Fish Pudding, 10/4/83

 

Reflecting on the many experiences that led me to this moment has let me air-out a lot of my dirty laundry. In this case, writing about my hubris of producing a literary atrocity such as the one I'm now sharing is beyond the stink of stale yoga pants and sweaty boat clothes. It's brutal to the point of hilarity.

Read the poem below. It's a hoot. Like a blooper reel.

Pointing to the obvious mixed metaphor of dead fish and mixed desserts provides enough grist to grind this poem to dust. But the fact that I actually submitted this as an assignment makes it all the more nuts.

This untitled poem was written in the fall of my junior year in college. I was deep into the requirements of major, (creative writing---eek!), and somehow I lifted my noggin from the booze and the recreational stuff to drop words about a guy being like stale pudding in the fridge. You'd think my debauchery would have reared something raw and inexplicable, not just base word pollution on the page. Bacchus was never my muse. Maybe this poem is somehow about him.

If I could start my education over, I likely would have studied herbology, textiles or culinary arts. I would have used my writing to promote a yoga business or pen volumes about feminist philosophy. I can't allow myself to sink in disappointment at how my life is going since I live like a boss on a vintage sailboat in the tropics with the man of my dreams. Maybe I could have turned out way cooler, like an international traveling urban beekeeper or a niche cheese producer who pairs wine and chocolate. Those peeps are fire. But I have this silly poem as an armature for my musings and it makes me smile.

So instead I inspect the tatters of my college projects and attempt my big thinks. I try to make sense of the craziness and find that it's okay not to be brilliant or stellar or, well, special. It feels just right to be in my own skin in this moment. What a life!

_______________________________________________

One day he might belly-up
Fishlike, bloated and dewy
Floating and dwindling like marshmallow in hot chocolate
That by virtue of its sweetness blends into
The rich brown.

Or one day he might dry-up
And cover the top of the parfait dish
And grow tougher with each day in the refrigerator.
He might be old pudding left uncovered.
He might be old pudding.

A Letter from Francine/Soothe Francine

When I was a youngster, I conjured an invisible friend that I called Francine. My parents cultivated this distraction, likely because our family was slightly lopsided: my two siblings were over 3 and 4 years younger than me and therefore I was typically in a different state of development and our house was hectic. Francine was a ready caretaker for some of my needs. I cannot completely produce authentic memories of us together, since much of what lasts about her comes from my parents talking about my imaginary friend rather than my own pretending.  

My girlhood was peppered with all kinds of social and civic activities. I attended summer camps, played sports, retained membership in Camp Fire Girls through high school and participated in Methodist Youth Fellowship. These were great ways for me to immerse in friendships that were based on activities. Even today I sometimes have trouble just hanging-out with even the coolest people and I am eager to do something. I'm working on being more present, both as a yogi and a person.

The two Francine poems were written in Marrakech, when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer, 1986-88. They go together because one is written to Francine, and the other from her. It's interesting that Francine voices an Eastern philosophy that I lifted from TS Eliot's The Waste Land. "Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata" comes from the Upanishads, and I find that it translates to "Give, Sympathize, Control," which horrifies, given Eliot's Nazi connections. Oh, to know then what I do now.

My earlier iteration was trying to sort out my feelings about social groups and my own need for solitude. Francine was telling me to be more giving but I sense she was also stuck in ancient dogma and male-domination. I am finding myself compassionate toward the naivete of my early 20's in these two texts and I reflect upon some of the prophecies in her words and those of Francine.

Soothe Francine

You played with me at the well, me telling

you things and you listening, endlessly.

It was you who fell, and me, promising

hickory nuts, shelled on the sidewalk with

a hammer or rock, who soothed. You were m

friend, quietly, and my confidant, scapegoat, 

and means for me to hear my early voice.

Are you as old as I am now? Or do

imaginary friends shrink into time

necvr growing once they're dispelled: I think

you've never left me although the well looks

smaller and hickory nuts fall unshelled

on the new grass. Please, let me tell you things

again, and listen, Francine, endlessly,

because I want to soothe you back to life.

I need a means to hear my later voice.

