“The moment of change is the only poem.” Adrienne Rich
Saturday, February 4, 2012
I listened to a podcast this morning on the treadmill Cheryl Richardson hosting the author Andre Dubus, best know as the author of House of Sand and Fog. I admit I didn’t read the book, but saw the movie. While wonderful, it definitely falls into the category of movies that are too hard to watch again. Anyway…
He listed the numbers of rejections his books had received prior to being published — each time over twenty rejections. House of Sand and Fog was rejected by 28 publishers before it found a home and eventually was sold to make a movie. He encouraged writers not to ever give up!
Most interestingly, they both felt that any time the writer focuses on their reader or the publisher or the goal of selling the work, they have moved out of the creative space and hamper their work. Good advice. For me, working late in the evening enables me to think less and write more clearly.
A common mystery, I think. Last post had me noting Spring, but now Summer’s come and gone here. This morning I went out on the deck (before it started to rain) and the smell of autumn hit me. I seem to love two smells: libraries and autumn. Both are really smells of decay, right? Leaf mold and book pages being inexorably consumed.
Another great feature of Autumn is the brilliant blue skies of October. Out here where it’s fairly flat geophysically, the sky takes up the majority of my view. I’ve been playing around with poem lines that start with, “a sky so big…” hoping to convey my favorite time of year.
I imagined honeysuckle yesterday on my walk. I know it’s too early, though. Honeysuckle blooms mid-June here — around my birthday. Spring smells are intoxicating me (finally). Lilacs overgrown fifteen feet tall line the alleys here: twilight dark purple, soft lilac, and white cones. Dusty spring shower scent, sunday quick cut the grass before it rains hard smell. Heady rotting, worm filled, dirt smell as weeds get pulled up, including what seems like acres of Bleeding Heart volunteers near the bird bath. I’m dumping bags of shredded cypress mulch – no faux orange colored mulch here! Sneezing, oh well!
I transplanted a small rose bush that had been mistakenly planted halfway under a downspout at the corner of the garage. In the two years I’ve lived here, it’s budded a few tiny peach roses. Hopefully, it will survive then thrive in its new home in full sun.
National Poetry Month Poster
Yesterday, it snowed and drizzled most of the day, like god’s own little april fool’s day joke. Daffodils on the south side of the yard are poking up, but pausing on days like yesterday. Today is the tease, like Eliot said: the sky is clear, with only a few swift moving clouds. It’s bright, but only 40 degrees now (10:30 a.m.). I’m putting off my walk on the hopes it’ll get warmer; I’ll risk the sun exposure now and then.
I should be able to put the down comforter away, trade the heavy blanket for cotton, and even open the windows in April, but this morning I have wool socks on my feet and a sweater on inside. Instead it’s still “mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots…”
Are robins really the harbinger of Spring? A few bounced around my front yard yesterday — don’t see any this morning, though. I am ready for Spring, like most people around here. Putting the recycling bin out Wednesday, I slipped in the four inches of snow and landed on my butt, cursing all the entities who might have anything to do with this latest snowfall.
The view over the top of the screen is tree-filled and watery blue sky — all frustratingly not Spring.
I haven’t learned to channel this itchy frustration into writing yet, and I’m too old to cavort like a goat anymore. I just want to warm up.
“… and even I’m getting tired of useless desires…” – Patty Griffin, Impossible Dreams CD
The idea of desire jumps to the top of my attention again this morning when I heard this line Patty sings (in the eponymous song). Whether it’s age or winter or Sunday morning, the ah-ha comes to me. When isn’t desire useless? Desire is only an idea or self-created notion stemming from the inability to keep my attention on being here now.
I’ve used the idea of desire to justify many actions (good and bad), but what’s the difference in the adjective, when the noun is the root of the problem?
I realize now that most of my hormones have tapered down to a random drip, what I thought was inherently me, was only the physical drive fueled by youth’s hormones and a misplaced desire for attention [love]. How interesting from this vantage point. Isn’t that called a parallax view?
Sexual desire is the obvious “useless desire,” but a new rug for the foyer or crown molding in the living room or even no rheumatic joint pain are equally useless. The point may be only to watch where my attention goes and if it’s more on the desire than the moment.
Thanks, Patty.
“Do you want to be the mystic or the scholar?” – Shams-e-Tabriz to Rumi.
According to many sources, Rumi is the best selling poet in America. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,356133,00.html
I don’t remember who said the quote about Economics, but I’m sure he or she is right. I have no problem spending significant money to buy a hand-made rug, but I can’t spend $1200 on a snowblower. Is it because I’ve reached middle age without having a machine to move snow? Most of the time I stick to “god put it there; god will take it away,” but in Wisconsin, several inches of snow is common and even all-wheel drive isn’t magic. Especially when trying to muscle through the frozen wall the street plow plastered to the bottom of the driveway. And you HAVE to clean in front of the mail box or risk the nasty-gram from the mail carrier.
Now my lower back hurts and I detest “my back hurts” whiners. I know it’s moving the snow this winter and being 55. Thankfully, I have a neighbor with a plower and blower attached to his John Deere lawn tractor, and I’m pretty sure he enjoys using it in the snow. He usually cleans up the bottom of my driveway and in front of the mailbox (Thanks, Keith!!), but he can’t go up my steep driveway. I appreciate what he does, though, but it’s only stalling the inevitable. sigh.
Cold cliff
weathered tree,
this knobby pated monk. . .
things there’s nothing better than a poem.
Laughs at himself for striving so
to write in the dust of the world,
and scolds old Ts’ang Ko
for inventing writing,
and leading so many astray.
- Ching An, 1851-1912
