promiscuous

language, the furious river, carries on its foamed and sinewed back all we thought we’d shucked off

Promiscuous
by William Matthews

“Mixes easily,” dictionaries
used to say, a straight shot from the Latin.
Chemists applied the term to matter’s
amiability.

But the Random House Dictionary
(1980) gives as its prime meaning:
“characterized
by frequent and indiscriminate

changes of one’s sexual partners.” Sounds
like a long way
to say “slut,” that glob of blame we once threw
equally at men and women, all who slurred,

slavered, slobbered,
slumped, slept or lapsed, slunk or relapsed, slackened
(loose lips sink ships) or slubbed, or slovened, But soon
a slut was female. A much-bedded male

got called a ladies’ man; he never slept
with sluts. How sluts
got to be sluts is thus a mystery,
except the language knows what we may

have forgot. “Depression” began its career
in English in 1656, says
the OED,
and meant (science jargon) the opposite

of elevation—a hole or a rut,
perhaps, or, later, “the angular
distance of a celestial object
below the horizon,”

as Webster’s Third (1963)
has it. There’s ample record of our self-
deceit: language,
the furious river, carries on its foamed

and sinewed back all we thought we’d shucked off.
Of course it’s all
pell-mell, head over heels, snickers and grief,
love notes and libel, fire and ice. In short:

promiscuous.

“Promiscuous” by William Matthews, from Search Party: Collected Poems. © Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Reprinted with permission.

women who make distinctive moves

Hudson Senior Center

 

Elizabeth Kubler Ross

Many people in the medical profession disapproved of her work — they thought it was indecent — but most patients were eager to talk. She used these conversations to write On Death and Dying (1969), which became a huge best-seller. In it, she outlined the five stages of grief, specifically when someone is diagnosed with a terminal illness: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Her work also paved the way for hospice care.

 

“writing is as difficult as staying underwater and breathing while you write!”

It’s the birthday of writer Shirley Ann Grau, whose novels and short stories, set in the Deep South, explore the intricacies of race and gender. Grau was born in New Orleans (1929), spent her childhood in Montgomery and Selma, Alabama, and was educated at finishing schools. She says, “I was probably the only 17-year-old who knew precisely how to set a table if I happened to be giving a dinner for the pope.” The head of the English department at Tulane University turned down her request for a teaching position, telling her, “There will be no females in the English Department.” She married a philosophy teacher, began having children, and kept writing, making notes on scraps of paper and holding “noisy conversations” with her characters. Grau corrected the galleys for her first book, The Black Prince, in her pediatrician’s office, as her son was being treated for measles, spreading the papers on the long examination table.
Though considered one of the finest portrayers of relationships between blacks and whites in American literature, Grau says, “I’m interested in people, but not as representative of race. I see people first. I do stories first.” She was just 35 when she won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1965 for The Keepers of the House, about a wealthy white man who marries his black housekeeper.

Grief

Grief is depression.
Depression is forgetting
and having no energy.
This is the state of my life.  
I can not get my act together.
I drove to the store to return some things to find out that I left the bag home with the things to be returned.  
Then, I have to tell myself to drive slowly and cautiously
because I am not in my right mind.

.

It’s a rainbow!
What you need is time.
What you have now is raindrops.
And sunshine=roygbiv

After the tantrum…

Monster by Katerina Babanovsky

aggression spins
yells explode
sweat flies
heart pounds

body screams adrenalin

backlash:
remorse
depression
hopelessness
melt-down

reach out

Are you there for me?