Happy soul, miserable body

The day went so well until just before midnight. Work, a short run at the gym cut even shorter because R was home sick & needed tlc, then (once D was home & we could tag-team parenting), I escaped to a Kay Ryan reading hosted by Marin Poetry Center and a fundraiser for their H.S. Poetry program.

Okay, I know this is not very eloquent, but Kay Ryan rocks.

Besides a score of awards including a Guggenheim fellowship and NEA fellowship, she was named to the "It List" by Entertainment Weekly (for what that's worth), and one of her poems has been permanently installed at New York’s Central Park Zoo. As she explained at the reading, the poem is installed in plastic along length of a low retaining wall. She said, "I like to think of kids running by, and reading it. And, you know, defacing it."

She's got that combination of wry humor, and dead seriousness, and true gift, that makes her irresistible (to my sensibilities, anyway). She's a minimalist. Her work is deceptively accessible, but upon re-reading (she repeated many of the poems she read), only gets better.

I like what she said about going to an AWP conference:

Once, when I was about twenty-five and not yet entirely aware of the extremity of my unclubbability, I did try to go to a writers conference. Thirty minutes into the keynote address I had a migraine. It turns out I have an aversion to cooperative endeavors of all sorts. I couldn’t imagine making a play or movie, for instance; so many people involved. I don’t like orchestral music. I don’t like team sports. I love the solitary, the hermetic, the cranky self-taught. Make mine the desert saints, the pole-sitters, the endurance cyclists, the artist who paints rocks cast from bronze so that they look exactly like the rocks they were cast from; you can’t tell the difference when they’re side by side. It took her years to do a pocketful. You just know she doesn’t go to art conferences. Certainly not zillion-strong international ones, giant wheeling circuses of panel discussions.

Yeah. My kinda gal. When I grow up, I want to be a lot like Kay Ryan.

I just need to make some changes in my life to facilitate getting somewhere with my work. Well, actually writing the poems, and then getting somewhere with them. D and I had a brief talk about it and I feel more supported than ever by him in this regard. He who does not (of his own volition) read poetry.

So. All well and good, until I get home feeling questionable, and go to bed early only to wake up with S's version of the flu. Not the weight loss plan I'd envisioned.

Here's a Kay Ryan poem from the poetryfoundation archive as an end-note, though:

All Shall Be Restored
by Kay Ryan

The grains shall be collected

from the thousand shores

to which they found their way,

and the boulder restored,

and the boulder itself replaced

in the cliff, and likewise

the cliff shall rise

or subside until the plate of earth

is without fissure. Restoration

knows no half measure. It will

not stop when the treasured and lost

bronze horse remounts the steps.

Even this horse will founder backward

to coin, cannon, and domestic pots,

which themselves shall bubble and

drain back to green veins in stone.

And every word written shall lift off

letter by letter, the backward text

read ever briefer, ever more antic

in its effort to insist that nothing

shall be lost.

On the mend

The girls are both better. It's almost as though they had 2 different flu's - R had a fever and no energy, but her stomach was fine and now she has a post-flu cough. S was sick to her stomach every 2 hours for 10 hours, but had no real fever.

D and I remain well, although I was sabotaged again by a glass of wine with dinner and I fell asleep early on the couch and woke up an hour later, very grumpy in part because D had been playing a PS2 game in the same room while I slept and the incessant maddening tune that accompanied it had invaded my dreams, and in part because I didn't get to the gym for a short run like I'd told myself I would.

I think I need to just plain NOT drink alcohol. Even a small glass seems to erode my humanity, and between that and lots of "comfort eating" while I was home with the girls, my self-esteem is in sad shape.

I need to write a poem to restore my faith in myself.

Make that two

S is down for the count, too. She woke up at 2am (just after R finally settled down for the night from her nightmares) to say that she felt like she was going to "frow up."

I must say that I have never met a more conversational nauseous person in my life. She was so matter-of-fact about it that I didn't take her seriously at first.

It's a conversation worth recording - soon, before I forget it! - but not at the moment...

Both girls out of school & D & I tag-teamed it, both missing some work.

Had a great writer's meeting with the Pointy gals - we all brought something, yay! to finish the day.

