Feeling a little strange now

I've been at my Mom's for about a week and a half now.  None of us felt good about leaving her cabin in the "holler" unoccupied so soon after her obituary stated where all her children lived, ranging from 1.5 hours to the entire continent away.  Plus there's some other issues with her estate I won't go into here. 

I keep thinking that she'll come around the corner from her bedroom and give me hell for spreading all my crap out over the majority of the horizontal areas of the living room.  I tend to do that when I'm stressed.  Or mad.  Or sad.  Or all frelling three.

I slept on the couch for 3 nights, finally going upstairs to suffer through a bout of insomnia last night almost as bad as the night she died.  Won't go into that here.

Her memorial service was focused on her, her faith and her life -- though some thought her pastor mentioned her choir and Sunday School class so often that it came across like a commercial for them.  They were a big part of her life, as was her writing group, which I crashed yesterday.  It was a dual purpose visit, returning some things they had left with her -- though I forgot to ask about a strange pyrex dish which showed up in her kitchen -- and getting two of my poems critiqued.*

I have watched a lot of mindless Law & Order SVU reruns and some Netflix online -- might as well enjoy the cable TV and internet while I'm here, no?  And I've done some other professional things, like fulfilling the ethics requirements for my Va CMT renewal.  And finally getting all the poems from the workshop I took in SF revised to the point where I'm comfortable sending them out to the other participants.  Twice, because I forgot to put my name on them before I sent them out the first time.

I can't seem to focus for long periods of time.  Grief, I believe.  I did so much grieving for both my Weim and my Mom, before she actually died, that I feel pretty numb at the moment.  That's normal too.  Gotta go, as my blogging time is up.

 * I have found that very few writing groups know what to do with the rough drafts of poems presented for constructive criticism, so I've about stopped attending meetings.

I have a valid excuse this time...

My Mom had been fighting cancer since 2007.  It metastasized in her lungs last fall.  After two sessions of chemo, she called into the hospital because she felt horrible. And then spent several hours on IVs to get her electrolytes in-balance and re-hydrated, she and her oncologist agreed to stop the chemo.

So she focused on quality of life rather than quantity.  And focused her energy on self publishing a novel and a slightly fictionalized memoir of the 23 years my family spent living in the Alaskan Bush, from the early 1960s to the early 1980s.  I read about 100 pages of it before my life exploded this past summer.  I also haven't read her novel.  Any of them -- published or unpublished.  It's like I am too close to her and them to be objective.  And I feel bad about it.  But I still haven't read them.

So, they are on my "to read" list.  Whenever I stop reading the head-candy crap I've been able to focus on lately.  Wonder why that is?  Dog died.  My Mom's dying.  I can hear her gasping for breath right now as I'm writing this.

I'm waiting on my younger sister to come back here to my Mom's cabin tomorrow.  I left a message on my older sister's answering machine.  Guess I should call my brother-in-law and see if he can get her a message at work.  Since I don't have that particular number.

I'm signing off and going to write my mid-afternoon pages, a la the Artist's Way now.

If I can focus on it, that is.

Another me!

OK, another blogger with the same blog name, across the pond.  Different font and different capitalization. And is mostly cat pictures.

I should leave a note on the cat's blog...or Dyoji, as the cat has been named.

: P

Crap, can't leave the cat a note...for I just tried.  Talk about synchronicity. How many other cats named "dog" are out there?

Vote for your favorite Olympic Poem!

Vote for your favorite Olympic Poem here on NPR. 

I'm not telling which one I voted for.

But I reserve the right to whine if mine didn't win.

Cuz I voted.

Hmm, maybe y'all should vote in November too.

Just saying.

Crap, has it been that long?

I so suck at this blogging thing.  And the other social media stuff.  Maybe I'm just being pulled in too many ways and need to cut back on my obligations.  Especially with my "mundane" job picking up steam and my Mom's health deteriorating like it has been in the past month.  She's about 7 hours away, if I speed and don't stop to pee.  So, a weekend trip isn't fun if I have just 4 days to make the trip. 

I have a college friend who recently contacted me and wants me to see her in the Durham/Chapel Hill area of NC, which is on the way.  If I make the trip next weekend, I plan on lunching or having dinner with her on the drive, either coming or going.  I haven't seen her since the year after graduation, in 1994.  Damn, that admission makes me feel old.

I was in San Francisco Bay area a week ago, at my Aunt's house about an hour north of the city.  I hadn't seen her in about a decade, since the last time she and my Dad had flown in from California to visit a great-aunt and attend a family gathering.  At least my Dad's side, anyway.  Since my parent's divorce, we kids have felt a bit like the black sheep of that side of the family.  Everyone loses something in a divorce.  And since we weren't especially close to any of the extended cousins -- how could we when we grew up in Alaska, the entire North American continent away from them? -- it was easy for us to just fade away. 

