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