Mis Mawrth Happus Iawn i Chi! And about the ficus...

Or "Happy March to You!" for my non-Welsh speaking readers.

I missed officially celebrating Saint David's Day this year because I wasn't at work to bring in scones & show off my Red Dragon flag, and I didn't post a blog entry Saturday either. But Mother Nature in our corner of the world celebrated for me, with good weather and daffodils trumpeting the advent of spring everywhere.

A year ago, I see, I had just sent off poems for inclusion in an anthology. Saturday, I mailed poems to be considered for a contest - the first of many such mailings. (Really, Julia.)

D and I did a ton of work around the house over the weekend. His big project was getting rid of the now-defunct 50 gallon saltwater tank that had been "temporarily" moved to the livingroom when we started the garage remodel. Inspired by his hard work, I was up until 12:30am this morning trying to find a new configuration for couches, chairs & the 26-year old ficus in the room - something that was feng-shui and would keep us from feeling like the place is just a jungle with a TV in the corner. But the tree is more bush than tree, and until we do some kind of topiary chiropractics with it, it insists on dominating the room.

In looking for a nice generic image of a ficus to add to the post, I found this quirky link www.theficus.com.


That link in turn lead me (2 links later) to this article & quote by Donald Trump:

There's no plant as beautiful as the ficus, and no plant that does the trick like the ficus.

(Hmmm. Maybe Mr. Trump would like to provide us with a small stipend as a reward for having lovingly coexisted with our plant for so long? A girl can only hope...)

How many times

...will I re-affirm my desire to write or my intention to be a better-published, better poet?

How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?

Thanks to Suzanne for the re-inspiration yesterday,and for this great poetry resource link.

The work progresses. I was re-inspired by hearing Rebecca Foust speak at a panel last Thursday sponsored by Marin Poetry Center. The discussion was on "The Professionalization of Poetry," and she was by far the most articulate, informed and relevant speaker for me. She's a woman who had a career as a lawyer, raised three children, and is now getting her MFA at a low residency program. She has gained a great deal of recognition and won several awards in a short period of time. How? By writing well and sending those well-written poems out there. Sounds like a plan to me.


The rain is still relentless. And this little snippet of a blog entry skirts around the thing that really must be recorded: the fact that our dog died a week ago today. I want to gather pictures, though, and perhaps also the little video clip that R. has of him nosing the camera and wagging his tail, and make a proper tribute post. But for now, Quiescat in Pace.

Oh. My.

**warning. mush follows. not for the cynical of heart.**


The first love note I found this morning was attached to my car keys when I went to start my daily half-pot of decaf.

(Um. Not that I need my keys to start the coffee maker. They were just near it on the counter.)

That one post-it note would have been enough to have me secretly smiling to myself all day.

But then I found another note on the bathroom mirror.

And another on the dashboard of my car.

It seemed like a note had been placed in every spot I might run into one at oh-dark-thirty when I prepare for work in the morning.

Short and simple.
(The notes, not their author.)

I came to work feeling like I was the best-loved woman on the planet.

And to make it even better, I'm loved by the coolest, smartest, funniest, dearest man I could ever hope to meet.


***


I divide my workdays between two desks in two departments in the office, so I wouldn't have found the last note until after 9am if my coworker hadn't emailed me to come to my other department early to see what had been left there.

I can't believe the lush beauty of the bouquet of red roses D. had delivered.

The note attached to the blooms is the same short message that I'd seen on the post-its.

There's hardly room on my desk (either desk) for the arrangement.

There's hardly room in my heart for how grateful I am to have such a sweetheart as a best friend and husband.

undulation

i.
the first grief is a white water slam
dashing into itself, erupting again
a tattoo beat in spikes and dips
like green blips on a screen.
between breakers this abrupt there is no
almost forgetting you are gone.

ii.
later, waves swell and fall like hills
spills of starlings twist and spin
in the blushing dusk. without counting
days or distance, here is the farthest away
you’ve been, now the longest
we’ve spent without your kiss.
orgasm, seasickness, the heat of
fire, the wind, and this. what else
comes in waves and goes in waves?

iii.
even now when we think ourselves
becalmed, sneaker waves capsize us.
we look for the horizon, everything
moves. terra infirma, the world reincarnates daily.
what of you? you in the flocks of fish wheeling
up and down in deep water. you in the modulation of bees
in the breeze-stricken apple boughs.

Slightly modified version

I like this better. Am wiping out the last version.

Rain on Fresh Concrete



The sound of the downpour draws us
to the window like the circus come to town.
All that we had left outside is now initiated by rain.
True, much had been well on the road to rust and mold
anyhow. But the concrete, newly poured, was not yet set in its ways.
We rush the storm: wheel in the mixer, toss empty bags,
fling tarps over the new path. The rain never pauses for breath.
We are alone in our remorse. We, who celebrated
every square inch of adobe we buried with bricks and cement:
that much less mud the next time it pours.
Cover it up in lining, rebar, gravel, concrete.
Planter boxes on top filled with dirt.
Dirt in boxes over concrete over dirt.
The strata we make of our lives.

An old one, in honor of recent rains

Rain on Fresh Concrete

Darkroom in Samoa

(an old one, posted for Kate. And written for her, and Joe, to begin with)

Darkroom in Samoa

We swim through green abundance,
one last breath before the glade. Before the
schoolroom mausoleum, chalk dust and damp
cement. One last breath before the closet
where we inter ourselves.
There are chemicals used for this in the dark or
near dark; developer, stop bath, fixing bath, wash.
Acrid attacks on the senses, vinegar alchemies,
each in turn.
Faces surface from oddly bent buildings;
lovers; horizons. Not always what was meant,
yet each one making its own sense.
We inhale the fumes and the faces together,
exhale a sigh of the same.
Our nostrils still burn when we step out of the room
and raise ourselves from the dead.
We make hardcopies of a wasteland,
here where the breezes are lush,
where the air is ginger and palm.

First published in Disquieting Muses, February 2000
Quoted in full again in pifmagazine, May 2000, in their review of DM.

New Years Eve, Post the First

Like so many people, on December 31st I am prone to rank, rate and ruminate. I don't like to look back and analyze much in detail, but I do take stock. I look at where the accumulated year has brought me. I look at myself in this moment, now, and ponder where I'll be in the Nows to come.

I've just spent the last half hour or so chopping wood. We've been going through the knotty, hard, stubborn stumps that are all that are left of the free cord plus that we were lucky enough to get a couple of years ago. And so my lower back is itself knotted and I have a stinging callus starting on my left palm. But the blood blister from when I chopped with my wedding ring on a couple of weeks ago has finally healed, and the wheels in my head are spinning with the same inspiration that a brisk walk in the hills normally brings. It's one of those times when if I could forsake my family, the dinner the girls are so excitedly preparing, the groceries I need to buy and money I need to deposit at the bank, I would sit and write. And write. Poems, prose, emails, blog entries. I always get the desire to write on New Year's Eve.

But even as I type these very words, R comes in asking me to open a new jar of tomato sauce.

[Here the blogger weighs out whether to insert long suffering sigh or philosophical observation...]

More later.

Is there something my husband isn't telling me?

Yesterday, we received a Christmas box from my mother-in-law. It was addressed:

Mr. and Mrs. P*******
and Becky


Here are my questions:

Where has he been keeping this other wife?

Does the box contain fruitcake? (I've been afraid to look)
If it does, how long will fruitcake keep?

I guess this sort of thing is to be expected from my mother-in-law, the woman who once installed hospital wall colored pastel floral vertical blinds in our bedroom while we were away from our house one day. The woman who gave us a BRASS SADDLE BAG mailbox with "The Patrascu" engraved in it. In black. Come to think of it, maybe she's just confused about who lives at our house. Sometimes it's just one Patrascu. Sometimes it's D., the Mrs., and me. Apparently.


I may have told this story before, but for years we talked about "losing" the mailbox and then reporting to D's mom that it had been taken. I practiced saying incredulously, "Somebody stole our mailbox!" but I just knew I couldn't pull it off. It was only after a remodel when D. built a mail slot into our garage that we were able to justify taking down the saddlebag. I know she meant well. I'm sorry if I sound like an ingrate. But here's my point: there are some items that one should allow a person to pick out for his or herself. You know, items that display prominently by default at one's home.