I attended a poetry workshop for 3.5 days of my 6 day trip to SF.  I learned a lot, got to see the SF symphony perform a lot of Latin songs from West Side Story, Rodeo, cha-cha-cha & mambo medleys where the crowd started dancing at their free concert in Delores Park.  I think I took a gazillion photos of the dancing -- from toddlers in the crow to practiced couples who looked ready for competition.  Gotta download some of those photos for the participants of the workshop.  And get my poems revised and sent back out to everyone else. 

If you get a chance to participate in an on-line workshop with Diane Frank, do it.  Or her annual workshop in her home in San Francisco.  It's a great experience.  Multi-cultural, no, not the word I'm looking for -- multi-disciplined, with the music and the sight-seeing and the poetry. 

Just ran out of time for this blog.  Gotta go work out now. 

Travel delays

I swear when I booked my flight, I was supposed to leave Richmond at 11am.  Maybe I'm going quietly mad, but I would've bet money on it. But my itinerary showed me leaving at 2:52 pm Wednesday.

So, I did call in a favor to get to the airport, but not from my BIL.   Asked a friend who has Wednesday's off & she agreed to help me out. And she had enough time to get her hair cut on the way back from the city. ;)

I was early, which meant my flight was delayed. I had distractions, iPhone, books, including an Ethics book I need to read some out of to get CE's to renew my license in 2 states. And we boarded the plane 30 minutes after we were supposed to have taken off, then sat there for another 30-45 minutes while the pilots recalculated the flight plan & asked for more fuel to be loaded onto the plane -- so we wouldn't run out of gas and fall from the sky like a lead paperweight.

We arrived in Cleveland in time for me to receive 5 updates from the airlines telling me I would not be leaving at 5:42pm, but at 10pm. There were flight delays and cancelations all over the boards & disgruntled passengers 10-20 deep at the airline customer service counter the entire time I was at the Cleveland airport.

I ate expensive crap pub food, had another beer (before, I whiled away time in Richmond observing 4 new GI's revel in being off-base), and actually went on-board a mere three hours late. I napped, wrote in my journal & watched the complimentary direct TV for 2 shows. By the time we arrived at San Fancisco, I was over three hours late and I barely made the last BART train out of the airport.

I arrived at the stop where my Aunt picked my up after 1 am, got to her house after 1:30am and she kept trying to feed me as soon as I got into her house. You can take the girl out of the South, but can't take the South out of the girl.

My S.O. has bad restaurant luck. I have bad traveling luck. Give me flight delays over frozen entrees any day!

I leave my Aunt's house a bit later today to make my way to the hotel I'm sharing a suite with two other poets to keep expenses down. But first, I'm swimming in my Aunt's pool.

Go West, young woman

So, I fly to the west coast tomorrow. I still have to shove my clothes in my bag, confirm my flight, decide how I'm getting to the airport and if I'm gonna call in a favor to get there. Or if I'll leave my car in long-term parking & pay the fee.

But my car needs to be seen by the body-work guys who worked on it last year, to see if they can find the intermittent leak which occurs when it's raining like hell or when I go through the car wash. And it would be nice not to have it looked at while I actually need it to run around in. 

Anyway. I'm going to a poetry workshop offered by Diane Frank of Blue Light Press in San Francisco. And I'm visiting an Aunt for two days. I haven't seen her in about 10 years, since the last time she came out to visit her Aunt with my Dad, who was living with her then. I think. Then I'm sharing a hotel room with a view of the Pacific Ocean with two other poets in the workshop from Friday night til Monday. I'm not sure if I'm going back to my Aunt's house or not after that. I may try to extend my trip for a day or two, since I was an idiot and booked a red-eye for myself on the way back Tuesday night. That way I'll be sure to catch up with an acquaintance I know from Greensboro. Since it took me three days to recover from the last red-eye I flew on, last fall, that might be the smart thing to do. Oh, how soon we forget what a pain in the butt red-eyes can be. 

I need to run off some more poems, like pretty much all of a chapbook I've been writing on for the last year. It may be book length by the time I'm finished with the series. She said to bring poems of a project we've been working on. And that is a long-term project I have been working on.

I'll keep you updated!

I don't plan on

Posting many of my poems on this site, but wanted to share these two in light of last week's events.

I wrote the first poem as a response to Robert Lee Brewer's 2008 Poem a Day Challenge, day 5 prompt:  write about something you dread.  As Scully had just turned 10, I wrote about dreading "The day".

Decade

My ten-year-old Weimaraner,

the one whose leg may be broken,

who sports yet another set of stitches,

I fear the day I will have to hold her

muzzel close as she struggles

for air. I shy from the day I will see

her deep keel still, her eyes haze, her

tail cease to move, her paws lie still.

I avoid the thought of where she

will lay down for the last time, or

where I will spread her ashes, or upon

which mantle I will keep her urn. I look

into her yellow eyes and vow to spend

more time tossing the ball, scratching her

ears, rubbing her near hairless belly. I know

that I will forget that silent promise until the

next medical emergency will remind

me that she was 69 on her last birthday.

For Scully --

  June 27, 2012

I carry my grief like a gift,

tucked under my heart.

