Eating Ants

From The Body's Question: Poems Tracey K Smith US Poet Laureate 2018

Ants love sweets. I relate. I relate.

Crave is me.

Save the colony, are they.

Alone in my honey ...

Swarms about my crumbs ...

My home in their planet.

He chides. More Protein.

Eat more insects, scientists say. 

I am without their predictability
a persistent pheromone informed calculus 
I am tornado like shadowing above them 
in my fear of itchy contamination. 

It is in my head: automatic negative thoughts.
Bait them, slow to the queen they go. 
No.

Voices in my head;
I'd rather not kill the ants but I do want to be rid'f 'em. 
What of an Option B?

Mock (giggle)
Eat ANTS.

Chorus
We need ants.

Refrain 
There is science! 

Yuck surfaces from my gut's own microbiome.


I am not at the ready to extinguish life
to partner with residual guilt
I am open to sharing space with planet savers
oblivious to true knowing

It is in my heart: be mindful
seductively resilience comes among the pharmakons 
vinegar and cinnamon.

Notes: 
This poem evolved from a satirical exchange about real life ants in the kitchen. While writing I encountered nudges on this poems' purpose as I try to wedge into my life more time for poem-ing. 
After a chat with a local poet I seek and find again the inaugural reading by Tracy K Smith. I scan and listen soon to hear the poetic reference to ants and purpose and reach Joy and poem such that "The body is memory". 
In my next attempt to squeeze in some writing time - I listen with some disappointment to Dr. Daniel Amen reading of his children's book. 
Distracted from life-balance again by tasks at the intersection of me and work [In chunks it appeared on my LinkedIn while posting my 5th anniversary search for collaborators] I click; nudged by prior knowing through Community TV curation and a friend who often connects me to a world bigger than my box. I take time to listen to informing promotional videos by Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg about the nonprofit Option B which just so happens to be more on what to do about ANT specifically when beset by trauma.

And as I revel in the puzzling of words, word usage examples play along: 

mindful eating will allow you to savor your food and eat more intuitively rather than emotionally

and end in a surreal wrap-up with the term pharmakon (Jacques Derrida Plato's Pharmacy) and inference by David Foster Wallace 

The self-conscious appearance of unself-consciousness is the grand illusion behind TV's mirror-hall of illusions; and, for us, the Audience, it is both medicine and poison

Reoccurring Realizations and Rain

‘Ah, that is what I was doing.’ The voice in my head says ‘you should count these’, these times that you were lost & found. Then the idea passes. Counting that is, immediately distracted by how familiar this eureka, what was once mere recall, seems over the most mundane of things: cat food cans open, tea in microwave, shoes in room x, list on table b, vitamin on the counter, stove on…with unmonitored scary outcomes, lights left burning. Sometimes the smells call me back to the kitchen. And I fear that more times, will be alarmed for smoke, if I do not get more connected. Yes I think the issue is staying connected.

When I try to speak of these instances of forgetfulness, the ‘me too stories’ of misplaced keys, missed b’days or late recall of appointments are instant retorts from the listener. And I know that it is common to forget – maybe due to excessive busyness or poor list management; but when is being ‘disconnected’ from what you are doing become outside of the understandable. What is the benchmark, the count? What is not common?

My son suggests it is not a topic for jest, or discussion. It is not real – this loss of mindfulness. My partner – jests. He shares the room and the life that will become more unknown to me and he too does not want this to become more real.

I have a T-shirt and bumper sticker that says “I do what the Voices in my head tell me”. In jest, the retort is it would be a better imprint if it said “I do what the Voices in my head remember to tell me”. Lists I try them. Forget them. They find different places like cell phone and keys and those documents made specifically to not go in such circles again. My life’s work was geared toward removing redundancy and now I feel captive to it.

The silver lining: I like the feeling of remembering ideas previously connected to. Not experiences so much. With ideas I rehearse remembering, the voice in my head repeating key phrases so that in the short term I will be able to engage in potentially engaging conversations. If too much time passes, and I am not certain what the duration is, these key phrases come back to me as sounds I cannot quite catch. Not quite the same as searching for a name to go with a face; it is more like a hum of words to a song that is familiar but you really do not know the lyrics. This happened to me before. When I tried to learn another language and when my Instructors had strong accents. One thing I do recall is this feeling associated with my Final Exam for Russian Literature.

As I try to recall – I think her name was Nona (it just came to me as I stretched into remembering) Welleck (spelling to be confirmed). She was particular taken with an author whose name began with a G. I was too; but without doing an Internet search I will not be able to tell you the author or the compelling interest. She was a young communist by lack of options. She was married to a significantly older man (maybe too due to lack of options) and they lived on St. Ronan St. (a street that holds some intrigue). He too was published and in many languages. He was employed by Yale and she was slumming teaching at SCSU. All this is shallows from a time that I ingested ideas and seemed full of excitement connecting literature, history and social relevance together. But not one of these bits of knowledge come to me…but I know if I see something in print I may feel a Eureka rush of recall – that will be like mist within no time at all.

