Saturday night

I am so grateful for my husband's ability to listen to me and for his support.

D caught me looking at job listings and wanted to know how serious that was. So we had a long talk. Actually, as I was saying, I had a long talk and he had a long listen and good advice.

I am not an ambitious person when it comes to work. I have never been. I don't feel the need to push myself ahead in some career path. I do not strive for more and more money. I feel extremely fortunate that I do make a good living, but that's more accident than planning.

I want a job where I know what my duties are and I do them extremely well and am recognized for my competence. Beyond that, what do I need? Health benefits and hours that allow me to pick up my kids from school. But as for the rest? I was happy covering books with plastic at the library, which required next to no brainpower and by most peoples' accounts was hellishly monotonous, but to me was therapeutic and lovely. I was happy doing software troubleshooting which required thinking hard and fast all day long while keeping 20-50 customers and programmers satisfied. If I know my place and can work hard behind the scenes to make the machine function, that's good enough for me.

My unhappiness at jobs has more often than not sprung from personality conflicts. I know I'm not perfect, and I'm sure I'm not easy to work with all the time. But whatever faults I have, I think that I have a positive attitude at work in general. And I only last so long working with people who are chronically angry, or disrespectful of other people who don't share their political views or temperament. My skin is only so thick, and then when I've had enough, I've had enough, and any more of the same negative attitude or unethical behavior from colleagues is fuel for the fire of discontent. Maybe I need to participate in some kind of workshop where I learn to interact more productively with aggressive personalities.

Or maybe not.

Just because my childhood has given me the tools needed to put up with abusive people doesn't mean I should.

Perhaps what I really need is to be a writer. They work alone almost all of the time. Some writers complain about this. At the moment, I think it sounds heavenly.

Fretting about work is not something that one should be doing on a Saturday night.

Is it?

More Spring Cleaning

Happy Birthday to my half-sister Melinda, and to our friend Cheryl! I don't think either read this page, but it's the thought that counts, right?

In other news...
In our livingroom are about 10 boxes and half a dozen bags all packed up and ready to go to the girls' school Rummage Sale. I'd done much of the boxing earlier in the year, but tonight I also went through cupboards and did more purging.

I also have three bags full of items that wouldn't necessarily sell at the garage sale but are still in good enough condition to donate to charity. And then there's the stuff that I've just plain thrown out. It's very nice to think that after I drop those things off tomorrow, I won't have to see them again. Except while working at the rummage sale, when I can pretend they were never mine, anyway, all the while diverting the girls' attention from anything they might recognize and suddenly feel compelled to rescue from my heartless abandonment.

You know how it goes. "But Mom! That's my favorite little-stuffed M&M-in-a-baseball-hat guy! I love that one! How could you get rid of it?!"

I tell you. I'm heartless.

But really, we SO do not need all this stuff. Good riddance to it, I say!

I do have a fear that all these internal & external changes I'm going through will lead to me jettisoning more big things - like my job, for example. There are plenty of reasons to stay where I work. But there are also, I'm increasingly aware, reasons to leave.

I've been feeling dizzy lately, just that slight loss of equilibrium one might get after a glass or two of wine, or the sense of constantly listing a little that comes from having turned around in circles several times like kids do before they lie on the floor and go, "Woooow." And of course I think it could be anemia, or that I'm pregnant (extremely unlikely, but technically not impossible), or that I have a brain tumor. Or it could be, I think, just a physical manifestation of an internal state of being off-balance. I'm listing. I'm drifting. And I don't know what port I'm leaving or what port I'm making for. I'm trying to enjoy the journey, but I'm also a little worried that I've forgotten to look up and take mental note of the position of the stars.


Today makes a year since I started this Blog. Who'd have thought it would be so regular a part of my life? I'm glad. Even though sometimes it feels like nothing more than a combination journal/email to myself, some confidence and writerly habits have come from it.

My first post said, "Thus it starts. No promises. Just a beginning."


And now?


Thus it continues.

No promises.

Just a process.

Another old one

I wrote this poem three years ago, almost to the day, to be part of the "THE WILD POETRY ELIOT HYPERPOEM" project. You can see the original hyperpoem here. The idea is for different writers to use a line from "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock"(in this case)and use it as a jumping off place to create something of their own, or to at least incorporate it into a poem somehow. I suppose you can either think of this as base, low plagiarism, or as another link in a long chain of artists inspiring one another. Or you can think of it however you like, actually. When I wrote it, I was very conscious of the war in Iraq having just started.




Portent

And how to explain that yellow smoke? Is it
signal smoke, the smoke of sacrificial offerings,
prophetic? Born of the burning of unholy things?
The yellow haze of gypsies, soothsayers and bombs.
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes
and will not be gone.