Still one fallen

R still has the flu, which is unusual around here, where the 12- or 24-hour variety is the norm. I slept in and went for my run late, and walked more of the 10 miles than usual. I'm telling myself that I'm saving up for the 1/2 marathon next week, and that it's better to walk with the blister that was forming than to tear up my feet now. My old shoes are too old to do well with long runs, and my new ones are not yet broken in enough. A quandary, but hardly worth worrying about.

R. said that she felt like she was floating Saturday night. I asked, "Did your hands feel like two balloons?" and she said the sort of did, and D. told me to stop already with the Pink Floyd references. We explained the allusion to R., but in her flush-faced state, she cared even less than usual how clever we were.

Saturday in review

R still sick and S walking around with a can of Lysol like it's a security blanket periodically hissing "stay away!" to her debilitated sister.

I had food delivery and S had dance class, then several unanticipated hours home to work on chores and tend to the ill, as well as a 5-mile run at the gym, before S had to go back out to ballet rehearsal (she'll be a Bird of the Forest in Snow White in a couple of months). Then S and I were off to a birthday party for the son of one of my few blog audience members (Happy Birthday Luke!). Note to self: 5-7pm is the perfect time for a kid's party. It doesn't interrupt your day, it includes dinner, and by the time you're done, the kids can go straight to bed.

Skate night and the flu

After school, both girls had brief play - dates which gave me just enough time to grocery shop alone (alone!) before picking them up again and heading north with two of their friends to the roller skating rink for a school fund-raising skate night. On the way up, R said she had a headache she thought had been brought on by the smell of another girl's mint tea, but as soon as we walked in the door of the bright, loud, chaotic skating rink, she fell apart into little pieces and it was clear that she was sick.

I passed the baton to a couple other moms to watch S and the other girls I'd brought, and R and I hung out in the car with the heater going (R shivering and crying and telling me about her horrible day) until D came and got her. Then I went back in and skated around slowly with S many times - although she's getting quicker with each trip to the rink, it's still harder to skate slowly with her than it would be to skate quickly without her.

Now I'm just hoping no one else gets sick.

8 years ago today

This marks the anniversary of my mother's quadruple bi-pass surgery. She used to celebrate today as a second birthday.

One of the doctors (my sister would remember which one) told her that the surgery should increase her life by 5-7 years. I don't know how much mom remembered those numbers, but I wish he'd said 15-20 years instead, just in case the number did actually have an influence. She started to fail almost exactly 7 years after the procedure.

Someone pointed out to me today that some people hear a number like that and it becomes their reality, and some people hear a number like that and it becomes the odds that they're going to beat.


So, I'm cleaning up our office at home and run across a design book on country homes that had belonged to Mom. It's full of beautiful photos but not my style, and so I'm pondering whether I should donate it to the school rummage sale or trade it in at the used book store, when I notice that several of the pages are neatly dog-eared. It pulls me up short. Those were the pages Mom especially liked, apparently, and for a minute I just stand there wondering what element of what chintz pillowed, wickered, antique-scattered bedroom called to her. Did she plan to mimic it in one of her rooms? Had she already incorporated elements of this book into her house? Only she would know, but I still don't have her new phone number, the belongings have scattered to the children and charities, and the house is inhabited by a renter with her own pictures on the walls.

This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened, and it won't be the last. Hell, I don't even need a phone number. An email address would be fine.

Wild Wednesday

After a weird night spent sleeping on the couch in between reading chapters of The Bronze Bow so I could lead a lit circle in R's class, it was one of those days where there wasn't time to do anything but hurl myself from one thing to the next.

Work included a little bug troubleshooting (which I *love*) & training a new employee, then I left early to run home for 10 minutes of typing up the lit circle discussion questions I'd come up with. Jaunted to the 1st grade class (with blueberry muffins and rice, soy & cow's milk and carrot sticks) to celebrate S's Half Birthday circle. Did the 6th grade lit circle time, back to the lower grades' campus to vacuum the 1st grade class room, then took the girls the the dentist. After that, we went to the gym so I could get in a 30 minute interval training run. We picked up dinner on the way home, after dinner I did some work for the school auction, a few chores, and squeezed in one episode of Friends. Ok, yes. Up way too late. But momentum can do that to you.

If every day were like this, I'd just sit down and become catatonic out of spite. Since it's not, I can survive it.

