Labor Day 2020

On this Labor Day, I have past Labor Days in mind.  There's last year, when we kept a wary eye on the fearsome Hurricane Dorian.  Two years ago, there was a tropical disturbance off our shore that turned into a tropical storm at the last minute, but we just had some wind and rain.  Three years ago I was keeping an eye on Irma, which would do so much damage to our property--are we fully recovered?

But there are more pleasant Labor Day memories too.  There are get togethers with friends and times spent on creative endeavors.  Labor Day is often a day when we cook; this week-end, we did a lot of cooking yesterday when my brother-in-law and his wife came over.  We did whole chickens grilled over a half-full can of soda, something we haven't done in a long time--delicious, and I'm not one who usually pronounces chicken to be delicious.  We had olive oil slathered potatoes roasted in the oven 3 ways (with rosemary, with rosemary, lemons, and carrots, and roasted with just salt and pepper).  And then, steamed broccoli, which has its own simple appeal.

Today I have an ambitious goal:  to get all of my books on our newly created floating shelves.  Yes, the Great Shelving Project is finally done.  Last year, when we were moving bookcases back to the house in the hopes of trying to get the cottage ready for my spouse's sister, my spouse developed this vision of floating shelves which would allow us to take advantage of the height of the ceilings.  And now, finally, they are ready.

The books have been packed away since the Great Flooring Project of 2 years ago.  It seems like in our younger years, we could do these home repair projects more quickly.  Of course, we didn't have to work as many hours to afford it all then.

On a past Labor Day long ago, we might have put away our white clothes and our sandals.  I stopped wearing white years ago, and I wear sandals year round in South Florida.  Still, I have some Labor Day traditions:  enjoying some summer activities which will be gone all too soon.

Pandemic Grocery Shopping

  Yesterday I left the house early for a Saturday--time to restock the supplies.  An hour later, the friendly cashier said, "I can tell you're a good cook by all the things you've bought."

I'm a little surprised that she didn't say, "What kind of disaster prepper are you anyway?"

Yesterday's trek was to the WalMart Neighborhood Market.  I do have some qualms about shopping at WalMart, but I have those same qualms about most of the ways I shop, qualms that come back to this basic question:  are the workers being treated fairly?  Unlike other places I might prefer to live, here in South Florida, we have no small farms to support and very little in the way of locally owned stores of any kind.

Because I went to WalMart Neighborhood Market, I wasn't just buying food for our meals.  I bought 3 bottles of aspirin because I haven't been able to find generic aspirin all summer, and finally, the aspirin shelf was stocked.  I bought paper towels and Kleenex and nicotine tablets.  But I also bought a lot of food.

I have almost always keep a full pantry:  canned goods, dried beans, grains, baking supplies.  I don't always keep a lot of perishables.  I remember having friends over one evening in January, and one of them said, "You have the fridge of a single person."  I had just cleaned it thoroughly because it was so empty.  Eventually, I restocked.

In these pandemic days, I don't let our supplies get quite as low as I did before.  I am still expecting some supply chain disruptions as colder weather comes and people get sick and now we've all been told to stay home even if we just feel sniffly.

I am a good cook--it made me feel inordinately happy when the cashier said that--so much better than looking like a maniacal disaster prepper.

Dried Up Markers and Chief Cornerstones

In 2016, I started buying Copic Sketch markers, even though they're more expensive than just about any other art supply I've ever used regularly.  One of their selling points was that I could buy containers of refill ink that would keep the expensive markers useful for much longer than a regular marker with no refills.

In the past year, the refill ink seems to have vanished from U.S. markets--or they cost so much that I can't decide that they're worth the price.  I thought I might just buy a replacement marker.

But in the past few weeks, I've noticed that some of the markers that I bought in the last year (or 2?) seem to be drying up, even though I'm not using them as much as some of the first colors I bought.  Do I want to replace them?

I tend to buy markers in bold colors that make me happy--and then when I need to sketch in some sand, I wish I had a beige marker.  But paying for beige?  I miss paints that are more blendable, even though I'm more likely to use markers because there's not much clean up.

