shira · erlichman

Check it out, loves.

New song, "Bronze"
- unreleased,
not yet recorded,
& live at the CLPP Conference 2009
at Hampshire College!

<3.

I am home and I am remembering what it is I am in love with. I'm in love with my bookcase. My bookcase in Northampton is a pretty glass apple, but the real deal, my bookcase here in Brookline, is a woolly mammoth whose hair I brush, whose neck I stroke, and who I've learned to trade languages with. It opens up to me, such a sweet animal. Poems and diagrams of hearts and brains (a.k.a. poems), strange hippie books that literally led to my falling apart - because books have been like Gods to me - I had to learn how to question them instead of just say yesyesyesIdo, maps of violence maps of peaceseeking, shelves of lives lived on tongues, I am so lucky. The feeling of thumbing through a collection of instincts I've had, lights and warmths my parents have guided me towards, and pages of autumns turned, somehow, summers. The feeling. I am in love with my bookcase which is the wall, pinned to it, white as the wall, born from it, taking up half of it, ugly gorgeous, mine!

I am in love with my childhood room. In love with the big paper snowflake dangling from the ceiling that Allegra and I made one night after splitting and spilling a pomegranate. In love with the birds everywhere, the tiny red paper ones flying over my window, the realistic ones Wolfie bought at the plant store and attached toa  real branch dangling from a hook on my ceiling, the geese from the picture book over my bed, in flight, in flight. I am in love with how this room holds me. I feel safe and remembered and remembering. Reading an old chapbook discovered on the woolly, I have the courage to face myself and let myself be who I was and love myself for it. What more of a feeling can I ask for? There is pride in me. I haven't always let myself feel pride. Like so many artists, I am always pushingpushingpushing forward, whatnext, whatnow, whatcanImake, whoamInow, whereamIgoing, dotdotdotdotdot. Tonight I sit with my family, I hold them close, I do not ache, my chest is not suffering winter, my emptiness is not amplified.

A photograph of my parents from their wedding day hangs over the dresser. My brother and I searched it tonight for our own features. You look like mom, I look like aba, you look like aba there, you look like mom.  Pictures of me etched in metal filled with ink and then pressed against paper hang on my wall. Wolfie made them of me back when everything was so different and I was hiding inside myself like a pit in a peach and I couldn't say everything that was in me and then everything took over and I lost myself and is that what lunacy is? They hang on my wall and I can look at them and say that was then and I stand now and Wolfie and I are okay and life is moving, life is always a river.

I want to understand so much. I want to belong. To myself, and to those I love, and to the places I want to love again. Sometimes the world feels like a blur of people too blurred to be real. They have so many voices and faces and ideas about me and themselves and the world around them. It can be hard to find myself, solid, among all that.

Mom says I should take time and just appreciate myself, all I've done in my twenty four years. So often I feel nostalgic, an ache for something, gone, the goneness of so many good things I feel I'll never touch again. So often I feel consumed by worry and regret and anxiety and self-doubt. So often I am trying and trying, reaching and reaching. In this room, everything that is, is. Everything that was, is. I see so many people I've loved and that have loved me. I see who I was and who I am, and let who I am becoming come.

One. I graduated Hampshire College in May. I was nominated and then picked to MC the Graduation. That was really nice. I smiled a lot. It was interesting staring out at so many seats filled with so many people. The people had on newly ironed clothes. They put their hands together, then seperated them, really quickly and constantly, to transmit their excitement. Then I went to California to work at an overnight summer camp and be around a girl that I really like being around. Then I went to Chicago and did really silly things for a good cause. In Chicago, I stood in front of a green screen in too much makeup. In Chicago, I became a hot air balloon. In Chicago, I sipped margueritas while sitting with Alvin, and Mike Mc-golly-gee, and Alvin's nice friend. Then I went up to the 18th floor of the Hilton and played the Kalimba (thumb-piano) that the girl I like being around got me for my birthday. My room was transformed into a music box, all because of my thumbs. Speaking of thumbs, I recently (during the camp era) read a wonderful book which revolves around thumbs. It's called Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and it's by Tom Robbins. I recommend it if you like: things that are funny, lesbian cowgirls, living on the edge, and learning. Oh yeah, I turned 24. Not in that hotel room, but in San Francisco. I ate a key-lime pie with my aunt, uncle, cousins, and the girl I like being around who also likes being around me. I love key-lime pie. It is a pie of significance for me. So far I've eaten it on two major events in my life. You know about one, and that event is thrilling - therefor, can you even imagine, dare you conjure, what the other event was? Then I flew back to Boston until I was out of breath and my arms were really tired and I landed in the airport where Kit, Casey, Kate Lee, and Shai picked me up and carried me all the way to the Whitehaus. Before that, we attempted to navigate the airport back to our car for about a whole nother Paleolithic age. I liked seeing my friends and my brother. I missed being enveloped by that feeling only they can bring. The feeling is like lots of pillows, and lightning in the distance, and you're safe and warm and laughing. Then, only days after kissing Boston hello, I had to kiss Boston goodbye. Now I'm spending my days in Northampton, where I have a new room full of sun and two beautious house-mates who make beautiful pictures and movements and really, truly are inflating me. It was, despite my perhaps overly-casual tone, a rather torrential summer. Yes, it had it's calm, but it also had freakin' floods. Being surrounded by these two bright bulbs and eating dinner with them each night and talking about life and art and being a person is really special. I am trying to find a part-time job in the area until mid-December (See "Two"); my other part-time job will be standing on the street and playing my Kalimba. I want to turn the planet into a music box.

