100 Days 2010.10 Cloud

Please view my inspiration piece at:
http://johntimmons.com/video/archives/39

Cloud

100 Days 2010.09 Christian

Please view my inspiration piece at:
http://johntimmons.com/video/archives/62


Christian

Blue-tinged fear, an empty hotel room floor
Only the night before you kissed me on the beach
The Costa Rican night alive with waves and wind and desire,
First kiss, forbidden kiss, the rules of the trip were very clear

Earlier that day behind a palm tree, while the rest of the group was
In the ocean your hand opened me up to worlds
I never could have imagined at 17, even if I had wanted to
But that night, that blue-black night, you changed my life forever

No, stop, I can't; but I was young and you were strong and
You entered me like a hot knife through soft butter my brain
Knew it was wrong but my traitorous body welcomed you
I screamed and cried and then lay still until it was finally over

The next morning you came to say good bye to the group and the reverend
And his wife. You want last picture? you asked in your terrible English
(My Spanish was better) And I thought maybe I had dreamed it all, the cold
Tile on my bare bottom, the sharp pain of entry, the shame, the guilt,
Did I imagine it all?

My seventeen year old brain could not find the words to tell the reverend's wife
I had just been kissed, and now I had to fit this new ugly word into the
Narrative of my short, tortured life. I cried when I told her, but she did
Not understand and mistook my tears for shame at breaking the
Rules, and I could not say the ugly word, it would not leave my throat

She forgave me my trespasses and the next night we went home
Another 17 years of my life has passed and now I can say:
I kissed a man named Christian on a beach in Costa Rica
And I wanted to tell everyone, the next night he raped me
And I couldn't tell anyone. That is my old life, my other life,
My life before this newborn narrative, born from blue-black fragments of
My former life

100 Days 2010.08 I Had a Dream About You Last Night

Please view my inspiration pieces at:
http://johntimmons.com/video/archives/96
http://steveersinghaus.com/mediaplay/?p=754
http://100days2010sue.blogspot.com/2010/05/day-8-i-never-dreamed-of-you.html


I Had a Dream About You Last Night

I had a dream about you last night, lately I always do
I had a dream about you last night even though you don't exist

My will to bring you to life creates dreams like false memories:
Mediocre former lovers now enrapture me with orgasmic lovemaking

Old crushes who probably still work as dishwashers or at gas stations
Appear in dreams like Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird

I had a dream about you last night even though you don't exist
And when I woke, I cried because I will never see you

100 Days 2010.07 Life Is Great

Please view my inspiration piece at:
http://johntimmons.com/video/archives/148

Life is Great

100 Days 2010.06 The No I Never Heard

Please view my inspiration pieces at:

http://johntimmons.com/video/archives/144
http://steveersinghaus.com/mediaplay/?p=750

http://100daysphotographs.blogspot.com/2010/05/day-6-may-27th-2010.html

The No I Never Heard

I have too much to say and nothing to say at all
You are gone and the saying doesn't change that
Some people may picture you at a bus stop or park bench
Waiting, to be reunited with your wife, your granddaughter, your mother
Or my sister and I

That is false poetry, words made up to soothe where soothing cannot heal
And healing cannot hope and hoping chafes like the skin around my nose
After the third box of tissues on Halloween morning
Elizabeth was dressed as a ladybug but you already knew
The last picture of you and her was from Babcie's house two days before,
Colleen dressed her up to see her cousins, you and mom stopped by
And I stayed home, sick, not wanting to infect the little ones

The night you died I called to check on you, something I had never done before
Mom called me at work to say you went to the ER the night before, sore throat
She tried to put you on the phone (which she had never done before)
And of course you couldn't talk, or didn't want to,
Either way, I never even heard your voice in the background
Saying no

Four hours later the phone rang, it was mom, is Rich with you?
"Rich!" He was sleeping on the couch so I could rest
He's gone, my mom said, your father's gone, he died
"What do you mean?" He had a sore throat, he was 57 years old, surely I
Was still asleep and this was all a nightmare that Rich would wake me from,
Angry, because I was kicking him in my sleep

There is no park bench, but I wish there was a spirit shoppe,
A dark, quiet place with filled with amber glass jars and unspoken hope
A place where I could barter my anger and sorrow for a jar containing a sound
The sound of your voice in the background saying no

100 Days 2010.05 I is Me and She is Me

PLEASE view my inspiration pieces at:
http://johntimmons.com/video/archives/14
http://steveersinghaus.com/mediaplay/?p=744
http://100days2010sue.blogspot.com/2010/05/day-5-objects-are-louder-than-they.html