I am sketching more these days because it's part of my morning devotions time that I broadcast from my church's Facebook page.  Part of me wants to buy more markers to celebrate and to keep my interests up.  Part of me wonders why I am bothering; I'm not a professional artist after all.

It's easy to spiral from there into complete self-loathing--I'm no good, no one will ever pay me, I'm too old/running out of time to learn to be better, why do I even bother?  These days, I'm noticing that I often slide down this difficult hole in my writing too.

Let me post this sketch that I made the other day.  It's a potent reminder of why we shouldn't give up in the face of rejection (both internal and external):

Running on Fumes

 It's been the kind of morning (week?  season?  year?) when I stare at the computer screen and think, I used to be a writer.  I'm not feeling particularly inspired as this week draws to a close.  But let me collect some fragments and see if I can get a sense of a larger picture.

--Let me remember that I have been doing some tending to my writing life.  I've sent out some packets of poems.  I submitted my poetry manuscript to CavanKerry Press.

--I have been enjoying watching the full moon set as I stare out of my west facing windows these past few mornings.

--My home computer has been very sluggish this week.  It's consumed some of my writing time as I sit here, waiting for my computer to catch up.  Grr.

--While I've been waiting for my computer, I've been reading Natalie Goldberg's The True Secret of Writing.  It's been long enough since I've read her that I have really been enjoying this book, by which I mean it seems new and fresh, even though they're the same ideas she's been advocating for decades.  At some point, I may try to capture some of the ideas in this book that seem new and fresh.  Or maybe I'll let them slide away.

--Part of my exhaustion/emptiness comes from being around too many people all week long.  For example, the fire inspector came to my campus, and I had to take her to every room because the doors are all locked these days.  She had to look at every plug (no lie), exit sign, and emergency light.  She had to push on every stairwell door.  She made notes.  She also had a non-stop commentary for the hour + time we were together; I now know more about fire safety than I ever knew before. We have also had more Corporate folks at campus this week than ever before.

--Part of my exhaustion/emptiness comes from not having a clear vision about the future.  A week ago, my boss was let go, and I'm still not sure of the larger implications.  Soon my school will have new owners, and I'm still not sure of the implications.

--I am missing people who are gone and past times when I felt like I was flourishing more than I am now, and this week, those missings are a bit more fierce.  I am realizing how much that missing is often thrumming in the background.  I'm not sure what to do with that knowledge or if there's anything that needs to be done.  I am aware of the undertone of grief that comes with later midlife, but startled to hear it in my life.

--I am wishing for a change in the weather, and it's just unrelentingly sultry here.  The weather is sultry, and I am sulky.  I am dreaming of a house in the mountains.

--I am realizing that if I had only myself to consider, I would make completely different choices.  Very little of my current life would remain as it is.  I am unsettled in that realization.

Mrs. Rogers' Neighborhood

Last week, my pastor sent me this message:

 

Here's what the message says, "I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy Kristins devotional so in the mornings! Thank you for that. She is really good at what she does"

I was so moved that I cut and pasted the message into this blog post, where I found it this morning when I was feeling uninspired.

I have been doing the morning watch devotional time at 5:30 a.m. each morning since the end of March, and I've never gotten tired of it.  I read the passages from the Morning Office part of Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours, we're quiet for 5-7 minutes (I sketch, but obviously, people can do what meditative practice speaks to them), then I say the closing prayer and say a few sentences about the day ahead.

Some days it feels profound, and other days, I wonder if I'm just blathering.  But usually, there's a comment or two from someone who was moved.

One of my favorite compliments from the past month:  one of my church friends said that I was like her very own Mr. Rogers, and now she calls me Mrs. Rogers.

There are many people I find inspirational and aspirational, and Mr. Rogers is often at the top of that list.  I would ordinarily close by saying I need to ponder what these experiences are telling me.

But I know what they're telling me; I just don't know where to go from here.

