Books & Bookmarks

Sometimes, just to give a little order to the ongoing chaos, I like to align the colors of my books-in-progress and their bookmarks. I just finished Dear Ann, by Bobbie Ann Mason, a sort of rewriting one's personal history through the imagination kind of novel. When I took a picture of it with my phone next to the Reveal the Teal bookmark, I learned how to use QR codes. 

Now I'm reading Manhattan Beach, by Jennifer Egan, with a hand-made bookmark from a friend who understands my relentless book-acquisition habits. Her clever bookmarks for members of our book club show what would be on our t-shirts! Mine says, "One does not stop buying books beause there is no more shelf space." So true. But at least my book buying is affordable (ongoing library used book sale) and often includes book donating at the end! 

My kids were just here, doing another round of getting rid of stuff (recycling, donating, or tossing games, puzzles, clothes, shoes, memorabilia, past school/art work), and they almost sold a loft bed contraption with bookshelves in it that would have disrupted my world! Fortunately, I have a little time...

During their stay, I stopped writing & posting my chalkboard poems. But (by getting up earlier than my kids) I kept writing a poem a day for National Poetry Month. As the poems continue to roll out, the rejections continue to dribble in. Likewise, the weather--a glorious week of warmth and sunshine while they were here, and now a return to chilly, wet weather with dribbling rain. Up so early to take our son to the airport, and now sadness will descend.

My nonfiction reading, slow going due to its devastating topic, is Still Life With Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains, by Alexa Hagerty, automatically renewed via interlibrary loan. Its bookmark is wisdom by Confucious: "Respect others and others will respect you." Hope that's true!

Being Human

Being human, I am still doing plenty of escape reading and eating lots of jelly beans. It's Good Friday. I worked, attended a medical appointment with my mom, and then our church Green Team in our new Green Team t-shirts helped the Ecology Action Center prep about 700 trees for planting. I got to tie a yellow ribbon round a lot of black walnut tree starts, orange ribbons around many hickory starts, and pink ribbons around another variety. Our little ribbons were as colorful as jelly beans! There was also mud and moss.

I loved The Humans, by Matt Haig. I read the nose cover and also enjoy the dog cover! An alien from outer space visits the icky humans on earth to thwart their mathematical advancement because of their general greed and aggression...but learns a few things. The dog helps.

Poetry keeps pouring out of me, onto a chalkboard and a computer screen and into a composition notebook. (Meanwhile, rejections.) I've been doing both poetry and prose in a Lenten workshop online that's about to end, and I provide prompts and poems for another online workshop every April. There's a great sense of camaraderie in both these workshops, for which I am grateful. Now my kids are coming home for Easter, so 1) some of the poetry may pause 2) I must not eat all the jelly beans!!

Hello Beautiful

OK, I'm suddenly trendy, as I'm reading Oprah's new Book Club selection! It's Hello Beautiful, by Ann Napolitano, and I started it soon after reading her previous book, Dear Edward, which I understand is now a tv series. My paperback edition of Dear Edward, a Read with Jenna selection, had the first chapter of Hello Beautiful in it, so I was twice dipped in its opening sadness and basketball escape.

Also, hello, Beautiful! Thanks for reading my blog. I ran into one of my blog readers last night in person at the theatre. What a joy, and I am so touched! He said he has read some books based on my blog accounts, and he also enjoys my chalkboard poems. This just warms my heart! And I needed warming up, as it's been cold and gloomy for a few days, but yesterday the sun came out, and there was a clear sky with stars and a fingernail moon last night!

It was a busy, but entertaining, Saturday. In the afternoon, I went to The Lost King, about Richard III, inviting my dad, who has written a play about the king and would be familiar with all the basic research and discrepancies! Delightful movie with Sally Hawkins, followed by a panel discussion of theatre and history experts from the university. And a young woman in the audience who had read the book the movie is based on. I remember the news of finding Richard's bones in a car park! That shouldn't be a spoiler! It was on the news! And it's history! The movie tells another story, too, her story!