I is Me and She is Me

It’s just like one of those tests they gave me in the third grade when they were testing me for learning disabilities. Look at the picture and then tell me how many objects you remember. A Nintendo DS, a pink Fender electric guitar, an acoustic guitar leaning against the fireplace, an Audrey Hepburn-like woman staring back at me from the TV, twin framed photographs, a large brown sectional sofa. Did I remember enough? I was being tested for learning disabilities because my third grade teacher was going through a nasty divorce and decided to take her frustration out on someone. According to my mother’s narrative of my childhood, that someone was me. This is how I remember it: Rorschach tests, pencil tracing each side of a picture of a butterfly, first right handed, then left handed, being taken out of class by the school psychologist every day. I can’t remember whether it made me feel special or just different. It turns out that not only did I not have a learning disability, but I was blessed with an above average intelligence yet cursed with supreme intellectual laziness.

She pondered Steve Ersinghaus’ essay-was it on polygons or paragons? How could she have forgotten already; either way it didn’t matter, she would have to look up either word in the dictionary. Contextually she understood both words, but if pressed to define them, it would be difficult-though she would probably have an easier time defining paragon. She used to remember quotes from Shakespeare and Shelley (Percy Bysshe and Mary), Kurt Vonnegut and Catch-22. Now she remembers which account to post the annual subscription for the update to the frame machine, why it’s important to know who initiated the exchange when swapping new cars with a New York or New Jersey dealer, and the reason why Doug the mechanic was fired two years ago-it was because he took a customer’s car to Dunkin Donuts to get himself some breakfast before performing the authorized repair work. She used to have a MacGyver-like ability to fashion a bowl or a bong out of objects on hand-an apple, a toilet paper core, a friend’s mom’s decorative glass bottle. Now she was known for her Lumberg-like ability to clear a paper jam from any of the ancient objects that served as printers in her office.

She ran into an old friend at a bar when she went to see another old friend’s band play. This friend used to be her boss and now she had her own staff. Her former boss asked her: how are things going? This was after her fourth (fifth?) Stoli gimlet so it was easy for her to lie: Things are great, I have a great job, I’m married for three years now, we own our own place, and I have a niece I adore. In perspective, when compared to that other life of hers fifteen years ago, when this man was her boss, her life was “great”. Here, however, was the truth underneath her lie: things are mediocre at best, she had a decent-paying job that was sucking her soul, her marriage, while still to the love of her life, was a daily struggle since her grief and depression over the untimely and unexpected death of her father two and a half years ago, and her fierce love of her niece burned in her heart in painful contrast to her fruitless longing for a child of her own.

The collision of two things in my life has made me stop and consider the significance of “perspective” seriously and mindfully: weekly psychotherapy and hearing the word “narrative” used with increasing frequency. My mother, who is probably the smartest person I know, has always given me the sagest wisdom I have ever heard, even though it has taken me my entire 34 years to begin to put it into practice. You can’t change people, but you can always change the way you react to people. I am now beginning to realize that now I can take this to mean I can change how I react to myself and that no matter how good or bad or mediocre my life has been, I can still create my own life’s present and future narrative.

100 Days 2010.04 Change

Please view my inspiration pieces at:

http://johntimmons.com/video/archives/18
http://www.blurb.com/books/356800

Change

Take these

every single day at exactly the

time. You are



and the

will

you to
There may be some

and

along the way but if you take them ritualistically, systematically, and with purpose, you will


For two years I have taken these


I have given them a


And yes, because I took them ritualistically, systematically, and with purpose, there has been
But I wasn’t necessarily

Then one day something came along through my haze of


to give me an alternative to finding out what I was missing, because all along, what I have been missing in my life has always been my biggest

Do this thing every single day for

Do it ritualistically, systematically, and with purpose and maybe



instead of

can be the catalyst for

100 Days 2010.03 Stars

Please watch the inspiration video at:
http://johntimmons.com/video/archives/28

I tried my hand at a little something different today (maybe it's the illness) but when I had this conversation Sunday something about the sweetness and innocence of it struck me so profoundly that I knew I had to do something with it. When I saw John's video, I knew this could tie in somewhat.