Photographing the Sealey Challenge

 On the first day of the Sealey Challenge, I saw several people post selfies of themselves and the volume of poetry that they had finished reading for the day.  I don't have a smart phone, so I knew that I wouldn't be posting a selfie.  I decided I would try to do something artful with each photograph.

For the first day, I noticed a pillow that would be a colorful backdrop to the book cover, so I went with that:

Here's something similar, using my spouse's collage as backdrop:

But as the days progressed, I tried to do something that would reflect on the subject matter of the book.  Here I used a statue of the Buddha for Luisa Igloria's The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis:

Some photos were a bit of an inside joke (Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in Switzerland):

Some photos delighted me in the way they came together:

I even pulled a photo because I worried I was being unintentionally offensive in some way, since Blanco is a gay male poet.  At first, I posted this photo:

Then I decided to go safer, even though I doubt anyone is paying much attention to my photos:

I wasn't anticipating the benefits of taking these photographs beyond the fun of it all.  But the thinking through of a photograph helped me to consider the essence of a volume of poems, the meaning of it all, and how to translate it into a picture.  It tapped into a different part of my brain, and I want to believe that I was a better reader because of it.  

It was an additional way I fed my soul, and that alone made it worthwhile.

What I Learned from the Sealey Challenge

Although it's been happening since 2017,  I hadn't heard of the Sealey Challenge until this year.  Much earlier, poet Dave Bonta read one volume of poetry each day of April, which is National Poetry Month.  I couldn't imagine being able to do that.

I'm still not sure why I thought I could do it this year.  It was August 1 when I decided.  If the first day of  August hadn't been on a Saturday, I might not have tried.  If my spouse hadn't been taking a long nap that day, I might not have decided to make the leap.  If I didn't have a few books of poetry in my book stacks (as opposed to my packed up book boxes), I might have lost the opportunity.

Some people spent months planning their Sealey Challenge--in fact, that's how I found out about it, by people posting photos of their stacks of books that were ready for August.  I did worry that I wouldn't have enough to read, since many of my books are still packed away.  Happily, I can still get books from the public library, although the process is much more laborious.  

I did a short post each day, giving a micro review of each book.  Here's an example:  "The Sealey Challenge, Day 29: Richard Blanco's "How to Love a Country." We are all exiles now, longing for a country that may never love us back. Or will it? Blanco says, "to know a country takes all we know of love" (p. 70), and sometimes we're rewarded. Moving poems exploring the terrain of exile and immigration and love of all sorts."

I also posted a photo of each book, a photo which said something about the book.  This process took on a life of its own--I'll write a separate blog post about that process later on this week.

So what did I learn?  The most important thing:  I have more time than I think that I do.  It's not a new lesson for me, but it's important to revisit it periodically.  I realized how much time I usually spend in somewhat mindless scrolling and internet zipping.  Why is it so hard for me to avoid those traps?

I also learned that my poetry stands up against the poetry I've been reading.  I've got some manuscripts which are publishable.  I didn't really have doubts, but it's interesting to read a lot of recently published work and to see how my manuscript would fit in.

I chose to read only female writers and the male writers that I included were people of color. I've spent plenty of time reading white male writers.  Most of the authors I chose were familiar to me, in part because I didn't spend the month of July planning to explore new authors.  But I was happy with my choices.  Even when I read books I had already read, it was a treat to revisit them.

For the most part, I read each book in one fell swoop.  Most of them took me about an hour of concentrated reading.  I often planned to pick up the book when I wasn't likely to be interrupted.  It wasn't the kind of deep reading I might ordinarily do, but it was rewarding in itself.

I learned that the perfect page # for a book of poems is 65-80 pages.  I read a few volumes that were over 120 pages--that's a bit too much for most readers to sustain the focus.

I had hoped that I might emerge from the month of August with all sorts of poems of my own to write.  Perhaps that will happen.  I've felt a bit more fluid in that way in the last 2 weeks.

All in all, it was a great experience--but I am ready to slow down from the breakneck pace of August.