Pics from the Company Party

You can tell from his hunched shoulders that D is not 100% happy. But for someone in tremendous back pain and medicated, I think he looks pretty good! I hadn't posted a pic of us here in forever, and thought I might as well take advantage of us being dressed up...








...and this is after I let my hair down,
although I didn't even get near the dance floor all night,
and in fact didn't even have a drop of alcohol either.
How tame is that?

The only benefit I can see

of blogging daily this month - or, I should say, of having an entry recorded for every day this month - is that I proved to myself that I could do so.

I might have stretched myself a little here or there, I might have gotten back into the grove of daily writing.

By thinking about something worthwhile to say every day, I realized both how much I get lost in trivia and logistics and how little I allow myself to sink down and contemplate and write about more meaningful stuff. So much for being a philosophy minor in college.

Honest review of monthly writing goals reached:
wrote 3 new poems, edited a couple of old ones
wrote most of one more chapter in the novel - the most I've added to it in probably a year

bah.
Onward, McDuff! (which allusion, by the way, I must have slightly wrong - because I cannot find the source for it online, only other allusions that must also be wrong. MacDuff doesn't get me any closer to the answer - suggestions, oh my 2 readers?)

Poetry

Ellen Bass' poem "If You Knew" was featured in Garrison Keillor The Writer's Almanac on 11/25/07. That's the second time in a week someone has pointed me to Keillor's page, and now I see from other poems that I like his selection, even if I don't always like the way he reads a poem.

The link to Ellen's web site, where she shares the poem from The Human Line, is here. But I hope she doesn't mind me quoting the poem itself. I consider it another way of pointing readers to her work.



If You Knew

What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line's crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't say Thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die.

A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.
They'd just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

Remind me again

Why I'm attempting to post daily this month?

Was it because I was feeling my life was too dull and I wanted to add something to my to-do list?

Yeah. That was probably it.


My schedule today, for my own future amusement:
4:07 drag myself out of bed by telling myself what a good person I am for getting up
5:00-1:13 work and all it entails
1:50-2:20 work out at gym (climbed around 100 flights of stairs while reading the beginning of a Connie Willis short story. I love Connie Willis)
2:30-3:00 go with D to his chiropractic appointment. See x-rays, the curvature, the results. Good news: no "underlying pathology" to worry about ("it's not a tumor!") Bad news: 60 weeks of appointments.
3:00-3:10 pick up S and one of her friends at school.
3:10-3:30 vacuum classroom
3:40-6:00 supervise playdate, make dinner (ratatouille from the Moosewood cookbook. My favorite)
6:00-6:30 take other child home, pick up R from her playdate, take R to math club
6:40-7:20 kill time with S at the outlet mall. Don't know what I was thinking. It only ended with bitterness because we walked away without buying her anything. Her. Life. Is. So. Hard. Sometimes.
7:30-8:00 pick up R at math club, talk to math teacher. He thinks she's extremely bright. Always nice to hear that from a teacher who is himself brilliant.
8:00-9:15 come home, take care of incapacitated husband and wound up children. Get all to bed.

D. had an acupuncture appointment at 5:00 and class at 6:00 (a quiz he couldn't miss), and maybe because of that or the above schedule, the rest of the night went like this:

9:16 realize that we COMPLETELY MISSED a rehearsal for S for the Nutcracker. Not good. Especially so close to the performance. I called the studio & left a message right away apologizing, and I'll probably call again today and grovel. I have advanced permission to use the "my husband is in so much pain and going to so many Dr. appointments it distracted me from my focus on the rehearsal schedule and it won't happen again" excuse. Fortunately, it's not like she's dancing the part of Clara this year or anything.

9:18-10:15 fret over what a failure I am for missing the rehearsal. Let dog out. Cover birds. Lock doors. Let dog in. Fret some more. Tell myself to lighten up on myself. Rationalize. Feel bad that I didn't write. Tell myself I'll get up extra early to wash the dishes and write. Recognize that this is probably a lie I am telling myself. Fret over lying to myself.

It's not a pretty picture, is it? But it's sometimes hard to jump off our treadmills, and I've been running on this one for a while, chewing the worry cud for years.

On a lighter and much more vain and shallow note, I've just bought new pants and they're 2 sizes smaller than what I was wearing a year ago. And they fit. Comfortably. I'm now smaller than I've been since I was 15, and have much more strength and tone to boot. Couldn't have done it without the support group I have, though. Kudos to them.

Currently listening to

The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue. It's a story about changelings. In Donohue's page describing the creatures, I'm reminded of myself as a child. I don't know that I was especially frightened of adults (apart from my terror over possibly making a mistake, heaven forbid). But my favorite thing to do (and therapists could have a field day with this) was to hide away in small spaces, like cupboards or under desks. Or to read. Or, ideally, do both at the same time. I also loved the woods, and was certain until I was in my mid-twenties that my ideal home would be a small house somewhere with trees on all sides. Ideally Oak, the Druid's tree, and Rowan, with its magical ability to fend of evil. Here's part of what Donohue says about hobgoblins:

they are hypersensitive; they can squeeze into small spaces; they are all we used to be. Hiding in the woods, burrowing under the library, holding on to their mythical nature, they are as frightened of us, as we are of them.

The book is interesting, and narrated fairly well, with alternating narrators taking the chapters that are told by the point of view of the stolen child and the changeling who took his place. But it's hard to say how much it would grip me if I were reading it and not listening to it. I've become so critical lately. No movies or books seem perfect enough. It probably reflects some deeply hidden dissatisfaction with my life or myself. Which makes me want to crawl into a cabinet, actually.

Consumerism Countdown

Christmas shopping.

I haven’t done any yet. Zilch. Zero. Zip.

And Saturday, according to the calendars I’ve been reading lately, is December first. Golly!

Usually, because of my controlling nature, adherence to traditional gender roles, and tendency to be a martyr, I do the majority of the Christmas shopping. But some years, D and I tackle the holidays together. This year promises to be one of those collaborative efforts, provided D has a diagnosis and better treatment for his back and isn’t in a fog of pain killers. (Actually, maybe one is better able to pick out presents in a freer, less inhibited manner, when one has had a little percocet...)

One year, when I was in college and before our year-long Break Up (after which we got back together again better, stronger, wiser) during the brief time when D and I (chastely, I might note) shared an apartment with a couple of other young adults our age, we made all of our presents out of gingerbread. We made gingerbread Victorians for the three people we knew who lived in Victorian houses. We made log cabins. We made classic gingerbread houses. We made our D&D playing friend a long sword out of gingerbread. And true to form, the piece de resistance (and I am not making this up) was a gingerbread Millennium Falcon. Ah, those were the good old geekier-than-thou days.

One year after we were married but when we were still broke, we made, with mixed success, about thirty candles for people on our lists. And yes, some of them were melted down from other candles we already owned. We were that broke.

This year, I may follow through with my annual threat to just get everyone a potholder in the interest of fairness and frugality (not to mention practicality). But the reality is, at some point, I’ll make a heroic effort to get everyone something good-enough-if-not-perfect, and will undoubtedly over-compensate in some areas and fall short in others, and do too much of it all last minute.

At least I can count on help from D again, as I can every year, with the Christmas cards. I just have to find or take the right Pictures of the Girls to send out. And I have the names and addresses of new relatives to add to the list – hooray!

Day of nonrest

The upside to working a Sunday is how much more productive I am once I come home; I know I have only a few hours to accomplish whatever else (like washing the last of the pans and filing papers in the office) I might want to accomplish over the weekend.

After we did work, homework, chores, the girls and I brought the bunnies in and let them play in the living room. It's hard to tell when a rabbit is truly happy, but they seemed to have fun.

Saturday, and Done with the Cooking

This morning I dropped off R. at the riding clinic, which was taught by an Olympic trainer. I delivered her to the barn just after 7am. It was 27 degrees outside. Brrrr!

