Our List of Solutions

Well, this was a fun one. Our List of Solutions, by Carrie Oeding (42 Miles Press, 2011). I read it too quickly because it has a lovely rambling, conversational quality, funny, with surprises, and sometimes lonely and sad, too. I have lots of favorites lines--I could make a list of them! But it would be too long, and it wouldn't solve anything, but here's one: "I want to make something beautiful out of the everyday." So do I, Carrie Oeding. I love your titles, too, and your impulse to make lists. "Prelude to How the World Works" starts with this line: "Envy the list, its certainty of what's needed in the To-Do." 

I wrote a to-do list yesterday and did not look at it once. Instead, I looked at old letters and the lost world, and today I'm exhausted. Today I brought the kids' stuffed-animal toys up from the basement to air out and sort, deciding what to save and what to toss. I texted pictures of them, all arrayed on the glider and chairs on the patio, to the kids, and they chose favorites (circling them magically on their phones) and I chose more, and figured out I can actually wash some of them on gentle in little mesh bags. 

Of course, "It is better I included toys," says Carrie Oeding, about what she might plant, in her poem, "Coming in From the Garden While I Think of Going Back." Yep, that makes it a Random Coinciday, as well as a Blue Monday in the blog, and a Poetry Someday, specifically  #SealeyChallenge Day 17.

More favorite lines:

"My friends say I don't mention my friends enough. Give us names!"

"Dancing is one way to have joy."

"Oh boys and men, I'm sorry, / my back turning has nothing to do with you."

"Apology to Meditation," a title, and the long sentence in the center that does exactly what I do while meditating, so, likewise, Sorry, Meditation!

I loved reading the poem "Storm's A'Comin" while realizing I would need to load up the toys soon and take them in, as my phone was giving me a weather warning, and the other book I am reading is Isaac's Storm, by Erik Larson, about the hurricane that devastated Galveston in 1900. I was reading a weather statement about winds unlikely to rotate, but, hey, a funnel was sighted in LaSalle County... Also, there is a pineapple in this poem, as in several I have encountered this month in various random books I am reading. 

The "Prelude to How the World Works" contains a list of questions and a list of answers that don't exactly line up, just like the world! And this delightful answer: "A: While considering leaving, look on page 66." You know I did. And I found the poem "And That is How the World Works." It was lovely to read a winsome book with friends and neighbors in it. (She gives some of them names!) To go "Dancing in Shorty's Bar." To discover "Sandy's List of Solutions."

Here's another favorite line: "I could live next door to disappointment." And another, from "Morning Song for the Porch Light": Still on, you greet the sun with your uselessness...."