Tuesday notes

I suppose any day that ends in making mini blueberry muffins with a 7-year old can't be ALL bad, right?

And for that matter, any day that includes dinner with the family is never to be taken for granted. Except for the way that special moments can be snapshots frozen in memory, we won't have this, the girls and D and I sitting at the table and giggling over any old thing, forever. I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

Girls' afternoon out

Today S. had an after-school playdate & R. and I did a little shopping and hung out together. I was surprised at how excited we both were at having the chance to spend time with each other.

An afternoon alone with R. is so different from an afternoon alone with S. It reminds me of the time I used to spend with my maternal grandmother. She'd alternate weekends with her 4 grandchildren, and she once told me that because we were such different types of people, she'd customize the activities to suit each guest. So with my oldest brother, she might play board games, and with my older brother, she might go for a walk. She and I would read or take nature hikes, while she and my sister might play cards. We all liked different things to eat, and all preferred different heirloom dishes to eat with. She spoiled us with her undivided attention and her appreciation for our uniqueness.

I can't say that my time with R. yesterday reached such magical heights, but we did feel conspiratorial while we gallivanted from store to store buying duct tape (and there's Another Blog Post waiting to happen) and earrings. We're doing it again tomorrow, too - whoo-hoo!

Run, Write, Shop

...a place-holder post for Sunday's activities. This is all for my own future look-back journaling reference, folks. At some point, I'll work on profundity again.

Company

...a place-holder post for the entry about 4 other moms, no husband or kids, and five bottles of wine...

Slamming the Poetry Slam

...a place-holder post for my experience at the local library at Poetry Slam night.

Such drama!

First there was a last minute plan for a classroom sleepover for the 6th grade, a reward earned for good behavior last year. Then (and for extremely good reasons) there was an even-more last minute cancellation.

I would guess that there were about a half-dozen kids who shed tears about this, but mine was one of the kids that pretty much cried herself to sleep about it.

Sometimes life's disappointments are so hard. Another mom said, "It may be that the lesson the kids have to learn is that the world doesn't revolve around their excitement." In other words, just because they collectively wanted the sleepover to happen so badly, and almost to a one had gotten their parents to sign off on it doesn't mean it was a good idea.

You tell me: a dozen especially high-maintenance, wild 11 and 12 year olds, one capable female teacher but no other chaperones, overnight in a classroom (and some reportedly planning to sleep outside) alone on an unguarded campus sharing a fence with a homeless shelter in a neighborhood in town known to have gangs. Hmm. Potentially a problem, here? Too many alarms started going off for too many of the more intuitive (or self-described "clairvoyant") parents. And even as pollyana as I typically am, I'd say there are just enough risks added together to make postponement in favor of a better plan a good idea.

But not all of these concerns can - right now - be shared with the kids - or even to some of the parents - because of the exponential drama it would create. So the message went out that it was too-last minute for too many parents and the logistics were such that we had to nix it. (But such wailing & gnashing of teeth anyway!)

I would like just ONE week without a flurry of emotional emails among class parents. I'm glad our kids are at this school. It has tons going for it and it's been great for the girls. I love this teacher and consider her a friend (although I agree there was poor judgement in this case), I am very fond of almost all of the other parents.

I just wish everyone would tone it down a little. Damn mass hysteria.

Yesterday's post today, again

It's just as well I don't have a Time Machine. I'd do no end of monkeying around. I mean, I'd stomp all over every butterfly in sight on my way to stop a cup from falling to the floor and breaking.

I'm easily distracted by unimportant things. Ooh! Look at that! No, wait, what's that? But I forgot about that, and oh- hold up, I have to - there's that, and oh yeah, look at this, too. Wow.

But something that IS worth checking out is Lisa's new blog, When I Grew Up I Wanted To Be A Horse.

Lisa has blogged daily for about a month now, and every entry is a good read.

Since Lisa is one of the people responsible for me having a blog entry for every day in 2005 (it was Julia's double-dog dare that started me, other friends' encouragement that kept me going, and Lisa's bribe of sushi as a reward for my diligence that really saved me when I was faltering), I may have to reciprocate the favor.

Except that unlike me, Lisa probably does just fine with only her own internal motivation. (But the offer of raw fish stands, Lis.)