Two. Hi, are you seeing Two before reading the rest of One? I recommend going back. I mean you only have one more sentence and then you can move on to Two. Plus two ends so soon, really, with maybe four or five more words, and then three begins, so what will you be missing out on anyway?

Three. Where were we. Mid-December. In Mid-December I'll be going back to Boston to hug my parents and live in my highschool room while POETRY X-TRAINING. IT'S GOING TO BE AWESOME. Danny Sherrard, Ken Arkind, and Jon Sands are on my team. We're going to travel around the country as the uniformed quadruplet "The Spilljoy Ensemble" sharing our thoughts and feelings in poem form with other humans. We're going to move our mouths and sounds are going to come out in the shape of strange mythical animals (See "Danny"), smoky-throated harmonica-hearted shades of blue (See "Ken"), and bashful brewery of beauty bubbling bountifully (See "Jon" and "Too Much Illiteration") and hopefully some "honest man's poems" (See "The Meaning of Shira's Name"). In order to do all this, we have to train. Half of December and half of January will be devoted to running in matching sweat-suits and sweat-bands, lifting all sorts of heavy objects like Truth and Wisdom, shadow-boxing until all hours of the late afternoon. AWESOME SQUARED CARRY THE COOL DIVIDE IT BY SWEET EQUALZ I HAVE HIGH EXPECTATIONS C'MON WORLD AND GIVE ME WHAT I DREAM OF. 

Danny. I'm excited to find out more intimately whether the myths are true. Does he make moths come out  of his sleeves when he starts "spittin' fire"? Did Mick Jagger sue him for stealing his mouth? Man, I wish they taught you they stuff in school but they don't. I'll have to go on tour with him to find out. Late night Bickford's conversations, here we come.

Ken. Aw man, when Ken personally invited me to tour with these cats, meow meow meow, he played me his electric toothbrush over the phone. The toothbrush was of some cartoon super-dude equivalent to The Hulk, though the true identity of the toothbrush escapes me now, and it said all sorts of things, all of which I heard first-hand over the telephone. Where does the compound word "first-hand" come from anyway? If you have a milk-man, does that mean you get your milk "first-hand" or "second-hand"? Would getting it from the cow be getting it "first-hand" and don't cows not have hands, so would that make it "first-udder"? If a cow delivered you milk that it got from another cow, would that be "second-udder"? If you overheard two people whispering, would you recieve their gossip "second-utter?"

Jon. Nothing is better than Jon's voice-mail messages. I feel like bees suddenly have sworn off their stingers and just want to chill with me and I'm like "Man, you're so fuzzy, and bumbling, and make good jokes with 'bee' puns" and they're like, "Yeah, I know, nobody ever wants to get to know us 'cus they think we're gonna get 'em with our poisonous stabbers. Man, it blows." Not to say with this strange scene I've set that Jon is something potentially threatening that then loses its danger and becomes sweet and cuddly. No, no, but rather, that Jon makes the world feel less thorny, more rose.

The Section Formerly Known as Shira. Section "Shira" went up to the counter of this too-hip-but-I-can't-help-but-sit-down-for-the-whole-day-typing-and-sipping-crackaccinos coffee shop and ordered herself something chewy. So, the Section Formerly Known as Shira will be replacing her. This section is sponsored by impressive caligraphy, the letter J, and the moment when your blinkers sync up with the car ahead of yours. Oh, I think I was supposed to tell you what the meaning of Shira's name is, but the letter J is getting all posessive and wants in on the news flash, so, here we go, J, take it away. Jrlichman jeans jonest jerson jin jerman jand jhira jeans joem jor jong jin jebrew. Jretty jweet, jright?

Three? Section Three? is unsure of whether it belongs here, or whether some other oddly titled heading should be here about some other poet like Section Kit Wallach, or whether J should just take over, or what. It's a bit insecure, but don't say that in front of it. It's best to comment on it within earshot at parties so that J can not know what you said for sure and just brew until it gets home and sleeps in its jed and then stay up all night wondering whether you said "J is SOOO insecure" or was it "secure"? J can't quite remember, and that's all the more frustrating, cus what if he really is confident and he just didn't hear it? So Three? is devoted to questioning and insecurities and the sharing of such dangerous weapons. Yes, they become weapons. When overused, or turned against one's self, insecurity and questioning can become extremely dangerous. Albert Einstein was all about questions but he also never answered anybody when they asked him why he didn't wear socks. What I'm trying to say is you can ask questions, but don't weild them wildly. They can get out of hand, or out of udder...I wouldn't want to leave anybody out. So here we go: Where are the Spilljoyers going? Can I learn more about it on the space that is mine? Let me guess, would that be at www.myspace.com/thespilljoyensemble? Will that tell me about ways I can get closer to Ken's beard? Is Shira spending too much time crafting a website which will tell me more about her where-abouts? Is where-about another really cool compound word?

Wolverine. This section is the name of the toothbrush I was introduced to over the phone via Ken. And what a toothbrush it was. Triple sigh with a cherry on top.




 

 

Hi everybody!