Someone to comfort her June 22, 2012

   

It would be easy to read into this poem what may not really be there, partly because of the unusual point of view she uses as opposed to other poems she has posted previously.

Unlike many of her other poems that seek to do away with overt characterization by eliminating pronouns or by converting them into a form that seems devoid of a persona, here, she doesn’t just the opposite, using a plural pronoun that on a superficial level might suggest two separate characters rather than two aspects to a single persona instead.

Instead of the “inner” and “outer” voices which some of her earlier poems have suggested, we get side by side personas, one apparently on the edge of panic, while the other exerting its influence for calm.

There is a temptation to assign this second, calming voice to another person, some kind and generous lover who offers her aid when she is most upset.

But the poem itself does not support this idea, suggesting rather a second persona is a kind of internal guide that keeps her on an “even keel.”

As with her previous poem, this poem seems to talk about her struggled to get back to some starting point, only when she reaches it, something happens it take it away, take her breath away.

While one part of her panics, the other part remains calm and soothing, helping her to breath easy again, both sides working together, slow deep breaths, steading her again.

The poem opens with an image so powerful; it can’t be ignored.

“Whip cracks down.”

This Implies slave labor rather than the mundane day to day tyranny of a typical work place, with a slave master, rather than just a boss, and the grinding of hard labor rather than just that of a time clock or a hamster wheel.

It may well reflect her reaction to the return of our boss from maternity leave, and a push to do more aggressive stories (as indicated by one story about the state senator and medical benefits for his cronies.) It is impossible to tell for certain what motivated this harsh opening. But it a clear statement that she feels abused and misused and is struggling to deal with the reverberations with the other voice – and here again I’m tempted to associate this with another person, someone else in the office who is providing her comfort, holding her, engaged in the in and out that allows her to remain calm.

The poem goes from acute to calm, from the crack of a whip to the slow in and out beathing, this second character bringing peace to her in her time of need to keep things “even.”

The use of the term “taking breath away” has a number of possible meanings, often associated with the love-struck, although here clearly it implies panic or terror.

The poem suggests the crack of the whip comes at a time when she just managed to pull herself together, when “we caught our breath,” or perhaps that starting point she refers to in the previous point where she has hopes to advance only to someone take it away,” and her comfort came from “Someone,” “Somewhere else” helping her to breathe easy “And it’s ours, too.”

The collective breathing, the in and out, the rise and fall that somehow counters the negative, leaving her in a place or space no better or worse than where she started.

 

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Information is like gold July 6, 2012

   

Working at the annex office, I’ve become more and more isolated, excluded from a lot of the information otherwise available at the main office, but in some cases deliberately withheld from me by people hording these nuggets to better position themselves.

Even before Tom’s alarming speculation about what is going on at the main office, I had to rely on my own network of spies to ferret out and supply me with information necessary for my own survival.

While Tom had a lot more to say about goings on in the main office, I have to reserve judgement until I can reach out to some of the principles, including the senator, the congressman and some of the mayors of north county to see just how valid these are.

But it is clear I know less and less about the goings on in the main office that I ought to. Even with my network of spies.

This partly has to do with my need to be physically present more than just one day a week, so I can catch the daily chatter for myself.

The situation has gotten worse, not better, since the return of the main boss after her maternity leave. She is a stone wall, maintaining her own information flow she shares with no one except when she deems it necessary.

She is one of the three pillars of power in the office. Our female owner rules the roost on the first floor; her male counterpart, the same on the third, with our boss operating in-between.

Almost everybody who is anybody gets their power from one of these three. So, we have those loyal to the owner on the first floor, others loyal to the boss on the third floor. If our boss has any supporters, she doesn’t acknowledge them.

K— a sneaky, sniveling little weasel who operates some of other publications – pretends like she has power, but mostly get this by bouncing between the two owners and garnering whatever tidbits of information she can broker to increase her personal power, squirrelling these away like acorns for some future point where she can unveil them to her own advantage.

`Our temporary boss -- who filled in for our regular boss – has been relegated back to part time job, almost as out of touch with what’s really going on as I am, except he spends three days at the main office rather than one. He can access any of the other power brokers at will when I cannot.

Fortunately for me, the main office is a sieve. People with little power to lose like to show off what little they know. Sometimes, however, they know just enough for me to get a hazy picture of things that affect me.

But it is becoming clearer that if I want to know what’s really going on, I’m going to have to work out of the main office, not the annex.

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What was said and not said July 14, 2012

   

Her text came as always with a demand: “Call me now!”

The voice mail message was much more confusing: “I never said anything to him. What the fuck did you say to him?”

I texted her back: “I’m at the vet. I call you when I’m done.”

I wanted to stall for time.

As it was, I had scheduled a meeting with the male owner to talk about my possibly coming back to the main office and working one of the beats that had opened up there, an idea I realized too late my email to her had ruined.

I do stupid things for stupid reasons.

A month after throwing myself under her bus, I still haven’t learned not to, and still tended to blame her. I still feel hurt by how easily she trickled up, and still believe our former temporary boss lied to me about her, though in truth, there is no way to tell if he did or not, though I fully understand why he would need to maintain the fiction even with me.

I can’t get over the look of panic in his eyes when he finally heard what I had to say in the park.