A Letter from Francine

(Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata)

Dear friend, your demands of others, tangled in words,

should be given freely in the meaning of your

deeds. Give them consistency, clear light, kindness and

repose. You observe. you record. You react. Give.

New people disappoint you, sister, why? You know

guilt, pain, frustration and anguish. You feel. You feel!

But sympathize. Elude duty; perform and lurk.

Feel suchness elsewhere, a redirected scope: there.

But you do not think on these things, preferring to

scan those disappointing others, ('help me,') thwarting

your urge to stimy yourself in you own freely-

chosen, appropriae control. Who will help them?

Concentrate, search and hurt. Meditate, learn and know. 

Being and become. We are both such. Love, Francine.

 

Miss Judge

I've been thinking a bit about the Cult of Domesticity. The ideals of womanhood have always included dominion over home and hearth, not so much by authority, but more by obligation to feminine roles within society that dictate the allocation of women's energy and resources. Based on this implicit framework, women of the 19th century had a moral responsibility to focus on families, household matters, upholding virtue and exhibiting a well-mannered performance. Historians refer to this as the Cult of Domesticity, or the Culture of True Womanhood. 

Some modern thinkers link the Cult of Domesticity to homecraft, such as culinary arts, crafts, gardening, home decor and childrearing, all of which are certainly worthy pursuits for any gender. TicTok today is chock-full of picklers, urban homesteaders and clothing upcyclers, all of whom harken the frugal and functional nature of COD behaviors. Through the COVID years, countless social media influencers shored-up their digs across the land, constructing outdoor pizza ovens and hyper-decorating laundry rooms. There is a resurgence of homecraft and even a push for bringing DIY game.

I am proud of the younger generations who aren't afraid of starting their own home-based businesses or engaging in lost arts. Etsy, Ravelry and Instagram show many crafters and collectors e-tailing hand-tatted handkerchiefs, homemade herbal remedies from foraged materials and explicit procedures for canning milk. Anyone complaining that the younger generation doesn't want to work is missing the point: they don't want to work for us, Boomer, clocking 40 hours or more a week for the man, shackled to a sub-standard health insurance plan and enemic 401K with a vague promise of future reward if they can survive into their retirement years. The now-vampires demand obedience to a flimsy system that counts on us dying before we can collect our social security payments, a lifetime of eating shit sandwiches our ultimate reward for our efforts. Moghuls rocket to outer space. Both of my parents died before they collected much of their social security. That lesson wasn't lost on me.

My poem "Miss Judge" is part of a Series of Misses, (with catchy titles,) that I submitted for my senior project in 1985. It strikes me that the piece has a kind of cycle to it, much like the COD coming in and out of style. There is external motivation for change, but at what cost? What if I actually enjoy knitting and baking and mothering? Can't I still be a feminist? Does the patriarchy minimize the importance of domestic tasks to shunt women's power? Is anyone sorry about this? My own opinion is that working for the military-industrial-complex (most jobs, right?) robbed me of my health and well-being, buying into a hierarchy that never made sense. Working on my own paid or unpaid projects is so very satisfying and healing that I never want to go back.

Miss Judge

We had it registered for its own good.

We changed all that it had been before.

We had it both neutered and spayed.

We had it plucked and shaved and its skin

painted another color.

We had its claws and whiskers removed and

its wings clipped and its fangs filed.

It had been so long, we'd forgotten what it

was.

But then someone remembered.

And it wasn't so bad.

People liked it.

It came into style.

They became jealous that we had it,

and we became proud of it.

We decided that we loved it, and let it go

back to the way it was.

But then it left us.

And we miss it.

And we're so sorry.
 

In the mid-90's, I met a work colleague who had come to Vermont in the 70's to live in a commune with her husband. She said that the men used to sit around and smoke cigarettes, bragging about how many jars of tomatoes their wives canned. She'd explained it was just part of the men gaining status through the efforts of their partners, and it didn't feel communal or supportive at all. She'd been divorced for 15 years or so, and was restoring a home with her second husband. I'm not certain she was any more pleased with her most recent lifestyle. It seemed like she was under the burden of a time schedule to get the renovations done, all while working full-time and limiting her other interests in support of a man-initiated project. She loved to cross-country ski. I wonder how many days she got out on the trails.

