May 2013
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Burial Hits the Beach
My first book, Burial, is now available from Tarpaulin Sky Press, just in time for summer vacation!
Set in the mind of a narrator who is grieving the loss of her father, who conflates her hotel room with the morgue, and who encounters characters that may or may not exist, Burial is a little novel about an immeasurable black hole. The book grapples with ontology and trades plot for ambience; the...
December 2012
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October 2011
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August 2011
10 posts
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May 2011
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Days 19 & 20: The Beginning
It seems appropriate that I began writing this post on my last day of teacher training and am now (finally) ‘publishing’ it on my last day of my teaching.
This past year — and especially the past few months — have been strange and transitional (among other words [like these]). I could make a list of the things I’ve done, but a list wouldn’t document anything. I...
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VUE #30: Youth Organizing for Education Reform... →
“In communities around the nation, youth organizing groups are becoming effective and powerful partners in school reform. The articles in this issue, produced in collaboration with the Alliance for Education Justice, provide a firsthand glimpse into just a few of their efforts in different communities.”
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Opening the Contemplative Mind in the Classroom →
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Days 17 & 18: I'm Counting on Your Fingers
Two more days, both backward and forward. Two days unlogged and two days to go. I’ve been thinking about savasana in preparation for when I lead a group through (in[to]? beyond? against?) it tomorrow morning. Today, I closed my eyes and spoke out loud in empty space to practice being less frenetic. On the train, I wrote things down in ink: ‘You are not defined by your thoughts,’...
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Day 16: The Expansiveness of Speech
I could write about a certain symbol being dead, but by what means? I do not believe in turning any living person into a body: a dead, once-living body — even if that body, in its life, seemed deeply unalive, already half-dead, unlike a human being who is, in fact, living, being, existing — breathing in reality, the fact or state of having lived, having died, having already felt...
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Day 15: Blood Pressure
April was broad and took place in twenty-four hours. I stood in the doorway. I felt my body fold over itself. Soon, my mind stood up with a long, flat back. Now May is unlatched.
One way to balance away from the wall is to take one foot, then both feet, away from the wall. Draw in your lower rib cage; draw your shoulder blades down your back. Feel your body realign from the base of the spine to...
April 2011
40 posts
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“I write as a literary artist, my ever-provisional, traditionally delineated...”
– John Cayley, ‘The Code is not the Text (unless it is the Text)’
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“You cannot know what you have wanted,
but you will not get it.”
– Andrea Brady, ‘Disappointment’ — from Embrace (2005 Object Permanence, UK)
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“And yet. It seems outlandish that I should need legs to love Emily Dickinson....”
– Rosmarie Waldrop, ‘Nothing and Its Shadow,’ Driven to Abstraction
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Day 14: Lightens / Lightness
Dissolving the surface of the mind, holding its breath, I place my palm near the wall. I place my palm against the surface of the breath.
I move my palm away from the wall. I look beneath my palm and feel its breath.
I feel my body drift.
I fall in love, then the dead ox arrives in the form of a knot in my hip.
The body proceeds. The body begins.
The mind laughs, weeps, and turns once more...
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Day 13: Dungeoneering
Can crying cure the common cold? Are you reading this, or is it a dream? There are words: yoga nidra, or yoga sleep, a state of mind which takes place between wakefulness and dream (Swami Satyananda Saraswati) — a conscious, deep sleep in which the body appears to be at rest, although the mind is aware and responding to things, e.g., ‘right thumb,’ ‘right palm,’...
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Day 12: Corpse Pose
The doctor called me by my first name several times.
‘Hi Claire,’ she said.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Are you on any prescriptions, Claire?’
‘No,’ I said, my mind turning toward prescriptions.
‘It says here, Claire, that you’re allergic to...
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Day 11: Sick Day
Stayed home sick with cavernous headache, throat of agni (अग्नि]). Woke up very early, read some things, including the Bhagavad Gita. While reading about the death of the body — the bones — I thought of a lyric from ‘Sawdust and Diamonds’ (see below): Though our bones they may break / and our souls separate / why the long face?
After I read, I slept.
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I slept...
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Sample Syllabi at The Center for Contemplative... →
Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about contemplative education. In particular, I’m interested in the ways in which contemplative practices can be incorporated into lesson plans — and, more broadly, full courses — in innovative, rigorous, and non-dogmatic ways. The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society offers an impressive, multidisciplinary selection of...
'And the articulation in our elbows and knees...'
