Lunchtime Note

This is a lunchtime note, at work at the library, where books are honored, and we the custodians of them. Although that sounds laughingly pompous as I write it!

Yet, the people who work here all are readers. We have all lost ourselves, and, I’m willing to bet, have found ourselves, too, in books.

That’s what’s been happening to me for the last year. I am finding myself anew. 

There is a wonderful quote in that May Sarton journal (At Seventy). It comes early in the text. When asked why she loved being old, she quotes herself as replying spontaneously, “ ‘Because I am more myself than I have ever been. There is less conflict. I am happier, more balanced, and’ (I heard myself say rather aggressively) ‘more powerful.’ ”

I know just what you mean, May.

Go Slow

I am trying to be patient with myself, and not just...collapse...into "I can't" and "I'm done" at the end of the day. So after work, I had dinner then went to the gym, then asked myself why I feel so weighed down and burdened right now.

It may be the rejection note I received from my latest little foray into getting some poems published. I'm allowing that at some level, I may be feeling down about that. Or it may be that I've had too many nights with too little sleep in the last week or so.

All I can do to test my theory is sleep a bit more, write a bit more, send more out into the world - because there is a way in which publication is a numbers game, and I am too stingy with submissions. Or too lazy - and I can't expect acceptance letters from publishers who haven't even had the opportunity to read my work.

And in the meantime, I am just acknowledging that tonight, I feel heavy. And that's okay. I can still do a little bit. Better a little bit every day than giving up before I've even tried.

And in the meantime, because yesterday's post was a bit of a tease, here's a link to Odd Salon for those curious. It is really the most amazingly wonderful thing. What a way to learn weird things about history, architecture, art and science! I'm grateful to know a Fellow of the Odd Salon and to be able to get to an event every now and then.

Odd Salon!

N. and I just returned from attending Odd Salon, but as I am posting this on my phone, from the red stuffed chaise with Moira curled up next to me and my own eyes half-shut, the details will have to wait until tomorrow.

A Bit of Good News

I've been invited to read at the WordTemple series in Sebastopol next month! They usually open with a local poet, and then have a couple of rock stars for the main event. I'm so honored - and thrilled - to have been asked. I don't know yet with whom I'll be reading. More details to follow.

And in the meantime, I did turn in three offerings for my poetry group this morning. The others in the group are so extraordinarily talented and hard-working, I usually feel inadequate by comparison. But as the great Marvin Bell has been known to say, you don't learn how to bat by watching someone strike out.

Anything But Poetry

I have spent most of the day doing anything but work on the poems due today for my (soul-saving) poetry writers group. I spent my day gardening, and organizing boxes of things from the attic, and climbing up and down the attic's drop-down stairs, with its warning sign in Polish: "Uwaga!" cautioning me each direction. Then I took S. to orchestra rehearsal (5-9). Home so late. I ache from all the work of the weekend, and I would like nothing but to collapse.

But I'll stick it out a bit longer. I also started reading a May Sarton journal (begun the year she turned 70), and find myself wanting to quote May Sarton quoting other writers quoting other writers. I suppose if the lineage brings wisdom and comfort or insight or inspiration, why not? I didn't know Sarton before this. I think I shall like her.

And it's true, too, that all of these things (especially weeding before it rained and Sarton) were a type of poetry. work. Now the trick is to believe in myself enough to assemble three or four pieces for my dear and talented friends. When really, I'd just like a glass of wine, a hot bath, and more Sarton or perhaps Bradshaw. Anything but the thing I should be doing, which I feel incapable of doing well. Hence the dishes. And the laundry, first. And taking out the trash. And blogging.

Sarton, looking a bit like one of my grandmothers, in this picture: (photo by Don Cadoret)

Put a Fork in Me. I Have No More Spoons.

As in, I am done in and plum tuckered out again!

Just home from the swanky "Evening in Vienna" auction put on by the Symphony League to raise money for the Youth Orchestra's Europe tour. Helped set up, poured glass after glass of champagne and replenished the petit four tray, then cleared glass after glass, plate after plate, etc. The cleaning took until about 10:30pm. Approximately 175 guests, I believe.

So I've just enough in me to write this little note, with the expectation that tomorrow I can sleep in past 7am, catch my breath, write some more, help S. find that prom dress and maybe - just maybe - make it to a concert that I really don't want to miss, in spite of the expense.

Blame the IRS

This post is a day late, but I am backdating it. Thank you, Blogger, for letting me do so.

This year, for the first time in decades, we owe federal taxes. This is because of a necessary monetary shuffle. (Peter and Paul are both in the brink of bankruptcy, but we’ll survive.) I was having difficulty setting up a revised payment plan online – as it turns out, it’s because our original return payment plan status is pending, or the like – so I called the IRS, just days before taxes are due, expecting to wait before I could speak to someone.

