Jenny Mendes

thats all

Jun 26, 2016 7:54am HEAVY That time I thought I could not go any closer to grief without dying I went closer, and I did not die. Surely God had His hands in this, as well as friends. Still, I was bent and my laughter, as the poet said, was nowhere to be found. Then said my friend Daniel (brave even among lions), “It’s not the weight you carry but how you carry it - books, bricks, grief - it’s all in the way you embrace it, balance it, carry it when you cannot and would not, put it down.” So I went practicing. Have you noticed? Have you heard the laughter that comes, now and again, out of my startled mouth? How I linger to admire, admire, admire the things of this world that are kind, and maybe also troubled - roses in the wind, the sea geese on the steep waves, a love to which there is no reply? ~  Mary Oliver

Poetry Sean Thomas Dougherty Portrait of Lebron as Ohio When is a poem one word? Even at 17 he was Baraka            on the court, Coltrane gold toned, a kind of running riff, more than boy-child, man-child, he was one word like Prince.            How back in those drunken days when I still ran in bars & played schoolyard ball            & wagered fives & tens, me & my colleague the psych-prof drove across Eastern Ohio            just to see this kid from powerhouse St. Vincent, grown out of rust-belt-bent-rims, tripped            with the hype & hope & hip hop blaring from his headphones, all rubber soled           ...

Well that was exciting, not to mention an incredible antidote to anyone who might be in need of a happiness injection. This is my sister's photo of the JR Smith, she went downtown yesterday around 7:30 to get a good place to view the parade.... guess that worked! Clearly as evidenced below a lot of people came out to celebrate, and it was so much fun to watch.... What a great day for my long suffering city!!!!  

I made 10 and broke 6.  It's the way it goes with ceramics and in life, nothing ever goes the way you might have imagined it.... and a beautiful poem on letting go. HEARTBREAK is unpreventable; the natural outcome of caring for people and things over which we have no control, of holding in our affections those who inevitably move beyond our line of sight. Heartbreak begins the moment we are asked to let go but cannot, in other words, it colors and inhabits and magnifies each and every day; heartbreak is not a visitation, but a path that human beings follow through even the most average life. Heartbreak is an indication of our sincerity: in a love relationship, in a life’s work, in trying to learn a musical instrument, in the attempt to shape a better more generous self. Heartbreak is the beautifully helpless side of love and affection and is just as much an essence and emblem of care as the spiritual athlete’s quick but abstract ability to let go. Heartbreak has its own way of...

Lots going on this summer.  My posts may be more sporadic..... but I'll do my best to keep up!

JUL 10 JOHN McCUTCHEON at Camp Roosevelt Firebird

TOUCH is what we desire in one form or another, even if we find it through being alone, the agency of silence or the felt need to walk at a distance: the meeting with something or someone other than ourselves, the light brush of grass on the skin, the ruffling breeze, the actual touch of another’s hand; even an understanding we formally could not hold. Whether we touch only what we see or the my stery of what lies beneath the veil of what we see, we are made for unending meeting and exchange, while having to hold a coherent mind and body, physically or imaginatively, which in turn can be found and touched itself. We are something for the world to run up against and rub up against: through the trials of love, through pain, through happiness, through our simple everyday movement through the world. And the world touches us in many ways, some of which are violations of the body or our hopes for safety: through natural disaster, through heartbreak, through illness, through death itself....

Mary Oliver poem 1. Understand, I am always trying to figure out what the soul is, and where hidden, and what shape and so, last week, when I found on the beach the ear bone of a pilot whale that may have died hundreds of years ago, I thought maybe I was close to discovering something for the ear bone 2. is the portion that lasts longest in any of us, man or whale; shaped like a squat spoon with a pink scoop where once, in the lively swimmer's head, it joined its two sisters in the house of hearing, it was only two inches long and thought: the soul might be like this so hard, so necessary 3. yet almost nothing. Beside me the gray sea was opening and shutting its wave-doors, unfolding over and over its time-ridiculing roar; I looked but I couldn't see anything through its dark-knit glare; yet don't we all ...

Come join the workhshop I'm doing a workshop at Baltimore Clayworks June 11-12 - there is still space left!