Day 10: Half-Life
Halfway finished and feeling hopeful. On Friday morning, I learned about non-profit yoga organizations and teaching opportunities, e.g., Street Yoga (linked below) and The Lineage Project, which lit a fire in my mind. I’ve been working in urban education for the past three semesters, and I love my students. (They’re easy to love, even when they show up having not done their homework,...
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Street Yoga →
“Street Yoga is a non-profit organization that teaches yoga, mindful breathing, and compassionate communication to youth and families and their caregivers struggling with homelessness, poverty, abuse, addiction, trauma and behavioral challenges so they can grow stronger, heal from past traumas, and create for themselves a life that is inspired, safe, and joyful. Our programs are based on...
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Day 9: The Bruise
Today, I learned you can get high using only your breath. One way is a pranayama technique is called bhastrika, ‘bellows breath,’ in which you inhale and exhale with great force until you crack up or stop breathing, whichever comes first. You can also cool your entire body down by practicing sitali: roll your tongue — create a straw — and breathe in through your mouth and...
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Day 8: 'More than mad, much worse than mad'
I’ve been enjoying The Anatomy of Melancholy, which is actually really funny (as in curious and droll). I mean, Robert Burton totally lists ‘sighing’ and ‘poetry’ as two of the symptoms or signs of love-melancholy. And check out this cure, where ‘them’ = the love-melancholics:
What remains then but to join them in marriage? […] Then they may kiss...
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“Many of them cannot tell how to express themselves in words, or how it holds...”
– Robert Burton, from ‘Women’s Melancholy’ The Anatomy of Melancholy
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Day 7: Blue Light
There’s a lot to say, but I’m fatigued. So here are some words and phrases to tide you (you, who?) over: consideration, absorption, consequence, breathe. Full embodiment, fallen triangle, constructive delirium. Dull pain, shooting pain, burning pain, lonely. Today at lunch, a glass of water shattered in my hand. There was no blood. I don’t know why; I can’t explain. Later,...
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Day 6: 'I wish I had a gentle mind, and a...
Today I looked at more illustrations of skeletons and considered state-dependent memory. The body does not differentiate between physical and emotional pain, Richmond said, redefining anatomy: ‘to separate things out into pieces.’
* * *
If you hold a painful asana long enough — if you come back to it day after day after day — you’ll eventually dissolve the...
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Poem Update
A new (well, newer) poem of mine, ‘Credo for Clairvoyance,’ has just been published in Gulf Coast. I’ve been writing super slowly lately (with patience!), and I feel like this poem itself might eventually grow into a longer thing, blah blah blah… which is to say, I’m here to say this: I’m thrilled the Gulf Coast editors were willing to include my poem in their...
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Day 5: Bones
1. The skeletons in my anatomy textbook have eyeballs. Admittedly, I am attracted to this aesthetic.
2. I read Wittgenstein on train to school this morning. (When I said Nietzsche, I wasn’t joking!) (Only there’s a difference.)
3. On the train at 7:00am, I sometimes take out a pen. Today, reading Wittgenstein, I underlined: ‘It is obvious that an imagined world, however...
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Day 4: The Anatomical Self
My experience with taking a few days this week to do and study yoga from 8:00am-10:00pm has been follows: my mind has become rather, um, blank. Also, crystallized. Also, very hectic.
‘Why am I not reading books?’ I think.
Today, I thought, ‘I should be reading Nietzsche.’
Thoughts race. Like a corpse, I close my eyes. I see blue light and outlines of images. Tonight,...
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Call for Dialogue
I’ve heard from a few people who are also reading The Anatomy of Melancholy and/or The Melancholy of Anatomy and/or the Bhagavad Gita and/or the the Yoga Sutras of Patajali right now (not now, but now), either along with this project or by chance. This conversation feels infinitely exciting to me.
That said, if you’re reading any of the same books right now, please drop a line and say...
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Day 3: Entering the Void
Today, I pressed up against my mind, an uncomfortable space. The game was meditation, and the rules were (or are, I should say) this: 1) notice and allow every thought that comes, and 2) practice every day, for at least ten minutes.
I sat up on a block against a wall. I closed my eyes. I tried to roll my eyes back towards my brain. I tried to trace my breath: 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3.
My heart began to...
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“I know the guru on the mountaintop is just a cartoon. Real life is lived in the...”
– ‘Nerve’ by Shelley Jackson, The Melancholy of Anatomy
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“Not that pain is the worst thing in the universe. Interesting things happen when...”
– ‘Nerve’ by Shelley Jackson, The Melancholy of Anatomy 