I went to the gym (Dude. I had seconds and pie Thursday), and then got today's bird in the oven. The mangling and wrestling and negotiating that goes on between me and still-partially-frozen turkeys every year makes me feel like I'm living an episode of I Love Lucy. Today, for example, I spent twenty minutes running water into the cavity of the bird trying to defrost the ice that was holding its neck in place, periodically pulling and tugging at the neck in the hopes of yanking it free. The recipe I use calls for rubbing a special herb butter under the skin of the breast, and if that isn't a weird sensation, I might as well start delivering babies for fun.

D's dad came over for the dinner (as opposed to supper), and I picked up R and we all ate the traditional two-hours-later-than-I-think-the-turkey-will-be-done. We're having a friend of R's over for the night, as an act of compassion for a fellow human being in difficult circumstances. (Her 10-year-old brother has 4 friends staying the night for his birthday.) R had a great time at the clinic, and by all accounts, did very well with the flatwork and jumping. She shines after she's had time with horses. No amount of dirt and grime and horse drool on her shoulders takes away from how happy she looks after she's cantered a few jumps.

D's back is still hurting, but Monday he'll see a Dr. and a chiropractor about it, and I'm starting to preach P.T. I can't imagine how frustrating this is for him, and my heart again goes out to those folks (including the ones near and dear to me) who are living with chronic pain. It takes superhuman strength and grace to bear that kind of load.


...
Off to supervise the night-time routine, but I can't leave without wishing Kate a very happy birthday. Celebrate, K!

The day between

This is the day between two Thanksgiving meals, where I worked 7-3 then did errands and chores and spent the evening watching a fair-to-middling movie with my family. Sometimes what makes quality time with D and the kids is just that it's downtime, and we're together.

Having said that, I'm also so grateful to them for letting me dash off to the gym while they had dinner without me, because I so needed the workout!

Was up way way too late tonight cooking for tomorrow, and tomorrow I'll be up very early to take R to a riding clinic, and then I'll focus on getting the next turkey in the oven. With any luck, I'll manage to work on my poetry too, somewhere in there...

Grateful

I started to write out a Thanksgiving list - the expected "what I'm thankful for."
The short list: Everything
The details:
life on this planet, at this place & in this time
the people I'm sharing that time with: my husband,
my daughters, the rest of my family - relatives by upbringing, birth and marriage
my few but valued friends
my health - physical, emotional, mental (holding steady at the moment)
my home - even when it's at its cluttered worst, it's a roof over my head and a blessing

but all that seemed so EXPECTED, that I didn't want to put it down.

And I thought about writing the MENU from today's meal (just to impress you all, because there were more different gourmet dishes than there were diners), but that, too, seemed contrived.

So I'm just saying that it's a day-after retro-post, I don't have enough time to say anything profound because of clamoring children, and for those of you who are disappointed, I say if you're relying on me for entertainment or enlightenment, you should should consider alternatives. At least for the next few days of cooking, serving, cleaning, working, repeat.

The downside to aquarium ownership

The day was unremarkable, but the evening was marked by the loss of our youngest and (at the time of his demise) largest koi, Nanashi. His name meant "nameless" or "anonymous," and you would think that it's silly to be sad about the loss of a fish (especially compared to the loss of a dog or cat, as friends who have recently suffered in that way can attest). But we got him when he was about 2" long, and he was 18" long when he died, and we're mourning all the same. It's a little different when the fish are as big as a cat, and are hand-fed every morning in 400 gallon tank in your living room.

Nanashi is the gold & white fellow (or gal, it's hard to tell with koi) in the pictures from February below. We still have the light orange Lao Tsu, our elder koi, and the silver Yosho, but whatever suddenly affected Nanashi in the tank water was affecting them too, which meant a 200+ gallon water change tonight in the hopes of saving everyone else. They're all fine as of now, and we may never know what happened. It wasn't old age, though - koi can live 100 to 200 years, apparently, if kept right. Apparently, a pond in Japan is the best method, so we're already handicapped with our tank in northern California. But D does an amazing job with keeping everything running well, and it's hard to realize that one's best efforts can mean nothing in the face of some unknown agent of mortality.

























Post-script - those 18" are body only and don't include the tail, probably another 3" or more. And he was only 2 years old....

Consumerism and Mortality

Watching the ebb & flow of people through Costco today while I waited for new tires made me think about death, about how we're all going to die and buying things is not so much life-affirming as death-denying.

Apparently my negative feelings about shopping go deeper than I thought. There's a poem in there. I'm working on it.

Sick child went to school (well enough), well child had an all-day play date. I cleaned the birdcage, bought - more shopping! - most of what I still needed for tomorrow and Saturday (2 dinners again this year). And I drove R's classmates to the ballroom dance class last night although R herself didn't go. After I got back at 8:45 I made a frantic but incomplete attempt to clean the house for today's babysitter. I'm comforted by the fact that I've seen said babysitter's bedroom and can only hope that she doesn't hold others to standards of tidiness that are higher than those to which she holds herself.

And the bird cage waits one more day

But I promise I'll clean it out tomorrow. Honest. Not that the parakeets seem to mind, but I do.

I did manage to move the hutch and all the antique glasses (my great-grandmother's) from its temporary wall to it's original wall, now that the pantry piece of the remodel work is done.

Also cared for the sick child, met with the well child's teacher for a conference, made copious cups of tea and soup, and ferried the Little Tea to Nutcracker rehearsal. Not necessarily in that order.

Cursed dusk and the demise of energy

The good news is that after one acupuncture session, D. is much, much better (and to my relief off the questionably effective pain pills). The bad news is that R. is now sick. She missed school Friday - math assignment due, Spanish quiz, but I'm sure that has nothing to do with it - and rallied over the weekend enough that against my better maternal judgment I let her go to the barn & have her riding lesson today. Now she's miserable with a fever and bad sore throat and we have only ourselves to blame. I only hope she'll make it to school tomorrow.

S is fine and I'm fine. In fact, I was buzzing with energy and even feeling downright inspired most of the day, craving a top-to-bottom housecleaning binge after running up to R's school for my turn to clean her classroom. (The truth is, I think I made regular coffee instead of decaf by mistake. After a couple of months of decaf, it's amazing how optimistic and motivated 10 ounces of the real stuff can make me.)

I got quite a bit done - S and I cleaned out the rabbit hutch, I swept and raked the leaves off the front yard, did dishes, tidied in general. But sure enough, as the day grew darker and the hour later, I felt myself incapable of anything but getting the girls to bed (lots of soup and then tea for R) and crashing myself. So sad. If ONLY I could maintain the momentum I feel in the afternoon past 6pm, I could get SO MUCH done. Coffee at 4pm would probably do the trick, but that's a slippery slope for me, and best left alone. Besides, on the occasions when I do get a second wind, I'm often up to 10:30 or later, and back to the less-than-five-hours-of-sleep dilemma. As Pooh would say, "Oh, bother."

In the groove

Today, I wrote for about 3 hours: an hour and a half in two different cafes with two different sets of writerly companions: a duo of Nanowrimo novelists, and then another third of my writer's group. This creativity is a state of mind, and I just don't let myself go into that dreamy what-if, play it out, mark it down mode often enough. It's not magic. It's just work, and not always hard work at that.

And they all had lung cancer in the end...

Wednesday, R's math tutor and R. and I solved Einstein's Riddle. There are links to it online, and some claim that Einstein said that only 2% of the population could solve the riddle, but I think that's hogwash. There may be a small percentage of the population that would have the persistence to bother, I suppose, but it's certainly do-able. It's also known as the Zebra Puzzle, and this wikipedia entry gives more history and tips for solving it.

Here's the riddle as we saw it, if you feel inspired. It's a logic problem, and I could work on these all day compulsively like I do a jigsaw puzzle (and I don't look at the picture for one of those, btw, because I consider that cheating).

There are no tricks to this riddle. It might help to have a pencil and paper handy. We used a big white board and dry-erase markers and worked out it together.

1. In a street there are five houses, painted five different colours.
2. In each house lives a person of different nationality
3. These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage, smoke different brand of cigar and keep a different pet.

THE QUESTION: WHO OWNS THE FISH?

