you undress, trying to fit
which part goes where.
I imagine my hands touching
you in tones of cerulean
or perhaps viridian.
You speak of love, but
charity is a fickle mistress
and we are both for sale.
Abed, we won’t speak as
you press your hips to mine;
and I will wait for you
like stretched canvas.
04/25/2010
May 13, 2010
I can’t remember the ocean
the way I used to – the way sand
felt beneath bare feet, how gulls
circled lazily overhead, picking at
the carcass of a washed up
Portugese man-o-war.
Bronze bodies stretched across
the sand. Tight ribs thrust up like
some great Naga; emaciated and
trying to slither free of a three
thousand dollar prison.
Near the shore, sand castles would
rise and fall, as if every child were
a politician and every wave were God;
the tide leaving fish to rot in the sun.
04/25/2010
May 13, 2010
My son held a ladybug
in his fingers once and
asked me: “What is dead?”
I didn’t have an answer.
I asked myself the same
once, as I sat and watched
a ladybug drown in my coffee.
She tried to swim and I
imagined her mouth -
gaping and gasping for air.
I didn’t move to help her
as she thrashed for the last time;
her body slowly dragging in spirals.
The ladybug was so
small and red I thought it
looked a little like blood.
I never wept.
Back in his room on the floor,
my son sat looking at me in
all his three year old innocence.
On the carpet her body had
been pulled apart – legs crumpled,
red wings held gingerly in his hands.
I looked at him with all my adult
wisdom, but he only ever asked the
one question: “Mama, is she dead?”
And we both wept.
04/16/2010