Encapsulated by my ribs,

absorbed like nutrition

with every heartbeat, the cells

of my body drink grief up.

It sweeps through cell

membranes, into nuclei.

Inserts itself into  my DNA,

becomes a permanent feature

in its permanent tomb.  My grief, a tiny 

reminder of the place you held in my life.

I suck at blogging

I sorta kinda wanna blog & really don't, all at the same time.

I have "blog" down on my weekly "to do" list, but then I push it back behind, say, work which makes me money or running errands or writing to my adoptees* in Afghanistan. I have two, one who has less than two months left in the sand, the other has less than three. One I email almost daily and hope to keep in touch with once he's back stateside, the other is deployed in a remote area and I haven't heard from him yet, if I do at all.

But back to the topic, blogging and sucking at it.

Sigh.

 I'm not sure there's much more to say, other than I need to move it higher on my priority list, if I want to do this thing at least half-decently. Or even half-heartedly.

Which means, back to the monthly platform daily to do list Robert urged us to set up in April and continue visiting monthly from then, er, now on. Frelling meevocks, this writing gig is tough.

Later, when I actually have something to say...

* Check out Adopta-Platoon.org

It's a great organization. And for you writers out there, it's an excuse to write a human being who may or may not be able to write you back. It's kinda freeing, in an odd sorta way, just tossing unanswered cards, letters and goodie boxes out into snail mail.

A Cat Named Dog: RIP, Scully

A Cat Named Dog: RIP, Scully: I euthanized my 14-year old Weimaraner yesterday.  Then went over to a friend's house with the young whippersnapper (10 year old) Duncan an...

RIP, Scully

I euthanized my 14-year old Weimaraner yesterday.  Then went over to a friend's house with the young whippersnapper (10 year old) Duncan and we held a wake for her, with my S.O. joining us after work. 

It was a hard decision I spent 5 days agonizing over.  And spent all those days saying goodbye -- taking her to the neighbors field to hunt through the grass for voles and moles, letting her eat the homemade, high protein food I finally made (when I ran out of the dry food over the weekend) for her and Duncan's enjoyment, crying whenever I saw her weeble-wooble down the front porch stairs with increasing frequency as the inoperable fibrosarcoma tumor grew and displaced her organs.  

I'll tell y'all the story of how I acquired my grey-ghost, back in 1998, when I lived in Salem, Oregon.  I lived with a guy for a little over two years too long.  I knew as soon as I moved in with him it was a mistake but it never seemed to be a good time in his life to bring it up, as he was sorta a drama queen.

I knew the relationship was over when I started fantasizing of trading in the boyfriend for a dog, because of the unconditional love a dog would give me.  And I knew, going into a relationship with a dog, that I would be paying all his or her bills from the get go and wouldn't be disappointed when he or she didn't come up with their half of the monthly bills.

So at work, I saw a picture of a small grey puppy for sale, a puppy with these huge ears flopping down to her shoulders and fell instantly in love.  I bought the dog and then spent a month trying to find a place to live which would let me move in with a soon to be 60 pound pooch.

I never regretted that decision, despite her terrible twos and the shoes, CDs and blankets I lost to a mouthy dog,  which was much easier to deal with than a secretive boyfriend who didn't pay his share of the bills.

I'll miss you, Lumpy.

Hmm, I seem to be neglecting myself

It's been a busy three or so weeks.  Sorry for the silence on my end.  I'm not sure why I keep ignoring my blog.  It's not made itself into a bi-or tri-weekly habit yet, I guess. 

And I've been juggling a lot of things, primarily traveling this last month:  Balticon46 over Memorial Day weekend (more on that to come, I promise!).  Then I drove to a karate/grappling seminar in my old dojo in Greensboro, NC (more on that, too!) with an extension to my Mom's house for a quick and dirty, but uneventful, girl's weekend with my sister's and my Mom (also a four day trip -- Thur through Sun).  Then my older sister & B-I-L came up the next Thurs so we could go see the Hokusai print exhibit before it left the Sackler Gallery in D.C..  And this weekend, the S.O. and I are in Williamsburg at the annual Virginia Dental Meeting.  Four weekends of travel, strange beds &/or guests (sorry Lisa & John, but y'all are strange :)

The Hokusai exhibit is almost indescribable.  These are woodcut prints are from the1830s and are frelling beautiful.  Especially the ones printed all in blue ink.  If it comes to a gallery anywhere near your city, do not hesitate to go, & go more than once if you can.  It's definitely worth the price of admission. 

The Japanese Mezzotints exhibit is worth a peek, too, especially the lone copper plate showing the etching.  It's warm copper tone blew the black and with print away, in my humble opinion.  And my sister made sure I saw it.  She knows what I tend to be drawn to, as she's seen enough of my photography and stolen, er, appropriated enough of her art/sculpture over the years.  (I still want my turn with the Jhierry totems.  Where the heck are they, BTW?)

More later, when I'm not getting ready for a dental CEU which prolly won't carry over to my massage therapy credits, not that I need anything but an ethics class to renew this year.  August will surprise the heck out of me, so I'd better get to reading that ethics book I borrowed from Kristen. 