What good could come of such a thing? What could it signal
that is clean? See how it lies low and eager to come in?
Yes, you see what I mean. It is Spring again.
The roses reincarnate the yard, and still, outside
the yellow smoke hangs sullen and sulfuric, daring us to breathe.

We try to blow it free like cake candle flames, but the smoke
remains: muzzle pointed at us, the yellow of rotten grass,
of nicotine stained fingers and newspapers in rooms
where we pass time reading the same stale page.

I have measured out smoke in pipes and corridors;
yours are not the only eyes that burn from what presses
at the panes. I have seen the smoke of fires rise
with a full-moon wind, but that smoke rose. Since then,

since then pillars have smoldered low beneath our feet.
And I can only think two ways free: to open the window,
let the patient smoke in, to anoint the room with what follows behind;
or to bide time until it slinks to another street, every tatter of it gone,
and we can wipe the glass clean.

Daily poetry

Tonight I have neither thoughtful musings nor family anecdotes to tell. But I found this on Poetry Daily by Alan Shapiro, and like it. I only have a few more days of National Poetry Month to give me an excuse to post so many poems, but I'll probably continue to do so after April, too.
Who hasn't fallen out of love? Or risen out of it?



Takeoff

We didn't fall out of love,
old love, we rose — we rose
as in a plane, as in the moment
when the wheels lift
and the whole craft
shudders against the gravity
it then forgets as
all at once the runway's
fretful rushing by the window
slows and resolves to field
and tree line, the beaten
metal of a pond
the sun anneals;

we rose the way it all
grows clearer
as it diminishes till
a car drives in place
along a road that winds
and straightens, straightens to wind
again across a widening
landscape in which
nothing at all is moving
except the ever-
smaller sharper
shadow of our
getting clear of it.

Road rash

R took a spill on her bike this afternoon. It was a slow-moving spill, and she's only scraped a knee and her palm, a bit, and now has an arcing bruise in the shape of part of her tire on her inner thigh. I was down the street walking home with S at the time, and I saw that R didn't shed a tear as she got up and hobbled to our driveway. Another mom, who was collecting her daughter from a play-date when R fell, commented on how brave R was. I also praised her for being so calm while I cleaned up the cuts and applied antiseptic and bandages.

"That was quite a spill," I said. "I saw you fall."

"Me too. Up close," she answered.


Later, when we were talking about our best thing/worst thing for the day, R said that her best thing had been the fall. "I know it sounds weird," she said. But then she explained that when she was going down with the bike, it made her get rid of some anger she'd been holding inside about other things in her life. I can only guess that this is the anger and frustration that she catalogued for me yesterday: anger over having to endure the STAR testing at school, over being friends with people who aren't friends with each other, over her little sister getting on her nerves. She said that the fall pushed everything out of her except what was happening at that moment, and she sort of felt better afterwards for it. I wasn't sure whether to be relieved that she had this kind of release (I understand what she means), or whether to be afraid that it's the beginning of some lifelong pattern of self-abuse in the name of catharsis. This is just one example, too, of me extrapolating some little event out to an extreme conclusion.

But then she said that her worst thing was also the fall. So I think we're all right.

Placeholder post

Here's a placeholder post: an I'm-putting-my-quarter-on-the-arcade-game-edge-to-say-I-get-the-next-round post.

It's not that there is nothing to say. There is plenty to say. How the kids on the street spill out from the houses in the long afternoons to play, and how we moms talk in driveways about whether evolutionary theory really contradicts the story of creation from the Bible, and whether the careful phrases required by Positive Discipline are really worth it when one swat on the bottom seems imminently more expedient and effective, and where there's a good deal on groceries, and what we women on the cusp (or just past) of 40 want to be when we grow up. There is plenty to write about the satisfaction of so many blossoms on the orchid in the bathroom, and the simple gratitude that it is still alive, after all these years. About what isn't still alive - the relationships and habits and reactions that have died either tortuous or unnoticed deaths, the stars whose light we are still getting. About the mixed blessing of a rejection letter from a literary magazine. About the rat coming to us when she is loose in the house and we call her. About cheese. About whale cheese. About Wales. About what is inherited and what is learned. About the smell of basil, and the perfect blue-grey color of the BMW driven by the boy in High School I had a crush on.

But today, I'm just writing to record that at least I know, now, that when I sit down to write, there is plenty to say. And the words to say it all are waiting just like those kids to spill out into the world and play.

Backtowork eve

Got the girls to bed later than I wanted to, but still at a - *cough* - somewhat decent hour.