This past year on the boat, I learned to make terrible wine that gets you shit-faced. I finished an afghan that I started 12 years ago for my son. I knit my daughter a pair of mittens from an intricate pattern, and I made my partner and myself light hats for cold ocean evenings. I even crocheted a bag from nylon fishing line we found on the beach as we made passage from the Bahamas. I cooked tagines and cakes, flatbreads and pizzas. I love these projects, without disdain. While I still remain a pitiful housekeeper and boat cleaner, I do appreciate good food and items I make myself. 

My hot take is that I do what I want. Sometimes I want to do what has been historically expected of my gender, and I want beaucoup kudos for it. I am so glad I have that in my life: my supportive partner, my attentive kiddos and my great friends. Life is good, people. 

Thingification

Jam session with ukulele at Chat-n-Chill
beach in Exuma, Bahamas.
PC: Alison Buchanan

I used to spend a lot of time being what I thought others wanted. This strained my interaction with my body, soul and relationships. I hated my body and hid it, or minimized its importance, becoming unhealthy. In dissolving my connection to physical well-being, my energy was patchy and I could not give to some of my efforts. I had little sense of myself, reacting to stimuli and not taking charge of my own feelings and actions. In my career I often bent to the will of my employer over my own inclinations and as a result, I knew frustration and strife. Although I was often proud of my workplace achievements and even earned some notoriety, there was an emptiness because I perceived myself directed by outsiders. I didn't have a language to communicate my values, or a heart for speaking truth to power effectively. I continue to dislike conflict and find many situations cringe-worthy, causing me to perseverate and lax at letting go of the opinions of others. This takes work.

I harnessed as much of my energy as I could to mothering, even through considerable adversity. With the divorce of their father, I found more ways to have better conversations with my kids who were nearly grown by that time. My son and daughter are my great gifts to the universe and I am so happy about their worlds and wilds. Being their mom was a role that came naturally to me and I have no regrets about giving mothering my best shot, sometimes even declining others' ideas and opinions because I knew what was right. I am sad being so far from them, which I think about all the time.

Reflecting upon the poem I wrote when I was 20, "Thingification" seems like advice that I wish I could have taken earlier. As I have established a practice of non-attachment through my yoga training and considerable personal opportunities to "let go and let be," I enjoy reminiscing about my 20-something voice. I often cue yoga participants to contemplate a timeline in Warrior 2 pose, reaching with compassion into the past during gentle warrior, and then with curiosity into the future in side angle. Returning to Virabhadrasa II, I encourage being in this moment, now that we have addressed past and future. This layer has made me more mindful of my time on my yoga mat, and less attached to what is not now. It is very liberating.

The poem, written when I was 20, word-processed

Thingification

Moonlight spares the building's 
corner from being lost in
the darkness.
the mitered squareness of
the edge more distinct
at night.
Inside a young woman clad
in underwear
curls her hair
and plans
to act more demurely 
than she did
the night before.
She had been outspoken,
hand-on-hip in
disagreement,
head stronger than
the mouth that
quickly lent
secrets and the tip
of a champagne glass.
And then she had been
hurried home,
Ladybug, Ladybug,
a plane hanging in
the dark air above
her like a blinking flashbulb.
Tonight she would try again,
smooth, neat and curled,
feigning the reserve
of one of Henry the VIII's 
wives for a man who
liked her better 
the night before.

I giggle inwardly at the stilted voice in the poem, describing the "mitered squareness" and name-dropping King Henry VIII. The plane that hangs in the sky "like a blinking flashbulb" seems so accusatory. One of the things I enjoy most about my life now is that I feel completely supported in being myself at all times, which is as much my growth as it is finding a beautiful partner who nourishes this. He would have liked me better the night before, too.

Photo credit: Dreamy Dale 

I hadn't expected that I would find love and acceptance at my age, (58 at the time of this writing, if you're curious.) I sometimes lead ecstatic dance groups and I find myself consistently announcing that "magic happens right outside your comfort zone," a vaguely Vygotsky axiom that might be more for my edification than anyone else's. I always claimed I wanted to be loved for who I am, not so much for what I do. I am new to living for myself, following my own curiosities and discovering love and beauty with a gorgeous man on a vintage sailboat far away from my beloved Vermont. Magic indeed happens out here.