Balticon 46, Day 3 & me is tiwed now

I over-labeled, I think. 

But I'm running on very little sleep, so this won't be very long, or detailed. 

I'll just say,  I've had a helluva time so far.  And probably will fall asleep with my head on the keyboard in a minute. 

Met some nice authors, scared another with my pirate costume accessories -- enough that said author said "Hi" to me by name every time he saw me* --, scored some free & not so free books, t-shirts, art.  Oh, yeah, still have that auction to pay for, frell! 

And wore two costumes, if you count the Chinese long tunic I wore today, and the mask I bought 'cuz it matched the tunic.

I just had to leave a panel about the probe we (NASA / US government) is building to go the closest one ever has to the sun.  Even though scientists have wanted to do this for 50+ years, only now is technology at the point where we can build what we need in order to protect the instruments from the high radiation of the sun.  I was starting to head nod despite my interest.  So I left rather than start snoring during her lecture.

And I have not had enough coffee to see me through any more panels, despite wanting to hit the science of Wedenesque universe panel in less than 13 minutes.  And the firking, song fest thingie. 

Next time...so, I'm signing off from Balticon 46.  And need to phone home now.


* OK, scared is an (over-)exaggeration.  I did get a "Holy sh!t, better treat this like it's loaded," when he felt the weight hit his hand.  & a "remind me not to piss you off, AC." 

Ho-lee Shee-it, Batman!

Sunday night, I didn't want to grit my teeth through the one-hour season finale of Family Guy while my S.O.  payed it some attention while conquering the world on a real-time strategy game, so I grab my neglected journal and head upstairs.  After I let the old dogs out to pee and gathered the odd dog bed up for Scully.  We have two dogs and three dog beds.  I'm not sure how that happened.  But one bed travels between the living room, where they stay when we're not home, & upstairs, where they snore louder than my S.O. does, at times.   :P

I am a multi-tasker.  (Why do one thing well, when you can split your attention and do two [or more] things adequately?)  I was icing my shins (frelling shin-splints!), writing my journal entry and compulsively checking my email all roughly at the same time.  

About quarter to 10, up pops an email from a representative of Balticon, informing me that one of the three poems I submitted to their annual Sci-Fi Poetry Contest won third prize, sorry for the late notice, but if you'd like to come and read it at the convention, it won't cost you a thing to get in. (Travel and lodging, not included, of course.)  Paraphrasing here. 

Hoooo-leeee Shee-it, Batman! Robin! Batgirl! (I never understood why they put nipples on the various Batsuits.  And why totally erect ones for Batman and Robin, and only discretely half-erect ones for Batgirl?)  

Anyway, I digress.  I immediately email back that I'm honored to be selected and would love to read my poem at the convention, which, to tell the truth, I'd been trying to figure out how to attend, even though it's less than a week away.  

I call my older sister.  At 10 pm on a Sunday night, I knew she'd still be up.  This is the same older sister who started sending me her sci-fi bookclub books to read when she was in HS in NC and I was a young and immature 11-year-old jr high school student (7th grade).  I went straight from horse and dog books like The Black Stallion series to sci-fi books like Roger Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber and Jack L. Chalker's weird "I have issues with my own sexuality, so I will write it all out in a fantasy series."*


I really was reading a bit over my comprehension at times.  


More tomorrow.  Me too tired to write more....snore.

* This is just my opinion.  I avoid his books.  Left a bad taste in my too-young-mind.

Pro-Cras-Tin-A-Tion

Sometimes when I try to bring up my blog site, this comes up as no. 1 on the list, and I have to scroll down to find myself.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPZVrmJ2HH8

It's a silly song.  Could be about pot.  Could be about a cat named dog.  Dr. Hook evidently covered it.  Though I have yet to find it.  Hmm.  Just did. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmdHaubofXA

I never walked my cat Kimik on a leash, for fear that he'd rip me a new one.  He was a big cat.  And not very co-operative if you didn't let him lounge on your lap for hours.

I'm procrastinating at the moment.  Or, I should say, just chillin' after a day that started at 0450.  Let's just say my circadian rhythms have moved from night owl-dom to WTF can't I go back to sleep?!?

I've been a bit more productive since I started getting up earlier.  But about this time of day, my motivation is nowhere to be found and I'm thinking a little nap-fu action is called for.   Hmm, pillow good.

How have your rhythms changed lately?

Peace.

Mia Culpa

It has been two weeks since my last confession, er, blog post.  But it's been a busy two weeks.  I sent a blog post to my friend, who's trying to get back into the regular habit.  I adopted two soldiers in Afghanistan, plus my nephew in the Navy, and have been writing them -- at least weekly.  Three letters a week.  My Mom could never get me to do this for family when we lived in Alaska.  But I was a snotty little kid and it wasn't fun then.   :)

I've also been to NC and back, to visit my Mom for Mother's Day.  And to catch a little karate fix while I was near one of my instructor's classes.  I barely made the start of his kids class and broke a sweat in there (it's been a looong while since I trained).  The adults class put me on my ass at least a couple dozen times.  We worked different ways of applying one wrist lock, seems like a dozen different scenarios in retrospect.  At least.  But I may have been confused with information overload.  I definitely had an attack of my usual physical dyslexia (Which way do I go?  What way do I turn?  Which hand are we blocking with?  Grabbing with?  That sort of thing. : ). 

