Who Am I?

Inspired by Yoko One. One of her pieces in ACORN. I wrote this in a group–revised later. You can follow Ono’s grid to create your own piece.

Name: (Including all the names you are called by)
Miriam Anna Sagan
Mir

Past Address: 153 Dwight Pl. Englewood, NJ 07631
Present: 626 Kathryn St. Santa Fe, NM 87505
Future: One and a half grave plots. Jewish section. Memorial Gardens. Rodeo Road.

I am at the age where…
I hang suspended between vitality and death. A long pleasant autumn day but getting colder.

What you like:
Place: the desert
Time: dawn
Weather: rain
Colour: dark blue
Sound: the mallet hitting the solid heavy wooden han at the entrance to the zendo
Smell: low tide
Taste: coffee, anything bitter

Describe your world as you see it.
Inner: Chaos, dreams, pale roots shooting down into the earth, a web of…the unknown, the imagined. The presence of death, dried dusty butterfly wings. Once I couldn’t fly and I still can’t. Grudge. Hope. Compost pile.

Outer: The westside, yellow leaves and late apples in the street, graffiti and tag lines, the invisible but real networks across the city—arroyos, acequias, boundary lines, surveys, the old abandoned tunnels the kids call “Heaven” and Hell.”

Regret: that I never liked how I looked when I was young.

Pride: that I never let down a child who depended on me (knock wood).

My attachments:
a. animate: husband, daughter, grand-daughter, son-in-law, Texas red oak, two apricot trees, friends, siblings, nieces and nephews, road runner in my yard
b. inanimate: house, memory, money, dead husband, dead friends, costume jewelry earrings, Navajo rugs, Persian rugs, Pueblo pottery, justice

(Perplexed, I notice that art, poetry, and music do not appear here. Or religion. Are they perhaps not “attachments?” Also, I can’t decide if animate or inanimate!)

My wish:
1. to not be confined
2. to get my own way
3. to love