Sunday, March 17, 2024

Where to Begin?

 

Where to begin? I'm so far behind in my blog posting! Well, I am still participating in the poetry postcard project, from Winter Solstice to Spring Solstice, so I have only a few more to go! Here is the array so far received, some strewn on the floor and some neatly stacked in my postcard-perfect tiny basket! I write suddenly, inspired by the moment, or in little batches, upon receipt of postcards, and send out from the p.o. Today I got a rejection, of a postcard poem I sent to a different poetry postcard project, but rejections are always fine, because it means I am actually sending poems out! In one way or another!

On Thursday, my dad and sister and I went to the local history museum to see my mom's picture hanging in the rotunda for Women's History Month. She looked perfectly natural there, among other local history-making women. I did not feel grief so much as amazement. At other times, tears overcome me. Today it was from hearing "Danny Boy" on the piano at church, a song that made her dad cry, my Grandpa Sid. I never know what's going to do it!

Yesterday I walked in the St. Patrick's Day Parade, an annual tradition. I think I walk in all the parades now, with various groups I work with. For Labor Day and St. Paddy's Day, I walk with the Democrats and/or to support specific candidates. At Christmastime, I walk with Heartland Theatre, as it's a small-business parade. In the ISU Homecoming Parade, I walk with Moms Demand Action. I would like to walk with them for Memorial Day, too, as we are remembering the dead and protecting the future. It was a beautiful day for a parade, sunshiny and warm. Today is sunshiny and cold, the wind making it feel colder. I am still wearing my shiny green hat, as it's actual St. Patrick's Day today, and still trying to keep it from blowing away. Sometimes I fail, and the hat is rescued! I made a little list of recent failures and mistakes, just to stay honest and analytical, and to forgive myself. I see the reasons why. They are mistakes to learn from, to apologize for, and/or not to worry about further! I failed to send out my usual remember-to-vote letter, for instance, so it will be revised and go out as a thank-you letter! I did canvas with/for candidates. The primary is Tuesday. I have to vote early and take my dad to the hospital in Peoria. My life is crammed with lists, duties, tasks, details. 

Lately, I just want to sit down and do crossword puzzles from a big book, to rest my body and put my brain to different use. Or write tiny poems! Or, speaking of hats, look at pictures of this baby! The baby brings me great joy. Seeing pictures of her, thinking of her. The reality of her! Thank you, baby!

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

King Cake

When you work in a public library, supporters bring you food! Today I had a yummy wedge of King Cake, and a colleague found the baby* in her wedge! Later, I wore numerous strands of beads to a committee meeting, distributing them to my fellow committee members. And when I got home, there were two poetry postcards in the mail, after days of nothing. 

A Fat Tuesday, indeed!

*Luck and prosperity!

I doubt that I will give up anything for Lent, except accidentally. Except a Lenten online writing workshop I participated in last year (and the year before? oh, Time, where are you?).... You should see my skinny calendar, all marked up with penciled commitments, meetings, rehearsals, deadlines, appointments....

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and we have no plans. Except, "Please bring home food, as I have back-to-back Zoom meetings." Must add milkshakes to the request....

Saturday, February 3, 2024

Submitting

This morning I sent out my first poetry submission since October. It's hard to keep up, to catch up, since all the big family events. Lately I've felt like three people instead of one, keeping track of everyone's personal health details and doctor's appointments. A juggling* act and an identity challenge. (I have to put initials on my calendar,** so I know whose appointment it is.) Since my mother died, I'm down to two people,*** but even that's hard. Anyway, while I'm behind in many poetry-related things (submissions, reviews, new poetry features at EIL), at least I got this done, and the October submission is forthcoming this spring, so there's progress.

Meanwhile, I am participating in a solstice-to-solstice poetry-postcard writing project, and it is delightful to get postcards in the mail with such marvelous creativity on them. I love snail mail!

**Speaking of calendars, I need a hard copy calendar. Everyone tells me Google calendar is so easy, etc., but I know what I can handle (and I have a Google calendar for work). I use a slim, portable, free (from the Nature Conservancy) calendar I can slip in the side pocket of my black-and-white polk-dotted handmade (Sugar Creek Arts Festival) purse, and fill out in pencil (because my life contains many erasures). I also have a large, spiral-bound 2022-2024 weekly-monthly planner for my theatre life. It's all working, but it keeps me 1) split 2) hopping.

*Speaking of juggling, a college friend just reminded me on Facebook that I know/knew how to juggle. I juggled 3 oranges as Elvira in a college production of Blithe Spirit. My face was sort of mauve and lavender for that play, a directorial/make-up designer choice. Elvira is a ghost. I believe I must have been shocking to look it. I shocked my dad, who criticized the choice, to me, personally, as if I had made it, but that's another story (an ongoing story...we're still in it! Sigh...) I don't think I even put on that make-up. The designer did it every night.

