The trouble with blogs

It's so easy to START a blog..it's keeping it going that is difficult. I don't always have something to say. Though my family might differ with that, I am certain they'd agree that not everything I prattle on about is worth listening to. I've opened this screen at least three times today in the hope that a bolt of lightning will illuminate the room and I will suddenly have an idea worthy of a paragraph or two. Nope. I've pretty much decided that I MUST do an entry at least once a week--which gives me absolution for a little more than 80% of my time. I can live with that.

That resolved, I have been attempting to corral my poetry oeuvre into some sort of orderly topic-oriented progression, so that I might enter a few contests, submit to a few journals, and perhaps, just perhaps, achieve (in that suddenly-free 80% of my time) that devoutly-to-be-wished goal: publication.

It isn't easy. Despite my exalted title (ahem) I am still as uncertain about the quality and value of what I write as I ever was. It's so easy to brush off a compliment or a kind word as simple good manners. (Perhaps that is because of the books I've read and readings that I've walked away from with a contemptuous "I could do better than that!")

In any event, sending my work off to a journal or other publication feels like putting a brand-new kindergartner on the bus--or perhaps, more accurately, flinging them under the wheels of the bus. I read a poem, then I start (figuratively) to comb its hair or tweak its shirt, or lick my handkerchief and scrub away at an imagined spot. It's impossible to believe that it is ready to be dispatched into the real world to be judged and (possibly) found wanting. Far easier to keep it safe at home.

But then, how will I ever know whether it measures up or not? Maybe this is why so many artists (and I include poets among them) aren't recognized until they are dead. They can't let go.

After the conventions

I'm beginning to think that the best method for evaluating our national circus (otherwise known as the presidential election) might be the same process used in rating other competitive enterprises: collect the scores, throw out the highest and the lowest, then average the middle ones. That way, we could just ignore all the over-the-top shenanigans (Sarah Palin's speech, for one), throw out all the low blows (but who's counting?), and whittle things down to reality-level.

Accept the fact that (thank God) our system of checks and balances won't permit the fulfillment of the more outrageous promises/consequences and believe that the American public won't fall totally for the exaggerations, misrepresentations, and downright lies that people tell (and the media reports) while under the influence of the convention spotlights. No candidate is a savior, and no candidate is the devil incarnate. Lord knows, we've had some bad actors in government, and politics can generate some pretty reprehensible behavior--but, somehow, we've managed to hold things together for a couple centuries with this system of ours. No matter who is elected, life will go on; perhaps not in the way we want it to, perhaps not without some serious bumps in the road, but on, nevertheless.

I'd like to believe that when I go into the voting booth in November, there will be millions of others like me (and certainly millions of others NOT like me) who will be listening to their own consciences, their own values (if the Republicans haven't damaged that word for all time), and their own beliefs, and will be voting for the people who are most closely aligned with their own views. I'd like to think that when the voting is done, all those millions of people will accept the results and continue to work and be involved in the governmental processes that allow even the minority to have a voice in how this country operates. That is, after all, the way this is all supposed to work.

Sarah Palin: Gloria says it better.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-steinem4-2008sep04,0,1290251.story

Summer's End

Only yesterday the sunshined schoolbus
ceased its daily orbit round the neighborhood.
We shrieked across the schoolyard,
books and teachers in our wake.
Freed from the solitary confinement of our desks
we wrote our names instead in jet trails
across the vast blue board of sky,
multiplied our hours by each blade of grass,
perfected the physics of skipping stones
and measured the depth and flow of creek and pond.
From grassy beds, we studied pinprick stars
in the planetarium of night
and wrapped ourselves in lush damp air
that sparkled with fireflies and magic.

Yet here we stand in August, three months gone--
with our barefoot mornings and lemonade afternoons,
days of watermelon on the porch
and thorny blackberry expeditions behind us,
learning once more the sweet alchemy of a peach
while the juice of summer
trickles through our fingers...

September???

Wait a minute. What happened to summer? Seems like it was Memorial Day only last week, and now, Labor Day? I think it has something to do with my absence from the school scene. When you are going to school--as a student or a parent or a teacher--your life is defined by the quarter system and punctuated by vacations. Leave that system and you're like an eecummings poem--except even those have some internal structure. You can't even rely on the retail establishment to keep you on an even keel: the aisles are full of Halloween merchandise the day after the 4th of July, and I imagine Christmas stuff will arrive next week on the heels of the back-to-school clearances. The seasons have even disappeared from the grocery store. At this point we should be winding down from peaches and corn and tomatoes and moving into apple season, but, thanks to the wonders of modern technology and transportation, I can still buy strawberries and cantaloupes that should have disappeared in June.

I need to be grounded a little more in the real world. Establish more of a routine. Pay more attention. Slow things down enough that I can see the changes and not have the seasons zing by me like they've been fired from a slingshot. Maybe it's true what they say--that once you're over the hill, you pick up speed.

Complexity

In the past 72 hours, I have popped like a kernel of Orville Redenbacher's finest all over the frying pan of my life. From the Democratic convention--Mark Warner and Hillary!! And the governor of Montana (what a guy!)-- to a marathon trip to Pennsylvania, joining my 88-year old mother in her monthly lunch reunion with her high school graduating class, fully 2/3 of whom are cousins. From lunch with my writing group to dinner at Acadiana, to the grocery store, to poet laureate stuff, to church committee, to a friend's birthday party plans, to where-can-I-get steamed-crabs in Baltimore (a question from a Californian friend)....pop, pop, pop. Nothing is related, nothing leads into the next event, and my entire life seems to be a monster non sequitur, a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. At least on the bad days.

And then I think of Georges Seurat and all his little dots. Maybe there's a picture in here somewhere and I just have to step back a little to see what's going on.

Library of Congress

All right. Raise your hands. How many of you have never visited the Library of Congress? (Seeing the Nicholas Cage "National Treasure" movie doesn't count.) We took a tour this weekend, and though I'd briefly visited when the great hall was finally restored, and also to get a reader's card this past year, I had not spent any serious time looking at the building or seeing what it had to offer till then. Wow.

Perhaps it was just that we'd spent two weeks photographing every building, statue, and scenic view in Italy this summer, but I wished throughout this tour that I'd had the brains to bring along my camera. The interior is simply gorgeous, and full of quotations (a weakness of mine) and symbolism, statues and mosaics and interesting details. And this is before you even get to the books. And the reading rooms. And the exhibits. (Did you know they have Bob Hope's complete joke file? Arranged by topic.) It is indeed a 'palace of books'--a temple of books-- and it speaks seductively to the booklover. Books of all shapes and sizes and subjects and provenance, arrayed in every direction. A place to stand in awe, overwhelmed by the power of words, worthy of devout pilgrimage.