I also hadn't planned on participating in any take-downs &/or throws.  Guess I should have told the instructor that my back was already close to spasm-city.  12 seconds after I told one of the lower belts I didn't want to be taken to the floor with the wrist-lock take-down we had just been shown how to do, Sensei grabs me to be the alternate demo-dummy, er, black belt.  I landed oh-so-wrong and right on my already bitchin' SI joint.  It didn't exactly say, "Thank you very much."  More like, "Frell you very much."*

I have a blog post that really should have been put online Thursday before last, but it has been languishing in my unused (of the last couple of days) journal in my messenger bag.  Briefcase, whatever.  Guess I should get a typing.

HOURS LATER:  Guess I failed to type it up.  Will just post this so I can have a half-way up to date blog post.   : )

* You should know what "Frell" means by now.  Ditto for "Frak"***.

**  I take my mission as a Science Fiction Ambassador very seriously.  I must convert the universe!  Resistance is futile.  You will be assimilated, even if it's just by your smart phone. 

*** Battlestar Galactica, not the shale oil fracking, drilling thing getting all the publicity lately.

Es ist Fertig!

Es ist Fertig!

Or, auf English, It is finished!  Done!  Kaput!  Behind me!

April's challenges are done, now I just have to make sure I post all the remaining poems I didn't get to this month on the Poetic Asides comments.  And to go through the Paltform challenges to make sure I did 'em all.   I'm pretty sure I did.

I should be jumping up & down and high five-ing myself, but I still have to send my interviewee my questions, send my guest blog post to my friend so she can put it up on her blog, and check my May editorial calendar to make sure I'm on tract.  

Yes, I know it's on the first of May, but to paraphrase a friend of mine, and one of my Sensei, "The 31st will sneak up onya!"

I did get my second poem for the online workshop written and sent in this morning.* It's scary for me to do this.  They are three poets I've never met in person.  They will only judge me through my work, rough drafts I whip off when inspiration strikes a la April PAD-ing madness.  

 I've taken a couple of workshop classes before.**  So I should be used to it, but it's been awhile & revising has never been my favorite thing to do.

Sigh. OK, my 15 minutes are up.  Gotta post this and get a move on.

* Online workshop with poet Diane Frank at Blue Light Press.

** With Sebastian Matthews via UNC-Asheville's Smokey Mountain Writer's Program in 2007 (& it's a good thing I really didn't know who he was then, otherwise I would've been much more intimidated by him). Last summer with G. Cleveland Winfield III, which has since turned into The Deft Poetry Society, meeting twice a month & sometimes taking advantage of the Inspiration Elevation open mic's he MC's at Java jack's in Tappahannock, Va on the 2nd & 4th Saturdays of the month.

How many Mondays are there in a week?

I've had four frelling Mondays in a row!

My "mundane" job is working as  NeuroMuscular Massage Therapist, a modality based on research of too many people to go into here.*  I quote a martial artist, a teacher of one of my teachers**, when I say, "I stand on the shoulders of giants."

I usually don't work 5 days in a row, because I live in a rural Northern Neck town & usually I don't have 12 people who all want massages in the same week.  You know the cliche, right?  No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.***

And, let me count the other ways in which I have overextended myself this week:

April PAD -- with not one, but two separate themes (2 poems a day was my well-nigh impossible goal)

MNINB Platform Challenge (Bob, could you not do one in April then one in May? Huh?)

And starting on Monday of this week, an 8-week Poetry Workshop with Diane Frank, a poet, editor & educator in San Francisco.  (Website info coming soon.)

Fortunately, there are only 2 others poets in the intro workshop.  (Wipes sweat from forehead.). We've written & critiqued our first poem, as of today, when I finally sent off my critiques mid-afternoon.  I have received my critique from the instructor.  And am pondering her advice.

I give April PAD-ing all the credit for the ease for which I wrote my poem.

And the MNINB Platform Challenge for keeping my forebrain occupied with all the scary social media stuff, allowing my hindbrain to churn out lots of poems this month, so far anyway.

I have an open mic event at a local coffee house in town on Saturday night.  At Java Jack's in Tappahannock, Va from 6:30pm to when we shut the place down.

Come on out, if you're in the area.  I'm one of four featured poets.  

Brain just died.  Goodnight.

* go to Judy Walker's NMT Center website for more information.
** Steve Roensch, Hanshi.  His instructor --who's name I will put here when I consult my notes.
*** Monty Python

Artist of the Month, Part Deux

As I wrote last week (al-frelling-ready?), I received a call that my name had been pulled from a hat to be Artist of the Month.  The pool is made up of those volunteers and member artists who volunteer more than the minimum 5 hours a month at the gallery, on committees or at events  (I think).