They did so well at the run this morning. R ran on ahead of us and says she did the mile in 15 minutes. The event wasn't formally timed, and I hadn't realized how informal it was until I got to the end and there was no clock, no timer, no nothing. I think S and I did the route in about 20 minutes, but that's just a guess because it started 3:30 min. after the 5k, but the 5k started "sometime" after 9am. At any rate, I'm proud of both girls. R says she didn't walk much, and S ran more than I thought she would. We did most of the route holding hands, except when she did a little sprint now and then. When she did walk, she walked fast, and we only had to stop once, when she insisted on unzipping the legs of her pants to turn them into shorts because she was hot. These pants have a handy design where you can adjust the length by adding or removing zippered sections of them - but since we didn't want to stop as long as it would take to actually pull off her shoes and remove the unneeded sections completely, for the last 1/3 of the mile or so, S had half of her pants fallen around her ankles. The effect was comical, but considering the circumstances (pushing ourselves to finish a run as quickly as we could), S and I cared about how she looked about as much as a woman in labor cares about how she looks.

Both girls ran the last bit of their race all-out. It's hard not to, when the finish has rows of people on both sides cheering you on. S and I were too far back to see R finish, but she said she passed several runners at the end. And S looked so impressive to me (just behind her as I was at the end of the race) pushing her short body for all she was worth, with her little arms and legs pumping. She's become taller and leaner in the last few months, but she still looked something like a determined little bull charging the finish line. (I would never use this description in her presence, and I mean it in the most affectionate way - honest. There's just no other comparison that comes to mind.)


On another note, I got to spend some much-needed time at the Apple Box "writing" mid-day while D took a break from work to watch the girls. I know that technically, talking about writing doesn't count as writing - nor does talking about other things count as writing. But it was still much-needed. I feel like I've had a real weekend.

Butter & Eggs Day Parade

S was in the parade today along with a quarter of the town's population (the rest of us watched). She walked with the girls' school. The theme was "That's Entertainment," and her school was trying to suggest old-fashioned things like jumping rope and music and dance and just plain "doing" instead of "watching" as good forms of entertainment. Very Waldorf of them. S was among the kindergartners in the back of the group, blowing bubbles. She seemed to have a good time. The town is small enough that we saw a dozen or more people we know downtown as we sat among the lighter crowd toward the front of the parade route.

Tomorrow, the girls and I will run that little 1-mile race together in the City.
It's a real family weekend. Except that D worked today & will work again tomorrow. Blech, I say. And he says double-blech.

Looking forward to writing time (BIC!) tomorrow too - if I can find parking while downtown is having an antique festival. (Be warned, SA, the joint may be jumpin')

I kind of dread writing these blog entries at night. It's been suggested that I switch my blogging time to the morning, but I couldn't do it at work, and before work, when it's still dark, I don't have time to get lost in a thought and find my way out through words. But even at night, even when I feel drained of anything but the energy to crawl into bed, once I start writing, my love of the process comes right to the surface, and I feel I could go on for a long time, enjoying what I'm doing. The exact same thing could be said of my running. As I lace up my shoes, I think, "Is this really necessary?" and after about 20 steps, I think, "Yes. Yes, it is."

Julia mentioned that she'd just read a Steve Martin book. I haven't read any of his books, but I found this quote and wanted to share:


"I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper. ~ Steve Martin

It's all OK around here

My friend Laura gave me a copy of the music from Oklahoma yesterday, and we've all been listening to it ever since. In the car, in the livingroom, in R's room. D says he's made a copy for in his truck & at work. I mean, we're such a sappy happy family at the moment, wandering around humming "The Surrey with the Fringe On Top" and "People Will Say We're In Love."

I'm a sucker for lyrics that are clever. Cole Porter does the same thing, and Irving Berlin. Not that I know many of their songs, but those I know I like.

I do know the songs from musicals I was in: The Wizard of Oz in 7th grade, The Sound of Music in 8th grade, Westside Story in college. And yesterday, I Googled the boy I'd acted opposite as a teenager. He was Gregor Von Trapp to my Maria, and I was Mrs. Crachit to his Bob Cratchit in the Christmas Carol. At one point, we figured we'd had about 20 on-stage children together. Oh, the romance. I must say he has grown up nicely since he could sing higher notes than I could, and his career has sure taken off better than mine did. In spite of battling MS for years, he's done off-Broadway and tons of voice-overs and TV (such as CSI: NY). Go, Grant!

Well, I must tuck the little "I Can't Say No" gals into bed, now. As S pointed out about the song, "She says she can't say 'no' but she says 'no' when she says that."

Ah. Can't put anything past my kids, I tell you.

