Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Tuesday Tidbits

--I feel like I should have more to say about John Hollander.  But I'm not coming up with much.  Happily, there are other poets out there who can fill the gap.  See this post by Sandra Beasley which makes me want to explore his works more than I have.

--Her post also makes me want to get back to writing poems.  It has been a dry summer in terms of writing poetry--well, in terms of most writing.  I'm grateful for blogging, which has at least served as a writing maintenance program; I'm not starting from scratch as much as I would be if I hadn't been blogging.

--It's also been a dry summer in terms of poetry reading.  Time to get back to those habits.  I started on Sunday with Bernadette Geyer's The Scabbard of Her Throat.  What a treat of a book!  Lots of fun with fairy tales, interesting twists on modern life, the interesting viewpoint which means I'll never look at a subject the same way again--in short, all the things I love about what a good poem can do.

--Yesterday, I was cleaning off my desk and realized that I've spent the whole summer not submitting poems.  It's time to get back to that again too.  There have been some years where I've been impatiently waiting for September 1, when so many journals start accepting submissions again.  This year, I'm astonished to find that we're almost to September 1, when my writer's mind still thinks it's May.

--Our buyers decided not to sign the contract.  They were feeling too much pressure trying to get it all done before they go on vacation to Seattle.  We're hoping that they'll return and still want the house (they say that is their intention)--or, since the house stays on the market, we're hoping that they return home to find that someone else snatched it up.  Not much we can do, of course, although we did lower the price on the house to see if we could attract a different buyer.

--After our we got the call about the buyers, I decided it was time to walk to the beach.  I had some sort of energy to burn off, and I'd already done aggressive house sweeping.

--I'm glad I went.  I got to see a toddler dancing to Bob Marley singing "No Woman, No Cry."  That would have been worth it alone.  I saw lots of folks taking pictures of the full moon.  I met a happy, little dog on the walk back.

--Most important, the walk reminded me of all the reasons why this house moving process has been worth it.

--And the moon!  The moon is so beautiful.  Last night, its light had a hard, crystalline quality.  This morning, it had a soft, milky quality. 

--I had strange dreams all night.  In each dream that I remember, I was in a different house, all of them mine in dream life, but nothing like my waking life houses.  Each house needed renovation work, and each one in each dream was different.  I was both happy to wake up and sad--some of those houses were neat, and some had land that had possibilities.

--A psychologist would have a field day with my dreams of houses that need work.  It doesn't take much analytical work to think about what those dreams might mean:  self-improvement work or literal home improvement or relationship repair.

--And now it's off to the world of the literal, my administrator life.  But let me remember the various vistas I've seen in the past few days.  Let me remember that it's time to move back towards poetry.  Let me start crafting a short story; Jeannine's post makes me yearn for similar enchantment.  Let me remember what I was doing with the memoir.

--And let the world be a better place because I moved through it today.  Let me solve problems.  Let me think about what at first glimpse seems impossible.  Let me not say "No" too quickly.

--Let me remember to smile.

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