I hope you enjoy it: Stars- A Conversation Between Me, My 7 Year Old Cousin, and Her Mother

100 Days 2010.02 Perspective

Please view my inspiration pieces at:
http://johntimmons.com/video/archives/66
http://steveersinghaus.com/mediaplay/?p=726
http://onehundredpoems.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/002-from-your-face/

Perspective

How I see my face:

Small forehead, big nose
Brown, discolored eyelids
Pores like lunar craters
Deep set eyes-like slits in a cut of pork belly

How my husband sees my
face:

Beautiful

Photo Courtesy of Christy Benoit

100 Days 2010.01 Icy Hand

http://johntimmons.com/video/archives/93 This video is so beautiful- I wasn't expecting to be so immediately and directly inspired.

Icy Hand (For Rich)

bits of inspiration, like flakes of snow,
float through a bright pink winter sky

we scramble like children through thick white piles-
you warm your hands on my inner thigh

I wrap my feet around your calf and you shiver with delight;
these are the nights that you remember: the nights before we had to try

Life got in the way of art tonight...

...and I couldn't be happier.

Tequila Sunrise

In the fall of 1995 I completed my first two credit courses at Tunxis after giving up in two previous years. The first course was sociology in which I got an A. The second course was Composition in which I got a C. This Composition professor was new, strange, challenging and inspiring. He wore baggy khaki pants with grandpa cardigans over button down plaid shirts with Nike's and smoked Marlborough Reds down to the nub in the courtyard right before class while he chatted with students like myself eager to soak up what we could from this new strange intellectual from Texas.

Having a conversation about short story writing outside the 200 building before class one day as the Marb Red was burning dangerously close to his fingers, I lamented about a floppy disc of stories and poems (this was the mid nineties remember) I had either written in or right after high school that I had misplaced. I was particularly upset about losing a story I had written in the second person Ala Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis entitled "Tequila Sunrise". I don't remember exactly how the story went but it was something about a Wall Street type asshole drinking and womanizing and being caught in an inescapable pattern of alcoholism and abuse. Anyway, I couldn't express my dismay enough and was looking to my professor to offer some suggestions on how to recreate this legend in my mind. What happened next changed my entire way of thinking about art and life. My professor raised his hand to point for emphasis, ashes flying, and Steve Ersinghaus said the following words to me:

I think it's a great thing that you lost that story,
you don't even know what better stories you may still have inside
you.

Fifteen years later I am still trying to find out if I have any better stories inside me. Thank you, professor, for making me think maybe I do, even after all this time away from the great lettuce head. I hope to do you proud in this project.

Batting Practice

So with only two days to the official start of 100 Days 2010 I thought I would get some practice in at writing everyday, even if it's just for a few minutes. Let me start warm ups by telling a little about the 100 Days ideas I considered and rejected.

• 100 Days of commitment to exercise-I am in dire need of pound shedding.


• 100 Days of looking for a new job- I am in dire need of employment that challenges, moves, and stimulates me


• 100 Days of pictures of my niece Elizabeth-she is sweet, beautiful, and beyond photogenic and what better excuse to spend more time with her


• 100 meals I have never cooked before-I will leave that to the professionals like Maggie Ducharme


• 100 interviews with 100 different people where I asked them the same 3 or 5 or 10 questions and published their answers.


• 100 reasons to live-I am using this project a little bit (or a lot of ) therapy for myself.

Some of these ideas may still find their way into the work I do submit as I still have not committed to an art form for the project. Full disclosure: I know we are supposed to work off of someone else in the project's work and I intend to do that as often as possible but I do have some ideas that have been bubbling up since I've been thinking about joining this project so I may include them anyway but who knows? They may be improved upon by finding inspiration in one of the other 100 days works.

Into the fire

So I have decided to participate in 100 Days 2010 www.onehundreddays.net, follow tweets about it at #100days2010. My concept is simple: discover the artist within by looking to inspiration without. I can't say what types of work I will be contributing for sure, I plan on seeing how inspiration strikes. I may try a poem or a photograph or simply a personal essay. My bio: I am an office manager, student, wife, sister, aunt, daughter, and lapsed writer. I finished my first associates degree from Tunxis on the 10 year plan in 2003 and I re-enrolled in the summer of 2009 but have not committed to a degree program. A long time ago, in a life far, far away, I thought I wanted to be a writer. Then I didn't. Now I'm not so sure but I have been so inspired by this project that I can't NOT be involved and at least try to create some work. I have so much respect for the work that has already been created in the 2008 and 2009 collaborations that I hope very much to be able to add something worthy to share cyberspace with whatever works evolve in 2010.