Despite having one of those* fathers, I got hooked by the B&W photography bug early.  I was my Jr High School's "photographer" and went on many basketball & wrestling tournaments during my year (year and a half?) stint.  I even went to Anchorage for the state band tournament, much to the dismay of the band.  I spent a lot of time in Kilbuck Jr. High's** darkroom that year.

I volunteer at the gallery because:  I am self-employed and have time to give them.  I want to keep the doors open so I can finally SELL a photograph, rather than have me and my S.O. give them away as gifts.  I also want to be a part of an artistic community, as I didn't do when I lived less than 5 miles from Penland School of Crafts.

I am not a natural club member, being a loner.  And I don't like dealing with the public much, thanks to years spent behind the counter working at a convenience store in high school.  I'd rather spend time actively doing something, but get stuck behind the desk a lot.  I do catch up on things while I'm there and there isn't much foot traffic.  Multi-tasking at it's best!

So I have five photo's in the front half of the gallery as artist of the month.  Two are black and white oldies from college, but I like them both enough to have them framed and hang in my house.  Three are digital color prints I took on a trip to New Zealand with my Mom a year and a half ago.  They are pretty much straight prints, though I want to play with them a bit with software, though I don't know what the hell I'm doing and get frustrated more often than not.  

It's an honor to be chosen as Artist of the Month, even if I did get pulled like a rabbit out of a hat.  I had to answer 6 questions about my creative process, which is a bit of synchronicity, since I'm focusing on all things creative and introspective and networking and with RLB's Platform Challenge.  

My next challenge is to find a way to post photos to my blog.  I think I need to do this through Google's program.  Which is yet another software program to learn.

*"DA-AAAD, take the picture already!"
** Currently just an elementary school, with the Jr High & HS students combined.  EEK!  Poor 6th graders!

(Absent Minded) Artist of the Month*

I'm catching up again on the Platform Challenge.  Just a couple days behind the curve on posting this.  I did write it the day RLB challenged us, but alas, no Internet at home means I post when I get into town and have a couple of minutes free and clear. 

Now I just have to find where I wrote the stupid post, i.e. poetry journal or brain dump journal? 

My journal has forsaken me, so I must reconstruct from faulty memory.  (Yes, I know I am unorganized as hell.  See below for case in point.)

So, the Thursday before Easter, as I was dressing in the locker room of the local gym where I work as a massage therapist (poetry doesn't pay, you know), I get a call from another volunteer of the Tappahannock Artists' Guild.  She informed me that my name had been pulled from a hat and I was artist of the month from Tax Day (April 15) to May 15.  And that I needed to get more photos to the gallery ASAP.  And I had to email her my bio.  And answer the 6 interview questions.  And get her a photo and images to put online for my artist's page on the TAG website.  (OK, I kept getting emails from her all weekend with the additional requests for information.  It's called poetic license.  Or a lawful lie.)

Since I had planned on leaving town for my visit to my Mom's right after I drove back home to let the dogs out to pee, I had to do all this** before I went on my trip.  So, I go get the framed, non-archival digital prints I had just removed from the gallery the day before, after getting juried into said gallery, plus all the good quality B&W work prints I could find in under 5 minutes.  And in my mad rush to get the hell out of town, I left my luggage on the bed upstairs.  

I got a call from my significant other an hour plus into my 7.5 hour drive asking me if I meant to leave my luggage on the bed, upstairs. 

Of frelling course I meant to leave my packed bag at home!***  

In my defense, I had worked out that am after my massage appointments, which meant I had my gym bag with me.  I remembered putting a bag in my car.  I just remembered the wrong bag.****  So, my luggage stayed home and I got to shop for another pair of pants and some undies before I left Greensboro for Lake James.

So far the Artist of the Month experience has been great.  It was the preparation that was a P.I.T.A..*****

Here's one thing off my printed bio which did not make it to my TAG web page.  It's a poem about working in my wet darkroom****** (Yes, it's 19th Century technology.  I'm a practicing steam-punk ;)  

DARKNESS

Turn the overhead lights off,

flick on the red bulb

to signal my final descent into darkness.

Lock the door,

close my eyes

and open them to find the feeble fingers of light

seeping through

walls, curtains

to stain the film I want to play with,

develop blank frames

into smiling faces

or the wondrous play of grey scale, white to midnight.

Bring out paper,

chemicals, containers

of hazardous smells, skin drying baths.

Insert, expose,

wet down, rock to the tick 

of the timer, peer through darkness.

Patient,

waiting

for the image to surface, one slight feature at a time.



Check out the links to TAG, or to the other blogs I sorta follow, or sign up for email updates to my blog.  Or not.  You won't hurt my feelings.  Really! 

* Aren't footnotes great?
** I just dropped off the framed images and a folder of loose prints for her to scan and put online for me.

*** Heavily edited for post-ability, since my blog content is supposed to be G-Rated.

**** I usually bring all my stuff downstairs and put in the staging area before loading the car because I'm absent minded.  Never change your trip routine 'cuz it bites you in the @ss later.  