HINTS

1. The Brit lives in a red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The Green house is next to, and on the left of the White house.
5. The owner of the Green house drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the centre house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbour who drinks water.


We solved it in about 15 minutes, and it was more fun for me than eating a box of truffles.
(I also didn't have to jog it off afterwards as I would have the chocolate...)

Creativity deferred

It's the working mother/wife/artist's dilemma: which to put first?
the family, with it's legitimate needs and requirements for being healthy, happy & cohesive?
or the work, that pays for some of that health and happiness?
or the creative acts and time alone that feed the soul of the person who helps feed the family?

There are days when these demands truly conflict, and even the most creative juggling won't include everything.

My priorities are nearly always:
1) kids and husband
2) work
3) self

Not that 1 & 2 don't contribute to 3 - I get a great deal of satisfaction out of my work, and my children and husband do so much good for me in so many ways (both intentionally and in spite of what feels like their best efforts to the contrary). But I know that if I put off that third priority for any length of time, I'm a bitter, cranky woman and about as much fun to be around as Dick Cheney on a hunting trip.

So to put this in practical terms, here's a what I mean. D is still in (undiagnosed) excruciating pain in his upper spine. The lab results are apparently in but his doctor hasn't called him, and meanwhile he's taking pain medication - a necessary evil for him to function at all - and will be seeing a friend who is an acupuncturist tomorrow. He's maintained amazingly good spirits in spite of the agony, and I know it's not because of the drugs, because they've had limited effects in general. (Except that his reading tonight of Heckedy Peg was inspired.) The girls' schedules are as full as they can be without it tipping over into "too much" (okay, maybe they're tottering on that edge in the overbooked direction), so most days this week I spent no more than 30 minutes at home between the hours of 4:30am and 6:00pm. The rest of the time I'm a Soccer Mom for kids that don't play soccer. And I can't exactly complain (note: iamnotcomplaining) because I'm the ambitious idiot who signed them up for ballet, math, riding, French, and violin. And they truly love these things and benefit from them, and their school work doesn't suffer from them. In fact, the activities support their academics as well as their creative lives. I make it to the gym for my 20-30 minutes of work out 4 days a week. Between that and the personal training I get at work 2 days a week, I'm physically in about the best shape I've ever been in, and am more than 20 lbs lighter and a dress size smaller than I was before I had kids. But what has been getting short shrift, still, in spite of those road-to-hell pavers, is my writing. My poetry. My, if you will, craft.

We'll see how that changes now that I've committed myself to writing and submitting a poem a week to an online workshop with a small but elite group of poets. Yes, something one loves should not require dares or pride (aka the fear of shame) to come into being. But if it works as a jump start - I have written an entry per day this month, after all - then perhaps the ends justify the (temporary) means.

Opportunity

You have to be careful what you put out there in the Universe. You just might get it all coming back at you.

I've got an embarrassment of riches right now when it comes to writing opportunities: writer's groups soliciting me to join (one in particular for poetry, started by an editor who has published my poems in the past), contests that different writer friends have suddenly told me about, local workshops, requests for poems from new acquaintances...even the dare to blog daily in November - it all leads to a heightened focus and more output.

Maybe you can't force creativity or mug the Muse, but you certainly have a better chance of writing something good if you're actually, say, writing, than if you're only thinking of writing....

Onward!

Tuesday

I guess there's no real advantage to blogging late at night when I literally can't see straight and can't summon the energy to write anything profound or creative. I'll stick to describing one thing from the long day.


Tonight S's 2nd grade class had its Lantern Walk. After dark, we formed a parade on campus. We wove along a path lit by about a hundred luminaries. Sophia held a stick in front of her as we walked; from the stick dangled a tin can poked through with holes (she'd poked the pattern into the can with a nail & hammer). Inside the can, a lit candle flickered as we paraded, with all the other parents and students and their flickering candles, singing songs to ward off the dark. S's voice was high and clear, her own light shining brighter than that of the candle. A sickle moon hung low in the sky as we headed back to the car afterwards. She sang Au Clair de la Lune (as much as she knows from French class, anyway), which was the perfect end to the night.

Nothing [significant] to report, sir

The day off was filled primarily by Cleaning S's Room - a significant undertaking. When we were finished, she said, "Mommy, what's that big brown thing?" Sarcastic kid. She was pointing to the floor. It had been a long time since we'd seen it.

The girls and I had friends over briefly in the late afternoon, which was really nice. Although I could never get 45 people to come to my wedding right now (my sister is really so much better at friendship than I), I cherish the few close friends I have.

On another note, D went to the Dr. for the horrific back pain he's had for the last 5 days. Because the pain is in an unusual spot, mid-back & higher than one might usually see for pulled muscles, etc., the Dr. wants to "get pictures." D. was given a shot & some pills that made him only a little loopy. I'm also trying to get him to see a friend of ours who is an acupuncturist.

Tomorrow it's back to getting up at 4am for work, etc. The usual routine. I went to bed around 9:30 and only got up for this brief tea-with-the-Smiths post. Not too creative, I realize. But what I have to say at the moment nevertheless.

Terra firma

After a long day of travel and many more adventures, the girls and I made it home not long ago: safe and sound, but weary. Poor R. has school tomorrow too (which was the cause of much bitter teen mutterings and gnashing of teeth, especially because her sister's school is closed for the holiday). The girls fell asleep the minute their heads hit their pillows.

I'm so grateful to be back. And so grateful for the experiences we've just had. The travel alone (5 plane flights in 4 days with two kids in two) was a character-building experience.

It's truly only minutes before midnight (as opposed to the fudged times on my last 2 posts), and the day started a million years and many custom lines ago. So I'm signing out for now.

Hasta mañana...

El Dia de la Boda

I'm sorry to say that limited internet access time means that this is just a place-holder post.
The full details of the wedding day will have to follow. These things (and so many other things) happen.

Hola de Mexico

We have arrived in Cabo. I have only a minute of internet access to say we're here, all is well (after only a few adventures), and I hope to blog more later....

Hasta Luego

I'm not sure what kind of internet access I'll have when in Mexico, so I thought I'd blog while I can. We're about to go beg like idiots (or at least, I will - D's rightly too proud) for the bank people to let us in early to the safe deposit box....

Ouch

You know, I spend my workdays trying to be compassionate when telling people how their mistakes (like not backing up, or assuming a backup is good) are going to cost them. A lot.

And now I have an even deeper, more profound, understanding of how wretched they feel when they realize the price-tag carried by stupidity, assumption, laziness, disorganization, or procrastination.

So.

Um.

Some advice for those of you who are traveling outside of the U.S. and who think it's a good idea to keep your passports in a safe deposit box at the bank: it's only a good idea if you realize that they're not in the house firesafe, but really, actually are at the bank, where you dutifully took them - if you realize all this BEFORE the bank closes for the day. Especially if your flight leaves only minutes after said bank opens.

I'll just minimize the last few hours of drama and intense ticket searching frenzy and the way my credit card is on fire right now, and say that oh well! oopsie! We'll be arriving in Cabo about 6.5 hours later than planned, and will be leaving a few hours earlier than we'd expected. (And that we really hope there are no accidents between home and SFO during the precious little time we'll have to make the newly booked flight to Cabo by way of Constantinople.) The girls will get to see all sorts of parts of Mexico on the way home that they may not have expected to see. And I have a nice credit (less the fee) from the original airline for future tickets. Ha ha! Isn't life just crazy sometimes? Ha ha ha ha.

And now, I think I'll pack.

Remind me to laugh ruefully about all this.

In about five years.

Sleepy Post

Went to bed around 9pm when the girls did, in spite of all my intentions to stay up late and Get Stuff Done. D. is fighting a horrible cold and has no voice or energy left, so he also was asleep.

I'm feeling especially ill-prepared for the trip, but that's only because I always want to Get Everything Done before I go somewhere, as I'm sure I've mentioned in previous blog entries.

Set an alarm only for getting up to satisfy the quotidian requirement.
Work went well enough today, and tomorrow I work a shortened day, having planned for a few hours to run errands, wash clothes, pack.
J's surgery is over, and she's recovering, thank God.
I got some shopping for the trip done while I had the car serviced (small tube of toothpaste, suntan lotion, etc.), then picked up my new glasses on the way home. The last pair are from 3 prescriptions and 4 years ago!

