wastrel not (wantrel not)

First World Problems

My children know what this means. It’s a good way to put a stop to whining and complaining. I mean this for myself, not as a means of controlling the entitled little folks (okay, not so little) with whom I live. Believe me, I’m plenty entitled.

I know that even in the US, many are living in very poor circumstances and conditions. Especially now with income disparity and the corporatocracy being what it is.

I want to show you something about me. This is the tube from which I squeezed (or, as we like to say around here: squoazed) my toothpaste the other morning after waking:

I have a compulsion to squeeze the toothpaste tube until I think it can yield nothing more; Lo and Behold though, every morning there is more. I am sure this toothpaste tube has thought of committing itself to the garbage can for weeks, but I won’t let it go. It’s like a toothpaste fairy keeps refilling a quarter-teaspoon of paste back into the tube every night.

I am sometimes overwhelmed by the crap that comes to me by way of Facebook. The pro-gun camp and the anti-gun camp. Never the twain shall meet and this makes me first angry and then exceedingly sad.

From now on, I will attempt to refer to what is known as a “gun control” issue as an “anti gun-violence” issue, both to flip the rhetoric on its head and present a more accurate phrase.

I enjoy many aspects of Facebook. I love it even with its flaws and deceptions at my [willful] expense. I have thought of un-friending certain people, but have decided simply to hide their posts.

I save plastic bread bags for reuse, as my mother did (and still does) before me and I rewash plastic bags, especially the sturdy ones with zip-tops that are filled with carrots or (DELICIOUS) greens that I purchase at the farmer’s market.

I like immaculately clean dishes. I am quite wasteful when it comes to how much dish soap I dispense from the bottle.

I don’t grow any vegetables or raise any animals. I do buy eggs from my neighbor.

Sometimes, when it comes to the aftermath of emotional interactions I’ve had with people I love, sorry is the best I have.

Oh, Emily. She was so [what we would call today] positive. Maybe she was even cheerful. I am happy to guess and suppose and surmise and read nothing at all about it but her own words.

Read Full Post »

submitting to rejection

One of the definitions of submit is to yield or surrender to the will or authority of another

Yesterday, I got a rejection letter. The good thing about it is that they responded in less than a month. The bad news is that I feel crappy about it. We all know the stories, we all know we have to keep at it. We all know that within the next several months, I’ll be submitting and submitting and submitting and that I’ll get rejected until I can’t take it any more. But I ran into a poet acquaintance Thursday night and he just got his manuscript accepted. It will be published in January 2013. And it took him 10 years. And his poems are good, really good, just the way I like them.

I happen to know that submitting is one of the four responses to being attacked. It is also, obviously, the last: fight, flight, freeze, submit. It’s a funny word to use for sending poems along for consideration, especially when poets have to deal with all the levels of meaning of words: puns, double-entendres, shadings, gradations, and so on and so forth.

In a similar vein, there was an Amherst Block Party on Thursday night—a town first. One of my favorite “living statues” was there. She dons a long, old-fashioned dress, buttoned to the top, and wears a sort of bonnet on her head. She sits at a writing desk with an open book, fountain pen, and a small box in front of her. When you put money in her basket (on the ground), she opens the box and gives you a little Emily Dickinson verse scrolled up and tied with a ribbon. I mean, teeny-tiny. She is all spray-painted in a copper-ish paint. I simply love her. Failed, however, to have my camera on hand, so you’ll have to wait for another time for a photo.

#71

It makes no difference abroad,
The seasons fit the same,
The mornings blossom into noons,
And split their pods of flame.

First of all, this verse is GORGEOUS. Breathlessly gorgeous and sensuous.

It also reminds me of several Sacred Harp songs. Not so much the sentiment, because here Dickinson is not writing about death. But the words and the sounds of the vowels and the images and that time in which Emily lived. That time to which we will never return and yet to which we are bound by the same sun and moon and seasons.