There's no translation for it

D just said he's "deprimé" (pronounced "day-preem-ay" with a French accent)which is apparently untranslatable, because the few words I threw at him - deflated, defeated, drained - didn't do the trick. I guess it's more like "totally without energy and feeling depressed about not having enough energy."

I know how he feels. I'm all daypreemay myself right now. But it could be worse. Apparently, the minimum wage in Cuba is being doubled May first from 100 pesos to 225 pesos - equal in US dollars from about $4.50 to about $9.40 a month. It would be worse to be daypreemay and trying to make ends meet in Cuba. Or plenty of other places in the world.

I'm reading Feed, and it's having a real effect on me. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes YA Science Fiction - a sub-genre, I guess. Highly. Like, way highly. It's all about death? And it's written in like first person, in this teenager's voice, you know? And it's like, totally affecting me so that I'm thinking da da da the world is heading in this direction and da da da we should all pay attention. On and on, as I read it. And I'm not really daypreemay from reading this book, because I get a charge out of a good book, even if it's a totally depressing good book. Or maybe because it's totally depressing.

Damn. I may never get out of therapy. Thank God for a good health plan and a reasonable co-pay.

Anniversary

14 year wedding anniversary today. D had roses delivered to my work: one pale peach rose for every year, and an extra red one in the middle for the years to come. He's a good man. I'm glad we found each other 22 years ago. And I'd say the same even if he hadn't given me roses: a good man.

A little lighter poetry for you

One of my all time favorites, from A.A. Milne:

The Four Friends

Ernest was an elephant, a great big fellow,
Leonard was a lion with a six foot tail,
George was a goat, and his beard was yellow,
And James was a very small snail.

Leonard had a stall, and a great big strong one,
Earnest had a manger, and its walls were thick,
George found a pen, but I think it was the wrong one,
And James sat down on a brick

Earnest started trumpeting, and cracked his manger,
Leonard started roaring, and shivered his stall,
James gave a huffle of a snail in danger
And nobody heard him at all.

Earnest started trumpeting and raised such a rumpus,
Leonard started roaring and trying to kick,
James went on a journey with the goats new compass
And he reached the end of his brick.

Ernest was an elephant and very well intentioned,
Leonard was a lion with a brave new tail,
George was a goat, as I think I have mentioned,
but James was only a snail.





I love the rhyme of "intentioned" and "mentioned." I love the wrong pen. And I love the snail's huffle. This is right up there with Nash's Custard the Dragon in my book. Just plain silly, and fun, and from a time before ours, but still something children today can love. Case in point.

I was deferred from giving blood again yesterday - the second time in a row - because of a low hematocrit count. This in spite of the fact that I take iron daily and was nowhere in my cycle (thank you for asking) that would have caused a lower than usual count. The culprit, I think, is probably coffee. The Blood Bank gave me a second copy of a purple photocopied leaflet entitled, "Hematocrit Levels Handbook" which tells me that, "Coffee taken with meals can reduce iron absorption up to 39%." Since I take coffee with, before, and after breakfast, it doesn't matter how many nuts, beans, apricots or raisins I eat - it's not going to help. One more reason to cut back.

On the other hand, apparently iron or stainless steel cookware helps: "One study found that spaghetti has almost 30 times as much iron when cooked in an iron pot than in a glass one." Who cooks spaghetti in a glass pot these days? And who knows what hematocritic value Calphalon has?

I must be tired. I started out with a darling poem for children and ended up discussing the health benefits of cookware. Heck. Maybe I am anemic. If I ate red meat, I'd have a big old steak to see if that helps me string sentences together any better. As it is, I guess I'll go have a raisin. Or a cup of coffee. Yeah. That always enables me to focus.

When 4 is better than 2

Four is better than two when you're talking about children entertaining each other. R's friend Richie and his little sister, S's friend Julia, have been busy since after 4pm with some elaborate political negotiations.

They currently represent two kingdoms - R & R are the emperors of Japan and China, playing in direct contradiction of actual current events by forming an alliance. Hmm. Do you think we could channel the friendly emperors in my house so that Nobutaka Machimura and Wu Dawei have productive talks?

Anyway, here Japan & China are in a feud against S & J, from the Kingdom of Jasmine & Some Other Princess.

But wait - borders change quickly! Now sooner had I written that than Richie is Merlin & R is King Arthur, and they're holding a unicorn hostage while announcing riddles that S & J must solve in order to gain entry to the kingdom.

Little did they know that the 5-year-olds already know the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx:

"What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs at night?"

"A baby, an adult, and..." (this took an minute) "...and an old lady!"

The little girls have been allowed to be part of the kingdom. A proclamation has just been read. The princess is giving Arthur "the most powerfulist jewel" in the kingdom, and has rushed off with her sister the Other Princess to the ball which apparently has already started.