There's always tomorrow...

Thanks to Julia for pointing me to Will Wheaton's post about procrastination and writing.

I don't usually read Wheaton's blog (although my husband does), but I sure appreciated his comments and the comments of his readers on this topic.

He describes the FORMULA for procrastination. At last! Now that I know what determines the behavior, I feel like I have more control in licking it.

I'm telling ya, hope springs eternal.

Thanks, I needed that!

You know how it is when you laugh until the tears are streaming down your face and you're shooting snot from your nose and, in the end, the funniest thing of all is how hard you're laughing?

Suffice it to say we had a good writers meeting tonight.

Bird Formations

Bird formations, San Rafael California. 12/23/06 4:30pm This is a fairly long video, but check out especially around the 3rd minute. Amazing.

Breaking the surface

I'm painfully aware when I write these quick daily posts that I could be saying things that are so much more significant, deeper. Worth writing. Worth reading.

I'd like to toss a stone into the still water and watch it go down. I'd like to note the stone's slight wobble, back and forth like a falling feather, as it sinks to the bottom. I'd like to meditate on the ripples that spread from its entry point.

Instead, I find myself skipping stones across the surface.

And worse than that - what I think is a stone ends up being just a piece of bark, and it doesn't even skip, but bounces once at most, and blows away.

Everybody sing! Rat's got the baby...

R. has a new pet rat, which she "earned" by keeping up with schoolwork and homework, keeping her room clean, taking more of a share of caring for the other pets, and maintaining a good attitude. This last is especially important when you're talking about a pre-teen.

I had mixed feelings about the possible bribery/threat component with "earning" something, and at times, R. said she wished she didn't have the pressure hanging over her. But she did a good job for the few months she was working for her pet, and in the end, it was some kind of agreement between her and D. to which I was not privy (I think it was mostly the attitude issue) which made the decision. He helped pay for the cage and food. She bought the rat.

I'll post a picture of R. and her baby, whom she named "Magpie," very soon. For now, here's a shot of me with one of our many rats. In the foreground you can just see the head of my grandmother's Schnauzer, Casey, looking up at me. I don't know whether he's looking at the rat or the ball, but this is a pretty cool testament to how comfortable I was with animals, even at a young age. (It's doubtful that the animals were as comfortable with me...)

Caught

Twice today when I was working on a poem, I got caught.

The first time, a co-worker walked by me while I was staring into space, and I jumped, and he wondered what I'd been doing. "Writing a poem," I explained. Although I was nowhere near pen, paper or computer.

The second time, I was driving the car with S. in the back, on our way to pick up her sister. We were stopped at a light, and while trying to form an idea, I did something with my right hand - just a gesture, like I was shaping clay in mid-air, I guess - and S. said, "Um, Mom? What are you doing?"

"I'm writing a poem," I said.



I've been thinking about the space I'm in when I'm creating - not just physical, but mental, physic, what have you.


I sometimes feel that I am an ecstatic.


But then my break is over, or the light turns green, or the dog needs to go out. I know I'm not alone in this dancing between practical life and the siren call of a Muse. But I had to write *something* for today's post, and here's what came.

"Not Fish. Snake scale!"

So for those of you who remember that scene in Blade Runner when Deckard is examining the photo of the replicants using a computer that allows him to see things in such detail (and around corners) that you never would have known they were there otherwise...

I had to think how close to reality that concept is now with the Gigapan camera. (Although you can't tell it "Enhance 224 to 176. Enhance. Stop." and have it listen to your voice. Yet.)

I heard a piece from PRI's The World yesterday where they described this device and what it can do. It's what's been used to create Google Earth, and maybe half the people (which would make 1 or 2 people) who read this blog have already heard of this long ago (I'm slow to catch on to these things), but still. This is, to me, anyway, SO AMAZING.

The camera is being used in a joint project from Carnegie Mellon University, NASA, Google, and National Geographic. The home page for the project is here. Check out the links to panoramas to see how incredible this tool is. As the team explains:

The project's long-term goal is to help us learn about and meet our neighbors across this globe, and learn about our planet itself.

The team is motivated by the desire to encourage global citizenship and understanding by connecting people, places and events through the utilization, exploration and sharing of dynamically viewable images.

