Holiday Season

This time of year always gets me thinking of where I am in life and what happiness means for me---being able to define what is working well in my life and figuring out how to change what I'm not so sure of. I'm not sure why I'm already thinking of my New Year's resolutions---esp. since I just assessed my life for Rosh Hashanah, but it seems to be a theme---now that I'm getting older. I've always had a combo of laissez-fare and serious ocd organization. Not sure how this dichotomy works, but somehow it does.

So my questions to myself are, where do I want to be as an artist and where do I want to be as a woman. Anyone else care to share your answers? I'm feeling both young and old, successful and not quite there yet. Carla, my yoga teacher would say, yes, these things are normal. You feel your feelings.

I'm wondering if my problem is that I've never really clarified my goals. I want to write, teach, be happy and be in love and to be healthy and not have to struggle. Am I being too loosey-goosey?

Some of us at Drisha have been talking about how women treat/view themselves---how we often appear wishy-washy and apologetic. We begin sentences: I'm sorry, I'm not sure I'm right, but I'm thinking...

And I know I've always had a hard time even deciding what to order from a menu, it all looks good. And now even with my poems, I'm not sure where they're going. I'm posting a draft below. I don't want to talk too much about the new projects because it seems that once you articulate something about a project, then you lose some of the discovery. So I'm just going to keep on trying to feel what I'm feeling.


Thanksgiving

What if I were to love you,
transfer blood from one
to the next, then does one
have a piece of the other,
breath of memory or dream
walking down, an opera
coming in from the window---

my voice or yours? Do you remember
where we began, that first taste,
you sitting in your chair,
me, with flowers
in my hair.

How then, did it come to this?
You with your stone,
me with my mirror---

for these do we give thanks?
Put the story on the table
and cut it up. Swallow
and keep it down.

The bits of blood in it.
It will not be sectioned
like a casserole, sliver
of pie or moon, the children
banging their spoons.