The balance of cloudy gloom with sunshine carries on in my poetry life, too. A rejection gets balanced by a request to reprint a poem, and going over proofs of some forthcoming poems. And I just keep writing. It's all over the place: chalkboard, computer, composition notebook, notepad for grocery lists, and my shower brain, where dialogue for a script also just spouted out like water or song. Or like water up the basement drain, after saturating rain, when I'm trying to do laundry, making it a half Slattern Day in the blog. But the sun came out, and I'm happy, and the bunnies in the yard, a true rhyme, are hoppy.

Tiny...Dead Things

Well, I went to work today, not to work, but to put up a theatre-library display, due to a collaboration between institutions, library and theatre, and ended up helping patrons and talking to visitors and just hanging out! Indoors. Because it was freezing outside, still is, and now it's snowing again. Poop! Maybe March is the cruelest month.

This picture has the stage manager in it, who played a lot of bagpipes last night.

The play is Tiny Beautiful Things, adapted by Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) from the book by Cheryl Strayed. So, book and playscript are in the display, along with various versions of Wild, and a bunch of nonfiction books that relate to the topics* in the letters that people wrote to Strayed when she was Sugar for the Dear Sugar column of The Rumpus. Already, many of the young people I talk with have already read the book and are delighted and surprised to learn about the play! Tiny Beautiful Things, the tv series, drops April 7 at Hulu.

*including This Body I Wore, by Diana Goetsch, mentioned in this blog entry (where I lost my car).

When I got home, I also didn't work, meaning do any housework, making it a Slattern Day in the blog. As usual it is also a Poetry Someday, as I wrote two morning poems, one on my chalkboard, to a mouse I found dead in a trap this morning by the refrigerator (sorry, Mouse!) and one in a Lenten online workshop where lately I have been doing mostly prose, so a poem was a nice surprise. I did catch up on some computer work. Sigh... Tough week of hospital visits for my dad, so I was staying with my mom, therefore. Lost a little sleep. For escape...and because we saw the season finale of The Last of Us, I am reading World War Z. I am hoping the mouse does not reanimate.

Tiny Poems

Last night I participated in a lovely event at the Chenoa Public Library, a presentation about Fugue, an artist book with photographs by Ken Kashian and tiny poems by me. You can see a little video about it, with a fugue as background music, at Ken's website and at the Fugue link above. Part of the joy was the absolute attention of the audience, and part was conversing with them afterwards in a relaxed and cozy way on a rainy night, us warm inside in comfortable chairs donated by other libraries! In fact, Sheryl the director and I realized we had attended the same regional library conference the day before. I guess that makes it a Random Coinciday as well as a Poetry Someday in the blog! Other coincidences: the library director had participated in a theatre in town that I work with, and I went to high school with her husband and his brothers. He farmed up the road from where I lived, and my son and his hometown have the same name! 

The town and its library are very near the Weston Cemetery Prairie Nature Preserve, where the poems and photos are set. Not everyone in the audience had been there yet, but they'll be visiting soon! I was so honored that people felt reverence for the place, and reverent in our space last night, thanks to the photos and poems, and, I think, the sense of community.

Also, I finally read Educated, by Tara Westover, that everyone had told me to read. Wow, were they right. What a story! Right up there with Women Talking, by Miriam Toews, about women overcoming oppression and violence and being uneducated, and finding a way out, a way to live their lives. We hope. I read a good article--where? LA Times?!--about how Women Talking, the film, won't win Best Picture at the Oscars, but that the real "win" was being nominated. I think it ends (paraphrasing here), But wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a world where it could win? Yes. 

And, by the way, can I invite myself to anyone's Oscar party? My tv doesn't get ABC. Well, if not, I guess we could watch the season finale of The Last of Us! But I do love watching the Oscars live.