A consumer version of the device is coming, as is are software tools to use in conjunction with it, and instructions for making your own, apparently.

And if I read slashdot more often than once in 2 years, I would have seen their article about Microsoft Live Lab's Photosynth, a software which "takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next."

As a kid, I loved to read science fiction. As a teen and young adult, I wrote science fiction. Now, it seems, so much of that fiction has become fact. There's a whole blog entry (or several) I could write about this, including what's happening on Mars. (D. is the expert on that.)

There's still plenty to explore, plenty of ideas to put forth that won't exist for a long time. There's still science fiction to write. It hasn't all come true yet.

But what an age we're living in!

Nothing Random

I'm reconnecting with poetry more and more these days, even as, this week, a poetry list I've been part of for 10 years comes to an end.

So because I'm trying to go to bed now-ish, and get more than 4 hours of sleep in a row (just to try something different), and in honor of poetry, I thought a link to today's Poetry Daily's selection would be a good quick entry worth doing.

And lo and behold, today's poem is Lotus Feet by Mary Cornish [read it! if not now then in their archives once it's there] - just I've started to catch up on the blog kept by Kate - aka Lotus Ice.

Nothing Random.

Why sleep when you can game?

Just now hitting they hay after an evening (ok, night) of gaming with the girls.

I know.

GEEK.

Sunday recap

The day in review, a "tea with the Smith's" post only for future reference and to meet my apparent intention to have a daily entries in 2007:
slept in until 8
fixed the kids breakfast
ran (8 miles)
wrote at Apple Box with writer's group gals (Welsh novel)
grabbed lunch for the kids (sandwiches)
helped 6th grade teacher clean classroom
home briefly
walked to grocery store with kids and dog
got ice cream with kids and dog (the dog & I had none)
walked home
dinner
bedtime routine
15 minutes of work on the 1000 piece jigsaw I started Friday
slept
got up to do dishes & laundry & blog

g'night, Irene.


:)

Dreamtime

A huge headache sent me to bed early, but I told myself I'd get up to write before midnight.

That worked about as well as it usually does.

I don't really sleep, anyway. I just have pauses between dreams.

All this 12th Night season it has been dreams and more dreams: of disenfranchisement: exile and exodus, fighting, fleeing, working, singing, speaking other languages, unrequited love.

A tip for the wary: do not let someone who thinks he is your friend tell the Queen, in front of members of the Court, that you and an unsuitable courtier have feelings for one another. Even if you haven't acted on said feelings, if they are untoward, the Queen will have to have you both killed for it. Or if she's feeling especially lenient (and because she really does care about you and your would-be lover), she'll only command you both to marry someone more appropriate. Immediately. Which can be more painful than a quick death, actually, because then you're forced to live out your lives apart from one another. *sigh*

I wish my 12-year old daughter would stop talking about Johnny Depp and the characters from the Pirates movies.



It apparently is affecting my subconscious.

Friday Friends

After about six weeks of being without a new episode of the old series Friends (we've been watching Red Dwarf instead), we got a little present from Netflicks today, so I don't have anything else to say except Happy Friday - the DVD player calls!

Help, I've fallen and I can't get up

Sugar is Evil.

And I may need some professional intervention to pull myself out of it's wicked, wicked clutches. I'll be putting notes to myself on the fridge next. Notes like: STOP!

This is a cry for help from somewhere under the cheesecake and fudge and See's candy and cookies and cinnamon rolls and chocolate dipped biscotti and marzipan fruit that I've been spending furtive time with like it was a long-lost, done-me-wrong-but-I'm-somehow-back-for-more lover.

help!

Oh, and Note to Self: "I'm training for a half-marathon" (even if I am) is not any kind of Magic Holy Water that will undo the vile results of binging on said Evil Sugar in all its nefarious incarnations.

Witnesses are beneficial, however. So thanks for listening, and for witnessing as I tell myself, "Pull up! pull up!"

