Wishing I Had Time to Woo My Muse

Often when I wake up, I'm making choices about which blog post idea I'll follow.  This morning, I feel a bit blah.  Nothing calls out to me.  I wonder why that is.

I do have to go to the dentist today, so I don't have my usual writing feeling that I have on a Tuesday or a Thursday, of time stretched out before me.  And in 45 minutes, I leave for an exercise class, so my Tuesday wouldn't have been like a Thursday anyway.

I also have some deadlines, which make it difficult for me to feel like my writing time is really mine.  One online class is coming to an end.  I've got some blog posts to deliver.  These responsibilities don't take much time, but when I don't have much time to begin with . . .

I feel a bit of despair.  How can it already be October, and I've submitted no poems to any journals?  Some years, I've had poetry packets ready to go for the Sept. 1 opening date of so many submission seasons.  Not this year.

My despair is a larger despair too.  How can I have spent so many years trying to get my book-length poetry manuscript published and still no luck?

I am sure that part of my blah-ness comes from 6 +  weeks of intense work weeks, and not the kind of work that feeds my creativity.

I have been here before, and I'm sure I'll come to this point in the cycle again.  Here's a poem that I wrote over 10 years ago that captures my feelings--except I'm not at the point where I have the time for wooing just yet.  Insert a sigh here.

I've decided to leave the poem as I wrote it, even though some of the gendered imagery makes me feel strange, especially the idea of a pouting, flouncing, female muse.


Wooing My Muse

It has been so long since I touched
her word soaked skin.
I used to glide so easily along her surface.
Now I worry that my fingers will fumble,
catch on any roughness, ruin the mood
I long to create.

I used to do this dance without even thinking.
Now I can’t take my eyes off my feet.
I count out the beats, trip over my phrasing.
Clumsy, clumsy, clumsy. My cursing inner critic
keeps time far better than I can.
Now I must woo my muse again.
She pouts and flounces, unable to trust
that I’ve really returned. She can’t forgive
me for my betrayals. I have made a mistress
of television, lingered too long
with the words of others, leaving my beloved alone
and abandoned. I leave little gifts,
necklaces made of words strung together,
flowers of phrases,
a candy box of symbols and metaphors,
until I win her heart again.

Poetry Monday: "Fixed Hour Prayers"

I don't have much writing time today.  So let me post a poem.  It's from the group of poems published at the wonderfully cool, online journal Escape Into Life.  Since it's an online journal, they can do neat things with images, and my poems are paired with wonderful fabric art.  Go here to see the feature.

Those of you who follow my poetry and/or my blogs know that monasticism often informs my writing and that I often find The Liturgy of the Hours seeping into my writing as image and symbol and unifying theme--and often in ways that surprise me.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the idea of the Liturgy of the Hours and fixed hour prayers, an explanation might help.  In monastic life, the cloistered members gather at the chapel at specific hours for a service which mostly consists of chanting the Psalms.  In non-monastic life, a spiritual discipline of praying at specific times can mimic that monastic practice, or it can be less formal.

How did I come to think of a monastic chapel in conjunction with a hospital?  I don't really remember.  But I do remember that the poem came out fairly easily once it percolated in my subconscious for awhile.


Fixed Hour Prayers


Her father’s inner life, closed
to her, and now, to him, a distant
monastery, a vow of silence
required for visitation.

Still, she makes her pilgrimage. She brings
baskets of goodies: the pistachio nuts
he loves, the puzzle books,
some warm socks. She leaves
her offering on his dresser.

She listens to the Gregorian chant
of her father’s wheezing lungs,
a language at once both familiar
and strange. The nurses, with their Psalmody
of medications, appear throughout the day,
a liturgy of the hours.

Before she leaves, she reads
the books of her childhood
out loud to him: the otter
making his journey home, the children
finding their way through a dark forest,
families forging a life on a prairie.

She reads these bedtime stories,
a compline of comfort
that asserts the possibility
of safe passage through the night.

Creative Impulses for a Sunday

We were forecast to have the first front of the season move through this week-end, but I didn't believe it.  It's early in the season for a cold front to swoop this far south.  But indeed, it's cooler this morning! 

Of course, that means it's 72 degrees, not 85.  Still, I'm happy.  I'm ready for changes of all sorts.  I'm ready to follow some creative impulses.  Some possibilities:

--At some point, I want some fall flowers for the porch, some mums or marigolds.  But I may wait a few weeks, until after the pumpkin offload at my church.  That way, I can create an autumnal tableaux.

--In the meantime, I'll buy myself an autumnal bouquet after my dentist's appointment on Tuesday. 

--Ordinarily, I might make pumpkin bread when the weather changes.  But this morning, I need to make the communion bread for the 9:45 church service.

--My poetry juices seem to be flowing again!  Yesterday, a Facebook friend posted this:  "Camping in October: waking cold on the stony ground, I know the day will be perfect."  I thought about the fact that some of us deprive ourselves on purpose, and then I thought of refugees who often have little choice but to sleep on a stony ground--but their day won't be perfect.