This post was started at 11:53pm, and if the time shown is anything other than that, all I can say is grrrr.

Anxiety

Had about 40 minutes of strong anxiety this evening, but couldn't pinpoint why. It might be that work was especially difficult today, and I left with more hairy issues unresolved than usual. Or it could be because of the surgery that my half-sister J. is having tomorrow in Denver. Or how ill-prepared I am to leave the country with the girls for 4 days Thursday.

At any rate, it was the kind of anxiety that made me call home on my way to a night out - just to tell D. that I love him, and love the girls. Stress makes me paranoid. I think this anxiety is just a manifestation of that same kind of thing. (Um. Not to say that it take stress, paranoia, or anxiety for me to express my love for my family...)

I suspect that resolving things at work, checking in on J. after surgery, and making a To Do list for the packing & preparation will make all the difference in the world. So will sleep.

What I Won't Be Doing This Month

It's November, which means it's also nanowrimo (national novel writing month), when thousands of people set themselves the goal of creating 50,000 or more words toward a novel. I managed (by the skin of my teeth) to do this a couple of years ago.

This year, my November goal is to finish the first fat rough draft of that book - emphasis on the word "rough" - and to write and compile 100 poems towards a book-length manuscript. I already have 100 or so poems kicking around, but they need to be good poems that would work together in a single collection. So I have my work cut out for me, still.

S. finished her performances of the ballet version of Alice in Wonderland put on by her ballet company and school. This time, she played the roles of a lobster (from the Mock Turtle's story about the Lobster Quadrille) and a card (the 8 of Hearts, which she said was perfect since 8 is also her age). But while we set the dinner table, R. and I joked that she should be cast as The Queen the next time the show comes around, since she often, Leo that she is, acts the part of She Who Must Be Obeyed. S. would be the first to agree.

R. made dinner - the last of the angel hair (I've gone to rice pasta), and wonderful stir-fried green beans, red pepper and garlic. She added lemon juice and a little squeezed mandarin orange juice to the pan, and it gave the veggies a great flavor. She'd like to cook dinner more often, she says. I told her this was a great idea, since I have tons of recipes that I've never tried. "I don't need your recipes. I'm going to make my own recipes," she said. So it might get fairly interesting!

Permission

Another note to self, while I bang my head against the wall that is entitled What Can I Possibly Blog About Today? (with the subtitle: And It's Only Day Three Of the Month. Lord!)

You have permission to love. Yourself, and other people. All of them. As much as you can. But yourself first, since that seems to be the tricky one. (When I feel love for myself, it stinks like a pity date.)

You have permission to try and fail. But not to not try. There's a difference between surrendering to the Now and passively expressing Denial of What Is through immobility. Move!

You have permission to try and succeed. Really. It's okay. Those painful years of being resented for being "daddy's girl," "teacher's pet," "favorite employee" can fall away. The resentment of others is not who you are. Do good things, and do them well for the joy of it and, let the accomplishment be its own reward. There's no shame in shining, in spite of what some might say. That's their own stuff clouding the skies. [The weight loss thing is a classic example. Reaching a target should be celebrated, not torn down by the insecurity of others. It's not you they're angry at, after all.]

You have permission to leave some things undone in the interest of getting a full night's sleep. Although you can get by on 5 hours a night, it doesn't do your body, mind or soul any good. Getting a full night's sleep -now, that's the way to healing and wholeness.

Write.
It will encourage the writing.

Friday. Amen.

By the end of most weeks, I feel wrung out but victorious, with the gratitude of someone who has just received a miracle diagnosis: the dreaded symptoms actually only pointed to something benign. I've swum safely to the rock of another weekend.

I love weekends, when I can sleep past 4am, be home in the daylight longer than ten minutes, and chauffeur only here and there instead of everywhere. I get caught up a little in the housework, I see my husband before noon. I have breakfast with my daughters: crepes with chocolate and strawberries and powdered sugar, bacon for them, turkey sausage, eggs, melon, and coffee out of a mug that doesn't have a lid or a company logo.

The leaves are starting to drop in the courtyard, we've lit the furnace, Thanksgiving is fast approaching - and I haven't even sat down to say yet what the light in October means to me.

First retro-post of November: day 1

Apparently, I'm still a sucker for a dare. So.

To the motivating individual who has dared me to blog daily this month, I hope you will accept this after-the-fact post (written November 2nd, early a.m.), since I only got the message about the challenge you issued just now. And we'll just have to see how this works when I'm in Mexico next week.

November 1, Day of the Dead.
I'd wanted to build an alter for Mom. I bought flowers. I knew which picture to add. I had a few other odds and ends to put in place. I had the morning off work because S didn't have school, so I thought I had time in which to do it.

Instead, I spent the day playing taxi driver/personal assistant for children. They were my children, so I didn't begrudge them their dependency on me, or resent their bake sale, Ortho appointment, Math Club, horse riding, and ballet rehearsal. I'm increasingly aware of how quickly they will be grown and (we hope) out of the house. But I have to admit that a little frustration was creeping through the cracks that for the second day in a row (after a 4 day streak) I wasn't able to sit down for an uninterrupted 30 minutes and write yesterday, let alone build that alter.

Then, while herding kids at the school bake sale (which R & I really did BAKE for, as opposed to just "distressing" the crust on a store-bought pie) - and these were kids who had barely come down from their Halloween sugar highs and were chomping at the bit to have MORE quick-and-dirty carbs - I noticed that the school had set up a table with a number of Día de los Muertos alters, and among them was one R had made for her grandmother

It was simple: a photo of Mom with the girls, all three smiling real smiles, as opposed to the "just take the damn picture" grimace you sometimes see in posed photos; a couple of little rubber ducks (which Mom always got for the girls to have in baths when they visited her), some glitter and sequins to represent a sandy beach and her southern California home, and a very touching poem in Spanish that served as a tribute. R had known they were making alters for her Spanish class. She'd gathered the pieces. and brought them to school, and crafted the alter - all without saying a word to me. I told her how much it meant to me that she'd done it, but she'd done it for herself and for Mom, and that was what really mattered.

Renewed commitment

Like Suzanne, I want to say thanks to Julia for the encouragement (read: push) to re-commit to writing. And doing so daily.

I've spent the last several weeks extremely focused on improving my body; daily short but intense workouts, smaller portions, healthier food, decaf coffee - and all of it has paid off in terms of both my waistline and my self-esteem. High time to move toward the same sort of dedication to my spirit. (Yes, cart before the horse would have been better, I know, but as long as both arrive at the same destination, that works for me.)

'Nuff said. For now.

I'm Here. Really.

How I can let so very long go by without posting is neither here nor there.

Life continues to be good. I could be very specific and long-winded, but in the words of Inigo Montoya, "No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”

We've had birthday parties and the hosting of Japanese businessmen, celebrations and stresses and much shuttling of children from place to place to place. I have written both poetry and prose, attended workshops and readings (my own and others). I have climbed miles of stairs at the gym which lead nowhere but, theoretically, a smaller waistline.

D. continues to all but break himself working on The Remodel. The drywall is up in about half of the rooms. Taping and mudding and texturing has started. There is tongue and groove pine on the ceilings. The horrible huge white POD that had squatted like a Giant Storage Box from Hell is gone (and there was much rejoicing).

The tomatoes in the garden are doing well. We have one string bean and what may eventually be 3-4 zucchinis.

When R. plays the violin, it sounds like music.

We've lost one rat to old age and have acquired two young bunnies (both female, thanks for asking) who live in a hutch outside which D. and S. designed and built together.

And that, sadly, is all I have time for. I just figured better something than nothing, after all this time.

Extraordinary

Birthday today. And an amazing day it was. I am content.

Three friends or relatives are on the better side of cancer or cancer scares.

I finally found the lost library book (on the library's own shelf, in fact - good thing my shelf-check skills are still intact).

I met and chatted with the man who does the voices of Gonzo and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew at work today.

My children like their schools, their teachers and their classmates (it was R's first day in 7th grade).

Nutrition & fitness plans proceed, and all is well on that front.