I know the mind is capable of more. I see its elasticity and girth in the gifts of my son and partner and I vaguely recall such capabilities from my childhood. I know I scored incredibly high in mechanical aptitude (Military Entrance Exam) at 17 when my only exposure to such things was overheard conversations between my brothers & father at dinner. There was a time when I was connecting. I wanted to study Russian via immersion. Long ago assumptions of capability.

As I post I realize that this scribble has taken a few hours to construct and that I started it in the middle of the night because the rain was making me anxious: intense downpours, winds and thunder. I actually felt afraid...and wanted distraction. I am now hearing it again through the voices and I am tired...so I will go back to my pillow and wish intently for sleep.

Insight -- that wakes me with a to do list

Seeking informing content for the WPAA-TV 2011 celebration of Free Speech Week Oct 17-23rd has been my latest distraction. The outcomes have been inspiring, at least to me.

Outcomes: Permission to schedule starting in Sept the film Severe Visibility, a dramatization of a theory on 911 events for 911 10th anniversary programming; and from 10.15.11 and 12.3.11 the documentary (Tradesman: Making an Art of Work). This program compliments the celebration of contributions by local tradesmen who volunteered to renovate the 1924 Barn into a Community Access TV studio/Black Box Theater in the face of public naysayers.

In process: An idea. Illustrate the power of alternative media. How: Do a local video capture of opinions and the power of informing those opinion holders with alternate media with an in-house event at 28 So. Orchard St. Open House Event: House Party at the Home of Free Speech serving Hot Coffee with the potential participation in Talk Back of one of my favorite commentator's on media.

1. Purchased 2 DVDs based on the permissions and prepared Guarantor Paperwork
2. Locate contact info and used it to reconnect with Prof. Paul Janensch
3. Started inquiry permissions process for the movie Hot Coffee on Civil Justice which is now showing on HBO. (I highly recommend viewing this work. It informs well. It may inspire you to take action. Stella is a hero. Director Susan Saladoff has a great sense of story. Bravo! This work should be on '50 Documentaries To See Before You Die' which is now showing on Current TV.

October will be busy as the play Cracked Upon a Time will be performed by PIECE Theater at Living Theater Oct 13 - 22. studioW volunteers will be doing video capture of this WPAA-TV partner event. This play was staged at studioW at WPAA in Dec 2010 as the 1st performance event in the new facility to an awed crowd. Another must see.

quake & waves --- the world became even smaller

Of the Sea - it is hard to imagine the magnitude of the ocean horizon so the tremors of that same ocean is even more remote a plausibility to imagine. But the mother in me suspects its vastness does not compare to the distance created by not knowing about someone dear who is in harms way. I am blessed not to have a child in a war, or ill, or desperately lost in circumstances ... but today I was given a taste of what if. It is so crushing.

Prayers seem an inadequate but appropriate response.

For those in harms way today, I will add my prayers.

[Response to American Samoa - Towering tsunami waves spawned by a powerful earthquake.]

images, dandies, and tweets

Some images are come by accidentally. Some take on lives of their own. Most can fill-in the blanks of a story. Some images also need blanks filled in. I named this image: aftermath - wearing liberty. I took it at Ground Zero. Because I know it is Ground Zero - it speaks to me. Without knowing this, the picture is incomplete in its telling. Clarity takes many forms. Maybe this too is true of truth.

Sometimes information can saturate. Saturation can cloak memory. Lack of sleep can do the same. Together, too much input and too little sleep, form a haze of thought something like scrabble with an acute random connectedness. I often get to a point of saturation. Today it happened. I know I heard things of interest to me but my mind feeling intent upon this knowing - registered blank. Distractions fill in these blanks. Blogging with conviction becomes more difficult in the haze. (I am the generation of purple haze- Are You Experienced? not the generation of hazegame.)

Some distractions: Papa wants to know if I can Google backwards to find a word he can not spell. The word is bat poop. Last night I Googled radish-tops-eat and confirmed what he had wondered about for years: Yes radish tops can be eaten much the same way he eats dandelion greens or wild spinach. I did not take any real time from the day job to be with him, or to be good to me today. And last evening's sleep was again interrupted about 4 am with noises of raccoons in the kitchen. We have relocated 10 so this visit was not expected.

Another word that entered my sphere of distraction was tweet. A week ago I declared I had no awareness or knowledge of tweet as other than bird sounds. However, the Twitter social-networking message tweet is now in my purview: through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question you can be known between the lines. Tweet is the way I have overheard my children talk on the phone for years. I am not ready to go there. But I did discover If about the future... which from book to tbd; is a place for further exploration. It is the archival references to free spoken word ripe for my future visiting, that compel.

evolving

Well I was not sure I would be remembering the momentary distraction word for today: but in passing it connected and was recallable. Am I evolving, too? Is this buzz word informing or reforming or self-involving? The term infers substantial change. This term reconnected me to something else I wanted to explore: Guerrilla Marketing and the idea of unintended consequences that I anticipate commenting on here after June 5th.

As a business analyst I have always been informed by errors, challenged by defects, and found that gaps suggest opportunities. Are these tools for evolution?

I need to evolve further the potential of FREEMAN PENNY QUINN, the 1st. I need to evolve further the toolkit for citizen journalists. I need to evolve further the daily practices that promote good health (yes I did walk Jake today!).