***** Pain In The @ss.

****** Written in response to a prompt from RLB.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

How much do you share as an author? How much should you share?

Personally, I mine my experiences for some of my poetry. I assume personnas for others. I steal subject matter from family, friends, from newspaper articles, NPR broadcasts like Fresh Air. You name it, I've probably appropriated it in some way, shape or form.

The problem is that can step on toes. I have people in my life who are uncomfortable, if not downright disapproving, of the subject matter of my poetry. Especially knowing I share them in venues such as the local open mic events in the various towns I have lived in, online with RLB's poetic asides blog or online journals & in print.

This is why I have a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy about my writing. I'm not sure it's the healthiest way to deal with this dichotomy, but it's my way.

In May of 2011, I attended the Poetry Society of Virginia's Annual Poetry Festival. One of the events at the festival really spoke to and about this issue. Remica L. Bingham-Risher's The History of Us All: Peronally Politcal Poems forced us all to intertwine our personal narrative poem with a historical account/event. She and I bonded a bit over our propencity to write about personal and family events and throw them out to the world. Her family has started editing themselves around her for fear of ending up in a poem. At least, that's how she told it. Mine hasn't learned this yet.

One of my in-laws was very upset about the subject matter of the chapbook I wrote poems toward in November of 2010. A tragic event and its aftermath of a family we knew, plus other family events, commingled in my brain. I brooded over them for almost 10 years. Eventually, these poems started wanting out of my head. I couldn't not write them. These two events became a jumping off point into a chapbook about a quadriplegic girl dealing with the sudden changes in her life.

You can't play it safe when you feel like you have to write about something which won't leave you alone.

Does your writing get you in trouble with the people in your life?

Still Catching up

Ah, when you bother to look at what is on the toolbar, you will learn something.

Shameless Self-Promotion advice from Blue Light Press


http://www.bluelightpress.com/promo.php

Catching up

I'm finally getting to day 6 of the Platform Challege RLB has cast out on his My Name is Not Bob blog.   And maybe Day 7, 11, 12 & 13 too.

 http://www.kateyschultz.com/2012/04/prairie-center-going-inside_12.html

I know Katey Schultz through Eve's Night Out, and later, through training in the Blue Ridge Martial Arts Academy in WNC.  She's a writer, blogger and has been traveling from residency to residency for over 2 years now.  She has posted to her blog regularly over the years, not quite daily but darn close.  She's announced that she is cutting back to 2 posts a week, to "refill the well" before she embarks on her next project. 


As a newbie at this whole blogging thing, and with everything else in my life, besides writing, the dogs, work, self-care, etc, I do not foresee a daily blog. habit forming.  I can't even get up at the same time every day.


My point is, does getting sucked into an internet presence necessarily mean that it will drain my creative energy? 


What do you think?

Holy Crap, Batman!

Well, I did edit my initial response when I found this blog post after Googling myself day before yesterday.  But still, HOLY CRAP!


http://vickyloras.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/my-post-for-marisa-constantinidess-blog-challenge-a-disabled-access-friendly-world-lessons-for-the-elt-classroom/

A lesson plan for one of my poems?!?  I'm being taught in high school?  (OK, somewhere, perhaps, maybe?)  Now I feel like a real author.  You know, like being taught in school is validating.  (No sarcasm meant at all.)  By reading the Vicky's Blog post, I learned that December 3^rd is International Disability Day.  

Several of my poems have been accepted & published by Wordgathering.*  It is the online journal of disability poetry and essays edited by members of the Inglis House Poetry Workshop in Philadelphia, Pa.  I'm currently at the tail end of re-editing the chapbook which most of those poems were written toward, in yet another of Robert Lee Brewer's PAD** challenges.  But more on that later, as in another blog post.

I still have trouble believing that one of my little, off-the-cuff poems from one of RLB's Wednesday prompts has a lesson plan.  And this poem is pretty much transcribed as I wrote it in my poetry notebook, in December of 2009.   I was on a roll coming off of another intense 30 days of poetry. 

Makes me feel like someone needs to poke me to deflate my ego.   And no, you can't volunteer, David.  No one would see you take me down anyway, Ninja-boy.***


Dreams

My  
dreams
consist of
climbing stairs,
one by one, feeling
muscles clench and relax
at the direction of nerves driven
by my will to ascend up and up, away
from the darkness of waking, immobile, in
                                                my hospital bed.


*Dreams appeared in the December 2010 issue.  Zwolf was in the June 2011 issue as the 3rd place winner (for authors without disabilities) of their annual poetry contest.  Birth Pains was published in the December 2011 issue. 

** Both RLB's Poem-A-Day April Challenge and the November Chapbook Challenge turn 5 this year.  He also posts a weekly prompt for rabid poets on Wednesdays the rest of the year. 

*** We once clothes-lined each other, at the same time, in the middle of a karate class and NO ONE NOTICED!

Some background behind the name of this blog

I grew up in the Alaskan Bush in the 70s and early 80s, before the state took over all the school systems.  My parents taught for the Bureau of Indian affairs for more than 20 years, from the early 60s to the early 80s. 