I'm registered for an all-day poetry workshop coming up with some very good, very solid poets from whom I hope to learn a lot.

My birth father (Hello T!) has just helped open the door of communication between my family and his. That's the vague way of saying that I had no fewer than 4 envelopes (with eloquent letters, cards, and pictures) arrive from him, his sister and his brother - all on the same day (yesterday). I opened them today to see and read for the first time about these close blood relatives. What bounty!

This along with the well-wishes of other friends and co-workers, and being spoiled rotten by my immediate family here at home, I feel. Truly. Truly. Blessed. And loved, the way a newborn baby is unconditionally loved, stinky diapers and screaming night-times and all.

I am well. And content. And so very grateful for this day, this feeling, this life.

And all this giddy mush without benefit of chocolate, alcohol or caffeine! Amazing.

Narcissism, Disguised as Reflection and Confession

I'm leaving this evening for a business trip on the other side of the country for a few days.

Confession: every time I travel away from home, for business or pleasure, I'm afraid that I'll die while I'm gone and not make it back.

And it's not so much that I'm afraid of dying as I am afraid of not having lived well. This is pretty ironic, if you think about it. Because where one normally has little control over how and when one dies, one has a great deal of say in how well one lives. I have such a nagging feeling of having squandered my time so far. The emotion may be something genetic, or a past life, or determinism pressing down on me. Or maybe it's the symptoms of the disease of the over-achiever who is trying to compensate for deep-seated feelings of inadequacy as the child of a sociopathic parent. Take your pick. The end result is the same.

By by living "well," too, I just don't mean ethically - although that's of course important to me. I mean also usefully, productively, helpfully, honestly, and generously. Note that I did not say, as so many people I know would, "passionately," or "lovingly." Both important, yes, but I have to be frank and admit that those things are less likely to come to my mind as top priorities. Passion scares me, for the most part, and love is something I'm still working on. (I hear some of you: "That's so sad." Yeah. It is.) This isn't to say I don't adore my family and friends. I do. But it's taken time for love to win out over detachment, even in that arena. Christ and Buddha are probably both disappointed in me. Haven't you been paying attention at all? they probably want to know.

But besides fear (and ignorance of the benefits) keeping me from a Wild-Life-Lived-to-the-Brim, and besides my slow grasp of the importance of love, I think I am just pretty complacent in a lot of ways. Or maybe the better word is dull. I'd have been fine as a medieval nun, with my only purpose in life praying or doing my chores. I don't want to hang glide. I don't need to swim with sharks. I want to balance my checkbook, send out birthday cards on time, file the piles of paperwork in the office. Write new and better poems. I want to continue to learn to love family and friends and self. And all of those things are challenge enough, thank you very much, and don't leave time for me to find the cure for cancer.

Have to go now. Have to get my affairs in order before leaving for the airport. Because if I have to travel without having lived as well as I could have so far, I think my only option is making myself as right with God as I can, even if it's while doing the laundry and paying the bills, while packing my carry-on bag.

Silly me

It's 12:52 a.m. I'll bet getting up in about 3 hours.

I've been working on a poem because I told my friend Robert I would write and send to our poetry list *something* new before Monday morning. It's late Monday afternoon where he is already, but I'm a proud woman. Stupid, but proud.

The weekend was birthday parties, and my sister in town. Family, friends, and 20 little kids high on cake. The week ahead will also be very full. Sleep is in order.

A Familiar Name on Verse Daily

Check out this link to Dancing Bear's poem Gacela of Animal Theory.

Bear edits the American Poetry Journal (APJ). Three APJ issues have included my poems, so I guess in a not-so-round-about way, mentioning him like this is shameless self-promotion. But besides being kind enough to publish my work, Dancing Bear is also an all-around good guy, and I'm truly happy to see his poetry grow in its depth and reputation.

Mary Oliver

I'm reading Blue Pastures by Mary Oliver. Billy Collins was right. She's good. She's really good - in that deceptively simple way. Here's something Robert Haas references in the Washington Post (original link here):

Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith

Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can't hear

anything, I can't see anything --
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,

the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker --
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing --
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet --
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.

Summoning, and smells

In the last week, there have been no fewer than 5 times that I've thought about a person, or needed to speak to a person, or had just left a voicemail for a person (all different people, mind you), and I literally ran into that person - in person - "at random" out and about in town.

Maybe it's because I live in a small(ish) community.

Maybe it's The Secret at work, even though I've yet to read the book or listen to the tape or watch the movie.

It's both uncanny and downright convenient.

***

This morning I woke up to hit my snooze button for the second time at 4:00 and I thought I smelled something burning. As I dragged myself out of bed, trying to figure out what the smell could be, I thought:

Oh, yeah.

Me.
Candle.
Both ends.

It was the only explanation.

I think sometimes the Universe hits you with metaphors whose obviousness are proportionate to your thickness of comprehension.

There was nothing else burning in the house.

A word to the wise

One of my novelist friends recently shared a Buddhist-inspired quote with me. It's a way to pre-qualify what you say, along the lines of something I once saw from an advice columnist. The advice columnist had suggested that before speaking, we ask ourselves, "Is it true? Is it kind?" My friend had also read that one should ask, "Is it useful?"

Is it true?
Is it kind?
Is it useful?

Golly.

If I consistently asked myself these questions before speaking, I would be a much, MUCH quieter person.

Less likely to amuse, perhaps. But also less likely to harm. And more likely to appear wise or even mysterious (as opposed to just shrew-like or flippant). Hmm. It's worth trying, I think. And it fits right in to my stumbling attempts to become a better listener.

The Real Thing

I am so uninspired by my own recent trivial blog posts.
Hence the dearth of entries.

After reading K's recent blog posts, I am excruciatingly aware that there are more valuable things to express, or ways to express them, than I've even come anywhere near lately. I mean, it's like - I'm here, and the things that warrant my honest time and attention are somewhere on the far side of Alpha Centauri. Little blinking specs of light sending out Morse code to say, "this is what matters, this is what counts."

And even though Blogger's digital storage space is cheap (what is cheaper than free?), it doesn't mean I should continue to squander the chance to explore - semi-publicly, and for my own later reference - what I'm doing on this chunk of rock and why, and instead make everything a "had tea with the Smith's" log. It just feels too much like a waste.

I recycle the paper wrappers around sticks of gum. I hate waste.

I self-edit a lot before scribbling in this blog. I try to keep it honest and kind. I am aware that some of the people who might read my entries do so just to stay caught up in my life, and I really appreciate that. I've felt like there's no need to be deep - just thorough and pleasant. And yet, so much has happened (like always, nothing & everything) that I haven't recorded anyway, I feel like I've failed even that simple mission.

But here. I'm dropping the "not living up to my potential" baggage at this station with a "please look after this bear" note.

WHATever. Letting it go, sir....
Whew. That feels better already.

Apologies in advance to those who are not interested in what Mr. Archer might call "philosophical musings," but I'm headed more in that direction again, (re)stretching my writerly wings. The relatives who read to see what the kids are up to, the co-workers who read out of an (inexplicable) interest in the day-to-day workings of my life - forgive me if I start to wax wordy and eclectic.

I had a friend in college who described another friend's highly Latinate writing as "gratuitously polysyllabic." Yeah. That's what I'm talking about.

Maybe it's just a mood. I hope not. Maybe it's me adjusting the poet cap on my head so it sits at a jaunty angle. Hey, whatever works. I've had it with trivial.

I had a dream last night that someone was reading new poems I'd written, comparing them to other, more recent work. The newer stuff was, we both agreed, better. Raw, rough, but real.

Here's to that sentiment.

(With great thanks to K and the other phenomenal bloggers I link to on this site, for inspiring me with the quality of their prose, the depth of their thinking, and the strength of their character. Diolch yn fawr.)

Hitting the Road

...Off to Las Vegas for a 4-day business trip, after the traditional up-all-night compulsive laundry folding. Because of course, that's somehow more important than packing...

I'm hoping to blog while away from home. After all, what else would I do in Vegas?

