Cream Silk Pajamas

Unable to find my navy blue cotton pajamas in the chaos of boxes and piles of clothes, the loose ones, with the top of stars, I washed the silk ones I've had for seven years and never worn. Cream-coloured silk. Found wrinkled in the bottom of a large cardboard wardrobe box. The "Marilyn Monroe" set on sale at Simpsons in the Eaton Centre after working in a nearby office. The top is more like a shirt, and had a large red heart for its single button, which I removed and replaced with a pearl-coloured one. And then never wore. Silk seems too fragile and precious for constant wear. But this is thick, durable, and sleek and soft against my skin. I sit in the lake-blue Director's Chair with plant-green designs that I unholstered once, in front of the computer, typing, sipping coffee, wondering, should I go out and buy dancing clothes at Dancing Days?

Another sarong in golds and browns and oranges and a sheer top with small tangerine moons and shimmering lines like longtitudinal threads of stars to navigate by?

And when will I dance, and where, and with whom?

I pick a purple plum from the fruit basket; it has a slight tang in which its sweetness and succulence is contained.

tags: silk pajamas, dancing, fruit, creativity, writing.

Then Post

Cut it, and cut it, until the meaning's almost lost.

Dreams remain,
hovering.

Pain runs up my left shoulder blade
through my neck into the left throbbing side of my head
and curves over my forehead like an iron claw
until I am nearly blinded.

Take away what you don't want.
Begin.

___
Textual note: I spliced a headache (which is now gone, thanks to Ibuprofen) with remarks on editing. Some of this was taken from a BBC interview with Italian director and screenwriter Emanuele Crialese on his "ethereal masterpiece," Respiro: “When we were editing the film we started from knowing what we didn’t want,” says Crialese. “Then we took away things until we were afraid that we’d almost lose the character. It’s like a piece of rock. You cut it and cut it and cut it...”

I saw the film last night, and loved it. A school of fish forms a central imagery, though none of the online reviews I read mentioned it...

She was stunning in the part of Grazia, too.


tags: editing, Respiro.

The Wind

The wind
is a dancer;
her flowing silk shawls
rustling the trees.

~

The wind
is a dancer;
her silk veils and petticoats
rustling the trees.

~

The wind
is a dancer;
lyrically streaming
sweeping with dervish whirls
and fine silk sarongs
rustling the trees.

~

The wind
is a dancer;
bangles and bells
drumming racing gale force
from nowhere, to nowhere
singing in the trees.

~

The wind
is a dancer;
softer than kisses, a
Genie sprinkling rainbows
over the sky after the storms,
whispering in the trees.


technorati tags: wind, dancer, poetry.

Salvia Sclarea, a most interesting perfume

It's a small raised red mound on my forearm. Because I've scratched it with my nails, nails that no longer break now that I drink fluoridated tap water, it hasn't healed. It's a tiny hot spot, like someone's running a faint electrical charge through it. I hold a bottle of essential oil over it and watch a drop of thick amber liquid seep over the redness. Clary Sage Oil, I swear it takes the itch of insect bites away and they heal. How often have I been good about not scratching only to give in in the morning in bed and vigorously rub one ankle with the other toe? And find I've drawn blood?

I read the bottle. Salvia sclarea eases mental fatigue, isn't that also good?

technorati tags: insect bites, sage oil, itchings & scratchings, mental fatigue, humor.

An Outing

Eventually we leave. It takes a long time to dress ourselves. I iron a nectarine red rayon skirt with bouquets of yellow and orange flowers with green stems, then change to an Indian silk wrap around skirt. I worry that the heat of the steaming iron will melt the delicate fabric. The patchwork squares are an array of colours and designs; each one singular, from floral to geometric, vivid colours of flowers to earth tones. A cantaloupe orange camisole surprisingly matches. She spends an hour changing behind her closed door. When we leave, she is wearing black pedal pushers and a crunched cotton empire sun-top the colour of the tangerine moon. Afterwards, she said men looked at her on the streets.



technorati tags: women, outing, Indian silk skirt, mother and daughter.

Heliotropic Coda

encrypted first draft of a poem

Unfinished Fragments

In the zeal to post a "sentence" a day sometimes I put things up before they're ready.... still working on this. I think what I mean to say is there's always stuff going on under the surface, so reading beneath the lines...

encrypted first draft of a poem