Evolution is a very busy thing but since it is nearly tomorrow I will need to get busy with it later... (but 1st a bedtime story about the other word of the day to which i can say I am often far from being gruntled ...unless of course, there is word play. nite cliffy)

Where should I be, where is my mind?

My spiritual mentor would always correspond to me on a transformed scrap of paper. A sample of such a transformation circa 1993 is shown here. I found it difficult to throw away even with its tea stains.

I am at my work table where I access work from home and do community tasks via computer. The presumption is that on occasion I collect my thoughts here via this blog which is concurrently a collection of past and future memories. This process is expressed via a Maxim which is keeping a diary supports personal development.

So I am here but I just drove some distance. Driving is now a rare occurrence given I have one eye tracking left. This makes the passenger more aware of my vulnerability than myself. Dad was my passenger today. We arrived late to the commitment to heaven ceremony (which requires either faith or imagination) held by the family of Rosalie Catherine Cook (his sister, my aunt and mentor). Gathered were unfamiliar faces that were connected through Rosalie. The gathering was small and polite. Charlie broke the ceremonial sounds with a how do you do to the person to his right. This fella married into the family via the youngest daughter of Bill, niece to Charlie and Rosalie. Yes there were cousins in the room. People who once participated in games of tag, kick-the-can, hide & seek all cousins from the occasional family picnic of decades ago.

Rosalie had been a beacon of family connected-ness in a older sister fashion while she lived in CT. That changed more than several years ago. Family distances were not bridged – hearing impairment and other aging issues taking the reigns of daily life when she retired to Florida. The rest of us entered lives after teen years. Her recent return home was brief. It allowed for one visit which included the expected squeeze of the hand…the ‘good to see you my dear' whisper in the ear, the 'what can I feed you discourse. Odd disconnected memories of Rice Pudding made me bring her some. She just smiled. Maybe it should have been Tapioca. (The absence of cigarettes was very pronounced. She had been the embodiment of the meaning of Virginia Slims for me even as the cancer sticks poured from the pack of Camels or Marlboro.)

But the mind has no focus as the heart tries to reflect: cousins, pieces of art and some craft pull me in several directions. I do not turn on the radio in near fear of more connections that I cannot trace.

My sister has Dad now. They were part of the procession to the burial site along with another aunt and cousins. I returned to my table with a promise to myself to visit here before attending to the external loci of control. Upon returning, I did walk myself and the dog first because it is at this too that I fail daily.

Back to the main event: Dad did not recognize his daughter. She resides on the other ocean’s side. Many years have passed. Today as most days she embodies confidence. She was simply and smartly dressed with color accents. I immediately considered how “Rosalie would have just loved how she looks”. I did the basic black attire. it fit and the random thought for what stylish colorful item in my closet would Rosalie like, passed into nothing she would like would fit today – so the 'do not go there’ voices in my head won and I wondered in thought too much more pressing tasks at hand feeling I would be lucky to be dressed and on time. Not lucky.

Rosalie. You grace every room in my home. There is no more to write.

lost & found about finding and loosing connections

(the drag of days -drafted on MLK day and reflecting back to 12.28.07)

I am living in an overwhelmed state of being with ‘must be done’ defined by an external locus of control.

This blog was undertaken, in part, to determine if I have the desire and capacity to engage in discovery and discourse? To put another way, Do I have the ability to independently think and reason and if so, does it or can it matter to achieving fulfillment in life? I am attracted to, and want to, understand and contribute to the ideals of an ‘open society’. But am I failing at this for so it seems? Or is it that failing is a fatal flaw in the construct of community engagement and consensus? How can global and local citizenship and arts and ideas and family matters and living healthy be made unworkable in the day today?

I have been distracted in very brief moments by the presentations of Ayaan Hirsiali and Irshad Manji, both impressive young women (CSPAN2). The presentations made me want time in my life to read Infidels and the Trouble with Islam, respectively, and to feel worthy of discourse with such nimble and noble minds. I was hearing that a missing skill set of our time is debate, decent, revise, reform.

I was in immediate agreement and pleased to hear the roots of Islam connected to inspire-innovate-create. But the telephone rang and my Diversity Day (MLK) was interrupted/derailed by an external locus of control.

Other distractions that got into my random scribble, the theme American Angels. A local Peter Gardella (Hamden, CT) with the theme of useful spirits in a material world ironically tied to a purchase I made during the holidays to support my imagination and a local artist. It is a large sun made of waste wood from Angel wings for other art pieces. I refer to it as a deconstructed Angel.

Forwarded an email string on puzzling (and art that inspired: This individual's compelling distraction found a place in the world of advertising. Magical, alluring, and uncanny. My reaction was to understand the pictures in the string and be informed about their roots. I always seem to want context even after being compelled to different zones by art.

Instinct, the nature of humanness, or peculiar to a personality type: too much to explore now as my day is being stolen by the day job once again. Connecting to that moment go here: Literally Finger Painting way cool in the moment of contact ---this link gives you more info about the artist and it is easier to send along to others...http://guidodaniele.com/