--Maybe I'll just spend the day reading, which is sort of a creative impulse.  The coverage of Ebola has led me back to the bubonic plague.  I just finished rereading Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonders.  Next up:  Connie Willis' The Doomsday Book, about a modern researcher who time travels back to the worst year of the medieval plague.

--Speaking of reading, I'm delighted by this interview with Billy Collins on poetry and leadership and the purpose of poetry.  He says, "Poetry can do a lot of things to people. I mean it can improve your imagination. It can take you to new places. It can give you this incredible form of verbal pleasure. But leadership to me suggests that there’s a place to lead the person to, that there’s a mission or a goal involved. I don’t think poets are that purpose driven. A poem actually can have either no point or a very nuanced point."

--If the weather is cooling off, it's time to start thinking about quilting again.  I need to think about another charity quilting event at church--perhaps for All Saints Sunday.  I need to finish a project that celebrates my parents' 50th anniversary.  I need to add a panel to this:

One heart for every year of marriage.  I made the first creation for their 25th anniversary when I was poor and in grad school.  The quilting gets better closer to the bottom.  It seems a fitting metaphor.

--Ah what joys !  A Sunday stretches ahead with all sorts of creative possibilities!

Inspirations on the Feast Day of Saint Francis

Today is the Feast Day of St. Francis.  These days, we might be more familiar with this saint, since our current pope chose the name Francis.  Many of us think of Francis as being kind to animals, but he was so much more.  For more on that, see this post on my theology blog.

But today, my mind comes back to modern people and our pets.

When I was in elementary school, one of the most pressing theological questions concerned pets.  Would they go to Heaven?  I remember that it seemed like a pressing question.

Of course, I also worried about the unforgivable sin and the fact that various adults answered the question differently when I asked, "What is the unforgivable sin?"  So, I will grant you that I was an unusual child.

When I asked about pets and Heaven, some adults brushed off my question by saying, "Of course not.  Animals don't have souls."

I suspect that few adults today would go for that simple answer, at least the ones who share their lives with pets.  We live in a time where people spend enormous amounts of money on their pets.  Gone are the days when you'd spend a chunk of money for shots and that would be the extent of your vet bills for the life of the pet. 

Lately, I've been thinking about the care we offer our pets and contrasting that care with the amount of care we give ourselves.  I've known more than one person who cooked better meals for their dogs than they do for themselves.  You can probably offer similar examples:  humans who make sure that their pets see dentists, even when the human members of the family don't take care of their teeth, dogs who see therapists, pets who get wonderful treats that humans deny themselves--the list could go on and on.

I wonder how Francis came to be so associated with pets.  I think of him as someone who looked out for the outcast of society as he cared for lepers.  We don't think about the implications of that aspect of his life in the pet blessing services that many churches will have to celebrate the life of this saint.

But there's more.   He gave up everything he owned--and he was rich--in a quest for a more authentic life. He inspired others to follow the same path, and he founded two religious orders that still thrive.  I can't decide which impresses me more, the insistence on an authentic life, even if it cost him everything or his fierce commitment to community.

As we celebrate the life of St. Francis, will we hear these parts of the story? I doubt it. Those are the parts of the story that are threatening to the social order. We can't have young people behaving in the way that St. Francis did. What on earth would happen then?

Our society would be transformed.

"Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw"*

I know so many people who say that they feel closest to God in nature.  I always assume that they mean the kind of nature that we find in places further away from human-made civilization:  mountain tops, deep woods, volcanoes--places like that.

I assume that they don't mean the kind of nature when a hurricane swirls or a tornado sweeps down.  They don't mean the kind of nature when one animal eats another.

 I have this on the brain because of a backyard drama that I witnessed the other day.  My spouse was at the back window.  He called for me to come quickly but quietly.

We spent the next 15 minutes watching an owl eat a creature.  From the picked-clean skeleton we found later, we think it was a smaller bird.  There was no struggle.  The owl had already made the kill.

 We watched as the owl picked and pulled with its beak.  It was both fascinating and slightly nauseating.

Later, we found the bones, which had been picked clean.  My spouse thinks that the owl's dinner was a smaller bird.  At one point, I thought he was eating a crab, but this skeleton doesn't look like a crab.

 We have at least 2 owls in our neighborhood.  We've spent several nights last week watching them swoop in the palm trees.

Yes, in the palm trees.  I think of owls as residents of distant woodlands.  My neighborhood is half a mile from the Atlantic ocean and half a mile away from one densely populated urban center, which is only one of many densely populated urban centers in South Florida.

In short, I don't think of it as owl habitat.

I asked my spouse why owls would live here, and he said, "Why not? There's plenty of food and little competition."  Plus, no one shoots at them, like might happen in a distant woodland.

It's easy to feel close to God in the twilight, as I watch the owls fly through the dark and call to each other.  When I watch one bird eat a smaller bird, my thoughts don't first go to the glory of God and the creation God has made.

 And it's even harder when I think about the cancer cell.  In my human-centric way, I want to see the cancer cell as an aberration.  What if it represents the future in terms of evolution?