All this, and more, lasting over an hour total now. About as long as it would have taken to sit glassy-eyed in front of a video or two.

And yes, I know that the riddle of the Sphinx also (sometimes) includes "...and is weakest when it walks on 4 legs."

Man may be weakest walking on 4 legs, but when it comes to kids contained in a house, 4 is definately better than 2.

Look out Barbie and Log - it's Bottle & Tape!

So S has a piece of folded up clear tape that she calls "Tape." Tape has adventures. Tape has family (more tape strips and even some little scraps of paper - it's a mixed family). Tape has all of S's attention for extended periods of time while she narrates Tape's dramas.

Then, last night, S discovered Bottle. Bottle is an empty 2 liter Calistoga container, but really, that's stereotyping. He's so much more complex than that. Bottle has a strip of paper across his neck with a face on it. Yesterday, S pointed to the face and said that if Bottle looked a little unhappy, there was a reason. Bottle had been playing at the school playground, and his friend had pushed him, and he fell down on a big, big piece of glass, and it cut his head right off. But then a girl helped him put it back on, so he's better. But he's still mad at the friend who pushed him.

This story has varied little since the first telling. R asked her about 10 minutes later about it, and the only change was that S added, "Oh, and *I* was the girl who helped him."

Tonight at the dinner, we were all being goofy as usual, but R had just done something extra polite. This prompted D to make a joke by tossing another newly empty 2 liter bottle behind his shoulder and saying, "I'm so glad you guys have such great table manners!"

S exclaimed, "Oh good!I can make Bottle's dad!" and R and I busted up.

We could hardly stop laughing, so we had S explain her story again to Papa, and it was the same thing (almost verbatim). Except that she did clarify about the decapitation.

"He had to go to the hospital. It was kind of an emergency."

when saturday night isn't

It really doesn't feel like Saturday night, because it really didn't feel like a day off today, and because I need to be at work tomorrow morning at 6am.

This was my day - by choice! so I'd better not complain, huh? And it is pretty dull reading, so skip to a more interesting site if you'd rather. This one, for example, I found by Googling "interesting web site."

Okay, my day:

7:40 - take Ford to dealership to have airbag-light-staying-on problem checked
(jogged home from dealership -3.3 miles)

9:30 - take S to dance class, bring R. While S has dance class, R & I have hot chocolate and mocha, respectively, and split a chocolate & regular croissant, at the Tea Room, which Lisa, among others, has called her favorite spot for breakfast (see Feb. 21 post).

10:40 - S's dance class gets out 10 minutes late. We go home, grab a few needed items (like helmet and crop) and go to R's riding lesson. S and I hang out while R rides.

12:45 - go from R's lesson to Novato. Get the Prius washed, then go to the dealership across the way to have 5,000 mile maintenance (on the car, not us). We walked from there to the mall across the way, had lunch at Fresh Choice & then window shopped Pier One and shopped for clothes at Target (pronounced "tar-jay," if you'd like).

4:15 - leave Target
4:20 - return to Target, with moaning and groaning kids in tow, to retrace our steps through the store to find a pair of sunglasses I'd dropped. These are the same sunglasses that had gone missing for a couple of days before I'd found them in the car hidden next to the passenger seat, and I was not going to lose them again. Find the glasses on the floor in the kids' clothing section, where we'd been 20 minutes before.

4:30 or so - pick up Prius.

5:00 or so - go home, picked up D, go to the Ford dealership, pick up the Escape, D & I drive back home in the 2 cars. Then D goes back to work (until 8pm) and I try to get yardwork done/make dinner/mind kids at the same time, and am unsuccessful in all but making dinner. Pour myself a glass of wine and have a happy rest-of-the evening. I'd had wine Wed. when S's ex-preschool teacher was over, but apart from that, this was the first time in weeks that I'd had any alcohol. A little goes a long way when you drink so seldom.

8:15 - read a bedtime story to the kids in the big bed. Asleep by 8:20. (I am, that is. The kids might have fallen asleep around 8:30.)

9:30-10:40 - hit snooze button for alarm countless times. Finally get up, convinced that I wouldn't be able to write a thing.

11:06-11:33 - yawn an estimated 26 times while blogging.

11:39 - go back to bed.

happy poetry (formerly, briefly, titled "draft"!)

I know. I'm so chipper and happy in my poetry. But really, if I wanted to write cheerful rhyming verse, I'd apply for a job with a greeting card company.

It's been a really long week, and now that I'm at the end of it (although tomorrow will be busy and I work Sunday), I'm just so relieved.

