Thursday, April 10, 2008

Sun Slack

Yes! It's spring! Yikes! I haven't been writing or reading as promised. I will get back on the horse today. Here follows a list of excuses (I just discovered that a neighbor/friend has a blog just for lists because she likes to make them, so I thought I'd borrow the idea for a minute):

Thing One: Yesterday we got given a pair of tickets to see Evidence perform at Merrill Auditorium (that picture was taken from inside the organ, cool). It's always a treat to go to the Merrill, not only because it's usually because someone gave us tickets, but because it's fun to see lots of people we know from dancing, working, and generally being in Portland. I skipped writers group to go.

Thing Two: Today it's sunny! That's a lousy excuse. What better weather for poetry? It literally makes me want to just jump around with delight that it's not freezing, though. I think I'm getting old...

OK, so I'm clearly an amateur when it comes to list-making. I'll work on that. Maybe. I think I like paragraphs better. I'm off to do some spring cleaning, because we only get the one day before it goes back to being rainy, cold, and yes, possibly even snowy on Sunday. Good thing we'll be in New Haven, dancing our feet off.

One more thing before I sign off and get writing (and cleaning). I realized today upon driving out to meet with a math teacher at one of the high schools "just" outside of Portland that I am more grateful that I live in Portland than I have been willing to admit, or even aware of. The traffic is SO bad once you hit the "city" limits, and the houses are just sort of dropped, without any apparent thought of design or position, about the landscape. And the strip malls. But you know what it's like. Anyway. I just wanted to say for the record ('cause god knows I complain enough about city life) that I'm glad I don't live out there.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Poetry Month, Day 2

I made several attempts this morning to write a little something about my annual exasperation with April in Maine ("spring," but without warmth, growth, or other indicators), but everything just kept coming out whiny.

So I moved on to listening to the Senate hearings. I have never listened to Senate hearings before, or any other hearings for that matter. I found them fascinating and terrifically educational (in particular on the topic of how senators, generals, and ambassadors speak to one another under one very specific set of circumstances, but also when it comes to the various disagreements as to what we oughtta be doing and/or not doing in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan).

The most interesting and, probably, useful, part of using the hearings as the soundtrack for my day about town, which included four short trips in the car over the course of the day, was the content whiplash that ensued as I switched back and forth from my everyday life to the hearings. In my days, I think about things like helping with triangle similarity, lower back pain, possible bike routes through town, the benefits of raw milk, and whether or not I'll ever earn and save enough money to buy a house. They're thinking and talking about how to pay back the gargantuan debt we're accumulating with our current actions, whether the living and governing conditions are actually improving in Iraq or not, and whether or not we have enough troops (with enough rest) to continue with the war and the rest of what fighting a war entails. Humbling, to say the least.

So. Back to it. I should warn you, though, I've also had Social Security on my mind lately. It's not that I pay more SS than anyone else, it's just that I don't ever get to forget about it because four times a year, I make the calculation and see just exactly how much of my money goes to paying benefits to current retirees that, under the current system, won't be there when I'm ready to retire. Maybe it's the perceived entitlement to "getting it back" that I should work on. I could just think of it as a generous contribution to the elderly. I have to say, though, that at this point I'm more inclined to find a way to give the money directly to my dad (retiree who works full time to pay his mortgage and health insurance) so that he can make improvements on the house that I'll eventually inherit.

But I wasn't going to talk about that. Yet.

Monday, April 7, 2008

2 read, 2 written

(See first "Poetry Month")

I borrowed from my friend Jon a book of poetry by Stephen Dunn, which I have now opened, three short months after the borrowing. (Actually, come to think of it, it was more like he borrowed it to me, in a sort of a transitive way, where I had little choice, fortunately, given that I am so particular about poetry that I forget that it's worth trying new.) I of course loved the first poem I came upon, and wondered before I'd made it to the third line how I had gone so many days without this latest promise of mine to read and write on every one. I could suddenly only barely stand all that I'd let go by without words, starting with, for some reason, this latest and oddest condition in which my right hand is decidedly colder than my left.

So it promises to be an interesting month. If you're near a library, the Stephen Dunn book is called Different Hours, and the poem is called the Last Hours.

2 read, 2 written

Poetry Month

Just realized April is poetry month, which is just the thing to inspire another monthlong writing blitz. The folks who put on the novel write in November also do a scriptfrenzy in April, but I don't have much interest in that. Instead I'll observe a little of both and read and write a poem a day for the rest of the month, plus, along the way, 7 extras to make up for lost first week. (It now being the 7th.) I shan't be posting them, likely, but I'll post about the writing and perhaps let you know if I run across any especially delicious ones in my reading. Off I go to catch up...

PS: I found myself tempted to entitle this post it "poitry," which is how my fifth grade teacher pronounced the word, and we her students then did for the next, I don't know, 17 years, any time it came up in conversation when we were together. Pity the teacher who says something a little off. Even once.