Private Acrobatics, 9/15/1983

Too long ago, my priorities and creative energies shifted from written expression to other forms. Some of my pursuits manifested in mothering, teaching, studying to advance myself, identifying as career-achieving, and making domestic crafts. I also infused my social network presence with my ideas, rooted in feminism. I spent a lot of energy writing for work and creating for teaching. While I regard what I've shared with the world positively, others have over-lorded my expression to some extent for a long time. At this point of my lifespan, I want to generate my own art into the world, which mostly appeals to me through writing, knitting, moving, dancing, making music and exploring. I reserve the right to try new things, too.

To kick-off this introspective initiative, I am reviving my blog. I have plans to interact with photos of my creations, new and old, and address my memories and impulses in order to establish the parameters of my growth in this world. Reflecting on my artifacts might help me to make sense of myself as I am now and reveal the common threads and the raveled edges of this Hoffman experience.

In this piece I explore the poem Private Acrobatics, which I wrote in 1983. As an undergraduate Creative Writing major at Hamilton College, I had to produce a seminar of written poetry. My diligent professor worked me through a semester of reading and writing poems, providing me titles from mostly dead white males, the grist of artzygrrrl death of the 1980s. I took it as my own failing that I didn't usually connect with the presented patriarchal body of work and didn't often glean the central themes.

My parents gave me the middle name Frost for my dad's favorite poet, the big Robert. I look at RF now as a wonderful poet, as I have developed an adult perspective in rural New England and appreciate that fences make good neighbors. Another professor had advised us to write what we know, and so my poem developed from a child's voice:

Private Acrobatics

Typed copy of the poem, as submitted to my professor.

Who has left me alone again

for other things although I was
the first? Sure she is smaller and
more helpless perhaps but sometimes
I want to show you what I've learned.
Like I can crawl up on this rack,
look at myself in the watchful
mirror, the only probably
thing that always watches me and
never changes. The mirror is
as my own fun is. The mirror
will watch my sun acrobatics
even as I can watch myself
fall, swinging lower with the too
unbalanced audience as it
crashes to the floor. Each broken
piece of the mirror is a new
member of my made-up private
audience that is the only
probably thing that will always
watch and never change for other
things even though I was the first.

I was pretty chuffed in 1983 when I first produced this piece. Most of my suite-mates brought electronic typewriters with them to college, but my mom had insisted on purchasing a manual Royal unit, the 1980s version of her ancient machine of her youth. She'd advised that I should be able to type anywhere, like on a train, on a ship or on the road. Mom possessed not so much a romanticized perception of writing, but more a pragmatic one. Maybe she thought I'd go all Jack Karouac, and she wanted me to be prepared. One of my dad's classes at Syracuse University had met with JK at a local pub and Mom assumed I'd need to type anywhere. Current laughs as I type on my Chromebook at a bar in the Dominican Republic frankly a little day-drunk on a 22-oz local beer. How could she have known?

I wrote Private Acrobatics about breaking a mirror when I was a little girl. My sister was born in the car on the way to the hospital when I was almost 4 years old, and therefore her dramatic debut was my first cancel culture. My parents worked very hard to bring us up with opportunities that transcended theirs, so when my brother came while my sister was still soiling diapers, I required too much supervision for my hard-working mom, who worked nights as a nurse and took care of us by day with only naps to get her through the toil of mothering.

I climbed up the beloved hat rack with a marble drawer shelf topped with a semi-length mirror. My parents were proud of their antiques, and this hat rack was a rare example of something in good condition. When I climbed up on it to see myself in the mirror and toppled it, their dismay resulted in a lifetime of reminders about my behavior and their replacement of the ancient glass. I layered my feelings of independence and lonesomeness in my role as big kid in the house in this poem so to process having to share attention. I think my ongoing need for relevance comes from being the eldest child, and I certainly still do take challenges to see myself reflected. I am defined by doing, not by being. More about my becoming a yogi later.