And I just spent an hour tooling around on the Web looking for a good poem to post here. I read Ezra Pound, ee cummings, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Wislawa Szymborska, Dylan Thomas, Theodore Roethke. I must say, none of it was very cheerful. So I thought I would check out "humorous poetry," which led me to limericks.


Um....I reviewed several of those.

Um.

There were none that were appropriate to post here.

To the Ants

I also have a poem about a spider. And about scarabs. But this is neither my first or last poem about ants. Nor is it finished, so constructive criticism and suggestions are appreciated, for those of you inclined. (Thanks to Josh & Julie for your comments last week. You may note some changes.)


To The Ants

If you stay, no good can come of it.
It will end in a way neither of us wants.
I know, you are just doing your job. You scout
for new ground, a place to raise a family,
the next home for a cluster of eggs.
But my task is to keep counters
clean of single-file lines, no matter
how handsome the individual parts
of the moving social whole.

I hope you know I admire you:
your strength, symmetry, absolute
dedication to the cause. How you care
for your dead, how you tidy up.
Even the way you create
chemicals to lay trails and hail nest mates
seems a feat too great for such a tiny creature.

But that’s just me. The next person
who comes along will not be so kind.
You will find a thumb blocking out the light
from the kitchen sun, until there is
only a darkness more absolute
than the deepest tunnels you dig.


c 4/05

Entertaining

Tonight S's past preschool teacher came over for dinner. We had a great time, especially because it was very relaxed.

At the end of the evening, our guest and I took turns reading pages of a story about a leprechaun for S, then the girls were tucked in and probably asleep within about a minute. Now the dishes from the home-cooked meal are done, the dog's been fed, I've (pretty much) blogged, and I'm still awake but ready for bed.

I will post the newly revised Ant poem tomorrow, after a little more feedback from the Yahoo poetry group.

Bright April

I used to like Sara Teasedale's "I Shall Not Care", and I think the sliver of me that is an angst-ridden teenager still has a soft spot for it. But while looking for it online, I ran across this one, which seems more appropriate, in a broader sense, now:


There Will Come Soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.


Sara Teasedale



Now, isn't that cheerful?


But I mean, honestly, that you can either look at the way in which the world has gone on fine before us and will do so after us - before and after each of us, individually, myself included, and before and after all of us, collectively - and you can find this to be about the most depressing, ego-deflating, terrifyingly brutal thing, or you see at is as a comfort. It means that the mountains in North Wales that I feel a part of will be just fine without me. Dinas Bran will continue to crumble into ruins, and the gorse will bloom every year. Fortunately, I am not responsible for the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. That's some relief.

I've mentioned my love of ants. I've written a new poem about them. And after I test it out on an online poetry community I belong to, I'll post it here. Because it's April, and I am working on poems before the coming of the soft rains.

Poetry in Sebastopol

Thanks to Suzanne for the hot lead on an evening of poetry. The Western Sonoma County Historical Society hosted "a night of vintage and contemporary poetry" at the Veterans Building. In spite of the fact that Suzanne and I felt a little bit like outsiders crashing the gig (as non-society members), it was great to hear Terry Ehret (the county's poet laureate) read, and to learn more about a little volume of poetry that was published in 1933 - a compilation of about a hundred literary voices in the area. Some of the vintage poetry was full of the emotionally manipulative pathos and forced rhymes you might expect from the era, but some of it was not so syrupy and did really evoke a little something about the local geography and history.

One of the things I found interesting was Terry's mention of William Keith, a painter whose work she had studied while writing poetry for the Oakland Museum. He created very large paintings, but in the end, Terry was inspired to write by a much smaller sketch he'd done. Here's one of the poems she read tonight:


Landscape
Untitled
WILLIAM KEITH
oil painting on a cigar box lid


A landscape might show up anywhere,
say as black and green,
red brushstrokes
on the lid of a cigar box,

inside three small glass bottles,
the dark amber which could be the sky,

an old, hinged palette,

brushes of various widths
and their stiff white hair,

whatever is near, your face perhaps.

Come closer.
You will begin to see how deep the woods are,
how much of night is suggested.
Are you thinking about sleep?
It is easy to imagine.

The tools you might use to invent the world
are everywhere, close at hand.

Sunday at the Zoo with J-

S was treated to a trip to the Zoo with a friend today. I think she must have had a blast. She came back sunburned and tired, with a plush stuffed tiger under her arm.

My car did not sell over the weekend, and even though it's only been "on the market" for a little while, I'm already almost ready to park it somewhere with a "$10 or best offer" sign on it. I guess I could see what the dealership would pay me for it if I'm that desperate. Time to visit the Kelley Blue Book site again, check the loan payoff amount, and weigh patience against instant gratification of being rid the extra car.