One Down, Four to Go

In February when my writers group met Billy Collins, I was so inspired that I pretty much announced that when I grow up I want to be just like him (but with more hair). See Julia's or Suzanne's blogs for their write-ups on the evening.

That night, I specifically vowed to get more of my poetry published. Julia is holding me to having 5 poems published by next February.

One down.

The Things That Start With One Loose Rock (a slightly modified version from the one previously posted here) will come out in a local anthology later this year.

Time to write and send out more!

Good news, bad news

Never underestimate the power of positive thinking, prayer, fretting and friends. Whatever the cosmic combination that did the trick, R. did get accepted into the school we so dearly wanted her to be in.

And there was much sighing of relief, grinning, and jumping up and down for joy.

We've met the teacher, who is (get this) an award-winning poet and otherwise awesome woman, one of those true firm-but-fair lovers of learning and teaching and the arts. She already - after a brief introduction and a longer interview - has had a positive affect on R's attitude. Yes, this is the honeymoon. But I'm starting to understand how sometimes it's the second or even the third marriage that works, once one applies experience to the selection process.

Thanks to everyone who was pulling for us.

Now comes the very uncomfortable part - hearing that other students in the class did NOT make it in. I've already had a phone call from one inconsolable mother who had been really counting on her daughter going to that school. She's at her wit's end about what she's going to do now, after being so sure that they would take her child. Let me tell you, there's nothing like hearing "well, congratulations" through someone else's sobs to give you a case of survivor's guilt.

This is obviously one of those Life Lessons - like Patience and Being a Friend - that I am meant to work out this time around (whether this is the only time around or not). I have a history of being fortunate in certain circumstances that spawn resentment - teacher's pet, dad's favorite, lead in the 8th grade play - things I didn't really ask for (well, maybe I did want to be Maria von Trapp, a little) - things that mean I am happy at the expense of someone else's happiness.

Yes, I know that I am not responsible for other people's happiness. But it's when I'm inadvertently involved in circumstances that lead to someone else's unhappiness that I question my own.

I'm trying to figure out what to do with this sense that I've done something wrong because I've come out ahead. And how strange is that?

It's a good thing I'm an accomplished fretter

...it means I've had practice in anxiety and the constant cow-chewing-cud worrying that goes with it.

Waiting to hear whether R. might make it into the new school of choice - knowing that there are no more than 2 openings and as many as 8 applicants, some of whom are friends - is maddening.

I'm a control freak. Maybe most worriers are. And when it comes down to something like this - over which I probably have no control - but might have some control, if only I knew - it's almost more than I can bear.

Now would be a good time to practice Detachment, because it's so clear and distinct from what I'm *not* doing, it's easier to recognize. Oh, yeah. Detachment. That thing way over there, so remote (ironically, so detached) from what I'm doing.

It's the second-guessing, and the second-guessing about who else is second-guessing, that makes my brain chase its tail all day. So to speak. I mean, ostensibly, this is an objective process. A lottery. But in reality, given the situation, one cannot help but wonder. (One? I mean, I and the other parents who are equally anxious for this placement for their children.)

Is there anything to be done to sway the school's selection committee towards us, apart from what we have already done? Has someone else already beat us to it and won them over? Am I hoping for the wrong thing? - since I've misplaced my crystal ball and so can't confirm that just because I want this, it's a good thing...

It's unlike me to want anything this strongly. And that desire alone scares me. I usually keep my expectations in life REALLY low - and thus avoid disappointment in particulars while living a narrowed life in general, probably. So I'm frightened by the passion I'm feeling, here.

It's probably good for me, except that I'm also worried (surprise!!) that if I pin my hopes on this school and things don't work out, some evil part of my brain will say, "See? You shouldn't be so attached or greedy. It'll bite you in the end if you desire anything too much. I told ya so."

*Sigh*

As I said, we shall see.


But soon, I hope!!

Diamonds and stones

Another mixed day.
The good news: my sister is engaged! We are all rejoicing. She and her fiance are so wonderful together.

The bad news: the school we'd been told had room for all the kids in R's class told us all last night at a meeting that this was misinformation. They have room for maybe 1 or 2 kids. ARRRRGH!

Never a dull moment!

Whoa, bath

My mother used to tell this story about me. When I was about two years old, my family went to the ocean. It was the first time I had seen the sea, having spent the previous months of my life in Colorado. Apparently, when I was shown the great Pacific, my eyes widened and I said, "Big bath." My comment when the waves rolled into shore? "Whoa, bath!"

That's my plea to the Tricky Parts of Life right now, too. Hang on a minute, here. Where's the pause button? Let me catch my breath. I need time to think, to take it all in.

As Eliot says, "April is the cruellest month." No kidding. And a component of its cruelty lies in the vibrant but mortal beauty of the natural world this time of year. The irises and roses are blooming in the backyard. We have our annual nest of house finches just outside our front door, in the box D. custom made to fit in the eaves last year. The rain has stopped (for now, anyway), and green things are screaming "Spring" all over the place. There's this abundance of life and beauty, and then there's this whirlwind of other stuff going on. Iraq. Virginia. Melted Freeways. And all the personal ups and downs.

Two weeks ago Friday, one of my half-sisters and her husband came into town, which was wonderful. But they were only able to stay overnight and until the morning, which was a shame (but understandable, since the drive back to Moab isn't too quick from our neck of the woods, and Monday mornings, and work, come whether we want them to or not.)

That same night, we had a call with the news that D's mother had had emergency surgery. They'd removed her appendix, but the real reason for the sudden pain that sent her to the hospital was a tumor in her colon.

Saturday, we took turns visiting her. She was an ideal patient - great attitude, careful with herself and good at following the care giver's instructions, but also obviously determined to heal quickly and be discharged quickly. (By Sunday morning, she was not only taking walks around the halls but also made her own bed.) The tumor was sent to the lab for tests, but I've never seen anyone look so healthy less than 24 hours after surgery.

Saturday night, we went to an 80th birthday party for friends of the family. This, too, was an emotional event - there were dozens of close friends of the hosts, some of whom we hadn't seen for about twenty years. I tell you what, when I reach 80, I'd consider myself abundantly blessed to have half as many friends as Mr. L. has. It seems key, in the way that love and crossword puzzles and a glass of red wine a day for some are apparently all key to a long and happy life. (I know all these things intellectually, it's actually *feeling* them and living them that I have trouble with.)

Sunday, after visiting my mother-in-law in the hospital again, the girls and I came home to find our next door neighbors having a huge birthday party for a 3-year old in the family. There were about 30 people in their Sunday best, and a Jumpy ("El Chapulin" or grasshopper) full of kids. We waived hello & went into the house, but within minutes, the mother of the birthday girl had come over to invite us to the party. And so the girls wrapped up a "new" stuffed horse of R's with a chocolate bunny in a box as a present, and we stepped into the Great Unknown Mexican Village next-door. It was such a fantastic experience, too. We were welcomed like we were royalty. We practiced our Spanish (the English speakers among the group humored us), and much authentic food was brought to us at the table they'd cleared in our honor. When I explained that I didn't eat red meat, one of the hosts dashed off and came back bearing a big bowl of fruit for me instead. People who have been living next to me for a year and who have said no more than two words to me were suddenly opening up like they'd just been waiting for the right moment to become friendly. As maybe they had. We heard I don't know how many repetitions of the traditional Mexican piñata song "Dale, dale dale" before we finally took our leave, carrying plates of home-made tomales for D. and confetti-covered candy in wrappers covered with alien logos and mysterious Spanish names for refined sugar. And even after we'd retreated to our comparatively stilted, silent and under-populated anglo-saxon home, the neighbors came to the door one more time to give us party favors - hand-made basket (the medium was pastel pipe-cleaners) filled with more Mexican sweets and even a dollar bill for each girl.

Do you know what it felt like? It felt like the whole weekend was about opening myself up to feeling Love for other people and then getting it back ten-fold. That's what it felt like.

The following Tuesday, we learned that the tumor they'd removed from D's mom was malignant. I got the news 10 minutes before rushing off to a meeting at the girls' school where the Administration showed up to tell the 6th grade parents (surprise!) that they (the Administration) had serious concerns about the "viability" of the class for 7th grade. There were, they suggested, too few students for a healthy Junior High group. They wanted to get feedback from the parents about this. About 2/3rds of the class parents, myself included, voiced strong support for continuing in spite of the smaller size. A few other parents talked about the value of moving to a larger school. We were to meet again in a week for the decision from the Administration.