My religious tradition tells me that God loves the sparrow, so therefore, I should rest assured that God loves me.  We've often interpreted those passages to mean that God loves us even more than the lowly sparrow, since we're obviously the more highly developed creatures.  Others read those passages as reassurance that God loves us all the same.  Both views are troubling.

My friend sees the presence of the owls as celestial message.  I worry about habitat loss.  My spouse sees the presence of the owls as evidence of their smart migration to an easier place to live.  Perhaps we are all correct.



*Tennyson's words, not mine.

In a Week of Tech Tiredness, Happiness

So many things are making me happy this morning.  Let me make a list:

--I was able to get my computer back to operational.  Hurrah!  It really was as simple as it should have been.   I learned from the Spring Computer Crash of 2014 that you shouldn't hope that the computer will heal itself.  Those restore points vanish all too soon, and then you have to go to the more extreme Refresh, which wipes out some of the programs.  Yesterday afternoon, I went back to the only restore point available, and now the desk top loads just fine.

--Because I got the computer fixed, I did some writing this morning.  It's always a good morning when I write.

--Yesterday I saw the first house decorated for Halloween.  It's muggy and hot and not at all autumnal, but the sight of Halloween decorations makes me smile.

--Today I will wear the jewelry that my spouse gave me--he bought the pieces from SERVV, which supports third world artisans.  Social justice and pretty jewelry--hurrah!  Below you'll see the bracelet.

--I got all the syllabi for classes in my department not being taught in the Fall migrated to the new template.  The completion of this task makes me happiest of all.  Hopefully today I'll get all the syllabi from the faculty teaching the courses for Fall--please may they be perfect syllabi.

--I met with a variety of people from across my college yesterday to try to come up with a more efficient way of evaluating non-official transcripts, a way that won't keep us out of compliance.  Within 20 minutes of brainstorming, we had one.  I love being part of that kind of problem solving team!  I love that although we all might have different agendas, we're not hostile to each other.  We solved the problem and laughed some too--excellent!

--I've also been happy when I could solve issues students were having with transcripts and registration.  When students come to me with issues about grades, I can't often fix those cries for help.  It's much too late.  But when a student asks me if a class taken elsewhere could be reassigned so that it doesn't drop from the degree audit, and I go to the file to realize that I can do this, I'm happy to be able to make an easy fix.

--I've also been exchanging e-mails with my online students who are crafting essays.  It's wonderful to see them develop nebulous possibilities into real outlines.  Hurrah!

--It has been a long week full of various technology annoyances.  I'm glad it's Thursday.

--One student I helped this week turned as she left my office.  She said, "I really love your poems."   It was the kind of day where that compliment really buoyed my spirits.

Of Bugs and Hidden Powers

I couldn't sleep because my spouse was making that strangled, snoring-esque sounds that he's only started making in the past week.  Sigh.  But I thought I'd get up and get some writing done.  I had thought about a blog post that talked about how my knowledge of Word is like my knowledge of my brain--I know that it can do so much more than I know how to make it do.

This morning, alas, my home computer is not doing anything with Word.  Insert a heavy sigh here.

My laptop computer is doing what it did in late March.  The desktop won't load properly, and thus, anything that loads from the desktop, like Word, isn't loading.  It's like it starts, then the computer starts over again trying to start it--it looks sort of like a rolling over of the screen.  Sigh.

Yesterday at work we found out that all syllabi, not just the ones for courses being taught in the Fall, must be put into the new template.  Luckily I already have a syllabus for every class in the catalog.  I just need to migrate some material into the new template.

I've been working with colleagues who are having trouble with the template.  In this process, I've been amazed to realize all that the Word program can do.  I just use it as an easier typewriter.  I suspect many people do.

The software program has so many powers that are so hidden to so many people.  Of what use is a powerful program, if it's so vast and complex that most of us can't access its power?

This morning, I'm feeling the same way about my laptop.

Maybe tonight I'll try to take the laptop back to an earlier point where it was working.  The last time I had to deal with this, I finally had to use the Refresh function--everything was in place, except for a few programs I had loaded.  In some ways, it wasn't a big deal to reload them.  But there was anxiety about the whole process.

It makes me wonder about the bug that's in my computer.  Why does it get hung up in this way?  Am I going to be dealing with this every few months?

I think ofthis paragraph in this post by poet Dale Favier, who has spent a lifetime in the computer field:

"As I wander on through life, observing various human endeavors, I've come to realize that everything is like that. Nothing has really been built to specs. Nothing quite operates as advertised. The flaws are various and infinite. All you can do is fix a few of the most glaring problems. The rest will have to stand. You can see it in software, because software is uniquely observable: it does exactly the same thing, over and over again, and it breaks down readily into tiny discreet steps. But everything works that way."

Somehow, when it comes to software or hardware, this idea doesn't comfort me.  When it comes to self-improvement, it is somewhat soothing.  The rest will have to stand!  That's such a radical idea in so many ways.

And here's an even more radical idea:  sometimes the flaw is the very thing that the world needs.

But it's hard to believe that about my little laptop.  I can't work with a flawed computer that can't access my files.  I want the computer to heal itself.  I suspect that it won't.

Maybe I'll discover that I have hidden powers.  May they be revealed!