RachelVB.com

Month: February 2011

  • People and spice

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    rachelvb
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    I’m watching fresh basil in a glass in the light. The roasted red pepper soup down and now the Vegetable soup is simmering. I have plants under my nails turning a brown and read (I meant red, but I like read) and green. When I bring them close to my face they smell like cilantro…

  • Stirring

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    rachelvb
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    It’s raining today. What a wonderful sound, smell, sight. To see rain and not snow falling into my backyard. Rain means something is promised. Rain means something is coming soon – the bulbs I planted in the fall have thin fingers reaching through the ground, the snow is melting, I even heard thunder this morning…

  • Trick of Spring

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    rachelvb
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    After your hands shredded ribbons up my neck I saw the lawn release itself from its white cast underneath it was decay a smothered-color green Your warmth was like a trick of spring now I watch it snow again one two three four five six seven more inch upon inch of your heavy chill a…

  • I'm going in

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    rachelvb
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    In my brain I hear a lot of clapping, a roar of a crowd. It’s my imagination – sush – because I’m going back in. I’ve found a flashlight and heading back into the mines.

  • 'Negative Capability'

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    rachelvb
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    Melissa Green wrote a comment last night about Keats’ ‘Negative Capability.’ Keats’ says it when man, ahem or woman (collectively) “is capable of being in uncertainties. Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” It’s an “emotional state characterized by indecision, restlessness, uncertainty and tension resulting from incompatible inner needs or drives of…

  • Dress appropriately

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    rachelvb
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    I gave a coworker a pen and she gave it back and now that I’m biting it and looking at it I see that I gave her a pen covered in bite marks. Sorry. I feel like sitting in a field today. In the sun and popping the heads off daisies and tying together ropes…

  • The weight of snow

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    rachelvb
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    There’s something tugging on the trunk of me. shaking everything free. But it’s not as freeing as it sounds. I ventured out into the world today. I saw a middle-aged Hispanic busboy waiting patiently for two overweight middle-Americans to leave their table so he could do his job and clear their empty glasses. Of course…

  • The Groundhog lied

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    rachelvb
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    We were done. We were almost completely done. The lawn released from its white cast, it was a smothered-color green. We had a trickster day of 55 degrees last week. Now it’s just being mean. One, two, three, four, five, six – seven inches on the branches. Maybe a foot on the ground. The bushes…

  • WCW on Howl

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    rachelvb
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    “We are blind and live our blind lives out in blindness. Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of angels.” – William Carlos Williams in a introduction to ‘Howl,’ by Allen Ginsberg

  • It's slippery out there

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    rachelvb
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    the snow coming at the car. the white fuzz. the light years I was traveling. The road to insanity is what it felt like. A dark trance on the highway. The wipers dark bone arms. We watched 127 hours and a row of students were speaking the entire time. Even shushed, they wouldn’t shut up.…