I was raised in the Yukon-Kuskowim Delta, residing in various villages, though my family lived everywhere from Barrow to Bethel.  Technically, I did too, but I didn't experience much as an egg.

Kimik is the Yu'pik word for dog. I only remember one husky named Kimik growing up, though my Mom says there were at least a couple before him. 

Fast forward to the Blizzard of '93, when I was a senior in college.  Not sure who-all remembers that blizzard which blanketed much of the east coast and brought life to a standstill.  Imagine, a female cat escapes from the house and survives the storm by making sweet love with a wild tomcat.   A couple of months later, I made the mistake of telling the owner of the slutty cat that I would take a kitten if he could not find anyone else.  To someone trying to get rid of unwanted kittens, that means I just got rid of a kitten!

Of course I named the cat Kimik, because that's what my family always named pets.  OK, it was the first choice of names.  And it amused me to have a cat named "dog".   Little did I know that cat would be the most dog-like cat I'd ever know.  He was vocal, affectionate, & very jealous of other pets.  And would sit on your lap basking in your attention for as long as you'd let him. 

Just before I moved to the west coast in the spring of '94, I dropped Kimik and another cat off at my sister's house -- temporarily.  She called me about a year later to say that I could no longer claim ownership, because she'd had them longer than I had by that time.  The cats sent me a T-shirt when I had my salt water tank.  You have to see the shirt to get the joke.  I'll post it here, eventually.

It was years later, after my new dog, Scully*, and I moved in with her, her husband and three cats did I get tested and realize I was allergic to cats.  I lived there for 3 miserable years, averaging a sinus infection about every 2-3 months. 

And that's the abbreviated story behind A Cat Named Dog.

* She was named Scully because Kimik was still alive.  You can't give the same name to two pets living at the same time. 

Between the Tackles

Is both the name of a blog two friends of mine host? post to? (newbie here) and the title of the play they are writing together.

I've had numerous, mainly phone, conversations about the play during the writing process with Britt Kaufmann but none with Stephanie Stark Poling.  This is because, like me, Steph is a self-employed procrastinator (and her email account hates me and eats my emails).

I volunteered to read through the play for them before the first table read.  Mainly because Britt was freaking out a little and to make sure it made sense to someone who hadn't poured months of time and coffee and planning into it.  I pointed out a major plot point that needed a bit more development so it didn't flow right over an audience's help. Hey, I'm a close reader. Like them details, as long as I don't have to provide them.

I've kept myself from feeling jealous over Britt's writing success over the last year.  For the most part.  She's had a chapbook Belonging published through Finishing Line Press, & been solicited by the director of the Parkway Playhouse to write not one but two plays in the last year and a half. She deserves her success. She works damn hard for it.  Much harder than I do.  Or much smarter than I do.  I think it's mainly the latter.

When I lived in WNC, we were acquaintances who met through her husband (my doctor) and a local open mic event, Eve's Night Out, which she hosts on a monthly basis.  We didn't get to be close friends until I moved to Va, when we decided to work through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way together.  It was the second run-through for both of us.

We laugh about this now.  We didn't bother to get to know each other & hang out while we lived 20 minutes from one another but we sure can talk on the phone for an a hour and a half now that we inhabit different states. Go figure.

I think I lost the point of this post due to ADHD.  I blame The Muppets.  & Short Attention Span Theater.

More later.

Link to Britt & Steph's blog:  http://betweenthetacklesplay.blogspot.com/ 

Not sure I wanna do this...

but Robert Lee Brewer challenged me, so I'd better step up to the, er, internet.

I'm an introvert.  I am the wallflower with her face stuck in the book at parties.  Or looking for reasons to just not go in the first place.  Or hiding behind the camera because I hate to have my picture taken.  Often photographers like to hide this way.

I prefer to communicate with written, not spoken, words. Or images, if I'm carting the camera around.  I guess blogging should feel comfortable.  But it sure is scary doing this first post.  Which, truth be told, I should have done a few days ago.  But I think I was trying to get out of town for Easter and, well, I procrastinated.

I think I'm up to 5/7 of RLB's Platform challenge*.  The challenge is to get a number of us who write to his Poem-A-Day Challenges** in April (National Poetry Month) and November (poem/chapbook version of NaNoWriMo***) out into the real world.  Those of us who are scared silly sharing our work with others.  Or at least, the general public.

I'm trying to write not one, but two poems a day (what can I say, I'm a masochist! and I have more than one project going at a time).  During the same 30 days, I'm also attempting to set up an internet presence without having internet at my house.  (I don't have cable either.)

Ah, yes, I am aware that this is insane.

On that note, I'm signing off .  Maybe I'll catch up tomorrow.

I'm still blaming Robert.

*You can find the platform challenge at the blog My Name Is Not Bob.
**The Poem-A-Day challenge can be found at Poetic Asides with Robert Lee Brewer.
***National Write a Novel in a Month