Apart from that, it was a good weekend. I even managed to read a little, and laze in the sun a little, and nap. And go for a short run. Plus the usual chores, and a lot of whispering to save my voice, which seems to be mostly gone, although I feel fine.

But it is bedtime, since tomorrow's a "school day."

Kid chatter

Heard today on the court:

Tiffany, one of the little girls across the street whose uncle had died, told me that she was going to go to her grandmother's to pick out one or two of her late uncle's things that she can keep. She's eight years old. She already, she said, has his pocketknife, although she said she didn't use it. "And I had some of his pepperspray," she continued, "But my I had to give it to my dad," then added by way of explanation, "Because he needs some."

About half an hour later, the girl on the corner who's 11, was saying to the boy across the street who's 7, "Did you know that there was a world-famous chess player who had been imprisoned, and he was just released from detention, in Japan?"

All those words.
And the boy asked, "What's chess?"

How silly is this?

I want to sell my Escape this weekend, but of course to sell one's car, one needs a pink slip. So after a long time carefully searching the 2 or 3 places the pink slip might be, I'm guessing it's in the safe deposit box at the bank. Now, to open a safe deposit box, one needs a key. I'm very careful about where I keep our key. Usually. But after looking in the 2 places that it normally would be, I've searched high and low pretty much everywhere else, and it's nowhere to be found.

I think the only thing more frustrating than spending all night looking for something is spending all night looking for something and not finding it. It's also ironic, for a couple of reasons. One is that I have a reputation among friends and family as a "finder" - I can almost always point them to the place they've left or lost an item. It's a gift I'm grateful for and something for which I can't really take credit (because it is, after all, a gift). But I can never seem to track down my own things that I've lost. The other bit of irony is that the key is probably somewhere new that I put so it would be "safe." It's apparently very safe, wherever it is.

On the brighter side, I've gone through a lot of paperwork and have done a lot of cleaning up tonight! But I'm wiped out, and ready to call it a day.

Arrrgh!

This is frustrating! I'd just posted a lovely little late-night post, full of - if not profound wisdom and insight into the human condition - at least complete sentences and links and a touch of humor at the end. But now, alas! it is gone. That fickle web. Something must be up with Blogger's site. Unless this really is the END OF THE INTERNET that I mentioned to Josh earlier in the evening. Too late to recreate it tonight. Bon nuit.

A "stay home" day

S calls weekends "stay home" days, but today I had to take one of those mid-week. I was feeling cold-y yesterday, and much worse this morning. I can't believe how much this fifths disease thing has beaten down our immune systems around here. I woke up only to call in sick at 6am, and then didn't wake again until 11. That left me only a little time to do nothing more daunting than balance my checkbook (where DOES the money go???) and clean out my purse - not as easy as you might think! - before running to the bank to keep the mortgage check from bouncing, and then getting the kids at school. R had a playdate here with one of the wilder boys in her class, and then I took the girls to his house (he has a 5 year old sister) to play while I went to a dr appointment. The appointment had nothing (on the face of it) to do with my cold: it was something scheduled last month with the same therapist I'd seen a couple of times. Talking with her has been so helpful, coming as it does during this time of re-evaluation of who I am and what I want to do with my life. All these changes I'm going through are very early mid-life, pre-perimenopausal, I know. But I also don't want to belittle this step in my journey by slapping a cultural or hormonal label on it.

But after the dr appointment, and after the stay at home, I feel so much better. Still, I'm sipping fizzy vitamin C drink as a write this, and tomorrow will undoubtedly come earlier than I want it to. Here's a poem that's 5 years old, written when R was S's age. I only tweaked a word or two while posting it here.



What Makes Creation Messy

We plant seeds in a riot of potting soil and peat pots.
My 5-year-old rips into packets, spills geneses:
snapdragon and cantaloupe, corn and beans.
Seeds for lavender and poppy, small as pill bug scat.

She bores holes with her pinky, thumb curving in the air,
I poke the earth with silent commands. To this one: germinate,
to that one: sprout. Grow and astound us, be bountiful, be green.
She writes the future with a laundry marker around the out-
side of the pots: CarrOt. PEPPEr. PumPkIN. BEaN.
CorN. PoPPy. CorN. BeaN.

Her fingers slip and leave hieroglyphs on the table, her hand.
They look like nicks, like the lines misused pruning shears make
on a slender apple tree branch.

The ecstasy of beginning behind us, now we'll mind the heat,
drip water to tempt the question-mark curves of green into straightening.
They're ours now, tiny things to tend or neglect at will.
She'll learn how apt seedlings are to shrivel if left alone.

Still in packets, the others are kept safe from either fate:
they await their turn to thrive or die
until the next time we give creation a go.