After an hour on hold, my connection dropped.

I called back.

Two hours and ten minutes or so later, I reached a very kind and helpful agent (#10010etc.).

So we’re now all set.

The backstory is that while I was on hold, I left the house, picked up S. from school, took her shopping for prom dresses to multiple places (in thick commuter traffic, with the added distraction of making way for emergency vehicles), and had a phone with a dying battery and a charger that was barely working. It was comical….

(And here, I must pause, to go to work a day after all those events! I shall continue anon.)

This is Better

As a follow up, although there are downsides to working out in the evening (such as the crowd, and the lesser effect on changing metabolism, and having trouble falling asleep), I don’t require brain power for it in the same way I do writing in the morning. So until the day comes that I get up at 5am and do both writing and a workout before taking S. to school, I’ll be jostling the crowds at night. And writing – blessed writing! -  in the morning.

Yesterday, it rained heavily. For the first time in over a decade, D. didn’t care. We have an intact roof! No more bucket in the laundry room to catch that one leak. No more tarps covering the roof and preventing us from using the wood burning stove for heat – for fear of sparks. This sounds like an episode of Oregon Trail. But it’s not so dramatic as all that. It’s really first world problems, and in this case, first world solutions.  

Lesson Learned

So, now I see that when I go to the gym in the morning before work instead of writing,  the writing suffers.

Five Minute Musing

There is little of depth one can compose in five minute before rushing off to drop of a high school senior and spend a day in public service/social work at a downtown library. But even phrasing that sentence as I did tells a reader (tells me, myself, in this case, as I write it) about, if not certain predilections or points of view, than at least about the face I would want to show the world. Language does that. Diction, and flow, and voice. What one says. How one says it. I could spend five minutes ranting about the injustices in the world, were a different person. I could compose a sparse haiku. But instead, I combine a touch of philosophy with a little self-serving martyrdom and patting my own back, and then I go on to analyze it. Thus so much of my life is distilled. Perhaps nearly everything we do, in small ways, can be seen as metaphor for how we live our lives and who we are. Perhaps that's just the poet in me, thinking that.

Shake, Rattle, and Roof

Currently, it sounds like a herd of bighorn sheep with claw hammers are wreaking havoc above me. The roofers arrived at about 6:50am, and have been destroying the cheap roof (circa 1991) ever since. They’ve already found dry rot – we’re not surprised – and have explained that the way this roof was made, with skip under plywood (if I’m understanding this - I may need to correct it later in an erratum…) this house was more or less designed to rot from condensation in the summer. But so far, it hasn’t. They’ll put in ridge-line venting, but it won’t be able to vent – but this is something D. and the foreman, Nate, have discussed on my phone, while I orchestrated N. driving S. to school last minute. 

My biggest worry is that they not drop something on the beehive, and that the chickens stay as they have, in the other corner of the yard and well away from the open gate, until I leave for the day and pen them in. They will be loud and unhappy all day, so I am delaying that penning for a bit. I do wish I could stay home all day but I’m on the Children’s Desk at noon. 

The hammering, huge thumps, buzz of  blowers, and whine of saws continues, along with shouts in Spanish. I used my Spanish yesterday at the garage sale and this morning, too, although most of the roofing team speaks English better than I do Spanish, I suspect. This is most nerve-wracking for D., who has the territorial instincts of a Doberman, and N.’s cat, Sif, who is miserable. Moira, on the other hand, is keeping her post by the back sliding glass door, where she daily watches for – and sometimes stares down – the little field mouse that hides in the bale of straw we use for the chicken coop. Tango has resigned himself to misery in N.’s room. Between Saturday’s hauling of everything down for the attic and sorting for the garage sale, the hustle and bustle of the sale itself, and now this (bighorn sheep with power tools all over the roof), I think it would take puppy Prozac to cheer him up. On top of all that, he’d been taken to the pet store for a bath Saturday. Tough weekend for Mr. T. But he does smell better. 

I am writing because it’s either this, or nervously houseclean, or pace anxiously in the back yard near the bees. I’ll do the other things next. Writing first. Not real concentration, because I’m nervous too, but at least reportage of some kind.

Here's what's happening as of 20 minutes ago:

And here's what it looked like - to me, anyway - at around 7:30. I told D. significant, "They're digging in the wrong place!" which did make him smile, at least. Poor stressed-out man.

Phew

I am, as the British might say, knackered. But we have fewer belongings and a very modest amount of money to show for it. And a few little stories, as well as a good deed done. And while I’m too tired—and sunburned, and aching—to provide details, I am not too tired to create a blog entry for the day. Even as a placeholder, like this.