Within a week, the news was official. And so we've been looking into Plans B, C and D for the next two years of R's education.

And did I mention that D's current remodel ran into a complication? This particular wrinkle required that he dig through the foundation in the garage - and no, it is not a good sign when there are salamanders living between your slab and the ground - and make a 6' pit in the adobe under a corner of the room, weld a rebar spiral (actually a very cool-looking sculpture) and put it in the pit, and then fill the pit with about 20 bags of concrete. I don't know what the neighbors (who, as of the party, had been our new-found friends) thought about us hauling wheelbarrows of dirt out of our garage. They might have suspected that there was a body being hidden, but the truth is, D and I were kind of hoping we'd find a body so that the authorities would come and do the digging for us.

Then April 23rd came. The anniversary of Mom's death.
The girls and I drove out to the beach. We got there late in the day, thanks to my tendency to just hop in the car after a quick glance at a map and with a vague idea of where I'm going. At least it was scenic, being lost that half hour... At the beach, the girls ran through, and rolled and slid down, the soft sand dunes, giggling and yelling at each other to try this, try that. At the ocean, their wildest manic moods and loudest screams just dissipated in the salty air without bruising my psyche.

We walked along the shore, looking for treasures. I found a piece of shell with a snake-skin pattern to its white surface. I thought of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea. It's been so long since I read it, it would be like a new person reading the book for the first time. I thought about Mom. We wrote messages in the sand to her. I wrote her full name, the date she was born, the date she died. In memoriam. We faced West and sang "You Are My Sunshine" loudly and out of tune into the wind. The girls used rocks and shells to spell out greetings, X's and O's, we miss you, we love you. I think R wrote a private "please get in touch with me," request. Officially, I didn't see it. We had barely finished our scribbling when an incongruously huge wave rolled up out of nowhere. We raced for higher ground as it rolled over the words, smoothed the sand, and sucked our letters into the water.

Five days later, in a toy store in the country, I picked a "free fortune" out of a basket. At random. It read, "You are the beautiful Mother, washing waves of love across sand."

Exercising the Brain

For the last 4 days (including today, this is me on a lunch break), I've been in training classes about 2 hours from home, commuting each day. This means that I leave home nearly two hours later than usual and I get home nearly 4 hours later than usual. It's amazing how quickly I can form habits - arriving at the same time, parking in the same place in the same lot, going to the same extremely up-scale grocery store for a coffee and a few minutes before class, leaving at the same time. It is a creature that likes its routine, Precious.

(posting this now, 2 weeks later, for posterity, I suppose...)

David Bromige and other poetic stuff

I'm working on a poem but it needs more time to rise at room temperature, so I won't post it yet. And I didn't enlighten the world yesterday with my witty blog-banter either.

But tonight I am inspired, first because I went to see David Bromige read. The evening began with several of his greatest admirers and other fine poets read his work in homage to him. Bromige is a frighteningly brilliant man and at the same time so completely humble and accessible, he might as well be canonized now, for all he's apparently an atheist. I can't say I always follow all of his work, but he's the real deal.

The second source of my inspiration is the latest Richard Shindell CD I got. I'm trying to think of how to describe him - a John Denver with no sentimentality and ten times the talent? A modern-day Don McLean, maybe?

At any rate, the poetry & music had me all worked up, and driving home I felt pretty moved. Moved to get lost writing in particular. (What!? Is it really after 11pm? How did that happen!?)

It's bound to be an emotional time for me anyway. D. is tearing apart the garage - our pantry is now on sturdy (function, not form) shelves in the kitchen, my [adjectives deleted] mother-in-law and her husband are coming for lunch tomorrow, and Easter marks the one-year anniversary (the holiday, not the date) of the last time I saw my mother alive. Yeah, that last thing just might explain the vulnerability. Bear with me, folks.

Observation made at 1st grade pickup

A child was swinging in the playground behind the school building.
I couldn't see the swing, but I could hear its shrill creaking,
like a seagull rhythmically crying out again and again in a rusty voice,
screaming in defiance against the rule of the sea.

Moon poem #2 (informal)

Forget About the Moon

The moon is a slut. I mean,
everyone loves her at one time or another,
and she plays us all the same-
spares no one her studied wiles.
The tramp draws you in, full of smiles
and smooth magic, pulls rabbits from a hat.
She builds you a house. She promises greatness,
then behind your back, she turns
into nothing more than a thin fickle
scythe of a whore. She cuts you down.
She lays you low, then she goes
missing for a night or two, the bitch.
You start out with your heart
beating its moth wings lighter than air,
un-scorched to the shore of her light.
But in the end her kisses are glass-sharp dust,
her hands are the siren's rocks. She is
distant. She does not need
you. She is cold. In the end
she is oh so cold.


c. rbp 07

Moon poem #1 (formal)

I'm working my way through form poems by writing a poem in each form I can find. Because I feel I need to be familiar with them all, and this is the best way I can think of to do that. Besides, sometimes things come out of the structure and stricture that wouldn't emerge otherwise. Here's a moon poem that came out of that about a month ago (can you guess the form?). I'll post the less formal (and less polite) one tomorrow. Have to pace myself if I'm to last the month.


I Want to Forget The Moon Was My Lover

I want to forget the moon was my lover,
the grand chiaroscuro curves she'd wind
around me, and how her charms would over-
come me when her smile lit the faceted rind
of the sea. I want to forget the might
of us, or how, eclipsed, I felt completed.
I'm done with tilting my face up at night
or scanning afternoon skies, defeated
if I miss her changeable shape. Instead,
I'll let the force of fusion rub my feet,
I want an x-class flare to kiss my head
and burn my tidal trysts away with heat.
I want thirteen million kelvins at my core:
the sun's molten fire. No less, no more.


c.rbp 07

It's that Month again

National Poetry Month has arrived. This is the day of the year when I ponder the irony of identifying a time specifically for poetry. Why is it necessary? Because its value will be lost, forgotten, otherwise? Because 30 days a year is all we can stand of it? It feels like an endangered species act to me.

But then again, there are lots of other important things being honored in April which are not necessarily endangered. I have researched and learned that this is also (apparently) Alcohol Awareness Month, Emotional Overeating Awareness Month, Learn Thai Month, National DNA & Genomics & Stem Cell Education & Awareness month, National Pet First Aid Awareness Month, Prevent Lyme in Dogs Month (which seems a little redundant to me), Soy Foods Month, Stress Awareness Month, and Workplace Conflict Awareness Month (especially important for those times when one worker has had it with another worker's insistence on reciting poetry in April).

At any rate, in honor of the label assigned to the month, and because I just saw her read 9 days ago, here's an Ellen Bass poem. It's from her new book, due out in June.

DON'T EXPECT APPLAUSE
-Tibetan Buddhist maxim

And yet, wouldn't it be welcome
at the end of each ordinary day?
The audience could be small,
the theater modest. Folding chairs
in a church basement would do.
Just a short earnest burst of applause
that you got up that morning
and, one way or another,
made it through the day.

You soaped up in the steaming
shower, drank your Starbucks
in the car, and let the guy with the
Windex wipe your windshield
during the long red light at Broad Street.
Or maybe you were that guy,
not daring to light up
while you stood there because
everyone's so down on smoke these days.

Or you kissed your wife
as she hurried out the door, even though
you were pretty sure she was
meeting her lover at the Flamingo Motel,
even though you wanted to grab her
by a hank of her sleek hair.

Maybe your son's in jail.
Your daughter's stopped eating.
And your husband's still dead
this morning, just like he was
yesterday and the day before that.
And yet you put on your shoes
and take a walk, and when a neighbor
says Good morning, you say
Good morning back.

Would a round of applause be amiss?
Even if you weren't good.
If you yelled at your kid,
poisoned the ants, drank too much
and said that really stupid thing
you promised yourself you wouldn't say.
Even if you don't deserve it.

by Ellen Bass