These lyrics are from 1830. The song is in a major key which fills me with a strange cognitive dissonance when I sing it.

#436 Morning Sun 

Youth, like the spring, will soon be gone
By fleeting time or conquering death,
Your morning sun may set at noon,
And leave you ever in the dark.
Your sparkling eyes and blooming cheeks
Must wither like the blasted rose;
The coffin, earth, and winding sheet
Will soon your active limbs enclose.

I am not submitting yet. I’m still fighting.

Read Full Post »

How about this for 49?

Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought

Emily Dickinson

Read Full Post »

one of those tiny errors that drive me nuts

First, Hallelujah, we have wi-fi from an unprotected network. As long as I sit on the upper deck of our house rental (from which I can see the ocean of Cape Cod Bay, can see the sand peeking through the water at low tide—even without my glasses—can feel breeze on my bare skin), I get reception.

BUT WAIT! I have now adjourned to the bedroom, on the same side of the house as the deck, and I have connectivity! No mosquitoes, just the sound of the bullfrogs from the huge pond below! This Cape gets better every minute!

I made a mistake in my recent post, thinking that the puzzle-head sculpture was in front of PAAM; as I was walking in town later in the day, I realized it was in front of one of the many galleries on Commercial Street. You know how I like to be accurate if at all possible, so I thought I’d let you know.

Here are two more photos of sculptures of heads, both of these from the excellent sculpture park, deCordova in Concord, Mass:

I don’t really know why I am putting these here now except that they are extremely cool works of art….

I have much more to share. Provincetown; my poetry; my poetry workshop; the amazingly cool, inspiring, fun, beautiful, poetic, art installation at the Emily Dickinson Museum, “Dwell in Possibility,” which we managed to sneak in on Friday before we left town for the Cape. I’ll give you a peek:

You know, this exhibit has been up for weeks and weeks and although I’d driven by parts of it a number of times, the family waited to see it until the day before it was to be taken down. BUT, oh, how worthwhile. So much to tell, so many poems to post….where to begin?

Internet is sketchy unless I’m on the deck and tho the moon be full and lo I want to write and post, I will retire for now. I think the poems I have been working on in the last little while of my life are good. I am getting better at editing.

Just know that I can see the flat ocean in the distance; it is close, not even a quarter mile down the slope

July is the month of my birth

Read Full Post »

emergency Wilco post

nick lowe opened. he sang beautiful songs like a troubadour he serenaded us. he sang alison. he played what’s so funny ’bout peace love and understanding. he played beautiful new songs. he claimed his voice was a bit croaky but it was beautiful and buttery good pipes he was elegant and lovely

wilco played really loud in boston last night my 15-year old did her first school night concert with her parents no less she is tired and grumpy but beautiful so pretty and full of piss and vinegar

they get carried away with just being boys on stage every boy’s hard rock guitar solo jam fantasy not my cuppa (tea) but i sort of get it because you are boys

yes they are a white band with a white sound and you can’t really dance unless you are the big-headed stoner who stood up through almost the whole concert blocking everyone’s view sit down and gave me the finger

i think of that guy and even feel sorry for him because those who can do, those who can’t play air guitar (if you use that, please credit me, but it’s so obvious maybe it’s been said before)

this new song rocks out not so much with its cock out i’d save that expression for other bands and other songs like led zeppelin in my time of dying but it rocks out nonetheless in a good wilco way eff the critics and only their old stuff was good when jeff was using drugs see forward he’s an innovator peeps

tweedy says that was influenced by ed herself he sang another new folksy one with lyrics about his dad i wish i could remember how it goes we had crappy seats but i bought them the day after they went on sale and almost sold out by then loyal fans

rare:

[props to pt dismal who unknowingly inspired me to write without caps] i think i like it the i s are the hardest punctuation would be even harder to let go of but who says i can’t experience new forms of writing look it’s not poetry but i’m trying

to break your heart

I would throw myself underneath the wheels of your train of thought

i ♥ tweedy

Read Full Post »