A Post A Day

gives you quantity but not necessarily quality. I mean, really. What was I thinking saying I'd blog every day? I obviously wasn't thinking of times like this, when the kids are tucked into bed and I want nothing more than to crawl between the sheets myself and put another day's worth of didn't-do-it's to rest.

I was thinking the habit of journaling daily would do me good. And maybe it has, somehow. It's given my consistency while other things that had been habitual in my life shift and drop away. But have I written elsewhere or otherwise, even knowing I'll be seeing my writer's group Thursday? Uh... no. Not really. Not yet.

Here's something from Gerard Manley Hopkins. I think I first read it in High School. Those of you who did not have Mr. Skinner for English may not know it as well:


Spring and Fall: To a Young Child

MARGARET, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie.
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Close to midnight

The girls and I went to bed early and I only am up to blog and see if the Tooth Fairy came.

I am (still) feeling a huge lack of time and space needed to do some serious meditating and soul searching. I think this feeling was heightened by the weekend away from home. Even though it included a long drive, it's hard to focus on the Meaning of Life while you're dodging semi's on the Grapevine.

Another poem in honor of National Poetry Month. And no, it's not mine. My throat is hurting - is it my body's way of ensuring that I take a day off work, have time and space to think and to write? Protestant Work Ethic vs. Suppressed Existential Crisis. Who will win?!



Caps
People should be open on top like a cup.
A piece of bread should be able to sop
some of us up. We should be milk-like
or like wine. We should not have to be
trying to get our caps off all the time.
The storybook boy attempts the simple gesture
of baring his head for his emperor,
but another hat has appeared.
This happens over and over.
Who does not share his despair of simplicity,
of acting clearly and with dignity?
And what pleasure can we find in the caps,
brightly feathered and infinitely various,
that pile up so high they bury us?

-- Kay Ryan

Home

Only a short entry, here, to say that we have safely arrived home after the long drive. We couldn't resist a little more swimming time this morning, and so didn't start the trip north until after noon. And then it was the frustrating stop-and-go of the megapolis L.A., and once we were north of that madness, the reward of spills of wildflowers on the sharp desert hills. Then the monotony of everything south and north of Buttonwillow, a dicey pit stop or two, and finally, darkness, the girls asleep, and two torrential downpours between Merced and Berkeley. Made it home awake but only for about five minutes more. Always nice to return.

Hemet for a Day

S and I arrived at Grandma's just before noon. Last night, we stayed in a smoking room (all that was left) at the Best Western in Lebec. We lazed around this afternoon, then went for a swim when Aunt J brought R over (she stayed at her house last night. It was amazing swimming in a huge pool in beautiful weather, and then lounging in a huge hot tub, looking up to see snow-covered mountains in the not-so-distant distance. My mom lives in a great little place, here.

In the early evening, I couldn't keep from napping a little while the girls played under Grandma's supervision. Then we had a simple dinner - pizza for the girls, an omelet for me. And now I'm going to round them up and get them to bed because they're going to have a hard time adjusting to getting up at what will feel like an hour earlier than school on Monday, and I figure we might as well start the earlier bedtime today. Besides, I have an ulterior motive. I'm still sleepy, and I know that an 8+ hour drive will require some energy.

I've been dared to post a poem of my own here. I will. And I'll make it a new one. But it won't be today, I'm afraid, as I don't have the time and space to write anything but this at the moment. But maybe the long drive home will give me something, if the girls sleep. There's only so many times you can sing every song from every Dar Williams CD, after all.

National Poetry Month is here again

Last night there was a poetry reading in the city: S.W. Merwin and Adrienne Rich. I couldn't make it, but to honor the event, here's a poem by Merwin and the beginning of one by Rich (with a link to the full poem). I'll be on the road all afternoon and probably until midnight, on my way south again with one daughter to pick up the other at Grandma's. This means the time to post is now!


Term

At the last minute a word is waiting
not heard that way before and not to be
repeated or ever be remembered
one that always had been a household word
used in speaking of the ordinary
everyday recurrences of living
not newly chosen or long considered
or a matter for comment afterward
who would ever have thought it was the one
saying itself from the beginning through
all its uses and circumstances to
utter at last that meaning of its own
for which it had long been the only word
though it seems now that any word would do

W.S. Merwin


Stepping Backward
 
Good-by to you whom I shall see tomorrow,
Next year and when I'm fifty; still good-by.
This is the leave we never really take.
If you were dead or gone to live in China
The event might draw your stature in my mind.
I should be forced to look upon you whole
The way we look upon the things we lose.
We see each other daily and in segments;
Parting might make us meet anew, entire.

... (Adrienne Rich. Read the rest of the poem here.)