***I'm one of them, but I'm fine. Routine exams, dentist, optometrist. Sort of slacking on that last. So it's a Slattern Day in the blog.

P.S. I don't have the 5-year butterly planner pictured above. I just like it.

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Wintering

My sister and I are reading the same book right now, Wintering, by Katherine May. Chris got it from a friend, who found it good for grieving and healing, for hunkering down when needed, and I found it on the library shelf while collecting adjacent books for a display. The subtitle is The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, and we are both resting and retreating since the death of our mother. Bitterly cold, it's an excellent time to hunker down and read; "wintering," as much a state of mind as a season or kind of weather, is all about taking time and care to adapt to any bitter reality.

Chris is reading slowly and as part of her daily meditation practice. I am reading in soft, slothful chunks, slathered in sherpa and fleece on a comfy couch. Where I am in the book, May is currently swimming in the cold sea at Whitstable, where she lives, in southeastern England, with her family. And here's one of those coincidences I love: Whitstable is where a man goes for his honeymoon in the play, Every Brilliant Thing, by Duncan Macmillan (with comedian Jonny Donahoe, who helped develop the script by performing it). I had not really heard of this place till I read (and re-read) this play, and there it is in Wintering. The play is about a man who makes a list of every brilliant thing that makes life worth living, a list he makes for his mother. It's got ice cream in it, and donuts, and the color yellow.

As well as The Sorrows of Young Werther, a famously sad romantic novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that temporarily made suicide dangerously popular. Considered the first psychological novel, it features impossible love and Werther in a blue coat. I would have put it on the display, but the library doesn't have a hard copy. (There are many electronic versions available for checkout.) When I finish Wintering it will go on the display. Heartland Theatre is doing this play in February, and I will be there, perhaps more than once. Relying on audience interaction, it will be a little different every night. The playwright also suggests changing place names and dates to adapt to the local circumstances. So probably no Whitstable.

Last night, I facilitated the Poetry is Normal Presents reading at the library, a virtual one, with Lannie Stabile reading from three of her books, including The Inconvenience of Grief, about the death of her mother. She was in Michigan, equally cold. She read several poems on the "First..." (Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthday) without her mother, what we've just been through in our family. The previous night, I facilitated An Inside Look, a discussion with the directors and designers of Every Brilliant Thing. It was, by coincidence, my mother's birthday. She would have been 91. And Martin Luther King, Jr's. He would have been 95. It gave me pause.

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

100 Books

In 2023, I read 100 books. That's according to Beanstack, where I track my reading now. I read all kinds of things, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, murder mystery, young adult, and even a children's book, the marvelous Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo, which I had heard about for many years. And I gave some books as Christmas presents, favorites from the year or from the recent months spent escaping, slothlike, on the couch, covered in fleece blankets. Speaking of sloths, I have already earned a sloth as a "completion prize" in the library's winter reading challenge, set up as a bingo card, where I have scored a Bingo from slothliness.

I gave Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin, to my son, in hopes he will share it with his girlfriend, a big reader, and they can discuss it. It's about gamers, friendship, love, and compassion. Yes? With some sound and fury and meaninglessness, despair, and regret thrown in but also hope. OK, it's about being human. Also enjoyed The Book of Form and Emptiness, by Ruth Ozeki, a lot of which takes place in a public library! On p. 276, the Bottleman says, "Let me tell you something about poetry, young schoolboy. Poetry is a problem of form and emptiness." It sure is!

All my poems these days are about my mother, even if they are ekphrastic or written on postcards. "Grief deranges," says Gish Jen in The Resisters, a book I read in January, actually. "Healing is slow." It sure is. I am participating in a solstice-to-solstice poetry postcard project and have sent 8 postcards and received 3. (Maybe that will pick up after the holiday mail...) Some have gone to Santa Cruz, CA and Portland, OR, where I have family, and one went to Japan! I love the random coincidii...

I loved Stoner, by John Williams, which I hope to discuss in 2024 with an online book group, an occasion to reread it. Life as it is lived, academic life, at the University of Missouri in Columbia. I loved The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes, a quiet Wow! book, a revelation, also, in a way, life as it is lived, but by someone not fully paying attention, until, well, until... I liked it so much I sought out the movie I had remembered shelving at the library, with Charlotte Rampling in it. Well done.

I gave Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett, to my daughter and my sister, who had already heard Meryl Streep read the audio version but now has a hard copy to cuddle up with on the couch, like a sloth. It's a mother-daughter story with a production of Our Town in it, perfect for our theatre family. I gave my dad compression socks, but I've been steering books his way all year. Stoner was one of them. I am very, very slowly getting back to real life. But thanking all those books.