Maybe we both bit too deeply into that apple, only I’m less shy about admitting it.

I don’t know exactly what gets said between those two, and perhaps that’s half the reason I sent the email, to stir the pot, to see what floats to the top.

Unfortunately, he knows damned well I betrayed him. And he is cunning.

Stalling for as long as I could, I finally got out to my car and made the call to her.

She was apparently in meeting room at the main office and was instantly hysterical when she answered my call.

“Why did you do this to me?” she screamed. “Why are you ruining it for me?”

She didn’t define what exactly she meant by ‘ruining it,” but she went on to say, “I’ve tried to be professional with you, not personal.”

I tried to respond. But the line went dead.

I don’t know exactly what happened. Maybe he heard her screeching voice and came into the meeting room to find out what transpired. Maybe he was there even when I called, possibly discussing the email I had sent, and encouraged her to hang up when our conversation veered in an uncomfortable direction.

I drove home with my cat and called the owner when I got there and had the discussion I had hoped to have with him at the office.

Then she texted me asking again why I had done what I had done. She referred to me as a stalker. I said I was not.

But I have an ugly feeling about the whole thing, though I still don’t know what transpired between her and our former temporary boss.  I drove to the annex and tried to call him from there. He did not reply and later when he did, he said he was at his public desk and didn’t want to discuss it then and there. But he said she had called him demanding to know what I had told him about her. He said we had talked about her writing. Then he asked, how much I had told her about our conversation. He apparently had not seen the email after all and she had not disclosed the details of the contents.

I told him what I said.

“I’ll get back to you,” he said, then hung up.

 

 

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Sun God, Tree of Life, and her June 26, 2012

 There is more than a little significance that for the poem she posted on June 26, we return to the roof, a place that seems to play a large role in mythology of her life.

People go back to such places because they signify something important in their lives, sometimes they are protective places, sometimes, they are kind of places where we face our own morality.

This is a poem that evokes powerful spirits, both threatening and protective, with her caught in the middle of them, invisible at times, perhaps even with feelings of insignificance.

She is looking out at the world from this lofty place in an almost dream scape where the elements take on larger than life proportions. The most important elements in this poem are the tree, the sun and the shadows cast.

These spirits are created by the interaction of the very powerful sun and the tree.

The sun is mostly seen as a god-like force in mythology, often male, and as often, the tree is seen as female, and so we have a creation that comes from their interaction.

The tree in most mythology is a source of life, a positive force, powerful in its own right, such as those in the Garden of Eden. It’s shadow, cast across the surface of the roof top, however, takes on an almost Platonic glow, “hazy” as she might have put it, and unreal, in a way like Plato’s shadows in the cave. The shadow is not reality, it is “a gray transparent projection” of the tree, not completely substantial, almost spiritual, an illusion because “trees don’t grow on roofs.” The insubstantiality of the shadows is made clear by the fact that they come, and they go, appearing and disappearing.

Reality or perhaps as she puts it, truth, exists somewhere between the sun and the tree.

In the middle of these powerful forces, we have another – perhaps the poet – described as “you,”

And if you stand between the tree and its shadow, you cease to exist, casting no shadow because the tree erases you.

You are real there in the middle of some other reality and its illusion. You are created or as she puts it “cast into being” by your relative position to these other forces.

This idea of creation and mythological forces puts this poem in a different realm and raises questions about the poet, who seems to wander into a Freudian dream world, where she is exploring that line between real and unreal, and we are confronted by illusion and perhaps question existence itself.

The tree’s shadow is not real yet is produced by an interaction by a real tree and a real sun, and though the person in the poem is real, there is no visible sign of it, no shadow because you are shielded by the wide arms of the real tree that spreads it wide arms over you.

As said before, the roof top location is important because she has been there before, a landscape on which she had previously explored her own morality, where is now she appears to be questioning her own existence.

We do not know if this is the same roof top as in previous poems and assuming it is, then the only trees capable of casting a shadow over it come from the southwest side, out of the church yard, and is most likely during late afternoon.

Since she sees the shadow cast across the roof, she has to be standing on it with her back to the tree and the sinking sun, the sight of which inspires her to explore what is real, what is illusion, and where is her place in that world. How can she prove her own existence if she casts no shadow? When she is standing in someone else’s shadow.

She seems to define the tree as a protective force, using the word “shield.”

The sun is different, almost threatening in its power to expose things and to create illusions, creating things that don’t exist, hazy shapes, and the appearance of trees where trees don’t grow.

The sun comes off as a kind of trickster, making these false trees appear and disappear and so it becomes difficult to know what is true and not or as she ironically phrases it somewhere between the real tree and its shadow “lies the truth.”

Since she (the you in the poem) casts so shadow, how do you find truth, when you are caught in the “interplay” between these other forces, brought into being by your relationship to these others powerful icons.

Although not nearly as bitter as some previous poems, this poem seems raise questions about her finding herself, faced on one side by a trickster, perhaps malevolent force of the sun and the over protective sun who erases her.

She knows she is real, has value, but seeks some way to step out from the shadow of the tree without risk of wrath of the sun.

This poem suggests that she is feeling invisible in a world in which she really wants to stand out, threatened by some forces, over protected by others, and yet her reality seems to depend upon that “interplay” of forces.

 

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