This morning

What I Dreamed

It is the sacred greentangle, the jungle time
of the jaguar. I come to help with the start.
This: twin cubs coming into black fur again
from the womb before daybreak, before the next moon away.
Their woven vine nest cradles hang low in boa branches
Indra's nets suspended in the wet air. I come
to birth the holy and beat a hasty tattoo home.
But the jaguar purrs it means two years
apart this time, two years in the task alone.
Alone with Jaguar, and the cubs-to-come,
and a shaman made of shadows.
Shadows made of green.
Green that drips from canopy
to hotplate leaf-deep floor.




rbp 1/3/07






...first draft, 35 minutes of keyboard chatter and backspacing but I said I'd work on poetry for the writer's group gals, so here ya are...

Burrowing

I've been feeling guilty. No one who knows me well will be at all surprised by this. The Guilt du Jour is that I can't seem to rally interest in day-to-day important stuff, like work and thinking up what to do for dinner and staying awake long enough to hang out with my husband after he gets home from work and after the kids are in bed.

But then today at the gym, I ran while listening to my newly-loaded iPod (I've had it a year but just plain haven't ever loaded it up). And while I was stretching and blasting something by Richard Shindell, I realized that it may not be depression or even seasonal overwhelm that's hitting me. It may just be a need to dive deep and delve, get lost somewhere below the surface for a while and see what I can pull up. I felt like I needed to be autistic in a corner. I feel like I need to tune out the world for a while. And guess what? Once I had this epiphany (or "apostrophe" as some would say), the guilt disappeared as quickly those Christmas cookies we made last week. Poof. It's withdrawal for the sake of art. Nothing to feel bad about at all, when it's fallow time, as Julia has pointed out.

Anyway, back to Richard Shindell - a plug for the sake of any folk music lover, here, but in particular: Clare, check out 'The Ballad of Mary Magdalene' and some of his Spanish tunes(here is one), and Kate, you may be interested in the cover he and Dar Williams (of course) and Lucy Kaplansky did in Cry, Cry, Cry of James Keelaghan's Cold Missouri Waters, the story of the Mann Gulch fire in 1949. Amazing stuff. A little write up of him at the Folk Music Society of Huntington site sings his praises, too:

Somewhere between the witty despair of Leonard Cohen's lyrics and the haunted Elysian landscapes of Richard Thompson's guitar, between the deeply ironic writing of Randy Newman and the evocative vocals of Michael Stipe, there lies the work of RICHARD SHINDELL.

~and~

Richard Shindell is at once an unassuming everyman and an enticingly enigmatic presence in contemporary music. The details of his life are hardly a secret ... would-be Episcopalian priest, now self-described agnostic, family man, a father of three; but there exists within his writing and performance something profound, wild, and unknowable.

I like that in a writer.

Okay, end of plug. Back to the burrowing for my own wild...

The New Year from the Central Coast

We're in the hotel room, the rest of the family dozing or just starting to stir before we pack it up and head home from our weekend in Pismo. We had a good visit with my oldest brother and his family (and his wife's large, close-knit clan too), and my sister and her boyfriend also came North from San Diego to spend a couple of days here. My other brother couldn't have come if he wanted too - he's been among those snowed in in Denver.

I've spent some time trying to figure out why I can't seem to blog lately, and since even trying to think about why I don't blog seems too difficult, I've now come to the conclusion that, as often happens around the holiday, I'm really just trying so hard to survive, and get through one more day, and tackle the to-do list, that there is no time left for peripheral luxuries like writing.

This is wrong. I know how wrong it is. I know that writing is as important to me as, say, eating, taking care of my family, sleeping, exercise & breathing (which consume my attention in roughly that order). But because writing anything of worth requires Time and Quiet, it hasn't been happening. Same old saw. But - it's also a new, hopeful year. And already D. and I are talking about the need for separate creative spaces to facilitate our work. We require such different things to create. He likes to be surrounded by the hundreds of small things he's already crafted - little pieces of aluminum and steel and delrin (not delron) and even tantalum that he's machined, models he's built, illustrations he's done - and he likes to hear music. I prefer silence and something closer to a monk's cell, and a space that is entirely my own, without someone else's "energy" there. So we're working on what it will take to have different rooms for what we're doing.

S and R and I went for a walk out to the end of Pismo pier at sunset yesterday (it was D's turn to nap in the hotel room), and we talked about New Year's Resolutions.

S said, "My goal for 2007 is to not die."

"Good plan," I said.

I didn't realize the alternative was even an option, but she reminded me that it's important not to take anything for granted. It's good to start with the basics.